City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order this special budget session of the Fond du Lac City Council. First, I will business this roll call, and with all of us present, I will declare a quorum present. Next on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment for silent reflection. Please rise at this time. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thanks everyone. Next on our agenda tonight is the 2027 budget and capital improvement plan overview. We're going to begin tonight with the process for budget approval and our city manager, Mr. Moore and our director of administration, Ms. Davey had that presentation for us.

Thank you, Mr. Heisler, Mr. President. Good evening, everybody. What we're gonna start with first is our timeline from here till the first meeting in November when we will hope to convert the proposed budget to the approved one and the same for the CIP. So where do we go from here? The first week of October, we will publish the public hearing notices in the newspapers, because that's a statutory requirement to advise the public that there's a public hearing. The public hearing is the second meeting in October, October 28th. Then the first meeting in November, so you've got the public hearing last meeting of October, the first meeting in November, we will bring the The CIP, the budget, the tax levy resolution to you for approval on that night. So that's essentially where we go from here and why tonight's important, right? Because tonight, if there are any loose ends, we tie those down. Want to make sure we've got all that straight before we publish the public notice to the to the public. Now, Mr. President, when we begin the next phase of this, what we've done, and Tricia Davey's gonna narrate this, is we've taken in questions that are both budget questions and CIP questions, so the agenda's got a distinct difference, but if you don't mind, we've just blended them together based on the questions and the way they were formatted.

No problem at all.

Okay.

Yep, you bet.

So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Tricia Davey.

Thank you. Next slide. So Joe and I will go through the questions that we've received from the council so far. And then after that, we'll open it up for other just general questions, comments, or any follow-up that you would like on these. I did list the page numbers on each of these so that you can flip to the pages right now if you'd like to, or just use these for reference after the fact. So our first question, what was the reason for the expenditure increases for the city manager budget? It was normal wage increases. In 2026, our budget did not reflect the city manager wage increase. So the 2027 budget just reflects the correction of the wages for 26 and 27. That was just an oversight in 2026. Mr. Moore did indeed get a raise for 2026. So that's all good. And then also increase to materials and supplies for repairs to furniture, blinds and walls. There's some things up on the fourth floor in the conference room and stuff that need a little TLC. So that's some money to take care of those. Question two, was there a change or addition of personnel and comptrollers? The increase from 2026 to 2027 was about $75,000. There was four reasons for that. The first is just normal wage and step increases for the staff. There was a change in the mix of single and family health insurance coverages. And just for reference, that difference between the two is about $17,000. So when an employee has single and then they switch to family, that's an additional $17,000 cost. We would like to add a short-term seasonal employee to assist us with delinquent ambulance collections. We do have a third-party processor that prepares all the invoices and sends them out to patients. They also deal with collections from Medicare and insurance and private pay, but at some point when they can no longer collect on those invoices, then they send them back to us to try to do some collections on them. And then the fourth item was for the promotion of senior accountant to deputy director of administration for TESSA. Next slide. Was there a change or addition of personnel in central collections? The increase from 2026 to 2027 was about $29,000. Again, that's normal step in wage increases and that department also had a change in their mix of single to family health insurance coverage. That was the reason for those increases. Next question, was the increase in snow and ice removal cost all material driven, and is the salt briner going to be able to assist with that?

So yes, the cost increase in that budget was all material driven.

