Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. We'll call the Thursday, 10/16/2025 meeting of the finance committee to order. We have a full quorum. Next item on our agenda is please rise for the pledge of allegiance. All right.

Next item on our agenda is public comment. Are there any members of the public here this evening that wish to address the finance committee? Alright. Seeing no public comment, we'll move on to item number 4A, which is approval of minutes for the October 14. Any changes to those minutes from the committee? Alright. Seeing none, those minutes are approved unanimous consent. One quick announcement before we dive into the budget is Mr. Brown is at a family commitment and he'll be joining us momentarily. So Mr.

Shurrow will have command and control for the first half of the meeting this evening. So that does bring us to item number five a, which is a continued review of the 2026 operating budget. This evening, we're going to cover general government, cemetery, planning and building inspection, public works including engineering, street maintenance, solid waste and recycling, parking, clean water plant, transit, non departmental, and debt. And I do have a running order. Mister Shiro, thank you.

Sure.

Before we get started, Joe, do you have anything?

We don't plan to give a presentation on the overall budget, but I just wanted to mention that the executive budget did include a general fund budget of 84,127,448. And as you mentioned, there's a lot of departmental discussion that's happening tonight and we are leading off with the municipal court.

Very good.

All

right. So municipal court can be found on Page 41 of the book and page 45 of the PDF. Good evening, your honor, Becky.

Good

evening. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves and judge, the floor is yours.

Thank you. I I'm Steve Wimmer. I'm the municipal judge. This is my clerk, Becky Yehrman. And, what we've done here is well, just by way of background, the court meets, Monday afternoon at 03:30 for juvenile court.

It meets Wednesday morning at 08:15 for initial appearances for adult court, and then we have trials and motions on Thursdays. I would say it's every every Monday for juvenile court, every Wednesday for adult court, and probably about three Thursdays a month for trials and motions. Today, we had two of them scheduled. One got adjourned, an issue came up and that was adjourned. The other one was scheduled for 01:30 and the defendant didn't show up, so sometimes that happens.

We we have trials scheduled and that hasn't happened in a while now, but everybody was here prepared to go and the defendant did not show up, so we entered a default judgment against the defendant. But then obviously, we're scheduling court time and we had two officers come in and so occasionally that happens. What we have done is I put together actually, Becky is the one who put it together. I don't want to take credit for it. It was Becky who put it together.

But a little breakdown on the number of tickets that have been issued and the revenue. So if you take a look at that document, if you look back to 2023, there were, for the entire year, 5,435 tickets issued. That was a fairly low amount that was down from a little over 7,000 in 2022. In 2024, last year, I would say about March, the amount of tickets being issued increased substantially. And in 2024, we had 9,219 tickets issued.

Now through today's date, we have had 9,799 tickets issued. And if you extrapolate that through the end of the year, it would be 12,374 tickets if that continued on that pace. So that is a substantial increase, almost two and a half times from 2023. If you look at the revenues, the revenues are up substantially as well. I think there's a direct correlation obviously between the amount of tickets issued and the amount of revenue.

On the far right side in the yellow highlighted area, this is through the September, the court has had revenues. This is revenue that we get to keep, of $698,111.77. So if you were to extrapolate that through the end of the year, it would be $930,816. Now, again, will that happen? It's hard to say, but suffice it to say that in the last year and a half, the number of tickets that have been issued is up substantially and consequently our revenues are up substantially as well.

So that's a little breakdown. Now obviously, that we've had some very busy mornings. We average it, I would say, at least 40 individuals in every Wednesday morning. We've had up to 60. There was one day where we didn't have court the previous week, and I and between juvenile and, adult court, we actually had a 100 people come through a Wednesday.

That and I used to have juvenile court on Wednesday afternoons. It just became too much between adult court with the additional number of tickets that were being issued, to have juvenile court Wednesday at 03:30 and then have trials and motions the next day. So I thought I had to break it up a little bit. And so we moved juvenile court to, Monday afternoon. So the court's been very busy.

Our staff does a fabulous job of keeping up with everything. I give Becky a lot of credit. She's pretty much on call twenty four hours a day whenever I need her. If we get calls on weekends where we have where we have to set bond or bail, Becky is available to assist with that. So Becky and the entire staff does a great job, and I think they've done a very good job keeping up with this substantial increase in the number of tickets.

Now with regard to our operating budget, everything is substantially the same if you look at things like professional services, utilities, office supplies, membership. I have to be a member of the judicial municipal judicial municipal court judges association. Becky is a member of the clerk's association. But for the most part, if you look at the the various numbers for things like postage, you know, all office expenses, there's really not going to be any change, substantial change to any of that this year. The only change that there would be, would be a change to the personnel costs, which it goes up a little bit for everybody's department.

But for the most part, it should be right in that range of 430,000 or a little bit more than 430,000 with the personnel changes. So that's a little overview. Again, the court has become this is as busy as the court I I I was elected seven and a half years ago. This is as busy as the court has ever been, but everyone has really stepped up and done a good job to keep it moving along. And and so that's a little overview of what our revenues are, what our expenses are. And if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Judge, thank you very much. Becky, thank you. Questions from the committee for the judge? Aldeperson Molson.

Just off the top of your head, do you know approximately what percentage of tickets that you actually have to do something about? Because I assume some people get a ticket, pay it and the whole thing never crosses your desk. Right?

Yeah. I I would say if you well, it doesn't necessarily cross my desk. It has to be processed, obviously. There are people that pay pay tickets. So I would say we probably average about 50 well, 40 to fifty, forty to 55 or 60 people each week in court.

Now you have that doesn't account for people entering not guilty pleas, and then their matters go to pretrials, and if it doesn't settle in a pretrial, then it goes to a trial. So I would say of the tickets issued every week, probably 20 to 25% of the people actually appear in court on the on the Wednesday for initial for adult initial appearances.

Okay. With Becky in agreement, that's a good answer.

Are you agreeing with

me? Yeah. Good.

That's good. Then Now now for juvenile court, those are mandatory appearances. So for juvenile court, I would say now, when I say mandatory appearances, that doesn't mean everybody shows up. Right. They're supposed to show up. But I would say 60 to 75 of the juvenile show up at least.

Okay. And we appreciate the time you spend with the juveniles. I think it's very helpful for them. Do you have a hypothesis as to why there are so many more tickets this year?

Why there are more tickets? Yeah. I I really can't answer that. That question probably is a question that should be posed to the police department. Why the amount has increased substantially, I would be speculating to answer that question.

However, what I will say is that I think it's important that especially the traffic code be enforced. I mean, I think that we have a number of tickets for people who run stoplights and stop signs, and that needs to be enforced because that is extremely dangerous when people run stoplights and stop signs. We have a lot of speeding tickets. I would say probably 70 60 to 70% of our tickets that come in on any given Wednesday are traffic violations. So I would be speculating, but I think that I am happy that that the traffic code is being enforced because, quite frankly, I think we have an epidemic of reckless driving in Southeastern Wisconsin.

And I don't wanna see what I see going on in other areas happening here in Waukesha and where people drive at high rates of speed and and don't stop at stop signs or stoplights. That's extremely dangerous. And at least in in this court, we take those kind of citations very seriously.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions for the judge? Great. Judge, Becky, thank you very much.

Alright. Thank you.

Next up is human resources, Marquis.

I'll stop back with an update on the brewer game.

Thank you, your honor. Appreciate that. HR is on page 43 of the book and page 47. So it's right after municipal court. Good evening, Marquis.

Good evening.

If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to the folks at home and the floor is yours.

I am Marquis Vasquez. I'm the human resources director and my presentation will be short and sweet as usual because we don't do a lot as far as financial things are concerned. This year, we were able to complete, an employee engagement survey and we had a pretty good result. I think it was 50 some percent who responded. And so that's pretty good, especially since we hadn't done one in a while.

So we're working we completed that. And so the next phase of that is to work with the department heads to come up with an action plan for each area based on the results of the perform I'm sorry, of the surveys. And we wanna click complete that by q two. We also planned to do the sec the internal part of the compensation study, which involved us reviewing the job description and questionnaires internally. We plan to split half of them this year and do the other half next year.

Well, fortunately, we hired a new HR generalist who has experience doing those, So we're ahead of schedule. We're wrapping up our reviews, our twenty twenty six reviews now. So we'll have hopefully everybody done this year instead of split up into two years. And lastly, we've heard a lot about feedback and onboarding and that process and what that looks like. So we've developed, it says a thirty, sixty, ninety day tool, but it's actually a one week, thirty day and ninety day tool.

So that first week everybody's, you know, is like drinking from a water hose. And so we wanna get a feel for how things are going and if they're getting the training that they need. So that's been developed and will be rolled out in January. Let's see. Another goal for 2026, starting this year effective January 1, we have moved as many know to a new insurance provider, so we're moving from UMR to Centivo.

And with that move, we are required to actively enroll in new benefits. So our goal is to get a 100% open enrollment participation because if they don't actively enroll, they won't have insurance. So we will be stalking our employees on a regular basis to get this done. And then lastly, one goal for 2026 is the Leadership Academy program. We have an internal program named similarly, but this program would be specific for supervisors, managers, and directors.

This is for newly hired or newly promoted individuals to really teach them the core responsibilities of being a supervisor because they have the technical skills but a lot of them don't actually have the management skills. So we're trying to hone in on those things.

Not that blind.

Okay. For personnel operating budget, for the most part, they stayed the same as always, except you will see a big jump in our operating budget. I think that's there is. So you see a 192% change. And the reason for that is this year was a contract negotiations year, so we have to pay the attorney to do the contract negotiations for police and fire. And we also had a grievance that went to arbitration, so that that's the increased cost and professional development and I mean professional services for our attorney.

So I guess my question mark, please is for the 2026, it's at a $134,000. I think what you had mentioned having in '20 or is occurring in '25, I was curious about '26.

I'm not sure why we have that there to be honest with you.

Professional services $134.05, which is an eight roughly about an $88,000 increase.

Jill, can you help me with that one?

Just so there's not silence, I'm looking at

Take your time, Joe.

The count level detail. We'll see if there's anything that shows up.

Okay. Yes, because I'm tracking it. I'm not tracking the 134.5 back to the book. That's the challenge that I'm having, Joe.

And that's

Well, it's in a couple of different orgs. And my question also spur some of your thoughts but in 1430, you budgeted 28,500 and so it's your regular HR account. And then in the labor relations code, you budgeted 100,000.

