Board of Commissioners - Special Meeting

Commissioner Jeff Sanford here. Commissioner Sharon Nesmith here. Mayor Tom Watson yo. Commissioner Curtis Mager here. Mayor Pro Tim Bob Glenn here. Thank you. Item three on the agenda, 2026 2027 annual budget presentation. City manager Nate Pagan. I vote no.

Short meeting a new record. Here we go. Uh well, mayor and commissioners, good to see you. Appreciate the opportunity to lead the staff as we present our proposed or draft 2627 fiscal year budget. Our format today will be like we've done in similar years. I'll provide a quick overview, some context with some relative stats and and uh numbers. The bulk of the budget is the second bullet point you see there, which is our proposed expenditures for next fiscal year. Of course, the budget is really our roadmap and how we deploy the resources that you provide for us over the next year. And so that's the bulk of the presentation. So that will be a little bit from me, but this is where you'll hear from the department heads and our managers. And you'll hear quite a bit more from our finance team today as well um in particular. And so this is where we present to you how we propose to spend the tax dollars that we're fortunate to to get every year. So that's the bulk of the presentation. And then we'll we'll end with a couple of brief slides talking about the revenues of course to uh support those expenditures for the services we provide. And then also we do a rolling five-year long range plan. So Angela will kind of just brief you on that as well as we do every year. Obviously good management dictates that we kind of have a sense of what we're doing and where we're going. And so we update that long range plan often. And so Angela will present a little bit of that to you at the end. Uh so this slide depicts the unemployment rate for Davis County, which is the lowest level that it's configured or compiled for. Um and so you you've probably recall these numbers that you see every year. Uh so the employment actually has spiked up over the last year. It kind of leveled off here more recently. I think a lot of this change is actually somewhat due a little bit to how they compiled the numbers to be honest with you. So it probably overstates the number of people who are actually um well it looks like the increase is probably overstating a little bit the number of people who are employed in Davis County actually. Um so I think there was a um a collection

change uh to be to be honest but anyway the number of employed folks in the community is is holding steady. uh you see similarly the number uh the unemployment rate in the community you can see the spike there in 2020 20 and 21 which of course was COVID related other than it has been relatively stable I think the bigger takeaway from this slide is our rate is essentially the same as the federal rate but we are below the state rate so that's always good to see that we're you know we're beating the state average and then a similar uh thing that we talk about often I know mayor this is something you care about and track a little bit more is the workforce participation rate um and so it's good data to see as Well, so again, good to see that we surpass the state rate in workforce participation. Trail the federal rate just a little bit. Um, but again, good to see that we do lead the state. That's a meaningful statistic really. I think probably more so, mayor, as you point out, than the actual unemployment rate is is the actual workforce participation rate. So, good to see again that we are surpassing the uh state rate. I like to show just some of the statistics that that are compiled every year. uh specifically the number of housing units that are started that changes pretty drastically year-over-year. So you can see we're down a little bit this year compared to where we were last year. Last year you may recall is when JGO started their big neighborhood out in West 60. So there was kind of a big bump related to that. So there's usually a reason why these numbers are are what they are of course. Um good one in this slide is really the value of regular and commercial permits. So you can see there's been more more than a doubling of what industrial and commercial customers have invested in our community. So that's definitely good news. And then I also like to track the number of active business licenses which is the last column there or row in that in that slide. So and that's definitely continued to increase. Back during COVID we dropped down below 10,000 active business license and we've slowly crept back up uh to where we're almost at 12,000. I actually don't remember us ever hitting 12,000. Not to say we haven't, but I don't recall that off

hand. So certainly that's a a good a good trend. Uh as well as we switch to the proposed expenditures, I wanted to first talk about what you won't see in this year's budget. Right? So some of these larger ongoing projects you're familiar with like the bluegrass fieldhouse, operation firehouse and and station three in particular, the pickle ball, the senior center, those are projects that are actually not in the budget we'll talk about today. Those projects are already funded. They're already under construction. and you know that when we did a recent tour for a trolley tour last month and so because those are ongoing and are not up for consideration now they're not in the budget so we won't really talk about those types of things again they've been vetted and approved already so these will be looking at the proposed expenditures for next fiscal year looking at some of the topline issues um you know you one of my roles I think as city manager is what I consider resource allocation you give sort of the high level priorities and I try to match up our staff and our and our resources with those priorities. And so this identifies a little bit of those always, including economic development, uh, community needs and infrastructure. So, we're proposing record spending on infrastructure and street maintenance this year in accordance with the feedback that you give me. Again, public safety, you often say, is kind of a typically a priority of all elected officials. And so, we continue to invest in our public safety efforts. And then really, you've always tked me to be conservative in in our posture. So we are proposing a balanced budget and we are proposing no tax rate changes of any sort in the budget next year. So again, conservative posture supporting things for growth. We'll talk about investments in the air park to help some of those sites develop. We'll talk about some initiatives in parks, but they're pretty limited this year. Um was pretty pretty tight fiscal year for us. Uh so we took a cur conservative posture as a result. uh but did try to align those resources that we have with the priorities that you've you've given us. I used to show

this slide at the end of the budget as sort of a wrap-up and then the mayor one year said it'd be great to see that at the beginning. So mayor uh accordingly here it is kind of this is just a high level summary of where the funds go uh and comparing it to the current fiscal year both the original and the amended budget. And so really look at the bottom line. You can see in the current year we started with the $76.5 million general fund uh after rolling over various unfinished items. We ended up about a little over 86 million. And so we're proposing something is between those two numbers. So just over $80 million for the general fund. You can see there of course the biggest portion of that is to salaries and benefits. We're in a a labor intensive business and so there's a large cost for doing that. Um and then the various other items. Again, you see maintenance as being the second largest item. We are facility heavy. We have numerous facilities across our portfolio and so there's a lot of maintenance that we do a good job of doing. Um but it does come at at quite a cost for us. Yes, sir.

Yeah, that's a that's a good question and I'll Angela prepare to speak as well, but in large part I think that's for the internal service funds. Uh, and we'll talk about that a little bit later as well. So, like for example, the garage or the property maintenance facilities maintenance folks more so they track their time and they bill out to the departments that they work for. So, if one year our mechanics at the garage work 20% of their time for OPD, we actually bill OPD for that. And so, they pay OPD then pays the garage for those services. So, that's what that means by a transfer. We're just billing an internal type of of tracking and accounting purpose. Angel, is that correct?

Uh well, to add to that, um the 202526 amended is higher. Uh we did an amendment for transfer to transit and and all that means is that it reflects the general funds match to the federal government's grant monies. So, good news. And then also the 2627 has an additional item in it and that's for the bluegrass fieldhouse which we not had before. So the a little bit of bump there in the 26 27. Thank you.

Yeah, good question though. And a good comment about Bluegrass Fieldhouse. Obviously that's scheduled to open hopefully in July and so that'll be a new expense that we've not had in the past. There are several shared items that you'll see across the budget. So we just had typically addressed those one time at the beginning. Um health insurance costs went up by $145,000 for the general fund. That's not an uncommon uh consideration for us as us like most employers continue to grapple with increasing health insurance costs for our employees. We do fund a step increase for all employees. I'm sure you recall a couple years ago we redid our pay charts after doing a pay study and I know you have wanted us to prioritize our people and keep our rates at market rates to ensure we recruit and retain a a good workforce. Uh we also funded a 3% cost of living adjustment for all employees. Uh the next column actually is is uh kind of a surprise and kind of good is that the pension costs actually went down for us a little bit. So the last couple years it hasn't been as challenging but for for many years before that our increasing pension obligations were were increasing at a at a rapid pace and so it was quite quite a large expenditure for us to absorb year-over-year. And we'll look at that a little bit in a second but it actually decreased for next year. So that was a nice benefit for us which ended up saving us what about a million dollars from what we had initially expected and then the when the actual rates were issued it it actually resulted in a slight decrease for us. Um so you can see there's a total cost to that uh as well. Um so again another shared cost is utility. I referenced earlier that you'll be hearing a lot more from our finance department today. Uh so in particular right now you'll be hearing from Carrie Haynes on our utilities and fuel which again we're have a heavy fleet and heavy excuse me facility load. So there does come with a quite a bit of cost for those. So Carrie if you would on this slide.

Good afternoon. I'm Carrie Haynes and I'm presenting information on the utilities and fuel budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. The city acquires utility services from multiple sources. The primary provider is OMU which provides electric, water and fiber services. Regional water resource agency provides sewer services. And then due to some locations um we have certain facilities which receive utility services from Atmas Kery and Davis County Water Department. To develop the upcoming fiscal year's budget, we contact each provider to obtain information on proposed rate adjustments and we use current year expenditures to project usage for the upcoming fiscal year. Adjustments in are then made to account for operational changes such as the new facilities like the blueg grassfield house. The total budget for city utilities for fiscal year 2627 is almost 3.5 million, an increase of about $200,000 from the previous year. And next we have the fuel budgets. This slide represents total city fuel expenditures showing actual expenditures from 2425, forecasted expenditures from 2526, and then the budget for 2627. The fuel budget accounts for approximately 6% of the general fund budget. The city secures fuel pricing through a competitive bidding process to ensure cost efficiency. To develop the fuel budget, we analyze current year spending and incorporate pricing forecasts from the US Energy Information Administration to project costs for the upcoming fiscal year. We also consider recent national events that impact fuel markets. To account for potential price fluctuations, a 10% contingency is included in the budget. Fuel expenditures for the fiscal year 2627 are projected to be approximately $1.2 million. and I'm happy to address any questions you may have at this time.

So, I know Nate, you and I have talked about this. Um, we have the electric bus and we know there's but do we have any other electric vehicles or would it be in our interest that these fuel costs continue at this rate for us to look into more electric vehicles?

Uh, other than the electric bus, I don't think we have any other electric vehicles now. I'll let Stephen comment when he gets here. Yeah, not that I'm aware of either. I know we've tried some in the past. The technology is really not there for us at the large scale type of vehicle that we need. You know, we have a lot of F250s, F350s, specialized public safety type of equipment and apparatus. And though their technology is just not not really there from a from electric vehicle perspective, I think it's something I'd be interested in the future to try to mitigate this fuel budget. You know, obviously we do have a huge fleet of vehicles uh citywide and so we do pay quite a bit in fuel. So, it's definitely something we'd be interested in the future as technology improves. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Nate.

I'm sorry. Thank you, Mayor. The the electric bus is is it is it working now or is it I don't know, Commissioner. Maybe we'll bring up that question again when Stephen Franklin is here as he oversees comment. It's been off and on the road at times over the over the 10 year that we've had it. Yeah, I'd have to agree that I don't think it's I don't think it's as useful as I thought it might be. And then you have to charge it and then I guess that's the electric side looks like it's going up too. So anyway, yeah. And for us again having a heavy fleet, it's more the apparatus too. We don't have many typical passenger cars like we might have in our personal life. Our our equipment is typically very heavily uh Is the bus on the road?

It is. Okay. Thumbs up from so it is back. It is back working. Okay. Okay. But to your point, it has been off and on the road a couple times during during this lifespan. Yeah, that's what that's what I was thinking too. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Any other questions for Carrie? All right, Carrie. Thank you. Uh, next we'll be joined by Whitney Brown. and Whitney will present another shared factor which is our property and liability. Again, sort of a byproduct of having many many facilities is that we have to ensure those facilities and that was a particular challenge with our increase this year that that Whitney will tell you about.

