City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm going to have heard this. That's what I'm doing. Your door is locked. Hello.

Hi, Crystal. Good. How are you? Good. Check the phone. City clerk. Mark, is this set up? I I like I don't like staring at that like I like to look at these.

Oh, okay. Like what? No, no, it's my presentation isn't on here, but I'll just use your laptop. Yeah. Well, how well no one else can see if it's not on the screen.

Oh, okay. America.

Okay, we're ready to start with Mr. Kingsley, Community and Economic Development. Good evening everyone. Um I have been charged with uh delivering two budgets this evening. One is our department's budget and the other is our department's you know thoughts on what perhaps the um eastn celebration of the 250th birthday of the country might look like and um how resources that have been identified might be used. So I'm going to start with the department budget. We'll kind of go through that quickly. um take any questions you have, any input you have um will go into the the 250th budget. So um starting with the summary of our budget, and I gave everybody a copy of the um hard copy of this, so you have it. Um our budget this year is actually about a $30,000 deer decrease year-over-year, which is about 4% of our total budget. Um the large line item of decrease is our general salaries. were actually losing a position in this context. That was the program administrator position that was per um previously held by Rachel who left um in May of this year. Um so that would be removed. Um we talking about a few small increases to kind of offset the reduction in headcount. So um our education and training would also be decreased by a thousand dollars. the increases are along the advertising and promotion to continue our work with GDP as it relates to the um the uh strategic marketing plan that we're doing for the purposes of destination marketing and business recruitment and and attraction. Um there's also a increase in here which is contemplated in the context of the ARPA the final ARPA allocation. So $25,000 to GDP um through um their their funding which is ARPA funding that is funding uh GP's um line item. And then um management services are increased by $6,600

um to from fund um additional professional services for our recruitment and retention activities. again, a position that was vacated when when Rachel left. So, um, those really are are kind of a nutshell of what is happening with our budget. Again, we're talking about a $30,000 decrease in the budget year over year. There are questions related to that. I'm happy to get into them before we uh get into kind of a summary of like, you know, the department and um and our activities for the year.

Okay. Not hearing anything. Staff for the department remains the same. It's myself, Trevor, and Olivia. Again, we did lose one position, but she was only with us for a short period of time. Redevelopment authority staff is the same as it was last year. We have five people that uh that make make up the uh the redevelopment authority. Myself as the executive director, Mike Brett, our deputy director, Sarah Addings, our fiscal and grant administrator, Kelly Joseph, our rehabilitation program manager, and then Tara Roach Pritchette who is our fiscal technician. Um it's important to remember that the redevelopment authority is actually not paid for um through the city's budget. Is actually paid for through the administrative um components of a variety of grants that are um that are managed through the redevelopment authority, including the community development block grant program and the home program. So, as it relates to highlights for this year, um we were awarded $1.1 million in additional um grants largely focused in parks and downtown improvements. um RDA affordable housing project at Locust Street um and the Highline Elevated Park which is actually going through additional um pending review before that grant can be final. Um there are $5.1 million in new grant applications that were submitted that we are waiting for a decision. We have 23 applications that were written in total in house. our completed administration. We closed out 11.7 million dollars in um in grants and that includes three large rack PS. Um it is important to note that when we get funding awarded, that's a great thing when we can actually show that we've um we've spent it and and close those grants out with no further responsibility on behalf of the city as grantee. That's when we've really completed the task. Um, we've also raised $45,000 in private philanthropy for our partners um mostly through for

the Grey Reason Development Partnership and Eastn Area School District for their robotics program. As it relates to the East and Iron Metal program, we've now completed the um remediation plan and we are preparing to bid that remediation plan. We also completed our work on Winter Village 2024 um and uh led program and committee and planning for 2025. And you can what is happening with the Winter Village so far this year, which I think has been very successful. Our current numbers to date on the attendance are showing a significant increase year-over-year, but you know, we're obviously only two weeks into that process. Um, we also completed our outdoor dining program for year six, which we're going to talk a little bit about the the income that came from that in a moment. As it relates to the RDA, the RDA is now firmly in round two of the residential facade program. We've actually completed 90 projects to date on the for um as it relates to the facade program. We have about 28 more to complete which we will do by the end of 2026 when the ARPA funds that are being used to fund that program are going to expire. So we've made a lot of progress in in there and uh only have a few more yet to to complete. as it relates to RDA affordable housing projects. Completed two units of groundup owner occupied affordable housing. Um, one of them was uh was recently transacted and closed and the other one is um pending with a qualified buyer. We've completed 824 Ferry Street, our church project. Um the four affordable housing rental units that were completed in that contest are now fully occupied. Um, as it relates to um the the uh the budget and the revenue that we bring into the city, I want to give you guys a complexion of like how we um are offsetting the cost of the department through um the untethered revenue that

we're bringing. So, we bring in a fair amount of unrestricted revenue into the city. A total of $245,450 was realized in 2025. That's from winter village income, outdoor dining fees, rack p administration fees, and other grant administration um uh programmatic uh uses that we could allocate against department costs. So if you were to put that against 2026 salaries, which obviously our 2025 salaries were a little different because we have an additional head in those um salaries. Um if you compare them, we're covering 99 90% of our salary through um revenue um that we're bringing into the city. And I intend that that will always be the case that we will always be trying to find ways to bring um unrestricted revenue into the city to offset our cost as it relates to outstanding um you know uh kind of portfolio for our grants. That's on the last page of my presentation. You'll see as it currently stands we were annualized grant awards since April of 22 through um September of 2025. We're about four We're just over $4 million. Current active grants are now over 8.8 million. Um, and our total 2026 budget is obviously a small portion of that. We also have $13.5 million in applications that have been submitted that we're awaiting um or awaiting decision on. So, that's an overview of our grant, the work that we've done um year to date. um happy to take any questions or um any thoughts that you may want to share.

Mayor, yes. Just just for the record, I I think we're making I I I looked in the budget and I can't replace it. I don't have the ability to replace it. I I didn't find a way, but this department brings so much revenue and does so much for the city. I think we should be looking in the future of investing more into the department instead of cuts over a quarter mill uh over a4 million dollars brought in in 2025 unrestricted. We should look at ways of making more and not cutting positions going forward and looking at ways we can replace positions to generate generate more revenue for the city uh through this department. That's all. What are your suggestions?

I I I don't have them on this budget, mayor. I went through and I just didn't find a place a way to uh replace it and keep the balance the budget balanced. So, I don't have one um this year. Um the only the only reason you bring that up is to add more people and and what you said was cut people. We didn't cut anyone. We have that one position that's open. Correct. Fill it. Right. Well, that's what I mean. We cut a position, not a person. But I mean, sorry. We cut a position which I think we can utilize another position to generate more revenue for the city. Huh?

The two items that we have the dining outdoor east San Francisco fresco and the winter village we we have the staff is working on getting money in and I don't think you're getting any more than that. That's that's a good income. No, absolutely. I agree. But I think by the way that income is fees not not sponsorships, right? I think there's there's other things we can do. I think we could do more than just what we're doing now. And I think, you know, if we have more staff, we could realize more things. Well, city council upped the fee for East and Al Frisco this year and that brought in the $20,000,

right? But I'm not talking about fees. I'm talking about positions to think outside the box and do more things just just to be able to bring more things into the city, more ways to generate revenue. My concern about your feeling of adding positions is those positions are there every year and you you will come a time when maybe you don't have East San Francisco anymore. You will come a time when we don't have the Winter Village anymore possibly. Um those are $40,000 that you're bringing in, but they're bringing in because of charges that we charge, not because of sponsorships.

Correct. But we're able to charge that because the department what the department brings to those services and people pay for it because of what we do. For example, we set it up. Um our public works does so much. I'm just asking or or if we look at next year of ways to invest more to bring more revenue in the city. Not not in the same thing we're doing, but see if there's other options we can do besides al Fresco and other things. The easiest thing to do is add people. We all every department needs people. Dave Hopkins isn't isn't up yet, but his Department of Public Works is so underfunded since I was here in the 80s, right? It was underfunded. It's it's I remember when we had 12 people in the parks department, 16 in the highway department. We don't have that anymore. I

I I don't disagree, but in this department specifically, we just saw in numbers, they're funding their positions by 90%. We're only funding at 10%. So I I just think there's way we should look at it is all I'm asking look at it next year as ways to invest in that department to generate more revenue. That that's fine. But all I'm saying you you add people you add that every year to your budget. Understand?

This administration worked very hard. We busted our chops to get a budget that was balanced but yet didn't call for a major tax increase. And you want to add in police officers, you want to add now the DCD. I said that that's money. That's I well and I'm not asking to add a DCD this year and you're right and and the administration yourself mayor uh everybody involved has done an amazing job in the city but times have changed and we're growing and I think we need to make sure our services are growing with it and and I think unfortunately we're lacking in some services that that I'd like to see picked up in the future not you know to go overboard but at least to match what we should be doing. I I I um and here what we're we're talking about right now. If we're getting $40,000 just from the uh Richmond village, that number could change. It can go down, it can go up. So, we really don't know. So, based on that number, we don't want to put another person in the position. We won't be able to fund it exactly what you're doing right now. Um and and and I I also agree that in the future we have to start looking at uh as many people coming in to the city as many services going to be added on that we need to get to. But not I don't think this budget uh can absorb that right now.

I agree. Hence the reason I asked if we can start looking at it for the 27 budget.

Dr. was um I seem to recall that last year we asked Oh, sorry. Uh we asked you this question. Um exactly. Um do you need another person? Right. I I think we asked that last year at budget time. Um my question on that was because of the grants that we're writing now. you're you're you're you're giving us a 90% number on unrestricted revenue. Um I mean I I I there's not a number that is associated with all of the grants that came in. I mean there's a number of all the grants that came in but you know how much of a benefit that has had for the city. Yeah. So my bigger concern is do we have enough people to where we can match the number of grants that are out there with applications? I mean you you can only do so much and right and so uh there may be more grants available out there that we're just not getting.

And my question is how is that balanced with staff?

Yeah. And I I I think that's you did bring this up at our at our my last budget uh presentation, Dr. Rose, and and the um I I think you even suggested, well, why don't we look at maybe growing the number even beyond that which um you know uh the the one the position that is going to be kind of put on hold for a time being you suggested and at the time I was like let's wait and see what activity level is like. And I mean one thing we have seen is that you know the the the federal grant side is a much more complicated landscape than it was last year. I think we kind of thought going into it we'd have a number of opportunities there. Um one of which I um actually identified in here. The one related to the highline is sort of in a holding position because of the complexities we're running into with the federal government as it relates to these um these specific uh programs. And I and I think that's something we're going to be seeing for um you know for the foreseeable future. So that federal um side is definitely more complicated, but there are a lot of state opportunities that I still think we could be seizing on and have access to that uh that more people would be helpful in being able to to write those grants. I also think that there's several things that we're not doing in terms of the Bizard recruitment and retention plan strategy that we're putting together that we really needed an individual kind of to take ownership over rather than kind of doing that ad hoc between our department um the main street program um and some of the other we'll call it community hubs that exist across the city. This is something where we really needed to be coordinated well. So I at some point, yes, I I I think that position is going to be really warranted. Um, and I and I I would hope at some point we can revisit it.

I was a little off of what you were asking, but I just wanted to uh insert that we did ask at at that particular I remember an additional position there last year, but more for grant writing than additional revenue type streams. And and last year we had the existing position that we're eliminating this year for 26. So we're we're essentially down one from when you asked that question at the beginning of 25. That's all I have. Any else, John?