We do use the state DOT contract for salt pricing, so we're kind of at the mercy of what those contract prices are from those vendors. The briner will help us reduce our needs to purchase brine from external sources and will be able to allow us to help reduce our salt needs. And this is expected to have a positive budget impact in 2028 once we have the salt briner in place and we can create our own brine and then adjust our salt needs from there. Next slide. Can you explain the reason for the increase in community development personal services and the decrease in contractual services when compared to estimated actuals? So as we know, in 2026, we had a vacancy for the community development director and principal planner for about six months. So we had hired an outside consultant to assist with those operations until the positions were filled. So if you look at our estimated actuals for community development, they were higher for 2026 to reflect that. And then for 2027, it's back down to the normal range. And if you compare 2027 budget to the 2026 budget, they're right in line with just the normal wage and salary increases and just minor operational increases. Next question, what was the reason for the $100,000 decrease in personal services and inspections? Again, some change in the mix of family versus in this case waived health insurance coverages. That difference is about $26,000 per employee. And then we have a temporary reduction in hours to accommodate some employee retention without sacrificing inspection services to the community. And so far that has been working just fine. Next slide. How have the county sales tax funds been allocated? So these funds we get from the county once a year as part of their calculation of the sales tax that they collect. They have a formula that they use to distribute that to all the municipalities within the county. And with our share, we are going to allocate $54,000 for an ongoing subsidy to our TID number 13. We've been doing that for a number of years so that we don't have to use tax levy for that. We have another $25,000 investment for homelessness initiatives. $50,000 for maintenance and painting of the big black train at the entrance to Lakeside Park that's in need of some TLC. $65,000 for thermal imaging cameras for fire rescue. $25,000 for historic signs for various parks. And then $38,000 for copy release contracts. So we try to use these funds every year for one-time purchases so that we don't have to rely on this income or this allocation every year from the county. And it still allows us to take care of some things that need to be taken care of. Next slide. Highlights of any fee schedule changes. We really don't have many fee schedule changes this year. The one probably that would be the most notable is we're continuing our incremental increase in boat slips fees by 50 cents a foot. We've been doing that for the last few years to bring our boat slip fees in line with what other communities in the area charge for theirs. Next slide. How is the placeholder $9 million figure for fire station number four derived, and when do you think we'll have a more accurate number? So the figure is based upon a cost estimate that we had received from the consultant that did our feasibility study in 2025. And then we've adjusted that because we know that costs are going to go up from the time that that figure was prepared to when we're actually going to start construction on that. We do anticipate once the design architect gets rolling and puts all their specs together that we will be able to get a firmer number sometime in mid-summer of 2027 to make sure that that's in alignment with what we have in our budget. Next question, how is the figure for Macy and Portland parking ramp repairs derived? So this is an engineering estimate. We had been working with a consultant to develop a ramp maintenance study for us. So that study has been completed. Juliana has had a chance to go through that and figure out what the priorities are. So we've programmed some money in 2027 to really kick that off and make some of the more important repairs that need to be done and get those taken care of as soon as we can. And we will not issue debt for this until we actually get those contracts figured out and see what those bid prices come in at. Next question. What can we give an overview of the work that's going to be done on County VV? So we're going to have some improved lane configurations at South Main Street, new traffic signals in a roundabout at South Park Avenue, as well as sidewalks and an off street bike path where feasible in the right of way during that in that stretch of County VV. Next question, what planned street projects are included for 2027? We have East Division Street, the one that everybody's been waiting for, Mart Park. We have Bischoff from Mohawk to Taft. We have Vine from 11th to 10th, Lawrence from Marshall to Stowe, and then Primrose and Pine Tree south of 4th Street. Next slide. Well, that wraps up the ones I wanted to cover. I will turn it over to Mr. Moore.

Thank you, Tricia. First one's about the continuation of housing facilitation. This 2027 will be year number four, but we don't have anything programmed for 2028 specifically. We've done enough now that there are enough lots being developed or in the pipeline to be developed that now we need to... take a moment and see what the demand is and whether or not we need to keep pushing as hard as we have been. And also to hear from the developers to see what they're seeing for demand and whether or not it's reasonable to continue in 2028 or take a pause that year. The next question is, about funding for housing investments in Hunters Grove. You'll recall that we have, we're on the brink of finalizing a development agreement with a company that's gonna build single family homes out there. Phase one, we talked about earlier this summer. Phase two is in the CIP, but given where we are on the calendar right now, approaching October, not expecting there to be any progress on phase one till sometime in 2027. I doubt that we will see phase two in 2027. So again, like Tricia referenced the parking ramps, there won't be any money expended or any debt taken on until we know that for sure. Next please. obvious we had some questions about flock from you and from the public. And so where we are right now, we don't have any money in the budget in 2027 for any license plate readers and what we will use 2027 for and then the time after that is to determine what's out there that might work for us in terms of our comfort with data storage, data release, et cetera. dog park, we had a request to begin a conversation about a dog park for the east side of the city. And so what we'd like to do with that is before putting anything in the budget, essentially commit to you that we're gonna put that in the pipeline with Paul DeVries and Public Works, John Redmond and the Park Board to start that conversation to really engage the public to also look at different lots that might be available for such a dog park, and to find out what the demand is and where it would be best served. And so I would expect it to unfold in 2027, and then we would find a home for it in 2028, if that's satisfactory. Next, please. So those were the questions that we got from you. Some of those questions were also asked by members of the public, the last couple especially. And so, you know, with that, Mr. President, turn it back over to you. That covers all the questions for the budget and the CIP.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Mr. Moore. You're welcome. Thank you, Ms. Davey. Appreciate you both very much. So how I think we should proceed, counsel, is we should kind of follow the sheet that's in front of you. And what we'll do is discuss the budget first. So at this point, if there are questions from council, we'll take those. Then after that, we'll look through motions for the budget. And then after that, we'll go to the CIP, okay? So we'll begin tonight with questions from council on the budget. And one more housekeeping note before we push our buttons to speak. Just as a reminder, everybody gets a couple of chances to speak per item. So just as a reminder on that. So please group as many of your questions together as possible so that maybe we can spark some more thought without having to jump back and forth in the queue. So I'll open it up for questions on the budget at this time from council. Ms. Brault, you're in the queue first tonight. Hold that mic a little closer for me.

