Council - public_hearing

Budget hearing for the city of Homewood, September 17th, 2026. Councilor Simmons. Here. Councilor Sims. Out. Councilor Lange. Here. Councilor Armstead. I'm here. Mayor Andrews.

Here. All right. Okie dokie. Thanks for everybody for joining us again today. And we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order and hand this over to our city manager, Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight, we're going to be talking about courts funds, narcotics funds, and other funds. We're going to let Lieutenant Hampton go first. I'll introduce him in a second. And then we're going to let Laura Roberts go for court. And then I'm going to talk through the other funds. These are other funds. Court funds and narcotics funds is how it is detailed in your budget book. And they're tabbed this way. And then the funds that are included in other funds are grants, sport of education, opioid debt services, environmental, emergency communications district, and inspection technology. And then courts, we'll talk about those in a second. And narcotics, is narcotics seized and operating We don't have any revisions proposed for tonight. I haven't heard anything since. We haven't made any real revisions since Tuesday night when I presented a couple that night. And then just to kind of close the circle on what comes next, September 21 is Monday. We're going to have a budget hearing that night at 4 o'clock. And then we have the 24th calendar if we need to have another one of these.

so kale to your point i think we've right you know we've uh had some things we flagged and and we're waiting for council sims to get back to kind of catch him up so i think you know we'll wait until next week to make changes and discussions and things like that if that's okay with you so we'll so

four o'clock on the 21st is that right yeah and on the 21st we're going to talk about capital projects the capital projects funds gas tax funds and park funds okay and then whatever else you guys want to want to talk about and then if we need to meet again on the 24th we certainly can 24th is also would be four o'clock yeah counselor armstead we left here this is what we went over to tonight so that includes revisions and general fund expenditures i've said this before i'll say it again the encode spreadsheets are what you're actually approving when we get to the when we get to the very end after the 24th and we have um We're probably after the 28th. We'll go back through all of this and build your book, put it back together based on information that we've heard and what you've decided. All right. So with that, I'm going to, Lieutenant Hampton, Eric Hampton's been with us for a long time from the police department. He's going to talk to us about the narcotics funds. We have two funds set up, narcotics seized, narcotics operating. and like we just talked about there is actually zero dollars budgeted in revenues or expense from these what happens and he'll explain how this happens but when they have seizures we'll then adjust the budget and hello everybody uh eric hampton my name is uh

What I want you to understand is that there's two accounts that I'm pretty much over, and that's going to be the seized and operational fund account from the narcotics. What happened with the seized funds is that when our narcotics unit goes out, undercover operations. They seize money, they seize contraband, they seize vehicles, property, and things of that nature. We get an order once it's adjudicated to court from the court, from the judge. Those orders are coming in from the court and they specify as the final order basically to say exactly how much the money, how much money or the profits that goes to the agency. With that agency money from the final order, that money is distributed, which means that the DA's office get a portion of that fund. The clerk's office get a portion of the fund, and then the remaining balance is remitted to us in that court order. That money is then turned over to us, placed in property and evidence, and then with that order, it goes into the SEAS account. The other account is operational. And it's pretty much the same way as far as how we get it. And once that operational fund comes to us, then we can utilize that fund for things such as by employees with the police department in narcotics or narcotics operation for operating expenses such as equipment. and things of that nature, training, and any equipment basically that we would need for the narcotics unit. What I do then is with a check, those accounts i write out a check the seize fund the balance stays the same it's been the same since 2018 since i came over we hadn't touched that money but the operating fund money we can utilize for expenses and equipment and things of that nature such as vehicles canine expenses anything that's associated with narcotics operation those checks are written out by me to by authorization of the chief, obviously, for if it's going to be a vehicle, we're right to check out for a vehicle. If it's going to be equipment, we're right to check out and submit that. That's the only monies that we're actually utilizing, and that's the operational fund, the SEAS fund. We don't touch, haven't touched, and it doesn't work. Another thing that we actually do is we let the detectives utilize expenses up to $500 for by money and that is for undercover operations to get more of the cases that pretty much get some of these property contraband from the balances stays pretty much accurate and the same i do nothing else with that account i used at one point to get the balance statements mailed to me this was years ago since the new transformation and transfer that doesn't come to me we have someone in finance to take care of that i can only then ask for from our administrative assistant can they call over to city hall and get the balance for the budgets that way i know exactly not to write a check that we don't have the balance to cover outside of that i have no real dealings with that account or any other movement of money without the optimization of the chief the the seizure money that comes in is it based on seizures that happen inside of this jurisdiction It has to have a nexus to Homewood. Most times, how that works with the narcotics and undercover is that if you have an arrest, for example, and the individual that's arrested, they want to plead or deal with the sentencing that they're originally charged with, they give information. With that information, it normally leaves outside of, uh, outside of Homewood into Birmingham or Jackson County. And that's where the actual arrest, uh, or the large arrest take place with the seizure and the larger, bigger fish, if you will. So that's the connection. It's just gotta have a nexus originating from home. Do you have a time?

