Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone and welcome to this budget workshop of the Middletown Township Board of Supervisors. Uh we'll start the meeting as we start every meeting with the pledge of allegiance. So please stand and join us. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, Miss Corpo, would you please call roll? Mr. Kizak, here. Miss Hannah here. Miss Kaine here.

Um, also in attendance tonight is township manager Eden Ratliff, Township uh I'm sorry, assistant township manager Nick Bala, and various department heads. Uh, thank you, Miss Corpal. Our first agenda item is public comment. Um, this is public comment on non-aggenda items. Is there anyone here for public comment? All right, seeing none, we will move right into our third agenda item, which is uh another review of the 2026 budget process. Mr. Ratliff, thank you very

Thank you very much, Mr. Kisak, and to the board, and welcome to the second capital budget planning meeting, uh, budget workshop of the board of supervisors. Much of this information is going to be a review. If you attended or if you viewed our meeting from uh I believe it was August when we met and we talked about capital. Uh this is a series of workshops that we've been having led by our dedicated budget team who was listed here um as well as the board of supervisors. Last week we talked about operations. The week before that we talked about revenue. We did capital in August. So this is the last plan public meeting um regarding the budget uh until we present a proposed budget. So all of these things are here for discussion purposes. Um there an opportunity for the board to provide feedback for the community to ask questions and provide their perspective uh as to what the 2026 budget may look like as the board goes through that development process to state their priorities for the the next fiscal year. Uh so again this is a review lots of information to discuss and we look forward to the board's feedback. Feel free to interrupt us at any time. Uh so the format tonight uh we're going to talk about the current budget just briefly understanding capital going through capital projects. We'll talk about sources of funding which will also be review uh as well as what all of that kind of rolls up to uh in terms of a pro a projection for 2026 to inform sort of the feedback process with the board and then there'll be an opportunity for the public to provide us some input as well. So a number that those of you who have been with us through this process uh may be sick of seeing is the current 2025 budgeted deficit. Uh the reason that we're showing this number is to just put in perspective what the current financial situation looks like. Um, this number is able to be funded by our fund balance, which is a a good thing for us, a sign of our financial health. Uh, but it is something to consider as we kind of look at opportunities to to develop the 2026 budget. I also want you to keep these big numbers in mind. Uh, because at the end of this, we start doing if this then that type of analyses where we start adding and subtracting different numbers to uh to themselves to see sort of what it rolls up into um into the 26

budget through for the decision-m process. You don't have to memorize it. you can ask questions and we can sort of dive right in. Uh the anticipated 2026 deficit at the existing level of service. So we talked a lot about this uh last week for those of you that were here. Uh if the board of supervisors says keep the existing level of service exactly what it is going into 2026, what would that new uh operating deficit be? It would be 3.7 million. That's because our operational costs go up by about a million dollars every year. Uh so that's what that looks like. And again, these numbers are important because we are going to roll it into capital to see what that larger picture looks like. Uh, average real estate tax in the township is about $560. We know the real estate tax is much more when you consider the other uh taxing jurisdictions. Um, we got feedback from one of our residents uh this week, which we really appreciate. We love community feedback uh especially about the budget process. They said, "Hey, you're showing the real estate tax, but you're not showing the earned income tax." We read that email. We said, "You're exactly right." So, we did some math to try to figure out what the average earned income tax is in Middletown Township. It's about $600. The challenge here, super hard to estimate, right? Not everyone pays EIT. Obviously, there's income disparity uh throughout the township. Uh so 600 is based on the 18,000 uh persons in the township that pay an EIT and that also live here. It doesn't factor into the little bit that we get from non-resident EIT. It also doesn't consider uh those of our residents who may work in another community and pay additional EIT to them, which is several million dollars that our residents are paying to other uh taxing jurisdictions. So, it's a challenging number to nail down. It assumes that everyone's making about $100,000 um in the township, but that is what the average looks like. So, that totals to be about 1160. Any questions so far from the board? Okay. So, uh again a review understanding capital assets. So when we talk about capital, we talk about it in two different ways. Uh one is capital improvements, which is new stuff, sort of doing new things. If we're going to build a new park or we're going to add a facility, that would be an improvement.

Um something that doesn't currently exist. Um the definition we work with internally is adding a new asset or upgrading existing ones to increase functionality or adapt them for new uses. Um, so if we were to build a new building, if we were to add, you know, a signalized intersection, upgrade it from maybe yield signs or stop signs to traffic signals, that's all capital improvements. Uh, capital maintenance is maintaining the things that we have now. Nothing lasts forever. Things experience wear and tear. Uh, they have useful lives. Uh, these things need to be replaced. So, when we talk about maintenance, it gets really tricky because sometimes we're talking about millions of dollars, right? right? If we're maintaining buildings, if we're maintaining roads, if we're doing concrete projects, if we're replacing vehicles, uh you know, these things can be super uh expensive um and have a significant impact on uh a municipal operating budget. When you get into smaller communities a little bit different than um Middletown, sometimes the maintenance of assets that they acquire, either through grant funding or different programs or sometimes donations, has a much larger impact on the budget than what they sometimes realize. And I think that you'll see some of that tonight. A lot of our capital budget is really not proposing to add really great things and exciting things to the township u but it's really maintaining the existing assets that we have. Uh this is an area of the budget that I think people really um dive into quickly. If you commute throughout the township and you hit the same pothole every day, it's the capital budget that deals with that. Okay. So we have a menty question. For those of you who are staples in our uh budget process, you're very familiar with my Mr. Do you want to guide us through this first menty question?

Yes, absolutely. So, for anybody in the audience and anybody who might be uh watching this live uh from home, if you go to the very top of the uh display there, you'll see menty.com menti.com. Uh and you'll be prompted to put in that 8digit code, which is 54696293. And again, that is 54696293. This is a tool for us to interact with you all in real time to get a sense of how the room or anybody participating in this meeting uh feels about some of the stuff that we're talking about. Uh so this is the first of a handful of questions we have for tonight. Uh just simply to kind of put a finger on the pulse. Uh this is not determinant or decision-m in any way. This is simply just to get a sense of how folks feel. So the first question we have here is are you satisfied with the current level of capital maintenance? So capital maintenance as Mr. Ratliff described is the existing maintenance of the stuff that we already have the existing roads the existing facilities um and different categories we have here up on the screen. So this is simply on a scale of 1 to 10 how do you feel like we are currently doing taking care of um our capital infrastructure. This is the only question we have at this point in the presentation. There will be two other points tonight where we will prompt you. So keep those phones handy. So, just to recap for anybody who may not be seeing in the room, uh, looks like from the very top, storm water maintenance is at about a 4.6 out of 10. Uh, road repaving 5.2 out of 10. Park and uh, park and public facilities. Uh, among the higher scores of 7.5, as is police vehicles. And right down the middle at 5.8 is ADA curb ramp installations. And still moving. Right down the middle on ADA curve ramp installation feels about right. I feel like we get a lot of feedback about ADA ramps. When we go into a community and we start to do a new project and we're placing those ramps, a lot of happiness

and other parts where maybe they've been deteriorated, not so much. Okay. So, the proposed 2026 projects. Before we go any further, uh I do want to note uh as Miss Corpal did as well, our uh department leader uh department leadership team here, our department heads are here. Uh this is all their work. Um these are sort of their creativity, their understanding of what the needs are within their department. Um they went through a robust presentation process to the department team to sort of explain um you know why these things are being proposed in 26, sometimes multiple years of planning um and sort of defended that. So they've gone through multiple defenses of these requests which is how it got to this point in the process. Uh there are some things not many that we saw in August that did not make it into the October meeting uh just because of the numbers that we're seeing. Um, you know, we felt that that could be pushed another year. But to the board, if there are additional questions or you want to dive deep on any of these things, so the department heads are uh ready and enthusiastic to be at the podium and answer questions. Right, guys?

Yeah, that was a lot of enthusiasm. Okay. Uh, so first up, parks and wreck, Mr. Valo.

Yes, thank you very much. So, you'll see here um we are um showing all improvements across each category tonight. showing the separation of improvements to maintenance just to really uh drive the point home of separating what we have already uh have in the township and what we're trying to take care of versus new and additional things. You'll see in the park and rec category uh there's nothing new or additional improved that doesn't mean we're not doing anything but we're simply maintaining or taking care of existing facilities. So, at Simmons Park, which is already a tennis park, uh tennis court facility, uh we're looking at resurfacing and fencing that. Uh Jones Park, a playground replacement, security enhancements at several parks, um safety netting at Twin Oaks Park, uh and some facility repairs at a few different locations. And I believe the next slide is going to be pictures to sort of tell that story.

And these are all real pictures. This is not AI generated. This is Middletown Township. I hate that that's a qualifier nowadays. I know. Yeah. Uh, any questions from the board on the recommendation from parks and recck? You have the slides in front of you, so you can see the financial impact of these projects. Um, anything jump out to you in terms of things you definitely want to see in the proposed budget or things you'd rather see pushed to a future year? I know it's hard to make those recommendations at the in the process. So, we can always come back once we're through the presentation, but

I think getting a little additional detail as to like what is behind these costs. Like to me, $350,000 to reurface tennis courts is seems extremely high, right? But there's probably numbers that go behind that. So, understanding what that entails is will be important to making being able to make that decision.

Sure. Mr. Capra. Great question. So the 350,000 is basically the quartz were built 15 years ago and they've settled. So what we have to do is mill it um mill it out, gut it and then repave it and then resurface it with all new netting and then the fencing has to go around it as well. So basically the whole thing soup to nuts is 350,000. We had just gone some through something similar at FYIA crossing park with the hockey rink. It's about the same process. Any color that you can add on to how you've reached $350,000.