So I know for the $28.05 that's for the professional development I just talked about for the new supervisors, department directors, and managers. So that that's for potential training for that. The 100,000, we might have budgeted it because we didn't know if we would complete contract negotiations. That's that's the only reason I can I can see us doing that? Otherwise, there are no anticipated costs that large.

Without Tony being here though the two items that I remember hearing during the process was that the at the time the PD union was not settled and I guess it still is not. And also wanted to make sure there was funds here in related to any grievance processes that would come forward in 2026.

Okay. Well we can, why don't we just put it, we'll put a pin in that 100,000 and wait, see if Tony has more detail and we can always get back to you can always certainly, we can always get back to the committee as well. Sure.

Yeah. That's what Joe said that that was the discussion. I'm I'm in all honesty, I don't remember where we came up with the 100,000, but we did not, we were not certain that we would be close to finalizing the contract negotiations. So that is a big thing. And also previous years, HR did not budget attorney fees within our department. They they used to all go to the the attorney's office. So this is our first year budgeting it's so we may be definitely off base. Hopefully, we are off base.

What what attorney fees would be in HR?

Like like with the contract negotiations. Anytime we use an outside legal counsel, those types of things are funneling through HR now versus the general

During this budget process, we did move any union bargaining or grievance process. The idea was that it should run through labor relations or that we have. That's the reason why there was money put there. But as far as the $100,000, if we're looking for more context, we can see if Tony has some money gets here.

Okay. And then I guess the one other just a quick follow-up question. So the like because the outside counsel budget if we need to hire the city needs to hire attorney that runs through the city attorney's office and their budget, correct Joe?

Generally speaking, that's the case. But I believe that the idea here going forward since we have labor relations items that are very specific, we are going to have those contracts run through this org, which is the HR budget.

Okay. Other questions for Marquis? Alright. Marquis, thank you.

Thank you.

Bring us to the assessor's office, mister Walker. And it's on page 46 of the book, right? Yep. Right after. And 46 of the book and page 50 of the PDF. Sam, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to the folks at home and the floor is yours.

Sure. Samuel Walker, City Assessor. We'll try to make this as short as sweet as possible. So as you are aware 2025 was a city revaluation year. Our accomplishments for this year revolve solely around that revaluation. So the conducting the revaluation not just in house but the commercial work through our contractor. Part of that was also conducting a public relations campaign with the assistance of the communications team. And then the defense of all of those values through open book and board of review with the assistance of the city clerk. For next year, it's going to be a maintenance year. So it's going to be relatively quiet for us as compared to this year.

That basically means we're going to be setting values not based in market just for permits, change of use, new, old exemptions and the like. We'll be defending those values again as we do every year through open book and board of review. And we're going to start preliminary work in advance for a potential and I'll put that in quotation marks potential 2027 in our market update. More news on that as we progress. As far as our budget goes, you'll see I think all but three of our lines are decreasing.

The majority of that is because we aren't going to be doing a revaluation next year. We tend to swap funds with the city clerk's office for postage and printing. Another part of this is also we're decreasing some of our other lines for subscriptions because we're able to get that as part of our software program. So we don't need an actual cost manual like book that we need to update. And then some minor things like training since we did a restructuring a year and a half ago, we don't need as much in our training fund for that.

But and I think the only increase really worth of note is our professional services for the contract with Accurate. It's a max 5% increase if we renew with them and it would be for the latter half of next year. But that's all I got.

Thank you, Sam. Questions for the assessor's office from the committee?

All

right. Looks pretty straightforward, Sam. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Clerk Treasurer, Katie. That is on page 50 of the book, page 54 of the PDF. Good evening, Katie.

Good evening.

If you'd introduce yourself and the floor is yours.

Katie Pinellas, new clerk. Over the past twenty two months, the clerk treasurer's office has administered five elections. As of July 1, we've issued 517 licenses, conducted tax bill preparation and collection with the assistance of Waukesha State Bank. Badger Books was also implemented for public usage during the April at the Elks Lodge with positive feedback. The goal for the office for 2026 will be to implement Badger Books at all locations.

Two major areas of increase for the operational budget are wages for temporary staff, which includes poll workers for for elections, tax help for in office. It also includes in person absentee, nursing home visits. The other major area of increase for office supplies is printing and photocopying, which includes ballots, absentee ballots, mailing, the envelopes return postage for voters, and tax bill mailing and printing of the tax bill inserts. All I got.

Katie, thank you. Questions for Katie? Alderperson Molson.

Hi, Katie. Do do the has your office stabilized in terms of the employees? Everybody's got all the jobs are filled and?

We currently have one vacancy, which is for the treasurer position. We do have our full time administrative assistant who started this week, and we do have an accepted offer for the part time. So she will start the twenty seventh as long as she passes her background check.

And are there four elections between now and November? There's no more elections. Not in 2025, but next year there'll be

There's for sure March if we need it?

Yep. Alright. Thank you.

Other questions for Katie? I don't either. Katie, thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, city attorney's office, Brian, which is on page 53 of the book and 57 of the PDF. Mister Running, if you would introduce yourself and the floor is yours.

Good evening. Brian Running, City Attorney. I'll take you through some of the highlights here. First of all, the overall budget represents a 3.3% increase over last year. This was achieved by a combination of some increases, modest increases and a significant reduction in our legal research budget.

We use an online research service called Westlaw and we were able to negotiate a $6,000 reduction in that. So that accounts for the largest single reduction we have in our budget. Those of you that have been through this with me before know that we've got a few categories that are very unpredictable and it varies from year to year. It varies with how many times the city gets sued, how many times we have to hire outside council. So our outside council budget, we ask annually for $35,000.

This is the budget that we use to hire outside lawyers primarily when we have a conflict of interest. When council members get tickets and don't pay them, we have to hire outside counsel to prosecute and send them to other courts. That's where that amount comes from. We also have very unpredictable and variable costs for things such as service of summons and complaints, service of process and litigation expense which would be filing fees and so on. So we're doing real well so far this year.

This is a good year for us in those very volatile unpredictable categories. So it's looking good. We're asking for the same amounts for '26 because they have worked out for us well over the past, I don't know, five, six years now. One place where I do expect to see some increases are in membership dues and conference and training. Our membership dues are primarily our fees to the state bar of Wisconsin.

All practicing attorneys in Wisconsin have to be members of the state bar. Their fees have been increasing fairly significantly over the past few years. Also conference and training in order for us to maintain our licenses to practice law, we have to have a certain number of continuing legal education credits each year. And those are, we're able to take advantage of a program put on by the league of Wisconsin municipalities that provides us with the vast majority of our CLE credits each year at a very reasonable rate. So I'm asking for $3,500 and that's for all four of the lawyers in our office which is really a bargain and we owe it to the league for that.

But just the same in the past, it has been lower, I just expect that there will be increases in that. And we are also fully staffed once again in our office. After nineteen months with Julie Gay's former position open, we were finally able to find a replacement for her which means that we're going to have more membership fees and more CLE fees this year. The program this year, the institute is going to be in Middleton. So we will incur overnight expenses driving out to Middleton for that conference.

I guess that's really the highlights that I wanted to hit. If you have questions, please go ahead and ask.

Thank you, Brian. I guess the one question I have is probably more of a reminder. The the sixteen ten, the interdepartmental charges, which is the revenue for about $11,000, what what is that?

You would have to ask Joe about that. It's a mysterious figure for me too.

Mysterious. I mean, come on.

It's an accounting thing. It's all mysterious.

There it's a it's an allocation that is sent over to some of our enterprise funds for inter attorney services.

Gotcha. You. Okay. Thank you, Joe.

See? Mysterious.

Mysterious. Other

question for the city attorney from the committee? Alright. Seeing none, Brian, thank you.

Thank you. Good night.

Bring us to community development, year. End And the the we'll of

year.

In line in front of the boss, but that's okay. What? Then I got called. I know.

It was official.

No. It's not your fault.

I know. And I just wanted to say that for fun. Rattle rattle a little bit.

You just said give me a hard time for something.

That's right. I don't know I don't know.

I'm in

a mood. There you go.

Well, hi, Jennifer. Hello. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to the folks at home, and the floor is yours.

Okay. Jennifer Andrews, community development director. And just wait for my assistant here to get my slide.

I deserve

that. Okay. First, we're looking at planning and I would say we have our biggest project in the past year as you're aware because we just talked about it at council is updating the zoning code. So it's been a big lift for the staff and we're hoping to complete that 2026. And then other we're always working on other plans and trying to get development in the door and working with developers.

So that's really the bread and butter for the planning department. The thing I'm going to point out here is in the staffing area. So our staff has not changed, but what we worked with Joe and, the finance department on is better representing how our time is spent, when it comes to the Director and Deputy Director. So 100% of those expenses used to be housed in this planning account, but really we spent a significant amount of time on building inspection. So this year, you'll see in the staffing, it's 0.35 for those two positions under planning.

When we get to building inspection, you'll see a 0.65. So it's reducing planning, but adding to building inspection. The numbers are the same. The salaries are your typical salaries. We're just trying to allocate it in a way that is representative of where the expenses really lie.

So here, up in personnel, you can see that change. And everything else in planning is pretty status quo. Our operating is up about 1.5%. So it's a pretty status quo budget other than that, that change. Building inspection, we've had a busy year in building inspection.

Our residential construction is up this year and also commercial is very strong this year, so that is good. And here you can see again in that staffing pattern, it should for 2025, it would have been a zero for the Director and zero for Deputy Director. And then in 2026 is where we're adding in those expenses for those two positions. So we are working right now with IT to purchase a new permitting software. So that will be the big lift for building inspection in 2026.

So once we finish up with planning, we get to refocus on building inspection and implementing that new permitting system, which will have a better customer facing portal and interface, so it's easier to use and easier for us to communicate with the customer. So you'll see that increase in personnel. And then the other line item I'd probably want to mention is professional services. You can see this is, the service that we use when we need to fill in for inspectors because I have no backup in trade inspections. So when there's a vacancy, there's vacation, they're sick, they're out sick, they're on leave, we need to, by state law, conduct those inspections.

And so we contract with various companies to do that. It's much more expensive for us to contract those services out. So in 2024, you see a big number there. We had a number of vacancies in 2024. And so that's where you're seeing that.

We're fortunate enough to be able to bring on fill up our trade staff near the end of 2024. So we're fully staffed now. But we did increase that budget line item for 2026. And that's really in response to trying to again accurately reflect what the true cost is here. So we're looking at the past years, taking that higher year out of the equation, but looking and seeing how much we're truly spending on those fill in services for inspection and trying to budget accordingly so that it's accurate.

