Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Go ahead. Like to call the April 14th public safety meeting to order. Do I have an acceptance of the agenda? So move. Second. All in favor? I. Do I have an approval for the February 10th meeting minutes? All in favor? So move. Second. All in favor?

I. Motion carries. Nobody signed up for citizen comments. We don't have any ordinances and resolutions. We have a review of the 2027 budget. Do you want to do that first or do the discussion? We can do the budget first. That's fine. Thank you. We've got our fun little presentation put together here for you guys. Um and I'm going to go through this. This is um set up. It's the a lot of the information aside from the departmental operating budget is the same that was presented at committees two weeks ago.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I put one at your spot. No, somebody else has to grab it.

Um, so, but we're going to go through the same information. We do have a little bit of updates that either myself or Jesse will make on a couple of um topics as we as we go through, but um we'll go ahead and just um walk through this. So in the um information that um you had in your packet um for the operating budget um there are no changes to the revenue in here compared to what you saw at the first budget workshop. It is all the same information. Um currently with what's presented the budget is balanced. Um but there are some impacts. There is no paving in the operating budget and none of the police vehicles are in the operating budget. And I say currently the way it's presented, it's balanced. We have some bad news that I will get to in just a little bit on something that happened.

It's the reason that paving and the vehicles aren't in there is because they're in the PIP fund. Mhm. Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah. Um so this is just another look at the operating revenues. This is identical to what you all saw at the um budget workshop. Gosh, it's been about a month and a half ago now. Um I have gone back through and done um additional um estimations on revenues. There will be a couple of minor changes um to what you guys see um later on but not today. Another look at how the revenues break down. As you can see um you know 47% of our revenues are either local option or state shared sales tax. Um 36% is property taxes. So, our sales tax and our property tax are definitely our huge revenue generators. Um, all of our other revenue streams combined are significantly less than those two categories. So, you can see the importance of those. This is a summary of our operating expenditures by department. Um overall the operating um budget for all departments combined is increasing about 1.9% just under the 2% mark for the total operating um increase. Um to put it in perspective the um inflationary factor was 2.8%. So we're actually re increasing our budget on here less than what inflation was. Can I ask you a quick question? With all of these um like police and fire in particular,

when was the last time like budgets were increased over time for like all the additional um new people that were hired? Has the budgets increased significantly since we've added more people over the years?

I mean, absolutely. Um for for the staffing cost, it's definitely increased. Um you'll see when we get to looking at the fire budget and next year's budget for fire, there is some recommendations for some increases in some of the operating budget lines um to reflect what we've really been doing. Um police is a lot lot closer to reality in um the way that it's been budgeted the last couple of years. Fire, there's a couple areas where um needed to have a little bit of a bump. And so that's included in here. We'll see that in just a little bit. You know, looking at our budget by department, um it's very obvious that public safety is very important um to the city. We have our, you know, fire at 25% of our operating budget, police is 31%. Um and then, you know, the next biggest um area after those is actually our trash collection. Um so you can you know see where the you know huge priorities on that public works is in there as well and parks um for those next two larger and then looking at the salary and benefit amount by department um you know police is about 40% of the total salary and benefits fire is about 33% so close to 3/4ers of our salaries are for our public safety personnel. Now, um that does include the administrative um positions in those departments as well. And then a snapshot looking at how our budget's broken down from an operating standpoint. Um 71% of our operating budget is for our salary and benefits. You know, our staff are the biggest resource and you can see that here. And then the operationals um area of the um

proposed budget is 27% and that's for all of the things that it takes to keep the departments running. Our over all of our overhead, our you know the power build, the lights, our vehicle maintenance, our building maintenance, all of those things fall into that operations category. um debt services is at about one 1%. So, some of the priorities that we had set um and you these probably look familiar, we talked about them at that first budget workshop, is to keep property taxes low, to make sure that we have a balanced operating budget, meaning that we have enough ongoing revenues to cover our ongoing operating expenditures, and then um reduction of our debt. Um the total debt for um fiscal year 27 is just under $2 million less than our outstanding debt was coming into the current fiscal year 26. And this just this gives a pctoral of our debt um the current fiscal year and then what um next fiscal year looks like about 1.9 almost $2 million less. Um the total debt services payment from fiscal year 26 to 27, the amount we have to pay within that fiscal year is almost a million dollars less next year than it is in the current year. Um staffing considerations um in this budget. Um this does have a 2.8% cost of living adjustment um included for all staff. Um, we have also budgeted an extra $25,000 in the central services um budget for unanticipated retirements. And that's um if we have more than what was anticipated as far as staff that are due the sick leave payout um with the

