Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, make me not live, please. Called to order at 10.38 a.m. on September 2nd, 2026. At this time, we'll have a roll call. Alderwoman O'Neill?

Present.

Alderman Thorpe? Present. And I am here. I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as written.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the July 15th and July 24th meetings? So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Motion carries. We'll start off with our fund transfer 127. looking at centralization or possibly over centralization in the budget we just passed. And I'll turn it to Deputy City Manager Buckland to give us a little overview on this. It seems relatively straightforward, but thank you.

Yeah, so when we were doing the centralization for both IT and central services, the first pass at that was basically drawing in funds related to broad classes of where it was budgeted, what kind of object code was it. But as we have gone through now and are doing the much more detailed implementation, it's clear that there are a few things that were listed in there that were related to that topic but weren't part of the point of centralization. So that money got pulled into central services when it shouldn't have. It actually should have remained in the departments because it's not work that central services itself is doing. you know, uniforms and other things like that, that's still being done in the department. So this just corrects that over centralization. So it's not the departments aren't doing anything more or less. It's just actually giving them the money to do what they would have done anyway.

Great. Thank you. And in this case, I see certainly with the latter portion of it, the water one, what we're doing is putting it back into an enterprise fund. Can you explain to me for the ADOT portion, is that going into the transportation fund or is that ADOT's portion of the general fund?

I believe that is in the transportation fund.

Right. Oh, that would make sense. Right. All right. That was my only question. Anybody got any other questions on this?

I'll make a motion for a favorable recommendation.

Second. Awesome. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. FT 127 has a favorable recommendation. Our big business item today is the collective bargaining agreement between the city and AFSCME Local 3162. Just to set the stage on this, we're really looking for the finance committee to get a better understanding of this, but not to wordsmith it, not to nitpick it, to make sure that we understand it fully and that we are willing to hold up our end of the bargain, as it were, hold up our commitment on this that our leaders have negotiated. So my goal here, like I said, is really two parts. To make sure, one, that we fully understand it. So any questions that we have, any assumptions we want to challenge, that we do that now. And then secondly, that we essentially deliberate, but in a very up or down way on, is there something we can stand behind? And I have a feeling the answer is going to be yes, but that's the process that we want to make sure. And in doing so, I think a big part of it is, do we follow the appropriate process for bargaining? There's also a little bit of, are we going to be able to pay for this in some way, but we don't necessarily need to get into the how are we going to pay for this part of it? We're not looking to negotiate on, okay, is $10,000 coming from this expense or coming from that expense? We're looking at, is there room in the budget to make sure we can stand behind this commitment? So that's the tone setting for this. Ms. Buckland, do you want to I KNOW WE, I HOPE WE'VE ALL GONE THROUGH AND READ THE AGREEMENT, READ THE SUMMARY OF IT AND THE STAFFING IMPACT REPORT, BUT ANYTHING YOU WANT TO ADD BEFORE WE JUMP INTO QUESTIONS?

Obviously there's a lot. The agreements are long and there are a number of things that changed here. You will see as we go through all of these agreements, you'll see some commonalities amongst them. And that's helpful for us on the administrative side. One of the things that I think was one of our goals this time was to try to standardize a few things. But very, very proud of the team for the work that they did. Obviously, this year was a little bit odd because we had a whole bunch of folks in acting roles as we went. through all of this, but got there in the end. So this one obviously first out of the gate, but the other three are right behind it.

Great. And can you remind us, I know this is a little bit orthogonal to this one, but the status of those other three, I think, can you just tell us before I speculate?

Sure. For all the other three, all the other three have been voted on and ratified by their membership. Okay. So all three will be introduced on first reader for council approval on September 14th, the next council meeting.

Thank you very much. I'll turn it over to any questions or clarifications from either of my colleagues and then I'll eventually jump in with some myself. But either one of you guys want to go first?

