City Council - workshop

good evening we're going to call the city council workshop meeting budget workshop meeting to order monday august 17th at 6 30 p.m roll call council member richardson council member darms here council member knight here council member thompson is absent vice mayor grimm council member stafford here mayor marks here and please stand for the pledge allegiance

okay number one overview and discussion of fiscal year 2026 2027 budget 1a budget workshop presentation devlin moore finance director

Good evening, Devlin Moore, Finance Director. Tonight we're here to discuss the proposed fiscal year 26-27 budget, and most importantly to receive your direction before we move forward with the formal hearings in September, next month already. A significant portion of tonight's presentations was developed based on the one-on-one conversations that we had during our budget meetings with council. During those one-on-ones, we discussed the proposed budget and asked each council member whether there was anything that you wanted specifically addressed as part of this presentation. So we've incorporated many of those requests into tonight's presentation. Tonight's presentation is relatively short. It's about 15 minutes to give you plenty of time to have discussion and let us know where you'd like to end up with your budget. So again, the purpose tonight is to provide a quick recap of the proposed budget and to give council an opportunity to discuss the proposal and to make any changes before the public hearings. Again, this presentation is largely structured based on the conversations and feedback we received from council. I'll begin with providing just very high-level highlights on all of the major funds. We'll talk about some trends, and then we'll talk about some other council-related topics that came up during the 101s, and then open it up for conversation. So we'll begin with the general government funds, which for this presentation is made up of the general fund and the capital improvement fund. The general fund, again, as it's proposed, is balanced with a reduced millage rate of 7.0387, which is below the rollback rate. And the general fund budget uses no fund balance and maintains all existing service levels and programs. It does fund a new planning technician for the development services. Department it funds it provides funding for ongoing union negotiations and it includes a $10,000 transfer from the general fund to the facility construction fund just to add some additional monies to that pot for future facility needs On this chart to the left, you have a pie of recurring expenditure by type. Again, approximately 78% of the general fund is made up of personnel services, 22% of it is everything else. And then to the right, you'll see that we're taking an analysis of recurring revenue and recurring expenditure, which is best practice to show that the budget is sustainable. And when you take the two, you find that we have a recurring surplus of 119,000, so that's a good sign that the budget is sustainable. There's approximately $1.4 million in capital outlay in the proposed budget. Of that, $791,000 is going to be street improvements. A large portion of that's going to be the infrastructure improvements in Harley, Strickland Boulevard. There's also a large resurfacing project along Rhode Island between US 1792 and Thorpe Avenue. The fleet equipment consists of six replacement vehicles and a dump trailer. And then the remaining capital is gonna be the capital non-IT, IT equipment and facility improvements. And that's all listed in your proposed budget as well as page five of the supplemental document. As we discussed during the 101s, during the budget process, approximately 130, or excuse me, 331,000 was either cut or deferred from the original draft budget that was prepared by the departments. And those cuts happened across all departments within the general fund. And those cuts are listed on page two of the supplemental report that was handed out. There were five positions that were requested that did not end up being funded in the proposed budget. Those are gonna be the two police officer positions, the EMS captain, and two maintenance specialist positions for a recurring payroll of approximately 440,000. Staff would recommend that these positions not be funded at this current time given the fact that property tax reform is, Heading towards us possibly in November and these are things that maybe the council would like to reconsider after we know what happens with that There are some pending items still. Union negotiations are still underway with both fire and police, and we are still waiting on the final premiums for the property liability and workers' comp. The good news is it appears that those premiums are gonna come in really favorable, and I expect that we'll actually have a decrease in the placeholders that are currently in the budget, and those will be reflected in the version that you'll receive as part of your first public hearing. Your enterprise funds are going to be made up of your utility funds and your stormwater fund. I'll just touch on each of these real quickly. So you have the utilities funds or the utility revenue fund is balanced with a $184,000 transfer in from prior earnings that's being used to fund non-recurring capital outlay within the fund. There are no new positions included in the proposed budget. However, there is funding set aside for a temporary part-time GAS intern. There is $640,000 being transferred from the utilities revenue fund to that renewal replacement fund that's set aside for future capital outlay related to the utility so that you don't have those big Increases and decreases in your utility revenue fund you start putting away those monies for larger projects when it comes time to do them and then there is four hundred and forty three thousand dollars in capital outlay and utility fund and Utility rate study is currently underway and will be presented to the City Council early next year. I Stormwater fund the budget aligns with the adopted 2025 Rate study it is balanced with no use of fund balance It does include two positions a field stormwater field specialist position and an administrative position and it includes $335,000 in capital outweigh that is primarily the stormwaters portion of the costs associated with the infrastructure improvements on Harley Strickland Boulevard Similar to the general fund, there were cuts and deferrals in both the utility fund and the stormwater fund. Many of these items that were cut or deferred will likely be reincorporated possibly into the budget as part of the rate study. It just was a little bit of the cart ahead of the horse with some of these things. And those are listed on page four, your supplemental packet. There was one position requested and the department agreed that it can wait until the utility rate study is complete and that's the utility processes manager. The last major fund that we're gonna touch on is the CRA fund. In the CRA fund, there's $893,000 appropriated to pave Thorpe