Uh we're going to move on to the 250th budget real quickly. Okay. So, um, and I'm gonna ask Trevor to kind of participate in this discussion, um, as well because between the two of us, we kind of took the, um, you know, the concept around the 250th and kind of thought, um, deeply about the ways that we could use resources to help the city celebrate its history. Um, and I want to do this kind of through three different kind of prongs. One is, you know, kind of the aesthetics of the city and trying to present the city in the rightly. We're going to have a rare opportunity here to seize upon um a lot of work that Philadelphia is doing related to the 250th. We're already being told there's going to be a lot of spillover effect to surrounding communities and I know that they have been reaching out to um organizations like the discovered Lehigh Valley organization understand what room nights in the Lehigh Valley are going to look at look like with um all of the activities they plan to have around this. So, we want to present the city um in the right fashion. We want to create some programming um and some activities that would be supportive of the community and engage the community um in its history and in celebration of the city um and where it is currently. And then finally, we have to kind of promote all of this. So, with that being said, we'll kind of walk through the items that we've kind of identified and some general numbers we came up for each of those items. So, in the summary page, you're going to see first we have um we have fire works, which have long been a component of the heritage day. um experience. We're promoting kind of like the idea of a heritage day weekend um or a heritage weekend um in this context. So there would be programming not only on heritage day but also on the day following and the fireworks would be kind of culmination of more the city and I call it community celebration of the 250th. Um talked about the aesthetic side. We'd like to include projection in that aesthetics presentation. We obviously have uh 10 different projectors that we currently have

operating in the city uh when we use them largely during the winter village um and some ancillary um uses along other holidays. We most recently used them to celebrate the um Phil the uh Eastn um Red Rovers success um and also did it to kind of promote the Lehigh Lafayette game. Um so we're going to want to do more with that, but we also want to do it inside of um the 250th, you know. Um, and the way that we would do that is we would do a heightened level of presentation on four buildings along um, North and South Third Street coming into the circle and we would map those buildings to give an experience that uh, that really celebrates, you know, um, the country and the city's history. And I'll show you a little bit of what that'll look like in a moment. Um, we're also talking about a potential uh, community picnic and riverfront, you know, kind of festival. I really think we don't necessarily, while I love our festivals and events, I think they're wonderful. A lot of times they're just attracting people from the outside into the city. I really wanted to give the city and its community an opportunity to celebrate its its background and its future. Um, and this is something that we do to give back to the community where the families could come down and be part of a picnic experience, one where they they would be the center. It would be the celebration of our community as opposed to the celebration of bacon or something to that effect. Um, and we'd have food, music, water activities. We're talking about the potential for um a a tubing experience that perhaps we could work in concert with one of our um businesses in the downtown Two Rivers tubing and in kind of creating. Um so a number of things in that and uh we'll kind of go through each of the different costs as we're going through the the the pages themselves. We also want to do some business decorations and activations with the businesses similar to do what we're trying to do with the winter

village this year which is get the businesses to participate in providing programming related to the 250th but also in creating the presentation you know that celebrates the city. Um we want to put light poles and facade banners and flags to really give the city you know some sheen during all of this. um do some promotion with a billboard at 22 and 25th Street. Um we're going to be working with Discover Lehigh Valley. Actually, we're already in the context of working with the LV about a potential mural in the downtown. They're actually going to be doing three in each of the cities um in the Lehigh Valley. So, they're doing one in Allentown, one in Bethlehem, and one in East. We're already working on a potential location for that, and they will um cover the cost of the installation of the mural and the maintenance of the mural. um general preparation. We know there's going to have to be a lot of work done there. So, we've kind of activated a little bit of money for the purposes of doing um you know, power washing and other things to clean up the city. So, the firewalks this works display and I'll kind of defer to the mayor because I think he has his own vision on what the fireworks display might look like, but I think we're talking about something along the line of about a 20 minute, you know, kind of choreographed firework display that would be, you know, um perhaps bigger than things that we've done in the past for Heritage Day and uh you know, more um you know, uh programmed if you will. as it relates to the aggra the architectural projection. We would add two new projectors to our um our contingency that would give us a total of 12. We would then have three for each building, which is approximately what we would need to be able to cover the faces of each of the buildings we're proposing. We would purchase two additional smaller projectors that would work on the monument and allow us to use that as part of the overall presentation. These would be mapped custom design um projections. We will work with a local Eastn business that we've been working

with on our projections from the beginning um to be in assembling those and they're bringing a lot of the technology um and even manufacturing ability inhouse to be able to help us deliver this. So you can get some ideas on the the pages that I'm referring to in terms of what these projections might look like. The bottom ones what I'm talking about when I when I talk about mapped projections. Oh, yeah. I was I was just going to chime in and say in terms of the mapping projections, like what we're working with now is sort of like a um basically like any projector you would have in a in a classroom or something like that. Um mapping means that they're going to be the actual slide is going to be customized to the shape of the building you're trying to light up so that it kind of like accents the detail of that building rather than kind of like fully blasting the building with the projection. Um, and you know, these would be things that we would use to activate the circle during the festival, but we would be able to

use them leading up. Yeah. Use them in the leadup and also be able to use them after the fact, right? So, it's sort of an investment asset we'd be able to use for future events in the city. As an example, after 250, we'll be able to use that mapping that we have to uh do something different with the monument. But because we have the mapping already, it gives us the ability to do a lot of different things. Yeah. question. Mayor, maybe you can answer this. With the fireworks this year, are we looking to do a a show somewhat with the uh differently than uh we do in the past? It'll be better or with I mean some areas I mean we're not Philadelphia, New York, but some do with music. No, they spell they spend 100,000$1,000,

but I thought maybe uh you know some some places do it like with uh with music. We can choreograph it to music. I mean, that's not a problem for this. Um, we use, um, Garden State Fireworks, which is out of New Jersey. Um, we could use that. They do that. But, um, what they told us this year was that next year. Figure it to be double because there'll be so so in so much demand in next year, 250. Every city will have fireworks. So to that point, Mayor,

you're increasing the firework budget about 20,000 from your normal 55,000. I up until you just said that, I was under the impression we're going to do something much different, but that's going to be the typical cost going forward. Typical cost will be about $12,000. We're going to add uh enough to go up to about 20, which we expect to raise five of that, at least five. Okay. Um, so we do expect this to be bigger and more grand than what we normally do. Yeah. And I apologize, Dr. Um, good. An idea came to me, so I'll just throw it out there. Sure.

But these projectors, it'd be nice if we could find a location where we could display that with a message board. I mean, we we've talked for many years about how do we get information out? And you know, Palmer has the messy courts and so forth. You know, if we could project it, that would be another way of of getting something out. But just throwing that out there. No, the only thing would project and correct me if I'm wrong is they stand they they are standstills.

They are. And you're absolutely right, Councilman. They are they are um these are projecting um an a kind of analog image. So, it's it's actually on what's known as a gobo, which is sort of basically serves as a piece of like film that is it's the light is projecting through and actually casting that image. We we can't alter the image unless we alter the gobo, which gets to be fairly complicated. Obviously, what you're talking about is something that would be a digital projection where we can actually control that with any computer device. We're looking at that. We're we'll definitely have next year. John,

the goos, what what do they cost per? So, we we're gonna have the projectors, but to do different events, different things, we got to buy updated goos for that. That's all contemplated in the budget we've put together, um they're about $500 a piece. The beauty of the situation that we have is our um colleagues at uh 3D Mention Media, which is again a business um in um in the city. It's located on Bushkill. Um it is uh it's located in the old circle systems building if everybody's familiar with where that location is. Oh, the manager there. They do

history. Um they uh they will they can do all of the custom fabrication inhouse for us now to be able to create these things rather than having they had um a uh a partner located um in Italy that was actually producing these pieces which became kind of expensive. So now they're going to have the ability to be able to render it in house. They're also going to have the ability to be able to do all of the the mapping design work that we would be doing for the buildings. Love local. Yes, I love local. That's what we're doing.

And let me go back real quickly and just say with every one of these items that we're going over there we is with most of them anyway, the the intention is to try to get matching funds to help support that initiative. So, as the mayor mentioned on the fireworks site, we're expecting the city's budget contribution would be $20,000. We would go out and find $5,000 and match either through sponsorships or other um other support on the art. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um we would be probably involved in helping to identify sponsors. We've done that for the Winter Village for um since its in its uh its incarnation and and certainly feel comfortable doing it here as well. I think we'll also look to our partners, the Greater Eastern Development Partnership to help us do that as well. So, there would be a combination of organizations working to to raise those funds. I'm going to let Trevor respond that he's worked with the LB250th.

So, we have been going they they don't really have any money to fund themselves, let alone fund, you know, they're not really issuing grants. The the state was issuing some grant the like PA250 was issuing some grants. Um, but those were very small and limited to one to one per county. I think Arts Quest got something like5 or $10,000 and that was the only award in our county. So, um, they they are not giving out money. In fact, they almost had to cut their only staff member um, but we're I don't know where they got the money from to extend her, but she had been through a uh national humanities grant previously. So are are you're talking about like the other cities in the Lehigh Valley,

Crystal?

Yeah. Um, so there just to give you a little bit of um additional insight into that, I don't know that the the cities themselves are budgeting an awful lot for the 250th, but they do have, you know, some third-party um relationships that are putting money into um 250th activation. Like for instance, I I believe if I'm correct, um the Anizda, which is the um neighborhood improvement zone development authority in Allentown, um has put some resources towards for instance a Liberty Bell um that that they are purchasing through the state. I think they I don't I don't know a lot about that program, but I know the state was sponsoring trying to get these things located in various communities and making that part of a kind of a trail that people would follow through um the state during the 250th. So, they're doing things like that through partners. Um I can't I I don't know exactly what Bethlehem is doing, but I do know that that is the case within Allentown that they do have some partners that are funding 250th related activities. I can also say that there the county um prioritized 250 related activities for the hotel tax grant that they will announce in the upcoming weeks. So um I think you'll see cities and municipalities paying for 250 related events out of that which requires a match of some sort. Um but you know I think that we went a different way in terms of our our grant priorities versus budget priorities. There are many many pros about being a small city. We are the smallest of the three cities. But the con is that all of our corporations are outside the city limits. So we can't go to Crayola like they can go um Allentown Mac Trucks still use Allentown as their address even though we're over country township. And so they go to Mac Trucks and Mac Trucks donates $20,000 to the cause. And

that's unfortunate for East and we are only 4 and a half square miles. Everybody is outside the city limits. So I can't go to Victoria. I can't go to Crayola. I mean we can because Crayola experience and Crayola has been very good. Lafayette College has been uh Louis and I met with them last Friday and they offered to um do a number of uh like one of the one of the things they're going to do is they're going to match our concert that we're going to have with the circle down at the circle. Is that 200? They're they're I mean they're 200 anniversary. We're only 50 years older than them. Amazing. Are we ready to move on to the next slide then at that point?

Okay. Um so moving on real quickly on the um projection side, we are proposing a $20,000 city budget and we would attract additional $10,000 in either sponsorship or match funds. And um to answer your uh your question, Councilwoman Rose, it is my expectation that yes, we can get sponsorships for things like um the projection work and I do think that be able to bring in an additional $10,000 in support of that. Um so moving on to the next item. Um as I mentioned before, I mean, we'd love to do, you know, get get the community more engaged in in things related to the history of the city. I think in in my own personal opinion as it relates to the um Heritage Day um experience, it's a great it's it is I really enjoy Heritage Day very much. I think it's a really neat experience, but I don't see a lot of people coming from the community to be a part of that and and I I don't know why that is and I'm not going to try to like hypothesize about that, but I do think that there's an opportunity for us to culminate this into a community picnic where we can engage, you know, our re our residents in coming downtown and being part of a program to celebrate them and this city. And I and I think we can do this on the riverfront. We could do something fun in terms of an outdoor cookout. perhaps have celebrity chefs in that kind of experience where people can engage with public officials and others um in that context and really feel a sense of you know um a neighborhood if you will and at the same time provide them kind of a family you know outdoor you know fun experience set I I I haven't had formal conversations yet with Two Rivers Tubing about this but I'd like to explore the opportunity of them working in partnership with us to do like a mini tubing experience where maybe you get on um at uh you know um in river uh riverfront or riverside park and then you're kind of floating down to the boat launch um and we have people in there

kind of making sure that everyone is safe and accounted for and then providing them the tubing uh you know equipped to be able to do to have that experience. There's also been discussions about perhaps long gate, you know, making that a longer trip and doing something akin to Derrier on the Delaware if everyone remembers that experience. And I think all of this, you know, should be kind of explored to be a neat way to get our, you know, our community excited about something like this.