Sure. Um, basically we had two different quotes come out, two different vendors that that do this for a living. Plus, we had the actual life of Foryia Crossing Park. So, when they mill roads or anything else like that, they have to take down everything and and f and um mill it and like I said, put down an asphalt grade. So, it's not a road grade. It's a tighter grade of asphalt that goes in similar to what we have at the pickle ball courts. So, um, and then the p uh the epoxy paving is about 70,000 on its own just to just to put down the coating on that as well.

I think that will be is there any of this can be internalized like can our own public works team do any of this? Yeah. So, we've asked that question um for nearly every project on here. Uh it's not an easy answer. It's certainly not an easy answer in what I would say year one of major construction. Um maybe I shouldn't say year one, but at this point for major construction with the Department of Public Works, the Department of Public Works does a tremendous job um at what they've been asked to do, which is a lot of maintenance, right? 870 acres of different small patches of grass throughout the township that they're responsible for plowing roads. They're the full-time mechanics for our entire fleet, which is over 100 vehicles. Um, you know, there's a lot that they're asked to do. It's not necessarily oriented towards construction. Now, is there opportunity for that to change? Absolutely. But it's additional resources is, um, you know, additional folks into that department who hasn't grown substantially in many years. Um, you know, where that becomes a challenge. Is this a time to inject those resources? Maybe it is. Um, you know, I don't have the answer to that specifically. Um, but if the board does want to fund this project in 26 and we choose to outsource or job out that that project, we're looking at about 350,000. Um, another, if I could just add, another thing to think about, um, is economies of scale, right? Like you don't want to be adding a paving crew into your public works department unless you're going to be doing a substantial amount of paving. Um, so that that becomes, you know, part of it, too. I think the other thing that's important is um so in this instance we've got a tennis court that is borderline unusable at this point, right? So it's it's a community asset that um residents are not being given the opportunity to utilize. And so um and and obviously we can see the the picture of the nets. And so in in all these examples, you're talking about circumstances where these are these are community assets. These are things that the township residents should have available to them to recreate. Um, and you need to do maintenance periodically in order to

keep them usable. So to have a have a tennis court that you can't play tennis on, um, obviously, you know, maintenance is going to be required from time to time. So some of these things I I view as as necessities. And just to add, so one of the things that I do remember is, um, so the park was built 15 years ago. We have settling. So we have subsurface issues, too. So it's not just milling and putting in new stuff. we have to go underneath and add some add some subsurface to get everything level before we put in the asphalt. So that's why it was a little higher than normal. And then how do we prevent that from not happening again?

You pat it down. So we had an issue with it at firefighters park. So when it was tennis courts, we actually had, think about it this way, we put six inches of asphalt, put it down. 10 years later, we put six inches of asphalt and then we had the same cracks and then we had another six inches. So we had 18 inches of asphalt. That was all bad because the subsurface was ne never taken care of. So then we had to take out 18 inches and then take care of the subsurface.

We see the same thing with roads all the time, right? I mean, there's a difference between doing a mill and overlay, which is sometimes super appropriate if the base um of that road is well done or, you know, is sort of outliving its useful life. But when you have roads where the base is in bad repair and you don't repair that base, which makes a road project much more expensive, if you do a mill and overlay, very quickly you're going to see all that spiderweb cracking and everything else come up. What's the typical lifespan for a court like and how often will we have to replace them? Is there like a I don't know asphalt the asphalt should last 2530 years. It's not like a road has a useful life of 25 years. It takes a beating. Tennis courts really

don't don't take a beating. uh all you have to do is like every 10 years have to resurface it in theory is if the subsurface and everything is good, the asphalt is good, then all you have to do is is repaint it every 10 years. So we're making an investment fixing the foundation. Correct. So I know that our township is fantastic at looking at grants. Is this something that would be a possibility for a grant? Give us

Yes. Patrick, Patrick and I have talked to the United States Tennis Association. Um, while they say they have millions of dollars to give, they only give you like 10 or $20,000 per court. So, it was something not great. But then to Mr. Atliff's point, um, the local share, the part the casino money has been very generous the last couple years.

Uh, there's a series of slides at the end of the presentation that talks about everything we've applied for grants for, how grants factor into all of this. Yeah. So, we'll be going over that tonight. Also, any other questions on parks and wreck feedback from the board. Thank you, Mr. Cabo. Building and grounds capital improvement. Uh, lobby security propos I should probably flip through here. Uh, lobby security. This is a project that's been in and out of the capital fund or in and out of being proposed for years. It's an opportunity to sort of solidify and provide security uh to the downstairs. So, if you enter this meeting room off to the right, uh about half of the um team that is non-uniform that works in this building are all kind of available and open to the public. And what I mean by that is members of the public can come in and sit right down across from you in your office whether you knew they were coming or invited them. And sometimes they do so with video cameras and everything else. Um those things happened have happened here. So, we're looking for an opportunity um inhouse with our public works um crew, Miss Kane, uh to provide some security and reinforcement for the team that works downstairs. Uh notably the upstairs is all secure. You have to badge through uh you know glass doors and all of that kind of stuff. So it's sort of a continuation of that theme within the building. Uh from a from and that's 50,000. From a maintenance perspective, we're looking for repairs to this building. I think in August we had significant discussions about uh the status of the roof on this building which has not been significantly repaired or replaced since the uh construction of the building about 20 years ago, 23 years ago. Um every year that this project sort of gets deferred, it becomes more and more expensive. Uh because of course cost of projects go up over time, but you know the deterioration is also um you know kind of speeding up. So we're looking at $1.1 million. I think that was the meeting where we had the tile uh that has mold and water damage all over it that we showed to everybody. Um so super challenging. Um we're looking and this is something I think that we can really look hard at whether or not makes sense for the 26 budget. Uh but concrete replacement out front, you know, as

everyone enters that building, that concrete is not ADA compliant. It's, you know, significantly challenged there. There might be an opportunity to make some improvements there. Uh as well as the exterior stuckco to what we call the north station, which is a substation of the Langghorn Middletown Fire Company. Um that stucco is in significant disrepair. The exterior of that building that also needs to be to be repaired. And so the estimate we have for that is 128,000. um $1.5 million in capital maintenance on building and grounds is a sort of a sticker shock number. It's mainly focused on the roof of this building um of the municipal center year-over-year. I would hope to see that number be significantly less.

And I should add too at the north station there is a small uh repair for the roof um on that building as well and there is an RDA grant submitted for that project. Um yeah, regarding the roof and I hate this one because it it is something that we have deferred. Um and but clearly um it's reaching a critical point where something needs to be done. I mean it's visible to anybody that is in this building with any frequency. I guess um just a a general question. How long would we expect to have a new roof assuming we did this all-in project? How long would that last? What's the what's the life the lifespan of a commercial roof?

Yeah. So importantly, this is not a full replacement of the roof. So we have a a nice metal roof on this building and we've had a few different experts out to assess it. And the good news is is not in such disrepair that the entire roof needs to be replaced. But merely it's a pretty significant patch job. Um and so noting that I would estimate probably 25 to 30 years because you're extending the life to the typical lifespan of a metal roof which is typically in the 50-year time span. So I just want to clarify. You had said that each year we wait it's obviously it's getting worse. Does that mean that not only are we going to pay more because of the cost of labor and you know the the uh equipment's going up and everything but because it's getting more damaged. We're it's just going to be exponentially worse every every

single rainstorm this building endures. This building is taking on more and more damage. Yes,

it's really kind of awkward um being in like staff meetings or leadership meetings in this building. Uh and when a torrential rain does come through, people like stop what they're doing. They leave their workstation, they take buckets, they're trying to like figure out where the water's coming in. Um it's certainly not the job that we asked them to do. And my preference would be that they do the job that we asked them to do and not take care of that. Obviously, we're doing the things that we need to do in this building. Um you know, but it's a project that at some point needs to get funded. And if I'm if you wouldn't mind advancing the next slide just to really kind of drive the point home. And this is a precursor to something else we're going to be talking about. That photo on the left is a real snapshot of the very front of this building. So when we get I would say a moderate rainstorm. That is what the front of this building looks like. It is a literal waterfall. The silver pillar that you're seeing there has an internal gutter system that is clearly inadequate for the size of this building. That is something that we're also looking to address um as part of the actual patch job that we're looking to do too. Uh but this goes to show you only 25 years ago the s this building was built with at that time adequate uh storm water management facilities and just in 25 years time with how things have evolved um this building is no longer really fit to um manage a modern storm.

When you're facing budget challenges it's hard to approve $1.1 million for roof repairs. you know, I can certainly appreciate that, but you know, at some point it has to be prepared. Yeah. I mean, I I've seen this waterfall many a times, so I can verify that that is a very recent photograph. Um, the other thing I think that is important to remember, you know, things things like uh parks and playgrounds and and roads, it's easy for residents to um understand the need because they utilize them every day. Not every resident utilizes this building every day, but we have a lot of people that come to work here every day. And so I do think it's important to keep this building um safe for the employees. How many people work here on a regular basis in this building? Yeah. About 100.

About 100. Yeah. So 100 people come to work here every day, you know, and they've got that waterfall to encounter every time it rains and leaking roof and mold and all kinds of other things. So it's I mean it's it's important.

And to that end, as the new person who working in this building, there's a lot more foot traffic here than I would have expected in a township building. Um, you know, this not being my first township building, there's a lot of people that come in for permits, for various approvals, for certificate of occupancy reports. Um, you know, people who need to interact with uh the police department. And then, of course, we have community members who use the public meeting spaces, right? This is not just our meeting room. You know, it's certainly primarily the room of where government, you know, and governance happens, but we've got community members and community groups that use it, steering committees, boards. So, it's a popular place to be. Uh, we sort of joke that Wednesday night this is like the community center. There's always meetings happening here, you know, whether they're directly related to the government or not. So, if you're looking for things to do, come to the township building on a Wednesday night. Any other questions on building and grounds? Next is going to be information technology. Mr. Bala, I think it's your turn.