Avenue, the road where Public Works Building is on. We talked in detail about that during our 101s. And that leaves $356,000 set aside for future capital projects that may come up as part of the CRA strategic plan. And the budget includes $20,000 for facade grants. I'm gonna provide some trend data. Some of this is in response to some conversations that we had during the one-on-ones. First, you've seen this before. This graph is displaying two pieces of information. The bar lines are representing the taxable values over the last 10 years, so you can see that since 2017-18, the property values have increased from, taxable values have increased from 631 million to 1.5 billion. Meanwhile, the millage rate has decreased over the course of the last 10 years. In 2017-18, the millage rate was 8.0650. The budget is balanced at 7.0387, which represents more than a full mill reduction. This is a new graph that I've never presented before. It looks at how our general government staffing has changed relative to population growth over the last 10 years. So we're only talking about general government employees. This is excluding the employees in the enterprise funds. In fiscal year 17-18, the city had a population of approximately 11,700 residents and it had 81.5 general government employee positions. That works out to be about 6.95 employees per 1,000 residents. So we're using that ratio to provide a comparison between fiscal year 27-18 and the proposed 26-27. So in fiscal year 26-27, we were projecting a population of approximately 15,800. And employee count including the proposed new position in development services is 106.75. That does exclude the DeBerry Fire Services and it excludes City Council. So these are solely feet on the ground, people at desks working. So over this period, the city's population has increased by 34%, whereas the general government's employee count has increased by 31%. It's important to point out that the relationship between these two numbers and even with the additional positions being added over time, staffing has not grown faster than the population. And in fact, the staffing level per 1,000 Residents has declined slightly over the last 10 years from 6.95 to 6.76, or about 3%. Even with the new position included in the proposed budget, We remain below the staffing ratio that we had back in fiscal year 17-18. So the main takeaway on this slide is that the city's workforce has grown as a community has grown, but it has not outpaced the population growth. this slide looks at the same workforce growth but from a different perspective comparing it to the growth in the city's taxable values so for this analysis fiscal year 2017-18 serves as the baseline both taxable value and general government staffing begin at zero percent and then the chart shows the cumulative increase from that point forward So since 2017-18, the city's taxable values have increased by approximately 136%. Over that same period, general government staffing has increased by 31%. You can see that the difference between the two have widened considerably over time. By fiscal year 24-25, the population had more than doubled while the general government staffing had increased by about 25%. Doesn't mean that staffing should increase at the same rate as taxable values. That's obviously not the case It's just to provide another measure on how the city's growth over the past decade put It puts into perspective the staffing situation So the main takeaway here is city taxable base has expanded significantly faster than the general government workforce. I Some other topics that came up during the Council 101s. The first is position counts. A council member had asked that we go over the position counts by department. So on the left you have your general government position counts. City Clerk Development Services Finance and Administration makes up 25 positions or about 23% of the total position count in general government. Public Works has 20 positions and makes up about 18.3% of the position count. And then Public Safety is made up of 64 positions and they make up about 59% of the position count. To the right you have the enterprise funds and those funds which are the utility fund made up of utility billing with four positions and utility operations with 24 positions. And stormwater with seven positions makes up a total of 35 positions. Once you factor in the Berry Fire Services which is another 20 positions, the city currently manages 164 positions total, plus seven council members are on the payroll. Another topic of conversation was related to an inquiry made back in June concerning the fleet inventory and vehicle assignments. So I thought we'd just take a moment to touch on that. So the slide summarizes the fleet inventory and the vehicle assignments by department. The fleet inventory is divided between city-owned and leased equipment. Of the 25 leased units, one is a motorcycle, which will actually be returned to the dealer at the end of the fiscal year. It's just not being used. And then the remaining 24 trucks, which are split between public works and utilities, are pickup trucks that the city leases. So give you a little bit of background on the city's lease program in December 2019. The council authorized the city to participate in an open-end equity lease with Enterprise Fleet Management for the acquisition of light duty trucks. The program has worked relatively well for the city. It's provided the city flexibility and some cost savings when it comes to acquiring these pickup trucks. If the council is interested, staff can provide a more detailed update on the lease program, including costs and how the program works at a separate meeting if you'd like. So let me know if you'd like that, and we'll bring it back to you. And then in the far right column are the take-home assignments. So the first column is gonna be those vehicles that are taken home every day. There's about 40 of those across all of the departments. And then on-call are situations where an employee carries, I was gonna say a pager, that's dating me, carrying a cell phone and they get called on on-call situations. They take a vehicle home so that they can come back to the city and address on-site work. As council works through its discussion, there's really two options. You can either proceed with the proposed budget as presented and adopt a millage rate of 7.0387, or you can provide us direction tonight on your requested changes, and we can look at what millage rates would be necessary to support those changes that council would like considered. So with that, as you open for discussion, I'll be leaving this slide up here, unless you want me to go to a different slide. You've seen this before. It gives you the millage scenarios. So the budgeted rate is the 7.0387. At your July 28th meeting, you set the proposed maximum rate at 7.2387, which would generate approximately $265,000 in additional revenue. And the rollback rate is at 7.0523. So I am here, and staff is here, and city manager's here, and we'd be happy to answer any questions.

