City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for being here for the Plymouth City Council meeting of September 10th, 2026. I'd like to start off with a roll call.

Council Member Bottomley. Here. Council Member Cranford. Here. Council Member Dill absent. Vice Mayor Hornish.

Here.

Mayor Nunn.

Here.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Can we do the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Item 2, approval of City Council regular meeting agenda of September 10th. Order.

Make a motion to approve City Council regular meeting agenda of September 10th.

I'll second. Council Member Bottomley? Aye. Council Member Cranford? Aye. Vice Mayor Hornish?

Aye.

Mayor Nunn?

Aye.

Thank you. Motion passes.

Regular meeting public comment. At this time, anyone from the public is welcome to get up and make comment on anything that's not on the agenda tonight. Those who want to comment on the agenda items can wait until it's called. And we like to keep this at three minutes or less if possible. Anyone like to make public comment on any item not on the agenda? Rosemary.

Good evening, Rosemary Marino Moody, Plymouth. I just have a question about the signs. So the one on Main Street, the speedometer was working this morning, which was very, very interesting because as I came through, it was about 725 maybe. The lights around the top is not flashing, but the speedometer was. And somebody ran the stop sign at Church Street, was going 30 miles an hour. They saw that, and they immediately slowed down to 15. So it does make an impact, obviously. I mean, it's not good that they ran the stop sign. So I'm curious because the buses go by about 7, between 7.30, 7.35 and the kids are already walking to school because I think the playground opens about 7.20. So I was wondering when those are flashing because I see kids walking in the morning on Main Street and it's not flashing yet. So that's the only thing I have concern with. The other thing is the walking path going across. So this morning I usually wait to push the button until the cars are there's no cars close so they don't have to stop suddenly. so today i pushed the button and i started across with my dog we got about halfway a guy coming south um totally went right through it because and i mean i could have reached out this way and hit him never slowed down there's no way you didn't see us so i'm still concerned about how fast they're going they're not stopping for the flashing lights if like if i'm on this side going across the car going this way will just go right through it if i'm not all the way across yet so there is a problem you may want to let chp or the sheriff know because i have seen kids coming across that path in the morning on their way to school thank you thank you anyone else for public comment

Good evening, Tom Tomlinson, Fire Prevention, Amador Fire. I would just like to give a big thanks to the city for getting the hydrant repaired out in front of Marlena Glens. It was impacted some time ago and damaged and rendered unusable. So seeing that fix is awesome. Greatly appreciate it. Aside from that, I'll look towards getting you an update on calls at the next meeting towards the end of the month, unless anyone has any questions. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else, public comment? Items not on the agenda? Online? No one? All right. Hearing and seeing none, we're going to move on. Presentation proclamations and appointments. We have nothing on that tonight. Consent calendar agenda, item five. Got to get a motion to approve consent calendar.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar for Thursday, September 10th. Second.

Council Member Bottomley? Aye. Council Member Cranford? Aye. Vice Mayor Hornish?

Aye.

Mayor Nunn?

Aye.

Thank you. Motion passes.

Any consent calendar? Oh, yeah. I might have missed it.

We can do it now.

Yeah, we can do it now. Anybody like to make a public comment on the consent calendar? All right. Well, thank you, Council Member Cranford. Thank you very much. All right. So no public hearings. Item 7.1, adopt resolution 2026-16, adopting the revised annual proposed budget and fund balance projections for fiscal year 2026-27. Can we get staff report on that? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Okay.

Thank you. Go ahead, Cameron. I was just going to turn it over to you, Mr. Heath.

Okay. I didn't know if you wanted to introduce it or not. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Cameron for the record, Andy Heath, financial consultant to the city. What I'd like to do for you tonight is actually go through a presentation that you've seen before. It's been updated a little bit with a couple of things, and we'll go over exactly what those updates consist of. from what you've seen before, and more or less methodically go through the framework of your budget, which is a very basic budget for your city. Your city has had some challenges in the past with being able to create a balanced budget, and the city manager has done a remarkable job in bringing a balanced budget to you, specifically for the general fund. in looking at the ongoing revenues and expenses that we'll go through a little bit tonight. So with that, I'm going to share my screen and go through the presentation.

Andy, sorry to interrupt you. I'm just going to see if we could turn the volume down to slightly on you, because I think it's hard for people to understand the volume's pretty high. If you can just bear with me. My volume's high? Oh, shoot. Well, I think it's on our end. I was just going to see if we could possibly turn it down. little bit. Sorry to interrupt you.

No problem. Jacob, can you turn on the present, as it said, send request to be able to present? Thank you.

Hey, can you try it now?

I can hear you. Can you hear me better? Is that better?

I think that's a little bit better. What do you think, Oliver? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's better, Andy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. And then I'm having difficulty sharing my screen. So someone needs to turn that on or the message I'm getting says the host isn't allowing multiple presenter sharing for this meeting.

Can you try it now, Andy? I think we did. Okay.

Yep, they were good, awesome. Okay, you should see my screen now with the proposed budget. Front page, slideshow part. All right, are we good to go? Everybody see that okay?

Yes, you can.

