Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

like to call the public safety committee meeting on April 8th to order. All in favor to catch up from last. Would anybody like to make a motion to accept the agenda? I'll make a motion to accept the agenda. I second. All in favor? I I have a motion to approve the minutes from the March 11th meeting. So move. Second. All in favor? I I we have nobody that's signed up for public comments. We have no ordinances and resolutions. We'll move on to other agenda items. Discussion of the 2026 budget. Well, thank you. Uh we have a PowerPoint we're going to go through. Before we get to the PowerPoint, I just want to uh thank Mayor Clary and Tamara. They put a lot of time and effort into this budget. It's in its draft form right now. So, we will see some revisions before it comes to uh the board. And tonight, we're just going to consider the operating budgets. This is not the non- operating. This is just our operating that's kind of to keep the lights on. So, our recurring revenues and our recurring expenses. Uh the first time Tamron and I looked at the budget, we were I think over three million in the red on the budget. Uh we went back and reorganized some of the budget and we got it down to somewhere in the $2 million in the red range. Uh since then a couple iterations and right now we're um we're still not balanced in the operating budget. Um there's some things we'll talk about, but right now we're at $800,000 approximately in the red. So just in the context of we started at three million in the red, we're at about $800,000 in the red. Uh so we still have some some work to do but wanted to get some feedback from the committees before we go and start making

some other cuts to some areas. Uh at this point you know any type of cut that we make you know you really start to feel it. Um so we just wanted to have these meetings before we kind of went any further with it. So uh from there I will let Tamara take it over. She's going to go and touch on kind of each slide and then I'll interject as needed. If you guys have questions feel free to ask. it might work best if we get through the budget and then take questions and then we Tamron and I do have to step out at six because we have to do the same meeting uh for general committee. So you guys can keep going on but we will have to step out six. Yeah. So first first off um at budget workshop there were um a couple of suggestions on changes to the revenue side. So we have increased the parks revenue by 25,000 and then reduced the beer and liquor tax revenue by 25,000. Um and then two other adjustments that have been making made to the revenue side since you saw the information at the first workshop. Um we increased some stationare revenue. Um it's um by 18,600 that is specifically tied to the amount that um we get for um police and fire for the supplemental pay. So what's budgeted on the expense side? This is to make the revenue side match what's budgeted on the expense side. And then um there's a fines and fee um line that was increased by $1,500 that is offsetting um a specific line item in um the police department budget. It's for the sex offender registry. Those costs go up on the expenditure side. We have have um the payments come in from the other side as well on those. So revenues look very similar to what you all um saw the last time. Um this is a summary. You should be familiar with this. You saw this um table for the revenues at our first budget workshop. Um the numbers are almost identical. You know, there's only, you know, $20,000 difference than what you saw the first time um when this

was displayed. We've also gotten another month of uh sales tax information in as well. And so we still look like same trajectory as we originally anticipated. So I think we're about 73,000 uh over last year's collection from last February. So yeah, we'll probably end up This is showing ending the year at 22 million. We'll probably be just a little bit north of that. Yeah, maybe 100,000, a couple hundred thousand, but we're looking pretty close to what we originally anticipated. Yeah. So looking at this, you can see our um total revenue or estimated um for operating revenues to be up about 2.28% from compared to what was originally budgeted for the current fiscal year. And then if we look at our revenues, um again, you know, property tax and sales tax, those are our our big drivers for it. It's, you know, almost 80% of our budget is um between property tax and sales tax revenues. And then looking at our just a summarization of our operating um budgets by department. Um here you can see from fiscal year 25 to 26 total increase of 3.778%. Um the majority of that increase is um due to the salary and benefit increases that were approved during the midyear budget. Um you know that's that's a big chunk of that. Um you can see, you know, overall you can see where, you know, see the new budget compared to what was originally budgeted. Um about, you know, a little over $2 million difference overall. And if you look from, you know, the third column over says fiscal year 25 original budget and then the last column is fiscical year 26 budget. Uh I think about two million of the increases

