City Council - workshop

wait and find out how in order to do that to fill those because potentially with the current revenue streams we're currently talking about we're just not quite getting there and so essentially what we're asking here is a chance to start evaluating the budgetary process and our budget and all and let john do that and look at each department one by one and go through things and try to figure out how we can make things work. Now, with the 280,000 that's still in there, essentially that, in my opinion, is kind of what I would call council priority dollars at this point in time, which could be discretionary funding throughout in case there is a position that is where somebody steps aside, but you have to fill it and you need to fill it. We may leave that out at the top end, but then you would come forward to us and we would try to fill that with those remaining dollars, that 280,000. I think that was my first take on it.

Maybe I'm... Yeah, I think that's a good clarification. At this point, you and I's discussion earlier was we aren't intending to take that 280 out. It was intended to be something to show you as an amount that's being reduced from the budget, but the intention would be that we would maintain it in the budget as a priority dollars.

It's just going to be how is that spread out, and I think that'll give us time, because I know that I've, for one, I've been kind of pushing towards... I'm not a big property tax fan You know I've made my my thoughts known on that and I would like to see us go to more consumption-based Taxing but right now we don't really have a true Source there are some one that they listed here, but I'm not entirely in favor of those either I think we've got a lot more discussion looking at some of that and how that works with safety public safety and Moving forward, but I know that's all gonna be discussion. We'll have in this upcoming fiscal so That's kind of where we ended up for today. I hope I've explained that properly. If anybody wants to jump in, they sure can, and then we'll open that up for council discussion. Anyone want to add and subtract from what I said, or did I hit it right on the head? I guess, I don't know. Okay, so I think, just because I know we've got a lot of staff here this evening, we've got citizens here this evening, People to feel safe and secure within this budget. We're not saying these things can't happen But I think this gives us what we're trying to do, especially when you see the non that the transfer is not going out We're trying to say that we are looking intently at this budget moving forward and trying to Get ourself ready for the next couple years of fiscal spending and what that looks like and what that means to this budget moving forward Because we're essentially kind of at a point, even if you took the mill levy reductions from the last four years, which would add up to 1.2, maybe 1.3 million overall. And that was kudos to the council for making those decisions. And it really, in the scheme of things, yes, it would help this budget this year if those cuts would have been made. But it just kicks the can down the road further on having the same discussions. So I think with John on board now, we'll have the opportunity here to really reflect on the overall budget. In fact, it's funny, I had an opportunity to talk to Mike Nolan and Randy Gates just the other day. They were here for Randy's retirement party. And I was talking at the same time, and for those of you who don't know, Mike Nolan is a city administrator, started in 1980, hired Randy in 1982. And at that point in time, they looked at the budget and didn't like the way it was being done. In fact, Mike said it looked like he kind of considered it kind of like a box of cigars where every budget was an individual budget. And it was hard to go through and hard to put together. It took a lot of time. So they fundamentally came up with a new way to present our budget and run the city budget. And it was kind of, at the time... quite a big step forward. So I feel like at this point in time we now have John's fresh eyes on things and obviously you can see by some of the presentations he's already put together for us looking at things and some of the things that he's evaluated with slides I've seen already with NPVD lease and whatnot. I think having him here will give us another opportunity to kind of see where we're at and help formulate a budget process And, you know, we've even talked, maybe tossed an idea around doing a biannual budget where you do two years approval at once, just considering because of the amount of staff time we have invested in each year into this system. So I guess I'm not trying to tell people that your thoughts aren't important today or that what you want to add in the budget aren't important. I'm just saying let's take this time to try to get our budget to a place where each fiscal, we're not having these discussions where everybody's nervous from a department standpoint, and where citizens are nervous we're going to be raising their mill levy to a point where they can't afford it. So just some thoughts I'd like to throw in there and interject, but that's where I think we need to do to move forward. But again, I probably, if anybody can, I know sometimes I ramble on, which I'm doing, so I will shut up and let other people speak.

And there are a couple of major points that need to be brought up as well. This is not the ending point tonight. We still have August 20th as the date in which we should get back our final evaluations from the county. And that could be or could not be a major inflection point on some of the decisions that we make as well. So we still have a good 45 to 60 days really of ironing out this budget. But at this point, I think we've gotten to the point where the major nut and bolts are hammered in.

Scott did I speak well did I get that out there to my words make sense on that?