The vehicles, does that include the pool vehicles?

Yes, it does.

Any questions, Council?

Yes, I have one. On the budget highlight general funds, you said $10,000 transferred to the facility construction fund. Did you mean to say $100,000?

I meant to say $100,000. It's amazing the things that come out of your mouth and you don't even realize you said it. $100,000, thank you. One extra zero. Yes, thank you. What page is that on?

I could suggest some things that might help what's how much we spend on cell phones

don't have that answer in front of me now if you want to give me a few minutes I can figure it out yeah of course sure that's just one of my questions the other thing is is I think in the future we should discuss and it might have to be after November but that we should go to a charter amendment and ask for five council members instead of seven we could save a lot of money like that Um, and then I think I took a note here. I feel like we did a lot of cuts when I went through the budget on all the major departments like public works and the police and the fire and, and I didn't see any cuts in administration. So, and I feel like that's where most of the money, there's a lot of big paychecks in administration So that's something to think about. And then I read in the. It was saying that the proposed decrease was 3.5 million or 13.48% due to grant appropriations, but that's not a normal expenditure, so you can't count on that.

Correct. And we consider that as non-recurring. So that's not going to be in that recurring number that we refer to. And then those will be reappropriated as part of the carry forward budget amendment. Whatever the balance is, that's due. You'll see it repopulated in the new year, but that's a good point.

then i i'm accustomed to i felt like we always put a little bit more money in the contingency fund which makes me a little bit nervous i don't remember do you remember what we put in there last year 90. yeah it's ranged between it was closer to 100. yeah and it's always at council's discretion to replenish that uh contingency contingency amount even maybe during mid-year if you want because I feel like we used a lot of that when the storms came and it was because we had to wait for FEMA to reimburse also so that was something that was concerning to me was that we didn't have a lot put in there for backup I understand some of the positions that were not funded now and maybe in the future till we see what happens the take-home cars i'm a little concerned about that because i feel like there's a lot of take-home cars and maybe it should be you know just the nonis it should not be issued to the non-essential workers so are those vehicles issued to all essential workers meaning police fire you know