Hello, I'm Whitney Brown. I'm the senior accountant here with the city of Onsboro. Um today we're going I'm going to talk about the property and liability insurance that we have. As you can see, uh this is our four largest insurance categories that we have. The dark blue represents the current year's budget and the teal projects the increase for next year. Overall, these categories are increasing by $281,455 or 26%. This change is driven by several key factors. In January of 2025, Kentucky League of Cities, also known as KLC, conducted updated appraisals of all city- owned buildings, ensuring that both interior contents as well as the exterior contents are updated appropriately for coverage. Additionally, the rising construction costs and inflation have increased rebuilding values. Uh, plus the city has expanded coverage needs by adding new facilities like the Walter Freeman Training Fire Training Center. and all of these have contributed to the overall expenses. Um, looking ahead, another impact on rates is expected in the 2027 2028 budget year and that's going to be driven by the March 15th hell storm. Um, on a positive note though, KLC does not anticipate applying a wind or hell deductible, which helps limits the out-of- pocket expense for next year's budget. So, that's great news to hear. Um, I have I can take any questions if you have any. Are you is KLC the provider of your your

Yes, KLC does provide our our insurance for property. Good deal. Got to have some help there. Anybody else? And we do lean on on the insurance folks on a regular basis to provide whatever discounts we we can. It's a good relationship with them. A lot of us are very active in KC both on the insurance side and and not. So, they're but they're a good partner. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Whitney. And I think we'll see you back in a later slide. Uh, so I referenced earlier again the the pension cost. We we've looked at these numbers closely over the years. And again, it wasn't too long ago where the annual increase was, you know, hundreds to millions of dollars every year of an increase that has stabilized thanks to some uh reform from the legislature. So, we definitely appreciate that. However, it is something we definitely still continue to track. You can see next year we're proposing or expecting a large increase. We are somewhat hopeful or optimistic that there'll be some changes from the pension board. So if you see JT maybe, you know, lean on him a little bit as well. Um because if we do have to absorb the full 1.4 million that we're expecting next year, that'll be a sizable increase. But hopefully that'll be mitigated between now and then. Um but still such a large expenditure that we uh that we face every year. So, as we continue transitioning to some of the expenses, we we talk often about the funds of the budget. So, obviously all of our accounts are in some type of fund. Most of them we talk about today will be the general fund. That's the fund on the left that you can see that is the main operation at city hall, police, fire, those types of things. Um, we will talk a little bit about some of the other funds though, such as uh when when Amanda's here, we'll talk about the recreation fund. Those are some of the programs in the parks department that generate revenue. We'll talk, of course, about sanitation. Sanitation is what we call an enterprise fund where it operates like a standalone business where the fees that our residents pay provide for the expenses for the service. So, again, just more of an accounting issue. But if you hear us reference various funds, that's that's okay. If you have any questions about that, be sure to um to let us know. So with that we'll transition to some of the individual departments now starting with uh the administration. Uh so for

the admin budget we are proposing a a budget of increase of uh 5% or $88,000 for a budget just over $2 million. Uh the bulk of that increase is for uh personnel related cost. You know employee salaries, benefits, things of that nature. We are expecting $16,000 increase in supplies. That's attributable really to two primary items. Uh one of them being computer related replacements. So we operate on a replacement schedule for computers the last couple of years up in admin. Um of course the admin department is quite small and so we've not had to do any computer replacement this year. I think we have three. So that's uh you know an increase in in the budget. Not a not a annual increase. So it very well may drop next year. And then part of that is also attributable to software subscription increases as well. So we have a lot of software needs, technology needs, and a lot of those have, you know, built-in escalators in those contracts. So we're absorbing those costs. And then finally, in the other category, an increase of 18% or just over $16,000. and that is attributable to actually something that we're going to do for the parks department and that is some marketing and quarterly flyers that we're going to do in Owensboro parent magazine and things like that to try to really put our programs in front of the core target audience for those programs. Uh and so Shaye will administer that on behalf of the parks department so it's included in the admin budget even though it's largely an expense for the parks department and that's about $20,000 of that increase of 16. So really other than that one particular new item we would have had a decrease in the other uh other category for admin. So happy to answer any other questions should you have any questions.

Okay hearing none then the next division of admin will be Tim Ross and uh public events.

Good afternoon commission. Uh Tim Ross public events um as far as the forecast goes for the coming year. Um overall total budget for my group is down um pretty significantly there that you'll notice. Um a lot of that's just due to capital. Um we've invested the last couple of years pretty heavily in capital and we did some of that purchasing strategically um to kind of spread that out over time just with uh with purchasing power to try to invest in some things that we just haven't even showcased yet per se. But that's the majority of that of that decreases in some of the capital. um supplies uh are up just slightly and that's just uh a recind of categorization of of how we need some of the funds for the year. But as far as what to expect um from public events um ever since I've been with the city of Owensboro, I've been a huge advocate in partnerships. Um I think the city staff does a tremendous job in so many different areas. um what we do, Erica and myself, couldn't be accomplished um if the parks department didn't work with us and if public works and police and fire and they're they're all doing their part to help make these things happen. And so when it comes to groups like Friday After 5 or Wendle Foster with their half marathon or the symphony with their outdoor events, uh you know, all of our city departments pitch in and help out to to create those. and I'm a big advocate in helping those organizations do their job as fundraisers for these different events because they provide a great service to the community. So, um I don't think it's the city's position or responsibility to host everything for the community to do and we certainly don't need to fund that. Um but my my premise since I've been here um is that we do, you know, a handful of things, big signature events during the year. Um and then we partner with some fantastic organizations like the Barbecue Group and their board to help keep that event going and to help grow that. So, we've got these key partnerships that we do throughout the year. But, as far as our signature events, um July 4th, obviously this year will be a bigger celebration that we've talked about um recognizing America 250. So, we're going to have a a drone show in partnership with the Friday after 5 folks on Friday night the 3rd and then a

significantly larger fireworks show than we've ever done uh on Saturday the 4th. So, that's one of our signature ones. Um the air show will be back again. obviously a major event that draws folks from all over the place and Phil's hotels which is what our goal is uh right to draw visitors in addition to um hosting a great uh great events in our community for our local folks to enjoy. Uh and then Christmas we've got um a couple of things that we'll unveil this year at Christmas to new to further expand what we do on the riverfront. So partnerships with some key folks and then those handful of signature events uh will be our focus this year. So happy to answer any questions. So just for the public's benefit, so we do the air show this year and then next year we do illuminate instead. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's our plan at this point be to alternate those year after year. Yes. Yeah. I thought Illuminate was cool. I mean the air shows knock it out of the park, but I mean I thought Eliminate was really interesting and different. So appreciate all your Thank you. Yeah. Our goal with that was to do something that felt very very different but still is you know inviting to lots of different demographic groups and we had just as many positive feedback from people around the country for that as we do for the air show. So kind of different strokes for different folks but it it hits two different niches and so our goal will be to expand that. Yes. In 27 and bring eliminate back again and the Thunderbirds is the featured act this year right? Correct. Yes. Air Force group. Okay.

Thank you. U I just want to say just for the general public I have another hat with I have been involved obviously with the old barbecue festival and now the barbecue and barrels and just from a history um the I just want to make sure that people understand that that event allows our uh community to raise funds to take care of nonprofit things that happen. So, uh, I've always tried to advertise that people understand that as much as $60,000 a year was produced each year for the nonprofits alone. It's nothing that we paid or anything. as the time and the unfortunately the cooking teams uh did seem to age uh a little bit more uh that

you resent that remark. I can say that because I'm one of those aers but uh if we had not had some city assistance uh and uh significant uh uh just things that you don't think about cleaning up the streets after it's over uh making sure that there's safety those types of things. So, I just want to let the parks department know that that is appreciated and it's actually um it doesn't make the festival feel like they don't have to raise money. We do, but we also appreciate having that help so that we could continue it. So, I just want to say thank you, Tim. Yes, ma'am.

What's that? Uh there's more than 40 distilleries as part of that bourbon experience, right? Then out on the streets, um I think there's over almost 70 um barbecue related barbecue food vendors and stuff. Commissioner Sampler, thank you, Mayor. Uh thanks, Tim, for all you do. I I love the partnership thing that uh we have going with all these different entities. I was going to ask you real quick about the dust bowl. Did we cut back the time frame on that or are they still doing it the week or didn't they do that at one time to Yeah, they cut shorten it?

Yeah, they they scaled it back slightly just a little. It's still um it still covers two full weekends and then throughout the week. So, it's still much longer than we had talked to them. I know at one point several years ago, we talked about drastically cutting it back, but we provide the same services that we've been to that organization and it's still about uh off the top of my head, I think it's eight or nine days worth of worth of games. I I just know I want it to be successful, but it's hard to compete with all the travel stuff, right? And because it's changed since I played in it 100 years ago, it is nowund. Yeah, I'm too. Uh, but it's it's a great community event. I just want to make sure they they stay viable and uh just I just wondered on the timing on that. But thank thank you for all you do. You're doing a great job. Thank you.

Okay. Hot seat gone. Okay. Thank you, Tim. So, up next from the admin department is uh community development director Abby Shelton.

Good afternoon, mayor and commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to present the proposed budget and program update for the community development department. This budget supports the salaries and operations of two staff members, myself and Evan Goal, housing and grant coordinator. The total fiscal year 2026 2027 request is $361,875 reflecting a 3% increase over the prior year primarily driven by the supplies category and as as city manager mentioned before that is a computer request. Administrative fees generated through federal program management total totals $141,425 and will offset the department request reducing the net impact on the city's general fund to $220,450. The community development department administers the annual city's annual federal allocations of $566,249 through the community development block grant and $281,750,000 through the home investment partnerships program. These resources support homeowner exterior re rehabilitation, commercial facade improvements, firsttime home buyer assistance, and the work of our certified community housing development organization, Habitat for Humanity of Owensboro, Davis County. We also manage key grant programs that advance housing, economic development, and public improvements, local community catalyst grant support, single family rehabilitation, new construction, rental rehabilitation, and the 5050 demolition initiative. I am pleased to report continued success within the Monarch NRSA. Since summer 202025, 72 project applications have generated $1.2 million in total private and public investment. Demonstrating strong community engagement. The NRSA will remain active

through June 2030. As the city's designated CHTO, Habitat will serve as the primary developer and builder of new single family homes through the Greater Owensboro Housing Collab Collaborative, a partnership between Owensboro Health, Habitat, and the city of Owensboro. This effort is already underway. Owensboro Health has donated 17 parcels of land to support 15 new single family affordable housing units and the city will provide partial funding for each of these new builds through the home federal resources to max maximize impact and expand home ownership opportunities. Finally, the department continues to support other department city departments by providing grant writing and administration. This effort has already resulted in additional external funding and increased capacity to deliver projects without placing added pressure on the general fund. Mayor and commissioners, thank you for your continued support and your commitment to investing in our community. Your leadership allows us to leverage federal resources, expand housing opportunities, and strengthen neighborhoods across Owensboro. I appreciate your time and consideration of this request, and I am happy to answer any questions or provide additional detail on any aspect of the budget of our programs. Go ahead, Jeff. You're It's okay.

Thank you. Thank Thank you, Mayor. Um, Abby, what is the percentage of rehabs in the Monarch area? Do you have any idea on the applications? Do you of the 70 the rental the rental rehabs or the single family? Single family like for people to It's the better part of our our budget right now. I can get those for you. It's probably close to 75%. But we have a lot of um the single family rehabs and the rental rehabs are really big through the community community catalyst grant. Now through the federal side, of course, our exterior um homeowner exterior rehabilitation program is is the largest.

Right. I've uh I think I've heard you say for every dollar that's invested up here, we get a return of around three. at the end of right now we're heavy loaded with our um federal funding because our exterior rehab program took off faster with applications and we just kept getting them and finally got a release for funding. So at that point um at this point that's really heavy but now the other side is really taken off people seeing word of mouth is is really tight between developers. The the question I would have is if we're doing that well then do you think there would be any um room if you wanted to do this citywide? I think it

because there's a shortage of housing. We all know that and if you can take structures that we have that are uninhabitable and we we're getting a return like that. It seems that would only make sense if we were to invest local dollars to put people in houses, especially first-time home buyers, kids that are trying to to get something started and build equity and stuff like that. I think as a community, we would only benefit uh hugely, especially putting people in homes

for sure. We um actually have paired a few of our those those rehabs, single family rehabs with our home partnership program for down payment assistance. And we do have quite a few first-time home buyers. I wouldn't mind seeing that going outside of Monarch and actually going across the city uh because there's a lot of dilapidated houses that could uh actually look pretty good and it builds it builds the neighborhoods and I think it builds pride where people live and I think it's something that we need to think about. That's just my opinion. Thank you, Mayor.

Yes. Uh, so Abby, several years ago over in the Germantown area, I believe it was Wabuk took a MPD structure and turned it into apartments. Given our shortage of affordable housing, have you ever had any conversations either with Wabuk, another company, or even Habitat about going from the single house model because they're starting to go to neighborhoods. We know that with the Carter Circle thing. Um to maybe duplexes or even even a a modest apartment building like a two-story apartment building to speed up the the gaps and and capacity to house more families because that's that's the thing. The Habitat does a wonderful job, but it's only one group of four or five people at a time. And that we've got 3500 housing slots were short just in Davis County. So, I'm just wondering if you've had any conversations about Habitat or WAWK or anybody doing that.

Sure. Um, if we had a magic bullet for for affordable housing, I would hop on that, but we don't and I have talked with those developers and we do constantly look at infill and where we can place larger housing um developments. But that's those particular folks do focus on larger developments just because of low-inccome housing tax credits. Now, I have spoken with a few local developers who are interested in doing uh duplexes spots here and there and and within the Monarch and are safe particularly and that is a a high demand of course and something that we um are readily available to work with on developers if they want to. Okay. And then tied to Habitat again, have they ever thought about tiny houses?

Oh, um yes, that has been a discussion. I'm not sure if we're we're um positioned to tackle that issue at this point. We're looking at accessory dwelling units our own PC is and I think that's the biggest the lowest hanging fruit that we have at this point but we have discussed the tiny home movement and what that could look like for Owensboro and Davis County. Right. Thank you for all you and Evan do. We appreciate you. Absolutely. Thank you ma'am.

Intermediate homes basically and it's hard to get them out once you get them in. That's the biggest problem because they finally have a home and I don't know the answer to that is I've been following these tiny houses for several years thinking that could work but uh it's it's tough sometimes to try and say okay you've had this long enough now you need to move on to the next level but appreciate I know that you all do a lot of work because every time I have to sign something you it takes about it's about that thick a document anybody else like a single page so appreciate your work. Thank you, sir. Okie dokie.

All right, Abby. Thank you. Next department is information technology and IT director Jeff Bell will brief you on his proposed budget. Thank you, mayor, commissioners, for the opportunity to present the information technology budget for fiscal year 2627. Uh, today I'll be presenting the infrastructure and applications budget. Uh, Mr. Carpenter will follow up with the GIS budget. The proposed budget for infrastructure and applications total $3.2 2 million representing a 6% reduction in expenditures compared to last fiscal year. Over the past year, we've made significant progress on key initiatives. We are currently replacing aging servers and storage systems that support the executive network to ensure continued reliability and performance. I'm pleased to report that the new data center equipment has been installed and we anticipate full uh migration in the upcoming months. This new infrastructure is expected to serve the city for approximately seven years extending uh beyond our previous 5-year replacement cycle. In addition, we are finalizing the the deployment of a secondary redundant data center at the fire training facility. This investment strengthens our disaster recovery capabilities and ensures greater continuity of operations in the event of outage or emergency. Looking ahead to next fiscal year, while we have no major capital uh projects planned, we will continue to to uh work on cyber security by adding additional layers of protection to further reduce and safeguard city systems and data. Finally, our applications team will

begin redesigning our in-house revenue collection systems, improving uh efficiency, reliability, and the overall user experience. I appreciate your time and consideration, and I'm happy to answer any questions you all might have.

Sure. Just out of curiosity, Did you design the uh fishing email that came out last week? I did not. Okay. Well, you got me to say, mayor, you reached out to me and you were not able to uh call me, but you were in a very important meeting and you needed me to tell you something. You needed like 45 gift cards for something. I just want thought I'd let you know that. That's a fish. That was a fish. Anyway, that thank you, Jeff, because I appreciate that security thing just because of my other businesses I'm in. But, um, I think it's great how you've improved even just since I've been on a commission a lot of the the technology opportunities.

Well, I appreciate my staff. They they do a wonderful job. Thank you. Will that data center that's proposed to come here, will that have any effect on what we do? No. No, sir. Should not. Good. Okay. Thank you. One quick question. Uh so a lot of cities and private industries have been held hostage, you know, had they call ransomware attacks. Yeah. Um and I don't want you to reveal what we do, but have we taken just in a general sense, have we taken steps to protect the city's files and essential information from those kind of attacks to the best degree we can? We absolutely do. We take that very seriously. My staff will tell you that's that is really priority number one with me. Yeah.

Uh we are using some uh we're using Crowd Strike which is the leader in the industry. We're also doing backups uh where we send the backups off site and they can't they're what's called immutable uh so they can't be changed once they get there. If they were if ransomware was to hit us uh we could recover. I'm not sure how long it would take us to recover but we could recover without any any penalties. Would we have to pay the ransom? uh should not have to. Okay. But never say never, right? I've I've been told it's not if, but when so I don't want that to happen on my watch for

We don't either. Thank you for all your great efforts and your staff. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. And that was a good question. Cyber security is always a priority for us. So, uh, there are at least two cities I'm aware of in Kentucky in the last few years that have been subject to a sizeable ransomware attack. And so, um, even before then, and as Jeff said, it is always a priority. So, definitely something we're we're aware well aware of. Up next is GIS by manager Will Carpenter. And just as a quick reminder, GIS functions as a partnership between the city, the county, OMU, and RWR where we partner to provide Will and his staff and uh we share those costs, each paying one quarter of that cost. It's a good partnership for us. It's been in place now for what probably 20 years or a little bit more. That's right.

Uh and hopefully continues for many years in the future. It allows us to have a better service than we could each have individually. And so they provide a lot of good data that we can we can share among those partners. Mayor, commissioners, thank you for this opportunity to discuss closer to the mic if you would please. It's on. I just just Okay. Get a little closer. All those fans we got at home, they will make sure they can hear you.

That's right. That's right. Uh mayor, commission, and thank you for this opportunity to discuss the upcoming budget for the uh GIS consortium as led by the city of Owensboro. I'm Will Carpenter, the GIS manager. As already mentioned, the GIS uh is an enterprise fund uh with one quarter of the budget coming from the city and one quarter from OMU, RWA and fiscal court. Uh the primary I guess the highest profile uh customer of our GIS services is central dispatch, consolidated dispatch. Uh the the way that the dispatching works is uh the call is lands on one of the maps that we maintain. uh and that's how the that's how they locate and route the the best responder for your particular type of call. In addition, we support a number of uh of reference layers that provide more information to the dispatcher and to the responders about what the what additional information will affect how they respond, what direction they need to come from, and what other considerations they may have. In addition to to uh 911 dispatching, we do work with uh with uh the the other partners as well. RWA, for example, has an ongoing project of of uh improving the the mapping of their service taps into the main as they and that's an interesting project as it's a byproduct of their normal operations. as they are inventorying and and and inspecting the the the mains, the locations of the taps coming can have a better location as uh on the map. So in addition to that, we do a variety of projects for RWR and fiscal court, especially with uh search and rescue and uh Davis County Emergency Management. Uh the budget has changed slightly uh where we have a an increase in our software maintenance. That's because our primary software vendor has changed their distribution model and the prices

have gone up. Uh now to be fair to them, the price hasn't changed in about 15 years. So they're kind of making up for lost time, but that will be a uh that increase will continue going forward. The other significant change is in the technical uh or under supplies under computer equipment where we're one of our staff members is scheduled for a routine replacement of equipment. uh being a small shop like we are with three full-time staff and one part-time uh a single purchase of a PC represents a bump when it happens. Uh with that, I'm happy to entertain any questions you may have.

Thank you, Will. Thank you, Will.

Next, we'll hear from Chief James Howard of the Owensboro Fire Department. Hello everybody. Honorable uh mayor and city commissioners want to thank uh each of you for having me back again this year to discuss the resource needs of our fire department. We OFD uh continue to appreciate your support as well as the support of the Onsboro community as we go about the business of saving lives and protecting property here in our community. I'm proud to be here as fire chief once again to represent not only our members but also those we protect to champion a budget request that seeks to not only maintain progress but also to engage in continuous improvement to move our department forward. So our uh okay, it's already up there. our uh on this slide here to the left, you'll see that our projected total budget for fiscal year 27 is $18,50,850. And as you see on the slide, that's a modest 3% increase from fiscal year 26. Of the total budget amount, just over 81% of that goes to personnel costs. Obviously, the the vast majority of the funds go to pay for our people, salaries, and benefits. the 3% increase in the personnel costs uh from last year to this or from the current fiscal year to the next uh is the driver of the overall increase for our proposal for fiscal year 27. On this slide here you can see that there are a couple of other areas that are noted in our budget request indicated such as maintenance and capital. The increased funding request for maintenance is due to rising cost uh of tending our buildings and our fleet of apparatus. believe the city manager alluded to the the cost of those things earlier in the presentation. The increase in the capital expenses is due to rising costs for the replacement plan

that helps us to cycle out older equipment and allows for new apparatus to be procured that meets the needs of tomorrow instead of yesterday. Uh other aspects of our budget that aren't aren't on this slide except included in the total budget amount include our supplies, our utilities, and other miscellaneous areas that you may have questions about here today. And if you do, I'll do my best to answer those for you. Bless you.

Yeah, I think we all do. So, here on this slide, you see a few highlights uh for the fire department proposal for fiscal year 27. uh with a budget the size of ours, obviously now that we've crept over uh 18 million, you can imagine that there are a lot of details that are involved for us to be able to provide the services that we do, including fire prevention, first responder training, and a robust emergency response capability. Today, I'd like to highlight on, as you can see on this slide, just a few of the opportunities we're looking forward to seizing upon in fiscal year 27. So you're all aware that our fire department achieved accredited status from the commission for fire accreditation international recently at a conference in Orlando. Hope you also know that this was the culmination of five years of work and that our 2022 to 2027 strategic plan played a central role in that accreditation effort. Over the next year, we're looking forward to partnering with that accrediting entity to collaborate on the development of our next strategic plan using consultants from their technical assistance program. Next uh next bullet that you see there are uh I want to reference our training which is a critical aspect of our budget every year and more importantly it's a critical aspect of our culture on an ongoing basis at OFD. In August, we look forward to beginning to conduct the largest recruit class that our agency has seen for decades. When our talented staff will take what we expect to be most likely at least 12 and as many as 15 recruits and introduce them to the skills that will prepare them to save lives and protect property in this community for many years to come. Our budget request includes a learning management software that'll improve administration and credentiing for this effort as well as dynamic a dynamic movable wall system that'll challenge new and experienced firefighters uh this year and beyond.

The third bullet there is in reference to our uh an aspect of our fire prevention. So last year, our new new fire marshal, Brian Roberts, who you're all familiar with now. He took the reigns of our fire prevention division has been looking to improve upon the three pillars of that division over the past few months. While he continues to make strides, and our department does in code enforcement and public education, our fire marshal is employing his passion for fire investigations to modernize our department's approach with the use of new software, evidence collection equipment, and the development of our shift investigator program. Lastly on this slide, but not least by any means, uh this last highlight concerns taking advantage of emerging technologies and rescue equipment to make sure that we're on the cutting edge of new developments in our industry. A couple of investments we're proposing in the coming year include a uh or include a set of battery operated struts for vehicle extrication that reduce the time that it takes to safely work in or near overturned vehicles and an underwater drone that could be deployed before or in addition to divers who respond to our water bodies to assist with searches for people and sometimes even objects or both. Uh so with those highlights uh noted, I want to thank you again for your time and let you know that I'll be glad to elaborate and give my best answer to any questions you might have for me today.

Question, please. I've got two. The first is uh and this is more about policy than the specific example. So we encountered two of your firefighters driving a vehicle back that I guess you've had a lot of problems with. I think it's a supply vehicle and they had to take it go pick it up in Ohio after it was repaired and bring it back. Does that ring a bell at all? Uh yeah, I'm very familiar with that.

They referred to it as Satan. Okay. Because they'd had so many problems with it. And I'm just wondering, so the question cheap is not that. It's when we get a lemon or we get a vehicle that we purchase that doesn't, you know, doesn't work to the specs we need it to. What's our policy? How do we handle that? because it seems to me like you're being cheated out of equipment you need to do your job. Well, there's a process. So, sometimes you have a less than ideal experience with a vendor or it may not even be the manufacturer. It could be things that you do in the upfitting of the unit uh the unit that you referenced. We don't officially call it Satan, but sorry, but

I was highly entertained. It is an apparatus that uh that we had delivery of that we've uh we've uh had some ongoing issues with to try to to get it on the road and is on the road now. And uh like any any anything that big that's on the road that has a lot of moving parts and does what our trucks do, it's going to have ongoing issues with it. Uh I'll say if you if you get a unit, I mean that's what warranties are for upfront as far as the unit itself. And uh I mean and this goes through any any purchase that the city has on that scale. uh whether it's a a sanitation truck, fire truck, police cars, any any kind of car, uh they're going to have some kind of warranty on them. So that that's your first uh first line of defense against those problems. Uh sometimes you run into issues that are kind of on the line there where it's not clear that it's a warranty issue and we do work with multiple vendors because there's upfitting in addition to the original uh manufacturer of the unit. Uh so I say it really depends on when the issue happens and and what the issue is. it. But I say warranties are what protect you from that and some of the issues that we're dealing with are not strictly warranty issues and I hate to go into too much more detail on that specific. And then the other question I have is there was a proposal you talked about a couple years ago and I think the training has begun where they're trying to and I don't know what it's called the official label but it's where the police go into a a live shooter an active shooter situation and there's enough gap that you can bring firefighters in to treat some of the injured while the police are still in the building either looking for the person or securing the site. Are we still going through training and that? I don't know what it's called. I apologize. I know there's an official name for it but Yeah. Uh mass casualty incidents and live shooter incidents are uh are a tremendous risk. Fortunately, very low low frequency but very high risk whenever they do occur. And our uh our training division has uh collaborated with the police department to provide training. We target a lot of that towards our paramedics now that we are a licensed agency and have medics

and they are uh they are trained for a tactical response once again that is in coordination with the police department. Uh and you you've seen in the past and we'll be replacing these in the next fiscal year that we have ballistic vests and uh and our folks once again they're trained u especially to stop bleeding that's specifically from gunshots even high calibers. Uh so that's that's just built into the understanding of the risk that that unfortunately exists in our society and our community or or the potential for that. So so yeah, we're we're training for that. We're fortunate to live in a county where our county responders and our city responders are all in a forwardleaning posture with making sure that we're proactive to be working together between law enforcement and fire. And I'd like to say I believe that our police and fire department work together as well or better than they ever have in the in the history of this community and and pretty proud of that. And that's definitely a an area where you see that collaboration uh take hold and and where you understand that it's extremely important. And there are certain aspects of how that works and how you embed uh medics into that scene and what we're looking to do versus what the police department is there for. But uh but together that effort is to obviously to make that to make that scene safe and normal again and try to get out anybody that can that needs help and uh and then they investigate after that.

Thank you for all your great work, your accreditation and thank you mayor. I appreciate it. Public safety elected officials number one job. I appreciate that as well. Thank you. Arm wrestle for it, I'll tell you. Um, just a quick question. The 12 to 15 new recruits, is that uh I know that's in your budget for next year. Uh, is that an addition or is that taking care of retention issues?

It's it's primarily retention. It's almost retention. Uh, the uh you know, we I mean, you've know because we've brought up and done the retirement recognitions in here and we're proud of those folks, but you start to lose bodies and it uh it puts a strain on the agency. So, uh so we're up to about 10 vacancies by the end of this month and we expect another couple folks to leave. So, we're just creeping up there where that's just to replenish the bodies that we have budgeted. Uh there are no new positions budgeted in the in fiscal year 27 for the fire department. We uh we're finishing up this year with 100 uh uniform positions budgeted and that's what we're going to uh try to get back up to in fiscal year 27 as soon as we get this recruit class done.

Are our uh the people that are leaving are they retiring or do we have uh are we losing them to other places?

Well, it's a mix. But most most of them are retiring. But like I said, like you've seen probably about a half dozen folks in the last four months that we come up here and try to say some nice words about them, wish them well. Uh and then there are other ones uh who uh probably about 40% of the ones that leave are either going to another department, getting out of the fire service altogether, uh or uh something happens that wasn't really in the cards uh going into the into the year. uh and uh that person or the or the agency needs to shift gears and they don't continue on with us. But uh but yeah, so it's a mix. It's it's mostly retirements, but you know, we it is getting to be more the case where you'll have more folks leaving at 3 years, 5 years, seven years, 10 years where 30 years ago when you hired folks, for the most part, you kept those people for 25 years. Uh it's, you know, the culture is changing, the the fire service is changing a little bit.

Yeah. Well, I agree with the culture changing because I I know when you got a job a long time ago, you hoped you would be able to retire from there and now I I don't have the exact news statistics, but people starting at like from age 30 are expected to change jobs x number of times in in their career. So, just was curious about the addition. Thank you. Sure, Commissioner Sford. U Thank you, Mayor. You got quite a little further detail. Uh the 3% in your personnel budget, does that cover the new hires that you're going to be hiring? Uh well, that 3% is or is that just or is that like for raises or or is it a combination or

uh that I mean that just constitutes the the different amount that has to be budgeted to cover the cola and the steps for the employees? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate your time. Elvis is in the building. Thank you, Chief. Uh, you asked about turnover. We're actually we're compiling a report. We track turnover relatively closely. And so, we're compiling a turnover report now that we'll probably present that to you sometime in in summer.

That'll be citywide too by department, not just not just OFD. Uh, next department to present will be the finance department. And of course, Angela Winger is the director of that department. Today, the briefing will come from Deputy Director D. Galloway.

Hi, Mayor and Commissioners. D Galloway, deputy director of finance and support services. Thank you for the opportunity to present the finance budget for 2627. Finance is one of the support service departments that we provide services to the other city departments that make city operations possible. This budget supports an incredible team of 17 full-time staff and three part-time staff. As reflected in the slide, our budget of $2.6 million is up about 10%. 155,000 of that is in our personnel area and as discussed prior it's the COLA the step increase in health insurance cost and it's also a budget for a retirement that we have in the finance department coming up this next year under maintenance we're up about $16,000. It looks like a large percentage but it's because the budget is typically very small. We have gotten purchased a new budget software system that will help us do the annual budget and prepare it. Um and that maintenance cost will kick in next year for that software. So that's where the increase comes. And we also have some upgrades to Adobe because the finance department leans very heavily on Adobe and Adobe Acrobat's use. The final category where you see the most of our increase is in the other which is up about $63,000. that increase is due to just a kind of culture change. We're seeing a lot of use of credit card to pay bills. Um, and of course the city pays a credit card fee. The good news is that there is an increase in the expense side, but there's also an increase in the revenue side for that because we do a merchant fee. So, we do recoup some of that cost. Um, and you would see that in the general fund revenue side. Um, that's the presentation for my budget. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try

to answer them. Questions? D, we may need to go to Angela on this because she's the one that mentioned it in her in her wonderful video that you did. Uh, so you guys are talking about digitizing a lot of the the budget and and financial information, which I think is great. Will that include the books so that we don't have will it all go digital? So that's why I'm looking at Angela.

Yes, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tim. Yes. Uh it's uh Claregov is the vendor and uh we will have a different book but also uh with that um that program we'll have a new online budget book which will actually be uh ADA compliant and it will also be interactive so that residents can yeah they can search things they can um I believe they can even ask questions um and so we haven't uh started programming that process yet but that'll be something we take on soon. We'll have it maybe next year. We we'll we'll have it available for the next budget. Wonderful.

Um and this is probably a Nate question. So our base step increase they get every year is 2 what? I believe for every year service the base step is 1.45%. And then the 3% increase is that on top of that step so they getting four or are they getting a total of three? Well, so yes. So essentially the paychart is where every year of service when you progress you increase at 1.45%. And then the entire chart is adjusted this year proposing 3%. So it is it is additive. Okay. So it's four or it's a total of three four three four five.

Okay. That's what I wanted to make sure. That's kind of what I I just wanted to make sure. Okay. Thank you uh D and Angela and all your staff for the incredible award-winning work you do. You say anything about our raise. Well, you guys get the same as as the rest of us actually. So, it is supplied blanket across the the organization. Okay. Yeah. Actually, Angela has something she'd like to add.

Yeah. I I think uh this might be an appropriate moment to recognize uh Da Galloway and Carrie Haynes and and others coming down the pike, but D and Carrie have obtained their certified government finance officer certification and that's a lot of hard work and seven I believe tests Deiana passed also. So there's three. There we go. and and so I just think that's uh something very worthy and I'm so very proud of them and that that's indicative of a lot of government accounting knowledge. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to recognize them for that. Well done.

And that's part of the reason you're seeing more of them present here as well, right? Their expertise is far surpasses mine in these things. So I thought it was best for for them to present directly to you as well as a continued step in that development. Uh so thank you for that D. We'll move on now to Josh Bachmire. Josh of course is the uh will transition. He's been the HR manager and this year actually he's becoming the HR director and some restructuring we'll talk about at a later date but Josh if you would proceed. Sure.

Thank you Nate. Good afternoon mayor commissioners. I'm Josh currently the HR manager uh I guess soon to be the HR director. uh and we'll kind of bring you an update on on some of the functional changes within with our department our department at a later date. So our our department consists of six full-time staff. Uh we handle safety and risk management, employee benefits, recruiting, training, payroll, records among many others. But uh the HR budget and staffing levels remain consistent with last year. uh overall increase from uh fiscal year 25 26 by 1%. Um the increases in personnel services which you've seen with the other departments uh in our department it's mainly driven by a couple of upcoming retirees who I'd like also to um um give some credit to Michelle Pucket. Uh she has served since 2002 and Elaine Timmel uh has served since 1997. and Michelle does payroll administration and we are currently training her replacement uh right now and then uh within the next few days we'll be interviewing for Elaine's position for her upcoming retirement. Both of them will be greatly greatly missed uh and provided tremendous service to the city over the years. Uh on the expense side um maintenance is up uh 17% which Nate Nate alluded to as well as several other departments. um that is due to in software increases uh for we we also use quite a bit of software for recruiting applicant tracking um basically it's our his systems uh the other category um this contains uh many different items but but contains recruitment uh safety costs and training costs and some

tuition reimbursement. The overall 10% reduction in this category reflects uh really just a fewer expected vacancies due to retirement that we expect over the next year. Uh so that reflects just a small reduction in in recruiting activity along with some uh adjustments in how we're going to allocate some advertising resources which obviously that's a big big part of our budget. Uh that's all I have. If I if you have any questions I'm happy to answer.

Commissioner Glenn. So, EPS, employee assistance programs are designed and I assume we subcontract that out. But if a individual has an addiction or a problem where they need counseling, including some of our first responders, what is our policy particularly with addiction in terms of bringing them back is our inclination to go, well, we've helped you and that's good. We've helped you with your life, but we can't bring you back in your position. How do we treat that? And I know that's a really sensitive issue that you you may have to deal with a couple of times, maybe more than a couple times a year.

We do. So So typically that happens one of two ways. Uh we either catch them through um you know, drug um testing, which which we do with all of our all of our departments and and some departments have different levels, you know, due to FTA requirements. Uh so we do have an EIP program. Uh it's administered through Owensboro Health. uh we can make referrals to that program or it can also be on a voluntary basis. So if it's voluntary, we know nothing about it. Uh we get basically um basically how many visits per month um you know what they're visiting for but really no protected health information. Now if it's mandatory and and we do this regularly as well. So, so you know, an employee tests positive for for a narcotic or drug. Typically, if it's first time offense, um we remove them from the workforce, um you know, especially almost all of our positions are safety sensitive. Uh we mandate that they uh meet with an EAP counselor. depending on if it's DOT or non-DOOT, they're they're treated a little bit differently, but really at the end of the day, we're taking the recommendation of the substance abuse professional on when they first they have to test negative and then they're allowed to return to work upon

be like somebody driving a vehicle like a correct bus driver or or working with kids or Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, the second and last question I have is we had the huge pay increase a few years ago in response to the the end of a pension. Uh, and I guess you're the best person to ask, has that stemmed the run to the exits to the private sector and and retirement? I mean, I just heard the fire chief indicate kind of no. Uh, or are we going to have to do another huge boost in pay uh to continue to address that that gap?

Uh, I I feel the city is in pretty good shape relative to other public employers. Unfortunately, public employers don't don't often compete with private. We're always going to have a level of turnover. Um, most of our turnover is due to retirements, which is still a good thing. But, you know, since since tier three was implemented, you know, at the state level, those folks just don't have the same reasons to stay with a public employer for near as long as they once did. Um, some of that has slowed down. uh pro that's probably more a function of of a little bit loosening of the labor market. Um but um um but with tier three, we really have to make efforts to to start competing with private to keep to keep good employees.

Thank you very much, Josh. And again, we appreciate all the great work you and your staff do. And thank you all. Any other questions for Josh? Okay. I didn't think there was Okay, thank you Josh. Next up is uh OPD Chief Art Elum.

Mr. Mayor, commissioners, good afternoon.

Want to talk to you about our budget requests this year. Um, as many people have stated prior to me getting here, uh, our budgets up to nearly 21 million. Uh, 4% of that is due to, uh, there's an increase. The large percentage of our increase is due to personnel, cost of living, uh, our step increase. We too have some, uh, expected retirements this year. So retirement contingencies account for some of that as well. Also, you'll notice a increase in our maintenance vehicle maintenance and equipment. Uh as you know, officers have mobile offices that require a lot of work. They drive all the time. So with camera systems, maintenance to vehicles that that increased this year do in part as well to when we seize vehicles over the years. We used to use drug asset forfeite funds to maintain the cars that were uh turned over to the police department, but we've noticed over the years that that some of those vehicles are not up to standard. So they require considerable maintenance. So, we were fortunate enough to get approval to have uh facilities maintenance and um public works work on those vehicles from time to time for us. So, that that is a benefit as well, but that prevents the city from having to buy vehicles for our street crimes unit and for officers to work undercover details and such. So, a lot of times you might see somebody in a a Jeep where we don't buy Jeeps for, you know, the department, but they might be in something that was seized and converted. Um, in the other other category, there was a 15% increase that was largely due

in part to insurance that was discussed by several different people here. I I would like to add though about the insurance. Uh I heard uh KLC, the Kentucky League of Cities. We recently were approved for our accredititation or reacredititation. So with that is like I think I believe it's a 10% savings on our insurance and it's not just accreditation but every year they come through and they do a report card. I'm sure you've seen it, Nate. And to make sure that our policies, our practices, we keep our buildings up, our range and things like that. So, they make sure that, you know, OPD or other agencies across the state that they ensure are meeting the standard and we always hit 100% on that. So see but highlights I I'll say this OPD traditionally and didn't just start with me. I don't have the art elim wish list. Uh we asked for the things that we need. So there's nothing new. I mean most of the things that we acquired last year satisfied you know what we needed in terms of equipment and things like that. So we we this year we don't have many equipment requests. So with that I'll open it up for questions.

Are you fully staffed? Fully staffed. We are currently 10 down. 10 down still.

Yes. Yes. We have u five in the academy. We have interviews set next week. Wednesday uh we'll be interviewing 10 uh potential recruits. Um but we also open the process. It's constant. So we have 10. And we know that all the 10 that apply won't make it for a variety of reasons. The police department just won't take anybody. So there was a battery of tests that they have to complete, not just physical, but psychological drug screens and all that. They have to sit through an interview. We do uh our people are very diligent in digging into people's backgrounds because how you hire is how you fire and and we try to do the absolute best that we can but as you all know sometimes people slip through the cracks and uh so when that happens yes I heard you ask about attrition um a lot of retirements but sometimes we get people that probably don't need to be in law enforcement and once we figure it out we move them on or they've moved themselves on. So,

Commissioner Sam, uh, what's the lifespan of a vehicle? Just the guys that's out on the street doing patrol. What's the average lifespan? Uh, that probably just depends. Some vehicles don't get the miles, but seven to eight years um, and sometimes even 10. Just depending on the mileage. I think the mileage point is probably about 80,000 miles. So, thank you. I just got one.

So, last year we had all the hail damage and I know that we kind of I'm looking at Nate here to make sure I'm saying something accurate. If I'm not, Nate, feel free to throw some at me. So, we we kind of patched up, if I'm correct, some of the police vehicles because we needed them. We didn't fully replace them because it would have been too expensive. Are we at the point now, a year in, that we're going to begin looking maybe at a a system to replace the hail damage vehicles, or is that not even a need given that maybe it's just aesthetics? I mean, I have two hail damaged vehicles and it's just, you know, pimples on the fender. But I a police car is different. I mean, you need you need to not only be able to do your job effectively, but you also need to look professional. If you got bunch of hail damage that didn't get repaired, I don't I don't know what you look like out there. as explained to me like I drive a Tahoe and they basically did line of sight repair. So anybody six foot tall uh stands back 10 feet and they look and what they can see that's what was repaired. So do I run across people that are 6'5 and 66 and like hey you got dents on top of your car. I can tell you that I can't see them unless I'm looking out a window. So, uh, but typically those the police cruisers that had those types of damage, um, it could be seen. So, those probably were repaired and they wouldn't have been repaired if they are due to be auctioned off this year or next year. It's just a waste of money. So, we try to do everything that we can to save taxpayer dollars. And aesthetically, you're you're correct. They don't look good, but at the same time, it would be a waste of money to try to replace those vehicles at this point. Okay.

Especially with the higher mileage. So, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for all you do. Appreciate it. Thank you. How's the academy going?

The academy is going great. It is uh truly a game changer for us. Uh I can't tell you we get recruits uh people that otherwise wouldn't have applied to be in law enforcement because still to this day, they don't want to go and be away from home. And that is in Richmond, Kentucky or even Madisonville at that point. So they come here, they learn uh the ways of OPD, our county judges and officials, uh prosecutors and things like that. So it is a win-win. It it's slow going, but you know, we get people in. We got a lot of dedicated people at the Owensboro Police Department that wanted to be successful. So everybody wants to be an instructor because it it's great. You bring these people in, you grow your own. So uh it was a wonderful move by you all. I thank you and can't express my appreciation enough.

Any else have anything? Keep up the good work, Chief. All right. Thank you. Years and years and years. Yeah. 35 if you remember our last meeting. 35. Up next, also a division within the police department is uh central dispatch as we call it. So, dispatch director Paul Nay will present his budget. The wizard. Wizard. That's me.

Good afternoon, commissioners. Mayor, as you see, my budget is 15% up for the total budget. Personnel 6% again, cola and step maintenance is up 65%. The biggest increase is that is we're migrating to a new platform of telephone system that is for the 911 system. So we're migrating to a newer version and replacing the hardware and the software. So that's a significant increase. It's a must has to be has to be accomplished. Um the reducing supplies accreditation. We were accreditated through Kentucky Chiefs of Police for the third time this last year and so that was part of the cost reduction of capital that we no longer need in this this this fiscal year that we were placed in this last fiscal year. Next slide is one of the biggest increase changes that we've done is AI powered NG 911 specifically for the fire department. So as a call taker is on the radio with the fire department, it transcribes the radio in real time and if they say mayday or officer down or second alarm, it highlights that in red so they don't miss that traffic and it keeps the firefighters safe. And we're and with this nearest budget, we're adding the NG 911 AS and two are incorporating to our budget. And you see we've we have animal control that we've added that's increased our calls around 2,000 calls a year that we dispatch animal control. And since the conception in 2010, we've had the Davis County School Police as a new police department within us that we dispatch for and now we have animal control. And that's all I have. If you have any I can entertain questions.

So the county doesn't do animal control. We we we dispatch them as a department now. They're a division of the of the sheriff's office where they have animal control officers and we dispatch them to calls throughout the day and when they're called out on the weekends and holidays.

Yeah. So the animal control officers themselves work for the sheriff's department. So they're not our people, but Paul's people actually dispatch them out. Now we track and so for those additional calls that Paul is now handling, we actually build the county for that. So remember, it's it's a shared service to where they're housed within the city, but then we pay on a prora share based on the call volume. So if 70% of the calls are within the city, we pay 70% of the budget. The county pays 29% and then we charge DCPS police 1% uh as well. So in that scenario, mayor, we're dispatching out county people to go to an animal control call. Okay, good deal. Anybody else?

I got one real quick. So, kind of a similar question to the fire chief. I know that being a dispatcher is incredibly stressful work, ter sometimes bad hours, the whole routine. How are we doing with uh retention of dispatchers and employees in your office? Because I know that's a tough cell. So this last year we were able to have overstaffed by we were over staffed our staffing and that helped divide the stress by having more staff on which mitigated less turnover and so we lost a personal now we're at our minimum staffing of 25 that we have. So we're at 25 with seven of those in training. So we're we're we're making progress but we lost our overage by one. So, uh, we'll have to try to work on maintaining that.

Thank you, Paul. Appreciate all your great work. Okay. Thank you, Paul. Next, we'll hear from parks director for a few more months at least, Amanda Rogers. Is she a quitter? I told Chief made me look bad. 35 years. It's not too late. We'll we'll accept a We can do an addendum, too. You want to change your mind?

Can you all hear me? Wonderful. Well, thank you for the opportunity to share my budget with you all. Um, Orange Parks and Recreation Department. Our goal is to make Orange Kucky's number one city to live, work, and play. And to do that, we have 16 full-time staff, 180 part-time intermittent positions. Typically we've got about 150 to 160 on board and we have some open positions as well. Um but we don't do that on our own. We do that with a lot of work and a lot of partnership and effort from Steven Franklin, Kevin D. Rosset, Kevin Kolan and the public works team. They help keep us they help our team keep things maintained and repaired and perfect for the community. U we really worked tire t tire t tire t tire t tire t tire t tire t tire t tire t tire t tire tously towards the department's vision of connecting people through parks programs and welcoming facilities. We have over 960 acres, 27 physical locations and we operate eight recreational facilities. We do this through two primary funds. Um within the general fund there's a parks division. Um within that we have administration Duke and best recreation center maintenance mothers sports and youth and in this upcoming year the changes in that fund you can see it's a little over five and a half million um which is about 3% increase from last year and we're down in personnel 2% that's primarily due to personnel changes um with with my retirement we're up in capital um a little less than 350,000 and that's for two projects that we'll talk a little more about in the highlight section of my section of the presentation. And then in the other category, we're down due to a project that we had in last fiscal year to do improvements to the Rudy Mine Trail system. So that's everything in the general fund for parks. In our enterprise fund for recreation, that's where we house our recreational

businesses and operations. So, it's Fin Halls, Hillrest, Edge, Fiser Park, the Orange World Tennis Facility, Merchant Center Court, um, and both of the pools. That budget is just over 4.4 million, and we're about 5% up due to personnel increases that, um, Nate has highlighted. We're also down in maintenance. That's primarily due to less buildings maintenance, repairs, and projects that are scheduled for the upcoming year. And then we're also down in capital and that is due to uh fewer capital style projects and repairs such as bridges, pipe replacement and those things that occur out in our park system. Um we have 16 full-time staff and they're split amongst the funds. There's six and a half employees in our parks general fund and then nine and a half in the recck fund. Um those are full-time park staff that help manage, operate and address customer service needs and program within those areas. Highlights for the upcoming year include the repurposing of Kendall Perkins tennis courts. Um, similar to what we did at Jugan Best, we had two tennis courts at that location. Um, we feel like that was an amazing uh, amazingly successful project with a lot of community input that's turned into a really hightraic location. We see a lot of soccer going on at that location, a lot of outdoor afterchool activity with the kids on the new obstacle course and in the Gaga ball pit. So, we're going to work with the neighborhood alliance and do some public input meetings and um work on repurposing that court. We also will be adding parking at Wayman Morris Park. If anyone's been out there during football season,

you understand there's not enough parking at that location. So, we've worked with engineering to get some estimates put together and we'll be adding spaces at that location to improve that situation and improve safety. Um, sometimes, as you know, when there's not enough parking spots, people park wherever they can, which can become an issue when there's a safety issue and we need to get a fire truck in or a paramedic in uh for someone that maybe is overheated or had an injury at the football complex. We'll also be partnering with our public works team to replace Goose Egg Playground. Typically, our public works team will come in and pull out the old playground and get that site prepared for the new. and I will work internally with our playground um the gentleman we purchase playgrounds from and we'll do the design and the layout for that playground and then we work in a partnership to get that installed with public works and then we're also replacing all of the fencing there at Jackson Fisher Park the complex fishing fencing so outfield fence sideline fencing back stops all that fencing is due to be replaced and that's a fairly decent ticket item based upon the amount of linear feet that we have at that location. So that's all the highlights and information I'd like to share about the budget with you, but I'll be happy to entertain any questions.

Did you get your batten cages in the at Wayman Morris or Dugan? Dugan. So Dugan, they're working on fencing now. It should be done pretty soon. Last week they had all the poles set and they needed to come back and put the fence fabric up. I did not go by there today or tomorrow to see if it's finished yet, but it should it should be finished this week, I would anticipate. That's wonderful. Yeah. Any questions up here? I've got one fishy question. So, several in several of our parks, including Wayman Morris and Hillrest Golf Course, we've got these ponds, Fisher Park. Do we stock them with fish? Because it looks like we you could fish there.

So, um at Wayne Morris Park, we are part of Kentucky Division of Wildlife. We're part of the fishing in neighborhoods program. Um we do get stocked twice a year at that park through that program at no cost to us. So, it's an a wonderful opportunity for people to come to a city park and still get that outdoor feel. Um, be able to teach their children how to fish. Um, state regulations for fish and wildlife and licensing is required. So, those under the age of 15 can fish with no license, but anyone over the age of 15 should be licensed to fish at that lake in that location. And is it they can keep it or it's catch and release?

No, you can keep it based upon the guidelines of Fish and Wildlife in the state of Kentucky. Well, thank you for all your great years of service, even though it's a little less than Chief Ela. Uh we appreciate you and we're going to miss you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Does uh I'm too lazy to look it up. Uh subsidizing the golf courses. Where are we on that? We subsidize both locations. Let me get to those divisions and I can tell you. So the bottom line at Ben Hall this year is

I have those numbers up. Uh so I think for Hillrest we're estimating that it would operate at a deficit of $69,312. So that'll be a subsidy of a of a matching amount. And then at Ben Hall's $542,215. That's staying in the same range. You're trying to get them. That's exactly right. Playwise and I know we did a lot of work out at Halls last year during the summer whenever it was drive off that

we have that bridge. We have and I I will take this opportunity to mention that we are hopefully going to have the driving range bay building out to bid u within the next week to two. We've got a couple of questions we need to get answered from the architect and we'll be ready to pull that out with purchasing. Um but we are very excited about the opportunity for revenue. That's going to be a big upside for us as far as generating additional revenue nights, weekends when weather's bad, typically things and times of the day and times of the year that we can't operate a golf course because people don't necessarily want to be where it's cold or they don't want to be in the rain with this indoor style driving range facility that will have heat. I didn't know about that.

It's not completely indoor. It is open, but we will have heaters and it will be covered. Um, so we really anticipate the potential for for revenue to be So would you put Top Golf out there? I was just going to say top.

It's not Top Golf. There's not levels, but we do have technology and there are targets and there are games as well as the monitor system. So if you want to play Pebble Beach Mayor, when we get it ready to open, you'll be able to go on that technology and choose your golf course just about anywhere in the world and play. Um, and as part of that, we're going to do leagues, activities, programs, rentals. Um, so we believe the potential for revenue for this, especially with that cost, um, upfront of being a small initial cost compared to a lot of our capital projects, we believe this will be a just going to hit it out of the ballpark with this as far as revenue for Ben Halls. Yeah, huge upside for that.

Yeah, that was actually a project you funded, I think, two years ago now. It's just taken a little bit of time for us to figure out how to procure all the necessary pieces. There were different models we had to evaluate. So, it's taking a little bit longer, but it'll be a good addition. Super. Okay, boss. Thank you. See you down the road somewhere. I'll be around. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Amanda. So, the next department is uh public works. During this presentation, you'll hear from Director Steven Franklin. I think we'll also hear from Deputy Director Kevin Daset. But up first is city engineer Kevin Coyen, who will present the engineering budget.

Good afternoon, mayor and commissioners. Good afternoon.

Uh engineering budget total budgets 4.8 million is down 2% from last year. Um personnel is up 4% due to salaries and retirement contingency. Uh maintenance is down. That's just due to uh rollover from resurfacing last year. Um and then just um supplies is is up due to timing of computer replacements. A highlight of the uh the street maintenance budget. The general fund resurfacing budget is um up 75,000. Um the 75,000 is to have a new pavement condition index survey done. So that's been five years since we had that done. So that'll rerate our streets. Um and the general fund and concrete streets. So that's that's for the street department. It's up just due to increase in material prices for concrete. YCV concrete streets. We have um a budget request of $750,000 there to do a contractor um concrete street rebuild. So we currently have a um a contractor that's going to rebuild a section of Morland Avenue from 9th to 12th. Um this 750 would allow us to complete Morland from 12th to Parish and then do another concrete street of similar length. And so we're just uh we're trying to do some uh get some more improvements done on our concrete streets. Um and then just the total there's 4.2 million sidewalks. Uh still budget of 500,000 still in the Seven Hills NAB. Uh and then also I think it's I think it's in the YCV

budget. Uh but we have uh some money budgeted to look at some improvements for the intersection of 26th Street and Buyers Avenue. You know, we've had multiple complaints there about um safety and accidents and speeding. And so we're going to look at some potential improvements for that intersection. And I'll take any questions that you have.

Questions? Well, I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag because I was that was my most entertaining moment watching Nate's videos. Uh was so what would be the time frame on a project at 26th and buyers? Would it be this year, two years from now? What do you think in terms of because that's a big deal. I mean, when you do what I mean, I hate to use the word. Am I allowed to use the word? Well, I think we'll we'll do the study and see what the study recommends. study to see if it's

and then I think at that point my my initial plan would be once we get that data then we would have something that we could apply for a grant fund so I' you know say maybe try to find external funding either state or federal for some period of time because it could be a sizable it'll be a seven figure project I'm guessing so we don't often do specific street improvements of that expense so that's something I'd like to get the engineering analysis determine what the improvement would be once we have those plans then we would have something we could submit for relevant grants. But unlike Fair View Drive, it would be a city project. It would not like

That's right. Because Fair View is a state route, whereas this would be a city street. And occasionally the state will fund some city street work like they're funding an improvement at uh on Carter Road for the for this year. So, it's something we could submit in that process. So, that's that's the timing now, I think, is to try to get it designed, figure out what we need to do, and then have that plan to submit for future funding. Yeah, I mean I agree with your comment. Roundabouts are the future. We're just going to have to get used to them because they they do speed up the traffic flow and if you know what you're doing, they're safer. So, I didn't agree with that till we went to New England last fall, but I do now. So, uh Kevin, thank you for all you do.

That's good. So again, based on your feedback, when when engineering requested an extra 750 new money for street resurfacing or for concrete streets specifically, that was a pretty easy thing to say yes to, right? And you've said that's that's a priority. So that was one of the things that we were made sure to fund. So I appreciate Kevin and all his work. Uh now we transition to public works deputy director Kevin Di.

Uh mayor commissioners, I'll be giving you an overview of street, storm water, and property maintenance. Uh the total budget for this year is 3,61,682 representing a 3% increase from last year. Personnel costs are up 5% primarily due to health insurance adjustments. Supplies are down 13% mainly due to current inventory levels of technical supplies and reduced motor fuel usage. Capital expenses are up 13% due to schedule replacement of multiple vehicles. Uh some of our things we maintain 11 thou over 11,000 signs. Uh we repaired over 826 this year and this year we filled 80 581 pot holes.

How many did you miss? Well, hopefully we don't miss too many, but we'll see.

Uh next is our storm water budget. Uh the total budget for this year is 667,582 representing an 8% increase from last year. Personnel costs are up 6% primarily due to increases in full-time salaries and health insurance. Supplies are up 32% largely due to the purchase of an arrow board to enhance roadside safety. Capital expenses are up 69% uh due to the purchase of a remote control uh mower to improve productivity and safety. That remote control mower is something we're looking to put on banks that are real slloppy uh and keep injuries and things of that nature. We hope it'll help out a lot. I wondered how you mow those retention bases. They look like they're about 45° angle.

A lot of times it's by hand weed eating. So, we're hoping this machine will take care of some of, you know, you can slip and fall and things of that nature. So, we're hoping this machine will take care of that. Uh, next is property maintenance. Uh the total budget for this year is 42,179 representing a 12% increase from last year. Personnel costs are up 1% primarily due to increases in full-time salaries. Maintenance costs are up 265% primarily due to the implementation of a new code enforcement software. Other expenses are down 45% mainly due to a decrease in demolition funding. We need to get in the software business. Mhm.

Uh some of our attributes in property maintenance. U we've received over 2,000 complaints. Uh we've had over 1,500 initial inspections. Uh we've done 20 over 2,700 reinspections. We've gave out 205 notices of violations, 104 citations, and we've had about $63,000 worth of leans. Those people pretty compliant with these citations. It depends. That was kind. Yes, ma'am. It's funny. I got a property maintenance complaint while we were sitting here about 30 minutes ago. Somebody texted me a picture. Turn this in. Get it fixed.

And that's all I have for you. I'll take any questions. Questions. You done good then. Thank you all. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Kevin. And then now Stephen Franklin will come handle the remaining divisions within public works. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

We're almost there. We got a few more to go through. So, first up, we have uh facility maintenance buildings. Buildings is an internal service fund which is responsible for the maintenance of public facilities and city buildings. They also assist in festivals, special events, and severe weather response. This year's total budget is approximately $1.9 million, which is down 27% from last year. Personnel increased by 9% primarily due to full-time salaries and health insurance. Maintenance increased by 3% due to timing of scheduled projects and capital decreased by 81% due to project timing and rollover of funds for capital projects such as the Thompson Berry improvements. Next is grounds. Grounds is also an internal service fund which is responsible for the maintenance of city grounds to include parks and recreational areas. They also assist in festivals, special events, and severe weather response. This year's total budget is approximately $3 million, which is down 3% from last year. Personnel increased by 5% due to full-time salaries, and retirement contingencies. Supplies increased by 10% due to inflation of agriculture related items such as fertilizer, grass seed, and plant material. Other decreased 24% primarily due to rollover of contractual service funds. And here you'll see a few highlights um of our plans for next fiscal year. Many of these are capital replacement items such as a replacement of HVAC uh systems at OPD, the roof replacement for the salt storage facility at public works. Um Amanda touched on this. We're replacing the fence at Jaxi Fiser Softball Complex as well as the playground at Goosek Park. Garage is an internal service fund

operation which is responsible for fleet management and maintenance for city vehicles and equipment. The garage also assists with maintenance of vehicles and equipment for RWR. This year's total budget is $1.8 million which is up 3% from last year. Personnel increased 1% primarily due to retirement contingencies. Supplies increased by 2% due to inflation in auto parts and other increased 48% or approximately $10,000 due to training and insurance cost. Sanitation is an enterprise fund which provides trash pickup and disposal to all residential and commercial customers. We also provide services for street sweeping, leaf and limb collection, and operate a drop off recycle center. This year's total budget is approximately 8.2 million, which is down 24% from last year. Personnel increased by 4% due to full-time salaries and retirement contingencies. Supplies decreased by 11% due to lower fuel projections and savings from mobile carts. and capital decreased by 83% primarily due to the timing of scheduled vehicles and equipment replacement. So here's some figures for you for this last year. Here you can see we collected approximately 248 tons and 819 tires through our annual neighborhood alliance cleanups along with some other figures for solid waste which is both your commercial residential yard waste um which represents your your limb pickup. And last but not least, we have transit, which is an enterprise fund, which operates eight fixed routes, one trolley route, and provides paratransit services through grits. This year's total budget

is approximately $4.5 million. Personnel decreased by 52%, supplies had decreased by 45% and capital decreased by 56% primarily due to the timing of scheduled vehicles and equipment replacements. With that said, the figures are somewhat misleading. The primary reason for the decreases is that all available FTA grant funds at the end of the fiscal year are automatically rolled over to the next fiscal year. Our requested budget amount remains largely consistent with last year and there are no reductions in services or personnel. So, for last year, you can see we had about 275,000 riders, which is a slight increase from the prior year. Um, we plan to install five new bus shelters in the coming fiscal year. And I'm excited to say that we finally received three new buses that we purchased back in 2024. So, it's been quite a while, but we finally got those. So, um, that wraps up my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Mr. Glenn,

um the question I had regards a couple of our bus shelters. So I understand at St. Ben's we had somebody decided they were going to camp in the bus shelter and they set fire to it. Does that ring a bell? St. Benedict's St. Benedict. Yes. Yeah. Is that factual? Okay. Uh so I guess our decision was to not replace the full shelter after that incident. So we just have a bench there now. Is that correct? I believe it's just a bench. I know the shelter's been removed. I'm pretty certain that a bench remains. Yes. Just for safety sake. Okay. And that's I'm not I'm not arguing that. I just wanted to verify that.

Yeah. And it's unfortunate, but we did uh speak with um St. Benedict's and it was their desire not to put a shelter as well. Um they are quite expensive. So, it's unfortunate when somebody damages one because it's not like it's $500 to replace these. These are tens of thousands of dollars for each shelter. So, um they are expensive. So, we we we don't want to be wasteful with our with our funds. tied to that, uh, most bus shelters in cities that I visit seem to have a lot of advertising on them and that would seem to be a revenue source for the city. Have we are we either not allowed to do that or have we just not pursued it or

We've really not pursued it. Um, there there may be some benefit to advertising, but essentially what happens is if any revenue you take in from advertisement, the less money you receive from FTA. So essentially, it's kind of a wash at the end of the day. Okay. It impacts your federal funding. Correct. Okay. And then the other shelter question, and Nate has alluded to this a little bit, is that the senior center shelter when the new senior center is built, we're going to put a a bus stop there. Where I wasn't clear where exactly you think you're going to put it.

Yes. So staff are finalizing drawings for that, but uh there's a lot of utility conflicts in that little area and we're kind of surprised to it. So, we're trying to work through those challenges, but right now it looks like it's actually going to be on Carter Road and it's going to be probably just south of the entrance to the senior center. Okay. So, it'll be it'll be on the same side of the street as the senior center. Um, and it'll be just adjacent to the entry point. Okay. Cuz if you don't put them in the right place, I think we'll hear about it. That's for sure. So, yeah, they're not shocked. That's right.

Yeah, they'll let us know. Uh, and then the last question I've got is I noticed during our winter storm, an unusual site, uh, two guys accompanying the driver of the sanitation vehicle up the hill and they were literally picking up the towers like they did in the 70s and pouring them in. And I I felt bad for these guys cuz they were out in the elements and of course the roads were still a mess, you know. Uh, do we have any alternative to going back to the 70s when we have a snow event? I felt terrible for the driver because now we have the robot arm but the guy told me I went out and talked to him he said the robot arm doesn't work real well in those weather conditions.

Yeah. Uh when it gets extremely cold like that which we fought what was it 10 to 14 days and they we never re broke 32 degrees. When you when you see continual days like that with that yeah some of the machines and it's not just sanitation trucks but anything mechanical it's hard to function in extreme colds. Uh once they get warmed up you know that kind of alleviates some of those issues. Um, but I will say, I mean, I'm kind of glad you brought that up. That just speaks to to our our team that we've got. I mean, they they do it and they don't complain about. They know what they're signing up for and they go out there and they help in any way possible. Yeah. Well, I appreciate all the great work you do and and your team. Thank you. Appreciate it.

So, you going to move the shelter on Fourth and Carter? Uh, we currently we don't have a shelter, so we're proposing to install a new shelter at Second and Carter. Second, correct? It'll be uh right in front of the new senior center kind of Carter where it's got that little extension to Thompson Burberry in the senior center. It'll be placed right there. Okie dokie. All right. Thank you, Stephen.

Okay. Uh next slide just covers some non-departmental items. So they just don't necessarily fit very neatly into any of the other departments. Uh so in particular this has three projects. Uh we are doing an extension of Air Park Drive. Air Park Drive of course is runs the main spine north to south through the air park and it currently ends at Southtown Boulevard. There's about 88 acres that are down there that right now run developed. As we've talked about, we have, I think, three or maybe even four different companies that have letters of intent or options to acquire property down there. And so, in order to make that accessible and develop and employ our local citizens, we have to do extreme extension. Uh, so we did budget $1.6 million in the economic development fund uh for that uh that that engineering analysis is done. We'll put that out for bid soon. I know at least one, if not two, of the companies are really eager to get there and break ground on their project. So, we're trying to make sure we stay ahead of them and so they can get their project done and they can continue their their course of business and grow and expand in the air park. So, it's a an expense, but it's a good project. Uh, so certainly something that we had been expecting. We knew that as that remaining 88 acres developed, we would have some expenses. So, this is something that we knew and expected. Uh, similarly, we've done for several years. Mayor, I know you like to go to the jail for the workforce initiative where we partner with the city, county jail, and the OCTC as for a re-entry program. So, we're continuing to fund that. It's been wellreceived. Uh, and then similarly, we've done for probably six or seven years now a downtown incentive program where we will either help a company downtown either buy down their rent or help with their capital improvements to renovate and occupy an empty building or a new business downtown. So, we're proposing to continue that program as well. Again, we've we've had probably 10 or 12 different companies take up take us up and participate in that program over its life. So had a good good return

on investment. So that is proposed to continue as well. So any questions about those projects? I'm happy to address them. Any questions? Go ahead.

Okay, good. Uh the next is uh about our tax increment financing districts. Whitney Brown is the point of contact who handles those on an operational basis in finance. So she will brief you on this item. Hello again. Um, I'm here to talk about the TIFF funds. This budget presents estimated revenues expected from the TIFF districts along with the relative appropriations. We currently participate in two tiff projects, the Gateway Commons as well as the downtown riverfront. Um, they are these TIF districts are economic development tools that support redevelopment and new investments in targeted areas through agreements with the state. A portion of these increment state revenues is returned to the city to fund eligible costs such as infrastructure, site preparation, and other public improvements. The city also contributes a corresponding share of local tax revenues um as part as this uh financing structure. This fiscal year, we received our seventh state reimbursement totaling approximately 1.8 1.84 million for Gateway Commons and 892,000 for downtown. Um, moving forward to our budget for Gateway Commons, we're budgeting 1.7 million in state revenues and about 493,000 in local revenues. Appropriations include the 2% administration fee along with the remaining funds allocated to approved public infrastructure and distributed among the development partners and agencies as outlined in our master development agreement. Moving to the downtown riverfront tiff, we are budgeting 769,000 in state revenues and 619,000 in local revenues. After a 2% administrative fee, the remaining funds are dedicated to debt service on approved downtown infrastructure projects. Overall, these tiff districts help drive a private investment, revitalize key areas, and fund public

improvements by leveraging the future tax growth generated by these developments. Um, if you have any questions, we'll be happy to entertain those. So, you're comfortable with how we're getting reimbursed from the state on our tip. Um, as comfortable as we have to be, I guess, at this moment. Yeah, we're working on that. Yes, the problem. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Whitney. Uh, next we'll cover the your community vision fund. That of course is a portion of the occupational tax paid within the city where that 33 is dedicated by ordinance to the YCV fund. It is a fund for capital projects and storm water related projects. Assistant city manager Leland Hancock administers that fund. So he will brief you on this section.

Thank you Nate. This year we've allocated a little over $9.4 million towards European division projects. The bulk of those are storm water public works public safety projects. probably the bulk of the complaints that you receive are storm water related. Um, in that account, um, you'll see that the city maintenance crew, which is the crew that, uh, Kevin Daset manages that keeps the ditches clean. We've also got outsource projects that we use, RWR has, um, another crew that goes out there and helps with those repairs as well. Those are for street inlets and usually sink holes in the streets, minor ones, I'll put it like that, not a Frederick Street style, but some of the inlets and things that you get through the complaints you hear from citizens. So, there's a long list of those. They address those as they pop up. Uh, but there's a lot of work that goes into that. You've also got storm water debt service, which is from a lot of the projects that uh Joe Shepers initiated several years ago, which help eliminate that flooding in the city. But those crews help keep those ditches clean, which gets the water out of the city and into the county and ultimately to the river stream where it will end up. But there's a lot of work that goes on there, and it is an an extensive system out there. This year, you'll see two highlights. We've done some additional concrete street work, which um city engineer Kevin Coen spoke to, and we also have a beautifification project, which is one of our entry signs that I believe has been discussed previously. So, we've got one of those that'll go in this year as well. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have on your community vision.

Questions? So, you've been around a while and so have I. And so, you remember the fairgrounds project, right? Yeah. And at least anecdotally, because I'm not an engineering expert, it seems to have improved things quite a bit. So, would you say that that was money well spent? Because I know it used to be terrible. They used to have raw sewage coming out of their yards and and we got a lot of complaints and that project seems to have helped.

I would say it's money well spent and I know um our city engineer Kevin Coan um through several projects through you know the York uh basin, those types of things. Uh there's been multiple things over the years and and I feel like those have all made an impactful difference whether it be storm water related from you know drainage from rains or from the sewer related activities as well. Okay. And I agree with you. And so to that end, I hear some complaints recently about flooding near the uh Ownsboro country club when it rains heavily. Is that an area my concern the constituent I is that county or city? I guess it depends what street, but I mean, yeah.

Is is the street that's I think it's Country Club Drive, but then it kind of winds into I think maybe V Road or whatever. I don't know. But is that an area we've looked at for any flood control or is that not within our pervey? Is it county or state? I can think of flooding that's occurred on buyers and probably an area in the beach. But Kevin, can you speak to that? Sorry, Kevin. There's a recent concern that was expressed by Yeah. Can you be more specific? Are you referring to buyers avenue or are you referring to

I think it's like lead take Legion Park and then head toward the tennis courts at you know the the boundary of So it would be buyers. You're right. It would be buyers and uh I guess beach kind of in there. That's the sense I get. They're claiming when we get heavy rain, it floods there. I have not personally seen that, but I don't always drive in that area when it's rain.

So the the section of Buyers Avenue between J.R. Miller and the Beach Road that's right there by the country club entrance, it it does flood sometimes. Um it's it's kind of one of the lower points of that system elevation wise. So it's a search charge point. Um there's actually been improvements done there already. Um it's just um it still floods there on on heavy rain events. Well, you get a hill. I mean when you go up Yeah. It's a sag and that's what I mean. People forget how bad it used to be, you know, before there was improvements done. But so we have tried to make some upgrades. Okay. Yeah. But we don't have any uh that thing actively planned for that specific location.

Okay. Thank you, Kevin, and thank you, Leland.

Mayor, if I could just add, I know there's been some discussion the second item you can see there now on that beautifification project. That was something that I think you guys wanted to see. There have been some articles in the paper about that as a as a good entryway sign that's quite attractive. I will say I asked Judge Casten to see if the county would contribute to that cost and they're planning to contribute $250,000 toward the cost of that project. So I think eventually we envision doing nice welcome to Owensboro Davis County signs from the east, from the west, and then from the south along the I165 corridor. So this is hopefully the first of three that we can do to have a nice design look um you know similar to things you might have seen on the interstates and other other cities. So I know we we've had some discussion about that and there's broad support for doing that. So we were able to include one of those signs in the budget. It would be cool if we get that bypass like it says welcome to Henderson. Have you seen that?

Uh yeah, on on the parkway there. Yeah, I have. That is really cool. We could kind of start looking at how to welcome to OB. Y good idea. Okay, up next is agency funding. Uh, as you will recall, we fund various groups, both arts groups, other government agencies, and then social service partners as well, uh, within the finance department. Diana Glover is our staff contact for agency funding, so she will brief you on this particular section. Good afternoon, Mayor. Good afternoon.

Sorry. Um each year the agencies submit applications and per policy the agency is awarded the lesser of 2% of prior years of the awarded amount or the amount requested pending any specific request. Overall the total budget increased from approximately 2.14 million to 2.5 million this year. That's an increase of about 382,000 or 17.9 compared to prior year. In the arts department, we see a moderate increase of about 33,600 or 3.5. Within this category, the largest gain is for Friday after 5, which increases by over 25,000. This is due to an agreement to fund an additional 150,000 over three years. The goal is to help sustain and enhance this event. Other organizations receive smaller adjustments, both increases and decreases, resulting in steady overall growth for the art sector. Next slide. Next slide. Um, in social services, the budget remains relatively stable with a modest increase of about 7600 or 1.4%. United Way received the largest boost in this category with a small reduction in capital funding for this community center helps offset those gains. Next slide. The most significant change comes from the government services which accounts for the vast majority of this growth. This category increases by roughly 340,000. This increase is primarily due to an additional one-time request of 395,000 from the airport to assist in the cost of the design for the new terminal. Overall, the budget shows growth, but much of that increase is concentrated in the government services, particularly the airport. In contrast, arts and arts and social services see more modest, steady gains. Taken together, this budget reflects the city's continued

commitment to support our community programs and services. And if y'all have any questions, mayor, can I just add to the to the airport? As Diana referenced, that'll be a one-time increase that they requested to fund a local match. A lot of the funding for the new terminal design will be fedally funded. There is a local match. So they asked for a portion of that from the city and the county for a matching contribution to that. And then I know the airport plans to contribute $200,000 of their own funds as well. So that is a $395 I think,000 increase, but that is a one-time initiative for that terminal design process. Okie dokie. Thank you.

Okay, up next we switch to revenue. No, we don't. We uh sorry uh first is the uh general fund spending. I'd like to show this slide because this is not necessarily by department. It's by function. Uh so again as as we've referenced public safety is a priority. This slide just demonstrates that's where the bulk of our revenue goes or bulk of our expenses go toward provide providing uh those important public safety services. Uh again you can just see that in parks and across the board. Uh but it's sort of a summary slide because now we've heard from from all departments. So this concludes the expenditure portion which of course is the bulk of the presentation today. So any questions about the summary or sort of the high level and where our allocating resources are being proposed

is that is that piece of that is that in this book on one page somewhere that is in summary I don't think that ex exact data is presented that way. Well, I'm pretty that tells the story, don't Yeah, it does tell a story. I do know in the final book we have a version of that. I'm D's looking to see if we have one in this book.

On page two, there is a kind of summary page for general fund. It's called general fund by appropriation category and it has the summary of all the departments broken down by the types of expenses, personnel, maintenance, supplies, etc. And then it also has a pie chart that kind of shows the distribution of the expenses. So it should be in in your budget book. A lot more complicated. I'm just going to get this printed out. Yeah, we can we'll have to provide a Would would this be online for the public? Just so it seems like it's easy to read. Yeah, we can do that. No problem. No problem. Anybody have anything else? I've got one quick question.

Uhuh. You had enough. Uh, no. I'm way past my quota. I agree with you. Nate, this is for you. So, one of the criticisms we hear is that we spend double the amount on the arts than we do for human services and social work. And yet, I know we do work with habitat. We do a lot of things that may not been in that budget line item. So, how would you respond to that? Because I mean, you know, we're not going to cut the arts, but on the other hand, we have a deep desire to help people and in our community, and we do it through United Way predominantly. So,

yeah, that's right. We do it through United Way. They have a much more robust structure for evaluating, reviewing uh and vetting those proposals or those requests. So, I think that's that's a good partnership we've had in place since well before I was here. I know it's probably been going on 15 years or so that we we've used that. Such a good a good strategy. I think something you said also is quite relevant in that we partner with either the housing authority but Habitat for Humanity substantially earn a substantial amount. Uh that's not reflected in these numbers. If you go back and add up what we've given them through Aby's department, either through vacant lots and properties or grants to help subsidize those lots and those houses, it would far surpass what we do probably to the art. So again, it's just reflected differently and that comes up more on an ad hoc basis. We may do two partnerships with with Habitat in a particular year and then we may go a year or two without doing it again just depending on availability of funds, but they're always a good partner that we can find a project with. If we're late in the year and have some money that Abby can deploy to them, we know that's a good partner. We're happy to do that. So I think that's that's a good perspective on on that that issue.

Thank you. And thank you, mayor. You can always dip in your own pocket too and give certainly could that big check we get. So, okay, what's next? So, that concludes the expense side and now Angela Winger will present first the revenue and then when she's done with that, she can go ahead and move on to the uh long range plan forecast numbers as well.

All right. So, now that we've spent two hours spending money, we're going to spend a few minutes talking about bringing money in. So um so for the first slide that I'm going to discuss is uh the one you've seen before. It's our top five revenues which are significant and make up a considerable u portion of the overall budget. And if you want to look at the revenues for other funds, you can see that on page one uh by fund in in your um book that your binder that we provided to you. So for the general fund, the total revenues budgeted are $80,153,872. This is an increase of $3.6 million over prior year revenue budget. We manage over 130 revenue accounts. So I want to break that down, but break it down at a high level. So we'll discuss the five largest revenue streams and those five streams make up 80% of the total revenue budget for general fund. So those five revenue streams include the occupational withholding, our property tax, our insurance premium license fee, the OMU dividend, and our net profit. And you can see on the slide representatively how much each of those uh five sections make up. That's the percent that make up of the total general fund revenue. So uh so the first item our occupational withholding obviously it's our largest revenue stream uh representing 32% of our total revenue. The occupational rate is 1.78%. 0.33% as we mentioned earlier goes to fund the community vision fund leaving 1.45% for general fund op uh operations. Occupational withholding is budgeted at $25,287,595. This represents a 1.5%

increase over prior year. And I'm just trying to be a little uh conservative. We were a little aggressive with the budget this year for 2526. And so um just just monitoring the the market and in our actuals uh year to date uh we're going with a modest increase of 1.5%. The next uh category is property tax. Now that category is made up of six subcategories, but overall property tax is our second largest revenue stream. It's 19% of our total revenues and budgeted at 15,45,812. So to break those uh other categories down, uh real or advalor property tax is the largest portion of that total. It's budgeted at 11.4 million, which represents a 4% increase over the revenue of prior year. I'm budgeting a 4% increase in revenue because that's the maximum that we can do without going to referendum. Please note this increase assumes no increase in the rate and you all will decide the rate and adopt that back uh later in the year. I'd like to note that the preliminary 2026 assessments from the PVA for the city reflects new property in the amount of 55 million. This is excluded from determining the 4% maximum which is going to be very beneficial and helpful to us. The next uh tax uh category is personal property tax. It's budgeted at 1.2 2 million. This is pretty much in line with the prior year budget as well as the current year forecast. There's not much fluctuation there in that category. The remaining four categories of property tax include bank shares, franchise, omitted tangible, and vehicle. These are all budgeted with slight increases or decreases. Our next revenue stream is the insurance premium license fee. This became our

third largest revenue stream for the fiscal 2026 budget. This represents 12% of the general fund revenues. The insurance premium license fee is a fee assessed on the premiums charged by insurers. The insurance company then passes this fee on to the insured. This revenue has continued to grow, trending with higher insurance premiums. I am proposing a budget of 9,648,523 which represents an increase over forecast of 2% but it's a 12% over prior year's budget. 4% of this revenue stream funds the debt service for the downtown revitalization fund. 6% goes to the general fund to pay for city operations. So for the fourth and the next largest revenue stream, it's the OMU dividend. It's the cash dividend. It's budgeted at 8,77,326. By agreement with OMU, this uh revenue stream increases $2.5% each year. The last then the fifth largest revenue stream is net profits. It's budgeted at $5,75,000. As you can see, the forecast is 6,500,000. And I budget this very conservatively because it's not as predictable as the re other revenue streams. It's it's based on how well a a business does in any particular year. And it's not just how well they do in Ownsboro. Uh say by example, McDonald's um or or some franchise that has a location here. The net profits that we get paid isn't based on just that one location. and it's based on all of their stores and so then it's allocated prorated down to the share that that gets paid here. So it's kind of unpredictable. So we do tend to be conservative with that to be sure we can uh cover our expenses.

Another notable notable revenue stream that's not on the slide that I thought was worth mentioning is the interest income. We're going to budget interest income at 2.4 million. That's down from forecast but higher than last year's budget. Our current bank rate is 3.65% and it fluctuates with uh the federal fund target range. So as that fed fund rate goes down, so does our bank rate. So while we like to see the fund fed fund rate go down, it's not good for the city's investments. Uh but that concludes uh my comments on the top five revenue sources. If anyone has any questions or comments, I'd be happy to address that.

Any questions? Hearing none.

All right. So, uh, next we're on to the forecast for the general fund. And before I get started on on this slide, I just wanted to point out that we do long range plans on all our funds, basically all the significant funds. And um I'm I'm just proud of the fact that Ownsboro does that because going to our Kentucky um government finance associ association meetings. You'd be surprised at the cities that don't do they don't do long range plans, not even for their general fund. So it's really surprising, but uh but we do it for lots. We do it for most of our funds. So I just wanted to point that out. We're very careful with with the the money that you all let us manage. Okay. So for this slide, the forecast for the general fund takes into account several factors. There's a lot of factors, but just to mention a few, uh we we consider the economy, uh the final financial effects of the two tiffs, the transit room tax and impending legislative changes, which you all are aware that there's been some change with the tiffs uh that we continue to address. Uh we also consider the cost of health insurance, state pension cost, and inflation. I want to say thanks to the diverse local economy and our wise city leadership that we do have a healthy general fund balance. And we need this. We need that so that we can weather the unknown unknown storms of the future uh such as pandemics, inflation, uh worldwide events and potential unfunded mandates. For the current fiscal year, I am forecasting an operating surplus of a half a million dollars. This is driven by higher revenues and offset by expenditures that were authorized by budget amendments. And they are for community investments such as developer incentive, project funding, and final payments to OMU for the city's contribution to the Hillcrest project. So you don't have to hear me talk about the OMU contribution anymore. We're

done. We we've paid it all. The annual deficits are projected to start in the fiscal year 2028 and 29. This is largely due to conservative forecasting of the revenues as well as the expenditures. And I wanted to talk about the expenditures and how conservative the approach there when we budget expenditures we budget um the salaries at full staffing like we have to budget for full staffing even though that's not always what happens but it could. So we budget for full staffing. We also budget at the state forecasted pension rates and we have found that every year for the past several years they come back with a reduced rate that we'll get that in January or so as we're preparing the budget and that that that saves us a million or more every time they lower that. So I just want to add that so not to be too alarmed about the um deficits that you see up there because it does address those items. um this graph. Oh, that's it. Does anybody have any questions?

So, do you anticipate a tax increase in the near future? Uh how soon are you talking? Let's see. I get out. No, as long as long as as long as we maintain uh the healthy fund balance that we have and um the transit room tax, you know, that's that's a good stream that we've added to our revenue. Uh I do not have any projected tax increases in any of my calculations here. This is all just status quo is what with what we have

that as as Angela sort of referenced. I think in in the later years of the LRP, it typically shows a deficit and we can typically mitigate that before we get to it. So, this is not really an unusual number. In fact, some several years I can recall that we've shown two or three years of of a million dollar plus deficit. Right now, we're not showing that into till year five. So, that's not unusual. It's not terribly concerning. There's no fiscal cliff or anything that we're concerned about at a certain date in the future. So, you know, obviously things can happen. no one anticipated a pandemic or things like that and you know those types of things we're in a position where we can largely mitigate because of our large fund balance. Um however you know not what we know today there's no plans for any any tax rate adjustments that I'm aware of

and I remember Matt telling us that we were as good a shape as anybody he's deals with or as the city has ever been in. So that's pretty strong on your part. Yeah. Yeah. That's an accurate statement. Um okay. So for um my last slide, Jeff's got a question. Oh, just real real quick, Angela. Okay. Do you factor in like teacher growth like since we've added uh the Massie uh industrial park? If we land something there, if we land something at the air park, if we new jobs, does I do I don't factor in grow jobs that have not yet been materialized.

Okay. So, but we do factor in growth. um based on historical averages and so forth. So it's today it's growth on what we have not growth on what we could possibly of what we anticipate. That's correct. So if we can get some things then that'll just add to this. That's correct. Very good. That's why it's important I think we do those things. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. Okay. So

that's why we do those special back. So, keep add correct. Yeah, that's just part of my conservative approach that not budgeting for uh withholdings when the jobs don't yet exist because there could be uh delays um and you know hopefully unfort not um hopefully they wouldn't be cancelled but you know just to be conservative so that we don't find ourselves short on on the revenue side.

You're welcome. Anybody else? Yeah. So we hear a lot about the tiff and you know so what impact is this these adjustments the state has made to our tiff reimbursement. What will that cause tremendous heartburn and problems balancing the budget going forward beyond this year or what do you what would you say?

Well it it it does reflect us receiving less but we're not done fighting. We're still working uh with Commonwealth Economics and other cities uh to approach um the legislators again. So, we're not we're not giving up. We're still going going to address that. Um the change mostly affects the withholding. So, for the Gateway Commons TIF, it really is not going to have much if any impact there because the bulk of the revenues there are sales tax and most of the jobs are retail jobs. And so there's there's little to no impact there. Now for the downtown tiff, it it does make some impact and um it's really hard to predict what it's going to do to us. Um you know, I could do worst case, best case scenarios, but we don't know when the state plans to continue to reduce that withholding rate. So I just budget and forecast for what I know today and then and are hear from from any contacts we have. So it's kind of really um don't have a firm number at this point, but it will impact us. But we're just kind of playing that by ear as we go forward knowing that there'll be reductions. Yeah, it's quite difficult because there's a lot of variables to that. In particular, at the rate at which the state income or withholding is reduced going forward, right? So, it's sort of unknown. If that phases out very quickly, it's quite problematic because the rate gets lower, it becomes harder to meet some of the standards to rate to continue to lower.

And so, that's the big variable, I think, because if and when in the current scenario, if that rate goes to zero relatively quickly, it's a it's a problem. That's probably not a very likely scenario fortunately because I think it gets harder to reduce it the further it's already dropped, right? So that's that's sort of the variability that's really hard to plan for because there's just so many variables regarding that in particular that make it make from a long range planning perspective. It's difficult. Now luckily that's going to be more than five years out. I suspect or I certainly hope um but because that's more of a long-term initiative.

This is all driven by their elimination of the state income tax and reducing the rate. That's right. Okay. And we have good access to legislative assistance on that. We're yaking at them all time. So yes, I know you have been. So that you know, at least they know we're aware of it and maybe there's something they can do to help us and they will if they can.

Yeah. Another item that really needs to be addressed is what happens when the rate goes to zero because there's the current legislation is silent on that that the amendment that they did. So that's just another um item that that we need to take to Frankfurt and and see try and get some kind of direction or information from them like what happens when the rate ghost is zero. You know Petri won't tell us. I know. So I don't know if he knows it's a difficult battle from our our our end. Yeah.

So it's actually nothing that we did wrong. We're being impacted by decision by our state legislator. That's correct. They have a pretty healthy general fund and road fund both right now. Yeah. And if their fund balance continues to be healthy above a certain level, they won't reduce the the IIT or state withholding. And so as long as they stay very healthy, I foresee no reductions to their withholding rate. So that's a good thing that they have a healthy fund balance. grains tip. They in the same position. They much, aren't they? They help us.

They're exposed even more than we are. Far more than us. Yeah, they most they're mostly the withholding and it's a very large area and amount. So, yeah, they um in fact, they're leading the charge a little more boldly than what we are with the legislators, but we're we're there with them. And so, like I said, we continue just because uh this legislative session is over doesn't mean that we aren't continuing to fight. Uh I shouldn't say fight, but to Hey, we're fighting to work toward uh trying to get a different resolution because we're still we're just still working on that.

Well, to me it was a contract. They agreed to the contract and now they're renegging on the contract. So yeah, I think you do need to fight and I think it's an abrogation of the responsibility to cities and counties and then you add in the elimination of the pensions and what that's done to municipalities and counties and I don't how much pain they want us to take but I guess it's a lot.

Yeah, it it boils down to the semantics versus the intent um of the agreement that the state made with um the cities because the the original language is is that what was collected would be reimbursed. But the problem is is what's being and so we relied on 5%. As did everyone else and and so but the problem there in lies as they reduce that rate there's less collected so that that's their stand. Well that reducing that rate affects a whole lot more people than the people here in Orange. That's the thought process.

Yeah. All right. Um, so if there's no other questions or comments, we can go to the last slide. Amen.

Okay. All right. Here we go. Uh, this is our projected uh reserve. And this is also again the general fund only. And so the fund balance you can see is the bluish greenish bars u the balance of our fund balance. And the gray bar that goes across the screen uh is representative of the minimum target for our fund balance. And I say minimum. It's not the one we strive for. It's it's what we set to be the bare minimum. So I just wanted to be sure and clarify that because some people see that and they think that's where we need to be and that's not where we need to be. We need to be above that. So I just wanted to be sure and clarify that as well. So uh the bar that goes across there uh aligns with the policy that the government finance officers association sets out as their best practice which recommends maintaining a minimum fund balance of 17% or approximately two months of annual expenditures which is also the policy that we have adopted here. Uh thanks to consistent conservative financial management, the city is in a strong financial position described by our auditor as very strong as the mayor alluded to and and our auditor still says that uh for the fiscal year 2030-31 the last year up there the minimum fund balance per policy like I said it's based on expenditures budgeted for that year is estimated to be 15.4 4 million. And as you can see from our chart, even with the forecasted shortfalls, we are above that minimum threshold is which is where we want to be. So if anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to to answer them.

I'm brain dead.

Well, that's that's a good time to be brain dead because that concludes our presentation. I'll just say thank you. One of the roles I think of what we all do but certainly of elected officials to be a community steward. And so I think this demonstrates good community stewardship both on your behalf and and your predecessors. We've had good leadership here historically. Hopefully that continues into the future. So thank you for your guidance and support and and feedback. Again I want to thank our department heads and managers who start working on these documents what back in December probably in some cases. Also want to thank the finance department. You've heard from Angela. We've heard from um Whitney and Carrie Indiana. Also, we've heard from um D Galloway. And so D retires this fall as well. And so I wanted to take a moment to specifically acknowledge her. This is her last budget process that she'll go through. So I'm sure she'll miss these long meetings, but wanted to acknowledge her for her years of effort as well. So mayor, with that, we will sign off. Let's talk some more.

So, you going run around with your sister full time now?

I am. Um, I just want to say thank you. Thank you, um, to you, commission, and the previous commissions. Thank you to management, um, and all the people I've worked with. Um, you guys, I know you all realize what an incredible team you all have at the city from top to bottom. Um, it's been a pleasure working with everybody. Um, between me and my sister, we have over 50 years of community service in Owensboro, our hometown. And I know, um, we don't take that very lightly. Before I came to the city, I worked for the housing authority for 12 years. Um, and then I'll be here almost 15. So, um, it's been amazing career. Um, and I've just feel blessed and fortunate. So, thank you.

We're going to miss that Yankee accents, too. I would just like to add she DA is going to be sorely missed. I I I we're going to be somewhat lost without her for a while, but we've got some competent good staff back here. Uh DA brings a lot of uh uh grant knowledge and experience from the housing authority and she is a hard hard worker. Hardest worker I probably probably know and so um can't replace that. But um anyway, I just wanted to pass that on and to thank her for her her time and service. Well, you have to get two then. We may talk about that later.

No argument here. Anything else? If not, I'll may make a motion to adjurnn. Could I have a second, please? Second. All in favor indicate by saying I. I. All oppose. Two hours.