No, you did Marin appreciate your comments, and I guess I would I would say to you as a whole there's been an incredible amount of dialogue and a whole bunch of Suggestions that have that have come in you know kindly solicited input from the elected officials if there's anything that we need to consider and trying to use this process as a way to collect and glean and identify areas where we can do better, do different, look at it differently, restructure some things, and just get the sentiment of the elected officials as they're hearing from their constituents. So we've tried to be good listeners to all of that. The difficult thing is, is evaluating that and trying to fit it all into the box. And there's some really strong opinions about certain things and certainly appreciate and respect the input of that from each of the elected officials that have provided those. Trying to take all of those and fit them into the equation and end up in the black is difficult to do. So I don't want anyone to feel disrespected or that we weren't hearing them, but we had to come forth with a document that had a starting point for at least us to begin with, and without fail, the good idea is the heartfelt conversations about what was wanted in there, it doesn't mean they're not important, it just doesn't mean they simply couldn't fit, and so you can only stretch the dollar so far, and so we matched that, the expenditure request with the revenue side, and put as many of those as we could based on the summary of the input we got back from the elected officials, and so I would offer my apology to anybody whose strong feelings about any certain item isn't contained here. And we can continue to have dialogue about that. As John said, we've got a couple months to go before we've got to put a final stamp on this. So it's a living, breathing, working document that we want full transparency, we want full opportunity to vet those things. But we had to come forward tonight with a starting point, and John and Sheila and the staff have worked really hard to try to do that, try to illustrate it in a way where this document, as you add and delete things from it, You can clearly see what the impact is on the levy. You can clearly see what the impact is on the bottom line. And so I recognize, fully recognize that some of these things have a significant emotional connotation to them as you affect not filling vacancies. Those are important issues and obviously have some tenderness to it as we talk about the fragileness of those things. Many of the line item things that were cut out that were projects for certain divisions those also have some some emotional sentiment to it and you can't blame or Dismiss the fact that those division heads Champion hard to get those things into the budget because they're important to them They want them to be able to provide the service they want for the community But balancing all that with the elected officials capacity to deliver on an approvable budget There within lies the recipe we're trying to seek and so it's it's been a work in progress countless hours of time and Good people throughout this equation, staff and elected officials both trying to do the right thing, trying to do their best to do a responsible budget preparation that allow us to move forward. So I'm grateful to everybody who's been kind and considerate, even when we disagree about some of these things that are heartfelt in many ways. but there's been a professional decorum throughout. People have handled themselves well, even in adverse situations where we're talking about very, very important things. And so I've been impressed by the human element of everybody involved, and I don't see any reason why that has to change as we move forward through the next two months as we dissect all of this. So I am grateful, Mayor, and you spoke to it. I think John does offer some perspective that's new. And sometimes you don't see things because you look at the same thing the same way through the same eyes over and over and over again. And he's offered some perspective that's given us a different glance at that. I can't wait to see him be a part of that for a full year as we develop the budget going forward. I think there's real value that he can shed light on things to buttress the good work that Sheila and other staff have been doing. And I believe that there can be some solid progress made because of his contribution. So I'm grateful for what he's done so far, and I'm looking forward to what he can do for us in the future. With that backdrop, if there's any questions that I or any of the staff can answer, we'll certainly try to do that.

I guess I'd just like to follow up on something you just mentioned. John, this is his first crack at the budget here at the city. What are your initial thoughts as you kind of dove into this?

Do you mean the budget itself? The budget document?

Yeah.

You know, 30 days in, you know, I've spent a flurry of every day trying to consume as much of it as I can while also trying to learn, you know, other important facts that go on in my office as well outside of just the budget. You know, listening through the budget hearings that we've had, this being the fourth one, you guys have spent an incredible amount of time as a governing board already reviewing such in-depth the budgets that go into this. I've not personally seen a governing board go through this much detail before. I've been on several nonprofits and I've worked at other nonprofits. Organizations, this is atypical in my view. So kudos to you for intentionally spending that much time on it. You know, are there areas in the budget where there could be shaves here or there? Yes, I'm sure there are. I haven't seen any big sore thumbs yet on the expenditure side. But what I would tell you is just looking at in my in-depth so far is that I see much more opportunity in the revenue areas. of analysis, as I mentioned earlier. I think we've got some glaring thumbs in the revenue streams, and I'm not talking about specific ones. There's multiple that have either improved greatly or actually reduced greatly and were important drivers in our budget over the last 10 to 20 years for sure. So those are the areas really that I've been focusing on the most is trying to put together some rationale of what's happened, what that means to our budget, what that means to property taxes in the end. That's an important driver for the citizens. But there are some major drivers in our budget that I've already reviewed. Sales tax, surprisingly, is probably going to be the biggest one that I get into next. But I've already, you know, been looking at the lease revenue from MPPD, for instance. know those those two major revenue drivers are no longer as strong as they were 10 or 20 years ago and those have been supported buttressed up by property taxes over the last 10 years specifically maybe longer than that but so there are some some areas where we really need to dig into and figure out why that happened and see if there's any ways that you have abilities to improve those or if it's strategic planning through economic development and building up our tax base, sales taxes, property tax, all those bases through development and forward thinking for the future. Those are the revenue side is where I'm really focused on at this point, if that answers your question. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Any other discussion from the council? Seeing nobody here, I'd open it up to anybody here this evening who'd like to come forward now would be the time to come forward.

