Town Board - workshop

need to be the official way to do this.

I was not here just to guide.

He said he was going to come in.

No, that's what I said. He's coming.

He's coming in.

Possibly he has. Oh, yeah, he was going in and out of. He's at the mercy there. The courts.

All right. Homeboard workshop number. whatever next is to order. The reason for today's meeting is to discuss budgets. As a recap, we went through a preliminary meeting. Corinne and I have sat down with the budget and we had done a bunch of hacking and slashing. It still needs to go farther, much farther. We can hack them all out and get it under the cap, but I think people are going to be disappointed with what we take out. And everybody here was asked to go back to their departments as liaisons and talk to them to see what their must-haves, must, and maybe what they don't have to have so we can sit down and have a constructive conversation on how we lower the numbers. With that, we'll go from there. Okay.

All right. Even if we were to tell everyone cut 5%, Patty's wine item.

But 5% was a hypothetical.

Yeah, here's a hypothetical. So if I took Patty's budget and I said cut 5%, that means she cannot get any supplies, anything that she needs to run her department that will literally just cut all of her 400 contractual expenses.

You're saying 95% of her budget is cut.

Yes, 93 and a half. Yeah.

Well, I cut 20 something thousand dollars out of my budget. We didn't because I needed it.

We don't need to go over my example. Well, usually the personnel is about 90 to 95% of a budget.

Okay. Let's, let's not, let's take what I said, put in contact. So Patty would write me back a letter and say, I don't, that's my entire. Discretional funds. Okay. You're okay. That people that are ways that have discretional funds and where they place it. in a year of a budget change we're gonna do. Maybe this is a year we free them, cut. You know, every time you have a little reel back, you know, it happens at home. You gotta put a roof on your house this year, you're not buying a new car. I don't know, I'm just saying, like everyone else spends their money at home.

Because most of the budgets are like patties. Most of them.

Most of our department only have 5% discretionary funds.

It's 5 to 10, depending on which department, but like court. Supervisor building engineering. What about overtime?

How much money do we spend on overtime?

I don't have that report on me. I guarantee each department's different, like water and sewer higher.

Overtime next year, except for the mandatory 24 hour operations, water and sewer. These are the things we have to consider. Work within your 8 hour work schedule and what doesn't get done start the next day. I mean, we have a lot of OT that I think could be managed better. I mean, these are the things we have to manage what we have first. Yeah. And then I don't think we're managing what we have right now. I don't think we're doing the best at managing what we have.

Right. And I mean, like we brought up going to court every other week. We brought, I mean, but those are decisions. Do you just want Pete to make those decisions? Or is this, I felt like that was something the town board should decide. I have no say in that.

Do you want any of those decisions? I'm happy to do it. Okay. Listen, I think the court issue.

Kelly, there's a state law, but there are ways around that. So if we want to talk to her, do you know we can get around this?

We can talk about every other every other court. Save us. But how do we how does that look? So the judge only works once a month now.

I think it's a challenge. I mean, if the sheriff's office or the troopers decide to do some sort of ticketing blitz or something, and now we're waiting. Yeah.

But I mean, it's just like certain things like that before we even address it, we figured, what are your thoughts first?

Yeah.

And that's why I was doing these budgets. We've never been this way. I mean, I've made my comments when I first started here about, we need to close this gap. We need to find revenue or cut expenses. And I was dismissed multiple times. And I understand this is a newer board. and we have one person who has been here who dismisses me still. So that's, I mean, I give advice.

The whole process freaks me out.

I would like to be a part of the discussion. I I'm, this is the first time I've been responsible for a budget. And if I have to place a vote on it for the final, I like to see where everybody's thoughts are. That's me personally.

It is true, but what I'm saying the process is, and I'm not trying to start a war here. I'm just saying the process is the supervisor deems what he believes to be the cuts are the deep cuts because he manages the time on a day-to-day operation. So he can send out, he could do preemptive strikes and mandate that you don't send me a budget that's even more than last year's. How about equal? That would even help us.

No increases.

Except for capital projects. I understand we know we have sewer problems. That's capital projects where we're bound for all that stuff. But besides personnel, and we've managed the hypothetical increase in the budget and the union, So that's in the budget. Right now we know we have anticipated a cost for use. We've anticipated a cost for garbage. And that's why it's so high. And we also got hosed on our fire contract last year, whether you guys want to admit or not. 15% was a hosing we took. That's a lot of money and it's building up. And now we're paying the piper because we didn't manage properly last year or the year before. And we're going to do it again this year.

I think fire ended up being 8%.

No, we took 15% of the people, so it's a freebie this year. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was able to, but still, we're still 15% over 2 years for a fire contract is unheard of in any other community. And we didn't control it last year because we're all scared of firefighters in their boats. I'm not. And we didn't take control of it last year and how we're going to pay the piper. That money added every year is just keep compounding our problems because we don't manage problems at the root problem. And that should have been a 2.5% to 3%, 2.5% to 3%. We gave 8% last year. We gave four years or at least three years of increases in one year. And that's compounded into our problem this year.

I mean, I think our bigger problem is we use $3 million of fund balance across the funds. And $1 million of it alone was general. Alone. And that's where we are becoming negative.

We're balancing our annual expenses off our checkbook, off our savings.

If this budget today was our final budget, let's pretend, between the tax cap increase and what that budget is, where are we at?

Because we would have to make up 1.8.

Is it still 1.8 with the garbage contract?

Well, it's, well, no, because garbage is its own fund. We are negative 1.8 only with general.

Only in the general fund.

Only with general. We're negative 850 or 300 or how much was it? We got that down to... 562, so 560,000 for sewer. And that's why I pulled up the rates, saying the break-even point would be 200.

But the general point, we're 1.8.

We're 1.8 right now.

In the negative, in the tax increase that we're allowed by law.

It's 387.

It's 387, so that brings it down to what?

Roughly.

I can't do the math quick in my head. So we're like 1.3 away from having a balanced budget?

Oh, we can't count that for the tax cap. That's everyone.

That's the whole thing.

That's sewer alone since we're borrowing that project.

I guess the number. If we didn't increase taxes beyond the legal limit, what is it?

Now that we're borrowing for the digester, sewer is going over the tax cap with just themselves on one project by adding that project.

Mm-hmm. So there's nothing. So we're 1.8 over budget period. Just in general.

Just in general.

Right. Okay. Highway's not gonna let us suffer.

No, highway's in a good, highway's in a decent shape right now. It's not something too bad.

So is there a particular department that is the biggest issue? Yeah. Which one is it?

Well, it's a combination of all the departments in general.

But is there a particular department

It depends on what you want to look at.