How long do you hold the funds? I would assume due to appeals and things like that, you may not be able to divide it up between the DA and all that. How does that work? Just curious.

Well, until we get a final order from the court, yes, it could take time. It could take months. It could take years. We're due money from the feds on a case that had taken place some time ago now that's in its final stages of adjudication. So the time limit is not a definite. It could be three months. It could be a year. It could be more. And that money stays in property and evidence until such time that we get the order from the court.

So we have a separate account that's a running account. Is that what I'm understanding? Or it gets moved after a certain period? of the funds that when you you have that are divided up and it comes into how do i find it one that goes da but i'm talking about for the police department itself yes those funds accumulate yes okay and then is it in just a certain account there's a separate fund and a separate checking account and those are restricted and that's why we don't have a budget for them because they can only be used for certain items okay so we don't so that's what i'm getting at okay perfect it doesn't go into one of our general yeah yeah that's that's what i'm saying yeah something separate for them that's right

All right.

I said this, um, about two months into this, into this job, I didn't understand anything that was happening in it or in court because this is courts. system can be really complicated and confusing. Laura's done a great job explaining it to me, so I've asked her to try to explain it to you. She has four funds. Municipal court fund is not a real fund anymore. That's right, right? We removed 27. So don't worry about 27. It's not found in your packets. So Laura's going to walk you through each of these, starting with the correction fund dash jail. Okay.

So Laura Roberts, I'm the court administrator here. So the correction fund slash jail, um, that fund is strictly used for, uh, the things we need inside the jail, like supplies, food for inmates, uh, inmates, medical costs, ambulance rides, things like that. Those are earmarked funds. And how we get that money is by forfeitures, court fines and fees and things like that. It goes into a big pot and at the end of the month it's divided out and gets separated to each of the accounts. So as we take in money, the revenue part, it gets dumped into the jail account and it sits there and then we just use it to pay for what we need. So it's pretty self-explanatory as far as what it's for. It's just for the jail. It does not and cannot pay for salaries because salaries is part of the police department and we are two separate entities so we can't pay for salaries out of that but we do pay for all the inmate food and any medical expenses that come up and things like that.

And so this year we have budgeted $95,000 for jail calls, jail food calls, feeding the inmates, and then inmate medical supplies is at $45,000.

So when I first came aboard, the expenses, the jail expenses were ginormous when it came to food and expenses, medical and things like that. And that was one of the things I was tasked to do was to get those costs down. And they've came down significantly. However, the more inmates we get, the price of the inflation goes up. Of course, the food costs may go up. But right now, we're doing pretty good on making sure we keep those costs down.