Jim McKenzie. I think most of you have probably seen I sent you an email. I think it's important for us to look back and see how we got here. I think that tells us a lot about where we're going. 2005, 2006, property taxes budgeted for our general fund were $238,724. Twenty years later, Our current fiscal year, 2025-2026, property taxes budgeted to the general fund were $6,057,344. That's an increase of 2,437% over 20 years. I think that's important for us to understand from the impact on our citizens. It's important for us to understand that that trend is not a sustainable trend. So as you look at that, I think that's important to keep that in mind. The list of cuts that were originally presented were approximately 2.8 million. If we didn't cut anything, if we kept all of that, it would require us to increase property taxes by 39% this year. That's a pretty big increase. Obviously, it's not palatable to the public. The other thing I wanted to mention was, and we continue to have a structural deficiency in the budget, last year we did not make any transfers from the general fund to the CIP. This year we're proposing not to make any transfers again from the general fund to the CIP. That creates a deficit over the last two years of funding for the CIP of a little over $1.2 million. That's, again, not sustainable. So it puts you in a hole going into the next fiscal year, the 27-28. Your CIP budget's not gonna support you not funding it again. You're still spending that money in the CIP, you're just not putting the money in to fund the CIP budget. So you're gonna be in a $600,000 hole coming up in the 27-28 fiscal year. You have to address on top of what you're cutting this year. So I think it's important to understand that you're basically robbing your CIP fund to balance your budget these last two years. So when you look another year out, you don't have that bullet left in the gun because your CIP budget, your CIP fund is probably going to be to the point where you won't have enough cash left in there to not fund it. So I just want to bring that up too. Thank you.

Yeah, I think those are the things we're looking at right now because that's why I've kind of stated what I stated early before the meeting started, before we got into the weeds here. That's why we're kind of trying to call this kind of a budgetary pause. Let us get an opportunity to review and address those very same things. The transfer into capital projects is an issue, and we're going to have to get through that and figure out how that's going to work moving forward. Again, as of this year, that $208,000 that you see there, those are going to be what you as a council will have the opportunity when citizens come forward or department heads come forward for replacing individuals that resign or to meet the needs or requests of their department. So those essentially are what we'll be calling almost like a council priority funds moving forward. So There will be some funds there if somebody comes forward and does need something, but this will give us a good time to dive into things and look at different things throughout our city and throughout the departments and make some decisions. But I don't think we need to look at this as it's just absolute dire. It's not. We'll work through it and we'll get through it. I think John addressed some things that we've seen. Yeah, we're not Receiving the sales tax like we used to as a community that's been something that we've got to tackle moving forward because that sells taxes allowed us the opportunity to build some of these divisions like we've been able to do like we've got now and provide the Provide I guess you could say maybe the up the resources for our community so yeah, we'll be diving into that and Looking through all that so with that anything else anybody here this evening? or this afternoon, I guess. Feel free to come forward now.

Mayor, for clarification, are we going through each department again?

No, no.

Hi, I'm Becky Wolf. And I am a member on the Parks and Rec Council, Advisory Council. But I'm here as a citizen who loves the parks. And I just wanted to tell you, we had our 50th class reunion this weekend, and we started Thursday, luckily, when the weather was a little bit nicer. And we played a pickleball tournament. We did a tour at Johnson's Park. Some went kayaking. We did yoga at Skyview. And that's all. because of what we've done in the past few years, improving our parks. My main concern is the staffing reduction, because I'm afraid that would mean we'd have to close AquaVenture earlier or something like that, and with this weather, I believe we need to keep my pool open as long as possible. I just have concerns. When we're doing so well to cut, and I know we can't add to the budget, Be real careful when you start cutting, please, okay? Thanks.

Thanks for your work on the Parks Board. Anyone else?

My name is Jason Tolson. I'm also on the Parks and Rec Board, and I own the local bike shop here in town. And, yeah, I've seen a lot of improvements in the last several years, you know. It really all kind of started with the downtown revitalization 20-some years ago. And I just think everything's headed in the right direction, and I know stuff is tight right now. I'm just kind of copying what Becky says, but just another voice out there saying it, that... Don't cut back too far with the progress that we're making. We're doing really well. Let's try and keep things heading that way. I know we're going to have to reduce some spending here and there, but just be careful where we do it and keep heading in the right direction. That's all I have.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council, Tamaragi Fire Chief. I appreciate, Mayor, the way you explained the salary attrition and the way that it appears there as we look through the spreadsheet. I appreciate the work John's done and the entire team. I guess I more just want to be on record as stating that... That position is very important, and I appreciate the fact that there will be an opportunity to justify those as attritions happen, or as vacancies happen, I should say. So that's something that we will definitely not want to go backwards on at fire, and it's my sole responsibility to make sure that we have those bodies and that they're out there doing the best they can for the communities and the surrounding areas. Appreciate the way was explained tonight that helps me better understand that there will be an opportunity and hopefully there can be more discussion On perhaps not having those in there as a way to balance the budget in the next 45 to 60 days, so Thanks chief appreciate it anyone else I

Mayor, Council, Will Ellis, Street Manager. Just kind of to piggyback off what Tim said with already being positioned down going into this. It's really going to affect our snow moving operations to whatever that is already. So, I mean, that's being held up now because of the talks we're having. So I just want to voice my concern on that, I guess. And we've got equipment ordered and stuff. If we don't have that person, then that truck sits in the shed. So we're invested into that, but it takes all the people to run them.

Will, do you historically know in the past five years how many positions your division has added?

Yep, I read them last time I was up here, one. One, that's what I thought. We were talking about adding two or three when the annexation happened. We added... A electrician, but it has nothing to do with the snow removal part of it.

So the one position was the electrician?

Nope. One was electrician. That was totally separate. He just housed out a street department, but one maintenance worker.

Okay. All right. Thanks.

Yep.

