Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright. Denise, you ready to go? Alright. Joe? Alright. Good evening all. We will call the Tuesday, 10/14/2025 meeting of the finance committee to order. We do have a full quorum this evening. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, automation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Alright. Next item on our agenda is public comment. Are there any members of the public here this evening that wish to address the finance committee? Alright. Seeing no public comment, we'll move on to item number four a, which is approval of the minutes for the September 30.

Any changes to those minutes from the committee? Alright, seeing none those minutes are approved unanimous consent. That moves us to our business item for this evening and that is a kickoff of the 2026 operating budget or I should say a review of the 2026 operating budget. This evening we are going to cover police, fire, library, park rec and forestry, internal service funds, and applicable special revenue funds. I will remind the committee that just because we have these items agendized, if you do have other questions as part of the budget, are always free to ask those questions.

But just be cognizant of a director that may be here or not here. But I always mention that as we kick this off is you can ask questions about anything as it relates to the budget and Joe and Tony will address those even if it's not the items that are specifically noted on the agenda because the agenda reads that we are reviewing the operating budget. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Brown and Mr. Schirle, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So again, my name is Tony Brown. I'm the city administrator. I will start off by providing overview of the budget.

Before I do that, I just wanna make it very clear because it seems that over the past weeks and months through some of the public discussions within the community, there seems to be maybe a misunderstanding of the difference between the general fund and the capital fund or capital budget. So what we'll be talking about tonight is the general fund or what's called the operating budget. And the operating budget really focuses on the operations of the day to day city. So think of your personnel, think of your operating costs for different materials, etcetera. Whereas the capital budget, probably the easiest way to think of it is this building right here that we're sitting in.

So capital budget is for larger long term assets that the city has. And I just wanna make that distinction because those are two separate buckets that function in very different ways. So when we're talking about the levy limits as I go through this that pertains to the general fund or the operating fund. And again the capital budget or the debt service levy portion of that is really separate. So what I'll do is I'll review the budget schedule, talk a little bit about the FMP or financial management plan, a little snapshot of the budget before you this evening, how that relates to the tax rate, and then the estimated impact on the average single family household.

So really budgeting, like it or not, is a year round thing. It starts in July it says here, but really this is kind of an ongoing discussion in terms of planning and and thinking about different strategies and things that we'll implement even before July. But as you can see, we're at the point in the process where the red box there is outlining that we're reviewing the executive budget with the finance committee. And just for everyone's understanding out there in TV land, the executive budget is really the budget that the city administrator along with department directors ends up putting together. And at this stage, it goes to the finance committee for you all to decide what amendments, if any, you would like to make related to the budget.

And from there that becomes once you guys adopted the proposed budget and ultimately the proposed budget is what goes before the council for their review and adoption. So we'll go over this is the first session. Next session will be on Thursday and then the following finance committee meeting on October 8 will be the meeting at which we're hoping you guys will be in a position where comfortable to make a recommendation to the council for the proposed budget. So just a couple of highlights about what we're kind of thinking about as we're putting the budget together. We're certainly trying to be prudent and have an eye towards long term fiscal stability and making sure that we're using funds wisely in meeting not only the operational needs, but the strategic goals of the city and departments.

With regard to impact on homeowners, it's really trying to consider the affordability for residents. Certainly aiming to not make any service reductions. But I think as I go on to talk about the financial management plan, that's certainly a piece of the discussion as we're trying to figure out how to be sustainable. And then the last piece which is becoming I think ever more important is workplace appeal between inflation, the fact that it is a labor market where there are a lot of different opportunities for individuals and with the demographics that will becoming our projected in future years, it is increasingly going to be important to be a workplace that people want to come to whether that's compensation, benefits, or other non monetary items. So this is really picking up on what we discussed a few weeks ago about where we're at in terms of the levy limits.

And I won't go through that because I think we've done that enough in the past couple of meetings or talk about CPI just a little bit here to the point that if you look at the orange line graph that represents the consumer price index or a basket of goods and services that people can get and how much that cost is going up annually going back to 2014, which is on average 2.6%. And then the blue line is the levy limit percentage or the amount of net new construction that we can increase the budget each year. And on average that's about 1.2%. So what this is really saying is that there is a trend over several years where the cost that the city incurs for different services, goods or equipment is raising, is increasing at a rate faster than we're allowed to raise property taxes, which is a significant portion of the revenue that the city collects each year.

Tony, one thing that might be helpful and maybe you'll talk a little bit is we've talked a lot about net new construction over the last of the course of the last month. And if community development or maybe your office has tried to map out what your projections are for maybe the next five or seven years, that would be helpful. But I also know that that can be difficult because it's very hard to predict what development is going to come in. But I think if there's if you have an eye towards that over the next five years, think at our next meeting, it might be helpful to maybe talk a little bit about that.

We actually do have most of that information. We're just trying to hone in on some of the assumptions. So what community development did is they went through and based on the comp plan along with where zoning is allowed. I should say where single family housing is allowed by the zoning districts. And we figured out roughly how many acres are available for that type of development.

Obviously, there's a lot of assumptions built into that, but I think it gives you a sense of how we are a built out community and really economic development strategy wise. In the coming years, it's going to be more about redevelopment. And redevelopment is a lot more complex and intricate. And the projects coming together, the time span or time horizon for them takes a lot longer. But yeah, certainly we can bring that back the next meeting to go over that.

And I think just just to remind the committee and perhaps the public as well, with the current levy limits that are in place under state law, there's no provision for a community like ours that are that is in a sense landlocked. Is that correct? That is correct. So we are we have there's no special provisions. There's no dispensation. There's no allowance or any type of any any type of language in there that says if you have a community that's basically landlocked, you're held to the same levy limit and net new construction that somebody like an Oconomowoc or Muskego or Mukwonago who have additional land, especially green land to develop, there's no there's no dispensation for us. We're held to the same standard as those other communities. Is that correct?

Held to the same exact standard. Great. Thank you. So with that last slide in mind, what we tried to do was be proactive about forecasting out what the budget looked like, but then also coming up with strategies to address whatever that forecast said. So the basic question there is what would it cost for the city to operate with the same services making modest assumptions each year over the next five years.

And what we found out is that the anticipated income, if you will, of the city that we receive is less than the amount of funds being spent. So that really put us in a position where again we're trying to figure out what are those strategies, what are those operational pieces that we are implementing to make sure that each year we do have a balanced budget. So early last summer we presented that to this committee and that has been incorporated into this year's budget, but is also incorporated into next year's budget. So for 2025, we addressed a shortfall And out of that, we had about $2,500,000 of different service reductions, personnel modifications that came to that total dollar amount. Then for this year, we recently wrapped up a conversation about the one item that was included in the 2026 budget year for the FMP and that was the garbage and recycling special charge which has a net impact of approximately $1,200,000 So taken together with the initiatives in '25 and '26, you can see here and this is looking at just before the 2026 FMP initiative and looking at it after that occurred.

So the blue is before, the orange is after. And you can see once you get to 2029 that there's a pretty significant impact in terms of what that shortfall looks like in lessening that from May to 3.7. So for the budget that is in front of you tonight, there's about $1,400,000 increase, which may sound like a lot, but percentage wise out of the $84,000,000 budget, it's less than 2%. Then in terms of the operating levy, and we can get this into this in greater detail if you'd like. But what you see there is about a $1,000,000 decrease and there may be some additional comments by way of looking at that in terms of the special charge, but certainly address that if the committee would like to at a later time.

Other revenues, that's going up by a pretty healthy clip of about 8.5% or $2,300,000 And then as you can see there from the reval that the assessor's office did this past year that we saw pretty sizable increase in the amount of assessed value. So now we're at roughly $10,600,000,000 which is about a 1,000,000,000 point dollars increase or 17 roughly percent increase over 2025. What that translated to is that the operating tax rate and just to be clear this is for the operating tax levy or operating tax rate. So the other piece to this is the debt service levy or the debt service tax rate. So for this piece of it went down $0.93 to $4.78 from $5.72 And then if we're looking at the average single family property for this after the reval, which is $350,000 The city portion of taxes for operating only is roughly about $16.75.

And if you took the equivalent value for 2025 it would be a $308,000 or $17.60 dollars and city taxes for operating only. We'll pause there for a second if there's any questions.

Questions for Tony thus far? Rick, if I don't ask now, I'll forget it. Rick, what would be or excuse me, Tony, what would be helpful in going into our next meeting as you kick it off would be to marry up the operating portion and the capital portion just to kind of put a little bit of a capstone on it? Because I mean, certainly we understand exactly what you're saying, but I think it's fair for the public to kind of see both the operating and the capital.

We do have an estimated total tax rate for the city. It's not broken down by operating and debt service, but we can do that.

I think it would be helpful because I think given given the attention that the budget's getting this year, think it would be very good to do that because I know and I know I've gotten a call or two about this building for example. And you know the fact that the city spent all of its money to build city hall and you you explained that the money was borrowed and at a very low interest rate under 2% and spread out over roughly, think this building is fifteen years, if I remember right. And that that is not impacted by levy limits. So there's a little bit of a different rules as it relates to capital, but it's not like the city paid cash for this building. And I think that whatever we can do as we go through this process to articulate that, to your point that there are two buckets.

There's a capital bucket and operating budget will bucket will be helpful, especially as folks continue to digest the the garbage fee that was passed. Thank you. Oh, I'll go to Alderman Lumpkin and Alderman Slipin.

So as I'm as I'm looking at this, our operating tax levy is gonna go down $964,000. Is a good portion of that because we removed the garbage levy from there? And then says that our residential city tax bill will be going down $86.86. I'm assuming that that's because the levy went down. And, basically, when you pay taxes, you're gonna be paying $86.86 less on a $350,000 home.

But then you add in for those who need garbage, the $1.60 and is that approximately the 40 how you arrived at the $49 on an average home, give or take or, you know, explain how that works?

I'll try to answer all the several questions in there I think you had. First off on the decrease of 964,000 on the operating levy. What the mechanics are is we take the $20.25 levy, we add the net new construction and adjustments and then the last step that we will be doing is removing the levy that was related to the refuse as required by state statute, which is roughly $2,000,000 So that reduction is reflected in this new levy amount. So then roughly then kind of describing your other question where when we in the previous meetings we discussed kind of like the tax bill change with the fee included that was actually looking at the entire tax bill, not just the operating. So as Tony mentioned, we will definitely bring something forward to kind of shed a little more light on that again at the end of probably next week or next meetings because probably the last item that I'll be covering will be the debt service fund which we'll talk about the debt service levy and the equipment replacement fund.

And so once we're done with that we can look at the tax bill for the entire we'll revisit it and take a look at the total tax bill comparison.

Thank you. Sure. Alderperson Helvinsleben?

I I just I'm I'm gonna ask it as a question, but I think it might just be either a typo or a rounding error. But I did notice that there's a difference in the dollar change in our book let on page four versus what I'm seeing here on slide nine that you have pulled up and I think it's supposed to be 94 and not 93 and in fact when I pulled up the calculator that was in my pocket that my teacher said I would never have in my pocket, I did check it. I think it's supposed to be 94, which is what is in the booklet, but not what's on the slide. Again, I'm guessing it's a rounding error. I just wanted there to be clarification, especially for anybody who's watching at home.

I just wanna clarify. You're saying the 93¢ related to the difference in the two tax rates?

Yes. So the city operating tax rate line, the second from the bottom, it's five seventy two, four seventy eight, you subtract the two, you get 94, obviously.

Yeah. And that's probably just a rounding error because it goes more decimal points beyond this.

That's what I figured. I just wanted to clarify because it didn't match what was in the booklet too. So if people are following around along, I just wanted to make sure that that was clear for anybody that was paying really close attention. Because I was like, wait. That's not what I was reading elsewhere. So thank you for the clarification. Okay.