I was looking at the overtime not just in administration but overall and wondering if there are opportunities where some of that overtime could be cut like if it's absolutely I know some of it's probably absolutely necessary I'm not talking about fire and police I'm talking about everything else so

I think it's I can't really speak to all on behalf of the departments but I can tell you that the use of overtime other than police and fire it's basically essential especially with police with empty vacancies Overtime is generally paid because a situation has occurred not because somebody's behind in their workload or They're being called in to do just additional work. I'm not seeing that on the timesheets The large majority of the overtime is police and fire I'm not really sure how we can reduce that. I

I'm not referencing police and fire because we know the situation there, but I'm talking about like administration.

10,766, city clerk 3,599, finance 1,020, and it looks like planning and zoning 247. So all of that amounts to maybe 15,000, $16,000. and we could look into the admin because that's the the only one that's ten thousand or greater is admin and then from there you've got the city clerk and that's for the attendance when you have the hourly filling in and so forth so City Manager would you address the chair next time you jump in like that absolutely appreciate it Councilwoman Knight you got any more

Anybody else vice mayor It is not No, it would be any typical vehicle on on street vehicle not apparatus not rescues not any of those golf carts or smaller women either

Correct. Absolutely.

For Devlin.

No, that's okay. And I have that answer if you want it now, but I did do a report that we can also forward to you.

I want to see it broken down.

Okay. This way I can look another way.

Okay.

So the report that we'll be sure you get, we'll have it broken down by fleet repairs and maintenance, fleet supplies and equipment, and then gasoline, and then we further broke it down by the fund, and then I gave fiscal year to date for 2026, 2025, and fiscal year 2024. Can we start with that? That would be great.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Any other questions, council, or comments?

No?

Okay. Chair, I have one more thing. Go ahead. You mentioned cutting city council members back to five. We could also look at reducing the salary for these positions as well. You can?

Absolutely. that's something that would have to go for a charter amendment though it's not something that we can do ourselves but it's just a suggestion on if we're gonna have hard times I think tonight we're just trying to figure out how to pinch pennies if you will and help out without losing you know our employees our staff and but also trying to you know just tighten the ropes a little bit which is kind of what they want us to do anyway but and then next year like said 10% we have to do 10% next year so and we'll be the bearers of that I think that There's not much that we have to really tighten more up on, right? You've done a good job.

I do have some responses to you on the other queries that you had. So I did pull up the cell phones, and the current budget for cellular service is $108,000. How much? $108,000 across all funds a year.

I just don't feel like we use them that much. And then, you know, this... these past couple days it was very disappointing to see that they weren't even picked up on emergencies so why do we have them you know so that's why I said it but that's a lot of money that's $100,000 is what we were carrying over to the capital fund think about it so we're not using them I don't know how you feel about it council do you use them a lot I can't find mine half the time because it's black and it blends with everything in my car okay just a suggestion I don't know how much that is for you know I know that the essential workers need them I get that you know that's up to the city manager of what who you feel absolutely has to have them you know for emergencies or you know Public Works is on the road and they need something you know that's I consider that something important but that's not my job that's your job

Wait, Chair. We can take a look at it and I'll report back. I'll do an evaluation to see, refresh who all has them and then classify them as a priority and see if there's anything there.

Okay, thank you.

I use mine frequently because I check the calendar on it and it's always being updated and it's a real quick oh I forgot about that and I had that so I find that very helpful to have it i'm not carrying i'm not carrying this i mean i mean i carry it with me everywhere i go so if i happen to be sitting and i look oh wow that just popped up so it's important to me the other thought i had is could we maybe uh investigate a another provider that might be cheaper go in that direction

Matt does a really good job with the cell service. We do get a good rate on the cellular service. And one reason why we go with AT&T is they have the first net coverage, which is that high-end coverage in case of an emergency. folks like police and fire who have the cell phones get priority uh use of the towers so that's really essential um but we can certainly ask matt about it and see when the last time he looked at other options he's probably listening right now thank you councilwoman richardson you got anything no

Okay.