How'd you do it?

change vendors and stop ordering stuff that we didn't need. So they still eat? Oh yeah. We still feed them. We still bring them today. They even get snacks. They get peanut butter crackers for snacks if they need it. But yeah, contrary to any rumors floating around, we still feed our inmates. We just changed vendors to something that was more economically feasible. And just that's how we were able to get it down. all right so the next court fund is correction fund dash court so this is um again funds that we take in uh from forfeitures fees fines and things like that these are earmarked funds we use this fund to pay for supplies for the court the operation of the court we will use this moving in this upcoming budget we'll be using some of these funds to help pay our salaries to offset the general fund and i don't know if that was that's in 28 28 oh i take that back yeah i was expecting it to come start coming out here great um so in the future this one will be helped pay salaries and things like that um but right now this pays for anything that we need for the court like last year you guys approved for the court to have an updated car we use this fund to pay for that car so anything that is not that's not necessary to come from general fund we usually pull from this so we don't have to take it from general fund again these are earmarked funds we pay for any special books and training that we may need that cannot come out of the training education fund we're actually going to use this fund to buy a new fingerprint machine that is desperately needed so that's part of what i've requested this coming year and so that's really what we use that fund for

Go back to the transfer fund that you said when we when we say transfer, I'm talking about transferring inmates. I mean, is that a cost or no? I mean, you were talking about on the previous jail.

So transporting transport we do. So if we have an inmate in jail that needs to go to the hospital, or needs to go to a doctor's appointment or something like that, we have to pay for their ambulance rides. Yes.

Okay, and that has nothing to do with the ambulance service we already have.

They bill the jail. That's separate?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Yeah, they bill. It's RPS. They send an invoice in, and what... the administrative assistant at the police. Y'all have to forgive me. I normally do not sound like this, but I'm sick. Anyway, so Becky over at the police department will send me invoices and she'll have me look at them to make sure that they're actually municipal court inmates. And if they are, then we have to pay for their ambulance ride. If they are not, I'm not sure where that comes from because it doesn't have anything to do with me. So the only reason why I wouldn't pay for them is if they were an inmate that was picked up for a felony that gets transferred to Jefferson County. But all municipal court inmates that are being housed or picked up, if there's any medical costs or ambulance rides, we pay for it out of that fund.

Yes, sir. Question about the ambulance ride. Do you have a negotiated fee with RPS?

This was done prior to me arriving. I would like to visit that, though.

Yes, for.

Yeah, for the jail specifically. Now it is about to come up with our others, but they give us preferred rates just like they do the insurance company because we have that contract in place. That's what I was going with that.

I was curious to go see that.

yeah they don't they don't they don't give the insurance companies preferred anything they're considered out of network so they they don't they they try to build we pay what blue cross would allow instead of what the bill is we don't do balanced billing units regarding those things

is that we do have sometimes inmates come in that are diagnosed with something that's called gelitis, where they don't want to be in jail. And when that's determined, and they are not indigent defendants, I'm going to start having restitution attached to their case to reimburse the city for that. Police officer, anybody transferring with them to the... A police officer does go, yes. In custody, a police officer is supposed to be going with them.

We don't pay for any treatment if we don't transport because our guys take care of that. So if RPS shows up with us and they don't transport, we don't pay. If a police officer takes them, we don't pay. The problem comes in the liability is how sick they are or if we can rule out that they are okay to put in the back of a police car and take them. That's always our first preference. It's the cheapest option. It's the best option for everybody. But sometimes chest pains, higher calls like that, you've got to keep them on the monitors and all this stuff the whole way.

And it runs about $700 to $800 to take somebody, just drop them off at Brooklyn. So we do always try to have an officer take them if we can. Yeah. So please do send me that. We'll get together on that.

We talked about the corrections on court.

fund 24 municipal court special okay so these are also earmarked funds it's the training and education fund off of every traffic citation that is paid and off of every misdemeanor that's paid per state law we get two dollars that's all we get that's all the court gets for training and education is two dollars and it amounts up sometimes that we save it and those kind of things to make sure the fund stays kind of fluffy But we get $2 per fund that is actually paid that goes into the court special fund. It can only be used for training and education of magistrates. So if I get a new person and hire them and they've got to go through magistrate training down in Montgomery, it pays for that. The annual conference, it pays for that. Any special books that we can buy and pay out of this fund, we'd rather use this fund than any of the other funds. So this is strictly for training and education of municipal court employees only.