Yeah, thanks, Will, and to Chief Rogge and Will, and I'm looking at department heads right here and right now. You guys have done a remarkable job since I've been up here and as I've been up here as a councilman. and what you've done for our community. And so it is not easy to sit here and look at that and talk about it. That's why there will be open opportunity to have those discussions as they come forward. It's just we need that time and that little bit of time to review and put forth some time into how we're going to make that happen. So I don't want to take this as really a negative thing budget session. I think it's just a matter of trying to get everything in order so we can do what we need to do for your apartments. Know that we look upon you and doing a terrific job because you have been. All of you. We hear it too. We hear it out in the community too. I hear about our parks all the time. Nate, you guys have done a great job. I hear about the street cleaning you guys have done. We've got water sewer Fire chief, police chiefs over here, we've had, you know, you don't hardly ever hear anything bad. It's just what we do hear about is this, you know, the property taxes and the budget and that. That's, you know, sometimes we have some things that get out of control a little bit, and we'll hear about those items. But all in all, the tough job is sitting up here and have to look at these numbers and go through them. So I'm hoping to turn that from a negative to a positive, how we do that. Take a little bit of time, but I think we can get there. So I trust the people in this room and I think we can all work together and get there. And that's what we're exactly what we're going to have to do. And you got to look at this too. It's not just Norfolk going through some of this stuff. Uh, you've got the state struggling a little bit. You've got schools are struggling right now to meet some of their budgets. We had unprecedented inflation after COVID and the dollar bill just does not go as far as it used to. And it's making these budgets extremely tough to balance. Um, even if you don't agree with the spending over the last few years, uh, that's fine, but that didn't get you all the way here. That inflation is a tough one and that's hitting everybody right now. And that's why our federal and state and local governments and there's 10 schools are struggling. So it's just a matter of time. And we, people went through this in the seventies after high inflation eighties, there was my inflation. I talked to just with Scott talking about the budget with the city coming out of the nineties, I think you said was just really, really tough to get through. So. We're just at one of those points where you kind of have to hit a reset, reevaluate, and move forward. And I think that's what we're trying to do. So that's the way I'm looking at it.

Well said.

So I guess I'll end my input from there. Anybody else have anything they want to add?

Mayor, council, good afternoon. I just want to support what Chief Rogge said and thank you for the opportunity to talk here again today. That position, that police position is very important to us. Two weeks ago when I was up here, I should have knocked on wood because I do have an officer that put in his resignation. He's leaving for the Border Patrol September 1st. So when you're behind as it police division it takes forever to catch up and so we would really like to get a full head of steam and have our everyone we're supposed to have so but I understand the situation the city's in and if you do pull a lever I would like to see the MPPD lease if you could do something there and I'm I really support the occupation tax on food and beverage, prepared food and beverage, and hotels and things like that. I just think that's the fairest tax to the people that come here and use our facilities and things. And like the parks people said, we do. Our parks are 100 times better than they've ever been. The city's 100 times better than it's ever been. The downtown, the library's bigger. The fire department provides the best care that they've ever been able to provide now with all their paramedics. But all that comes with a price, as you know. Anyway, thank you.

Thanks, Chief. And again, what you've done in this short amount of time that you've been the police chief has been nothing short of remarkable. There was a time there where we couldn't fill positions there, and you filled them. And that says a lot to your character and what you've done for our community. So we do appreciate it. So these are hard conversations to have, and you've got a tremendous department there, and you guys do a fabulous job for our community.

I get you're in a hard spot, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't support our people and get them all the help that they're supposed to have.

And you touched on a couple of things, some revenue streams that will be discussed, and I want to bring those type of things up too. And discuss what that means for our community moving forward long term. And there's other communities doing that already. And, you know, we do have. Significant.

Right. Like 4%. I saw. Right. I think it was Lincoln.

You know, Norfolk does have a tremendous draw here. We have what they call a multiplier. And it's about 1.86 for every dollar that's spent in Norfolk. 0.86 dollars are spent from individuals coming to our community. So you, on a daily basis, are seeing a lot of people in the community that just maybe don't live here. but they utilize the community like we all do that live here. So there is some real good thought that you need to put into, when are you talking about, um, consumption taxes and whatnot, but there is some public safety that I think you can justify for those types of things also too, that they should help support.

Many of us enjoy a beverage now and then, but, uh, If it wasn't for alcohol, we'd probably only need half the officers we have. A little bird told me that maybe the tax on bush light for the fire department is... Bush light tax, is that what we're going to call it?

Can we make it Coors Light because I drink bush light? No. Okay, sorry. I think they do that. Maybe that's why they said bush light.

Mayor and Council, I figured I needed to come up because the other department heads also came up just to share just a few things. The two things that we need to do our jobs well is staffing and equipment. Those are the things that keep us going. I really like the fact that it actually just said $100,000 off capital rather than picking out things that, that might hurt us and not help us. So hopefully we can go back to the board and choose those things that might be less important and not lose equipment. I have two trucks in our budget. We need 16. We have 16 that are over 20 years old. We have staff driving around today without air conditioning. I mean, it's just not good. And so hopefully we can continue to do that. We've also, with the staffing, things that we've added, just the maintenance level, but we also kept AlkaVenture open for the last two years, I think, maybe even three, until Labor Day. And we squeezed that within the budget that we had. And so we've been using every single hour we have available to us to offer the services that we're offering. We're doing our best. That's the hardest thing to see cut is because of that, because of what we are trying to do. Ultimately, it's your decision, and we will go back and support this body, of course. And we're looking forward to continue to do our best and do what we can with the tools that we have available to us. You know the two things again that are important to us I think is the equipment the mowers and the vehicles that we use to get around town and to do our work and also the staffing levels we have to keep things open and keep things running and well at a high level. It's busy in July, not so much in December, but we also have 200 staff in the summertime, and we go down to as low as 16 in the winter. So we have a lot of seasonal and summer staff that help us keep things running and keep things going, and we're very appreciative of their work, and we're appreciative of council's support as well. Thank you.