I mean, I can't make sure and water. Are their own thing and we got to deal with that that, you know, so that. But, you know, rec parks, those are things we potentially can services for people. If those are the services, golden age center, not that I would suggest doing that. I'm just saying those are places. Those are 1 needs, right?

Well, that's why I gave budget for you guys to look at. Because, like I said, we can cut from the final current projection line. Or the super recommendation line that I sent you guys if we cut from both. That would be great and we can lower the fund balance that way. But. I mean, every department head was like, oh, I guess you can cut a little here, cut a little there, but I need this, I need that. And I can't tell them no.

Then you add on the wage increases and then it just goes off the deep end.

Correct.

So the wage increases are in that budget.

They are in this budget.

They are in the budget. Yeah. So the wage increases are really what's driving us.

But the problem is, is we never made up the revenue from the original union contract four years ago when I had how many sheets sent out saying We need to close this gap as it is, but now. For personnel, we also have to close this gap that's coming up because this will cost us this much after the end of year for it. And that's the same spreadsheet that I sent you guys this year.

So, so let's take let's take personnel office. That's that's already managed. If we, if we told everyone to hold their line. On last year's expenses or their own lines. The discretionary funds, what would they do?

I mean, I'm just trying to figure out what we even went through and took the fall through back out and we adjusted this year's budget to carry it and all this other stuff because there's a lot of my items that weren't used like we talked about and we told all our department heads to lose these frivolous lines that never get used because we can't afford to fund them. If you're not going to use it, why would we? So we were trying to make that money kind of work for us.

My point, a lot of times they put it on paper and they don't use it. And that was my point earlier on, is that the response, we have some, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you can't be lazy as a department at a budget time and just say, oh, here's my last year's budget. Let's change this line, this line, this line.

That is where Corinne and I found a lot of the money to bail us out of what we bailed us out of. You know, it's a lot of ground.

Yeah, it's like, it's like, look at the 20 as a department, like, each one of your budget lines state. I haven't used it. I'm in this line. Yeah. Well, I should use it or I should send it back to the town.

We were looking at lines that they were historically not used for 3 years. We're cutting them. And they have a number, so that that number drives up our 1.8.

No, no, no, we cut it. I don't know.

I'm saying that that number 2.8. Yeah, 1.8.

Yeah, it was 2.7. Originally we got.

That's how we tried up that number. So, um. Yeah.

So right here, this 2027 supervisor recommends that leaves us 1.8 minus. Right. So we need to look at that line. Right. And try to pull more out of that.

Correct. Or if you go to that budget packet, I wasn't going to keep printing 180 pages. You look at the final current projection line. Let me get this out of order because I have things marked. Okay.

Okay, just in general, I see. I thought there was a summary you were looking at.

Got it.

We think that here and here. So this is this year.

If you guys see Tom pop up, let me know. I'll let him in. So you can see where we went through and cut these to zero, cut that. Before we go line by line, the $25,000 for the special event. Yeah. I just, they had a meeting.

We talked about that special event money, didn't we?

And I think, yeah, for the extra $25,000, we can probably remove that. That's not been cut yet.

Yeah, but we can. We talked about that. I think we should. Yeah. Yeah.

If the chamber supports them, we can just direct pay a vendor for $10,000, whatever we've approved. It's just a long ways out, Pete.

So $25,000 out, you're okay with it? Oh, yeah. We talked about that. We wanted to do that, but we didn't want to do it without talking. I don't want to ruffle on each other.

Well, I'll ruffle.

Well, I didn't know if anybody already had a plan going on because I wasn't at those meetings.

I just think it's too far out. There's no plan presented yet.

If they already had it spent, then we didn't want to pull it out.

So there's that. Sidewalks. Is that what you guys do line by line? That's what we did do.

I mean, for today. What did you guys do ahead of time so we can come and see when you guys had the cuts?

OK. What's the sidewalk line for? Is that for repairs?

when they dig up something for sewer and they have to fix it. So infrastructure is there. I know highway is starting to do more than they were. So the hope is smaller projects. He seems to be doing them and getting them done. So I don't know if we can reduce that line.

So when we look at personnel, I'm sorry, I'm going to have a lot of questions because I haven't done this before. When we do personnel, there was a separate sheet in years past, right? My department, it laid everybody out. But can we go in and take overtime out?

I mean, do we have some departments?

I mean, like obviously highway, we can't take out water sewer, we can't take out, I mean, there'll be more of a discussion probably with unions at that point of what we can expect.

The challenge too, with some of, I guess we could call it discretionary over time, like parks, But they're, yeah, we can't have services if they can't do their job.

I understand.

I'm just saying that that's one of those ones where like, oh, you know, we could cut their overtime. Well, we can't because if it rains or pours or it snows or does whatever, they have to make hay when they can make hay. And unfortunately, the state law requires us to pay them.

We have also minimized the amount of part-time people they've hired to kind of offset that in the past. So we've made the voluntary statement, cut your workforce in that

Which saves the bottom line because there's no benefits.

There's no, so I agree with that. Actually having that whole grass cutting thing we put together too. Now we have somebody who cuts grass, cutting sewer plants and not sewer plant operators and vice versa. So that, that has actually been a relatively good cost savings, but now that, that blemishes parks a little bit, because parks is now paying to make all those other things done. But it's also freed up. those separate players to do their jobs.

It's not always reflected on the line item. I understand that.

Right.

And last year, it seems like there was a lot of conversation about controlling that so that it was justified. It had to have approval processes. So the numbers that are in here now are based off of what you feel to be a fair assessment. Okay. I just want to tidy that conversation up that started before we move on.

So it's traffic control. Well, exactly. What falls under that budget is that maintaining our lights and all of our traffic lights and everything.

Actually, that is more of highways.

Yeah.

So highway manages that.

And is there a rationale that why it went up 27 percent? So we're projecting to be under budget at a $55,000 and then we're projecting to increase it by $20,000 even though we're projected to be under budget this year.

I believe he has expenses coming up.

Well, so I don't want to speak out of school, but I want to say they're redoing some of the loops and some of the stoplights. I think, I think I remember that conversation, but don't quote me on that. I'm pretty sure that's going on. I got to go get some work.

3310. Yeah.

We do have, we have a safety.

i said we should leave oh yeah i'm like oh because i've needed that i keep a pair in my car can you leave those blue ones for me because i like to use those next to you yeah i got it here oh you said traffic yeah traffic control devices 3310 right here three one zero

It just looks like we're coming in under budget this year, but we're going up. If it's something we don't have to do, if it's a want or a need.

It's not under maintenance for loops. There is a maintenance on lights and style loops, but... Hmm. Final current projection this year, 10,000 for that. And then it went, there's the 20,000 maybe. Now we're going to say 24,000.