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I guess the first thing I'd like to make a comment and then I have a couple questions. I appreciate the effort you went to to keep the City Council informed of the process. And I appreciate, I think it should be noted, you touched on it, but the number of people that were acting. And I want to commend you for your mentorship. your team building, the smoothness from our perspective. I obviously don't have the union's perspective, although I've heard nothing, and I'm sure we would have for all the right reasons. And so I really commend you, Ms. Buckland, for leading this effort in a time – of transition and all that. And the results are clearly fair. I don't think any either side, I don't want to use that phrase, but has any issues and I applaud your effort. And I also applaud the process. It's a challenging process where for the timing that we had to approve a budget and put the added burden on you that we're going to approve a budget and then you need to negotiate a deal that we can still do within a budget that's afterwards. There is no perfect solution to that. And the other note is I think, I know this one is, and I think all four are two-year agreements. So I applaud that as well. So I don't have many questions, but one of them is I want to... More positions were added to be union positions as part of this negotiation. And my questions might sound like I'm trying to make hard questions, but I think I know the answers to all of them, basically because of the way you've handled this whole thing. But was that the right thing to do? Are we in a better place for our employees and our city with the transition of those positions?

Yeah, there are guidelines around when when something appropriately is excluded from union participation and when it is eligible for union participation. Generally speaking, as people who try to honor those rules and kind of approach that in good faith, they had, They had brought forward some positions. You'll notice that a couple of them are new. And so some of that was just cleanup of we've had some camera operators, but they weren't merit. If they're not merit, they're not eligible. But when they become merit, so there is actual language in the agreement that specifies as those are transitioning, when it becomes a merit position, it's union eligible. And so some of that was just straight straight cleanup. Some of it was we had added some positions as in the course of the class and comp study that were part of the career ladders, but that hadn't made its way into the union agreement either. So part of the career ladder was in, but part of it was not. Doesn't really make sense that the whole career ladder isn't there. So they had brought that to the table

as a legitimate question and and we try to engage with that in good faith so um yeah i'm very very comfortable with where that landed okay uh and that is a perfect setup for my next question which deals with after our standby as steward of the taxpayers dollar and trying to minimize the amount we pay I was a little struck that, and this kind of goes to your comment about continuing process improvement, that we ask some of our employees to be on standby, and we don't compensate them. We didn't compensate them for that. And I noticed one of the changes that you've coordinated, managed, is that there are about 15 days a month on average that employees are on standby, whatever the details. But the point being is, one, I'd like to commend that, because I think if we're asking our employees to commit their time to be on standby, we should compensate them in some way. So perhaps what I'm saying is, first, kudos. Second of all, are you comfortable that we've cleaned that situation up across the city, that when we're asking our people to do something, we're compensating them for that?

Yeah, so I actually appreciate your framing because this is specific to the standby part. If someone got called in, they were actually working, they got compensated for their work time. The difference here is that being on standby, someone has... has to sort of deliberately set up their non-work hours to make sure they can respond in time. So they sign up for, I'm not going to do certain things on those days because I might get called in, right?

Child care.

So anyway, one of the things in my earlier comments, we were trying to do some standardizing across and make sure we've got kind of an equitable approach. across multiple groups. This is one of them. You'll see the question of standby and on-call in several of the agreements. So this won't be the first time you'll see that idea crop up and it won't be the last time, I'm sorry. So yeah, you'll see it in a couple of different places.

Great. Great. I want to jump in here, if you don't mind, because I had a question about this same thing, and I agree with Alderman Thorpe that it seems like a really good idea, both for standardizing and also just for plain fairness. My question was around how we calculated the cost of it. If we're adding 15 days a month or 180-ish days a year, and the expected cost is only $7,200, just how

So the thing to remember, it's paid at straight time for three hours. It's not a full day.

Three hours, 15 days per month, though, right? So still three hours times 180 days strikes me as being more than $7,200 a year, right? 180. If we're doing 15 days a month, I'm just thinking 12 months a year. I mean, I'm not saying I'm opposed to it. Like I said, it seems good for fairness, but I just want to make sure that if we're agreeing to this, we can stand up here and say we knew what the cost was before we agreed to it.

I'll double check the math, but yeah.

Okay, back to you.

Okay, thank you. And my final question is, And I'm fine with a yes or no, because no, I think, leads to probably conversations in a closed session. As you finish the first one, and you have completed the process for the other three, and you've dealt with a lot of actings who will, in the future, not be actings anymore, specifically the person to your left and HR, et cetera, Do you, in your role, feel you have the tools, including the contract support, that you need to manage these contract negotiations in the best interest of our employees and our city?

The short answer is yes. The city has retained outside counsel to help with union negotiations. We did that last time. We did it again this time. Last time it was just for police and fire. This time we actually used that outside counsel for all four. That was enormously helpful and that support is is really helpful. And I anticipate the city continuing to do that into the future.

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. That's all my questions.

Thank you. Alderman O'Neill, anything you wanted to ask about?

Sure. Just a couple of questions. I too appreciate all the work that went into this because I know it's a lot. Over the past five years, this is the Third time I was part of the council when we were completing negotiations. And the first two times, there was actually a lot of questioning around the timing of it. We're talking about it now after approving a budget. This is the third time that that's happened. Is there a process that you're working on so that in two years we will be further ahead? I know that code states that we're supposed to start negotiations in early fall. Do you have a process in place for two years from now where hopefully we will be looking at this in May or June as opposed to September?

Yeah, so that's a good question. We do start in the fall. The biggest thing is actually really capitalizing on the efforts that Director Ajayi is making now, which is bringing the reporting timelines and audit timelines in. One of the things that ends up delaying finalizing. So we can start conversations, but it's hard to finish them without having the final numbers. And so all those efforts that the director's making now around pulling that timeline in, we're going to reap benefits from that in the next round of negotiations. And that alone will make a really big difference in the timeline.

Thank you. Do you foresee any legislative changes that you will be asking for or that will be necessary as far as kind of holding people accountable to a more clear timeline? I don't think so.

I will caveat my answer here that a full answer really should involve the Office of Law. So you should take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt. But there are federal rules around how negotiations work, what the expectations are of the parties. And so there are limits to how much we can sort of force the issue in some ways, because us forcing the issue, it's not that we can't do anything, but there are a lot of ways in which you can get yourself into trouble by at least having the appearance of bargaining in bad faith. And so we do try to, we try to honor that paradigm of not only negotiating in good faith, but appearing to negotiate in good faith.

That makes sense. I just, I always get frustrated when we're sort of doing a placeholder because I feel like it just shows our hands up front and center. Yeah. I see the finance director nodding her head, yes.

Yeah, I can appreciate that. You know, that was a little bit different this time. There will be fund transfers that come to fund this. That's not in front of you today, but that will be coming.

Thank you.

All right. I have just a couple ones because the folks to my left and right hit most of the questions I had. But kind of tying into Alderman Thorpe's question about the process with having so many acting folks, can you talk in particular about how we integrated the director of HR, the new director of HR into this. I mean, that seems like the person who might have ideas on how we could do this differently, especially given his background having been in roles where he's negotiating with public sector unions before. I guess what I'm really looking for is, can you reassure me that two years from now he's not going to say, oh, we should do this totally differently? Or if he is, I want to know that too.

Um... I think that there is a very big difference between how the city approaches negotiations and what kinds of things we want to negotiate about. Sure. So I don't... I don't really see the city taking a wildly different approach to how we negotiate. There are different approaches that are out there. I haven't heard anything yet that's like, oh, we're never doing that again. I'm not hearing that kind of stuff. I do think, though, that as Director Ajayi, as Director Hall, and others have really dived in, and dug into their work, part of what that's uncovering are some things that, you know what, next time you might want to think about this. And so I think the question of what subjects we might want to negotiate over is a very different question. It's two years away, well, it's a year and a half away. So we have time, we still need to implement this, right? Implementing this will uncover other things, right? For us and on the union side. And that's fine and we'll come to the table with, they'll come to the table with their list and we'll come to the table with our list. I'm not sure that it quite answered your question. I'm not hearing anything from him that's like, you did what?

Yeah, I think you answered my question in that there might be things within the process that we want to do differently, but we don't want to fundamentally change the negotiating framework process. Yeah. This is just a super baseline thing, but I, and apologies if I just missed it, I didn't see anywhere in here, how many employees are we covering with this? I see the number of position types, but are we talking, yeah, how many actual employees are we talking about here?

So of the unions, this particular one is the smallest one. Right. Has a membership of 40-ish.

Okay, 40-ish. Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. I think that covers all of the additional questions I had. Oh, one last thing. Sorry, the Labor Management Committee. Could you just explain a little bit more about what that looks like and what the membership of that will be and why we felt it was important to create that?

Yeah, so labor management committees are fairly common. You see them in a wide variety of places. And the purpose of them is to talk about topics that come up and start having some conversations and to get to resolution on items in sort of a friendly fashion before you get to negotiating. And it's to, in some sense, weed out a little bit. Here are the things that we should just talk about and turns out everybody's sort of on the same side and we're just gonna have a conversation and deal with it, as opposed to, no, I think we're gonna have to negotiate about that. So it's a way of bringing forward topics and having a more, um... organized between negotiation conversation than just having grievances, for example, be one of the primary ways in which we talk. Here's a non-confrontational venue for us to talk and raise issues. So you see them in a lot of different places. The city hasn't done it in the past. It's in this one. It's in the other Ask Me one as well.

And so we're pretty happy about it actually Yeah, it sounds almost and it reads almost like We're setting the agenda for the consent calendar We're sort of saying the the things that we don't need to have a whole prolonged discussion on we all agree on this I would just ask and this is not something that by any means needs to go in the agreement I would just ask THAT WE CONSIDER THIS IN THE CONTEXT OF WE'RE TRYING TO REDUCE NUMBER OF BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS AND COMMITTEES AND WORK GROUPS AND SUCH THAT WE ARE OR I SHOULDN'T EVEN SAY TRYING TO REDUCE BUT TRYING TO BE INTENTIONAL ABOUT THAT ACROSS THE CITY AND I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS DOES NOT END UP BEING SOMETHING DUPLICATIVE.

Oh, yeah. So the membership here is strictly management and labor. So we're not talking about private individuals or anyone outside of our relationship with the unions.

Yeah. I didn't even need a response to that. It was more just a, I hope you'll think about it. And I appreciate that. Thank you. All right. That was all I had. Any last questions? CHANCES? ANYTHING? THIS SEEMS LIKE A VERY REASONABLE DEAL FOR US. I UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE SMALLEST ONE, BUT I THINK THE KEY THING FOR THE PUBLIC TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A 2% COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENT, AND THAT WAS, AS I UNDERSTAND, THE BIGGEST STICKING POINT. WE HAVEN'T SPENT A LOT OF TIME TALKING ABOUT THAT TODAY, BUT THAT IS PROBABLY THE most crucial thing for that we negotiate over that the public should understand that is going to impact our budget and I'm I'm happy to see that that's what we stuck to so thank you thank you for the hard work with that

Favorable recommendation. Motion for favorable recommendation.

Thank you. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Resolution 2326 receives a favorable recommendation from the Finance Committee. All right. Next up, we have Resolution 2726, which I know this is somewhat tied in, but also has a little bit of stuff outside of what we just talked about. So you touched on it briefly, but can you maybe just outline for us the parts that are unrelated to what we just discussed?

Yeah, so in addition to the particulars from the AFSCME negotiations, the other thing that's in here is creating paramedic-specific job classes that parallel the firefighter job classes. So the PTIMEDIC unit The idea is that the people in those job classes do paramedic work, but do not do firefighting work. So that changes what the qualifications are and the rest of that. So this creates a parallel series that would be applicable. Obviously related to something the council already approved, but this is the job class part of that.

And yeah, I think I've gone on the record that I think it's a very good idea to say if so much of what the fire department does is essentially paramedic work, is medic work, then having folks who are focused on that makes perfect sense to me. So this seems pretty common sense. Anybody got any questions about it?

I don't have a question, but I have an aside. On social media, there was somebody saying, I really just am a first responder, this and that. Does anybody know of any departments that are hiring just that without being a firefighter? And everyone's like, no, no, no, no, no. And I said, actually, as of July 1st, the city of Annapolis. So hopefully that got some new recruits, at least one or two.

Wonderful. Yeah, big kudos to our fire chief for always being so forward-thinking. We really appreciate your work and just trying to be on the forefront, whether it's this or the whole blood. I love to see it. Is there, if there's no additional discussion, is there a favorable recommendation on R2726? So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Nice. Next up, we've got our capital improvement projects discussion from Director Vogel. Thanks for being here, Director. I appreciate you sending this to us. As a reminder, this is really just our quarterly review to look at capital projects and understand which ones had something changed, which ones are no longer on the track that we expected them to be the last time we talked. So we don't expect you to go through every single one of them. But really hearing... Where are there problems? Where are there things where you're doing even better than we thought you were going to do? And just hope you can hit those highlights for us. Thank you very much.

These are on all the time, right? Okay. I'm Burr Fogle, Public Works Director. I think it should be really short. There's probably not much of an update other than I will tell you that Robert Eads is probably not going as well as we'd like it to in terms of them being able to complete by their contract completion date. So, we're considering ramping up our pressure there, you know, using the tools that we have to get that contractor to finish. Other than that, big news is 6th Street should finish up fairly soon, maybe this week or next. That's the floating dock in Eastport on Back Creek, and Tucker Street is also underway. The fuel dock or the fueling station on Spa Road is almost done. And that's pretty much it, unless you all have questions. There were 70 other projects, but none really jumped to mind as being particularly interesting.

We just announced CityDoc project is ahead of schedule, but we did a whole press conference for that. We did a press conference for that. I was sad not to be able to be there. Do you have questions about Robert Eads Park? Or you already know all about this.

No, this is the first I'm hearing that it's not going to be on schedule. So what is the plan for Robert Eads Park?

I'll say the hope is that the contractor works with a little more urgency, understands that we're serious, we want you to finish, the contract completion date is out there, and we have certain tools in terms of bonds, and none of those tools are particularly great. This is sort of how things go in the low-bid contracting environment sometimes.

right so as far as people that are watching the project what can they expect should they expect to see increased work or that's been my biggest complaint is that it doesn't appear to be anything going on not a lot going on that's correct so what should the output to those that are saying you said it was going on what should we be telling them the city is doing the best they can it's not our work it's a contractor

We only have certain tools.

Does that mean the project is being, completion date is being pushed forward? Does it, are we still in we don't know mode?

We're still in, we're doing our best to pressure the contractor to finish by their contract completion date, which is October. It's still achievable. They just really need to get to work.

Thank you.

Any questions, Alderman Thorpe? I do. Thank you, Director Vogel. The response to 6th Street continues to be incredibly enthusiastic, so thank you for the work. I think similarly, August has caught us. I think the contract date is like September 30th. uh to be completed it might actually be october it may actually be in october yeah um and i think we were we were enthusiastically um uh optimistically looking at a ribbon cutting next week this week next week um could i ask you to work with the mayor's office and set a date i have an email going out this week and i was going to put it in there and i drove down yesterday and they're they're progress into their contract date, perhaps not to our optimistic date. If I could ask you to work with the mayor's office and put forward a date, I don't think we need to cut the ribbon the day they finish being a Navy public works officer in your former life. But if we could set a date that makes sense well in advance when you're confident we could do it, that'd be great.

So we have it on the calendar for next Wednesday afternoon or evening. I'm still not confident though. They really only have two days of work. I mean, they could show up. today and be done tomorrow. But just the way this contractor has gone, we're not always sure. So if we really want two weeks, we'll just go ahead and push it back now.

I think we should, sir. I think there's no reason. It's not like a bridge that we're going to keep it closed until we cut the ribbon. So we can use it. And then, I mean, I'm fine if we do it well into September. the 28th of September, pull that out of the air. So I just think there's a valid reason to celebrate that project being done without making it a stress for everybody. So, okay. Thank you. And then the second thing I have is I want to commend your team as we continue to get our arms around street end parks and rising sea level, the amount of effort that your team behind the scenes is going to. And we had a meeting yesterday that they brought Rex and Parks in to ensure that everybody was on the same sheet of music. The coordination that your team is driving is tremendous. And I just want to thank you for that. Roger, for you updating on three projects, but for those who are watching, there's about 40 projects that I know of that are living, breathing, and taking time of your team that making sausage is a difficult thing to do. So I just want to commend you and appreciate the effort of your team. Thank you.

Similarly, I'll commend you. I appreciate us setting up these quarterly meetings. I think this, so far at least, is going exactly how we had hoped. And I think it's helpful to be able to have this opportunity to just ask you about these. I've only got two things for you. First one is a super... I don't want to say small because it's important to a lot of people, but it's a detail that it's totally fair if you don't know it off the top of your head. The Southgate Water and Sewer Project, the paving, it was supposed to be in September. Are we still on pace for that? I'll have to follow up. Okay, that's fine.

If you can just follow up with me on that, I'd appreciate it. Good chance, yes.

Yeah, last I heard paving was going to happen in September, and that was in July. But I quite literally get an email about it every single week. So I would like to make sure that the information I'm putting out is still accurate. And then the second thing was just about DNR waterway improvement grants. So this is something that we have... at least one, typically a few capital projects that we're planning to get DNR Waterway Improvement Grants to get them done. Is that handled by your department?

Yes. We now apply for them. We kind of coordinate with the Harbor Master's Office, decide what projects we want to apply for and apply.

Okay. And what's the timeframe for that? Do you know when those are open, when we're applying for them?

This cycle in the next few weeks for the 2028 program.

Great. Thank you very much. And so maybe this is a question more for the city manager, but have we put together our list of priorities at this point, or is that something we should talk about?

I think we've put together our list of priorities. I remember a meeting a month, six weeks ago with the Harbormaster, with Jackie Geild, and we went through what were the projects we were going to put forward. Interestingly, going back three years and beyond, we were pretty successful. The last two cycles, we've gotten zero. which strikes me as odd, given we have a significant maritime industry, a lot of boaters here, the boat show. I find it interesting, yeah, that we've not been, I don't know, maybe getting our fair share, at least from my perspective.

Might be something for our deputy chief of staff to work on with our state delegation. Ms. Buckland, you got anything to add on that?

Just that there are a number of different waterway improvement projects that are listed in the CIP. And some of them do say the project is dependent upon securing funding. So there are some things that are even acknowledged within the CIP that are kind of next things.

OK, thank you. I think you know what? We didn't get Burnside or Actons in the last cycle. We're going to go after those again. Those are the two, for me, that I think are the most urgent.

Yeah, I would agree with you on both of those. That's all I had on this. Anybody? Last call? No? Thank you very much. I have one more thing.

Yeah, please. I should have mentioned this. The other side of Ego Alley, the Southside Compromise Street project, maybe any time in the next week or two, we'll have that contract awarded. So that is the original downtown flooding mitigation project. The earliest, a little bit of trivia, the earliest billing against that capital project when you go into our financial system occurred in 2013. Wow. And so when we get a construction contract awarded, that will be a significant milestone. Seriously. For about $5 million to build the bulkhead. 13 years later. 13 years later, yeah.

Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate the whole update. Thank you for making time today. All we've got left on our agenda is an update from the finance department, and I'm happy to hear whatever you've got to tell us about. One thing I'd particularly like to hear about is, you know, we've talked about a list of hearing topics for this committee, and I'd be curious to hear where you think we are on getting to do some of those.

So first of all, my name is Karen Ajayi. I'm the Director of Finance. And before I start, I want to thank you, Vicki, for all that you have done with negotiating those contracts, because I have a lot to learn from you going into the next round. So again, I appreciate everything that you have done. So, regarding the list that you provided, I have not had an opportunity to prioritize them at the moment. My primary focus has been the audit timeline. I know how important it is to make sure we hit those deadlines. We have been primarily focused on stopping the numbers from moving. And that entails making sure that all the purchase orders are closed. Very, very important step in our financial statements. And so we're closing a number of purchase orders. We will have our hard close date. It's scheduled for September the 18th and that will completely stop the numbers. Once that's done, then we're going to go straight into redoing our fund statements. So what we did, we did a preliminary, our preliminary fund statements. just to look at the numbers, do the analysis, ensure that we don't have to do any adjusting journal entries. And then once we finish that process, we decided to stop the numbers for the POs, and then we'll go back and do our final fund statements. And then we'll start interacting with the auditors regarding them taking a look at our fund statements. So we are on target. I say all of this because we are on target with our audit timeline. So I'm hoping that you're happy to hear that because I'm happy to hear it. Absolutely.

I'm happy to hear it and Alderman Thorpe is even more happy to hear it.

With that, I do want to also mention that we are in the process of hiring leadership in the Office of Finance. Last week we had approximately 10 interviews for three different positions. One of them was the budget manager. Another one was for the finance office manager. And then the last one was for our payroll admit staff. We have put an offer for two of the three positions.

And I do want to... Can I interrupt you and just ask which of the two? Yes, sir. Which of the two?

It's the payroll admin and the finance office manager. Gotcha.

Thank you.

I do want to also introduce to you our deputy finance director, Inez Capone. We have selected her as the next deputy finance director. Actually, she's the deputy finance director as of last Thursday. So I think she's here. I want to introduce you to the council members. So we're filling those positions as quickly as possible. So with the focus of the audit timeline, getting people in place, it's a lot. And then trying to stop the numbers from moving, it's a lot. And then getting everyone acclimated into their new roles in the finance office, we're doing the job. We're getting it done. I can assure you that.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for the update. I'll say as far as the hearing topics, I appreciate and you're doing the right thing in making sure we can dribble before we start coming up with strategies to be able to dunk. And that's what those hearing topics are. They're pretty much all very aspirational. Um, I will ask if rather than trying to say, let's come up with the, how do we prioritize every one of them? If you can start thinking about what's the one that's the lowest lift that in the next month or two, we could have one of them on, but I, I understand. And I appreciate, I want you dribbling and it's, I'd say dribbling. I know it's really a lot of very difficult stuff, but getting the fundamentals right before we start thinking about the aspirational part. But I also have seen your ability to do both. And so that's my ask is just whichever one is the lowest lift for the department to think about how we could have that in the next couple months.

Absolutely. Will do, sir. Thank you.

I think so. I'll forward it again to you. But yeah. Any questions? Thank you for that brief.

If I could get slightly personal on two different topics. One, I love that you are sounding like you are the director of finance today and no longer the acting. And I noticed that your colleague to your right was smiling the whole time you were briefing. So congratulations on being fully immersed. On the good news, bad news point of view, I have an observation and then a question. We have a really good staff liaison for the Audit Committee who has just been recently promoted. So, congratulations on the promotion. And I just have to ask, is she going to continue to be the staff liaison for the Audit Committee? So if we could take that as an action item for you and I to talk about. Yes, sir. Because I have literally an email about 90% drafted on the way to you. And so we have a really important audit committee meeting coming up. So we want to make sure we have a good liaison. Because I was spoiled. So... I do have a couple questions, and no surprise to you, they probably are about the close process.

my understanding what you just briefed is that you're planning on having the close for 26 completed on september 18th that's correct sir okay um how confident are you we're gonna we're gonna hit that oh we have to it's it's actually a requirement that we we've set it up with our vendor to assist us with closing our books and so that date is in in stone we cannot miss that deadline

Okay, so I assume, or I'll translate that to be you are confident we are going to hit it? Absolutely, sir. Okay, thank you. Then now let's talk about 27. When are you planning on completing the close for the first quarter, which ends September 30th, right? And similarly, if you're planning on doing a close for July, which I don't think you're at that point yet, but when is that? But more specifically, the question is first quarter. When are you planning to complete the close for first quarter fiscal year 27?

So the close for fiscal year 27, we are in the process of getting all of our journal entries in, we're supposed to have a team meeting regarding the status of getting all of those journal entries approved. We've set up a specific date every month to have that close. We started, you know, we push back that date to the 20th business day and we just keep moving it up so that the team can get used to closing things out by a specific timeframe every month. So for an example, for our July close, we should be finished by the 15th business day in the month of September. And if we can move it up a little bit more, that would be great, but I'm testing it. It's a test drive right now. As I mentioned earlier, It's a cultural change, and that takes time. So that is the reason why I'm itching up the date more every month to see how it works and to identify what is preventing us from closing on time. And so I have to get to the heart of the issues. And as I get to the heart of the issues, I have to address those issues. And that takes time. But we're test driving. We're moving up those dates. The team is getting used to closing the books on a monthly basis. That's what we're doing right now. I can't say when we will start sending out those monthly reports that you and I have talked about, but it is on my mind a lot. I have been in contact with other counties and counterparts at my level to see how they're doing their monthly reports. I have some ideas. I will be basically sharing that information with you very soon to see if this is the way you want us to present the information. But it is my priority to make sure that leadership has the information that is needed to make decisions on an ongoing basis. You want to?

Yeah, I'm going to jump in on something here because I want to underscore that the effort that Director Ajayi and her team are making is on two different fronts, both of which are really, really important. One of them is somewhat procedural. People need to have their work done. Silly things like all the P-card receipts need to be in, and so you can post the whole batch and that kind of stuff. But there's also a cleanliness aspect. that if you're not inside finance, I think it's sometimes difficult to appreciate how much everybody else just assumes that all the numbers are correct. But the only reason they're correct is because finance pays attention. And so there's a lot of the year-end work that the team has been doing that's around sheer cleanliness of the numbers. Are all the old POs closed and stuff? Because when that report comes to you, you should be able to make the assumption that this is a fully accurate representation of the financial position of the city. And there's work that's happening along both of those fronts. And it's deep, detailed work. And I have worked with Karen long enough to know that both of those aspects are really important to her, and for very good reason. And so I think that from the council's perspective, I think from the outside, it's easy to say, this should be a canned report in the system. We should be able to just run a canned report that's here it is. And while that's true, part of the job of finance is to make sure that you can actually hang your hat on that. It's not just about running the report. It's about being able to stand behind what the report says. And I think that's really where that effort is happening.

Is that fair? That's very fair. And I do want to add here that as we make those changes, we're writing procedures. That's a lot. But I want to make sure that it's there so that all of the departments in the city of Annapolis will follow them and make our life easier on the back end. They're the front end of the transaction. We're the back end of it. We're making sure that it's clean, data scrubbed. in order for you to rely on good information. That is my primary goal is to make sure whatever we put out there is accurate. You can rely your hat on it. And so what we're doing is whatever works and whatever is in compliance with the laws and the regulations, we're going to put this in writing and say going forward, This is how we're going to conduct business in the departments as well as in finance. That's where we're headed.

And the other thing I'll say is that obviously there's a whole discussion on the inside too that's a parallel to yours that city manager's office wants the same thing. So just to have some reassurance that you're not the only ones that are asking and We are going to get there. But I want to get there in a way that when you get it, you can count on that.

Yeah. I want you to know... First of all, thank you for that explanation. Spot on. I want you to know that... I, and I think I speak for the body, do not want to rush you to be wrong. So totally agree. And matter of fact, I would even go a couple of steps farther. Both of your reference to your reliance on other departments. I think the system's working in the right direction. One of the council meetings in July, I believe in the mayor's remarks, he even commented, clearly inspired by either the director of finance or the deputy city manager, about the importance that he's put on other departments, on all the departments, feeding, being part of the system, et cetera. So I want you to know that my... If I thought you weren't going fast enough, I don't mince my words. I would say, we're not going fast enough. I would probably call you directly maybe and tell you that first and have a conversation. But that's not where I am. But I would like to see, and not today, but I would like to see a rough timeline of people And I don't want to be prescriptive in my request because, again, I believe in my heart of hearts that the city staff is moving exactly in the right direction to clarify and change the culture of the city so we're living within the budget a budget culture. So I would like to see a timeline of when you're looking for the quarterly closes to be complete and when you're looking farther out if you're ready to say it when you're looking to get to monthly closes and I think that's in both cases there's a little risk in asking you to do that. I will tell you from my perspective I have so much confidence in what I'm hearing from you that I'm also fine with you all saying in in a month or two saying our plan was x date we're looking to push it back a little bit more because we want to be better or whatever so this is not a report card this is not a pass fail but i think if you don't have a plan you don't have a we don't if if we don't have a plan we don't have a plan And so I would just like to get a little more into where your heads are on when those milestones. And I don't want to go any deeper. I appreciated your conversation about journal entries. That is more specific than the details that this body should get. But I appreciated the perspective because, as I think the deputy city manager said, a lot more goes into this than we see. And there's no question about it, right? I mean, the problem... or the challenge you have is, and not to compare it to any other department, but Two plus two equals four, and there's no negotiation between, you can't say, well, today that's four and a half. You know, the ramp's going to be deeper or whatever. I mean, it's, so I fully appreciate that it's the specifics that you're dealing with. But if we could get a rough plan, maybe at the next finance committee meeting or the finance committee meeting after that, if you want to tell us in a couple weeks, we're working on whatever. But again, and I'm not looking for the backup information. That's not the purview of this body.

Understood, sir.

All right.

Thank you. That's all I have. Great. Thank you so much, Director Ajayi, at this time. Is there anything else anybody wants to say for the good of the order?

Can we revisit the change in the staff liaison for the audit committee? Yeah, fact, too.

All right. With that, I will ask for a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Have a nice day.