Our our thinking with this was was twofold. One, um that a big obstacle for Heritage Day has been the heat, right? You know, it's the height of the summer. It's 100 degrees out. So having like the cooling elements um to try to keep people down there and keep people comfortable. And secondly, thinking about cost as a barrier for people participating in the festivals, right? So you know if you are going to any of the festivals downtown, you're lucky to walk out for under $100 for a family of four for a meal, right? So, our thinking being like we want people to feel like they could come that it's not going to be a a a big budgeted event or anything like that and that we're just trying to like recoup part of part of our cost to make the b the budget work here. So, you know, the goal would be that people feel like it's accessible, right? Because the like what is more kind of American than a Fourth of July barbecue, right? So, you're just going to come down, you're going to have a good time, you're going to have keep it really simple and seeing this as like not, you know, not Winter Village, not Bacon Fest, not Garlic Fest. It's like very much like a less is more kind of thing, right? You know, you're getting a hamburger, you're getting a hot dog, you're getting some chips, playing in a sprinkler, you know, listening to music. That's that's pretty much the event. And just having a moment to celebrate the community. um and trying to keep it affordable to to us and to the the people who are visiting and having that kind of culminate into the fireworks. So, this is sort of a day an end of day mid midday end of day experience.

John, if I may and mayor, this might be more towards you. You moved the fireworks back downtown last year and and one of the pros were we didn't have heritage day on Sunday. people weren't gathered. But doing this picnic, to your point, would then have everybody gathered on Larry Holmes Drive, which we don't want for safety purposes for the fireworks. So, if we do do it, we might have to cut it off significantly early. So, we don't have people congregating down there for the fireworks, which is why we moved in the first place.

And I think that I'm sorry, Councilwoman, you go. If I if I could just briefly clarify, I think that the slide

the way that it's written is maybe confusing, but we were anticipating that 30,000 being the total. So, it would be $15,000 raised, not 30, though. I mean, point taken, but I just wanted to clarify. and we haven't but I think with Lafayette's 200th we can we can go to Lafayette. They were very receptive to us when Lewis and I went up there last last Friday. Um they were very receptive to joining in on the 250th and and and matching some of our funds. So if we went up there then to sponsor the um picnic, I think they would. But I do believe that because we didn't discuss this internally yet, but I do believe that it might be a different weekend. Okay?

It might be a different weekend. It might not be here each day. It may be just a community picnic and I think we would get a lot of people there anyway. I don't think a little different but not unrelated. We talk about Heritage Day and it's a small community event.

Sure. I and and and I'm going to throw Jared on the spot. Mayor, if you don't mind, maybe he could weigh in as well. I want to hear from whoever. When I was growing up, Heritage Day was the event was huge. It was It was It was It blew away Baconfest, everything else that we know today. What h where what's the change? It was hot then, right? Does I mean, what do you guys see that's the change to where it's not or am I just getting old? I mean, and I'm not just picking on Jared. Anybody can answer, but while he's here, I'd like to hear if he has an opinion, too. But it used to be a huge event.

It it Yeah, it might be. I'd like to hear what everybody thinks. it maybe that's that's the case but you know the whole downtown was just packed shut down for for the fireworks then we went I mean for the uh heritage day then we had the fireworks I mean it was just a big thing and it it it definitely has fallen off in the last 10 years I just don't know what the exact issue is just from my own from my own position before Jared gives an exhaustive overview I mean one of the things it was it was more of like a festival feeling to it I mean and I and I think we took some of that festival feeling, you know, from it. Yes. I mean, I think it was two days change in how much hotter it is today than 20 years ago. But what climate is on? No, it doesn't matter.

They could probably um

we adopted GDP adopted Heritage Day right before the pandemic and um had two virtual programming years. So, just a virtual reading on the Declaration of Independence. If the chief of police were here, I think he would talk about some of the problems that Heritage Day historically had with the the what I call that kind of mischief inclination, you know, interactions between Philsburg and and East and just um kind of like a an alternative mischief at as opposed to the day before Halloween. So, um there are things you could do to mitigate that and we we have discussed those over the years. Um, but we were taking our lead from the city in terms of it limiting the carnival aspect on Larry Holmes Drive and also pulling back from the fireworks piece which brings out a lot of people. Um, you know, the riverfront is a great place to watch fireworks. whether or not you you agree with fireworks as a as an entertainment venue because of you know veterans or pets or whatever, you know, there's there's it's a great place to watch fireworks if you if you're one of those people. So, we kind of started on the back foot. I would say eliminating fireworks, eliminating the carnival, two years of co

enhancing history. and really enhanced history, you know, trying to push history in partnership with the Seagull Museum and our history partners in LB250 last year.

So, looking at 2026, we've gotten a verbal commitment from the state of Pennsylvania for what's called a big stage grant. Um, we're trying to double down on history in the morning with our partners and then we have in the ballpark of 40 to $50,000 worth of music booked through that big stage grant for Heritage Day itself. So, trying to bring people back for live music, free. I know John took a a shot at, you know, Baconfest being um an event focused on bacon, but I think all of our our events that we do bring people together for free entertainment and whether you choose to buy food or not is Yeah, there's there's a decision there. There's a price point. Um but we're trying to provide high quality free entertainment this year to

it's free entry. Free entry.

Free entry at a level that like I think will be proud of. So we have our own plans for Heritage Day. Um Her day weekend, I think, can be a bigger celebration with different components that different people control. We don't we don't own the whole weekend. We don't own the parks. We're trying to put our attention into Heritage Day. I think to the mayor's point, a 250 picnic, if that's what we're calling it, you know, celebration of America's 250 doesn't have to be on the Sunday before the fireworks. It could be on a different Sunday. Um, my encouragement to John and Trevor is if they are going to weave the picnic into fireworks is the the police department needs to to commit to additional staffing and there needs to be consideration of additional lighting because the current version of Scott Park after hours, whether it's live at the falls or rose on the river tearing down with volunteers, is dark. It's incredibly dark on Scott Park in Scott Park and on Laring Homes Drive. So, if there's a strategy to bring in outside lighting that you can kind of turn on after the fireworks um wind down and if the police is supportive of bringing in additional staff, I know that's overtime. I think that could be a good version of the event, but honestly, we're I don't even want to use the term gunshy. We're we're reticent to to bring fireworks back to Heritage Day where we're trying to bring let's say 10 to 20,000 people downtown for history in the morning followed by Americana festival in the late afternoon into early evening.

Yeah. I think just having the discussion on what we want Heritage Day to to to become I think is is good. The history is great, right? But if you're from East, you can only hear the declaration be re reenacted so many times, right? Like you could most Estonians can recite it with the group now. Um, so we're not really attracting city residents anymore for that because we've experienced it our whole lives, right? So maybe, you know, looking at other things to try to get the draw of not just visitors but but city residents. And I don't know what that answer is. So, I'll give you guys something else to think about, but you know, looking at a way to and and I understand the problems with the kids and the youth that that that was a problem. So, I guess it's trying to figure out how can we eradicate or minimize that, but bring back a similar feel to to to what it used to be and just make it a really

we want we want the same thing. We want so what we call our signature events for GDP, we want it to be the bike race, Heritage Day, and Bacon Fest. and Baconfest is way out in front. But we do we're adding a music component to the bike race this year which we hope will elevate that event alongside all the other stuff that we're doing. The bike event is starting. Yeah.

And Heritage Day I think with a one-time investment through the state and if we show a good precedent that allows us to sell sponsorships into 2027 and we can continue that momentum. So we're trying to use 2026 as an organizing principle for all of our events. Um Winter Village is part of that too. we can do better at the Winter Village next year with um hopefully some resources that come through. Um I think the county budget is actually published and the the city I think had an ask in for 15,000 for the village for next year. We got an $11,000 grant through the county that was part of the recently approved county budget

and then that big stage grant that I mentioned is a one-time thing, but we want to use that as a launchpad to making Heritage Day better. So, you know, for GDP, I feel like we've never really gotten a chance to get it right. 2026 is a great time to do that. We're focused on Saturday. I think there can be some complimentary stuff that happens on Sunday. Um but to the mayor's point, the picnic how this picnic gets sorted with the fireworks. It's I think that's up for discussion. Yeah, obviously I think that'll be problematic if we have everybody down on Larry Hills Drive for a picnic and then go to the fireworks. It kind of puts us back to the way it was before the fireworks removed. So, I think that would definitely

Yeah. So, I just want to, you know, No, I appreciate my my our position as GDP that we're we're not sleeping on her day. I agree that it should be an important event, but focus on history in the morning and then kind of crescendo to, you know, a festival atmosphere into the night with top-notch musical talent. Uh, last question I have for you. Satis. Last question I have. 40 50,000 uh for music. How many bands would that get like quality bands? I have no idea. I mean, it depends on the band. I mean, you can spend seven figures on a band if it's Simpson, but

right. Um, we have two stages. The idea is two separate stages. We had a stage at Center Square. The idea is to have a second stage at Third and Ferry, so you could trade back and forth. Like, if you've ever been to a music festival where they have different bands start at different times without a whole lot of downtime. So, we're looking at, I think, eight bands with two headliners, like co-headliners. Okay.

Um, in the neighborhood of 2 to 10,000 per band. And the big stage grant is was written as the competitive opportunity specifically for this thing. So like we wrote a grant in April of last year. It was actually to support 2025 events to try and get them ready for 2026 and we are hearing that we're part of a to be allocated um trunch. So yeah I mean bands are sliding scale a good number. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Y

So just to round out the other um you know and and and as I think is being kind of characterized, these are intended to be ideas of things that we can do in the context of you know leading up to and celebrating the 250. They're not they're intended to be you know to kind of bring discussion and bring other ideas that we can consider. Um but one of the other things that we wanted to do is get our local businesses more engaged um in helping to dress up the city, give the right um you know um vis you know visual to to the city as people are coming in. And one of the ways that we thought we could do that is sort of challenge them to kind of help provide some business activation um where they would have host you know for instance reenactments or or readings or bring in um historic scholars who could speak on certain subject matter that would get people, you know, interested in the city and its history. Um, and at the same time, you know, we would offer them in return is some uh a package of of swag, if you will, that they could use for the purposes of dressing their businesses. We want we we really would like to see more um uh business engagement in in helping to provide the aesthetic in the city. We're trying to do this with the Winter Village. We like to see this with Heritage Day as well. And that leads into kind of the 250 of discussion as it relates to um other in that total cost that we're proposing. There's $10,000 in the city budget. We bring another $10,000 through additional support. And um I know some are asking where where this other support could come from. I am intending to meet with um the director of community and economic development for Northampton County to talk about resources that they plan to put in place to support 250th activities. And given the fact that we are the county seat, um I would expect that they would want to, you know, see us do something, do this right, and for the fact that we play a very important

role in this country's history, I think they would like to see that done here, too. So, um as it relates to um other aesthetic things that we can do, I think putting up banners that would kind of promote the 250th um and and also be something that potentially we could reuse for Heritage Day. So they would had dual uses, maybe do some form of architectural banner banner along city hall that would show the s the history of the city. Again, things that could be used in in different periods for heritage day so that we wouldn't necessarily have just one use. Um and then obviously, you know, putting flags in appropriate locations, make sure the city um is dressed properly for the celebration. So the total there we are talking about 10,000 and um for the $10,000 match$10,000 match

promoting um the the the um 250th is going to be important. We obviously have the uh the the Route 22 um and 25th Street billboard that we've used for the purposes of promoting everything from the Winter Village to just um explore Eastston. the um you know cost to to design and put up new vinyls and there's going to be somewhere around $5,000 and we could use that for a significant period of time leading up to the oral you know the the 250th so you could have it out there for three or six months oh did I forget did I skip one

oh yeah I'm sorry let me go back to the murals that's on the other side so um we've been engaged in a conversation with discovered Lehigh Valley for about uh about three months at this point about their intention of doing um a 200 a 250th themed mural in each of the cities of the Lehigh Valley. Um we've started to look at potential locations. We have one in mind. Um the owner of the the subject property is kind of looking at the uh the potential and we don't have feedback yet as to whether that's a likely candidate, but we will be coming back to you with more information on locations. But uh I guess suffice to say DLV has um commissioned an artist that is prepared to deliver these murals in each of the three cities. They would use local um contractors to help uh install the mural. Is there intention to maintain the mural and then also to remove it if indeed that becomes necessary? But the intention would be that this would be something that would would would be a sustained you know um kind of remembrance of our 250th uh anniversary. So this is something that we are working with the LB on and they are prepared to cover the majority of the cost. I think our out-ofpocket expense will be very limited here. um not more than $5,000 and I believe that their committed funds will be in excess of 15. So um more to come in terms of the location and the kind of design we're talking about, but there are ongoing discussions there. And that's uh an overview of the proposed budget for the celebration of the semiquincentennial. I can't believe I actually said that without messing the word up. Any other questions?