For the loops, it says?

It says it's on line item 3310-0421. And it says maintenance on lights. And then in parentheses, it says install loops, et cetera. There it is. So you'll read it the same way I do. So I read that one.

So it's explaining the use.

Appears today.

But I mean, it was a 24,000 dollar budget line. And final year projection was only 10,000 for this year. Yeah. So they're asking for 24. so it seems like. It's on a different line or something that's combined here causing this to be. 70, unless that's control box next 1, I'd see a 17,000. If you look at it, my fingers are halfway down the page. There's three things under 3310.

Yes, he asked for those to be increased. We already spent $37,000 this year. We have to pick something else up. We can follow up with

I'll talk to Jim about it.

It sounds like we have to check that and move on. Dog control, that's just steady all the way through.

Vital statistics. We have a $5,000 line that doesn't seem like it gets used. 2026, zero expenses. That's because it's in December.

Oh, okay.

I get it. All right. So it is paid.

We took that out. I think that was tied into that one team's program. It's the one in the Narcotic Guidance Council. There was another one that I think with you, but that's gone. That's gone. Okay. So how do I...

The highway superintendent. Is he getting a raise? Is that next year raise? What is the elevator? Okay, so that's what that that's 17,000 is okay.

It's the staff will vote for them.

We'll get a raise.

First of all, elected officials should not be on steps. Full-time elected officials are to be on salary that we determine. That is ridiculous to put elected officials on steps.

I mean, it's just been .

There's some money right there, right? Freeze all elected official salaries. It's gonna happen tomorrow. There's no reason elected officials should be getting an increase when we're in a budget crisis. And there's nowhere in the world have I found any other town that has their elected officials on step increases. You get elected at $10, it's $10 for four years, unless you find a reason to vote yourself a pay raise. Even Congress doesn't get step increases. They get elected for 174, they get 174 until all of Congress decides they're not making enough money.

That's not my vote, too.

Well, I say, I'd say we vote the free salaries, like, professional salaries, including mine.

Back to last year's numbers, we do that at the public budget. I'm just, we can do it right now and well, you can take it out of the budget.

I'm just saying for numbers. What's that? What's that? Get us. If it's 17, just from the highway guy, I can. That'll be around 30 grand. And then we need to really think if that's the way we need to stop. I don't know why, when we got into this practice of tying elected officials to step increases, we are not union, we are not employees. We are elected officials. We get the privilege of all the benefits that come with elected officials. We should not also get the privilege of blind increases that the people of our community do not know we're getting. It's hidden increases of our elected officials that nobody knows about. Period. Again, this isn't. I know. I'm just saying, this is my rationale. I can calculate it for you.

Don't disagree with me.

Do you know the number? I want to calculate it, Corinna. We'll see what the input is.

I just texted Ron to see if he was into it, because I can't pull up my spreadsheet.

I don't mean, I'm just emotional over this, because it depressed me. That we've let them forget like this. That we have elected officials on step increases. It's a ridiculous concept.

Well, it's only three. It's only the highway superintendent, the town clerk, and the supervisor are the only ones that it's applicable to.

No, but also we give our judges and us whatever increase everyone else gets. Well, that was different.

That's also not in other towns.

No, that's not true. That is true.

The other elected officials get raises if everybody's getting raises.

No, elected officials, I will tell you, I worked in the town for six years. We got an increase only when we voted an increase in.

Right. But I mean, if everyone was, it wasn't automatic in the budget.

Well, that was just trying to say, if we approve a cola in the past, it's been for everybody. Right. If we choose to approve a cola for everyone, but elected officials, that's how we should do it. Absolutely. And I thought we did that last year, didn't we? For the town board, we rose our cold.

Well, except for the supervisor. Wow. Right. Because I was the only person that was on the steps. Yeah. Yeah, so it looks different.

Listen, like Jim said either, but I don't, I just don't believe that that conceptually elected officials should be getting the same. They may run for unless they come and say, here's why I deserve more money. And they justify it and we say, okay, that's what the judges did in Lewis and they got, but they came to us and they said. We think we should make the judges and listen to making the same increase. That I voted on for them 20 years ago, they have not gotten 1 time more.

35,000 still the same that isn't the way this and all the other times we need to consider it.

I'm just telling you, I disagree with you the issue. I think you're going to run into. which is fine, they're elected officials, they know it. They know when they were running about the STEP system. So I think that's the challenge. You say, yeah, I run. If it was set number, yes. But this town has told these people, hey, when you get elected, this is the way it works. You're going to get bumped down, and then you're going to be back up in four years to what it might be or should be or could have been. I don't know. And I don't know what the answer is. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying we've put people who run for certain offices in a pickle because the town did it this way, which I agree with you. I disagree. It should be that's your funding, and this is what it is. Um, you know, and, you know, to bring up the sheriff made $85,000 up until last year. Yes.

I'm not, I'm not saying that happened in other situations.

No, no, but I'm saying they agreed to that. They ran for that. And I never felt bad for the sheriff that, you know, the state raised it. But with that said, I agree with your conceptual, but also the people that ran. that ran with the understanding or knowledge that their pay might increase, and that's why they retired or quit their jobs. So we gotta balance that conversation while we restructure in the way you wanna do it, which I think is correct, if that makes sense.

I know a lot of words, but I don't disagree, but we have to understand the way we have elections that we're not all elected in the same year. Some will always be affected by the change when a change happens.

Right, right.

But we were saying next election, we're freezing everyone's salaries at this, and they don't want any changes by board resolution. That affects you and Rhonda, because you guys plan on a different.

Right, but instead of maybe, I'm just thinking of different ways of looking at it. Instead of saying today we're going to freeze it, let's look at what the final projection is, what it is today, and say, okay, we're going to pick a middle ground here. We're going to pay you $152,682 in perpetuity and lots of changes. You know what I'm saying? I'm just saying the words, I don't know what the right number is. But pick a number that's within that scale and set it and forget it.

You're right. We could take an average of, we actually could, that's a good concept, take an average of what Pete made from the day he came in to the day he leaves, pick an average number between it, and set it as a supervisor's salary from here until we decide.

Same thing with highway and clerks.

As long as it's not a person that's a step that, let's say, someone retired from the town and stepped right into it, they wouldn't leave that step. Right. They would. Yeah, they go straight from that step. Don't you? When I started, they told me the salary was probably going to be told.

It starts here.