So moving forward, we've talked a little bit about this over again the past month here. And that's just the fact that largely most of the revenue that we collect at an annual basis is either restricted by the state or is state aid in the form of intergovernmental revenue. So just to touch on taxes for a second, it's roughly about $52,000,000 or 62% of the budget. And if we're only able to increase that on average 1% a year, That generates roughly $525,000 of additional revenue for an $84,000,000 budget. So that is really at the crux of what is the challenge that we face.

And especially when we're thinking about comments that Alderman Piper made with regard to people talking about, well, why didn't you build the or not build a new city hall? We would still be having the same discussions regardless of whether or not city hall was built because the discussions we're having revolve around levy limits and tightness if you will or really challenges that it creates because we are a landlocked community and it holds us in a position where it is very difficult to realize a high amount of net new construction. Then for the intergovernmental revenues which are roughly $16,000,000 or 19% out of the $84,000,000 budget, we do not get a lot comparison to our peer communities. So this is looking at again those communities that are a similar population to the city of Waukesha. And between the total base shared revenue along with supplemental program and then expenditure restraint combining those altogether, you can see just the kind of stratification here where the city of Racine gets close to $35,000,000, while the city of Waukesha gets a little bit more than $5,000,000.

And a lot of that is due to the fact that there are varying levels of household income. And I'm not even going to and I'm hoping you're not going to ask about the formula for expenditure restraint because it is very complex and it's like a black box. But a huge driver in that is household income. So a city like Racine where on average the household income is lower, they're going to get more. And the reverse is true for a city like Waukesha where the household income is a little bit higher or substantially higher when you're looking at comparing those communities?

Alderman Leipk, you had a question.

I think it would be helpful for the community to underneath any one of these graphs talking about the city sizes, we know that they're all comparable. If you could just put a little notation on the bottom population, you know, then they could see a little better. Like, Walk has 77,000. How many does Racine have? How many do Green Bay so we can we certainly do that.

You. I guess as a follow-up to Rick's point, if I think of or if we think of communities in Waukesha County, how do we stack up from a per capita on a per capita basis? I think that again, we're giving you a lot of we're we're asking you to do a lot of different things.

That's

But for for good reason because there's there's 15 of us including the mayor, 16 that are getting a lot of calls and questions and information and data is very powerful.

Yeah. We can bring this piece back too. Just A

chart like this with communities around Waukesha County would be great. Okay. Any other since we stopped, any other questions? Any other assignment? Gentlemen?

All

right. So just some budget highlights again as I mentioned in that budget snapshot, property taxes are going down roughly $1,000,000 State shared revenues going up about $3.17. With regard to expenditure restraint, it's going up a pretty healthy amount at close to $600,000 but it is worth noting that this might be short lived. We received a larger share of the overall expenditure restraint program pie, And that's because several municipalities didn't qualify for the 2026 payment that previously did. So again, amount of funding with the program stayed the same, but the amount of communities that qualified decreased.

So that's why you're seeing the amount there go up a little bit.

So that just furthers the lot of the points that we've been making this evening. So you have a fixed amount that the state sets aside for expenditure restraint, you have less and less communities that are qualifying for it because they're seeing the same challenges that we are. Right. So in our particular case, because we are budget well and budget conservatively, we were the beneficiary of that. But that's in a sense could not can't continue forever.

And the other reason, mean the reason why we're thinking it might be short lived is because we believe that's a number of those communities may be able to jump back into the program. Whether it was they had a referendum this last year or they're taxed because they had a reassessment, their tax rate dropped below the required amount. So it was a little uncommon for this to occur. And so as we project, we will be conservative until we see how this kind of pans out over the next couple of years.

So don't bank on $592,000 Not every year, no. Okay. Alderman Lemke.

I think you partially answered my question, but what causes a community to not qualify for expenditure restraint? I always thought is if you have a referendum that says you wanna spend 5,000,000 extra in the levy for parks, would that then cancel out your expenditure restraint and that's why we don't do that?

Yes. So those the referendum is really driven towards the levy limits. You get a referendum pass whatever reason you you put out there that you you're allowed to increase your levy for that. But it does the the expenditure restraint program is independent of that. Every year they publish what the CPI percentages from the previous year, plus we get a little bump for our net new construction as well.

This year we were able to go about 3.7% above the previous year's general fund budget. But if someone had passed something that was more than the 3%, 3.7% or I think they do look at around the state different percentages, they would have been disqualified from the program for one year. If they can if they've in future years after that though, that's their new base. And so they can potentially jump on the next year.

And the last two items on here, so I think this is worth pointing out. So those first three bullet points, those are all things that I just had mentioned that we have not a whole lot of control over. The last two items, public charges for service and permits, those are things that we do have control over in terms of setting the rates for those. So in some cases, it's due to the fact that we have modified those rates. And in other cases, it's that we're seeing more activity.

So for public charges for service, this is different charges as it says for services that departments have. So thinking in your mind, ambulance billing, recreation fees, planning, engineering, review fees, those types of things. So that's increasing about $200,000 same with permits. And for permits, that's more think about new things that are being built, whether that's building permits, plumbing, electrical, etcetera. In terms of general fund expenditures, as Alderman Piper likes to say, we're a public safety community.

So that is where a majority of our funds are spent between police and fire. Other thing probably that I just wanna mention is that roughly, correct me Joe, 70%. How much of our budget is personnel costs? 75 percent of our budget is people. I constantly say and people probably get sick of me saying this is that the services that we provide take people.

And to do that, we need to pay them competitive compensation to make sure that we get high quality individuals in our city jobs. I think by and large that has been the case, it's been the standard and we'd like to continue making sure that it is. Just a little bit about highlights for expenditures. So as you can see, speaking of wages and benefits, they're going up about $2,000,000 to about $63,700,000 The contingency increased by about $1,370,000 And I believe that most of this is related to what we're just talking about is expenditure restraint and making sure that we continue to reserve some of that capacity for future years if we need to utilize it. Could you

just maybe just double click on that a little bit around the fact of kind of the banking of operating dollars as it relates to ERP and how that works with the formula?

Okay. So the ERP thresholds when you're talking about qualification and or what you're allowed to do for the following year. It looks at the previous year's budget for the general fund and you're able to add up to that CPI percentage, which for us was 3.7%. After we did our budgeting in house, we realized that we were with the reduction of refuse and recycling costs coming out of the general fund budget, there's no required adjustments in the program to deal with that. We have a bit more capacity.

And so if there's any given year over the next couple of years where CPI is drops a little further, in a given year it's gonna be it could be less than like even our contractual increases that we have in like police and fire. So we're what we're doing here on the contingency side is just budgeting in a contingency so that we have that capacity for future years because remember contingency is part of the base for the following year. Like it's the entire general fund budget. So base and just as far as mechanics go for contingencies as far as the city is concerned, those funds are can only be used with your approval. It's very clearly set off to the side.

I believe half of our contingency is being funded by a transfer in from our stabilization fund. We don't intend to use it, but it's literally just to preserve capacity for that program going forward, so that we have some flexibility.

Did you mean the finance committee approval or council approval?

Council.

Thank you.

We can always ask for your recommendation for approval, of course though.

Great. Thanks, Joe.

And the last item in there is the solid waste being removed from the general fund and put into a special revenue fund. In terms of the tax rate, this is just looking back to 2018. And then you can see from '23 to '24 that the rate went down, that was a year there was a reval. And then also you can see how it's going down from '25 to '26. From 09/22 to July.

I do have to point out because people glom onto certain things that these are estimated at least for '26, it's an estimated tax rate. So it does not include the fine final manufacturing assessment because we don't get that until later in the year. And then also it doesn't include the total tax increment within TID districts or tax incremental districts. And what that means is that's just the amount of taxes within the TID that need to be paid. That make sense?

Okay. In terms of impact to property owners, this just looks at different values and says based on that value. So this is not really taking into consideration whether or not your assessed value increased as a result of the reval. But it's just saying that static dollar amount in the case of like $200,000 that in '25 a property taxpayer would have paid $18.84 and moving forward that same value house would have paid $15.60. And with that, here's just listed next steps.

And I think I'm going to unplug here so we can move on to talking with the departments for this evening.

Gentlemen, I assume you have a running order in mind for tonight?

Yes. And I just

I kinda wanna explain kinda what the plan is for each department. We will bring up for each department, we'll bring up their initial budget page, their department page so that they can, I like to call it, tell their story? It talks about like accomplishments, goals and even like some statistics, whatever they would like to tell you about their department. And then we will go into the numbers a little bit kind of in summary form like we've done in the last couple of years. And so I have a PowerPoint for that. So kicking us off is our police department. And

I yeah. I was just gonna say, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say that that is roughly page 63 in the book. It looks like it's page 67 of the PDF. And for those following along at home, it's 200 pages total. Gentlemen, good evening. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves for the folks at home, and the floor is yours.

Good evening. My name is Tom Wagner, assistant chief for Waukesha PD.

Ty Hoffman, also assistant chief at the police department.

So we'll start with the 2026 goals. So the first one under service and excellence is going to be basically to keep all the funded positions that we have fully staffed and consistently maintained at authorized levels. Part of that is over the course of last year, we've had as many as 13 down for patrol officers. So it's important for us to maintain the level of number of officers to give the city the and the community the service that they deserve. Second goal that we have is under the strategic goal of engaged community.

That's continuing the great celebrated work of our crisis response unit, reducing emergency detentions, increasing voluntary treatments through education advocacy, and we are on pace to meet our goal of 10% in 2025, and we want to have another 10% of reduction in 2026. The last one that we have in there under service of excellence is to continue our traffic enforcement efforts. We want to reduce total traffic accidents in 2026 by 10%. And we also want to continue to address root causes of crashes intersections to make sure we're deploying our resources to those areas to reduce those accidents. We can roll right on to financial for you.

I guess I would before we I wanna ensure that we publicly thank, as I know we start to talk about overtime and the financials, the police reserves and the good work that they do. I I think we've talked over the years about the just the pure dollars of overtime that they save manning special events and things like that. And I know it's well into the tens of thousands. And we all know I'm sure we all know someone who's a reserve police reservist. We wanna thank them for their for their service. I think it's a good time good time of the year to do that, and you should probably do that every time you see them.

So Absolutely.

Gentlemen, back to you.

So as you can see, one of the issues that we look at each year is our overtime spending And as a whole, on the overtime budgets, we are on track. Some specific budgets are over, some are under. The biggest being the patrol overtime budget is substantially overspent and that's due to various factors each year that we have very little control over, officers sick or injured, family leave requests, military leave, special events, SWAT callouts, etcetera. These are all instances where we have very little control. Where we do have control is the staffing.

And we've gone from a different model of a minimum staffing level to what we call an optimal staffing level, meaning that supervisors at certain times of day and call times of flux or decrease have the discretion to adjust minimums at that point. If they're over or they're under, they are given that discretion. So we've been able to save over time by allowing the leaders of our department to make those decisions in real time. Moving on to staffing, recruitment and retention that was touched upon earlier, like it was said, at one point this year, we were down 13 officers, which for our department size, that is a very large percentage of our staffing to be short, which obviously then contributed to the overtime costs associated with filling all of those spots. The good news is that through the very intentional, deliberate, and creative work done by our recruitment team, I can report that we are now two officers down.

And as of January 1, we have two named candidates that will be filling those positions, and we'll be starting the Recruit Academy in January. So come January, we will be back up to full staffing.

What's the secret to that success?

The secret to that success is a couple of individuals who I will call out personally, captain Brad Becker and lieutenant Chad Purgandy, who have run our recruitment and training programs in the recent past have been extremely creative and flexible in their methods of recruiting and also retaining the best candidates that we can get. They've gone from a traditional recruitment model, which was very static and took months and months and months to progress from step to step, and pivoted and became extremely flexible and creative in how they attract candidates, get them in the door, interview them, and get them through all the steps necessary to get them out on the road as cops. We've been very successful in drawing lateral transfers from other agencies all around the state. And a lot of that has to do with all of the benefits and intangibles, as well as tangibles that our department offers. Our recruitment through the use of our PD Building, which has been recently remodeled is a huge, huge draw for folks when they come in the door.