So there's, it's accurately reflected. There's no surprises later. So that's really the big change in building inspection. The other one, that little line item, it says, operating supplies. We have to order stamps that go on each and every single family home building permit from the state of Wisconsin. We're required to put the stamp that they provide on each billing permit. And last year, we we or for this year, we had, going into '25, we had a number of those stamps on hand. So we anticipated not ordering for '25. We officially ran out last week, so I had to place a small order. But next year, we'll have to replenish our stock of stamps.

So that's why that line item went up. So it's basically we didn't budget forward in 2025 because we thought we could make it to the end of the year. But the good news is we had an uptick in residential development. So we're a little short on that, but that's why that line looks a little bit higher. So

Jennifer, thank you. Sure. Questions for Jennifer? Jennifer, couple questions I have, with tourism. So I'm on page 57 of the book, and this is a revenue to the city because it's the hotel share. I'm just curious with the Cobblestone opening, do you have a rough estimate on what we can anticipate on an annual basis from that?

I have not done an estimate for that. I'm sorry.

That's okay.

Yeah. So just real quick about that. Are you referring to like the room tax? Yes. Okay. By oh man, this thing keeps going off. So state statute actually froze the amount of revenue that we're able to recognize in the general fund. It's been like that for a long time actually. And so even though we are bringing in the hotel, will not necessarily see any net revenue from the room tax. It gets sent to the convention, the Tourism Convention Center

Bureau. That's right. You'll see revenues probably block that.

You'll see revenue come in and then we do have a large expense of the money going out the back out the door to the bureau.

Very

good. Other questions for Jennifer? And I know we're joined by Alderman Vantrieste and Alderman Manion. So as always, if you have questions, just get my attention. Nope. I just answered the question in my head. So Jennifer, thank you. I'm good.

You're welcome. Thank you.

That'll bring us to information technology.

Before we do that, can we can we maybe bring in the mayor and the city administrator to do their presentation?

I guess. Sorry, Chris. Mister mayor, good evening. Hello. The mayor's office is on page 36 of the book and 40 in the PDF. And mister mayor, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself for folks that may not know you, and the floor is yours.

Sure. Sean Reilly, mayor city of Waukesha. Happy to be here. I have my accomplishments and goals up on the screen. I think the biggest thing for me is is that in the last year, we've done a lot more in making sure our employees know that they're valued.

We have different events for them. I've always played a big part in basically being the face of it, but other people do the work of for it. But that's the goal is to continue to do that no matter who is mayor to recognize employees because it does make a big difference in keeping people on, which is something that we I think people like working here and they do feel valued, but we gotta keep working on that. Financial stability, I have continually for the last ten, eleven years advocated for with the legislature, with our legislators up in Madison and the League of Wisconsin municipalities have worked really hard to try to convince the state to fix the broken system of finances for municipalities. I am the president of the Urban Alliance, is a subunit of the League of Wisconsin municipalities, I've testified many times.

I've been out in DC with the National League of Cities all paid for by the Urban Alliance which is nice as well as many of the conference at the League of Wisconsin municipalities events I go to. That was one of the benefits of being hopefully this isn't go to the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, but that's one of the benefits of me being president of the Urban Alliance is that a lot of my times in Madison as well as in DC was paid for by the league as the board member for the league. And obviously the other thing that's going to be happen, everyone knows I'm not running for mayor. So the position is going to change in April and I'll be working hard to make sure that that's a seamless transition. For my budget, I think that the important points are we've added a little bit of money for operating supplies and that's to make sure we recognize board and commission members.

Need we wanted to have plaques and or proclamations for them as well as to provide recognition for their service. A lot of times we have people that have served for fifteen, twenty years on committees that are citizens and I wanna be able to provide some. The mayor wants to be able to provide something for them so that they that they know that the city has recognized them. Office supplies has been a small increase. That's for the new mayor.

We'll need I haven't had to order business cards or anything like that or the tags or the I haven't had to order that. It's all I don't hand out a lot of business cards. The new mayor will obviously need new business cards and thing that goes on what do you want to call it, badge. Then the membership and training has also increased. And that's a reflection of the big biggest part of it is is the League of Wisconsin Municipalities had an increase, but almost all the memberships have increased percentage wise.

The League of Wisconsin Municipalities budget is all under the mayor's budget even though all the departments as well as all the alders also can use that resource. And as you know, Brian Running indicated that they go to the conference for the League of Wisconsin municipalities that reduces our cost tremendously for getting CLE credits assessors. Actually every single department has some type of training through the League of Wisconsin municipalities. That's about all I have to say. I think Tony will be talking about we kind of a we have a combined office.

There is one change in there that is a reduction in personnel for the mayor. But I'm gonna leave that to Tony to talk about.

Thank you, mister mayor. Mister Brown?

Thank you. Tony Brown, city administrator. Before I do get started, I know that for the human resources budget, there were some questions about a $100,000 for attorney fees. So that is regarding the ongoing negotiations with the police union. And if it gets to the point where we move further along in that process in terms of mediation and arbitration, That is the funding that is set aside for that.

Just to give you some frame of reference and context for that, recently well, recently being yesterday, decision came down on grievance that went to arbitration. The city ultimately won that grievance, but going through that process cost us roughly $35,000. So you can see how going through different collective bargaining processes like this can get rather expensive if it gets to that point. So that's why that funding is set aside.

So Tony, the whole the entire $100,000 is anticipated for police negotiations?

Yes.

I did with the whole with

the hope that it doesn't get to that point, that's what you're projecting.

Yeah. That is certainly the case. So if we do get to a point where we go to arbitration, we wanted to set aside a sufficient amount of funding to be able to deal with that.

And if it's budgeted and not used, it goes back, certainly back to the general Yep. Well, we hope that it does not get to that point.

I do as well. Alright. So I will go through my 2025 accomplishments. I think probably the one that is certainly the main or one of the main focuses that I have is updating the financial management plan and going through the process of fulfilling the things that we outlined for '25 and '26. And then moving forward, I would say that we're I'd like to think of it as phase two for the financial management plan and that really consists of two different items. The first is kind of

a public

outreach strategy approach to get community feedback on what they prioritize and value as services. And I may have mentioned this HR or finance before, but what this would consist of is a work workshops, focus groups, and then also the other thing which is within the budget here tonight is the community survey. And within the community survey, there is also some budget engagement tools. One is a simulation tool where it allows you to illustrate kind of the financial trade offs by placing citizens in the role of kind of policy makers to understand, well, if you move this part of the budget, here's how it impacts the other part of the budget. There's a prioritization tool and then also a taxpayer receipt.

Guess this is a a shout out to the communications and engagement team. They went through the process of refreshing the website. So it is, I would say, a lot easier in terms of functionality. But there's some cool features on there too where and I know that people probably don't speak like over 40 languages, but you can choose different languages on there. And then there's different ADA related components to it as well.

And then the last thing is we just started quarterly reporting for the strategic plan. And I think that has allowed us to stay focused on what are some of the strategic priorities in there by fulfilling the objectives under those items. For next year, as I mentioned, we'll go through the and complete the National Citizen Survey, which is more or less our report card for how we're doing. And then we'll continue to work on the strategic plan and update the financial forecast so we can continue to work towards making sure that again the goal being to stay two years ahead of the current year with a balanced budget. With regard to the Marinais budget, for salaries and wages that's mostly just general increases or or cost of living adjustments along with the rest of the payroll benefits.

Regarding professional services, that would include the survey. And in addition to that, the second piece that I didn't mention with regard to kind of phase two of the FMP is bringing a management consultant in to look at one or multiple departments and review the organization of it to determine are there efficiencies that we're able to realize through making different modifications within that department. On the operating supplies and expenditures that is mostly related to the recognition dinner. I think it's a dinner. I might be mistaken there.

Dinner for the board members that serve the city. Membership and training, that is again the league along with increases in ICMA and then a couple other organizations that I belong to along with Rebecca and a few other staff members and trying to get them opportunities on the communications team to go to trainings as well. And then the last item is miscellaneous expenses. And there is miscellaneous revenue as well of 18,000. And what that represents is just the Parade Memorial and revenue coming from the community foundation and then expenditures to maintain the Parade Memorial.

So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Tony, thank you. Alderman Lemke.

I just have been noticing throughout the the whole book that the area for retirement, the percentages change all over. And I'll just pick your department. It it says it's a 13.9% increase, and the mayor's office is a 9.7%, you know, under retirement decrease percentage. And I just wanted some explanation as if those two departments, in my opinion, I didn't see any changes in status of them, what how does that work?

Alright. Two things. That's one of the reasons why we actually reported it on the screen together. If you look at the screen right now on up there what we have for the presentation. We did notice that in past budgets the wrong position was split between the Mayor's and City Administrator's Office. So that's why one's going down, one's going up. I will say that in general, for all departments, the rate for WRS has gone up for the employer. So well, for both sides, but it has gone up. And that's the other reason why it's increasing, not just salary increases, but also the rate went up.

Okay. That was just something I wanted to

figure No. It's a good question.

Thank you.

Holder person Molson.

Okay.

As a part of the financial management plan, we're going to survey the community. And if is that the same or a different survey survey than the National Citizen Survey?

It's the same survey. So it's and it's the same survey that we did a few years ago. So we we're trying to and we have been on a cycle where every two years we do the national citizen survey. So it it is the same survey that was utilized during the strategic planning process.

Can we ask our own questions in there? Is the national survey supplies that they have the same question for everybody.

Yep. So there is, as you pointed out, the standard template of questions. And then there is a piece of it where we can ask I believe we had the option to up to maybe two or three questions in addition, unique ones that we could ask. I don't recall what the one was last time that we asked. I'm gonna look back at Rebecca. Okay. Yeah. It was so I don't know if you caught that, but it was on prioritizing different city services last time. Was the unique question that we had.

If we only get three questions, is that enough?

I suppose it depends. But what I would say is the more unique questions you want to add, the more it costs.

I see. Thank you.

Other questions for Tony? Guess, Tony, the one I guess the one thing that I wanted to go back to is the professional services, which I know we've been talking about a bit. So what's the rough breakdown of the 158,300 between the areas that you're going to focus on?

Yeah. So the citizen survey is about $18,000 and then the remaining amount that's changing the 90,800 that would be related to consultant services.

Okay. Alright. Thank you. Other questions for city administrator or the mayor's office? Alright. Gentlemen oh, mister mayor.