exception of only a couple of people who have larger payouts that will happen who we know won't be retiring this next year. Almost everybody else that's on that list and there's only about 16 or 17 of them left. 25,000 would be more than enough to cover one or two of those retirements. So, we're just making sure we have enough um added in there to be able to cover additional retirements that may not be identified yet. And then um just a notation um like prior years when we present the actual um budget that goes through finance committee diploma with the ordinance, we will have attached the um updated organizational charts for each of the departments. Those are still being um worked on. Um there was you know one um adjust one department had some adjustment of some staff that was requested um an elimination of a position reclassifying a couple of other positions. So that will be reflected um in the organizational chart that comes forward when when the budget's um ready to be presented. So, the way that this is set up and presented right now, we have about a $24,000 surplus. However, after we put this together um and had it ready and ready to go, so the day of the last committee meetings, we got notification from TCRS, the state retirement um plan, that our rate went up about 2 and a half% which is the equivalent of a $900,000 increase. So, we don't really have a $24,000 surplus that we're working with. We are from this point we actually are have almost a $900,000 deficit that we're actually working with. Um I've been having lots of conversations with Jesse and the mayor. There's been a lot of conversations with departments. We're working through options at the budget workshop. We will be presenting some

different um scenarios and options of how to address that gap. Um, so that's where I said we had some um not so pleasant news that came up, but um and that is not something that's negotiable. We don't have an option but to pay that retirement um into TCRS. Now I want to get in and this is where um you know I think Terry will see um some answer some of your questions looking at the actual um fire and police budgets their actual line item operating budgets. Um first one here is fire. A couple of things to note on the overtime salaries. We are um we do have it built into um increase um the budget by almost double. The last couple of years we've started out with about 160,000 budgeted and then the overtime that's actually been used has been right around that 300,000 or slightly more mark. Um that's just how it operates. Um that's what's needed. So, we're starting the year recommending that that amount is increased um up to about 300,000 to be more realistic with what's been actually happening. Um and then the other let's see the other line that um we are have in here to start off with a recommendation that's a little bit higher is this um motor vehicle maintenance. Um this is the repairs of of the apparatus for the most part. Um we started the year budgeted at 250,000. We're going to spend this year about 390,000. Last year it was the same scenario. We started with a lower budget and ended up having to do the last two years we've had to do amendments during the midyear budget to add funds to their um vehicle

maintenance. So, um, the initial recommendation is to start with that being a little bit higher, um, which is more realistic to what's actually happening in their budget. Any questions on this page before I go on to the next one? Because there is a few more lines for fire. I just Um the way this is presented um the emergency gear, that's their turnout gear for fire. Um you can see there's nothing recommended in here for fiscal year 27. That is because next year is a very huge year. There is significantly more that has to be replaced because of the um cycle. I believe there's a 10-year cycle for those to be replaced. And next year is a cycle where there's like five times the amount of normal um that has to be replaced because of when a whole group of them was ordered. The recommendation is to purchase those out of the PIP fund next year because it's such a large purchase. It's it's uh about instead of being just over $100,000. I want to say it's about $400,000. Jesse, do you know what the results are of the gear that they sampled that they were looking at that was supposed to be um more cancer friendly friendly? They I think they got like three to let a couple of people try. Do you know how they like those or if they were a lot more expensive or not? Do you know?

I'm not I'm not sure. I was just curious. I didn't know if the cost was equivalent, if it was something they liked, didn't like. I know we have a lot that we're purchasing in this year that's included in this year's budget. Uh but I'll put that down. I was just curious. I know they were testing under the carcinogens. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, but I didn't know if they they liked it.