Ready to go to the next one? Cool. All right. The last one is Fund 28, Judicial Administration.

Okay. So this is another earmarked fund that can only be used for the court. The state law says that it is to be used at discretion of the court clerk and or judge. However, I still come to you guys for permission to use these funds because I think that is the best way to be transparent okay I do not hold a checkbook everything that I need to spend out of this fund it either is already well it is already budgeted but even if it's budgeted I still send a request to finance who then looks over everything and they keep copies of everything I just think that's the best way to make sure we stay transparent with this fund Um, they get the account, they get the bank statements and things like that. If I have questions, finance department is amazing at answering those questions. And then they make sure everything lines up with all the invoices and so forth out of this fund. Um, we pay for, uh, furniture that we may need, um, any upgrades that we may need, any equipment that we may need. Also, we will, um, right now in this current budget that we're in, One of the judges is paid out of general fund and one's paid out of judicial administration fund. Moving forward, both judges are going to be paid from this fund to take that other off of the general fund.

Moving forward, October 1?

Yes. And 50% of your personnel.

Oh, so it's this fund, not the other one. Okay, so I was right. So it's just this fund. So the 50% of the salary cost for personnel is coming out of this fund, not the other one.

Because there's the reason why Laura and I decided to do that is there's a $715,000 in fund balance, and the general fund needed help this year, as we all know. So we decided to take half of her salaries out. This is not a long term solution, because eventually that fund balance will go away and those salaries will need to go back into the general fund.

But for the time being, this was the best case to move forward for this budget and, um, and whatever the court can do to alleviate out of the general fund that we need to do that. So, um, so any, anything else, um, professional services, uh, like our software, um, our NCIC that we have anything like that all gets paid from out of here as well. So we should only have 50% of salaries. for court personnel coming out of general fund, and then everything else comes out of court funds. And again, these are all earmarked funds. We can only pay for certain things out of them, but salaries is one of them.

So if you had a chance to look over the study, our numbers are way higher than a lot of the other courts they compared us to.

That's been in the last year because I hit the ground running when I got here to clean some stuff up because it was a mess. We're almost completely there. My staff has been a rock star. These other departments that I've been working with have been fantastic to get that port cleaned up. We are almost rock solid. There's just a few other things I'm cleaning up and smooth sailing after that.

what we have to do and kill you while she's here because we might not see you again for a long long time yes so always pop in and see me i will be there So, as we were discussing earlier about the tickets, the cost, the price of tickets now and parking tickets, and she indicated, because I don't know what the price of the ticket is. Anybody know what a parking ticket costs?

Do you know what a parking ticket costs? Yes, she does. $20. And she still has $20.

That's the reason I brought this up, okay?

Yeah, so it is $20. And one of the things that we will need to do is – get newer parking tickets and updated parking tickets to reflect the new fine schedule or reflect a new fine schedule. you can charge higher because the the ordinance allows for it and like i had told councilor lane we did but then nothing but nothing happened we discussed it and then move forward with it that was it no it was it was the previous council because that's when that's when they were talking about five hundred dollar fine i mean crazy stuff remember well we don't want that yeah no suggestions and numbers and they were quite hot so what would be the suggestion I would say 25 to 30 I mean I know it's not a whole lot but you don't want to find people $50 for stay in five minutes over the three hour parking.

What is like what is the other municipalities there between 25 and 30? Okay, yeah. So we should be at least 25. Right?

Yeah, I mean, charges more than that.

I was in graduate because I got the tickets. Yeah, some places do charge a lot higher.

And the handicap, it's only 100.

Right. Two of the parking violations that do, I think, need to be more punitive because it is a huge safety issue and it's just a general human being issue. One is parking in the fire lane and the other one is the handicap. Those two need to be capped at the 500 or at least up to 500. I'm not saying your first offense has to be that, but if you get multiple, they need to keep going up higher. But that's just something y'all can discuss.