Okay, okay, perfect, good, okay. So as part of tonight's presentation, what I'll go through is just give you an overview of the revised proposed budget changes and some of the modifications that have been built in since the last time you saw this. We'll go over the citywide budget and overview. We'll look at the citywide, all the funds together as a whole. We'll look at staffing, and we'll look at capital projects, of which there's really only one. And we'll focus a little bit on the general fund. We'll look at the general fund budget in and of itself, the revenues and expenditures, and then look at the forecast that's been put together. One thing I do want to mention is that today I was able to go in and look at the fiscal 25-26 information, which is the year just finished about two and a half months ago. to determine whether or not the estimates that we have built in for fiscal 25-26 are good, particularly for the general fund. So I went in and looked at all of the data that's been posted to date, and Ricky's done a great job keeping everything posted, so all the numbers appear to be really good, and implied the accruals that need to go back to fiscal 25-26, and it looks like we're going to be right in the ballpark of what the estimates are, at least on the bottom line for the general fund. So 25-26 is looking like a pretty good year from an estimate perspective and what you'll see tonight. After we go through the general fund, we'll look at the proposed budget for the enterprise funds, which is your water and wastewater funds, and then look at the other fund groups, just a couple of them that I'll point out to you. Okay, so the budget development process, some of the changes that you've seen that you'll see today compared to the last presentation. So we have done some updates to the salary schedules. The salary schedules were updated to create transparency in the presentation of salaries. There were two schedules. There are two schedules that are presented as part of the budget. And what I've done based on a request is actually gone back and reconcile those two schedules. They always did reconcile, but I made them so that it was easy to reconcile them in terms of what's actually in salaries and what's actually in benefits. So the two salary schedules that you see have been updated to reflect that. We've also updated salary distribution costs. There was one individual that wasn't distributed correctly. So we went in and we changed the distribution. It was distributed correctly, but we changed it. I'm going to change that distribution. We updated the city manager deferred comp or 457 costs into the budget. Those were inadvertently not included, but they are now. And then we updated the city council budget to include the salary appropriation for all five council members, even though three of you actually declined your stipend. We actually built that in with the understanding that at any point in time, the framework of the council, particularly during the election year, can change and you might have council members that don't decline their stipend and actually take it. So we built that in all the way across the board for the entire year for all five council members. We also did updates to the sales tax budget. So just last week, I was able to go in and reconcile all of the sales tax, the true amount of sales tax that's been received for and applied to fiscal year 25-26. That amount has been updated in the model for 25-26, and then more importantly, I've parlayed that forward into the current year, so the sales tax budget actually went up a little bit. I reviewed the preliminary water and wastewater rate update information, so that information has come out, I guess. I looked at this information and tried to articulate exactly what the impact was going to be on the rates moving forward from the report itself. It was really difficult to do that. And when I did do the extrapolation, it turned out that the rates really weren't going to amount to much more than I had estimated in the budget. And that is probably because I'm estimating it based on what you've actually received to date. We will go back and look at that again for the water and wastewater once we have some experience for the first few months of collections of the new rate so that we can update that budget. And then finally, we did an update of the CFD information based on the assessment that has been put on the roll for the CFD. So that changed a little bit, went up by, I'm going to guess, between two and a half and three and a half percent of the total from the previous year. This is your citywide budget. So this is the citywide budget as a whole. You can see here there's an arrow that is pointing to a number that is $3.94 million. That amount represents the appropriation authority that the city is seeking with approval of this budget. Of that $3.94 million, you can see the majority of your budget lies within three funds, your general fund, your water fund, and your wastewater fund. Just about $3 million of that $3.9 million, as you know, is three funds alone. Then you have some other appropriations and other funds, and we'll go through that in just a little bit. This is your capital. This is the only capital project that's budgeted citywide for the coming year at this point. It's a $150,000 appropriation funded by the GASDAX fund, GASDAX slash RMRA fund, Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Act, which is Fund 10. It's for the Old Sacramento Street Rehabilitation Project. This is your staffing. So for staffing, you have a total of 12 positions. 9.2 FTE, there it is right there, 9.2 FTE that are accounted for. And this is the breakdown of those FTE and where they're actually budgeted. So the percentage means that, like for the city manager, 50% of his cost is budgeted in the general fund, 15% in the water fund, 35% in the wastewater fund. In the aggregate, you have 6.45 FTE, which stands for full-time equivalents, budgeted in the general fund. just under one FTE, 0.8 FTE actually for the water fund and 1.9 FTE for the wastewater fund. For the costs, 69% of all the staff costs accrue to the general fund, about $601,000 and the remaining 31% goes to the other funds, the other two funds. What I did want to mention also is that you have some other costs that are for staff-related type positions for finance and planning that are contractual-based, and those are budgeted into professional services in their particular departments. There's also an amount that is budgeted for Zinfandel Ridge. It's an $11,000 amount. This is just an estimate, okay? We have no idea by the end of the year if any of this will be actually transferred to the Zinfandel Ridge, but There's an appropriation there, and to the extent the general fund, or any other fund for that matter, provides any services to Zinfandel Ridge, the CFD, Public Works, for example, doing some cleanup work out there, anything, whether it's the staff, direct staff costs or indirect costs associated with the staff, those can be charged to the Zinfandel Ridge CFD. So we have a minor budget in there for $11,000. The only way that those costs will be transferred is if we have an articulated itemization of those costs that we can detail so that in the event Zinfandel Ridge wants to see what those costs are, they will have that information. Another thing is, other than for one position, there are no salary increases that are built in for 26-27. So the CPI increase that is typically part of the budget has not been built in for 26-27. To the extent one were to be built in, each 1% of an increase to the workforce would equate to about $6,000 for the general fund. So if you gave a 2% raise, it would be an additional $12,000 in ongoing costs that needed to be added to the general fund. Okay, now we're going to go to the general fund itself and focus on that budget in and of itself. So I have two different slides for the general fund. You can see in the blue area, we have I put the estimated amounts that are likely to transpire for 2526. And again, these are going to be pretty close to reality. Okay, so you can see here that we're expecting to use in 2526. About $331,000 in reserves. I think that may be a little bit better. It might only be $290,000 to $300,000 based on what I looked at today, but it's going to be in the ballpark of $330,000 use of fund balance. Why did we use that fund balance? Because TOT revenue dropped significantly. They're down 40% from the average of the four prior years with the loss of the Shenandoah Inn, collecting only $195,000. $195,000 per year versus $325,000 that you typically collect per year. Also, we can't use the gas tax funding that can typically be transferred into the general fund to offset streets costs because you have to meet your what's called maintenance of effort. That's that MOE number. That amount has to be spent out of your general fund before you use any gas tax to defray other general fund streets costs. your budget for that year. Your actual expenditures for that year are only $59,000. So we can't use any gas tax money to help defray costs. There's one-time costs associated with staff transitions. So in last year, last year's budget, the city manager left. There was a payout for that. And you had a massive staff reorganization that took place. There were high legal costs. We've been over this. About $260,000 is incurred for 25-26 versus the typical $75,000 to $85,000 average. And we also had higher protection costs at $69,391, which is an increase of about $30,000. When we did the mid-year, we anticipated a use of about $203,000 in reserves, but it's actually going to be about $300,000 is what I'm guessing after looking at the information today. On the next slide, I'll focus on the 26-27 budget. So you can see the proposed budget for 26-27 is actually balanced, $1,342,959, both in revenues and expenditures. So this is a balanced budget. The budget assumes static service levels, and I want to reiterate that this is a very, very basic budget. There's not a lot of bells and whistles built into this budget, especially for the general fund. It's a very basic budget. Nominal revenue growth is built in for certain revenue categories, 1.5% to 2.5%. You have fully loaded salaries for all positions. This does not include the CPI increases that I mentioned before. And if you do add that at some point in time during the year, that's about $6,000 additional to the general fund. also includes an appropriation from the general fund towards the Amador County Public Safety Contract. This contract typically has not been funded by the general fund, nor have any public safety costs been funded by the general fund, because you have been able to use all of your fleece money, which is a supplemental law enforcement, and you have a special fund for that, towards that contract in the past, because it was a lot smaller than $422,000, which it is for the coming year, for the current year, $422,000. So that $422,000 and future contracts are simply going to be necessary to fund that contract by not only the general fund, but pretty much the supplemental law enforcement fund and all the money that comes into that, which is about $200,000 per year. and the CFD, because it collects a specific amount for public safety, and so that amount is built into the forecast in future years as well. So the $422,000 Amador County Public Safety Contract alone will be funded $49,503 by the General Fund, $292,630 from the Supplemental Law Enforcement Fund, using essentially everything it brings in for 26-27 and reserves that it's built up, over time, and also the CFD for $80,000, $40,000 for the current year and $40,000 for the prior year because up until 2526, the CFD had paid nothing since 2017 towards any public safety expenditures from the money it collects specifically for that purpose. Also, the current budget does reduce legal costs back to the base of $85,000. Keep in mind that in 25-26, it was around 260. So we put that way back. As far as I know, things have gotten better in terms of legal costs that are being incurred. Okay, some of the key general fund revenue items. So about a 2.5% increase in property tax. So I was able to actually go in and look at property tax again today, too, because that third apportionment of property tax is typically received in August. was posted, so I put that, accrued that back, and it turns out your property taxes are going to be a little bit higher, so that's a good thing. Probably about $5,000 to $10,000 higher, so that's good. Increase in sales tax revenues based on the 25-26 actual collections. I mentioned that a little bit ago, too, that sales tax came in a little bit higher, so I just parlayed that into the future. Static levels of development-related fees and charges for building and planning-type permits and other charges. Removed all one-time, any one-time revenue related to grants or any donations, so it's not assumed that those come in from year to year. I did include that $11,000 reimbursement from Zinfandel Ridge CFD, as I mentioned, and again, that will only be moved to the CFD to the extent that the actual costs are incurred. On the expenditure side, we have full funding for all positions in the general fund for the entirety of the year. It's a reclassification of a lead maintenance worker from last year to a maintenance worker one. So that created a little bit of salary savings. But nonetheless, it's all built in to the budget itself. This assumes that every position is filled for the entirety of the year. So if you do have any vacant positions starting July 1st, which I know you do, and they remain vacant for any period of time, or if any other positions become vacant at any point in time during the year, that will accrue to salary savings, okay, which means you won't spend that money that's budgeted in your budget. You'll actually have, you know, a surplus that's called salary savings. So you have a little bit of that already. That's not built into this, so. $244,000 decrease in administration related to lower city manager salary costs and the removal of a one-time payout from the prior year and $175,000 reduction in legal costs. There's a $90,000 reduction