between police and fire and that's mostly salaries and benefits. Um all the other departments are pretty close. Disposal went up um a little bit from the estimated year end, but if you look at the original budget to this year's budget, it actually reduced a little bit. Um and that does include um the 2 and a half% rate increase. Uh but brush disposal, we budget that a little bit lower, so that's a little bit of a decrease. Uh so primarily what you will see is it's a salaries and benefits adjustment uh with healthc care cola um the raise for police is in there. So you will see most of the difference between uh police and fire for those two years makes up the bulk of that increase for general fund. And then one other thing to point out you do see um kind of some ups and downs in some of the departments. Um you'll see with the executive department that there's a reduction. Um two of the staff have moved out of the executive department into administrative services. So you do see that um bump there. And then the same correlation um if you look at codes you see a reduction because um there's a position that they're not going to be filling that is being transferred over to parks. So parks um has an additional staff person and coats has one less. And the pie charts will show this to you, but from a priority perspective, you see the enormous priority put on public safety uh with a budget because the budgets of, you know, 19 million and 15 million are, you know, significantly more than any other budget. I think the next highest budget is trash, which kind of non-negotiable. Yeah. So, when we talk about priority, uh, police and fire, public safety definitely get priority in this budget. So, maybe Um this just gets a real um good picture of the budget by

department. This is the operating budget. You can see you know 53% of the total operating budget is for public safety. Um other departments are you know like Jesse mentioned disposal is 10% public works is about 10% and then everybody else is um significantly lower from there. And that 10% in public works Tamara that is paving as well that's included in that budget. Is that right? Yeah, there's some of the paving. Yeah, a little over two million of paving is included in that budget. And then this is just a look at the salary and benefits. So, of that total um you know, a good portion of that is salary and benefits. If you look at the salary and benefits um for the in totality, you know, you got 74% of the total salary and benefits um called public safety. Yeah, fire and police get a huge chunk of this pie for the um funds allocated for salaries and benefits. And then the total operating by type, you can see salary and benefits is the biggest piece of our um budget. And then our operations. Operations are all of you know our our electricity, all of all of our things that we need to do to operate um our departments. Um, assets is a tiny little piece. Um, debt services, it's about 3% and then our community contributions. These two show zero because they're so low that they're less than a half of a percent of our total overall budget in the general fund. Um, budget priorities. Looking at looking at this from the perspective, you know, at the first workshop, um, you know, the mayor laid out what his priorities were. Those were all shown. So talking about those again, um keeping our property taxes low is a priority. Um so there's no rate increase. No, there's no no change proposed for property tax.

Keeping that rate low like it currently is. Um balancing our operating budget. You know, our budget is structurally balanced when your recurring revenues are sufficient to pay your recurring expenses. That's where Jesse meant, you know, me already talked about us needing to do a little bit more work. we're going to be having to, you know, really look at look at things and determine, you know, how we can get to that balanced budget. And then debt reduction, um fiscal year, um 26 budget, um has about 21 2.1 million less in outstanding debt than we do in the current year budget, which brings us to our debt overview. Um and this is just a pictorial of that difference. Um you can see the drop about 2.1 million um from the what was owed in the current year to what will be owed um effective in fiscal year 26. And then the majority of that is principal. We have about 7% is interest on those debts. And the uh the the top part of that column graph 776,000 and the 537 that's the interest that we're paying on our debt. But the interest that we're receiving on our funds and our investment policy exceed what we're paying at. So we're I think estimating around 1.3 million this year. Is that correct? Yes. And then next year it drops to about a million. So we're almost double what we receive in interest and what we pay in interest. Yeah. Which is a good situation to be in. Absolutely. Um other budget priorities are paving. Um paving uh currently as proposed has $7.5 million proposed for paving. Um coming out of 2.7 out of the general fund, about a million out of state street aid, and 3.7 million out of the PIP fund. So that total as it shows up there is

