Finance & Debt Oversight Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. The monthly meeting of finance debt and budget oversight committee, will come to order. The clerk will call the roll.

Sorantu? Here. Driscoll? Here. Gaddis? Here. Hobbs? Jones? Here. Martinez? Four present.

Thank you. Let us begin with, the finance department. Thank you. Good afternoon, Director.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Sorantu, Vice Chairman Driscoll. I'm happy to be here today reporting on the March revenue and expenditures. Joined today at the table by our tax commissioner, John Zavisha, accounts commissioner, Thomas Buckley, and our purchasing commissioner, Natalie Bronagh. We will jump right into the reports, I'll turn it over to commissioner Zavisha for an update on income

tax. Afternoon.

I'll start on Page two of the report

with the 2026 year to date numbers so far. At this point for the year to date, again, it's early in the year. We're less than 16% of income tax collected. For the month of March, withholding was down about $232,000 Business just shy of 8 or just over $8,000 and individual was a little over 20 in We're growth the

We're

We're in

seeing

5,000,000 million dollars in a single month. So although we are slightly $1,600,000 behind last year's pace or $640,000 April will definitely be our deciding factor of the direction of how the year is going so far. As I continue on to Page three of the report, right now, this puts us at approximately $244,600,000 which is slightly behind pace. But again, at this early stage, concerns at this point, but we'll definitely see next month. What will end up happening is your for net profits, your first quarter estimates will be due.

Withholding quarterlies, April 30 will be their first payment of the year. And then not to forget that for the way withholding works is each month is paid. So the March payments were actually the February withholding. So at this point, we actually only have two months of withholding numbers at this point. So a

little behind pace compared to last year, but early in the process. And the goal for fiscal year twenty twenty six is how much in total tax collections that we're projecting?

That is and two forty six point five. Okay.

Thank you. You want to comment on the stacks unit IRS collections? Sure. IRS units two

to

And to able a

And Every individual needs to receive a sixty day notice in regards to that. So whether we've taken the case to court before, had previously assigned it to an outside attorney, or just haven't taken it to court as of yet, all of those accounts need to be redone with the proper wording and given the time frame. That's part of the reason why their assessments are down and with assessments being down so far this year, that's where the collections, like I said, about 60,000 behind. Again, on that one, you're comparing that to last year's 6,200,000 six 200,000 was the second best collection year, ever for that unit, that's been in existence for twenty five years. So, going after strong numbers from last year, but again, thinking that once this gets set, no concerns about that, not being able to get up to 6.2% again this year.

Sure.

Kind of like winning the Heisman two years in a row, which I think did happen. Okay. Anything else under tax?

No. Again, like I said, so it's just early in the year for us.

Okay. Alright. Director?

Thank you. Moving into the overall general fund revenues on Page four, you'll see that total collections, through the first quarter at 61,700,000 or 16.9% of budget. Looking through the report, just highlight a few areas. We did receive the first half property tax settlements, that are reflected there, towards the top of the report at 50.7%. So in line with, the budget estimate.

License and permit revenue running a little bit ahead at 30%. You might recall, I think, last month we mentioned, there's a one time permit that comes in of about 350,000, that was received already this year, causing that positive variance. In the intergovernmental category, we do have several areas here that are either, semi annual or quarterly, and we haven't seen those collections yet. That would be in the homestead and rollback area with, some of our JEDS revenues as well as casino revenues. Local government funding though does come in monthly and that's been on track with the budget estimate so far for the through the first three months.

Charges for service revenue overall, at 16.5%. We do have some quarterly items here, like the cable franchise fees that we wouldn't expect until next month's report. And then in the EMS and BLS transport, we do have monthly, billing that comes in for transports, but we also receive a one time payment from the county. That one we haven't received yet. That's why we're at 13% in that budget estimate.

Court fees and fines, right in line at 25.6%. And then as you look through the rest of the report, the other transfers that come in, to the general fund from CIP, we make that at year end. And then the transfer in from the toll lot, is reflected there at about 30% of the budget estimate.

