Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

This meeting of the finance standing committee is called to order at 08:30AM. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved.

Second.

Okay. We can just so you know, Alderman O'Neill, can't see you but we can hear you.

Okay.

And okay. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. And is there a motion to approve the minutes from the last finance committee meeting?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor please say aye. Aye.

Alright

with that we're jumping into our first presentation of the finance committee budget season. Get excited, everybody. Thanks so much for going first this time. City manager team, appreciate you guys. And, with that, I'll just say, miss Jackson, can you put fifteen minutes on the clock? And then I'll turn it over to you guys.

Alright. Thank you guys so much. Today we're gonna talk be talking about both the the core city manager's office as well as the harbor master's office. We do not have the office of community services with us today. They'll be with the discussion around community grants since that's a big part of what they do, so we're just gonna combine those.

So for today, obviously for the current year, one of the the big things, of course, has been transition between the former administration to the new administration, onboarding of new council members, and then hiring of of key positions. The work of the city manager's office, there's the core oversight and then there's there is direct programmatic work that's overseen by Jackie Guild. And so what we have here is a little bit of a combination of both both of those things. I'll let Jackie talk about her parts of that.

Okay. So we did to do our work because there's only three people in the work that I do that's resilience and sustainability. We heavily rely on grants. So you can see that we secured over a million dollars in grants and technical assistance in the past year which go towards the many energy efficiency and pollution reduction projects that I talk about throughout the year. A couple of the major projects that we've working on throughout FY twenty six that will finish up is a climate state California, of of

The

Us in our infrastructure transportation and planning projects. And then we've also secured a community solar contract, no cost to the city, potential to save the city $100,000 a year in utility expenses.

Alright for performance measures the performance measures here are all around the resilience. So again Jackie?

So I'm not going to go through I think all 15 or 16 of my performance measures but you can see that because of the nature of what we do in the resilience energy and environmental space there are quite a few and they we end up sometimes partnering with other departments and then also taking on some projects initially ourselves and then moving them on. But I will say that in the last year we have plastic waste reduction, we've got composting, we're pushing forward, land preservation, habitat protection, there's community engagement, yeah you can move it on. Zero emissions policies, IPM policies, increasing adoption of EV vehicles which we're working a lot now with central services on and decreasing food waste as well as pollution. So that's kind of where you see a lot of that million dollar over a million dollars being technical assistance we've received at no cost or very low cost to the city but it is resulting in things like saving with a potential to save $20,000,000 in lighting expenses if we owned our own street lights. We've explored that.

We're diverting about 45 tons of waste to the landfill. So carbon emissions capture there as well as savings and tipping fees. And then we have partnerships with the Resilience Authority. You'll see later, I don't know if it's in this presentation but I'm not, but the Resilience Authority on behalf of Anne Arundel County in the city has saved us around $65,000,000 in deferred expenses we might have to spend on infrastructure infrastructure or storm water related things or flooding related things over the 50 or so projects they've done since their inception. In 2022 projects really got going in 2023 through 2026.

So I'll let you read the rest of that on your own if you have questions later because that's a lot to go through.

Okay. So the the other kind of major piece of work that sits inside the city manager's office is special events. So I have some just in terms of just other workload that sits in in our office. Felicia Nolan who oversees special events, she coordinates 120 to 130 special events a year, which is a fair amount of work because she also actually coordinates then all of the, all of the work between the organizer and city departments. Banner permits, She directly takes care of the fourth of July Memorial Day parades, directly takes care of fireworks for New Year's Eve and fourth of July.

For us, obviously, just to give you a sense of our commitment to you guys, we attend more than a 120 meetings every year of the city council and various committees, which is not including the various boards and commissions and and stuff like that that that both of us participate in. So there's a very heavy commitment and involvement of our office with the city council. So and also doesn't include the budget sessions and stuff like that.

Gonna highlight the rebate. Yep. And so there are couple of things I'll break out here that are particular to the resilience and sustainability work is one that Alderman Huntley may be particularly interested in. We have the rebate program for the electric leaf blowers. We were allocated a $105,000 by city council to run this program.

We had a consultant devise help us devise it for $10,000 initially through the resilience authority. Then the trust charged us, on the remaining $95,000 a 10% fee which I negotiated they wanted 20% I got them to 10 for the first year and that was $9,500 so we were left with 85,500 for the actual rebate program. To date they've spent about $36,000 that figures you know maybe a month old and then so we have 49,500 encumbered already with the Chesapeake Bay Trust to run the rebate program for us. We're gonna be pushing to get that out. That number tells me that either it's not as painful as people may have complained about initially to go buy electric leaf blowers and also that the contractors, the landscape contractors who are the most vocal are not been availing themselves of the program although we've made many efforts to get information about this available program out.

So we have money left for this year going into 2027. And then in community engagement, education, outreach efforts to change behavior, to help people with energy rebates, etcetera. We had a goal of 13. We did nine such events in 2025. This year we're already at 19 and we haven't determined 2027. Part of that is due to the fact that we added another environmental program manager in FY '26. So that's been very helpful to all of our efforts.

Alright. So as far as the budget enhancements that we had put in, we had only put in one personnel enhancement. That position that Jackie just talked about, that that environmental programs coordinator in the current year was actually funded out of out of, savings from the city manager position being vacant. So it was not independently funded. So our big ask for this next year was that it be independently funded so that we could retain it.

So to essentially stabilize that team. On the non personnel side, there were three things that we had put in just related to city manager's office. One was adding, a smaller tranche of additional money for the leaf blowers that is not was is in the that is not included in the mayor's proposed budget. There's a little bit of money that was asked for by the Annapolis two fifty commission to complete their work related to the celebration five thousand that is in the proposed budget. And then we did the national community survey three years ago and typically you'd see about a three year cycle.

So, I'd put in a request for that. Given the other strategic planning that's going on, for FY '27, we're we're actually gonna push this off a year and, so that also then is not included in the mayor's budget.

So I'm sorry. Yeah. Can you just go back to that slide. Explain this slide again to me as the first time we go through this. These are things that are not in the budget you're saying?

So in the far right column, it's a yes or no question. Was it included in the FY twenty seven budget or not? So two of them were not included. Just so you're aware, this is one of the questions that typically gets asked. Right? What did we ask for? Here's all the stuff we asked for. One of those things is included in the budget, two of them were not.

Thank you.

Yep. No worries. Alright, so looking at overall, budget trends in the city manager's core city manager's office, you're gonna see a lot of variability here. Part of the reason for that has been some some additional personnel. We've had a little bit of in and out of personnel.

We had one position for FY twenty six that we actually moved to central services, you'll recall. And then of course we've got like the additional environmental programs manager and then council for this year added a legislative assistant position. So there's there has been a lot of variability. And you'll you see that in the salary line where there's a lot of up and down, Right? So, obviously for '26 projected, it looks really low because we had a very key vacancy.

Right? But what you see in '27 then is now the result of we've got these additions. They're fully funded in the budget. Right? So that's actually what's what you're what you're seeing. And so the percentage changes look a little bit weird as a result. The year to year changes, It's a little bit more steady than it looks just because we had that very large key vacancy for so much of fiscal year twenty six. Then finally, you'd asked about just other additional information that you might want to know. You want to And talk about these then we're going to turn it over to HarperMidster.

Again, are just the resilience and sustainability part of my work. So they're not reflected in some of those earlier slides so we did work on LED conversion for the whole city and that's through $300,000 in grants. Have something I wanted to do with consultants as the second item for a long time but had taken it out of budgets but we were able to get a detailed fleet inventory which will allow us better planning for the fleet and a much better idea with software of how much money we're spending on each vehicle miles traveled maintenance etc. Again better for budgeting and planning but we're in also for our EV transition. We got that point $2,500 through a relationship with BG and E.

As soon as we buy one EV, that's reversal the 2,500 is reimbursable and this was an inventory worth $30,000 if I had asked for it to be funded by council. Also resilience and sustainability continues to lead the e ferry which is now a hybrid ferry RFP process. Again this is grant funded in 2023 and I'm leading the electric trolley system feasibility study which was a joint city county Danger Foundation funded effort to study the feasibility of a trolley system, bringing back a trolley system to Annapolis. And then the last one

is One of the slides that's in the template but that's not here is about revenue. And the reason is the only revenue that we really bring in is a special events permit, which is typically less than about $3,000 annually. It's not a very, expensive permit. Alright. So I'm going to switch over to Harbor Master.

Take it away guys.

Good morning. Tyler Norfield, Deputy Harbor Master. Is Jacob Knowles, shoresides operations manager and Tim Jacobs, our waterside operations manager.

I just wanna give you guys a quick time check. You got about two minutes.

Oh no, I'm sorry.

I'll go quick. I think the biggest accomplishments for FY '26 this year is the Houseboat Task Force. I think that's our number one besides working through construction with moving our office and working with visitors and boaters and lessees.

Just real quickly performance measures I would say if you look at our benchmarks everything is increasing or steady with the exception of the benchmark that's second from the bottom there which is abandoned boats. We're working very hard to educate and identify those potential boaters and nip it in the bud for lack of a better term. The unknown is the FY '27 proposed when we're looking at the city dock construction and how that'll impact stays and know boaters usage. But we're doing everything in our power to to maintain our availability for the building public.

And we did not have any enhancements in this budget.

Yeah. They didn't ask for.

The operating budget, as you can see, has remained pretty steady. You can see in fiscal year twenty five, salaries and benefits jumped up. It was a conversion from a contractual for two employees, myself and Tim Jacobs. Contractual to civil servant. And then capital outlay in FY '25 and '26 is kayak rack program which is, doing a lot better this year.

We've got

this morning.

And, yes. And then we also, apply for a bunch of grants each year. We have annual pump out grant which is 90 k about derelict and debris is $25,000 to clean up the harbor. And then also occasionally waterway improvement funds which is 250,000. Recently, Saint Mary's configuration and the power pedestals for the new city dock. Next slide. Our revenue stays about the same. We're expecting it to kinda go down a little bit with city dock. About half of our slips are are not usable. So after that, I think it'll increase drastically.

And then our operating costs are fully covered by our revenue. This number is generally higher. But again, city dot construction has kind of reduced that.

I want to acknowledge we hit time but why don't you guys this is your last slide, So why don't you just go through this and we'll call it out. Thank you.

We coordinate with multiple departments and agencies for eight special events each year. So Blue Angels Air Show, July 4. New Year's fireworks, we go pick the barge up down in the West River, bring it up, do all that coordination. This year boat show we installed a temporary dinghy dock. That was a huge issue the past five years at least and it was a drastic improvement.

We implemented a customer survey but also a supervisor log that the supervisors fill out and they'll compile data. That way we can essentially see where we need improvements or yeah essentially that. The kayak rack program last year when we kicked it off for the the first year the pilot we only had two customers this year we're already up to six so it's it's gonna improve it. Increased social media postings and advertisements for that I think has helped. And then we did a whole bunch of community involvement opportunities.

We had touch a truck at the rec center. We did a water safety training at local camps where we'd bring the boat to a kids camp and kinda did a whole bunch of different things with them. And again the customer service survey was added. And then lastly with our new office that we're anticipating it's gonna be a good opportunity to do some community outreach and training in a nice facility located downtown. So thank you.

Thank you, guys. Thanks all you. And, yeah, that's exciting. I'm excited for that. Before we jump into our main questions, auto Roman O'Neil, Autumn Thorpe, anybody on in just pure clarifying questions? Something that got missed? No? Ms. Bucklin, anything you wanna add? Okay. Sweet. Alderman O'Neill, questions go to you.

Great. Thank you so much. My first question is in regards to Ms. Giles, the leaf blower program. And I realized that we have not had, as many people take advantage of the rebate program.

And I'm wondering if we could turn our efforts into actual enforcement better enforcement. I have a lot of residents who are trying to help with enforcement that are really, really frustrated by the fact that in order to report a violation, you're sending it to an email so that by the time the email is read, most likely, the person who is violating the the ban is long gone. So I'm wondering if in the rebate program there could be additional resources or using some of that additional resources for enforcement.

I hear what you're saying, I understand. So the money has already that for FY twenty six has already been allocated to the Chesapeake Bay Trust and we plan to push that program a little harder, especially with the businesses to make sure that they realize it's there. We haven't had any complaints or pushback, about the requirement since we started it, but as you've seen today, you know, people aren't availing themselves of it. So I don't think we can use that money for increased enforcement. We already have funds that we had put aside to hire a temporary enforcement officer.

I was far along in that process along with planning and zoning with our former HR director and then the project dropped. So the timing in between summer and is not a good time to hire somebody but spring we're pretty much in it already so I don't know if we can hire somebody quickly enough but what we thought about doing was hiring an extra inspector for the fall season with those funds we already had and move forward with that. That would be a person who would work after hours and on weekends. Right now planning and zoning did pick up quite a bit with their enforcement. They have allowed all their inspectors to work overtime to do enforcement and they and their employees have taken them up on the offer and have been doing extra enforcement.

So we have six to seven inspectors that as they're out and about doing their duties they can do enforcement but also they can pick up overtime after hours and on the weekends to do it as well. It's true that just like tree cutting, you know the trees are down before we get the complaints sometimes or branches are already coming off. So that's just something we're trying to respond to as soon as possible. Weekends are the biggest problem.

And I will add that planning and zoning had some concerns about supervising a new contractual person, when you were outside of core hours. So this was the that's this is why we landed on offering overtime to existing employees because they had, you know, they had some history. They already knew the the kind of knew the ropes. And so and they have been, like I said, as Jackie said, they've been picking up those those extra, that extra time for targeted enforcement.

Okay. We'll talk more offline. I don't want to take up any other time for additional questions about one specific program. Those are all the questions I had.

Okay. Alderman Thorpe. Yeah, I

would actually like to continue the leaf blower question. I think it's a good one. How is enforcement done in that who is cited and do we can you tell us how many citations have been given since the implementation of the program?

Okay. So the enforcement is done by planning and zoning inspectors. They have to there has to be either a picture or you have to catch someone doing the leaf blowing with diesel or gas powered leaf blower. The operator because that is the way the statute is written. It's it's not illegal to own a leaf blower but if you're operating one that's so we have to find the operator so sometimes it's the person owns the house that's doing it and sometimes it's the company.

One thing we talked about internally was doing targeted letters to companies that we've had complaints about because we haven't seen them doing it, we have no proof of them doing it other than by you know the person who called it in. So we're going to target some of the ones we know we're doing it and tell them there is a fine associated with it which they already know.

So to be clear, there's a lot of talk on social media about houses getting cited for contractor work and that's not the way you're doing it?

It's who is operating it because that's what the statute says. And I checked that also with the office of law and that's also their they concur with that.

I think that the reason that that I think that the reason that that perception is there in the community is because during the initial time before we were actually before we were issuing citations, That is planning and zoning's normal practice is for their other citations to go to the homeowner. And so because of the problem that Alderman O'Neill, talked about of, you know, we got a report but no one's there. That warning had been going to the homeowner. But as as Jackie said, that was a clarification that we had with the office of law and planning and zoning. So everyone understands that should be going to the operator, not to the homeowner.

Okay.

So in those Thank you.

There are any citations then if you want to bring them to our attention, somebody actually got cited that wasn't operating but just owned the property, can deal with that.

Okay.

Okay. And as far as number citations, I don't have that figure today. I have to every time we want to know that we have to call planning and zoning and I've already talked about how the county does it, at least for their plastic bag ban. They have a website you can go to and it shows how many citations have been issued to date, and we don't have that. And I think that's something public facing that we we should do.

Okay. Could you get back to us

on that? Yes, I will on the number of citations.

Okay. The other thing on leaf blowers is it sounds to me like this has become a classic program where we budget a certain amount of money and then there ends up having to be external, extra expenses, I. E. Planning and zoning and inspectors. And as we move forward, and I won't put anybody on the spot now, but as we as we move forward, I think it's really important for the finance committee to focus on the the cost of an entire program. So if we could look at that, going forward, and that'd be a a logical question that I'll be asking.

Yes. I agree with that entirely. We see that with several of our initiatives as plastic bag ban, polystyrene foam ban, other environmental initiatives that the cost of actually implementing it whether we need a contractor or finances to do the work is not considered. We do put it in our staff reports, those kinds of costs.

Yeah, okay. Thank you. So on to the environmental program manager. Can you explain to me how this works? So we hired somebody without the city council authorization to add a person.

No. We that was the position was authorized. Yes. But we used funds that were available due to an vacant position to fund that for the So first

if you look at the personnel complement in the FY '20 six budget, you will see that position authorized. The dollars independent of the city manager position were not in the budget. We obviously at at that time, we already knew that that position was vacant, And so that position, didn't receive its own funding allocation. We knew that there were gonna be savings in the city manager salary. So but the position itself with was authorized in the personnel complement.

Okay. But in this year's budget, it adds one. So is it the same one that we're adding again?

No. That should be steady.

Yeah. It goes from one to two.

Yeah. I I I think there might be an error on the staffing summary.

Oh, It's not the legislative one either because that was authorized as well. Yeah. We just

didn't No. It that might be an might be an error. It was authorized in '26.

Okay. So there's actually because according to the budget, there's an increase in one in the city manager's office. And what you're saying, miss Buckland, is there's no increase in staff?

No. And she's she's working for the city. She's here. That position is filled.

Yeah. It's a regular civil service position.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. That's that's an important point as we move forward, and review the entire budget of any personnel increases that there actually isn't one there. Okay. Thank you.

If I could move to harbor master. Do you is there overtime in the world of the harbor master?

We do not have an overtime budget at all. We've kinda Jacob does a good job at tracking that. We send guys home that are at that is it? Thirty five hours?

Thirty twenty nine.

Twenty nine point yeah. Twenty nine hour mark, we send them home.

I'm sorry, say that again?

At the twenty nine hour mark in the pay period we send them or per week we send them home for part timers.

All right. That is tremendous management and I know that's not easy from my own experiences so thank you very much and that's notable that we do that because that's an expense that could clearly pop up there. The St. Marys Moray we have not spent any money on the St. Marys Moray field, is that correct?

That is correct. We have not touched that grant yet.

Okay. Because it's not authorized. Is that right? Staying on the the harbor master, the classic question that the active city manager mentioned earlier, if we gave you 5% more in your budget, what would you do with it?

We would probably get a community outreach person, do more training for local residents and visitors, that kind of thing. Building safety.

I think especially as we look forward to our new building, one of the big holes that I think our office has, is being able to hold some training, whether that's safe boating classes or kind of being the front person in the lead for a lot of the we had a lot of requests for field trips and a lot of like summer camp visits where we do talk about, you know, boating safety and water safety in general. If I'm maybe dating the old rec center that used to be downtown, I remember there was always safe boating classes down there. There was always first aid classes, CPR classes down there. And it's a really good part of the community that I think we would benefit from as a community.

Okay. The other end of that question, if we took 5% away from your budget, what would you give up?

So I guess this budget we're dealing with, I guess there's gonna an amendment coming up supposedly. Our seasonal salaries got cut massively this year. So as of right now, as it's proposed, I don't see us having enough seasonal money. We went from $199,000 to $68,000. So that's gonna be our major issue for this coming budget.

That was not proposed by the harbor master's office.

Yes, was.

They wouldn't have cut their unseasonal salaries that much.