Just just one quick comment which I didn't really for the recognizing board and commission members, these are the citizen members that would also include an event like a dinner. I didn't make that clear, but we're planning on doing a dinner for them for anyone who wants to attend that's a board

or commission member.

Very good. Thank you. Gentlemen, thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. We'll go back to IT. Mr. Polfall, that is found on page 159 of the book, 163 of the PDF. Chris, if you would introduce yourself and the floor is yours.

Sure. Good evening, everyone. I'm Chris Polfo, I'm the IT Director. A couple of highlights here around the 2025 accomplishments. We set first goal that we hit around the asset management system, which was part of the strategic plan initiative that we that fell to IT in 2024.

And I talked about this a little bit during the CIP process with our PC replacement budget and how because of having that asset management in place, are able to really take a good look at PCs that need to be replaced. I mentioned how all the PCs that we bought during the pandemic were coming up due for replacement and how to break those up between a five year or a six year replacement window based on hardware warranties. So that's that one there, we just continue to add more hardware to help with hardware lifecycle management. In service and excellence there, we have already signed the contract for the CAD vendor for the CAD RMS project. And in November, you will have contract for the records management system part of that, which is going to be Central Square, which is the vendor for CAD.

We were looking at doing a separate vendor for the RMS side of things and proved through discussions not to be feasible. So we are going to have a fully integrated CAD RMS system. And we're real close on wrapping up the red lines on the SOW for that or statement of work. One of the big things around security that we were working on this year was replacing all the Windows 10 devices. So Windows 10 was end of life on Tuesday of this week.

And we had roughly 85 devices that needed to be upgraded or replaced at the beginning of the year. And as of Monday morning, we had two left to do. And they were spare laptops, so they weren't even in use. So that was nice to accomplish that. What we're looking forward to in 2026 here is the IT Board and I've been working with the IT Board for a number of years now on IT policies.

And the Center for Internet Security has some standards that they look at and they have their control documents and they have it broken up into different groups. And in that implementation group number one with the policies recommended by the Center for Internet Security, they say if you're doing these policies, you have good cyber hygiene. And so that is our goal for 2026 with ITB is to make sure all of those policies are aligning well and procedures are aligning well with that implementation group number one. As Jennifer spoke about earlier, we're looking at selecting a vendor for the new permitting system and that goal is to have that implemented by the 2026. Now the CAT RMS, that's a little over a two year project.

So that won't be done next year. And then the last goal here and we'll get probably talk about this a little bit more further down the line in my budget, but is reviewing all the different software contracts that we have out there, trying to renegotiate for multi year contracts because the annual increases with some of these softwares that we've had for a long time are it's starting to get out of hand and we need to do something about it. And so it's a goal of mine to get through the bulk of them next year. And that's obviously working with departments that use the different software on that. So Joe, if you want to go ahead and get into the budget part of this.

Yes. So this is the personnel summary here. Well, you can see the overall change between personnel and operating is 6.3% from last year or from this year to next year. And you can kind of see what that looks like through the different increases with retirement and salaries and wages. When we get into the operating part, all the hardware and software comes for every department in the city and every campus in the city runs through IT.

So all the support and maintenance for it. And that was and you can see there's a pretty good jump from this year to next year in that line item. And that is the main goal of accomplishing that goal that I just talked about where we're trying to renegotiate contracts and get those contracts that are jumping up 5%, 10% or whatever down to a more manageable and reasonable 3%. And you'll see that too like when the CAD project, we've already started doing that. So when the CAD contract came through, you see the first five years of that program, there was no increase in the annual maintenance.

And then the next four years, it was a 3% increase. That's going to be the same for the RMS. Recently, we just had a fire department software contract come through. And if you looked at what the year over year increase was at, we negotiated that down to 1.5. So there's some room to work there. I think some companies are willing to work. There just may be some ultimatums there made as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to you guys for questions.

Chris, thank you. Questions for Chris from the committee this evening? Just wanted to comment and just on behalf of the Finance Committee, thank the work of the ITB, Alderman Manion. I know you guys do a lot of the folks on that committee do a lot of good work throughout the year and then also help us review different projects that go into the capital budget especially. So Dan, thank you for that. Any other questions? I didn't have any. Chris, thank you. Thank you. Prairie Home Cemetery, Karen is on page 159 of the book and one sixty three of the PDF.

Hi Karen. If you would introduce yourself to the folks at home and the floor is yours.

Karen Richards, Prairie Home Cemetery director. Okay. So this year, the cemetery, we have completed some major infrastructure improvements such as HVAC system in the chapel, replacement of the fountain at the Autumn Garden Mausoleum Complex, which we've heard many positive comments about. And the tuck pointing masonry repairs for the chapel building are hoping to be completed in the near future as well. And then there were some plumbing issues on the grounds that were improved and brought to code.

So those were some important not sexy but important things to get done. And then what we're looking at also is adding to our cremation options. This year through September we've had 152 services and 58% of those were cremation services. Last year we did about fiftyfifty cremation and full body services. So we are seeing a definite uptick in the need for cremation options and we're looking at adding more of those.

And researching for a plan for our boulevard area. And then also looking at by next year having a recommendation regarding single software that can be a comprehensive cemetery management software so we're not using multiples that don't talk to each other. And then we plan on adding a community event next year for education and also we'll be working on a master plan for the cemetery which might be the first one. As far as the budget you'll see the operating revenues are showing an increase and a good portion of that is that Joe and I have done kind of an extensive study on the actual cost related to perpetual care for the cemetery. And we will be recommending an increase in the funds that come from the perpetual care fund.

And and a little bit from the endowment fund as well. And then it does show that a bit of a loss in 2026, but we expect to make that up with some fee and service increases that will be going to the cemetery commission in December. And overall the expenses are up 1.5% and the total for the cemetery is 2.5. Okay. So I'm on the next page.

And then you'll see in the operating summary some of the numbers that might stick out is the 16.7% increase for gasoline and fuel. This year with the weather the way it was, we were mowing much later than we were in the past and which meant that we were using a lot of fuel. So we're expecting that to increase again next year. It's not a significant dollar amount, but the percentage looks high. And then that 21.5% decrease for transfer to other funds is related to mausoleum care funds and the state law, state statute related to those.

And it was up last year because of a new columnarium, but that's going going back down. Are there any questions?

Karen, thank you. I think one thing to certainly point out for the committee and the public is that the cemetery receives very little levy support.

Right.

And I believe that number is?

88681.

And it's been Roughly. It's been $88,000 for probably the last

Ten years.

Ten years.

Yeah.

And I just so I think it's because you're seeing a lot of big numbers on here but I just want to remind the folks that this is the majority, the vast majority of the operations at cemetery are covered by revenues received by the cemetery. And only, I shouldn't say only, but $88,000 of levy dollars is all the city cemetery receives in terms of tax dollars. So other questions for Karen? Alderman Bantrieste.

Hi Karen. Did you get the gator that you wanted or

Yes, we did.

You did? You got the one you want?

Yes.

Okay. Good. Thank you.

Mhmm. Other questions for the cemetery? Alright. Karen, thank you. Alright.

Thank

you. Department of Public Works and a variety of different sub departments within the Public Works department. I think we're going to start with engineering. Alex, Brandon, good evening. So that is going to be on 79 of the book and 83 of the PDF. Gentlemen, if you introduce yourself for the folks at home, and the floor is yours.

Good evening. I'm Alex Damian, the director of public works, city of Waukesha.

I'm Brandon Schwen, city engineer. So we'll just kick it off with engineering, I will kinda take the helm here. As far as 2025 on engineering goes, I thought I'd quickly highlight one of our biggest accomplishments was the design and delivery of the Area VII flood mitigation project. So this was a critical piece of infrastructure and kind of the missing link or the final link of all of the work that we have done in Area and it's along the North High School grounds. That project is still being worked on right now, it's still continuing into the fall season.

However, that will be wrapped up hopefully prior to the year where we're looking at. But that project and just the flood mitigation program in general, we've had a few presentations about infrastructure investments. Flooding has been a hot topic lately that that program has really shown its worth. We've invested over the length of the program at $19,100,000 in flood mitigation and that is continuing and it's nice that it's our engineering staff, we do utilize some consultants on the flood mitigation program but that is something that the engineering group really takes pride in delivering on an annual basis and important to keep that program moving, just wanted to highlight that Area 7 flood mitigation work. Some of the other things just on the cover sheet to look at as far as just total expenditures, the engineering division of DPW is very heavy on the personnel side, very low on the operating expenses in comparison.

Now I know some of the other departments as they've been up here have highlighted that they have finally reached full staffing or they've been able to fill those vacancies. Unfortunately we have not had that opportunity in engineering. We continue to have three very critical vacancies within engineering. Our engineer three traffic role, our engineer two which is site development and construction as well as our senior engineering tech survey position. So we are seeing those vacancies, we're doing the best that we can in utilizing engineering consultants to fill those roles on a minimal basis.

But that is definitely something that we are tracking and trying to see what other items that we can come up with, what is something that is impacting the division as a whole. Moving on just kinda into the budgetary numbers. Joe, if you wanna go that direction. So looking at the budgetary numbers I'll just go down to my page too. There we go, now I'm on board.

Just from a percent increase standpoint on the operating side, I'm gonna use the term that it's a very status quo budget, that is on point. We only have a 1% increase on the operating side within engineering that is solely related to the cell phone utility coverage. Everything else was a zero percent increase. We do have our staffing cost of living increase and that's very, very flat and in line with the rest of the city as well. So from a dollar amount standpoint with the engineering side, very flat, very same as last year status quo.

That's all I have for engineering.

Did you wanna do questions on engineering first or We'll certainly see if there's any questions for Brandon so far. All right.

Alex? All right. Thank you, Street Maintenance. Is that where we're going next, I believe? Go ahead. All right. Okay. Well, tell me where you wanna go after this one, Joe. Sorry. Do it the right way. So as Brandon said, status quo budgets. Right? For public works, that's pretty much where we are. We looked at the department as a whole for increases and decreases and balancing and that sort of thing. So where you are going to see some increases is in the Streets Maintenance department here or division.

So we'll get into that in a little bit. But just to go over our vacancies, we are also having a very difficult time hiring staff. We are currently short six. That includes three mechanics and three heavy equipment operators. So equipment operators, we are getting some candidates, but not very qualified ones.