A race to it. Yeah, sorry. First of all, thank you for the answer to all the questions. I fired off some last minute this afternoon and got an answer right away. So thank you for being very responsive to all of that. And I always ask about the county sales tax page because there's always a lot there. And... I think it's nice to have that kind of fleshed out a little bit. So my one question on that is the $25,000 that will be allocated to support initiatives targeting homelessness. Could we get a little more detail on that, please?

We think our partner in 2026, which has been AdvoCap, has been a good partnership. So we would, I think we'll probably continue that in 2027 if that works for them.

Wonderful. Thank you.

That's all I had. All right. Thank you, Mr. Perl. Other questions, comments from council? I'll go to Mr. Biber next.

Thank you. Just to make sure of the process, when you're wanting questions together, are we going through the budget and then trying to group the questions there?

Yep. Ask as many of your budget questions as possible in this section. And then after that, we'll go to the CIP after that.

We'll go through it. You'll lead that through and we can ask questions.

Okay. Correct. Great.

I had with the community development, do we have a succession for some of the big ones where we don't have to hire out in place for some of these different ones? Right there, sitting to my left.

Jules is here for the long term, so that fills that need. We needed to hire that company that we brought in, who did great work for us, by the way. I can't detail any of it, so I didn't know, but thank you. Because we didn't know, we'd been advised by the recruiting firm that this was going to be hard to fill and not to think we were going to turn that around, the vacancy around in a hurry. And so that's why we hired that consultant to essentially sit upstairs. I mean, they were here on site for a couple, three days a week sometimes.

I mean, like a lot of spots have like, a chief has assistant chiefs. Is that something similar with that where you'd have an engineer behind it? I'm just trying to get you set up.

No, community development's pretty lean. Okay. And typically we wouldn't think of the planner, which is a position in community development, as the deputy. Those two, it might look that way, but that's not really how it's organized. The directors carries a lot of responsibilities without having a number two.

Probably some of the other positions, too. I hope there's some succession if something, God forbid, happens to them or they decide to retire. Some of the bigger positions, I'm hoping that some of that's covered. Well, I guess with the deputy moving her test up, that's a good example of a proper way to do it.

Yeah, and all the other departments have that arrangement where there's an assistant city attorney, a deputy comptroller, et cetera, assistant chiefs. Community development is the one lean one.

Okay.

It doesn't have that arrangement.

All right, thank you. Mm-hmm. Don't leave.

Scott. Here. Ms. Loring, you're up.

I just want to say the budget looks great. You know, the two things that I would have liked to have seen just a little bit more money on, but it looks great. And thank you for answering my questions today. Thank you for spending that time with me, Tricia and Joe. Sure.

Thank you. Anyone else in the queue? I see no one else at this point. So without any further questions from council, I at this point would entertain any motions if there are any to change the budget. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

I'm just looking in the public works streets. You have the Hickory Bridge, Paul. later on in that. Where is for the street north of the bridge? Is that in one of these general ones?

Sorry if I'm not talking to the mic. It's stuck here. Mr. Viber, what page are you looking at?

That'll help us. I'm looking at the capital improvement plan number 11.

He's in the CIP, not the budget yet.

Oh, sorry.

That's all right.

We're good.

Hang on to that question for me for just a sec.

No problem. And then what we'll do is we'll let Paul come back to that in a second. Before we move on to CIP stuff though, any other motions for the budget at this point? Going once, going twice, sold to the guy in the red polo. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yep, that's right. Perfect. All right. Now, at this point, I'm going to let you jump back in, Mr. Biber, and have your question about the CIP, because that's where we're going to go next.

Okay.

Yep, if you don't mind.

Thank you. Yeah, the question was, I'll go back to it here, page 11. I see the one specifically for, we had talked before a couple months ago, Paul and I, and that was going to be looking to be a plan in 28 and 29, 29 being the bridge, I think. And then 28, they're gonna have the Hickory Street, have to do all the infrastructure below it and the road itself redone.

Is that in there or is it, I'm not, I just- Yeah, so that would be covered under our Clearwater Elimination Program, which involves a couple different items in the CIP. one being from wastewater, one being from streets, and one being from storm. And so those are combined to get our annual street program, which the streets listed in the presentation, that's Hickory Street will be listed next year on that list where you saw Division, Bischoff, and those others. So Hickory from Johnson down to Division will be in 28. And then in 29, we will do the rest from Division to the bridge, along with the bridge, which will be in 29. Okay, got it.

Up to Division Street and then south of that. Correct. All right, good. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, Paul. Any further questions from Council on CIP-related items? I'll take those at this time. Everybody good? It appears that way because we have no one else in the queue, which is, that works for me. Are there motions at this time to do anything in the CIP? Mr. Moore, if you wanna jump in, go ahead.

When you've completed that, I'd be interested in hearing the feedback from you, because we're always trying to improve and do better about how you are able to digest what we provided throughout the summer and whether or not there's any room for improvement there. And then the second one is when you read the intro memos for the budget and the CIP, if you see any room for improvement there too. So since we're all together, I thought it would be useful, but maybe after your CIP.

Absolutely, you bet. We can certainly do that before we adjourn for sure. Okay, so at this point, IS THERE ANY DISCUSSION OR QUESTIONS ON THE CIP SPECIFICALLY? ANYBODY WANTS TO JUMP IN THE QUEUE FOR THAT, GO AHEAD. MS. LURING, YOU'RE UP.

I FORGOT TO LOOK AT SOMETHING, ACTUALLY. SO I'M GOING TO ASK ABOUT IT. So there was, so with the acute crisis center unit closing, there's a need for an extra worker. Is that something, is that in the budget or are we considering assisting with that?

No, as we sit here tonight and Chief jump in, I think that's a county responsibility. I think that what the city property owners are paying in terms of the county part of the levy is in support of that. But Chief, I'll let you jump in and comment.

YEAH, FOR THE, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ON THE COUNTY SIDE, THEY CALL IT A CLINICAL THERAPIST, AND THAT WAS IN THE RESOLUTION LAST NIGHT. NO, I DIDN'T SEE THE OUTCOME OF THE COUNTY BOARD SUPERVISOR'S MEETING. BUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT THAT POSITION AND HOW STATE STATUTE IS, THAT POSITION AND WHAT THEY DO FOR EMERGENCY DETENTIONS AND inpatient care, it has to be a full funded, it's a county worker under Department of Human Services. We did look at different models around the state that had city employees and they just weren't effective because they weren't able to do their job. So that position has to be a county employee, fully funded county employee.

Okay, because you feel like we need an extra one, right? And I just wanted to, or not, I'm just, I'm just...

Yeah, I mean, I was, I had been at the table and advocating for two additional social workers like we have embedded in the county and in the city as they were looking at doing their plan in the county. And that was what I shared with the county board and county committees.

Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to, because I didn't.

I appreciate it. Great question.

Thank you, Ms. Lurie. Further questions on the CAP at this point? Seeing no further questions, I'll take motions to change the CIP at this point, if anybody has any motions, anything they'd like to discuss for changes on the CIP. Seeing no motions, I'll close that off as well at this point. So with that, That runs through our budget and capital improvement plan overview part of the agenda for tonight. But at Mr. Moore's request, I'm gonna continue and just kind of ask for general feedback from the council about budget presentations this summer, how that all went, overall the budget document, if there's room for improvement areas and things like that that we could do better, then now would be a great time to share that feedback with staff. Ms. Sproul, I'll let you, actually, I'm going to go to Ms. Luring first. She's first in the queue. You want to jump in there?