And I think maybe direct,

I don't want to

talk out of line, but maybe the direct answer your question directly, we would have to cut our availability of hours for

the office.

We wouldn't be able to run seven days a

week. Yeah.

I think a lot of people think that the construction kinda cut our seasonal budget in half due to the construction. But that part time salary money is used for assist harb masters, anything on the water with enforcement efforts, street end violations. Our office still needs to maintain a seven days a week opening from 7AM to 9PM daily. But I think if we did do the 5% reduction on a normal budget year, we would have to cut services, at least hours of operation.

Thank you. I Ms. Gald, did I hear you say you're not going to do the survey in fiscal year twenty seven? You didn't ask for it in the The survey. The national community survey? Yep.

I I said that. Yes.

You're not gonna budget it?

Correct.

And if you did, who would manage it?

It was I was the one that coordinated it last time so I assume I would coordinate it again. There's a strong component of that that, the public information officer played a role in in terms of putting materials together for for advertising and and putting up signs. We still have all of those artifacts, so I that hopefully wouldn't be quite as much effort. But since I have more of a stats background,

I

was the one who coordinated and I'd probably do it again.

Is it fair for me to say, that as you tackle performance metrics and the PIO is maxed out that it's probably a good idea for that not to be in the budget for this year.

I know that there's a lot of work planned for FY twenty seven for community outreach that's more targeted. And so I also view it a little as a little bit duplicative. I'd rather wait a year until we're deeper in, and can really make full use of that information, get past this initial period.

Okay. Thank you. That's all the questions I

have. Great. Thank you. I want to start by talking about this development and event specialist program. Not program, person. So I'm just trying to understand, is this a new position or we're moving it from the mayor's office?

It's They're one.

Okay. It's a position that you already have. Who? Sorry. This is always kind of an odd question. Who are we talking about here?

Yeah. Felicia Nolan.

Oh, okay. I thought she was in the mayor's office. That's that's on

She's me

been in

the city manager's office for a fair while.

Okay. Great. So nothing new there. And we heard the environmental program manager is not vacant. I wanted to talk a little bit about the supplies and other category. And there's some I think that's always kind of a variable category. But it looks like we're seeing a big decrease in the special projects area. I went in, and it's actually for some reason, this isn't all in our budget book, but it's in OpenGov. Thank god. Let's go OpenGov.

And so I just wanted to walk through a couple of those things in particular but more broadly understand so this is my question to you to start. Why are we having such a big decrease in that special projects category from year to year?

So the special projects category, incorporates, you'll see changes over time in both contractual services and in special projects. Some of that is related to items moving in and out of the city manager's office. So, like we had had lobbying, for example, that moved out this year. There are funds that have been traditionally set aside, in there for some of the special work that Jackie and her team have done related to greenhouse gas emission, the climate action plan. Those particular expenses, you know, are are episodic.

And so some of that is is drawing to a close and now planning the the use of that information and planning the next steps. So what the f y twenty eight budget looks like is a different question. But those lines have tended to be episodic, both for that movement in and out reason and because some of those major initiatives on the, environmental side are also somewhat episodic.

Great. Thank you. Well, I have a note here before I jump on to just say congrats to the harbor master's office on having so much more grants than was planned. It looked like your projected was way higher than your, your budgeted for. So good work on that. So drilling down on special projects. There were are two areas I wanted to ask you about that are both kinda cross cutting. And so I apologize. I'm asking you about money that's outside of your budget also. But if I was gonna do that to anybody, it's only fair I'd do it to you guys, or maybe Joel.

But the first is that lobbyist line item that you were just talking about. So in past last year, we had a whole debate about should these be under the city manager? Should they be under the mayor? It seems like they're not under the city manager anymore. What what happened? Are we getting rid of them? Are they I think one joined the mayor's office. Right?

So, yeah, council council moved that money to the mayor's office. So that's where it has resided. So there are a couple of things that that have happened to that. One is that, I didn't feel like we were really getting the full value of the federal lobbyist. It's not that we weren't getting any value at all.

I just didn't think we were getting as much value as we were putting into that. So we discontinued that. Obviously we have the, we've got a couple of other positions that are coming online where some of that work in some sense is getting brought in house. So, the part of the task, and duties of the deputy chief of staff will be a certain amount of liaison work with with various levels of government. Mostly at the state and county, but, you know, knowing that federal delegation is is part of it.

We have a particularly active federal delegation and a strong relationship at this point, which helps. And then of course we've got the legislative analyst. And so some of the kind of core work around, staff reports for the state legislation and stuff like that will be picked up by that person. Now this year, given how busy I was for, I I love her to death for this, Ashley Diaz, who works for Jackie, picked up that work this year which was an absolutely invaluable help. But that was in addition to her other normal normal work.

So when that's that's work that'll go go to that legislative analyst. Assistant. Assistant. I'm sorry. Yeah. The legislative assistant, not analyst. There is still some money in the mayor's office, doesn't sit in the city manager's office anymore, but then there are also these two staff positions that will pick up pieces of that.

That's great. Thank you for explaining that. And it makes sense once you explain it. The so the other one is under city manager's office, we have holiday decorations. And I noticed we've got that's higher this year than last year, which is great because I think the costs on that keep going up. There's three different line items. And feel free to say because, again, this is kind of one where only you can feel free to say, put a pin in this for planning and zoning. But there's three different line items where we're giving money to the downtown Annapolis partnership. And they're for very different things. So general operating, holidays, and then Annapolis and Bloom.

It's like we're increasing some or decreasing some. How were those decisions made as to how we're supporting that organization overall and how we were choosing to increase or decrease support for particular things?

So with respect to Downtown Epplers Park, so I'll encourage you to ask planning and zoning that question as well. But from my perspective, the the those different pots of money, they do have different purposes. Right. The amount that's the $50,000, there's a contract with the downtown Annapolis partnership that is there to implement the Main Street program. That contract actually specifies $50,000 The past couple of years the city has voluntarily upped that amount.

We for this year went with the contractual amount. The department and Adam Straub in particular has been investing a lot of time with that organization, to help to help sort of bring it along, and and make sure that it's really fulfilling its the obligations and expectations under under the main street program. So there's a lot of of county or sorry, city involvement with that organization that I think, sort of makes up for the the dollars in some sense. As far as the other things are concerned, those are contributions the city has made to frankly sort of city beautification. And those amounts are more of a reflection of what have we historically done.

Yeah. I think to ask you a more targeted question, why did we increase the holiday decorations? Why do we decrease the flowers? And would there be any downside to shifting some of that, you know, if we're increasing one by 10,000, decreasing one by five, can we just shift some money from one to the other?

I don't I don't see any particular reason why if there was a desire to do some shifting, I'm not sure why we couldn't do that. I'm not sure I can I'm not sure I would have to get back to you with an answer about why those particular amounts for those particular line items.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I just want to I I care about those beautification things. I wanna make sure that they have the resources they need. Most of my questions were actually about the office of central services. So I'm relatively, short today. Alderman Thorpe, Alderman O'Neill, any last things before I turn it over to Alderman Alsop Johnson, Alderman Conti? Either of you guys?

I'm all set. Thank you.

Okay. Alderman Conti, anything? Alderman Alsop Johnson, you got any questions?

Not at this moment.

Okay. Wow. We might have actually wrapped up our first one early. I'm sorry. I made you guys rush through. You got anything you wanna go back and go to? No? Okay. Then I have a couple lower value questions that I'll take the time to ask you. Miss Kelly, can you tell me more about the composting, performance metric that you were talking about? I see you were sending your facility food scraps. What facility is that? I'm trying to think where we even serve food. Or maybe that was just our metric was that we would have one sending food scraps. I'm just interested in composting generally. Whatever you wanna tell me on compost will be appreciated.

So we have right now, what we do is we have the compost drop off, point in Truxton Park in the parking lot. So that's what I'm focused on here. You know, we have goals to encourage more composting among residents, among businesses, and in city facilities as well. Transportation if you're referring to city facility, transportation at one point was the only city facility that was composting and was part of our contract with Annapolis Compost for pickup. We want to expand that to all city facilities that, would like to participate.

And so as an example, the city leads and shows the way. So we're adding additional we're going with a different company in f y twenty seven. We're adding one bin because the bins are always full. We think we there's more capacity there and

So are my compost bins. I hear you.

That's where we're at with that and that's where the metrics come from. We know what we send to the landfill from the composting company. I mean, excuse me, we know what we're diverting from the landfill from the composting company.

Thanks. You have some? Yes, since we have some time can I go to slide four please? Is there any possibility to put some granularity in FY '27 goals on this page? Specifically, like, what is our tree canopy goal for 2027?

It's 50%. I thought I had that on there. Yeah. There it is. It's 50% by 2050 and for FY '27. That's something, that the the, city forester is working on. I've talked to them like they know what they need to do as far as tree planting to reach that goal by 2050, but they haven't broken it down into what needs to be done each year. So I and that's something that I've talked to the city forester about. We need to you know, even if they're aspirational, we need to set some goals for each year in order to achieve that.

Yeah. It it would be great if at some point because these are tremendous performance metrics. Decrease in the food desert is something we talk about quite often and would love to know what the what the objectives are for '27 to get done.

So to that point, that's something that's been an objective for a few years. We haven't had the manpower to address it. We're resilience and sustainability staff are talking about how we can actually start to engage some partnerships around food deserts. We're really, with the current situation in the economy with the rate of food prices and energy costs, We're really focusing in f y twenty seven on what we can do as a city. Some of these things are beyond our control. We can do some partnerships, some rebates from the city to address both the cost of food and energy. And so we're trying to get ideas for f y twenty seven around that.

Yeah. I mean, that's a great objective. And sometimes it's important for the council to know that we don't have the capacity to do anything in this objective.