They look around and say, wow, this is this is quite a police department. We give them a tour, and they're constantly and consistently impressed. And that is a factor in drawing people to wanna work at our agency. The support that our officers and our department get financially from the city, the council, is is a big bonus as well. We are trained well.

We are equipped well. We have beautiful facility, and that draws people to wanna come and work in Waukesha and stay in Waukesha. So we've been very, very fortunate. And I would say we are we're bucking the nationwide trend of being down officers nationwide, and we've seen it locally, that agencies are are experiencing shortages in officers. Some of that has to do with the more portable nature of the current workforce where they are willing to work a time at a department and leave to go to another department for various reasons. We've we've experienced that ourselves.

And I would be remiss not to remind the council and myself included that, doing a ride along with the police department and the fire department, is a great way to get some real good perspective on not only the good work that our policeman police department does every day, but also some of the challenges that, you know, we face as a city of 80,000 people. So I encourage my colleagues on the council to take the police department up on an offer and ride around in the police car for a bit. I would say do it in the evening, probably a little bit busier, but whenever your schedule allows is good too.

The only other thing on the the financial side that we have to add is is obviously as you can see the vast majority of our operating budget is spent on personnel costs.

Questions for the police department? Alderperson Molson?

I do have questions for the PD, but I wanna back up to the administrative table first. I noticed when I was reading over this budget book that the health insurance goes up by a whole wide variety of percentage points. I was wondering if you could address generally what you what you found in the health insurance market this year. And I know some of the variability would be the various choices of various individuals, but

I'll let Joe talk about the financial side of it, but I'll speak to the strategy side if you will. So for a number of years, the city has been with UMR or United Healthcare. And we've had two different plans PPO one, PPO two that have a certain percentage of employee premium contribution. This year or this upcoming year I should say, we'll be switching to a different health insurance company called Centivo. And the difference there is that one primary care physician visits are $0.

There's no deductibles. Everything's really just a flat co pay. And the model is really kind of trying to do a couple things. It's trying to get people to go to the doctor to identify different things that they may have going on sooner rather than later because that decreases the likelihood that over the span of let's say it's a chronic condition, that it ends up costing a lot more claims wise because roughly 50% of all of our health care spend is related to claims that we have. And that really is one of the things that drives year over year what type of increase that you get in health insurance.

Just for reference, Southeast Wisconsin on average on an annual basis, roughly it's about eight to 11% increase that you'll see, again, on average. And then the other thing too is to coordinate care with your primary care physician so that as you are going through the health care system, which is pretty complex, I think everybody could agree on that, that you are getting kind of coordinated care in terms of going to certain specialists. So So there is a referral component. It's not a referral in kind of the HMO type of way where it's a referral based on medical necessity. It's more focused on working with your physician so that at least they're aware of what you're doing and trying to get you to the right folks.

And then I think the other part of it too, quite frankly, is trying to put something together where over a number of years, it is a cost savings compared to what we pay now over the long haul for both city and employees. So that's my long winded answer and I'm sticking with it and I'll switch it over to John.

Okay. I don't know how to follow that up. I would say your assumptions were right on. I mean, the last couple of years, we've had a decent amount of turnover. So elections as compared to previous years tends is we're seeing a lot of differences. So whether that's people coming on that we retired or people that left that had family and people signing on that had that are now single or vice versa. So really the biggest piece that is driving differences in the health insurance budgets of any department is is generally the election and it's related to that turnover.

Thank you. Sorry, thank you. And back to the police. So far for overtime, were you able to do that with volunteers or did you have to order someone to come in?

Most of the voluntary or overtime is covered voluntarily, but there are definitely times where we need to order personnel in.

Okay. Do you know how many babies we had this year?

I don't off the top of my head.

Okay. The do the patrol officers agree that the CRU benefits the entire department?

Absolutely. The whole department is behind the crew units for the work that they do. They they're specially trained. They are able to respond faster to those calls for service, and they're just better equipped to handle them than what the general patrol officer is even though they have some level of training. So it benefits all the officers in the department as well as it does the community.

Thank you. And then I know that we're working on a new dispatch service software. Do you know does that impact our budget at all? Not yet?

The finance director says not yet.

Well, we aren't operating on it yet. Right now it's part of the capital the capital project side of things as we're developing the software and we're working with the consult our consultants on that right now. So I believe you'll start seeing the impact of that next year and definitely in 2027.

So we picked something up and it's currently being installed. Is that generally where we're at?

It's probably slightly more complicated than that.

Well, yeah.

I don't know if if you It's

built from the ground up as

That's we the best way of saying it.

It's being built at the police department?

When I say being built, mean in a general non literal sense where they're they're building a software system. So they're not laying bricks or mortar or anything like that at the PD, but we we had a meeting today, and I'll give you an example where we have to go through all these different decision points for these software engineers to say, if this, then that. If this, then that. So that's what we're doing right now so that we get the system built specifically for our purposes to work the best for our department and city.

Okay. And then I know that we've taken on the sales calls for dispatch. Do we have enough dispatchers and does that does keeping that I mean, I'm assuming we're prioritizing re retaining that service in house. So how does that affect our budget?

Yes. Currently, we are down three dispatchers right now. So their overtime budget is is reflecting the shortages therein. We are looking to hire dispatchers. So that that is definitely a concern that we are seeing right now.

Thank you.

Aldeperson Helvinslavin.

Yeah, this may be more for the administration table as well. So in reading through the budget booklet this weekend, I noticed on page five that the CRU, the Crisis Response Unit, was called out in that earlier section. Specifically, it looks like and I think we all knew that this was coming that the federal funding for that program is drying up. I see it called out here that beginning in 2027, we're gonna be expecting the city funding for that to be around a $100,000. Is that something that we are including in those projected budgets that we were looking at prior.

So I know, you know, we've got those those charts with all the the lines that are looking a little better than they did prior to a couple weeks ago. But I just wanna make sure that that's something that we are keeping in mind. I mean, I know it's in the booklet, but I just kinda wanted to call that out.

Yeah. So for the projection or the cost to continue, what that's looking at is existing services and applying some assumptions to them. So that's not assuming any type of service level changes. So within forecast, it would not have that $100,000. So as we're thinking about that, what that would mean is that the gap or the delta would increase by a $100,000 in the projection.

Now having said that, I think the PD has been very diligent about finding different grant sources and working with the county to do that. And in the case of at least kind of this next year, through the work that they did with the county, they were able to get grant funding. And we haven't really talked about that a whole lot yet, but that's something that's being worked through right now. But, yeah, I'm working with health and human services. We've been able to realize another grant for another year.

So it kind of has momentarily pushed back that date at which we'll be having a discussion about whether or not the city is going to fully fund that. That's something that probably will come sooner than later because the county wants and rightfully so, a decision about how committed the city is to the program to having the second clinician. So that's a piece that we'll be talking about probably in the next couple months, if not sooner.

Thank you. I I do wanna say thank you to to the police department as well. I at least in in my district, I have seen the benefits of the program. I really appreciate it, and I I would love to see that continue. So I appreciate the clarification. I appreciate all the work that you've done. Thank you.

Alderman Lemke.

First of all, I wanna just state that I support the police department 100%. But a couple of constituents have talked to me recently, and they say, why are we paying for a sheriff's department and the city? I know the city is big enough. We wanna have our own police department, but why is somebody like the village of Waukesha and the town of Big Bend and all of that all covered by the sheriff's department where city of Waukesha is paying is has their own police force. What is the size of the city that you have to be in to, you know, partake in Waukesha sheriffs versus the the city police department? Do you have any idea?

That's a complex question. A lot of the sheriff's department is obviously responding to communities that don't have full time police departments, and they're contracting with them. But there's a lot less population in those areas and calls for service than needs for those communities that they serve. So I know the sheriff's department's also has struggled with staffing levels. In fact, I've heard there's sometimes there's only, like, four deputies on for the whole county in the course of a a day shift. So for us, for the calls of service that we have and the level of service that this community expects and deserves, it's completely different in the populations that we serve.

I know I've I've said to my constituents, we're not paying for the Waukesha sheriff's department. It is part of our Waukesha taxes and and volume of services, Peewawkee pays the sheriff's department for their use. So I just wanted to make sure I was correct in my assumption. Well,

guess I'd be remiss if I didn't add on to that a bit. I mean, we the city of Waukesha based on my last number is pays roughly a little over 10,000,000 in property taxes in the Waukesha County and that number is probably low because it's an old number. And I for one have been harping, I guess, is probably the best term on the sheriff's department over the years to try to get a little bit of return out of that, whether it's bear cats or police dogs. And unfortunately, the the county has their own budget challenges, and they've they've told us in many instances over my time sitting in this chair is that can't provide that service anymore. So go buy your own Bearcat and city of Waukesha because we can't guarantee that we can have someone there to respond it even though our police officer could probably drive it just as well as theirs.

But that's another story. And the same thing as it relates to canines. There was a many for many many years, the city of Waukesha didn't have canines. The county provided that service. And they came to the city a number of years ago and said, we're not able to do that anymore. And through the work of the department and and and a nonprofit that I'm forgetting the name of, so bear with them. So please pardon me on that. They worked and got us pretty much the three initial dogs for free through a program. And now we have three police dogs that we didn't have ten years ago. So there's a lot of things that I would like to see from the county as it relates to this, but we're they're in the same budget predicaments as we are.

And as it relates to crew, I'm a huge advocate of crew. I mean, I've I've some of the work that I do outside of this job, you know, I've seen that live and in person. And we worked real hard with the county, the police department did to work up a funding program program that works in conjunction with the city of Brookfield because they also participate in the program at a level to come to where we are. But it's an extremely important program. And I hope that our county board representatives are hearing this that this is something that, you know, that the county should continue to support because just like in many cases, just like health insurance, like Tony said, if we can if we can through this group, if we can head off someone that's going through a bad time and having a challenge, that will save the county money as it relates to mental health.

And certainly, in many cases, save a life, which we all benefit from. So, yeah. I I I do hope that our county board representatives are are hearing that how important the pro the crew program is and it would be it would be we certainly appreciate the the partnership with the sheriff's department, but we wanna make sure that we continue to get some level of return back for the little over $10,000,000 that we send in every year. So it's not a question but probably more of a statement. Other questions for the police department from the committee? Mister Brown?

Just following up on your comments, would it be helpful if the police department provided a memo about the program to the council members so you could maybe advocate for that?

I think I think an overview of crew would be great.

Yeah. Because there are certainly some impacts that I know that they have identified in the past with regard to reduced emergency detentions, transports to the hospital and also just service efficiencies.

Alderperson thank you, Tony. Alderperson Helvenson?

Yeah. If you are going to do that, which I think would be a really great idea, I know that you all have done a presentation that specifically called out the staff hours that were saved. I would say that that would be a really great statistic to highlight if you are gonna create a memo for the rest of the council because I found that really helpful when I've seen your presentation a couple of times. Definitely encourage you to do that because I am I'm in agreement with alderperson Piper. This is a great program.

I guess one question I that I have gentlemen that's been rattling around in my head a little bit. And I guess very plainly, if if you were called upon to reduce your budget by $500,000, what would that look like? What would that strategy be?

Our budget, operating budget is conservative like the rest of the city departments are. Looking at our numbers, think approximately 95% of our operating budget is personnel. So if you'd ask us to cut $500,000, that means people, that means jobs, and that would be a very tough decision for us because service to the community, the excellence and service of what this community expects and deserves, we would have to make some really hard decisions on how we would have to lose people from our agency. Would that

be less officers on the street?

Potentially. We obviously have sworn and non sworn positions in our department, but that would be a really difficult decision to have to go and look through basically what we would consider essential and nonessential in terms of employees. And I believe all of our employees are essential.

Thank you, gentlemen. Any other questions from the police for the police department from the committee? We do have the mayor here as well. Thank you, Sean. And Alderman Van Trieste and Alderman Manion join us as well. Gentlemen, if you have any questions, just wave wave profusely and I will somebody will get my attention. Any questions for the Alderman Manion?

It's not so much a question, maybe more of a comment. Looking specifically at the overtime line, this is something that's been a topic I think as long as I've been on council. We've always looked at overtime numbers with respect to public safety departments. And we always say we're gonna do better and manage it differently. And yet it seems like we always are over budget.

So I see in 2024 we spent 875,000 roughly, but yet we budgeted in 2025, 300,000 less than that number. And here we are projected to be $350,000 over budget. So I guess, again a comment and we're looking at again, you know, increasing that line item by less than 1% in 2026. So the numbers to me don't really add up. I guess my question is, are we confident this time that we're gonna get it right Or should we be budgeting a better, more accurate number with respect to the overtime line?

So I mean the one thing I'll say globally when I think of overtime because obviously this is a topic for numerous departments, not just PD, is really to look at personnel holistically. There's a reason why that OT is high. It's because the if you look at the salary projected versus the budget, I mean that's about 600 or $700,000 below. So the reason why the OT went up is because they didn't have the folks staffed. They've been trying their best to obviously stay fully staffed, but there's always with the turnover we expect that.

So I guess really what we're budgeting for is fully staffed perfect world. And the way I look at the budget when I'm I'm not focusing just on one category, I'm looking at the whole picture. Yes. If they have a lot of turnover or a lot of FMLA in a particular year, that OT is gonna go up. But in the end, we're expecting that the other expense accounts and the personnel will be under budget then. But if we start running to the case where that's not the case, we need to have a different discussion. That's my opinion.

My comment to that would be, I think, you know, again, I've been sitting in this chair for twelve years and I think it's been a discussion every year of those twelve that I've been here. So

You're right.

Something isn't quite working there.

So the only the only other option would be is we would budget less than full staff and and put and put more of that into the OT lines, which is possible. It's not what we've done in the past, which is why I've always kind of looked at it from a total standpoint. I would say if there's a shift in kind of theory on how we should put this forward in the future, we can discuss those differences. But that's just generally the I wanted to at least have you understand the way I looked at those. Wouldn't say that. It probably wouldn't change the overall totals. It would just change the buckets and the categories. It is definitely a discussion that's been going on for a while. Alderperson Wagerson?

Sorry, have short arms. So my question is about how much of special events are in that overtime? Like, Joe, when you're looking at the budget and we talk about special events, and, you know, we do have quite a few of them here in the summer and I'm sure that overtime plays. Know, we have projected events, so I guess I'm I'm curious how much of that plays into your overtime budget.

I will say that special event overtime is a significant portion of of the overtime spent at our agency. Each year, we compile a memo and submit the total cost of the previous year's special events that we had to staff and we send that to the city administrator. So we have that. I believe this past year, if I recall correctly, it was roughly $50,000 Does that seem accurate?

I'm going to say yes for right now.

Good enough for me. It is significant though. To answer the question shortly, it is significant.

And if I could just add to that, I think that's one of those things that and just to be upfront and straightforward is that's one of the things that we'll be looking at in terms of cost recovery because it does become a challenge operationally for the police department to do those types of special events. And I think my view is that it's a lot to ask of officers to come in for their normal shifts, then come in for overtime because of FMLA, then come in for overtime because of special events. So I think it's something we need to be kind of thoughtful about in terms of how we move forward because there is a real cost to that to the city. And on some level and in some cases, it is that the general taxpayer is subsidizing us having some certain special events.

If I may as well, given the happenings in our city that we're all very well aware of that we've had to completely reevaluate the way we staff and look at a special event. Therefore, in order to do these events that we don't really have a great deal of say in, in order to do them safely, it requires more manpower, more people, more overtime.

Thank you very much. And I just for the people watching at home, really that was one of the reasons why I asked the question Cause it is subsidized by the taxpayer. Cause my question now to Joe and Tony is, are we considering, and maybe this isn't the forum to do that, but you know, maybe just to say that you know what is our fee for special events? And we they don't currently those those groups do not pay for the police department to be there. Is that correct? It's not included in the licensing or the or I'm sorry, the permit fee when they're asking for street closures and things like that. Is that correct?

I can't speak to what the fees exactly are, but they are I I think the the word that comes to mind is de minimis or small. So if you allow me, I will bring up the memo, and I can certainly follow-up with an email to the committee just to give you guys a good understanding of what the cost is on an annual basis along with what those special event charges are as well and a street closing permit and what that cost as well.

Doreen, are you good? Aldeperson Helplenslavin?

Yeah. I just wanted to get back to, Aldeperson Mannion's question and then the comments that you all had. So it sounds like it sounds like at the beginning of the year, we anticipate being fully staffed in the police department. Is that I heard that accurately.

That is correct. So we we will have all those positions accounted for. Mhmm. With officers in training and in the academy, it's several months before they actually become fully fieldable officers that are able to be counted on on their own.

Sure. So from a budgeting perspective, if we're thinking about where we should put the budget dollars in wages versus overtime and thinking about whether or not we're fully staffed or assuming we are understaffed, so to speak, I guess would your recommendation then be to assume a fully staffed department based on what we're projecting here tonight, and and what we're expecting to come on in the next few months? I I guess I'm I'm cognizant of what what, alderperson Manion is saying, but I guess my concern is that if we start shifting things around based on what we're hearing tonight, that might not be a very good idea, at least for this upcoming budget.

So I would say that we don't know what's gonna happen during the year. We don't know what their turnover is going to be or any other department's turnover. So again, I'm okay with changing the buckets down the road. I wouldn't recommend it, but I'm willing to obviously work with administration and the council on this. I just from my perspective, I think it's definitely it tells a story.

So if overtime is over budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars in any department, I feel like a story should be told. Especially any any questions that come up, which they should be answered. It seems like the PD does have a decent story or explanation for why it occurred this year and even past years, I'm sure. But I would say like the way I look at it is still holistically. If we were just to put up total personnel and total operating and just kind of explained what those were, even to the total like right now we're projecting for PD to be six of six of the 500 to $600,000 below twenty twenty five's budget.

Okay. In personnel. So to me, I do think overall it's a risk. But to Alderman Manion's point is it has been happening over the history of the city. So it I just think at the very least, it needs to be explained during this during this time period and even throughout the year when this occurs.

But from a budgetary standpoint, I'm looking at it from total personnel. And I will say this, we do these five year projections. We assume that throughout the general fund that we have about 1.5% give back to the general fund in personnel because of turnover throughout all of the departments. It could be bigger in certain departments every year, but that's generally what what our history has been, our trend. So we assume that when we project.

So just to keep that in mind, it's not in the budget that way, but when we do projections, we do assume that the general fund is going get about 1.5% of personnel back. But yes, from a budgetary standpoint, you look at salaries and wages and OT together, that's if I were if you're asking my recommendation, that's what I would at least I would want you to expect from us. That's how we're managing it, but that we are here to explain why we go over budget in any one of these lines.

Sure. Yes. Just kind of as a follow-up statement, I guess, because the way that I was looking at it, especially after hearing your comments, is I'm looking at the 2025 original budget that's up on the screen right now versus the 2025 projected for salaries and wages. And I'm seeing the difference there versus the difference on the overtime line budget to the difference in the 2025 projected budget. And ultimately, it looks like there's a smaller difference there in the in this in the overtime budget to what we actually ended up spending.

So to me, that that's a that's a success story even though ultimately that wasn't really probably the way you all were seeing it. But in terms of a budget success story, it it to me, it looks like we came out ahead as the city, I guess, is the way to look at that. Am I am I reading that correctly?

I do. I think it's a management's success story, actually, that the department paid attention overall to their personnel budget and still accomplished the the goals that they had in place.

Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. You guys did a lot with very little. So thank you again.

Alderman Lumpkin.

I just maybe I heard it wrong, I'm just looking for some clarification. When you said that your overtime budget, most of it is from special events. Is that correct?

I wouldn't say most of it. No. A significant portion of it. 50%? No. Oh. $50,000

per Okay.

Thank you.

Other other questions for the police department from the committee? Gentlemen, thank you. I think you bore the brunt of a lot of overall bigger picture questions while you're up here. I want to thank you for that.

You guys are welcome.

Number one. So gentlemen, thank you very much.

Thank you all.

Joe?

All right. Next up we have our fire department.

And fire department for those following along at home, bear with me, is starts on 69 of page 69 of the book and it looks like page 73 of the PDF. And gentlemen, if you would introduce yourselves to the folks at home and the floor is yours.

Right. I'm Rob Goplin, the Fire Chief and with me is Assistant Chief Tim Fleming. I'll start out with our 2025 accomplishments. One of our biggest accomplishments is our mobile integrated health care position, the caseworker position expanded its reach by in 2025 significantly. There was over 70 referrals to this position as of August It's currently working with more than 14 open cases in the city.

And just as a reminder, that's a position, that ultimately is designed to help anyone who might be experiencing homelessness or a, mental health issues or substance abuse issues that might not have access to the proper care or the proper help that they need, this position helps get them connected with those those agencies and entities that might be able to help them and get them the help they need. And then that hopefully and in many cases has reduced significantly their reliance on our department by calling 911 and requesting emergency services from from our department and and in some cases the police department as well. Our apparatus specification committee. We've tasked this committee with taking a look at our apparatus and what exactly we ask for when we build an apparatus. As you well know, apparatus are expensive and the trend keeps going up.

There is a national committee that is working towards addressing those issues in industry. We've tasked our committee with doing the same thing locally. Looking at what is it that we really need, what meets our needs, and are is there any way that we can change either the specification or some of the things that we ask for in that apparatus to decrease the purchase costs or hopefully shorten delivery times. In the rig that we started this process with, we were able to find $25,000 in cost savings. That might not sound like a lot when compared to the overall price of the rig, But with that particular rig, was already under contract.

So there were a few things we could do, but not a whole lot. So we're going to continue that process with every new apparatus that we do spec and move forward with. We also secured a four year labor contract that gives us some financial predictability over the term of the contract. Ultimately, we talked about recruitment and retention a little bit tonight already. That's a piece of recruitment and retention.

I can tell you that in our market, there are definitely people who look at and seek out the labor contracts prior to deciding where they wanna go work. We're in a scenario where the labor market has the option of being able to select their employer in a lot of cases. And this is a this is a a piece of that that can help improve recruitment and retention for us. We also secured approximately $300,000 in federal grants for paramedic education and community risk reduction. I spoke to you at the council about that just a couple nights ago.

And obviously, that's a benefit not only to the department to but to the city overall. For 2026, a lot of our goals are around planning and projecting out into the future and addressing changes internally into the future, including doing a complete review and modification of all of our department policies and procedures to make sure that we're being as efficient and effective as possible across the board of all of our policies. Everything from our strategy and tactics, what we might do on an emergency scene to administrative policies, documentation, record keeping and so on. We're also evaluating our incident response plans so that we make sure we're utilizing our resources in the best way possible. Things like looking at our responses to medical medical responses, our high life alarm hazards.

So how many how many apparatus we send to a specific building that's classified as high life hazard for a certain type of alarm or a certain type of incident to make sure that we're not only responding appropriately, but we're also maintaining availability of our resources for other incidents in the community. We can also potentially decrease some of the wear and tear on some of our apparatus. And enhancing data collection, to be able to answer a lot of these questions, we need to make sure that we have good usable data that's in the format that we can see and use readily. And so some of the software changes and so on that we're making are going to help with our data collection and so on. Starting to look at some of our performance metrics, you can see that our call volume continues to increase year over year.

That's really nothing new. It's pretty much the trend across the industry. And obviously a lot of our call volume is EMS. And our transports as you see on there continue to increase year over year. We're going to talk about that a little bit more as we get into some of the numbers in the budget slide.

So if we want to move into those. So if we look at the personnel summary, the main increase in the personnel is based on the labor contract that we settled recently and the wage increases there. Obviously those increases will affect things like overtime and retirement and so on. That's where you see the bulk of the increase there in that. Moving on to the operating slide.

One of the things that I want to point out here on professional services, you'll see that there's a 9.7% increase. And I mentioned a while ago or just a minute ago, excuse me, that our EMS transports continue to increase. As our EMS transports increase, our EMS revenue increases. Our EMS revenue, is generated through billing of patients and we contract with a company to do that billing. For them to get paid, they take a percentage, a set percentage of that EMS revenue.

So as EMS revenues go up, the cost for the billing service goes up in a corresponding fashion to that. That's why you see that increase in that number. So while there is an increase in the expenses that's offset by the increase in the revenue for EMS billing. Second largest increase in that category is our utilities. Obviously with five facilities to maintain and you see the increases in the utilities market across the board. That's a pretty standard increase in the market. So ultimately that market can be a

little bit

volatile. Those are ultimately the main issues or the main increases that we see in the budget and I'm happy to entertain any questions.

Chief, thank you. Questions from the committee for the fire department? Alderman Lemke. When I look at

the personnel and I've questioned this before, it seems like the qualifications to be a firefighter in Waukesha, you have to have your EMS and your paramedic badge to get hired on. And I know some other fire fight fire departments around town, not around town, up north. They're hiring firefighters at $21.22 dollars an hour that don't quite have the the qualifications. And I know, like, my shop, have a grease tech, and I have a brake tech, and I have the next guy up who who's real qualified. You know, they're tiered up.

Mhmm. And so if you're hiring everybody at that top level, your personnel costs are greater. Can you explain I understand it's it's it's an ease of plugging people in because everybody's at that top rate, you know, but explain how we might be able to save some money by hiring some entry level guys instead of having buddy at the top.

Well, the ultimately, if the expectation is that we are a paramedic level service. We're an ALS transport service. That's the level of service that we provide to the community, and and I I think it's an appropriate level of service for a community this size. Right? So ultimately, we're hiring people at emergency medical technician basic level. We are not hiring them at the paramedic level. Ultimately, we need them to get to the paramedic level. But in a lot of cases, we're hiring them. In fact, I would argue that as most cases, we're hiring them at the EMT basic level. And then we're having them go and get their paramedic license after they get hired.

Many of the agencies that you see that are doing that, where they're hiring them maybe without those those certifications or those licenses, they're actually a state license, they're doing the same thing. They go and get them eventually. And one way or another, you're either hiring them at that rate or you're paying while they go get trained to get that license. So it's ultimately the licenses is necessary either way. It's just a matter of how they go about getting it.

Thank you.

Just to further on that, we'll be able to offset some of those expenses now with the grant that we have for '26. So those additional expenses that you're talking about for those licensure levels will be offset with that grant that we were awarded for '26.

Thank you.

Other questions? Alderperson Helbenslavin.

Yeah. I was going through this and on page 71, so this is not what's on the screen, but in the in the booklet under the line for 2213 FireEMS state aid. It looks like there were some pretty drastic number differences there. I'm assuming that gets to what you all were talking about, Tony and Joe, at the beginning perhaps with sort of the unexpected expenditure restraint situation. Is that is am I reading that accurately?

For for fire EMS, it is a it is this this piece is actually a slightly different grant, and I and I think the chief has an explanation for what it is.

Sure. So that program is actually called the Funding Assistance Program. And essentially, it's a program created by the state to provide assistance to agencies that provide EMS throughout the state of Wisconsin. Essentially, apply every year and if you're an EMS agency, you're eligible. Ultimately, there's a really interesting fantastic formula that they that they use to figure out who gets how much money. And I couldn't explain it to you right now. But ultimately, it depends on it has

to do

with, population and call density and so on. So they redid the formula. EMS agencies in Wisconsin have been asking for that formula to be altered and more accurately represent the costs that are incurred by a community. So they redid that formula and that resulted in a change in the funding, which is what you see in that line where that funding has increased. We did reach out to them and ask them if we can expect that to continue into the future.

And their answer was a very state like answer where it said probably. But it will depend on how many people apply and those kinds of things, Right? So an understandable answer, but a little bit gray.

So in our favor this year and hopefully will continue to be, but that's up to the state.

That would be my hope as well. Yes.

Got it. Thank you very much for the clarification.

Other alderperson Wiggerson.

I don't have a question. I just have a statement. First of all, I 100% support the fire department. I think that you guys do an exceptional job. And I just wanna say that I feel like the biggest win was really the labor agreement this year, and I was so glad to be a part of that and getting that approved. I just think you guys do a stellar job, and I just you know, who wouldn't wanna come and work for us in my opinion? So that's all I've gotta say.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I agree, and and I certainly appreciate the support. So thank you.

I guess, couple things for me is, number one, I I alluded a month month or so ago, I alluded that the fire department had to come to my and everybody is okay. But we were very impressed with how quick you guys the team showed up. I was still on the phone with dispatch when station four was coming around the corner. And just that's a testament to everything that we do and the response times that you highlight. So I always want to call out the performance metrics that are in this budget book because there's a ton of really good information that we touch on and we probably should spend more time on.

But for the public and for the council, there's just a wealth of information as it relates to the work that all of our departments do. Everything from police and fire and public works to park rec. So I encourage that you spend some time looking at those metrics. One question, I actually have two questions. The first one was around response time, which we've talked about for a very long time. And I was just curious, and I'm back on the front page here. When I look at 2022, the percent of emergency calls meeting the seven minute goal and just how dramatically that's improved from 2022 to 2024. And gentlemen, I was just curious if you had some commentary around that.

I think one of the biggest things as I mentioned before is having good data and having data that's in a usable format that is readily available and visual, right? So as we were going through and looking at how that data was looked at and what times within the CAD system were being used to calculate the response time percentage. We found that there are some instances, there are some calls where those it's grabbing the wrong time essentially. It's grabbing a different time within the CAD system. So we were able to go through and look at those a little more closely and that's what ultimately results in that change.

Okay. And my last question is, if you were in a position to eliminate a $05,000,000 from your budget, what would your strategy be for that?

Well, the strategy would be sitting down and talking with with all of our stakeholders involved and looking at what that might mean. You know, I think you heard from our friends in law enforcement, we're 93% personnel as well. So when you start talking that kind of money, you're talking a significant impact across the board. No matter where you look at it, whether that is an impact to the response times that you just mentioned in your own experience or an impact to what we're able to accomplish outside of our normal response whether that's other staff positions within the department. But it's a potential service reduction no matter how you look at it.

Great. Thank you, Chief. Other questions from the fire department from the committee? Alderman Manion.

At the risk of being the overtime Nazi, I'm gonna ask this anyway because it's fair that I kind of beat up on the PD a little bit about it. So can you speak to any factors that drove about a $260,000 overage in overtime on the fire department budget and what may be, I guess being managed differently in the future year because we're not increasing that budget number by about 6%.

Sure. So in our overtime projections, we run into the same problem that everyone else does when you're trying to look at exactly how many open positions are you going to have or what other factors. Our biggest factors this year, our biggest factors are duty related injuries. We have thirty five percent of our overtime right now is duty related injuries. Our other injury or other sources of overtime, obviously, there's sick leave for our staff and there's family medical leave.

Ultimately, our overtime number this year is trending better than it did last year. But I will definitely tell you that we've had a significant number of long term duty related injuries that have been off duty for quite some time.

That's not good, but I appreciate the context that helps explain that a lot. So thank you.

Thank you. Other questions for the fire department from the committee? All right. Gentlemen, thank you.

Thank you.

Joe? Next up we have library and I believe Bruce Gay is in the audience.

And the library is on page 86 of the book and page 90 of the PDF. Good evening, mister Gay. Bruce, if you would introduce yourself for the folks at home and the floor is yours.

Thank you. You. I'm Bruce Gay, I'm the library director. Talk about the library's accomplishments and what we're looking forward to for next year and happy to answer questions. I'm very happy well, first of all, me say, you know, we talk I'll talk about the sort of special accomplishments we have.

But, you know, 95% of what we do every day is what libraries do every day, which is helping people find the things that they want, answering questions, running programs, all the stuff that really makes this library special, we do that. And these little accomplishments that we talk about, they're big accomplishments, I should say, but they are not the the the bulk of what we work on every day. So talk about the accomplishments. We have we've had a very good year. We've focused on three sort of areas that are in your 2025 accomplishments.

We have been working several years now to build an endowment for the library. Previously, before 2020, there is no no history really at the library of doing any private fundraising to support the library and special projects. So we have been, in the last couple of years, sort of learning. I I would say this year, are really taking the training wheels off on our library fundraising. We've had a very successful year through several different campaigns, and so we're very pleased by that.

Also, this year, library managers and I sat down last year about this time and said, you know, in 2025, we wanna refocus the library on being the champion of reading in the community. This is important to us. We wanna make sure people know, you know, know that they can get good things from the library. And so we've done a lot of different initiatives this year to support reading in the library. Of course, you know about Waukesha Reads. This is our nineteenth year. It's going on currently. We've had a very good response from the community to this year's book. But we've also added what we call a lucky day collection. This is a set of books that people can't put holds on that are extremely popular.

So what happens is people come into the library and they say, oh my gosh. They have that book that I wanted for months. There it is. I'll check it out right now. And we've had extremely high circulation from these books. Typically, they they go out for one week, and they'll be put back on the shelf and will be out this next day. So we're very happy with that. And finally, we have focused this year on customer service. We do a staff training every week on Thursday mornings. A short customer service training is often part of that.

And we have implemented what we are calling service standards so that we're asking every employee that this is the way you are going to react and act with not just the people coming into the building, but the staff around you too. We've had a good response to that and that the training for that has just finished the library so we're really happy. Moving forward into next year, we are again continuing with our endowment. We're going to do a campaign to celebrate the library's one hundred and thirtieth anniversary. We're trying to raise up to a $130,000.

It doesn't sound like a lot, it would put the library's endowment at over $1,000,000, so we're excited about that. We have are working to increase our cardholders base by using GIS mapping to identify areas in the city where a large number of people don't have library cards and do some special outreach into those areas. So we're working with the city's GIS department. And finally, we are working on engaging the community more with increased attendance at library programs. If you look at the performance metrics, you can see the number of people involved in library programming has been going up steadily for the last four years after the library's reorganization where we made an effort conscious effort to increase our programming.

As far then as the budget for next year, it's very much a similar budget to the current year cost to continue. The only change that you really see on that cover sheet, you'll notice that there was point seven five additional staff and that is actually replacing our security service with library security guards. We're going to have a a ten hour and a twenty hour library security guard. We'll get more hours of service for less money for the city through that change. That's highlighted there on the screen now. Happy to answer questions on that page or we can go right to the financials if that's better.

Any initial questions for the library, Bruce? Alderman Lemke.

Last year at the meeting, I thought I asked, is there any opportunities for volunteer work at the library? I know some of the communities, other libraries have quite a few, a very active volunteer list. And so I it seems to me like the library is a perfect place, like a hospital would be for a educated, intelligent volunteer. Yep. And With a little bit of training. And you said you were gonna be working on a you know, getting a volunteer coordinator or somebody in that to identify what where you need volunteers and Yep. Get word out to the public.

Yeah. And we do have person in that role now. It's one of our librarians who her her special project is building the volunteer base. I don't have the numbers. Excuse me. But we are actively seeking and getting more and more volunteers. We're using volunteers to, for instance, deliver items to our homebound population rather than having library staff do that all the time because that program is growing. So they will take books out to the homebound. We have now, we've had volunteers working in our taking helping to process our books by putting on labels in some cases. We've had live volunteers helping with our programming, so they'll be either counting or helping manage the crowds that come into programs.

So, yeah, we are building the library volunteer program.

Would it be okay to reach out to Rebecca so she could get that on the city website?

It is. You know, volunteer.

Is it is it there?

Because I

I haven't seen it

when I looked last. Yep.

Thank you.

Is there? Okay.

Alderson Helvet Slabin.

Yeah. This might be more of a a comment slash personal story, but I did wanna call something out that that is sort of kinda mentioned here. But you had mentioned the Lucky Day collection, which is more specifically for physical copies of of items inside the library itself. But one of the things that you did not mention that I'm going to call out here is that you've worked really closely with the Bridges Library System in discontinuing Hoopla but then allowing for those skip the line items in Libby which is a much more affordable option for the library. And so I guess I wanna commend you on doing that.

You know, when we're talking about where can we reduce inefficiencies, I think that that is something huge that you've done. And on a personal note, thank you for doing that because I am reading the the new Dan Brown book and skipped the line right now. So I'll be finishing that tomorrow morning on

my drive to work.

So I appreciate that, because it's a great thing that the library did for the city from a budgetary's perspective, but it also helps the patrons. So thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. I don't need to get too far into the weeds, but we have had for several years now two streaming audiobook, ebook services. One of them has proven to be unsustainable because of its budgetary impact on us. So we are removing that and adding more to the other service which has been much more financially responsible for for what the library needs to do.

Other questions for Bruce? Bruce, I guess I have a question and an observation. Where is late fees on the revenue side of things? And I ask because my goal being that my wife is a heavy library user, to reduce that by 10% because I'm I'm the book returner. And my wife, in all seriousness, is an absolute champion of our library.

And if if she was here, she would tell you that. So I don't it's not a serious question but more of just an observation that we do appreciate the work that you do. Mhmm. The one, I guess, of an observation probably for for Tony is just the success that the library's had around raising money with the endowment. And I know there's been conversations over the past few years about the fact that the library does a great job of raising money in volunteer park rec.

Great job of raising money, volunteers, other departments, community development. Just and we don't need to do it this evening, but just a comment or maybe if you would like, just around the level of coordination that we have because I guess a high level example would be that if we're if if the city is asking family x and company z for funding at the library, is there good coordination with asking them to support other programs across the city and how those roles communicate with one another?

Yeah. So I guess I'd start off by saying that both pieces, sponsorship and volunteerism, They are objectives within the strategic plan to take a, I guess I would say a holistic look at. As many of you know, right now in PRF there is a part time voluntary coordinator. I know that there is a demand within just that department. I'm not touching on the fact of other departments where there are additional tasks that could be assigned to that individual to promote additional volunteer opportunities.

So I think that is something that actually we're having discussions about right now in terms of elevating the number of hours for that position. But then also how does that look in terms of fitting within the organization and departments working together. But I will say that between that position and other departments there is some assistance that's being provided. To what degree that's something we probably could come back at a later meeting and maybe go over kind of high level what that looks like in terms of what's being done right now to give you kind of a baseline as we probably have future discussions about not only what that position looks like, but how can we better coordinate that as a city overall.

Great. Thanks, Tony. One last call. Any other questions for the library this evening? Bruce, thank you.

Thank you. Joe?

We have a couple different pages for Park Rec and Forestry. First off, the general fund pages are what we're gonna address.

So that is looks like page 92 of the book 96 in the PDF. Ron, good evening. If you could introduce yourself and your team for the folks at home and the floor is yours.

Thank you, Alderman Piper. Ron Groll, Director of Parks, Recreation and Forestry. And it's my pleasure to introduce our budget team here and it kind of falls in one of our accomplishments because we have a few new faces on board. First of all, we have Mark Thompson. He's our new, but he's been working for us for a while, our new Recreation Services Manager.

And all things rec budget, Mark is the man. Melissa Lipska, she's our Parks and Forestry Operations Manager. And Melissa has been with us eleven years ish. Who's counting on that? Ann didn't have another chair for him.

But our most recent addition to the department, Mark Schramm is our Customer and Administrative Services Manager. And that setup has worked really well for us in really managing the budgets. And we are here to answer questions tonight. And

I got a

few things, though, I want to go over before that, and we'll start from the beginning. And maybe the beginning is our budget is flat. I'll start with that. And actually, a slight decrease in our overall budget in the general fund. The accomplishments for this past year is well, one of them is that we had two positions that we've had key positions, direct services manager and the customer administrative services manager that we had to fill this year.

And that all happened in like the first quarter of the year. So that's a major for us. That's some major positions, major voids that we've been able to fill, and we've been very fortunate to get the folks that we have here on board. Other accomplishments. The we keep talking about facility rentals, but I'll talk about it a little more.

That is definitely one of our strategies. If you build quality facilities, again, commend the finance committee for the support with the Mineola project is a great example of that, that people will come, people use the facilities, and it's a key piece of our revenue strategy. And so we had a record year with facility rentals, and that's one of the metrics that we pointed out on the page, $642,000,000. That's again, that was a projection. The year is not over quite yet, but we definitely we've surpassed our past record for rentals.

So we had, I should say, thousand, I'm sorry, 6,420. So I left a zero out there. So that's a lot of rentals, and, you know, we see that only growing and the demand continues. And again, we touched on that with the Mineola project is being another example of being responsive to what we're hearing from the community. The goals for this upcoming year and as a city administrator indicated that we're working toward realization of the upgrade of the volunteer coordinator position from twenty hour a week part time status to full time status.

Definitely one of our goals. We've been pursuing this for years actually in previous budgets. But the time has come to really take us a hard look at that. Harder, I should say, harder look at that. According to city master plan, or I should say the strategic plan, we are going to be completing park and open space. That's what we used to call it. It's actually a park system master plan. That's language that our accreditation folks use. It's a park and recreation system master plan for the department. Revision, we're definitely overdue.

Our old plan has served us well for over fifteen years, and a lot of things have changed. We've been able to implement quite a bit over the years from our existing plan, but it is time. And that is something that we look forward to. And the last is, of course, the Mineola project. Again, work is in progress as we speak that with the planning components and working with the city engineering in particular, the partner with services they have on staff and also contracted.

And again, our goal is to get substantial completion of that project by the end of the year and with the idea of opening in 2027. So that's our goals. The thing to note with staffing, as you heard from a couple of the other departments tonight, staffing has been a major challenge, and we're not immune to that whatsoever. I guess the good news would be at one time, we were down nine full time positions. And for us, that's a lot.

And we're down to three. So we're making headway, making progress, but most of the year and that's just full time. And we depend a lot on our part time and seasonal and challenges on all fronts. So staffing more than ever in all the years that I've been in the business, I have to say the last two have been the most challenging with recruitment and filling jobs. We use in a given year, we push over we're pushing over 200 seasonal type positions to fill and that's what programming, etcetera, in addition to, again, the full time and regular part time positions that are outlined here.

Another thing to note with the staffing section is part of the reorganization or restructuring, I should say, with fleet. Two of our positions were strategically moved over to public works. So mechanic and stockroom position were moved over as part of that restructuring for efficiencies. So that has taken place. And yes, I think that covers the cover sheet.

And again, with the budget, how can we keep our services going at the level that they are and maintain a flat budget? So, here's some of the strategies that are in place to do that and that are incorporated in not only the 2026 budget, but it have been part of our philosophy over the years to try to do more with the same, I guess, you could say, and sometimes definitely less. One of the strategies is from maintenance side, really identify low mow or no mow areas. So we have pushing 1,200 acres parkland. And so there's areas that don't necessarily have to be mowed all the time.

So we call that low mow. And so that's has to be done strategically again, and has to be planned for. So we have about 65 acres that used to be mowed, that we no longer mow, and or it's mowed on occasion. So usually, we'll do that twice a year in the season. The other strategy is incorporate natural areas into parks.

One park that really features that is Meadowview Park, and that's the park that's still under development. It's been phased in since 2019, and that's off the bypass in Northview, and a very popular site. But that what that site demonstrates is how you can design parks that not only be functional for, obviously, recreational purposes, but also integrate and meet other city needs. In this case, stormwater management. So it's a would you see those natural spaces that look wetlands?

That's by design, and that's part of the overall plan for stormwater management in the city. So that's another strategy that saves the city money, and it also shows that synergy, that partnership with other departments. Volunteer program. Can't say enough about that. We're very committed to the volunteerism.

And so program continues to grow. We currently are at thirty seven thousand hours of volunteerism that we're dealing with. And we hit a we're kinda hit a breaking point as Tony indicated in order to take it to the next level and encompass all volunteerism within the city to the best we can. That's gonna take consideration of upgrading the position to a full time status. The value of that you know, there's different numbers you can use, but the state within the state of Wisconsin, the recognized value, that grand total of that volunteerism, those thirty seven thousand hours, is 1,300,000.0 in volunteerism.

So there's you don't have direct tangible money in hand, but you certainly have value in kind from volunteerism. And I can't say enough the connections and the relationships and the partnerships that come out of the volunteer program, you can't put a dollar figure to that. That's really key, not only for our department, but really for the city as a whole. Now the fourth strategy, use of contractual services. We wouldn't be able to get the work done that we have without integrating where makes sense, contractual services.

And the one that typically feature on that is the medians within the city. We have 11 miles of medians of all shapes and sizes, and that is all handled through contractual services. I can honestly say there's just no way that we would be able to handle that with the staffing levels that we have. And it makes a lot of sense because as you can surmise that not only it's a staffing thing, but it's equipment, fuel, etcetera, that is also saved by using it. Now it's not the answer for everything.

I'm not saying it is, but there are applications that make sense when you look at contracting out. We continue to explore those opportunities. The special revenue funds. That's another strategy, especially in the programming side is to really move as much as practical, feasible out of the general fund world into the special revenue world, which is basically self supporting. And recreation, the real upside to recreation and special events is there's a revenue piece to it.

Much, much more difficult on the maintenance side as far as generating revenue. So we really look at the maintenance side. I'm not saying one's more important than the other, but the maintenance side is really nuts and bolts. That's infrastructure, green infrastructure of the city. So it's the park lands, the trees, the forestry program.

That is heavily tax based, where the recreation programming is much more aggressive on recovery. And that's kind of the one two strategy with funding overall. Identify technology. What technology makes sense? For years, we've been moving toward keyless entry.

We know we have seven shelters. Mark, there he is. Mark is our keyless entry expert. He's become an expert now in a short period of time. And we're using that technology from a especially we want to control from lighting to access, like the skate park is a good example.

That's actually programmable, which really helps us because it kinda has quirky hours, it closes at dusk. So it, again, makes it more efficient for the shelters. We have in the works adding more shelters that can be automated where we can open and close it remotely, which saves time and wear and tear in all the things that add up. The

more

strategies is shared resources. This is the one that we've really put a lot of emphasis in. Kudos for with public works department. We work very closely with them and vice versa. If Alex is here, you tell you the same thing, that the shared resources, we both have needs at different times a year.

So example is we're definitely more heavily involved with snow operations. That's where the help is needed during that period for public works. And for example, in the spring, we have needs. We don't have our seasonal people coming on board and grass is growing, things are coming alive. And that's where DPW can augment, help augment our staffing during that time.

And that's just an example. There's many more things that take place with that, from assistance with stump grinding, tree planting, right on down the line. So that's an ongoing endeavor. It's always been there, but we've taken steps jointly to formalize that. So we call it shared resources.

So there's a concerted effort on both departments to try to make that more seamless. We have two different missions, but we have one common goal is do things what's in the best interest for the city. The I have one more. That the level of partnerships. And that kinda chimes into and one of the questions is about sponsorships and the level of that.

I think Alderman Piper brought that up. We're pushing there were almost around 200,000 in sponsorships, and that's just for program sponsorships. So from sponsoring the fireworks to music in the park right on down the line. It's about $200,000 of money that's sponsored. And, again, that's cost that is not incurred in taxes.

That does not include, like, projects. So we've had some major projects with significant levels of sponsorship or, I should say, contributions. Recent example would be partnership with the school district and redoing the tennis courts over at Lowell. That was a $270,000 contribution. Carroll University with Frame Park at 690,000.

So we had some pretty tangible projects and there's more. So that is a big piece of our strategies. And we'll continue to look at different avenues and ways that we can be creative and especially partnering with other departments. Again, our budget, we're at almost a 1% reduction in our operating. So we don't really have a lot to talk about, but we're certainly here and to answer any questions on anything specific with our budgets.

And again, we're trying to make do with what we have and we go from there.

Ron, thank you. Questions from the committee for Park Rec, Aldeperson Helvinslavin and Forestry, pardon me.

Yeah I'll try to keep it brief. My question is related to your goals and performance metrics. So it looks like your 2026 goals are primarily like project based like we have to complete all of these tasks for these big projects, but relative to the performance metrics you did mention, specifically with facility rentals and program enrollments consistently going up, do you have any goals surrounding facility rentals, enrollments, park usage, those sorts of things? Do you have any goals related to those performance metrics?

Yeah. There's definitely a correlation with the construction of the Mineola Pavilion, but that also ties in with increased revenues. And for example, overall in our budget, we're projecting in we try to give a conservative number, but over $70,000 in new revenues. And that is connecting the dots. Where again, if you build the facilities and you have areas that need to generate that money, you have those in place.

And we, you know, from a staffing perspective, trying to, again, build these facilities where you're self supporting as much as possible. The Mineola project is a nice model of that, and it kinda transcends into the overall philosophy when it comes to revenue, and and that's the direction we're going. I I maybe I didn't address that well enough for you, but we revenue is high in our mind, to say the least, and we have the opportunity to do that. And we're trying to position ourselves to be even more in a in a even greater position to generate revenues to offset cost.

Sure. Maybe as a follow-up to that. So at any given moment, we have potentially x number of spaces available to utilize. And I'm just gonna use facility rentals because it's kind of easy. Yeah. So let's say we have I don't know how many exactly rooms that we have but let's just use a nice round number of 10. I know it's a lot more than that. But let's say we have 10 rooms available for ten hours on any given day. What would you say the percent usage is? And I know that probably varies depending on the time of year but over the course of a year do you think that we are getting the sort of max usage out of those or do you think that could do more with facility rentals?

And I know you've said revenue is forefront in your mind. I'm just wondering if there's anything more that we can do to really make sure that we're utilizing the spaces that we do have as we kind of think about how Mindiola will be used.

Right. Yeah. And you hit on the head that not one size fits all, and that's really a benefit for the system because we do have a variety of different options when people look at spaces to rent. And some of our newer facilities have more availability, but they're really picking up. So it's really a matter of continuing to promote.

We're definitely on a facility promotion mode. And the trend is good. The trend has been increasing. We see that go even further. We've had new user groups that's very encouraging that are not only short term, but it'll probably be long term for more tenants at I use that example over at Mineola with a soccer group that is is can have one group can have a tremendous impact on a facility, especially if it's a group of significance.

And fortunately, if you had the facilities that attract those kind of groups, then you reap the benefits from that. And that's what we're seeing. So the numbers we give you are always going to be pretty conservative when it comes to revenue for sure. And it definitely looks up. Interest levels, what we hear and when surveys have gone out over the years, that's always the thing that people are looking for is facilities.

What can we rent? What do you have? And not only does it attract residents, obviously, that's our priority, but you bring in folks from out of town, which is also a revenue component. So keep that in mind. We wanna bring people in the Waukesha so we can be part of that.

Sure. And then just as a real quick final question, you had mentioned that there was a $1,300,000 kind of savings essentially right through the volunteerism. So it's like volunteer hours essentially that would have otherwise potentially been staff hours. Right? Is that am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah. I'll clarify for you on that. And savings, it's it's the kind of work that I call that you can just cut the grass, but you have landscaping. We won't get to the weeds. This is how we get to the weeds.

Mhmm. So, yes, properly maintain landscapes within parks, in particular, you need the help of volunteerism. Because we we and and and the the added value to that is, again, this connection and ownership that the people that volunteer is, you know, pretty incredible from building playgrounds. So it saves us money, but really our biggest motive is that. It you you build true partners within the community.

And, yeah, I I can't say enough for that. It's started very small, and it's gotten pretty big. And, again, I I know we were dealing with tangible numbers, but don't forget about the intangible stuff.

Oh, absolutely. And I and I do appreciate the the intangible. You know, I've participated in in some of the park cleanups and things like that. So I do appreciate that. My question related to this, and we're gonna get back into those tangible numbers again, is with that that move to the full time volunteer coordinator, are you anticipating, essentially kind of a bigger return on investment from volunteers essentially, if that makes sense. So are we anticipating potentially more volunteers, more volunteer hours, and and kind of a higher level of service coming from those volunteers that we're going to see reflected in our parks moving forward with that full time volunteer coordinator?

Yeah. I the easy answer to that is all the above that that you indicated. And I I think the biggest piece, and and Mark can jump in on it because he's inherited the volunteer program as part of his job, is all the volunteerism outside outside, he said figuratively, Park Rec Forestry. The intent when that job was created back in twenty eleven, twelve was that someday, it would be basically the hub or the centerpiece for volunteerism for the city. And it's actually happened.

You know, it took some time, very gradual, very incremental, but that's the stuff that sticks. So we know we know it's successful. We know that it will be successful. And we're kinda it's not it's a good problem. But we are at a tipping point where if we wanna fulfill the original mission for volunteerism, there's only so much time that a person can give to that. And there's a lot of people involved, but you need someone to lead. So, yes, that's we're we've we're doing really well, but there's more to be done.

I just want to add something real quick. Obviously, it's one of PRF's goals to work that into their departments as a full time position. You should note in 2026, it is not a full time position. That is not in the budget that way. So just

Thank you for that clarification. Appreciate it. That's yeah. That's where that's kinda where I was going with this. So thank you. I appreciate that.

Alderperson Molson?

Are you gonna redo that master plan in house?

No. It's way too big.

And So it's kinda like when we did redid some of our like, the comprehensive plan, we'll hire a contractor Correct. To do Okay.

Yeah. It's for several reasons. It's it's advantageous to get a, you know, outside perspective on it, but we're certainly heavily involved. And then the public input process would be a key piece. So you have your focus groups, etcetera. But our last plan, we're pushing almost twenty years on the plan. So it's due. We got a lot of mileage out of it, and it is a focal piece of the city's strategic plan with people centered values.

Okay. Do you have as many arborists as you want?

I'm sorry. Boy, what would Aaron Leonard say? Absolutely, no. Yeah. I mean, our staffing level has been the same when I got here, you know, twenty five years ago for arborist. Now we've did a lot of reformulating and remixing, but there's only so many times you can do that. So

Do we have any vacant positions?

At this time, amazingly enough, no. But that has not has not been the case for the majority of the year.

Do you feel like we had a pretty successful pool season? And I noticed that you anticipate even more so next year. Do you know what what kinds of thoughts you had there?

Yeah. I think pool season was good. I mean, we started out and again, Mark can chime in on that, but it's all weather predicated. And we had really, really good weather, but really August didn't pan out as well as we would like. Presales are very important for us.

So like the pool passes, that gives us a hint of interest. And it was, I would say, one of the better years for and that's all preseason revenue upfront before we even have one person walk through the door. So a good season. Our revenue goals, the last report we saw were almost met right on the dime. I think one was at ninety eight percent and one at 96 for as far as revenue against the projection. So that was going

to that's been on my nose. One of my questions is always around pool recovery rates. So it's roughly 9896%.

Well, that's the revenue that's meeting the revenue projections. The pool recovery, we still don't have a final number, but that's probably gonna be in the eighties.

Okay.

Traditionally, I don't have it in front of you. Walmart, he's he's probably got it right in front of him. Yes. I do know typically with the new structures, we've been about with both pools around 80%, 85% recovery.

I'm sorry, Beth, I didn't mean to hop on your question.

Thank you for the questions and thank you for your work. Go ahead, Joe.

All right. Thank you. Other questions for Ron? Alderperson Wiggerson.

I want to go back to the full time volunteer coordinator. I know that it's not in the 2026 goal, but I guess my question is, do you do you you already have somebody working on that in a part time role. Is that what I'm reading? Correct.

Correct.

Okay. And are you paying? And I'm assuming that that's a paid position. Yes? So then they would be moving to a full time paid role. Right? Correct. Okay. We don't have it in the 2026 budget. So how are we paying for it?

Well, the way it's structured

If it's your goal for 2026, I guess, is my question.

Yes. And '26 is to take measures to advance that position to be for consideration. So we we've as Tony indicated, city administrator indicated, some of the initial groundwork has already been in place to try to make decision making time when that comes around, hopefully very clear so you can make a well informed, educated decision on it. So we're in the process of putting that together. And but yes, that's all part of the 2026 is positioning the position for full timeness.

Other questions for Ron? Ron, I guess I have a handful. And I guess kind of a mix of questions and things that I always like to talk about as it relates to Park Rec and Forestry. Melissa, know you and I traded a couple of emails on tree trimming and Aaron got back to me on that. And I just think the comment is that I've just noticed that even in my neighborhood, there's just some of the street a lot of the street trees need some love. And I know that we've been down some arborists and things like that. But I'd be remiss not to bring that up this evening that I just noticed in my neighborhood that I'm ducking more than I have in years past as it relates to taking walks around the neighborhood.

Is that a question?

Well, I don't Melissa looks like she wanted to respond, so I just pause and Melissa. I was going

to see you got taller.

Yeah. Yes. You are correct. And it is a compounding issue. For every year that we get behind in pruning, it gets you know, kind of further behind, further behind, the branches get lower, trees get bushier, suckers get worse, things like that. We are working with Aaron. He has been very diligent, and we are painfully close to being able to implement a pruning cycle, which we have not been on since, I think, 2009.

Well, full fledged

Basically, the emerald yeah. The full fledged pruning cycle since emerald ash borer hits. A lot of our pruning right now is, reactive, which kind of makes us hop all over the city. It's not as efficient. So we're trying to kind of pull up back on some of that and work with residents to be like, okay. Yes. We know, it's a little little low hanging in in some neighborhoods, but if we can get to that in one year, two years that we're we're trying to position ourselves a little better. And we're about as as close as we've been since I've I've started and that's that's all thanks to Aaron and and Tyler and working on managing staff time as efficiently as they can.

Yeah. And just to chime in on that. Well, first of Aaron Leonard is our forestry supervisor for those that may not know Aaron and does a a wonderful job for us. But this kinda reverts back to the shared resources initiative that that's enabling us to be in a position to have arborists do arborists work, where if we can get help, and we have, for example, let's use that as example, stump grinding, tree planting. Not to say that's not arborist work, but pruning is more of a specialty.

So you just don't I wanna say I don't wanna say anyone. And and but if you don't do that on a daily basis or if that's not part of your regular job, it's not that easy to get up and prune trees, especially on streets. So the strategy here is that we want the most trained people that are arborists that are trained to do pruning of all shapes and sizes doing that work, and but it's augmented with shared resources to help us out with we still have trees to plant. We still have stumps to grind, etcetera. And that is making a difference.

So we definitely have a plan in in in established on not only short term but for long term. Staffing levels, contracted services, again, has helped us. That's, again, been an initiative, especially with pruning, not necessarily pruning, but with tree removals. And so the things we can do to offset non pruning activities in other ways, then that frees up more time for arborists to focus on pruning initiatives.

So, Ron, what's the tipping point though? Mean, contracted services continue to go up and staffing remains the same, I mean, when does that tip back the other way where the majority of this work is either being contracted out or is being done by public works or with an assistance of public works? Because I see that contracted services continue to go like this, but staffing is relatively the same.

Right. And and that's a that's always it's a a balancing act every year. We have to assess what's gonna make the most sense. It's contracted services can be volatile. It can be up.

It can be down. But again, not one it it makes for certain activities, and this is one of them, for example, like stump grinding, you have to have competition. You have to have folks out there that do that to get really good pricing. Then you have the overhead, the other upside, and this is something I'm I'm not telling you something you don't already know, but the other upside is you save on the overhead. In other words, the equipment, wear and tear, mileage, gas.

All those things that it's much more than staffing, but it's not the total answer. So a blended approach is so important. And pick and choose where and that's that's what we've been doing. We feel we've been doing a good job of blending in contractual services with staffing. And that has made that's how we get things done, quite frankly, with budget being relatively flat.

So if you were approached to reduce your budget by $05,000,000 what would the strategy be?

All right. Joe, I actually wrote down a few things for you. Just because I'll thank the fire department Or PD. I guess we the rumor had it that that question was coming. And maybe it didn't help with me formulating the best answer for you because it's not one thing.

So $500. So $500,000. Well, one, we would continue to assess what type of programming and events could be moved out of the general fund into special revenue type environment. So it's not on the tax burden. Recreation has that ability, not all recreation programming.

So we have to keep in mind, again, a balancing act is there's certain programming that needs to be subsidized, and then there's other programming that you can charge with. We and and one thing we do do at Park Rec Forestry Board level is three times a year, our fees and charges are looked at and evaluated. So that's a lot of other agencies that we're aware of, may they maybe look at it once a year. We do it three times a year. So because it we follow the seasonal, you know, cycle of that.

So we're very sensitive to fees, charges, adjusting, pivoting as needed. And so in this case, our subsidy level for programming is around what? $2.69? So 269,000 for over a million dollars of services. It's not a not a bad ratio. But can there be more? So that's one piece of that answer. Fees in general, always being looked at. Where can we realistically increase fees for charges? Again, it's the balancing act there is point of diminishing returns.

So do we charge people great, it looks good on paper, but we get less people registering for programs. So we have to find what we kind of call the sweet spot with that. The sponsorship levels, that's one of our favorite topics. We continue to increase that. There's room there's capacity to expand that.

The market, it's tough as we realize with other fundraising type activities, but it is doable especially for the programs. And if you have sponsorship levels that are achievable, like the $5,000 level, the 10,000, you're more likely to get maybe five companies or agencies or businesses to give the 5,000 level than one, you know, give it a $50,000. So that's part of the strategy with our we call it the SPARS coordinator, the sponsorship partnership in alternative revenue sources coordinator. And, yeah, it's a mouthful. The and she's done a really nice job.

With that position, actually, Karen Richards, cemetery director, that's where she cut her teeth with us. She was the first sparse coordinator, you know, for the department. But what does that mean? Well, almost had $200,000 that that position helps generate in a big way just for what I call program sponsorships. Everything from getting the kids t shirts for the sports programs to underwriting concerts for tribute Tuesday and all things in between.

So that's the avenue to continue to chip away at that 500,000. And, yeah, and then really the ultimate piece, we are due for another community needs assessment. So our accreditation program requires us to do every ideally every five to eight years a needs assessment. And that's when you ask that question, what are the services that people are looking for? What are the services that maybe aren't as popular?

And that would be a guiding point for us as far as prioritizing, you know, what kind of programming events, maintenance, what's the maintenance level expectation that the residents have. But you gotta do it systematically. I can't stress that enough because otherwise you're gonna get opinion here, opinion there. It has to be something that has a high level of validity to it. So that's where a community needs assessment designed around Parks Rec, it would be a departmental initiative.

It's not in the budget, and we're not proposing it for this year, but it is something that we will need to address not too distant future, again, for accreditation. We're up '28. '20 And that's the, again, think a big benefit of accreditation is it forces you to do these things. There's plenty of agencies that are like, we're not gonna bother with that because it takes a lot of time and effort. But if you wanna operate at the level that I think we all want to see is you got to do those kind of things and it's required.

So if we don't do it, we don't get accredited. So there's that added incentive. So that would be the combination of that. I'm quite confident we can come up with the 500,000, it's not going to happen overnight.

Thanks Ron. I've got some other things, but I want to bring it back to the committee, see if there's any other questions for Ron. One thing that we talked about was when we did the improvements at the skate park was is there a way to track attendance? And I know it was hard because there's really there's no turnstile or anything like that. But I was just kind of curious if that was something that can be estimated because there was we've made a significant investment and there's a lot of people that showed up and I was always just kind of curious if we're seeing increased usage out of that facility that was part of the capital budget probably three or four years ago. It's probably I always say three or four years ago and everyone reminds me it was like eight. So keep track of stuff, but Believe me, I get

reminded about the skate park.

And then the couple the other questions relates to the master plan, Ron, is we and you had talked about kind of the low and no more areas. As part of that master plan, those areas will be identified, right? So you we can so the council can see kind of what where those areas lie as it relates to the overall park inventory? Actually that's that will be included in RFP.

It's part of the scope. It's a great suggestion.

Areas for I guess certainly areas for additional opportunity not to cut as well. Be something that you and the team are looking at?

Yes. It's a holistic approach. This is designed to be the master plan for the future of not only what we have, but what's down the road. And those kind of insights are I think very beneficial and that's a great suggestion to include that. We just are starting to put together like RFP for that.

And then just a couple more things. Just and Melissa, know you and I have talked about this too, just the ability to put when we talk about cutting grass, the ability to put mowers around town so we're not driving mowers all over town because I'm I'm the geek that takes a picture of a mower going down Delafield and texts it to Melissa saying we've got it. There's got to be a better way to do this. So I don't need a response, but just something that's always on my mind. I think of fire stations and other facilities where we can put mowers.

And then lastly, just on the medians too, kind of knocking down the weeds that we've talked about as well. So I appreciate this opportunity. Budget time is a great time to kind of get this stuff off of our proverbial chest a little bit. So I appreciate the committee indulging me. That's it for my list. Is there any other final questions for Park Rec and Forestry? Alderman Manion?

Ron, I think you were kinda dancing around it with some of Alderman Piper's questions. But when when I went through the budget line item, there were a couple of there were a couple of areas that stuck out to me with respect to park maintenance. And I'm curious if maybe these were areas where we were forced to be reactive, maybe because of some of the staffing challenges. But the three line items in particular that I saw that were kind of outliers were professional services where we were almost double projected versus budgeted vehicle and equipment maintenance where we were almost three times what was budgeted and building and grounds maintenance where we were over by about a 170,000. So I was wondering if you could speak to those three items and what maybe what's contained and what's causing the overage there because I'm seeing we're not increasing the budget numbers in 2026 for those line items.

Yeah. Very excellent question. And the majority of that is definitely due to staffing. We were down nine positions, but the work is still there. And so we've had those conversations administratively.

Melissa and I talked about that incessively, but we still got to get the work done and work within the parameters that we have. I know Melissa, if you want to expand on the those three areas. I mean, one area with vehicle maintenance has a lot to do with the transition of fleet. And the fleet manager has a different way of addressing it. I'm not saying it's a better way or a worse way.

I'm saying it's a different way. And so that's part of it. There's a lot more attention to fleet. And the two other items are really directly related to work that has to get done, but we don't have the people to do it. So then we revert to time and material. That's my relatively simple response to that. Melissa, if you like to add to that or not?

No, not to elaborate too much. But yes, a lot of it is reflected in that. And so we're hoping, anticipating once positions were filled that the maintenance and the professional services budget should equalize back to our, I'll call it our normal levels.

I guess to kind of to piggyback off of Dan's question. So what so you're down nine people, the work still has to get done. So what what's the protocol internally to say, you know, we're down nine people, this has got to get done. When when does the call go to the garage and say, I don't need nine people, but can you spare two or three? I mean, does that look like? So we don't so we can use people that are already on staff granted in a different position or a different department but avoid the time and material. Yep.

Most of our need is technical. So plumbing, electrical, HVAC, programming and HVAC controls And that's nothing that any anyone on city staff currently can do. So and a lot of that work requires journeyman's or a master's licensure as well. So that's where we're working to recruit what we're hoping to get the plumber and electrician positions filled again because we're seeing not just our department is expanded contracted services, but the the other departments that we would send the staff out to. So fire department, police department, city garage, city hall are all having to bring in additional contracted services as well with us being down those positions.

So unfortunately, there's not a lot of job sharing we can do with those at this point. But we do know that the other departments are are hurting. I actually had a call from the cemetery that are like, can I borrow your plumber? And I go, not right now because I don't have one, but I can give you a couple phone numbers. So there are other departments are are definitely feeling it as well and being very encouraging and make sure you fill those positions.

So is that part of the protocol? I mean, you get a phone call and say, hey, you know, do you have somebody? I mean and I guess my question is, do do you do that? I mean, if you're down nine people and need three people for a project, I mean, is it pretty easy to get folks

from

the garage or another area of the city to help out with stuff like that? Because I understand that a lot of what I mean, there is certainly a technical aspect, but at the end of the day, I mean, there's I know there's work that's done that is less

Yeah. I I'll just chime in on that one is that shared resources work great if the other resource is there's understaffed at the same level that we are. So, really, there's there's periods of times that make more sense to be able to share, and you can plan for that. But in general, we do as much as we can if they have a in terms of public works, if they have the availability because, you know, they have their work that they gotta get done. But I when the smoke clears, they come and help us and vice versa.

But we have to be a little flexible. So sometimes it's not right when we would like to have that help, but they're always able to help we're always able to help with what we got. The biggest challenge is they're down a bunch of folks just with mechanics. We're down, I think, four, five mechanics. So their challenges are similar to where we're at.

So we're sharing as much as we can, but the pool of sharing is a little smaller right now, if that makes sense. So there's a protocol is, yeah, it's if needed, give us a call and vice versa. And that seemed it was working well for us before. We just took it and formalized it to another level with the shared resources where we have planned periods of the year where if we have the people on both sides of the fence, then we're gonna do our shared resources. So it's predicated on having the resources to share.

Great. Ron, Melissa, thank you. Any other questions for Park Rec?

I

think we're pretty close to being over. Ron, Melissa, Mark, Mark, thank you very

much. Thank you. Joe?

All right. So it took us about two hours and forty minutes to get through four departments. We have roughly 15 to 20 divisionsdepartments to still go. Granted, a lot of those are smaller departments. But everyone does get their chance to tell their story. That is planned for the next meeting, Thursday. I believe we had the option to go over maybe some internal service. The main one that and the main fund that's internal services are health fund. So if you're okay with me keeping that to next time when we're talking with HR, I'll have that the fund we'll discuss that fund right after their regular general fund presentation.

And we've got the sixteenth and the twenty eighth, can certainly finish up any smaller departments or other presentations, take any amendments, ask questions and make a recommendation that night. So really we've got two meetings to go to get the balance of the work in.

We do think I mean we do that from a presentation standpoint. We do anticipate getting through everybody next on to Thursday. Obviously, if there's any questions after that that didn't get answered, of course, everyone is planned to be here on the twenty eighth.

Okay. Is there any objection to finishing up for the evening and moving on to Thursday? I did not think there would be. So I know we had a couple of other things on the agenda for this evening, but that's the beauty of this is we can push those to Thursday. And for those of you watching at home that were waiting in anticipation for internal service funds and special revenue funds, you'll have to wait until Thursday. That'll keep our ratings up. I'll bring it back to Joe and Tony. Any communications further?

For me it's just we will see you again on Thursday and then that final budget meeting for finance committee on the October 28.

Great. Denise, thank you for coming tonight. Alderman Manion, Alderman Ventrieste, thank you. Mayor, thank you for coming. Any referrals from the committee? I

know Beth I

can't imagine Beth will have a referral, she'll tell me if she did. Any objection to adjourning? We are adjourned. Thank you, folks. Thank you.