in public works related to lower salary and reorganization for the reorganization elimination of a position and lower equipment maintenance and repair. $10,000 reduction in building regulation and planning related to lower anticipated staff and contractual costs. And then again, we did add that $49,503 back to the general fund budget to begin paying for what is going to be an ongoing amount for law enforcement contracts. This is what your reserves look like. Because we have a balanced budget and because we have Anticipated that the reserve in a general fund at the end of the year just finished will be just over 1.7 million that probably won't change too much, but for. This slide Okay, so this slide articulates certain funds that we've talked about several times with your Council before several funds that have negative fund balances. All of these funds have had negative fund balances for years, okay? They really haven't changed at all. In fact, the general plan update fund has received some revenue, but it's only been like $269 for what I believe is a fee that's charged with a permit that helps go to offset this negative balance in the future. Obviously, you would have to sell 1,000 of those permits ever before you became whole here, okay? So these funds have been – they're actually in the last audit that you have that's available online in 2021, and they have negative balances in that audit. So these have been around for a long time, okay? We tried to do as much research as we could. I worked with the former city manager and the public works department to try to pull as much information as we could to determine whether or not these funds had any foreseeable applicable revenue source that might be coming in, and they simply do not. In fact, they've been closed out. The only one that does is that general plan update fund, but I have no idea how the city is going to recover through permit fees $269,000 to help defray that cost. That negative balance for those three funds combined is $838,000. Typically, when you have funds like this that have incurred expenses, which is the case here, that have exceeded the amount of revenue that came in to offset those expenses, the general fund will come in and pick up the difference. One of the recommendations that we're bringing back with this budget is to basically earmark these negative balance funds against the general fund. And this is consistent with discussion that your council has had in the past. And we're bringing it back now to essentially reduce that fund balance to just over $900,000 from the $1.7 million. Otherwise, these funds are just going to sit on your books. They're going to be negative. The cash simply is not there. In fact, it's truly not there. And you're just going to have this conversation on an ongoing basis. There are some other funds that are warranting a review, and that is the fund that was set up for project costs associated with the Miwok Indy and the casino project. And there's expenditures of about $85,000 and change that have been incurred to date. Initially, I was told that there was a potential for these costs to be reimbursed. So that's why this fund was set up in the previous administration. But I'm not sure what the status is here or whether or not those funds, those expenditures will ultimately be reimbursed at all. Okay, so let's move on to the general fund forecast. So the forecast is again, it's just updated and it provides a forward looking conservative baseline budgetary outlook for the city's general fund and what the future looks like at a base case approach. So everything is assumed the way it is today. There's no new positions, there's no deletion of positions. We're assuming nominal growth, conservative growth in both revenues and expenditures. And we're parlaying that into the future, given what we know about expenditure trends and revenue trends and what it takes to provide the level of service that is articulated in the budget that's before you right now. So with that, this is what your forecast looks like. So you can see you had some years of surplus, those years of surplus. starting in 21, 22, 22, 23, 23, 24, mostly because and related to the permit fees, development permit fees associated with the Zinfandel Ridge buildout. Then you went into a deficit mode in 24, 25, $313,000 use of fund balance there. For the year just finished, it's going to be about 331 as projected on this forecast. I'm guessing it'll be probably around 300. You can see we have a balanced budget for the current year. That's at zero. And then parlaying everything into the future, you can see that we've taken everything and we've created a balanced budget that's sustainable. So those deficits in 27, 28, 28, 29, 29, 30 are small. They're manageable. And I'm going to bet a dollar to a donut that the staff will be able to balance the budget if indeed things stay the way they are today, coming up with what it takes to eliminate those small deficits in the future. So this is a decent forecast that you have, at least for the future. But the future use of the reserves continues to be driven by the new public safety contract. So one thing that I have done is starting in 27-28, which is the next fiscal year, and then again in 28-29, and then again in 29-30, I've increased the amount of the general fund contribution towards the public safety contract, because eventually you're going to run out of the reserves that exist in the supplemental law enforcement fund to help pay for a portion of that cost. They're just simply going to go away, and you're only going to have the $200,000 that it collects on an ongoing basis to pay for the amateur sheriff's contract. Also, the loss of TOT revenues is looming in the budget. I did look at TOT as well today. We did receive the two payments for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. Those have been received from the major hotels and the park. We're right on budget with respect to TOT for last year. And then you have increasing costs, obviously. One thing that's not built in, though, is any increases in salaries. That is not part of this budget or forecast. Okay, moving on to the Water Enterprise Fund. Just real quickly, so not much has changed on this from what you've seen before, but you still have a deficit budget for the Water Fund. We're expecting to, at least at this point in time, until more research can be done on exactly What impact the recent rate increases in the implementation of the rate study will have on the water fund itself, but we're projecting about $135,000 use of reserves, which are basically non-existent at this point in the water fund. So the negative fund balance is expected to grow to just under $400,000, as you can see there on the bottom. One thing I do want to mention about the Water Fund is you have the annual debt service payment of $149,000 built in. You also have the repayment of the $150,000 Arroyo Ditch Loan coming from this fund with an infusion of money coming in from the Community Benefit Fund. So it's kind of an in and out to the Water Fund. One thing we also need to do is look at how the Black Mountain Software System, the BMS system, your financial system is partitioning penalties to water and sewer. I'm not sure that it's entirely correct, and we need to go in and look at that to make sure that penalties are being posted to the right fund, or penalty revenue, that is. So that's for the water fund. For the wastewater or sewer fund, You have a budget, $803,000 in revenue, $632,000 in expenditures. So the operating budget is in a net positive position of about $170,000. And that's mainly because of two, well, the wholesale septic sales, which I think this is the second year, 26-27, that we've had those. And the penalties are also included here. Again, revenues we're going to need to review. But even though the water fund deficit spent in 23-24 and 24-25, it's expected to have $170,000 net gain in the 26-27 fiscal year. At the end of the year, assuming all of this comes to fruition, your reserves in the wastewater fund will have just under $2 million in them. Okay, transient occupancy tax, the TOT Streets and Promotions Fund. So this is a fund that was formerly used and took your TOT revenue that now accrues wholly to your general fund and actually split it between two funds. So 50%, actually 40% went into this fund, the TOT collection fund, and as a transfer from the general fund, and only 60% went into the general fund. The issue is if you kept doing that, your general fund would just have that much of a deficit. The transfer amounts to about $80,000 each year. So if you're moving money into the TOT Streets and Promotions Fund from the general fund, then you've got to deal with the general fund all over. TOT Streets and Promotions Fund has been used predominantly for streets purposes and promotions expenditures for the most part. This is where your summer festivals, your rodeo, your Christmas market, 4th of July, and other functions like that are funded from. And you've also had a certain capital projects funded from this fund as well, notably in the past, recent past, the McGee Park residual costs in 25-26, about $78,000 came out of this fund for that. So at the end of the day, the budget for this fund does include the $40,000 to $60,000 that you would typically spend towards those noted events. But there's no funding source coming into this fund. So once this fund is exhausted, ultimately, the general fund will have to pick up the cost for those recurring noted events to the extent that is the purview of the council. So at the end of 26-27, assuming you spend between $40,000 and $60,000, of the estimated fund balance towards these events or any other purpose in this fund, you will still have about $136,000 to $156,000 remaining for future years. Community Benefit Contribution Fund, this is Fund 005. So these funds are collected pursuant to a development agreement that's in place within Delridge, and it requires a payment of fees into the fund for new development lots or lots in homes. These funds can be used for, there's some information that was provided by Vicki a little bit earlier this year, but there was a memo that went, I think, to the council that articulated the use of these funds, providing loans to advance planning or construction projects, providing loans for reimbursing costs, advance for past projects, i.e. reimbursing water fund for debt service on the Plymouth Pipeline project, constructing enhancement projects, purchasing capital equipment to improve service to city residents. And then also, we need to look at, well, actually, I think it's already been approved. It was approved two weeks ago. The use of $150,000 of these funds towards the Arroyo Ditch loan and the payoff of that that was in the water fund as a project, an enhancement project, At the end of the day, this fund still has about $240,000 in it. Okay, Zinfandel Ridge Community Facility District. So there's two funds. There is an operating fund and there is a public safety fund. This is specific to the operating fund, and this is just used for the ongoing maintenance and operation of the roads and streets, bike lanes, culverts, everything associated with what the engineer's report and the documents discuss on what Fund 80 can be used for. This is likely to begin the current year with about $285,000 in fund balance. The assessment for 26-27 is expected to generate about $137,300 in addition to that. And then the expenditure plan is included with the budget itself. And it includes things like landscaping maintenance with the continued contract for that. That was actually implemented in 2526, recurring maintenance and operating costs, and then administrative costs that's at $11,000 or a portion of it that may or may not be incurred is also included in appropriation. But again, if those costs aren't incurred, they won't be transferred. This is the public safety portion of the Zinfandel Ridge, which is tracked separately in a separate fund. So this is only used for law enforcement and fire services. LIKELY TO BEGIN THE CURRENT FISCAL YEAR WITH ABOUT $236,000 IN FUND BALANCE. THE ASSESSMENT FOR 26-27 IS EXPECTED TO GENERATE JUST OVER $71,000. AND THIS FUND PAYS FOR A PORTION OF THE COST OF THE CITY'S PUBLIC SAFETY CONTRACTS. AND ALSO, BECAUSE IT HAD NOT BEEN CHARGED IN PREVIOUS YEARS, I INCLUDED AN AMOUNT FOR PRIOR YEAR PUBLIC SAFETY COSTS BECAUSE THEY JUST STARTED PAYING FOR THOSE OUT OF THIS FUND IN 25-26. Okay, looking at one large fund group, and I want to call this one out because there's some pretty large amounts in these funds for fund balance. Unfortunately, these funds can only be used for very specific purposes associated with growth in your city. But nonetheless, if you can find a nexus to using these fees for any projects that you might have on tap, it would be good to work with the city attorney to determine whether or not they might be able to be used. But These are your AB 1600 or your impact fee funds, which are development-based fees that are collected. The only revenues that you see coming in under the revenue line, that's just interest. So that's the amount of interest that's expected to be earned on these funds in the coming year. You can see that a couple of those funds have over half a million dollars in them. General administrative impact fee, 519,000. The streets impact fee, 539,000. And then your fire fee, has just under $300,000 in it, actually. So these funds, again, can be used only for development-related purposes, but you may want to think about future projects that may qualify for use of these funds. Okay, so that's all I'm going to cover in the budget itself, given the amount of information that's been covered before. So budget development with the next steps. So what we'd like to ask is if the council consider adopting this proposed budget, get any feedback or direction from the city council based on the presentation that you've seen, and then we'll continue to reconcile and update the fiscal activity to the current date, which we were just doing today, as a matter of fact. So with that, I'll stop, turn it back over to you, Mr. Mayor, and answer any questions you might have.

Thank you very much for that, Andy. I appreciate it. This time, I think we'll open it to the public comment before we go to council discussion. Anyone for public comment? Definitely.

Stephanie Moreno, Plymouth resident and small business owner. I'd like the indulgent counsel on the mayor to, I will likely go over three minutes because of the length of, The documents I gave you, I want to make sure that you understand what I've seen there and also other things that I identified between what Mr. Heath was presenting today and what's actually in the budget packet. Regarding the pages I sent you, the one that you had I sent directly should have been in color so you could see all of the changes that were happening back and forth between accounts since June, changes that have not been explained in a public session. I want to know why the public safety contract is pulling money out of the general fund when there's sufficient money in reserves. I understand that in the future there won't be money in reserves, but right now at this crucial point, why are you pulling money out of the general fund to fund the sheriff's contract and putting it into... non-governmental contract line item instead of having all the money for the sheriff's contract come out of the reserves that you have. I'd like to know why, what the money, you're taking $80,000 out of the Zinfandel Ridge Public Safety Fund, how much is going to the sheriff and how much is going to fire? Because you said the packet says it's going to both but doesn't say how much goes to each. I'm asking that why the amount for the fire protection agreement is going significantly up than it has in past years. There's been no change in our contract, so why are we nearly doubling the amount we're paying for fire services, it looks like, according to the packet from two or three years ago. I'd like to know why the developer deposits. I asked for copies of all the invoices that they billed to developers for the four-leaf contract, and there have been none. You've spent almost $200,000 on the four-leaf contract. I imagine that a good portion of that was for developer agreements, and it hasn't been asked for reimbursement. That means you're carrying the developer's cash flow. Why is that happening? And if it was shown in the budget, it would show an offset to your general fund pull because that would be at accounts receivable in your balance sheet. I'd like to know why the Arroyo-Ditch County loan, this was talked about at the last meeting, the $150,000, why they're not doing a deep dive to find out where that money went. It seems to me it's important that the City knows that their money has been spent appropriately. And there is a way to track that. And you have the dates on it because it was in the packet last time. And I'd also like to point out that you didn't indicate whether it was a transfer alone in your motion at the last meeting. And I pointed out that I thought it was illegal to do a transfer, that it could have an excess if it was alone. So I'd like clarification if that was a loan or transfer because you didn't make that. The safe routes, I provided lots of documentation. It sounds like Mr. Heath hasn't been provided that documentation to show that the state fully reimbursed us for what was owed. So if there's a balance showing, it means those deposits went into another fund or it means that somebody hasn't cashed checks. Either one is plausible given the management of the city in the last years before this council took over. I think you need to do that deep dive that the city manager keeps saying he hasn't done to figure out what those are before you write them off. I can provide those documents again if the city manager, finance director have misplaced them. I want to know, I asked the city for records of how much you're paying for deferred comp and for health in lieu of benefits, and they have nothing in writing. So how were those fees established? You're giving employees 750 a month if they don't take health insurance. I don't know if there's a requirement that they have other insurance. And you're allowing them to take that $750 in cash and put it into their different comp, and then you match it with another $750. Neither of those amounts are documented anywhere. That's a lot of money, and it may be earned, and it may have been negotiated, but the council should put it in writing what that amount is so that it doesn't inadvertently change in the future to a different amount. But when I asked for those documents, they said they didn't have any. I put in here that the maintenance worker is still showing is vacant even though it isn't and I think he's been here for almost a month. Those dollar numbers should be solidified. And so those are the things that were in my letter and I can explain any of those further if you want. The additional things if I can have a few more minutes. The capital project list in there that says that you have a Shandell Road 150,000 on it. It doesn't show you what the other projects are in your capital improvement plan to show if you're changing the priority on what you're funding. You had other projects in the city that were slotted for capital improvement funds. So what's happening to those priorities? That schedule should be in front of you. You're only budgeting $85,000 for council fees. That's what you did last year about that amount. And it wasn't even close to accurate. So it's obvious that mid-year that they're going to be coming back and asking for more money. So this is just kind of a loan from the general fund to mid-year if you understate the actual expenses in order to balance the budget. In the packet, it says the $82,000 for TOT is coming from reserves. Why is the TOT money coming from reserves? You all have talked a lot about TOT. You said that you want to use it until it's gone. But if it's coming from reserves, it sounds like it is gone. So I'd like an explanation of that. The General Found Update Fund, in the narrative it says that Those funds, and I think Mr. he also said it that those funds have negative balances and need to be taken care of. But it also says that all of those funds, those projects, the 6 projects that are listed in that capital project fund. Don't have budget this year because they would have been completed or likely to be completed through 2526. Your general fund update has not been completed. It's putting you at risk for all the projects you have, because you haven't updated the fund. And I know you've gotten some exorbitant estimates of how much it's going to cost to do a general fund update. But it can be done in-house for a lot cheaper. And you have a contractor already on that's supposed to be working for you. So that's an option. Also, if the general fund update fees came from developer fees, so when somebody buys a building permit, like I have several times, if a fund goes to the general fund update, it's supposed to be used for that purpose. If there's a negative balance, it means you borrowed against it. Writing it off means that you're not using the money for the way it was intended. don't use the money for the way it was intended under state law it has to be returned so just writing off negative fund balances without researching the legal basis of them i think is is a a potential liability to the city um mr he said there's no salary increases but the narrative says that the accountant's getting a raise so there's a discrepancy in what he's telling you and what he's got in the narrative and i the accountant truly probably deserves a raise. But why is he getting a raise? Is it a merit raise? Is he being reclassed? What is the percentage of the raise? Why is he getting a raise and no other employees are getting COLA? Those are things that should be explained, I think, in the budget before you approve it. The Zinfandel Ridge Community Facilities District is not a slush fund. It keeps being tapped to fund the negative balances in your budget. And the report hasn't been done to show the assessments. I'm sorry. I just want to get through these. These are important things.

You've got to go really fast. We've let you go two and a half times what the normal is. So just try and wrap it up.

I know. There's just... Nobody else here, right?

Well, there is. I don't know if somebody else wants to speak or not, but just go ahead and do it really quick. But try and wrap it up in the next 30 seconds.

CFT report hasn't been done. He said that it's in the process of being done. That's how the assessments are done. I'm tired of hearing this phrase that the people out there knew what they were buying into when they got that. You know, when they bought those houses, they knew as an extra fee. Yes, but they also knew that those fees were governed by state law. And if you're not following state law and how you use the funds and how you're raising the fees without doing a nexus study that I believe is illegal. Anyway, thank you. There's a lot of questions and I just really feel you've come this far. You've really put a lot of effort into understanding. If you can't explain these things to a member on the street as to why you're doing it, I don't think you're ready to vote tonight. I think that there needs to be a further explanation on some of these things to make sure that the budget is sound and that you can justify the expenditures that you're making. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else for public comment?

