Planning Commission - Special Meeting

All right, we're saying it's all OK. Let's keep your life, you know.

Good evening. Hello public about that right in. Nobody OK. All right, well tonight we're going to go over the 2027 budget.

We have.

In front of each of you, there's two packets or two handouts. One is a single page. One is a five page packet. I'll go over here in just a second. But as we've known for years, the process for the budget, typically Yvonne and I, we meet, go through, gather information, take the first pass at things, get it organized, and put some thought into it. And then we met with what we designated the finance committee. So myself, Yvonne, the department heads, and a couple of council representatives had that meeting. The second round through the budget, which gets us to tonight, which is a presentation slash discussion with you all, the entire council. It's the opportunity to DISCUSS ANY ITEMS THAT NEED DISCUSSING. NO MOTIONS ARE GOING TO BE MADE TONIGHT. IDEA WOULD BE TO COME OUT OF THE MEETING TONIGHT WITH ANY CHANGES AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE A PUBLIC HEARING WHICH IS ONE OF THE TWO KIND OF MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS REQUIRED IN THE PROCESS. AT THAT TIME YOU CAN STILL MAKE CHANGES FOR THE BUDGET, ALTHOUGH these iterations. But it's available. And then finally would be the adoption. And I'll cover those things here. Kind of at the end as a wrap up. But I guess quickly I'll cover the first page. The 4B that's designated by the budget process. And that's really the cash flow. And Briefly, I'll just go through here just to remind everybody how the budget is calculated. So if we start at the top, we have, it's broken down by funds. The first one listed there, the general fund. We start with, our starting point is June 30, 2026. So we start with the June 30, 2026 cash balance, which is $2,926,260. calculate the estimated property tax settlement that we expect to receive in December of 26. That number is $425,260. We have estimated miscellaneous revenues of $433,782. The biggest portion of that number is your local income tax certified shares. I did not provide you with a list of all the miscellaneous revenues or the Form 2, but I would love to, if you want to look at it. And Michelle Davis, I don't know if everybody knows. So Michelle is here from our shop. We're at a client's today, so she gets to just stay in the truck and ride on out of here. Plus, she's a good . But she actually has done a lot of work, and she knows this budget probably as well as I do. But anyways, happy to share that form, too, if you guys really want to . Trust me, it's not exciting. The next column there is the expenses. So this is effectively the remaining budget. So we take your adopted 2026 budget and the additional appropriations that you guys have approved. We take that and we reduce it by the amount of money that has been spent over six months to come up with $1,552,000 of budget remaining. work the numbers from left to right and come up with a projected cash balance in your general fund of $2,232,420. That gets us to the end of this year. Now we can start looking at 2027. The next column there is your property tax levy. Just to cover it again, you are subject to what's called max levy. So we can only charge so many dollars in property taxes. And DLGF did some fun stuff last year. Historically, as a rapidly growing community, you guys have qualified for that three-year growth appeal. The state has eliminated that mechanism for everybody going forward. Last year was the last year to complete it, and DLGF and budget related items. They approved a three year growth appeal at a certain level.

But they approved a growth appeal at a higher number from 25 to 26.

And then they, and it's never been done before, they determined that they felt like you were going to get more income taxes at 27. So instead of letting you keep that with that additional levy forever, which is traditionally how it's done, they've said, OK, we're going to back it down. So let's say you've got $400,106. They're going to back it down. You only get $300 of that for 27 and on as your permanent final levy. I don't know. It's a long political rationale behind that. They didn't want to give the three-year growth appeals anyways. And then they were kind of backed into a corner. fine, we're going to make it painful. And a lot of communities didn't get it. It's really kind of unprecedented. But that mechanism doesn't exist anymore. So right now, we're living off inflation increases. So from 26% to 27% or 6% was your growth and your levy. So that's what we're living with as the legislation sits right now. Currently, your max levy is $1,282,490. So that's the 2027. We have allocated that between General Fund and MDH. We can allocate that between, frankly, any and all of the funds and any combination thereof. So that's a mechanism that we have to get resources where we need them. So if you guys approve a budget or we need to get things done or satisfy needs, you know, more into the MDH or LRS. Historically, you've always funded your general fund in MDH with that, and then some combination thereof. And then CCD, or King Capital Development, at the very bottom, that is a fixed tax rate of about five cents. So that's the one where you usually, with new growth, with new AD, you actually get real additional money. You did have an increase. We do have your certified K27 NAB and it went up by, it went from 312 million to 316 million. So it's louder than it's historically been. You know, we've seen those Any questions there? We account for circuit breaker loss, which again is that levy built into the tax rate that you can't collect because circuit breaker exists. So although we set the tax rate assuming you collect a certain amount of money, when they calculate the tax bill, they realize that Ryan is only going to pay 1% and not pay any more. So the difference between this calculated tax bill and the 1% is circuit breaker most. Frankly, yours is not that high, like 10%. So we accounted for that as a uncollectible. We estimated miscellaneous revenue of $995,000. And we've got a budget that we'll go through here in a second of $2,180,482. We have that blue column we like to highlight. That's just the difference between your receipts and disbursements. So as of right now, the general fund doesn't have any deficit budget, I will say. And I'll explain a big piece of that. It's not exactly what it appears. But traditionally, budgets don't get spent in their entirety. And revenues, as estimated, tend to be on the lower side. It gives us a projected ending cash balance of $1,970,000 about 12 months relative to your market, so $2,000, which is a good price to be in at the minimum. We recommend it's six months because you've got to carry, you don't want to get your settlement twice a year, so you really need to make sure Any questions there? And then, obviously, everything, all the points, the same idea. Next schedule.

