Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome back. We have continued our work session. I just want to thank each of you in attendance and thank you gentlemen for coming down from Highlands to be here tonight. Commissioners, now is just the time to mix the ingredients of the cake per se and put this budget together. I've got a little list here of items that we need to discuss. Anybody have anything they want to go ahead and open up with? Well, out of respect for Highlands and their time, let's just start off with Highlands Fire Department. And let's just put it out there.

Well, Chairman, I'll start this. And I'm going to turn back the... I don't want to bore you too much in the past, but when I joined the fire department in 1989, it was all volunteers, and we had people standing in line waiting for applications to join the fire department. And in my time at the fire department, all the decisions were made by the firemen and and the fire department as a whole. And since that time, they are more controlled now by the town board and the town of Highlands, which we control the budget. The ask was for a two-cent increase, and that was to provide three more staff. And I don't disagree that The non-response of the volunteers are in dire straits in what I'm hearing and what I know. And so the staff is definitely something that's needed. And how that looks, I really don't know. I don't know. I've tried to dive into this ask for three new positions. And over the weekend, I was asking questions about we have before we had a paid administrator that came in four or five days a week, four hours a day, and controlled all the books and all the ins and outs of the operation of the fire department. And now, since the town has taken over the finances, the checkbook and everything. I remember that very well when that came about and how the uproar in the fire department was the town controlling the checkbook. And we also know that there's not a real problem with response during the day. Highlands Fire Department has a lot of people coming up the mountain that are on other fire departments that work for the town that are participating if needed. And it was clarified at the last meeting that the real problem is at night. So I questioned and I served with the chief and assistant chief on the fire department and so I questioned If you look at the town's book, the chief and assistant chief are hired administrators that work full time during the day, while we have two full time paid firefighters working during the day. So that puts four staff on the fire department during the week, during the day. And the real problem is the night calls. And the other real problem is, and I may be wrong by saying this, and the chief here can clarify that, but, you know, the majority of the calls are on the weekends. I'm not saying that a house don't catch on fire any time of the day, night, week, or whatever. But I question... why, number one, is why we have two administrators full-time during the day when we need firefighters. So I look at it as if we took the two PAINT staff, oh, and I'll back up. I did question why that the administrators did not serve And I was told that the administrators are not shift workers. They are 40-hour-a-week employees that work during the day, which I'm not real sure I understand the importance of having two full-time paid administrators working the same shift when it's all about firefighting and serving the people of the community. in emergency situations. And so through that process, it seems to me like we could take the two administrators. The state recognizes the administrators as firefighters. The town's position is administrators. So they were elected by the people at the fire department as chief and assistant chief. The town of Highlands appointed the chief and assistant chief to full-time administrators, chief and assistant chief, and the members of the fire department don't have any say whatsoever in electing their chief and assistant chief now. So through that process, clarification is why don't we take the administrators or the chief and assistant chief Add one person to their shift, that gives them three. Take the other person off of there and put them on another shift and then add the third firefighter. I mean, by all means, when 911 is called, we need a response from the fire department. But it seems like that we're adding three positions when two of those are already firefighters. that are there during the day that could handle this. And honestly, the fire apparatus that's at Highlands Fire Department, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of fire departments out there would give their IT to have some of that equipment. We talk about 20 years of service. Really, that's a recommendation from the Department of Insurance and Safety for a full paid fire department that runs, these engines got 15, 20,000 hours on them. And I know of some of the trucks that we sold over the years that these stations that bought those are still using this. And we sold them for pennies on the dollar. Then the last thing that I will say is, you know, I mentioned before about the lawsuit with the price fixing for companies that manufacture these fire engines. I don't know when that will be settled, but it sure seems like when that happens that this fire apparatus is going to be reduced in price. That's just... I have no proof of that, but there's a reason why that it's in court. But I would love to have answers by the town manager or the fire chief as to why we can't regroup here. And one last thing that I will tell you. I was elected by the people not to run the fire department or any portion of county government. It's my job to make sure that every dollar that we extract from the taxpayers of this county is spent in the benefit of the people paying the bills. So that's why I have to ask these questions to get transparency to be in the know as is there another way without a tax increase. And their proposal is two cents. And I just watched the town board meeting, and I wasn't elected to run the town of Highlands. But it's proposed to increase property taxes in Highlands three cents, two-cent fire tax increase. Our people in Highlands can't afford this. My phone has rang nonstop about this. And they're also proposing to increase enterprise funds. And our local people can't afford this. So it's our job with the fire department and the town to try to come to a solution to give them what is truly needed. And in my opinion, they need one or three staff members. They just had pump tests on all the apparatus. None of them failed. And just because it's a 2004 model, that truck is still in – You know, I haven't ran them a long time, so to know that. But I think that's what I'm hearing from some of the volunteer firemen is their voice doesn't matter in the discussions, and they're struggling to get response to these calls for the volunteers that are active. And one last thing, and then I'm going to close with this. I said it at the last meeting when I joined the fire department. If you missed, I believe it was three calls in a row, you were booted from the fire department. Also, if you were not participating in this, you were booted. And so my opinion is, that if you're not going to serve your community and you're just going to show up to meetings and get your credit hours and not participate in the actual purpose of you being there, there's no purpose of you being there. And I would say that, and I get it, you have to have 19 members on the department to be recognized by the state. I get it. But it's not helping us. And if we have to keep the volunteers that are participating on there, boot everybody, and then pay for the staff to get our numbers there, then that's what we need to do.

Any more thoughts?

giving my thoughts. John supplied a lot of information right there. Appreciate your work.

Well, I appreciate the firemen. I mean, I lived this life for almost 22 years. And it's hard to come in and say no to your brotherhood. But yet at the same time, somebody's got to make these hard decisions and try to get control. I mean, when I was on the fire department, we ran the fire department on honorary memberships and donations. Then we went to the tax base. We had $385,000 annual budget. If we needed a new fire engine, all we had to do was put it in the paper that we needed a new fire engine, and we could do a campaign to make donations to buy a new fire truck. And I would almost guarantee you, if we put the effort forth To do that same thing in today's, I would give it four to six months and we would have enough donations to pay for this new fire truck. But it's easier now to just raise taxes and ask for a tax increase and tax the people where the people feel like they're not part of the fire department in the community anymore. I mean, if we can raise a million dollars just like that for a playground in Highlands, almost bet you that we could raise five or six hundred thousand dollars for a fire truck and then the people that are contributing to that fire truck you're getting the money and you're not impacting the folks that can afford to pay anymore and you're getting what you're looking for and not impacting your citizens and and now we're at a 1.9 million dollar annual budget we need another Take $700,000. Where does it end?

I mean, I think it's probably a question for the folks sitting here as far as the justification of the people. I kind of understand what John's saying and somewhat agree with that, that we have two administrators. I mean, I think at the... At the very least, the fire service, it's a service, it's a service to the people. So I would agree with Commissioner Sherrill on that as far as three or one. I don't know what the makeup of that looks like. I don't know what the town, I don't know how that works as far as, do you need two administrators? Do you need them both on the same shift? Do they fight fire? I think those are the questions that we really need answered. Yeah, please.

Mr. Chairman, Board, thanks for having us today. I wanted to clarify a few things. I sent a memo out on Friday. I hope all of you got that memo. Did everybody get it on Friday? So it was to bring a little clarity to the request that was proposed. So this is a three-pronged request, basically. And if you saw the memo, first off, we came here several years ago and asked for an increase to build a new main station, which was needed. The board gave that two cent increase. Taxes were collected for a couple of years before the building was completed in order to service the debt service on that. The first payment was like two years in. So we built some fund balance with that money coming in until the building was complete and we could make a loan payment. We tried to make a balloon payment toward the loan. And then that was basically restricted within the loan documents. We couldn't make a balloon payment. So the town board decided that the reason for building the new building was to hire full-time firemen because it had come to that. So we have the barracks up top to house them. So the board said, we've got this fund balance. We want to go ahead and hire six full-time firemen. They did that. We've paid for those firemen with the fund balance for the last three years. This upcoming budget will be the fourth year. So if you look at the memo that I gave you, you see the fund balance started, and then each year it's declined. And that's the reason for the declining of the fund balance. So the first prong to this request of two cents, is a one cent increase to basically cover the six firemen that are already on shift right now. That's one cent to cover them to balance operations. A half a cent is for the third fireman that would be proposed that you guys have been talking about. The other half cent is for a new truck. Now that half cent won't pay for a whole truck, it'll pay for a half a truck. So we're gonna finance that and bring $300,000 in. We're thinking around $600,000 for a new truck. So it'd take two years to pay for that new truck with a half a cent is what we were looking at. So that adds up to the two cents. So it's critical to understand that one cent is needed now to balance the operations that we have now after we hired those six trucks. full-time firemen. And those six full-time firemen are very critical. And we've realized that from the day we hired them. The amount of calls we get in Highlands is increased. And like Chief said at the last meeting is we're on an island. You know, we cover 69 square miles. We protect almost half of the valuation of this county in the Highlands Fire District. So I think it's critical that we continue to look at the response, the quick response to any calls that we have in Highlands. And that was the reason for the third position, is to get two people out, have one people cover the station. Now, Commissioner Sherrill says, we've got a handful of volunteers that are dedicated, that are very dedicated. And that's a handful. And that's all you've got. And they're getting older. And when that handful ages out, I don't know what we have. So it's going to fall back on these full-time paid firemen to cover and to protect the 69 square miles in the Highlands Fire District. It's critical to this county. That's the first problem. The second subject that you brought up was You know, the two folks that are administrative, well, number one, they're looked at administrative, a chief and an assistant chief, but they're also firemen. They respond to the calls. They are firemen. They are listed on the roster for the state as the required 19 firemen that we need. They were hired actually, and John, you probably know more about this than I do, they were hired actually in 13 before the town board took over in 14 as the chief and assistant chief. The fire department board appointed them as that. And then in 14, a year later, the town board took over. So they have been, you know, Firemen that have been on call or, you know, on staff full-time during the daytime since 2014. I don't, you know, I listened to that and how we would move one around to cover a shift. I don't know how you would do that. You definitely need at least one more if there was some way to move those two around. You'd need at least one more to cover. You know, nine times a week and everything. I don't know. I guess we'd just have to sit down and go over how that would work. And I'm open. You know, I'm open. I hope I speak for the town board. I mean, I'm here representing the town. But I'm open to seeing, you know, how that could be constructed in order to serve, you know, that third fireman for shit. The truck. And I understand that everybody, you know, all departments, I'm sure, come in every year asking for trucks. And, you know, I've really thought about this, and I've talked to Chief about this, is that you don't want to just go out and buy a new truck, you know, every time you turn around. But the deal is we have a 04 and a 06. You're absolutely right. We just had our ISO rating. And we maintained a 04, which we were able to lower from, I think, a 05 to a 04 just a few years ago, which saved the property owners in the Highlands Fire District hundreds of dollars on their insurance, and we were proud of that. I was hoping we'd get down to a three this time. We were close. Basically, what they told us is with a third person, they feel like we're within a three the next time it comes around. That was another reason for hiring the third fireman for a shift. We can drop to a three. That's going to save the property owners in that Highlands Fire District hundreds more dollars on their insurance. The thing about it is, is a pump test was conducted a couple weeks ago, and those pumps did pass. But you have to have a truck to operate correctly to get that pump to the location in order to use that pump. So the first truck out is a truck we've been using for a number of years. There was issues with that truck. We just had it worked on. Spent 10 grand on it, working through some stuff. Over the weekend, when that truck had to go out several times this weekend, it had to be put in reverse in order to unlock the brakes to be able to go forward. So now it's going to have to go back to the shop. And that's the first truck out. That's the first truck out. So when you look at those things, I don't know how many thousands of dollars are going to have to be spent on that truck. But at some point, those trucks have to be replaced. And you don't just willy-nilly replace a truck. Like you guys have in all your departments, you have a capital improvement plan. And that is looked at each year to see where these vehicles are. If it's a vehicle that's still operating, you know, very well, you know you might want to skip a year. If it's a vehicle that's up on that CIP and it's giving you some trouble, it's time to move on. It's time to replace it. And that's my concern with this first truck out is that there's issues with it. and it's needing to be replaced. And one can tell you, if we ordered a truck right now, I know in ambulance, I think fire trucks are about the same. You're talking a minimum of two, possibly three years before you even get that truck. Now, we have discovered a few different trucks out there that or on the market where you could just purchase some of their base trucks. You might be able to pick one of those up for a half a million and put the stuff on it you need, but that's not a guarantee. So if you ordered one today, you're looking at minimum two if not three years before you get it. So that truck we're having trouble with, we're still going to have to repair in order to get us through until we got a new vehicle. So that's what I wanted to clarify is it's kind of a three-pronged request. Number one, we need a cent to basically balance the operations we have right now with the six full-time firemen that we hired and paid with fund balance over the past three years. That's number one. Number two is the half for the third fireman, which, again, we can look at, kind of move that around, see what can happen there. And then we need a half cent for half a truck, basically. That's your request.