Question, director. When does the EMS and BLS transport fees, when are they paid to us?

The, billing that there's some that comes in monthly through, billing. There's also a one time payment that comes in from the county. I'll have to check when we received that last year, but I would expect it relatively soon.

All right. Next.

The next, two pages, reflect the general fund expenditures, by category and by department. As you look at Page five, you'll see overall labor expenditures are at 91,500,000, or 23.5 percent of the budget. So just under that 25% benchmark for the year. Overall labor costs are about 255,000 ahead of budget on a year to date basis. We do have a variance in fire overtime.

We did have a class that graduated at the February, which will help with recall overtime. And as you look at expenditures from January, February, and March, we've seen those start to come down, a little bit. Other labor expenses, those are one time contractual stipends. So at 68 of the budget, at this point of the year is not unusual. Supply and service costs, both running under budget on a year to date basis. The capital item that you see in the general fund is, for the purchase of multi function printers. So as departments are replacing those, you would see that reflected there. Again, overall, where we would expect to be at this point in the year.

Is it unusual or not to have fire over time with the class that just graduated, at 35%?

I think the fact that, there was a class in the academy, earlier in the year and late last year, and there would have been men or women pulled off the line to do training in the class. There would have been some recall over time with the class graduating that should, hopefully help with the recall over time. Okay. Alright. Okay. Anything else? No. The general fund expenditure by department is on page six as well as, the revenue and expenditures for all funds. I'd be happy to take any questions before we move to CIP and ARPA.

Urban Beautification is at 41%. Why do you think that?

Urban beautification, that would include encumbrances that they have set up the year for their demolition program. So it's funding that they've encumbered and will spend throughout the year.

Okay. Great. Okay. Alright. I don't see any questions from members yet. So go right

ahead. I will just mention that we did put our March capital improvement project report out there. For members, it does include all of the, twenty twenty six approved projects are now reflected in the report with the passage of the budget. I'd be happy to take any questions.

Questions on CIP? Okay. I don't see any. Okay. Anything else?

Just the last piece to mention, our ARPA report there, one page report by project is you should have it in front of you. At ninety three percent of the total budget expended at this point.

Okay, all right. Any questions from members on ARPA? Okay, all right. Anything else in addition?

No further updates from finance.

Okay. All right. Any updates from purchasing or anything? Okay. Dan, any updates you have? Things are going fairly well?

Yes.

Okay. Great. All right. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next,

we'll have a collection update from Department of Public Utilities. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Director. Good afternoon, Chief.

Thank you, Chair Sorantu, for having me here today as I present our monthly water bill collection update. Going forward, I apologize for not giving those copies to you electronically. I will submit those to you, you'll have them this afternoon, but going forward I'll get them to you sooner. So our team has created the monthly report that you see before you now. The report provides a monthly and year to date snapshot of our installment plans and current collection figures.

Our goal is to provide consistent and comparable information for you to view. Per the committee's request from the last meeting, we've included under the utility installment plans 2026 chart the running total of how how much has been collected and in total, a chart to show the outstanding balances for residential customers, outstanding balances and commercial and high strength industrial customers. Currently, we have a total of a little over 5,200 residential payment plan accounts. In the month of March, we collected over $571,921 on those accounts, bringing the year to date collection total to a little over 1,555,350. Our team has been working on updating our process for nonpayment and water shutoffs.

We are resuming the process of turnoff for our commercial accounts. Because we have not shut off residential water in some time, which we are making plans to do hopefully soon, We want to make sure that we're developing a quality program that is fully communicated to council and to all of our residents. We want to take a responsible and phased approach. We will be providing a comprehensive customer assistant and financial support overview in addition to our plan. We are scheduled to present this plan to council May 13.

Our goal is helping our customers to be successful in paying their bills.

Have a question on the chart, upper left hand corner, total scheduled to be paid $6,322,000 What does that represent? Is that people that have enrolled in a payment plan?

Yes, for the residential. On the residential side, yes.

And would that be just during the month of March or is it since January 1?

That's based on their payment plan that they're currently on based on whatever that increment is. So on those nine zero six residential payment plans that we have, we have $6,300,000 scheduled to be paid back through those installment plans.

Okay, all right. Councilperson Gavis.

Thank you. Thank you for this. This is really, really nice. This this I'd love to see this as a standard for other things. I'd love to see this as in code compliance and anywhere else we're collecting fees and fines. My question is, on the top it says for residential and commercial, does that mean our industrial or all current, nobody owes back water bills for our residential or for our industrial customers?

Commercial does include those industrial

Okay I just All see it at

grouped into one. What this represents is those that are currently on some type of installment plan with us.

Okay. I seen down at the bottom it was broken up by industrial, commercial, and residential. So therefore I thought maybe there weren't residential. So thank you for the clarity. No. Do we have a numbers on I love how we have the data but do we have how many residents and how many commercial are are have back bills to pay? Like do we have the totality number?

We do and we will be ready to present those on May 13.

Okay, that's that's wonderful to hear. Thank you. Thank you for your hard work. This is really outstanding, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank

you. I appreciate that and I will share that with the team. They've been working very hard. We have a number of different finance and accounting charts and best ways to communicate and to show you exactly what we're doing. We're working on those and that's why we were hoping to be able to present this month but we need a little bit more time and we still have other things that we're trying to get on board.

We've been working with Raph Tilis who did our rate study and we'll be doing the next modeling for the water. Along with that they presented some tools that other utilities around the country that they work with are utilizing. So we're reviewing those now and seeing if maybe that's something that would fit. So when you ask different questions about well what happens if you try this program or what if you take out this affordability piece or you want to get to the 300, we'll be able to show that a lot faster. If we sit down even one on one we can put the numbers in and then give you a graph and show you what those looks like.

So that's what we're looking for in the horizon. So bear with us.

Thank you Councilperson. Before I get to Vice Chair Driscoll I want to make sure we understand. In the middle of the page, outstanding affordability as of March '26. Residential customers, we've collected $10,208,000 Commercial, almost $4,700,000 and industrial, about 943,000. So year to date, or since we started the collection program, restarted it, we've collected $15,000,008.46. Am I reading that right?

That's correct.

Yes. Okay. Alright. Okay. Let's go to Vice Chair Driscoll.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanna echo the statements made about the presentation here. I think it's good. I just want to be sure I understand this. The column total scheduled to be paid represents people who have agreed to a payment plan, the sum of all those accounts. So we have not actually received $6,000,000 But if those people who have agreed to a payment plan continue to pay into that payment plan, that is the total that will be collected. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Is there any interest or fines associated with that? Or is that just stretching out the amount of money that they owed over a defined period of time?

It is stretching out the amount of money they owed over a period of time. With that they agree to some type of installment plan that works with their budget. They get set up on that installment plan with the city of Toledo. And then that helps them make a payment to not over to not only cover that back amount owed, but also help them to pay the water bill that is still a keynote.

But we don't penalize them. There's no like interest or No, penalty associated or Okay. Do we do that at all for any of our water customers, commercial, industrial either?

We have done late fees and have had that as you'll see when we kind of present our plan for moving forward and getting out of that moratorium that we had. We are gonna make some recommendations that you know the goal is to help people get in the habit of paying their utility bills and to do that we want to make sure we have really accessible programs installment plans for them to get on payment plans. As a part of that we will recommend that maybe those late fees get waived and makes it a little more affordable and helps them pay those bills on time. So we have that all as a part of some of the research that we've done through other municipalities and some of the recommendations. Then of course as our team's been looking at different scenarios and calculating those against our budgets etcetera and our current rate models, we'll have all that information for you.

Okay. And so when so this outstanding affordability chart, when did so you said collected $16,000,000 almost. What's the time period? When did we start when did that ticker start running on that?

With the affordability programs?

I

could get that date for you. I don't know off the top of my head.

Because that's a year to date figure.

No, it's not

a year to date figure. It's just like a running balance total. Now if we can modify this if you think it'd be helpful to

No. I think that's fine. Just wanna understand when it started and also understand too that that that numb some of those numbers are going up, obviously.

Yeah.

So there's still people getting behind on. Yeah.

And when we do our May presentation we can make sure that we provide you with the numbers of when we've collected as part of our a part of these programs and we can break them down.

That's a presentation to the water committee, presentation committee of the whole, how's that?

That's correct. It's in the water committee. It's a presentation for our plan for non payment disconnection and reconnection. So getting a plan and process together because we put the moratorium into place in 2020 when COVID happened and since that time we have not been doing any disconnections for residential customers. So in order to use that as a tool to help people become successful at paying their water bill, we want to make sure we have a really defined plan and process.

We want to make sure we have some very clear installment plans and debt forgiveness plans and customer assistance programs and all of the tools that we have. We want to make sure we define that very well and have a plan and process that counsel is comfortable with and that we can use and do some outreach and communication for our residents before we would start actually shutting off water if it got to that point.

Okay. Will that require, is there gonna be any associated legislation or is this just administrative policy for how DPU is being run?

There is not any, currently there is not any legislation associated with it. This was at the request of Councilman Martinez who is the committee chair.

Okay. Okay, that's all I had. I don't wanna skip ahead, so we'll see you on May 13. Thank you.

Sure.

Okay, so thank you Councilman. So on May 13, the presentation will center on a thorough discussion and report on collections.

Yes.

Will you also advise counsel how and when you will institute water cutoffs for residential customers and any commercial or industrial?

Yes, that's correct. That'll all be part of the presentation.

Now originally, memory serves me right, we were told by DPU that we had about $66,000,000 in uncollected bills. This page in the middle says $61,000,007.34. Can anybody reference that? Because I weren't we told 66,000,000 at one point? I thought we were.

This is this is the document that was run by our team. We can go back and check. I I can go back and look at at maybe when that was announced. One thing we were trying to do also is keep this consistent report. Because as Director Bannister mentioned there are several different tools and financing tools. And that number really does change every day. It really does. So we're just trying to keep a consistent report and consistent way on that we're drawing the data so we're giving you accurate information on a monthly basis. But I can go back and check on that 66,000,000

Yeah, because dollars that's what director Stevens told

us

several times. Now another question in the lower third of the page. Affordability total due versus collected. Okay, dollars 52,000,000 $157,000,000 that's residential and then seven million six fifty two million or something like that. That represents commercial and industrial or it's just commercial?

For the purposes of this schedule, we did separate commercial versus industrial. Industrial is below the commercial and you'll see that's at $1,900,000.

Okay, Alright. So then collected as of March, a total of $10,000,002.00 8 is on residential. But if you take everything, commercial, industrial, you've collected over 15,000,000, almost 16,000,000. Correct? That's correct.

Yes. Yeah. About 26%. That's correct.

Okay. Now you also mentioned other cities that you've talked to. Have any of these other cities, did they ever have winter averaging on the sewer bill in the past from your discussions?

I do have that information, but I haven't had an opportunity to really look into it and digest it. But I do have some information.

By way of referral, could you get that information to us? All of CONSOL, obviously. In terms of, know, did they have those plans? Do they have them now? We obviously ended our winter averaging program. And I guess my next question is, is there any hope to reinstitute part of that or all of it to bring it back? What do rate paying experts say?

Well the first thing is the pool discount which we will start May 1. And then the second piece which we've talked about before is the irrigation program. We're not ready to, we don't have all the details at this point but we will have something that we can present.

Do you think you'll have that May 13?

The irrigation program?

Yeah.

Won't necessarily be part of that presentation, but we will have information that we can

Well we're gonna get back together in Yes, any yep.

That's what I'm doing now is gathering the information for us to get back together before we're ready to present anything.

All right, counsel Doctor. Jones.

Thank you chair. Thank you for putting together that report. You said you were gonna send this electronically as well? Yes. Okay, perfect. I was just wondering as far as the payment plan sign up makeup, how many or a percentage of them are first timers versus those who may repeat, have been on repeated payment plans? Do you have that on hand?

We have that information. I don't have it on hand but we're happy to get that by way of referral.

Okay. Can do

a referral. Because we do have that information.

Okay. And for those who are I guess been on there repeatedly, how are you working with them to ensure that they are paying on time, not this time around?

Sure, so there's a couple things we do and we try to really work with our residents through our customer service representatives through the installment plans and what is affordable, what is something they can pay and how we can also make them successful and help them be successful in paying their utility bills. So Jenny Jakeway and her team work really, really closely with the billing team and actually do receive the calls and to engage Toledo and have the ability to set residents up on installment plans. With that we also use promise pay as a tool as well they have payment plans that residents can be set up on. And with those what is really nice especially with promise pay etcetera is those residents get reminders. Get text messages.

Get information that just helps them know that a bill is upcoming. We try to set it that makes it something that they can pay, right. It's not helpful to have someone set up a payment plan that's unrealistic and something So they can't we really try to do our best in making it accessible to all of our residents as an option and a tool that they can use.

And do they receive like text messages and emails or just text message?

I know it's text messages. We also do we also offer emails. So the my t o l the tool that you can use for your water bill that can be emailed as well. You can set up like your notification preferences.

Okay. Yeah. I was just wondering because a thought popped into my head of how you can track when an email is read. I'm not sure if you can do that with text message but just to ensure that one the email address is correct and then two if they are seeing these emails but still ignoring then that's a whole different way of trying to approach that as well. Okay, okay perfect and one more question, I'm not sure if this is covered under your department, but it makes sense. The Water Tap program, has there been any discussions of trying to get that started or trying to look back into it because we're hearing the farms are growing basically what can we tell people at this point?

Sure.

Do you know The more information on best thing to do is they can either call Engage who forwards that information on to water distribution. I think I will get back to you. I believe there's still a page on our website. So we are collecting and taking all that information and then we're starting to review water distribution and some cases might need to go back out and assist those that that already have them making sure that over the winter there wasn't any damage and they get turned back on.

Okay, perfect. And then as far as newer applications, they're still on pause right now. Is there any date in sight when they can see some action per se?

We are hopeful that within the next month or two we're able to do that. We do have someone that's taking that responsibility on and we're getting that person up to speed.

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you for all you do. Looking forward to the presentation about updates and looking forward to the email as well. Thank you, chair.

Thank you, doctor Jones. Okay. Are there any other questions on this matter? Anything else you wanna present?

Okay. No.

Thank you very much.

You. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Next on the agenda will be the city auditor's report.

Good afternoon. John Revolsky, city auditor. Today I have the city auditor's monthly report. I have two items to update on. The first item is the grass cutting audit.

As you know, that's in progress. And given that mowing season is upon us, I think I'm adding additional procedures to include certain observational components that weren't possible during the off season. I think that that could yield improved or additional recommendations. And I do want to be clear here, that's not to say anything that I've seen so far has led to any increased risk that could result in additional procedures. This is more to add additional procedures given the timing that this is being performed to see if it could result in improved or additional recommendations.

Given that, this will be expected to be released at the end of Q2. The second item is we met the Audit Advisory Committee to discuss the 2024 Act for audit results. And that's a committee with certain council members, myself and outside committee members that were appointed to the committee and we walked through the audit adjustments and had a good working meeting around that. That's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you. And then Mr. Auditor, the committee have any suggestions for any changes in terms of reviewing the last year's audit?

The the committee did have some good suggestions. I noted all of those and plan to review those and make sure that, you know, finance was in on the meeting as well, so they're aware of the recommendations as well, and we'll be following up on that.

Very good. Thank you. Are there any members in the audience who would care to address the finance committee? And any members of counsel? Any issues? Okay. With that, we stand adjourned.