City Council - Regular Meeting

to our illustrious city manager.

Thank you very much, Chair Lions and uh and council and thank you for bearing with us. I know I have it on the schedule as the final budget workshop and I kind of talked at finance committee earlier this week as this is the penultimate the second to last I I'd kind of split the difference here. I think this will be the last one where hopefully we're really talking about some of the final outstanding pieces that we've been flagging as we've been going out through this process and I actually just sent around um the agenda with those. She's done an incredible job. Um, and Nate Burkhart from our team as well of keeping track of all those changes as we've done the fun process of going through every single line. I'm always I don't care. Isn't it amazing? Be a city council. They say it's exciting. Um, it'll be fun, they say.

It'll be fun, they say. Yeah. Run for city council. Meet new people. I won't repeat. Travel the world. Yeah. Maybe not on on all areas, but um you know I I this is my third round. The first one was just such a fire hose and just trying to get somewhat

accurate information in there. Second round last year, we were in a lot better um position to make some good um decisions. But this year, I'd say we have real data for two years now. And um and I think one of the tough things on this was, you know, what you guys didn't see was it was a 20% increase plus when I got it. Um, and you know, the time that I and Ashley and the team spent to get it to 7.03, uh, you know, uh, through cutting an enormous amount of things. Um, and and then, you know, we've been going through the change log and, um, and really it's just maintenance. There's like we didn't backfill two positions. One in uh, the code office, uh, we didn't backfill that position when we became vacant. we didn't we're not back filling a a highway position when it became vacant. Uh I kind of saw the writing on the wall with some of the benefit increases and you know even that wasn't enough just to kind of maintain what we have uh and even in just the time we've been here Ashley will bring up this chart a bit you know workers compensation increased by 30%. because you know Carrie did the analysis on police and fire overtime and uh with the workers comp and you know that triggered a 30 $30,000 increase in our workers comp insurance. Um so all these things that you know the fuel which we'll talk about is 70 you we're going to right size that that's what is it 60 70,000 what's 90,000 not for something new 90,000 uh across the board just are already baked in that we don't have any control over they that union negotiated increases health insurance increases uh you know this uh the water rate increases which we're doing to prepare for the water treatment plant upgrades which also triggered like a major increase to the city's water rate so we get back up to 30%. So this has been a really tough year and just trying to cut

almost everything we possibly can. I even brought the roads um uh pieces for the courthouse road which was at $300,000 this year. We didn't use that much. I think we're about 200,000 but I was like all right well we'll bond for that next year. Um and that was like a negative 300,000. I thought that was really going to, you know, kind of give us some cover. Plus, the employees um and and it hasn't. This is just this is a really tough year. I know the um the county's up even higher than us. A lot of other counties and cities are up even higher than us. Uh we do have a lot of growth pressures in uh in the city that I think make it even harder. It's harder to be hard to be the fastest growing city in Maine with all these increases. Um so, you know, that's that's kind of some of the headwinds we're facing. We talked yesterday in our project management team about we might have to get pretty serious about revenue conversations um on uh on a few areas. I know one we're going to talk about tonight with short-term rentals. We've had some parking kiosk conversations in the past. um how do we get more on with just a lot of our fees and revenues not not non-propy tax pieces on um on making sure that we don't have happen what happened before where you go 15 15 years without adjusting those revenue line items. So, uh, we're going to go through kind of the final big outstanding items. Emerald ashbor, um, the IT request, uh, and a couple of the other ones that are kind of the last remaining on, you know, a go no-go from the council before we, uh, we get to final. And we'll go over some of the other ones that were just pieces that kind of came up during the budget process that are not really negotiable. We was it $30,000 increase for salt, I think. Um, and you know, that is what it is. We had everybody rebid a bunch of things. There's some smaller things like $5,000 for foreclosed property um expenses that we've we've seen in the system. Um, and I think that's talking to staff too on years past there was a lot of this stuff

like just don't worry about it. Don't put it in the budget. Like we'll just kind of have it in there. And you see that in previous audits. You know, some departments going over by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Um, now it must have looked really nice when you set your budget hundreds of thousands of dollars lower and when the tax rate is set based on that

tax rate and it just bleeds on designated fund balance. Um, and that's why this whole time until we're fully reconciled, I don't really, you know, we stick within the budget and um, uh, we until that und designated fund balance is is true and accurate um, we kind of can't move forward u on on a lot of things. So that's where we're at now. We're going to go through first this kind of great calculator that Nate Birkhart we try to give said we give him credit but we tried to um get him to come in here but it's overtime so we're on a budget freeze and he's now early employee so this is all Nate's doing even it's recorded so we can applaud him and he can look at it I hope so next week I also hope he doesn't watch these he does

he seems like the kind he's at home watching right now

I He's also been a part of our finance director search. We're in the final three candidate phases right now. Um so you know in addition to doing this that and the other thing and yesterday he was at our project management team meeting pitching an idea on knowledge capture uh and how we can use new AI tools and um some other things that would happen in the past when you have so much turnover that you have a system to be like here's how planning runs here's how the city manager here. So, we're very lucky to have Nate. Um, and we'll go over the calculator and then we'll go to why I said no to their request for a new IT position. Um, so just to kind of uh, you know, last year we were in Excel, thanks to Nate, we're in a um a little bit more of a user friendly system to look at uh this kind of budget calculator as we get to this final area if we add or subtract some things. But um we're at a a 20 roughly $29 million sort of commitment side of things um uh budget that's we actually spend a lot more than that, but we have so many revenues from revenue sharing um our own revenues. The school has their revenues. So that's not the total expenditures for the city, but that's the commitment side of things. Um that's up in general about 8.66% 66% where we're standing now with um and we'll get into what we could add or um subtract. There's really not too much um beyond some operational pieces to subtract at 9.51%. You know, we were in at 7.03% when we started this conversation, but after a lot of rebidding quotes uh and other pieces, we're now at 9.51 on the municipal side uh and 8.66 66 when you blend the municipal um the school which was about a 7 uh eight I think was their final percent

increase but if you go to the kind of budget trends while they're 7.8% increase they are the larger size dollars wise of city government. So that's actually um you know as much or larger dollar um amount. Um but we have some budget growth trends and and Ashley will share this calculator with you all. So um you can check it out as well. Um but you can kind of see the total budget, municipal budget, school budget. This goes back to FY23 uh and FY 24 the kind of year before I arrived. You see that was um really some of the biggest increases. uh the school last two year or this is is this just a school or is this let's put school and municipal and county up there and not have so last year uh school is at a 9.3% increase this year there what does that say

yeah I can't read the legend so if you can explain the colors oh it's the county okay yeah and then Um, the year before 16%. Yep. And then the school was at 5.1 and the municipal side was negative. And then this year we're at um Are you talking So what do you say this year? Fiscal year 27 or fiscal year 26? 27. Okay. So the 27 the county side is up 16.6. The school is

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going the wrong direction. Uh the county is 9.9 and the school is county municipal side is 9.5 that you can see and the school is 8.0 and the county I think was at the county is at 9.9

9.9 y um if you go down to historic distributions. So this just gets you kind of basically those numbers that were in percents but in their actual dollar figures. So the uh FY27 proposed of the 29 million 11 almost 12 11.9 million is the municipal side to fund all municipal expenditures. The school side is 16.6 million uh and the county side is 821,000. So yep, the county is present the most largest percent increase, but as a dollar figure that's you know that's not as big of an impact to the budget. Um and you know and that's the uh again that's just the city side of taxation what goes out in the commitment. It's not what you know what the total spending um amongst all the groups or revenues are. It's just the net of what the municipal ask or and school ask and the county asks is. Um and then below we have in the calculator too as we was popular last year so we um brought it back. Um although last year there was a lot more to kind of cycle through. I think this year there's only two or three things. um want to keep going where the

what what are you looking for the pluses and minuses on the that's over here calculator um on adjustments really the IT employee the emerald ash boore I want to talk about the city sewer bill and we'll we'll go through um the agenda shortly there's a couple things that we have check marked in so we'll be able to see if you want to add these things it'll change the budget um uh this if you go up sorry the so we've included the salt. You know, we we can't avoid that one. Um the payment for the loader, that's uh that's not avoidable. It was just a catch that wasn't in there. Uh it's for the debt service or the lease on the loader, right?

Um then there's some other things that just kind of shows like, you know, the $90,000 for fuel. Well, if we didn't have that, we could have been $90,000 shy. Yep. Uh what did you use for a number for fuel? How did you kind of project where it might go throughout the year with it being so unpredictable? Yeah, so the teams, so they started with 50% increase. I said that's a little high. Let's go to a third. Um, you know, it's going to be hard to tell. Some people are projecting that could I feel like with the political environment, it's almost impossible to tell where this is going to be. And from today's because we are at a 50% increase from three months ago.

Yeah. So, you know, we're we're including this all. This year also was tough because we lost some of the power um options which we didn't include. We just did the fuel. Yeah. So, the um but that's that's a 25% I think is where we landed on gets you to 90 $90,000 increase. We felt that was appropriate. It might not be enough, but that's vehicle fuel. Okay. And that's also 90,000 above like what this year's actuals with a little more already. People had already been budgeting a little more for next year.

This $90,000 is 25% really across the board. Um,

uh, we talked about the workers comp, some of these things in here in short-term rentals, which we'll discuss, which, you know, that's a $40,000 potential software. Again, that was like an initial bid just to get in general. Um, and we've budgeted $100,000 in revenue based on between 700 to a,000 uh uh short-term rentals in Ellsworth. If we were doing equivalent of one nights uh fee, we'd probably have that or more. Um, but if we don't want to move forward with the short-term rental registration system, um, and the revenue that it would generate, that would be another $60,000 added to the budget. So, um, we'll talk more about that tonight, too. greater and plow steel. Again, we have to do that, but that's $10,000 that got added to the budget. If we didn't have to do it, it' be negative $10,000. Um, but we did want to just kind of express some of the as we've been going through the budget as people have been rebidding um some of the initial quotes they got. A lot of these came in. Um, you know, I think it kind of shows that, you know, this isn't um with a lot of the increases in the spending is is just maintenance costs that are going up. This isn't like anything fun to add $90,000 for fuel. It's not, you know, to for greater and plow steel um for the expectation for the salt to come in over bid um you know, the foreclosed property maintenance. uh this is just expenses that the city's likely to incur and we need to budget appropriately for it. Um so we're gonna before we transition to back to the agenda, I will note too that we'll get through tonight on some of the larger pieces that are still outstanding um that I'm looking for a little more guidance on council and if we do want to move forward or if we want to take them off the table. Um, and then Ashley and Nate are going to

work lightning quick to kind of solidify that into the the new finalish uh 600page budget book. And then I'm going to spend a couple weeks uh going left to right on it again to, you know, dot every eye and cross every tea and hopefully find some additional cost savings uh to bring things down a bit. Um, I've done that twice now, like I said, getting from 20% down to 7.03% 03% and then we spent the last two months, you know, every week in these meetings kind of unearthing, as I always say, I always hope it's going to go more in the black, but it always goes, well, you didn't budget enough there. And as you've seen in this process, this isn't like um you know, oh my gosh, we're doing a ton of new things and let's just not do all these new things. Um, you know, this is this is really a maintenance budget for the most part and these are the increases we're seeing. So, um, you know, I have been and I will go for with an eye towards anything superfluous. I think I'm trying to see if I can actually make it matter. There's things like, you know, we have in communications we've budgeted $10,000 for a website upgrade. Our website isn't great and it's got a lot of communications issues and it's got limitations and it's um, but we could live without a new website refresh. $10,000 to refresh a website isn't really that much. Um, but that's also not going to save the um, so yeah, I've already done and I've already done that once. So, I'm just like, h I think I already cut Amy from 25,000 in the things she wanted to move forward with comms to 10,000. So, I'm not I'm not confident there's going to be a lot in that category. Um, uh, there's some other things, too. Maybe I could talk to the department heads to really dig deep. I know I was thinking with myself, it's in my contract that I get $2,000. Um, and that was presented to me when I originally had it for, you know, taking people and staff and

employees and consultants and other people that come here. Um, for food, I can cut that $2,000. I actually haven't used anywhere near it, I think, this year anyways. Um, so is, you know, can I cut that? Can we cut our entire training budget? Um, you know, there's just that's I don't think that's necessarily going to get us there either, but I will do that as I'm looking through the final exercise of like, can I cut everything that's somewhat superfluous down to zero? Training. Training is always tough. I already cut it down by about a third this year over the previous year. Um, it's also alphon grant eligible. So, it's like you cut it, you lose the grant match on 50%. So, it's like you're like you're only cutting a little bit and then you're losing all this grant match funding. So, um you know, I'll continue to work on that side of things, but this is where we're at right now. Any questions before we get to the bigger items? And then the the last piece too, we're going to try to hybrid. I know um while I was out last week seemed like there was a great SIP conversation um and we want to continue that conversation beyond the budget cycle. I think for the near term with where we're at now there's not a lot of um beyond debt service and out years. You know we need to get off that cycle of just issuing debt. We are low in debt in comparison to other cities and towns of our size. um uh we're no nowhere near our statutory thresholds for issuing debt, especially for bigger infrastructure. It makes a lot of sense to do that to phase it in or to spread out the um the costs over multiple years. Uh but we need a much more robust debt strategy um as well in our in next budget cycle. So we'll do that SIP uh plan and then I also hope to uh as a special meeting I also hope to add kind of the final final of what I you know going my left to right based on the kind

of final recommendations of council um where that number figure is at uh before we look towards the June meeting for final passage or not passage of the budget for the municipal side. The school side is out to primary election and that'll be voted on soon. So, you know, there could be voted up, could be voted down, and um depending on how that goes, we'll um notify you all as well. Anything else? Okay. Uh why don't we start with the IT new position? Guess Jason isn't here. Um he can come in. He can come in. Jason Oh, he's ming the

Yeah, he's coming. Jason, you want to come in? I really don't have anything to add to what we talked about the last meeting is should be fresh in everyone's minds. It was only two weeks ago. Um anything I think I would have to say tonight would be a repeat of what I had last time. So actually I have a question. Um, if you the the new position that you're looking for, would they have any would you look be looking for someone that had any GIS experience?

No, we've we've looked at that before and there's not a lot of overlap between IT work and GIS work other than that they're both performed on a computer. So, um, we've struggled with that in the past. When I started here 18 years ago, um the previous tech director was really into GIS. So, he was doing a lot of that work on his own because he really was into it.

Um and there was some expectation that I would be doing the same type of thing, but I had no experience at GIS and no real time to learn it. So it, you know, he he was starting down that path, but then once I started and didn't have that experience, um, it kind of fell off and we don't really have a robust GIS system. Um, but this position would just be like a help desk type of position to to help with the day-to-day tasks. Yeah, I know at the last council meeting of this discussion, I think everybody empathizes with it as being the most stressed component of the organization and the biggest um sort of efficiency loss to the rest of the organization, not being able to utilize them more. I did, you know, was hoping to to find enough that we could maybe fund this, but I'm still at the um you know, that my recommendation is we can't move forward for the other percent increase reasons. um it's just it's not the right year for it. We did talk a bit about you know I kind of heard from you all on the internship side of things and you know a contractor so it doesn't have to be a full-time employee. talked a bit about like maybe a fellowship with UI and it could be kind of you know with could lead into an outy year becoming a full-time but I think talking with Jason and Nate that's just it's a lot more labor for this year on not necessarily something that's going to be um guaranteed to be a labor reduction in the future. So in some ways could be just more work on them um while they're already stressed out trying to prepare for um that type of initiative. So, I think that the hope is that we either move forward this year or I'll be first on the list likely again next year. So,

can we click on the 100,000 116 or whatever that was and just see what it does

that shows up. Yeah, that's really hoping it wouldn't. There it is. Sorry. That's what he sees. I mean, I'm pulling for you. I really am.

But I Yeah. I mean, I I feel like them ships going through the straight home moves. if there was some way and I realized yeah listening to your concerns about having uh you know somebody part-time or even getting I I don't want to create work. our our concern with like a fellowship or an internship was really a lot of that is frontloaded with setting up programs you know working with the university and getting someone on board and we felt like it there's a high risk of it being a net time loss at least especially in the first year or two

um and we didn't want to take a chance on on that. So, what about with the contracted though? If we we don't provide benefits for them and it comes in a I don't know. I I don't know what our fringe was in that 116 but 2030 I what is the health insurance and the and all the benefits and stuff? I know it was in the the new request section at the front of the book. I'm just Oh, it is there. Okay. This is based on a salary of 725. So, the benefits would So 72. So it would be 7. So if we contracted a 725, I don't know what the job market is for it right now. Are people really looking for work or is they finding it?

The countyy's hired three people over the past 10 years um and they've struggled each time to find including all those benefits. And that's what it would be at 725. I'll just see much of a difference. you you won't. No. And I'll just point out too when you know I'm working on my budget um at work as well. And excuse me, when you have somebody who's going to contract, they build their own fringe into their hourly rate. You're not going to get um a quality person at the same hourly rate with no benefits. So if it's um what $35 an hour, they're probably going to be 50 to 60 or more

than that to cover their own. You probably see an IT contractor over $100 an hour. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So that it's not a way to save money. It's a way to do a short-term fix, but not to save money. Yeah. With like with the intention of coming on full-time, but yeah, it's not really that big of a difference. I think we all have to be thoughtful about our requests to IP when our computers don't work. I'm getting better at Googling answers. Yeah, I know that there are bigger IT issues that come to them, but No, it's something we have talked about a lot over the last couple weeks is just

we have some changes coming. We're going to really lock down on tickets. You send a ticket or you don't get help. I mean, not quite that harsh, but pretty close. Um I don't blame you. No ticking, no laundry. Yeah. I mean, you're gonna It helps us prioritize. We We just, you know, Nate was on vacation. I was here, you know, alone for two weeks and I had people texting me. I had cell phone calls. I had desk phone calls. I had emails. I had tickets. I was coming from everywhere. Um, and it just really makes everything hard to manage. So, I there are some efficiencies we can make with what we have now. Um, so we're going to we're going to do a little reorganization regardless and

see how that helps. I think HR was one of those pieces of the organization that was in you know I think even more stressed than um it was when there was just one person there you know they just let me ask let me ask let me ask let me ask and they have a much more robust system now for it's got to be in the ticket we're actually talking to a finance director candidate today who had a great saying which was on this front which was your lack of preparedness is not my emergency lack of preparedness on your part does not create an emergency on my part I have a different variation pretty close to that. Trust me, I've been involved with a lot of things like

Yeah, it's um it's hard. We all have to have cross empathy for each other, but nobody knows like how many, you know, hey, I sent this ticket in a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. It's like, well, yeah, well, Nate's been working on the budget like crazy. And, you know, folks don't know that aspect of of their work. Um, so we all

maybe if we made other cuts You know what I mean? because I don't have any problem with not giving any nonprofits anything because uh the nonprofits I belong to we don't ask for any money. What's the total amount of money that we provide to to nonprofits?

I don't have it off hand. I did um note for uh uh council shay that I was going to gather that and there's not uh that figure so that the council would have that external organization it's not in our external organiz it is external organizations but they're kind of it's in a couple places external organizations there's one here that have 110 for the lights are working better at high street and and I see you down there fixing lights. Yeah, we are.

It's kind of frustrating when you pull up down on Main Street and got to make a right left turn and Oh. Oh, no. I can't go. Damn. What happened here? The DOT had a pilot project and they came and took their equipment away today. So, they were we were putting the old stuff. But you was right there, man. You you know Yeah. He had left and it immediately like five minutes after he left it went in a flash. Oh, it was all a mess. It was a mess. Yeah. What's it? Um, so the amount requested by outside organizations is 305,000. The amount that the subcommittee has recommended that we fund is 239,000.

Didn't Bport just did this, right? They cut all their nonprofits. Yes, they did. I mean, it's tough because they're all they're all going through the same economic issues. A lot of the services they provide actually do cut expenses for the city. I know with the general assistance, uh, she talked about how they she went, "Go talk to our nonprofit partners, then go to us." And so ultimately, my concern is if we cut the nonprofits, we may still end up spending more. So, and a it's not a big part of the budget. Yeah. And these are investments.

What would 239,000 taken out of the budget do? You guys still need me? Come on. Do it in your head. Come on. I think one of those was with the YMCA and I think they shut down their pool or the having the Y manage the pool. What with the with box sports cut?

Yeah. Ashley, you mentioned that or Charlie that these come from several different places because the external organizational budget is only this is not why I'm seeing. Yeah. So it it will we have some of them in the wreck budget, the rec commission budget. They're not next year. We're hopefully going to have them all combined in one section of the budget. Got it. So that's why you don't see them. We have the external organizations and then we have the stuff that falls under the RC commission. Does that include Heart of Ellsworth?

Yeah, so that it would include Heart of Ellsworth, the Y, the Grand Chamber, um the Garden Club, um what are there's a few other ones. Um yeah, community. So it wasn't the pool, it was their fitness center. I don't know why I was in the wreck. Yeah, but they're not in the wreck, but they're they're places. I don't have Yeah, you've got Next Up, Domestic, Wick, Friends in Action, Lo and Fishes, Woodlon, Hospice. Yeah, he's wrong.

Would there be value for this conversation to delineate the ones that are immediate need where again we've we've heard from Tina, they come to us versus there are quality of life ones like the grand and the um and the music programs that those are is does that have value in this conversation? And again, I'm not necessarily supporting any of the cuts, but want to know what the conversation is or I mean, but then snowmobile club, that's reimbursement for registrations if I remember right. So that was Yeah, that's like 500, right? That's I think a,000,000

I think we got 1,100 back in reimbursement. I don't know off the top of my head, but I think it was like 1,100 this year in reimbursements from the state on that. Yeah. So that money that has to go to the snowmobile club. Yeah. I'm not aware of others that are like that where it's basically it's only the snowmobile. Yeah. Just want to know I don't support cutting the nonprofits. I just wanted I wanted to know what the number was what we're talking about. It's not insignificant but it's also you know I'd like to find 239,000 elsewhere in the budget if it's possible. Um may not be but I think it's good to know what we're dealing with as a number. Yeah.

I think the ramifications are impossible to predict. Yeah. And could be long lasting and farreaching. Yeah. No, I don't. But it's, you know, at this point we everything should be considered and it's it's good to know what that number is and this tool is really helpful. Yeah. Is it out of the question to ask them to go and revisit their numbers and see if they can do like we had the school do and what we've been doing and to try to come down on their numbers or

be pretty I mean theory we could but I think that would be not I mean at this point I don't I mean I don't see this meeting as we have to make every decision for the budget cut you know Charlie said he's going to go back through one more time and we can get a better sense of where that's at. Um, I mean, if I think if the council I'm I think I see here four or five people that don't aren't interested in cutting it completely. Um, and so I I don't know if it's if we want to like figure that out right now, but um it's just it's you know it's not an insignificant amount of money.

No, you make a good point. We need to as uncomfortable and unfortunate as we need to have a conversation and kind of validate where we are. The other I think point whether they're immediate need or or quality of life. These are the things where the residents of Ellsworth are going to see an immediate impact on their lives. Other things are longer investments, but that these are things they'll see this year if they're cut.

It's it's it's like the YMCA. Okay. I don't mean to pick on the YMCA. I was a big I'm a big supporter of YMCA but then you got to look at the big huge picture and then you look what has happened in the past and look for the quantifiable results okay they're they provide daycare okay not just quality ex you know it's it helps families and talking with a former former chairman of the board. He explained that things were great until legislature passed to raise the minimum wage and that's hurt a lot of daycarees. Okay. I mean it's it's a tough business to be in. Okay. Um you there's stringent rules and regulations that go along with child care and yeah you know there could be a little wiggle room on cutting but to give them 70,000 you see I mean they can do more fundraising you know what I mean help funded child care a little bit. You see what I mean?

They do a lot more than child care. I know they do, but I'm just saying. Well, yeah. I mean, I think the But you got to look at other pictures of the services that we provide and and it's going to be tough. It really is. The fuel prices and all of that, everything. And then uh why not go through it line by line for each nonprofit and see which nonprofit we gave to in the past.

Ma'am ma'am I don't we only when if you're addressing the council we do it from the DS and um it's not public comment right now. If you'd like to we'll have time later if you'd like to make any comments on the budget discussion for tonight. Thank you. Patrick, what do you think would be a good number? I mean, you think so?

Well, I'm just like I said, it's like a lot of people go, we pay 70,000 to the YMCA and then we hire a parks and recck director. I can see the need on both, but you you know we got to we got to find the little ease and I'm open for you know any kind of any we can all work on this to get it so it's a little bit better. There are some nonprofits. I assume if you want I'll pay I'll pay for a couple of these. Patrick, that's that's

Do you Let me just ask you the question. Do you have any idea what childcare costs out on the open market? I have a good idea. It's very very very very expensive. How much? I'm not going to I just like I said, I know it's a lot, but it can't be 70,000. I think um for a productive workshop, right, that's what this is. I think we don't want to get too far into the weeds. Um I think it again, you know, we're setting a budget and we, you know, we don't like the number we're at and we need to consider how we get, you know, what we can do to bring it down.

Um we've discussed nonprofits. we have a general sense of what the total impact is, but I think a better use of our time moving forward is to work through the agenda. Mhm. Um and then again, this is not the last I know we'd like it to be, but I think we'll have to have at least one more workshop. No, especially after I think let's keep talking. Staff's listening. M

we can take notes and we can progress through this and then see where we get to um you know come back and have you know maybe have some maybe get into the weeds a little bit more there and certain things but I think for today's purposes the I mean it's fair I mean anything I mean what would one police officer position if we remove that due to the budget you know like I don't want to remove I don't want to get rid of any police officers I don't either I don't want to get rid of but each one but so there's a cost center in each one and we can we can look at that. Mhm.

Um and um but I think my preference and advice is let's work through this as on the agenda, but these are good ideas and as they come up we should raise them. Um I do do we have anything else for Jason? I don't think so. But it seems like to your point on yeah that's this is not the year for this one. kind of doesn't seem like we're um you know I think in general even if we do go through some of these other routes and the council wishes to make some cuts to nonprofits or other pieces um it's not going to be to necessarily fund this piece it's going to be to reduce the overall tax burden

um so that's uh that's unfortunate but like the I'm sorry Jason but you're relieved Thanks, Jason.

Um, next we'll talk about the emerald ash pore. Is that next? Right. Yes. Yep.

Good evening. Um, I think very similar to what Jason said, um, I know mine was a little longer ago than two weeks, but I think I've I've given pretty much the whole dialogue of what the the purpose of the request is. Um, to refresh memories, we're looking for um it was $100,000 for uh pest and disease management within the not just the urban canopy, but um any of our green spaces around the city. Um and that would start with um uh integrated pest management program uh where we'll go out this summer and fall and collect the data we need to formulate um a plan on how to move forward with uh protecting our um our trees, our canopy from the threat of emerald ashbor which we know uh is on MDI and it's in Herman and um basically the industry best practices tell us that now we should begin treating our own um forests before they actually arrive here. Even though we don't have um any hard and fast indication that they are here, the industry tells us it's safe enough to assume that they are here. It'll be a little bit of time before we see the evidence in our own trees. Um surrounding communities uh began treating this year um in 26. Uh so Camden began treating, Bangor is beginning to treat. uh the other communities that I mentioned prior, Herman started treating two years ago, I believe. Um so pretty much everybody around us is treating their trees for emerald ashbor. Um the the downside of this is um if we choose to do nothing uh and we wait two or three years and the emerald ashbor infestation is allowed to go unchecked, we'll incur way more than $100,000 annually in cost to remove publicly owned trees in the rightway. So um the other thing to consider is the plan that we would develop and put

forward is not to treat every tree that we have. We would prioritize the trees um and basically give you trees that are the highest value to the community and those are the ones we would propose to save. Uh the rest we would um either do nothing and keep our fingers crossed or trees that are already at risk. We would um use some of the money that we're requesting to do a removal of those trees while it's still cost effective to do so. Once a tree is in infect infested with emerald ashbor uh you you can no longer climb the tree um for a climbing arborist. So your cost of removal becomes um much greater because now you need to bring in heavy equipment to remove these trees if they're threatening any structures or utilities in the area.

Okay, I have a couple questions and I'm not grilling you here. I don't want to make it seem that way. Um the the main state 2026 survey from February and March shows no emerald ashbor in Ellsworth, Trenton or Le Moine. Um do you think they're wrong? I do. I think I think they have no evidence of them, but they can be there without any visual evidence for up to two years. Whoa. before you start seeing dieback in the crown, which is the first indicator. And by that time, the emerald ashbor most likely has been in that tree for up to 18 months.

Okay. Um I I guess I guess my my my concern is that I and I'm not saying we shouldn't save the trees, but but the thing is this is going to be a recurring expense for the foreseeable future. It's never going to end. So I I mean are we safe in saying that we have resigned oursel to the fact that there is nothing we can do for the outlining areas. So in in our far outlining forests there's nothing we can do about those more or less.

Yeah. Okay. So so there so what we're looking at is the ones in the city proper on the library. And how many of those are there? 511. Have they been tagged? Uh we have the geolocc we have geoloccated them so we know where they are. Okay. Um the thing is the have you have you talked to the state about running a volunteer program to come in and tag them because it's very that's very good for um public relations because if you tag them you give the public something to look at and the state will come in and do that for free. They'll train volunteers. Um it gets the community involved. It puts a visible presence. I just think for public relations that would be something we should

we we do have a community tree steward Michael Lotssworth who's um provided to us through um a program with the main conservation corps in Americanore. Uh his his time is not paid for by the city. It's compensated from another uh source and this is the work he's doing is going out and locating them. Um and they he is going to go back around this summer as well and revisit the trees he's already seen. So if we need to, we can tag him because he has a lot more data he needs to collect uh to to build this uh in this um integrated pest management plan. No, not going to say if I understand correctly, you're talking about putting a visual on the trees that the residents can see. Yes. These are the ones that are

and it says look up. I mean, it gets people thinking because if this is going to be this huge outlay at Infinitum, I think it's very good to get the public involved and see how they feel about it. Yep. I mean, really, do they want to save these trees? It's I That's maybe a hard question to ask, but this is going to be phenomenally expensive. My other question is um what is the status of um the bio-engineered wasps? The what's that? The wasps.

Um Danielle, I might need help from you on that one. Um they we had a we we attended um a conversation that was put forth by the um the the main forest service. Um and they I'm trying to remember when that was. It was back in February. We were on the call. Um and they've they've they've done this. It's like a pilot program in some very small communities where they're trying to do to do this is like vinyl haven and Io places where there's a very very um restricted air uh land mass where you can't get export from you know the your your parat parasettoids can't leave the area easily and they can't come in easily. Um and they are seeing populations are beginning to establish but on a scale that is um pretty insignificant at this time.

Well these have been used in Connecticut since 2013. They were used in Michigan but way too late. Michigan has no ash trees left but they were used they've been used in New York. Yep. So is this something that we are not considering? Not no that we we absolutely are the the what we're recommending for the um the chemical the the injections right now um is a stop gap. We would do that until the until this paricettoid can um can create a population significant enough to combat emerald ashbor. Um, so it would take a couple of years at least for them to establish that population to actually be effective.

And again, reacting proactively, you would want to not Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. If I may. Um, so the parasettoid was aren't available for municipal purchase. So, as a program through the states, they're really expensive to rear. Um, and so the state has been leading the way in releasing those populations. But municipalities They I they can hope say yes, you can release them here, but they're not something that we can purchase. Um so and it takes a long time for the the populations to really establish to a point where it's actually making a difference.

Yes. So I I understand it's going to take a long time for the trees to die, too. So I mean Well, not perhaps. If if if they're not treated, it could take a year or two for them to succumb. Yeah. So I mean I I I just I don't get a sense of I I don't get a a sense of direction here. Um anybody else want to jump in here? No. Thanks a lot. You're doing great, Carol. And I think I think just just to res like to repeat um like obviously we didn't come to this the decision to even present this recommendation lightly. The thing that sticks with us is

we can treat them and spend this money and try to save them or we can watch them die and spend the same amount of money or more cleaning up the mess. So, it's either way we're going to have to spend the money. It's what do you want to spend the money on? However, it you're not going to be spending the money at infinitum to clean them up. Eventually, the cleanup would be done. this the the taxpayers wouldn't be questioning why they've got to pay, you know, how this $100,000 line. So, I mean, you that's really not a a sound analogy if it's it's a sad analogy. I mean, I don't want them to die, but Bango D Oh, sorry.

I just say I did read that recent Bango Daily News article, which I think was kind of one of those about the new maps um to expand, but it hasn't hit here yet. And it did have some like you can treat them when you see that it arrives too. You that there is it's not like if you don't pre-treat before anything's arrived that there is still an effectiveness level to doing it upon arrival. Um and in fact like I think it it was kind of reading the article it was actually a little bit unclear as to

it seemed to be like they were they were advocating to wait till it arrives but then there was like a separate piece. Well, from from what I've read, um they say that they say that you should have established presence within seven miles. Well, so we're further from I mean, we don't have established presence in Trenton Leo. Yes, there is. Um Bar Harbor does have it, but they're under quarantine. I just make that into a question, Rody, and answer. Can I help you? Yeah. Go.

I would make a suggestion. What I've heard so far tonight is that the IT position is going to be at the top of the list for fiscal year 2028 and that we have a placeholder in fiscal year 2028 for this conversation again with updated data and that that may be the given where we are looking at the percentages over Rod's head that may be what we can do this year and it's a calculated risk. Well, again, you know, I I would my my opinion is that getting the public involved, getting those trees banded so that people see them.

Um, having Charlie and you go on radio and talk this up um in action, frankly, and very frankly, for the fact that this is going to be an ongoing thing, not a one-time thing. Yeah. Yeah. And and the other thing to consider, I mean, emerald ashbor is not the first pastor or disease that's threatened our canopy. I mean, every a lot of people in the room remember Dutch elm disease and we talked about that a lot and then spruce budworm, you know. So, so the idea as well is not just to say we need this for emerald ashbor, but we would like to have some some funds

annually to be able to to anticipate what's coming next and be proactive in the treatment for that. Okay, I don't have any more questions. Anyway, thank you for your time and I do not envy the decision making. Thanks very much. This is not the fun part. Uh, what's next on this, Ashley? Yeah, I do remember the elm tree. And I guess just a maybe we could pause there for a second. Um, do we want to We can see what that does if we click it in. Press the button. Do you want to um press the button and then let's reduce the number two. Thanks, Ronnie. Re what do you mean reduce it?

Uh start with 100,000 and then what if we were to fund what if we were to reduce that funding to 50 at 100,000. Can you remind me what that top one was? I again I No, no, no. the one the 10 point versus the this is correct. So this is the the it's the municipal side the 9 total and then that's the combined impact total of the county school and yeah

so and then if we were to do it at 50 question.

Yeah. Well, I want to do this, but the, you know, considering where the budget's at already, um, it's hard for me to support it just for that purpose. It's not because I don't want to and it's not because it's not important. Um, but I think you know what if we're not going to move forward with funding it, what can we do? And I think that's what we're talking about. I think we need to keep talking about it and because it's coming regardless and it's not just emerald ashbor it's the health of our forest in general especially the climate change and um the city you know we can be reactive but it's going to cost us more um but I think there's now that we have parks and recreation director we have a really active arbor commission and you know I think this is a really important issue that the city needs to keep talking about we need to educate the public. I think that's a good start.

Um, but I think it is, you know, I hate, you know, saying, "No, we're not going to do this and then six months we see it here and we start to say, oh crap, we should have done that." And I don't want that. But um just where I'm at right now is just it's already such a b tough budget cycle it's hard for me to

and to be fair the Arbor Commission has not tried uh we haven't tested the waters for fundraising or looked at grant opportunities. We just kind of came up we we came up with this number. We know that it needs to be done and and so there is some work that we can try to do there. I don't know what we'll find when we do that. Um, but people tend to be very passionate about trees, so we can play to that and ask for them to write checks to us and get back to you on how that goes. But I I think your um your point about the state was a really good one about tagging those trees and

yeah, they'll do it for free and getting that people to look and to recognize that we actually how many of them we have and that impact imagining that our streets not lined with those trees anymore, the the park not having those trees anymore, the library not, you know, and I think people really it might make that impact that we need. So if we if we consider some modicum of funding to get this public awareness going and get the trees banded

and stuff, I would support that. But I just I I don't get the sense of planning that I would feel comfortable with here given the status of the bug. I mean maybe Rotty's right, maybe states wrong, but they were they they were successful enough to identify in that it has spread in the north. So, you know, uh that's where I'm at. I And I I'm with you on that, Carol. I mean, we need to make sure that the public's behind us on this, you know. Yeah. And they that's that's the bottom line. they if they they want it, they they can have it

and for them to make a good decision based on knowledge, not you know rumor or whatever and and understand what it means going forward. So yeah, could I add one more piece to that? the public outreach. We all see on occasion the warnings to not bring in firewood and I think anything that can be done to reinforce that for people who are stopping here or driving through that's just again part of a public awareness campaign that we can do this year while we're gearing up and make it uh on deck for next year. It's good conversation. Yeah, it's important issue. Yeah. No, I appreciate the

Okay, even having it. So, we'll click that one. The um on to the city school uh sewer bill responsibility. Um I know this is one that I really want to fund too. This I know the school's already their budget's out. They haven't budgeted this. sent out what was it? What was their side of the It's about 34,000 34,000 and the city was

24. You know, I believe I wasn't here for that conversation where we thought the city there was some talk about should the city go this year, the school go next year. I propose that we this both the city and the school go next year. I think we had a fair amount of big increases that we were right sizing our budgets for this year. The public fire protection is a big one. Um that's to give folks who may not be acquainted with that. We uh you know we're trying to prepare for a 20 plus million dollar water treatment upgrade because due to all the growth in the city we are at the absolute limit of you know being able to provide water in the city and you know that project is already the pilots for those have gone through the designs are in next year groundbreaking's happening you know this is going to come just at the right time we obviously can't avoid that project um but to kind of be fiscally responsible and not have all of our customers whacked with a huge bill when the debt service comes In a couple years, we increased the costs. That triggered this like archaic public utilities commission requirement that the city carry 330% of all of the water um uh or the water department or the water systems

um which you know I think it was around $60,000 increase just this year off the bat. So we've already kind of done one of these. Um just to give you a level of what's driving some of the cost here over the last two years public fire protection has gone from 366k to $518,000. So um you know that's there that that piece that's really not much anything. It's and that's actually driven by we've had so much growth in the system. Um you'd be like great we're getting new customers that should be driving the city's water rates down. Well, it drives the water department's enterprise accounts potential rates down in the system. But for the city actually, because we have to hold 30% of the total cost, as more growth happens, the city has to just pay a ton more money for the whole public fire protection system because it stays at 30%. Um, so it's

statemandated.

Yeah, it's waste water isn't regulated in the same way. Um, that's kind of why, uh, so I think we should do it. Um I think next year is probably the more appropriate time now that we've taken some big increases on those sides of things. Um so and I'm just trying to make every u that doesn't abs like the plow greater steel. I can't say no to that. We're going to need plow greater steel for next year. I can't say no to the salt bid and we're not going to pay the extra x thousand. I can't say no to fuel. Um but this one, you know, it is within our purview to uh to not move forward. I think we should. Um, but I think we should do it with the school and it should be next year. So, are we good with that? All right. In general, um, and also I should note for just council's direction too, um, and councilor Shay and I have already discussed this on a few things, um, that councilors do have line item veto or the council itself. Um so if you know if a counselor is would like to um you know when we do the final budget resolutions to call for um any specific I know we're kind of reading the tea leaves here that's this is not a formal decision on any of this. So if you think the emerald a dashboard needs to go and you want to see a vote on it or needs to move forward you know you could ask for that. Um you could say I think it needs to here's my final reason why and um make your pitch and you know and that could go forward on vice versa. Um, if you want to not see funding for a nonprofit or a percent decrease in nonprofits, the counselors can vote on that to move forward. That's different from the school budget, which is really the council could say, "We're not going to pass your budget, or we'd like to see you directionally in this area, but you can't go line by line by line." It's fortunate for you all, you've already had to do 600 pages with the city side, which is the smaller part of city government, much smaller. I think 11 million to 16 million. Um, but, uh, you know, that's that's the way it is. So, um, now on to one that could kind of go

one way or the other. I really don't know. Um, the short-term rental, um, registration program with, uh, with a fee around, you know, generally targeting around one night's rental, which other cities and towns, I think, including um, have Oxport and others have done. Um, and I'll leave it to Robert to talk a little more about that.

Good evening. Um, so this this one could be a long discussion. I hope not terribly, but um, so there's kind of a two-part uh, discussion here. The first thing is u funding for the software that I would need to even begin to tackle uh, the short-term rental issue. Um, I think the conservative estimate is somewhere like around 500 short-term rentals in town, but uh I've seen upwards of a thousand. It grows every year. I feel questions about short-term rental and what we allow and don't allow on a weekly basis. Um, it's not going to slow down anytime soon. I don't know that I necessarily want to regulate short-term rental. I don't want to regulate it out of existence. I think it's everybody's right to do what they want to do with their property. for sure. Um, but there's if if we want to have any sort of registration to know how many we have, what the impact is on our community and get hard data on that, I actually have to I have to have that that software to be able to do it to to do a registration. Um, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000. Um, that was the bid before. Um,

what's the proposal for the fee per rental? 300. Well, we we're kind of targeting a revenue amount of, you know, it could be 300, but it's $100,000, which I think is actually conservative if we did 300, which is the average nightly rate.

The Yeah. So, when I did the when I first did the workshop uh topic on this back in January, I think uh right around $300 was the one night average uh take-home for our Airbnb owner um for one night's stay. Uh so, if we put the fee at $300, which we did, so they so they could potentially we the city would have one night and they would get every other night. Uh that would be um what 500 times 300 whatever that whatever that I'm not a math major.

So if it's a low end 150 if you're at the high end you're at 300,000. if it's actually, you know, uh that's why we I don't think we want to finalize necessarily the number tonight, but that we're going to move in this direction that conservatively be about $100,000 in revenue that pays I think my recommendation and this was a very tough one for me because I um I'm in general opposed to regulating boom markets in any environment. We've seen a $700 million valuation increase in the city of Ellsworth over the last four years in large measure. That's part of that. That's after a 11-year period of time where there was effectively no increase. I mean, less than hund00 million in the city of Ellsworth. Um, and that's, you know, real money for property owners. Now, in some ways, that's not exactly real money. Um because if you're you know if you're on a camp and your property values in that lakehouse have increased by 30% because there's all these Airbnbs near Acadia and you're not planning on selling your house that's just a higher tax burden for you. But on the flip side of where my father grew up where like nobody people's houses are worth less than when like when he was there um you know you don't have the option to sell your house. There is this could affect the market in some ways. It's going to affect Yeah, it's going to affect the market because there's no hotels in downtown and there's like 12 in downtown area. A lot of them are historic old houses that go past that beat in age Main Street. Um the other thing is um there's like eight that are walking distance to Main Street

Airbnbs. Uh Airbnb booking.com there there's a couple others. I choose to stay with Airbnb because they helped me through COVID. I had very very strict guidelines to go by. There's really no need for any inspection of anybody that books through Airbnb. It's very strict. I I have to have certain things done. If they don't, then it doesn't meet the standards.

And I pay a fee for that. And then on top of that, I pay uh actually uh outrageous property taxes for it. uh d water and sewer and heat. And right now I've got uh some uh workers that have been renting one apartment for going on. It's going to they're going to be there until uh the end of May. So I do provide short-term housing. Yeah.

You know what I mean? For workers that come here. Just to clarify, for hotels in Ellsworth, they pay a fee to the city, right? Correct. Yes. It's it's per per room and we do an annual inspection based on every hotel license that goes.

And this is kind of one of the reasons I've I don't know. I don't want to say come over. My recommendation originally was uh if we're going to do this, let's not just do it to do a a data gathering exercise that needs to generate revenue. Um I'm opposed to any other kind of f further regulation but also the council may want to um there's a lot of people who want more regulation on occupied requirements other pieces but looking at the data seeing that you know the up to a thousand was the latest report like you kind of start to realize you know how does Aadia go from 2 million visitors to four million villitors over a five six year period of time without building enough capacity to hold that oh wow well Ellsworth a substantial portion of the housing real estate market became a hotel to accommodate not just growth in this area but that piece you know to give you a perspective the largest hotel in the state of Maine is like 300 keys so we got a we essentially built a thousand that these have multiple rooms now granted some are you know not all the time so this is and we're not you know they don't have a fee like the other hotels do the state gets 9% I think is a lodging tax so to me that's the other like difficult thing so the state takes 9% of that huge increase the city has to live with less long-term rentals um you know which hurts the availability the affordability of housing going to the schools and the state gets to reap a windfall of revenue from that and the city effectively has to deal with a ton of infrastructure Robert if I yes so um there is an impact um for these rentals that they don't believe that Airbnb or any of the other companies really monitors and that's occupancies and I I don't know if they in their own personal case. If they ask you how many people are sleeping there on in a night and if they uh actually monitor that. Um I know for a fact that

there are some Airbnbs or short-term rentals in town that uh advertise they sleep 20, but our tax card says they have three bedrooms. See, I Yeah, I I have uh one that sleeps six. You show up with seven, you owe me $75 a night. You're you're one of the honest ones. Yeah. Well, I you know, like I said, I've I have had experiences where they pulled up and they they're in a suburban and they keep unloading. like 20 people in a threebedroom. That's a fire.

And I' So that's And I've turned them away. Yeah. And you're there, but there's so many people that don't actually occupy their space. You have the the keyless entry, all of these like ways to not even see the people or to monitor what's going on. And yeah, that's where I' I've seen it more than once doing inspections, not for short-term rental, but just if in my

normal inspection prog process for other things where I see a bed that's in every room of the house other than the bathroom and the kitchen and it's they're so they're they're sleeping people where there isn't prop potentially proper egress. They don't have smoke detectors. That's that's why I want to do inspections. It's not because I I I'm worried that that you know you might not have the proper handrail. That is part of it, but I'm more worried about that there there's too much occupancy in these homes and on city water and sewer if you have too many people there. That's not the real big issue because the city sewer can handle that. My my real concern is for the majority of the houses that are rented, they're on city, they're not on city water and sewer. on a well and sept house on a sleeping 20 people for a weekend or a week if you had family come over. That's one thing. But if you're going to have six months of the year where you have 20 people living in a three-bedroom home, a three-bedroom home is designed to to have the septic capacity for uh six people.

Many of those on our lakes, correct? Right. That have not maybe the best. They already probably don't have the best septic systems. Yeah. They're old and Yeah. So at best we we probably have to work an ordinance out to be able to regulate that. Then now you're talking about regulation and that would compel inspection. Well that's like I said so you know the dead had a registry you know like I said it's

this and this this is in some ways part of of this discussion too for me is directional like the revenues that's one of the reasons we're in tougher shape this year too is Betty and Homestead and some other things we over estimated on revenues. they didn't come in nearly as much this year. We're pulling back our estimations on revenues. So, it is an estimate on the revenue. So, you know, we're putting something conservatively there if we want to move forward with this piece and then that's going to trigger, you know, at the new start of the fiscal year or even sooner that we're have probably the first piece as to what do we want to rightsize that fee for and then the other questions on do we want any other regulations in this market and I think that we'll need some public outreach workshops etc. This is really more directional if we're going to move forward with um this short-term registry program. Um you know, it it needs to pay for itself and all the staff time that we're going to put into this um subject, not just from the code office, but from my time um deputies time, planners time, um ordinance. Uh this is going to be a big project. I think we could be conservative with 100,000. We might, you know, once we get fully gather the data that, you know, might not have to be 300, it could be 150 to still meet that threshold uh for the budget. and then you know we'll have a a long form project. If not um we don't want to move forward with the well there's kind of two options here. We could either not move forward with any cyber fee discussion or that we're directionally want to include that in the budget. Um that's going to be a net uh increase to the budget if you go down to the of $60,000 because um we'd get rid of the 40,000 to pay for the uh of the the program but then we'd also lose $100,000 in revenue. Um so uh or we could choose to uh pay for the uh the registration system and um not have a fee and that's an increase of $100,000 um to this budget. So um that's why we're kind of in our conservative estimation. I think we're going to move forward with this program and get a lot

more dialed in into this enormous um new business that is um you know is currently taxed by the state at 9% and currently generates um revenue. think it does generate property tax increases and we had a good discussion you and I on this really good discussion on we don't know how this will play out even at that level you know talked about you might go to a long-term rental instead of these short-term pieces just to have a little more stability

which is a big gamble in itself because I might get lucky and good tenants I've had bad tenants and that's why I switched because I I had the extra insurance to pay for the repairs. It's an old house and it's within walking distance of downtown. You know, the money I'm making off of it is not profit. It's all go going back to pay for $60,000 of having the roof done. You see, I mean, and I still am not done. And plus, I have to pay my mortgage and $4,000 a year for taxes. I'm not going to gain that if I rent it out because the gamble is uh Oh, great. Now I got to fix a plaster wall. And I I'd like to add

um like I don't want to take anybody's money away from him for you know to be able to maintain the house. Um but I think this also would lead to a bigger discussion in general of other ways to generate revenue for the city other than just tax you know your your property tax people

uh it's a matter of user fees. This is a This piggybacks onto the discussion that I had a year ago about the code offic's uh building permits and plumbing permits and all those fees hadn't been updated in 25 years. For those of you that were here a year ago that remember that um you know there are other ways to generate revenue for the city that just not it's not just property taxes and this is yeah getting their 9%. I think this is one of the things cannabis the same thing you know they're getting I think 12% now they were at nine they don't have to deal with like you know all the regulatory and adhere um so it you know never kind of

seemed fair I'm in support of the registration and um yeah I mean it's I think at the very least it's a start um I think it addresses safety and concerns and also impacts on our, you know, sewer and water, things like that. And we don't know the scale of it, so it's going to help us get a better idea. Um, and then maybe it stops there or maybe folks consider further regulation. I don't know. But, um, I've heard from enough people that this is a really big, you know, concern. And, um, I think it's and it's revenue for the city and, um, we need it, you know. Well, and I would I agree with you and I would add this. This is revenue reflecting um the impact that these are having on the community. This isn't whose arm can we twist to grab money that this is trying to find appropriate ways to have revenue that reflects the impact. same as I think it's a great analogy with um with the permits that if the building permit doesn't cover if the fee for the building permit doesn't cover the cost of that process then the taxpayers are paying that

correct so we we equalize it I think this is incredibly appropo impro appropriate um looking back on my notes from back uh I guess in January when we had this conversation that $40,000 software eliminates the need for a dedicated staff person that was originally anticipated for this program. Correct. I think the registrations are very important for that um compliance and consistency with hotel rooms that there is the inspection. Um I I think it's very appropriate. The a question I have is that night um one was budgeted the other wasn't. And did we equalize it for that net 60?

Yes. So, it is both the revenue and are we going to stay with that $100,000 revenue and $40,000 expense as a conservative reasonable? So, is the $60,000 additional revenue in the budget yet or not? No, the the $100,000 revenue is in the budget and the $40,000 expense is in the budget. So, that if we take that out, that would be the adjustment to 60,000. Yeah, it would be the 60,000 minus that. It would be 100,000 minus the 40,000. So that's why you would add the 60,000 back into I thought you said they weren't in the budget.

They are in the budget. We up I updated the budget today. So those numbers are in the budget here showing the proposed budget of the 29. So that is in the budget. So if 100,000 revenue and 40,000 expenses are already in the budget, why are we adding 60,000 to the budget? No, that's if you get rid of this. Let's say you say we don't want to do the option is keep it as is or Yeah. So if you keep it as is with the 100,000 revenue and the 40,000 expense, you're at the 9.51. If we get rid of it, then we would add it in here and then you're at 10.

So you're looking at adding and the Okay, it the check off was going in the opposite direction I thought it was. So I support leaving it in. That's the decision that we need for tonight. I think along the lines of what Patrick was saying, the rest of the details we work through in in future ones, but I think we need to get a handle on where they are, um, what kinds there are, and again, make sure that there's a a basic safety inspection for them like we do for a dollar. Honestly, I I support the number being at around 100,000 for a conservative estimate because I don't believe you're going to get 100% capture the first year or ever,

to be honest. Uh, and so if we have 500 of them, that would be that at $300 that'd be 150,000. So 100,000. So not 100% capture. Okay. So if there's more than 500, it'll be about 100,000 I think. Not that we're inviting non-compliance. No reality. I think the reality the reality living in the code world, the reality is is you never get full compliance on anything. I I'd say yeah, I would I'd say this is kind of like taxes in general, property taxes, you know, they're also our firm. So we did a big test drive of the system through open gov which we've actually been very happy with on the procurement and other places. I you know we could continue forward with this through the larger government contracts to lock in

that but I I you know as always um I'd want to look at other systems. I actually have a couple emails with Robert on this this week before we decide on that and that that'd be another number. Again, a lot of these things we we're quoting out um but we did talk to them in detail and also their system can allow for a lot of the other regulatory side of things too. So, literally having a system that has, you know, one of the top-notch short-term rental regulation or um registration systems in the country for this type of thing, you kind of learn how you can fee, you know, is it um you had a couple there's a bunch of different ways you could structure that fee. If you own, you know, um, a dozen of these types of facilities, that may be a different than if it's, you know, you're just renting it out for 30 days, 30 days or more. Um, but if you're renting it out, you know, short term for x amount more, there's different ways to structure this. And then the regulatory piece, too. And and they did have um, all right, because I asked that question about the compliance. There are companies that, um, you know, can really do the data scraping uh, to do the ensure the compliance. To your point, you'll never get to that 100%. But there's also a fairness issue that, you know, we're not just going to hope that people come in and there's no, you know, great the folks that decide to pay it, okay, the folks that don't, but like the lodging tax, folks might try to skirt the lodging tax. Um, and you know, that's illegal. Um, so, uh, so they don't do it usually.

I'm not going to do that. No, especially not in a televised. No. No. My one of my colleagues there in the audience and she going, "Yeah, there's no way he's going to." Yeah. I just No. No. I it it it I did I tried to do long-term rental and it didn't you know I luckily I didn't have to go through the you know the procedure of here you're you've been served get out you know and then 90 days later you know 60 days later give them another one and then give them another one that all tags up you see what I mean and then once they do get out

a lot of um as we're going through this discussion, I keep going back to my time apartment hunting in Bar Harbor and the sheer amount of luck I had because the first place I looked that was someone renting out part of their house for in the off season for $600 a month in the summer. that place was was $1,200 a week and that was how that lady paid her mortgage. So,

we're so if we can just get a good picture of what the short-term rentals are, it'll help us better inform a discussion which it seems we need to have because we need people to be able to live in Ellsworth, start a family, and a key part of that is affordable housing. And it just comes down to we currently just need some data. So let's I'm in support of this as a invaluable first step.

Yeah, I think this is kind of the the baseline to kind of move from. You know, I I hate messing with markets. I think Bar Harbor is an interesting example. They've really regulated and I think in some reasons the reason we have a new Hilton hotel here um is because they're not allowing it on the island. So we are benefiting that's a huge and they've regulated and the islands regulated these areas pretty extremely, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's affordable to live on the island now either. To be fair, Bur Harbor is is dead in February because there isn't a year- round population anymore really.

So, how do you I I think I think this initial step isn't, you know, it's a pretty reasonable amount. Do the data collection and we can decide and there's pros and cons of regulating yourself out of business growth. Um, and and there's other studies that show that um, you know, some folks who've gone heavier in the regulation devalue homes so much because if you're going to make homes more affordable, that's kind of what you have to do. you have to regulate the market so that the housing prices go down so people can afford them. Um, and that actually can offset tax revenue to the city to such an extent where you regulate it to generate fees by so much but then the cost of housing goes down so much that your valuation disappears. But those are all for a later day. I don't think that this kind of thing $300 a year.

Um, all right. Well, we'll keep that pencile in for now. No change, no adding of the additional 60,000 and we'll kind of keep there. I think those are the um Thank you, Robert. Thank you. Good discussion. Oh, no. He's going to stay for dangerous buildings. Oh, yeah. This is kind of this is kind of a joint. Um he thought you get away. So, I think we can get through this one pretty quickly. if you don't mind, Robert, I'll you know, and maybe Sue, why don't you come up? Um, we had this in code this year. It was one of the things we uh we end up think we might need. Um, but

you get a breather. No, he's got to stay moral support. I'm going to make him I'll leave it over to you to talk. Do you want to talk about it or do you want me to give kind of a uh Well, the You mean the dangerous building? Yeah. And I guess that one's really we're going to put that into code or sorry into tax

under tax. Yeah. Because generally what's happening is there are buildings that are foreclosed and for whatever reason they're in very bad shape um considered dangerous and we demolish them. Um although we had that one was not foreclosed. I guess that's the that's the issue there. But um but it's still a building which apparently uh well obviously comes under tax. I'm taxing it. So there's discussion about if if code says it's got to go, who pays for it? And that apparently uh their tax because then we can add that amount to their account so that if it ever forecloses uh we can recover that once it's sold. Now, having said that, even though this particular one that we're talking about wasn't foreclosed, we did send a bill out to the owners to pay for that. They have not responded at all. Um, so that's where we're at. Robert didn't have the money to pay for it and neither did I. So now we're just trying to move forward and and see where uh in the future where we can put this so that there's not this question of going back and forth if you're paying for it now you're paying for it. I mean just

we did also the first year I was here uh uh demolish uh 16 central street which was city own right. Yeah that was city owned. The roof had fallen in and was a dangerous building. Did we reallocate for this one for the overage for code on danger on that on the overage expense? I think we did. I thought we did. So, this is in some ways to kind of rectify that not happening again. Like, right, this is an expense. I think this kind of goes back to something else a lot in the past. Oh, this unexpected expense, we have to shut this building down. This council ordered us to do it.

Oh, we don't have a budget line item for it. Just well, I don't know. put it here and then it blows the budget and don't catch it until like no we got to anticipate these are going to go forward um have an actual GL account um that I can pull from budget for it appropriately and then over the long term it actually should be somewhat neutral and we'll talk in the next section because the money would come back.

Yeah, I have a question. So you said you'd sent a bill to the owners, but my understanding under the statute is ne the following tax year, if they haven't paid that bill, then we can it's a special assessment that would go on to their their tax bill for that year. And then if it and that would be part of what's due and if they don't pay, then that is part of the cost that would be foreclosed. Because I I know I'm working with some in my in my job with some communities that yeah, my understanding is if you city has to incur cost to to do it, you do send a bill, but then if they don't pay it as of April 1st, that following year, it can be assessed as a special assessment against them or you can take them to court. Um but I think the in this so I just is that

well I mean I that I don't know about that part of it. Um, we've not had this. I've not had to deal with this before. I will say that sounds like, um, that makes sense to me that it should be that way. Uh, but I'd have to do a little more research. It sounds like you have done the research. Yeah, I mean, it's in the statute. I think maybe just confirm with legal but my understanding is is that you send them the bill if it's not paid following tax year it can become a special assessment against the property and then that's how eventually

the municipality can recuperate the costs either they are able to pay the assessment or it forecloses um and obviously that's not what the city's trying to do but that's that's the mechanism that legislator has created for cities and towns to recuperate the cost um I I wonder if that is something that needs to go through assessing. Maybe not. Well, we'll pencil that in. I think um yeah, that that was was my kind of just general expectation is that yeah, we put a lean on it, but I know it's not exactly like that. It's like a separate process. So, it would you mean it wouldn't be so much a lean, it's just like you get your tax bill plus hey 20,000 bucks. We had to

Well, right. Like right now our tax bills when they go out if if people haven't completely paid the prior years it shows on that tax bill that they've got a pass due amount. So it it can be I can I physically know how to go in and add something like that to somebody's account and it will show up on their next bill. But is that the right thing to do? That's what I've got to find out. You know what? And to save the city money, you could also ask me municipal association. Oh, I always go to MMA legal first. Of course, you Google. So, yeah, go to them. I bet this is a common issue. I bet you they can provide guidance.

Yeah, I will. I will definitely do that. Yep. Perfect. So, yeah. And I can't tell you how many times we've had conversations about where it should be and why are you putting this in my budget? And I was like, I don't remember why. But we figured out I think this is the right place. We got it. And um

the uh maybe this can kind of blend into the which I think it is somewhat related. We might want to change the name of this new revenue line on tax acquired properties that there's an RFP out right now. The city hasn't done this in a while and um some of the uh tax acquired or foreclosed upon properties. Some the city owns outright. Uh some they own uh in foreclosure. But, you know, we can only do the Supreme Court ruling and the right thing to do is um we're only going to get the tax revenue plus of all of our staff time, legal fees, etc. Um but we're moving forward with this RFP to do that. We could expect some revenue. I think this is probably the one of the only things in the budget that might go in the black. Um it's kind of hard to estimate at this point, Sue. I know before we actually have the real estate agent here

um the total amount of taxes that are owed um on these areas to get back plus our fees and whatnot. Um

yeah, I still need to get in um I I've got I've got my book pretty much completed with all the properties. Uh but there are some that may have sorans that I don't have that information on. So, I'll have to look those up there. Not a lot of them, though. But, um, and then, um, employee time. I got to try and figure out how to how to estimate that and include that in the sales. But pretty much we're really just waiting to for it to finish and timewise and figure out who we're going to contract with. So, and then it's not an immediate thing because then we have to once we get that contract, we have to give the prior owners 90 days notice.

90 days. Yeah. 90 days that the properties are going to be going up for sale. Uh, and that's I mean 90 days provided I know where to send the notices immediately. There are some people I have no idea where they are. Um, so we'll have to do some searching there. Um, but then do you know what the final like or the total owed on these foreclosed properties is? I don't I did not add that up. I mean I it's easy for me to get I can get that for you for Mondays.

Yeah, I think we'll we'll go in there. We'll um yeah, for our next uh discussion on this, you know, I'll I'll put a you know be probably won't be a lot in the black. I don't want to overestimate on this one just because the time the 90 days um we're only getting the tax revenue back and plus a little bit. It's not a huge amount. It's we're not looking like we're going to be able to fund it person. It's really not. No, no. Basically, we got to recoup the cost, right? Because that's what's happening. We've been it's we budget money to to provide the services. These properties are like, oo, so we're not making anything.

No, we're not. Um it's and if we did sell a piece of property for more than we're going to do the right, you know, we have to follow the law and do the right thing, right? But it's it's still going to be a negative because the money's already been spent and we're and we're kind of behind the the whole thing because uh there when I first started we had some properties, foreclosed properties that we had sold and it they all of them ended up uh in court

because the prior owners then came back and even though it had been sold and we thought everything was done, they came back and uh wanted their property back, ended up with a lot of legal fees. It ended up costing us more and partly because we sold them before the fiveyear um before five years had gone by. And at that point, they legally can come back and and try and get the properties. After five years, it would have been cityowned, not tax acquired anymore. But and that was why we were waiting five years so that we wouldn't keep having to go to court on these because it seemed like for a little while everyone we tried to sell the owner, prior owners would come back at us. So, um, now that is not an issue. They took that five-year thing away. And so when something forecloses, we can give the prior owner 90 days and then put it up for sale.

Yeah. And then through the new statute, as soon as you what any net proceeds that would go back to the former owner, we then that by that confirming their receipt of that that waves the liability from anyone coming after the city in the future. So that that is an improvement in the new statue. Yeah. And they they do need to sign off on that and yeah that that's safer and it gets these properties back in the tax roles too. So you know it's a net neutral for the city but then it's these property and then if it's housing it could be more housing. If it's commercial it could be put to use. So

So how many properties are on the list? Well, I've got about um 25, but I can tell you that a good portion of them are technically foreclosed, but but the owners have reached out to me and are making payments and we have an arrangement that they get it paid to a zero balance that we will deed it back to them. They are interested in keeping it. I mean, those people I really work want to work with. Right. Good.

So, what I'm going to do, which I my plan is to bring this binder in at some point and let the council see it, but I'm going to pull those ones out just so that they're not even considered. Um, but so I don't know. There may be there may be eight maybe that are like that um just off the top of my head. So, okay. So, what's the decision we need to make tonight? It says determine budgeting and accounting approach.

I think I can kind of pull this back into my especially with some of the the numbers we look into here. I'm going to do a very conservative, you know, 20 30,000 in revenue. Um get to kind of a figure that I feel like we'll make in this fiscal year. Um hopefully we get a little more. Um but just to have that'll be one of the things that pulls things into the black. Um but just to make sure you know council's aware of that. Um so that'll be one area where we'll try to pull a little cost savings in and um and maybe we even budget a little for once we figure out the timing on that Patrick on some of these things to get the lean or the um dangerous buildings to get that money back um as well. So

um that kind of is the is the major ones. I also have, you know, the change log. Ashley did a spectacular job, you know. Um, done with me, right? I won't. Okay. Thank you.

Encourage counselors to to look through it. You know, a lot of this is is is smaller things. Families first. We added the um information that you're missing your packets to the count. Um things like we add the one increase the revenue for cannabis. We increased to 40,000 because we forgot about the medical re uh recreational. I had a little bit of a panic today with Sarah because I noticed we're going to talk on Monday to for the final piece of this with the overlay and we're getting to the end of like how long that application period's been open and I didn't think we had any applicants. I was like did we just do all of this work? Um all of this work and like I have to reduce increase the budget by $40,000 because we're not going to get that revenue and like all the work but I think we got five or six that come in. We don't know.

Six

um six. So that will be over the three threshold. We look we're like like pending a council approval on Monday. We likely will have to do the lottery system. We likely can count on that $40,000 in revenue, but we did increase the revenue there. Um you know, it's it's really a lot more smaller things. It just Ashley has kept up on every single one. But if you don't see something that you really felt like you wanted included or um or changed, uh please let me know. You know, there's smaller things like on uh fire equipment, the maintenance repair needed to be 15 um uh increased by 15,000. Um some other pieces like that I will do now that we have some of the larger discussions at least directionally. Uh I'll be able to pencil these in and really do my final left to right of these 560 pages. You know, looking really for any non-discretionary just out of the basis conversation too. I think I'm going to reach out to department heads and um you know asked to dig deep a little bit. Um you know there are some areas that are you know we got I think was 220,000 and because Twilight dug deep to kind of make sure Econ Dev came in on initial discussions low but that's really restricted funding. I can't we can't use that 220,000 in surplus for other things. We need to use it for economic development related activities like potentially the downtown restrooms. That's not something that we can um those won't be areas uh that but there may be a couple tiff eligible expenses and you know I can look uh for those areas uh but I might reach out I will reach out to department heads and you know I've already talked to our comm's director on that 10,000 for the website. Um and she said you know it's we really need one. It's having a modern website and our new branding but she said I could we could live with that. Like we can keep going. she's doing a great job with what it is now and maybe we keep that first in the deck for next year. Um, I think one of the hard things about this is going to be is like, you know, I'm looking at for

the non-discretionary of uh or the discretionary I should say, which has already been cut down by me going through the past budget and like saying no to absolutely everything to try to bring down um you know the much larger pieces of the budget, the school side, public safety, public works, and you know the increases are all in debt service benefits. Um, you know, so it's really hard. I can't um I can't open up a a union contract um to change those things around. That is, you know, as you mentioned, chair lines, we don't want to um reduce force in any areas, but that's the only way to get cost savings in some of those um union departments would be a um rift. The other areas I can look on, but they're the much smaller areas of government um and you're not going to find it. So you're trying to pull down the larger expenses of government by you know by slimming down the smaller parts of government which has a basic numerator denominator problem. Um so I I'm not hugely hopeful that you know we'll do what we can do. Um there will be and I often think too like we're there's been an enormous amount of turnover in the organization over the last four or five years. I think it was 25% the year before I arrived. Um, you know, I think it was about 15% my first year. We got it down to 10 the second year. I'm hoping that we'll stay around that level. Um, and a lot of people are brand new. Um, and like to think that we can, you know, cut the planning department's training budget. Um, when they haven't been here for two years, uh, one of them is probably eight or nine months. Um, and oh, by the way, in the fastest growing city of Maine, we only have two people in planning, Bar Harbor has five. Um, so there's this like I think there's a, you know, there's a little bit of a discrepancy of like what is where the increases are. Um, you know, $400,000 just in debt service for the roads that we, you know, they were needed and that was a ton of

deferred maintenance. Health insurance is up 300 grand. Um, the public fire protection a couple hundred,000. Fire department's up and that's not adding new people. It's up $300,000 um this year. The police department's up, you know, 150 or thousand or so. Um, and again, those are areas that there's really not, unless I can lie to you and say the fire department's not going to cost that much, so we're going to reduce their budget by $150,000. Um, and then they actually spend or we have to not have fire protection as much of a way. We can't do that. Um, so so it's got a little tough road to sled. I I mean I'm not hugely confident that through a you know discretionary on the non-union side what can go forward we can eliminate all you know travel or any kind of those pieces Sarah and I will look at our own budgets um you know and that's uh and I'll come back at the the the next we're going to do a special kind of capital improvement plan workshop um plus we'll have a final conversation on this prior to the uh the budget meeting to see See if I can trim this down a little more.

Thanks for all the hard work done a lot of work for this and it's not easy. No. No. Um but Ashley, what is the $45,000 council adjustment? That is when I was updating the budget today. Um we had a salt bid come in and so I needed to raise that salt line up by 10,000 and the payment for the loader by 35,000. Okay. So it's not that like I I don't think we made a decision tonight. No, no, no. Those are just so you know that that those have to be added in the budget. So that's what the amount would be. Got it. It was just the counselor adjustment had me concerned. I don't remember doing that.

That was at the very end of today and I was like, "Oh no, now I hear you." Okay, this the setup where we can see the instant Yeah. This is nice scenario playing is really nice. All it all Nate. Yeah, it's fabulous. Thank you all. So, we will have one more meeting at some point. Yep. Before the um the final meeting at the uh the June um June vote. June council meeting. Yep. June 4th is the meeting. Yep. June 4th is the workshop. Oh, for this Y. Yeah, that's what we scheduled. Yeah. Okay. June 4th. June 4th.

Yeah. We'll have Ebony send out meeting invites and everything. So, okay. Well, I'll miss you all on future Thursdays. Ma'am, did you I will you want to say anything? Yeah. And just I'll just note normally for workshops we don't have public comment. We reserve those for our monthly council meetings. Um but I appreciate you coming. Apologies for interrupting learner. No, I ongoing ongoing learner, too. Exactly. So, I appreciate you coming and please, if you could just say your name. Um, and my name is Karen Arin. I'm a resident of Ellsworth. I live on the Bangar Road.

Excellent. I'd love to have more police up there, please, because they speed like nobody else. Okay, I'm not kidding. I've had three accidents at the end of my garage at my yard and they were not mine. And I'll just ask that um we for all public comments we keep it to three minutes or less and that could be relevant to the budget discussion.

Well, on the topic of Airbnbs, I've heard quite a few people that do their Airbnb as a way to support themselves in their retirement. And I'm not talking about that man on the council, okay? I'm talking about there are people in Bah Harbor who do it. It's their only income. They are retired. They cannot work. And if you end up taxing them to death, I mean, the state's already taxing them how much? 9%.

Yeah. Do that some more. They'll have to close down their Airbnb because it won't be worth it because they have to clean it themselves and they have to, you know, repair it themselves most of the time, especially if they're retired. They don't have any other income. So, on the topic of trees, yeah, let's tag those trees. Okay. Why put it off? Get the kids to tag the trees. It's a great science project. Come on. Okay.

Yep. And if we need that much help, let's get get a grant. There's got to be an Arbor grant somewhere. Okay. And then Airbnbs, if they have 20 people in their house, I'm pretty sure their insurance is going to have a problem with it. You know, you have to have insurance for these things. Yes. Um, the more regulating you do, they're going to have to close up dangerous buildings. I mean, wouldn't it be kind of good to ask the contractors around the area what to do with them, how to do it? How much it costs the school budget? I'm sorry. There's 900 kids in one building to one nurse. That's a That's a hazard. That's an accident waiting to happen. And seriously, let's get some Let's get some fresh blood to our school system.

Get some what? Well, they have these three What is it? Those machines that make 3Ds. They have five of those, you know. Do we need five 3D machines? Oh, okay. You're checking 3D printing. There's There's so many ways to cut their budget. so many ways. And you don't have to trim their people, okay? You really don't. You just need to use their people more adequately. I'm a former edte. Use your edte better, not just a warm body. Thanks. Thank you.

I also had one more thing and maybe if you could just put this in live. Um, you know, I know councelor Lions, we were at the Chamber of Commerce and recently I did big presentation. I think I did it for the finance committee too. if you want to see some of that data just to really I was like wow we're just experiencing so much growth in the data um from valuation increases from housing production increases from Hilton owner suites hotels from there's another big one I just heard about that um you know I somewhat of a rumor so I'm not going to say it now but um I'm excited about and that honestly that happens every couple weeks just somebody like wow Ellsworth is exploding that makes sense for the fastest growing city in Maine um and when you have this kind of growth you have these huge pressures on in the system. Uh but I really took some time to and with now uh you know we're able to do a lot of regressionary kind of analysis of data sets and we have data going back to the late 90s on permit growth in the city and valuation growth on everything that's come through here. Um so I did some analysis on that data and you know there's about half a million dollars a year and if you could just add um negative500,000 into this um Let's do negative 50,000. See what happens.

No. 500. 500. Sorry. Save my joke, right? We'll give you a reset if you want. No, I'll just I'll pass. Um, so you see what happens when um, so you know, half a million dollars that's going to be and that's new growth. I'm not talking about valuation increase. This is actually maybe you could flip that around.

So you're talking property tax increases, not valuation increases. Yeah, I'm talking just new property, whether it's commercial, residential, all those things together, you know. Um, and that's we're getting about 500,000 per year every year. Um, and you know, you some of that's sort of interesting like a new substation by Versent 55 million. It was probably our biggest one that's coming. That was a couple years ago. Um, it's a taxable property. Um, the uh, you know, we have the Hilton Home to Suites. We had the the big Bates property that came in. Um we have two new uh tractor dealerships that are coming in. We have um you know potentially hundreds of of new residential units. So this is actually a really good growth profile. Um and when you and but this all doesn't come in until the commitment. So when we made a big investment this this fiscal year um uh and carrying into next year in our assessing department to kind of keep up with that because we hadn't sent tax bills out in probably a decade. I thought it was five years, but folks said that they hadn't seen it in much longer than that. Um, so you know, we're but we're also getting better at just analyzing the growth. I think you were here for some of the finance committee presentation with the new consultant we have been assessing. Um, and so that's that doesn't account for that. That while this is the rate with really no increase, um, we haven't factored in the valuation increase. We pulled that out of the budget process this year because that's separate. we want to just talk about like what the city spending and the school spending and the county spending increases are. Um but that's kind of the bread and butters of cities that are growing. Um is you know that's what's going to keep services as they expand to be able to mitigate the tax impacts um not just through a valuation increase uh but through increased business growth that can you know truly help the existing taxpayers pay less or at least pay less of an increase um in the system. So,

and by improving our water treatment system to bring it up to better standards, that's just going to be a big advertising. Say, "Hey, we're making improvements to everything here." Business charge. Yeah. I mean, but it's tough, too, because at 500,000, while it looks okay here, um to come back, you know, that doesn't that pretty much covers the benefit increases for workers comp, health insurance is up 17%.

So, it seems like, oh, great. Um, it would be a lot worse uh if we were in that scenario, but we got to I don't know, blame Twilight. She needs to bring in like maybe six or seven million dollars in new business, new valuation. Yeah. Get some get No pressure. Get some more machine shops and fabric, you know, machine shops, baking stuff, you know.

No. And oh no, I should on the flip side, a big thank you to Twilight and Sarah and Ashley. They've been working overtime on the budget. Um, and Nate, of course, and Jason who let us borrow Nate again this year. I'm really hoping that the new finance director and the great team that we have that we can and do a little more knowledge transfer on that, especially considering we're not doing an IT um ad for them. That maybe my kind of internal smart goal is to finalize the system so we don't have to rely so much on our deputy IT director in this budget process. I mean, he's got hundreds of hours into this this year, especially without the finance director here. Um so we uh have a great team. Um it's not a huge team and they are uh you know gosh we're flat out all the time and um really I know people love this city. They see the growth opportunities here. Um as we say we take pride in this place and uh we take care of it together. So thank you to the council too. This whole process you know it's been long line by line but that's what you signed up for whether you knew it or not. Um and it will be over soon. So,

I was in this for the glory, too. The name and the big lights. Where's the glory come? Next one. I didn't sign up for the glory. Sorry. I need better.