But what happens when that half truck is paid for, that half cent? I mean, people never get that back, so that money is going to go and, I mean, we're just growing and growing and growing.

So what we were looking at, so we've got an 04 and an 06. So what we thought is basically what the request would be to purchase that truck over a two-year period and then turn around and have the ability to purchase another truck, order another truck and to purchase it. over the next two years to keep them in rotation. That way we don't get compression and have to buy two trucks at one time. That's one thing we don't want to do. But that was the reason for some of the funding.

That's kind of why we're in this spot that you remember when we bought 50 and 51. We bought 51 first, the top mount, and then two years later bought 50. much identical trucks top mountain side mountain 50 is a little bit shorter that's the reason we run out of it every day um and i feel like that's why we're having issues because it's run every day multiple times a day they go to the grocery store they take it they go to the hospital they take it because they want to be prepared and i want them to be prepared if they're out of the grocery store and we get a structure fire they need to be prepared to leave right then. So they kind of take that truck with them everywhere. But we bought those two trucks back to back, two years apart. So that's kind of why we're in the position that we're in, having an 04, and then an 06, and then an 08, another 08. So they're just somewhat stacked on top of each other. Which, going by the CIP, you go with the 20 years, even if you go with the 25 years, we've got two trucks that are over the 25. My fear is, as a fire chief, that one thing that I don't want to happen is we're out there in our engine, and we've got guys inside fighting a fire, and something happens, that thing shuts down, blows up, Am I saying that a brand-new truck won't do that? No. But I feel like your chances of a newer truck bailing you is less.

So right now you're paying for those people out of fund balance.

Yes.

But you've got $1.4 in your fund balance right now. Have you allocated that money to pay for them? We did at the beginning of the year.

Yeah, the beginning year, as you see in the memo, we had 1.345 million. And it's decreased every year because we've been paying them out of that. So it will decrease this year, but we won't know what that number is until the end of the year. So it should be less than a million dollars is what it'll be.

Take a moment. I want to take a moment to just kind of share with you guys really where I'm at in my position in all of this and my thoughts on it, and hopefully it'll be clear for everybody. First thing is, you guys know I fully support all the first responders here. That's the reason why a number of years ago I took on a volunteer position as a chaplain. Work you guys do is super important and very needed, and I don't think a lot of times people fully realize the extent of truly what that need is. So please understand I'm in support of you guys. This board, in my short time being here, we've made a lot of significant capital improvements. And the thing that keeps coming up is for us to understand, like, yes, it's a limited amount of funds. You know, I look at the budget this year versus even from last year going up. We're trying to get two things accomplished, and we're going to have to prioritize really how we're going to do this, okay? There has to be an increase in taxes in order to be able to help fund all these different things throughout the county. But the choice has now become, do we put the burden on locals or do we put it on the visitors coming through? The way I'm looking at this is if we can focus on getting just some more funds coming in, period, it makes it a lot easier later on down the line to be able to go with an increase in millage rate increase for whatever departments are going to be needing that. I don't feel like it's going to be an easy thing to be able to put that burden all together on everybody in the county. And what I'm referring to is a quarter, I'm really in favor of supporting, you know, quarter cent sales tax right now, because I feel like that's going to help start, in a broad sense, bring more money into the county and open the door as well for us to move into these other areas like what we're trying to do with you guys. So I got to be honest, I don't know if this is the right time to be able to do that, to be honest with you guys. I think when it comes to the volunteer issues that we're having, instead of just looking at the fact that we do have an issue with the volunteers, it's really coming up with programs that's going to help either motivate or incentivize new volunteers to come in and want to be able to be there. Because that seems to be a big part of the problem really all across the nation, which is many of these departments, you can't get anybody to volunteer. And my thought process is if you're not going to start with them when they're young, good luck trying to get them while they're older. If the young people can't even get into their system to be volunteers at any cost and understand the concept of giving without needing somebody to always give you something back for it, then what are we going to do with adults who are already set in their ways? So we have these issues that sometimes to me, we're tackling a problem, but the way that we're trying to tackle the problem, it's like trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. You know what I'm saying? If it's a more serious need, let's go in depth with the need that's there so that we can try to accomplish a whole lot more in the end. So my position in this is I would like to be able to support all the first responders here. But the way that this is going about right now, my support is going to go more towards increasing taxes in a way that we can get people that are coming through this county to be able to pay into ours the same way that our citizens keep going to other counties to enjoy other things, and they're paying into their quarters in sales tax. You know, we got to be able to find ways to keep the money here and open up that door later on for us to be able to do any incremental increases we need to make because we've got to be able to show the people what in the world we're doing, what the funds that we have coming in to begin with. So it's not, you know, just to say no, you know, like I don't want to support this, but it's more or less like a timing thing for me. Would it be better for us to start with a quarter cent sales tax this year and perhaps next year's budget revisit this exact issue with your department and some of the other departments that have been approaching us as well? So that's just where my thought process is with this.

Let me ask you a few obvious questions so I can build my little chart right here. What's your current mill rate, VAR tax? It is 191. And you're proposing? 391. And what's that net generation? It's $1,209,500. 209? Do either of you know how many staff cashers fire department has on paid staff?

Chief, county employee, fire chief.

Just a rough number of paid fire.

Six during the day, four firemen 24 hours a day. And then four 24 hours a day?

All right, what about Tyna Franklin? Mr. Cave, do you know off the top of your head?

So they've got three on a shift, so they've got nine plus one, I believe, ten.

If I'm hearing you right, and pardon my experience in emergency services, I have to lean on Mr. Cave here. You don't have the recurring revenue to fund the six current employees you have. Is that what I just heard? Yes. I guess going back in time when we hired them, can you kind of give me the background on that scenario? Was there funds allocated, you know, reoccurring to hire the employees, or was it, were they hired out of fund balance?

They were hired with fund balance. And again, what had happened was we had some fund balance, and then there's two years when we took in the increase. to pay for the building loan. But it took two years to build the building in order to pay the first loan payment. So that had built up.

We had to have the increase for the LGC to approve. To build the building.

I mean, we increased taxes to build the building, and then we couldn't pay the payment, so we hired six employees. No, we could pay the payment. I didn't mean to say couldn't, but essentially... You know, the balloon, but we had a surplus there, so we used that funding until the payments were due.

Yes, the county allowed us to raise the rate in order to pay the $600,000 payment. So the $600,000 for the building was there to service the debt.

At this point in time, we don't have the recurring to pay for the six we have, and then the three proposed. Correct. Positions. Correct. I mean, no disrespect, but I feel like Cashers is a model fire department, and Chief Dillard up there is incredible. I mean, how do they make this work? I mean, is there anything they're doing that we're not, or is there anything different? Is he admin through Jackson County? Do either of you know?

I don't know. Their fire tax is, do you know their fire tax rate? No.

I mean, if we're comparing apples to apples, we can't compare Highlands to Clark's Chapel, but we can compare Highlands to Cashers, in my opinion. I want to say 30, I think. 294 is what theirs is. 294 and Cashers.

They're at 294, and we're at... Their evaluation, though, if I'm not mistaken, is...

I think their district is a lot larger. I think it's one of the largest.

How many substations does... I think they have seven stations. Seven stations total.

So we have one substation. Yep. And John knows how that substation came about. Right. So the country club folks, which would have been Highlands Falls, Colesagia, and Wildcat, wanted their fire insurance lowered. And so to do that, if you put a substation out that way, you would get that. So they raised the money, and they bought the property and built a substation. And that's the reason we got the one substation. So when a truck is replaced, one of those trucks in the substation, correct me if I'm wrong, is pushed out.

Try to take that old one, 1252. We'll probably surplus it. And the next substation is in there as a reserve tanker or the tanker for the substation.

And I don't know the numbers to this, but, you know, thinking about Randy and his substations and all that stuff, you know, and Coliseum Fire Department is now opening their substation on Ellijay, and the people on Buck Creek are screaming because of their insurance ratings and rates. You know, I see two things there that we should be really – before we start shifting all these trucks around, there should be two campaigns here. One is to get the folks out there that would be impacted on Buck Creek to do like the folks out at Coliseum Club and Wildcat and everybody. I mean, you don't have to have some big, massive – Elaborate building you can put a metal building there with bays drill a well put a bathroom in there and Put two trucks in and you've got a substation those folks on Buck Creek would save enough money to pay for that building and we should be focusing on that part number one and Number two you said it best the folks out there in the country clubs. They saw the savings of with the insurance, they bought the land, they put the building in, and they paid for all that. And all Highland Fire Department had to do was put two trucks in there and all those folks out there, and it helps people on the east side of town to have an apparatus. That's the way the volunteer stuff you were talking about. And I understand they've paid firemen, they want to be in the first engine out for a structure fire, but we always ran... medical calls in the pickup or the Tahoe or whatever. And I can just see that first truck out going up VZ Top for a medical call and coming back down through there and burning the brakes up and everything else. So it just...

I'll give you a prime example of the reason that they do that. They were on a medical call. I don't remember the exact location. On a medical call, while they were on the call... It was either a vehicle accident or a car fire, one of the two. Well, they have everything that they need. They have jaws on there. They have everything that they need on that truck. So while they were in the middle of this medical call, yes, I would love for them to just be able to zip around in a pickup, which we're working on that. We'll have a smaller truck with some water on it, hopefully soon. But while they're on that call, giving a call for a fire or a wreck or whatever, so they like to be prepared so they don't have to come back to the station and get a different truck and then go. You see what I'm saying?

Oh, I understand, Ryan, but at the same time, if they're on a medical call with that apparatus and they have a wreck that they need the jaws of life. They're not going to abandon that patient at that medical call, so that truck is tied up on a medical call when it should be at the station for you or Roger Lee or anybody to pick up and go to that.

They will leave if the EMS crew releases them.

Right. Yeah, I mean, I get it.

Which is what happened on that scenario.

And we had those discussions years ago about, you know, we don't want to tie up our equipment. or any type of call when it's equipped for another type of call. I mean, you don't want to tie up the rescue truck in case there's a rescue. I'm not trying to dictate the operation of Highlands Fire Department. I retired. But at the same time, I have to try to get you guys to help us help you in getting – of what you truly need without bankrupting what local people are left in Highlands. And we talk about this. Highlands, there's been a max exodus of local people in Highlands, whether they've passed away or it's getting so expensive that they can't stay there. And we're still down that pattern. And no wonder we can't have a feeder program. Our kids going to college, unless their family had property that they retained in Highlands, they can't stay there. They can't come back. So we're in a long-term problem. You know, I listened to the town board meeting. We're talking about employee housing and affordable housing and all this other stuff, and then an hour and a half later, we're talking about raising taxes, three cents and a total of five cents. And that's why, you know, my phone rang off the hook. I know you had your meeting up there, and I asked a lot of people why they didn't show up to that meeting. And their response was, I don't want them thinking that I'm against their service, and they're not going to come and speak against it. So at that same point, if you can figure out a way to make this happen with one additional person, Instead of $300,000, you have $100,000 for that paid position. Then that leaves $200,000 to go towards the truck. But I understand you need staff. I mean, you protect billions and billions of dollars worth of real estate. And people are proud of some of the local people. Man, I love the work that you did and your fire department did. I support them. But with all these increases, we can't. So I'm just – I feel for you, Ryan, for being the chief of something that's – but at the same time, you know, we're limited on what the people – are telling us that they can pay and stuff like that without not supporting you. And that's why I said maybe we do a campaign there to start raising money for a new truck. See if we can do it that way. And start asking the people. Start including the community back in the fire department like it once was.

Let me interject a minute, John. I'm hung up on that. operational reoccurring expenses, right? So if we essentially allocate, you know, $600,000 or whatever, and our fund balance is stuck around $790,000, is that what I understand, Mr. Ward?

That's what it would be if all $689,000 that was fund balance appropriated was used.

So I guess what I'm asking is if we go one full year with six-page staff, essentially at the end of next year, I mean, are you depleted in your fund balance, or is there enough revenue to cover that?

It'll be close. I mean, we're going to get very low.

I don't want to play devil's advocate, but for the same reasons you just suggested, John, that everyone's leaving supports the fact of hiring because they're not staying up there, but I'm hung up that you can't pay the staff you currently have.

Right.

And you're wanting three more. I mean, is there a way, Chief, to fix the shift? Mr. Sherrill's talking about where you can have, you know, where chief, assistant chief, everybody isn't there on banker's hours, and essentially we divert that to the weekends and nights and weekends. I mean, his point has merit. You know, everybody wants to work banker's hours and, you know, being a firefighter Monday through Friday, you know, 8 to 5, but it's Saturday night, 2 in the morning. That's what I'm worried about.

Could be visited. I'm not going to say that it would happen. I just don't see myself as the fire chief going to work shift work. Nor would I see the assistant chief going to work shift work.

But you show up at that call at 2 AM?

Nine times out of ten, yes sir, I do. So when I leave, I was hired Monday through Friday for eight hours a day. Robbie had started working four tens a couple years ago. So he comes in early, he'll come in like 6.30 in the morning. I come in at nine and I stay till five. just to have that extra coverage. Does that make sense? Have a little bit, that third person there early, and then the third person there later in the afternoon. So I say it'll five. When I go home, if it's a structure fire, major wreck, brush fire, something like that, nine times, if I'm available, I'm coming back out.

So who would be there on Saturday?

The paid guys and then the volunteers, if I'm out of town.

Two current paid guys?

Yes, sir. What's their hours?

They work 48-96. They work two days on, four days off.

Well, I'm with Chairman Young on that. I think it is alarming to know that we hired six guys out of fund balance and we can't pay for that recurring expense. I mean, I think that's what's the importance here. Is it people? Is it trucks? I mean, can we live without... People? You live without trucks? I mean. If we paid for the people, could you use your fund balance to buy your trucks?

We could definitely look at that. What we have left, yes.

You need the people. I was assuming that was the answer.

I mean, like, if during the day, or at any time, if Highlands Fire Department has a call, all three of those people would be going on that call.

Well, I think what we've talked about, not to interrupt, but the fire service is changing, obviously, with the volunteers and all that stuff.

So having the people is important. I just think that if we're funding people out of fund balance, I mean, that's a dangerous game to play, but we're there.

And if you have fund balance that you could purchase a truck with or whatever you've got to do if we can't get where we need to be, but that's just kind of where I'm at with it.

What do you cut out to cover those people next year? That's my question. For easy math, you call them $100,000 a person. Where do you generate the revenue to carry what you currently have?

So you're talking $1.1 million in employee salaries at 11 people. If you put three more, they have eight already, so you're at 11, so that's $1.1 million just in Employee salaries. It's six and three. Am I right? No, there's two administrators. They already have eight.

Yeah, we have eight. You can't pay the admin. I mean, they were hired in 14, so that should be before the building.

It's the six full-time firemen that work 24-7. Those are the ones that. Six and the three. Right.

So the paid firemen, are they town employees or state employees? So all eight employees at Highlands Fire Department are town employees. Yes, sir.

We're no different than the electric department or the water department. We're a town department under the town umbrella. Our funding comes from fire tax.

Yeah. So in essence, really the town of Highlands is really – taking over operations of Highlands Fire Department. There's no – it's not a – you might call it a Highlands Volunteer Fire Department, but realistically it should be called the Town of Highlands Fire Department because the town is dictating all operations to the point of even hiring the staff with nobody – I mean, obviously the funds for the fire department come from county tax collections sent to the town of Highlands. And that's where the problem is with operations now and what the volunteer firemen are saying. We have no say. We have no say in anything. They don't have business meetings anymore. That's where we conducted all of our stuff. And we went to the tax base before I left. And knowing the uproar when we had to turn over the checkbook to town highlands, that didn't settle very well. But we still, while I was there, we still had business meetings. And the firemen and the chief and assistant chief, we had business meetings that we ran that department.

And now... We have something major. We do have business meetings.

Yeah, but they're not in... You know, we went over all the financials at the business meetings and everything else. And it's my understanding that's not conducted at Highlands Fire Department.

Not at every meeting. Yeah.

So to me, it's almost like... And just for lack of better terms, as the volunteers are participating, some dedicated, some not dedicated, and basically when the pager goes off, they show up, they get in whatever vehicle, they grab their turnout gear, go to that call, come back, get in their vehicle and leave, and it seems like their input is no longer valued. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, but from what some of the volunteers have told me, it's totally different from what it used to be. And I can understand the lack of interest of being a volunteer in that situation. But I really would like to know what that looks like. You know, if you can shift this stuff around and make, you know, your two administrators, the state recognizes them as firefighters, the town recognizes them as administrators of the fire department, add the third person that would give them three during the day shift, and then let the, because if that will work, then you only need one person. And I still, I mean, like I said, you're right, Brian, I was there when those two trucks were bought and everything else, and we're using a lot of hypotheticals, what if, what if, what if, what if. Well, there's a lot of what ifs in every day that we get up, but I just, I think the taxpayers deserve not what ifs I think the taxpayers deserve. A factual answer and a reason to raise their taxes, present them why you're raising taxes. I know we can talk about it, but are there other options? And that's what I swore into office for was an effective and efficient government that our taxpayers can afford and appreciate.

So when I was hired in 2011, I was hired as a fireman, as a 40-hour week employee. In 2013, I got elected as the fire chief of the department. In 2000, I believe it was 14, early 15, the town board decided to make those two positions, Chief and assistant chief hired positions, not person stability, I guess, structure in the department. They made those two positions a hired position. So I answer directly to Josh. I just, I don't see myself going to shift work.

I don't blame you. So, I mean, Ryan, I get it. I mean, and you may answer this and you may not. How many years you got left until you retire? Fifteen. Fifteen years. What about the assistant chief? Six months. Six months, okay. So, if I was the assistant chief, I wouldn't want to, I mean, I'm leaving in six months.

Right.

So, you're going to have to ultimately either replace him or that position goes away.

Right.

Okay. So there's a lot of things that's happening over the next several months that would impact Highlands Fire Department. And as far as I know, and manager, correct me if I'm wrong, Highlands Fire Department is still contracted with Macon County, North Carolina, correct? Correct. Okay. So the town of Highlands is superseding Highlands. what our contract for Highlands Fire Department by dictating the operations. Is that not, I mean, is that not, I mean, they made choices to hire eight people. We weren't included in that. in that process?

So our contract doesn't specify details as far as personnel. It specifies performance requirements. So the only time we would get involved would be the performance requirements if you don't meet the protection class 7, which is the minimum, and then obviously Factor IX-S and the other stuff. I don't know that I would say they're superseding because our contract is very vague as far as the operation. Because being a contractor, there are limitations on what we can do as far as dealing with day-to-day stuff that they do. We have to give them a job to do. We give them the performance requirements and then have to hold them responsible for doing that job.

I'm the finance director for the town. Every year, and I think Lindsay can attest to this, we have to submit budget requests to the county for the fire department. And when we hired those full-time firemen, I have to do a whole sheet that says what we're doing. So I don't know who was on the board at the time. I'd have to go back and do research. But the county saw those requests. So yes, our town board may have approved it to send it to you guys to be approved. But it was still approved by your board. So I don't think saying that y'all didn't see that or whatever. You may not have, John. I don't know if you were here. But somebody saw it, and they could have told us no then. You know what I'm saying?

I understand.

I'm agreeing with you. Not being able to pay for them is one thing. But it was approved by the county as well, not just the town board.

Yeah.

I pardon myself. I just wanted to share that.

I mean, Rebecca, with you being the finance person, I mean, you know all the ins and outs. But, you know, we talk about it as far as our fund balance. you're not really supposed to pay for recurring costs out of the fund balance, such as salaries and everything else, because eventually that's gone. I'm not. And that's like funding positions out of grant funds. You know, if you watch what we do, if there's a position that's fulfilled by grants, at the end of that grant funding, that position is over.

And so it's tough. Who made the decision to pay, like, To pay that reoccurring expense out of fund balance?

So what had happened is the fund balance was large. And there had 2.5. So they had, there was some fund balance there. Then the board of commissioners, Maine County Board of Commissioners at the time approved the two cents to build the new building. And so we collected that for two years. before we were completed with the building in order to make that first loan payment. So that fund balance built up to the 2.5. Well, we knew we wanted to just write a check, basically, for the two years and give it to pay down the note on the building. Well, that was restricted within the loan document, so we could not make a balloon payment. So at that point, we were sitting there, okay, we've got $2.5 million in fund balance. We've got a lot. The board inevitably built the building to hire the six full-time firemen. So the board said, we've got this. We can support this for a number of years. Let's go ahead and hire the six firemen and pay for it to lower that fund balance down.

At that time, what was the plan for paying those firemen when that decision was made?

Well, as it lowered down, then they would come back and ask the county board for an increase.

We knew that at some point we were going to have to come back and ask. Yes.

But the fund balance was so high to bring that down. We knew we could fund for several years, and that's what we've been doing. So it's been going downward, and now we're here asking for the increase to cover those from now on. Because obviously coming in here with $2.5 million fund balance, this board, and I could understand, is not going to give an increase with that kind of fund balance. I wish we could have, like I say, wrote a check and put it toward the building, but it wasn't possible.

A little whistle there. I came in this morning thinking, man, we're going to do, you know, I would support a half a penny to get your three guys. We would address some trucks at a later date. I know that we're going through the process of the contracts with all the fire departments. I know that's coming up, so kind of wanted to push that down the road a little bit. But now, you know, I feel like I'm not interested in hiring those three guys, but somehow we've got to figure out how to come up with a penny to pay the six guys that you currently have that you can't afford. So... I say all that to say I don't know where I'm at right now. Where are you at, John?

I'm stuck. I mean, I understand Ryan needs manpower. And what that looks like, I mean, I am. I'm really stuck because, you know, at the end of the day, you have to look at what the people out here that are struggling to survive and what do you really, really, really need?

Right now. Well, right now it sounds like they really, really, really need to pay those six people they currently have.

Well, I was going to say, right now it seems like the immediate need is to figure out how to make sure that the six that you do have can get paid because it's not going to make sense to hire three more when we can't even pay the six that we have. So the question is right now, what needs to be done to be able to get these six people paid without it having to be coming out of the fund balance? What's a good game plan right now? Would half a cent do that?

No, it would take a cent.

And can you break down those numbers that you sent with the salaries? Because it ended up being, I think if you average that out, it's about $95,000.

It is with salaries and then benefits once you figure in insurance, retirement, FICA, and all that. So basically for the three new firemen, they would just be firemen. So what we have on each shift right now is two per shift, and you have an officer and a fireman. Is it a lieutenant? So a lieutenant and a fireman on each shift. The lieutenant makes more than the fireman. So all we're asking for with the three new ones is three firemen. So it's a lower pay. And that was the $287,000 for those three. So when you look at the six, you've got three of those and you've got three of the lieutenants that make a higher wage.

Just a quick comment. I'm nobody to just want to share my opinion with you, but I feel like you're in a delicate position as chief. And to Mr. Sherrill's point, I think you kind of hold the purse strings to the public in meetings, events. Cookouts, benefits, dinners, just getting the community in there, building rapport, relationships. I think you hold those purse strings. And there's any way, I mean, that's your seed corn for your future farming and women. But I don't know. I look at what Cashers has been able to do, seven substations, and I feel like it's vibrant. I mean, the tone down there is just, you know, man. I don't know, kudos to them, and I'd like for us to be like that. And I think there's a way we can do that, and I don't know, I'm hung up right here as well.

Mr. Chairman, I can clarify, we were talking about cashers a minute ago, if you just want reference. They're funded with two different funds, because cashers and highlands are the only two departments, because they have some property that's in Macon. I'm sorry, it's in Jackson, but don't know where to get there from Macon. The only service fees that they have over there are for highlands and cashers. Cashers, they actually, according to the budget message this year, proposed a decrease in their service fee to 1.6 cents per 100, which brings in 1,900,000 and some change. But then Jackson County has a public safety service district tax, and that's where it makes up the difference. We said 2.94. That brings in $1,225,000. So their budget's $3.1 million, if my math is reasonably correct. And according to this, they have 13 employees at the moment.

All right.

I mean, I just don't know what to...

Some of these things are... Some of the questions are unanswered. You know, can you make it work with one more staff member?

If they can, though, how do we address the one penny for the six people to have? Well, okay.

So we talked about the fund balance. If they don't get the one penny... there's still enough money in the fund balance to pay those folks for another year. Correct? Okay. So that's how that's funded. And then if there can be a campaign to try to raise the money for that new engine, then next year when it comes up for that increase, then you might add that other half a penny. fund the employees. There again, it's hypothetical if we can raise the money, which, you know, in the years past, we have been able to. But I just, I see our people really struggling, and I see the fire department struggling. So, it's a million-dollar question as to what can we fund or what can the taxpayers fund. to get their members to have a full-paid staff and hope and pray that we can raise the money for that new apparatus. And that way you're not impacting the people that can't afford to pay anymore. Those folks coming to Highlands are very generous people. I mean, if it wasn't for them, Highlands would be really... There are some of the poorest people still lives in Highlands in this county. But I also ask the question, how many employees in the town of Highlands still live in Highlands? You're looking at him right there. That's the only employee in the town of Highlands that lives in Highlands Township. So it's – I mean, it's a tough – it's a tough position. I mean, I want to help you, Ryan. I just don't know. I talked to Roger Lee last night a little bit, and he said, we've got to have manpower.

And so, you know, I mean... And I feel like Roger Lee and David and some of those guys, I mean, they're the ones that are dedicated. They're getting burnt out. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're getting burnt out being the only...

Well, Roger Lee's been on there for 40-something years, perfect attendant. But, yeah, I mean, when that 911 call comes in, you need to respond to try to save this. But I think without manpower, it don't matter how nice of an engine you have, it's not going anywhere.

I agree.

So I'm stuck. I really think the most important critical aspect of this is one or three new positions and move on. I mean, if I can, you know, if we do a campaign, I mean, I'd be willing to try to help with trying to raise funds if, you know, it was – I was asked to do that. And there again, I mean, I hear it through all the fire departments and the communities. We just really don't feel like we're part of the fire department or the fire department's part of us anymore. Not necessarily just Highlands, it's across the county. And we need to connect that dot back in.

So the question is, do we go a penny for the six? They currently have. I mean, I feel like the need is there for more.

Well, I think they've got the money to pay that sickness. I mean, it's going to deplete their fund balance down to another. It's going to be what would be left if you.

We don't know that exact number.

Yeah, but you said you had one point what?

At 1.3, it's going to fall below a million. Then it'll probably be another $400,000 or so, $500,000. So they're still going to be left with $500,000 in the fund balance. But then what do we do then?

Well, that's when we come. If we do enough to get him the help that he needs. and then reassess this thing after the assistant chief leaves, you may end up saying, hey, I just want to be administrator, and you may hire another chief, or you may, I mean, who knows? No?

He's done. He's done.

So I'm just looking at it as somewhere along the line we can't have two people on day shift. and have four people when the need is at night and the weekends.

We run calls during the day as well. I mean, I may go out tomorrow if it's not raining and help the guys work on hydrants.

Oh, I'm not saying you're not responding, but where you're lacking response is at night. I mean, we talked about that.

Oh, you're right.

In the wee hours of the morning, you're lacking that. Well, if you and the assistant chief worked the days like you're hired and paid to do, and you had one person that would give you the three people on that shift, and then you could take the other person and move them over to do the third person, and you hire one more, and that puts them – and that gives you three people – We were wanting to hire three new employees.

Right. One for each shift. Yeah. So during the day currently there would be five there, and then at night there would be around the clock.

But there's no lack of response during the day. You've got people coming into town to work, and if the pager goes off, they come and respond during the day. So we're overloading the day shift with potentially five people when from 8 o'clock at night until 6 o'clock in the morning is where the problem is.

I would have to look back at the stats, but if I'm not mistaken, the majority of our calls are during the day.

Yeah.

I believe our peak is 10 to 2.

I feel like in worst case scenario, I can support a penny to get the six covered for right now and work towards next year adding the other three. Because to me, it would be crazy to lose the six that you have and then try to gain three. You're going to be in a worse situation. So to me, it seems like the priority right now should be making sure that you can keep the six that you have, get that funded, not through fund balance, because that fund balance, it shouldn't be used for any recurring expenses. I get that that's what you guys have done, but it really shouldn't be used for that. So if we can figure out, like, maybe, you know, at the most doing a penny right now to cover those six, and then next year, you know, after, because we're already looking at a countywide tax increase that we're trying to get done here with the quarter cent sales tax. So it's like, are we asking people for too much at that point? You know what I mean? So if you get the six covered right now, that gives you a year to be able to figure out how to get an additional three on top of that. But getting that six to be covered outside of the fund balance, I think that should be a priority.

I know we're splitting hairs right here. And I hear your point, Commissioner Sherrill. I don't feel like we run the county like that. And I understand where you guys are. But to Danny's point, if If we fund the cent, you can still use that 3%. It kind of gives you guys a little bit of leeway. If you want to hire, you want to try, do a trial with one or two new employees, you can use that fund balance, right? If the six current employees are covered by the one cent proposed, then you can run a trial run. And I think there's merit to John's point about being potentially heavy during the day. I think it's the evenings and the weekends more particularly I'm going to assume Saturdays. You know, when all the events are downtown, the golf courses are full, I think that's when I would speculate. But it's a tough one. I understand all points here, and I really do.

I mean, it's a complicated issue.

It really is. And then it also, you know, you'd have to have an increase next year or come back next year, but it's not a wallop, you know, next year. It's more of a.

Well, if you were going to fund those three out of your fund balance, that ought to last you a couple years. I mean, you're funding six out of them now. Yeah. So I think the issue is, do you want to continue doing that? Because we obviously don't think it's a good idea.

You really don't want to deplete. You don't want to deplete. Like John, I think, mentioned the other day. I didn't know that, but the county has a policy. We have a policy. Our fund balance is 50%. If it drops below 50%, which it has, that's the reason the town of Highlands had to look at a tax increase, is 25%, I think you said the other day. And you kind of got to look at it as well, I think, with the fire department. You need to keep a certain percent, whether that be, you know, at a $2 million budget, that would be, you know, $500,000. So you want to keep some in fund balance, may not be that much, but you don't want to totally deplete it. And that would be my only concern is getting to the point where if you had a truck blow up, you know, you couldn't fix it. Because you didn't have $150,000 to fix it, which could happen.

I would say don't deplete it. You know, again, if you go to one cent and get the six covered right now, you have a little bit of a leeway for a year gap right now. If you needed to do a trial run like Chairman said, you know, maybe one or two extra out of your fund balance, but I wouldn't. I would do that as a trial for one year, not as a recurrent expense for every year after that. I would give yourself a year to be able to figure out, like, how not to get those additional, you know, funded so that way all of them, everyone's being funded correctly and not out of the fund balance. So you would have a year's gap, if that makes sense, to be able to kind of make up for that if you can.

Do you have any community events planned, community meetings? Just get-togethers, anything up there?

In August.

Is that the only thing you have this year?

We go to the school periodically for different events.

I'm no one to say this, but it'd be nice to see something up there quarterly. Maybe something oriented towards kids and young adults. Maybe just a spaghetti dinner. Just throwing out my two cents.

Is anybody ready to take action? Or no action? It sounds like it's still available. Are they still working off the fund balance?

Is that what you're... Well, honestly, I don't even know at this point.

The next year, so your fund balance, if you continue to work off that, we all know that's a weak link when you start... You have recurrent expenses. It has come off your fund balance. Sitting here, I do not have a solution for you other than any. But in a situation where we need to make decisions now, I don't have a problem with the fund balance being used in such a particular way. It's safety. If we maintain that cost through our fund balance, I think Mr. Cabe would have to have some input if we can maintain that for another year.

Let me ask another question, Ryan. When the assistant chief retires in six months, this goes to you as well, are we going to replace that person and still have two administrators during the day? Are we going to take that position and put it in as a paid firefighter? Because that's funds right there at retirement that would certainly – I'm just stuck on two administrators, and I understand. I mean, completely. You know, I served with you and Robbie both, and I understand where you're at and where he's at. But looking down the line – To me, to have two administrators on the day shift is not in the best interest of the taxpayers and the finance. And that position should certainly go to the full-time paid firefighter.

And that may very well change. Once that happens, we very well may restructure.

Yeah. Yeah.

That would be a town board decision.

Yeah. So we've really been working on this. I mean, this has really consumed me all weekend and trying to figure out how to help you. And so, I mean, a half cent gets them three more positions. They fund the six out of the fund balance, come back next year. And, you know, rehash this thing out for the overall picture. But, manager, you have heard me probably talk about this before. The two municipal fire departments, ultimately, eventually, Macon County is going to have a full-page fire service. We've talked about the town of Highlands and the town of Franklin, the two municipal fire departments. owning their departments. Have y'all had any discussions in Highlands about that being a possibility as the town of Highlands just takes control of? No?

No, there's been no conversation about that.

And I don't know how close we are, but those are probably good conversations to be had because Highlands Fire Department's not the only ones that's struggling you know, for volunteerism and stuff like that. So, ultimately, it's coming. So, I don't know when, five years, ten years, I have no idea, but it's a good conversation. So, I mean, guys, I...

Let's go with the fund balance one more year.

Half a penny in the fund balance?

Pardon me?

Half a penny to hire the three guys and let them use their fund balance one more year?

That seems to be a movement that we can make with a lot of backlash on it.

I'm not playing that guy, but I feel like the problem is they're wanting to hire three more, which is nine in the fund balance. I'm sorry, I mean, what they currently have is six. They're not funded. But they're wanting to hire three more. Mr. Sherrill, is the need there to hire the three more? I mean, is it?

Without completely diving into this thing and figuring out a whole new scope of scheduling and everything else and shifting people around, when the assistant chief retires, They have the money for that position. If we do the day shift with the two administrators and one, ultimately, in my mind, they need one more person. But only if you take the two paid guys, one of them off during the day shift. And they work with the two administrations.

You're saying seven total positions?

Seven would get them if they redid their complete schedule.

That translates to ballpark 700,000 bottom line reoccurring, correct?

Yes. So you have to get the six positions. I mean, that's got to be a priority. Well, that's in that 700,000, those six positions, plus the one if they restructured their thing.

Of a half a cent? No. A little over a penny.

How would you guys feel if we matched the cashier's mill rate? That'd be one cent. That'd be a cent. Ryan?

Ryan? I think if we match the penny, if we gave them the penny, that's their sixth recurring gas.

Exactly.

Maybe even a seventh. At that point, you still have your fund balance. If you need a truck, go buy a truck.

And then we can work on, and again, I don't know what Robbie's going to do. He may work several more years. I don't know. He might work six months. But when that happens, we can have that discussion then. And then look at the third person, how we could work that out.

Somewhere along the line, we need to, I mean, I don't want to by no means force the assistant chief out or anything like that. But, you know, we have property and lives to take care of. If you've got your time and the fire department needs you, members and response teams and everything else, that's our focus, all of them. And so, but my recommendation would be when he retires is do not fill the second administrator during the day.

Lindsey, can you tell us what, if we went to the 2.94, is that what Cashers is? How much that would be? Would that be enough to hire the extra person or no? Probably not.

The penny is $604,751, but she'll have to figure it out. That would give you $622,893. If you went to .029. So that would pay for our current...

And I don't want to speak for Rebecca at all. However, from the finance perspective, it has to be terrifying for her to hear you all say, do a trial run out of fund balance, because I know I would not want Warren to do that. because you're going to be in the same situation you're in now, and they're going to be coming back to you. So that's just my opinion.

I think there has to be a change in how your fund balance is used, and it's capital. I mean, if you need a truck, buy a truck. Don't hire people. We may not be sitting here in three or four years when you need the money. They may say no.

In my mind, though, you have a gentleman who has potentially months to less than a year left. I mean, there's one of them right there. So if you were to fund your sixth, it would be easy to hire the seventh knowing that position comes open. That's kind of where I'm – how I can justify that mentally.

But ultimately, that was the – the fund balance was the path forward. They knew they were going to have to use the fund balance to pay those positions.

But I think now they're in a position they're asking you, like, hey, where we are. I don't think we should encourage them to continue another path that says, okay, we'll try it and use the fund balance again because they're going to come right back to you, in my opinion.

Or hire somebody on a – When you can't guarantee, it's hard to hire somebody when you can't guarantee them employment more than a year.

So do you plan on approaching Jackson? Of course, it may be too late this year, but that little section over there, just let them adjust the service fee over there too, which that's not a lot of money.

We've had a conversation for some reason. Jackson County has always just wanted to say, we'll just give you this and not charge the rate. But we've had some conversation this year. not got anything confirmed, they would actually, we would give them whatever rate you come up with, we'll give them that, and maybe they could collect on that, which I don't understand why they haven't in the past. But anyway, that's been a negotiated number every so many years. I don't know why.

That'd make it pretty easy on cashers if that's the current rate to collect.

Oh, well, with cashers, the same rate as cashers?

I'll make a motion then. See where it goes. I'll make a motion that we adjust the fire tax rate for Highland Fire Department to 2.94 pennies, which is an increase of 1.03 pennies.

I hear a motion by Commissioner Breeden. Second. Second by Commissioner Antoine. Any further discussion?

Yeah, I have to bring. I mean, I know it don't get you the truck you're looking for and all this stuff, but is that going to help you with your response and where you need to be? That's going to.

I mean, the way I understand it, essentially we're staying the same. We're just using different monies to pay our current employees, right?

Yeah, without – so potentially giving you enough money to hire the seventh person to try to shift your schedule around to have –

you and the assistant chief to uh i won't be honest i'd have to have a long talk with him i don't see that working um well we do we do have we do have the issue of assistant chief

You know, again, we don't know when he's going to retire, but he's close, very close. So if he win, I feel like it's time to talk about whether or not we need an assistant chief. I think that would, if not, then that would free up that money to hire another person easily.

And that's why I'm saying this. That ultimately would give you two options. More firefighters. And, you know, I mean, you see it all the time, whether it's in private business or public. You know, sometimes if a person's not willing to retire when, then sometimes you have to make that decision to better the fire department and to save the community.

It's in his plan, believe me.

Oh, I've heard it. I know. Actually, that's quicker than I thought it was. But ultimately, we just have to make decisions to give the fire department what is truly needed and give the community what is needed to save lives and protect property. And so... And realistically, I think that the no fireman that you're talking about is an introductory level at $40,000. And just those benefits is $50,000.

By the time you figure health insurance and retirement, the required retirement.

So that's over, or that's, wow. Okay. No, I'm... I'm good. I mean, I think they need the help, and hopefully this at least gets them somewhere where they need to be. Any other discussion?

All in favor, please raise your right arm. State aye for the record. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, I want to make a couple of comments.

I don't see anyone from the Board of Education.

I've been trying to catch up with them since last Friday. I was there this morning at 8 o'clock trying to talk with the superintendent, and he was on emergency at that time. I guess I want to make a statement about the Board of Education's budget. And I just wanted to be on record. Again, I want to thank Mr. Ridenour for the information he sent out to us over the weekend on how to proceed in this type of discussion. With the local career expense proposed budget of the maintain for the Franklin High School, I mean for the school system, The total maintained seems to be $14,294,138.65, which is 21% of the $68 million plus there. I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with the capital outlay proposed budget. But what I have the problem with, I'd like to be on record that I would request, and I'll find them and share them my opinion too, for them to go back within their local current expense and local capital out made monies to see if they can find monies that pertain to their top priority request. It's not, it's proposed budget. And it pertains to exceptional children's teachers. It pertains to EC numbers continue to rise and projected enrollment for 26, 27 will be higher than in recent years. To not have that in the budget may be, Ms. Rodanair, illegal. I think it has to have an attention. Also, the other part of it, let me finish that sentence. Outside a self-contained classroom, three EC teachers currently carry caseloads exceeding 40 students each. People, that's criminal. To effectively serve these students and improve EC testing and outcomes, case load ratios must be reduced. That's not in their budget. Mental health professional, Macon County School, Also, self-contained, exceptional children as teachers. Three, these positions are needed to keep up with the growing number of exceptional children students by providing specialized instruction, support in self-contained classrooms. And the last one there, exceptional children personal care assistance. Four, These positions are needed to support more students with significant needs by helping with daily care, safety, and access to learning. The thing I want to be on record is, and when I find the superintendent, I just want you all to be aware of it, I'm going to ask that they look at their local current expense, and local capital outlay expense again to see if you can incorporate this money. It's not cheap. What I just read to you there and what they've got here in numbers comes to $546,978.98. And so that's a pretty big request to ask them to go back into their budget and look at current expense and capital outlay expense in the maintain area and try to find that monies to support this request regarding exceptional children. By law, IDEA is the federal law that ensures all students have access to a free and appropriate public education. to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free, appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living. And I think we're leaving, I think, Not on purpose, but I think they need to go back and review this to make sure that we're not doing something outside the law, that we stay within the law. And we all know the new high school was built on the backs of exceptional children. They were one of our forefront runners on this new high school. And because of these type of laws, you can even go and look at your ADA Title II state and local government activities. We are responsible. So my encouragement is to the Macon County Board of Education is to go back and review their current expense and your capital monies and see if you can find enough monies to incorporate those four areas there. And I just want to be on record for that, and I will do a follow-up unless there's a, people here said we need, you need to speak to them here, and that's what I was trying to do today. Or you can go speak to them, make the same request to them that they find the monies, but I want to make sure y'all were aware of what I was doing. If you want to hear me say that in front of them, they're not here.

I wish they were here. And I would also say I agree with you. So when I saw those numbers, I think that's alarming. But let me just share real quick. So the way we get there, if that's what we want to do, is what Jackson County does. So Jackson County dictates how they spend their money with the school system. So they're giving them overall $11.25 million. Part of that is current expenses for 8.6 million, 1.3 in teacher supplements, 4.93 for counselors, 225 for junior ROTC. So they dictate what programs they're supporting. So if we wanted to say, well, EC is extremely important, and those numbers are alarming to have 40 students with one teacher, we would have to pull that out and say this is what. But currently, I wish they were here to answer the questions or at the very least, defend themselves. But currently, we give them money, and they spend it on what they see fit.

Right. I guess I was just trying to make the piece to encourage them to go back into your budgets and look at it and find that half a million dollars to incorporate into this with exceptional children. But I just didn't want to do something out here on Gary Shields by himself without you all knowing it.

I agree with you 100%. And if we go through, I mean, if we go through with what we kind of have talked about in some of these meetings, you're talking about a $1.2 million increase, maybe a little bit more. There you go. We could certainly. Ask them to fund those things.

I was looking at the local current expense proposed budget on top priorities. The exceptional children's teachers at Franks High School won $69,549.96. The mental health professional from Aiken Middle School was $77,029.66. Self-contained exceptional children's teachers three was a $208,649.89. Then except for children's personal care assistance, to me that, with my rough math, $546,978.98. If I had that money, brought out of those other, they have to prioritize or whatever it may be.

We can do it, but- Well, I think we have to make a decision on how we want to fund this, because we've been talking about a percentage. So we want to get them to a percentage, and that's their percentage. And if we gave them that $1.2 million increase, I mean, that gets them to a little over 18%. So if you go back and you just look at the years of funding that the school system has had, I mean, they were pretty flat for a lot of years. I mean, they had an increase in 2019. It was a pretty decent size increase, about a million dollars. And then it went up, stayed the same. It went down a little bit.

What did we fund them in 19, Barry?

2019, their operation was $9.2 million. So now we're at 14. Now we're at, well, not what we're funding, where we're at right now. If we give them that, well, that was including their capital. So without the increase, they'd be at 11.8 million, including that capital outlay money, which is the 1.1 million. So their overall, just their operations in 2019 was 8.3 million, right at 8.4 million. Right now, we're at 10.6. A little over $2 million in seven years.

And I'd just like to say, Mr. Ridenour, if you'd like to make a comment on this, that this is serious stuff when you start working with exceptional children with the laws that they are supported by. Whether you're talking about IDEA or ADA or whatever it is, they're supported by the law that we provide for them, their education. And so I just wouldn't want to have a, Another situation where we had before where a piece of the exception of children caused quite a bit of grief that we weren't supporting it. And we finally came around and worked with it. But I appreciate what you did over the weekend, the information you sent us, how to approach this problem. Thank you.

I will say I actually text Superintendent Lynch just to make sure they weren't hung up or coming late or something. And he's had a conflict this morning, so he's not going to be here.

Yeah. Any more thoughts?

Personnel at Macon County School System. You know, it seems like they do the same thing that's happened in county government. a position would be funded by grants. And once that grant money is gone, then they expect local dollars to kick in to keep funding that position. I did call down to Raleigh to find out about these grants. budget cuts and everything else, and they're supposed to be sending me some information about the school system. And there has not been any budget cuts that would impact the Macon County school system. And they were the ones that told me that you look at the local positions that were funded by grants, and now, like I said, those – those grant funds are gone and they have those positions and they don't want to do away with that position. And then there's other ways that they – it's my understanding that they can transfer positions out of this way of funding to put them in the grant funds so that they know that those grant funds are not going to – be renewed, and then they expect the local dollars to keep them afloat. So my question to that is, what does the local numbers look like in 2019? How many people were funded locally in the school system by local tax dollars in 2019?

I should know that. I served on the ESSER committee that started in 2020 or 2019 there. And we knew, and Mr. Lynch was a part of the team and did an excellent job, we knew in 2024 those monies were out. We also... I made sure that the people who were interviewing for jobs knew that in four years, that money would go out. And like John's saying, there was always a piece, well, the county, I said, no, no, you can't do that. This is the money you have. And in four years, you can't depend upon the county Supporting this continually. If they do, God bless them. But if you don't, it's the end of it. Mr. Lynch wasn't the superintendent, but he was very much involved in this. And he knows the trying to maintain the type of monies that you're talking about. would be a challenge. And we're in that challenge. But when it comes to exceptional children, we got hearts for them. I got hearts for the families. If it's increasing, we need to make sure that we take care of those exceptional children in our schools. And I think the law here supports that, that we have this obligation. However you want me to proceed as a Board of Education, I'll talk with Mr. Lynch and try to get this thing moving. But I think there's a time frame here that I'm concerned about also.

So, Commissioner Sherrill's question, I don't have data back to 2019. This year, on the maintain request, the total positions that they had on local was 107.95 last year. The total request on local was 100.2.

We're on 104 this year.

107.95.

Almost, so see that's, and that's what the state, you know, the folks that I talked to said, you need to look at these positions that they transfer because if you track that, you will find that the school system It's not state-impacted funding. It was grant funding that is no longer available. And of course, if local tax dollars will support it, they'll keep hiring. And then they also said that, back to Commissioner Breeden's point, is the money that Macon County pumps into the school system, we should be tracking that money and earmarking that money without just giving it to them and saying, here, do with it what you want, because we saw what happened with what we thought the lunch money was going last year. So it's a very complicated budget process in the school system. There's so many avenues for monies funneling into that budget, and so good. I mean, that's seven positions that they want local dollars to fund since last year. Where does it stop? Where does it end? I mean, it's easy to say, yeah, just keep going. But to me, if they are positions that are really required or mandated by the state, the state's going to fund them. These are what we want, not necessarily what we need. So you just got to be careful. That law that you're talking about is a federal mandate. And so...

But it's also responsible of the local and the state... Title II requires the state and local governments give people with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from all of their programs, services, and activities, public education being one of these activities, employment, transportation, recreation, healthcare, social service, courts, and voting. This is a mandate, or I'm going to say a law, that talks about that. And I think we have an obligation, or Gary Shields feels like he has an obligation, and I hope this board does, that we need to make sure that our acceptor children, those families, those people, that we adhere to this, that these young people, and if it says in the information here that it's increasing, it's a... It's a tough family world out there today. We all know that.

One thing that really caught me the last meeting was I asked a very specific question. If you don't get the funding, what does the Make County School System do? We cut out programs. That's right. Well, wait a minute. We're not going to cut staff. So at the end of the day, who's impacted? our children that we're trying to protect. So you don't cut out programs. You find other ways to fund those programs and keep as much staff as you possibly can to do these positions. But at the end of the day, it's not about building a paycheck. It's about taking care of our children. And if we're automatically just going to cut out the children's programs, I think that's the wrong avenue for funding.

And I don't think the law will allow us to cut out when we're talking about exceptional children.

Right. And that's what you're talking about, the importance of funding that.

Yes.

Okay. And I don't disagree with you. But when you have a budget shortfall, you have to make very hard decisions, and it should not be impacting the ones that you're serving. Amen. Amen.

I agree with you. They got to go back and look at your capital outlay and your current expense and see what, how you can, I'm going to say reduce that to the point that you can incorporate the exception of children into the education that they deserve, the families.

See, I had some questions for whoever was here with the school system, and they're not here. So those questions can't be answered.

Well, Lindsey could probably do a better job of this than I can, but if we just go through and break down their operational budget. So, again, if we're trying to get to a percentage of what we're going to fund for that of our budget to the school system, if you go back to – I mean, she gave me numbers all the way back to 2014, and it started out operationally at 7.8 million. And it rode 7.8 million, actually went down to 7.6 until 2019. And it went to 8.3. So there was a pretty significant increase there. 2020 was 8.8. 21 was 8.8. 22 is 8.8. 23 is 8.8. 24, another significant increase at 9.6. 25 is 10. 26 is 10.6. And then this year, if we fund them, if we tried to get to that 18%, which I know they say they need 21, but if we split the difference from 16% and we went to a little over 18, that puts them, I mean, that's a $1.2 million increase. So it puts them at... $11.9 million of operating income, of operating expense, sorry. So that's what we're giving them. And that gets us to 18.18%. That doesn't include school resource officers, nurse program, or debt service, which I know does not come directly out of their budget. But that is money that is contributed to the school system. which puts it at 23.6% if you added all those.

What percent is that? 11.9 is what percent?

Uh, 18.18%. So if we were going to go on the idea of just giving them 18%, cause they need 21, we can, we can afford to do 18. That's the number you're looking at. They're going to get a pretty significant increase this year. If, if our budget increased the same next year, you're looking at a $550,000 increase next year. Um, If we just maintain that 18%. And I think at that point, they would have to have some conversations because they're not able to fund that $3.6 million or the four or five or whatever they're asking for. And I don't know where it comes in for us. Where do we come into play to say, hey, out of this 1.2, we want you to fund these EC folks or we want you to fund this or not this. But we're giving you a number. which I would support the 1.2 increase to get them that 18%. I think that needs to be their baseline number.

And to get that 1.2, you're talking about funding our making counties capital out of fund balance, which frees up that $1.2 million operating money to give that to school, correct? That's correct.

Is that feasible, what we're saying here?

It is. You do have still a significant fund balance. One of the things that we've talked about, which Mitch went over last time, governments do it. You don't want to cover operating monies, which is the conversation we've had prior to this. But in certain circumstances, using your fund balance to leverage your monies, knowing that you'll reconcile some things later on, that's certainly okay. And he does not think that that's going to cause any issue with our bond rating or any other financial issue.

But let's get into that just a little bit. We always talk about this fund balance and the capital improvement fund. So, we transfer and you use the interest income from this to help balance the budget. Okay. So, let's just say 30 million. Okay. So, we are at 25 percent for the undesignated fund balance of coordinates. There's an ordinance for that. So we stick to that 25 percent. We put the rest of that money in a capital improvement fund. Yes, it is still going to be drawing interest. But that interest on that money is only allowed to be used for capital improvement, correct? If you have it in a capital improvement fund.

We will be putting that interest in that.

Yes. Correct. Okay. And that money can only be used. for capital improvements. So if we set this undesignated fund balance to 25%, next year, all these people asking, we don't have that fund balance to depend on to give this additional money. So it makes your job and your job a little bit harder to balance the books because you can't tap into that $1.15 million to balance the budget. So it's a double-edged sword here. People look at this undesignated fund balance as, oh, we can ask for this money and they can tap into it, give us the $1.2 million out of the capital fund to give to the school system. But if we go back to that designation of 25% and the capital improvement fund, we don't have that luxury anymore. Correct. Because if you're going to retain that at 25%, any additionals that would be added to the undesignated fund balance would be immediately sent into the capital improvement fund.

You're correct. At some point, yes, you would not have the ability to do what you're doing considering today. You're correct.

And so I think moving forward, I think we're – We're playing on a dangerous road here because of the things that this county needs. And folks being able to know that they can come to our board and we can tap into that fund balance is a dangerous pattern. And somewhere along the line, we have to make – hard decisions. Do I support a lot of this? Absolutely. But we only have so much money. And we don't want – I mean, we depend on that interest to be able to balance the budget and keep working on this stuff.

And eventually it's not there.

So I think that's a – I mean, I see exactly what you're talking about, Commissioner, but –

Let's see. It's hard. There's a little story here that I'm leaving out. Eric knows what I'm going to talk about, but Derek Rowland and I had the opportunity, I'll say that, to meet with the ACLU. Eric, that was last year when Derek was here. And when we were talking about Franklin High School, You may have initiated that meeting with ACLU. Derek and I went over to the central office and we Zoomed with them. And the story is, when we got through there, Derek and I decided we'd just keep our mouth shut because they'd already had been alerted about Franklin High School and the deficiencies that we had there and that we were going to have to... pay attention to the exceptional children piece. And I'll never forget the lady saying, when you, and she said, when you go in front of the judge, because we were telling, we tell the lady, we don't have the money to build a new high school. Then that lady said, when you go in front of the judge, make sure you tell them that Macon County has the lowest tax rate payment in the state. And she just laughed. And Derek and I said, oh Lord, we're in trouble. Because at that time, she was saying, no, you'll increase your taxes in order to take care of these young people. That's one of the things. And just so happened, the $62 million came in a few weeks later. And prayer answered. And we didn't have to go through going to court and stuff like that. But we were on the verge of having to stand up and do something because we were being challenged at that time that we were not providing for the exception of children. And to be honest about it, we weren't. Not at the old high school. So there's issues here. And I think that the again, still goes back to the young people and the families of acceptable children, they are supported by the law. And I think we have to find a way to acclimate to that in order for them to get what the law says they're required to have or we're required to give them. And I just shared that with you that just sometimes it gets bigger than you are. And the ACL's union, when they become involved, they are bigger than some of us because they've got the political power, judicial power that they can use. But I don't want to go into that arena again over this piece of information that we're leaving out of the budget or finding some way to put it back in the budget where we won't be challenged again like we were before.

Just trying to play mediator here. Ms. Leppard, how hard would it be to set up an account and to use some of the 1.2 million proposed funds from Commissioner Breeden to fund the 500 plus thousand?

I feel like we can set up accounts just how we have current expense. We can designate that. But this is all I want to point out. I can't speak for the school system. But their maintain request... is already more than what you're funding them if you give them the 1.2. So for their maintain, they're asking for what, 14.2? Almost 14.3 million. What you're trying to come up and fund now is on their top priorities, which is in addition to their maintain. So they're going to have to make hard choices. And I think that needs to be clear to them of we're already not funding you your maintain, and I think For good reason, I think there's some issues there that we needed answers to, right? But now you're earmarking 600,000 of that in addition to say this is on your top priority list. So they're going to have to really look at this maintain list and see of that. Yes, good answer. But nothing says that we can't fund them that. Now when we give them that money, we just cut them a check every month. If that's outlined, this parts for EC.

So could we go a little farther on that and pull whatever EC money they're using now inside of that operational budget out? So if right now we're talking about funding $600,000 to fund on their top priorities. Well, what if we pulled out what we're already funding in EC and say it's a million dollars? But the operation number would go down a little bit. But then it's kind of like Jackson County is doing it where we're actually seeing

I mean, we would need to get that from them. I don't know. Just from conversations I've had with Laney, they kind of play like a shuffling game of trying to maximize local dollars. So just because a position is on local funding right now doesn't mean at the end of the year that same position is on local funding. So I know that they do move positions around to be able to draw down That's state money and federal money. I don't know what that looks like EC-wise. I don't know if there is pots of money she's already pulling down for federal and state funding. So I don't know how easy that would be, how much local dollars are truly spent on EC. I mean, it looks like to me this is an addition to what funding they're already getting. But if we don't have a good breakdown, because it's always moving around, I don't know how we would break that out.

And back to Commissioner Shields, I mean, you have an elected school board that is responsible to make sure that they're upholding the laws, right?

Right.

Okay. So for us to try to dictate the law to them, well, the people elected them to run the school system and uphold all laws, all inclusive to all children, And to Lindsay's point is they have to make tough decisions. Do we obey the law or do we fund positions? And in one year, almost eight positions. Well, next year, 15 positions. I mean, it just – and so somewhere along the line, in my opinion, all government entities is going to have to go back – we're going to have to have a reset and go back to the basics of – the task at hand.

I mean, it just... I think that's why we had initially started out with that percentage. Right. It's just a percentage. And you guys are elected to spend it. Yeah. But as our budget grows or doesn't, so does theirs.

And if ours decreases, then so does theirs.

And I think it's a view thing. I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. But like for us... I feel like every one of us have reviewed this budget a lot. And I feel like in our minds, those are maintained numbers. So I don't know, like those should be funded. So to me, that should have been part of a maintained request. So that was what was really hard for me to wrap my head around is like, why are they over here on this top priority list when you absolutely need to be funding these positions? So that would also give them some time, hopefully with their board, to really work on these priorities of like, EC should be top of the list, true? I mean, that's what we feel like by reviewing it. And so maybe this number could shift some, hopefully. And, I mean, worst-case scenario, they're going to have to come back to you and explain, you know, we're still not where we need to be.