And then the mechanics, we are receiving very, very few, if any, applications. So that is of our concern because we are obviously trying to deliver good mechanic work on all the city's equipment and fleet. As you see in one of our accomplishments, we did reorganize the city fleet to be managed under public works. If you can go into more details on that or if you have questions on that, but I'm just going to just mention that, that's one of our accomplishments and that did get taken care of this year. If we get into our expenditures here, I kind of mentioned that there's a personnel and there's an operating budget here.

The operating budget for Streets division here isn't just a 1% or anything like that compared to the total budget. You'll see that's like 35% of our $7,500,000 budget. So that's rather large sum of money. But I'd like to kind of walk you through where that money it goes. Really, that $2,600,000 is broken up into four areas.

30% of that or $763,000 is We Energies and sewer and water bills. So utilities, that's basically fixed. That's our street lights. It's our traffic signals, that sort of thing. $620,000 is salt.

Fuel and vehicle maintenance is 613,000. And materials for maintenance. So this is what the crews do all summer long, patching our streets, fixing our traffic signals, our street lights, all of those things. That accounts for $486,000. So those four areas account for 95% of that $2,600,000 And then to look at it a little bit differently, you can break that down into seasons.

The winter season, that's basically 33% of our budget of that $2,600,000 or almost $890,000 is winter season. So that's salt, fuel and vehicle maintenance. Spring and summer, that's when we do our work on streets, sewers, storm sewers, things like that. That's 26% of our budget. And in the fall, about 8% or 9% for leaf pickup, but that's basically five weeks worth of work. And then that remaining part of the budget is 30%, which is fixed at the utilities point of that.

Alex, what's the rough cost of leaf pickup if you

The rough cost of leaf pickup without personnel is about a $180,000 right now. That's without personnel.

Do have an idea what it would be with personnel? I mean, I understand that we're paying these folks to be in there on staff because we staff for snow plowing. But do you have an idea on what it would be with personnel cost?

Well, it would be five, six weeks of basically every staff member at the city garage. So we can do the math on that quick, would assume, Joe, right? I don't know. I don't have the number off the top of

my head.

More than 100

more than a $180,000.

It'd be more than 100 and Yes. 80,000

That's fair.

Yeah. It would be at least I would think double that. So we're pushing $500,000 for leaf pickup probably.

So you're right now, the department is down roughly three equipment operators. Is that what you'd mentioned?

Correct.

And I assume those are plow drivers in some respects, right?

So going into the All plow drivers and work on leaf pickup, yes.

So going into the fall, when Park Rec was here, there was some talk about shared services and things like that. So going into the fall, if you still have those vacancies, would those positions be filled with grounds crew from the Park Rec and Forestry Department?

We, on occasion, do ask them for help on that during that time period. That's usually one of their busier periods with tree removals and things and tree plantings. So that hasn't always worked out. We have also coordinated with the Waukesha Water Utility. They've borrowed us truck drivers in the past on that as well. So the answer to your question is, yes, we reach out to receive help when needed.

Thank you. One second, Alex. Alderman Lumpkin, you had a question?

Yes. You said the variable costs of of the lease pickup were about $180,000 Is that mostly fuel?

So that's fuel, vehicle maintenance and then some rental.

You.

Alderman Vantrieste?

So Alex, I know that we just completed a major project, Silvernail Road. Do we know what it would cost us to still and I wanna know if you've got that in the budget this year or 2026. We've got a bike path Alderman Lemke shares that South of Northview and we in the last couple of years we haven't had any jeep with a five foot plow going down through that to maintain that. I'm wondering are we going to return to maintenance on that during the winter months or did you budget for it? Or That

would be serviced at the level that would be appropriate for a bike path. So I know in the past, there's been discussions on who's supposed to plow that between the city and the state. Right. Is it that along the bypass? Is that the one you're talking about? Yes. South South of Yes. South of

the highway.

Yes. So parts of that are state's jurisdiction and in county and that is so that would be not ours to plow. That would be the state's or the county to plow it for the the state. Yeah. And that's in their budget. And we wouldn't be plowing a a county trail. Yeah. We haven't seen it.

And if it's anything like we see with the county weed control mowing and all that, apparently they get one mow a season that they're funded from the state. And it's just kinda getting ridiculous. Okay. Thank you.

Correct. There's there's there's a lot of maintenance work that the county isn't really completing on state highways in our area and and path mowing and and plowing isn't too high on their priority list.

Alderperson Wiggerson.

Sorry, have short arms. I want to ask specifically about the vacancies that we have. How long have we been without the equipment operators and the mechanics in your area?

So it varies. So we're we are hiring people

Mhmm.

But then we lose somebody. We are hiring somebody, then we lose somebody. So we've had vacancies for for a year, two years, but it varies. It could be one. It could be four. It could be five. It it's varied. We haven't had vacancies in the mechanic area until recently here where we've had some retirements. And then we actually will have probably one more retirement yet this year. So that's newer and that's this year. We haven't had many vacancies in mechanics.

Okay. Thanks.

Overall, our been vacant for very long. We were we did hire one a year or so ago, but a year and a half ago. But right now, that's where we're at.

Thanks. All

right. There's no more questions there on street maintenance. I can move forward to solid waste.

Solid waste is on 98 in the book and 102 on the PDF.

Right. There isn't an introduction page here, but we do kind of keep them in loop with engineering. So one of obviously are the accomplishments for solid waste is the transition to John's, a huge, huge undertaking both by Dustin Nolan and then Emma, who is filling in for him right now and doing a great job. But that is and was a huge accomplishment transferring all those carts and things. So that's that story.

But if you look at the budget sheets in front of you, this is where the story unfolds with the with regard to the fee that just was passed to council. So you can see the operating cost, that's the John's contract, was moved out of the solid waste bucket and put into a special revenue fund. So what remains in this budget is basically disposal of trash from the city, disposal of trash from the drop off center, wages at the drop off center, and also some wages for doing the grinding for our composting. So if there's any questions on these numbers here, I can go through them with you. But the increase that you see in their professional services is an increase that we're looking to have as for future credit card fee.

We wanna run fiber optic and get fiber optic connected to the booth and then be able to use credit cards down there. Obviously, you use credit cards, there's fee to use a credit card. So we need to budget for that as well as many other expenses that account for that. The $210,000 in contracted services that remains right there is basically the drop off center tonnage. That the operation down there is busy.

It's extremely, extremely, extremely busy. Every Saturday and Wednesday, we're always amazed with how much how many people come to drop off waste there. And we just announced that, if you don't know, it's a lot cheaper to dispose of waste in the garbage can that John's provides than it is at the drop off center. So the drop off center is not revenue neutral at this point in time. We are running probably 50 to $60,000 subsidy for it out of the general fund to pay for the drop off center.

We increased rates last year with the hope of well, we knew that there's gonna be more garbage, and we have a higher cost of disposal. So we were hoping to keep that at least in check and not get crazy over on our budget. And that's where we are right now. We are as of I can share this sheet with you here. But as of August, we've already disposed of thirty two hundred and eighty three hundred 3,200 tons, basically, of garbage there.

And that's about equal to a whole year's worth. So up until August, we've we've disposed of that much garbage there. So the the the fee increases that we did implement have helped us not blow our budget out there. So that is a positive. But right now, we are to date running a deficit of about 46,000.

So like I said, we had planned on it being about 50,000 to $60,000 of subsidy out there. So we're kind of on track for that. We did see a very large increase in March for people to be bringing garbage there when when John's took over and the the fee kicked in for ordering or picking up your bulky items. So but that has somewhat leveled off and come back down to normal. So we're happy to see that. So that's the story of solid waste. If there's any questions?

Yep. Alderman Lemke had a question and then Alderman Wiggerson. Yep.

So I see that the solid waste removal was about $3,000,000 coming out of the budget. And that's going to be put into the special revenue fund. I thought the number was is 2,000,000 the amount that the tax levy is being reduced because you have to use the numbers from ten years ago or whatever it is or

Yes. And then it relates to just the garbage portion.

Correct.

Okay.

Yep. And then I forgot my oh, drop off center increase in tonnage Was a good portion of that increase relatable to the flood? A lot of flood people brought stuff, whereas you just were getting rid of stuff because of the John's fee.

We did see a little bit of spike in late August, but that wasn't included in these numbers. We kept track of those numbers separate. We have to for if we are gonna receive a FEMA aid for disposing of that material. I don't remember the exact numbers that were off the top of my head, but we can we can find that data. It wasn't crazy, crazy amounts of tonnage.

And then one last question regarding the Mastercard Visa at the drop off center. You said you were gonna put fiber in there. What is the cost of adding fiber to there versus I know that at my business

Mhmm.

Credit card terminals, you can have one by your credit card company that works off of a cell phone.

Yeah. And and I just said add fiber, meaning we're gonna get connected to the Internet. I don't I don't know the best way and the cheapest way to connect, but I I know we have connection there for for cameras and things like that. So it might be as simple as just running a a wire to to to that. Or if it's easier and cheaper to just run it off of cellular, that's obviously gonna happen as well. So I I didn't mean for sure that was gonna happen, but

To be determined.

To to be determined on how it's actually connected. We we wanna connect to a credit card machine.

Alderson Wiggerson.

Alderman Lumpke kind of stole my thunder with the question regarding to the $2,000,000. But you mentioned before that it's actually cheaper for a resident, and correct me if I'm wrong, cheaper for residents to use the drop or the pickup with John's than actually delivering to the drop off. Yep. Is that correct?

So what's

the difference?

So this disposal of tonnage of just waste is if you can fit it in your cart, that's the cheapest way to get rid of Mhmm. Garbage for for anybody. I mean, obviously, that's for the city, I guess. Right? So if if you're bringing that trash to the drop off center, we're paying a higher rate because we're hauling away dumpsters worth of it and then paying tipping fees on that. John's has got a a good contract price for us for disposal of tonnage.

And do this more for the people at home. My question is leading on purpose. Yep. So it's really more for the people at home. But thank you for the clarification.

Thank you.

Alderperson Molson.

Can you help me find where in the budget the new revenue that this this affected residents are gonna pay that special charge? Where what line is it where the people

It's funny you should ask or ask that. The next slides that I have here are related to the garbage and recycling It is sitting in our special revenue section. Joe, don't know if you have the page number. I think I included it in your list.

Yes. Garbage recycling is going to be on 125 of the book and 129 of the PDF. Thank you.

I didn't have that in front of me, I appreciate it. So basically, kind of full circle from the discussion here. This is essentially the page for that fund and it's very simple. We're showing those contracted service for residential garbage and recycling on one line under contractual services and we're showing the public charges for service netting that out to zero. And that is our intent. As I mentioned in the past when we were asking or requesting that fee to be approved, that was always the intent of the fund was just to cover the cost.

Alderman Van Trieste.

Carbage and recycling fund. The way I understood it from city administrative round was that we were gonna put 2,000,000 into this fund and then the 1.2 was going to be separated from that. How are we doing that? We're not No. Doing

kind of it's kind of a the $2,000,000 is something to talk about. So kind of what was just stated. To pull it out of the general fund, one of the things that we are required to do on the levy limit side by state statute is we have to pull out the garbage portion that cover from the levy from the general fund levy. So that's where the $2,000,000 reduction came from out of the general fund for revenue. And then we moved all of the expense for garbage and recycling over and the fees covering the total contract netting to zero.

Okay, clear. And I wanted to say to Rick and Noreen covered what I was going to ask too about people with the flooding and the tonnage. So thank you. Very good.

I'm sorry, Rick.

So just so I understand it and the public understands it because this is something that I have to explain to my constituents, which if I'm explaining it right, then that's great. So our fee that we pay for the garbage in 2025 or or for 2026 is about 3,200,000 provided we have an average amount of garbage and there's no extra fees for people all of a sudden are creating much more garbage. But the $2,000,000 we took out of the levy and that's because the state requires you to take out the amount of levy from

Covered services.

Ten or twelve years ago when they

Whatever the levy was that supported garbage collection

In what year?

In 2014.

Okay.

The 2014 budget is what we had to remove.

Yeah. That's That's why the inflation now is 3,000,000, the reduction in the levy is the 2014 amount.

It is. That's And it is just the garbage portion.

So and is that extra million dollars why most folks are paying $49 more for their for their trash on a $350,000 house? I mean, is is that where that comes from?

It's part of the discussion, would say. Without getting into too much specifics, The difference between the 2,000,000 and the 3,200,000.0 is recycling services charging a fee for that or part of the fee covering that now. And then some inflation between the now and twenty twenty twenty fourteen.

And is it safe to say that because we have a contract with John's that '27 is going to be about 3% more and '28 is going to be 3% more?

We do expect that. It's allowable in their contract. And so remember the fee, it's assuming we know what the contractual service costs are from John's. We don't necessarily know to the penny what the disposal cost is going to be. We have estimates what that is, but every year we'll garner what those costs will be based on our previous couple of years of collection and disposal and we'll estimate based on that.

Thank you.

All right. So I think we're on. Alex, was there anything else under garbage and recycling?

I do not have anything else. Joe?

So we'll move to parking utility. Of course.

That part of these guys' presentation part?

Yes. I just

get the end to

of their presentation, I just have a question.

Okay. Okay. We've got parking up next. Parking is on page 149 in the book, 153 in the PDF.

Alright. Parking utility. So what I do wanna start out first is kind of a good news and kind of a look at where our revenue is and has been from parking permits. As you recall in the last couple years, have made the switch at the South Street ramp as well as the Transit Center ramp to go to automated license plate readers. We've also utilized an online payment system through passports for purchasing of permits, that was always around but now there's a really big focus of utilizing that at both of our transit ramps so we can keep a check on that revenue as people are using both of those ramps.

So what it's looking like right now based on nine months of data in 2025, the projection for a total projection of all of our four permits which includes street parking, lot parking, the South Street ramp as well as the Transit Center ramp, the total revenue projection is approximately $480,000 So what is that in comparison to what we've done in previous years? Well the last full year that we had all of our permitting systems online and in place, our total revenue was $350,000 So that revenue stream is definitely increasing. We've already brought in $360,000 on the permits for this year alone. So we've already surpassed that 350,000 threshold. So that is the good news on the parking utility side, the permit usage is up, we are seeing increased revenues and people are utilizing that new system which has been very important.

We do know that we have gotten some user feedback on that system. We are currently working through some implementation of changes, working with Passport to the city's parking vendor to bring in a new payment method or an alternate payment method for short term parkers that does not require a username and password and all the additional information to type in, it's very streamlined but we will have those two options too. For the long term parkers and those that are purchasing thirty day permits or one year permits, they can get a login, they can track their permits, they can get notified when they're gonna expire. We'll have, still have that option as we do today, but we're working on bringing on board that short term payment option to really streamline the process. There will be a future small contract amendment with passport that we'll see routed to the board of public works upcoming as well as council.

I have a

constituent that'll be very happy to hear that, Brandon.

So that is that is definitely yes. It is coming. We are listening. There will be new signage at the ramps going up, we are currently working through that as well. Other items at the South Street ramp which has been a really point of focus for us, we are still working on recruitment of the security guard positions, that is important, that is still ongoing and looking to get that up and running in the very near future.

We also have the structural repairs at the South Street ramp that will be ongoing that has been bid and is going to occur this fall. And as part of that project we will also be working with that contractor for a future change order to handle the glass block vandalism damage on the upper level as well as some of the other repairs to doors, etcetera. That will be a future change order routed through Board of Public Works as well. So a lot happening as far as the parking utility goes just globally. As far as budget goes, it's basically the same as we have last year.

The very minor changes budgetarily really are on the PD enforcement org side of things and very much less on both the building and the general parking utility fund side. So very minimal changes as far as operating expenses and the personnel is same kind of moving forward.

So with the security guard, are we using the same company that's used here at City Hall? Is it the same vendor?

The security guard positions will be internal city staff.

And

that is what that's what we use here at City

too.

If I can touch on that for a second. What we found is that the effectiveness of using some of those firms in terms of pay along with the services provided and the quality of the individuals is not necessarily where we'd like it to be. So for example, at the library, they're actually bringing security guard in house as well.

So all of these companies that provide security, we can't find somebody that has folks up to our standard? So we're gonna make them city employees?

So I would say it's not only the standard piece, but the cost piece as well. It's actually more cost effective if we bring it in house. Hi, Brian. Hi.

Sorry. I actually oversee the security guards for both city hall and the transit center. And one of the things Brian Eagle King, transit manager. One of the things that we saw when we opened the transit center twenty one years ago is at first, the contracted security firms were good, but they kinda tailed off, tailed off, tailed off to the point where it's kind of a funny and sad story at once, but we actually had a security guard getting picked up by the police for an outstanding warrant, the contracted security guard. So back in 2018, yeah, I think it's seven years now, we went to HR committee and then got approval to get the transit center guards brought them in house.

And what we've found is that there's a much higher quality of applicants. We have ex military or active military, retired law enforcement, and then more experienced security guards, and they've worked out great. So the gentlemen here are actually city employees. Okay.

I was was unaware of that.

Yeah.

They're not full time city employees. Their hours are checked. Yeah.

They're they're limited. Limited term. Okay.

Limited hours. Time.

Brian, you stay there one second. Alder Yeah. Alder person, Alvin Slavin.

Yeah. I know as being part of the library board, one of the other pieces of that that we talked about, and I'm only bringing this up because Tony, he would mention the library as well, is that when we brought or bringing the security services to an in house position, the people in house are consistent rather than when you have a private service you don't know who you might get on any given day and so then they can kind of get to know potentially habitual offenders and things like that, and that provides that higher level of service in addition to being potentially more cost effective. Is that an accurate statement?

Yeah. That's a very accurate statement. Our guards, especially the ones that have been there for a long time, they have a very, very strong relationship with the police department and work especially with the CSOs and, you know, the officers that will patrol the transit center in city hall. We just it's it's very it's been mutually beneficial. I think PD would agree with us.

Great. Thank you.

Alderson Wiggerson.

I also just wanna let everybody know as a head of the HR committee, we approved those positions because the other thing that city administrator Brown just said was it is actually cheaper for us to have in house security guards rather than going through

the

agencies. He just said that, but I wanted to confirm that that was one of the reasons why we ended up approving the positions at the HR committee level.

Okay, very good. Alderperson Molson.

Changing the topic entirely, still on parking though. Do we permit an inoperable vehicles to park in the ramps for any length of time?

No. No, we don't. Is there an inoperable vehicle for a long period of time that we need to look into?

There was, but I haven't checked recently.

Okay. No. We should be getting those towed.

Thank you.

Other questions for parking? Alderson Wiggerson?

Do we have a camera in the in the parking structures that we utilize?

Okay. Have cameras, and we are working on getting some additional cameras, I believe. Yes.

Okay. Thanks.

Upgrades as well. There's a lot of cameras that were not very helpful.

All right. Any other questions on parking? All right. Transit, which is on Page 162 of the book and one sixty six in the PDF.

Okay. Well, I'll kick it off, but I'll ask Brian to come up back up to the podium here. So the the sheet you're looking at right here, you see that big box there of 2026 executive budget of $8,850,000. I want to to make it very obvious or very clear to everybody that the city's portion of transit is $1,270,000. That is a whole mix of a number of things that is very confusing.

Brian can explain that, but I don't think we're even gonna get into that amount of detail because it relates to county funding, federal funding, all sorts of transfers, debt service, all sorts of different things. So, I'll turn it over to him here in a second. But as you might remember, just last year and previous years, going back to 2012, we were at $1,400,000 set, basically. So we've decreased it again for, 2020 going into 2026. And that is the lowest we've been since 2010.

So the amount of subsidy from the city to the transit system is $1,270,000 And I'll turn it over to Brian to kind of walk us through his part of your

Okay. Thank you, Alex. I think just real quickly, some of our goal or accomplishments for this year are the first one was we consolidated from 10 to eight routes in June and reduced 15% of the service hours. While we maintain much of the ridership, the ridership is maybe a little a couple of percentage points below. So that's something we're pretty proud of.

Another thing, our preventable accidents are down or were down through June and they pretty much have factored along or gone along the same way. 50% from 2024. We don't have a lot of accidents, but obviously accidents the more accidents you have, less safe, more injuries. And then also there are insurance implications from higher claims. So I think we've done a pretty good job there.

And then also we are and we work with the City Garage with this is and they do a great job of making our bus stops accessible. We're up to about 94. I don't think there's a system or I know there's not a system in the state our size that has that high of a percentage of accessible bus stops. So definitely things that we're proud of. Ridership for a fixed route, it's pretty much flat for 2025, but that was that does include a 15% decrease.

Metrolift ridership is skyrocketing. We're actually going to see over 12,000 rides for the year. It's the highest total since 2013. And then just want to point out one other thing and that's our passengers per revenue hour for the fixed route. It's the big buses.

That's really our efficiency of ridership. And as you can see back in the COVID years, it was about 6.3%. We're up as of June 30, we're at 8%. Since we've done the consolidation in June, overall for year to date, we're now at 8.4% through the September. And if you just look at from June through September, we're at nine.