Sure. Thank you. Uh, so on the left in the improvements category is some broadcast system upgrades. So, uh, for those who are familiar, we broadcast, uh, all of our board of supervisors meetings. Uh, one thing we didn't highlight at last week's operating budget, but is certainly relevant for this conversation is the uh, staff is recommending um, that planning commission meetings be televised uh, using the broadcast system beginning in 2026. Um, and importantly doing some uh, ongoing maintenance to the system will allow us to continue to expand and do additional broadcast meetings in the future as we know that is something that has been uh, talked about uh, a lot more recently. Uh and over on the maintenance side again um most of our staff in some way, shape or form touch technology. There's some folks who are entirely uh their entire job depends on a computer. Uh we do have 100% of our employees uh working in person uh the vast majority of their time. And uh but because computers are core to their function, uh making sure that they have modern technology consistent with our computer replacement plan is um of course essential. Um and then the other items you'll see there, the network course uh switch is uh an incremental step towards moving towards u a cloud-based system is something that we've been working towards over the last several years and continuing to do so. And then finally, the last two items are both um mobile computers for the first responder vehicles in the township.

There are quite a few residents that we're interacting with that are watching our meetings remotely. We know this because they communicate with us, they email, they call, they reach out to the board of supervisors, they post about it on Facebook. And I remember being new here, you know, saying to Mr. Valo, I don't I didn't see them at the meeting. He said, Eden, come on, man. Like, they're watching online. I said, oh, that's right. They're watching online. Um, and with as much conversation that there is in this community about, you know, the growth pressure, development pressures, you know, the role of the board of supervisors and the planning commission in the land development process, if they're not coming to the meeting and and watching government participate, which most people do not do, um, broadcasting the planning commission meetings is an opportunity for folks to really dial in on something that they care deeply about. So, I'm excited about the prospect of doing that next year. Questions on it? Okay, so we are on to uh the police department. So once again, similar to parks and recck, no proposals for uh capital improvements. This is just maintaining the existing infrastructure. We have uh body and end car dash cameras at $110,000, weapons and gear replacement, uh $30,000 for uh firearms, tasers at 15,000, and then some facility repairs for $25,000. Uh on the next picture, for those of you who don't know, we have a shooting range here. our police officers, we want them to be proficient with the tools that we give them, and we want them to be using them more than the once a year required uh qualifying process. So, this is an indoor shooting range that's actually in this building uh that hasn't been upgraded in a long time. Uh it's something that needs to be maintained, something that needs to be upgraded, and we're proposing to do that for $25,000 next year.

I'll just comment. I know we often talk about how uh great the police department is in at getting the most possible useful life out of their vehicles as they can. And I know and I and I will just say I know they do the same with their firearms. They get as much useful life out of their firearms as they can. So, um when they're when they need to be replaced, they need to be replaced. And that's a safety issue for our officers. Yeah. When the chief started telling me how much useful life they get out of their out of their police vehicles, I was sort of shocked. I mean, we're talking in excess of 100,000 miles. I mean, they're really putting wear and tear on these things and working with our our very skilled mechanics and public works to run them for a very long time, which is a great benefit to the township because replacing vehicles is not inexpensive. And importantly, because it's not on this slide, we are going to be talking about vehicles momentarily as a standalone category.

Okay. So, for those of you who are wondering what the theme of the budget is, uh I'm still sort of figuring out exactly what that theme is going to be, but I think public works is going to be a significant part of it. Uh so, I will take improvements. Mr. if you want to take maintenance. Absolutely. Uh so public works site improvement. Um this has been going on for a long time. Uh I think in terms of conversation, so a picture is worth a thousand words. Uh that building on the top left, you heard our public works director speak about it in August. Um not really adequate for the size of the department now and the operations of the department. Um I actually went in there with him after the last capital meeting and you could see on um you know on the rails that maintain um the garage doors that go up and down. They're all bent and and sort of messed up because you know they run into them because the trucks are a lot bigger than what those bays are uh which you can't quite see there. Um we chose not to tell the story uh in public about how we heated that garage last year, which is a place that we have folks with offices as well as our sign shop. We have more signs in this township than people might realize. uh and we maintain most of them. Um you know, it's not a safe building. It's not adequate. We've applied for grant funding for it. Um the construction cost to to build a new facility, which we would need on that site, is $4 million. Um you know, but there's some work that needs to happen there uh you know, preliminarily to kind of design what the future looks like. Uh we have a street sweeper and for those maybe I should have pointed it out. We have vehicles and apparatus in this room here to the right of Mr. Valla. These are um from one of the children of our team member. They allowed us to borrow these these vehicles tonight, which we really appreciate. I'll just note the excavator is not proportional to the dump truck that's there. Our excavators are much bigger than the dump trucks. They excavate and dump dirt and debris into the back of dump trucks. Um, but we need to replace a street sweeper, a very popular piece of equipment we have that runs 5 days a week. Um, street sweepers are not are not inexpensive, $335,000. Replacing the excavator at $135,000. Both of which we've applied for RDA funding for. Mr. did a nice job for this presentation Friday morning to the RDA talking about the importance of these um

you know of these pieces of equipment. So just on the improvement side of of trying to to deal with these things is $870,000. So now for the larger number on the right. Yes. Um on the maintenance category, you'll see and I'm just going to jump ahead to road repaving right in the middle uh for two reasons. Number one, it is 80% of the big number you're seeing at the bottom there, $2 million. And more importantly, it is a different number than we talked about in um in August. Uh so we've as we've been talking about the budget process and had some public interactions and even with the board, we've heard one thing pretty consistently the entire time is we want you to do more specifically things that people can see, touch, and really um wrap their minds around and things that really impact their day-to-day life.

You interacted with the township road coming to this meeting tonight, right? That's every hand in the meeting room. I mean that that's the example there. Yeah. Thank you very much. Um, and so we've heard more about more roads, more curb ramps, more storm water maintenance. Um, and so what you're seeing there is an investment of $2 million. Um, and I will caveat and we'll detail this a little bit further uh in tonight's presentation. Uh, we are planning for that money to be coming from the highway aid fund, which is a dedicated uh fund that we receive from the gas tax. And so we'll, like I said, I'll talk about that a little bit more. Uh, but that is the big number you're seeing there. Uh, just to continue at that point down, then I'll circle back up to heavy equipment.

One last thing on roads. Uh so the current road maintenance program is a 100year replacement program. Roads are not built to last 100 years anymore. Maybe at one point in American history, but not now. U you know, we're doing about 1.3 paved uh roads per year. We need to be looking at like 6.5 miles, 1.3 6.5. So there's a real need for investment there. We have a great repaving timeline chart uh over my right shoulder for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. So you know, this is an investment into that infrastructure. What concerns me greatly about roads and concrete, ADA ramps, storm water, is if if you don't maintain it and you don't sort of get ahead of the maintenance opportunities of these, by the time you realize how far behind you are because things are really deteriorating, the cost to get caught back up is exorbitant and the community winds up saying, "You need to do all of this now. When are you going to repave my road?" And you really can't dig your way out of that hole. So, um, you know, this is difficult decision to make, but it's a real opportunity to make sure that we don't get into that position in the future.

And exactly. And that number is actually four times more, um, in paving than we did this year. Uh, actually close to five times. And importantly, that is about 9.1 miles of roads. And we are planning to focus next year's road paving in Levittown. Uh, we recognize that Levittown uh, in many over many years has been um, underinvested in in infrastructure. Uh, and so we see that as a real opportunity to make a meaningful impact for people. Um, we also have on this list uh some line painting as well as patching a foot bridge near Walter Miller Elementary. Moving back to the top of the list, we have heavy equipment. Um, I will call out the first two dump trucks as well as the last open trailer. All three of those in addition to two of the improvement category items uh are all submitted for RDA grants and so we're hoping to hear about those by early December. And finally, um, some Bryant equipment for a large truck as well as a crack sling machine. And I believe on the next slide where we had the photos, you'll see on the bottom left there is the current crackling machine, which I'm going to venture to say, I mean, a lot of things are older than me, but I would say that's close to older than my parents even. And I won't say how old my parents are because my mom would be upset with me. Uh, but all that to say, it is really not a safe uh condition uh piece of equipment for our staff to be using. Uh it has actually been the source of an employee injury before and so we're looking to modernize.

Yeah, it's horrible. comes up, pops, it's very hot, you know, and it can burn employees. When I when the public works director showed this to me, I said, "You have like this can't be real. I hope we're not using this thing." And because the technology, it's not really evidence here, is so old, it takes hours to heat up, right? Which is totally inefficient in terms of going out and doing some simple crack sealing. If you look at the uh sort of stains around the box on that, that's hot tar. So, that has filled over. Any questions on public works? Any thoughts on $2 million in road paving a year? Just that it's a substantial increase over the number of miles that we're currently paving uh on an annual basis. Um so it it's not it's not a comment on whether or not the need is there. It certainly is. And I and I the message is definitely received that at the current rate it'll be a hundred years before we repave every road in the township and that's not sustainable for the long term. So um it's something we definitely have to look at but it's a it's a big it's a big cost investment and again a lot more money than we have been dedicating to road repaving sort of in the the last few years.

Yeah. My only other comment was for the new garage building. I know this portion would be just for the design, but I think knowing how we are going to fund that full construction before we go forward with the design will be important. Yeah, we're working with our state rep, state senator, and United States congressman to try to identify grant funding uh for that project. And we feel cautiously optimistic at the opportunities that are in front of us. Uh the good thing is to go through the design process um doesn't necessarily bind us a construction. You don't want to design something that you don't have the intention to construct, but that design doesn't necessarily go bad if it sits on the shelf before we ultimately construct it. But your point is certainly well taken.