Can you give me the difference between 18% and the .18, what that would be dollar-wise? Just straight 18%? Yeah.

23 and a half percent of our budget.

Overall, yeah.

23.17.

What I'm getting at is if that .18%, if we just hit an even 18 and we could use that other part to fund that ambulance, I don't know if it's enough, but it might be close.

And I guess that's what I was trying to do is to get them to refocus on the capital and current expense. And for me to feel like it was their decision to do these type things, not... us, that we can just support them and not be the... Well, I don't think you're wrong.

I mean, I think it's our responsibility to have those conversations with them.

Yes, I think you're right. What Mr. Ridenour passed out to us over the weekend, he's... It's definitely a process that you go through with. And... It talks about down here funding disputes with the local school board. And there's a procedure for this. And I think you're correct and I'm with you is that they should have the first opportunity.

I agree with that. So at just a flat 18%, not the 18.18, your total operating expenditures that you would be funding them would be $11,814,471. That would save you Over the $18.18, that's $116,156. Not quite enough to do an ambulance, but close, huh? How much is the ambulance?

$300? $160? It was like $160. Right around $170 mark for a remount.

The full ambulance cost was $256,681. The remount, though, I think it was a little less. Yes.

Thank you for the opportunity to share that with you.

Well, I'd like to make a motion that we approve an increase to the school system, making their budgeted money 18% of our budget, which is an increase of...

One point.

Yeah, whatever that number is, Lindsey.

You didn't tell me that number.

Yeah, I'll second that motion. I have a motion by Commissioner Breeden. Did you finish your motion?

Well, I guess do I need to say that that's, no, yep. That's my motion.

And second by Commissioner Shields. Any further discussion? Do we need to clarify where the funds are coming out of our fund balance? Yeah.

Yeah, we need to say that you are going to be, the motion contains that you are using an appropriation of 1.259058 from fund balance with 18% of that going to the Macon County Schools operating expenses. But you're going to have a remainder of $116,156. So what would you like that to be? Do you want that to be...

Mr. Cave? Retract your motion. Yeah, I'd like to retract my motion. I'll start over. On the record. All right. What do we want that money to be used for, that $116,000? Well, I'd say let's reallocate here in a minute.

Can I go into contingency?

You can, sure.

You have a current contingency of $96,995, so you could add that to contingency.

And that was $116,150?

116,156, $116,156. Glad you're making that motion. I'll give it a shot. I'll give it a second.

All right, so I'd like to make a motion that we allocate 1.25, or 1,259,058. From general? From general fund. Balance. Balance. And 18% goes to the Macon County School System. The remainder of $116,156 goes to contingency.

I hear a motion by Commissioner Breeden.

I'll second that. I didn't get it all down, but I'll second it. I trust it.

Seconded by Commissioner Shields.

Yep.

Any further discussion?

Okay, so that takes away the funding for capital outlay for the county? Is that... All county capital will be funded from general fund balance.

You would essentially be funding all of the school capital and all of the county capital requests this year from, well, yes, from fund balance.

What say you, Manager?

I'm a little cautious using the fund balance. However, I will tell you, you make a very valid point on interest on investments. The thing is, we won't allocate all of that capital at once, so therefore it doesn't go away July 1st. We'll continue to make interest on it six months, seven months into the year. our projection is our interest on investments are projected to stay basically in the same range that we had last year. And we were very conservative on our calculations on those this year in your budget.

But we still did increase. I just want that to be clear.

We did still increase.

Just because we needed funds. So we did increase those.

So for a one time thing, I don't have an issue with it. However, at some point, your growth and revenues, your interest on investments, your revenues coming in, you're gonna need some more funds somewhere to maintain your own budget across the board, which that can look like your normal growth, that can look like your quarter cent sales tax. It could look like a property tax increase eventually somewhere. So we just need to plug those numbers in. We'll revise capital improvement plan. We'll track that out over the next 10 years. And we will put that into the formula and just be wary of that.

And him and I had a lot of conversation about using fund balance because it's obviously not something you want to do for what we're doing. But you are trending well this year. Sales tax is better than it was last year.

Good.

And your interest is good. So... We should end. So even though you're appropriating some fund balance, you should end well this year, too.

And if the need is there, if you truly identify the need that you want to spend that money on, at the moment, your only other option is a tax increase. And you make a very valid point that it's a struggle for some folks. At the moment, if you want to maintain those needs that you see, that is your best option without doing a property tax increase.

But we're still working towards that one quarter of a penny sales tax. That could be a contribution to the total budget too, right? That's correct.

That's a lot of emphasis on that quarter, Sam.

Yes. It's $2 million. So... So...

Are we actually with this ask? We're below what they're asking for for maintain. Correct. So the additional positions, they're going to have to figure out.

Okay. I mean, I did the quick math, which I don't have mine right here in front of me, but that from your raises down to your local supplement. I mean, you're about $505,000 of that money right there.

Yeah.

I mean, we're going to have to make some decisions on that, on what's spent for the rest of it.

Yeah, raises to supplements is $550,155. All right.

Motion by Commissioner Breedon. Second by Commissioner Sherrill. Any further discussion?

Commissioner Shields.

I'm sorry, Commissioner Shields.

I was trying to give Sherrill some credit there.

All right. Any further discussion?

All right, all in favor, please raise your right arm, state aye for the record. Aye. Any opposed? All right, Ms. Tenney, please select a 5-0 vote. All right, since you brought up the ambulance, does anybody have any thoughts on funding remanding an ambulance that was cut out of our budget?

We can, with your money and contingency, I mean, you've already budgeted. One of them is included in the capital money. With that extra contingency, we can revisit that. And then if we need to approach that after July 1st, we can certainly do that if you don't want to make that decision today. the money if you moved it in a contingency so we can use it for whatever need you have.

We should have roughly, what, 215 in there or something like that?

For timing purposes, do we need to make that decision right now, Mr. Gaber? No, I don't think so. No, I think we're good. We're just going to set aside and wait on you for that. That's correct. All right. Now I've got a list of items right here. Is there anything else anybody wants to add or remove from this budget? Our finance and county manager looking for direction. Southwestern.

I think the Southwestern, I think we hold them flat on our operation, 510, some change. We're going to give them the $125,000 like we've been doing for capital and then do the driving track or all of them?

We didn't put the $125,000 in for any of the capital. As a matter of fact, we didn't put anything in for capital. So if you want to appropriate the money for the driving track now, you have a couple options. You can do it now. We'll pull it out of fund balance, adjust the bottom rate of the budget up, and it'll reflect the money for the track. Or if you want them to come back in July, I mean, they can come back and then we'll adjust the budget then. The estimate then, the estimate we got was $574,600 for paving the driving track. That's less than the $800,000 that they came in last year and they proposed for. And it's included in the capital improvement plan under that $2.5 million budget. It doesn't matter to me if you want to do it now or if you want to wait until July. One of the things we discussed, 5% contingency on top of that is about $28,000. So if you wanted to round it up, even number $600,000, that would give you the money for the paving and the contingency. How many bids? They had three bids. They ranged anywhere from 574.6 to 782.551. Now, That's actually a community college project. It's not us doing the bidding, so it would be a funds transfer to them. It doesn't have a date on it as far as how long it's good for. But they did say that they could start within basically a couple weeks of us if you so desire to appropriate the money. So if you appropriated it in the budget, you pass the budget in June, first day of July, the money's available. They could start very quickly. Or if you want to wait until July, it's probably going to push them into August until they start a pavement somewhere.

The question is, is how soon are they going to implement this program at SCC once it's paid? Because do they have plans to do it in the fall?

Yes, it's November. It's in October. October is the scheduled class, yeah. Yes. They had checked, and within two weeks of them notifying this company that they They would be able to start.

We're going to do it. I don't see the point in waiting.

Financially, it makes no difference to you. It's the same money for us.

I make the motion we continue with that ASAP.

So does your motion include the bid? The bid money was $574,600. Do you want to include a contingency to round it up to $600,000? $600,000. And the funds coming from? Fund balance.

And paving and what was the other word?

Just the paving and contingency.

Is there something else that goes with the paving?

Resurfacing.

Resurfacing. Paving and resurfacing. Is resurfacing in there or is that resurfacing?

Yes. Yes.

I wonder if they're going to fill all those cracks and stuff. Is that in the bid package?

I got a motion by Commissioner Shields, and the funds come out of fund balance.

Oh, I thought you said.

Nope, I got a motion by Commissioner Shields, second by Commissioner Braden.

I'm sorry about that. So it was actually the tack work, the binder, the asphalt, the yardage calculations. I'm assuming they will do the cracks, but like I said, that bid's on Southwest, or we didn't do the bid on this one, so I'd have to.

So they're proposing, you said two lifts an inch and a half, so what you're saying now is probably two inches of binder and.

Two inch of binder and one inch asphalt toppers, what this bid was. That's better.

Surface. Yes. Okay.

And I'll also say there are other capital needs. The $125,000 we did last year, like the roof they mentioned at the PSTC building, we can have them come back to us and we'll do those one by one during the year whenever things come up with that.

Sounds good. Any other discussion?

That's a little concerning, Owen, that you're going to have tractor and trailers out there all the time on that surface and And actually, if that's strong enough. But anyways.

But they are empty.

Yeah.

All right. All in favor, please raise your right arm. State aye for the record. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Ms. Tammy, please let the record reflect. Anonymous vote. All right. SEC. I mean... Anybody else have anything they want to add, remove, or change with this budget year? I mean, Kilisage is on here. Hudson Library is on here. Does anybody have any interest in adjusting bill rate for Kilisage, funds for Highlands Library? I think we just pinched the schools to heart. It's hard to go up there and rehab a library. It's not ours, my personal opinion.

All right. I mean, if you're asking if we have any interest in it.

Ms. Leppard, Mr. Cave, anything else you need from us?

I think unless you have anything else, I think we've been through it.

Does there need to have another discussion, another budget work session?

I think the motion will adjourn. We've been pretty fast. I hear a motion by Commissioner Shields. Second by Commissioner Breeden. We've got to go to the bathroom.

All in favor, please raise your right arm. Stay down for the record.