So next year, I didn't anticipate that we'd have nine riders per every hour of service that we have. So that in a nutshell is the statistical part. And then when we get to the actual expenses, you'll see a lot of negative numbers, a lot of negative numbers in fact. Part of this is the county's funding is mixed in and the county had significant decreases, but we've also done decreases. As I said, it's a 15% decrease in service hours in the summer.

I mean some of that was our Route 1 that goes out to freighter, so Waukesha and Milwaukee County pay for that. But some of that was also some additional decreases that we have as well. So salary, it's below like 3% because we have fewer operators. We the 15% decrease resulted in five full time operator positions being eliminated. The management company did not lay anybody off.

There was just through open positions that were removed. The benefits too. Benefits is a little bit Some things in benefits, I wouldn't necessarily consider benefits. It's like holiday vacation pay, FICA, things of that nature that makes up over $700,000 of that. But still that there's a sizable decrease in benefits because less employees, there's going be less people on the management company's health plan.

But also they've done a really, really good job of keeping the health insurance lower. So kudos to them for doing that. And that is pretty much the other things. The drop of contracted services, lot of that's just with Waukesha County. And then the insurance piece of it is just since we're operating less hours, our that's mainly liability insurance.

We're operating less hours, less miles. Our auto liability insurance is based off of how many miles we drive. It's no different than personal ones. So that's where you'll see that 12% decrease. With that, we just had I actually have a handout that pretty much we just kind of goes through.

I don't have it we won't have it up on the slide, but I can hand this out. But we had since COVID actually since 2023 to we have another proposed decrease in service and for January '26, our city the amount of service hours that we have in the city of Waukesha is actually decreased. It will decrease 27.4%. So over a quarter of our service hours in the city in the last three years will decrease. And a lot of that has been through making efficiencies, but there are real world impacts on our passengers, but we're trying to minimize that.

But our ability to continue to do this will be it will be difficult to continue to make reductions and not have major impacts on the riders. And then I think the other thing just to keep in mind is our Metrolif ridership. We've seen a 47% increase in the last three years. We're seeing numbers that we haven't seen for over twelve years. It's just I'm not surprised just with an aging population growth.

So this has required additional buses out on the road. And just for we used to like in 2013, which is the last time we've seen ridership this high for Metrolift, we used to run it on five buses. Right now they're doing it with handling the same similar load with about three buses, three to four, and that includes a service area that has expanded to Froedtert Hospital. So they've done a really good job, but that is an expense that is going to increase both now and in the future. And most likely we'll need additional operators for that.

Brian, thank you. Yes, it's a good overview. I think given just given the fact that we probably all throughout the course of the year get a phone call or two about transit and buses and people on buses. So it's always helpful to get a little bit of an overview. I take it for granted because I've been on transit for many years and get to see a lot of this information all the time. So as Brian I'll I'll ask the committee. Any questions for Brian? Is he

Yes. So Brian, for the public and myself, can you explain the difference between Metro Lift and the regular buses? Is the Metro Metro Lift like a wheelchair or handicap versus, you know, where they where would it be convenient for them to ride the big bus?

Pretty close. Yes. So the Metro Lift is for ADA.

Correct. Okay.

Yeah. That's for individuals that can't ride the regular bus. So it's more on it's like dial a ride service. They have to be have a significant disability that they can't ride the Okay.

And then one last question relating to the transit budget. You said that the overall budget is $8,849,000. The city's portion that they're paying is 1.27. The rest comes from other areas. Is it state and local state and county funding that makes up the majority? Federal too?

The actual the actual our actual Waukesha Metro budget is about $7,000,000. The the county the county's transit budget gets mixed in with our budget. So there's 1.7 there's about 1,700,000.0 in there. So it's 7,000,000, but of that 7,000,000, then $2,300,000 is paid for by Milwaukee and Waukesha County for Route 1. Because Route 1 starts at our transit center, we pay about 29% of that cost.

The county takes the middle part of about 42%, and then Milwaukee County makes up the rest for that route. So the actual city transit budget, if you really, really the four metro is about will be 4.7 for next year in So the

how much of the overall transit budget is paid with fares? The money comes from all over different places, but how much are the actual users paying?

It's about 10% to 12% currently.

Thank you. Alderman Van Trieste.

Brian again. Did we have any COVID money? A what was that ARPA? Yes,

We still have some ARPA funds that is going to because the ask to take us down to 2010 level of city funding, we do have to use ARPA funds to balance the budget for '26. And will those be expiring? They do expire. They expire at the end of the federal fiscal year '29, which is September 30. But our ARPA the city's ARPA allocation, the way it's looking right now, we will expend all of our ARPA funds probably by the end of first quarter next year.

But we do have other funds. There's CARES and Carissa funds as well. There was three sets of relief funds that were issued to transit. Some not all transit systems, but we had three sets of funding.

All right. Thank you.

Yes.

Other questions for Brian? All right. Mr. Engelking, thank you. Clean water plant.

All right. Alex, Zach. We all love the clean water plant. Think tours are great. We'll try to keep this fairly high level here.

Zach, if you would good evening, if you'd introduce yourself for the folks at home, please. Good afternoon. Zach Eisner, Clean Water Plan.

I'll give a brief overview and actually I'll ask Zach to hand this interesting data sheet out for you. So just to kick off on staffing at the Clean Water Plant, we are short one operator currently. I hope to hire that person shortly here. We do have a couple applicants, I believe. So as you can see, our $9,000,000 budget, this operating budget is split to personnel of about 43% and the remaining 57% is the cost to operate the plant.

What goes in operating the plant, all sorts of things, chemicals, power, all those things that basically are necessary. So we've got some accomplishments this year. The handout that Zach just passed out there, this is our weekly average effluent chloride, data sheet here. So with our new permit, we're required to reduce chloride in our effluent to below 400 milligrams per liter. You can see the purple line on there.

It's jagged. It's going up and down, but generally, it's decreasing. Our goal is to get it into that green bar between two fifty and three hundred milligrams per liter. So we're getting close, almost there. But the reason we bring this up is, this is a goal, not only a goal, but it's a requirement. The DNR requires us to do all sorts of things with lowering phosphorus, lowering chlorides, lowering everything in our effluent. And that's why we do business there, and that's why costs increase as well. We'll get into that in a little bit. So the softener rebate program has been successful. We've been sending people checks to get rid of their softeners.

That's a good chunk of what you see as a decrease, I believe, in the last couple months at least. So we do have money in the budget to extend that program next year as well. However, that might not be the only way might not get us down to that green bar. So we are right now also focusing on high water users going into those businesses mostly and trying to get them to optimize their softeners and working with them on how to do that as closely as we can. So that's an ongoing effort.

And moving forward, hopefully, we don't have to get to this point, but we might be going into mailing cards and things like that to get people to optimize or remove their softeners because, quite frankly, we have to get down to that level. We're looking good, but we're not there yet. So that's the message. So if you talk to anybody, tell them to remove their softener, please. It'll help to this our goal. The other accomplishment that we have is Zach is working with the contractor right now, and that's to add the dryer and our other Phase three facility upgrade at the plant.

Alex, it looked like Alderman Lemke had a question. Sorry.

Okay.

I'm sorry, Rick.

Before we were on discharge to the Fox River under the old system with our well water, everybody had a water softener and we were obviously discharging into the Fox River. I'm assuming that our effluent level was substantially higher than 400 milligrams or milliliters. How come the DNR allowed that, but now they won't allow anything near that to go into the Root River? What's the difference? I mean, why is the change?

It's because we went through a new permit process and they put stricter and stricter requirements on us to discharge both to the Root River and the Fox River.

So the Fox River is still for

use your mic.

No. Both both of our outfalls have to meet the this more stringent requirement.

Thank you.

Okay. Alderperson Wiggerson.

So do we know how many people actually have water softeners in their house?

We have estimates.

Okay.

So how many do we believe there were? About 10,000, I believe, if I remember correctly, to start. So

So when you're talking about doing a a concentrated effort to get rid of those softeners

Mhmm.

Are you looking at, like, the entire city? Or yeah. Okay. That's

about Correct.

The petition. Yeah.

Right now, we're still running a rebate for a $150. If you fill out the information in the paperwork that shows that you removed your softener and we'll send you a check for a $150.

Well, I removed my softener years ago.

I I tore mine out about a week after we went live with Milwaukee Water. Perfect. Alderperson Molson.

Can we do anything to peep have people put less salt in their parking lots and driveways?

We are lots of efforts for that salt wise. There's all sorts of other groups out there to try to do that. Yes. There was an effort through state legislature to change some of the the laws and allow flexibility for contracted services for banks and restaurants and whoever to have less liability on those contractors and businesses, but that failed to get through the approval process. So that's another thing to talk to legislators about. I believe they're gonna be making another effort on that in the future.

Thank you.

And that's a difficult thing when the landscaper and the plow people get paid by the bag of salt that they lay down. They're going to lay down more than what they so they get paid more.

Correct. They're getting paid by the bag of salt they put

down. Alderman Bantrieste?

So Alex, it sounds like bridge decks are a big problem here. Potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and then we get the melt and it dilutes it somewhat. Mhmm. So with that, how do we this is this is our problem when it's on the roads. And you mentioned earlier we spent 640,000 on salt. Correct. Yeah. So is there a different product out there that might cost us a little bit more, but it gets us down to 400?

No. Not at all. Potassium chloride, it's still a chloride. So probably still registered the same way. But we use as as many opportunities to be as efficient with our salt use as possible.

Spending $600,000 is a lot on salt, but the public safety does play into that, obviously, that we wanna have safe roads for people traveling them. And we're we're not gonna stop salting at this point. But we do make every effort possible to reduce our salt loading on streets. And we also tighten up our sewer system as much as possible too with lining sewers, with lining manholes and things like that to prevent the water to get into our system So that

how does chloride that's on a bridge deck get clear over to the root river, how does that happen?

It gets into manholes. Yep. I didn't know

It's not

And it's chloride isn't treated out of the wastewater. There's no process to remove it.

We actual pipe that goes out to the root river?

Correct. It's storm water. Not storm water. This is wastewater. Oh. So salt that's dropped on the road

Right.

Or in a parking lot that gets into the ground, that gets into the pipes, into the sanitary sewer system, it goes into the clean water plant. The clean water plant does not treat chloride or salt out of the water and that discharges at the River and the Fox River.

Alderperson Wiggerson?

How long is the DNR going to allow us to keep doing this until we get it fixed? What's the timeline?

So we're supposed to get to the year. End of next year. Is it end of next year? Thought it

was the

end of

this year.

End of next year.

November year. So that's our goal and our accomplishment. I think we'll get there.

So pull your softener out. Don't put salt on your driveway. And we'll start and we'll get to where we need to be by the end of next year.

Everybody gets snow tires, they don't need to salt

the road.

Any I know there was return flow as part of this. We've talked a little bit about both, Zach and Alex, anything as it relates to return flow?

Not really. That's paying to pump the water back and paying the water utility to send bills. That's what's entailed in that.

Any questions? Any final questions for Alex or Zach on return flow or clean water plant? All right. And Alex, before I let you go Zach, thank you. Before I let you go, wanted to give an opportunity to John Weinckoff. At the Park Rec Board, we talked a little bit about the new fleet manager position. And I just wanted to give John an opportunity to just introduce himself to the Finance Committee and just talk briefly about the new role because this is a change in how we've done things in terms of managing the fleet. While John comes up, also want to recognize Brian Knapp and Joe Buginski who are here this evening. These gentlemen supervise the vast majority of our street crews. So guys, I want to thank you for coming.

I don't know if you want to talk, can't imagine. But I wanted to want to thank you for the good work that you both do every day and and thank you for coming this evening. So John, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and just give a little bit of an overview of your new role.

Yes. John Weinckoff, the fleet manager overseeing vehicle fleet operations overall, all city vehicles we have within multiple different departments. For the most part, we have been taking care of majority of the city vehicles already for the many different departments. The exception to that was the Park Rec Department. One of our mechanics actually works up at the police department on-site directly.

So he works directly with them. But higher level involvement within the Park Rec. A lot of it was to do with they had a change where mechanic had retired, which was an opportunity to look at efficiencies that we could gain by bringing everything into one house and standardizing our fleet maintenance techniques going forward similar to them what we do with all the other departments fire, cemetery, public works, and whatnot. And allowing it they had one full time mechanic position up there, and then they had a stockroom position. Part of that stockroom position was actually allocated towards helping the mechanic.

So in conversation's sake, I would say they had 1.5 mechanics. The level of their the size of their fleet in excess of 600 vehicles for 1.5 people to oversee that, that was just not even close to being enough. And obviously, as the stated where we're at with trying to keep everything fiscally sound, creating a whole another group of mechanics up there was not practical. So by bringing it down by us, we're able to take all 10 of our mechanics and triage it across the different departments that we oversee.

You said 600 vehicles?

Yes. Correct.

Obviously, that also I will give the I will give the default. That's everything from a weed whacker to a vehicle that you see on the road, front end loader construction equipment, chippers, you name it. So some of the smaller items do add up pretty quick, but there's a lot of high dollar item equipment up there. Obviously, lot of mowers that are very expensive that are driving around that have a lot of maintenance requirements to them and whatnot. So it we had been discussing it for many years and obviously once the point of retirement came up then that was kind of the opportunity to take a look at it seriously.

We looked with Tony and Marquis, had a lot of discussions with them and then obviously Park Rack to get to this point where we're at. And yeah, I'm gonna admit that in the early stages of it, obviously, it's changed. So it was there's growing pains on both sides for us and for them. When you have a person that's in house and you're walking distance from you, so it would be different than if you got to pick up the phone and hey, we got to get a guy down here or whatnot. So we're overcoming a lot of those obstacles. I think we've made great strides. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. Are we going to strive to do much better? Absolutely.

I think the level of service that they're going to see out of their equipment is going to increase. It has already increased. Yes, there's going to be dollars that are involved in doing this. Bringing the standards that we maintain the equipment to across the board has expense that involve with it. But when you're talking millions of dollars worth of equipment, that's a very worthy investment that we need to do.

Maintaining equipment so we can keep uptime, so we can keep parks mowed, we can keep buildings opened up and whatnot is pretty critical to what we all do. So that's our goal. We've worked together. My team has really busted their butts to work around this and overcome every adversity that we could be thrown at us, and we've done a very good job. Our biggest struggle right now is our shortages in staffing.

We have been only able to fill currently three positions for mechanics. We have a retirement that's coming up very soon at end of the year, right at the beginning of the year and it's going to be a tremendous hit to our operation. That individual is very knowledgeable on all of our construction equipment that we oversee. So replacing that knowledge is going to be very tough. Going into winter being three people short is going to be hard.

Obviously, yes, we took on all this other work. So we there's been a lot of long days and short lengths to get things going. And hopefully conversations with Tony Marquise, we've tried to work towards what we can do as approach to try to fill those positions to get that staffing level brought back up. Once we get there, that will make a tremendous impact on the customer service.

So if you're watching at home and you have a person in your life that is a mechanic that wants a great job at the city of Waukesha, I have them apply. John, thank you. Since we have John, was there any questions? I know as it relates to fleet or John's role from the committee? Good. John, thank you. Thank you. Alex, anything else before we let you go? I have nothing else. Any other final questions for Alex? Alderperson Wignersen?

Thank you.

Oh, I

did not even have my mic on. Sorry.

Thank you. Doreen was giving kudos to leave pickup for those of you. And I would agree. Alex,

thank you.

Mr. Shuro, I was remiss on the running order that I did not see the finance department on here. I was wondering if you wanted to provide an overview of the finance department for the committee this evening.

Yeah, I'll need one second.

And then you'll need to remind the committee what page that's on.

That's a good question too.

52 of the PDF. Thank you.

Ironically, didn't create a slide for finance. That's okay. But have I way of bringing some information on screen. So if you bear with me.

Alright. It's quiet because we lost the we lost our entire gallery once public works wrapped up. So we know we're we're we know we're nearing the end when we lose the entire gallery.

Thought I could get one by you too online. So thanks, mister Piper.

I'll be You're

very welcome.

Yes. Alright. So to see here. I'm not used to driving this way. No. I just need to get my access to my tabs. So I thought I had them. Alright. There's two tabs. One's personnel and one is related to our operating costs like most others.

So as you can see on our finance tab here from a budget standpoint, we have an increase of roughly 5% overall in the department. And it is broken down in a couple of different things. But first off in personnel, which is the biggest increase. You can see probably the biggest thing of note there is really the health insurance. We have a small team.

And so when we have anybody decide to go to either enroll in insurance or change their elections, you're going to see it. So that's actually what happened for us in this case. And so that's the reason why it went up 12.8% on the health insurance side. Outside of that, really nothing additional to note as far as personnel is concerned. As far as the operating side, make that up a little bigger.

The main increases here relate to professional services that seems to be the theme of the night, guess, for other departments as well. But the increase here actually is associated with the citywide audit. We're required given all of the debt that we issue as a city to have an annual audit and that runs through this particular account as well as other post employment benefits. We offer health insurance to retirees and a requirement, it's an accounting requirement. We have to do a study that basically calculates the liability of existing retirees and potential retirees for health insurance and what that inherent cost is to the city.

So that's the other reason for the increase in that line. And if you have any questions, I'd be I would love to answer that.

Any questions for the finance department? Alderperson Molson? What

about the annual financial report is popular? Popular? That's what it says here. The popular annual financial report.

Oh, now we're pulling up department pages. I get it. You gotta hold me to the same standard. I understand. Hold on a second. Let me get that up there. I got files everywhere. Alright. So you would like to you're talking about our goals? Yeah.

Okay. So that's just a name as given by one of our organizations, the the Government Finance Officers Association. A pop a pop a popular annual financial report is really a very condensed report. It's supposed to be easy to read. It's almost like the summary in our budget or the public hearing document we have to publish in the paper, like taking a 200 page or 150 page document, which is our financial statements and putting it in one or two pages. So that's really what that is. Would like Who

do we give it to?

We put it on our website. It makes it easy to read if anyone wants to really look in the financial results at a very high level with a little bit of discussion and description. Are you just saying did you say zero? Oh, good. Alright. Alright. I appreciate it. So so anyways, that that is really what that that relates to. I think if you think about all of our documents, they tend to be lengthy. A lot of that is driven by our industry and trying to get information out to the public, which is needed.

But we also there's a trend now in our industry to try to provide some information that makes it a little easier to read, whether it'd be graphical or just much more summarized. So that's what really what that is.

Thank you.

For sure.

Other questions for Joe? Alright. Debt service, mister We can go that out. Alright. Thank you, Joe. Appreciate it.

Let me get some things off here first.

Alright.

Debt service. So in our debt service fund, the vast majority of the of what we pay in that fund are debt service payments. And so what these two charts are really showing you are like the funding and the payments for that debt for debt service. And so if you wouldn't mind, if we could look at the right side first, that really breaks down our 2026 debt service in the types of debt that we've issued and at least in the duration that we've issued. As you can see the dark blue is the vast majority, 83% of what we have outstanding.

And those are ten year debt issues. When we talk about our capital budget, that's primarily what we issue. Some of the longer term stuff that the fifteen year in particular, that was related to our building projects. We borrowed for the police department, we borrowed for the City Hall, we extended obviously, we'll have those assets for a much longer time than some of our other equipment and things that we borrow for. One of the and also I think if I wasn't I don't believe I was here for those debt issues, but the interest rate, and I've heard Mr.

Piper mention this, was very low during that environment. So even for the longer term fifteen year debt, it was still 2% or lower. So that's the reason why the city decided to do that. But overall, can see we have about 28,100,000 in debt service. We have revenues of the debt service portion of the tax levy, 27,400,000.0 plus some interest income.

You can see there's a little bit of a shortfall there. The main reason for that is we do have some money on hand that we're putting towards the debt service payments. Some of that was related to premium we received with the debt issue that we issued, the debt issuance that we've had in the past that we are required to use. And then we've had some accumulated interest earnings that we will also pass on to cover those costs. Any questions on the pie charts before I move to the next piece of this?

All right. So like the overall debt service and capital levy. We did talk about this when we did CIP. So if you look at the chart, the blue and red bars are the historical, the things that have occurred already. And then you can see the projected is the pink and the purple.

And so what you can see here, the first pink and purple is actually what we have in the executive budget. And then you but as I mentioned before, with the escalation of projects that we had, whether it was buildings or just having additional infrastructure that had to be handled, they referred to Alex and Brandon talked about like the Area 7 flood mitigation project were priorities of the city. So with buildings and those types of infrastructure projects, we had an escalation in the amount of debt that we issued. As such, we had our debt service levy escalate during that time. We are trying to get with this year and in future years, trying to level that off.