And I think just to add, just to make sure, you know, for the public's purposes in the sake of transparency to put all the chips on the table, a project of that magnitude, it is normal to do a a borrowing or bond issuance. There are not any bond issuances recommended for this coming year. Um, however, a project of that magnitude, historically, this township has, and we as professionals would also recommend that if there is a lack of external funding or a capacity to handle a large onetime expense like that, that is the normal kind of thing you would be able to borrow for. Yeah. Our budget is not such where we could have a $4 million dispersement for a project like this. How many years would that be over approximately?

Yeah, it really depends on the cost to borrow, the time frame we're looking at, what the economy and market are doing at the time. Um there are external experts that we would work with and have worked with in the past that would advise us on this. Um that's outside of my area of expertise at this point. And again, we're not looking at a bond issuance um in the next multiple year, you know, conversation. We're really aggressively chasing after grant funding at the state and federal level to try to fund it. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't I don't want to like wreck the surprise for you guys because I know you've done a good job at setting it up, but it is traditionally you give us all the bad news first with how much all of this will cost and then at the end you tell us how much grant funding we've got or are applying for. So for those that are paying attention, it's um that that part's coming, but we keep talking about it. So it's it'll be

grants are coming. Yep. Don't have no fear. We'll we'll hurry it up so we can get to the good news. Okay. Vehicle replacements. Yes. Uh so over on the left hand so the only thing that we're looking to do additional uh and this is really a modification of an existing vehicle. Um there is already a fire chief vehicle but we're looking to uh replace that with a fire command vehicle which has a slightly different uh useful function to it. Uh Mr. Atliff can certainly embellish on that.

Yeah, there's a big difference. Uh the chief's vehicle right now is a pickup truck and everything is sort of sitting in the back of the truck. When you think of a command a vehicle, I want you to think about it like a mobile office. So if they go to an emergency scene, they have a lot to do. They have, you know, whiteboards and different pieces of equipment, radios, multiple radios depending on what's happening on the scene. Um, you know, they're showing up and can run command out of that. All four of our volunteer companies have multiple of these as we're building out the uh career side um of the daytime engine is sort of just leaning into that process.

Um, and again on the uh capital maintenance side, uh the pickup truck is something we did submit for an RDA grant on. Um, and there are also two zeroturn mowers as Mr. Ratliff said. Uh we mow over 800 acres of grass on a regular basis every season. Um in the police department, this is uh I believe a total of four or five vehicles. Uh there is also an RDA grant submitted for that um to staff them or uh replace their vehicles for the year. And then in building and zoning, there is a small amount of grant funding specifically for an electric vehicle. There is one a vehicle due for replacement anyway. Uh there is one EV deployed in that department already, which is um been useful. Um, and I'm also pleased to share that we are in the process of hiring uh a new building inspector to fill a long standing vacancy to make sure that our uh folks who are doing some construction work in their uh at their homes and businesses are able to get inspections in a prompt way. Pictures of the vehicles, transportation, so on the capital improvement side.

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, a lot of these things are u items that we have existing grant funding for. We've talked about them. Some of them are already underway um such as the um South Flowers Mill um warning system. So this is some funding we received earlier this year uh thank you to our state rep and senator u to add an advanced warning system or to try to prevent uh vehicle strikes on the South Flowers Mail Road bridge. This is the one near uh the Harley-Davidson dealership uh near business route 1. Uh working up the list you'll see there new falls road and Woodburn roads. This is um two corridors of improvements to do pedestrian push buttons. Uh this project is currently in the design phase, but we do expect it to be bidded and implemented in 2026. Um and then I'll save the curb ramps for last. So jumping back up to the top, the school zone improvements. Uh this is something that we are in the process of identifying a project consultant for that is a grant requirement. Uh and looking to do the improvements to the school zone, uh signals there and that will include a speed indicator. Uh, so this is kind of one of the ones where we, you know, is it improvement, is it maintenance? We do already have, um, school zone signals throughout the township, but because these are, uh, new, we're looking to do them all at once, and they're actually a little bit more modernized with that speed indicator on them. We really thought about, and this is an improvement. Uh, but you'll see there we have 60% grant funding for that. Um, the last thing that I'm going to talk about is the ADA curb ramps. Again, as we talked about with roads, we hear over and over again, why are we taking so long to do all of these ramps? I think we said at the um August meeting that I would be early 60s by the time we catch up. And when I say catch up, that means we finish all the ones that today are out of date on. And I won't say how old I am right now, but that's a long time from now.

560 ADA ramps are out of compliance. And when I say out of compliance for those who are ADA experts, uh sometimes they update the spec for a ramp, right? So from 2023 to 2025, the ADA laws and regulations around what a ramp is supposed to be designwise may change minimally. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about minimal changes where the average person may look at a ramp and say, "Yeah, that's that's likely ADA compliant." We're talking about significantly disrepaired ramps that are not able to be used by people with uh who are differently aabled um in our township. 560 of them. We have well over 560 ramps. Um it will currently take us till 2053 to address all of those at our current ADA ramp investment schedule. Uh which concerns me greatly because all the rest of the ramps will be well out of compliance by then. Um many communities what they do when they do a significant kind of road project. They go in uh the year before and do all the curbing and all the ramps. What we are faced with is the also the opportunity I should say to kind of go back and comply uh with ramps that maybe aren't due to be paid for another 101 15 years that maybe weren't done in the past. Uh as well as trying to keep up with the um you know with the demand for for maintenance and maintaining these ramps. So significant increase of $750,000. We have a chart in the back of the room that talks about this in a little bit more detail. Um trying to get to compliance with those ramps that are out of compliance and also see what the future looks like of maintenance. And importantly, similar to road paving, uh when you do curb ramps like this in a larger quantity, there's an economy of scale there, right? You're able to do more with a little bit lower overhead because you're already spending the overtime overhead to go out there and have the crews out there and do all of the administrative work. That's the same whether it's a small construction or big construction. And so we recognize that there is some cost savings when you do a higher volume like that. Um and as Mr. Ratliff said, it is very important that we get these ramps done ahead of paving. It helps makes the overall project a lot more efficient and less impactful to the residents even though we are doing it in two separate pieces. Um but importantly uh that budget would

allow us to finish the Cobalt Ridge section where up until this year uh we've been slowly chipping away at about 20 or 30 ramps at a time. That budget would allow us in one shot to completely finish that neighborhood which has been um seeing curb ramps incrementally replaced for many years.

For those of you who can't tell by the passion in Mr. VA's voice. While being the assistant township manager, he's also many respects a transportation planner, which is why he knows these things inside and out. Uh, any questions on transportation storm water? Sure. So the first one um even though we have it in the improvements category uh importantly the Langren Gables especially is a project that is already uh underway and so those funds have uh already been encumbered and in some respects already spent. Um and REITs Avenue is a project that is not quite as far along but is currently in the bid phase. Um that $1,94,000 figure is what we expect across those two projects to be expended in 2026. So, you're going to be seeing in your upcoming board meetings payment certificates for the Languin Gables projects for work that's already been completed. And so, that is our estimate of what uh from a cash standpoint is going to be impacting the 2026 project. But importantly, those are funds that have already been encumbered. Uh we are noting that the $744,000 grant specifically for the Langghorn Gables project is funds that we expect to be hitting next year. Uh so fortunately what we have already spent uh is going to be coming uh just from the capital fund but most of what is going to be spent next year will be covered by those grant funds. Um Hillside Avenue is another uh stormwater project. Um this is something that um our staff has the ability to perform inhouse and so this is a bidded out construction figure. We do expect that this will uh come down if we do have the ability to perform it in-house. Um and then we'll be talking about that a little bit more detail later on as well. And then finally, these last two are uh some design figures. Um because as and again in the sake of transparency, some projects that we've been looking to do uh over a multi-year process uh we recognize that there is a cost incurred that typically uh is absorbed into the uh engineering budget that we felt like uh would be better called out uh to show you the true cost of designing a project which

is on average is about 10% of the construction cost. And there is grant applications out for the construction of both of those, I might add. Continuation.

Yes. Uh so everything on the left you'll see is an MS4, which is municipal separate storm sewer uh system. Thank you. Uh they test you that when you take this job. Um so what you're seeing there are stream make restorations and again we're designing. So, a stream make restoration is going in along a creek or a waterway and trying to clear a lot of debris out of the way and trying to do things and take contaminants out of uh the waterway that would otherwise be going into uh degrading back into the water and uh contaminating the overall quality of our water. Uh and these projects um require extensive design. Uh currently there aren't any design, but we do have some construction funds uh applied for and so we are requesting $150,000. And again, that bottom number is adding to the previous slide to design uh some of these and we might uh prioritize that based upon where those grant funds might come from. And then over on the right, uh we are looking to significantly increase the volume of inlets that we restore or replace, excuse me. Uh that is about three times what we normally spend uh on inlets in a single year. Uh again, we are hearing over and over from the community, we want you to do more storm water maintenance. And so that is a direct reflection of that. How do you for the MS4 projects, how do you prioritize which storm which creeks that we work through?