I'm going to try and move through this.

If I'm going too fast, if you want to stop and talk about something, great. Otherwise, I don't think you want to go line to line. So first thing, the salaries. So all salaries in the entire budget right now have a 3% cost of living adjustment. That's a discussion point for you all. I think we just wanted to put something in there. We do maintain a database that's pretty easy for us I'll say manipulate both numbers, look at what the impacts may be, but we, you know, I always like to show something and then you all can determine if you want more or less. We did, one of the pieces that came out of the, one of the finance committee was the council salaries. So you'll see that those have an increase in their 3750, And so that was contemplated, discussed as something that maybe won't want to be considered by you all. I don't have any base, but that's a discussion point for you all. I think there was some talk about qualified candidates.

I think the conversation around that was merely we're looking at think we're at 7,000 a year we're looking at moving at 8,500 a year to this year so that hey if people are going to look at that and want to jump in to serve the town this gives them that perspective to do so the candidates that we could offer and we haven't risen raised that since we've been here so that was some of the conversation around the table relative to the council salaries

I don't know if when now we're going to have a salary discussion. This will be a good time to, if you have any thoughts on the 3%, or if you want to come back later if somebody wants to come back. The next planned meeting is a public meeting. So I don't know if Yvonne, you have any thoughts on how? Because we will need some direction from you all.

I think this is the time to discuss.

all these numbers represent a 3%, except for the council.

Yeah, I've got, I think 3 makes sense. I know there's a lot going on in the world in taxes, but 3 makes sense to me. At 3%, the number, the 27, the 215,

62,000 or 27,000, 277,000. The deficit that you represent. At 3%, that number doesn't scare me.

So I'm going to jump to, let's just cover the 277, so that's not a big motivator of our decisions. At the very end, on the second page of the packet, that's the end of the general file, 1101. We had talked about, because historically the town, and not just you, everybody in the state, day transfers. Because if you do a rainy day transfer and you qualify for the three-year gross appeal, then automatically they perceive that as not being proven responsible with your money and saving for a rainy day, but you have too much money. But that's all gone. That's gone. So one thing we talked about was... Which is up to $277,000. $150,000 of it is rainy day. So it's not an expense. It's not an outgrow. It's a move from one... It's a transfer.

I think it's necessary to put money in that rainy day fund. It's not been done in many, many, many years. And currently, if there's a flood or a tornado here, you've got a pittance in there. It wouldn't cover much. So I think it is important that we have the opportunity and we have the funds to transfer some money into that. Now, the exact amount, of course, you guys make that decision.

So the 262 deficit is for that company.

Right, right.

Just figure it that way. So really, to me, this is the kind of budget. Trust me, I would tell you, yeah. But I have no problem with 3%. This budget is 100% fun of all of us. This one is. So I just wanted to.

No, I appreciate that. Does this affect sewer rates?

I don't have a problem with the 3%.

I think we're all good with the 3%. I think so.

And then you want that, your council salary going from $7,000 to $8,500, correct?

Yes.

Everybody on that same page?

We're going to do the salary elements with the budget.

I don't have that summary.

Well, we don't do that tonight, but I didn't know if you wanted, like a lot of times we try and do them in sync.

If you're here, like the public hearing, that's up to you.

I don't have it written up at the moment, but it can absolutely be taken care of that way. And it'll be in that same...

Sometimes it just makes you usually have the whole...

We're also talking about potentially some other changes that would also need to go in that salary ordinance. So I don't know that we can get all of that together. But, you know, here in the past few years, we've done the salary ordinance in December simply because there are so many moving parts that need to be taken care of and adjusted. We'll shoot for doing it with the budget, but I don't think that we're going to be ready for that. But we're looking at the insurance side and other things that we might be adjusting.

And then, so we'll run a 3%. Just so you know, like you guys are looking at the change . It looks a bit of a cleanup. Jenny and I, we worked through our salary database. We've got some stuff cleaned up, so we're really, these are the items. Let's see. I'm just going to kind of skip to the major ones unless somebody sees an item they want to discuss. I think we're all good with that. Yeah. So yeah, like per increase, the 77 went up 3%, I think. Something like that. We did try, one of the things we did look at this year was try to even lower budgets because you'll see in your report you do have a 24-25 actual data there, so you have kind of a lot of historical data. Marshall body cameras, I think we just under budgeted last year. That was my note.

We added the tasers into it this time and took the tasers line away.

consolidated. Yeah, it all became one contract.

Body cams, car cameras, and tasers.

And it's an annual contract?

Yeah. And then some money changes. BS&A, I'm sure you guys are aware of the software change there. Okay. So at the bottom, we had the capital outlays. So we had park equipment, furniture, $250,000. We kind of had strategically So anyways, I adjusted it back out. That's not to say we just don't really have an official plan right now. So if you guys decide you do want to buy all that equipment, we can talk about it and do an initial appropriation. And the rainy day transfer, the $150,000, it is limited to 10% of the total budget. So there is a threshold in which you can only do so much of a transfer. That's within that. Patrick. Otherwise, that's all I got. Did you have any that I kind of glossed over, but I think anyone want to speak about on this one? And then we'll go to NMVH next.

OK. Salaries, is that what we talked about?

Yeah, we're going to go to NMVH next.

OK, that's fine.

You guys good with the general one? Yep. So the next one, yeah. Motor vehicle highways, NMVH. So same thing here. We did include a 3% increase to those. And we are getting rid of the overtime block. But we didn't get rid of the overtime budget. So it got pushed up into the labor wages. Because the way it actually gets booked, it doesn't book to the overtime line. So there's no reason to have it. Well, we had $8,500. We moved it down to that. I think at the end there was... Oh, yeah, we had a... That big change was I had Jake Paul's allocation wrong the prior year, so... Okay, anything to add? Jared?

Yeah, go ahead. Did we... Like, one year it was explained to me that all of the street overtime... is included in, if I bring, like we have a six to ten inch snow, if I have a full call out, are all the guys from the treatment plant, everybody paid from the street overtime budget? No.

No, they'll just be paid out of the, out of wastewater. Okay. Even if they do, because and forth, it's impossible. So wastewater people get paid at a waste water, even if they're helping you out of the street that one or twice a year.

That's why I brought it up, because it was explaining to me that it's that way.

And years ago, it was set up that way, and that's changed several years ago.

So their allocation doesn't change.

So Jake would be the only one who would get street overtime

But it's all in that labor wages.

And the labor wages is also if you get another intern or something.

We have to for that, right?

That's right. Yeah, we have the intern, Jake, and then they have overtime. That's $73,000. Otherwise, we have Steve. We talked about, I think, street signs. They're just expensive.

down all the side roads.

How are you on supplies?

Do you feel like you... I'm getting there on supplies. I need a few more, uh, A-type barricades, small ones. Um, I type threes.

I'm good on them for summer febs. It's about the only time I have needed those. Um, the biggest expense, and you know this by as well, is the, uh, I feel somebody hit something. But there was a significant purchase this year in that. Didn't you purchase extra or something this year that we wouldn't expect to be every year purchase?

There's maintenance on the street sweeper and things like that.

Speaking of that, vehicle-wise, how are we, and I guess this is across the board, and I know we're kind of jumping back and forth, but wastewater, and I know we just bought an expensive truck, but how are we on street trucks and

Thank you, Ryan.

Jim wants a Jeep.

No. We have three trucks that are over 20 years old. We got a 2005 Chevy dump truck. We got a 2004 service truck. And the truck I'd like to replace this year is the 2004 Chevy. It has 95,000 miles on it. Right now, Blue Book says that truck's probably worked between 8 and 12. So if we sold it outright, the truck I was looking at was actually less than Steve's and had the same setup. Thanks, Bob. It was around 53 or 54. And then we get a five-year depreciation. You get a warranty with it. So I don't mind if we keep the truck until it's worth zero. Or if something happens to it this winter while we're pushing snow, what kind of puts us in a predicament? But if we have that process of, well, we don't want to keep them, I'd say that 20 years is probably a good runoff to look at. There's a little value in that truck, and now's the time to do it. And that's definitely not to get a truck, just to get a truck. I think we've got three older trucks, and if the cent bill, if it gets worse in 28, where are we going to be to fund if we have three of them that are 25, 26 years old?