Councilman Pel, do you have anything else? You want to act DCD? No, mayor. I don't. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Hopkins, you're up. All right. Good evening.

Good evening. There we go. All right. I included a couple of slides in here. I didn't know whether the incoming council people were going to be here just you know to explain the department but it never hurts to refuse. So I put together an or chart showing the 13 I'm sorry I know two are watching. Oh okay text they can't hear but they can hear pretty well. Yeah, he just said Crystal they couldn't hear but they can hear. Okay. We heard they weren't picking up.

Okay. So, I put together an org chart just to kind of show you how the department is laid out. Uh we have 13 bureaus uh including the wastewater treatment plant, underground utilities, highways, parks. Um now we have sustainability which I think is going pretty well. uh about a hundred full and part-time employees and uh you know that's basically how we're structured currently. Um here's just an overview of assets that that the department has under management. You know we have we have quite an extensive sanitary sewer system, storm water system, uh public roads, uh you know I spend a lot of my time on underground utilities and wastewater treatment. um signalized intersections, super pumping stations, the parks. Uh we have a pretty large fleet uh for a small city. Um we have, you know, an inventory of about 8,000 street signs and public uh and pavement markings, all the public buildings and parking facilities. Um you know, and then, you know, manhole lids, uh guide rails, street lights, and our street tree inventory. So, you know, we own a lot of stuff and uh you know, and we're we're still a pretty small city. Um I wanted to share my programmatic priorities for this year. Um you know, we've been we've been getting a lot of grant money and putting a lot of effort into pedestrian safety, traffic calming. You know, it's probably the biggest complaint we get is speeding in the neighborhoods. Um and and it's tough to combat. You know, we we do have some tools in the belt. Um but it's it's a difficult problem. So we're going to continue working on that. Um our underground utilities, you know, the city has, you know, in in many cases one of the first underground systems, you know, in the United States. Uh it's we're doing pretty good. Um I think I think as a group, we've invested pretty

well in the underground, but since it's so extensive, uh it's an ongoing battle. um and MS4 municipal uh storm sewer system um and best management practices. You know, we do have a 5-year permit for that. It's a very expensive program to to uh comply with. Um we still haven't reached our our permit goals yet, but we're continuing to install them. Um I want to continue with our roadway reconstruction. And I think in the past five years we've we've really caught up where you know I think maybe 10 years ago I was I was concerned that you know our productivity and need they they were not um compatible and I think I think we've come a long way. You know we've also endured an onslaught of gas line installation which is which has helped a little bit. Um sustainability and urban forestry are focuses of ours. Um, you know, we we're getting our sustainability program ramped up and and I think Brandon's doing a good job with that. And then, uh, the other thing, you know, if if you look at the number of assets we own, you know, it's really important to track those assets. Uh, we use a program called Cardigraph, which uh is now owned by Open Gov and is now incorporated into the open gov suite of software that we use. Um, but you know, we populate it with thousands of data points a week. Um, we we track every street sign, every pavement marking, everything we do. Uh, we catalog photos. We have videos and it's in a GPS environment. So, if you were to go on a map and click, you know, a, you know, a sewer line on a particular block, it'll tell you what it's made of, when it was last maintained. And we have that AC across the entire suite of public works assets, uh, including elevators, generators, service reports, and it's

it's really a good way to cradle, grave, manage manage our assets. Um, here's some specific projects that we're going to be focused on this year. Um, you know, we have Eastern Iron Metal, which is obviously a big development project for us. Um, down at Abbott Street in Humor Park. We have broken miter gates, which we need to deal with, and the Abbott Street Bridge that needs to be replaced. I probably don't have to go through all these. Um, we just we we have a lot of specific projects that we're going to be tackling in 2026. It's going to be a very busy year. And, uh, I I give a lot of credit to John and Trevor and Liv. uh they they do a great job for bringing money in so we can we can have some resources to tackle these projects. Um so this is kind of uh you know the brass tax of of where we are for my spending plan for 2026. Uh my budget in 2026 is going to be roughly 27.1 million. Um, you know, keep in mind that does that does account for some large expenses like the wastewater treatment plant operations, the city sanitation contract. So there's there's some big ticket items in there that contribute to that.

How long is our trash contract?

We have two more years. We also have three uh options to renew. Uh so we we'll probably evaluate at that time whether the the market looks good for bidding or whether we should stick with what we have. Um you know we took a hit when when we went out for bid this last time and and you know what the market changes sometimes it's a biders market sometimes it's a you know it's a a buyer market. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so, so I I don't I don't like the word discretionary, but these are the the the bulleted first group of expenses are things that I I've asked for in addition to 2025 that I feel we need. Um, I really need an electrician on staff. We we have three right now. At any one point in time, they are all in different buildings fixing lights, receptacles. Um, in my mind, their their main job is to make sure the traffic signals are compliant with permits and making sure that everything is functioning properly. Um, we have come a long way with training. We recently this year, we completed outfitting all of our intersections with brand new controllers. Um, we are really up to speed on technology and I could probably go on forever about some of the some of the tech we have installed now. So, it's it's really uh it's really fascinating, including uh at the intersection of Larry Holmes Drive and Third Street, we now have a we now have a camera in there that's AI powered. It's called the Mayo Vision One, and it is running the intersection with a single camera. Um it tracks every vehicle that goes through, categorizes what vehicle it is, it tracks pedestrians, and what's nice about it is usually when we do traffic studies, we have to take that vision data down, send it to my vision. and they have to process it, we get it back and then we put it in synchro to watch it real in real life. This automatically formats it so we can just go on the computer, take any existing time frame,

it'll show us in synchro what the intersection is doing. And it also has a near miss function which we've been monitoring since we got it about a month and a half ago. And the near miss, that's where the AI comes in. It'll track both near misses for cars and near misses for pedestrians. and it'll take a 10-second clip. And when you play it back, it'll show you the two the two objects that are about to have a near miss. And you can use that data to start kind of figuring out countermeasures to to help with that. And one thing we have noticed is that almost without exception, the near misses for pedestrians have been people crossing against the signals. So, you know, just going against the man and and and that's not to say that that intersection is not intimidating. It is. and it does need work, but it's it's pretty good data. So, so I'm I'm asking for that additional employee to be split between the 101 and 260 fund, which is the wastewater plant, which is where we spend a a very good amount of time. So, we don't we don't and not to get into a long treaties on how we split costs with the other member municipalities, but we don't fund we fund the when things are built to that fund, we pay about 24%. and the other municipalities that are in the authority help cover those costs. So that keeps cost down for us. Um they I also ask for a bump in their their tools and equipment. Um every year we kind of struggle and things are just getting more expensive and this covers you know other people's budgets. So if we go to the police station we have to install new wiring and and cable and receptacles and all that stuff that all comes out of this budget. So, it's this is an allaround city support for all of our public buildings and street lights and everything else. Um, clothing and supplies, that's really that's a negotiated item in in the ASME contract. Um, and we run short every

year, particularly on years where we have we have to buy coats every other year. And so, you know, this is just keeping up with with the price of things. Um, fleet repair is the same thing. Um, we have a massive uh repair budget for for our fleet. Um, you can imagine that, you know, the old side view mirror that used to be 300 bucks is now heated and electronic and, you know, is probably $1,200. And we've noticed that with all of our equipment coming in. It's it's getting more complex and more expensive. And we have five technicians who are each responsible responsible for about 40 vehicles each. Um, which is, you know, that's a good amount of vehicles to assign to one person, especially when they they're still fixing firet trucks and heavy equipment and some of this some of these things when if they tear a motor out, it takes them a week just focusing on that. And I I give them all the credit in the world. There's almost nothing these guys can't fix. And we have saved a ton of money by sending things out. Dave, while you're talking about that, mayor, I'm to understand the price of parts have gone up 10

200 300%. That's what we're looking at now for all our parts equipment. Oh, for for in your experience? No, no, that's my understanding that it's going up. It it astronomical. It is insane how how fast things are rising. So whether it's the market or you know whatever you can attribute that to um you know even those guys are surprised when they call around for parts and and they call multiple sources and they're they're getting the same responses. So um you know it's an expensive business to be in but they they do save us a ton of money because they

there there's hardly anything they send if they send something out it's it then it definitely is you know in need of repair. Um the public buildings, same thing. I added 5,000 to that budget. That includes everything from the elevator repair, Jenny repair, windows, um all the all the things the maintenance guys do. Um same with the parking facilities. Elevators have been a huge problem for us. You you may have noticed that, you know, sometimes the elevator in the garage behind city hall is down more than it's up. Um you know, any anytime you have an elevator in a in an outdoor environment, they they tend to really act up. We we have spent a boatload of money on keeping those elevators running. So I think we need a little bit of uh a little bit of extra money there. Parks machinery um you know the parks guys do their best to keep up and I think technology and machinery is is one of the ways we do that and and keeping them you know with with good mowers, things that are going to run and and stay up and productive. That's what we need to do. Uh, one of the things the parks department did this year is they entered into a lease for a robot that paints the fields. Um, this thing has saved us so many manh hours and it uses about a quarter of the paint that a regular paint machine does and it remembers all of our fields now. So, they just drop it off, it paints the football field. What used to take uh I think four guys four hours each is now taking it about two hours to do the whole thing

with grid lines and it's down to like a quarter inch of accuracy. So and and that and that was their that was a suggestion they brought to me and I was like you know what that's great guys uh great idea. And then in the in the recreation department, um you know, Kevin and and now Pa Paige Fedak, I don't know if everyone's met her. Uh she was Eric's replacement. You know, they they developed a strategy at the end of last year and you know, it includes a lot more programming, uh senior outreach, and uh you know, I want to I want to see them be successful in what they do. And so, you know, out of out of the whole budget, that represents about a 0 point4 uh percent increase over 2025. Um, and like I said, those are those are things that I I feel like we need to add. And then the last two bullet points are things that had to increase. So, we went out for bid for uh sledge hauling down at the wastewater treatment plant. Uh, frankly, we got clobbered that the bids were very high. Um, you know, we no longer take it to Shrin. We don't take that to Shrin and we don't take our garbage there, which I think helped because normally what we do when we bid a hauling contract, we bid out the the disposal location first. So then all the haulers know how far they have to drive and then we get then we get apples to apples hauling bids. And in this case, you know, it's going to pinaril, you know, that's a lot farther of a drive than than Shrin was. So I think it really drove the cost up there. And then um the city's garbage contract also has a built-in increase for CPI for all urban consumers. Uh that was about 109,000 over 2025. And that that really is the you know all that represents all the changes in in the budget. Um maybe I'll just stop there and see if there's anything anyone wants to

discuss. Um, I just have a request, mayor, for maybe in the next year. How many employees do you want to give, David? How many you need, Dave? 10, 15? I'd like to see numbers over the next year, mayor, if we could just to see the numbers on what it would look like to bring the trash back in house. I know we did it years ago and it was better to go outside. You don't want to do that. That is really high on your joints. It increases your workers comp injuries. increases all of your um well I'm not I'm not saying let no the garbage the trash haulers in the city when the city had trash haulers in house only worked until they got done

right so the other employees are upset because they worked an eight hour day and the others only worked maybe three three and a half hours four hours at the most well obviously I'm not in a position to say bring it in house but I would over the next year like to just see what those numbers look like I I think you know having looked into it a number of times One of the things that is a it's really an obstacle is the lead time on on trucks now, right?

So even like even if you said, you know what, at the end of this contract, we're going to take it back in. I don't even think we could buy the equipment and can get it in. That that's one problem. The other problem is more about um you know the that that is brutal work, right? So, you know, there's there's probably only a certain demographic of people that are capable or interested in doing that work. And with the way you can bid within the contract, once you train someone to do the work and learn the routes, every the first time something opens up, they're out. And that's that's one of the reasons why the city got rid of it. And and not that it's it's good, bad, or indifferent. um it's just very difficult to keep the workforce trained and able to do the job and that and garbage is just one thing you cannot miss

right

and and so I think it's a reliability thing and I think that you know the companies that bid on these contracts they have extra trucks they have extra personnel they're switching people all around and uh you know I would not want to be the person in charge of something that we couldn't deliver on then we start to have real problems so I think it's a I think it's a good suggestion to always keep those options open. But but when when we've gone through when we've gone through this in the past, particularly when, you know, you can talk to guys, they're they're few and far between now, but there are still some guys on staff that started in sanitation and then bid their way up in, you know, sometimes into supervisory positions. You may remember John Sprro. Um, John started as a garbage man in 1971 and worked his all all the way up to be supervisor. And uh, you know, we we picked their brains too on what they thought about it. And, you know, they brought up a whole host of issues that may not even fly today. Like the mayor said, you know, you rush, you you leave when you get done. Um, and then people just bid out and go everywhere. So, it's it's probably worth a discussion.

All right. Thank you. Okay. Um, I wanted to bring this up because I think it's an important issue for us to all be on the same page. Um, our our pools and and I've talked to a number of uh consultants at this point and they say we are just like everyone else where you know we built these pools in the 1960s. they were widely, you know, popular with the with the residents and uh and you know, we've underinvested over the years and, you know, we've deferred maintenance and now we have one pool closed. Um, and that pool is probably going to be closed for multiple years and I wanted to explain why. Um, there are there are two types of feasibility studies that you can do. One is, you know, what pool consultants will call like a standard, you know, run-of-the-mill feasibility study where they come in, they tell you everything you need. They look at ADA issues and and flow issues and filter cycling and and then you get a report on, you know, your deficiencies and potential investment and what you need to do. Then there's then there's the level of the DCNR pool feasibility study which is a much more complicated uh endeavor for the consultants. It involves everything from public outreach. There's a long list of metrics they have to uh accomplish and and so but what it it's it's much more expensive to do it that way, but if you do do it, it positions you to get DCNR money. And so I I called

I was just going to interrupt. This is somewhat similar to the the whole stamp program that we went through. So, u you know, you could get other consultants to to kind of look at this, but going through this with the state now opens up, I think, what what you're now going. And Mark, to your point, the next report, Mayor, you might know as well. The next report from Stamped should include our swimming pool investments. Correct. No, I don't know. I thought that was part of it when we told they told me that would be included. I just but I think there's like two more reports they're doing. So I just wanted to make sure that was in there.

So So I I my recommendation would be to get a very reputable consultant on board who can come in and and to be very honest we we did get one done. Um in my opinion that did not work out well. We lost track of the consultant. Um just kind of ghosted us and frankly we we we didn't even pay for it. So, I I I don't know how reliable the information is in that report, but I did speak to uh the pool firm that's constructing the new East Natiatorum. Um they're not local, but they're they're pool experts, and they use a local architect in the Lehigh Valley to help. Um and they have they have a resume that's extremely impressive. They they've done professional level facilities. They've done tons of municipal facilities. and they made me feel confident that, you know, when their work was done that we would be on the best path forward, but it's going to require some decision-making. And the reason I bring up the DCNR one is because if if city council and the administration wanted to consider a different path forward, for instance, converting one of the pools to dry recreation activities, maybe, you know, maybe be able to use it because we use our pool between 70 and 80 days a year. You know, we could have a facility that the residents could use two or 300 days a year. Uh, it it could include botchi, pickle ball, tennis, volleyball, a a spray park to cool off, you know, a really nicely thoughtout playground. Like, it could be a place where, you know, the residents could go and spend three, four hours, do a bunch of different activities. The bath house could be potentially be repurposed into a place where you could, you know, have seniors do crafts and carts and, you know, whatever. and and so, you know, I I I think it it might be time to think about investing in one heavily and making it a really nice facility and

then investing in, you know, potentially making Eddie Side more of a dry recreation that has a you know, a spray facility, but but I think what kind of facility like a spray facility with misting poles galore. Um but I I not the

but I you know I I I was here when when uh you know the pools were threatened to be shut down for the and and it it was an un there was a lot of push back and I think that was because all we did we were just taking things away and we weren't offering anything. And I think if if we were to really think it through and offer something that could be as good if not better then we get the both best of both worlds. We we have a you know a really nice swimming facility and then we also have something that other people can enjoy that may not enjoy swimming. But um and so if if we did go forward, it might be worth doing the feasibility study for any site anyway in case we continue down the road of keeping an aquatics facility, but I wouldn't do it to the level of the DCNR, especially if there's a chance that, you know, because it's going to Eddie site's probably going to require a million dollars over the next two years and and and that include pool repling, uh reconfiguration of the baby pool. There's ADA issues. Um, so I I I would feel better if we had, you know, sort of the best information available to us. And I would ask for city council support and using some of the rec fund money to get the studies done. I think it's going to be about $80,000 total, but um the the representative from DC&R said typically if if you get their level of report done, they'll look at funding half. So if if it it if you know conceivably if let's say we we decided to redo hy and it cost us $5 million you know we could potentially get two and a half from from the state for that and that's the only way you can access that money. Um the other risk and this is why I'm bringing this up. If you go that route and you don't get the grant your pool is closed for another year. So, you know, I I I don't know. You know, that's the

that's the risk we take, but at least I think we're we're positioning us to be in the best possible place to get, you know, a a really good amount of money for the investment if that's the way we go. Um, but there is, like I said, there is the risk that it's going to take a while to do the study, then we have to apply for the grant. If we don't get the grant, we have to apply another year, and then we have to go through design and construction. So, you know, this could be a longterm this could be a long-term um sort of implementation, but in the end, it could be worth it to have two highass facilities for the residents. Mayor, can we have this discussion on the agenda for January just to discuss the pool so we can get moving on it?

Absolutely. Y Thank you. And All right. So, so thank you. I just I thought it was in Well, did you say April? So, we couldn't even apply until next April, right? So, I I thought it was important just for us to kind of, you know, talk about the available options and and what we're sort of facing from a pool standpoint. I think I think we can get through each side for the next probably the next couple years with, you know, just repairing things, but a after probably two or three years, we're going to have to invest.

Thank you. I think the public might be better situated without clamoring like they did. My wife was on council at that time so they and Kenny was here. They were really up in arms. Kids coming with bathing suits on everything. Right. If you have plans of what is going to take its place. Exactly. You know, you showed a pickle ball, you showed a spray park, you show a couple different things, plans that show what's going to replace it. I think you might have a I think your point about not just taking away really really resonated well with me how to give them options

and I I' I'd also love them to see how to incorporate like to me that divide between the playground at Hy and the pool like I think there's a better way to set that whole thing up. So this will give us a chance to like reset think about the best possible offering we lot got there's a lot of space there on use there is the only way you would make it connected is to put up a steel platform podium and put the playground on top level with the school with a swimming pool.

Does anyone have any Okay. So,

we're just about finished. Dave is the last one. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. All right. Thank you. Any questions for Dave? Any questions for WPW budget or for Mark?

Which one is that? It was just the the basically the list of of proposed changes. Yeah, we have Oh, yeah. That's up next for discussion. Okay. Under number three. Okay. proposed amendments, economic developments first.

Well, the way this was the way I put this together, and I can, you know, slice it and dice it in different different fashions, but what I tried to do is keep the general fund uh proposed amendments together. Um, and I classified them. Those that are in white and not in either the green or as you can see here, the blue are items that I had proposed previously where u shortly after the budget was presented, the mayor's budget was presented, there were a few line items that we found that I had missed and I asked that they be considered um, you know, as as new additions to the the mayor's budget. So, those are basically those items that are in white here. Uh, following that, you've got items that are in green that Councilman Pabone uh requested. And then in discussions with Dave prior to his presentation, we found a couple of additional items that needed to be added as well. So, those are uh listed in the blue and those would be basically coming from the administration, just not the original ones that we talked about. a month or so ago.

So, uh I I don't know if we wanted to go through Yeah, I have Lewis and I had print outs. Okay. Of Okay. The amendment. You You actually put them together. I did. So, thank you for that. Sorry. What is your amendments, Mr. Po?

These are the amendments here. Mayor, um as I mentioned, I don't know, three or four times now through the process, and we had some discussion. The mayor's proposed budget has prime parking meters at $3, non-prime 275, parking garage at 250. You'll see here under revenue, um the proposal is to put all the meters at three, drop the parking garage to 225. So, the numbers are staying the same. I'm just reallocating that quarter. I'm taking it from the parking garage, put it there. I believe that the goal is to get parkers to the garages. So, by lowering that rate, I think we'll achieve that. Based on those changes, we'll generate um $168,750 in new revenue. You'll see the new police officer, the new full-time parking enforcement officer.

All right. So, before you go any further, councilman, uh these with Benz just a that does not include benefits. Okay. That's that that's half half the year. That's only half year salaries. There's not full years there. So what you're doing is you're adding $62,500 to the budget every year with plus increases.

I'm I'm adding So we we we balanced it with the meters and adding the new place to 16875. So it's balanced. The comp plan would be a onetime fee. Now we lost the MAP grant that we applied for for the um comp plan. However, we're going to apply two more times and I met with Senator Boscola last week um who's really going to push for us. But if not, worst case scenario, uh we have 75 coming out in two years to redo the comp plan. That's a one-time fee that will then go back into the um but your 625 you save you it cost you 625 next year, but the following years it cost you 100% because you're going to have that same personal

you're going to have full time. Correct. and we're going to take another 150 that's a onetime fee and put it there. The comp plan is a onetime fee. I understand that. And then I I I don't understand why you're adding to a budget that stamp has just proven that you have deficit in the next five years. Deficit spending, right? Because I don't think the stamp program talk took into ser took into account the services that were lacking. for example, I think the SAM program took in more than you think because they're they're they're a public financial institution that understands revenues and expenses.

They don't understand that. I'm talking to Marcus Gilbert every day and we don't have parking enforcement in the neighborhoods. We don't. Saturday, we had a crash car abandoned on right off of Eighth and Ferry for two months. They've never gotten a ticket. And you realize that that person lives in this in the neighborhood? Well, I called Saturday. We had no parking enforcement anywhere in the city uh in the neighborhoods working. The residents are complaining every day about parking in the neighborhoods. We don't have parking enforcement. We heard from the police chief as well as police officers that I've heard from the unions. We're trying to get to the 64 that this city has allocated before. You're at 64. We're not. You are at 64. We're not at 464. We budget for 64.

We do, but we're not. Well, that that's what I care about. I guess you don't care about revenues and expenses. No, no. I care about doing the job that we're supposed to do and we've been lacking over the years because we're cutting positions. Not in the police department. We're not cutting. We We've added to the police department. To the police department. I said not in the police department, but everywhere else we've cut. This is a start. We have the same amount of police officers at 25,000 residents as we're going to at 32,000 residents next year. We sometimes the other weekend we had five officers for the whole city. Please don't Please don't talk about operations. Please don't talk about operations. What are we going to talk about? I need the public to know how many police officers we have out there in the public. Well, when do we talk about it? Because I've been bringing that up foression. I we we supposed to have one. It got cancelceled today. Well, you can have one tomorrow.

But that's why I said what should I bring up here? I don't want to bring up police operations because I don't think the public should understand. Well, that's why I asked if we could have executive session. It got cancelled because we have to discuss it now because we have to vote on it. So, we should take a pause now and break executive session. Not if we don't have the discussion, mayor. Well, we can I said we could have an executive session tomorrow night, but that doesn't give enough time, but that doesn't get give enough time for council to really process and get their questions together. Well, here's my here's my issue. So, I'd like to make a motion to go into

2008 I added 11 police officers. The average police officer is two per thousand. So, we should be at 60. We're at 64 budgeted. Now, the reason why I in in 2023, I recommended that we go to from 63 to 64, so that if we have a lot of retirements, which we have, we can fulfill them because it takes a year to get a police officer on on the streets by themselves. I'd like to make a motion to uh pause the meeting and go into executive session. We can do that. Second, we can do that. I'm just calling executive session. Executive session.