Sure, that's a great question. So, there's a few different factors. So, uh the first one is the wershed. So, in the township, we have a total of four wersheds. Uh and that will uh each watershed has different sediment requirements or sediment reduction requirements that we have to uh apply for or seek within our MS4 permit cycle, which is typically five years. Uh, and beyond that, we look kind of more at the practical side of where do we have access points? Where do we actually own the land? So, a lot of these you'll see are in Levittown. A lot of the green belts that we talk about in Levittown are actually township land on either side of the waterway itself. And so, those are ones where we have a lot easier of a time going in and making those improvements because we don't have to worry about getting easements or uh worrying about property owner access. Um, and importantly, the actual waterway itself is township owned, too, as opposed to some others that might be privately owned. So when we think about the storm water fee uh which is something we think about a lot uh and I know the community thinks about a lot too. You can see here that from the capital improvements from a drainage perspective which is what nine out of 10 people think about when they think about storm water is not nearly as significant as what's happening on the MS4 side. So the municipal separate storm sewer system uh program is a mandate out of the uh from the environmental protection agency from the clean water act um which I'm sure this community has heard us talk about before um that is dealing with storm water quality right ultimately what that federal and then through administered through the state government regulation is saying is that we need to take the quality of our storm water which is measured through complicated engineering and improve that and so the storm water fee is funding both of those. Um I think a lot of people in this community have who I've had the opportunity to talk to will say hey there's so much work that needs to be done on the drainage side you know is that really what it's funding and the answer is well it's funding both and it sort of becomes like a utility um you know from the way that the state views it u you know we have this opportunity or obligation I should say to improve the quality of our storm water well how much storm water are we creating which is sort of how that bill is created uh not different than water

or sewer usage so when we look at the storm water fee understand that it's funding both of these and that you know one of these things is not optional. I I would argue both are not optional. We have to manage storm water as well. Uh but it becomes super complicated. Any questions on storm water? I think we're going to be talking about this pretty significantly later on. Say and if this if we don't beat the topic of storm water to death enough for you tomorrow night in uh I believe upstairs the storm water advisory committee is also going to be meeting. So uh if you want some company to talk even more about storm water, those are your crew.

Yeah. We also have good graphs here uh in this room tonight talking about sort of the drainage projects um and what the replacement um schedule looks like for that. I think if I recall correctly, it's a 10,000-year replacement process for all of our existing storm water drainage uh as well as the demand for additional drainage in areas of the township where it doesn't exist. So, a lot of opportunity in storm water. Yeah. And just to kind of put that into reference a little bit, um thankfully an underground pipe doesn't have to be replaced as often as a road has to be repaved, but generally speaking, anywhere where you see inlets, you see inlets on both sides of the road. So generally for every one mile of road, you have two miles of storm water pipes. That is very common in a lot of parts of the township.

Are we tracking for residents on our website at all the various projects that are going towards that storm water that storm water fee um that we have? I know one of the things that we talked about is trying to get as much actual work done out of that fee as possible. A huge percentage going towards actual projects.

Yeah. What we um I think we have a slide on it later if I recall and we had talked about this extensively um in August. We had a town hall meeting with the um Lang Horn Gables uh project with that community um down in the Gables and we actually showed them the budget. We said here's how much drainage work we're doing. Here's how much MS4 stream bank restoration projects we have to do. if you'll notice the cost of those two subsets of projects is greater than the amount of revenue we're receiving from this. And so they said, "Well, what what's the plan?" Which I thought was a great question. So, uh, two things, grant funding, right? Um, delay where you can, and then try to reduce the cost of those projects, uh, by gaining either efficiencies of scale, potentially insourcing some of it, uh, things like that. That budget doesn't even go into dealing with like inlet tops and other sorts of small drainage work that we do here. And there's lots of areas um of opportunity for um, improvement in some of that, too. Other questions about storm water? We're getting into summary slides, so I think everyone will be thrilled here. Uh, okay. So, first a mentee question.

Yes. So, of everything you've heard, uh, this is certainly not an exhaustive list, but again, we're focusing on the improvements or the things that are new and additional. Uh, if you wouldn't mind pulling your phones out again, um, and if you need that code, it's at the very top of the screen there. Um, how would you prioritize? So, this is a ranking order. So, you get to put all of these um on the list, but you get to tell us which ones are the most important to least important. And as folks complete that, you'll be able to see in real time, it'll average out the sentiment of the room. So far, the most popular is our traffic signal improvement projects. Uh followed by the South Flowers Mill uh bridge advanced warning system, which we got some grant funding for. Uh stormwater construction projects back and forth between the fire command vehicle and the excavator. And then the street sweeper is last. That's surprising. Okay, traffic at the top. All right, so everything that we Oh, we have another question. Sorry.

Yeah, last question right now and then we'll have two more at the very end. Which services are you most interested in expanding? So, we talked a little bit specifically about uh road paving, curb ramps, storm water replacement. Um really trying to dial into, you know, we're talking about doing more in addition than we've already talked about. And again, we're talking about this in the context of a deficit. So, are these things that you're open to expanding? And then you also have the uh opportunity there to maintain the existing level of service. So, if you're uh satisfied with what we're currently doing today and you're not looking to adjust that, um I would put that as your number one. That's your way of telling us that road paving at the top followed by storm water inlet replacement maintaining existing level of service ADA curb ramp installation at fourth and the fifth would be street sweeping consistent with the last question as well. Okay. All right. So a summary slide. So we remember to everyone in the audience the difference between maintenance and improvements right maintenance is maintaining uh exactly what we have now. So we have a list there facility repairs parks vehicles IT police inlets uh and paving whereas improvements would be adding to. So the total of everything that you saw on a maintenance perspective is $5.8 million tonight. So here's how that breaks down across departments. road paving and signals uh both which were popular in that last question would be the largest followed by facility repairs and then it sort of breaks out across departments from there. So how about improvements? The improvement summary uh across each department fire and emergency services, building and grounds, heavy equipment, curb ramps, storm water management,

street signals, information technology was about 4.4 million. That's how much we went through tonight. So here's how that breaks down. Stormwater projects being the very large portion of the pie followed by signals and then ADA ramps breaking out a little bit further from there. So here's a summary slide uh for those of us who are deep into the numbers. Uh you can see the capital summary. Um this is from August. So the 818 meeting which you heard me talk about. This is what that slide looked like. I'm going to show you how it's changed to tonight. So take a quick glance at that. And then here's the change. Uh so here your capital improvements at 4.4 million which I just noted capital maintenance at 5.8 million that totals to about 10.2 million. And so that change from the preliminary which we saw uh in August is less 300,000 or negative 300,000 on improvements and $853,000 increase on the maintenance side for a total of about half a million more uh from where we were in August. August is the very beginning of the budget process. So, uh, you know, very quickly getting up to speed, sort of reviewing a lot of information and preparing it for a public meeting. I think that we got pretty close. So, I'm happy with how these numbers sort of, um, how they shook out between August and now.

And importantly, that is a net change number. So, this reflects things that we at the staff level have pulled back that we originally talked about. Uh, those are things like solar panels um, at one of our facilities. Uh, and that also reflects the increases to paving, to curb ramps. Um, those two things alone that adds $2 million. So you're seeing net of all of the changes we're talking about is a net increase of about $553,000. So just want to make sure we clarify that. Any questions from the board?

So visually give you 10.2. So does everyone have the numbers memorized that we talked about earlier? We can add this one in there. All right. So sources of funding. We said that eventually there would be some good news. So Mr. Valla, why don't we talk about grant funding? So we're looking at grants at the federal, state, and local level. Uh we have in here both awarded grants that we have uh which you've heard us talk a little bit about tonight as well as pending which means we've applied or awaiting decision. Um when we talk about township funds, we want to talk about it in a way where it's restricted and uh which is dedicated to a specific use and unrestricted which we're going to go through. Not every dollar that the township has can be spent however the board wishes. Right? There are some funds that are specifically allocated for different things whether they come from the state or the feds or uh through different revenue sources. It's not just one pot that they can divvy up. however they they like to. There are a lot of rules and regulations around that. So, let's talk about grant funding.

Sure. And I'm going to preface this section of the presentation by saying uh our staff warned us that this is probably going to be the most boring part. So, I apologize in advance, but importantly, if there's anything that is unclear as we go along, please feel free to jump in and interrupt us. So, you'll see on the left side uh awarded grants totaling $1.48 million. Again, these are projects that are both uh in the maintenance and improvements categories. Uh some of these things are uh projects that are already underway, specifically the Langon Gables stormwater project. Um and over on the right you'll see grants that we have already submitted for that we have not yet received. Um a lot of this is um RDA grant funding. So about 1.2 million of that which I believe if you jump to the next slide will show you the breakdown of that. Um so you'll see 1.48 of earned grants um as well as 1.2 of RDA and an additional nearly 1.9 of potential other grants. And so it's important to differentiate the earned versus potential. You hear us talk about the 1.4 the earned grants coming off right off the top. That's money we don't have to worry about because we know it'll be coming back to us. Potential is we'll show you kind of the best case scenario is if we get all of those grants. Uh but we'll also show you the worst case scenarios if we don't get a single one of those

questions on grants. Yeah, the staff is wrong. This is my favorite slide so far. This is a positive number, right? Yeah.

Write that down for the afteraction report, please. Um, okay. So, other sources. So, you heard me talked about there being restricted and unrestricted, uh, flow of funds. So, one of them we talk a lot about is the highway aid fund, uh, which comes from the Pennsylvania gas tax. We get a portion of that dependent on how many miles of roads we maintain. The annual revenue there is $1.2 million. We are have to be very clear on what we spend this money on. Um, you heard me talk a little bit last week about how we use some of it for public works staff, which sort of makes me a little bit nervous because I think there's an opportunity to use this towards infrastructure improvements like paving that you heard me talk about um, and ADA ramps and other sort of equipment purchases. Um, so if we do decide to sort of increase the amount of infrastructure maintenance we're doing, you heard us say $2 million in road paving. We can supplement all of that average annual revenue uh, from the highway a fund into paving and then increase that by another $800,000. So it becomes not a $2 million hit on the general fund. So we can sort of reduce that um you know reduce that um total liability to the general fund by using this. Um so we are proposing in 2026 to primarily use this um for road paving unless the board has um a different perspective as to where they'd like to see.

And if I might add to uh this fund actually has a pretty substantial fund balance of a little bit over a million or about a year's worth. And so there is adequate funding in this fund between current resources as well as what we know we'll be getting for next year to cover that $2 million figure of road pavings entirely from this uh highway aid fund.