7.5 million. This year we did about 7.7 uh we did about 7.4 4 plus 300,000 we did in the parks. So this is a slight reduction um from last year but still a very healthy paying budget compared to previous years. Absolutely. Um other um the public safety vehicles and apparatus um replacement. Um there is a fire engine um for as well as the replacement of all of the hose and the hose racks for fire in um the proposed budget. And then 13 replacement vehicles for PD are included in this budget. And Chief Bush has they have submitted for an AFG grant for the hose and the hose rack. So there's a potential that that hose and hose racks will come through a grant, but that is included in the budget. Yeah. Yeah. It's currently in there assuming that we aren't getting those funds. If we get those funds, then um we'll be able to offset a little bit of the city's expense. Um other considerations related to staffing. Um the budget as you see it in front of you does um include a 2% cost of living adjustment for all employees. Um it does um like I mentioned have um the reduction of one code's position and an increase of one position for parks. And then with the final budget that comes forward um there will be updated um organizational chart along with the number of authorized staff by position um and updated salary tables. All of that will be presented with um the budget when it comes forward to the board. Our draft general fund operating budget as it stands right now were deficit just over $800,000. Um some factors that played into that and these are um non-discretionary factors. We had no control over these. Um the ECC cost increased almost $200,000.

That's the 911 call center. Is that right, Tam? Yes, you have e emergency communication center. Um our property liability insurance um is increasing about $100,000. Um health benefits for employees um we're estimating a 15% increase which equates to $600,000. And then we got notification that our TCRS, the um state retirement um plan, um the rate increased from 14.38% of our salary and benefit or of our salaries to 14.64%. That equated to about an $80,000 um increase. Um these four things are right around a million dollar that um were out of our control that are increasing for the fiscal year 26 budget. I do. I do want to talk about the health benefits. So, um when we originally started the budget, we had anticipated 20%. We don't get um a quote from our insurance provider until later, really close to time to adopt the budget. Preliminary um estimates right now with our current provider are about a 30% increase on one of our healthcare plans. Our utilization rate is at 130% meaning we're 30% over what we've we we've used 30% over what we put into the pot. So, um I don't really see a way that we're going to be able to stay uh on our current plan without some significant increases. Uh so we are exploring the state's plan because the state doesn't typically have those increases and at this large of an increase it's going to push us to not be competitive with the state's plan. So um it is very likely that we will uh look

at going on to the state's plan. Uh Mr. Gall talked to them about the increases that they see and they have never seen an increase of double digits. Um, so as we, you know, last year we had a big increase, this year is another increase. It is pushing us over the point where we are in where that plan is more competitive than our plan. Um, the state's plan though goes on a calendar year. Our health insurance is on a fiscal year. So if we hop on to the state's plan, we won't know what the increase will be because it will come January where typically we will know before we adopt our budget if we're on a fiscal year what that increase will be. Um however preliminary you're looking at a 30% increase. It doesn't really matter what the state increase is because uh we are going to be much higher than a state increase. So uh we are diving deep into the options with the state plan and hoping that that 15% could end up somewhere around the 7% 8% range. Um so we should see some of that number roll off. And then working with Mayor Clary because we've heard Ben talk about um health benefits this year. We're also looking at a structure where we could get on the plan. It might cost the city a little bit more but it could be less. We've developed a preliminary structure where of all the plans that an employee can choose. There's only one that will cost an employee more. All the other plans would cost the employee less. So we're still working through that. Hopefully that's kind of a win for the city because it will be less than staying with our current health care plan and a win for the employee and that the cost for the employee will be um lower than what we'd anticipate saying on our own. If we went with it and it reduced what we budgeted for, could we put the difference back to the employees to reduce what they pay?

Well, I think the first thing is we'll try. We're at a deficit of 830,000. So, we're trying first to get our operating budget at least to break even. So, you know, these four things right here, which are largely outside of our control. Uh we don't control the ECC. You know, we we do make claims on insurance, but our insurance provider gives us those rates. Um those things are over a million dollars that we really don't have discretion over. So healthcare is one where we're looking at a way to maybe cut that difference in half. So if we take 300,000 off of the 600, that gets our deficit to about 530,000. So I think I mean it's up to the mayor what he wants to propose on it, but I think getting a balanced budget was one of the priorities of Bulma in our first workshop. So that would kind of be a priority one to get us to a break even because on the nonoperating side, we definitely won't break even. nonoperating operating side will cost us money as we get a new project. So I think first priority will be to get that to a break even. Good. I think the ECC last year, didn't they have a pretty healthy increase? Yeah, it was about 150,000 last year. Okay. Yeah. I don't remember it being Do we pay more than other cities or just Why? It's based on call volume if I'm not mistaken. population but if we play 29% of the total budget I think the county I think the county pays 31 gall 20 something and it's likely that that number can come down and they bill us quarterly so they bill us they do a budgeted cost and then they bill us on actuals so the actuals typically come in 90% 95% of what they budgeted and what we budgeted so that number that $200,000 increase when it actually comes to us in a bill may be 100,000, maybe 150,000, but that's the number that we have to work

with right now. There's actually two reasons might come down. One is that um the overall budget for the ECC might not be as high. So, our 29% share would come down, but also um in May or June, um the ECC board, which I'm which I'm part of, um we're going to look at that percentage and if it's still accurate. That percentage was set eight or nine years ago and it's based on call line population. So we may we probably go down a little bit in our in our Okay. And the last bulleted item, the TCR rate, that is what we pay for our pension rate. So you know, for every $100 that goes out, we pay right now $14.38 towards the employees pension. Uh that rate is going to increase to 14.64%. 64%. And while that doesn't seem like, you know, it's only a fraction of a percent, when you're dealing with, you know, $25 million of payroll, it ends up being, you know, those little percentages like there it's almost $100,000. We don't necessarily have control over that rate. That rate is determined by um the market rate of return because that money is invested in a pool. So based on the rate of return, uh based on how long employees are living, based on the cola and the raises that we give employees, uh we'll see that number go up and down year to year. I think a couple years ago it was 14.11 or was it 12%. It's gone it's gone up the last couple years. Almost 12. Yeah, it's it's been 14.38 the last three years. So this is the first time in three years that it's changed. Okay. Um, and I think our last couple years we've had um we're not funding based on the market rate of return. We haven't funded at 100%. We've made 100% of the payment, but based on what the market's

done, how long employees have stayed here uh when they're retired because that number is estimated. So, they give us an estimate, we think this is what you're going to have to pay. We have to pay that amount. we just haven't actually met from a mathematical standpoint what that liability is. So that's going to increase. So right so that's 14.64% that is related to the pension cost that we employ. So now looking specifically at our departmental budgets um the first one up is the police. This first page is the salary and benefits. Um, one one comment to make on here in putting this budget together on the salary line item. Um, PD has a significant number of vacancies and included in here 10 of those vacancies are assumed to only be filled for half of the year for six months um as a cost-saving mechanism as part part of the budget. um overall increase of seven seven% when looking at the salaries and benefits all combined on there. And then the operating budget um is increased 2.67% total um line by line. you know, it's only there's only $40,000 just over $40,000 um change from the current year budget um original budget to the proposed budget for next year. There was other professional services. So, that was the the main change. When you look on line number 27, um that was a position that was uh previously funded. we did not have to fund and so now we have to fund that position. Do you want to describe a

little bit what that position does? So obviously there's a huge focus in public safety about mental health co-responders uh responding. We're dealing more and more with mental health issues and people with substance abuse issues uh on calls for service. So for the last almost three years uh there's been a grant-f funed uh position through volunteer behavioral health that they have supplied an employee that although technically I think their their job responsibilities include responses for other agencies. Uh 95% of their time has been spent with HPD. They go out with our officers. They ride on patrol with our officers and help us address when we were dealing with someone in in mental health crisis. Um, so they approached us. Their grant is running out. They will not get that anymore. And they're offer they they see the value in what this person has been doing for HPD in the city of Hersville. They want to keep them here. They're actually eliminating a position within their office to help fund that position. And so, uh, in order to do that, they asked for a contribution from the city to go toward that. And, uh, this person will still be a volunteer behavioral health employee, but the city will be contributing toward that. And what we've seen over the last three years uh that we've had that person on board is is it's been a huge value to our officers on the street when because again like I said more and more that's what we continue to confront and deal with is people that are having a mental health crisis or substance abuse issues which lead to mental health issues also. Um, so that was our reason for requesting that in the budget to try to keep that person on board with the city of

Hendersonville. And what we this expenditure amounts to uh 40% of their total operating, you know, their cost for that employee. They're they're going to cover 60%. And this is an up to amount. It just can't go over that amount. So absent that that one change, um the actual operating budget for PD would be a little less than flat. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was a $50,000 was the dollar value for that. So um taking that out of the mix, it would actually be a reduction to their budget. And then on the assets, um we'll we'll pull those um and look at them in a minute because they're all in the pit fund. And then for the fire um budget for your salary and benefits. Um couple of things. We did increase the overtime budget and then we increase the um line item for the retirement payout. We want to make sure that we have both of those two things um covered. You know, overtime again may will probably need to be looked at as we get into midyear budget. Um and and then like the health insurance and other items are increased as well there. Good question. So 25 the overtime was 220. Mhm. But 26 we dropped down to 150. Why is that? Well, we budgeted at 90,000 and it's going over that. And then we increased budget comparison knowing that we will potentially need to go back and look and look at that um to potentially increase it at midy year. Um but if there's vacancies or anything like that in the

other budget, then that can offset some of that. But we don't know what that looks like until we get into the year. I mean hopefully we don't have vacancies but that is a potential if there are vacancies it would cover it would offset that. We've also um you know when we know that there's going to be a vacancy coming up. Uh we've had some overlap with the budget this year in terms of hiring someone because the academy is six months apart and so we've had people come on early knowing we don't want to wait till you know the next six months for the next academy to come to. So um you know that's in the salaries line item budget. Uh so hopefully that gets people on board quicker as well. And then the operating budget for fire um has about $93,000 um increase compared to the current year's original budget. The bulk of that um is an increase in the um vehicle maintenance line. And then in line the uh emergency gear line, um there's an increase there on the budget. And the vehicle equipment is one that likely at midyear, even though we're going up 65,000 from our original budget, you can see the last two years, um, you know, we're in the $300,000 range for vehicle maintenance. We did get a new fire engine and we're on the schedule now for replacement, but um, you know, we're kind of guessing at what maintenance is. Even though it's a big increase, I would not be surprised if we come back in mid year and have to do some adjustments. Yeah. But, you know, it's kind of a guess because we don't know these things are going to happen.

And then again with the assets, those are going to be in the PIP fund and we'll look at that in just a second like right now. I would like to point out if you don't mind if that's okay. Yeah. So, like when you look at uh fuel, based on the fact of how we've changed our response plans, uh we we look like we're going to save dramatically in fuel. Uh which would potentially year to year help with maintenance as well. Um, that's not something that we have discussed, but we have changed our response protocols to not sending uh three engines and two trucks to every alarm at Walmart, at Home Depot, big bo big box places, residential alarms. If there's nothing there other than it's alarm that's caused by steam, we're not sending the calvary. We've we've instructed our folks if they get there, a supervisor goes with them in a single truck company. if they see something or more information starts coming in, then all they got to do is ask for those resources. But you can see there's savings in fuel um that we're creating by that response protocols. Yeah, I think both uh Chief Bush and Chief Jones have done a really good job with the budgets. Absolutely. You can see there's some that are up a little bit, some that are down a little bit, like line item 28, it's up 20,000, but it's the repair of the building. So if I mean if that expense doesn't come in then we won't go all the way up but we went to 42,000 the previous year. So uh there is not a lot of fluff I think in either police or fire budgets. Not at all. So looking at the um pit budget um lines one two three show your revenues. Um those are the same that you saw during the um budget workshop. uh it's really based on uh no grocery no increase tax on the groceries. So that's why the

dollar value is show lower than the current year. And then um the part I want to focus on tonight is this first section for public safety. It's lines four through 10. Um we do have the motorcycles um some other equipment. There is 10 of the replacement vehicles in the PIP fund for police. Um, and then the dry suits for the dive team for fire and then replacement of the hose um on all the equipment and the hose racks and then the replacement of one fire engine um are in here for um public safety. And then the other three vehicles for police, as we said there was 13 of them are actually in the drug fund. We're utilizing some of the fund balance um in the drug fund to purchase three additional vehicles. Um other than that, the drug fund is um very status quo compared, you know, year-over-year. That one doesn't really change a whole lot. If you would go back one slide two, there's you know with uh the number of replacement vehicles uh for PD uh we did a a resolution for fleet management and at that point we were predicting about 20 vehicles a year for PD. Um we don't have people to put in the vehicles right now. So this number has been scaled back from 20 to 7. Additionally, when we look at the fire apparatus, we have um two pieces of equipment that would be ready for order depending on the lead time. For PD, the lead time for the vehicles can be months for lead time for fire apparatus can be years. Um, okay. So, we have a truck and engine that are due now. This and that's

assuming a threeyear lead time on this. Two of them are four year I think. Well, it's for an engine that's less, right? Two years 22 to 24 months a truck is 32 to 36. Yeah. The last I think the last engine that we ordered was supposed to be around the 22 month mark and it ended up coming 26. So, two and now we're talking about a ladder truck maybe three to four years. Um there is one in here um that maxes out our budget. So we have to look at how we're going to do both of them. Maybe we stagger one to next year so we don't have to hit at the same time again in 15 years. But I just want to point out this has fewer uh PD vehicles and depending on the timing of that fire engine fire truck, this just has one fire engine in it at this point. So, I think if you look at the surplus and deficit on the far right side, it's 609,000 negative and it's it's it still leaves us a a fund balance of zero, but we're going to have a little bit of money in the account when we start this year. So, we absorbed everything not only that that fund's going to bring in this year, but then what we had residual from the current year that we're in. Yeah, drug fund. Same thing. This shows a deficit. Um, but we are utilizing some of the fund balance that's available in the drug fund. Um, other than the three vehicles, it's very status quo budget. And then um remind uh budget workshop number two is going to be on May 5th. Um during that we will be talking about the new and continuing projects. We also will be talking about the special revenue funds, looking um at the fund balance um summaries and then

also um doing another look at the operating budgets. Um you know there'll be some revisions and some more work done on those between now and then. Um so you'll see an updated version of the operating budgets when we get to the second budget workshop as well. So, I think from a high level, um, there may be a little bit of room in public safety budgets if we don't dev from what we've previously done, but there's not much. I mean, we could say, okay, let's take $5,000 out of meals or something, but we're not talking about the difference of, you know, getting us to 500 or $600,000. So, I don't know that we're going to come back and tweak these budgets much. uh anything that we do at this point is going to be a real impact operations. Uh but we'll we're going to continue to look through these things, see if there's anything that we can refine. But I don't anticipate a lot of change as far as reducing these public safety budgets. If at all. No, they're very tight budgets already. Now, they will come down in terms of health benefits because we factored 15%. So if we're able to come in less than that um all you will see that across all departments and the cost of the health insurance premium comes down. Any other questions? I do not make a motion. Make a motion to adjourn. A second. All in favor? I respond to it. You can make this see the uniforms are different. I don't know people are check North Carolina. I don't know somebody where they got