So Okay.

That's not necessarily a bad thing much like in the other slides that said we're not going to do this not in the budget. Right. But is it possible to set a date when these five will be filled in?

Yes. We can. We're we're in that planning stage right now. So by the end of by June, I plan to have some goal the goals set up for f y twenty seven.

Okay. Acting city manager, that's probably a since this is our first meeting, there's probably gonna be a lot of these Yep. Do outs. Is that you that tracks these or is that my colleague to my right? Or who who tracks these?

Particular When somebody says we'll get that to you by tomorrow, we'll get that to you by June.

Yeah, I think between the two of us, we'll coordinate.

The way I'd like to see is that at the very least it's an action item within our minutes and then that allows the city manager to go back and see the minutes and see what's needed. But I think it doesn't hurt also for us to very explicitly say, hey, miss Jackson, let's make sure that's written down as an action item.

Yeah. So just keep in mind, I mean, this is something we very much want to address. We think this is forefront in the minds of our residents is food scarcity and food costs and as well as energy costs. But there are two people that are doing most of this work. And you'll hear from other the mayor's office and others say they're overcapacity. I've been overcapacity working those kinds of hours for years, and you can see how much work I generate in by my monthly reports. So Yeah.

And and I just wanna put a fine point on that. I think we've got to the council specifically has to be able to support the staff in what we're gonna do and what we're not gonna do. So my goal is not to give you 12 pounds of potatoes to put in your ten ten pound potato sack. And so I think we need to create an environment of openness and honesty to say, I can do that, but something else needs to give. And so I think it it's tremendous in here to be able to say this is this is, you know, 50 2050.

We need to be at 41% in 2027, and we're not gonna get there because I don't have the capacity to do that. And that puts it on the council to decide what are we going to do moving forward. That's a hypothetical example for anybody listening. I made that up as I was speaking, but it's one that's very graphic, I think.

Thank you. Okay. Two last questions for me. One and this is sort of more of an overarching budget question, but it was prompted by talking about the LED lights. Where do we see the utility cost within sorry, maybe this is really to you. Where do we see the utility cost? And in particular, I know, like, sometimes we'll see within police, right? Because there's a dedicated police station. But for something like the city manager's office where you're within city hall, are we carving out, like your portion of the utilities or can somebody just walk me through exactly where that is?

That's all going to get moved towards central services, but the today of it all is

it all? Okay. Capri Tenner, budget analyst, historically, it has been allocated, between each department. For FY '27, everything has been centralized to central services.

Gotcha. I'm sorry. Capri, before you go, would you mind explaining why we felt like that was the right choice? Again, like, there are some places where it seems like it's hard to split it out, but then others, it seems like we pretty obviously could split it out. So I'm just curious why that decision was made.

Vicky may be, city man I'm sorry. Acting city manager Buckley may better to explain this, but in theory, I believe the central services was that was the intention of central services being created, for central service to handle the things for all citywide like utilities.

And I think the question ends up being what is the value and the point of allocating it? Right? Having it in central services and having it all in one place allows them to manage it building by building which is what we want to see. I think that if we had a situation where you know one particular building's energy use or other things went through the roof, that potentially has a whole bunch of different reasons associated with it, only one of which is there was a fundamental change in the use pattern of the department. More than likely it's related to actual facility issues, age of equipment or other things like that.

I would just speaking for myself, I would rather see us really track it building by building and how are our buildings performing. And if we need to drill down and we think there's been some fundamental change in the use pattern of the occupants, we can do that. But that starts with what's happening with our building.

Got it. Thank you for explaining that to me. Auditor Roman O'Neill, did you come on camera because you had a question?

No. I don't know why, I came on camera again.

That's okay. I just wanted to give you the opportunity. Alright. I got one last question for you guys, and then we'll let you go. So if I'm looking at the salaries and benefits for city manager budget, it's increasing by 25%. We have heard a couple different reasons for that. We were having a new city manager who's gonna get paid more than the old city manager. We are taking care of that weird vacancy savings thing. There's a third one that I'm not oh, just, general performance increases. If we've got 25 chips, can you help me understand how we're allocating that increase across those different buckets?

Like, is it 10 to higher city manager salary and five to performance? Or how does that work out?

I would actually have to to dive into the the relative contributions of each of those elements. As you know, the the merit increases vary, you know, three to 4%. So that's that's that portion sort of right off the top. The other increases, the salary for the environmental programs coordinator, that's a fair chunk of that, right? That's an entire salaries and benefits worth that's being added on the top.

So out of out of that 25¢, probably at least half of it is that. Okay.

That that answers my question. Yeah. Alright. Cool. That's close enough. I I think I was debating if I need a more specific answer, but I think that pretty much explains it to me. Alright. That's all I've got. Sounds like that's all my colleagues got. Going once, going twice. Alright. Thanks guys for sending such a great example. It's been a good one. Appreciate it.

At

this time, we will take a five minute break. So I'm just gonna recess us for five minutes, and then we'll come back at 09:32 so we can get ahead of schedule. Chillen, do I need a motion to recess?

I need a motion to recess right now.

Can I get a motion to recess? So move.

Second.

All those in favor of recessing until 09:32, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Thirty five AM, whatever on whatever date is 04/21. All right. At this time, I'll turn it right over to our director of racking parts.

And, hopefully we can get your slides up and then when she gets started, Ms. Jackson, would you just start the timer? In fifteen minutes. Go ahead.

Good morning. For the record, Rosalyn Johnson, director of recreation and parks. To my right, I have miss Lakisha Simmons, deputy director or chief of recreation. And to her right, your left, Rodney Dillard, chief of parks or deputy of, parks. And then to my right, your left, I have Haley Stern, who's our marketing coordinator. Also the only 30 under 30, professional recognized in the state of Maryland for National Recreation and Parks Association. She's been knocking it out of the park. So a huge honor, huge award, kudos to her. Alright. So f y twenty six accomplishments.

Revenue for f y twenty six was almost 1,900,000. Pip Moyer, brought in, 3 quarters of 1,000,000, 705,000. Facility rentals, 387,000. Programs and activities, $285,000. There are performance measures.

So for national community survey, percentage of respondents selecting good or excellent was 73%. We started doing surveys for our programs and events, and so satisfaction with programming is 87%. Parks and recreation program facility registrants per 100,000 is 190. And then percent of registrants that are city residents are 61%. Percentage of housing units within a fifteen minute walk is a 100%.

National community survey of respondents selecting good or excellent, of course, 70%. Number of staff hours of training per staff for latchkey is thirty, and number hours of training per staff all others 91. And I do wanna say these are new performance measures. Our other performance measures weren't really measurable measures, so, this is our baseline year. Budget enhancements.

So convert two part time maintenance worker one positions into full time, and so that cost was 34,000. That was not accepted. And then qualified child care staff to hire a child care director and child care teacher, 40,000 that was accepted, and that's for an additional location.

Briefly, is that maintenance worker within Pit Moyer or within parks?

The whole the parks. The whole entire city. So two for the whole entire city. Over, the last two years, we've gained a considerable amount of acreage, and then, of course, demands have become more and greater for our small team. We have, 10 full time, staff maintenance workers, so, it's surprising and amazing what they do, with a small number of people.

Permanent expansion of programming 11,000 that was not accepted. An increase of food line items to accommodate the additional, childcare sites, 10,000, and then opening a new latchkey site, 24,000. And then, no dugouts to provide shade and some protection on the baseball field. So I wanted to do a new dugout, and that was 10,000 that was accepted. And then keeping up with the recreation trends and technology through esports, that was 20,000, and so that was, accepted or continued. Increasing programming, 12,000. That should say no, on that one. So that one was not accepted. And then increase in recreation programming budget line item, 28,000. That was accepted.

And then our budget trends. So here's our budget trends, salaries and benefits, contractual services, supplies, another, and then capital outlay. And so we are kind of on course. The salary and benefits is a little bit, higher. Our contractual services went down a bit, and then supplies another went up a little bit.

And capital outlay, that was just moved to, a different category, and our our projects are underway. Then here's our revenue bringing us to the 1.8 that I discussed, briefly earlier. Memberships, facility rentals, program activity and registrations, pool memberships, the snack bar and childcare. And then what do we spend versus what do you get? So we looked at our operating f y twenty five operating total budget and then our revenue.

So the net is about 4.3 of city, taxpayers' dollars, which totals about 2.15% of the city's total budget. So the residents, and the taxpayers get a lot for that 2.15%. So here are the events that have seen record numbers. Our community fund day, our harvest fest, our kids day this spring saw a 157. Girls play initiative, a 157 girls. Adult Easter egg hunt broke an attendance record. Our kids Easter egg hunt, broke an attendance record as well. And that was just extremely, amazing what happened. That was a testament to our team. During the event, we had the main the water main break, which left us with no water.

So we had about a thousand people, probably about seven fifty at that time, a huge baton event, inside a pit. So people were everywhere. Every parking space was filled, and we had to immediately shut down because we had no water. So, that went really well. We were able to finish the event, just escalate the schedule up a little bit earlier. Every child who's showed up got to participate in the event, but that's thanks to our amazing team. 2025, our field saw over fifteen hundred hours of playtime equivalent to sixty two point seventy five days. Kudos to Rodney's team. That's what the fields look like. They shut it down.

We've been getting a lot of complaints about our fields. So Rodney scoured the whole entire country and figured out what we should do in best practices. So that's the before, that's the during, that's, after, and you can see it's a major improvement in our fields. And all of that was done in house. Additional information, Dunn Municipal Pool saw 13,400 participants. Swim lessons were provided to a 133 youth. Thanks to Jennifer, Paulette, and the team. We anticipate more youth learning to swim this summer, with Stanton swims program. Summer camp saw 2,819 campers. Greenscape is getting ready to kick off.

Of course, this weekend is, when green Greenscape is, so they're gonna start picking up tomorrow. So that's a major volunteer program that Marissa and Rodney, do an excellent job, and all of our parks guys do an excellent job with. Back to school in session, 400 people, including students, parents, and faculty were, at our back to school events with when we were at resource tables. And then we hosted the Hispanic Heritage Festival at Pitmoyer, continuing that. In previous years, they had 1,200, but with everything going on in the country, I think 928 attendees is a huge testament to the people who organize it.

Of course, we had our new logo. Stanton Community Center held its first open house with close to 250 attendees. I think alderwoman O'Neil will have some questions about our late nights. I'll save that for her questions that we'll share about that. But his history of Stanton was on display. We work with close close community partners, and so that was a major, event, and the community really appreciated it. And, teen nights still continues to go exceptionally well. We had over 214 teens. We have 80 new members, and we started implementing our ads. So it's a cost saving initiative to work use Facebook and Instagram to do our, to advertise.

We saved a lot of money, which allows us to do other things with that funding to support our programming. And that's kudos to Haley and Kendall and her team. We explained our first adaptable programming, and that was a major piece. So we call our therapeutic rec program, our superhero program. And so that started because I was sitting in the parking lot, and I saw someone, who brought their clients over, and they were playing basketball. And they shot around for a while. It was starting to get cold. And I said, I wonder what they're gonna do when winter starts. So talk to the team. The team was like, oh, we're gonna do an indoor basketball program.

I think we got more out of it than they did. We had everyone participating, cheering everyone on. It was just an awesome, really feel good program, but I think the participants really enjoyed it too. We even had some of our staff do cheerleading in case someone didn't wanna play basketball, but the caregivers, the participants, and the staff had an amazing time. And then, of course, we had Pam Turner retire after thirty six years of dedicated service. So we miss her, and the work that she did. She was kind of our voice of reason. And the, hey. Why are we doing it this way? Maybe we should do that.

So we we truly miss her. We, also celebrated International Women's Day. We again, I talked about our Easter egg hunt. And for women's history month, we had women in wellness, an event that was designed to promote physical and mental health and well-being. And our Easter egg hunt and then our largest kid day in was a 157 participants, and we're on track to have another largest kids day in coming up.

And the parks team has been very busy. Trucks and park tennis and pickleball courts have been power washed. Lights in the courts have undergone relamping maintenance. Griskum 1 And 2 and Collison have been mowed, and they spread 75 tons in new ball diamond mix, that's been laid and raked. So we're trying to figure out ways in which we could have that feels more playable given the super rainy seasons that we have. So we have some things we're testing, but I don't wanna put it out. We like to underpromise and overdeliver. Social media numbers have increased. We have more followers, more people engaged, more people that like us, more people that reshare our posts. And I think that's is that fifteen minutes?

Seems like you might have beat it.

Yeah. Oh, eleven. Wow.

You. Alright. I'll say at some point, I would love as a follow-up if we can get for all those amazing things, can we get some dollar figures buying them? Like, how much like, one of the examples was the adaptive basketball. Like, I don't think anybody here wants to get rid of that, but it would be worthwhile for us to know how much did that cost and so we can be able to balance it against other things here. So for each one of those bullets, could we get a a rough dollar figure for them?

That'll take us some time. We could possibly do it. We don't track by program, so we'll have to go back and, you know, and so sands a budget person. I will ask our budget person who's already, slightly, inundated to assist us as well. Okay. But I can tell you that program was, minimal cost because it was during the day. We didn't have to have additional staff that weren't currently already working. And so we already had the basketballs. We may have purchased new pennies, which was maybe about $200 if that.

It sounds awesome. I don't mean to hate on that one. I just am using it as an example.

Oh, absolutely.

First one that came to my mind. You Do have something to say, mister Palakol? No. Just trying to make sure nobody picked up your cough. It's nice to get it off. Alright. Older Roman O'Neil, you had any questions?

Thank you. I have a a couple. And that was a whirlwind of a a presentation, so thank you. My first one is, of course, in regards to Stanton Center. And I know in the past we've talked about staffing and whatnot, but I would really love to see us putting in staffing, and budgeting for keeping Stanton Center open, most especially on days where school is closed.

That is the number one thing I hear from the community is that when schools are closed, the children often don't have a place to go. And many of them are children who partake in the after school program mostly because their parents are working. What can we do? I'm gonna I'm gonna take Alderman Thorpe's question. What would it take to increase the number of days that Stanton Center could be open, especially those school closed days?

Thank you for your Stanton is open on the days that schools are closed as long as it's not a city holiday. So when it's a city holiday, it's a little bit different. So the only time Stanton is closed on city holidays. So you're talking Christmas, any type of Christmas Eve, New Year's Day, or, Maryland Day. So days such as that, Stanton is closed.

So Stanton doesn't have the same cadre or staffing that PIP does as far as part time. So we don't have an internal group of part time staff that would be able to run the facility absent, any type of presence from management. So that's part of the challenge. Thank you, other woman, for putting $7,000 in our budget so that we could extend the hours. So we've been focusing on programming to get, the community used to us kinda being open, particularly in the winter during, our warming center.

Our facility had closed around six, 06:30 after the after school program because, we had the unsheltered population who was participating in the warming the warm nights. So, we've worked on that. So now, the building does close at 8PM, and their activities until 8PM. For example, we have usually about 20 to 25 youth in the gym, until 8PM, which is unheard of and unusual for us. We've been working on building that up so that, the community starts to know, hey.

We're open. You know, this is things have changed. And so we're anticipating that we'll be open we'll be able to open Friday evenings and Saturday. We've opened one Saturday so far to test it out, but Friday evenings and Saturday will now be opening, starting May. And then I think once we get a permanent, center director in there and once we get another rec recreation leader, we will have, better staffing to be able to do more programs. But, the the piece for us is to be able to pay someone overtime, a part a full time rec leader or center supervisor overtime so that they can open the building on city holidays.

You're good. That was just for the presentation.

Oh, okay. Okay.

That's helpful. Thank you very much. My other question is in regards to, the pool and lifeguards. And can we talk a little bit about that? Is there I know that there's been some groups that have asked for pool use. And is there any plan for us to work with some of those groups, like the master swimmers? And is there any option to work with those groups?

So coming to our So something we'll have to give. We're looking at it. So last year, as you know, we had to do, we operated the Hakka Pool. We didn't anticipate that the person with the pool operator's license would be going out for surgery. So we have one pool operate well, two pool operators, but we had to work between the two pool operators we have, one being Jennifer Rafik and the other being someone on her staff. So, we were inundated with programs, activities, and events. So the master swimmers, I believe we looked at the numbers and they wanna swim, I think, 6AM, and the pool did not open until 7AM because of staffing challenges that we have.

And those staffing challenges are continuing this year?

Well, it depends. On who can And we're still in the hiring process. We're still looking at our number of lifeguards. I know Jennifer was shaking the trees, and she was a little concerned that she wasn't where she normally is this time of the year. I'll ask Jennifer Rafiq to come up if she has anything else she wants to add.

Good morning. Currently

I'm at 28 lifeguards.

I'm sorry can you just identify yourself to start?

Oh, hi I'm Jennifer Rafique.

And what's your position?

My position, the aquatics supervisor.

Thank you.

And fitness manager.

I'm gonna add one more.

And acting stand center director.

Alright. So currently, I'm at twenty eight lifeguards.

Is that for for trucks and park pool or is that For

the trucks and park pool.

How about Harbor House?

I currently do not have any for Harbor House.

Okay. On our staffing list, it says 20, for both. At 28, then we're over the number required.

What staffing list are you referring to? I don't think we have that staffing list.

The one in our budget book.

And maybe miss Buckland, is this disconnect maybe related to what we were talking about, about part time versus full time equivalents? Could that be where we're having this disconnect? You know what I'm getting at here?

Where we were doing FTEs instead of don't take the seasonal part time numbers too seriously as far as the budget is concerned.

It seems like maybe the answer to how can we have 28 positions when we budgeted for 20 is perhaps people are working a third fewer hours per position.

So those are not FTEs. I mean, are 20 FTEs, but Jennifer operates part time staff, you know, some may work four hours a day, some may work six hours a day. So it's just kind of interdependent. We look at the bottom line. Jennifer looks at her numbers and how much she's spending for staffing, not necessarily, the full FTE complement. We might have one person who's taken up a slot, but they're working maybe two hours on Tuesday. So it just, you know, it's it's a it's a shell game for us as far as covering our staff.

If I run with 20 lifeguards, we won't be able to operate seven days a week, fourteen hours a day. So it takes with the rotation, it takes there are seven stations. And depending on how many people are in the facility and what the environment's like at the time with outside camps, inside camps, the patrons, the level of the swimmers, I might have to add in additional stations. So then you have to have a safety team because if something happens and somebody's jumped in the water, then the team has to shift, somebody has to get the AED, the to go bag, etcetera, etcetera. So we can't stay staffed at 20 for the whole season.

So what is your goal number? You say you have currently 20.

My goal number is 32.

Alright. I would like to continue a discussion offline to see if we can work reach out to some local community partners to help get that number up because at at twenty eight, we're not staffing the Harbor House pool?

No. We're not. Jennifer, has traditionally staffed the pool herself by herself, with addition of Sammy. Sammy's there, as well, but she's the only lifeguard.

Okay.

And I'll just throw out as a related action item on that. Let's make sure that our budget book gets updated to be the appropriate number. What What you need, what we're authorizing, not changing the funding, but making sure that if we're giving a pot of funding for however much, that it can support that our book says the number of people that can actually support. So that's my action item.

