City Council - Special Meeting

I call to order this special session of the city council. Having taken having a quorum, we will proceed. We had no one sign up for the public forum. Uh recorder Smith, the report of the minutes. Are there any changes, corrections, or additions to the minutes? None. The minutes stand as posted. We have no unfinished business this even. Ask the first questions pertaining to tonight's But the first questions pertaining to tonight's budget discussion discussion.

Oh, I thought Oh, I thought I was going to get to dur this meeting right there. It was so It was so close. Go ahead, bro. I have a few questions. Uh, one's regarding it, Mr. Holmes. Yes. Um, I noticed you have a three-year replacement program for the PCs.

That's correct. about the senior center. I'm just over here in my corner. I'm dead.

So, I take it the um the phone in the elevator is fixed. Yes. Um Garrett came up with a solution that is satisfactory to the elevator company and the elevator inspector. Um the hard line didn't didn't happen, but he got able phones in there that we just swap out, make sure they're charged, and the inspector said that's fine as long as there's somebody to man it during open hours. So, good there. All right. Thank you, Liz. Appreciate it. That's all I have.

Mr. Sassy, uh, first item is for you, Chad. Um, you have your list of your goals and objectives that you'd like to say to accomplish between uh July of 2026 and June of 2027. We are finalizing goals and objectives for the next year. Okay. Because usually those tie in with the budget. That's what I was asking. Absolutely.

Okay. So, that's question number one. Uh, question number two goes to Stephanie in HR. Thanks for sharing information with me. Uh, do we have a plan of how our personnel across the different departments is going to look like over the next several years? Because you're going to have people retire, you're going to replace certain people, are we going to fill positions for attrition? Are we going to put down a head gun or all that type of stuff? Has anything like that?

It has. We could take this uh in part. We have already actually started doing some of those actions. uh we have had individuals that have retired this past year and through collective evaluation between myself uh HR and finance we have not uh filled those positions. Um the one exception to that is the parks director position that we still have budgeted for in line item. But the other positions uh we haven't treated through. They weren't department head positions. they were staff positions um and their workload through evaluation has been distributed to other employees within the city uh and that is functioning exceptionally well. We're very pleased with the the return on investment in that. We know and we just had this conversation uh this past week uh in looking at our retirement plan and so forth. Uh we know that over the course of the next two to four years uh we are going to have several key retirements through that. Um several of those are in department head positions. Um and when they decide to retire those positions will be filled. Uh but depending upon the regular employee workload. Uh if those individuals retire we still have availability to fill them um based upon the current need. uh in some of those positions like I said we have deemed that we did not need to do that in others we we have filled um so we'll continue to go forward and work them as they arise we'll continue to go forward and work them as they arise

Stephanie gave me that we have 78 fulltime and 10 part-time employees as of March. Uh I brought this up last year, got chastised for it. I don't care. I want to talk about it again. Uh when we look at our total revenue coming in, it's 11,926 536. And we're going to need one because if you take a look at the ratio of how much are personal services plus contract services adds up over the years. It's gone from 71.5% up to now 75.9%. So your delta keeps shrinking. It keeps increasing. So you're going to have less money to pay as a city. The last thing I want to see is somebody come back later and say we have to have city tax. We really need to start looking at our costs. And I know you've looked at the costs from a spent standpoint, but the biggest piece of the puzzle from a spent standpoint is salaries and benefits. And that's why I was asking about was people who retired the nutrition plan and all that other stuff because you got to play the shuffle game eventually. That's what I got right now. and we are addressing those and Amy and

I sit down and daily have conversation multiple times throughout the day about uh where our resources come from, how we spend them and how we um allot funding Um imagine that it would continue to work in such fashion. Who has questions. I

I will tell you that the the budget process u that uh we have and that we've been uh operating with um I'm I'm very happy with with what we've come to and what we've put forward. Uh I sat along with Amy with all of our um department heads went over their budget um and we kept budgets, operating budgets uh either flat um or below. Um and we also were able to uh very successfully figure in a 3% raise across the board uh for all of our employees uh plus their longevity. Um and we are still uh below the mark um on where we were the previous year. And if you re remember last year, we went even below the mark then. Uh so I'm very uh confident in our uh budget this year and where we're going and believe it sets ourselves up to be a very strong financially u resilient municipality uh and to be able to meet the the needs that arise and that uh pop up occasionally uh when things happen. So very confident with that. Anyone else? Do any of the department heads have anything that they would like to add in general?

You have a question? Yes, I do. On theification budget, the budget amount this year is this coming fiscal year is less than this year. Is that going to be enough to be able to do what you need to do? Yeah, it is because last two years, if you remember, we did the pollinator garden area. So, our expenses were a lot higher then. So, we're not into that right now. So,

a question I guess for you, mayor, when in the budget people have been asking for say salary increases for particular employees, how is that determined? I I know just because they ask for it, it doesn't necessarily happen. How do you determine whether or not those those persons within that department are granted those increases? So there are currently no increase in salary that are separate salary or hourly that are separate from the 3%.

Everybody's that same across the board there. No one's getting any more or any less. It's a flat rate across all city employees. Um that applies equally.

The other question I had, Mr. Le, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Reporter, myself, and Tony, sometimes are all in attendance at the utility meetings. We know at most of utility board meetings there's talk of the need to increase the pay rate for new employees because we're not able to attract employees. talking about retirements and and so forth. Is that something that is within this budget process or is that something that's totally separate? How does that work?

So what we have have done is taken the the lowest pay scale uh for an employee depending on what category was an S class or a Cclass or whatever it is. So this year, whatever the lowest pay scale is for an individual, um, say if our starting pay right now is $16, but our lowest paid employee is 1725, we have adjusted that and that is now our new starting pay. So no employee will start less than what is currently being paid on the book. So they don't have to play catchup when they get hired. they're coming in at it's the lowest pay scale obviously um but that's how we have increased that in years past we've given raises but we haven't adjusted the starting pay so by doing this we adjust our starting pay so that when that new hire comes in they're already at a place comparable where that

you know employed the 3% to the starting rate So that that would be the new starting wage for the city.

But I guess my understanding was with this discussions of the employees and utility board new employees that wasn't enough to really attract people. So is there room for improving that? because I almost to see the city get to a point where we don't have people that are trained and certified to be able to do the work that they need to do. So our pay our pay scales are set at entry level for a particular purpose. We are not uh targeting you know the individual who and what I'm just completely using this as an example. uh our pay scale is not set up to target in an entrylevel position a 45year-old individual married three children mortgage all of those things

I'm talking about job duties

right so when you're when you're looking at entrylevel classifications we have actually what do I want to say increased our efficiency in our hiring over the course of the last year um in how we market, how we hire, and how we actually put together what the benefit package is. Yes, I understand that, you know, somebody could say, "I can go to Hobby Lobby and make $19 an hour, maybe, but there's no health care, there's no vision, there's no dental, there's no retirement plan that you're being paid into, there's no comp time, there's no sick time, there's none of these things." we have increased our communication to the viable pool of individuals that are applying to identify these things and go over and we're filling our ranks. Um, you know, I think we've had one individual uh over the course of the last year say I'm not taking that job because of the pay out of the several individuals that we we have hired. Um, I don't know necessarily that it's a or I don't believe right now that it's a concern because we are uh filling our ranks and and filling those vacancies. Um, if it got to a a point, yes, that nobody is in the world's wanting to hire, but eventually you max yourself out some to, you know, Henry's point, there's a cap. But we just can't in a municipality, we just can't continue to raise pay and raise pay and raise pay and raise pay and expect, you know, because we've got limited resources in revenue. So, in this case, I'm very confident uh in how HR is is currently functioning and operating. Um, and I'm very pleased with the response that we've gotten back. We put out our pay

scale when we put out a job in um the last time you did public works. We had what probably 20 apply? Yeah, probably um that applied and through the process, you know, we hired you know. Yeah, two of those um you know that that got through. And how many vacancies do we currently have in I think there's only one. there's only there's only one vacant two um which is much better a much better position than we're at now when I do orientation I am now teaching the younger group that you know we we do have good benefits and I know a lot of times