Yeah, I don't remember the exact numbers. I think most years there's about a dozen sets that get replaced and next year there's like 40 or 50 sets that need to be replaced. So it is it is included in the budget. It will it's been being recommended to be purchased out of the PIP fund because it's such a large increase compared to what the normal is. I will get an answer to you. I was just they liked it or didn't or it may be outrageously repeat. I don't know.

Yeah. So, any any questions? Um overall um fires budget the recommendation it's um it to increase about $550,000 compared to the original budget for this year. Um and then that's a just over 3% increase um for the fire budget. But the major increases are really in the the two areas. the vehicle maintenance and the overtime budget line item and the over time they would defer that's been correct. It's going to general committee as we see the file this evening. Yes, ma'am.

All right. And then the police um budget trying to see where the the salary and benefits are pretty um stable on their police's budget isn't really there's not a lot of variance compared to the current year. You know, there's a couple of accounts that are up a few thousand dollar, some that are down a few thousand dollar. Um, the biggest increase I have to sorry I'm trying to identify go back. So a big a big increase you can see dollar-wise is the salary and benefits the m this is because of the the cola that's obviously going to be you know two and a half% on a $12 million um budget is is a pretty sizable dollar amount. Sorry guys, I'm looking at these.

Overall, the police bud the police did a really good job of putting in what they needed to. Yeah. Um, you know, it's our biggest budget by far. It's over $20 million. Um, yeah. So, a lot of it has been shifted to the pit fund as we've had to do that with police vehicles, but I think overall it's um PD's done a really good job of putting together what they need. Yeah, I'd agree.

Yeah, there's not there's not any any one line item that's huge. Um you will see on most of the departments um in the past we had one line that was labeled computers and everybody was sticking their software and their computers and everything else in there. some for putting computers in a non- capital asset line. We've actually split this out. So we have computers hardware and computers software now. So going forward you will see software in this line and hardware in this line for the current year. This is mostly software for the for police, but that's the account code that it had been in um in the past. And so you'll see that. So there's going to be a shift, but that should give us better information um going forward. Um, any questions on the operating budget for either of these departments? I mean, I think they're pretty straightforward. You know, try to be a pretty realistic department. You know, Chief Jones and Chief Edwards both did a great job getting their budget submitted and, you know, being realistic with what they needed. Um, workshop number two is going to be on April 27th. Um, that workshop will be going over all of the projects. So any new projects that were requested um as well as projects that are in the current year that will continue to next year. We'll also be going over our special revenue funds which is like the PIP fund, state street aid, storm water. So all of those funds, drug fund. Um and then we'll take another look at the operating budget with some options for how we're going to balance that budget. you know, we're still working through those, coming up with different scenarios and options that we can um present information and solicit feedback. Um so that's that will be a fun evening with everybody. Um

oh joy, right? And that's the end of that presentation. That went really fast on brand. So, if if yall have any questions um or comments on the budget information um feel free or email us, email me, whatever. Now, we will move to a brief discussion on the ebook. Yes, ma'am.

Chief Jones, you want to update us on this got put back on here. This an alderman request. I have received a lot of phone calls uh back in our neighborhood. There's a lot invited. So, can you just for the record explain what what is legal, what is not legal, and basically if there's anything we can do about it?

So, let me first off, I guess, let me hand these out to y'all. And this is this is a form that we put out to our officers uh to help them out on the street because of the changes in the in the law. Uh we we've actually shared this with Casey and asked her to push this out. It's Jesse. It's on the website. So, we put out a communication, I believe it was over a week ago, and we linked. So, we put all of this on a web page so that residents can go and look for themselves and see the TCAs and all the references to what's legal and allowed. So,

and if we could get uh Officer Lackey to do a little video on the police page, too, people don't look at the city page, that would be good.