So one of the things that we need to figure out with the board's guidance as we move towards the November 17th um presentation date. So we'll be back in this room on November 17th proposing a uh 2026 budget. we may be able to say, "Okay, we want to commit to $2 million in paving, but let's pay for a portion of that out of the fund balance of this otherwise restricted fund so that we're not hitting the U general fund." And we sort of ramp up to that with general fund um contributions uh in the future years. You've heard me say that in the general fund, we need to maintain a certain fund balance for our creditworthiness. Not necessarily true. Um in these special revenue funds where we're getting funding from the state, there are small communities throughout the Commonwealth that use their entire fund balance every year. totally appropriate as long as they can support their operations with at least three months of operating reserves in their general fund. So, that wouldn't concern me as much. It's a lever that the board has at its disposal.

Questions about the highway a fund? Okay. Another restrictive fund, road machinery.

Yes. So, the road machinery fund is one that we don't often talk about, uh, but it is a dedicated real estate tax fund. It gets.3 mills, uh, which is equal to about $155,000. So maybe about every two to three years we can buy a decent sized piece of equipment. Uh but importantly in the last 10 or so years when we've had pretty reliable uh support from the redevelopment authority uh through their grant program uh that is usually our first line of defense for grant funding um or funding our uh public works vehicles and then if there is ever a need uh beyond what we have grant funding for this is usually the next place we'll look. Uh if we don't ever need it uh we are able to build that balance up um a little bit from year to year. I think I've repeated my errors from last week and got us off the presentation. Any questions on road machinery fund? Again, a fund we don't talk a lot about. Okay. Uh so another restricted fund is a stormwater fund. So for those who pay a storm water fee, we cannot just use that funding for anything. It has to be used towards either supporting MS4 projects or maintaining our storm water infrastructure um including cost of equipment, materials and engineering. So our average annual revenue is $1.6 million. As we look at the total cost of projects over the next five years, we know that the cost of projects is greater than five years of revenue um in the storm water fund. And so as we heard earlier, we're looking at grant programs. We're looking at ways of trying to reduce that. One of the things we're deeply exploring that we talked about um during the operations meeting last week is using some of our public works team or potentially adding to our public works team to try to be more proactive on maintenance um and on maintaining the both inlets and underground piping that we have uh which is miles and miles and miles of piping. I forget exactly what that number is. Um as well as performing some capital improvements inhouse reducing construction costs. Mr. Valla noted a couple projects that are upcoming where we may be able to see some reductions there. I think there's more digging that needs to be done on this proposal to figure out exactly how that reduces

costs over the next several years um on both capital maintenance and on the capital projects of the stormwater fund. But I would just note that we are really feeling the pressure internally to try to figure out how we can bring some of those um project expenses down uh over the next five years because we're we don't want to be in a situation where we're asking the community for more revenue into that fund. And I think insourcing is at the top of our list of things that we're exploring along with grant funding. Questions here. I know this is a this is a big one that gets a lot of conversation. Okay. Uh so the fire apparatus fund. So this is funded by a tax allocation of 1.08 mills. Funds are held until used for a purchase of a new fire engine or other fire apparatus. Uh the average annual revenue is $560,000. So there is an apparatus plan that has been um mostly agreed upon by the volunteer fire companies. And I say mostly like 95% there's some sort of uh smaller vehicles within the overall system uh of the career 244 company and the four volunteer companies um that need to be figured out. But overwhelmingly it's a good planning document that tells us what our um need to replace apparatus for the fire system looks like in the future. So, this is something I want to take a moment to sort of step back and think about. When we think about the fire service, I want us to think about it as one service. While it's supported by one career engine 5 days a week, uh, and four volunteer fire companies, which makes it seem like five different systems, it's really one system. All of these companies work together. If there's a major working fire within the township, you're going to see all of them kind of partnering. So my question as the manager for the board of supervisors who's proposing to fund the purchase of apparatus in the township, my question is well what apparatus does the system as a whole need? And that is what that apparatus plan is primarily designed to do. I will tell you there's more apparatus in the system than what the system actually requires in terms of serving Middletown Township. Uh and there's various reasons for that. The

system has changed. The companies have evolved and changed over the hundreds of years that they've existed. Uh and some of them also provide support outside of the township which is terrific. We surround four burrows. There's other townships and burrows around here uh where they may be, you know, in a position to be able to provide support, which is excellent. So my question is in terms of the apparatus plan and a policy discussion that I'll sort of start tonight for the board of supervisors is can we put the apparatus fund supported by the apparatus plan to support these five companies in a position to be supporting the service as a whole that the township needs? And so one of the things that I'm sort of thinking about um is as we're replacing engines, as we're replacing towers or adding apparatus to the system, if there are purchases outside of the township that are made for a fire apparatus that can support what this apparatus fund requires, does that allow us to change what's happening? So, let me give you an example. Uh in 2027, uh we're expecting delivery of three fire engines that were approved, I think last year. uh one that goes two years ago, one that goes to 244, two to the volunteer engines uh to the volunteer fire companies. In 2028, we're expected to take delivery of a fourth fire engine. Well, if one of the companies were to order an engine that would not be identified within the apparatus plan, are we able to say, "Okay, in this apparatus plan, we don't necessarily no longer need this engine because it's been supported by a volunteer fire company, which is terrific, and now we can change the plan, reducing the overall liability to the fire apparatus fund." challenging policy conversations, important working relationships with the volunteer companies as we sort of try to figure these things out. Um, it's fire engines are very expensive as you can see. So, you know, we want to be able to be in a position with the apparatus fund to be able to support what the service needs recognizing that there may be a surplus which I think gives us an opportunity to potentially reduce our overall liability. And

I think the last thing I'll add to that conversation is you'll see the cost of one fire engine there. the current uh level of funding we have in there, it takes about two and a half years for us to build up enough funds to buy one fire engine and there's I'm gonna say maybe about 12 or so that are in that overall plan. Just to put that in perspective. So we know now at the current revenue level of the apparatus fund, we're not in a position to sustain the apparatus plan that I think is a good plan that should be supported. So we need to figure that out as we move forward. Not asking for any sort of feedback or policy solutions tonight. Just sort of looking for creative ways to make sure that we can reduce our overall liability um to the taxpayers as we try to support the system.

Unrestricted capital fund. Mr. Valo.

Yes. So the capital fund is really kind of the I hate using the term catchall, but essentially any other fund that we haven't already talked about. If a project doesn't find a home in one of those places, it'll find its way in the capital fund. or if there is an overage, for example, if there is not enough money in the uh road machinery fund for a public works vehicle, uh usually the capital fund is the one that'll carry the balance. And you'll usually hear us talk about them that the most frequently uh as the board is approving expenditures. Um previously, and you've heard us talk about probably every single budget cycle, uh certainly since I've been here, that there is no dedicated funding source to the capital fund. Uh there is no dedicated tax source. There is no dedicated other than you know having uh good luck with grants or pretty consistent good consistency with grants. There is not a uh single source of funding that we can reliably count upon uh to fund u specifically the maintenance that we talked about let alone doing anything new or additional. Uh so that $2.8 million figure over the last several years is an average. And so that is a combination of uh generally one of two places. One is from the general fund uh back probably six or seven years ago uh before our structural deficit began to emerge. Uh we were able to transfer sometimes a couple million dollars at a time uh from the operating budget into the capital fund to support the cost of projects. And then secondly, in more recent years, the investment fund which currently houses the $40 million principle uh from the water and sewer sale in 2000. Uh there's been some interest income that we've been able to pull off um and into the capital fund to support projects in recent years. So ideally, we would never have a capital meeting like the one we're having tonight again. The ideally we would have a voted upon and agreed upon five-year capital plan across all these funds that the board of supervisors supports and wants to fund. And the capital meetings for that upcoming budget year is a dust off and kind of revision of that plan to basically say, does this plan still make sense? Are we in a financial position to fund all these projects? Is there anything we need to move? Are the cost projections still um still viable? You know, does anything need to happen here?

And the capital budget meeting tends to be, yeah, we talked about that three years ago. Still support that project. We're on our way to execute. Perfect. Let's sort of move forward. Um, you know, we're not there yet. I think we'll get there quickly. I think the department heads have a lot of perspective about what needs to happen both from a maintenance perspective and then proposing improvements to the board of supervisors. If we can sort of culminate that these uh these conversations become a little bit simpler and allow us to financially plan in a way where we're not looking at surprise $1.1 million roof repair projects, you know, in a given year. So, I'm excited for what that future looks like.

Yeah. And I'm again, I think something that I've talked about consistently since I've been on the board is that that multi-year look and making sure that we're not only looking at the current year budget, but also what does that mean for two, three, four years down the line. Agreed. Okay. So, projections, more summary slides. Uh, so this is sort of summarizing what we talked about here. Um these are revised estimates as of tonight uh on what the capital summary looks like from both an improvements and a maintenance perspective giving you that total of 10.2 million in the bottom right hand corner. Same slide as earlier. Sorry, same slide as earlier.

Yeah, same slide. No surprises. Uh total maintenance cost. So this is sort of breaking it down at $5.8 million earned grants of 7500. So this is where the memorization of numbers comes into play. Um other sources of funding at 2.2 million. So it gives you a little over almost 2.3. So the net 2026 cost of maintenance looks at 3.5. Again, this is maintenance, not improvement. Um potential other grants of 2.1. So we're looking at a potential net cost of 2026 maintenance of 1.3 almost $1.4 million. So what look like a very scary number of 5.8 all of a sudden has come down um you know significantly depending on what plays out in terms of grant funding. One of the um areas of feedback from the board of supervisors is that that we need is if a project is not funded by grants, what do you want us to do? Do you want to see that in the 2026 budget year? Do you want to push it out to a future year? You know, how does that sort of play out in terms of the development of the 2026 budget? And

just to add a shade of clarity here, that other sources of funding you see, that's money coming from other funds. So, it's uh we're able to encumber it from other places. The the vast majority of that is your road paving, the $2 million figure. And so that's not just kind of coming out of thin air, it's coming from other parts of the budget to really kind of drive home what the net impact to the capital fund would be. And so really the worst case scenario again is that 3.5 number in the middle and best case scenario of all of the potential grants come home for us. Uh your worst case or your best case scenario, excuse me, is that bottom number, the 1.38. So would you say that we need to plan for the 35 or do we need to plan for the 13?