Take a sh discuss. No, not really. We can't discuss that executive session. We don't have a solicitor. We can't have We can't We don't have a solicitor and and Mr. Shear is the one who's canled today's uh because what you wanted to bring up tonight and what you are going to bring up tonight, he he said we can't discuss exam, right? That one part because a personal matter. It's a it's a it's a budgetary matter. We have a list.

Listen, our police officers I'm not against adding police officers. I would like to have a thousand of them. We don't. We can't. You know, you can't just keep adding to a budget that has deficits every year. We have a gap every year that we have to. And this administration worked very hard for the last 18 years to make sure that we haven't raised taxes. We have senior citizens, seven to 18% of our residents are seniors on fixed income that can't afford tax increases. I I agree and that's why I found the money through parking.

No, you and I took many small businesses here. So what So I was at Albanz on on Saturday night, Friday night, and everybody everything was full. Well, guess what? You raise the parking meters to $3 an hour and they're going to be empty. Mayor, your budget has the parking meters going to $3 an hour. You're increasing the circle

and then you're increasing the other ones to 275 and you're increasing the parking garage. If the goal is, first of all, if the goal is to get people in the parking garage, raising them makes absolutely no sense to do that. I'm not changing your numbers. I'm just repurposing. The only time our garages are full is when it's free. This weekend they were full. So raising them to 250 would help that. It wouldn't. So we're lowering it. I'm take I'm not increasing your debt service on parking garages. It cost us $33,000 per space. And yes, we're we're decreasing it to try to attract people to getting in and adding it. But mayor, you increased it. I'm decreasing. No, you we increased it because

But you just said we need to decrease it. I'm paid for the debt service. Do you park in the garages? Sometimes. Sometimes. So, sometimes you pay for the debt service, sometimes you don't. Right? I don't park in the garage. Guess what? I should not be paying for the debt service on that garage. The person who uses that garage should be paying the debt service. It's a user fee. It's not a tax. It's a user fee. But the goal has always been to get people in the garage. Correct. That's what we've talked about. We've heard numerous times over the last our garage is full.

Okay. So, I would suggest that lowering it a quarter as opposed to increasing a a quarter would net that result that we're looking for. I didn't add money or take money away. I just reallocated a quarter on your budget. I just reallocated Decreased it by $100,000. Increased it. No, that has parenthesis. No, I increased it, Mayor. Oh. Oh, yes. Yes. I there, but then we picked it up because I increased the other one. So, we we netted 16. You want to you want to put all parking meters at $3. So I go downtown to have dinner and it's I'm going to be there for three hours. They're going to cost me $9 to park. So if we're trying to get people in the garage, go downtown to eat. Yeah. All the time. Okay. Well, and I pay the meters.

Sometimes. No, all the time. And you busting you all the time for it. So, but my point I have I'm again I I work too hard and the staff work too hard to bring you a budget that has no increases. No, no increases other than in parking fees and we gave a balanced budget. No increases but the parking fees and residential parking permits downtown. And what I did was take your numbers. Do you think $100 is a lot of money and money? No, I'm just saying we're we're we're speaking about what was increased. We don't want to miss anything. All I did, mayor, was take your numbers and just reallocate a quarter.

I I am against putting meters of $3 an hour all over the city because I think that's going to hurt small businesses. Is it that the $3 that you're putting in the circle area is to force them to go to the garage? Correct. Well, yes, because they're only half a block away. Yeah. But if you lower the meter even closer to 275, you're defeating the purpose because they'll just go a half a block away instead of going to the garage. So, it defeats the purpose and then you increase it. Right. So, so by my point, I have a problem with the $3 in a circle and and one smoke off the circle.

Right. But but that's not that's defeating the purpose of getting cars to the garage because they can save a quarter and go a half a block over. Additionally, when you talk about small businesses, there's business owners in the circle that complain often that we don't have the parking enforcement and cars are staying well over the 3 hours and it's not getting people in and out of their businesses. We need parking enforcement. Well, the problem too come from the restaurant workers parking in the same space all day. Well, whatever the reason is, if we're not enforcing it, customers aren't able to get in to go to these business and patronize them.

Why did we go to the holidays from now till the end of the year having free parking in the garages, not on the street? You want to know what I why? Because all the employees parked on the street and it was harder to find a parking place during the week than it was on a weekend because the employees of that business parked on the street because they knew it was free parking. So then enforcement would be the way to go. How do you figure enforcement? Because if people are parking there just leaving it for over the 3-hour limit and we enforce it, people are not going to be able to keep doing it. And that's what the businesses are complaining about. Regardless who's parking there all night, Mayor, it's stopping other shoppers from parking and running in. So, you want to enforce the three-hour parking?

I think if that's the rule, we should enforce it. I I I think if we set three hour realize that you you what what I've heard over the last two weeks from you is that you want to enforce the the parking at three hours. You want to enforce the parking on the corners and you want to enforce parking in the neighborhoods. Do you know that in the neighborhoods the people who park on the corner are neighbors? Mayor, do you know residents of East? But mayor, do you know you can call Marcus Gilbert? I'm calling him every day for res but I'm calling him every day from neighbors complaining. Not me. I don't park on the street. It's residents complaining every day about the parking. I've taken Lewis through the neighborhoods where cars are parked beyond the curb, beyond the um corner.

We've been there. We've been there. I I I don't disagree with that. That's why we gave the police the fire chief and the deputy fire chief the the power to give tickets in front of in front of in front of hydro and hid no corners, too. The issue is we're just not the these are services that people expect to have in the neighborhoods and they're not getting them. They're they're just not. Yeah. I'm getting calls every day vehicles parking first of all pay their pay their salary and their benefits. Now, if you want more part-time PEOS, I'm all for it. You put you can put 10 on I don't care.

Yeah. But the problem is that's what we do now and they don't come. They call off according to Lewis because we Saturday I called Mr. Gilbert. We have an abandoned car all smashed up. It's been here for two months. No ticket, no anything. Can we get a ticket on it and try to contact the um the owners? We don't have anybody. They didn't come in today. That's that's more times than not. Well, then hire more people. But this is a full-time employee that you're going to pay not only benefits health care, which went up 20% this year, but also you're going to pay when that person retires, you're going to pay part of the retirement. Now, his 4% that goes into the retirement is going to come from the city.

Well, then hire two part-time, but we can't continue to do nothing. We we our services are lacking in in in different departments. Now, people want to move here. They're paying high price to move here and and they're not getting services that they should be getting. I get the complaints daily. Every day, College Hill, Southside, Westward Ward, every day, numerous times a day. Dave Hopkins, we've had the conversations here where Dave had to go out and paint corners in in College Hill because of the parking because we're not enforcing. So, you want to enforce parking? Yes.

So, when they call my office, they should tell them to call Mr. Sure. But but so so mayor so we picking and choosing what we enforce what laws we're not picking and choosing. We're we're we're catering to our residents who live here and have a play have to park somewhere. Mayor, I'm not getting calls from visitors. I'm You call Marcus Gilbert and ask for a report. I call him every day. Saturdays included for residents calling about parking issues on their block, abandoned cars, cars that haven't moved for weeks. about that. I'm talking about parking. But that's what I'm talking about. Cars is not parking. It's taking up a parking space. I agree with you. But it's not an it's not a parking ticket. It's an abandoned car and the police should be given that ticket.

Well, you and I have had that conversation for the last two years as well. That's not happening. So, my proposal was a parking enforcement officer. It's not If it was once in a while, it is what it is. It's every day. And if Councilwoman Rose was on the call, she'd she she'd say the same thing. Council member Rose can get a freaking parking space for a whole year for $100. She's not talking about herself. She's talking about the Southside the West W. The the tractor trailers that we're talking about. She got the calls, too. I'm not talking about downtown. You're talking about West Wart. I've said it. West W, Southside, College Hill. And

you have people downtown in forcing parking. One person um not enough because the business owners are complaining, but there's one down here. But the neighborhoods, we don't have any residents garages. We talked to the chief. Well, we've had that conversation. Has a enforcement officer right on the hill. Yeah. Well, they're not seeing that either. I saw them yesterday. I I'll forward you the email from Miss Anderson who's been emailing. She came in to Karen with a handwritten letter. What? Two weeks ago, Karen? Not there.

No stuff. the the question that I have is um and and I'm I understand I understand the parking issue but you know to in to some extent to enforce parking near the corners and that those cars end up having to go somewhere because they're parked there primarily because they're residents that that that are living in that area And I mean I I can't tell you how many times I've been out in West Ward. And that's that's always the problem. You know, somebody tell me, well, you know, I had to park three blocks away and carry my groceries down here because there's just too much, you know, there's over parking. So, we're starting to take away

people. And I I mean I understand it's it's it's a balance here, but I mean if you're taking away parking spots, it's just making that parking the number of spots decrease. Uh and I'm just wondering where those cars would end up going. The other thing is the reason why they put down put down the lines in the west ward is to show them that they can't go past that that white line which goes to yellow

because before they was jammed tight from corner to corner even with the yellow line with west is is congested and more times than not you got family with three and four cars and as Roger said where are they going to go there always going to be a fight there we have cars that are parked out with their rear ends or the front of their cars out in intersections making it hard to turn. I I brought Lewis through and I wish he was here today. We drove through the neighborhoods and he saw all of them. We're not enforcing we do that once a week. We go on a tour of the city and but we're still not enforcing it though is my question. And every time

we should enforce it and I'll just say that Mr. Pit wants us to enforce it because you're moving you're ticketing residents that they're not visitors are residents but it's residents complaining. It's a safety issue. Well, the ones that don't park, you know, I could complain about people parking on a corner of my lot because I have a driveway, but I wouldn't buy a house without a driveway. I don't I had trouble on College Hill. They shoveled the snow right into my wife's car. Listen, I'm perfectly I'm I'm perfectly fine if you guys don't want to add the PEO. But when the calls come, I'm directing them to everybody else. They already come to me before they go to you. They don't. Yeah, they do.

They don't cuz I ask them, "Have you talked to the mayor?" "No." "Have you talked to the mayor?" "No, they call me." Well, I will make sure they do because I It's every day that I'm dealing with Marcus and we never have a parking enforcement. believe that the administration could work so hard getting for six months getting you a budget that has no increase in taxes and you want to increase taxes. You want to increase the transy transfer fee and you want to increase parking fees

because again mayor it's not what I want to do but the services are lacking in the city. the our our basic services that I'm going to you're not going to want to hear it here and I will absolutely bringing up executive session. Um we are dropping the ball in many areas because we don't have the staff. When I asked the department, what's the problem here? I don't have the staff. My staff was cut. But if they don't have the staff to do it, mayor, we still have a job to do. Listen,

if you don't want to do the parking enforcement, we don't do the parking enforcement. I will direct them here. I will go on record. I will direct them here because the call the the the calls are coming for two years now from the residents that we don't enforce it. And every time I call, we don't have a parking enforcement officer. Run the plane. We find out that the person lives in the same block. And then what? Nothing. Nothing. All right. So, you can park wherever you want and just East's not going to do anything about it. that. Listen, if that's the way it's going to be, I'm okay with that. Just know that I'm directing them to you. No, they're going to get a ticket. According to you, they're going to get ticketed.

Listen, I don't care if we give them warnings, but you have to do something. We have to do something. But, but Dr. Ruckles is right. Where are they going to go? They're parking in a corner, not because they want to. They don't want to get hit by a car that's turning or making a turn. Where are they going to go? So, so there four cars parked on the corners. The eight total every block. Every block you have eight. All right. So, where are those eight people go? So, to be clear, we're just we're I just want to be clear. We're picking and choosing what ordinances we're going to enforce and which ones we're not.

No, the the greatest power that a police officer or parking enforcement officer has is who they give tickets to. Just like the state trooper doesn't give you a ticket when you're speeding. It's selectivity.

They don't I But see, I said we knew need more parking enforcement. I never mentioned the word tickets. Give warnings. I don't care. But you need We have nobody. You're increasing 32,000 f 32,000 people in another year. We we we have no parking enforcement in neighborhoods. Where are they going to go? Why don't you come up with a program that puts parking lots in every neighborhood? And that means you're going to tear down homes to make a parking lot. But come up with a program that that puts parking lots in every neighborhood. That's what you need. This town was built in 1752 was laid out. It was laid out for horses, not for cars. And people had one car. Now they have maybe three or four cars per household.

So then the infrastructure, we should have addressed infrastructure before we in invested in development. The parking problem. I'm not going to fix it. I will go back to something that I've said for a long time. And I believe firmly that much of our parking problem is associated with uh a large number of people living in a particular residence. Good. And I think one of the ways to fix this is to require that everybody license their car to be parked in the city. If that's the case, then we know that house right there has a Wait, wait. I'm sorry. Say it again. we have to license their car to park in the

city to to I don't think what do you mean make a like college hill has you know you they they have to register their car in order to park on the street okay after two after two o'clock I think two to six so this this would require people to register their car with the city

and then once they've done that then we know how many people are in that house but up until then we don't know how many people are in that house. And I've heard from people out in West Ward that, you know, that house over there has eight people in it and each one of them has a car and they're all parked up and down this street. Well, that's against the code. You can't have eight unrelated people in there.

So, so if a just for clarification, so if a resident registers four cars to their house, but they have eight there, who's going to look into that? Who's who who we assigning that to? We don't have parking enforcement officers. So, who's assigned who's going to take on the responsibility of finding out that they registered four, but they have eight. How do you enforce that? We have no people. I don't care what the plan is. I I'm not saying ticket. I don't want to ticket people. Warning, something. But you're you're you're adding more of a job responsibility. There's nobody to do it. You think a warning is going to stop that?

I think you got to do something. Two warnings, three warnings, then there's a ticket. But you got to do something. And it's not every every car, but there's cars that are in dangerous areas. There's cars that are abandoned. We're not We're not mayor. I called you last summer. We had a car that was completely stripped behind the uh church on the um the confluence if you remember the alley. Completely stripped. The kids were playing in it. It was there for two weeks. We didn't know. We had no way to sol it. Like nobody knew. We don't have parking enforcement. There were kids running through the car as a jungle chimp. The whole car was spewed at all over the the street for two weeks when nobody saw that. To Roger's point, if you do that, who's overseeing it? Who who do you have to say, okay, we have to we have to tackle it? It can't be the codes department. I I go short as it and again I think in that particular case I think what what the idea was was to charge a nominal fee for registration and and with that fee from registration we then can hire somebody that manages that entire program and and basically what you got to do is if somebody comes in and you count the you count the three related okay that that are in one house And when you get a a fourth unrelated, then no, you can't you can't you can't have this. And now all of a sudden they don't have a sticker to park on the street then that you know they're they're going to get cited for that. So So uh I mean they do that up on College Hill,

right? But so but I guess I'm I'm more confused now because we don't want to offer a warning or a ticket for not every car but a few cars that are causing a safety concern. But we're going to charge a registration fee for all residents vehicles. I I have to believe what some municipalities do is they charge a nominal fee for the first and second car and then it gradually goes up. The third car is more the fourth car is more. The fifth car is very expensive. I No, I understand it. But even a nominal theme, my point is this is if if that happens, if that happens, what's

what the anticipation is is that the number of cars that are going to be parked particularly in West Warden is going to decrease. Why? Where are they going to go? Going to move to the alleys.

No, they've moved out. They can't they've identified you are housing people illegally and therefore you cannot have that many people in your house. And so they they end up moving out because they can't be there. So that's that's the idea is to decrease the number of cars that are parking there. So So because so many people are struggling and they have a couple family members living with them, we're going to make them leave or and we're going to charge them per car.

Well, but that's not a burden. But a ticket for the few cars that are illegally parked, that's the burden. But we're going to charge every resident for every car. And if they have more than the cars registered, then they're going to have to leave their home and and in and this plan that I'm presenting is the burden. If it's if it's a family member, then that doesn't that's not a violation. If it if it's non-family, it is a violation. And how do you determine what's family and what's not? lease. It's least husband, wife, and children. They have to register their car. So, it's husband, wife, and children. And then what if they have ch their parents live live with them? Then then that's family.

Okay. But now you have six people and they're all paying a fee for a car. And that in the west and the southside that's you have two cars. Okay. Two cars. But everybody in the west that has one a car one two10 have to pay a fee for it every year. That's one program. I would just Well, right. I'm just saying instead of Hobok, New Jersey does that. The vast number of people in in West Ward that I've talked to about that, they said we'd love to have that. They they are willing to pay that so that they don't have to deal with with hopefully with parking. And and so so so you think and I'm asking

Yeah. because I had never spoken to anybody about that plan. But you think people in the West Works, that's who we're talking about, would rather pay a fee annually per vehicle than to have a parking enforcement officer come around and give a ticket to cars that need to be ticketed. The problem is doing that, and I'm not against that. I'm just saying I if they're not they're they're parked illegally. I I agree they should get a ticket. But the problem with that is we're not decreasing the number of cars out there.

I I don't know that you can decrease them other than by making people leave and now they're homeless. I I don't I mean I I don't know. We have 170 kids families in the East Area School District that are that are homeless or staying with other families and this and that. So putting them out, I don't I don't see how that is beneficial to them. and charging them a yearly fee per vehicle. I'm not sure how that's beneficial to them. I would think that enforcement and it's not going to be they're not, you know, I don't envision just non-stop ticketing. You know, maybe you do a part-time, but there are safety concerns with the parking that we're dealing with every day. every day and and my the reason for the extra PEO and if you want to do I'll look at two time two part-time mayor but the issue is every time I call Marcus Saturday included there's nobody working in the neighborhoods we don't have anybody

because you don't have anybody wants to work those jobs just like at Riverview I don't have any servers who wants to serve THEY ALL WANT THESE HIGHPAYING JOBS THAT DON'T do anything I I'm we can't get parking we can't Yeah. Um, we don't we can't even get firefighters or police officers.

I I I appreciate the issue. Okay. I think though that we really need to find a way to decrease the number of cars out there. Now, how that happens, I I'm I'm mean I think one way would be to have them require them to register their car. I think that would be a way of doing that and I think that but it's adding an extra burden. I don't think you could eliminate cars from people in the Lehigh Valley. We don't have enough decent job mass transit and we had that program and and the budget got cut

and we don't have enough highpaying jobs or even semi highpaying jobs in the eastern area that people can walk to and and mass transit isn't isn't if I mean if just looking at the problem the whole problem the whole problem okay if we ticket cars at corners let's say we're not there you still have that same number of cars there that are trying to fit into that same space, right?

And right now that space isn't big enough. So, they're overflowing into these areas on the side. So, we go out, we ticket them. Where are they going to go? They don't have the space is not there. So, we need to look at that as far as how are we going to best right serve the residents out there. But even if I if I subscribe to to your your theory and we do the permit, we don't have the staff to enforce it. We don't have parking enforcement to enforce it. Who do you send out there? You can't send codes out. We're short staffed. We can't send finance out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why do you say we're short staffing codes? Cuz we have to hire three more. We don't have enough codes. They're budgeted.

The re They're budgeted, but we don't have them yet. And once you have them, we just had the meeting. you, myself, Lewis, and and and and Dwayne, and we had to pull back on the uh the uh inspections to do quality of life issues. So, who are we sending to enforce it? You can put all the programs together. We don't have the bodies to enforce. Also, you could add a million dollars right now to the budget, okay?

Because that's what you want. You want more people. And we have not reduced our work staff by by more than three or four over the last 20 years. And I I understand you come from the school district where you subscribe to the 3% 4% a year. I don't I I've never I've never had a 3% tax increase when I was on the school board. Every year you said not one time did I have 3%. 1.75 2%. We never went to 3% mayor ever. Yeah, because you want to stay under state minimum. We never went to 3%. Mayor, because you had to have state approval. Never went to state 3%.

Back on the subject of parking, there's there's one practical thing that we could be doing in the west board. If we start targeting the uninspected vehicles, the vehicles that uh don't have proper registration, that would take a lot of cars off the street. I got a complaint from somebody who lives on 10th Street and says it's like a big junkyard there. There's cars parked over there that are inoperable and and there's no enforcement of it anymore. That's what I'm saying. Well, your issues that you're bringing up are not financial issues. They're they're enforcement issues. And those quality of life issues,

you're dealing with the police department who went through a really bad time when crime was rampant and they had to put down crime. It's very hard to shift them now to quality of life issues which are small in nature but a pain in the neck to their presence. So what's the solution then? That's why I said a PEO and if you want to hire two partimes that's fine but as I've said and as Mr. Eder who lives in Westward just said we're not enforcing it. We don't have the people to enforce it.

You're you're you're just all I see you wanting to do is add people. There was an officer who retired a couple of years ago who said when he was on night shift all he did was look for uninspected cars to take it. He would, you know, and and that's true. Typically on night shift we don't have people that are showing that kind of initiative. Yeah. Yeah. Uh it's my understanding now is with the with the license plate readers go back they they they're told that if you just drive down the street that one's not registered that one's not reg you know and so on and that's low hanging fruit in my opinion

that would help get cars off the street like you suggested it would also bring in a little revenue for those who who are willingly putting those cars on the street And it it's a win-win. We just got to get it enforced. Yeah. So, what's the plan? If we're not hiring more people, what's the plan to enforce it? Because that's been the theme tonight.

Call the chief and and make sure it's enforced. But it's up to the men and women of the police department to do it and they will get it done because you have 64 people for a city of 30,000. So I I think the other issue that we would be good to address is is you know why is it that these part-time uh PEOs aren't showing up? I mean that that you know there there's there's something wrong here because we have part-time crossing guards

that are there every day of the week, you know, and

you know, something's wrong here. I don't know what it is, but something's wrong here. And I mean, I think that it's it's like the mayor says, you know, let we can put on part-time PEOs. Um, and you know, as they generate tickets, they generate their pay basically, you know, and it allows us as as as you said was, you know, we could as we generate those, we get in revenue from those from those tickets. And so, uh, it just seems like there are there are issues here that hiring new people aren't necessarily addressing is is is the only thing I'm concerned about is, you know, if if if if we can solve this issue with the PEOs and and, you know, oh, they called off six today. they didn't want to come in or it's, you know, it's kind too cold outside, they didn't want to come in. What's that problem? I mean, we we need to identify that particular problem. Even if we hired a new a part two part-time PEOS and they still don't come in, we're back to where you were before, you know.

Well, listen, I agree. Something needs to be done, but I don't think we could any no longer just ignore it. It something has to be done. So, if there's another way to do it, mayor, if you think you can get the police officers to do it and and not infringe on what else they have to do, then then I'm for it. But we can't just continue to ignore it. Okay, we can do that.

And my reason for being a PEO is every time I call for a PEO, we never have one on. So that was my my my will we have the hire of event next chief zoning officer and planner. Um so creating a new position um take the existing position salary add the 7500 to it to get a chief zoning officer and planner. And we've discussed this in the past in executive session. Yes. If we need more discussion, if the mayor's calling executive tomorrow, we can discuss it there if anybody needs more discussion on that.

But especially with going into um a new comp plan for the next what is it 17 years? Um having 10 years, having a a certified registered planner with some experience uh I think is is is the move and the way to go.

Okay. And then finally, the comp plan. Uh we're looking at about $150,000. We just got denied on a MAP grant. Uh Whiteall at the same time got 80,000. So we spoke to Lisa Bascolan. We're going to try to go after two more rounds of the MAP grant coming up this year to cover it. If not, there's 75 uh and 75 budgeted to cover the comp plan cost for and I believe that's um consulted to hire a consultant to do to actually run the plan planning meetings. We would get the volunt the residents to be on the committees,

right? And then finally, uh, reallocating or or not reallocating, but using a h 100,000 from the open space fund. Two years ago, I I brought up um a playground an area uh for for our special needs um um residents, our children. Um we picked I went out with um Kevin McCarthy from REG, Dave Hopkins. We looked at different parks. We we settled on Milan Street because it has the most room. um much more parking availability for parents or vans, whatever to bring the children. We got a quote back in 2024 and we reached back out to them recently. As long as we order before the uh before January 1st of 26, they will honor the 2024 prices. So the um special needs playground will have swings for children in wheelchairs, children's in walk, children in walkers, sensory boards, and it's important that we're not segregating them. We're keeping him keeping them with the other student other children so they're included and playing there.

My only concern about Milton Street is that I don't know of many disabled youth in that neighborhood. Can we do a demographic of the neighborhood to decide where best to put it? We have plenty of room up on Ne Park, too. I don't know. I don't know. I see the one kid that walks to Crayola every day on a wheelchair. Yeah. Are we talking I'm sorry. Are we talking about the city of East or we're talking about kids coming from all over?

Um well be the city of Easton, but obviously we wouldn't exclude anybody else. The only nearest one to us now is uh Cedar Beach uh in Helen Town. The reason why I didn't why I looked at Devon Park was just the hills and kids on walkers and things where Milton Street has the the parking on both the alley and on the street that's always open uh on that side. It has the freshly paved um walkways for kids that have special needs they can get through. So, we wouldn't have to invest that money into it. We don't have any sidewalk on Milton Street at all. No, we don't. You'd be on Milton and then we have the uh the paved paths going in for wheelchairs and walking. So, already there. So, it would save cost from having to do it to add.

I don't have a problem with the I told you I don't have a problem with the handicap. I think it's great to have a a playground for kids with physical area,

right? There's a young man on uh Burwick Street in a wheelchair, young young child that I was talking to about it recently. So, that would be the money's there. We're just going to use it to go to uh the playground we have to order by the end of the year and they'll honor 2024 prices. Um, here's a copy of the administration's hold on the administration's proposed organizational chart. So, you'll see where the uh chief zoning officer and planner will will fall into place based on the the administration's um org chart for starting in 2026. That's the open rate.

That's for new. That that would be the new one. Yeah. So, it would be under uh Mr. Tilman. Mr. gentlemen would just then focus on the the um the codes aspect and the new person would take on the zoning and planning. He oversees that person though, correct? Correct. But he'd be free up more time to focus on the codes and that person to the rest. Mayor, if there's no questions, those are the only uh items I had. I don't have any any questions for council.

So, what what amendments are you making? I mean, sorry, I know I see this one with the codes to hire a chief planning and zoning officer, uh, a director and which is under Mr. Tilman. And then you also put forward a are you pulling the full-time parking person officer?

Well, that's what we have to talk about. But the meters is where the funding is coming from for for everything under expenses. So that's where the discussion takes place. that extra revenue by shifting that quarter and lowering the garages um and increasing on the street generates the 168750 um which is broken out under the expenses. That's where the money's coming from. Can I just go ahead Dr.

Yeah. Um, I had a long discussion with the chief this week and and um, you know, I I understand where you're coming from with the the new police officer, but I don't think that solves the problem. I think the problem has been and will continue to be even if we add another position is the fact that we do not um, anticipate loss, I'll call it. So right now there's uh five vacancies. Five vacancies within the police department. We have five candidates in the

and we have five in the in the pool. But

within a couple months we have two more that are leaving. And so the next pool doesn't open up until in the future, you know. So if we're looking at let's just say 63 I whatever number you're aware of but if we're looking at 63 and say okay we we'll hire up to 63 well we we we need to make it such that it's capable of the police department saying okay we know that in the future we're going to have we're going to lose an extra two so we're going to have in the academy enough to cover that and I don't think we've been doing that in the We have 65 officers right now,

right? We have over five right now. Yeah. But but beyond the salary and wage initial calls for 64, we have 65 officers that we're paying for because five of them are retirees, right? But but the I I think I think some of it is some of it is the fact that how we replace officers, we're not allowing for it to be over what we're budgeting for. even though they'll never we're not getting to that point. We've never got I shouldn't say never. Uh the chief said I think there's like two or three times in his 17 years that he's been here that we've actually gotten to that point.

And that's the problem to me. The problem is not adding another position. The problem is how can we ensure that what we have the 63 if we went to 64 and we still stayed in the same program we might we may be at 62 or we might be at 61 you know because people are ending up retiring. I think if we were able to find out a way to project and to get to that point where okay we're going to hire instead of five in this particular class we hired seven in this class and then all of a sudden when those people leave we have those replacements you know I think that's something that we need to because if we're in our current situation

we've never gotten to what we're budgeting for you And and I think that's where you're my understanding that's what you want to push to you know and let's think about how we do that and is there a different way in which we can do it to ensure that we get to let's get to 63 or let's get I mean in the future maybe let's get to 64 or whatever whatever that number is. But the point, you know, when when chief told me in his 17 years as chief, he says, I think there's only been three times that we've actually been right. He's right. And I was like,

how's that possible? You know, you know, and and so I think whatever that process is, we need to fix it. We need to be You're right, Dr. Rugles. I think there need to be a discussion uh with the chief and a sit down and come up with some kind of plan because we have as long as I've been on council we have never been to that point and even when I first got on council and uh before chief I forget Maz

Mazio and we had all them police come off and start to get new police officers but that wasn't we gave them an incentive if I'm not mistaken there was a setup there. Somehow someway we got to come up with a plan and I think it's going to be difficult because of the fact that we really never know when a person's going to retire. Yeah. That that's an issue. Yeah. Yeah. But I think I think looking at history and looking at

I I mean just recognize that some of the time some of the time Yeah. Okay. We we're budgeting for six let's say 63 right now. But let's recognize, okay, we're going to go to 64 right now. We're at 65. We're at 65. We're at 63 budgeted. So, we're at 65. Well, okay, we're going to h that's going to happen. But the reason that we want it to happen because then in in the future, there's going to be two retirees coming up this year.

Yeah. Three, don't we? Or three. And we'll be back down to where we where we're budgeting to. Okay. But I think that that's the problem and and I I I understand the the you know the issues of how long they have to be in in the academy and how long they got to be on the street before they're actually released. You know, all of that is is there. But the fact is is that even if we add this position, there's no guarantee that we're going to be at 64. And the problem is we probably won't be at 64. will probably be at some number less. So, how is it that we can get

I'm fine with having that discussion, but one thing we have to do in all of this is do something, right? If for 17 years or Councilman Brown's been here 23 years and he's never had we've never fulfilled it. That's an issue that should have probably added to one person. We added one officer to 65 to 64 rather. So, then we have 63. What we didn't we didn't take into consideration when we added that one person is because you got a budget for that person is the work related injuries right now we have how many two out did chief say today two I think he said two out there were two out one just left recently two out for and I mean those are things you can never

you can't play

but uh I mean same thing's true in fire department you know you have an injury and somebody's out and now all of a sudden you know we we have to fill that spot. And and and fire department's very similar. You know, we got send them to the academy, we got to blah blah blah. And so it's it's always a continuing issue, but I think no matter what we set our number at, it doesn't seem like we're ever achieving that number. And I'm I'm wondering how that can better be established or achieved. So if we're going to have those conversations, I'm willing to eliminate that position for this budget to start those conversations. But the conversations have to be started right away in my opinion. I mean, we have 45 days from the budgets passed to amend it if we need to, but I'm willing to take that out now. I'm not I'm not willing to take anything else out. I take the vote however it falls, but I will rework the numbers with Mark and and um and uh Lewis in the morning. Um taking that 45, but um I I got to stick to the rest of it.

Well, I think what the solution is having an executive session tomorrow night, and I'll have the chief, he's going to be here for a meeting, so he'll be he'll be here for session. said he was going to be here tomorrow night. Yeah. So, you could have you could talk to him about quality of life issues and we could talk to him about being plan at 5:00. Five o'clock. Yeah. I I I I did not, you know, the PEO was not something that I spoke to him this week about. So, I would like to hear his input as to what that what he sees as the issue there because I mean, if we have a PEO, they should be writing tickets. I mean, that's that that's enforcement is what their middle name is, right?

So, my understanding talking to Lewis is with the part the issue with the part-time is we have some that only work a couple hours a week, some that works 10 hours a week, some that works 30 hours a week. And that's where my thought of the full-time and you have somebody who has a job who has who's going to show up do their 40 hours, you know, as a part as opposed to somebody who's just looking to supplement income and if they don't come, they don't come. Yeah. So that's why I went with the full-time as opposed to to the part time. But but again, I'm like I said,

fulltime in the past. The problem with full-time is you're adding a person to the payroll plus their their benefits and social security. You pay 7.65%. So their social security, you pay 4% for retirement, you pay 20% increase in their health care, and it gets to be very expensive. And but I mean, I I I just want to get somewhat from the chief because like I said, I see crossing guards Yeah. all over the place and they're part-time and they're there every I mean I we see them right up at at College Hill and you know and they're there she's there every every day.

Yeah. But I think the difference in my opinion with the crossing guards versus this. We seem to be hiring younger people as just some extra cash parking enforcement where the crossing guards are usually older. This isn't how they're retired. This isn't how they're, you know what I mean? Yeah, they like having something to do, go out, just take a couple dollars. Um where with the part-time, they're make working 10 hours a week.

Yeah, it's almost not worth worth it to them. Well, I mean, I think those are the problems we need to identify and then say, okay, well, what does our hiring pool what should our hiring pool look like, you know, in order to get individuals who are going to be reliable, who's going to be here, you know, when when they're scheduled and and then get out there and do that enforcement. I agree with you 100%. If if there's if there's somebody that's breaking, you know, a parking violation, yeah, you know, maybe maybe initially give them a warning, but if they're if it continues on, yeah, they're going to they should get a ticket. You know, I agree.

So, we'll bring Chief into executive session.

Okay. What happens Executive session 5:00. I'll call for it. Although it probably won't be till 5:30. 5:30. Oh, he wanted 5:15. He wanted 15 minutes and 5:15 we'll have it. 5:15. Crystal. Okay. Okay. and then we'll vote on the budget. Tomorrow night will be the last meeting for the year unless we need the meeting on the December 22nd which right now we don't think we need it.

All right, you're up. I'm sorry, mayor. I'm done. You've been done. I'm done. I'm tired of you today. Uh well, we have the opportunity now to discuss the or uh the resolution uh that is on the agenda for tomorrow evening. Uh and I'm welcoming any uh comments from council.

I like with far away. I like what I see here with the u what Miss uh council rose put in. Uh, I think it it fits her needs. Uh, it looks like she from going to that conference was able to pick up a little bit more information that is warranted to be in here. So, I'm I'm okay with it.

Yeah, I I agree. I I I responded to the email. I appreciate Councilwoman Rose's um additions to it. I think um you know it sends a a statement that more needs to be done and and Councilman Rugles obviously you had the the foresight in 2017. Um so I'm glad you did it then and we brought it back so it looks good to me. Yep. Those additions looks good. Yeah. Anyone else? I I see a lot of Yes. I I have no problem with it. Yeah. Yep.

Anyone else? And I mean I I I just want to point out that you know the city has been active in this. It isn't that we didn't do this. This was done in 2017. Uh and now there are other there are other issues that have arose since then that hopefully this addresses but you know it it wasn't that we were not active in this. So, so this is this is the addition right which council me council member Rose introduced right addition that we already have.

Yeah. And and there are there are specific thing I mean time changes things and that's really what's happened here is that time has changed us. So I think this is this is a good um I I agree.

Yeah. And and I I agree and and I think what the city has has done over the years with the immigrant community, whether they're documented or un I think has been amazing. And and when when people scream that, you know, city and council and the mayor, we don't care about immigrants, this and that, it's just a an uneducated lie. Um and you know, unfortunately, we had to deal with it. But I'm glad we we took the time, did it the right way, and um you know, we got it done. So action speaks louder than words. Okay, we'll see you tomorrow at 5:15.

Hey, you don't you don't give nothing nice like that. I don't want it. I know. I didn't say nothing. I was yesterday. Did you bring it back for me? No. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Listen.

Don't pull me for a blowby blow. Don't wait for the call. taking my water with me. I don't want my water to break. I know one thing right now.

Yes, sir. Nothing like it. Okay. Got it.