That's right. Salary schedule or anything. I just. It was going to be a raise. It was going to be what everybody else was getting. And then they put me on this and I objected to it. And I said, I don't think you should be doing this for electeds. And then. Then the supervisor and highway with the only other ones that you could do. And I said, well, that's even less fair. You know, that's even makes even. Less sense to do that. And it, it stuck and it was just, it was unfair. And then there was salary freezes over the years with the red and green budget. I was affected by that for six years. My salary was frozen yet. Everybody else's went up. So it really was, it's ineffective. But as far as getting elected on a salary, the person, if that's what you're going to do, if and when I leave, you say, okay, the next person's going to come in at 10% less than what my outgoing was, then that's what the person's going to expect, period. They're not going to expect it. They're not going to expect a 6% raise.

Well, it sounds like somebody who would potentially replace you would come in at the same price that they're paying you. Well, whatever the board decides. I don't know if that's exactly right either.

Whatever the board decides. I don't. The town board makes that decision.

I get it.

At the budget hearing. Yeah, I get it. The budget hearing is where you set the salaries of the electors for the following year, period, regardless of who the nine people are. But you can't lower it while somebody's in office. Right, right. You can't you can lower it if somebody is not going to be there. You can lower the salary if somebody is not going to be there and, you know, a new person's coming. That's right. But you can't do it for the judges because you can't have the judges in two different salaries.

Correct. We're trying to figure it out.

You can't have the councilman on two different salaries. So it's only applicable to the highway superintendent, the supervisor and the clerk.

And I was just going to butt in at 3% increase. The average increase for that is about 11 to 14,000, depending on steps.

For all nine people? for all nine electives. That's $11,000 out of your budget.

I thought you said $17,000. No, that's excluding steps. The steps are up, yes. Him and John are $17,000 together. That's benefits and stuff, it says.

No, that's him and Allison, but also you've got to remember $4,000 of that is the health insurance bonus.

Okay. Which is the huge savings. Yes. So, okay.

Okay, so that's, that's that.

Can't touch that one right now. Yeah, but if you want to work out a number, you're going to come up.

So, I got to go in and get the number.

Yeah. REC admin is in equipment going up 20, about 20,000.

I haven't talked to REC. I have a night. I have that page with me. You had that. You had that that corresponds from Joe. Regarding what we talked about, my program costs.

That's the whole board, didn't he?

I'm not sure if I know that it was an equipment. It's what's on the equipment line. So that's why they're buying a car.

Here's what that brings them, I don't know if anybody wants to read that email once it was only said to be not.

Did you need to see it is that what you're asking for.

So I just want to look. No, no, no, I want to get a good look at the numbers to tell you guys okay yeah so there is a and increase. Uh, both cost of programs and number of programs for next year. There's another program they're adding. Which kind of adds to the cost of running that department, but it also adds to.

But I guess the other thing you see your AC units. And a shed with concrete. That's 15 that last year. um well it's handwritten in here yes the handwritten would be his requests yeah the typed up is what was in there for 2026. okay so a shed with concrete i think we're still trying to figure out if we should build a building i want to spend 15 grand on a shed that they're going to outgrow in 15 minutes This seems like everyone who builds a jet watch. The first one is finished. So I think a reasonable building is better to put that money towards if we're going to. You're on 7110, right? 7020.

7020.

107 was the final projection, then 117 is what he asked for, but somehow in this thing, it's 136 or 127. Or 126, I'm sorry.

It's always 126.

That's what you have on this document you gave us that recommended from the supervisor?

Yeah, because he added all of these and you're looking at equipment.

But I see that he only asked for 117. So how did it go from 117 to 126?

It said department requests. This is 126.

Oh, 26 requested 117. We dropped it to 107. Now he's requesting 136. We dropped it to 126. Okay, I get it now. Took that out of here. So I don't want to screw up your whole filing system. So I would say the shed, we need to think bigger. That's a short term solution in my mind. I don't know how you guys feel. That's not a ton of money, but it's still, it'd be better.

But you reach points where the little parts start to add up.

Yeah.

So there's the new one typed out.

Thanks.

That was in the fact that that was sent.

You just re-sent that one, didn't you? The general?

Yeah, I sent them all by departments.

Okay.

Again? Not since the last meeting. Okay, since the last meeting. Because nothing was changed last meeting. Okay.

I'm not going to go in the opposite direction, but how do we reduce the park sign? It was 44 to 9,000 down 94%. What was that?

And how are we going to?

I can show you.

That would be a. There's a couple of them, but some of them I can show you when I get that back.

Okay. Vinyl side for pavilion.

Actually, can you hand me the parks? That's how he's going to, um, on programs they're gonna he requested to put sides i think this is right sides on the pavilion so on rain days they don't cancel they have a space to put kids and that's split between golden age and rock by the way so it's 10 000 i'm not sure how this um on 70 twin like 70 20 line item for the sludge removal and stuff at nike base i'm not sure how all that's going to play out Like we have some heavy cleaning costs that I'm hoping we eliminate. I believe they increased that. They split it between RAC and Golden Age though, right? Yes.

I just think that's going to go down, but we'll need them for correction, so.

We still got 75 grand for the asbestos repair, which I thought we were like, no, we're going to shutter that building. Instead of spent 75 grand on a tiny building like that. And it was the original one.

Which building are you talking about?

It's that where the land storage is and stuff next to the community center.

Is that the one we just approved to have the scope to look and see what the issue with the roof was? Or is that the building that the community center is in?

I thought it was a senior center. I thought it was above the actual rec department one that they were going to do the.

So the roof is leaking in the first section where the recreation center is. Okay. And it's pretty obvious why it's going to be leaking, but they'll get there. But that's not the asbestos one.

But not the one that they've been talking about with the asbestos. It's the same building. I thought it was across the street. It's connected.

That was Frank.

The recreation center is connected to the building. That is something that you can come. Not talking about the recreation offices. The community center roof. Community centers attached to that.

To the right.

I was under the impression it was the offices.

So the one we approved is the rec and community center building. Because there's stuff being stored in there. Total.

I mean, I go in there for the lion stuff. I've never seen water on the floor. It leaks somewhere. I don't know where.

That's what this asbestos repairs is for them. It's for that building.

$6,000. I just would hate to invest that kind of money into that small space.

Why do we spend $6,000 on the whole thing? Is that that buffer thing? When we hire somebody to come do that?

And it's only...

So they want to do it themselves?

I think that's what he's offering possible increases. They want to change the floor too. What am I paying? My biggest concern with that, I asked her to hold up until we go through the season of no leakage there.

Yes, let's 6,000 a week, so I would say 6 weeks. Want to shed is that we've got to come up with a better solution. I don't know how critical these picnic tables are. Do we not have.

Picnic tables this year, or I talked to John that. Because we have all those picnic tables over there about. I said, I basically said no, because it's so okay. We didn't, we didn't scratch the table. So, all right. So that's, we, we, we did a bunch of that already. Um, but so it doesn't reflect on the notes.

It's in our hand.

So, if we did that, that would be 25,000. Yeah.

So I would say if we could do that and we could drop this $25,000, right?

The $136,000. Did you touch any of that? Oh, so I see a $126,000. Okay, so $15,000 more.

So that would bring it to $116,000. So can we punt the... Shed for now, and look for a bigger solution.

So, that would remove the shot.

Yeah. So then I would bring it down to 115, I believe. From 126 correct. Oh, no, 136, 136, no, 136 went down because you took the picnic tables out to 126 supervisor recommended. Then you take the shed. So I showed you 106, right? Okay.

But you took out the connect tables with just 10. It should be 111.

It's already out. The thing you sent us, it went from 136 to 126. Pete said it was picnic tables that brought it down the table. So 15 more to bring it to 111. So they're saying lose this yet. So that would be 111. So that would be a minuscule increase. The 75 still, we could use it for something else. But if we need it, I guess we need it.

It does say, though, if there are no sheds, then we still have to have pod costs of $34.60 to rent a pod.

So did they rent it this year? Is that where stuff is now? We paid $34.60 for pods?

Most likely, yeah. 3,400. Yeah.

This is what frustrates me at the beginning of the year. I brought a simple metal building that got so confused and convoluted. It could have been just a simple building like this shed they're talking about. And it was just like just over $120,000, $150,000 money we had between three budget sparks, highway and recreation. It could have been built right now. But we let it go through the political bull crap and now it's at $300 and it's not going to get built at all. We got to just start doing stuff that makes sense. You know what? So we're not going to ever insulate the building. It's a metal frame building to put stuff in. And we got off track, got distracted in a different direction, hired people to send out RFPs, and now it's above our costs. What do we do? We shot ourselves in the foot for 20 cents. It could have been built right now. What do you have the parks one battle recreation? That's the revenue.

That's what we increase the revenue based on the increased programs. But the start ones, I see that was 24. 25, and then you had a date and that was as of July 31st.

Which one's your opinion?

This has been discussed before, like a public works position that kind of oversees all the stuff and all the buildings. Like the little stuff in here, like floor cleaning, $6,000. We have floors cleaned here. They come in and do the strip, whatever. We have somebody come do carpet a couple of times a year. 3,000.

Yeah, 3,000. Our own public maintenance department, much like we did the grass cutting that would serve all the facilities. But that would require some pretty serious changing of things. Personnel-wise. Personnel-wise, we'd have to get some equipment. We'd have to get more vehicles to run them around. And we Started with the grass thing, because that was a no-brainer. That's working out well. This next step would probably cost us before it seemed. So I don't know. If we want to go down that avenue, I'm happy to look at it, but I'm going to tell you that it's not going to be cheaper.

I'm just thinking like, do you really know it on Monday morning? No, I know. But we spend thousands.

The other question is too, we spent six grand on that floor cleaner. Is it only going to be used over there? That's a big piece of equipment for not a whole lot of floor cleaning.

Is that equipment or is that a service where somebody comes in and does it?

I thought it said purchased, didn't it? I gave rec back to you.

Oh, it's equipment. So that means they want to purchase.

They use it in that recreation center and they use it to do that.

So maybe we could use it here and not pay somebody.

If we were going to purchase it, then we should be a unit that can be transported. And maybe we put Jim in charge of that. Hey, you own this thing. You've got to once every two months or whatever, swing through these facilities. And do it.

It doesn't clean carpet, though. Well, I'm just, I mean, I know we're talking small dollars when we just look at it like this, but there's a bigger picture. Yeah.

Yeah.

I just want to make it clear that it doesn't clean the carpets. Right.

But it's also a good use of personnel because and I'm again, I don't want to be thinking I'm bashing anybody, but the fact of the matter is. In the winter when it's not snowing and it's cold as hell. What are 15 guys in our department? So what you're saying is we, if we could get the union contracts to say, listen, could you. Help facilitate building management or building maintenance. Put that in the company. That's all the duties is assigned or something. Yeah. I'm just saying what Jim sends the guy over here to work with our gym to run that machine. They do have some sort of agreement because they come in and they take over.

He's on vacation. Yeah.

So we used to hire someone to come do that for $3,000, $3,500 or something like crazy. So now it's shared. So that was a good move. That was a couple of years ago.

Right. So you did you already. Cut the playground.

Sorry, sorry. The playground got cut out. We referred to the lane to go find money if you want that. Right.

And so the bucket I get. So that mower is the thing.

The mower is the concern.

Yeah.

It's a huge expense. It's a huge bordering on a need. You know, so I don't know where to go with that.

You did cut it for... Yeah, you suggested adding $25,000 to maintain it.

We'll maintain the old one, but I don't know if we want to spend that money this year or not. I mean, it was a pretty red-lined budget, so I don't know that this is the year to do it. It was all that it needs replacing, and I get it. And next year, it's going to be $10,000 more, and I know that, but... You know, when's when right? Yeah. It is, I guess the best way I can put it. I understand why they need it and it makes sense. They need it. And it does save man hours. But it's a lot of money. Yeah, it's an employee.

Well, does he offer that with. The next guy that retires, they don't replace and then let's buy the machine. It's really the cost of the employee. That's what I'm saying. If that saves us eight hours a day in cutting, then the next guy that retires, I'm not saying fire someone, but the next guy that retires, they don't replace them.

I don't know if it saves eight hours a day in cutting. I think the issue is the downtime puts them behind.

Correct.

um yeah so then they got taken to the shop you can't mow and then all of a sudden it comes back now you've got to mow everything that you were going to wait a week take a week to do you're going to do it in two days because it's already a week behind uh so that's the challenge and i hate that it's expensive more it's a big mower how much is it 110 thousand dollars

That was one of the things that's cut out of this one.

The problem is we're still at one point, whatever, and that's already out. There's no way it's going back in.

There were some hard decisions made on this, and that was one of them.

You know Tom.

I'm not passionate about that.

I explained to him kind of the same thing you said, and I said, I'll get it. We cut 80 grand out of

Old age.

I got away from 98 to 15 or something like that. As much as

Well, that's why it would have been nice if they would have brought the respectful budget instead of having to pull his hair out. Because that's what I'm frustrated at. I'm not worried about pulling my hair out.

It's already gone.

Well, the sideburns. Yeah. Or the beard. I'm just saying, our department heads, I think we stress to them, they got to know we're struggling, that they're paying attention.

I mean, I told all the department heads in end of May to say, we have a problem. You need to cut. You need to make cuts. Don't freely spend it. I do have written in the software soon that we can put in the policy where the purchase is above an X amount. It needs prior approval before purchasing. And that will be going live in like two weeks. So we just have to come up with the policy for that.