I like the idea, and I know you can get some value out of those, why they're running and why they're whole, putting them on gov bids or selling them outright. But I like the idea of keeping those trucks as plow trucks. Because, as you know, plowing on, it's just hard on vehicles.

You're right. I mean, it's a great plow truck until it's dead. Do you want to put a blade on a brand-new truck? It's a cringing thing to do, but we've done it before.

Well, I mean, that's what you're buying for to work, and I understand that.

Actually, that saves us probably another $8,000 because a new blade set up on a new truck is probably about $8,000, $9,000, and that truck's already got the blade and set up for it.

Right, but just keep it in the back of your mind. I like the idea of having those older trucks to utilize, even when one goes in for service or if something happens to them, we have that backup.

You mean keep it in the older truck? Open truck as well and not trading it?

Right. I mean, it's something to think about if you guys think it's a good idea. But if there's really nothing wrong with it, other than it's rusty and it's ugly and there's not a lot of maintenance cost going into it, there's got to be a maintenance cost before you throw that truck away or sell it. If there's not a lot of maintenance cost, it's just old. Keep the truck as a plow truck.

I had a conversation with the wastewater guys about that very truck, about the maintenance currently, because they did a comprehensive look at it, and the things that were wrong with it weren't real major, according to Tom and Kyle.

And they're not. We put an air conditioner in it last year. What was that? 300, 400?

Yeah, so you keep it as a backup. You still...

cycle in a new one but don't necessarily get rid of the old one but then we're kind of running into a place now where if you go and look at both of our farms the north and the south well right now we're running that we have no room to park another vehicle in and we got another truck we got more trucks and bus to put in seats for plowing i mean it's great if you know a newer truck goes down that you can you know go have a

We could park it at the north plant just outside, just like it sits outside here. But that's it. Like I said, we've got three trucks in that over 20. Whatever you guys decide to do, so be it. But I thought if there's value in that truck, I understand what Ryan's saying, keeping it. Kind of makes sense because you don't have to kind of tear up the new one right off the bat and put a blade on it and start pushing snow. You're going to do it at some point. Yeah, you will. Or don't buy it.

It's a work truck. It's made to be driven and used. I'm not saying don't use it.

If you're going to get a car, get a car.

I mean, you're just swapping out that truck for a blade for the new one, basically. You're probably better off keeping it for the snow. Yeah, I don't know where I'd eat it yet.

I see the value in what you're saying. Just something to consider.

Like I said, it's the maintenance cost for me that pushes it over the edge of

we had, do we need another one? Do we wait? Do we push it off another year? What we talked about is what we don't want to run into is when we got to basically get a whole new fleet in the same year. Two years ago, I think it was, we had to replace like three police vehicles because they were just into life, right? So we kind of want to spread those out so they don't happen. We don't want bison to not need it, but creating a threshold of, hey, at this time it triggered this. That makes sense to me, right? It triggers the decision, and then we make the decision, hey, at 20 years, are we at the point where we need to replace this one? And then what's our cycle look like, right? Because if we got three that are 20 years old, if all three of them go out next year, we're in shit smoke, right?

Well, that's exactly what I don't want to see. Yeah. Especially pushing stuff, say, if the transmission does go out, we're looking at 2,000, 2,500, Yeah, so it's, you know.

Yeah, so I think it would be a good idea to get a new truck as a cycle there.

Which one does that replace? 2004. That one? The one that sits out there.

Yeah, right.

Are we going to get a Ford? Lowest bid. Yeah, we'll get the lowest bid, yeah. That's a pretty good bid from Dell on the 53.

Just out of curiosity, is it in our budget for this year? Because you're talking about a truck pushing snow and stuff.

It's in there.

It's in there this year. Yeah, we had 200,000. So on page three of this, if you go down to the link, actually, we had 200,000 vehicles in 26 as of June. I don't know how many updates since June. We had spent 114,000. So that includes the crane truck?

Yeah.

And the repairs to the street sweeper? That's in there.

That's in there.

The crane truck. The crane truck.

That was on the crane truck. Okay, I thought that was pay down the sewer.

Now, this year we bought the police vehicles and one new truck, and we did it all early in the month. Because they all kind of came in at the same time, and they did license plates at the same time.

Yeah, police vehicles purchased out of public safety land. The one, the big truck, was that $114,000? I don't want that. So we're going to have to sell it.

I THINK WE DID SPLIT IT.

YOU STILL HAVE THE BUDGET THIS YEAR. AND ALL THESE NUMBERS ASSUMING YOU'RE GOING TO SPIT IN THE BUDGET. AND WE ALSO DID PUT $100,000 IN FOR 27. SO IF YOU LOOK AT THE ECONOMIC BUDGET, YOU HAVE THE 26 BUDGET YEAR TO DATE, 26. We lowered the 200 down to 100. We had talked about the truck. We just kind of left it. Sometimes it's not always a year mark for anything specific, but the last couple of years we've been using it to... We got the 25 or the 26?

I think we got the 25, didn't we? Either way, it was 180, 175, 185. Yeah. So it's a zero truck. Yeah.

Not $500,000 of it. Now you're being cheap, man.

We don't have that much money. It's a bit of kids. Okay, so really, we can discuss that at our next council meeting. That's not really doing this, but it sounds like we can knock that out. Yeah.

No, no.

Nope, that was just saying if we had happened to.

No decision, just direction.

All right. Back to page three, local road street. NPO and street maintenance. That's self-explanatory. I don't remember talking about it. CCMG. Do you have a number?

Are you doing it for next year? Oh, yeah. No, because since things have changed, now the call starts well next week, September 1st, and I haven't even finished this year's project yet. So, I was... and our roads are in really good shape. So I was just going around and doing crack sealing, planning on doing crack sealing for several subdivisions next year and crack sealing is like 75 cents to a dollar a square yard and I've got 34 different I love crack ceiling, by the way. Yeah, but that's $11,000. I need to really start looking at some roads that are rated maybe six and sevens and start thinking about doing some double microsurface in there on some roads, too. Love double microsurface. Yeah, it's a good application.

That's what I was going to do, too. I was thinking.

It is good.

It tripled a little much.

I'm going to stay up. It's a fantastic product.

So that's a little more money. That's like $650. It's a great fix. What's that? At least from the Bittner to the Alley. The town's match, I mean, and that's a bid you can come in at that. Chances are they'll be coming lower.

So what I have now, I'll be

I'll be sending in two separate applications. I have 34 different road segments, and there's a crack seal. I have a total of $56,818, and it covers $45,000 down for $11,363.72. So, that's really, I'd like to get that number up. Can I find the road?

That's assuming we win the grant as well. That's assuming we win the grant as well.

We have $100,000. Yeah. We have $100,000. Which one's that? So MBH, Motor Vehicle Highway Restricted Farm. Yeah, so we're good. There's like three different ones.

There's $100,000. You need more than that $100,000?

No.

Okay, cool. We're good.

Good? Yeah. Need a truck.

Can I buy a truck with this?

No. That's the problem. You can't do anything but like triple seal or whatever. Can I lower the amount I'm putting in there? Yeah, we already did that. It used to be 50-50, but I think once you get a certain condition, is that what I understand? What's that?

Yeah, we went to 40-60.

But really, I mean, that's all that money can be used for, so... And you can use it for more. It doesn't have to be just for grants.

No, I throw in like 100% local money at it. And you can apply for a grant that's paying for 80%. So I'm really looking at roads and saying, eh.

Can you use sidewalks with that on it?

Bikeways. Because there's some sidewalks. Sidewalks.

that's right off of the street.

It's where you would put a sidewalk, but it's really a bike lane. It's a bike lane.

It's kind of like a sidewalk, but a little different. What's that? Chevron? Bike lanes, yeah.

Those are, I don't like them.

There's a gray area, you know.

Well, we have them all along Main Street right now.

Bike lanes?

Yeah.

Some people call them sidewalks, Bill, and I call them bike lanes.

Because they qualify for this. You can do sidewalk work and end up with little N88 curb ramp updates, but you have to be doing an inch and a half bill on rebate to be able to do sidewalk and N88 curb ramp work. If you're doing track seal, then give me any funding for that.

Well, I'm saying where they aren't, we'd be doing more than an inch and a half. So there you go.

All right, Bill.

So we're good on 100,000?

We're good. Yeah. Economic development. We just touched on that. We actually increased economic development services. Is that on the way?

I mean, that's all the stuff.

Yeah, on the way. And then the truck, possibly trucks, whatever, vehicle line. We actually reduced that. Then you have improvements. There's improvements on the building, so they need to make some capital out of it. Law enforcement, containing education fund. Bob's big, big money. All those tickets, SEPO things. Getting rid of shopping. We budget all the resources. So you get $13,730. Not a lot of changes here. Like we updated, heard Bob, we updated our county CAD contribution. It's got an allowance in there for police vehicle. This is something we want to keep an eye on.

I'm a bit concerned with that not, whether that's enough. Because the simple oil change anymore is a tremendous And the number of vehicles that we have that need digital oil changes has gone up, so cost for maintenance.

That sounds like a conversation with Jiffy Lube.

We need a bulk discount. We're trending to 48. We need a better discount. We need to increase it to 45.

Well, why don't you go and talk to them?

All right. I know somebody there.

Which one?

Yeah, I mean, it's going away. So you guys have got all your must meetings. Public safety is going away. Edit is going away. It's all going to one income tax. Nobody knows what it's going to be. I can tell you all kinds of stuff. We do know there will be some income tax and all that money will go to the general fund. So effectively what we're going to have to do is reallocate and move these expenses up to the general fund. Hopefully you get at least the same amount as we are now. So it's just a different way of paying for it to be continued. I mean, that's truly what's going on out there. You have all the leaders of all of people that do what we do, the leaders of the county, the attorneys in these meetings, and they're like, okay, we're going to get together and we're chatting about this, and yeah, we all want to get what we're getting at least. I think some of the numbers, I can't remember you guys' numbers, but they have been projected.

And all the numbers are just like, I mean, nobody knows.

You guys are all kind of allergic. Basically down at the state house they said we don't know what to do so Peach County come do this really expensive poll or survey and give us your feedback. And maybe with that information we'll be able to make some decisions. If I've been to, we've been to at least half a dozen of them and they're all different.

Those comics don't go on.

works.

At least that way they stop to it and say this is what we're doing.

So all that to say, we've got a healthy budget in there. I don't know that there's a lot of money to be or use all of it. Obviously things come up. I don't think I know how to please people this year. But we keep it in there.

You've said that before.

Not this year. Bob is the only one that can spend that money. So

Needs a police golf cart.

We're not doing a golf cart.

We're doing a side by side. Okay, it's gotta be more useful. Yeah, we just passed an ordinance.

Yeah, I get a permit. Got to get a permit.

You're exempt from getting a permit?

Is that why you did that?

I didn't know if we were done with salaries or... I am done. The floor is open.

The floor is open to talk about whatever you want.

Okay. I know I brought this up last year and I'll bring it up again this year and probably the year after that. The road builder certificate me like nine years to give. It really enables me to do my job. Other people in town are, you know, paid as soon as they get their certificates. I felt last year this was a certificate that was worth $5,000. I felt the same way this year. So that is probably a downside. seems right.

In the salary ordinance, you currently have payment for certifications for wastewater and certifications for your treasurer office. But you currently do not have a certificate line specific to the street department.

Where'd you come up with the $5,000 figure?

It's comparable with as soon as they get the wastewater, as soon as they pass the test, they're getting $5,000 as they're paid.

So I just thought it was comparable to that.

And that's not, I mean, that's just the one that took me the most school at Purdue to give. It's one of eight, seven or eight certificates that I have.

steve tell me how that road builder certificate how does that benefit the town because you have it it benefits town because it's it's given me a lot of engineering knowledge like like when you apply for a grant you list that is it looked at differently because if they get 50 applications yours is

that because otherwise you'd have to pay a consultant to do that

Certificate saves the town because you're not paying someone else.

I will say this. I am going through my training.

When you get that with the county, will you be compensated?

I've never had a conversation. I've been doing the training all on my own. I typically do a lot of that in the wintertime when it's slower, when I have the opportunity to do that, because in the summertime, I'm halfway through my road builder certifications and under each course there's like multiple videos and tests you have to take and how to go through that opportunity, what's eligible, what's not, rating roads, you know, it literally covers everything. There's lots of education that you have to go through.

That's a significant.

It's a significant.

Did you, is there a cost to that process?

The courses, I think, well, when I went up to Purdue Road School, I think the road school was, free, I think, down there, pay for rooms.

Say that again? Rooms. What it cost you to get there.

It was like a three-day, three or four-day course.

And we paid for that for your continuing education?

I'm not. I'm not. I get paid, you know, hourly salary and to take those courses. I would say at the end of it, if I get my master road building certification, I would definitely say that would make me a more valuable employee. That being said, we did not give you a raise unanimously last year, but it compensates $5,000 but I would say that I think it would be justified to compensate and something for reaching that because it is a hell of a lot of work to get that certification so because you have to start somewhere you have to get a motion in a second and a discussion and all that kind of stuff not that we can do that today we can't okay

Well, in my opinion, because of that certification and in and of itself, it avoiding going out and hiring consultants that would be a lot more expensive. And so again, just for discussion, I'm perfectly fine with the 5,000 because it saves us more than that.

I had a discussion with your father last night. town manager and he does their community crossing grants to land he's not credited to you know pace the roads or anything like that they hire that out with engineering firms and they pay they pick through the nose yeah okay so for a discussion they don't have street superintendent and i know we don't make a motion we don't take a vote it's direction not decision me personally i'm okay

Yeah, most of the certification incentive fees we have are $1,000. I think there's two in here that are $2,500 and one that's $5,000. I don't think we've got anybody at the wastewater. Kyle's probably the only one that's level two, right?

That would take only nine years to get.

Kyle and Jim.

Yeah. And right now we're on the race to get our level three license, which it's not even going to pay, but somebody has to hold the license to operate the plant.

But would that take nine years to get?

I hope not.

I hope not, too, because they've studied hard.

They can't be available for all of them.

And I will speak to that. That Master Road Builder course, just completing the courses is a feat upon itself because there's so many courses you have to take and pass these tests and stuff like that. The videos are mind-numbing sometimes. But not only that, we have to, I think it's approved like 350 hours of continued education. That's going to those credits might be like, oh, you get four credits for going here. So if you can imagine how many classes you have to go to earning four credits at a time, some of them are worth two. Imagine how many courses you have to go to to get like 350 credits. It's a lot of work. So it takes years.

Well, any other thoughts? For the purpose of the a decision on that.

It sounds like we need to add it to the salary ordinance as one of our... We would have to.

As a certification. For this meeting, we could put it on there to earmark it. That's right.

It doesn't obligate you to just say earmark it and have that discussion with the leader.

Well, and I do like the idea of putting it with the certification because that doesn't mean that you would give that money to somebody else who didn't have the certification. So it's not just in the as a salary, it's the incentive to get that, and you have it.

I'm okay with that. That would speak volumes moving forward, that if and when we ever do hire a new person in the future, if they don't have that...

It's an incentive for them to get it.

Yeah. In the future, somebody will have... I send Jake to every school. I don't know where Jake's going to end up, how long I'm going to be chances are you're not going to get an engineer in here, just like out of college or whatever, just for the reason that we don't have an engineer, and the engineer has to work under another engineer for five years to get the stamp. So it's really

It's an annual payment for the certification. Which is exactly what we do with others. And again, you're not adding to the salary, but you are incentivizing the certification so that in the future it incentivizes.

So if we add that to the budget, the room's would be what it is. Correct.

It's a consideration. Yes.

So maybe in the next council meeting we can put that on the agenda to just kind of have that discussion.

Or just do it with the salary ordinance and you don't have to do it separately.

We can do that, but wouldn't it make sense to have a quick conversation before I make that salary ordinance?

If you would feel better about us having a conversation, we can have a conversation. Just a suggestion. It doesn't matter.

I can find it on there. I did not. We're fine.

In that case, you know, my question would also be wastewater operator three might need to be on here somewhere.

Well, I think we just changed it from two to three because we're required three. Okay.

Is there still a two?

It's two right now, yeah. Will there still be a two after a three? Plenty of twos going through there. Senior services.

We make donations to

worthwhile causes.

Speaking of which, how did Cambridge City go? Yeah. It was good.

I think we uplifted some spirits by giving them the support.

Did you buy them lunch?

We did not buy them lunch because the council member came running in with three chicken sandwiches for us.

The church, the local church was distributing food.

Churches are the worst. Church food. Of course the church is going to give you Chick-fil-A.

The Lord's chicken. Not on Sunday.

It was a good day. Good. Good.

We have to call the police department. They do not have a lot either. And boy, they have a smell of space.

It's awful. But it's a place to be.

So hopefully they can mitigate that. I did the best I could to put some odor reducers in. But they were thankful, and we're still supporting them from here by contacting the state board and the IRR, which is the records archived people from the state, and helping them battle some of their little facts. So we'll continue to support our board .

SPEAKER 1

In the landscaping, yes.

Which they look so nice.

They really do. Yeah, they do.

They do.

Heat and everything.

Put them on my front porch and they die. It's a lie. The stuff on my porch is dead.

And then community events and what is that?

I guess what I'm looking for are . I mean, we probably ought to give it a space in there because it was very expensive altogether, I think.

It ended up being between $500 and $600 per dumpster. We took in no money this year. We got that $200. The $200 from Jason.

Just saying. $5,000.

5,000.

5,000 more?

5,000 more? For the dumpster day?

It was $4,200. If it was $600 dumpster for seven dumpsters, that's $4,200. We could increase it to $5,000.

Right, from $4,200 to $5,000.

Yeah. What is it right now? Well, it depends on... How much?

It doesn't have its own...

I don't know.

Do we have it... We didn't contemplate it.

No, I think it could simply go under community events and outreach, and we can increase that amount to accommodate.

We did seven dumpsters?

Yeah. That's a lot.

There's 7,500 in there budgeted now. There's 7,500 budgeted in community events and outreach at the moment.

I guess what I'm saying is if we increase that to 10,000, Do we spend the community outreach bill, I guess is what I'm asking?

We spent $3,024.25.

I mean, we only spent $3,000, so that's what I mean if we increased it from $7,500.

In here, I paid for these numbers after these numbers came out. So there's more spent out of that. So I would say increasing it to $12,500 isn't going to hurt anything. That way you can do your dumpster next year and still support Summerfest and still have some money to support something else that happens to come up that you haven't really thought about or don't know about yet.

Don't pay for the police department?

On what?

Don't pay?

Don't pay.

I definitely like spending the money for the dumpsters because It's well received. It's very well received. It's a great community outreach thing that Terry's come up with. I can't imagine not offering that. Even if we get a zero return, I think it's If we can get the volunteers in, then we can do that.

Let's make sure that we start earlier trying to find the volunteers.

I forget where we were. We were somewhere. We'll be there next time, hopefully.

Just have license plate scanners as they bring them. Walk cameras. Walk cameras.

Do we install a walk camera over there?

People did that last year. A lot of people showed their ID.

How much money did we bring in last year? $80?

I think it was more than that. It takes a lot of time and energy to do that, but you don't want people I was on Sweet Creek Drive the other day putting up a traffic study and there was a lady there and her kids went to

I think they were in choir, and they were doing some tree trimming and stuff like that. And she actually mentioned to me that the choir department would love to do some community stuff like that. I know the school's probably got some kids that need community hours and want to volunteer like that. If we can put that information out to the schools and see if anybody wants to volunteer for that event during some community hours and stuff like that, I think it would probably be well received. And it wouldn't just be a handful of us council people trying to unload couches and stuff.

I've got some Cypher Creek lampposts that I can put in the dumpster next year. I've got two in my house.

Well, we need two on Main Street.

These are a little broken.

So are the ones on Main Street.

Jared, how's it? I have a review of this. We're in good shape. Pretty good. You've done a lot lately.

You've got resources. Exciting for things.

So as Senate Bill 1 takes effect and we're working through that, projected revenues coming in the next year or two, are we going to spend that to start doing stuff? You guys are in these numbers all the time.

I mean, I don't expect a huge... At least for another few years.

At least for another few years, yeah.

Okay. We'll get some data sent out.

So the next meeting, she has the public hearing. It's supposed to be in October.

We'll put everything in here. I'll send stuff to Yvonne. She can do it. It doesn't work too well, but it shouldn't change anything. It's 16th, right?

16th. We've been together enough, I think.

Hold on. Essentially, we've worked through it. We're all on the same page at the moment. If there's a minor tweak, there's a minor tweak.

Are we going to have copies of this or make it available online for public hearing?

Sure.

What would you like? It'll be in the paper. No, no, I mean. It will not be in the paper. Do you know, like, so this might be something for your coffee or whatever, the thing.

There's a website, the ifi.gateway.gateway.

that the public can sign up for. And they can receive notifications any time New Palestine does an additional appropriation, publishes the notice the public can for the budget. Because that's not done through the newspaper anymore. It's just done online. And they can say, hey, send me an email any time New Palestine publishes something.

And it'll push it to them, right?

And so for those people that are interested in my question though is will we have copies of these for the public hearing right the updated version we would want copies that we can have and maybe even

Just like we hand out the agendas. We always do.

Yeah. Yeah. As long as we have it for people. Yeah.

Terry will send it to me, and we'll make copies, and we'll have it available like we always have.

Yep.

And it will be in my agenda.

It will all be everywhere.

It will be in my agenda. I'll go with that document. Or upload it. Yep.

Yeah, we'll probably have something next week in my agenda.