I just want to say that I've been on city council now. This is my third year. It's starting to be a long time now. Just kidding. But as I've been on the council, I think it's done really well. I'm... able to understand it, especially now because it's my third year. So I think it's well organized and if we have questions, everyone's accessible and we can come and ask you questions and you answer the questions. So I didn't get to spend my time with Ms. Stowes, but I know that she would have went down through everything and so would Tricia. So I just want to say thank you for making it easy to understand.

Thank you, Ms. Leung. Ms. Brault, you're up.

Thank you. Yeah, I would just like to echo that. Thank you. One of the things that I really appreciate in the budget memo is kind of a look back at like where we've been and some of our successes, things to keep in mind. Because even if you've been on council for a few years and have been through this process, like, there's things that you don't really remember because we haven't discussed them in depth in a while. And I also already expressed this to Mr. Moore in person, but I just really appreciate the timeline that you've chosen to follow where we get all of those presentations in the summer. I think especially for newer council members, it helps us to get a better relationship with our department heads so that if we do have questions, we're not really afraid to ask them. We know who to talk to about which item and just the timeline in general, it just gives us so much more time, I think, than a lot of municipalities or at the county level that we get to sit with the actual budget document and the CIP. Cause there's a lot of numbers in here. And I think most of us, none of us, I don't know. I don't think any of us are accounting, professionals or in fields like that, that we're looking at this kind of stuff all the time. So for, you know, resident representatives to have so much time with the budget, I really, really appreciate. And then of course the, the fast question answering is just amazing. So thank you to Tricia too.

Thank you, Ms. Brault. Mr. Biber, you're up.

I'd like to highlight also, Joe, that, uh, how good it is to see how everything is very organized. Not just one department, but several departments win awards for keeping excellence, and that's... reflection on you and also on your folks. I also liked being able to visit each of the departments and talk. I still got more to go. Got a few people there, but it's for me to help be up here to be able to work with the city and represent the citizens. As I always say, I think of the inverted pyramid, the citizens first, the city staff second, and then me at the bottom. And I appreciate everyone that's been very kind in helping and answering questions. So still got more to go, but I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bimer. Anyone else want to jump in on this? Without seeing anyone else, I'll just add my comments really quickly. Mr. Moore, I wanna say thank you very much for the memo. I think the memo in particular is a really good introduction to the budget. It makes the numbers a lot easier to digest. Ms. Davey, the year by year comparisons, so easy for me to go, okay, this went up by this much, and so then it led me very quickly to be able to ask why. Mr. DeVries, thank you for all the detail that you provided, particularly on the street projects, because I know that's something I'm gonna get stopped at probably by the time I go home tonight. Somebody's gonna harass me at Irish's about what streets are getting done. So I appreciate that very much. And honestly, overall, the CIP is laid out extremely well. And I know that there are some members on council who were not a part of the ARPA funding, but even the way we did ARPA funding compared to the way a lot of other municipalities did ARPA funding back then, it's just incredible. It's a really, really great thing. And I also have to say, as a bit of a tech nerd, it's really wonderful to have it all up on the website and to have it in a searchable PDF document form that I can just very quickly go, okay, what's this? I mean, I would have... I wanted to take a deep dive on SALT. I would have never been able to take a deep dive on SALT if it wasn't laid out so well. So thank you all very much for that. It made it very easy for me. Really appreciate it. So with that, I just wanted to add one more housekeeping note that the Planning Commission, as a part of its function, gets a chance to review the CIP as well. And the Planning Commission did recommend approval of our CIP for next year. So with that, I think that concludes everything on the agenda. So I believe all that's left for us to do, unless you want to jump in one more time, Mr. Moore? We good? All right. Well, then at that point, I think we know who needs to give us a motion to adjourn. I'll take a second for that, please. I got a motion by Mr. Zimmerman and a second by Mr. Biber. Thank you both. And that passes unanimously. We are adjourned. Thanks, everyone.