Off topic, that was a little bit tricky today, but it's going to be a nice system once we're all used to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just getting used to it.

I mean, the learning curve. Yeah. Oh my God.

Yeah. It was a six month transition in six weeks.

Yep.

Well, I was working all days of the week at any time.

So I think you're all gonna find there is some meat in the budget, but there's not a ton unless you start getting into programs and employees before it gets tricky.

Planning, I assume it's planning board. Since we don't, is this the overtime for? How much is it? $27.50. $27.50.

That used to be what it cost us to pay the secretary before. So now it's going to be the overtime.

It'll be the overtime.

So she'll apply.

She'll probably code her time on the different. Okay. Yeah. So it won't come out of engineering. It'll come out of planning. Okay. Understood.

On the engineering line, on the front page, I don't catch any of that. 1440.

Oh, we haven't talked about engineering. Architectural review. What's their 5,800 in personnel services that they don't ever spend? Or no, they do spend, I guess. Well, they, again, are- Board of Architectural Review.

They are liaison by town employees.

Well, that's the overtime of the town employee that goes to that. The long range is the same.

I don't even have in our board anymore. I just sent him an email yesterday saying, are we going to read? I mean, this goes to Sheila. Sheila will have to just dive. Okay, she reduced. And I got to do that quick.

Reflect, it's going to remain.

If you can get the tree law passed, maybe we can get some funding to help us get that money back.

The tree law is going to change again, so who knows how that's going to go.

You got to leave that tree stuff in the budget because we have so many.

I'm just trying to get reimbursed. If we can become a tree city, then some of this money could be grant money instead. But I don't know if we'll ever get a tree lot passed.

Why not?

I don't understand. I was so close and you just dropped the ball. It's right on a negative edge, but now there's some reconsiderations for some more.

The guy who loose lost his board.

I lost my board completely.

I know, be careful how you talk. All right, now that we found something to laugh about, let's go back to the numbers. What was I looking at? That just got me totally sidelined.

Oh, just going through the tree on the board. Drain it. There's nothing really we can peel out of there except for that 20 grand.

What's scary is drainage should probably be five times that amount, but we can't afford it. No, 10 times. You're on the same page as me. That is a huge issue that we cannot tackle because we don't have the money for it.

We're not going to get anywhere until we have a hydrological study, and we're not going to get that until we get a grant for it. That's something.

At least we replied. Yeah, that's more than we could say years past, right?

So, at least we're trying to read their hand now.

There's some positive stuff there. What is unallocated insurance?

Ability. And unfortunately, do the claims leave one up? More than double since when I started sure.

It's been.

I mean, good news is I just got. I got some good news where I can make some budget adjustments from what I put in. So that will lower that and a little bit, not much, but.

It helps and under shared services where it's got contract or what kind of stuff is that. Is there shared. Is that like the window cleaners? Yeah, that kind of stuff. Elevator, all that stuff.

Right, isn't that crazy? What are we buying in shared services equipment that's $100,000? Oh, it's a computer refresh?

as needed because computers have to be replaced every five to seven years.

It's a cycle. Yeah, there's a cycle on that. So not all the computers get replaced at once. Every year, a couple in each department.

So that cycle is going to be higher because we're projected to finish at 150, but we're going up to 67.

Right, I'm coming over here.

Yeah. 267, I'm sorry at 267. We're going up 110,000 dollars.

Okay. Yeah, I remember I adjusted for this year's budget. So last year you had to look at what was in the budget last year, which is always a little off.

And then you're projected to be at 150.

Correct.

So now we're projecting to be at 117,000 more than what we finished at this year. So I'm wondering if it's a bigger part of the refresh or is it just a guess or where are we? How do we come to that?

One of the things is a large frame scanner because engineering is about to go at any day. So we locked that in the budget. Yes. But I took it out of this year's. Like we're not going to purchase it. So that's one of the decreases. That's every year thing.

That's one of those things we spend the budget for five years and when it dies, we got to replace it right away. But we're not going to replace it till it dies.

And then that's the equipment that's currently out there.

It's actually shared by more of the engineering, so Code of the Forest Measures and other departments. Thank you.

And you have to replace it because you can't buy a part for it anymore, right?

Right. When it goes, it's gone. The next time it goes, it's gone.

It's gone. Like the copiers three years ago.

So it just keeps percolating and making things happen. So until it doesn't, then it stays.

Close one eye when you hit the button.

If we get to 1440, there's a lot of money there. And it's not, I don't understand it. All right. Now that just increased in. I'll show you what I'm thinking. Substantially. So. If you give me the answer, I think I'm going to give you.

I'm going to go out and decompress. Right there. So pretty much in order to get grants, we need plans set ahead of time. Previously, we would book these expenses directly to the project that we borrowed. Yep.

The only way we can apply to get money is to have a plan.

So we have to theoretically have allocated money that we're trying to save by the grant?

Normally if you got a grant to do a project that would take the engineering and all that other stuff on it. We're trying to have some projects engineered to a level that we can apply for grants with the engineering, you understand, and not put the engineering into the grant aspect of it. So it changes how you chase money and the levels you can get it at. So do you understand my point?

And you can't even apply for some of the grants without having that design. Right.

So this is a philosophical shift from 26 and previous? Yeah. Because we only spent $100,000 in 26. Yes.

How much is in there for that? No, 25 we spent a lot. We spent $260,000.

Yeah.

Year to date.

26, you're going to project it at $98,000.

Yes.

So we didn't do those things that we expect to do next year.

It just wasn't as...

So in 2025, he said it was higher. I don't see the 25, that's not on here.

2026 was 200, sorry, 2025 was 260,000.

Well, where's the plans from there? What do we get grants for from that 260?

That I'm not sure of.

But I'm...

i don't want i gotta see what this money is going on so i think so i think things are kind of getting convoluted there there's a lot of stuff to do with the filter the stormwater and uh no the filter upgrades that were made at the water department probably included in that a couple of things that happened at wastewater um a couple of these plans like we talked about with the verity group and all that stuff were were were started back then Well, wouldn't those come out of water?

Well, one of the positive things about those would be a water expense.

Buy some of that, so that's going to help that line.

Yep.

Well, engineering coordinates the projects before it goes out. I still can't find the line. Is it 1440?

1440, right at the bottom page one.

Yeah, but do you have it on the detail or not?

No, I don't have it.

I'm probably the best person to ask that.

Glenn, that would be a good person to talk to about that.

I'm just saying our engineering department is bouncing at almost a million dollars and I don't, I'm not seeing enough production to spend a million dollars. Production is not.