Thanks, Nate. Thanks for all the hard work you do, too, and your staff. Thank you. Thank you. Parks is one of those places, one of the first to get praised, but the first to get cut. So it's always a tough one for you. I get it. All right. Anyone else?

Council? So my question is, where are we going or what's our next step? Because, again, I see the proposed possible income on the Nebraska public power. We're already... Back to January, if we started it or if we voted on it here and we passed, it would be back to January before we'd start collecting it anyway. Right. So that takes us from October. I mean, we're already out three months in, correct?

Right. So I would, one of the things, are we talking about that tonight? Is that the next budget we're going to talk about? The next one we talk about the revenue streams.

We can, because we can either do it tonight, we can do it at the next meeting, because what we'll do is at the next round of meetings bring forward those recommendations, which one of them includes those general fund revenues, which we'll address that.

And Jim, I agree with you on the MPBD lease. I do. I think that half cent is something we need to really look at, especially with where we're at right now today. I think that $154,000 would be really well put towards public transit, or even helping maybe our... I think if we do it, it's just got to be tied to something long-term. And so I do agree. I think that's something we could – I don't know if we're going to talk about it now or if you guys – we've kind of put out – we've kind of laid out there what we're thinking. And now you guys have the opportunity to – if you don't agree with it, right now is the time to talk about it. So that's why we're here.

With revenue streams or just the overall budget?

Overall, overall budget and we can, we can suggest different revenue streams. I just felt like we maybe were not a hundred. The occupation taxes, that's a whole different ballgame. Those are things you got to, you got to put some time to thought in how that's going to work, what that looks long-term, like what it's going to do to your property tax overall. Is there a property tax reduction? Is it, you know, is it justified? How do, where do you come from for it? Or what, what, what do you use to pay for what? I think those are all things that I'm not quite sure we're prepared right now at this time in our fiscal to address. But the half cent with the MPD lease, we're prepared to address that right now. So we can talk about that or that could be the next meeting. I guess, so anyway, go ahead.

It's all up for discussion at this point. What the staff and what I'm really looking for is some direction so we can get you a finalized budget based on your input. These are just boiling down to the things that we've heard of that are most important Discussions we've had not in this body. So not real ability to for us to make good faith decisions based on that input. So the MPP delist you did discuss last year in the budget process included it in the budget and didn't did not input it as a into actual Effect the lodging and the food and beverage I've been doing some research already on some of the other class a cities, especially the ones in that twenty to thirty thousand dollar I'm trying to develop a revenue mix of what those other cities are looking at because I think more than half of them have some variation of occupation taxes of various kinds. But that doesn't mean that they just, that's a good idea. It's a revenue tool in their city. So what does that look like in their general fund or in the ways that they fund their operations? Not that they do it, it's how is it used in their revenue mix? Just like I mentioned earlier, it needs to be a tool in our revenue box. So I'm putting together some thoughts around those items already to help you make that decision or not. But it's there tonight for your understanding because those are property tax relief levers that can be used.

I'm glad you say it is property tax relief levers and not addition to. Well, yeah. Let's talk about that NPPD lease a little bit. So you've got $154,000 on here because it's It's prorated, right. So a full fiscal, what's that look like?

200. Can you click on that cell, Lyle?

It's 220.

Oh, shoot. Go to the assumptions tab, Lyle. G30. Click on the 4 million up to the right, the 490. Oh, Sheila, where's the number? It's like 200. 205?

It's 200 and some change. 205. There, 205. Thank you. So with that, to me, since we've been funding transit now for, what, four years? We've been kicking in 100? Since 1992. Oh, well, I mean when we really start kicking in money towards it.

Yeah, it started jumping up in about 2018, 19.

Okay. So essentially it's become a... expected expenditure from our city to transit you know when you do something that long you know it becomes something that you're kind of expected to cover uh as an as a citizen's need within our community i guess you'd say so i have no problem um utilizing that half percent to steer towards that particular type need uh personally i would my first thought would be using those funds to support economic developments budget, because as the city goes and the more power is being used, those funds naturally grow, and that's directly contributed to economic development. Unfortunately, that's not how it works with economic development. Those funds cannot be used for that particular, if I'm right, I think I'm right on that. So with that being said, I thought, well, what else would it be good to tie something like that to? And I think a transit is really good for that particular project.

And that specific expenditure is a case where it's a multiplier. I think Steve mentioned at the meeting that we talked about transit. It's a multiplier. It multiplies itself by four times, I think, four or five times, because we put in those dollars, they get revenue sources from other places. So it's really $100,000 on our share, but it's 20% of revenue that comes into them because of our share.

I also know that the Senior Center has come to us in years past for funds. Right. different things I think that would be another fund that would be good for those citizens you know our seniors have spent their years here paying into property taxes and then you know me to continue to support them within our community also think that there could be an opportunity there with those funds for okay I lost my train of thought but so you know public transit senior center but as long as we just It'd just be nice to explain why and how and where it's going.

With transit, how many other community partners are there right now other than the city of Norfolk? Because prior to the fraud that took place, I believe we had probably six or eight, seven, six or seven different, more than that, entities that helped pitch in, and where are those community partners now?

Yeah, so, Councilman... Since I've been involved starting back in 2018, the city of Norfolk's been the only community sponsor. There's been conversations about trying to get sponsorships with some of our surrounding communities. Pierce specifically was a conversation back when they were transporting children to school. Pierce was very interested in that. Currently, the city of Norfolk is the only community sponsor or county sponsor for that matter. As a function of that, the dollars stay here within the community. When the transit was cut back here last year, last May, they made a decision to only fund transit within or rides within the city limits. So they might venture out if you're right on the limit, they might venture out and pick you up. City dollars, providing service to citizens within the community.

But Steve, doesn't Faith Regional and Northeast Community College give to it?

They did back when we were working on the fixed routes, but that was a function and a conversation of the fixed routes. They do receive dollars as part of a sponsorship for Route 6. Route 6 runs from Norfolk to Wayne, and that those dollars fully support that route and the capital necessary to run that route.

If you look at transit, I think the community sees it as a service that needs to be provided. You know, you look at Columbus, Kearney, Grand Island, and several others. I mean, they are either

and operate the transit or the gift to it, so I think if we decide to not do that We'll see it's gonna cost cost us a lot more down the road so I'd also just point out and I think I pointed out before too that Currently anyway transit rents and has rented from the senior center for many many years Possibly as many as going back into 2010. I don't know when they built that garage over there and So there's $36,000 a year in rent that goes to the senior center to help support them from transit.

For the record, it's included in this budget. Just for the record, yeah. So people watching or listening.

I think it's important. What John was speaking about earlier about how do you, generate revenue through economic development. And I think that's something, you know, I have a ton of interest in is how do we find areas of town? Like to me, this glaring is like the livestock market. How has that affected property taxes over 10, 20 years that it's sat like that, you know, that in the Tyson plant, how has it affected sales tax along the Northwestern corridor? What can we do as a community to incentivize development in those areas? Well, there'll be short term pain. and where we're at today. But when we invest in things like that, the long-term gain is we're no longer arguing over COLAs every year. We're increasing property tax down there through valuation and development and creating better spaces for our citizens. And so I have a ton of interest in that stuff. I really think it's hard to tax our way out of the issue we have today. So my focus is mainly what you're speaking about rather than What tax can we generate today to support our budget?

I just came from the university. I know this is anecdotal, but three years ago when I walked in there, it was the same thing. It was a revenue problem. It always feels like an expenditure problem. And there's certainly cases where you need to review every budget line and cut where you need to. But a similar case, it was a revenue problem. And it came down to straightening out the way we were doing business and how we were investing in ourselves to turn ourselves around from an operational standpoint. 95% of the effort was on the revenue side because that's necessary to fund the things that you have to have or you desire to have. John, I just need to make a suggestion.

If you could speak up a little bit. I think we're having a hard time hearing you in the back.

I've been accused of that my whole life. I apologize for that. So I'm apparently soft spoken even though I don't feel like it. So I'll do better if I can. Move it forward like this. Is that better? There we go. Thank you. I'll do that from now on. Thank you, Sue. I get yelled at about that every time I go to a board meeting somewhere. Your predecessor did the same thing. That's the same exact thing we had before.

Maybe I'll get a lapel mic or something. Any other questions for John? So to Jim's point, where are we going from here?

I just want to ask a general question. And I've listened to the department heads and both chiefs. And I understand you guys are in a situation where help is needed and that is froze. But I guess I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to ask this question more directly to Scott than anybody. Is every position 100% valued and needed under the administration side of things?

Are you talking specifically about the administration budget, this building and those that are housed?

Yeah, that's correct. And I'll kind of back this up, but if you go to Saturday's paper, they listed everybody's position. And if you just ran the numbers of what their salary was, that's a huge substantial number of wages and benefits that's brought into this building. My question is, is every position needed and valued to 100% of what we're paying in wages and benefits?

Well, I certainly want to say that I'm proud of the staff in the administration building. They do exceptional work.

I think some do.

And the goal is to constantly strive to be the best we can be, use the checks and balances, the evaluation process, constant feedback, administration doing the mentoring and coaching and supporting to help them achieve their highest potential. That starts from me and goes all the way to the bottom. And so in terms of giving back to the community or giving back to the elected officials the faith they put in hiring those people, it's our job to give our best in return, Corey. Councilman Hill to run that is absolutely the mission. What we've done as part of this budget is made ourselves as sacrificial as everybody else in terms of if there's a vacancy that we deem unnecessary to fill, that's exactly the decision that we'll make based on the efficiencies that run in this place. Those are hard conversations to have. This is a hard day to have. They are, and when they happen, we'll have to make that consideration. I will tell you after Our preliminary budget hearing, I did not receive one ounce of feedback from any of the elected officials to reinstate that position, not one. So in terms of an overwhelming support to put budget authority back in for attrition in the administration building, I received none. And so based on that feedback, I would say that it sent a pretty loud message that we need to do more with less. And that starts in this building. And so I take those comments seriously. I evaluate that at its full potential. And if we need to make the appropriate hard decisions, we'll make the appropriate hard decisions based on the direction I've been given. So that's part of the equation. And if there's not a checkmark by admin, it means that when there's a first opening, we're going to have to have an opportunity to look at that and make the best decision on where it comes from and do more with less.

So Scott, do you think we can bring ambulance billing back in house to justify a wage?

Oh, I've had some preliminary conversations about that. The question is, um, based on the efficiency of the company that we've hired versus the capacity that we were in receiving those funds before. And, and, and she froggy can speak to this if he wants to, but I believe that we're collecting at a higher percentage rate of increase that pays for the cost of providing the service to the company that gets their portion of providing it. So to put it back into the hands of somebody else, I'm not sure that there's a net increase in that. And I don't know, Trevor or Tim, you want to speak to that? I've been operating under the assumption that the billing company that we hired is doing well for you and you're collecting at a higher rate than we were before. Maybe you can speak to that, or if you're satisfied with that, or if you feel that moving backwards to putting that in-house would be a better idea.

Yeah, it's a great question. Um, quick med claims is who we're using right now. And when we started going that direction, that was for the guidance of the previous city administrator to try looking at, uh, moving those responsibilities away from a position here. Uh, basically the, where our billing works is there's a, a multi, um, step approach to where our shift lieutenants or EMS supervisors have a component after our paramedics enter their reports. Our administrative assistant has a component of that and then that comes over to Justina here who does a large sum of work prior to that getting to quick med claims Once that happens all the billing goes through quick med claims it eliminates several manual steps that were taking place here and the collective sum and that has been Pretty good for us now. I won't say it's been perfect We've had some recent conversations with that company to talk about their efficiencies and their communication with us as recently as last week and I think the message was received loud and clear that this is a hot topic in the city of Norfolk right now. Uh, we either get their best foot forward or we have to look elsewhere, whether that's ourselves or a different company. The biggest driver of fire departments, our side going away from doing it themselves as municipalities is because of some of the coding that Medicare Medicaid use and one minor air costs costing the municipality hundreds of thousands of dollars, um, based on how those calls are entered for billing. So it's basically taking the liability off the municipality and putting it in the hands of those companies. So they also provided a pretty extensive service to us recently. We submitted for ground emergency medical transport. So basically that increases the amount of Medicaid reimbursement we get for those qualifying patients. And instead of us manually generating all that information, which we did not have based on the way we did it before, QuickMed claims took that information and submitted that to ground emergency medical transport so that we can get better revenues. Trevor has some more information here, Chief O'Brien, that we can talk about if you have deeper questions than that, but it's absolutely something we've talked a lot about since those comments were made. Do you have anything to add to that?

Just a couple things. It's not so much directly correlated to the the billing, the third party billing, uh, but obviously increasing our fees and adding some of the fees that weren't typically in our fee schedule, like a lift assist billing and fixed wing medical crew transport billing, uh, have increased some revenues for us. And those processes doing those ourselves to be able to get those off the ground would have been difficult, merely even impossible. Um, Honestly, that company gives us the feedback we need and the support we need and the legal backing to be able to get the revenue streams that we need. It's tough to pull those right now because there's always a delay in getting the bills back for Medicare and Medicaid, so I don't have an exact number today. Sheila could probably provide a little bit more information, but I think last year we were somewhere around 90% of our revenue coming back in. Medicare Medicaid, I don't even want to try to get into exactly how it all works, but there's a percentage that they're allowed to write off. So we can bill as high as we want, but at some point the Medicare Medicaid entity has the ability to only pay a certain amount. And the majority of our patients are Medicare Medicaid patients. So That's where you get a discrepancy and, and it may not look as good as it is on the revenue side. Uh, but if we went back to when we were doing it ourselves, it was a ton of labor labor hours. Um, just going out, sending those bills to collections, getting that stuff back in. I clearly remember having the conversation when Brianna Durst was here. that she was here until 6 or 7 or 8 o'clock at night working through mostly our ambulance billing process. And that didn't even include the staff time we had into it in our building. And that has eliminated, I mean, probably, I don't know, 10 staff hours a week at a minimum doing that to refocus on other things.

One of the things that I have heard, full transparencies. I did field a question through an elected official of why we had to go with a company that was not local. I think it's Pittsburgh, actually, because that's a glaring thing when you get a bill and you have to send payment to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We had people initially who thought it was fraudulent in nature, those types of things. We did look deeply at somebody, even within the state of Nebraska, and we just, there aren't those providers. There's a very small niche group of people that provide this service, and again, it's because of the liability that those companies take on by providing this service to municipalities, so just in case you're asked about that, that does come up occasionally for us.

I think Brianna mentioned that she was working about two to two and a half days a week on ambulance billing alone, and I think it's a three-year contract. We're a couple years into it, so we're couldn't necessarily get out of it right now if we wanted to, but we can evaluate it.

Scott, who does our utility billing? Do we outsource that too?

Water? You mean water and sewer? No, we do that internally, right? Yeah. It's all internal? Yeah.

Okay. Utilities transfer money to the general fund to pay for that service.

Okay.

Well, back to Jim's initial question about this evening. We're getting back on subject here. You know, he's wondering what we're doing tonight as far as what we want to get accomplished. I think, I guess in my mind, I was thinking we were going to come up here and people were going to be adding up to tracking and going back and forth, going back and forth. We really didn't do that. I wasn't really, I don't know if I was 100% prepared going into other funding sources just this right now, but I think probably isn't a bad idea to, we can discuss them. I'm not sure if I'm 100% ready to vote on those funding sources. But if we can just provide some direction for the next particular meeting we have to vote and approve the budget, we would then have that. So I don't mind having a discussion. Sure.

Lyle, if you can jump to the impact summary tab real quick. Just as a baseline, the proposed budget that was brought forward... Scroll down just a little bit right there. Scroll down. Based on $100,000 homeowner valuation, the current proposed budget increases the levy dollar to that homeowner about $1.35 for the 12 months. So just as a context layer for you and your decision-making of adding and subtracting as we go forward, that's kind of where we are baseline at the present with the budget.

Unless the valuations come back differently. Unless the valuations come back. An even, bush, or whatever.

Yep. Correct. Let me uncheck this box here.

So we'll probably know more about that here coming in, what, August 15th, 20th?

That $1.35 Lyle is not going to change. Okay. That's the proposed budget. The next one down would be the change below at the $840 as we check and uncheck things. That'll change that number.

So with the select items adjusted, that's what it is, the negative 840? 840, yep.

It would be relief if you unchecked those expenditures that we showed, the comp study and the parks. Which we did. Yeah, so those net effects are the 280 net effects. If you don't include those back as council priority dollars.

So I'm just a little confused here. As of right now, what we're discussing moving forward is a negative 850 expense.

Essentially, that's what's that's that's the net effect of the check marks that are on the sheet the ones we talked with it either But as you and I discussed that 280 you were anticipated as maintaining in the budget as count priority dollars, correct?

So the dollar 35 is the real impact right now By maintaining those funds in the council priority don't yes Yes, because right now everybody needs to be made aware the council priority dollars are now being fully absorbed by the budget As long as same with keynote dollars, right? So essentially there are no mechanisms to pull if there was someone to come forward or somebody to resign. So I felt like leaving that 280 as, you know, if we've decided to do the comp study or we use the MPBD lease revenue to pay up over the comp study, at least we have those discussions. But if I eliminate that, then there's zero discussion during the fiscal. Anything so because we're just that's where we're at so we've never had that before usually we typically have some council priority dollars We're discussing for things so I was trying to leave some of those funds just for that situation So and John just for a point of clarity for those that are watching online Or don't have a good visual that if the box is checked it's included in this budget proposal if it's not checked It's not is that that's correct.

Just so we're crystal clear. Yeah, that's simple fact. Yep, I

If it's not checked, it's not on the budget. If it is checked, it will affect the budget. Yeah.

And in those three cases that Lyle's showing right now, those are reductions?

Those three items are in the budget today, and those three checks would remove them from the budget.

Just want to make sure that's clear on how that's being presented.

Exactly.

I do think that comp study is important. I also thought the efficiency study was important. But I do think that getting the handle on some things this upcoming fiscal might be a little bit more important than adding those back in at this point in time. But I do think they're very important. So I don't know much about the bumper cars. That's the first I heard about it was just the other day. But you don't have to come forward and talk about it. But it sounds like fun. But I think it's something we'll be open for discussion. Moving forward, but anyway. Any other questions for John or anything you guys want to see done this evening that we're not doing?

So that being said, if we're looking at the NPPD thing, So like, does it just keep rolling out further every month that we put it off?

Or does it go by quarters so that... No, so if we want to pull the trigger and raise it from a 12% to a 12.5%, we essentially just have to give them a 90-day notice. So you just have to go 90 days out from when you approve it.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Yes. Because there are some, if I remember right, that, okay, it's quarterly before you start realizing the benefit.

Yeah. So if we happen to pass this, we have this as potentially maybe a resolution or something in September when the budget gets approved, notifying MPPD, making it starting effective January. That's what's proposed.

So, Jim, I guess are you proposing to leave that in? To add that into this year's fiscal budget? Yes. Okay.

I think, well, that's, I'd send Kylie some thoughts.

Okay, so that would be something that we want to, I'm not necessarily sure we're ready to vote on the revenue sides this evening. No. I think we just talked about all the things we took out this evening and moving into the next meeting, which would be what date?

August 10th.

Moving into August 10th meeting. I think that's where you're gonna be presenting the revenue side of things Whitwell Minimal amount just probably the NPVD lease part of it. Yeah, and what that looks like hopefully by that time.

I mean I'm I've made a fair dent in my work on the revenue, but hopefully by that meeting I should have more factual information around some of those impacts to those drivers and

And you could just practice yelling at me. I'm sorry, Sue.

I'll just remind you, John. Yeah, thank you. All right. Well, anybody else? Because right now I'm ready to adjourn. Anybody opposed to that? All right. Thanks, John, for your hard work this evening. I think we're good. I see no one else. So we will adjourn.