Rosemary Marino, Moody Plymouth. I concur with Stephanie. What she's saying and what she's asking you guys is something you guys should be looking at as city council members. because it's ultimately your responsibility to make sure this budget is correct, because you guys are approving it. It doesn't matter what your staff wants, it's what's best for the city, and make sure that the accounting principles are being followed. I still, I've asked several times at these budget meetings about the methodology for the city managers, allocation to the different funds. And I have not received an answer from the city manager or any of you council members. So I wanna ask Mr. Heath, since he's in charge of this, he's the finance director, if there's any written cost allocation policy, methodology, formula, procedure, or administrative guideline used by the city to allocate the city manager compensation among the general fund, water fund, and sewer fund. You can't just say, oh, I'm spending more time here, so I'm going to allocate it this way. There has to be a methodology. It has to be in writing. Just throwing out these is not a methodology. The other thing is I'm looking at these costs and I see that the cemetery fund went down $24,000 from last fiscal year. The swimming pool, $35,000 down from this last fiscal year. and the parks down $15,000. That's a lot of money. You can balance a budget by reducing all of these and then overrunning it and have to come in in March and ask for extra money like they have in the past. This isn't right. So are you telling the citizens of Plymouth that you're no longer going to take care of the cemetery? You're going to do very little maintenance on the parks and the swimming pool also? I mean, you can't really cut the costs on the swimming pool when you have to pay for the chemicals and all of that. So, you know, $35,000 is a lot down for the swimming pool, and it has nothing to do with how long they're open. So those are my questions on that. The other one is, I don't think the city's done due diligence in these grants. There have been several members of the public that have offered to come in, look over those grants and try to help you guys to figure out what happened. But none, none of us or the others that have volunteered have ever been asked to come up and do that. People that have knowledge and grants that understand this, because obviously, The deep dive's not being done. And with the information that came from Caltrans, I don't know how you guys can write something off when it said that they paid you guys. So due diligence needs to happen. Where's the oversight? Who's the oversight for your city staff? It's you guys. And you're not providing that oversight.

Thank you. Anyone else for public comment? Anyone online. Okay, hearing and seeing no 1, we're closed public comment at this time, go to council discussion. Do you like to start anything?

Sure, I can start. I have a handful of things, so, um. The first thing I have a question about, Andy, is the $85,000 that the casino still owes us. You made a statement that you were told that this money was going to be reimbursed by the casino. Do you have any documentation to that effect?

No, I don't have any documentation. This fund was set up not by me. This fund was set up by by somebody else coming into the city and the costs were being incurred. I think some of the costs have been incurred as recent as six to 12, 18 months ago. So my recollection in talking with the former city manager is that it was intended that the reason why you would have a separate fund like this is with the intention of getting reimbursed at some point in time later. And that's why the separate fund was set up. That was the question I asked and that was the response that I got. Do you have something to add?

No, we have not been able to find any documentation on what that phone was for. Or why it was started.

Well, I know why it was started. Because I was on council then. So it was started because we were in negotiations for a wastewater situation with them. And there was an agreement that the casino or the tribe, whatever verbiage we want to use, would pay... all city attorney fees and all engineering fees that went into all the work that had to go in to that negotiation. So I want to know why we haven't invoiced them.

I can't even find an agreement on, I mean, we can invoice them, but I can't find an agreement that forces them to pay.

So has anyone gone through Margaret's emails? Do you have anything from Margaret's?

I've gone through Margaret's emails. I've gone through everything. I cannot find any agreement between us and the casino or the tribe.

Have you called Matt and talked to him about this? What about Andreas? What about Frank with BB&K?

Andreas doesn't have any knowledge of it either.

Okay, so Frank was the attorney at the time. So maybe Andreas needs to talk to Frank about it.

Okay.

And find out. Because this didn't just magically... Okay, so to Stephanie's point, she didn't even bring this one up. It's like all these things happen and then everybody goes, I don't know. I don't really know how that happened. I don't know where that's from. I don't know why that is. And I brought this up in the last meeting and I said, the bus just keeps getting passed, right? So that's $85,000. If somebody had even given me a handshake agreement that, hey, yeah, keep track of that, we'll pay it. And then they wanted to come do business with me later. I'd be like, yo, me for $85,000. So I'm not, I don't, I'm not okay with just pretending like we don't really know. We don't really know what happened either. We need to do our due diligence and find out from Frank. Frank would know Frank would have the answers. He was here before this council. He was a longstanding city attorney. He works for BBK. Andreas talks to him all the time. I feel like I'm getting stonewalled on the issue because nobody wants to deal with anything having to do with the tribe. So I do not like that. Like, oh, well, we just going to let her keep griping about it, but we're not going to handle it. So. I want something more firm than we couldn't find an email from Margaret. Because there's got to be something because it's in our budget. And it's been carried over since 2023. and continued to occur. So one, why wasn't it built back then? I don't know. There was some odd thousands of dollars that should have been built each year. So I just want answers for, for that. Um, Another thing I brought up in the past one was the Arroyo Ditch money. You know, I know we're paying back that loan. We owe the money to the county. I don't disagree with that whatsoever. We do owe the money. It needs to be paid. However, what I do disagree with is there's no accounting of where the funds are. What did they get used on? We don't know. We don't have answers. And My frustration is not directed, just so you understand, at current staff, because I understand that this was not current staff's undertaking, right? These things were done many years ago. But there's got to be some sort of paper trail of when it was deposited, where it went, and Why, if we didn't fix the Arroyo ditch with that money, then why don't we have the money to just pay it back? Andy, I don't know if you can answer. I asked it the last time that you weren't here. I don't know if you can answer that at all.

No, I mean, I'll give you my speculation. So I know that there is an agreement that articulates the need for this loan. And that agreement accompanies some other types of funds that were received related to this project or whatever it was, okay? and that this $150,000 was necessary to complete the project. Depending on when this transpired, and I don't know when this transpired, it should be easy enough for the city to go back and pull records associated with, well, number one, where it was deposited, and number two, what it covered, which I think is articulated in the agreement itself, what it was supposed to go for. The issue lies with It is conversion to the new financial system, BMS, when it did that. So if you've got to go back to the prior system, I don't know if there's anybody on staff, because I certainly don't know how to get information out of that system.

So when we converted to the new accounting system, I don't know if anybody knows anything about that. Normally, like right now, I'm in the middle of a conversion with work to a new system. So we are going to get an export from the prior system that we will put into the new system. So does that not happen with accounting? How would you know what the numbers are?

Yeah, it typically does happen when you convert systems. The problem with Plymouth's case is you only convert it balance forward. As of the end of the year. No, no history came over. Okay. If I may, this is a new system.

52. 50 as well, sorry. Staff has located some engineering fees that were associated with that. Just in the last few days, we are now working to see if we can recoup any of that money. And so we are working on that, but it was just engineering fees. There was no pipes or any infrastructure that was bought with the money that we can find as of right now. But there were quite a bit of engineering fees and surveys that went into it. So we are working to see if we can do some of that right now.

Where would we recoup that from if we had a loan to pay for it? I don't understand.

From Cal OES, I believe.

Like they would owe us for fixing the ditch?

A portion of it. No, I mean, whatever. So the whole matching funds and that grant, we did expend some energy and staff time into looking into it. And so right now we're trying to work with them to get a portion of it. I think it's 75% of what we've spent. So that's in the process at the moment.

But, okay, I get that. But that still doesn't answer the question of where the money went. Like, where is it? What did it get spent on?

So we paid out our engineers and all that. So I think it was something like $144,000 we've spent. I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but we're trying to... On the Arroyo Ditch Center. Correct.

Okay. So you guys have found some sort of paper trail for it. All right. If we could have that in the next meeting... if at all possible, the documentation that supports that, I would really appreciate it because I think it should be. And then how do we, so this might be an Andy question, then how do we recoup that money back into that fund? Would we just, if we were able to recoup it from somewhere else? Do you see what I'm trying to ask, Andy?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, at this point in time, that ditch is the, the money is being transferred from the community benefit fund fund Oh five into the, into the water fund to cover that loan, pay it off so that you don't incur any more interest or anything like that with the County. Um, where that money could eventually come from. You know, if the city manager is stating that there's a potential source with Cal OES or some other source that may pay a portion of that, then that's an option. But outside of that, I don't know. I don't know anywhere where that would come from.

If we got that money for some reason, then we would put it back into the community benefit fund.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah.

So then what's the money that's sitting in the Arroyo Ditch Fund? Because it's pegged for $174,000 that's sitting in that fund. In the budget.

The Arroyo Ditch Fund. Which fund is that? CDA Arroyo Ditch. It is... Do you find it? Yeah, that's... That's got a $54,000 expenditure built in. So let me look and see what that's for.

Which number?

It's fund 67. Yeah, it's on the first page. You flip it over, it's right in the middle when you look down at special revenue funds. Thank you.

Sorry. Admittedly, I have to have eye surgery, guys, so I have a really hard time seeing until that gets done.

Yeah, so I'm finding out fun in the schedules right now in the agenda pocket. So CDA, Arroyo Ditch Fund, so there is a transfer out to cover, oh, there is a FEMA grant that had a negative balance that the CDA Arroyo-Ditch, there was an expenditure that was incurred out of the FEMA grant fund. So the fund right before that, Fund 66, has had a negative balance for multiple years. That expenditure that created the negative fund balance in the FEMA grant fund should have been incurred in the CDA Arroyo-Ditch fund. So that transfer is being done to eliminate that. with the budget in 26-27. So it's for a much prior year expenditure. So at the end of the day, the FEMA grant plan will be closed out as it should have been five years ago. And then the CDA Arroyo Ditch Fund, whatever that can be used for, I'm not sure, will have just under $20,000 remaining in it. Okay, and I'm sorry, I just don't know. There's been no activity in that fund for five years. On page, the PDF, it's page 97, 96 and 97 of your agenda packet.

Thank you.

On my PDF, that's what it is. You got to give us a minute and your numbers. Yeah.

Give me a second.

Almost towards the end of the budget, but not quite.

Can you find it in the back?

Here at this page. Thank you.

But this same fund four weeks ago or whenever when we first looked at this, this was like $174,000. And now it's... I don't think so.

I haven't changed this.

I remember something about 174 in there.

Why am I not finding this? I know I'm not making that number up.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

It was a single line item. It wasn't broken. Hold on. Give me a second. That's fine. You can go to somebody else.

I remember the 174 also. Yeah. Do you want to look for that for a minute, Wendy?

Yeah, it's not in here. Yeah, I do remember 174,000 on the line too. Online item, it was a single line.

Yeah, it was there. I remember. I'm not sure where we're looking, but I remember 1 line item that was 174,000. Previous 1. yes, thank you. So the one thing I'll go ahead while she's doing that address is the question about why the fire contract is more this year. So my understanding, I have the contract and looking through it, my understanding of the contract that we have with Amateur Fire is that basically what we do is we were charging originally in the city, they would, we would pay the equivalent to what they charge residents in the county. with their fee. And we have a representative here. You can correct me if I'm wrong. But many years ago, it was like $38 they assessed on people out in the county. And here in the city, the city, the deal they have with the city is the city would just basically pay them that equivalent of what it was per the parcels here in the city. And I believe the contract says we'll pay what their rate is. And their um the fire district in you know it's been several years costs have obviously gone up quite a bit they raised their assessment in the county so my understanding is under that contract is that we have to pay a basic equivalent of that and that's why there was the pump up In the fee and your board welcome, sir, if you can clarify that. Yes, sir. Exactly. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So. I think in the county, their fee went up and the differences, I think, and you can correct me again, if I'm wrong, feel free. I believe that in the county, it's like a, some kind of a scale based on different factors, but I think that they just. here in the city to make it simple because it I researched this a while back and I can't remember exactly what I came up with but here in the city they were just making it I believe a flat like $69 or something like that is that the rate I think per the parcels and so when you put that all together it comes out to what the increase is now and so that is part of our original contract with them to charge to pay them what that charges now You know, the one thing we have to look at, I've always kind of wondered why the city just pays that, where out in the county, everybody has to pay it themselves. So when I lived in the county, I would have a line item on my property tax for that amount to the fire district, like when I lived in Pine Grove. For some reason, the city has always paid that out of the property taxes, I guess, here in the city for the residents. And it's kind of like the situation we got in on with the water fee. The city is, you know, paying and going into a deficit over it at some point. It needs to get visited, but you can pay that for every one of them. That's a separate thing. So that's what I have on that, if I'm incorrect.

Mr. McDermott. Mr. Mayor, if I can interrupt you. Council Member Cranford, I did find one line item. I just pretty much went through the whole budget and looked for $170,000. And I found a line item that is the Prop 68 grant estimated to be received in fiscal 25-26 for $177,000. That is the grant, the parks grant, that was received for the McGee Park project. It's in a specific fund that is being zeroed out with the receipt of that grant.

Because we did not receive that grant. Is that what you said? Oh, no. Oh, no. We received it. Yeah. Oh, sorry. It's kind of. Oh, yeah. I hear you on the thing. Okay.

Sorry.

But our biggest takeaway from this is Wendy is not a lunatic. But I did see that. I did. It was there.

That's why. That's why I looked for it.

Right. Yes, that's it.

And that is on page 98 of your PDF, or my PDF, which should be hopefully page 98 of your package.

Fund 45.

Fund 68. No. Fund 68.

There's a fund balance, a Royal Ditch Capital Improvement Fund 45 for $174,000 that has been carried over from 2022, 23, 24, 25...

In Fund 45?

It's under the Water Enterprise Fund.

It's Fund... Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. Hold on, hold on.

It's Fund 45. Thank you.

Well, okay.

Do we have another line item that's $120,000?

Oh, no, no, no. Okay, I know what you're looking at now. So that is... I see what you're... So that is just a reserve. And you can see that that reserve has not changed at all. Okay. Here's the problem with the way your reserves are set up for both your water and your wastewater fund for that matter. You have different levels of reserves. For purposes of presentation, the enterprise in and of itself is presented in the aggregate as a whole, which is what you see with this schedule here. It's fund 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, because all fund 41, 43, 44, and 45 have in them are these uses or reserves or uses of reserves that have transpired over time. So if you look at the amount in the water impact fee, it's a massive negative. And that is what's driving your negative fund balance in the water fund, in the whole. Impact fees typically can be used for improvements that are being made to the enterprise in and of itself, whether it's water or sewer or any other enterprise that the city might have. That was negative. Okay. And, and they kept pulling money and, and I don't know how you can have a negative reserve, but in the aggregate over time, you can see that back in 22, 23, if you add up all those reserves, there was actually a positive reserve of about 200, $200,000. When you add up minus 1.1, add the 9,000, add the 5,900, add the one 74, which is at a Royal ditch. and then add the 1.2 that's remaining, all of that adds up to about $200,000. Well, you've been using water reserves over the last four years in operations alone. So these reserves, they shouldn't be stated this way. You should have one reserve because if you have no impact reserve, which you don't, obviously, you have a massive negative there, then you have been dipping into your working capital reserve. So that impact fee reserve a long time ago should have been settled to fund 40 fund balance, because that's where it came from. You can't use more impact fees than you have, and at that point you did, which is fine. You just use your operating money to pay for some big capital project at some point in time in the past. That didn't answer the question, though, but that answered the question about reserves. The issue with the way this reserve is set up and how it's specifically called Arroyo Ditch Capital Improvement probably has a lot to do with the fact that this money was put into this reserve, maybe the $150,000, maybe something else, obviously, because that's more than $150,000, to pay for the Arroyo Ditch project. All right? But whether or not that was done, that question remains. The issue there then becomes, if indeed this money was never spent, then the water fund should pay it back. Okay? So that's the issue there. I mean, we'd have to go back. And again, because this goes back so far, I would be hopeful that I can go back one more year in your current financial system. Otherwise, we're going to have to try to dig into the fund balance system and find out why this was set up the way it was and maybe look at a prior audit to see what it says with respect to delineation of these types of reserves. But I really don't like the way these reserves are set up.

So a lot of that was difficult for me to understand.

I understand.

Because I'm not an accountant. So what I'm going to ask is, is the $174,000 in the most layman terms possible, not real money that's in that account?

It is part of the aggregate fund balance in the Water Enterprise Fund as a whole. Okay. So, and by default, unless it was specifically put aside, set aside, and it had a legal reason it was specifically put aside and put into this reserve, I can't I can't say whether or not that that was the case. As it was specifically put aside, your fund balance in the water fund as a whole is negative right now. So this money is not there.

Okay. So that's why we can't use that $174,000 to pay back this loan?

Correct.

Okay. That's a crappy answer.

Sorry for that.

Oh, I have other things, but why don't you go for now? I need a minute.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll get back to it. Wendy or Holger, if you'd like to go first. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll go.

I'll go.

I'll go. I'll go. Again, last meeting, I felt that the bones of this budget were good. I still feel that way. I think we are getting hung up on some of these Royal Ditch, the negative balances, and now coming to light the Miwok fund. That one's a little bit more recent, but these older accounts that are sitting on our books or in our budget, they're not impacting the actual budgets. They are items that could clean up our books, do the general journals, get them out of the negative. And then maybe we pass the budget. Then we make a list of these that we need to address. They're not going to get solved overnight. I would guarantee you we could spend all year trying to, with the bandwidth that we have on staff, the investigating that's going to take. I mean, if we hold up the budget on these kind of items, We'll be passing it in December or March. That's my personal opinion. Again, the changes that I asked Andy to make, they've been done. The actual costs and the expenditures and the actual revenues of the actual monies are solid. And once we get this budget wrapped up, I look forward to having an actual versus budget report that we could keep in check every month. and continue to, to investigate. I'm not saying that we should just let these old balances just go without being investigated. I'm saying they're just not going to happen soon. And they're not really going to have an impact on how much we spend versus how much revenue we bring in. They're just accounts sitting on her in here, just sitting there. Um, The other, so that's how I feel about the budget. I feel confident in it. I don't have a lot more to add going through the semantics of the little things. Again, my changes were made. I also think Stephanie brought up a good point about the policy on the health insurance and the employee deferred compensation. If we don't have a write-up on it in the employee handbook, or it's not something that we provide our employees when they're hired to go into their employee folder, somewhere there needs to be a protocol for what every employee should get. And I haven't read the handbook in detail. And if I... I missed that part. But that should be in detail and written somewhere. One of our policies are our employees receive X amount of dollars.