Yeah, that increase in line. I mean, we're not getting any more personnel or anything. So it's, we're going to contract all these things out, I'm assuming.

And why do we have so many in-house engineers that we contract everything out?

And then do we cut that?

We can't like have both ways. We can't have our guys just shuffling paperwork to the contractors. Four grand.

3,500, I don't know what the rationale was for. It seems like potentially there might be some meeting.

So is so let me ask you this. Because I can't remember exactly wasn't there some stormwater stuff involved with a piece of that?

Yes. Yeah. Yes.

It was in that line to stormwater and grant projects.

Yeah. So stormwater was a big part of that.

Well, stormwater coordinator, is that what you mean? 260,000?

Stormwater reports and all these other things that I'm going to be honest with you, it doesn't. than it's done in the past.

Does he have a $200,000 increase?

I mean, I can cut that if you guys.

We don't want to cut off our nose to spite our face. We don't give free money away. If we have to spend 200,000 to get a million, I'm not so dumb.

Well, so I think there's multiple things in there and I think a big piece of that is stormwater. stormwater has become a bigger and bigger piece of that. And I would have to ask you to talk to Bob and let him explain that to you exactly, to understand it, because he sat with me and that's a lot of discussions as well.

Do we have a different stormwater went up? Do we have to find what that, and this is what we need to do when we have our department meeting, what is the day-to-day operations of our engineering department? Like, what are their tasks? And then what do we pay because above their skill level or and or just as much work? Because it seems like I don't understand. What we do in house and what we do out of house. Because we got a 600,000 dollar bill for in housework to 250. I don't know what we're getting 600 so it's a stormwater thing, but.

Yeah, it starts at sixty five. It's projected relatively next year. Yeah, so it's two hundred thousand dollars.

I remember him saying this is a big thing, but we also have never done it. Yeah.

Except in twenty five, it was two sixty on that line. Actual to fifteen.

So I think it's a. There's just so many year thing, maybe. I don't know. I don't know either. Talk to Bob about it.

I think Jose just went to ask him about that.

I don't know what this is. Was Jose going out with the system? I don't know what the system is yet.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay.

All right. So what happens daily in that office? So a guy brings a plan in for a subdivision and we do the review. That's in-house, right? Or is that at-house?

No, primarily I believe in house.

Primarily.

So we now have one, two, three, four, five and a half employees in that office, right? It's actually, and then the secretary makes six.

Yeah, six.

Yeah.

Yeah. So five and two parts.

Six. So when I got here, there was two, two and a half, and they were screaming, make us whole. And now they're whole and they're not costing us any less. I'm saying that's what I'm saying. The contractual line should be decreasing as we increase you in personnel. Because six people should be doing something in engineering.

Well, I think hopefully Jose gets an answer because there's 250 in person out professional services. Let's see what that.

Yeah, I know. I'd love for him to come in and sign up because. If we, as we, as we increase your staff. I understood, I understood when we were 1st here, you had to outsource some, because only 2 days can handle so much. But now, as we don't, what I'm saying is, I think you got used to outsourcing stuff and. Here's all sorts of stuff now we should be doing in house. No, I'm just I'm explaining my logic. Did we forget to go back to the way it was when we have a full staff? Why are we still outsourcing? You want to I wouldn't argue they wanted a full time engineering department. I wanted to go to contractual. We kept the full time engineering department, but we're, we're still paying 360 for contractual work. Or 3, I don't know.

It's a combination. I'm sorry. Travel training.

I don't know if GC and 1 of the larger part of that is there are 1 model.

Our water modeling and wastewater modeling people, they should, they should be in the end. So they should be, they should be on wastewater and water. I think wastewater water is wastewater effect.

Well, it depends if it's wastewater for sure. If it's for a project, it gets applied to that project. And most of GHD goes to a project.

Yeah.

Bob's not there and nobody else is there. Nobody quit.

I don't know. I don't know. Nobody else is there and we're paying 49.

Well, we got it now.

Yeah. You know, the guys that are there, they're unaware of budget stuff. Yeah. And Lynn's not here. So I don't know. Let's circle back to that one. Yes.

That might be a windfall if we could figure out a way to do it better. Well, when you're gone, what I said is when we're up to six people in that office, when I first started, there was two and a half. So as we staffed up, we should have, the traction line should have went down because I understood hiring contractors. Correct. But I think maybe we got into a trend of still hiring contractors for stuff. You could push back to in-house. Because we got a full house, full in-house engineering department. Yes, we do.

Legal. So recommended to drop it down.

So we need to do something. I don't know what it is, and I understand the concern about going below where we've been, but we have to lower. Absolutely. That is a massive note. And there's multiple ways to get there. I think 1 of them is, you know, potentially changing how we do business. Uh, which we're exploring now, I, I agree with that. You know, but I think, and. So, primarily legal is driven by. This room by the board, and I think we just kind of really, uh. we're asking the rest of our departments to make hard choices and make cuts. And I think we need to start stepping up ourselves. And where we can minimize that, we need to do that. I think we need to all be on the same page before we go to legal. So we're not, I'm not working on something and this person's working on something, this person's working on something, but we're really all doing the same thing. I think we just need to do better. I do. Oh, great.

I don't disagree. And I think, at least the way I'm viewing it in my short time here, we've relied upon legal to do a lot of things on their own without us even knowing. They're operating in the background, spending money for the town. And I'm not saying we don't know, but we just don't know how much it's going to be, right? Oh yeah, we're researching this thing. We got a team and all of a sudden they spent 30 hours researching something that we're not even sure we wanted research. Right. But we had kind of,

We let them have those rings. There's no line in the sand with advisory boards reaching out and having meetings and calling and emails.

There's no authorization for the call. I think that's on us, personally. We've got to set parameters for that. I think that's on us, and I think we need to, as a board, start to do a better job before we ask everybody else to. But I do think we need to draw some hard lines as far as who actually has access to them.

Right. And as a resident prior to this, I would have never in a million years thought that I could contact our law office and spend $2,000 worth of town money answering my personal questions. No, I don't think that's a thing. But it is.

I think sometimes there's a lot of research that legal is relied to do instead of...

We could do it.

I just did that letter and I spent a couple of weeks doing research or whatever and hand it over. And just are there, did I miss anything? Is it legal? Are we protected?

Right.

That's a lot different than start from scratch and get me $500. Right.

write me a law and i'm not saying write our own laws but i'm saying let's get an eight percent cook before we let that's what i'm saying you can get it to the line yeah so i really feel that this is 90 percent just make sure there's nothing and as far as people working on the same project that that's a communication issue on everything well so i think but if we if we initiate any legal insight, it should come from this room because then we're all in the room. Somebody could say, well, I know this and I know this and we could put all that together. Okay, we don't need you to tell us that. Now that's done. Now we just save ourselves $500. I think really by letting it happen that way, I think we can practice what we preach. That's what I'm trying to get.

We have to do a better job as a group. Yes. letting each other know where we're at and how we're doing it.

So I'm not going to disagree with that, but I'm also wondering if that's why we don't initiate anything with the attorneys unless it comes from this room as a meeting. That way we're all here.

As opposed to someone picking up the phone and calling.

Correct. So it's a thought. I mean, it slows some roles, but on the other hand, it probably will save us a lot of money.

because we'll all be on the same page however we end up we do have to have a reset with legal however it goes yeah because and that's the challenge too we end up reaching out because we haven't earned anything in three weeks oh yeah i have been working on it and this is where i'm at with it well it'd be nice if we knew that three weeks ago now i made a phone call you just charged me a hundred dollars to find out what you did if you did anything

or the delay makes it, oh, now we've got to start the review all over again.

Yes. I get a lot of requests about odd things, about property purchases and sale and all that stuff. But I bring it to the town board because I want to know, first of all, I'm not going to work on it if you guys are nervous, but number one. Number two, there's not going to be a $10 bill at the attorneys. I mean, these things are going to cost money. So I don't want to also institute that obligation for us to pay that without the rest of the board Knowing full well, this is what the freight is, you know, I didn't think a lot of that happened, but I'm also.

7 months in you got years here.

So, from my perspective, or even looking at the invoices. Some questions that should have came to me went to legal. and so i mean last year the only reason why i was contacting them was because i learned an hr role right and i had to make sure i was doing it you know we resolved that on board is going to help with that number significantly correct and i didn't call that often to do 100 grand worth of

And I'm saying that there's residual, there's other monies that are.

Yeah, because of a lack of based based on what the supervisor is recommending, I think. We're in line there to 20. From 344, I think we need to find a way to be in that.

That was 250, it would cover what I'm present, but I'm proposing 30 for contractual and 200 for an attorney to that other guy.

yes supposedly they're sending something today even if it's a letter yeah they said they're sending something today okay okay someone collecting those things that we're doing all goes to kellyanne oh it's good even like i'm hiring across or we are hiring a crossing guard guys just so you know yeah um it's all going to her like things aren't lost or Not lost, just filed in a different place.

These are the people. Do you want to interview them? What do you want to say? See, the one thing, again, we can go to. It doesn't cost us any more money between 430. It doesn't cost us a penny. Right. And then the thing about us agreeing on what I can bring to an attorney is I might be bringing something sensitive about something that's wrong. And I'm not going to ask the board permission because it's something that I need to work on first by myself. I mean, you have to have the ability to go. All five of us have the ability to go individually to the attorney. Do we want to abuse that privilege? No. Do we want to? We want to make sure we stay within the threshold. Yeah.

Well, it's spending on a credit card, right?

Yes.

Teenagers spending on a credit card. I want an answer. I call, I get an answer and I don't realize I just created a bill.

Yeah. So that's. Every time I dial that number, I try to think of how I keep my question under 10 seconds.

Well, there can never be enough communication around this table. So that will solve that. Some of that, if there's duplicity and. So many other areas.

for that we're not we're not taking a lot of numbers down there well that one was already down so i mean if only we had if only we had a recreation center on top of the city great just saying people have to realize what this town can afford before they tax the residents out of existence

So we need a better understanding of that, the engineering number, especially if some of that is built into what Verigy will provide.

Like the engineering line, if they were to tell me for this $300,000, these are the four things we're going to have drawings done up for, and this is the projected cost, then I would feel very comfortable saying, okay, because then I know the drawings are going towards something we're going to do very good or something. But don't just tell me you want that much and you're going to hypothetically maybe spend it on something here or something there.

Well, I'm not comfortable with it until I see how this other thing is going to play out. If those are on the same list, we've already determined to- Like a very deep project? Yes.

Yeah.

Let's look at everything. That's communication around the table again, right?

We're going to find out exactly what that is, how we can do better, and if it is duplicated somewhere else.

And the fact that you are full staff now some of that contractual line should either decrease or give us an obligated project and we'll yeah because the town board should also be determining the obligated projects, why are we letting. me why are we letting a department decide the project should be tell us what their priorities are projects what's the priority of the town board I get that that makes up.

This safety inspection line that's code enforcement right yep.

What is the audit? There's nothing we can change on that. That's a contract that's been signed five, six years ago.

It's really expensive. I'm going to audit myself. I've already audited myself.

I would prefer to keep my license. Thank you.

You want to send this out of the bars? It's like you put a big old turkey on the table and gave us a butter knife to cut it up with. There ain't a lot of cutting here. The turkey's pretty skinny. That's the other thing. That's why we're here.

I get it.

Corinne and I spent the better part of two weeks packing and slashing here.

This is a... Yes, semi loaded question but let's say let's pretend we love the supervisor recommended budget what it where it's at where would we have to be with our tax increase to have a balanced budget.

22.

It will be in balance now there's no way to get it in life just yeah I just need a number in my head, so I can.

22%.

Look out the sound right about it yeah. So. yeah.

22%? Yeah, at least. What does that look like for a homeowner?

I would have to plug some numbers in and get the average house this year versus last year. It's not just a simple calculation.

We're saying 22% general fund. We're not even including the hike. Oh, total. And sewer and water, did I include that? 22%? Yes.

The full balanced budget would be 22%. So theoretically, 19% more than what's allowed.

I mean, like I said, sewer, depending on how much we have to borrow on Monday, sewer is already over the tax. We're breaking tax no matter what this year. But we can't, I mean, for the last few years, I was told don't add general don't add to general. And last year, I was like, we need to add something to general. Which means highway didn't get any of their share. But highway is going to follow the same path if we don't also.

Having the conversation about highway.

But it will become a problem if we don't. Stay on top of that.

I'm all for staying on the tax cap, but it eludes me how we do that.

I mean, there's no way. With this project, Pursuer, that we're passing, that alone, Pursuer, is over tax cap. There's no ifs, ands, or negotiations. It's over.

So doesn't our medical obligations also really went pretty wild?

yeah i mean those increased the last three years except this year 14.1 yeah um i mean the union contract from last year we never closed the gap of revenue to compensate the increase don't break the tax cap and when i'm told don't add money anywhere drop it back down

I don't think anyone in this room is blaming you for where we're sitting, Corinne. Oh, I'm not taking any. I wanted somebody to say that in the room while we're talking about it.

It's just the trends of the economy.

It's that. It's sins of the past, if you want to call it that. And then you put all of those things together.

You kick all those cans in the corner, and then you've got to pick them up.