City Commission - Special Meeting

Time's 5.30, but call this special meeting in the Pittsburgh City Commission to order. Will you join me in a flag suit?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Before we get started, Commissioner Stu Hite will not be joining us this evening. But I do have some comments I want to make before we get going. It's been quite the process this year of going through the budget and listening to everything people have to say. They come forward in public input and speak their piece, and we want to hear that. So I think we've done a good job listening to people that want to speak. I do want to respond to something that I received last night. It's someone's opinion on the budget, and I'm just going to summarize some of it. It appears to be grandstanding. Time to let the city staff do their job. The city's budget is complex and isn't like a home budget. Making comparisons is dangerous and, quite frankly, silly. We choose to stay here when we could easily leave. This is the opinion of a former city commissioner, also a former state rep, and considered to be among the city elites. We are trying to save taxpayers' money. If we are trying to save taxpayer money and it appears to be grandstanding to you, my response is this. I've been a commissioner for some time now. I have always been about saving taxpayers' money. So if this is grandstanding, in your opinion, so be it. I will continue to save taxpayers' money. Next thing, moving on to... Just my thoughts on where we're at and where we started. Because of a mistake last year, the Commission, on a unanimous vote, made the decision to begin the budget this year, 207 in the rears. Our goal was to reduce expenditures. I received calls from former employees, current employees, and citizens to look into how P cards were used. Commissioners inspected closely and thoroughly. We scrutinized how these P cards were used. 90% of our employees followed city policy correctly. However, some weren't. In one instance, we found theft of taxpayers' funds. In preparing the budget, Darren and staff did reduce expenses to follow the decision of the $207,000 in arrears. They reduced a little more than that. But when presented this first draft, we scrutinized the draft. We asked to reduce expenditures to reflect the 3.5 mil reduction. Darren and staff did reduce expenditures by requested by the commission. At the beginning of the budget process, we asked staff to meet with the Commission to review their budgets together to find ways to reduce expenditures. Tonight's meeting should have happened at the start, not the end, of budget discussions. I understand there are still some questions that need answered. Hopefully this can be done in a timely fashion tonight. I feel the 3.5 mil reduction will be achievable. Going forward, we've identified revenue sources to offset these reductions. We need to continue to find revenue sources to lower cost to taxpayers. And we get started. I want everyone that has questions and opportunity to ask their questions. And we're going to sit and listen to them. It's not going to be contentious. But at the end of the evening, I'm going to call for a motion to approve the budget. as it is. So, having said that, any other commissions have anything they want to say?

I just, for my piece of this, being new and watching what happened last year, I want to be a part of this, and I want this to make sense to the public, and I think we're doing that. We've made great moves this year to open up communication with the public so they know what's going on, they can see what money's coming in and where the money's being spent. Moving forward, I think we need to focus on taking care of the people of this community and focusing on property taxes. And that was one of my goals in my first year being on this commission. I think we're doing some great things collectively. We've still got a lot of work to do. There are more things we can do moving forward, and we'll look at those in the future. But I think we've come a long way with the 3.5. I don't think everything's been done. There are some things that we'll look at next year to help with this. We're going to continue to try to do the best we can to complete all the services, take care of all the citizens, keep the city running, and also take care of the citizens that are paying their taxes.

The one thing that matters to me the most is that the people know what's going on in city government. Whether you care or you don't, you know that we're behind looking at everything 100%. Political theater, as was mentioned last time, is not rubber stamping a budget that I don't agree with, and I do not believe that. I ran on a, that I would not take a blind eye approach to anything that was not good or transparent. It's doing everything we possibly can to cut expenses but still keep things running. And the one thing that I feel is maybe for next year, definitely, we need to put more emphasis on paying higher wages to the employees, doing better on the benefits for healthcare. And I do not believe in a go along to get along mentality whenever there are things that sometimes get pushed to the side because other things are felt to be more important. And you can't have a city without its employees. And I think everybody knows that I've always been for the employees. And no one is expecting the city to bear the brunt of the money for the parks and stuff, but we purchased ground for a soccer field. That was more than anybody had done in the past, 23.7 acres. And we will have soccer fields out there. And property tax relief is high on the list also. So I appreciate the employees. It's not an easy job, especially whenever you're out there doing the work and nobody's watching. There's people that are doing that every single day. They come to work, and hopefully we'll be able to show you that. Maybe not right now, but it will happen because that is going to be a priority list for me.

In 2022, we went through the employees' compensation, and we went through every bit of it, and we came up with a very fine schedule at that time, which goes into this particular period. And we plan, hopefully, to do that again in the near future. But it's not what you all are saying. It's the process. This is dragged on and on and on, and People are tired of hearing about it. My constituents are tired of hearing about it. That seems like all they hear about. They're not hearing about what other things the city is doing. Everything's the budget, budget, budget, budget. Last time you guys were opposed to 3.5. You wanted another point. Now we're back to 3.5 again. Well, I think that's great. And like Commissioner said, next year we take another look and see where we are. If we can bring it down another point or two, then let's plan to do that. But let's not continuously beat this to death next year like we have this year. Thank you.

I'd just like to respond to that, Doc. The reason we did scrutinize it, because of the mistake, we wanted to make sure there was no more mistakes. I understand that. You said that the 3.5, yes, it was brought up. I don't know what it was, 4.5. We didn't approve that. I wasn't in favor of that at the time. But somebody brought it up. Well, I mean, he had the right to bring it up. What we've done is lowered it by 3.5 mills. And the brunt, unfortunately, has fallen on city employees. You know, I've heard comments being made in the budget process that we want to get rid of employees. That was never our intention. It's kind of comical, because how long have we went? And I don't know if all of our departments are fully staffed now, but we couldn't get those departments for a long time to be fully staffed. So what did that mean? The employees picked up slack, worked harder with less people, and they provided the services that citizens expect. So for me, it was never about getting rid of city employees. You know, comments were made last meeting, which it was out of line. We talked about the heat and working on the streets, and hopefully the city employees have boots to wear on the hot asphalt. There was no reason for that comment to be made. And so anyway, to me, the 3.5, 3.5 mil deduction, I think it's something that we can do. Accomplish and we can we found funds to to help us along that way I think if you go any lower That just means you're taking more from our city employees and none of us want to do that this year That's what happened some of the stuff training clothing a bunch of different things because of that 3.5 mil reduction those things got cut. It wasn't the Commission. We wasn't set down and looked at budgets and see where we could reduce expenses. We didn't bring this up. That's how it ended up. So like I said, I think we're at a good place. Like Doc says, I think we can next year starting in January, we need to get on top of this. I don't know what kind of meetings we're going to have on it, but we need to stay The commission and department heads need to work together. We got this 3.5 mil. I don't want to go next year and say, all of a sudden, guess what? We lowered it one year. Now we've got to raise it. That's not my intention. I don't think that's anyone's intention. I think if we work together, find more revenues. that we can count on. Now, it might be, you know, next year if we need to, we might have to look at some of these pet projects that's out there when people needing money for different things. We gotta maybe take a look at some of this stuff and let's, you know. It's been a long time since we've thought about, well, I'm not gonna say that we have, we think about taxpayers, but it's been a long time since they've seen any relief. I've been here 13 years. I've brought this up several times at budget meetings. that we need to do something for the taxpayers, and the budget gets passed. Usually sometimes it's four to one, and I can accept that, majority rules. But we're on the right track. We're looking out for the taxpayers. We need to stay focused on that, plus we need to find revenue sources to accomplish that and give the employees what they need.

I would like to bring up another subject for just my own clarification. The money that we received from the battery company.

Eagle Pitcher.

Eagle Pitcher. Darren, can you give us a breakdown of what's going to happen to that money?

Well, part of it we've already talked about. Missy went through the final accounting. The net revenue after we defuse the bonds is $2,000. $2,616,361. So that was what we decided to take instead of the $3 million over 10 years. But the market was in our favor, so our original estimate of $2.5 million became $2.6 million, which is good for us because that's another $116,000. The health fund shortfall, we put $806,000 towards it. So That's the one time, hopefully that balances it. And then with the changes that we've made to the budget, um, to the health plan, we can keep it balanced going forward. Um, the originally we brought you a submitted budget that had a 2.15, two mil increase decrease. Um, after our first meeting, you guys said you wanted to take it down another 1.34, eight mils. That was really done not through, um, cutting expenses, but that was done through, um, taking Eagle pitcher money. So that's another $246,622. So that right there leaves us a million four. We've got, it's hard to know how long that will take us because obviously what a mill generates every year changes. So like last year a mill was 179,000, this year it's 182. If you put three or 4% onto it next year, it's 186. Yeah, we roughly have $1.4 million left over in that reserve. It's going into our reserves. It just goes into the general fund reserves.

So we have plenty of funds to do the soccer field.

We asked Mammoth for a cost last week, and it was $967,000 to do one turf field. which, you know, Mammoth is in town, so mobilization is not in that number, and then just the cost of living is not in that number if it goes up. So theoretically, if you did the turf soccer field, you would still have just about $600,000 of Eagle Pitcher money remaining, which is within about $100,000 enough to cover the 3.5-mil field. In 2028, that's a long ways out, I realize, but that's as far as the numbers will take you. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the only things that we have talked about using the Eagle Pitcher money for.

On the soccer fields, I know everyone that watched, we had several meetings when people came in asking us to help the soccer fields. And we were helping. We were helping behind the scene, but we just couldn't say anything. So that went on for several months. The best commission meeting that I've been part of was when we told those kids, we're going to buy property for your soccer fields. Now, the soccer fields, just like I think Cyril or somebody mentioned, that was $370,000 for 23.7 acres. That $371,000 was part of a $975,000 bond-funded project, right, Darren? Yeah. $604,000 was for infrastructure improvements, concession, and restroom buildings, right, Darren? Yep. So what is that, $300,000 or something? So that's, I don't know, roughly $900,000.

Yeah, the balance was going to do two fields with irrigation, sod next spring, and then the couple of buildings you talked about.

Yeah. So at the time, no one asked us, for the turf fields when they came forward. They asked us to buy property so they could have a soccer field. And we're going to have three soccer fields. I think at the time, you might have mentioned, Aaron, when we did decide to buy that property, it would be up to those people to try to get donors to donate money to the project. I talked to my son. My grandson plays a lot of soccer in Florida. It's a big thing in Florida. Hopefully it gets that big in Pittsburgh. I don't know if it will or not. But I go to soccer tournaments, and it's huge. It's bringing in economic impact for the towns. But most of those fields down there are played on turf. I mean grass, natural grass. There's a few... that might have a turf field here and there. So I'm not against the turfs, but I think the money we just talked about, we just talked about some of these prep projects. We've earmarked the Eagle Pitcher money, and if you would, let me finish in, could you tell me what the franchise for the... data center. But anyway, we've earmarked this money to go to help with property tax relief. And now, since we have this money, first thing we want to do, we spend it fast, and it's a worthy idea to spend money on a soccer field, turf field. But I think our goal was to reduce property tax and use that money to help reduce property tax. So the turf field, I'm just saying I'm not against it totally, maybe next year, but I'm against it right now. That $600,000, we should use what we said we started out with, lowering property tax, give a little property tax relief to the citizens. Now, Darren, could you tell me what the revenue from the data center would amount to?

Is that your sheet, Missy? Yeah, I mean the one you pulled together for the commissioner. I mean, that's the best one we have. But I didn't make it, so is it okay if Missy reads it? You want mine?

The idea of trying to start a change and do something differently to move towards property tax focus doesn't happen in one year. So the money that came from Eagle Pitcher was supposed to come to the city over a period of time, and that changed. But a large amount of that money is still coming to the city due to the completion of their lease program. So if we use that money effectively and program it out over time, we can use that effectively for property tax over time. There was a comment made that what we're doing this year is not permanent none of this is permanent we have to keep trying to find ways to make this happen and if we keep focusing on it then we can do that nobody on this commission is against bettering our parks to be clear like the the turf makes sense but we're also supposed to be working off of a budget these are non-budgeted items so we have to do it with a plan we can't do it all at once and then not do other things that we're trying to focus on. There's never going to be enough money to cover all of that. Just to make it clear, Commission's not against the turf. We just want to make sure we're doing it correctly.

So will we add all the extra funds we'll go towards property tax in 2028?

I don't know. We'll have to talk about that when we start working on 2028's budget. I think we can stretch it. through 29 if we do it right to make sure we've got at least three years of some type of property tax relief for the people.

See, that's a little blurry. Is there something you can do about that? Let me see. All right.

Is that better?

Yeah.

It's not shaking.

So go ahead, D.J., go on. The concept of spend it as soon as you get it kind of thing will get us caught up, and we won't have the ability to do long-term property tax focus. I think that's what we're all kind of looking at. We have to make sure we can budget items that are needed by the community as well as focus on where the money is going. And if we jump on spending it as soon as we have it, then we're not going to get to that point. You got any thoughts on it, Cheryl? No.

I was more in tune with what Misty was doing. We talked today about the electricity franchise, and I wrote them down when we were talking today. Is that what you're looking for? Yep, I got them. Oh, you got them. Good. Okay.

So what you see here is a historical amount of what we booked into franchise for electrical. And when you see, let me scoot it up so you can see 24, 25 and projected 26, okay.

And this is not just the data center. This is everything.

This is all electrical franchise. So it's not just the data center because we didn't have specific information because that's customer information that we aren't allowed to share without their permission. So we'll start there. So here's the 24 amounts that were booked into franchise income. And then there's the 25 right here. And then the 26, and we had it through July booked. And then I just went ahead and projected it for the rest of the year. So this last chart at the top just shows the change from 25 to 26. So when you see that, you can see that there's an increase just about every month. And it's hard to say for, like, August because that's projected. But if you look above my finger there, all of those are actual increases each month.

And this is coming from the data center? No.

No, no, no. This is just increases overall.

Okay.

Okay? So this is just saying what is the increase in our franchise. So if you add that up, I think it added up to around, what was it, around? And then here's what I want. Carrie was able to get permission from the customer to share with us what their portion of that increase was. So we do have that permission to share that.

Missy, can you explain to the public what the franchise electricity means? Call it. Darren, do that. Connect the dots.

Basically, it's just set by ordinance. So I think ours is 5% of Jay. Sorry.

He's our franchise guy. Jay, 5%.

So on their on their sales every community collects a franchise fee So which is basically a return of cash to us.

It looks like Misty's guys that answer your question Yes, it's 5% off their total sales from yeah, they just from their business monthly They were sent it back exactly business within the city of Pittsburgh.

Yeah we miss each I Don't know if you've drawn an average But it looks like starting in 26, we've got 16,000 in January, 15,005, 16,000. It looks like it's about 15,000 a month.

Yeah, it probably averages about that.

So you take that times 12.

I was figuring it was. I wish I could do that in my head. No, I added, this is where I added January through July, and it's about 100,000.

Was it just projected, Darren, that I thought it was supposed to be projected around $20,000 a month?

Blake's not here. There was two things that were projected, the sales tax and the franchise tax.

Right, okay.

The sales tax looks like it's only doing about $2,500 a month. Okay. The franchise is obviously, but it looks like that could be a couple 100,000 dollars a year. Obviously, you've got, we're right in the middle of the hottest months and then. It will be nice to have a year, but I mean, I would, I mean, I can't do it. My head is 15,000 a month.

Missy is probably about that. I didn't have, I didn't average it, but here's where I wanted to show you that. So in January, our increase was 22,443 from the prior year, January. Okay. From 25 to 26, there was that much, but in January, 16,000 of that 22,000 was attributed to the data center. Okay.

So then when you get to February, our increase overall was 16,000.

And of that, 15,000 was attributed to the data center. So that's how that works.

So it averaged about 15,000, like you said, a month. It looked like going on down. Yeah, that'd be a good, I mean, a ballpark.

And what happens to that money?

It goes into the general fund. All of our franchise revenue goes into the general fund. So that's about $180,000. I don't know if there's a ramping up. I don't know if next January they'll be doing more, but that's...

Currently, this is unprogrammed revenue going into the general fund.

Yeah, we haven't programmed any of that money. So if it's unprogrammed, where does it sit? Just in the general fund? It turns into...

You know, it's not as earmarked. When you say it's unprogrammed, I mean, we just hopefully we pass the budget at some point and it has 3% raises for the employees. So that's $390,000 in general fund. That's not tied to property tax. That's not tied to municipal court fees. That's not tied to this. That's just another cost that we have to absorb during the year. So it's hard to say it's unprogrammed, but we definitely have started a new program and saying, hey, we're going to tie all this money to that.

Yeah, it's not appropriated to a certain project or a certain expense line or anything like that. It's just part of our compiled revenues.

And the budget was built without it. So it doesn't have... It's not showing as an expense against that in the budget.

And this wasn't put in the 26th budget?

No.

No. So we have the potential moving forward to use this revenue as a dedicated revenue towards what we've been talking about as an asset to not have to cut back on so much, but we'll pull from the revenue side as opposed from the reduction in core spending.

We have... Yeah, I don't want to... I'm not arguing, but yes, but we have every year we have 4% and whatever inflation built in. So we have a $53 million. Our budget's like 72, 74 million, but our, our revenues and expenses are about 53 million. And so if you imagine 4% on that every year, we're always trying to keep up with the rising costs. So, but yeah, it's, I mean, it's what we've been talking about for last month. It's a new revenue stream and hopefully it'll, you know, my hope is it continues to generate more and more revenue and not flatline at 15,000 a month, but we'll know more about that in a year or two. But yeah, it's well over a mil. I mean, 180,000 right there is more than one mil of property tax if you look at it that way.

When you talked about the 806 going towards the health insurance, where did that put us at? Because we were in the hole.

Does it bring it back?

Zero. It just brings us back to zero.

I guess that needs to be explained, too, because I've had questions on that. If the Eagle Pitcher money wasn't available to use towards that, how would we cover that?

We would either make more drastic changes to the plan on both the taxpayer and the employee side, or we would take it out of reserves, which we would highly not recommend since it's an ongoing cost. And we wouldn't want reserves or, you know, when they're gone, they're gone.

It just brought it to zero is all it did.

That 806 was exactly on the estimated year-end reserve that IMA presented. It was right off their sheet of what they...

So if it's at zero now, what happens next month or the month after that? You take, in order to make it back...

Yeah, I think it's meant so that throughout the year, as you put those contributions in, it ebb and flows with the expenses. And so by the end of next year, then it should catch up.

The 806 is the projection by the end of this year. It's not where we are today. Today we're like at 520 or something like that.

Oh, that's what I just asked.

Where did the 806... Yeah, the 806 is the... If we carry on at the way we are, our projected year-end deficit is 806. Oh, okay.

So whenever I ask where does the 806 put us, and you said at zero, meaning not today, at the end of the year.

Yeah.

Okay, sorry, I didn't understand that.

To your other point, and the changes we've made to the plan are in hopes of keeping us from going into the red every month like we have the last two years. But we're at the mercy of the claims, as you know.

So in the past, projecting that, especially whenever it started out having, what, two million-some-odd dollars, and you've seen it was, like, sliding downward, there was no way at that time to, like, see what and where and how to put money over to there to keep it from falling all the way down past zero? No. I think you went like way below zero.

Yeah, I remember they had that. When they presented, they explained that stop-loss incident that ended up costing $600,000, so that was the majority of it. So they are tracking claims. They were before, but this one just fell in the No Surprises Act timeframe. So that was the one that hit us pretty hard as an organization.

Sometimes it seems like no matter how much money you put over to there that It's always going to be falling, and it's going to fall faster than you are putting the money in. So that's why I was just asking.

We're really trying to figure out if we have just had two bad years. It happens. The one claim that she's referring to, Kim's referring to, is the difference that we're out right now.

Sure.

So theoretically, in the next four months... Things can go really well. We wouldn't need the whole 806 and we'll have 100,000 in reserve. But what we're being told through the market is all costs across the board are going up. And this is just the new, you know, I hate to say the new normal because we use that during the pandemic. But this is what it's trending. And so our best guess is to put enough money in there to protect us when we get to January and then hopefully the plan changes. And the increase in employee and employer contributions will keep us from having to go back into reserves or whatever money we come up with.

So are we still in a – we talked about this several times over the last six months, I think, the value of being self-insured as opposed to a different program. Are we still well within there, or is it getting close to where the other option might be the better way?

We have – We have an extremely good plan. It's been extremely rich for the last 10 years. I think it should be noted. We have not increased our employees' contribution or the employers' in the last decade. Blue Cross is, and I hate to throw out Blue Cross. I'll probably get sued or something or get a mean letter. But the trend that they used to project was 8% to 10% a year increase. So when I first got here, we weren't giving in raises, and the employees' premiums were going up 8% and 10%. So we managed to turn that around, but I don't think there's any problem with our model. I think our model is fine. It's just we've been spoiled for the last 10 years in having a very rich plan and having a very cheap cost. And however long, eventually that's going to turn around, and you're going to have to start paying to keep the plan you want.

I was I was floored this weekend. I talked with my cousin who? works up at Fort Scott a company out of Fort Scott and she said She couldn't retire yet because she her insurance She had to have insurance and she told me they have blue crosses with shield and she said she has a $12,000 deductible I Mean so really she's got her insurance for catastrophic is what it is So I mean

Is there anybody else in the league where they band together cities and they all be as one? Is that, you know, I think we talked about the school district and other places. Is that ever a benefit other than being self-insured? Is pooling all of, you know, with other cities in the league of municipalities?

Great question. We're pooled with War Comp, and so we're very familiar with how that pooling works. But at the league... The thing that makes our plan special is our network of providers. Um, so people, cause we're at the full court at the four States. So people can, they want to go to Missouri or Oklahoma, Arkansas. Most of those people are in there and it's very similar to the blue cross network, which is a huge network, but there's no, um, Reference-based pricing in the model we went to is not anything that's systematically done in the public sector. So you would not, other than getting in with a larger pool, you would still be insured by Blue Cross. You would still be getting the high premiums. I don't think there's... Is that what the league does, Blue Cross? No, the league doesn't do a pool like that. Oh, they don't do a pool? They use KMIT for work comp, but there's no public employee pool like that that's on the scale you're talking about that would give us.

The county or the school district, do they?

I think the IMA, who's our consultant, has approached the county before, and the county asked for their number again a couple of months ago because they're obviously, like everybody, they're struggling with the cost. But IMA's been good to us. I think they would tell us if there was a better model. This model saved us a tremendous amount of money and allowed us to go from no reserve to the $1.6 million you were talking about. But unfortunately, it's just so expensive. I mean, everything is so expensive right now. And the insurance is no different. So we're going to have to pass a little bit of that on.

One of the problems, a couple of years ago, I spoke with a fellow at the municipal meeting about the health insurance. The problem that they have is there are so many small towns in Kansas that insuring those people is difficult because you've got to go in and you've got to examine each one of them. There are, what, probably 400 or 500 towns that are, maybe more, that are in the third class level. And to get an insurance company to write for that kind of policy for a broad group, he said, is virtually impossible.

There's 625 cities in the state. We're the 23rd largest, and we have 21,000 people. So that tells you they get pretty small pretty quick. But yeah, ours has worked. It'd be nice to do better. I think every year, every decision we make has been... When we did have a higher reserve, we really even enriched the plan and lowered the deductible and the out-of-pocket. But eventually, you just have to live with the costs you have. But I don't think going to not being self-insured, I don't think would be the answer at this point.

So are you talking about $1.4 million still on the table, or is it just going to stay in the reserve?

It's in the reserve now.

Okay. So is that what we're talking about right now? Even though we put the 806 towards the IMA and then the 246, 622, but that leaves, that's of the Eagle Pitcher money.

Yeah, there's a million four left after the... After the deducting those. After the value decrease and then the expenditure for the medical side, so... Again, we'll have to visit that and dig into that again for 28's budget. As far as 27's budget, we've agreed on what we're using out of it for this portion. I just would hate to see that money go all kinds of different directions when we have the option to kind of schedule it the way it was supposed to be received by the city over a series of years.

So that leaves us with three non-turf fields. Two. Two.

We'll have two fields, and they'll be irrigated with sod.

Not just natural grass, but sod.

You said two fields? I thought it was three. No, the land's for three. You've given us some money to put two fields in. So if we could use this and put in a third, we would have a third turf field. It would be the main field, and it would allow us... Florida has, we're just a little different than Florida. We don't, we don't have, they don't have winter. So our growing season is very short and we don't have the rainfall. So back to the spring, we first talked about soccer. The negotiation was just to get the, get the, get the area. Cause that was the big part. And now we have it. And yeah, we never bought up turf because I mean, when we're a million dollars short of doing something, I don't usually bring it up to you. I mean, we asked, we asked mammoth back then and they were like, yeah, it's a million plus for a field. And we were like, well, And that's what started a conversation about, well, maybe people should start looking to try to raise money. But that's the only reason this came up, is it was asked, what if with mammoths in town, we're never going to get it cheaper, and it would give us three fields, not two. And one of them would be turf, which would allow us to put most of the play on that, because that sod is nice, and it's going to be irrigated, but it's going to get beat to heck, especially if it's this hot next year. We'd like for it to grow in and get established and get some roots and then have three fields You can have a lot more you have bigger tournaments on three fields. You can't let you that's all of us But I get I mean, it's a good point. I'm not selling the turf field.

I'm just City's done a bunch already with purchasing the property and developing it I stepped out on Pittsburgh high schools field to see what condition it was in and it's natural and They're playing on it. Lots of games every week. There's somebody out there with practice or there's the high school's playing. I mean, they're using it. What kind of dollars are you talking about in property tax relief? So if we split the remainder or at least a large portion of it and project it over 28 and into 29.

So are you saying $700,000? Are you just working off the Eagle Pitcher money to see how it stays in the queue, so to speak? Stretch it out. Just trying to understand it.

Again, we're using $200,000. What are we using this year so far? We have $1,563,000 left. Once you take out the health fund and the 1.348 mil reduction of $246,000, you have $1,563,739.

Of Eagle Pitcher money? million 563 1 million 563 739 Yes, we're using 246 for 27.

So yeah, we split that Say we just focus for the next two years gives us a little bit of time to work towards additional revenue sources and forward planning Or continuous property tax reduction then it gives us time and it takes care of part of the equation So depending on how much you want to use each year, you can split it up separately next year and then what's remaining for 29 or you can Divvy up 22 years and then start from there and we start working on additional budgets because we're always going to be looking for ways to save money and revenues Again it just falls under that the money's there it was supposed to come in over a series of years If we treat it like it's coming in over a series of years and use it effectively then we can we can Have real proper tax relief for several years in a row and then gives us more time again to work towards the next revenue source that can be proportioned to assist with this initiative. Like I said, it's not just a Pittsburgh issue. It's a national issue, and I think we've got a real chance here, an opportunity to do something for the people with this initiative. this money to start out with and start working towards additional money to build towards. It isn't permanent. It isn't long, a distance from now. I mean, it doesn't fall under our five-year plan. We've got to come up with other options, but I guess it's a good start.

If we're using it for, explain to the average person listening, how can it benefit them?

we're going to use what we've used for 27's budget, and then we'll apply a portion of it next year to drop additional black mills like we're doing for 27. Oh, okay.

I got you. And how can people see how that's going to affect them? And I know it's been brought up several times. I'm going to say it again. There's three taxing entities in Trophy County. We're doing what we said we were going to do. We have no control over what the county or the hospital does. I mean the school, the school 250 is going to do. So at least we're doing what we told the people we were going to do. Will they see a lot? I don't know what they're going to see, but we're doing what we said we were going to do. And we're at the mercy of the county and USD 250 to see what they do. I agree with using this equal picture money over several years. Hopefully in that time, we can find more revenue sources to help us along the way. But we started out saying we're going to correct a mistake. We overcharged taxpayers. We're doing that, and we're looking forward to the next few years for the same results. So that's one of mine on this equal picture money.

I think part of this communication that we're doing right now today, this meeting, going through the budget one last time, is showing the people that we're doing everything we can. We want to look at it, take it serious, and we're doing that. This is just the final portion of this year's version of the budget process. Again, we'll have some changes for next year and we'll probably add some additional meetings and do this meeting as soon as possible so we can dig through this deeper and not have it be the very last thing at the very last hour.

I have a couple questions about the information I asked you for doing the breakdown of the deductions. The Uniforms and clothing for employees. I don't want it to be a factor to where we have, like I think you mentioned earlier, boots and pants and equipment that is needed to do their job. I know we're dropping that $20,000, but I, under no circumstances, do not want any employee to go without the proper attire to do the job that they're required to do. So I don't want that to be a factor, even though that is one of the deduction areas here that we're looking at. All the way down, I don't know if you guys have it.

What if you run out of money?

Well, here's the thing. I'm not going to, I as a boss would not send somebody out to do a job that's dangerous without having, say, steel-toed shoes or pants or anything like that. But they're, The allowance is there. Let me go back to that main sheet. It looks like around $40,000 is what it is, and it's being cut in half. So it's still there. It's just not to the extent as it was before. But I don't think it should be, you know, if you're doing the job, you're on your own. No, I mean, we're not. I don't want that to be known that that is not something.

That's the misconception that's floating. If we make that cut or these deductions, that we're going to be in the negative or at zero for those type of things, and we're not. That's the point.

Same way with building maintenance. You don't let something run down so far that it's causing more of a problem than preventive maintenance and getting it fixed, even though there is... Where was it? Let's see, equipment maintenance, uniforms, contractual. I just want to make sure.

Here's a way to look at the cuts. Yes. You've got about 346,893 of that list that I gave you, I don't know, a month ago. That's literally deferring maintenance. You can't call that anything else. The building demo went down $12,000. That's stuff we're going to have to do eventually, whether we do it this year. Pool improvements, we took $38,000 out of pool improvements budgeted for next year. That's deferring maintenance. The tree removal, you're all aware we took $100,000 out. That's deferring maintenance. I might say... Deferring maintenance is how you balance your budget in tough times. I'm not saying that's not what I'm just saying. And we took $147,000 out for golf cart paths and drainage improvements at Four Oaks. So that's $346,000. $40,000, the $20,000 for the food pantry and the $20,000 for the code blue security that we provide every year, we took that out of the general fund and are paying for those with opioid money. I don't know how long the opioid money will last, but... That's an important thing that I think every commissioner wants us to continue to do. And taking it out of the general fund was an option because we had the overhead money. The health plan changes are $581,000. That's, you know, we're going to see what that does. And then the rest of it was the $944,000 was literally reducing cutting an inspector that we a lot of times we get a big job we hire we just contract for an inspector because our three inspectors can't keep up with all the inspections it takes to bring on a FedEx or something like that so that came out of the budget for next year and then we did cut utility the list that you're looking at that's the list that we cut so some of it was deferred maintenance I don't think we all know what deferred maintenance is I may not tuck point my siding, but if it blows off in a storm, I'm going to be doing whatever I have to do to put new siding up. So that's what deferring maintenance is. It's something that, I mean, we have probably 10 times the maintenance need that we spend every year anyway. So we're always, I mean, the roads aren't perfectly maintained. We put as much as we can. The taxpayers can support on the roads. So I don't think those cuts are nearly as hard. But to your point, we're not going to send anybody on the street crew out in flip-flops. What we're going to do... is we try to find some places where we wouldn't cut people. and we obviously have to pay all of our benefits. And when you're looking at a number that's like $600,000 or $700,000, you've got to look into something like those 10 line items. We'll monitor them next year. Usually we do budget transfers at the end of every year. I hope you're all aware that you've been on here for a while, that we have to do budget transfers to the HUD fund or another fund. So what we did in this budget is said, okay, well, let's transfer less money at the beginning, thinking we may need it, and we'll just look at it hard at the end of the year, and we may have to transfer money from then. But that'll give you an idea of the impact of those cuts. But we're at no point. Now, traveling training is something we're going to cut back on. I mean, I don't want to, but that's something, you know, you don't, I mean, nobody goes to enough training. Everybody needs to get trained. But the boots, the safety equipment, nobody's going to be going without boots and safety equipment. We just. the money had to come from somewhere to get the budget balanced and we'll monitor how it goes. Sometimes you have savings during the year. Somebody doesn't, you know, if we lose a position and we don't fill it right away, there's money in there that can make up some of that. Sometimes the emergencies that you have during the year don't happen that year. So we'll keep an eye on that, but we're not going to put anybody in an unsafe situation, Commissioner. Thank you.

So is the Eagle Pitcher money the only money that we're looking at right now other than You talked about the gig of money and for future. What about delinquent tax collections? There was like 132,000 sitting out there. I know the county's behind on their tax collections. Is that something we would possibly look at doing ourselves? Or how much would it cost us to make $132,000?

I think that's more just delinquent property taxes. That's not the people that, that's not all the property that's sitting on the rolls for the last 12 years that hasn't been brought down.

Tammy, one time when I asked, and this is a couple, maybe a month ago, she said there was 39 properties that was close to $132,000. But I know it costs money to recoup that money, so...

I think the county's working on that. I think they've hired a firm. I don't know. I think it's a firm out of Wichita. Really? That's good. They were way behind for the longest time. We definitely want our piece.

Yeah, it's... Well, I'm glad that we're devoted to looking for other money to help fill in the gaps. And I hope that we can get that accomplished, but

Anything else you guys can think of? The focus here is just to make it a priority and try to look at this every year. Because it hasn't been done. This hasn't been a normal thing for the commission or the staff to do. So this is a new year. We've worked through some back and forth. We've come to some middle ground. But I think that having this focus on trying to make this effort make sense continuously is the direction we need to go. Said we've made leaps and bounds. We've had our arguments. We've had our agreements. We've had our Misunderstandings, but I think we're doing What people want so if we continue on that path looking at additional revenue sources opportunities And nobody's saying dump every new revenue completely towards this process, but we definitely have to have new revenues coming in and new ways

So when you were talking about 3.5 earlier, so do we have to make a motion for that money to be earmarked for tax Property tax relief or is that something so we can do You need to all you need to do is pass a budget if you pass the budget

With the instructions that, as it sits right now, we have the 3.5 mil, and that's what we've, you know, kind of softly presented to you over the last couple of meetings was, here's to get you to the 3.5. You have two budgets right now. You have the budget I submitted, which had the cuts that we just talked about, and then you guys said, well, how could we get to 3.5 mils? And we did three things to get there. We changed the property tax revenue stream. We dropped it to reflect that mil decrease rate. And then we increased our using reserves. Our fund balance went down. And then the third thing was that, was it the delinquent? There's something that's tied to that, the delinquent tax that was another $1,400. That's the only three things you've done to the budget that I submitted, that we submitted, the staff submitted to you. So all you need to do, are you asking how to... Put a budget together with that.

No, just asking that that could be part of the process of making sure that there is tax relief.

This is all enclosed in one budget, correct?

The action that you would need to take.

All you need is one motion.

Yeah, we're not going to do things one at a time. Okay. You just say we want to adopt a budget at this mill rate. It's on that cert page that Missy has.

I think what Cheryl was trying to, relate was more of, do we need to direct the future usage of the remaining amount of Eagle Pitcher money that's in the reserves currently? That's not what we're doing tonight.

That's not what we're here for. We're in Kansas. You can only do the budget year. Now if you do a lease or something, obviously there's special rules, but you can't say, and next year we want to do it this way too, but you're all going to be here next year, so that shouldn't be an issue. Okay, well, let's run through this.

You said at the beginning of the meeting that you would make the motion.

Oh, we're not done. We're not done.

We've gone through the budget. We're talking about where it's at. The people do want to hear about the line items and how this budget's put together. So I'm going to jump all the way over that. That's why we set this meeting. Mr., is your plan to walk through essentially the way the budget is scripted now? Are you going to walk through and talk about the line items? Did you guys have a plan for this evening?

We didn't really have a plan. Basically, we were going to ask your questions, and if you had certain line items you had questions on, we can discuss them.

Okay.

So there's no direct outline to go over the budget as it sits now. I think, again, that was part of the purpose for tonight was to be able to explain the budget better to the public. We don't have that.

Well, let's do it this way. If you're looking for guidance, if you want to, I mean, I thought you guys were going to lead, so you can lead if you want to go through this. My first suggestion would be Kim puts the salary run, we have 40%, 45% of our costs are employees. So if the salary run is in here, it's done in one fell swoop. We do it through ADP. Kim takes all of our positions. She projects it. We put the 3% on it. It swings down and catches all the benefits and does the adjustments. So that's already in there. That's 40% of the budget you don't have to talk about. There's one new position we recommended, which is that parks position for the soccer. Am I correct? Is there anything? I mean, so if you want to go through every department and talk about what their FICA is and what their Social Security tax is and what their pension contributions are, but that's all been done through a program. It's set. It's in the budget. then you can if you want you can nobody's here from utilities Matt Chris Pete are all at a conference they had scheduled ahead of time so they're gone if you're talking about the general fund the next option would be just to go by the report we've got and we prefer the reason we gave this detailed budget to you seven weeks ago was our expectation was you were going to go through it and say hey I have a question on this line item I mean, for us to go through and tell you, we already did that. We did it internally twice, and then the third time to get back. So we really became prepared to answer your questions on the remaining light items, but we can do it however you want.

I guess I would ask to explain to the public how you created it the way it is now. Give them an explanation of the software and the process.

Let me pull this up here, and then we'll just kind of walk through my steps.

I think that's generally, too, what the commission wanted as well, is to have a time to sit down with you Collectively and go through the process with you so we get to see it real time and watch watch how it comes together It's something that has value for next year's budget cycle and this will change somewhat Next year because we started out the budget process in

not having the software up and going. And so what I did was I pulled down, let me just pull in for instance, this is a worksheet, it's an Excel worksheet that I created. It does not match up and it does not link in with the state budget. So the form I just had up here on the overhead is the state budget certificate. So what I'm looking at right now or what I'm showing you right now does not link in with the state budget. budget worksheet. There's nothing that exists today that I'm aware of that will link into the budget worksheet and just draw, you know, draft those numbers. So there's still quite a bit of manual work, but this was basically, I created worksheets and summary pages here, but each worksheet is pulled down and I pull data from 22, 23, 24, and 25 actuals And then I pulled budget numbers from 24, 25, 26. And then from those numbers, we went through with each department and went through those numbers. And pretty much, like Darren said, this top section, let me get to a better part.

When you're talking about pulling data, you're pulling that from the current system.

From the old system.

The old system.

And the old system doesn't have Excel. So you have to pull that down in a CSV format and sort it out. It's not in a very good format, so luckily I have quite a bit of data analysis experience, and so I was able to do that. Let me see if I can find like, there's fire services. We'll just look at this one, for example. So the old financials, they're lined out by personnel services. We were just talking about that, and Darren just mentioned that 45% of our expenditures are in personnel. And so those numbers directly came from the worksheets that come from the system, the ADP system, and her calculations of creating the increase in whatever we decided the increase would be for the personnel cost.

So we have one system called ADP. It's a very common system across the country, and that's where we house all of our personnel information. It keeps track of who's working here. what their hours are, what they're paid, all their benefits. And so Kim and then we meet every week. And as we hire employees and set the pay or somebody stops working here for whatever reason, we sit down weekly with the police department, HR, myself, and the finance director and keep that thing updated every week. And so that's what Kim used to do the projection of next year's budget off of.

So on each one of these tabs is a different department. And the one we're looking at right now is fire services. And so, of course, we as we met with the department managers, we already had some of this filled in because the personnel information came straight from Kim because she was able to provide that data. And so we were able to start filling in this column 2007 proposed budget. Then, as we met with the department managers, you'll see comments over here. I can't get that to move over for just a second. You'll see over on that last column, those are comments as we made assumptions. Now, this is not where we landed. I want to caution you on that. That was just our first-ditch effort at trying to get some numbers together here. So the numbers changed a little bit, but not on the personnel. So when you get down to the next section, those are the contractual services. And that's just a grouping for these expenditures, insurance, utilities, natural gas, travel, training, dues, memberships, advertising expense, and so forth. So same thing. I provided all this data to them ahead of time. And they were able to take a look at this. And then when we met... we could talk about what kind of increases they were expecting. And so then the next... Can I stop you there?

I noticed moved to public safety sales tax. And that's what we were talking about, travel and training. So in the fire department, the police department?

We've never had a financial system. So as sales taxes have been passed over the years, whether it was the street sales tax originally or economic development sales tax, all of those financials have been kept on spreadsheets. And so they're literally not in the system. MISI, due to a bunch of hard work and tenacious effort, the whole group, we finally have a system now where we can budget those things. Instead of police and fire looking like they're in the general fund, but they're really being paid for a big proportion from the public safety sales tax because in fire we do training and everything out of there. We buy trucks out of there. Now in the new system, they're all in together. So her notes to herself are saying, okay, this thing is now no longer going to show up in the general fund. The number of officers that we have that are charged with the public safety sales tax, their salaries are going to show up at the beginning of the year in the budget in the public safety sales tax fund. which is unique and has never happened before. And that's the same way with streets, economic development. So those are a lot of notes to ourselves because she's got to take this entire spreadsheet you see in all those worksheets. And she had to keep this tied out while trying to load it into the new system and tie it out. So it was right. And then tie all that back to the state, but workbook, which doesn't tie to anything automatically. So It's a great question, but a lot of these notes are to ourselves about look what fun this thing needs to move to in the new system so we can get the new system starting the year correctly. Because next year we'll just be using the new system.

So the second half of this current budget, the line item breakdown comes from the new system? That portion's all from the new system and then the rest of it's... The blue headings, the weird looking... All that's generated from the new system.

I think it got lost in the mix, but that's why seven weeks ago we were so proud of like this is the line item budget in the new system, because then you can go through and you can compare actual projected and what we're saying your budget is. But this is the very first run at that with us, and so it has a ton of comments in it.

So if you see in the blue, these numbers will not match exactly to the final graph, because what happened was we got this far and said, okay, now we have our data, our historical data loaded in the new system. Let's see if we can move our proposed budget into it. And so we rolled that proposed budget into it, and then that's where we made those $410,000 cuts once we got there. We made some other cuts. But when we got to the last point and we said, well, we need to cut some more, that $410,000 was the last thing we cut from that once we were in the new system. But in this, there's... You'll see the columns in the sections here.

And this is why we met with apartments and went through every item in here and said, okay, three years ago, you spent this two years ago. You spent that last year. We budgeted this estimated for the year that we're in. We're thinking we'll spend this much. They helped us set that number based on what they know. And then that number is something allowed us all to come together and say, okay, what should we be budget? What should we be budgeting for, for 2027? And that was how we started. But this sheet doesn't tie. The only sheet that is adopted by you is the state workbook. And it ties to the blue. But the new system ties to it to the dollar.

So I think at the beginning of the process, when we're looking at the commission itself being more involved in that process, what you just said is exactly what we want to be a part of. We want to be a part of that conversation so we can have that information real time with the department heads. and then be a part of the data collection and generation for this product. Digging through the line items, and I see where you're going with this, it's very tedious to go through all departments, all sections, all funds, and then essentially try to find a gotcha or something that we can manipulate and change. The intent, I think, was to be a part of those conversations so we could all speak on it and ask questions. The information you're giving us now is exactly what we were looking for before. This was the notes, the reasons behind it, the options, the directions from the past. So we're looking at numbers, but we don't have the information explaining the numbers. So I think for next year, that's something that I'd like to see as an additional add to is to have that.

I think there's a happy medium about at what point do you enter in the equation And part of it is the fact that how far do you really want to get in the weeds? I'd be happy to explain anything you want to know in our process. But how is your time best used for being a commissioner? And is it in the weeds or is it? We're trying to give you a good, solid plan here without you having to get in the weeds. But we're happy to answer any of those questions.

I appreciate that. I know you guys have done a lot of work, especially trying to use a new system and then go back to the old system and pool data and try to make it all make sense. But I think the... the hearing to understand and hearing to learn process is not happening and that's if it's just relayed to us then we're getting the end result already so if we're in that conversation we're available for that which we've all said we would be able to this year and years moving forward but if we're a part of that conversation then we have everybody in the room that has ideas and influence and understanding of what's actually happening and how we can affect it so it's not It's not the commission trying to control that conversation or that meeting if that's what we're leading to. We want to be a part of the communication piece so we can help with it.

So I do want to say this, that as a manager of my department, I can't be in the weeds so far with all my people that I'm sitting next to them receiving in the cash at the front counter or setting in and watching Haley enter in accounts receivable invoices or setting in accounts payable and watching Megan do all the accounts payable. At some point, I have to trust in them that they're getting things in the system and they're going through the approval process. And so I think at a commission level, you guys have to decide at what point do you want to be in the weeds. You know, I'll respect that, but it's going to be time consuming because we spent hours and hours and hours and hours working with the department managers to do that. And well, keep in mind.

So, you know, putting in a new system is an unbelievable amount and it's not even in yet. I mean, quite frankly, utilities is an online next year. You won't start with this. We started with this because this is all we had. Next year, you'll start with this. We'll give you an update at the end of the year. And then when we're meeting for meeting in, I don't know, we started meeting in January, February this year. When you're meeting with the department heads, instead of them getting up and saying, this is what my department has and this is what we do, you'll have all of this already. So you can start having, if you have a question about a line item, you can ask it in February instead of, We're not dumping on you today, but this thing, you've only had it seven weeks. And like you said, there's been a lot going on. Missy's team is inundated. Next year, Missy's team, and they've got a new person that started this week. We finally filled that vacancy. It'll be a different shop. Missy will know what she's doing. She'll have her own system. And I think you can get granular early. But this year, you're...

I can't believe it's even in this format yet, but you don't have extensive history in municipality finance and you're learning it this year too. And I, and I get that. And I appreciate that. It's been creative this year. Um, especially having multiple systems to work through building as we go.

Um, my staff has on top of this, my staff has put in, um, human cumulative hours, uh, installing a new system in just implementation meetings, project meetings and implementation training. Um, over 1500 hours and that equates to equates to about 450 hours per person. Um, and so in addition to putting together the budget, updating, uh, and changing bank system, uh, banking, uh, banks for our, our bank, um, doing a lot of other things besides that. But, um, yeah, I mean, we can, we can start early. I do want to show you, that's kind of a, that's kind of a, uh, a really quick overview of how we started the process. So once we got to the point where we could get into the system, I'm going to show you what the system, this is the central budget system right here. And what I was able to do, I can do this in, like you were asking about uniforms and clothing. And I can go up here and drill this down. I've loaded, this was after we loaded everything in the system. But you can drill this down by the account. This is the account number, 547000. And that's just going to pull up uniforms and clothing for each one of these areas. Okay. And so we were able to, this was so helpful in balancing things out. If I want to see everything in the budget, I just click the view all. And it's going to show, this is where it all starts right here in our revenue line, our ad valorem, our delinquent tax, our motor vehicle. And it's got 27's budget. It's got a 26 projected. And these were all things that we still had to put in the system, the 26 projected and the 26 budget. We had to put those, when you were talking about getting things to you earlier than what we did, we had to put these in about, what, three or four days before we brought the budget here. That's how tight the timeline was. We had to get all this data into here, not just what they loaded for us, Tyler, we actually had to put the other in. And so there's so many line numbers in here, and then you have to tie them out and everything, make sure it's tied out. So this is the whole budget right here. And this is all funds. So you can't just say, oh, well, if I add all these up, will that total our general fund? No, it won't, because it's got... It's got the opioid funds in it. It's got the ARPA funds in here. It's got a lot of the other funds. So there's a way that we sort and subtotal these in order to get it down to just the general funds. But now we have a system we can do that with, which we didn't before. It was all manual.

Well, Missy, I appreciate your work on this. I think in the past, before we had something like this and we came to a budget decision, you know, it was so... and i'll go back in time it was like if we had any each commissioner had a question on the budget they met with you and well not you at the time but darren and the finance director and i'd rather i think i don't know if that's where dj's going but what how you've got this i would rather have any questions that a commissioner has answered to all of us at the same time. You see what I'm saying? Because, you know, we might not think about that question they have for you. So how can we do that? If, if there is a question that comes up, how can we all have the answer together? Would that be in a, yeah.

I mean, so the meetings were, um, and I think I said this last week, but I know a lot of stuff I said last meeting, the, the calendar was put together in January with the intent that you guys made it clear. You're like, we want to have, we want to talk about the budget the whole time. So I think, um, obviously it was difficult to do cause we didn't even have, we were putting it into a system and trying to get it right. But starting from now on, I mean, Missy's already gives a bi-monthly report, but any questions, um, that you have on the budget, you should be able, I mean, these are, some of these reports are canned. You can just pull them down. I mean, that's what a lot of other cities do is you can just, see it online, but without the system, it's impossible to do. But you should, if you want to do it with all of you together, you need to do it in a public meeting like this, and assuming it's not personnel, it shouldn't be an issue.

Well, I think, hadn't we talked about it before, maybe, I don't know, every quarter, kind of get a little update on how we're doing and where it's going?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we just need to... It sounds like I'm ringing the same bell. We just... It has to be in this system. I would have liked to have had this system a decade ago, but we had the ARPA money and we did it now. Missy got stuck doing it as part of her first job. The system is going to give you the data you want. Trying to get it to you is very difficult.

I think for the present time, we have to trust that Missy and her staff have done the right thing and accept that rather than go through line by line by line by line. For this year, next year we'll

I wanted to show you kind of the time span as far as how many different meetings we had with our department heads after the initial, when they came and presented here. But these are meetings that we set up and we sat down with the department heads and went through that worksheet that I showed you. And so it's time consuming and it's a dedication to time. If you wanted to attend those, I mean, you're looking at, we were... We were rocking and rolling about every time I turned around. We were in that office, and we were going through it. So it is quite a time dedication to do that. So I just want to show that.

That's more of what we do in public. I mean, we should just do it every meeting up until we pass the budget every year. I mean, it's just a lot easier to do when it's not... Well, on somebody's Excel sheet that they had to crank out and keep on the side. I mean, Missy gets audited. Missy's books get audited every year per state statute. So that's why it's important that she has a system that she can lean into because now half of the stuff you screw up is when she's looking at a number here and she's been doing it for six hours and types in, reverses two numbers, and she doesn't have 12 staff to review every input. That's why a system is critical. But I think starting in January, I would think at least every two months, if not before, we should just have 15 minutes at the end of a meeting and say, okay, let's run through. Everybody's pulled down their budget report. What's in it? Does anybody have any questions? What's this client item? How are we doing on boots? The line item is boots. Are we out of money in February? And where are we going to transfer it from? I mean, that's why we just want to get to next year's budget because we don't know the impact of the three and a half mils. We know we did it. But we don't know what it's going to look like. I mean, it's going to get balanced.

I think the other half of that equation is the feedback from the departments, and that's just what I'm leading towards, is what was spent and the time spent on it effective, or is there other options we can come up with collectively to get the service or the condition changed or the event completed? doing it differently.

So the new system, I'll kind of explain. All the hours that I put to get that spreadsheet together that I showed you with all those tabs, it is no more. I don't have to do that next year. All the data is already in here. I don't have to put in 23, 22, 24, 25, 26. It's going to be in the system. It's already in the system. So that is a huge jump in the start of next year's budget right there. So there's also the other thing that's good about this, and we weren't able to use this issue because we were so ready to go with it. There's a step where we can create the budget, send them out, our first wave to the department heads, and it's a department-level budget. Then when the department heads have entered in what they think that they need a budget for, we switch levels and it goes to the finance level. then we I look at it and I look at things and say okay is this reasonable is it's not reasonable blah blah blah and then when I'm done with it we can bump it up to I can't remember what the other level is I think it goes to it may go to the city manager level and then at that point then we switch it over and once we feel good about what we've got here then it can switch over to the commissioners level and then the adopt then it's an adopted budget so there's levels of And so it keeps those other levels. So if you ever need to go back and look and say, okay, we ended up here in the adopted budget. What did the department head say they needed here? So there's different levels. We didn't get to use that this year.

Yeah. So, um, the access for the commissioners that want it to be able to have view view abilities into this budget, have you identified when that's going to be possible?

I did some research on that, and I reached out to a lot of the GFOA members to find out what the stance was on doing that, and most of them said, no, that we just provide the reports that our commissioners need, and because of security issues, they did not grant access to commissioners that they provide reports, any reports that they ask for. So at this time, there's no plan for that.

But how flexible is the reporting?

It's not right now.

But it has a reporting function.

It does. And here's what. We're going to do report writing next week. And so we had an introductory class to it. It's been quite a little while back. And so now that we have data in the system and we can take the training, me and my staff members are going to take the report writer training. And so it takes somebody that kind of understands databases and documents things like that that you've got to drop in and finagle things to make sure you've got them right. But we're going to do that training. And then we hopefully, I'm hoping that they'll tell us that we can do scheduled reports, that I can develop a report and I can schedule them and then they would email it out. I don't know that yet, but the systems I've used in the past to build reports provided, I just scheduled it. In fact, the bank, they're like, they use all my reports that I scheduled and built when I was at the bank. And so they don't have to be, I don't have to recreate the files. It refreshes any time the report runs. It refreshes with the most updated information and it emails it out. I'm hoping that's the case.

If there's no legal binding behind giving a view access to the commissioners, then I would still pursue having access for the commissioners that would like it. If there's not, if it's just, it's not common or it's not, you know, something that's routine and that doesn't hold enough weight. I would still like to have access for the Commissioners to have real-time abilities to look at this data. I don't know. Any corporation of 300-plus employees, your CEO and the next five have access to all the data in the system, and that's where we're at. So having access to view it I think will help us generate questions.

I respectfully disagree with that, and I do not want to do that. If you want reports, I will provide you reports.

Yeah, I don't think there's – the difference with a CEO is, I mean, they're paid employees. I mean, the GFOA was pretty clear, and I don't have it in front of me, but we can get it to you because we asked them because they're the standard. I'm being having access to view whatever information you want to view is completely normal, but having access to the system and a login is completely out of the question. Sorry, I don't want to be that.

I don't want to say you guys know, but I'll do some additional research. I just I think it's important that we're talking about the commissioners coming up with concerns and questions and trying to have input. And this would be a way to do that without having to. set an appointment with somebody every time we have a question.

Cheryl gave me a call today, and I talked with her right then. I was able to provide her the data that she needed.

No, and you've been great answering my questions, too. I get that. But you just got through saying earlier that everybody's very busy doing all the things they're doing, and this would be a way to alleviate that additional stress.

We have a better system now to run reports off of, and we will. And until we get those reports built, those custom reports built, right now all we have is the canned reports. And if I can provide the type of report that you want and maybe even provide you some introductory reports and you look at those and say, well, yeah, I like this, but I wish you had this, this, and this, and then I can modify the reports and those can be automated.

Yes, and just schedule them?

Mm-hmm, I'll just schedule them if I'm hoping that's what it is. I'll find out more Monday.

When is the remainder of the system, everything online?

Right now, we are still working through a few of our some role, administrative roles. We still have a little problem with those, so we're working through those. They said that user security is just a normal thing where people try to do something and they can't do it because of user security. Because it's so flexible, it sometimes is a problem. We're still tweaking that. We are... We're still doing reports. We're going through the workflow process, and we're kind of tweaking the security on the workflow process. So if we actually have some of the department heads that are entering their invoices, and then it goes to Megan for her to review, it's approved electronically by the department manager. So like for instance or Matt's department either Lanny or Dwayne might put the invoice in and then it goes to Matt He takes a look at it and he can change the jail coding that he needs to put it towards It goes through quality review through going through Megan and accounts payable then it comes to me for final approval So we're still working through some of that. I mean it's set up. It's working. We've issued checks We've done all that but there's still some little pieces that we need to fix the p-card system and the p-cards are where We're pulling in an upload worksheet from Commerce, who has RP cards. And it automatically loads it to the user. And the user should be able to go out there and see their line items. And we've tested this. We're still having a few issues with it. But basically, we can scan Dwayne or Lanny or whoever is the person. They can scan their invoices right into the system, and then it goes through the workflow process, and everybody approves them as they go, and they're ready to be paid. And then in this system is where you can click into that invoice and click in and see the actual image of the invoice. So that is a huge, huge improvement. So I know I'm going a little further than what you want to do, but those are the biggies that we still have to finish for the financial system. And then I believe either late October, early November, we will start on the utility billing. And I'm not sure the municipal court system and what was the other one, Jay? The billing system starts in late October, early November. And then the municipal system and then what was the other one?

Just those two.

Just those two, okay. So that's where we're at.

Going back to the P course, I'm glad you brought that up because my understanding is Now, what you've got, if you don't have an itemized statement, a copy of the invoice, then nobody gets paid for their charges, right? If an employee went somewhere and they couldn't come up with the invoice.

Okay, so we have what we call affidavit of lost receipt, and they have to fill that out in order for us to, they can do that. If they've went somewhere and spent it, but they have to say what it's for and the reason why they lost the receipt or they didn't get a receipt. So they have to have that affidavit and they have to sign it. And that's scanned right in there.

Yeah, the last time I left town, I came back and there were bugs all over the city car. So I took it to the car wash, but it didn't kick out a receipt. So I had to fill out an affidavit saying I didn't spend that on a pizza in Frontenac or whatever. I don't know what it said, but I signed it.

And it's scanned in there as the receipt. It's part of the system. Okay, yeah, I got it. I'll go to that car wash. And as far as P cards, they've all underwent training as far as and signed the new forms and the training. I think there were a few that had, but for the most part, I would say 90% of our people that had P cards have filled out and went through the online trainings that Jeff set up. And so that's done. And now we've been training them. We started with Dwayne on the P card. He's kind of been our guinea pig. He's been really good trying to put in the stuff. So we'll eventually... We hope that this next statement, which comes out this week, later this week, we'll be able to upload it. We're still having a few issues with the upload file. It's got some... some errors in it, and once we get that to upload, then we can start having the departments put in their receipts. And then it'll be electronically approved, so we don't have to have all this paper. That's one of the hard things, is getting people to realize that once you've got it scanned in and you've verified it's there, I'm having them hold, like Megan's office, hold the paperwork for about 60 days, and then after 60 days, you can shred that, because it's in the system record. So...

So we've come a long way with the P cards as well. Well, thank you for working that and getting that straightened out. And again, there was so many different things with the P cards that we looked at this year and it was very time consuming. And no, I don't know. I can't, I couldn't tell you how many hours I applied towards those drives going through those receipts and looking at expenditures and, and, meant like the mayor said there's most most everybody was doing the right thing uh there was some you know discrepancies on what was reported or how it was supposed to be reported but it sounds like you've got that all cleaned up so i don't have any additional drive items for this um do you have any questions i just have one can you tell me what the the mill is going to be now with the if we adopt the 3.5 drop is it going to be was it 49.2

954 less 3.5.

No, because that's your revenue neutral rate, right?

I want to know what the one that we're adopting. Yeah, 48.5 Okay, what pager is that it's not numbers the page right before the line I'm breakdown

That much money and the total budget will be that amount okay 48 Just for the record yeah, it'll generate eight million eight hundred and seventy four thousand three hundred sixty two dollars Which is down from nine point three million in the current year and then the total budget is Once we put the budget in this new system, everything, I mean, it's $76 million, $104 million, $805 million, but I think roughly it's $53 million between revenues and expenses. The rest of it's transfers and missy items.

And we, just a note, if we move forward to it on next year's budget, and we're talking about this concurrently, but a breakdown of all the... The various revenue sources, even if they're $80, we have a breakdown of that as a part of this packet somewhere.

Miscellaneous revenues by detail.

By detail and daytime group sourcing. And then we talked about a summary page as well. That's something we'll have to work on together at the end.

I'm hoping that would be one of those reports we can build And there were no ARPA funds left correct We're just spending the last ones on the roof at Lincoln Center and we got to the end of the year Okay

All right. I said I would. I'm going to. I'm going to make a motion that we approve the 2027 budget with the final mill would be 48.506. It's a reduction of 3.5 mills. Okay. 3.5 mills, 48.506. Move and seconded roll call vote Brooks.

Yes oneself. Yes, Perry.

Yes sickly.

Yeah, okay motion carries The budget is approved before One last thing. I want to want to take a moment to thank our Commission City Darren and city staff for hard work and dedication and that went into preparing this year's city budget. Developing a responsible budget is never easy. It requires difficult conversations, careful considerations, and the willingness to work together towards what is best for our community. This year we made real effort to look closely at our expenditures, identifying areas where we could reduce costs, and make thoughtful decisions without losing sight of services our residents depend on. I appreciate the commission for its leadership and willingness to work through these challenges together. I also want to recognize Darren and city staff for their professional creativity and commitment through the budget process. The work that happens behind the scenes, reviewing numbers, finding efficiencies, and looking forward to ways to stretch every taxpayer dollar does not go unnoticed. We may not always agree on every issue, But working together, listening to one another, and keeping the best interests of our city in mind, we can make sound decisions for our community. Thank you all for your time, your effort, and your commitment to making our city stronger and more financially responsible. I'm grateful for the teamwork that went into this budget and look forward to continuing that work together. Anybody else have anything?

Move to adjourn. Second.

Motion to adjourn and second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries.