City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the city's work session, April 13th, 2026. I'd like to call this meeting to order and inform the public about the opens meeting act and is posted in the corner there of the chambers and is accessible to all members of the public. This time we'll take roll call. Granquist here. Arns here. Webb McCarthy here. Beckman here. Jensen here. Langy here. Hildebrand here. Mayor here. All right. At this point in time, we're going to go into a discussion part of this work session and we'll start with the discussion regarding the results of the outcome of the strategic plan.

Hello.

Hello. Uh my name is Britney Kanik. I'm a retail account manager with Nebraska Public Power District and I've been assisting Nicole Sid Lace, our economic development manager with this process for the city of Norfor. So where we started, it started with the whole process overview. That's where we're going to go today. So the homework was for all of the council p people and city department heads. They had to fill out a survey. From there, we culminated all those results and identified top the top five themes across all answers. Those were housing and econ and community growth, economic development and job creation, infrastructure and public safety, community trust, engagement and governance, and quality of life and collaboration. So, keeping those five things in mind, we had a work session actually at the NPPD facility on December 17th, another public meeting and the strategic planning session was to share the thoughts and ideas of all council based on those identified themes from the survey. Each member of council was given an aotment of time in which to speak on each of the topics and then public comment was received. From there we took the results and compiled the comments, thoughts and ideas which led us to the council retreat on March 9th. From there we did the prioritization exercise. I'm sure all of you will remember that. It wasn't uh super technical but I think it was effective. So those themes and comments were all on one or a big document. Each council member was given five personalized sticky notes and and the mayor too. So there was a total of nine handed out. So 45 total. They had I guess we just gave them time to write

down their top priorities. And then there were five easels labeled 1 2 3 4 and five. and they had to go up and put their sticky note based on their priority. So from there we waited it. Well actually first of all the written priorities were placed. Then we took a break and the members of the public were invited to come up and take a look. Each priority was then read aloud when we reconvened and then public comment was received at the end of that as well. Should probably say state that. So here's the result where we're at today. All of those those 45 sticky notes were compiled, sliced, diced, prioritized, and we have before you the top 10 priorities. Now, the priorities were weighted. So, if someone stuck their sticky note up under priority number one, those were given the most amount of points. Those were given five points. Number two, four points. Number three, three points. Number two, no, I'm sorry, I'm going the wrong way. number one. Number two was four points. Number three was three. Number four was two points. And number five was one point. So if your priority was number five, it got one point. So your top priorities received the most weight, which makes sense. Now, I have to tell you that there were 17 priorities listed of the 45 that had multiple themes. So, one that comes to mind is was something regarding child care facilities being owned and or subsidized or incentivized by the city. Well, we looked at that as economic development and job creation in addition to the quality of life and collaboration. So, what we did was weighted those the same. So, if somebody gave that their third priority, each of those categories was given three points instead of splitting the points. You didn't want to do that. So when you add all these up, you're going to get more

than the points. But what shook out at the top were the stockyards and South Norfork redevelopment. Economic development and job creation was the the top priority there. That was the highest score. And if you notice over in the far right column, there's the count. So the point total was 31. The count is the number of times it was mentioned on the sticky notes. So, of those 45 sticky notes that we had, the stockyards and South Norfork redevelopment was listed 11 times. So, it's kind of a high priority. And then you can see from the Do you want me to go over all of them, mayor, or do you want the public? I don't know if the public can read. That's kind of an eye chart, I realize.

Want me to go over? Sure. Wastewater treatment and expansion, that was under infrastructure and public safety, that shook out at 30 points. Um so if you look below all of the top 10 but you get the budget collaboration and public building public trust that was number three under community trust engagement and governance. The recycling program was number four that's infrastructure and public safety youth facilities programming and child care under quality of life and collaboration. Then we had housing rehabilitation that's under housing and community growth. TIFF specifically mentioned under housing and community growth. That's why that one is categorized there. Um transportation and airport governance under infrastructure and public safety, business attraction, economic development and job creation and economic development strategy under economic development and job creation. So under those themes are sub themes. If you look under the economic development and job creation, you see the South Norfork stockyards and former Tyson plant. Stockyards weighted the most heavily with South Norfork and then the former Tyson building. Next is infrastructure and public safety, wastewater just its own category. The third is community trust, engagement, and governance. That's under budget, collaboration, and building public trust. Budget had 10 points, then you had collaboration, then building public trust. The recycling program stood on its own. Then you have quality of life and collaboration which is specifically youth facilities programming and child care. Youth facilities then youth facilities specifically as a sports complex was mentioned. Then we had youth programs, child care, family programs and community center. So that's how that one's broken down. Then under housing and community growth, the first one was housing rehabilitation scoring 10 points. The next one was TIFF. Under that uh infrastructure and public

safety was transportation and airport governance again standing on its own. Then under economic development again we have business attraction and that was broken down into industrial and retail. Industrial had a little higher waiting than the retail did. And then lastly was the economic development strategy of those top 10 priorities. So that's how the score worked and they were calculated more than once and that's the count. So hopefully the definitions at the bottom help a little bit um with that and if you're looking at it later wondering where all that came from with that I would take any questions I guess what's the recommendation and you guys kind of perform these things to work with other communities. What's the recommendation on how we stay on task and we work through these this process moving forward to the rest of the fiscal?

Well I would say next year I mean you have to work it into your budget, right? So, you're probably going to need to look at the priorities, the highest priorities that you have and then decide what is feasible to do within that. You're looking at a two to three year time frame. Yeah. You know, what you've got the budget for and how you can make that a priority if you choose to make that a priority. But I would use these as your top 10. I mean, this is your guiding principle right here, these top 10. It's kind of like the council's capital improvement plan pretty much. Yeah. Now, it's just having the capital to do it all right. Um, understanding there's no way you'll probably get to all of these things in in two to three years. So, you definitely have to look at that. Um, understanding that your highest priority is the

appears to be the stockyards and the South Fork development. So, it really is just up to you as far as how you want to tackle it and what you want to place as your highest of the high priorities. Okay. I know we we won't tell you what to do. Y we just need to stay on task and move forward with it and correct. Yes. What's best for our community and Yeah. We and we can I mean I guess check in but just to hold you to task but yeah. Yes. Anything else? Oh, it's just you know lot sometimes you do these things and then you just put on the shelf and they look pretty and there they go. Yep.

Way to go. You did your did your duty. Now we have talked about making this a poster right for the for the uh training room so that you guys can always have them in front of you so you can do things like that. But yes, are there any other questions? I would just like to make a comment. I want to say thank you for facilitating this and organizing it, putting everything together. It I'm sure it took a lot of work and uh we're not the easiest group to work with, so thank you for doing that.

No, you guys were perfectly fine to work with. There was absolutely no issue with that at all. It's good to have uh different opinions and it's good to have questions and it's good to have all that stuff. That's how your best ideas come. So, no, thank you. It was definitely a fun exercise for me who doesn't get to do much on the economic development side. So, I thank you too. All right. You bet. I will go ahead and go. Thank you. Thank you. Anything from the council?

Okay. At this time, we'll ask for any public input at this time. take can't really see how this is logged. Nobody. All right. So, here we go. We're going to move on to number five on our packet here. Uh discussion of the current fiscal year 2025 2026 budget and the development of the fiscal year 2026 2027 budget.

I think this Scott, I think we're going to have you come up first. Okay, I'll do it.

Mayor and council, thank you uh first and foremost for giving up time. Um you're all busy folks doing many many things and to give up your evening to be here with us tonight is important. The budget's obviously a major uh function of of city government. Um but our duty, our responsibility to do that fiscally wise and efficient is upon us and and we have that duty and we take it very seriously. So tonight's designed to be informational. It's designed to um be transparent. It's designed to give you the opportunity to get a snapshot in time as where we are right now 6 months into this fiscal year. So it tells you where we are and it it creates a pathway for where we're going forward. So the the idea is to share information and then talk about some of those key topics that we need to be considerate of as we're shaping the budget going forward. And so your input is critical to that. Um let me let me uh say this to you uh publicly thank you for the difficulty that you have as an elected official balancing u the repres representing the needs of the citizenry and meeting the needs of the staff that are coming to you asking we need things we want things we have to have these things to carry out the mission but they all come at a cost and you have to be answerable to the public that deserves to know that we're spending those dollars the best way we possibly can and in the midst of all that It can get emotional. It can get frustrating. It can get challenging. And I know it puts you all in tough positions. And I just wanted to sincerely thank you for that difficult job. You take it seriously. There's not one of you that hasn't come forward and said, "Scott, can we do this different? Can we do it better? Can we save some money doing it this way?" So, I know you take that duty extremely seriously because I've watched it and I've witnessed it from each and every one of you. And I commend you for that. And on the flip side, we have a a group of staff back here that I want to provide. you want to provide with the tools that they need to do the job, which is not always easy. It's easy to say yes. It's hard to say no when you just don't have the funds available. And we struggled

with that last year in a very challenging budget year. I'm hopeful that this year will be better. Um, time will tell as we as we move closer to the actual approval of that budget. Some of the indicators that we're going to talk about today are important. Randy will describe many of those that kind of are the the litmus test of where we are in in terms of our condition now that may be better than it was a year ago. There may be challenges we don't know about that we haven't realized yet that might make it harder, but the only way you can deal with that is to talk about it openly and honestly. Um we got a great audience here today of staff and and citizen that that care enough to want to know what's going on. And we will talk about those things openly and hopefully we can answer every question that you might have. staff have worked hard to gather information on all the various topics that touch the budget in one way, shape or another. Obviously, the mayor has presented um some forced some consideration, some of his ideas and perhaps changing the the traditional model that we've used for budgeting and he's he's put a lot of heart and soul into into trying to offer some solutions or some alternative ways of thinking that we can consider. So all that swirled up in the recipe for tonight is to just bring out some information, have some informal conversation, see where we're at today, and hopefully begin the the pra the practice of figuring out where we're going as we finalize this last six months of this fiscal year and prepare for next year. So with that backdrop, thank you so much for being here. Um hopefully we can um uh deliver on giving you some good information tonight. At at a minimum, I want you to walk away from here knowing more than you did when you came and perhaps stimulate some conversation about what we can do better, different going forward, um, to make our budget the best that it can be. So, with that backdrop, mayor, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

We'll move forward. Thank you guys. Thanks, Scott. Or chief chief Scott. Scott, old ex-chief. New Yeah, old chief. All right. U, we'll move on to Randy. I guess this is your portion here. Um the state of the budget.

Yes, I will be glad to review that with the council. Um I tried to look and see whether we were where we were at budget-wise and where I thought we would be come the end of the year, this current fiscal year. Um that's difficult to do when you're only halfway through the the fiscal year. Um, we approached this several ways. Uh, we looked at where we're at now and is that where we does it look like we've gained ground or lost ground? Is our fund balance growing or look like it's going to be growing or looks like it's going to be declining? And we also looked at it another way where we basically went in and did what we normally do about a month from now and estimate expenditures for the entire year and asked the department and division heads to estimate their or we estimated revenues and we asked the department division heads to estimate their expenditures uh and see took a look at what that looked like. Um both of those numbers kind of jived um came up pretty close to each other and both of those numbers would indicate that um we probably stabilized our fund balance. I don't see big decreases in fund balance happening this fiscal year. Um definitely not like fund balance decrease we have in the budget but we always budget very conservatively and normally our actual comes in better than that. Um, as I mentioned, we looked at this two different ways. And the first way was to look at where we're at now.

And there's a the summary financial statement that you guys get every month. I put an early version of that for the end of March in the agenda packets. It's on page seven of the agenda packets. We don't have the year-end adjustments made or end the month adjustments made to that yet. So, what you'll get distributed to you later in the month will look slightly different than this, but I think it's a pretty good indication of where we're at now. Um, I made some comments on that and in red uh some some of the big items and some of the adjustments I thought we needed to make to get the true picture of where we're at. Now, if you look at the upper right hand corner of that, you'll see the biggest variance on here is in our taxes. They're up about $2.1 million. And that's the additional half cent sales tax for the police station expansion, renovation, and uh what's left over will go to streets. We've got about 2.1 million of that in so far this fiscal year and that's why that is up so much. Um, another fairly big variance is um in the uh fire. If you look at fire, they're uh expenditures were a little over 200,000 ahead of where they were at this point last year. And the biggest reason for that is hiring the three additional uh firefighters. The um admin fund had

and pretty big uh change to the budget. It was 5.7 million last year and 4.9 million this year. That's over an $800,000 difference and that's primarily due to less transfers to the capital project fund that we had in the um prior year. The bottom line as you get down towards the last few lines on this financial statement um shows total revenues and total expenses. Probably ought to back up a little bit and talk about police for a minute because that's got a really big variance in it also. And part of that is that half cent sales tax where trans statutes say we've got to receipt that in in the general fund. We're going to spend it out of the capital projects fund. So that money comes into the general fund and then we transfer it right out of the general fund over to the capital projects fund where we're going to spend it. And that transfer is budgeted in the police division. So that $2.1 million revenue increase you saw up above in taxes is a $2.1 million expenditure increase in the police division. Partially offsetting that is the personnel settlements we had uh last year in the police division. Those were over a million dollars. So that nets to about that $1.1 million uh increase you're seeing in the police expenditures. It's right what you'd expect to see.

Then as you get down to the bottom uh lines, there's total revenues and total expenditures. Total revenues r about 2.3 million from the first half of uh last year to the first half of this year. And that 2.3 million is primarily that 2.1 million of additional half cent sales tax I talked about. Um total expenditures are up about 1.3 million and that's approximately the 1.1 1 million increase or in the police and the 200,000 increase in the fire that I talked about earlier. And that that's still a little over a million dollar um favorable variance. And that's because of that personnel settlements that we had last year that we don't have this year. If you look at this on first blush, it looks like we're going backwards. Total revenues are 15.3 or 4 million. Total expenditures are 16.6 million. And it looks like we're going in the hole about 1.3 million, which is where we're usually at this time of the year normally, and that's because of the timing of property tax receipts. People normally pay their property tax when it becomes delinquent. So I'll be going down to the courthouse and paying that on or about May one and on or about September one when the second half becomes delinquent. The year that we levy those property

taxes, we don't get much of any of that. What we levied for 2526, most people are going to pay that around May 1 of 26. So, as you get through March, you don't have much of that in. You've got some people that pay before the end of the calendar year for tax purposes. You've got other people that we'll just try to check when they get it. You got houses closing and some of that kind of thing, but lion share of that is going to come in real close that may one day. So you're going to miss most of your current year of property tax. What you are going to get is about half of the last half of the prior year property tax. And since our property tax was pretty stable between last year and this year, you would expect to be about 25% short. You got about a quarter of the prior year property tax you did get, but you haven't got any of your current year property tax. We collected about 28% of the property tax we have budgeted through March. So, we're about 22% short of getting half our property tax. It's about 1.3 million, which is just a little bit over the 1.3 million. It looks like we're going in the hole, which is what our fund balance is down. Uh that's the line that's highlighted on in the uh summary financial statements in your agenda pack and up there on the um screen. So even though it looks like we're going in the hole, you make the adjustment. I mean that that looks that way almost

every year. I went back and looked at the last 10 years and you see see that's similar um draw down every year. So, we're coming in. If you adjust for that mistiming of property tax receipts, you'd expect fund balance to be about even this year based on the first half of actual revenues and expenses. Then the next item in the agenda packet is the second way we looked at this. And well, one of the first things I'd like to point out is that for 2526, we budgeted about 7.1 million of fund balance. that top line there. What we actually had is in the 2526 estimated column cuz when we put this together, we know what our October one balances. So, we actually had about 8.4 million of fund balance, about a $1.3 million more fund balance than what we budgeted. And that's because every year we tend to budget conservatively and our estimated revenues that we're putting together when we're doing the next year's budget are usually light and our estimated expenditures are usually heavy. And I expect this year it'll be even more so because we ask people to do this on a relatively short time frame and we're asking them to do an do this a month ahead of time. So

they've got less data and uh the time period they had to put it together was crunched. But every year you'll see a similar thing where we're usually saying we're going to draw down fund balance and last year we really did draw down fund balance but I don't think we will significantly draw down fund balance like that $2.5 million shows in the 2526 I expect will be about a I looked at our largest revenue sources in some degree of detail. Big one being uh sales tax. If you look at just the percent and a half sales tax and and there's a spreadsheet on that every month that goes into the agenda packets, you'll see that we're actually ahead of budget and ahead of the prior year. Uh and yeah, we're up 212,000 compared to the first 6 months of last year. We're up about 3 and a half%. We're up about 3.9% compared to budget. Normally we budget what we got in the prior year, but we had a department of revenue notified us that we would be having a LB 712 or 316. I forget what that is. One of the economic development uh sales tax refunds that we'd be coming out. So that's why the budget number is

different than the difference between prior year actual. The property tax is our second largest revenue source. I normally don't pay a whole lot of attention to that because it tends to come in close to budget. Um when you look at the actual budget when you compare estimated to uh what's budgeted it always looks like property tax is low but that's because state budget forms were you have to budget your entire property tax you're levying but the part that the state is providing for property tax relief like the property tax credits the homestead that allocation that shows down an intergovernmental revenue. When you add those two together, they usually come in real close to what we budget or add those three together. Um, NPPD lease revenue is our third largest revenue source and we expect this will come in about $92,000 under budget. That's because when we put this budget together, we budgeted that we would be increasing our lease percentage a half%. That isn't going to happen this year. And that amounted to $190 or $91,000 of revenue we had in the U MPPD lease revenue that we're not going to get. What we are going to get that partially offsets that is the additional revenue resulting from

the 3% uh rate increase NPD had for 2026. We budgeted there would be a 2% rate increase. So there's a 1% spread in there. Since we get 12% of revenue and they raise their rates, we get more revenue. and they raised their rates more than we thought they would when we were putting this budget together. Administration fees is our fourth largest general fund revenue. This is about a million half dollars and that's um what the general fund is charging other funds such as water sewing and um transfer station for work that the administration does for those other funds. We bill them out their revenue. We collect it. We do their payroll. We pay their bills. you guys set up here and and make decisions that impact the other funds. And so we charge those other funds. We also charge outside entities that we do similar work for. Um housing agency is one. The solid waste coalition is another. And we made a change to the solid waste coalition admin fees. I don't know if you guys remember, but a agenda or two ago, you approved a new administrative services agreement with the Solid Waste Coalition that had a substantial increase in the admin fees because we didn't think we were recovering all of our costs. And we went through and analyzed that on a similar basis to way we analyze our own enterprise funds and that showed we should increase fees

substantially. And that went into effect April 1, I believe. So we'll get about half of that this year. And that's about 46,000. Um, so with admin fees, um, we expect to go up about 93,000 this year. Kino's our fifth largest general fund revenue. It's about 3/4 of a million a year. And that's another one that gets reported to you on a regular basis in the agenda packets and that's coming in just slightly under budget. Overall, as you can see on the spreadsheet file has called up there, we're expecting about $316,000 uh more estimated revenue than we have budgeted. That's probably very light. It's probably going to be much more than that. And we also had the department division heads, as I mentioned, go through and estimate their expenditures. Um, once again, I think they're probably very conservative. But the net result of all that, if you go down a little bit farther on that spreadsheet while is that number of asterric that shows based on these estimates, we'd expect our fund balance to go down about 1.4 million. If you go back and look at a history of what fund balance does, as I talked about earlier, it almost always comes in much better than what those estimates are. As you saw at the top of this spreadsheet, last year it came in $1.3 million better. That number tends to go up as your budgets go up.

And over the last 10 years, that's average 3.45% of the total budget. So if it does the same this year, there would be about a $1.4 $4 million expected positive variance between what our actual results are going to be and what this would show. So that's showing just about what if if you take those numbers and subtract them, it's an $83,96 increase in fund balance that would indicate. I don't want to mislead anybody. This is a rough estimate and it's not going to be real precise, but I think it shows that we're stabilizing fund balance. I expect we'll have revenues about equal to expenditures. We may be off one or $200,000 one way or the other, but I don't think we're going to. may show a little increase. We may show a little decrease, but I don't think we're going to show a big decrease like that $2.5 million that's in that budget goal. Um, that's pretty much what I did to try and give you an idea of where we're at now and where we expect to be for this fiscal year. Um, you know, we've got challenges coming up in next year's budget. I think everybody knows the informal negotiations with the police and fire unions. That'll probably have a significant

cost. Um, the CPI numbers just came out Friday. They're up 3.3% through March. And that's usually the March CPI is usually the number we start out with when we're looking at COLA. So that'll be significant. Um later on in the agenda, we'll be talking about an efficiency audit that will cost us money. We had a big draw down in fund balance prior year. We were at the GFOA recommended minimum or now well below that um to the tune of about a million and a half dollars and I think we should work at building back up to that JFOA recommended minimum. That's why when we had sales tax declining and at the same time we had big unexpected expenditures, we could weather that storm without cutting services or that type of thing. So I think it's important that I don't think you can do that in one year. We were hoping to try and do that or about a 5year period of time. Um but work our way back up to that GFOA recommended minimum fund balance. Um so there's challenges like that. Uh I just this last month, well beginning of this month, April 1st, had to go from the oldfashioned cable TV with Aloe to streaming. Uh had to get get with modern times. But those streaming revenues

don't count as cable TV for purposes of the franchise fee. In fact, federal law prohibits us from taxing those internet services. So, all of those cable revenue is going to go away. I expect it won't be too long before we'll see other cable TV companies switching or stopping their service and people going to streaming. So, we got some challenges like that. Um, but anyway, I think bottom line is we're not going to start $2.5 million in the hole. I think we'll start about even with where we were last year at about that $ 8.4 million beginning fund balance. Won't look like that when we're preparing the budget because it'll be based on estimated revenues, which I expect will net to something better than that $1.4 million or so deficiency that's shown here. Um, they'll have a more time to prepare it. We'll have another month of actual. But anyway, that's my spiel. I'd be glad to answer any questions.

Can we get you to stick around for one more fiscal?

That's a no. All right. Well, thank you, Randy, for putting that presentation together. I guess maybe we could just touch on the highlights real quick. Compared to about the same as last year as far we as end of the fiscal, not a real big surplus like we saw in years previous where we were adding to the beginning balance. We're looking about a net zero coming in. Yeah. Not a big surplus like some years we have. Right. Definitely not looking at a big uh deficit like we had the prior year.

Right. Right. Okay. Well, thank you for that, Randy, and thanks for putting that together on the short notice and short work schedule with how you guys typically perform your budget and work through that. I guess we'll move on. What now? Are we Did we We went through the foreseeable challenges of the year- end budget already. So, we're I think we're going to go to the health insurance cost savings initiative. All right. Good afternoon, mayor, council members. Um, I just want to give a little bit of what we're looking at next year for our health insurance plan. And I do have once that pulls up, I do have Amy and Stuart from IBC. They're are consultants for health insurance. They help um RFPR plan every few years. They do our stop-loss carrier reviews. Um they review claims with us because we're self-funded. So they help us make sure what we're bringing in for premiums and um the income coming in for health insurance covers the costs of those claims and expenses. So they're very helpful. They're available for questions um if you have any. So, so as I mentioned, IBC's in the back. Um, they do the competitive market market analysis. So, some of what I'm presenting today is what we literally just talked about a few weeks ago with them when we were reviewing claims. Um, the improvements we made last year to our health insurance plan was really to

add in two other options, employee plus spouse, employee plus children. Prior to that, we just had single and family coverage with the PO plans. Um, we have right now, this is our 2026 plan. So, if you see single, the employee doesn't have to pay anything per month. um there is a $1,000 deductible. And then going down to those other plans up to family, you'll see that there is a monthly premium. And today they're 485, 495, and 527 per month all the way to family. And the deductible for those plans are 2,000 per year. And I will add, we've been with Blue Cross since 2024 is when we started with them. And so we're getting to the point where we're wanting to audit, make sure they are or review them and make sure they're the most affordable for us and they have the best coverage. So looking at 2027, those PO premiums, we are forecasting a 2% increase to those monthly premiums. that is pretty conservative um to maintain those costs and keep the deduct the deductibles the way they are. Um last year we didn't increase these at all. So we went a year without increasing and now we're going to 2%. It's just a slight $10 to $15 extra per month and single would still be free to the employee. One thing that we're looking to add which is new uh for the city is to start another option for employees to do a high deductible HSA eligible plan. And what that means is the employee would have a higher deductible. Um, the single, as you can see, would still be

zero per month, but because they're risking the high deductible, the city would contribute into an HSA, a health savings account of $600 per year. So, um, that would help. If the employee wants to also contribute out of their paycheck, they can certainly do that. There's just yearly IRS maximums that are allowable for these. And you don't have to spend the HSA within one year. You can keep acrruing that and have it available. So this definitely benefits employees who maybe don't have the high health needs. They don't go to the doctor as often, but if something does happen, they have that health savings account to help pay for those issues. So they are riskier and we would look at um keeping the rates as we have them today for the high deductible plans. So no change in cost other than you would have a higher deductible. Do I have any questions? I'm trying to go through this pretty quickly.

Is there a reason just to not do the increase on the plans even with the higher deductible? I think it's because they have a higher deductible of 4,000 and 8,000 respectively. That's a pretty high jump that they're paying for those bills until it gets to that point. So, we we want to try to keep it affordable for the premiums. Um, not keep them too high, keep them relatively close. And Stuart and Amy are back here to help give us the guidance to make sure we're comparable with other organizations and how we roll this out. And certainly they can speak to the cost savings to the city by having these high deductible plans. They are cheaper for us to carry. Are there any other questions with this?

What deductible increments do they go in? Cuz here's a,000 and 2,000. Um, if they have a spouse or a child, what increments do they go up? Do you know? So the other three are still 2,000 for deductibles for is that what you're asking those other three options. So if you had a single PO plan their deductible currently is 1,000 at what increments can those deductibles be increased? Stuart Navy do you or Stuart do you want to answer that question like what

in other words can you have a PO single PO plan with a 2,000 a 3000? Yeah, you guys are self-funded. Stuart Lee again with IBC. You guys are self-funded. So you're the insurance company. We just were ask Blue Cross to rate those for us actuarily. But so we could go thousand single deductible up to 3 thou 2500 3,000 all the way up to whatever you guys want basically. Okay.

And then what we would do is work with the actial department at Blue Cross and figure out what the impact would be on your health plan. Does it make sense to raise that to 3,000 if it's only going to be a little bit of savings for your group? because then what we do is look at the claims history and what's going on in your group as far as claims and how much that would impact your plan. So yeah, we could certainly increase those deductibles and out of pocket maxes for the current plan. Um and jump in a little bit here on the high deductible health plan. The concept behind it is so your current plan has a 3,000 out of pocket max for single. So if somebody's hospitalized they're going to pay, you know, the th00and deductible and then 20% till they reach 3,000 out of their pocket. the concept between the high deductible is a 4,000 deductible, but then they're 100% covered after that. So, it is more out of their pocket by $1,000 a year, but then you put that $600 the city's giving into that health savings account. So, the people who don't use it that rolls 600 couple years at $600, now they got two or $3,000 in there. So, if they did have a claim at a hospital, they actually had a couple out of thousand out of their pocket. So, kind of a concept of let's help them save a little bit and maybe we can save some money in the process

and they can also fund that HSA account too, right?

So, yeah, we we would recommend we'd really encourage them, especially young people, not that age discrimination here, but you know, if you can put 10 20 bucks a paycheck into that your own health savings account in addition to the city, you could have several thousand dollars. I'm using mine. I don't use it. I got money for retirement. I'm using it for Medicare premiums when I'm 65. So, you can really use it as a tool in a number of different ways. It's a taxdeductible expense. If they use money out of their paycheck, it grows tax deferred. And if they use it for uh medical expenses that are eligible, it's never taxed to them for the expenses either. So, they're really nice. A lot of employers, what's this is called what's called a dual option, offering your current plan with another plan and let the employees choose. It's good for recruiting because some people love an HSA and we're going to get the numbers to show you that hopefully it'll have no cost, maybe a little bit of cost savings or at least no increase to your to your plan cost.

I I really like the idea of adding an option. I think I think that's a really good um benefit to ask. Jessica's wanted to do it for a couple years.

It's just trying to do it in smaller phases. You don't want to try to take it all on at once because you also have to educate people on how this all works. And so trying to do it in a phased approach that they're very helpful in helping us develop this and get this out for open enrollment. They also come and present to employees. And so we appreciate everything they do. Are there any other questions with these Jeff? Um, so on our uh 2027 premiums, we're showing a 2% increase for the employees. Yes.

What what's the is there any actual increase? What's the actual increase to us as a city though? So the 2% overall it it would increase. So if um I don't know the actual numbers. I know Kylie was with me when we put the spreadsheet together. Do you have that available, Kylie? But the city's portion would also increase 2%. So like the Cobra cost would also be Well, yeah. I guess what I'm saying is that it's nice to increase that or it's it's fine that we're increasing theirs 2%, but if it's costing us 8%. Well, then that should be more of a four and four and 4% versus So in other words, it's a 4% increase that we're giving half of it to,

right? or a 2% increase and half of it goes to them, right? Okay. Yep. It's distributed, right? The distribution is is an equal share to the employee as to the city. Okay. Yep. Any other questions?

So, the other thing um Stuart didn't mention is right now we have our dental envision through Ammeritus, not through Blue Cross. And so another cost savings proposal is to uh bundle that all under Bluec Cross. So that should have a cost savings. Um they obviously know more of what that estimate would be, but it also creates efficiency for employees to just have like one card or one insurance company that they can talk to about their claims. Um so that's that's another direction we're trying to also roll out next year. So, a lot of changes. Um, we're just trying to continue to add to our benefit options and that helps employees get what they're truly wanting or if they just want dental. Right now, that's bundled in with our f or with our insurance health insurance option. Separate those out if they just want dental only, those types of things. So, that's really it for my presentation. Are there any other questions? All right. Thank you.

All right. Um, we're going to present the uh summer workstations and or sessions and dates and times next here. Kylie's going to go ahead and do that.

So, within your packet, you'll find a 2026 meeting schedule. Um, in the past, we've always asked for your availability during the summer. You've provided it to us and then we go from there. We're going to do things a little bit different differently in the fact that we have scheduled these dates and times already. Um so to please mark them in your calendars every year between myself and Kelly's Vto who helps with the budget. Um it takes hours for us to not only gather your availability but all the department heads availability and then try to wrangle everybody as best we can. So with this approach, these are going to be the budget dates and times. Um if there is a significant date that doesn't work for a large number of people, we will change that date. Um but as of now, this is where the budget uh upcoming work sessions stand. Um you'll see that the we're going to do the same schedule as we did last year. We got great feedback on how that was done. So you'll find that the first two budget work sessions are going to be the presentations of the department budgets. The next two after that are going to be the official recommendation of the budgets and then the final one will be that special city council meeting where we do that budget public hearing that has to be separate from our regular agenda schedule. Do you have any questions for me?

So, do we just send you an email and we tell you we can't do that? Yes. Yes.

Also, during the budget process, we talked about the presentation, too. I' I'd like to see people come informed and ready with your questions. So when they do when staff's asked to come forward and present, it doesn't get redundant and they go through every line item like they have in the past. So have your stuff ready because we're asking you guys to come to quite a few budget. We're asking staff to come through quite a few few budget readings. So we're just going to have it not not they're not they're going to skim information. They're just going to present the key stuff and they're going to go to the next thing. So if your questions ple please be prepared for that. just be a little bit different. I just want to cut out the redundancy. You know what I mean? We get into some of the stuff that you don't I mean there's not a whole lot going on. I'm just everybody reads through it and it you know just to save some time and save your time and people that are here's time and staff's time. So

So what kind what kind of lead time are we going to get then? When's the pack going to make it out before this session? So our our finance team does a really great job and we aim for a week in advance. Okay. Because Thursday to Monday isn't very good. You say we can advance. We advance of what date of the budget session date. So the so for example the first one is July 8th. We would we would aim for July 1st. So you'd have it sometime. Yes. Right around 1 July that way. Yes. Okay. And again we're going to present on all those and we we get we're giving you more. It's going to be early so you have time at the end to come back with questions.

So it's a it's a I just noticed last year was it was a lot deeper process than we've done before and some of it got a little redundant. So you should be we should all be prepared for that when we get there. So is that good? Or if you guys want to go back I'm just saying it's my opinion. You're not liking that. Let me know. But will our will our subsidiary also be informed of that? You know who I'm talking about. Airport. Yes.

Well, we want Yeah, that's that's an important thing. I think we're going to try to bump them up this year on the agenda so they come in right away and that way we're those tough those tough conversations we're having right away or a good conversation, however you want to look at it, but we're we're we're kind of getting that going early so it's not late in the game. So, yeah, we're we're we're looking at doing things so the the things that people have hard time with are upfront and the things that are, you know, a little easier to pilot come towards the end, if that makes sense. you sat through a budget meeting, you know exactly what we're saying. So, all right. With that being said, I guess I'm next. Um, so you should have a memo and an agenda in your or a memo and a packet. Memo and a packet in there for me. Um, Kylie has said on here a one minute overview for me because she knows what I

so I don't want to go in. So, I'm not here to go into a lot of depth, but I'm here to give an overview and what we're essentially wanting to ask of this e present this evening. So, I'm just going to start with good afternoon. I'm going to read it. So, I stick to the minute. Over the past several years, we have seen a pattern that is not unique to Norford. Property values have increased and with that, the pressure on residents has increased as well. For many households, that pressure is real. Even when income remains steady, tax bills continue to rise, but they are tied to evaluation, not c cash flow. That's the challenge in front of us. The question is whether we respond, but how we respond and what way we do that in a responsible, sustainable, and a built to last way. That's why we have laid out a long-term roadmap focusing on a gradual I should say I because I long-term roadmap focus on a gradual um gradually reducing reliance on property tax and moving toward a more balanced funding model. One that better reflects how our local economy actually works. This is not a short-term decision. It's a multi-year effort designed to strengthen the city financially while reducing pressure on residents. The plan is structured in phases. Year one is city responsibility. basically looking inward and we're establishing a clear baseline, establishing efficiencies and making our options and making sure our options align or operations align. Uh year two is public decision. The community is going to be asked to consider options to begin replacing a portion of property tax with the consumptionbased model. Year three is growth and alignment. We capture benefits from economic growth and we continue to strengthen how the city is structured financially. Year four is the final translation. Um that's that's going to be the community again plays a major role in determining whether we can complete this transition with long-term revenue alignment with pro with sales tax. This plan is built as a shared effort. It's not something

the city does alone. It requires coordination between the council or staff and the public over time. It also extends beyond one term. A translation of this scale would require consistency from future councils and future leadership. Our role in the beginning this process is to establish a foundation that others can continue to build from. And that bring me brings me to tonight. If you're one is about looking inward and establishing a baseline, then we need to define what that your starting point is and we need to to agree upon that. That is why I'm proposing we begin with a operational efficiency study. This is not a question about past decisions of work or or our staff. It's about a creating a shared objective understanding of where we are today so that we can step forward measured and credible. Historically during periods of times like this following inflation raising rising property values communities see increased focus on how governments operate and how resources are used. This is our time as not this is our opportunity to define that baseline ourselves from a practical standpoint. We also need to recognize the budget process. Do this correctly. Funding for this review will need to be included in next year's fiscal. That means this timeline may shift and this plan may take additional time to f to fully accomplish. But that does not change the direction it reinforces the need again. Because without a shared starting point, we we cannot confidently move forward and without the foundation, future councils won't have the clarity they need to continue the work. What I'm asking for tonight is simple to support the beginning pro process so we can establish the baseline to move forward. And that's asking if you guys would be basically okay if we put something together to present to you at a council meeting an RFP from a a company that would be

willing to do that u operational effect efficiency study. So that's my I don't know was that a minute? Did I get it little off? I tried. Okay. So, with that said, um, next thing is we there's some discussion on that one paid memo and action plan for mayor if you've got some questions from that at this time. Uh, otherwise, I was going to let Randy kind of address what the the issues he has had with it on the plan that I presented to you. And like I said, this I don't want to be this isn't my plan. This is just a thought process. This is a thought process on budgets in the future. This is something that I encourage you to have great conversation about and be coming forward with things that you dislike about the plan. Let me know or let us know and let's try to focus on ideas to add to it. I think this creates great discussion. In fact, in a staff meeting, we were talking about it just the other day and we started talking about different things about LBA40 a capital improvement or a council priority dollars and there was just some good conversation back and forth. So, I'm hoping that this leads to that and I hope it doesn't lead to a lot of discouragement and, you know, just point directly at things. This is not if if you don't like it, just just speak upon it and present different ideas. I think that's great. That's what we're here for. So, with that being said, Randy has reviewed it and he's going to kind of tell me where I was way off or maybe I hit the hit things right. So,

yeah. First off, I'd like to say I think the mayor's plan to get to a Z property tax is doable. It might require some different ways of getting there. Um, for instance, one of the items in there is um making sure that the enterprise funds are paying their appropriate share. And I think there's a half million dollars in there that uh would be additional general fund charges to the enterprise funds. I talked about earlier in the largest revenue sources the amount of money that we have in the budget already for administrative fees. Most of that comes from our enterprise funds. We've got about a million and a quarter annually. we charge the enterprise funds and we didn't reach into hat and just pull that number out. Uh we've got a methodology we use to go and try and calculate what we think that number should be. Um and it comes up to that one4 million. So, I don't I'd be surprised and maybe this is something the efficiency audit people can look at, but I'd be surprised if there's a half million dollars out there of additional legitimate general fund costs that should be charged to the enterprise funds. Um, I think the growth dividend is probably overly optimistic at least for when you look at the general fund by itself because that's supposed to be 1% of operation and maintenance and our

operation and maintenance is about 52 million a year in the general fund. Uh, so we're looking at probably something more like half that. Um, payo financing for our smaller capital projects. I think we'll net to about zero if we pay with cash instead of issue debt. You would think that would save some money, but we have the ability as a government to issue tax exempt debt. So, we get pretty good interest rates on the debt we issue. And usually the interest income we're earning is about the same rate. Um sometimes you can actually earn a little arbitrage on that. Um just depends on the interest rate markets. But long term all in all I think that will be about a wash. Um but even after you adjust for those items I think you still get to $0 property tax with what's left. So, you're telling me there's a chance?

Yes. Okay.

Like I said, it's going to take a lot. It's going to take you to have council support, you have to have city support. So, but it is the plan. Put it out there. Um, and I think we'll have opportunity to discuss about it more while we're going through this year's budget. So, with that being said, I guess we we moving on if unless there's more questions. Sorry. I don't have any questions. I just have a comment that I think that efficiency audit um is is a must. I mean I I think you you need to establish a base um on where to start from and and not necessarily start from where we're based at right now because we don't really know if right now it is efficient or not. So, I think establishing that um that audit and establishing a base is is probably your first priority in getting this done.

Yeah. I think um Jessica, do you want to speak on a community you had contacted that had done an efficiency audit?

Um yeah. So, Hastings did one in 2015. I know Grand Island and Lyall can speak to this one from an accounting audit perspective. They've done one as well. Um, so Hastings used the Novak Group that's changed names for their firm. They're out of state and they're still in existence, but we've had conversations with them. Um Dave Patac was working in Hastings and so we um he gave me permission to give his name that it worked well for them based on their needs. um it was about evaluating utilities at that time which is maybe a little different than what we're looking at but I think the audit itself is helpful to get the baseline like you said Frank and you give them the scope of what you want and you just need the firm to do it. It just takes 16 weeks I think Scott for one firm that we talked to. So, you really just have to develop the project and um tell them what you need. So, it's been done. I think we could do it. It's just going to take time to RFP and and get a firm that will do what we need.

So, just because you're standing there Yeah. What are we looking at for estimated cost to have an audit like that done? So, the group we talked to that Hastings used um was anywhere from 80 to 250 depending on the scope. I would say probably closer to 200 for what we're looking at the whole city. So, Scott, do you have any other comments with that?

No, I would I would say I was impressed by our phone interview with them. they they had a pretty good perspective on how they break down each division and and looking at at the things that are working well and identify those things and the things that can be tweaked or changed uh for improvement. So sometimes it's difficult to look in the mirror and and are you afraid of what you might identify, but without appropriate feedback, it's hard to not know. So I'm not afraid of it because I feel like our staff are doing excellent work. Um, but for each of us to look in the mirror and say, I couldn't I possibly do it a little bit different or is there efficiencies by combining this and this or is there a streamline for this to not look at those things, we would be remiss. Um, so I'm comfortable with this and I I think this firm represented exactly what what I think the the mayor suggested in the beginning is is an opportunity to to do an overview of us and and find out where we can make improvements. And we should we should always be challenging ourselves to do better, whatever whatever that is. So, I was impressed with their their interview. I was impressed with how they described it. The the depth of the staff that they have that are knowledgeable in each of the categories that um as one just it's one firm. There may be many others out there like that, but until we do an RFP, I'm not sure we'll know, but I think we can bring back a product that the mayor and council can consider that that we can move forward with. The thing we found out for sure is we couldn't hire them, collect the data, and have any meaningful input to this year's budget process. We just simply can't do it fast enough. So, if they want 12 weeks of just collecting data to do the interviews and the evaluations and observe the operational elements of the city out, you know, in in motion, we can't collect it fast enough to do any good for this fiscal year. So, and since we didn't budget for it, it seems prudent to plan for it, budget for it if that's indeed the wishes of the council and then implement it in the next fiscal year and have that as a tool to help shape, you know, future budget considerations down the road. So, even if we wanted to go fast, we can't go

fast enough to collect it and be here for this this budget cycle. It just it can't it can't be done. But, we'll move at the speed that the council wants us to do. So, all right. Jessica, who what do they all get input from in this 12 to 16 week study? Who who or what do they take the input from?

So they work with all department heads and they even have focus groups of just general employees, you know, so they can get involved as well. Um, so they're not just speaking to leadership. They're wanting to know, you know, what technology, what what machinery, what equipment, what processes, how many people work there, and they evaluate the whole nine yards. But it takes more than just department heads to to come up and give them that information. Is this a company that physically goes and talks to everybody or is it just a survey that gets sent out by email? Nope, they physically come on site.

Okay. So that's their practice, the way they described it. And so if we have multiple divisions involved, that's what goes into the cost of it. But I think it's nice that they could come on site and then reassure people, you know, they're not just pulling information. They're actually involved with our operations, they're seeing them in person. So that's what they said they do. Do electro officials have any any conversation with this company as well? Absolutely. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions? It so the audit would includes all departments. I mean, fire, police. Yes. Everything. Okay.

And this firm even has um like a fire chief, for example, who's maybe retired and maybe has other ideas or ways of doing things. It doesn't mean they're going to tell us what to do, but they give us um concepts and implementation plans that we can consider.

All right. Thanks. Thank you, Jessica.

So, I guess not quite sure we can do at a work session. You really can't approve something. You can't vote on anything. But I I guess recommendations. What? Give recommendations. You can. Okay. So, no loading. I guess we're just looking for a recommendation to move forward with the request um for the proposal

and that would just be proposal brought to you. Then you get you know cost what they're going to do and you'd see the scope of the what they're going to do and that would come forward to a council meeting. But like they said and this is what I just found out uh that is not going to be able to perform this year and we're for next fiscal won't happen. So you're you're looking out a year. So and that's where I try to state that tonight but part of the budget process correct and it will be yeah I would move for approval of this efficiency study. Yeah I I mean I I what does it hurt right?

Um at least give us an idea of how they want to do it. uh what's all included, what's what's the cost? And I think, you know, ideally, we'd like to see it come back and say, "You guys are good." You know, I mean, that would be the ideal thing, saying we were we're being as efficient as we can right now, but it doesn't hurt to get their opinion um or at least the cost of their opinion. Okay. we move forward before.

All right. Well, with that being said, just because of the budget coming up and I've heard different comments on different uh deals within our budget, we thought it'd be nice to bring forward a couple items and just go through a little bit explanation about them and then how they work, what we can do with them, if they can be brought forward again. And we'll start with LB840. Um and I think uh Mel I think Mel was going to somebody's going to talk about I can start. Okay.

Um so just a brief overview of LB840 and where we are now. Um LB840 is a local option municipal economic development act that was um authorized in 1991. And essentially what it does is allow cities like ours to collect and use local tax revenue specifically for economic development. Um, in 2010, voters actually did approve LB840 funding here in Norfork. Um, that has since expired. So, if the if our community wanted to consider going through this process again, um, we would have to follow a couple steps. The first would be to get a written plan that would be drafted with specific goals, a specific budget, eligible businesses, and an administrative structure. Um, the Nebraska Department of Economic Development recommends a strategy of developing the pan the plan through a communitywide assessment and planning process involving as many community leaders and stakeholders as possible to be productive to make sure that there's a lot of ideas and that there's community support and buyin. Um, the plan would be then pre-presented publicly for comment and adopted by resolution by the governing body, which would be you guys. If passed by council, there would then be uh there would need to be a majority vote of approval at either a general primary or special election. If voters approved the plan, an ordinance would be established to enact the program and create a dedicated fund for the plan. Um there would also be a citizen comm community uh citizen committee, which we currently have, which is reviewing the loans that still exist under our previous LV840. Um and they just look at financials the loans where we are on those on those um existing documents that exist and those existing programs that have been funded. Um they submit a report to this governing body every six months and then annually there's a requirement for an independent and outside auditor to review the program each year and to make those results available for public review. As a first class city um we do

have access to an expanded list of eligible uses for the funds. Um, but the funds could be used for direct loans and grants for fixed assets and working capital, public works improvements that are essential to business locations, job training, real estate purchases, workforce, and low to moderate income housing, rural infrastructure, and even early childhood infrastructure development. Qualifying businesses for the program include manufacturing, research and development, interstate commerce, telecommunications, broadband, tourism activities, film, TV, commercial production, retail trade, housing, construction, and early childhood care. Um, regarding funding the program, it could be funded through property taxes, a local sales tax, or an occupation tax. Um, it could also be funded from utilityowned from municipalowned utilities. Um but there are some restrictions on those types of funds and how they can be um spent. Um there would have to be if Nor wanted to pursue its local option sales tax. Um Brandy did point me to a restriction that Norfor has um currently our sales taxes are must be used for tax relief or public safety um unless voter approved. So if we decided to try to go the sales tax route, there would be two ballot questions that would need to be presented to the public. both would need to pass in order for it to move forward. So if one failed, the other both would fail.

That makes a lot of sense because that we didn't we went property tax the first go around. Yes. And that was probably why. Yeah, I'm guessing. So So there's also some other um accountability built into the program. Citizens can petition for a continuation vote after just one year if they have a specific number of support. Um if less than half of the collected funds are spent after five years, continuation will automatically go back to the voters. So, if we're not using it, we could potentially lose it. Um, and then council can repeal the program at any time with a twothirds vote followed by a public hearing. May I got one more question for you. So, there is a portion or occupation tax that does not have to be voted on. Can that be used for LB40? Say that again, mayor. There is a portion of occup occupation tax that does not have to be voted on. Correct. That is my understanding. But in our

Can you confir within our city government bylaws, we cannot do that because we you you would have to be voted on regardless, right? We we wouldn't have to vote on an occupation tax. Uh wouldn't have to have the voters vote on an occupation tax. Uh but we would have to have the voters, as Mel mentioned, vote if we want to use sales tax for this. We'd have to do away with those requirements out there that it be only property tax or public safety. That's my understanding as well. Okay.

Thanks, Randy. So, Mel, if we did want to reenact the LB840 uh into Norfor's budget, um approximately how many other communities in Nebraska do you have any idea that currently use LB840? I think quite a few do. Is it that over 98 according to Brooke? Over 98. Over 98 communities. Yes. And most of them do use the sales tax option.

Yeah, it was brought to my attention by somebody who was looking into it and uh who's not sitting up here right now, but he had asked me about it and was wondering about the other communities who were utilizing it for um economic development and what happened with ours. You know, obviously ours was tied to the ones that are still around, I understand, are tied to sales tax. The ones that they let sunset were tied, I'm guessing, right? that that's kind of what I understand. We're tied to property tax, but that's kind of always explained to me. So, we thought it'd be a good time to talk about it. Again, just it's a tool in the tool chest that's out there for cities to use. Something to think about and we can talk about we what we used here for. It was great. We we did a the city of Northfor loaded that in in 2010 and put that gas line in out there for us and it was a great great job by that council back then. I think Jim, you were on the council then. I see somebody else out there who was on the council then, but that was uh you know that was a good thing for the community. So, um it worked out. Um but unfortunately the way it's sunset now and that was kind of just what we wanted to see. Did we want to add anything to this at all or we good? Mel, did you have anything to add?

I didn't unless there were any more questions for me.

Okay. Um the thought that some people have is that we could just um take the 400,000 property tax that we had before and repurpose that for LB840, but that's been built into our budget for a number of years now. That would be difficult to do. And it's not like we haven't been efficient with our property taxes. Just last year we lowered our levy rate by more than a cent and a half and that 400,000 that was LB840 is less than a cent and a half. So just in we've lowered our rev levy rate for several years. So

yeah, with the two years in a row of levy weight reduction, we wiped out what the voter approved increase to LB 40 was back in 2010. And just the current year levy rate went down over a cent and a half. Say, which is more than the $400,000 that cuz $400,000 we need about a 1.44 cent levy rate. And

I don't want to be misleading because that's not to say that the assessed values didn't go up. It's just that the percent of the mill levy that can was increased to catch those dropped. That makes sense. Assess value to go up. I'm not trying to mislead anyone. Oh, we got a sheet here that Would you like me to just briefly kind of go over the handout? Um, so just to kind of u Brooke Anderson put together we have an opportunity to put this on the graph for us. this one. Um, so just to kind of she did put some go over

I can wait for you Lyall to get that up please. Where Jim's at? Okay. Sorry. jump into it.

I can just jump into it. Um, okay. So, there the funds were utilized in 2011 for business expansion uh to the tune of 150 a little over $155,000. Um, it was a 1.625% interest loan with 99% forgiven. 21 jobs were created as a result of this. 2013, $60,000 was used for another business expansion project. Another 1.62 62 point 1.625% interest with 99% forgiven loan. Eight jobs were created. Um approximately 3.6 million was invested into the natural gas line. Um this is the gas line that is in the northeast industrial area. Um and then in 2023 $200,000 were invested in workforce housing through the work neighbor works um pro through neighbor works. And this is a 99% forgivable loan. um if the applicant established a $1.5 million revolving loan fund for workforce housing and created 30 units. Um and then in 2023, $103,000 was invested in childcare activities and that was a 4% interest rate loan with 99% forgivable. um 11 full-time jobs were create or were supposed to be created as part of this requirement with a pay wage of at least $15 per hour and a two-year retention period for those jobs. Um I can also talk a little bit about Carney is doing a sales tax is what they have. They're utilizing their fund for business retention and expansion, job creation, land building, workforce development, and infrastructure. Columbus has one as well that's funded using sales tax. Uh they do business expansion, housing, childare and workforce development. Grand Island does as well with sales tax. Um Hastings is doing the same. Um BRE workforce housing downtown redevelopment. Um South Sue City is also funding their

LB843 sales tax as well as Fremont and North Plat. I do remember when they when this came out and it was on the ballot uh that the Chamber of Commerce was extremely helpful on that. They they went out and campaigned for it quite a bit. But anyway, so that's a little information on that unless you have questions about that. We'll move on. We just got it up on the screen. We can leave it up. But um now we're going to talk about capital priority funds. I found this very interesting the other day while we were going through it. We call it council priority dollars, but they're the capital priority funds. I have been under the impression that they were a voter um self-imposed voter property tax increase and it was not. This came about Do you want me to go Does somebody else want to go on the history of it or I I can say a little bit I guess. Um I don't know who's going to talk on it.

I can talk. Okay. Well, basically in it came out in the '09 2010 budget process. uh and I believe it was a split vote, but it passed and um has been in our budget ever since. So, we thought we would talk about that. But it does it does leave a little bit of different impartation and interpretation in my mind, not knowing that I was always under impression that was a voter approved, not thinking it was a council approved. So, it does kind of change the way I look at those funds a little bit. I don't know, Cory, if you're on the same page as me, maybe. I don't know. That's the way I thought upon it. I I did too.

Yeah. So anyway, I think that's important to know. And then uh but I think they created it, correct me wrong, they had a um a retreat in '09 and uh it's a retreat that I've heard a lot about. Uh they came up with about five different things out of that retreat and this was one of them. And so I wanted that to be brought out there that that it did come out of a council retreat, but it was a way different type of retreat than we have than we have today. I think the retreat was in Wayne on a Saturday and they got a lot done. They brought a group in from I think Minnesota came up and talked to them and and they got a lot done that day. But anyway, I thought I'd just put that out there and then that's where that all came from. Little history on it and then Lyall can speak on the rest of it.

Well, I let the let the packet li operations guy for the city of Northwork. Uh we can let the packet do the do the talking. This is the document that's out on the website that Kylie posted and walks through some of the examples of it. That's the last page. Well, we we would buy this building without it, right? They funded the bond for the building for eight years, I think. Yeah. I think we paid off the last two years off early. I think a bond issue was Yeah. I don't think it's on here, but that did. probably but the big portion of the council priority dollars went to pay for this building 2013. Oh,

2013. Go back down a while. There you go. Oh, I see. Oh, it says two 2023. Okay. Jim, you were probably at that retreat. Yeah, you would have been at that retreat. I was at that. Yeah. Yeah. It was very productive retreat. I was out campaigning for city council back then. Was a great retreat. It really was. Had didn't have great.

Any other questions on council priority funds? Okay. Um, with that being said, are there any questions about tonight's from the council about tonight's process and what we did, what we covered? Starting this week, this is an important deal, the the council retreat, the actually the strategic planning session, the council retreat. In a c coming days, we're going to be sending out the direction to the division heads from Randy and Sheila start assembling their budget based everything we talked about this part this point and this ball will keep rolling.

Well, I think we got a a lot of good information from NPBD, but I I do think we need to really dial in on that sewer plant expansion. I mean, to my opinion, but just me to my I know it wasn't number one on the list, but it was I think it got 30 votes.

Uh but man, that's important for this community to keep moving forward and to as a sales tax heavy community, uh to balance our community in a way, we really need to make sure we've got industry being able to develop here. So, it's huge for us to do that. So that being said, does anybody else from the public want to come up and speak at this point in time?

Jim McKenzie. Um, I just had a question on the general fund budget summary that Randy presented. I noticed the intergovernmental revenues was budgeted at 976,000 and we're estimating at 1.469 million, which is a $493,000 increase. So, I was just wondering why that was so much higher than budget. That's where the uh when I was talking about the property tax usually comes in lower than what's budgeted, but we get state revenue to offset that. That's state revenue is in that intergovernmental revenues and th that is not budgeted, but it has to be reported. So, in our budget forms where you show the actual and estimated that's in there, but it's not in on the U property tax number um because that we get the dollars that we levy, but we don't get them all from the property taxpayers. We get a significant portion of them from the state.

Okay. And then kind of a follow-up comment on that is, you know, when I look at the beginning fund balance in 2425, it's 10.6 million. The beginning fund balance on 2526 is 8.3 million. So we've gone down by over 2 million. And then your projected ending fund balance on estimated ending fund balance on 2526, which is 6.9 million, 7 million. You said you think that's going to go up by 1.4 million. So, it's not going to be down to that level. Um, I guess I would just caution you about that a little bit. I mean, I've seen your long-term financial projections from previous years showing that our levy was going to go down, down, down, down, down, and it that changed rapidly in the last couple of years. I mean, now we're looking at your current long-term financial plan shows you having to increase the levy substantially this coming fiscal year because it's showing a general fund property tax change of almost $2.6 million increase. that um long-term financial plan going back since we started it has almost always showed a large jump in that first year. Um then after that it levels off and I think it's pretty accurate in the increases and decreases that we'll have in those later years except it can change quickly if we change our assumptions significantly like what we expect our assess valuation to grow by. I think we're pretty conservative in that regard. I think we've got 5% in there and we've been growing

much more than that uh lately. Um sales tax is the big driver of that thing and what we estimate for sales tax growth rate can cause that to change a lot. But we try and be conservative on that also. But you're looking out 10 years and and crystal ball isn't all that good when you go out 10 years. I I guess I would just challenge that a little bit. I mean, we're looking at, you know, I know you projected sales tax to be flat this year and we're up $200,000 and even if we're up $400,000 by the end of the year, we're still $2.1 million short. according to your long-term financial plan. I think you cut some capital improvement last year. You kept the wages way down and you took money from other pockets. And so I just I'm concerned about being more open with where we're at financially. I think it's I think it's we're short and I this looks like we're short and I just don't know that we've been act actively addressing that and that's my concern. I mean when you look at the numbers on here

I think that's why we're having the meeting Jim. Pardon? That's why we're here tonight. We're here to look at these numbers. Understand that we're not trying I'm not trying to accuse Randy of not falsely reporting something. I'm not I'm not accusing anybody of anything. I'm just It kind of sounds like it. Well, I I I understand we I think every one of us sees the same thing you're seeing and I want to want to address we have caution about what we're moving into and that's why we kind of set this up so we could talk about those numbers and make sure where where we're at. So, we really can't do anything right today. It's going to happen. It's going to happen over the next 3 months, you know. So, if you would, please. Yeah, I will. Yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but go ahead.

My concern is that what I heard tonight was we're in great shape. Don't worry about it. That's that's kind of what I was hearing from the back row and I'm going well that's not really what your numbers show and so I think there is some concern and I just I didn't hear that that we've really got to look at our budget and figure out how we're going to fix it. I mean you're talking about efficiency study. You wouldn't be doing that if you didn't think we had some issues that we have to address financially. So I

efficiency study is because I want to start a new program and I don't think you can start it without a baseline. We have to establish a baseline otherwise we won't have the transparency to go ahead and make changes and ask the city and the voters to approve different things down the road if they're going to go that route. The efficiency is essentially just to find a baseline and yeah I think there is some concern behind where we're at too behind that. So we want to know where everything's where where we line up and I mean it was you know I don't think it's a bad deal. I think it could be very positive. I mean it was a very tough budget year last year. I mean, and you you had spent a lot of time cutting things out.

And when I look at the projections for next year, it looks like we're significantly short next year. And, you know, your only revenue increase is going to be sales tax. And it's, you know, if you're going to get two or $400,000, even a $400,000 increase in your sales tax is probably barely the rate of inflation. So, that's not a lot. And when you're increasing salaries by the rate of inflation, it's going to eat that up and more. And so I I don't hear the concern, and that's why I'm up here. I just wanted to express that that our budget is not You don't hear what concern

that you've really got to look hard at the budget as far as what do we need to do to Didn't we just discuss efficiency audit? I mean, that's exactly You just said the efficiency audit had nothing to do with the budget. It had to do with planning for next for future. Well, future. That's That's why I got brought up. You're right. Not for this budget, right? No. But I mean, Randy, you're saying where are we going to end up this year? You think

I think, and these are real rough estimates, um, that we are likely to come in about the same fund balance at the end of the year as we had at the beginning of the year. Um there's I don't think we're going to see those big draw downs in fund balance like we have budgeted or like we had the year before. I think we're going to I think we've somewhat stabilized fund balance and it should come in close to that beginning fund balance of $8.4 million. maybe off couple hundred thousand one way or the other when you're trying to estimate half a year out. Um it's hard to get very precise, but I do not see and we looked at it several different ways. Do not see this.

Well, I think I think what like for even myself, you know, we're used to the next fiscal having a surplus into the beginning balance. We've had that for quite a few years now and that beginning balance grow grew. This is kind of the first year besides last year that we've seen where Ry's presenting at baseline which that's not good. That's not what we've been doing over time. So, we've got to make sure that we reflect upon that because we can't continue to go baseline or down with that beginning budget because that or the beginning balance that's a bad thing and that's probably what you're seeing too. Yeah. So that's what we've I think we've come to recognize that part of it. It's I don't think hearing a baseline tonight was a good thing. Usually we're hearing well between 800 and 1.2 million above. And so that's when that beginning balance kind of took off. And I'm kind of like I like to look at those numbers like you do and you do the spreadsheets. And I've got my own I go back 10 years here and I've kind of went through it too and and I'm seeing the same thing. I'm looking at u beginning balance growth in 2020 2010 and 2015 at about 3.5%. I'm seeing the beginning balance growth between 2015 and 2020 at 4.9%. And then I'm seeing a 20 between 20 and 2026 at 3%. And that 3% and that's just me. Those are those aren't Ry's numbers. That's me going online and finding them on our websites. But uh big portion of that is obviously the the the we had a big payout last and that that took did a number to that. So what I think we've seen is we've seen this you know if you're watching city budget going like this it's flatlined the the revenue streams have flatlined according to the city budget. I think that's what you're talking about tonight and I think I think all of us up here are yeah worried about it because we we were here sitting up here last year and I know you came to every meeting last year and sat up here with us. So that

was why I've been brainstor going off a discussion I had with a city administrator a few years ago about budgets and how they can work in different communities. And I've been thinking about an opportunity to maybe change some of that and help our city continue to move forward without uh overburdening our our property tax base because it it's it's a lot it's a lot on people right now. But I appreciate the comments. I I do get it. Uh but that I think that baseline growth is what is scaring everybody. But I'm not not

that that's my point. When you look at when you look at the property tax, excuse me, the sales tax revenue, if it grows at $400,000 a year, you're barely keeping up with inflation. And when you talk about salary increases, that eats that up. And then you cut your CIP last year. And I see no opportunity to grow your CIP or do those things um with the budget where it's at. So those are the points that I wanted to make. I I'm just I wanted to make sure that we're talking about that. Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else have anything this evening?

Well, thank you for your time, council, and staff and everybody else who came out tonight. I think we'll do I have to journ this meeting. Um meeting adjourn. It's