Well, I think that and that is the FTEs, not the number of bodies. So it might equal 20 FTEs, but some years she will have 32 bodies, some years she'll have 34 bodies, but it's still the FTEs that throws people off.

Yeah. I know we heard on Thursday that some of these numbers are squishy as we're transitioning. Back to you, alderwoman O'Neill. I didn't mean to jump in too much on your questioning.

No. No. No. That's that's okay. I appreciate that. I'm gonna hold off on the rest rest of the questions because I know that Alderman Savage had many of the same questions I had. I'm turning it over to the next questioner.

Alderman Thorpe, that's you.

Thank you. And, and thank you for everything you all do for our city. The the smiles that you bring to faces I'm stealing your line, director. The the smiles that you bring to people's faces and to their minds is tremendously impressive and important. I am new to the council and I said started my brief by telling you that I love you guys a lot.

But the next thing I'm going to tell you is we just have to be more data driven in recs and parks. And I look forward to working with you over the next four years to be able to do that. It is not easy But as I go through the book, the budget and your brief, I'm really falling short of being able to support an answer to taxpayers that says that Truxtun Park pool is worth spending every dollar we're spending other than the emotional reason that it's obvious that it is. And so just to use that as an example, we've got to be able to explain what that 20 number is. I don't think anybody in the finance committee is challenging you whether you need 28 or 32 by your reputation.

If you ask for 40, I think we would work to get 40 if you said you needed 40 to be safe. But we've got to be able to defend the budget. So we want to work with you because if it's 20, we're looking to budget 20. If it's 28 or 32. So just as a start, I very much look forward to working with you and Ms.

Buckland in the years ahead to put some more data to support your effort. And the way I look at it is I like to reverse the leadership pyramid and that we work for you. Our job is to get you the tools that you need to do and in your case, to just bring incredible recreation and park facilities to the city of Annapolis. So, having said that, let me jump into some questions. And I have a lot, but, and I'm gonna if I could go to slide two. Chairman, how much time do you want me to take?

We're here until 10:35. I've got some questions. Alderman Savage has some questions. I'd say certainly don't spend more than fifteen minutes if

that seems reasonable. So sounds good. So let's go to page two of the brief. These are phenomenal numbers. What were the goals for these three numbers and what are the goals for the next budget year?

So we're not, driven by revenue goals per se. We try to increase our memberships, and we try to have people come back and increase their memberships, but we don't necessarily have goals because we are more of a service delivery, not necessarily kinda looking at the dollars and cents as far as cost recovery is concerned. So that's a new type of thinking, for our department if that's the direction that administration wants us to go in.

Yeah. So so I I can go two different directions here on this. I I like that, right, that that we shouldn't be maximizing revenue in Pip Moyer and our rec center in order and then lose quality or whatever. But I think there's got to be a connection between the number of memberships that your goal is or your objective is and the revenue. And then that should also be tied to the number of staff and the number of employees and the usage and all that.

So if it is a change, I want to be really clear that if the revenue goal is $700,000 or $800,000 that doesn't it doesn't put a grade on it. It just puts a a learning tool that we staffed Pip Moyer for this many members, and this is what we got. So it's a longer conversation, and we can take it offline. But I'm I'm definitely looking for as we move forward, there's gotta be budget numbers in this budget that says these are the revenues we're looking for.

Well, we like to deal with things that are in our direct control. So we don't have a salesperson to sell memberships or kind of follow-up with memberships. We, will accept people's memberships. We'll set them up and all those other things, but we're not necessarily pay for play. That's more of a YMCA. Traditionally, your recreation and parks departments haven't been pay for play. We can certainly look at it, but we don't have anyone who's out selling our facility rentals. We don't have anyone who's necessarily selling our programs. We do advertise and market our programs, but we don't have a direct relation. We do determine whether or not programs can run based on the attendance.

For example, for our after school program, we need 10 people for it to even be feasible. Part of the challenge is is that the revenue that we bring in goes to the general fund. So the more for example, if we want say we wanna have 10 more summer camps, well, that's gonna decrease our our staffing for the rest of the programs that we offer. So it's a little bit difficult for us to do the pay for play model when the more we spend, the less we have to work with in the future. So, we're kind of penalized, if you will, budget wise. If we have more programs, then we have less more less money to last us through the rest of the year.

I wanna take a a moment on that and just say, I I really hear you on that. And it's something I've heard from other departments. I think it's something we should maybe we're we're not gonna solve it in this budget. But I I wanna add that as something that the finance committee looks at in the the time in between because there's a real feeling of we do more, we generate more revenue, and it's not necessarily coming back to our department. And and I'm sure that's hard. So I I just want you to know. I really hear you on that, and I wanna think about it in more date detail.

But Thank you. And and we don't necessarily want it to come back to our department for us to keep. We want to come back to the department so that we have more money to work with for other programs, so it kinda lasts longer, so to speak. I So just wanna clarify that. And I didn't think you were saying that, but just for people who might not understand where we're coming from. We're not trying to be greedy. We're just trying to be able to have the funding to work with to do other programs and continue programs.

Yeah. But to put a finer point on it as we move forward, whether this question is for you or for the finance director, there's got to be a planning figure for how much we bring in in revenue for memberships in 2027. I mean, otherwise the budget, the confidence in the budget is can't be very high. So again, that's not to evaluate to your point, you know, you don't have a 100% control over it but there's got to be a planning figure.

Yeah, there is a plan figure. It's just that because of the whole nature of not allocating revenues down to specific departments, you'd find the revenue number in that non allocated figure.

And I think that's working with Ms. Buckland and the director and we'll get to that. Okay, I've made that point. I don't want to drill down into that. If we go to page eight.

Can you tell us about our child care programs?

Sure. What would you like to know?

In general?

Yeah. So our child care programs, we have one site that before care and the rest of our sites that are after care. We need a minimum of 10 children in order to run 10 children in order to run the program. It is licensed. We work with the schools. So the schools will say, hey. You have this council chamber to do your pro your after school program in. We say, okay. Well, thank you for this space. We'll call in licensing, which is a state department, and they'll say, oh, it's this many square feet. You could have 10 kids or, well, 15 kids or you could have 25 or you could have 45. They determine the space. We say, okay. Great. Thank you. Then we say, okay. Let's advertise it. So we advertise at the school through the PTA, see how many people sign up. And if they sign up and let's say we get all 15 people this year, we say, wonderful. We go through the year.

We have the program. So when we sign up for next year, which is about this time, we say, okay. You 15 people who participated this year have first right of refusal to participate next year. And they'll say, okay. Well, one of my children are graduating from this elementary school, so there's one space that opens up. So we give them the first week or so to register. And then after that week is gone, then we open it up to everyone else at the school, and they'll say, okay. Great. Well, we only have one slot because licensing only allows us a certain number of children. It's beyond our control.

The schools give us the space, and they have many competing programs that are happening too, so that's somewhat beyond their control. And then we open it up and people, you know, get false hope. So we have, you know, let's say we have a family. They're first in line when we start the registration at ten or six, depending when. 10AM or 6AM. And then if they have two children, then there's one child who's in and one child who's on the waiting list, But nobody's leaving the program, so they're like, oh, I'm number one on the waiting list. I'm definitely getting in. Well, probably not. And so we hate to give that false hope, but that's a situation where we're that we're in. And we have no control over any of those pieces.

Poor Lakisha takes all the, frantic calls from parents, who don't understand, who, just beg her, you know, can you please find more space? But we'll lose our licensing if we do. Lakisha, do you have anything you wanna add about the after school program?

Nope. That that covered just about it unless you have any other questions.

So how many children did we support with, or would we support with the $40,000?

So it depends on the location. We have to have a child care director and we have to have a teacher at each site. So if it's a site that has 15, then it would be 15. All of our sites are full except for,

Annapolis Elementary and Millsboro.

Then how many are we supporting now?

About 130 children.

Okay. So I'm channeling Alderman Chandelmeier a little bit here whose focus is on childcare. Back to my example of what the council can do for you, do you have capacity if you had more resources to increase the 130?

So the challenge we have with the after school program is finding qualified people who are willing to work because the hours are horrible. Meaning they're like, if you have a traditional part time job, you get off at five. Well, our program starts at two. So you're two to six. So you need someone who either works third shift or second shift because at two to six time frame, two to 06:30, actually, is the time where we need someone.

So you're looking at, like, a niche market almost. You're looking at maybe a parent who was a homemaker and her children just gone back to school and she's looking for something to do part time or someone who's in between jobs or someone, you know, has some other, part time jobs and they cobble together a whole job. So the challenge is really finding, qualified staff who are willing to work these hours. Beforecare makes it even more difficult because you're looking to hire the same teacher who's willing to work an hour and a half in the morning and then some hours in the afternoon. So that that's the challenge the initial challenge.

Then the file the next challenge would be space because we rely on the schools to give us space. So if the schools had space, that's another resource challenge. And then the funding to go along with it, you know, to support the meals and the other things that we do. So there there are three major challenge when you're looking challenges when you're looking at child care. And then if we look at licensing, they are not easy at all to deal with. Lakisha will tell you. Lakisha takes a beating, but she's like a Timex. She keeps on ticking. Because the licensing, we have to send things to them multiple times. They will lose things.

And then we know they're busy and they have sites all over the state that they're looking at, but it's something to stay on top of. So, this year, we've done a pilot where, Eastport did not have any space and Germantown, did not have Georgetown East. Sorry. I get it mixed up every time. Georgetown East did not have space. So schools are willing to bus them to us at PIP, except for, except Georgetown for, East. They were not, willing well, transportation wasn't provided there. So we had one parent who got her own children there. And so we had a non licensed program because as recreation and parks, we can have non licensed programming. And that seems to have gone really well.

We have an average daily attendance though of about nine. Eight. Eight. Sorry. Okay.

If I may, Lakisha, can you talk about the, so the the number of students that are allowed is set by licensure. Can you talk about that?

So They come in and they measure the usable space. We have no control of that. They have the matrix that they use and they tell us that this space can only accommodate this amount of children. That is something that's a standard that they have throughout the state. And so we can't even though we may look at a space and say it clearly could accommodate 50 kids, if they come in and they measure that usable space, they say this is the only amount of children, the only number of children that you can have in this space. And that's again a matrix that they use throughout the state that we have no control over.

Okay. Thank you. So I'd like to shift and follow-up with on older woman O'Neil's points about pools. What are the hours again for the pool at Truxtun Park?

Seven a. M. To seven p. M. Seven days a week.

Okay. Are those the hours that you recommend or are those the hours you're limited to?

The hours I recommend.

Okay and I'm looking at whoever you all want to, you know, whatever you want to. So you're comfortable with that?

Yes.

Okay. And the the number of people that used the pool at Truxtun Park was 13,400 in 2025. Is there a is there a goal or objective for 2026 or 2027? Are you looking to increase that or was that high high?

Well, well, go ahead.

I'm always looking for an increase.

I'm sorry?

Always looking for an increase.

But there are several factors too. For heat advisory days, open up and it's free of charge for everyone. So we do two hour shifts. So it, you know, the heat advisory days would increase our attendance. So some of it is, you know, inside of our control, some of it's outside of our control. Some are camps come to us. We don't the pools are an area that, my professional opinion would not be to try to increase increase increase because then that's the number one, that's the largest liability any jurisdiction has is the operations of the pool. So the more we try to pack in people or have people come in, the more challenges we have. So we don't try to, for example, get more summer camps in. Some summer camps are better than others.

Some come with many staff. Some come with very few staff. And some of the staff, when they come to the pool, they think, oh, it's the lifeguards responsibility. Well, these lifeguards, it's, you know, two of them, three of them depending on the pool or how many, we have. But they don't know these children, and they tell them, hey. Do this. Do that. So it it becomes a challenge. So, packing in a pool is not something, that I would feel comfortable with. I know it's not something Jennifer would feel comfortable with. We utilize her pool operator's license, and so, I always defer to Jennifer on what she feels comfortable with.

Yeah. To to be clear, I'm not looking we're not looking to pack in a pool. I just don't know.

No. We're yeah.

So let

me shift to

the pool at Harbor House. Did I hear us say, so well, actually, let me ask questions. When are you what are you planning to do at Harbor House pool in 2026?

So we put in the budget to, increase the budget as we traditionally have the last two years, to run Harbor House pool. So that's what we would like to do, and traditionally that's been Monday through Friday that the pool has operated, and that's been with Jennifer going down to operate the pool. We are we believe that they will have a pool operator Monday through Thursday because the pool operator is off on Fridays. Is he still off on Fridays? Yes.

Okay. So we're not sure yet. We're still in conversations with them. We usually wait until after our budget is approved to try to kinda move forward with the plans depending on whether or not council supports, that. But Jennifer actively tries to hire lifeguards, but there's a lifeguard shortage all around the country.

So she even partners with Annapolis Pediatrics, to shake down their children that they have who are of age, who, she can do she can teach to swim. She even has a learn to swim I'm sorry, a lifeguard class Memorial Day weekend, I believe, and the weekend before because children are coming back from college. And, you know, so she Jennifer and her team try to create, a scenario where they've removed all the barriers so that we could have lifeguards at our pools.

So I I'm pretty confident that the sentiment of the city council is that we would like Harbor House Pool to be open seven days a week, Maybe not twelve hours because construction park has other capabilities, but I would like to add to the due outs to come back to us in what it would take, what are the ideal hours for the Harbor House Pool to be open and what it would take, what it would cost to do that. And I would ask to include not only to get it done but I would open our aperture and ask you to include hiring a pool management company so that we don't ask our superstar here to be in Truxtun Park, Stanton Center, and Harbor House all at the same time. If we could clone you, any of you, I would do it. I'm just incapable of doing that. And so I would ask to come back to us.

It is I have not met I've not talked to a city council member who doesn't want Harbor House Pool open seven days a week effectively and and become a real community pool.

I will share one. That's a paradigm shift because Harbor House pool has traditionally not been open on the weekends even when HACA operates it, operated it. So that's new. And with pool operating companies, we have seen failures, where they say they can do something, and then they have the same I mean, they're who are they pulling from? This summer is gonna be even more of a challenge with the whole, immigrant scenario.

A lot of times they will hire people from out of the country, which proves a whole another cultural, competency issue, when working at the hack a pool, because there there's a vast difference in, I won't say values or morals, but in the way, that people from different countries sometimes operate. And it's a way that our our community is not used to. So that will prove another challenge, and then we've seen where they abandon contracts mid year through or charge exorbitant rates and costs and fees. So that I do wanna share those challenges going in. I don't wanna say that it's gonna be easy because it's not.

Because either they're gonna pay $2 more than we pay and they'll steal our lifeguards. And then instead of us paying $2 more, we're gonna end up paying $10 more because we're paying that convenience fee with that type of contract. Jennifer can tell you other stories of other HOAs that have them run. So it's it's a challenge.

I'm I'm just asking to include all options in your seven days a week plan. And if I could just ask one more question on Stanton Center.

Hold on. Before before you go to Stanton Center, I think Alderman Conte had a question about the pool.

Hi. So to piggyback on what you said about the pool not being open, the pool definitely was open on Saturdays for a long time. I think, like, 2021 was, like, the first set of when they haven't been opening on the weekends. I know that you were saying that y'all have 28 people who are operating a pool. So if we're having to take away from Harbor House being limited on getting pool access, why can't we take from PIP and some of them go there and then PIP more your hours get limited?

Are you talking about trucks and pool? Yes. We've tried that. There's a perception that HACA is not a safe place. And so when Jennifer's tried to transfer her children I mean, I'm sorry, her lifeguards to HACA. They have refused, parents have refused, and they've threatened to quit if you just want the truth. So, you know, that's a challenge for us, and I hear you because you don't get to determine where you're gonna work, but that's the truth of it and that's what we're met with. Jennifer, did you want to weigh in?

So basically, so like at Pitmore year, I know, like, the pool is good, but when you have the days like your free days and stuff like that, so you have majority of, like, your white population of people at that pool. And on those free days, you have a lot of your predominantly black people there, and they don't always get treated good either. And I've witnessed that myself. So if we were able to kinda, like, leave our Harbor House kids there and be able to let them get access to the pool, then I think that's the best option versus having them mixed and them get treated bad too.

Okay. Well, I think we've talked about, the treatment and I've shared, please reach out directly so that we can address, any concerns right then and there. We have the cameras. We can look at it and we could be sure that we, you know, handle any type of conflicts or anyone being treated differently. I can say knowing Jennifer that that's certainly not on purpose. That's nothing that happened directly. So, you know, we'd love the opportunity to address it when and where it happens.

I think that's that's appropriate, and I just wanna bring us back to the budget conversation that there's going to be a proposal that you guys will bring us of what would it take to have the Harbor House Pool open. That's the request from Alderman Thorpe. So I'm gonna give you a couple minutes for Sand Center, but we we've got other questions.

One question I have for two questions I have for Stan. One is

Just had a couple minutes.

So but I'll be quick. And and I think these are these these may be questions you take with you and come back to us or what. But as you and I have talked about, I'm very focused on Stanton Center being many of us on the city council are very focused on increasing use of Stanton Center, and I want to applaud what you've done at Stanton Center. Again, I'm not sure how you're in three places at one time, but you're capable of doing that. But I'm struck that the budget for Stanton Center, the projected budget for '26 is 780,000 and the budget number is 605,000.

That's more than a 20% decrease in the cost of a facility that I believe should be increased. I would applaud the opposite direction. I'm struck that just from awe don't even know how many people use Stanton Center, as you and I have talked about, that I'd like to start counting how many people use Stanton Center like we do at PIP knowing it's never going to be a 100% accurate number, right? I'd like to increase the use of Stanton Center. And so I think for purposes of time, perhaps a do out is what with this decrease of plus more than 20% of the budget for Stanton, what is changing at Stanton?

And then what would it take to make Stanton the equivalent of Pitmoyer, realizing it's smaller, but to bring it up to scale so that when when you you walk into Pip Moyer, it's nirvana. When I walk into Stanton, it's sometimes empty. And so so if if I could ask you to get back to us on on that, I would appreciate it.

We'd be happy to. And let me share that we're taking baby steps. So right now we have the, there was never a computer at the front desk, so we have a computer at the front desk. We, now have a scanner a scanner and we have staff who have been trained to be able to register people so that we will have the same scenario that we have at PIP. So we're working through that and it's a culture shift with the community too because it's like what do you mean I have to, you know, scan when I come in? It's like, it's free. You know, we won't charge you, but you just have to scan when you come in and then scan when you go out. That way we will be able to quantify how many people come in per day.

Great. Thank you. And then, what is the status of the glass floor? And specifically, how much money has been put has been spent on the glass floor and what is the plan? What is your current plan for the glass floor?

Nothing has been spent on the glass floor. So, the current plan is that unless we try to internally raise the funding for it, we won't do a glass floor.

Okay. Thank you. That concludes my questions.

Thank you. My start of my questions actually probably go to miss Buckland or, miss Turner. Handful of ones. Why is it that with parks and rec it seems like we don't have an overall budget in open gov? It's a bunch of different individual ones whereas other departments I think we can see the whole thing. Is that just me? Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong and it's in there, Capri.

No, it's not in there. I don't know why since I've been here it hasn't been, but it's something that we can add.

Okay. Yeah, if you don't mind. Thank you. And then for the converse of that, and I think we are hearing about this a little bit, but it's a breakdown for revenue. It would be great to see where the revenue is coming from for each one of these programs. We saw it a little bit on here, but yeah, Ms. Buckland, you want to

answer Yeah, I just sent the you actually can see all of that inside OpenGov. I just sent the link. I sent it to you, Roz, as well so you can see it. Of where that is in the budget. Actually we sent it to you too as well. The individual line items.

Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. That one I'm sure is in there somewhere and I just haven't found it yet. Third one I've got that's for you folks is the building materials for dugouts, which awesome. I I bet the mayor is very excited about that. But, why is that not capital outlay? Why is it I think it's under supplies and other?

It's $10,000. It's not a huge cost. We could use, one time funding for that. I don't think it's the I think the budget people thought it's not in the best interest of the citizen of the budget to pay for it over twenty years. We normally will partner with Public Works. When they have some extra concrete, we'll have them, you know, kinda put it down and then we'll do the fencing. So, that has been a great partnership that Rodney has worked out.

Oh, but anything to add, miss Turner?

She is correct. Anything that's one time funding, you're gonna find in special projects. That's why historically, you'll see the train go up and down because it's one time funded.

Gotcha. Great. Okay. Back to you guys. So I get a couple let's call this, like, lightning round where I'm just asking you why something's going up or down within a couple of these different categories. So contractual services to Pit Moyer going down by like 75%. Why is that?

Question that we do not

You could say pass.

Okay, pass. Okay, pass.

So we'll add those to the do out list. Yeah. Do you mean those specifically?

Oh, yeah. You're gonna see that throughout all of the departments because of the centralization.

Okay. It's

moving software to IT, telephones, Gmail, postage, and utilities.

But then in this case, oh oh, utilities might be the answer.

Yes. Utilities.

Yeah. Okay. Because I was gonna say you don't see it certainly not to the same extent among the other

Yes. Parts

It's gonna be heat

and electric, repair and maintenance budget, buildings and structures for majority telephone. That's the all in contractual services.

Got it. I think we we touched on this already, but if you can give me, like, a one sentence answer here, can easily explain to somebody else why the big jump from FY '25 to '26, then '26 to '27 under latchkey. Salaries and benefits, I mean, for latchkey.

The big jump in salaries for latchkey?

Yeah, we're going from over two years $3.74 to 07/22. We're about doubling it in two years.

Before they had positions, three of those positions sorry, last year one of them converted. Once they get to five years, we have to convert them to civil service. One converted last year. This year, three are converting because they reached that five year mark.

That's a that's maybe a bigger question is how do we address some of those added costs? Because forward, we're essentially like we're doubling the costs here. What I'm hearing is we have the exact same people working doing the exact same thing. But we've now we're now paying twice as much. I don't know. Miss Buckland, is there, like, some solution on that? That sounds I put it like that, that's a real bummer.

Well, if I could share, we haven't had that conversation about the three converting. There are two that we've agreed to convert because they're converting to full time, which means, they have to have work during the whole year, not just that period of time. So the three converting, we do have an option to go to part time, and I think that, maybe our option that we would choose to go to part time. And the two converting will help us because then we have permanent summer help as well. And if we go to part time, then these staff could still do, the hours that they currently do. Okay. Believe it or not, we have some people who don't wanna be full time.

Sure. No. I do believe it. I it yeah, it just seems like not not a a you fault, but a problem of we're getting the exact same thing and it's costing us twice as much money.

The the delta between an employment agreement and full time is not twice. Right? It's not twice the cost.

But our cost is doubling. For two years.

Yeah. So so the the movement of of the type of employment, and then we we have added we've we've added some sites, right?

We will be adding some sites hopefully.

Okay, so that's also part of it.

And let me share. Are there any questions for Rodney Dillard, our chief of parks? He has a funeral he has to get to.

Oh, I'm so sorry, Rodney. Yeah. I would've started because you're actually, like I I got a lot of great thoughts on your work. First of all, thank you for all you do. Thanks for how hard you guys work over in parks. I wanna get you guys set money for additional maintenance people. And so my question to you is, do you have a recommendation for how we could do it?

So we did me and Capri, we did talk about it. What we do have is three part time staff. And what we was gonna do

is

use the money that we paying the part time staff to add to that. So that's why we came up with 34,000. So and the 34,000, I think, is the benefits from from that. Am I correct, Kupri? And so it's just the benefits that those new guys gonna get.

Believe it or not, it's a it's it's a investment. It's a good investment for the city to turn those guys over because we have we have bad turnover with part time staff, and then not to mention we lose them sometime at the November all the way up into March. And so when we when we faced with the storms that we was faced with this year, we wouldn't have had the part time staff if we didn't we didn't hire one of the part time staff to let the two roll over through the wintertime. And we had to use that strategy just to have more more boots on the ground. And luckily, we did that because it was beneficial because this storm was a different storm, and, you know, the city was faced with a lot of challenges during that time.

And with those boots on the ground, it proved us right that we do need two full time staffs. $34,000. Yeah. And you have it's a it's a great investment for the city, and I think that I think that's something that we should say, okay. Let's let's get this done.

So I oh, you'd look

like It's difficult to let someone, go for four months and then have them come back. So you're losing all the training and the investment that you've made in them and then hope that they, you know, find something due for four months and then come back.

Yeah. Before Christmas. And and usually, we wind up, sometimes we wind up with some dedicated people, but usually, once we make that that layoff in November, we have to rehire all over again. And rehiring all over again, what it does, it it sets us back in the spring months to be able to do everything that we need to do during the spring. We might we might get some some new people in probably like in May or June, but, you know, that that puts a lot of strain on the full time people.

Yeah. So if I walk down the street and ask one of my constituents, they would totally tell me we should put more money into keeping the parks maintained. And the the converse that I hear from folks a lot is, why do you have so many people monitoring the front desk at Pit Moyer? And so my first thought off the top of my head is, director Johnson, could we say we're gonna have one fewer person monitoring the front desk at Pit Moyer and use that to pay for this additional, park staffing?

So it doesn't work like that because it's part time staff funding that pulling from. But I will say that we don't have too many people at the front desk because when people come in, they don't like to wait a long time. So if we have two people and two people are signing up, then the line gets long. They have to make sure that everyone signs in, which is why we have that kind of quick pass desk over to the to the left when you come in, and that's where you just scan and go, scan and go. But a lot of times, hear a beep, and that means you have to go over here, and you have to register.

So we have summer camp registrations. We have people who wanna rent the facility. We have all those things going on. So when someone comes in, all three people might not be dealing with someone, but there are times when we have lines out the door of five people, six people. So I would say that we are not overstaffed at the front desk. Oh, and the calls because they have calls and people will call the front desk like a switchboard and say, hey, can you do this? Or they'll say, hey, my water is not running or, you know, whatever and my our team will have to forward them wherever in the city.

But we are running out of time. I think we're gonna have some questions. We'll send you guys for follow-up. The bottom line to me on that is let's come up with if we need additional parks maintenance staff, and I really do think we do, where else could we, look to to get that funding from? Maybe it's from somewhere else in the budget, but you guys are wrecking parks, so I'm asking you where within wrecking parks, could we have that. Last question I've got for you, and I apologize to all of my colleagues who haven't gotten asked any, is the security guard. We have $28,000 for security guards. Now I have a bit of a bug BMI bot. I'm sorry. Mister Dillard, thank you very much.

Thank you. Sorry about your Yeah. You a good day. Your loss. Security guard, I got kind of a bee in my bonnet about this in terms of how we've done it in city hall. I think it's made us a lot less welcoming. But could you describe to me why you feel like that funding is important, where it goes, why we need it?

The security guard is at one location, and that's at the Truxtun Park Pool during their peak times and their, high times, and the security guard is definitely needed. One, they have they're outdoors and they carry a lot of well, they're outdoors and so it's good for them to have a security guard there. But there are also a lot of patrons and participants. The other part I could tell you about offline because it's probably not good for me to say that out loud. So

Okay. Yeah. That'd be great. I'm just, like I said, I think too often we we worry about, oh my god. There's something horrible going to happen. Let's spend a bunch of money on a security guard and nothing horrible is actually going to happen. And all that happens is the people who walk in, the first thing they see is a guy with a gun, and that's not very welcoming. Hard. Yeah. Sorry. I'm playing at this. I'm talking about city city hall. But yes.

And they're there, and you don't see them. You have to go through the gates and, you know, to the left I'm sorry, to the right. But, they're not the first thing you see at all.

Thank you. Alright. We're out of time. We I'm gonna work with miss Jackson to put together a spreadsheet of remaining questions. We heard some follow ups. I appreciate you guys very much being here. And, on the you know, I asked you kind of a big follow-up on the presentation. If you'd like to come back and, you know, talk about that for that follow-up, totally go with us. Just we can when we send it out to you, just let mister Jackson know whether you wanna come back and talk or you just wanna send it to us written. Any last things for the good of the order? No? Alright. Thanks, guys, so much for being here. Hey, we do have additional business? We do. Right? We have an f t. Hey, Carmel?

S a f t and then the fee schedule, the the city supported.

Yes. Let's put

a pin

in that. Auto Roman O'Neill. We've got a couple supplemental appropriations that the city had asked. I know you have a hard deadline. Are you okay with me and alderman Thorpe handling them, or do you wanna stick around? Or we can push it to another day.

Would it be possible to push it to tomorrow?

Sure. That's fine with me. Miss Buckland, is it you you made a face. Is it fine to push it to tomorrow? You don't even know what we're talking about? That's fine. We're gonna push him in tomorrow.

Yeah. That was mine.

Alright. With that, can we get a motion to adjourn?

Okay. Thank you so much. Motion to adjourn.

All those in favor please say aye.

You.