Uh I would go halfway. I would I would plan for 50% of grants, you know, coin flip, right? right to put it down the middle and go from there. Um, what's going to be most important is understanding what the non-negotiables are from the board of supervisors on the maintenance perspective. Um, I I would love to say let's fund the entire 35 and anything that we get on grants is gravy. From a maintenance perspective, that's, you know, advising you from a policy perspective and an operations of the township perspective. That's what we should be doing. But I can appreciate that it might be a multipleear leadup. Um, you know, realizing sort of the challenges we have in the general fund. If you plan for half, um, you know, we'll probably be in a good place. And does that other fund contemplate the transfer from the investment fund or no?

There are currently no proposed transfers from the investment fund. We're showing you kind of the worst case scenario here without relying upon that. And importantly, this is just the maintenance side you're seeing right now. Here on the screen is uh the improvement side. Same kind of exercise.

Okay. So, let's look at the improvement side. So, we said it was $4.4 million in all of the improvements you heard tonight. Uh a lot of really great projects that are um that are presented. So, we've earned grants of 1.4 million. So, that brings us down to 2.9 almost $3 million in the um net cost of improvements, potential other grants at 1.1 almost 1.2 million, which brings you down to a liability of 1.7. Again, we're not sure exactly how that potential other grants is going to play out or what the timing looks like. Feedback from the board of what you'd like to see in next year's budget and what you would not would be super helpful. When do we typically see the grants come in? Is it December?

It depends. So RDA is usually early December. Uh but that potential other grants consists of grants of every category for every type of project and each one of those has its own deadline. But I would say the largest kind of single impact that we're looking for is early December. So generally speaking, by the time you're uh voting on the final budget at your December board meeting, we'll generally have the answer for those RDA grants.

Thank you. So the challenge is we have to present a proposed budget on November 17th because we have public inspection requirements that we are super important because we want the public to understand what's being proposed so they can provide feedback too, you know, but there's unknowns to the tune of millions of dollars in play. Other feedback from the board cost of capital. Yes. So again, this is a conglomeration of the last two slides that you saw together, showing you the maintenance and the improvements side by side. So again, we started at that 10.2 really scary number uh working it all the way down to kind of the worst case scenario if you wanted to do everything you heard and that is a big if. Uh is the 6.5 number again in both the maintenance plus the improvements category. And the best case scenario is that bottom line being able to do everything we talked about. If every grant that we have out there came uh through for us, that would bring you down to about 3.15.

And just to we have zero funding to the capital fund and there is no fund balance. Correct. So to say that there's I'm not sure I understand the question. Any direct dollars going tax revenue in terms of what's being proposed here. Correct. This is just showing you sort of the expense side. Um I I think it's incumbent on the staff in the um development of the proposed budget for November 17th to figure out exactly what the funding mechanisms are going to look like. Um ultimately I think it's going to be a blend of all the levers that we have, some of which we've talked about, some of which we haven't.

There is about a million dollars or so that we're expecting in fund balance to be remaining there. Uh but again, just as a matter of practice for folks who might be new to the budget process this year, typically we'll infuse directly into the capital fund what we know we're going to be expending for the year. Uh and so some of those funds we do expect like the stormwater projects to be encumbered partially.

So let's wrap this all together. So uh last week for those of you who were with us on the operating budget, we talked about the contracted increases um for the operations. So if we did nothing new, we kept all the existing uh service levels the same. We didn't add anything. It's just the mandatory increases like insurance and collective bargaining agreements that we can't do anything about. So if we take that number um plus the required maintenance only. Uh Mr. Valer, remind me if we included any grant funings in this slide. Uh, the maintenance is net of grant funding. Yes. Yeah. So, net of grant funings, earned grants. So, earning all grants uh here. So, best case scenario, no grants we've already earned. I'm sorry. So, not the potential. So, grants we've already earned and earning none of the additional grants, you're looking at a $7.3 million liability.

And that that projected deficit, is that all funds or just the general fund? That's the general fund. Okay. general plus. Yeah, we're we're showing capital as being part of that because the capital currently doesn't have a dedicated because I think the the what was it the fire fund, the parks and rack, they were all like negative. Yeah, we didn't in wrapping up, we didn't address those funds. Uh because the projects we talked about here are not going to be funded out of those funds unless we otherwise show that tonight. And again, just to be clear, that's assuming we we approve all of the proposed maintenance projects. Correct. You're including and that you get no grant funding, right?

Correct. So another view, so proposed operating increases. So we talked about some increases last week that the board gave us feedback. So if the board approves all of those, which is not likely, uh as well as all of the appro improvements that we reviewed tonight, so capital maintenance and capital improvements, what does that number look like? You take your 2026 uh budgeted uh projected total deficit, you add the operating increases, you add the capital improvements uh and it brings you to a number of 11.5 million. And again, that assumes that we do very poorly uh in the grant field, which is not what I expect. In addition, it assumes that the board says yes to everything, which I also don't expect. So, if we take all of that less potential grants applied for um your and so let's just say that we get all of the grants that we've applied for, we do very very well. I'm expecting us to do at least somewhat well. Um you that brings that number down to 8.1 almost 8.2 million after the grants. So, we are at the end of our presentation. Um, we have a couple menty questions, but let me just ask the board before we do that. Is there anything you want us to go back over tonight? We can flip all the way back through this presentation and do it again. We did it in about an hour and 20 minutes, so we could probably set a new personal record there. Uh, but if there's any projects, improvements, thing you want us to go back through, have more questions about, we're happy to flip back to that.

I have a question. Um, back to the it I know one of the things um thinking about um our communication and our website and making sure people have information and making it accessible for everybody. Is that included in any of that of how we're going to address that?

So, we didn't include anything for a website revamp or any sort of systems that we can use to communicate with the public. we do have a full-time PIO and we have in my opinion um resources that are available to us that we're not utilizing as fully as we can. Um some of it is a mindset shift. So our team has done a really remarkable job in my opinion since August of really being proactive and out in front providing information um to the public. So, I've been very pleased when I sort of hear things or people send me screenshots of the different Facebook um you know, Facebook pages um that are in the community of people showing screenshots of these presentations or they're clearly having listened to or participated in the meeting maybe virtually um and having a presentation. I think all of that credit goes to our acting PIO and to our budget team who've been super proactive at providing that input um and making sure that it's available to the public. I think there's so much more work we can do. So I think we can revamp it up without asking for additional um without asking for additional funding towards that.

Okay. Thank you. One of the things I know that we've talked about last week and this week is that that saying of existing service levels. Can you give like just a couple some commentary around what does that mean to the public? What are existing service levels?

That's a great question. Uh I'm not exactly sure how you want us to answer that. I guess I would say that we get feedback from the community um in different ways about things that they'd like to see completed. Um you know, things that they would like to see uh you know, added to our project list that we don't have the time or bandwidth to do. U so we have one community member who I met first couple weeks that I started working here um who called me about his neighborhood. I forget what neighborhood he lives in um but they have newly paved roads within the last several years but no new ADA ramps. Um and he just said, "Hey, we should have done the ramps. You know, can you come back and do these?" And I'm thinking in my head, well, if there's no additional resources that we allocate towards it, and we have 20 guys who are working really hard in public works who are plowing the roads, doing the roadside mowing, mowing the grass, taking care of all the street signs, um, you know, working with parks and wreck to do, you know, maintain the facilities and then do projects there. You know, when are we going to do those ADA ramps? I'm really not sure. You know, looking at the ADA ramp sort of replacement schedule. Um, I walked around um, the Lang Horn Gables community with one of our residents um, just talking about the Gables project and the drainage work that was there and you know this resident has a lot of time on his hands which I really appreciated and he spent it with me and we walked around and I'm glad I was wearing like jeans and boots that day because we were crawling down into the creeks and he's pointing to the existing storm water infrastructure and he says, "Eden, this is half full of sediment." He's like, "No wonder we're flooding here. Water's not coming through here. You need to get, you know, cameraing in here to understand what's happening with these pipes. you need to get a vac in here to kind of flush all this out in order to take care of it. We don't have that equipment. We don't have that time. We don't have I won't say we don't have the expertise and our public works team. They have a lot of depth of knowledge and abilities and lack of time to get to all of these things. That's just one community. Like if that's happening there, where else is it happening? So, when I think about those concerns and I think about the existing level of service, it just means that it'll be another year where we don't get to that. Um, however, there are some services we provide here that are really great. If you call our police department and you have a concern about a suspicious vehicle in your neighborhood, they're going to be there a couple minutes. Um, our daytime career fire engine is on

scene within five minutes of an emergency call. That means from the moment of where they're doing an inspection or maybe in the building or they're having lunch, five minutes to stop what they're doing, put their gear on, get in the truck, and travel in the township license sirens to get there. That's an incredible response time. That's a turnout time of like 45 seconds, which is really good. So, the things that we do here are things that we do really well. I'm just understanding the need of a township of this size with 46,000 people in it. 160 miles of roads, 800 acres of grass that we mow. There's a lot of demand for additional services. And I think it all sort of comes down to what I said in this interview, which is this is Middletown. It's a great community and the expectations are really high. I'm trying to figure out how we can position this team to accomplish those new expectations that come every day. Other questions? I think we have a couple menty questions.