So what do we do? What do we have to do to do this?

Tell the Seegers to put that on the agenda, on the pre-council agenda first. Done. Done. Okay.

And we wait until October the 12th.

No problem. Just don't let us forget about it. Parking tickets, they're only $20.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Because somebody will be like, it's worth it. $20 a parking ticket.

Let me tell you, it has to buy a lot of time. They battle hard for that.

They come in and say, you did it. That's right. So we need to do $30. I'll do it. Yeah, let's do it.

October 12th.

Do I need to email you that? You got it right here. Awesome. Awesome. Yay. Well, that was very, I'm really glad you came out.

It's okay. I would like to skip out.

Yes, yes, go. Take a lawsuit.

I gave you a little more revenue this year.

Sweet. We're trying.

Thanks, Laura.

Thanks, Laura. I've been dying to find out because I never knew what part.

I thought we.

year well i thought when we did last year not we is and y'all were doing it it was well with the top though i mean it was like they're busting yet matter of fact you don't even want to come to home with it that's the case i kind of vaguely remember that but i did not realize we brought it that's why i asked for an early writing because i like it i mean we ought to have something on the sign when we do yeah i mean maybe not i don't know some people do some people don't but it'd be interesting

All right. So the next group of funds are what I call other funds. That's just a word that I made up that includes funds that don't really fit nicely into another category. So grants. I'll start with grants. Grants has just some interest income and revenues. And then we don't have anything projected in expenditures. But what will happen is we'll get a grant from Jefferson County for sidewalks like we did last month. And then I think Aspen and I still need to talk about this and figure out how the process works, but that money should come through the grants fund and then be transferred out into a capital or the general fund or wherever it needs to go.

When you do like say the Lakeshore and that there's any of that called grant is that any of that grant or no okay so in that case if we don't spend it this year does that get moved over to the next year going back to the things you know where we always stay in one year so do we have to that whatever is happening on I-65 and Lakeshore Obviously, it's going through two years' worth or whatever. How did we handle that grant?

So 65 and Lakeshore is not a grant. That was not a grant. Right. That was not a grant. I thought you were talking about the green. He's talking about the diamond.

Yeah. Okay. There's something. The creek was.

Yeah. So the creek project was a grant.

Okay. Right. And we spent that already or no?

So that is, the way that works, that was a TAP grant. And what we do is we pay a hundred dollars to the contractor and then we tell Al about to give us back $80. Okay.

I'm just curious, like, how does that go on the, on the books?

So right now that goes through the, through the capital projects fund. So we had a capital project set up for that. We, what we did is we showed, do we show that as a grant part of it, those grant those that, I mean, that's what it comes in is right. We showed in revenues and the capital funds.

Okay.

And I think probably what it should look like is it comes into the actual grants fund and then gets transferred out. That's what I was wondering. That is a reimbursement. TAP grants are reimbursement.

So, like, for next year, we don't have any of that? Or we do have it, but we've already moved it over. We don't have any of that next year.

A-TRIP is?

A-TRIP is not a grant.

Okay.

Well, it wasn't right. They said we will award the project for $2 million. We'll pay up to $2 million, and then the city will pay everything else. And so we just wrote a check for everything else.

We are calling it 31, I'm assuming.

That's right.

Going back to the 31, I know this is not part, but we do this so we can get something else done, the extra money, the repaving, which was a cost of how much? $400,000? I mean, so we're getting a lot more. What I'm getting at on that is if that wasn't done, who repaves that anyway? I see 31 gets repaved all the way from Hoover all the way up. You know what I'm saying? But I'm very seldom do I see it here in Homewood. And is that the?

Has authority over US 31. OK.

So we don't have to pay any of that.

We don't pay any resurfacing.

OK. OK.

just got to get it done more often by them by begging i guess by begging okay all right the board of education fund so this is all of the ad valorem tax that comes to us so we collect the ad valorem tax that automatically goes to the schools uh this year we estimate that property tax to be around 12.3 million so these are the um This is the 4.2 mills that are required to go to the Board of Education. This is six? Yeah, this is six. Sorry. Huh? Oh, so you need to keep looking. What page does it start on? About 10 pages.

Yeah. I see property tax. Let me make sure of this one. We're starting here, are we not?

So where I'm looking when I say fund six. So, yep, you're right. Yeah, OK, that's what I'm saying. OK, 16.

Yeah, my sister. Got it.

Got it.

Small writing. So We estimate $12.37 million from 14.2 mils of property tax that automatically goes to the schools. We collect for the schools, and then we send it to the schools. So it's just money in and money out.

So is the interest income just for the period of time? Like I said, it's just the time stamp that's in the account.

It is. And I don't know. I'm not sure that. So we'll need to go back and look at the 25 audit, which is about to be finished. They're going to present to you guys in about 10 days. But we need to understand how that should be coded. I mean, technically, that should be the school board's interest, right? But not ours. But there are also some... Like you'll see on page two, there's some collection fees that we have to pay to get Jefferson County to put them to collect the money and send it to us. So all that's included, too.

That's a number, too.

Yeah, that's a number. It's a lot of money.

Yeah, geez. Absolutely.

All right. No good. Opioid funds. So this was a settlement that municipalities came into with.

How would you how are you? What? Yeah.

Well, oh, Something to go with the fire department or the police department to combat some of the drug use themselves. Right. It's got to be tied to opioids.

So every year, so we have a schedule that we're collecting from Big Pharma. That's it. We get checks from them. And this year, we're proposing to get 91,000.

the one with the education situation well yeah yeah yeah so you can do treatment facilities they're they're very keith is really the one that needs to be talking about this because he was the litigator there is a list from the state auditors that we have conditioned that things we can spend it on it's equipment anything we can use aids equipment treatment beds but there is an approved list of where we can spend this money and it's very narrow in our hand in our camp but we get enough narcan out of other grants right now that we're we're not doing it but cardiac monitors there's a list it is very narrow so this came from the opioid lawsuits that went on and all the manufacturers are still paying into it

like things like seizures and stuff like that? Not seizures. That's what I'm asking.

This is just from opioid manufacturers. From the manufacturers. I got you.

It's like the nicotine settlement.

It's like antitrust litigation. So we have never spent any of this money before until this year when we partnered with Safe and Healthy Homewood. I think this year we gave them $23,000 for them to run an opioid prevention program at the high school. And next year we're proposing to fund the whole year, which is $91,000. The truth is it's really hard to find ways to spend this money.

He about stood up again. I'm sure he gets confused.

I notice you're not turning around to look at him. I didn't think about that. There might be some stuff out of our general fund budget we can put in here.

He's jumping back there. You can't hide. So y'all are good on that?

Yep.

Debt service, our debt service payment is, our warrants total about 10.5 million. The total debt service fund expense is 11 million. And so the way that we fund that is we send 8.5 mils to debt service, which totals about 7.4 million. and then to make up that gap we've talked about this a bunch to make up that gap between our debt service payment and the and the ad valorem tax we move general fund money over into it when you say eight and a half turns into seven point four bills eight and a half mils military It's .75 for Homewood, and then 31.2 comes to the city.

And we are at the lid. Any questions about debt service?

of flipping sheets all right um environmental escrow jj knows all about environmental escrow and there used to be a maple cleaners on the northwest corner and so we're having to test that to make sure that the groundwater is clear so it's paved into a fund and we take

until the environment but there's just money in that there's just money hanging out in that account and we pay it every until it's and we should be finished this year matt

question we have a schedule for that yeah probably next year they'll come out they have test wells back there in the alley and they'll go in and test it and as soon as it comes back clear enough to their satisfaction all right

Chief, Emergency Communications District.

This is restricted money that we get through telephone surcharges from, well, the state 911 board collects them on our behalf and sends them to us monthly. The only thing we can use this money for is to receive and dispatch the initial dispatch of an emergency 911 call. Since we contract with Shelby County, the bulk majority of this budget goes to their contract. Other than that, you see a portion of the salary there. That's Hannah, our GIS tech. She does all of our mapping. The stuff that controls when you call 911, it knows where you are and knows where to send us. I do have two quick changes that I've already worked with Aspen on our contractual professional services. Our 911 contract has a CPI clause in it, and I learned that the CPI for that clause is 2.2, so I need it to go to $705,000. We'll make those changes soon, too. But I got good news. If you drop down to utilities, I get to reduce that $50,000 to $10,000 because I got confirmation today that AT&T has ceased all legacy charges as of September 30th. So we won't have our normal legacy selective or outer charges.

What was the first one?

The contractual or professional services? Yeah, it's $700. I need $705. Okay. It'll be 704-968. Yeah. Yes, sir.

They are still... The police also. If you dial 911, your phone is going to go...

Without going too far into this, our ESN, which is our emergency service network, that controls anybody that dials 911 within our jurisdiction. All of those calls are routed to our phone controller at the Shelby County dispatch. We have our own pod in there where it's our dispatchers that will work for us, but they're the ones that work our radios all the time. But, yes, it goes through their center and into our piece of that. So the only thing that can come into the city is the non-emergency line that we still have. Those are general questions, all that. But if you dial 911, it never touches any of our equipment here. It goes directly to the state system, directly to our dispatch center.

So the residents just dial 911?

homewood i mean as far as emergency services 991 i would strongly discourage that because when you dial 9-1 with your phone we don't just get the phone call we get your location we get the ability to ping that phone again to tell us where you are so if you dial 9-1 and then pass out or if you've been kidnapped and you dial 9-1 and hang up we contract the phone for a certain amount of time it goes dead at some point With that 911 call, carriers are required by federal law to deliver a certain amount of information to us. So what I tell all of our residents, if you think you need a police officer or a firefighter, just dial 911, and you can tell the dispatcher, hey, I don't think it's an emergency, and our protocols will determine that. Now, if you just have generalized questions, it is the 205-332-61. Yeah, the non-emergency number.

In texting, right?

You can text 911. That is up and live. I can geek out on that one stuff.

Thanks, Chief. Thanks, too. Appreciate it. And the last fund is Inspection Technologies Fund. And Wyatt's here to talk about this.

Yes, sir. Inspection technology is a fund that was created, I don't know how many years ago, but it was created by a previous building official to fund, it's to be a dedicated source for technology and equipment and upgrades to support permitting and inspections, just what our department does in general, plan review, inspections, et cetera. Over the... Let's see, the way it works, the way it's calculated is it's based off of building permits and mechanical permits, and it's charged at a rate of 50 cents for every $1,000 of valuation of the project cost. If the base permit fee happens to be based off of what we call a minimum permit, which has a $100 permit fee, then the transfer is a flat $1.50. To put that into some perspective, since we went live with our Tyler, system upstairs 16 months ago we have transferred almost 17 117 000 dollars into fund 25. we've not used anywhere near that so the money that we have put uh set aside the money that i've indicated that i'd like to have set aside to have access to this year is really for um a product called Decision Engine. It's a Tyler product. And what it does is it's sort of like an application guidance tool. So when people come up on the, pull up the civic access portal to apply for permits in Homewood, one complaint that we hear a lot is there's so many different applications and the names of the applications can be confusing and it, you know, I don't get it. It can take a little while. Well, this product would allow you to simply type in You know, hi, what are you doing? What are you looking for? And you just type in, hey, I'm trying to add a deck on my house, for example.

It's like Bugsy on our website.

It's sort of like Bugsy. And so it'll ask you some questions. Well, you know, say you're going to build an addition on your house. So it'll say, okay, you're digging a foundation. Yes. Okay. Well, then you're going to need a land disturbance permit, and you'll need a residential building permit, and it'll take you to those applications. So it's probably not quite as high-tech as Bugsy, but it's... What's its competition? Well, that's a good question because I know there's been some talk about looking at some...

I'm catching a lot of it, to be honest with you.

...different products. So I don't know... I don't know where that's going to go. So I'm not really, I don't, I don't really have a good beat on that at the moment.

I'm getting, getting to this because, and I've sent Kale calls there and Sam also like just on small, just small little things added for porch patio or something is now into the eighth week. with permits going back and forth with this group. And I think you know which project I'm talking about. That's one of them, OK? And we've got to do something better for the small these little small jobs to take this long to get a bid and they're going to come up with four or five times go back and then they're waiting to two of the departments of the engineering department has approved it then they come back i'm sorry it's changed then they have to come back i'm getting blasted i mean look and i don't have a problem with it yeah because i'll answer my phone and i'll do it but For a four-by-eight fire pit on the backyard for eight weeks and $3,000 already they've spent in surveys, and we can't get a permit? We've got a problem. I'm lost. Is that this? It's not the $3,000 permit.

It's not for that, OK? I mean, the guy had to go through it.

It's a project that's going on. It's timing. Well, the timing is to the company he's using. That's where it's going with this, because I've heard. It's not related to this, though. What kind of inspection? The questions are technology. It's not related to this part.

Just to briefly answer your question, it doesn't take eight weeks for our reviewers to review permit documents and issue comments. Oftentimes though, permit reviews can drag on into the weeks because the documents that need to be provided sometimes take a while for people to have to go back and get. Homewood has a lot of ordinances. And these ordinances are in place for a reason, but they do require some very specific documentation to be recorded. And it's our job on the fourth floor to ensure that they are properly documented, or we could find ourselves in a legally precarious position.

I'm just using that for one of the terms that's competition. I mean, competing. I've heard we potentially looked at that, and that's the only reason I'm asking that.

Yeah, there are some really good competitors to Tyler out there. You don't have Tyler in place right now.

We have Tyler in place right now.

yeah and to be clear to answer your question I think there are opportunity so one of the one hundred and ten thousand dollar software conversion for ENCODE 10 I think we said this last two nights ago we've been talking for decades about upgrading to ENCODE 10 because our software is antiquated and so whether that's ENCODE 10 or another We're going to use some of this money, potentially.

That 110 fixes the problem. I'm all in.

Well, so there are different modules. So there's like the finance and budgeting module that would happen in finance. And then there is potentially the business license and permit module that would help Bo and Wyatt both if we were to change on that.

And will that 110 just be for this year?

Will it be ongoing? Or is that a one-time deal?

So there's an implementation cost that is usually more than the software. So you pay the implementation cost the first year, and then there's an annual subscription based on the amount of the products or modules. There will be much more to come on that as we move our way through.

So it's possible, depending on how that rushes out, it's possible that the $10,000 or so that I'm talking about for this decision engine may never get spent himself yeah we'll just see how that goes um but that that that's where that ten thousand dollars comes from um so the the 32nd explanation is um this fund 25 is established by ordinance 2829 and it sets sets aside a portion of certain building permit fees to be used permitting and technology and things that we need for plan review, inspections, permit issuance, et cetera.

And so that's it. That's it. We can take questions. I can take whatever questions you have related to what we talked about tonight or what's coming up or what's happening in the past.

Yeah, what's the schedule as capitals on Monday?

Go back to the first slide. On September 21st, we'll talk about capital projects, funds, gas tax funds, and park funds. And those will be the final three.

And then Thursday as needed.

And then Thursday as needed.

That'll be just those three then?

Those three groups. Right, there are multiple funds in each. Amy will be here. A lot of department heads will be here to talk about capital, but Amy will be here to talk about projects that are being proposed. Berkeley will be here to talk about some of the gas tax funds and the park funds.

I think we'll probably need Thursday. Is that what? I think we'll probably need Thursday. And then is Nick back next week? Does anyone know? Is Nick back next week? I did email him today. I did.

Okay.

He's got a lot of catching up to do.

Okay. All right.