Yeah, we can we can ask him together. Um pretty much the the reality is they separate these into class one, class 2, and class 3 ebike. So one of the things for our officers is very difficult on the side of the road to determine the class of ebike that it is short of, you know, I mean, we we lay it out for them on here, but it's just not readily able to be determined. And some of those uh devices are not marked the way they should be. Plus, what we found and in research we've done, sometimes they can take a class one bike, not change any of the markings on it, modify it to where it would actually fall in the class two or three category, and we'd never know that. So the way the state and what we've done, they treat they've treated all class one ebikes as bicycles. Uh so it is treated the same as any bicycle that has no other means of propulsion other than the pedals. So that's kind of the guideline that we've been following. If it is a and sister Chief Mson, if I say this wrong, you be sure and chime in there, but if it's a class two or greater ebicycle, they have to be a licensed driver. In other words, they have to have a valid operator's license to ride the the class two go.

So, so class one and class two go up to 20 miles an hour. They're classified as the same. The only difference is one is pedal assisted and the other one is throttle assisted. So a class one is with a throttle. I'm sorry, class one is with the pedals and class two is with the throttle. That's the only difference between those two bikes. When you get to class three, that's the one that can go up to 28 miles an hour. And that's the one where you have to be 14 years old. And there's actually you have to have a speedometer on on the on the bicycle. 14 or 16. It's 14. 14 is a minimum. Well, I I think that they just passed in July. It'll be 16. It's going from 14 to 16 in July. In July. In July. Currently, it was 14.

Okay. That's what I'm going off because it they're talked about a valid operator's license. But those also have to have a headlight and they have to have turn signals and they have to have a registration plate and they have to have mirrors on it and you know, a lot of the those things. And so that's where we're going to, you know, the enforcement effort has to come in. Now, what we've been trying to do because we get those same complaints is and and the biggest issue that we've run into is education pieces with parents who are allowing them to operate those ebicycles. And sometimes what we're running into and and I'm not sure why they think there's a difference, but they actually have electric motorcycles now.

Well, if it doesn't have pedals on it and it's a motorcycle, then it's going to have to meet the same requirements as a regular motorcycle. you're going to have to be an oper a licensed operator and you know you have to meet all the other requirements for registration and everything else. The the you know we've encountered a few of them. They're riding electric dirt bikes. Well, dirt bikes are never allowed on a public roadway and they sure can't be riding on top of them. So again, that's part of that education piece. But the the thing we've run into and it's kind of like what we were dealing with last year with with the golf carts. Certain golf carts in the state of Tennessee can be registered as either a low speed or medium speed vehicle, but your standard everyday golf cart for the golf course cannot. But it also doesn't mean that your 13-year-old can have eight kids hanging off of it driving through the neighborhood. That's not legal. And so we we did a lot of education and let them know that we were going to start charging people. And that seemed to help and that's kind of what we're trying to do with this. But um you know it's it's still an issue. Uh one of the complaints we we recently got was a lady that said this was an adult on an ebicycle uh that almost ran into her. So you know it's not just I don't want to make it just the kids but on the same hand we've had complaints from people riding 10 speed bicycles on the greenway at excessive speed when people are trying to walk. So, it's it's not just limited to the ebikes and the bicycles, but we are trying to address that. Um, and you know, we're getting to the point we're going to start issuing citations and then summones into juvenile court because we we've we've tried doing the education piece with Casey's assistance. We got things out on the city's website. We will ask um Officer Lackey to put some out on the PD website, but but

we've been trying to educate people and it's kind of getting past that point now that we're going to have to start enforcing that. Okay. Anybody? Is there a particular area that the problems worse? I mean like Streets of Indian Lake down in W four. So the parks and and basically all the residential neighborhoods, you know, it's kind of spread out. We get a lot of the residential neighborhoods, we we're getting these complaints and it's all over town, but it's all over the country actually and talking with other mayors in Middle Tennessee and we're hearing from all over the mayors all over the country.

I think we're doing the best right now education and then if you have to at some point citations but right now education seems

well we wanted to start off with education because this is so new. We we feel like that maybe a lot of parents don't understand you, you know, okay, you're not buying them a motorcycle, but you're buying them an ebike that's capable of going 30 miles an hour. And sometimes in cases where they modify them, it's way more than that. I mean, you think about the standon scooter. Well, I mean, you don't expect them to have that much speed. I mean, but literally, there's some of those that are capable of running 45, 50 miles an hour, and that's just ridiculous. Anybody else have any questions, comments?