Yes, we have two final questions to wrap us up for the evening. Um, one is, uh, which areas, so you've heard a lot about, uh, the different services in the township specifically on kind of the capital resource side. Uh, which service areas, um, when we're looking to address deficit, uh, really need to be prioritized, which ones are kind of top on that list? I would note that this is also reflective of the current operating budget. I think the police department of the general fund operating budget is about 60% of that budget today. So it goes from police, fire, road paving, storm water maintenance, parks and wreck, ADA curb ramp. And the last question, you'll notice the options are uh pretty much entirely the same. Are there any services of the township you're willing to reduce? So certainly the other half of the conversation we want to make sure is getting addressed a little bit. And the only additional option you're seeing there, you're seeing the same six options you had before, but you're also seeing a seventh, which is don't reduce any services. And so, anything above that line, you're saying make sure we don't reduce it. Anything below um or excuse me, anything above that line, you're willing to reduce.

So the question is which services of the township are you most willing to reduce? Number one is don't reduce any services. Two is storm water maintenance. Then ADA ramp installation, parks and wreck, road paving, fire protection, police is last, which might be a perfect inverse of the last slide.

Yeah, I think so. Okay. So, the budget calendar, um, I think this room is probably an expert at it. You've been participating with us since the beginning, which we really, really appreciate and have valued the opportunities to have such intense at times uh, public discussion um, about the 2026 budget. Um, for those that have followed me in my career, I've said this in a many municipal buildings. The budget is a statement of the board of supervisors priorities for the coming year, where they want to allocate resources in order to accomplish the priorities that they have. Our job as a staff is to support the development of that and then execute it faithfully, which is exactly what we've done and what we'll continue to do. Um, so this is the process, the last public meeting uh before the uh proposed budget is uh presented to the board of supervisors, which will be on November 17th. I hope to see everyone in this room uh and those that are maybe not here at that meeting. Um that's going to be sort of the big unveiling u be a large book, a lot of presentations, a buzz message from myself and I'm sure a lot of questions from the the board and community which we're looking forward to. We are also proposing to the board of supervisors to ho host a town hall meeting. So this actually comes from the Gable stormwater project that we're doing. We hosted a town hall meeting with them uh about their project and it wound up being amazing. Um we got a lot of folks from that community who came out. Um, I unexpectedly stood in the front of the room with a microphone and asked uh answered a lot of questions that they have about the project and about storm water in general and the community and different stuff. And it it was a great vibe. We had a really great conversation and then we eventually broke out into sort of like impromptu breakout sessions with our township staff and uh we were well staffed by RVE our township engineer as well. Uh we want to do the same sort of thing with the budget. We think that the budget has gotten a lot of attention that it really deserves um over the last you know several public meetings that we've had. We think that there'll be a lot of questions um coming out of what's in that budget and what does that mean for the township after we unveil it on November 17th. So, we'd like to do a public meeting uh with the board and the communities, much more informal than what we have here. And you don't really need another meeting of Eden and Nick

standing at a podium talking about it, but something to say, hey, this is what it is. Ask us your questions and let's sort of go through it. We're proposing to do that in the evening on Thursday, December 3rd. That's a tenative date. Don't don't calendar it yet. Don't cancel your plans. We're still figuring it out. uh welcome feedback from the board as to what that might look like um and how we can continue to engage the community. So, I want to congratulate the board for getting through I think 59 slides tonight. Any last remaining questions?

I I'll just say uh the budget process is uh it's a tremendous undertaking. It's a lot of work. And um I think one one maybe overly simplistic way to think about the budget process is that we as elected officials, our job here is um as the guardian of the resources, primarily the tax dollars of our residents and our job is to figure out how best to allocate that money. Um and it's uh it's always a challenge. It's always a difficult uh task for us to um to figure out how best to prioritize and allocate that money. It is the job of the township staff, Eden, Nick, all the directors um to provide us with information um to provide us with information about what it costs to maintain the level of service that we currently provide to the residents of our community, but also what it will cost to uh provide the things that we need going forward into the future. And so we have um now a lot of information. Um you guys have done a tremendous tremendous job with delivering this information to us and I think to the community. um with um the right amount of detail, but also in a format that is very easy to digest and understand. Um you make our jobs easy. Um as difficult as the job is of allocating tax dollars, um you make it easy for us to understand the needs of this community. Um and so I just want to thank you. I really do genuinely appreciate all the hard work uh by you two gentlemen, by all the directors, all of your staff. You guys do amazing amazing job every year. Um, and this year um was may have been the best budget process um that I've gone through, which is saying something because as I'm sure residents have seen, this was not all cheerful news um as we've gone through this. So, thank you um again for for the the tremendous work that you've all done. Um, we now have time as a board to consider and digest all that information and to figure out um how to prioritize all of the uh maintenance projects, capital projects

um and uh requests so that we can present a budget to the community um that as Eden said hopefully um shows the community our priorities for this township. And so I um would very much encourage residents to be in contact with the four of us, be in contact with township staff. Um it doesn't just have to be at meetings. We we acknowledge and recognize that it can be difficult to come on a Monday night and sit here. Um when everybody has uh families and careers and other commitments, reach out to us. We we are accessible. Email us, call us, um reach out to the township, let us know what you think. um how how do you feel about all this information? What are your priorities? Um because we we want to hear from you because we want to make sure that we when we are setting our priorities that we are truly um setting the priorities of the residents that we were elected to represent. So um one final time, thank you very much uh to two of you and the entire township staff for all the hard work and thank you to my colleagues for all the work that you've put in over the last few weeks getting prepared for this process and the work that we have ahead of us. Anybody else have any last final comments or thoughts?

I just like to say thank you. Um I think this budget process, the amount of information that we've been able to put out to the public. Um again, this is we have a lot of really hard decisions coming up with us. We're looking at what was the final number? $11 million um $8 million potential deficit um between the two funds. You know, it's something that I saw three years ago. We know that we're we're at the point where, you know, there it's either cut a lot of services, which, you know, based on, you know, what we've seen tonight, there's not a lot of um desire for that, or, you know, um try to figure out how we we increase revenues in order to pay for the things that need to happen. I think you said earlier in the the meeting, what was the theme for this budget? I think it's it's making sure we get back to basics, right? make sure we are maintaining all of the things that we have in the township. Make sure we're keeping them um up to the same standard that the residents are are um wanting and needing. Um so again, thank you for the team. I know this is really difficult. I know you're in a difficult place knowing that there are not funds available. Um so again, thank you guys for everything that you've done this budget season um working with the teams and putting this information out to the public. I just wanted to reiterate and say thank you um for the budget team. This is an extraordinary amount of work and um very detailed. I think it was explained very um very well and hopefully the public will be able to see this as well. Um and see how much work was put into this and um we have some difficult decisions to make. I do hope that the public um not just the public that's here, but reaches out and tells us um you know some of their priorities that they want to um go into this budget. Thank you.

I'm going to say thank you as well. I really appreciate um also breaking it down and showing us um the grants and what the possibilities are. Um some light at the end of the tunnel. Um, I want to thank all the people that came tonight because it's really important that you're here, that you hear this, you take it back to your families and your friends and your neighbors and you share, encourage people to participate. Um, because really that's why we're here. Um, and I just wanted to say both to uh, Nick and Eden, thank you. And to your teams for all the work that you did as well. Thank you.

Mr. Val, Mr. Riff, any final thoughts, words? I I'll just say that I have the easy job uh sort of standing up here and doing a lot of the talking with Mr. Avala to the board about what these presentations say, what the um you know what the information is and sort of walking the board and the community through it. It's everyone who's behind me over my right shoulder who makes it happen, right? It's the budget teams, it's the department directors, it's the people underneath them who have been compiling this data when we laid out a budget development plan at the end of July. Um understandably, some of them were looking at us like, "Are you crazy? that is going to be so much information, that's going to be so much work and we're going to say what in public um you know as we sorted to unveil it and they you know put their heads down and got the work done and presented a great product to make it easy for us to have this conversation. So u not to add one more thank you to this but it's thanks to all of them for making it happen without them and we wouldn't be here.

Yeah, I I think actually think that comment bears uh repeating. So for everything that was presented here tonight, um there is a department director and a team behind them that actually did the heavy lifting of putting all that information together. And so again, it's it's worth repeating. Thank you to each and every department and their teams for all the work they did to put this together.

It's every detail. It's the you know, it's the little things that the public's not even seeing, right? Uh if you go back and you watch or look at the presentation, which is all online by the way, um on a budget dedicated page of our website, if you look at the presentation in August, it's actually blue, whereas tonight it's red. And that's a detail that someone on our team was sweating about because they wanted you to be able to follow the entire discussion through the budget process and see that there's a change in the information that's being presented and the numbers that are there, you know, down to how you see all of that. I would never think about those details, but we have people who are experts at so many different things on this team, you know, and they care so much that they're sweating about it. Um, that's just one example. All of the posters and the graphs and uh, you know, the showand tell items that are here, I mean, that's all little stuff that's designed to help inform different types of learners and people who receive information in different ways about a really complicated topic. Most people, I would argue, in this country, will go their entire lives and not think about a municipal budget. many people in this community probably won't, but if you want to think about it, we're going to give you that information in any way that we can so that you can receive it uh and feel like you're a meaningful part of the process. So, thanks again to them. They're the ones that made it happen.

All right. So, that will take us to other business and I will start with Mr. Valor. Anything? Nothing. Thank you. Mr. Miss Corbal, nothing. Thank you. Miss Kane, nothing further. Miss Hannah, nothing. And I have nothing further. So we can adjourn for the night. Uh one final thank you to everybody including all the residents that are here. Hope to see everybody uh next month when we have a preliminary budget to present. Thanks everybody. Have a great night.