So let's see.

I wrote a few more. I know we're being impacted with the TOTS funds, but I'd like to know if we're actively enforcing the TOTS to recoup the TOTS funds. Not recoup, but to get them. I mean, are we? Okay. If we're not enforcing it and we're not getting it, that's our bad. Yeah, I think the water and sewer penalties need to be looked at if they're not being posted correctly. Yep. That's all I have for now.

Go ahead.

Okay.

I'm recuperated for round two.

I actually am also interested in knowing what the methodology was in reducing the pool and the cemetery costs. Can you speak to that, Cameron or Andy?

In reducing the what? I'm sorry?

The pool, the swimming pool costs.

So I think that a lot of the pool cost reduction had to do with the fact that you basically eliminated one maintenance worker position. and redistributed the cost. So a large portion of that maintenance worker position may have been allocated to the pool and some of the other categories like parks, et cetera, recreation maybe, that is not there anymore. And there was just a redistribution of basically everybody that was gone through and lowering the costs in the general fund and the aggregate because you eliminated one position.

Okay. I just know that in previous years, we've always gone negative in that budget because it, we, because it's not super revenue generating, right? It's something we do for the kids.

Sure. Absolutely. And that's the case with, with most in most cities, you will see the majority of their parks and rec programs, if not all of them are not cost recovery. Okay. It would just be, It would be too exorbitant in terms of the fees that you would need to charge to make that fully cost recovery to use those facilities. So a lot of cities use discretionary funding, which is what it's there for, to provide those programs to their community.

Okay. So. Okay. I think that's it for now.

Oh, what are you recording, RJ? I would agree with Wendy Bottomley. I mean, it is time to move on. And I've looked through this budget forwards and backwards and And I took into heavy consideration Stephanie's input and comments on 7.1. I am ready to, I mean, I want to hear from Mayor Nunn too, but I would be ready to make a motion to adopt the budget as presented with the following directions to staff to be returned to council and the lender, then the next regular scheduled meeting. Number 1, provide a transaction level accounting of the 150,000 dollar and with our county loan for the project, looking for receipts deposits, expenditures, transfers, remaining balance before any other city fund is used to repay the county. Number two, reconcile the Safe Routes to School Fund, which is Fund 34, negative balance, currently approximately $481,797 with Caltrans reimbursement, local match. Again, looking for records before this is treated as a general fund obligation. Number three, provide an accounting of aggregate unreimbursed development related costs, including the previously identified approximately $200,000. What remains collectible and where recovery is reflected in reserve projections. And then lastly, number 4, provide a written status update on the outstanding independent audits and confirm which beginning balances in this budget remain on audited. I think. With that in mind, I would be ready to move on. Thank you.

You know, I have on it is. I think Bill, and there's a lot of you guys on these things, and I have looked through some of what's been presented to us by Ms. Moreno also, and I have some of those concerns. However, I think these are things we have to keep working towards. I kind of agree with Wendy and, you know, kind of with Holder's hand that, you know, if we could sit here and bring up everything and try to fix everything before we approve a final budget, and this won't be done until March or April, you know, um, So I think the questions are out there. We keep working on them, but it doesn't mean that we don't pass the budget. I don't think as a budget, adopt it and continue to work on some of these things. Some of the stuff I had questions on, and I know that Andy's working on, we're trying to figure out the Zimperdale Ridge, the percentages. on fire and police and so forth. Those have been questions for a long time and we're going to have to keep working on them, but I don't think we necessarily have to wait on all these things. I think we can, like I said, if we keep waiting, we're going to be waiting. We're never going to get it done. Anybody else have anything more they'd like to say about it?

Holder?

You got more for the mic?

Uh, I'm not sure how to make that motion now, but, um, I make a motion to adapt the fiscal year 202627 budget as presented with. The aforementioned directions to staff.

I'll 2nd. Council member bottomly I council member Cranford.

No.

Vice Mayor Hornish.

Aye.

Fair, none.

Aye.

Thank you. Motion passes.

Item 8, City Manager's Report.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll start off with our August summary report from the Sheriff's Office. They handled a total of 162 incidents within the city, 22 car stops, four disturbing the peace calls. They had one passing of bad checks, suspicious person times two, suspicious vehicle calls, and vehicle accidents. In the city, there was five total arrests. One arrest was for lewd and insidious acts of the child under 14. and some other crimes around that. Arrest number two was driving while suspended for DUI. Arrest three was a felony bench warrant with additional charges of resisting or obstructing a peace officer and providing false identification to a peace officer. Arrest four was possession of controlled substance with multiple priors. And then arrest five was driving under the influence with causing an injury. Let's see. We also have received are reviewing an agreement with the county right now to start working on old sack road. And so we'll talk about possibly a special meeting with that because we have kind of unavailable, but we'll do that here in a sec. We've also started, and we should have for you the next agenda, the clarification of the city clerk position, which is brought to us as well by Ms. Moreno, and clarification of that and separating those duties. As Tom from FIRE noted, we did fix the fire hydrant. That money, it was about $8,500. Shenandoah Excavating came out and knocked it out for us. We will recoup that money from flexible spending through CIRA. We also, a couple of meetings ago, we talked about some loans that were found that the city gave out back in 2005, 2006, around those timeframes. It was a significant amount of money. And we are looking to collect a decent chunk of that. I think it's about $83,000, $88,000. So it's going through probate right now. But that'll be money that's coming back to us. And also, about a year and a half ago, the city purchased a vacuum trailer, a vac trailer, to start doing some of its own digging and repair work. We didn't have a vehicle to tow that trailer around, so we've been contracting out all of our road work, I mean, our pipe fixes. Also, we didn't have anything to tow our equipment from and around the wastewater plant between the spray field, the wastewater plant, And for instance, on July 4th, we had to drive our backhoe all the way down from the wastewater plant to help pick up. So we got three different bids for vehicles, and we did make a purchase after conferring with accounting and BBK. We spent $20,549.64. 50% of it came from the wastewater fund, 25% from the general fund, and 25% from the water fund for a 2018 F-350 with a utility bed that's able to pull that around. And since we purchased that vehicle, we've been able to take care of two of our own water repairs, water leaks in the city, which saved a significant amount of money from having to contract out. So that's where we're at, and we'll continue to work on the things that you guys have asked. As I mentioned, Andreas and pretty much all the BBKs unavailable on the 24th. They did give some possible dates. I asked for some possible dates because we will have to move fast on this Old Sack Road agreement. We also have a winning bid that we'd have to discuss. Give me one moment, please. But Andreas can be here on the 21st or 28th, which are both Mondays. Or Frank Spandorio is available and could cover 922 or 923, which is a Tuesday and Wednesday. So if that's something we can discuss now, maybe get on the books, we can start planning accordingly. Okay. That's all I have.

I don't know that you guys, it matters for you guys, but I will be out of town the 21st through the 25th celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary.

I cannot attend on the 21st.

The 28th, though.

What day is the 28th?

Monday. I can do Monday. I can do the 28th.

Stephanie, would you like to say something?

Just for the record, the city manager doesn't have authorization to make capital expenditures without city council pre-approval. And that expenditure didn't show in last year's budget, and it doesn't show in this year's budget. So why was it hidden out of this budget if they just spent it, the expenditure should have shown in this budget? So when we talk about transparency and accountability, this is exactly what I'm talking about, that things are happening behind the scenes, He's not coming to the council for things that state law requires. And you are not allowed to do capital expenditures, equipment purchases until your budget is approved. So there was numerous things that he transgressed. And I just want the city council to start doing a better job of making sure that he follows the rules. Thank you.

Especially I didn't point out the dates. That's right. So I could do Monday. I could do any of those days. Most likely if I'm in town. Never know what the future holds, you know, at work.

So we want to maybe set it up for 9-28? Sounds like it works for everybody. 21 or 28? 28.

Do we need to do it sooner for the purposes of the, can we do it next week at all?

Um, maybe I'm, I'm, I haven't heard back from ACTC on what the timeframe they need it by. I just know that we're running out of our window to start the work. So I'm assuming it's going to be pretty quick. I'm right now, BBK, um, WGA, and I am reviewing the resolution and the agreement. So, um, We can bring it back whenever you want.

Okay.

Or I could double check with Mr. Gedney from ACC tomorrow and let you guys know and we can make a decision on that.

Okay. Because I don't want us to miss out on that.

Right. No. Better than later. But you said you can do 21 or no?

I can do the 23rd. The 24th is our actual next meeting.

Correct.

I can do the 23rd and fly in that day. I can, and I can do the 28th.

So 23rd or 28th, you can do. Holder, you want to make it a little earlier, 23rd, or you want to put it up until 28th? I'll go to 23rd. Want to do 23rd? Let's shoot for 23rd. Yeah.

I don't, do you need to make sure, oh no, all three of you are here, it's fine.

Yeah, I was just going to say maybe check with Debbie because if we don't want to get down, there's only going to be three of us and then something happens with one of us, especially with my work. So maybe check with Debbie and plan on the 23rd, but. All right, I'll check with council and then what time would it be? My assumption would be the same time 630. thank you. Special meeting can we do well, I guess we're on a different day so we can. Okay.

Also, I actually want to address what Stephanie just said. Is it is it illegal for you to make capital purchases? Expenditures? Is that against state law? Are you aware of that?

I checked with BBK throughout the whole process, and it was never once an issue. It was something that kind of needed to be done for us to be able to handle the work that was in front of us. We didn't have anybody available to fix a major water leak on Garens at the time.

Cam, do we have a threshold on what is considered a capital vehicle?

I don't know off the top of my head, ma'am.

Do you have anything else on report? No. Okay. We don't usually take public comment on a city manager report.

We have before.

We have?

Yes, we have. I don't recall ever doing it. Because I called on it while I was mayor.

I don't recall ever doing it.

I understand that we don't normally do it. So we probably need to make a decision as a council if we're going to regularly do that.

Because... Can't pick and choose.

Yeah. Otherwise, we're just picking and choosing every time. So maybe we need to offer public comment after... That's literally what I'm saying. That's literally what I'm saying, Stephanie. Just give me a second. So I think going forward, we need to just do public comment after city manager and council member report.

That's fine. I just didn't. I was saying this. I never recall doing it.

We don't. And normally nobody cares or asks, but I've been, we've had it happen more than once. So let's just do it. Go ahead.

Go ahead and make a comment if you want.

Hey, Rosemary Marino Moody, Plymouth. I'm wondering why do we have to have a special meeting? If you guys, the lawyer can't be there at the next meeting for whatever reason and the city manager can't cover that, is there something that you have to have a meeting for or can you just go to your first meeting in October?

Why are we doing the expense? It's because there's a money issue with the county for the ACTC stuff for the Old Sack Road. We have a timeline with them. If we don't get it done, we could lose it. And we don't want to lose that opportunity.

And why wasn't it on this agenda?

I can't answer that question. I don't know.

I mean, we obviously knew about it, so it would have been the perfect opportunity to be on this agenda. But it's not ready yet.

Oh, there you go. It's all being reviewed, as I mentioned.

ACTC is not ready. They're writing it up with their legal and getting all their I's dotted and T's crossed to present it to us so we can go over it and adopt what they're presenting to us to fix our six miles, this old sack road.

I think we received it on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, and so I reviewed it and sent it over to the attorneys for review.

So it's done from there, but it's just not on our end done. Is that what you're saying?

Well, if they've sent it over to Cam, I didn't realize they had sent it over to you.

But it wouldn't have made our 72-hour window because we have to have it. I'm just trying to figure out if there's a cost involved in that. And I'm just curious. Whatever the cost is, we're okay because we're getting a lot of road.

Okay, also, I think the intent will be if we have a special meeting for that, we would cancel the 1 on the 24th. Is that what I'm assuming?

Yeah, we're not going to have 24. yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So it would basically, it'll replace that. So we'll try to add that agenda as if.

Yeah, right. It didn't look because we can't do the 20. okay. All right anyone else for public comment. Well, you know, you want to Robert.

He's going to tell us a joke.

Tell us a joke.

Robert Moody. So yeah, the talk about the pavement down there on the road, we don't have no information, but being that it's a lot of heavy trucks going down there, how thick are we planning? Are we planning on getting a road to handle the heavy trucks? Or are we getting just a inch and a half layer that it's going to peel up?

We can't, we can't, it's not on our agenda. So I don't think we can. Yeah.

Right. All right.

Anyone else for public comment? Okay. In closed public comment on the city manager's report. Mayor and council members reports and council requests for future agenda items. Oh, yeah, there's many 1 of us when you want.

I don't think I have anything to report. Um. I don't have any future agenda items right now. I have a couple brewing, but I'll hold off on those. Christmas. The only thing I will say is the Christmas committee situation. If anybody's interested, Stephanie has already said she would do it. Holger. Should we do it? I know, but can we? I don't think three of us can do it.

Rochambeau.

Go. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, my God.

When's the last time you wrote?

Wendy wins. So anyone else in the public who's interested in being part of that? And then I know we've gotten a bunch of donations, right? Already, like people emailing in and calling.

Received one email.

Oh, I thought you got some phone calls, too.

No, I just reviewed the stuff on social media.

Oh, okay. Okay. So if you wouldn't mind emailing me, Cameron, a list. I already got the same email you got, so I know that one. But if you wouldn't mind emailing me a list of people that you have seen or heard that would be interested in donating.

I should make a plea right now to the general public and ask them to email you if they're willing to donate. Okay.

Well, because the big general public isn't here. This is a small general public. They're online. I know. Yes. Please email me. What is my email? City email? W Cranford. W Cranford at city of Plymouth dot org. And I'm sorry. I have like 14 emails.

Okay.

So, yeah. Anyone who's interested in donating to that or being part of that, let me know. And then we probably need to put that on our next agenda. I guess I do have an agenda item. We do need to put that on our, not the 23rd, the first one in October, because we need to pick a date and discuss.

Oh. Oh, December. December 5th. Okay. Okay.

So sounds like that's kind of probably it then. Because that was when our Christmas market is. Okay. And then I won't be at the next meeting. I already said that. And that's it for me.

Yep. I don't have anything to report, but I would like to get in touch with the tribe for the meeting because it's been a while since we've had the chance to have an ad hoc meeting with them. Thank you.

I don't have anything to report, but I would like to ask, does anybody, I know this isn't Rotary, but does anybody know if they're going to include the chili cook-off at the Harvest Festival? Question?

Nope. I can reach out and see if Nan wants to. I think she's the new Rotary president. So I'll see if Nan wants to come and maybe to our first, well, October meeting would be too late. How is it already almost October? Yeah. I'll reach out to her and see what the scoop is, because I haven't seen or heard anything about the Harvest Festival either. It's October 10th this year. Where did you see it?

There's a flyer on the window at the Rotary where they meet in the Burke Building. I haven't seen it online. Yeah, so I walked past it the other day, and I saw it, and I'm like, oh, Harvest Festival. There's the chalk contest. There's grape stomp, but no chili cook-off. I know. I was wondering about that. Okay. No future agenda items, but just a couple of requests is, Cam, if you could work with Ricky to, you know, he already knows, but to get the budget versus actuals cadence going, that is high on my priority list. And with regard to these, you know, a status issue, once a month or when you have an update on these, on the forensic finding of these old accounts. I don't want those to get, now that we passed the budget, I don't want those to get lost and just pushed to the side. It's pretty important that we make sure we get as much information as we can.

I think that if I may, that if you have a monthly report, even if we haven't found anything yet, is more suitable or substantial than having them come to us whenever there is something. Because then we might forget about it. Yeah.

But I'd like a solid list. And then I think I asked before, we have a very long list of to-dos, for lack of a better word, including now these. potential agenda items for the future. I just wanted to see those. That's it. That's all I got for me.

All right. Do I have any reports or anything to add to the agenda tonight? I will tell Wendy, if you haven't seen our new truck, it's got a full-length rack. It goes from the back to the front, probably a 15-foot rack. You can hang a Christmas tree five or ten feet off each end. You can get quite a tree on it if you end up needing a truck.

I have no issue with us getting a truck. I just want to make sure it was acquired.

Oh, no, I was telling you about the rack on it. You have to move that tree. Quite a tree on there. Quite a Christmas tree on there.

I don't know. It's supposedly a 30-footer.

Well, there you go.

Can I handle that?

That's what I've heard, too. Oh, yeah. It's hanging off the rack in front a little bit.

We have a bucket star on top. All right.

Anyone like to make public comment on mayor council member reports? Hearing and seeing none. I'm going to adjourn this meeting at I'll let you know.