And if I may, I just wanted to also clarify the contingency. I just wanted to make sure you knew that that $75,000, you have another pot of contingency that is your reserve fund balance of like $3 million for emergencies. So we actually didn't use that contingency money for Milton because it was so expensive, but there is other money set aside. The contingency that's in the general government is more for Just budgetary items that come up as needed so again So there's three million sitting aside for anything You set it aside for emergency disaster relief, economic downturn, that kind of stuff. So it's not budgeted. We come to you and ask to budget it if needed.

Same, Andrew. Thank you. I was going to suggest that we send you a schedule of what you all have appropriated the money previously for so you can get an idea because it really is not for the catastrophic emergencies it's for the items that come up during the year that weren't weren't funded for whatever reason we come to council and we say okay here's the item here's where you can fund it from and anything that comes out of contingency is approved at a public meeting by council so that was but we can provide you a schedule of where it went this year and possibly last year just for reference okay thank you

So it looks like, are you, do you have anything else before I move on, or? No. No? Okay, we'll make sure. So it looks like we have two options. We proceed with the proposed budget as presented and adopt a millage rate of 7.0387 mils, or we provide direction on requested budget changes. So, and adopt a millage rate necessary to support council's direction. So with this being said, and us still having some unknowns, how does that work?

My recommendation would be for you to tell me whether or not we want to target the current proposed budget and come back with answers on those other things, and you still can make adjustments at the first public hearing if you'd like. If you're absolutely not comfortable with what's been proposed in the proposed millage rate, then I think we may need to have more conversation. But I think everything that we've discussed tonight is within that proposed budget, and I think you've set yourself up for –

successful first hearing okay thank you okay council so it looks like we our maximum rate was seven point two three eight seven the budgeted rate is seven point zero three eight seven so you can go anywhere between those two numbers and you can see what the revenue increase is or D no increase for those numbers on your chart so It really depends on How much money do you think we need and how much do you want to set the the tax rate for? I know a lot of us don't want to raise taxes for our residents But we also have to think about We're sitting here talking about cutting cars and phones. So things are getting rough so when you make your decisions think about that that um the finance department or director has set these up to show us how much income or revenue we can make with this to help out with these problems so or issues i should say does anybody have a recommendation on the council are you asking for a motion i'm asking for a recommendation or a motion

uh madam chair i'd like to make a motion to proceed with the proposed budget as presented adopt a miller's rate of uh 7.0387 my meals okay hold on go ahead i'm sure if i can just jump in and for everyone who i haven't seen in a while my name is garrett olson i'm an attorney at the vose law firm i'm filling in for

for paul this evening i believe the the what's up for discussion tonight is whether or not you all would like staff to bring to the first public hearing this particular budget in this particular millage rate so a motion to do so would be best directed to direct staff to bring back this budget and millage rate for that public hearing process sylvie

So we have a motion on the floor to bring back for further discussion with more information. Does that sound right? We need a second?

I second.

We have a motion, we have a second. Any public comment on this? Seeing none, we'll bring it back for the question.

Madam Mayor, we don't take any official action at a workshop. So you had not.

Okay. And I think that you so you have direction on bringing it back. But do you have an idea of where we were going to go with the military? Because that's what he was asking for on? Maybe get a we could go around and maybe we could go around and say what we think we would like it to be. Is that what you're trying to get a consensus of where we're at on that chart?

Well, if everybody's good with the head nod on the 7.03, the budgeted millage rate, you're still going, so what we'll bring to council at your first public hearing is an ordinance with that millage rate, but I'll also bring a blank ordinance so that once you have the answers, if you want to go up, you will have that flexibility to do so then. So I think I've got what I need to build out.

Council's okay with budgeted rate? Okay, thank you. With that being said, we just need a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned.