Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. Mount Juliet Board of Commissioners will hold a work session on May 18th, 2026 at 5:15 at City Hall for the purposes of reviewing the fiscal year 2026 2027 budget. The public is invited to attend and comment. Are there any objections to setting the agenda as published? Hearing none, we'll set the agenda as published. And our first item on the agenda is citizen comments. If there are any citizens that would like to make a comment to the board of commissioners, we'll open the floor. You'll be recognized for three minutes. name and address, please.

Yes, Stephen Hackedorf, uh, 393 Page Drive, Mount Juliet. Um, so the only thing I I had to say is obviously I'm looking forward to hearing the discussion. Um, I I implore that we do not raise property taxes any further um, from last year, which was a substantial increase from what we had had before. So, I implore that that not be something that we're doing that we're looking at doing. Um, so just wanted to make my voice heard on that. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, seeing no no additional comments for the public for the public comment session, we'll move to close p or citizen comments and we'll move on to our presentation. Uh Mr. Martin, this is under your sponsorships. You're recognized, sir.

Well, thank you, mayor, vice mayor, commissioners. Thank you all for coming in early today on a special night. Thank you to staff as well for all their hard work and efforts. Uh, Miss Hires worked hard along with myself and Michael and of course the department heads on the budget. We realize this is a budget workshop, so there's still work to be done. Uh, but Miss Dana has put together a PowerPoint presentation that she's going to give you guys here in just a second. So, I'll turn it over to Miss Dana.

Thank you, Kenny. Um, first I have to thank all the departments for working so hard on this budget. Um, it's it's it's always a uh a beast to put together. Um, but I do have a a PowerPoint to go over which gives you just basically the bird's eye view. Um, I do want to uh let you know I I handed out a page. Um, it's called changes to the budget. So, these are just some basic changes that I've made since you guys received the budget. Um, like I I mentioned in my email, this is a very fluid document until it hits you guys at first reading. So what you have before you very likely won't be what hits you at first reading, but you will be aware of any changes that are made um between now and then. So this is just the first set um of changes that were made. Um and if you guys have any questions, then um we can we can go over those. Um I do want to give you a bit of good news um before we start the PowerPoint. Um I received the sales tax numbers today for um April and we will be getting 2.16 million this month. Um that is an 11.49 increase percent increase or $223,000 more than this time last year. So that is a very good month. Um that will also be going into my projections. So my sales tax numbers projected for next year may change because of that um because this is higher than what um we have been seeing which is a good thing. So I just wanted to give you guys a bit of good news for that. Um I'll go through the PowerPoint and then um we have the agenda which has the departments and when they'll come up one by one to kind of go over their budgets and you um have an opportunity to ask them questions about it. But we'll start with the PowerPoint first.

So based on um the estimates of revenues expenditures um with our beginning fund balance from last year, I'm projecting that we're going to end around 16 million this year. Um so that will be our starting point for July 1. And there's our beautiful PD headquarters. So, the general fund revenues, this shows you a pie chart where the majority of our revenue comes from. Um, I'm projecting revenues of almost 58 million. That's local taxes of 37 million, permits and fees at 6.7 million, fines and forefeiters of 1.2. We have very few grants in the general fund this year. They're only 51,000. Um we have intergovernmental revenue which is our state shared taxes and um that comes on a per capita basis. Um that's 9.6 million and then we have miscellaneous revenue of 3.3 million. 3 million of that is a borrowing that I have added to the budget. So some revenue highlights. This is a reappraisal year as everyone knows. So I do not have a tax rate to present to you yet. Um the CTR has not been certified by the state. So um that's not said in here. I'm estimating about 7 million in revenue. Um and that may put the tax rate around 20 cents. The certified rate is estimated to come in at 17, but we'll just have to kind of see um these are just kind of estimates at this point. Um the state shared revenues. So our um census is projected to be 45,172. That puts our state shared revenue at 6.55 million. Um I projected 26 million for sales tax. Uh 2.5 million for business tax and 1.35

million for hotel motel tax. The um the sale of the land for the downtown development is not included in this budget yet. Um that may that may be included by June. It just depends on where we're at on that. And our general fund expenditures, these are by category. Um public safety is obviously our largest um group of expenditures. They're 37.8 million. Public works is 3.3 million. Parks is 2.5 million. General government 9.8. Community development 1.9. And our transfers out are 7.3. The transfers go to our debt service fund, our capital projects fund, and our state street a fund. This gives you a breakdown of where we spend the funds. Obviously, personnel, we are a service business. We serve the citizens of Mount Juliet. Our personnel expenditures are 37.4 million. Our operating expenditures are 11.1. We have new capital expenditures of 6.8. eight. Obviously, our transfers out are four. The transfers, I'm sorry, transfers to capital projects are 4 million. The transfers to debt service is 2.6. And then the transfers to straight street are only 500,000. So, here's some uh of our expenditure highlights. I wanted to focus on payroll this year. Um there is a 3% COLA in this budget which is uh at a cost of 935,000 and this is just general fund. Um there's a 2% merit which is 582,000. Uh there's some personnel requests. There's three new police positions which

include two dispatch and one evidence clerk. There's two police officers that were requested but are not funded in the budget. There's an animal control position at 64,000. a deputy planner um but that has been cut to half a year which is 64,000. There's an assistant finance director at 124, a new building maintenance um position at 93 and then there were 11 fire positions requested that were not funded in the budget. That cost was 975,000. The other side is a breakdown as you can see the total personnel cost at 36.6 million. This is uh and the difference between that and the 37 on the page before uh are new positions that are not in my payroll sheet. So there are new positions that are are calculated al together for the cost and those are in the departments individually. This is just what's already been approved in prior years going forward. So, it just gives you a breakdown of wages, what the COLA is, what the overtime is, um longevity cost, what merit cost, and then the taxes and benefits total. Uh so, continuing on with our expenditure highlights, these are the capital items. Um, you've got 615,000 in new vehicles and equipment. Uh, 538,000 in machinery and equipment, 55,000 in communication equipment, 143,000 in computer equipment and software. We've got 3.2 million in other machinery and equipment, and 2.9 of that is the public safety communications tower upgrades. Uh, other improvements, 700,000 of that is a rollover of a renovation of one of our fire stations that was not spent this year. So, it's rolling over to next year. Um, we have parks improvements at 370,000

and then we have our final Costco payment at 1 million. So, to sum that all up, we start with 16 million. We have revenues of 57.9, almost 58 million, expenditures at 62.7. That leaves us with an ending fund balance of 11.3 million. The next page is um what I get from Matt. This just is for your information. It's a list of all of the capital projects and where they they pan out over the next 10 years. So that gives you an idea of what's coming down the pike and how much we would need for those projects. The next page is a summary of all of our other funds. Basically wanted to show you that the revenues and expenditures are uh what the revenue expenditures are and that all of the ending fund balances are um positive and adequate for the coming year. Oh, and I do uh want to note that the debt service fund, we have paid off one of our bonds this year will be the final payment in June for it. So, one of them will be falling off. Um, as far as the sewer fund goes, I've got operating revenues of 13.7, operating expenses of 12.1, projected operating income of 1.6, uh, non-operating revenues of a million, capital contributions 2 million, change in net position 4.6, and there are capital expenses of 19.3 million. That's the end of that one. Um, I did want to make a note on our hotel motel tax reserve. Um, I'm

projecting the end of the year that will be a million. Um, with the revenues and expenses for next year, um, because we can use that on our trail projects. So, those are included in there. Um, we should end next year at about 611,000 for that reserve. That was my 50,000 foot overview. So, if you have any questions, if not, um we'll go into the next part of the um workshop, which is have the departments come up and and uh give you an overview of their budgets. And the first one, oh, yep, sure.

Um our fund balance is 16 million. That's what it's estimated to be. Yeah. So, just to cut to the chase, um, how much is coming out of that fund balance? About four million. Almost five. Almost 5 million. Yeah.

So, that'd bring it down to 11 million. My math correct? Yes. Thank you. You're welcome.

That's the deficit. I will say that our our operating revenues are more than our operating expenses expenditures this year. Um but it's the the capital items that are are we're just not funding enough. We don't have enough revenue for the capital items. Um I will call Ross. And Ross' budget is on page 54 through 58. the four hills.

All right. Um, overall this year, we're pretty much as far as our operating, we're pretty much staying status quo. We in Charlie Daniels we went down on our contractual services from 132 to 95,000. We reduced a few other of our line items through there. Small items of equipment we reduced operating supplies was reduced as well as household janitorial supplies. Uh the big thing for Charlie Daniels is going to be our uh and other parks as well. The satellite and money park is pretty much all going to be our capital improvement projects. As you can see, we we're asking for 220,000 for a new roof. I had a couple of roofing companies come out for a full metal replacement for what we have now. They were in that neighborhood of 200 to 220 as well as get a new playground fence. the playground and the community center builder in 99 2000 or 26 25 years old. So the playground fence is a wooden fence. It's lived its life. We uh definitely need an upgrade on it as well. Had a couple fencing companies come out and put me on that as well. Got around 100,000 for that as well as our newest addition to our playground being Leo Land. I was asking for 50,000 to put towards that. Stephen White House has been great. He's having another golf scramble this year. He's planning on helping us add to it as well, but I thought, you know, as a city, we need to jump in there and put some of our own skin in the game, add to it if we can as well. Other than that, it's Charlie Daniels. Um, that's about the extent of any changes this year. Like I said, we're pretty much staying status quo everywhere for this year. Um, you go over to Monday park for capital improvements. See, we're asking for five new mowers. That's on our

usual rotation of our mowers. They're getting up there in hours now. They're time to move on to go to our next one. We are going to repurpose two. I've talked to uh utilities. They're going to take two of our old mowers as well as City Bug's going to take a mower. So, we are going to repurpose our old ones to them. And then, uh Big French drain at Mundy Park. Any of y'all that's been over there at any time, the parking lot over close to the shop building always got water running across it. It is a safety hazard. We spoke with great a Ray Armstrong helped out. He talked to him about that. Gave us got us a price for that. Put in a French drain to pipe that under the parking lot to see if that couldn't release without water coming across the top. Especially if we're in the winter months and it's freezing and stuff. We're not having to go out there and throw salt every day just over the water. Satellite parts, everything pretty much same. cut a few of them u to a th00and from 2000 the uh Jones Park even page park and Robinson Park always all been cut from 2 to 1,000 we do have in there for the part of u veterans park which is listed as train station on here the u under contractual services we do have 8,000 in there to add new names to the veterans wall have 72 names left that we can add to that. That may be a little bit lower depending on how many people, you know, sign up to have a name put on this year. We may roll some of that over next year. The Christmas tree extension, we did put our last 4ft extension that we can add to this tree in there as well. Between the extension and install, that is 20,000. The uh the extension itself is 8,000. The install is 12. the Christmas tree.

Other than that, as an overall budget, we've those items were pretty much sat as any questions I'd be happy to answer. Yes, sir. Tell us again about the Christmas tree. I don't understand why it costs so much.

Uh originally when we did the Christmas tree, we did it where it could have two extensions added, two 4 foot extensions. uh after the year that we bought it. Last year we added a 4 foot extension. This year would be the second the final 4 foot extension and I think up to I believe 28 or 32 foot I can't remember exactly off hand. Um but it is I it does sound expensive I understand but I know last year when we spoke with the gentleman um the tree the extension everything is getting shipped over from China so that's a big cost of it and then the install the install will be 12,000 every year that's counting them taking it up down storage and everything is where that cost

do they maintain the lights if something happens to damage to it. Are they responsible? We don't do anything with it. So, we won't have this cost next year for the extra four. No. No. That extra 8,000 will not be there next year. Okay. It's a very nice tree. Question. It should be, shouldn't it? Are we really buying a Christmas tree from China? That's where I mean the uh company we use that originally bought it, that's that's where they told us they shipped it from. That's what we were told last year.

What page is the Christmas tree expense listed? Page 53 53. Christmas tree expenses on page 53 in the train. Mhm. It's a It's a merged It's a merged budget, but because now it's a kind of the park area as well as the train station. I think you were doing like the 53 and I looked at it. That's why I was trying to tell you this. I was like, I may have the wrong page number. I apologize. No, we don't have to. No, I mean just originally we don't have we don't have to make it. I mean, that was just the original understanding as far as I was also under one in America.

I'm sure we like I don't know. I mean that's through get motivated is who we you know bought that from originally two years ago. I think the shipping cost alone as I said the shipping cost is what um he explained to us is what ate up a lot of it. I think originally it was maybe before a lot of things happened I think maybe 20% cheaper but last year last year is about the same cost. We paid about the same last year. Yeah.

I'm I'm going to say based on the projected deficit, I mean, we may be four foot short on Christmas. Okay. I've been short my whole life. Vice Mayor, right? That's 8,000 that would be cut. 12,000 would stay for the setup and the storage. So quick question, you know, with the storage because because I know that that was discussed with our previous parks director after, you know, basically after we get some of this uh like the the police department moves and so forth, we may have some additional storage. Is there any opportunity for us to do a savings there?

Uh I mean it's currently they're just taking it to I mean it's currently being stored at the Madro. It's just for them to take it down, take it to the storage. And so the charger is $12,000 to put it up and put it down every year. So $6,000 of put put this tree up and then 6,000 taking it back down. That was their cost. That's what we paid the last two years. Okay. It just in your statement you said and storage fees. So I didn't know where getting it through storage. Gotcha. Okay. Is there any opportunity for us to install this? I mean, is it is it that hard? I'm just looking. I mean, again, I'm not gonna say we couldn't, but I've never watched them because again, that's what I mean that was kind of the whole

originally three years ago, like I said, when we started all this hard deal with them and contract was they take it up, they take it down, you know, we don't have to fool with it. I've never actually watched them put it up to see what all it entails. Sounds like an Eagle Scout project. Yeah. I'm I was just sort of thinking, you know, maybe that could be an opportunity to be able to see if that's an, you know, see if that's something that our team could do, especially if we're watching them put it up this year and then we could watch them take it back down, right? So, uh, but I actually thought it was because of the storage fees as well. So, I thought we were storing it somewhere. So,

that's good to hear that we were at least putting it over at the annex building. the capital expenses. Um, new roof with our hotel motel that covers that. Yes. So that when I was talking about the reserve going up and down earlier, that comes out of that reserve. Okay. So that's coming out of that hotel motel. Yep. Reserve. Okay. Well, can can four feet of a Christmas tree be that since we're putting said Christmas tree on a park? Well, yes, I guess we could. Yeah, I I think that would be a good Christmas gift to us. Okay. Merry Christmas. Keep that out of the general fund.

Well, it'll still be in the general fund, but it'll be covered by the reserve just to be covered by the hotel motel tax reserve.

It's same thing with mowers and the other capital items. Perfect. So you're moving 20,000 to the most it would come out of there. Right. Any any other questions, comments for for parks? Not yet. Second read. Well, he ain't on the first reading yet. No, I

think we're good. Yeah, good job. Thank you, Rob. Uh, next up is Mark Kirk with the building and codes budget and his budget is on page 47. Our budget's pretty much status quo from last year. Um, we had only added a couple things and they were removed. One was an inspector position. We wanted to add back.

Is this page 47? Yes. Just want to make sure. Thank you. Hari, were any of the positions included in the budget? Was that what you were saying? Or were they both? Uh, they were both removed. So, if you look on page 47 under department head requests in red, um, that was the cost of the physicians. Okay, gotcha. That was one position. That was one position.

Yeah. Any other questions or comments for Mr. Kirk?

Thank you, sir. And the next budget is uh planning done. ready. Okay. Oh, I'm so sorry. Uh 48.

Yes, sir.

All right. We've got a pretty uncomplicated budget. I don't think I made any changes to anything except for the request for an additional would be a deputy planner. Um I think uh keep that option open um would get us back to previous staff levels as well. We have had a director deputy until recently and right now with the uh staff we have it's it's kind of bare minimum I would say for a city of this size it would give us a little more horsepower to do uh you know whatever comes our way. I know there's a lot more field work and things like that that we're we're we're we're starting to do and to have the extra body and coverage would be would be most beneficial.

The rest of the budget left it the same. I see that deputy planner is reduced to half year. Okay. Along as we as we do at the moment. So, what's the volume difference between previous staffing and current state? Well, current state previously I was the deputy.

Well, correct. I mean, far as the number of items coming through the planning department, is there a way we can quantify that?

Yeah. Okay. the number of items that's that's probably on par with the way it's been. One thing I will say that has changed recently is there's a lot more of a push to get out in the field to look at problems, signage, anything zoning related. Um other things, you know, it's it's it's hard to get out and do um you know, scheduling of inspections, things like that. We we do have a push of more more time in the field following up on things. We've got a pretty good system now, but it is a but it is a skeleton crew I would say for a a city of this size. Um really it's flexibility and things like that. And then other items that come along down the pike, you know, bigger projects like updating zoning code, things like that, maybe could be beneficial to have somebody with some uh, you know, knowledge and some horsepower uh to help with those type of things. Um, but essentially, yeah, getting it back up to the way it was, you know, staff levels to basically where it was before, um, you know, spreads the load around a little bit for for all of us. We are the point of contact on the front end for a lot of stuff. There's a lot of time dealing with the public I think on our on our front end that eats into a lot of time. Um, but that's my reasoning.

Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Next, we'll get into fire and EMS with Chief Hol. And that's on page 44 through 46. Good evening, mayor and commissioners. Uh tonight I just kind of wanted to first of all go over some of our accomplishments that we accomplished in this year's budget. Um station three. We had the grand opening and we're now operational out of that station more than the two-year project completed in totality. Um and then that station in operational which puts us much better in the center of the city and is working fantastically for us. We also took delivery of our new ladder truck um that is going to be stationed there at station three once the training is complete on it. completed cross trainining of all of our personnel to a minimum level of advanced EMT and firefighter 2, which was a huge accomplishment for our training staff and our EMS staff to get those to get everyone cross trainined to where they're dually functioning in those roles and that helps us out tremendously both on the EMS side for coverage as well as on the fire side for our ISO rating and our coverage for fire scenes and etc. Uh we made several upgrades in equipment for EMS. Part of those were funded through our ambulance billing company which provided all new hardware uh for us to do our billing with uh as far as the computers, the mobile data terminals and things like that as well as some other equipment. Rescue equipment upgrades and we'll talk about the tiller again here in a few minutes. I want to mention that. But rescue equipment upgrades that we purchased this past year. Um life safety inspections. We conducted several hundred I think over 500 life safety inspections with thousands of violations found. All of those violations were basically corrected by the the business owners um with no expense to the

business owner not being cited getting those corrections made even on the second uh the second visit going back to those which has made our of course our businesses safer for our citizens to traverse and etc. And then pre-inccident plans. We conducted over 1,000 pre-inccident plans where our companies went out, gathered keyholder information uh vital data about the building uh to our response there to the building which also offered some safety factors from just doing those pre-plans for those businesses. And so all of those are are great accomplishments and we really appreciate your support for us and uh our ability to provide that uh as we go on through that. Uh but one of the things I wanted to address um kind of with this and it'll answer a lot of questions on budget and some of the things that we asked for in the budget this year as well as some of the questions that come to you all occasionally that I get um questioned about or get asked about from you all is um what I feel is some kind of some comments or criticisms that occur in uh through social media or or comments that are made to you all. Um, you all get calls, we get comments on social media, but there's a there's a handful of people that either were employed with us in the past or try to portray themselves as subject matter experts when it comes to fire and emergency services. And the reality is those persons have no experience uh either in city administration or in fire administration and they relate misinformation on those media channels which gets citizens upset and concerned etc. and it's based on conjecture, not on facts. And so, um, the three main topics that are concerning our department when it comes to that are the department is oversized for our city. A lot of concerns with budget and how much money is going to the fire department and to provide EMS and and the thought process that these individuals are putting out there is that our department is oversized and I'll address that in just a minute. Uh, a new ladder truck, the tiller was not

needed. I'll explain in just a second why it was. Uh and then EMS is too expensive causing an unnecessary an unnecessary tax burden and taxes here or unordinarily high because of our EMS system. Um so I just want to relate those with facts, some of the facts of where we're at with that. Um our department um when people say it's oversized uh for for the size of city that we have, there are 345 municipalities in the state of Tennessee. 27 of those have a population of greater than 30,000 people. Mount Juliet is 21st ranked in population among those cities. So we are number 21 out of 345 municipalities. We have the 17th highest call volume for fire and EMS uh entity in the state of Tennessee. So we ranked number 17 there. Uh out of those 27 cities, um the fire departments in those 27 cities, only six of those fire departments provide transport EMS services. So that's six out of the 27 with 30,000 or more. So with that being said, we should kind of hold that same rank of where our population is within those 27 people. Um when we're looking at those um so we should be anywhere from 15 to 16 on just about everything from the number of fire stations to population served by fire stations to square mileage and etc. Uh, and all of that is true and on most of those categories. Again, like we are 17th ranked in call volume. That would hold close to where we're at with total population. But when it comes to the number of stations, uh, square miles covered by station, we are actually number three in the state behind Nashville and Memphis in the number of square miles that we cover per fire station. And so that is that tells us that we are not oversized for our city as well as the population for our city. We are number four in the state in population covered per fire station. And

so that is another avenue of of saying that we are not oversized as a fire department. And then Mount Juliet is also and I'm proud of this because it just shows how well our city manages the budget, how fidiciarily sound we are with our with our stuff, but out of all those cities out of all those 27 cities, we are ranked number two in the lowest tax rate in the state. And so that is another feather in our cap for the way that we do business and keep our tax rates low with the level of service that we provide. Who's number one? Uh Brentwood is the lowest and they just had a reassessment done as why they're lower than us. So they are at 19 cents after a reassessment. Okay.

And so um the six departments that provide EMS are Nashville, Memphis, Bartlett, Cerville, Germantown, and us. Uh we are the fifth most populated of the six. only Germantown has less population than we do out of those six. Uh but out of those cities, Bartlett has a population of about 56,000. They have 98 personnel on staff uh out of five stations. Carville has 51,000 almost 52,000 in population. They have 102 personnel running out of five stations. Germantown has a population of 40,000. Um they have 96 personnel operating out of four stations. And Mount Juliet has a population of 44,000 and we have 72 personnel operating out of three stations. So the next closest city to us that provides transport EMS has 24 additional personnel than we do. And so and why is that important? Um it just shows that we are not oversized as a fire department for our size of city. I think it even shows better that that fact. And then budgetarily wise and kind of to address that, we've asked for positions the past three budget years to address some of that staffing to get those staffing levels up where we feel like they need to be and that would benefit us for our ISO rating as well as our operational concerns. Um the last two years those were cut. This year we asked for positions again. Those positions were again cut. And so um it just causes us issues with operations. We have to better staff our ladder truck. It's been staffed with two people for quite some time as we try to run quick response vehicles. If none of these positions are staffed, we're going to have to stop utilizing quick response vehicles because we will not have the staffing to do so. Uh we will have to staff the ladder truck with additional personnel to make it functional for rescue and for for ladder operations, which I'm going to go over here in just a minute about the the needs for that truck and why we bought that truck for for what we need it for. Um but if those

positions are not some of those positions are at least put back in, we will need to make um some changes as far as that. And Miss Hire is going to get those numbers uh for us to make changes to firefighter positions to basically change the classification of those positions. We'll need to to move three of those to lieutenant and three of those to engineer to better staff that that aerial apparatus in the budget. she's going to come up with those dollar figures should we not place any new positions or the new positions that we requested back in the budget because that's what those positions were for was lieutenant engineer and firefighters. So chief um quick question just so I can understand. So uh we're ISO 2, correct? We're ISO 3.

ISO 3. Yep. Okay. Just want to make sure is that is that the goal right there is to stay at three or to move to two or move to one? What's the goal here? Uh my goal would be to move to class one. Uh class one, moving to a class one would make about a 3 to 8% uh decrease in insurance cost to our businesses. Uh I'll be straight up honest with you, it's not going to make any difference at all uh whatsoever or most for the most part not whatsoever to residential uh our residents. But it is going to make a huge difference. 3 to 8% for a business client is quite a bit of money. What would that cost us though as a city as as taxpayers? Right. I mean, we're we're we're moving in that direction already as it is.

I don't know whether these positions will push us over the the edge to go from a class three to a class one or if we would be a class two. I feel confident that if we're reried right now, we would go to a class two and out of those rates some and out of the 345 counties, how many are at class two right now? How many are at class two? I would have to get that number for you. There are several dozen that are at class one. So there there's quite a few that are at class one. Okay. And obviously Nashville is what at class three. Is that correct? I believe so. Yeah.

All right. And then just another quick question. So if we do move to uh let's just say putting those staff members into the larger truck that takes the load off of the other vehicles. So that way when it is needed, we could be able to use the technology to say, "Hey, we don't need to run the larger truck. We could be able to run the smaller trucks." Yes. So that should help out with some of the cost and maintenance on on this equipment. Correct. Yes. Okay. All right. Sorry to interrupt. Just want to make sure. Thank you.

No problem. Um, the next thing I wanted to address is about the tiller truck and and why we bought the tiller truck and some of that stuff like that because some of the things that you were seeing on on social media was that it wouldn't fit in the fire station, which it does. Uh, it is it is sitting in there right now. And the other things were that we bought it to get around the city and why did we need to buy it to get around the city? How many issues did we had with the tower getting around the city and etc. Uh but the truth of it is I came to you guys in 2024 and requested uh to do a resolution to purchase that truck. We were in need of replacing tower one at the time. U if we would have replaced the tower exactly specked out 100% like it sits now. U when we had when we have the truck, it would have cost about $2.1 million to buy that truck. Uh the big issue that we were facing is we needed additional rescue capabilities for vehicle extrication, some light collapse things and things like that. As far as needs for that type of rescue, we're not going to get into rescues where we're doing, you know, complete collapse rescue, trench rescue, and all that. We've got Nashville very close to us. those teams can get to us very fast and we're not going to spend the money and resources for that because we just don't have the risk necessary to go there. So, we wanted to make sure that we have the rescue capabilities that are necessary and meaningful for our community. Uh but we just on our current apparatus don't have the ability to store a lot of those struts. Uh a lot of the shoring equipment and things like that that you need to stabilize vehicles to cut into them or if you have a a big rig that's involved in an accident to get those cut open or get those removed from the patients that are there in a timely manner. So there's two options there. Essentially look at a rescue truck and staffing a rescue truck like most cities have. I would say that every city our size, just about every city our size has at least one rescue truck staff. Many of them have multiple rescue truck staff or

purchasing a tiller truck, which a tiller would serve us because it's got four times the four times the storage capabilities of what our current ladder truck had. And so it allows us to store all the rescue equipment that we need without purchasing a new truck. The cost difference between buying that tiller at the time that we bought the tiller versus buying a new tower was about $300,000. we were just over 2.4 million on the tiller. We would have been at 2.1 million had we bought the ladder to replace the tower. That's why we bought the tiller. And so that's one thing that I wanted to kind of remind you guys. I know that we talked about it when we purchased it, but I also wanted to for the public to understand that's why we purchased the tiller is so that we get more capabilities and more use out of a not as utilized truck. It makes it more utilized by having two roles and two functions more so than just responding to fire calls as a ladder. Uh it's essentially a ladder and rescue truck combined. Uh is what we're using that truck for. And we think that it'll greatly enhance our operations, our ability to do those type of rescues and all of those things. But it it makes what is now an underutilized truck more utilized without us having the expense of $650,000 to a million dollars to buy a rescue truck as as well as staff it. And so those that's the reason that the tiller is in play. Um the last thing I wanted to address is that EMS is too expensive causes tax burdens and taxes are too high. Uh I just wanted to remind everybody of why you all voted for us to get into the EMS business. Um the number of units covering our city uh was a big issue when we got into this business that that we would not uh commit to providing a second unit to this city. um long response times, no say or a seat at the table in the level of service or the amount of units that we had uh was the issues at the time and that's the reason we got into EMS or transport EMS. So,

what is EMS in in Mount Juliet as we said? Number one, it's responsive. There's no extended response times of 15 and 20 minutes any longer because we haven't had those since we've started the service. That just doesn't happen. um innovative. It's a high level of care providing new technology, new equipment, new standards of care. We have more critical care paramedics working for us than just about any agency around us that are capable of providing an even higher quality level of care than a paramedic ambulance is capable of doing. Uh we're proactive. We really try to address situations and be there because we're consistently answering the same households in and sometimes where they have chronic medical conditions. We're try to be very proactive with them about getting more help to that person, whether it's through their doctor, whether it's through social work, other things like that to where we try to be proactive for our community because it's community- based EMS as well as we try to be fiduciary. So, we've got the highest billing collection rate of any of AM's customers in our state or in the Southeast actually. And and that is a great thing that we have that high of a billing rate. Why is it that high? One, our payer mix is good because of our citizens and what we have here in Mount Juliet, but also it is because we do great documentation. We've got a great billing company to work with, etc. We're actually looking at moving to a new records management system through that billing company at their recommendation that we think is going to even increase our rate more. Uh, but we are currently collecting at 64% of billings. To date this year, from July the 1st through the end of April, we have collected $1.35 million. And we are projected to collect over 1.7 million, just over $1.7 million for the entire budget year this year.

You say 67% collection rate. Well, you've got a 64% collection rate. Yes, sir. But that's the best of any of the services that AMV provides um billing for. Is that AMV? Aless medical billing. That's the billing company. That's a company that does our billing for us. Do you bid that out? Um, we actually I think it's not every year we have Yeah, we have um I mean if they're the best billing I would say that's pretty good, but we don't know they're the best. They're ranking themselves. Yeah, we uh Well, I mean that that they're ranking us off of all the customers that they have that they have. Yes. That they have. Yeah, I'm looking more across Yeah. Across the board.

We at the time that we were signed on with them, we felt like they were the best. They're definitely one of the industry leaders in EMS building. We should be able to get some billing production rates. Um there should be some statistics around that. Even on a regional on average regionally, I would say you're 35 to 40% billing. I'll look into that. Collections from your total billings. I do that. Yep. I'll figure it out. I'll find out. I'll let you know. Yep. If you're right. And um so this year, the net cost for us to provide EMS in this current budget year is projected to be right around $800,000 by the time the buildings come in. and and our operation and expenses are incurred within that.

What do they what do they retain? 10%. Yeah, they're just a tad over 10% 10.1 something like that. But within that 10% they also pay for our they pay for our records management system. They also pay for hardware, all the hardware that we utilize for computers and etc. on the ambulance is to uh make those bills happen because the fact of it is the faster that we get those the documentation turned in the better the billing that we're going to get off of it. It comes in especially through Medicare CMS, it comes in a lot faster, okay?

And and more streamlined and they're not going to question you about what you're billing uh if you're delaying days at a time. So, we require personnel to submit uh those those PCRs every day and they can't even wait till the second day of their shift. They have to submit those um that day and get them submitted in so that we can get them built. Do uh I'll talk to you. Are they leveraging any ancillary networks, ambulatory ancillary networks as far as their billing is like specialty PPL networks? There are specialized ambulatoratory networks that negotiate. I'm assuming they're we're charging off of Medicare rates or paying off of what?

Well, they pay off they pay off of the our rates. They what we do what they do is our rates are based on fair market value rates for our region. And so Medicare pays what Medicare will pay for a Medicare patient and we cannot bill that patient any more than that. We have to accept Medicare assignment. But we bill significantly higher than Medicare rates. Most patients insurance cover that billing because of the the necessity, the EMS necessity for us being able to transport. So most insurancees cover that and pay at least most of that minus a deductible or what the co-pay is, okay,

for that particular person. And so we bill that. They're the ones that that send the billings to the the customers and etc. or our person the person that's transported our patients. They send that to them and then collect back off of that. And they're collecting above Medicare rates, huh? Oh, yes. They're collecting above Medicare. Yeah, we collect significantly above Medicare rates on most calls. Yeah. And on an average thousand billing, Medicare would likely pay us $350 to $400, whereas commercial insurance would pay the full $1,000 and and then the person may owe a co-ayer, etc. Excellent. Thank you.

Yep. And then the other thing that I wanted to mention about EMS is there is currently a bill that is coming out of tacer. Um and so it is a house bill 83 senate bill 160 but it basically requires a municipality to reimburse the county for any ambulance services rendered by the county if such municipality does not provide ambulance services within its boundaries. So we are exempt from that because we provide our own ambulance services. But essentially what this will do is if a city does not provide their own ambulance services, they will have to pay the county as a percentage of their population to the county's population for the EMS for the EMS services um total operation. So I know that that we total um total budgets in the $22 million range and so I would say that their EMS is 40 to 50% of that at minimum. Uh

90% Huh. 90% from what I recall, Mr. Martin, when we met with them.

But based on EMS being a 40 or 50% number, it would be 2.3 to $3 million if Mount Juliet was not providing EMS if that bill goes through. Um, so a lot of cities are going to be impacted by this because they're going to have to pay if that goes through. And and a lot of people are like, well, will it actually go through? It was voted through to to tacer and go to the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 96 to zero through the Senate. And so it is um thought that the bill likely may go through when it comes back in session in January. Well, they were calculating their cost based on call volume.

They're call they're calculating the cost based on percentage of population to the entire county.

That's what the law requires. Yeah, that's what Taser requires under the law is that it's a percentage of that up to 50% of the total service cost. So in our particular situation in Wilson County, if if Mount Juliet, Lebanon, and say Watertowns, total cost, I mean total percentage was 60% of the county's population, those three cities would be on the hook for 50% of the budget for them based on their their percentage of population relative to that. So, it's um you know, like like I mentioned before, we have a net cost once our billings are out there of less than $800,000 projected for this year's budget. And we would have to pay 2.3 to $3 million to them if this bill goes through for them to provide EMS for us. And so, I think that that's a a thing. It's a major concern for a lot of cities. I know a lot of other cities are very very concerned about the bill passing. and a lot of other cities are contacting us about how we do ambulance service and uh looking to get into the business themselves. And so we are addressing a lot of those concerns over time. Um again, as I mentioned as far as the budgetary needs and where we're getting back to budget, but I wanted to kind of bring those facts out about where we're at because it's a lot of questions that you all get while we're in this meeting. But budgetary requests personnel, we do need uh the personnel that we requested. Uh I know that we can do without the training officers. Those would be great to have because of the level and amount of training that we do. Uh but the nine positions that we requested would go directly into operations and um would love to see your consideration for adding those back. Um stationary.

What's the cost on that for without the training officers? Sorry 900 I think it was 975 total. So that 975 was the total not including the office including 156,000 156 is the training officer total should be in the 800 range. What if it's it's hard to answer the question. We don't know what our property tax rate is or state certified rate assuming

I'm estimating so based on what the county has sent me um for every penny on the tax rate it's going to be about 353,000 to the city. So it would it would take about two cents and some cents of a cent to uh cover that cost.

Okay. Um, kind of going off a technology side here, station alerting and CAD. And I know Chief Chandler is going to cover a lot of the CAD within our emergency communication center, the computer aated dispatch. Station alerting is something that we have designed station 3 with as well as the other stations are easily brought on board with doing station alerting. This would greatly enhance our time to dispatch. it would lower that time to dispatch and and at the dispatch center essentially what that would do is be like adding another dispatcher to the equation because any fire EMS call that comes in essentially when they accept that call in within the CAD system and they say okay we validated the address we're accepting this call they can still be on the phone with the patient or with the person that's calling in the emergency and the computer will take over doing the dispatch at the station so it will immediately start computerated always dispatch uses to the location as well as that. So, it helps dispatch and their and their load that's on them as well as it provides um the big thing for us that it provides in the stations is it zones out the bedrooms to where when an ambulance is going out on a call in the middle of the night, not everybody in the station is woken up by that call. Uh it just awakens the people that are in those particular bedroom. It zones those bedrooms to where you're not waking the entire station up. Um and and those kind of things. It also puts us in a in line to where we're not dispatched per station, we're dispatched per unit. So, the station alerting and the and the CAD system are are greatly needed. Um, those are things that kind of in a in a holistic package of things including radio updates and the tower upgrades and things like that are are things that we truly need for public safety in both police and fire. The CAD system that we have is a um I would call it a very antiquated CAD system for what 2026

should be in technology. It does not have the ability to do location based dispatching. So we can't we can't see where our units are and know this is the closest unit and have that CAD make a recommendation of that unit being closer and going on that call. So, it's going to dispatch off of zones and at times our trucks may be closer um you know to that call, but the CAD system is not going to know that because it's not capable of that location based dispatch. So, it's a that's a concern for us that we really would love to see the CAD. Um, and then some of the line items, you know, were reduced, which we understand that we're in a in a tight budget year, and I understand that completely, and we are uh we definitely I I commend you all for everything that you do and keeping things the way that they are and things like that. that, you know, we we can always if some of those lines that were cut, you know, if we stay in the range that we are on diesel cost, we are very concerned about the fuel line item. Uh, and a couple of other things like that, but we could come back for a budget request if the, you know, a budget amendment if fuels costs stay up. Hopefully they will not. Uh, hopefully they will trend back downward, but you know, if we had to at those point in times, we can come back for a budget amendment for some of those those particular line items that have been reduced. So, but again, I I want to thank you all for what you do, for helping us u help our citizens and and be what I feel like is the safest city in Tennessee, providing the services that we provide, both police, fire, and EMS. And um and especially with our dispatchers, but um thank you for doing that. I want to commend our personnel for everything that they do for us and if y'all have any questions, be free to answer them.

So, Chief, um just a quick question. So, or actually a couple. Um, so when we're looking at uh adding these positions, if if it is, are we able just to be able to just keep the positions where they are? Uh, you know, the firefighters, we don't have to keep promoting all these people back up because, you know, it's great to have all these chiefs, but sometimes I keep hearing we don't have enough Indians. Yeah. So, how do we fix that? The three positions that we have, and the reason that we ask for budget amendments if we do that is that the current ladder truck does not have an officer assigned. It does not have a lieutenant. It is the one fire apparatus that does not have that. So, do we have an officer right now in in the truck that we're going to be uh decommissioning? No, we have we only staff that truck with two at this current time.

Yeah. But if we're going to be eliminating that truck,

the need is to the need is to staff that truck with at least three people. And one of those positions would be an engineer position that we're staffing it with and another position would be an officer level position. That's that's six of the positions that we were asking for. Um the other three positions that we were asking for was basically to ensure with staffing that truck with an extra person that we could continue to provide response with our quick response vehicles, the squads, the smaller vehicles that go on medical calls when that medical call necessitates um them responding with them. If if we close down that quick response, those quick response vehicles, our engines would be going on the high acuity medical calls with our ambulance. In other words, a life-threatening medical call. They would go on there with the ambulance.

No, what I'm saying though is that if we're going to be decommissioning a truck for the new truck, correct? Yeah. I mean, that truck has got two people assigned to it every day. Those two people would be on the truck. One of those positions would change to an engineer. The other position would become a lieutenant and then that's where the other, you know, the positions come into play is keeping those quick response vehicles staff. Okay. And then the overtime, obviously, if we're going to be adding more positions, that should take away from this overtime. That's budgetary, correct?

It should. It should. Well, we allowed about the same amount of people off. So, I mean, to keep the minimum staffing, we will allow the same amount of people off. And of course, with hiring new people that have less time to take off, it probably would adjust that overtime. And then some of those some of that overtime is used to backfill or to pay people for mandatory classes that they are not attending while they're on duty because we're working. We don't work five days a week. We work the 48 hour shifts and sometimes the training that they are mandated to go to is occurring when they're off duty. We try to do as much such training as we can in house. We've done a great job with doing that these past few years, but there are some mandatory classes that our personnel are required to go to that we have to pay them for and that's part of the overtime. Is there any way we can get that list of how much because I know that that was the whole purpose uh you know three years ago was when we were looking at this program was to be able to have an in-house training program and that was the also just as this new firehouse was just talked about was the the new training program the new training classes and

and absolutely and is it possible to be able to do some cost savings to have the instructor come in and use those rooms that we just built? Oh yeah. And that's what we do most of the time and but I can get you the cost on on those. And when I say mandatory things that people are off duty for and it may be where things that we can't do in our own classrooms such as a cadaavver lab at Vanderbilt for our EMS personnel that they may be required to attend to go there during that lab. Okay. To do specialized skills. All right. Yeah. I don't think we can bring that. They really go there. You you You pulled the perfect example out that no one's gonna

no one's going to challenge you on why you didn't do that in house. Thank you. By the way, did you have a question, Commissioner? Uh, it was around the um the overtime. Okay. Covered. It seems high. I don't know what the standard is, but it just and I know this this past year we had quite a bit more overtime the first half of the budget year because we were training our personnel to firefighter 2, some of our personnel to firefighter 2 and advanced ENT. Now that that's complete, that has gone down significantly. Yeah, because it's almost doubled in two years.

Yeah, with that training with that training that we conducted, much of that had to be conducted with them off duty. even though we were doing it in house, it couldn't just be conducted on duty because it was a that's a that's a 10-week long class. And to try to conduct that three times uh for different shifts would have been impossible for us to do.

Just just to be clear, I'm looking at 2024 2024 2025 and comparing it to city manager 2026 2027 a million bucks compared 520 back in 2025. Yeah, I can get with Miss Hire and see if we can adjust those adjust that number some based on trends and where we're at u with the training classes and knowing that those are scaling down. Okay, I'll go after you if you want. Go ahead.

All right, so I brought this up last year not to feel like we keep kicking the can down the road. My concern is funding EMS. So when this first started, I know that it the way it was presented that the billing was going to cover the department and be self-sufficient. Um, so if the projected revenues for billing is 1.7 in this next budget on the EMS budget, we got operations and capital which totals just under $900,000. So on the surface that sounds really good. You know, 1.7 that definitely covers that. But in order to get a fair assessment of what the billing is covering and I know that you put all the personnel under fire, so EMS doesn't reflect any personnel. And I understand why because you cross train and all that. But in order to get a fair assessment of what the 1.7 billing uh covers, what would be do you have a number on uh a personnel cost? Um

yes, M. That's just MS.

Miss Hire just provided that this afternoon. It was about $1.6 million. So we covered personnel cost plus a little over 100,000 this budget year. That's what we're aligned to do and that's what's got our operational cost down just a tad below 800,000 total. And and when I when I say that when I say that that operational cost is 800,000, I don't know that you're going to find an EMS system that provides the level of care that we do and the response times that we do and everything else that we do for $800,000 a year to our citizens total cost. And and as I've mentioned before with our cross trainin personnel that augments fire augments EMS and EMS augments fire. So EMS the personnel in EMS definitely augment fire because all of those personnel count toward our rating of on the daily staffing. they are we have those personnel cross trainined that way if we have a fire where the unthinkable happens similar to Glass Creek and we get a firefighter hurt that we can employ more additional personnel immediately into that situation uh to where they can help out on a fire role and and do those things and so that that is where the EMS really truly augments our fire protection within the city as well as providing um the best EMS care that you're going to find in the state. All right. So, if we have an estimated personnel of 1.6 million plus the 869, um, we come around just under 2.5 million, right?

Are you total? Uh-huh. for personnel operating in capital for just for just thems okay so around 2.5 so if you subtract the 1.7 you should get a net cost of the EMS of 769,000 right that's what it cost

so that's my biggest uh concern in this whole thing is um it's not self sufficient. So funding it appropriately uh is my biggest concern and I think the sooner we address it the better. What was that cost number? 769,000. 69,000. Thank you. Emergency. Yeah. And I and I was not the chief here when EMS was undertaken. So I don't but that I know of. It was never promised that it was going to completely sustain itself and pay for itself 100%.

It was cost neutral

and and I know that I would never promise you that you're going to get the level of service that we provide and it and it completely pay for itself. It is going to cost um there are cities I mean we were actually watching the advisory commission on intergovernmental relations and I will get you that report on that whole bill and all that stuff whenever it's we're supposed to get it as soon as it's published or sent to us. We've requested it, but they were literally talking about a city that's got a private EMS entity or Murray County is actually the county that their county was providing EMS and they're supplementing what they're funding the hospital for of like $300,000. The hospital came back to them and saw them they were going to have to have four million and the county negotiated back with them and that cost came down to 2 million. And so that was actually on on the advisory commission's um meeting. You could see that on the recording of that meeting where that took place. So, they were they're having to pay $2 million for a county hospital to provide their EMS, you know, and and that's I think that you're I think that our citizens are getting a great service at a great price for what we're providing. And I would never say that we're that it's ever going to pay 100% for itself. Uh it it's going to have to have some funding help with that. But in addition to that,

it also benefits us on the fire department side with that. And so that's that's what we've done. I would say there's a lot of value for a net cost of $769,000. There's no question about that. But uh I I remember what I was told when this was starting up. Basically, I think I recall it being something like it's going to be cost neutral. We're in an area that's going it's affluent. we would get good billing rates and we don't need to look at private because we should do it ourselves and a bunch of stuff and you know a lot of that was just a lot of that was estimates and yeah

I don't know I got to where we are but really for $769,000 I still think we're getting a lot of value for what it's costing us of course we get to figure out how to pay for it based on some of the stories that I've heard about the past uh I would say that He definitely this commission definitely made a great decision for our citizens and enacting this.

Well, I you know based on stuff and I've still got voicemails and call recordings right on my phone right now that I think people would be shocked if they were played as to what the level of service was the time that we were dealing with. So, I think anybody that that questions the decision of why we did what we did, um, I can remember entire months where you didn't have a you didn't have a station staffed in this thing. And I mean, it might have been three days out of 31 or something like that. Maybe I'm exaggerating that a little bit, but not much. It was it was pulled. and they were a number of times I was like, "Please don't let anybody slip and fall on this side of the the county because there is no more ambulances in service." So, wait, Vice Mayor.

Yeah. Um, well, just to highlight that because I remember some of the, you know, response times was 27 minutes is sticking in my head and so was 34 minutes for I think uh a shelf falling over on uh an individual and somebody getting cut by a lawnmower. So, those were the response times. But anyways, um I know you and I talked about the pilot uh that I'd really like to see if we could be able to at least see if that's an opportunity. And I understand that, you know, if we have somebody out there transport, you know, like uh transporting um and that we may have a let's say a dark spot or maybe that ambulance may have to go respond that is on the other side of town. Um I think just to be able to see if that's an opportunity to to implement a pilot. Okay. Uh because I know that seems to be the the discussion on social media as well as the phone calls that I'm getting. Um and you know for the commission um that may not understand the pilot you know discussion which is you know I think commissioner talked about this uh last year where um transporting was a possible cost savings. So, anything we can do to help out this budget and you know obviously if we're trying to look by adding more staff but then we don't have staff to actually do the transportation that's kind of um you know contradicting you know I mean like contradicting uh each other because we're adding staff but we don't have enough staff to go and do the pilot. So, um, you know, if we've got the coverage, we got the technology, I think we can be able to at least look and see if there's some opportunities there to offset these funds. So, um, would like to get more information on that and see what we can do to create that pilot and see if it works. If it's a six-month pilot, we say, "Hey, it's increased our numbers or or our response time." Or we can say, "Hey, it was a uh, you know, some additional funds that help offset these costs." And then we can be able to help justify that. So, but again, we don't want to get ourselves into a situation where just like you just said earlier past um a leadership had, you know, you

would never have committed to it because of the data. Well, we know it's a it's a revenue generator for other cities. Why are we not looking into it as well for for those pilots? So, just wanting to see if that's an option. So um one more thing if you don't mind uh the technology on the calls for the for the cost there um is that going to help off offset us having to so every time there is a let's say an accident right uh we send out ambulance fire and police with this technology are we going to be able to help offset that where we may not need a fire truck um we only need ambulance and police is that something because they're all crossrained so that should be able to take off the load of the equipment as well as um also be able to help some of the technology that we're utilizing

and and the big issue that we have with the current CAD system. We're we're getting ready to start we've already done

and Chief Chandler may want to mention that as well, but the police and fire aspects of what we call power phone. It's call handling software and so it's it's stuff that our dispatchers are using to address those calls and and figure out how many units do we need, where is this at? um EMS is coming. That includes what's called emergency medical dispatch. So, our dispatchers will be able to give pre-arrival instructions. They'll be able to triage calls to where we can say legitimately and legally that we only sent this we sent this unit non-emergency because it wound up being a non-emergency type call under that triage of how they triage those calls. Additional to that, there there are certain call types that we're just not going to send the fire truck on. The ambulance will go by themselves. Um, so I mean some of the abdominal pains, isolated leg injury that we just don't know what it is and you know those are those are cases where a firetruck has a limited amount of use on but right now we just don't have a way to triage those calls. We're doing that through power but the the key part of that is that CAD system integrating with power phone and and providing that documentation of the necessity of sending an ambulance or sending additional apparatus or etc to where we do those things. And so that that is coming online. EMD is coming online within the next few months, but it would tie in much better with a more uh robust CAD system that's capable of tying in with it. And Chief Chandler will mention that, but a lot of the flock safety things and things like that are not capable of integrating with our current CAD. And those that's why we're asking for the CAD as as well as the station alerting to to do that. But we are definitely in the midst of trans basically not responding all units on on every single call type.

Okay? You know, we we understand that on chest pains and respiratory distress and your high acuity calls that are life-threatening, we need to send both of those units, but on some of those other call types, we're going to scale that down and only send the ambulance by themselves. Okay. One last question if it's okay. Is there anybody else got anything? So, I don't I do. Go ahead. I do too. I already told you. All right. One one more thing. Uh so on on those technology calls, is it going to give us the ability to to not send the bigger trucks? Uh so like you know again I mean like so because I know you had talked about maybe u trading in one of our trucks. Is that the is that the correct truck that we need to keep in order for these smaller callers?

No, the the truck that we're the truck that we're selling currently is one of those trucks is the is the tower, the old tower that we have. The the other truck is a mini bumper truck, which we think we're going to be able to get more value out of than we actually paid for the the truck uh in 2020. So, that is a truck that's very non-utilized by us because it's essentially it doesn't have the storage space that we need to contain all the equipment that's required by ISO to respond. Uh, and we just don't have the ability to staff that truck. We we respond in very similar to what we did during the ice storm. Part of our overtime cost was the ice storm where we staffed up our many or all of the quick response units. We normally staffing wise, we wouldn't have been able to staff those up. Well, we staffed four of them up during the ice storm in an in an effort to try to keep our big apparatus off the roads completely during that ice storm. And we only responded to a couple of calls that were actual fire calls with our bigger apparatus. And every other call was addressed. trees down over power lines, medical calls, slips and falls, everything else was addressed with those quick response vehicles. And that's what we would do with those. They're Ford interceptors that we would send two firefighters out on that are medically qualified, of course, and and we would send those out on those on certain call tops. That's what this request is, is to kind of keep that staffing level up to where we can we can staff those vehicles.

We have the chains on those trucks, correct? We've got chains on certain trucks. The new truck has automatic chains on it and we and we've got the ability to get around in those. Okay. Thank you.

On 111. Oh, no. I want to ask you another question. How many how many injuries did we have this past year? Injuries for our staff. Our staff, firefighters, EMS, all of them. Yeah. I I'll have to get that number for you.

Obviously, that affects our works comp most of the time. Our work comp. I noticed this line. Then I want to go up the top and maybe you can answer this for this. Um on 146 uh from last year to this year, it went up about 8,000 or so and then it went up 247 698. And that was that's what y'all came up with the city versus what they came up with. So, I didn't know if that was because we'd had a lot of injuries or if you know, um, historically, unless we've got a bad rating, the work comp rates go down some.

No, we actually did get a favorable work comp rating. Okay. So, that is something that I'll get with HR because they get that rating. Okay. But, I'll get I'll get with them on that to verify. And it's the the work comp is sort of based on our total payroll. Um and that's sort of divvied up by so I'll I'll get with them to double check that number because um Brody did tell me recently that we got a favorable rating.

Uh which leads to the next question or two. So your department Mark turns in this like on pay of line 111 where that the salaries permanent would be 6,73286 but then the city comes back with 7,77. So why where did you get that to have that number? That's probably in my my payroll sheet. Um I'd have to I'll have to look because those numbers are come from one source and so it's not necessarily his request. It's my payroll sheet that pulls that over and then I copy it to like as I go through I copy it to the second column and the third column. So there was probably a change that was made that got recorded in the second and third column but just didn't get updated in the first column. So it's not necessarily that he requested something that went up. There was a change that I made in the payroll sheet that flowed through all of the department.

What page were you on? I didn't 44. I didn't understand because that was 345. And then when you go to I was told that was step

overtime. it um it it steps should have already been calculated in that. So there's there's a change that I made in the payroll sheet. Um and it it I I'd have to look to see, but it it the the difference between the six seven and the seven isn't anything that he did. It's it's an adjustment that I made to the payroll sheet that flowed through and it just didn't get picked up in the or copied into the first column. And that includes also on line uh 113, excuse me, 112 that was 48 more. So it's the same issue. Yes.

Okay. So then mark uh down where that shows the remove for the nine plus those two. Does that include all the benefits? Yes. That's that is total cost of the personnel. That is not just salary. Okay. So that didn't reflect up there in any of those columns. No. Okay. No. Thank you.

Are you saying the seven should be more or less? No, I'm saying it should be seven. There's nothing that he did that changed that number. It's it's something a change that I made in our payroll sheet, right, that flowed through to the two second and third column. But I because I I I make sure that it pulls from one source. So I usually try to when I update it, copy and make sure they all match. So I didn't copy the something changed in that one that didn't get copied into the first column. So it was it was just an overall change in the payroll sheet that I made. It's nothing that you did or added. No, I know. I know. Yeah. Earlier when we were going over this um a lot of these payroll increases or step

commissioner the difference that you're saying is where he's asking he's asking from the 26 27 department head number to the the city manager numbers we discussed earlier was from the increases from the 25 26 number to the 26 27. Those are going to be steps. Those would be steps. Commissioner, can I jump in real quick? Are you done? No. Okay, go ahead then. Go ahead. All right. Sorry, it was just quiet.

I can't find my notes where I was figuring this earlier. I think I was um figuring between the 17 cents and 20 cents. It wasn't a whole lot. It was just under like 800,000. So really comparing that to EMS, that's right about the same. So really that would cover um the EMS deficit, but it doesn't cover anything else. Yeah. Nothing. And and the the numbers that you have are based on what an estimated 20 cent rate would be, right? So that that overall deficit of 26.7 um that that is at a estimated 20 cent rate,

right? So that even if we compared it that way, it would fund that but nothing else. Right. Yes, sir. So I'm done. Nope. He hasn't gone yet. Do you uh do you have a list of equipment that we're selling this year? Uh the two things that we plan on selling this year are actually on the market now. We've we've actually you have a sense of how what their values are? Um yes. We anticipate getting between 550,000 and 600,000 for the tower that we're selling. Probably 750.

Well, it's listed for 750. We anticipate by the time the 10% comes out for the transportation of it and sale of it and everything. Let them pay for that would be our net. And what was the other? The other one's the mini pumper. It is currently it's listed for a little over 300,000. We anticipate netwise getting right around 300,000 out of it. We're hoping. Okay. So, just to be clarified, do the timing that's not that's not estimated in this budget because I didn't think it was because I was looking for it. Um it's tricky to do it an end of year because if I put it in next year, we get it this year, then it looks we're short next year.

Yeah, I've got the same issue on contributions, but we'll talk about that later. Um, so that's almost 900 grand. I mean, that would that would that would cover most of your capital expense, your uh one-time requests um for capital expenses. When do you anticipate those selling? I know they're on the market. It's hard to predict, but are we having any active? Yeah, we've got several people that are active on the on the tower and then we've had 5700 views of the mini pumper on the in 10 days. So, so getting 550 to 500 or 600 views a day.

Yeah. 800 to 900k would cover those expenses and that we wouldn't have to take out of our that $4.7 million. Correct. So if if that um we would still we would still have the deficit just depending on the timing. So if we let's say they did sell and we got them this year, it would effectively increase our our beginning fund balance. It would not affect the revenue deficit for the next year. It would just increase our starting fund balance. So we would end higher. We still have the deficit, but we end higher. Now, if the if we get the revenue next year, then we start with the same fund balance, but it does shorten the deficit.

When you're talking about next year being next fiscal year, July Yeah. July one. July one. Yeah. Okay. How long does it take to sell? Uh, we've got some very interested parties on the tower, so we're thinking that may happen fairly quickly. Um, so I'm I'm not sure timing wise how that would time out on and they may entity paying. And if it's if it's another city, they would be in the same situation that we would be in is do they do they purchase it with next year's money or do they do amend and purchase it if it's another city? So it may be they're having a timing issue as well.

Well, maybe we could give them a discount to close early. Okay. This this year's good to know. So, Miss Hire, so we've talked about this every year. So, I'm just trying to figure this out just why we have, you know, the chief talking about adding positions. In years past, the whole reason why we've looked at topping out quicker is to be able to maintain good talent, right? So, we promote everybody within and and we automatically bump everybody up to topping out with six years, I think it is. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Five years.

Five years. Okay. So five years a brand new employee can top out in five years but then we keep doing these pay studies which is again costing the city and taxpayers more money because we do the pay study or do we do the five-year program? So I'm going to say this publicly because I think it needs to be discussed that any new employee I would really love to see a cost savings. Which one do we do? Because right now, you know, again, employees are getting, you know, double dipping, so to speak. Not the existing, I'm saying new employees because they were able to get the cost, uh, you know, the pay study and they top out in five years. So, which one is it that we're going to do? Because that was a whole discussion that we were discussing. We did the internal pay study, but that is not reflected in the budget. There were no

Yeah, I know. But we talked about this last year where it was discover, well, not really discovered, but it was talked towards the end of the budget, which was the whole reason why we did the pay study, which is where Commissioner Hefner brought that up. I think what, three years ago, I think it was five years.

Five years. Okay. Um, and then we keep doing the pay study and we review it. You know, we compete with our neighboring, you know, communities of, okay, they get raises, then we got to give raises, they give raises, and we keep going back and forth. So, but the other question is that we top out in five years. So, which one should we be doing? That's what I would like to see. Is there an opportunity to say that we could be saving money and taxpayers dollars because we're going to do the five-year top out or are we going to do continue to keep looking at the pay studies for every year, every two years?

But every city in doing a pay study, they adjust their their pay rates. Their people are still moving through the pay scale. So, it we we still would move through a pay scale. Now, when we did the the one five years ago, anytime that you adjust the the top out pay, you bring an employee where they are, they may be at top out now, but you reduce them to a diff different step. So, it takes them, they're not automatically topping out, they're still moving through the pay scale. They don't automatically jump up. Um, so it it

well, they still get their percentages. So that's what I'm saying is is that you know again I took my notes from last year when we discussed this. Um so you get 2.5 after 6 months 3% after one year 5% after two years 7.5 after three 8.5 after four 10% after five years 3 36.5% over that time frame. So, what I'm asking is is that when Commissioner Hefner brought this up initially for us to do all those bumps between 28 and 32% pay increase to bring all positions up. Correct.

Yes. But that was bringing the top out pay. That did not mean an employee got automatically bumped up to the 30%. They got moved up to the next pay level that was closest to their pay rate where they were at, which means they could be at a seven. Um, but when the new pay scale went into effect, it dropped them to a four or a five. It just depended on what the range was that they that that pay scale increased. So, they don't automatically just because you did a new pay study and there is 20% higher, they don't automatically get a 20% raise. They are they are in the pay scale, our old pay scale, and then they're moved up to the next level and then they move through the pay scale just as they did before. So what I'm asking though is is that when we look back so a brand new employee is now in a sense reaping the rewards from

well let me from the change right but it's either I mean you either hire them here at a higher pay rate or you hire them at another city at a higher pay rate. You're still comparatively you know using the same pay scale trying to anyway but that doesn't mean that that the new employee starts off automatically higher. But do most cities top out in five years? No. There are some I think I think Gallatin reduced theirs. Um Hendersonville had like an 18step plan. Um but I've noticed now that they're reducing their level of steps to try to get people in and keep good talent. So when they reduced it from 18 to what 12 or

I don't know what Hendersonville done. Gallatin reduced theirs and I can't I can't remember what they started with but I did notice that they I think they have like a sevenyear top out now. So they've they've dropped theirs down. Okay. I wanted to follow up on that. You're bringing up a good point because five years ago when when I requested that case study, there was no discussion about topouts. It was based on a hourly rates. Mary, that is top out. Like the what I when I say top out, that's the the top rate.

So that that the pay scale goes. So that's a that's a top out. That's not was not my under that was not my impression. It's not that was current rates for each municipality. That was what they were getting paid. At least that's what I was told. No, that was the that was the top out rate. That was like Do you have that? Do you still have that? Oh, okay. Can you can you and maybe I just totally missed it, but I never once heard a conversation about top out as part of those conversations about bringing everybody up to within five plus or - 5% of the average,

but that was bringing their scale to that, not necessarily an employee to that. It was bringing the scale to within that range. The employee would fall somewhere in that scale. They didn't automatically go up. And they're in that scale because of their experience or however long they've been here. Isn't that correct? So, okay. Because it was based on titles. There were no individual names. Correct. Based on titles, right?

And there was a pay scale for that title and then that was a comparison of okay, where are the where are the where are the top out rates for that position across the cities? And so then we increased it to within 5% of that, right? And then scaled it back to where okay over the years. Okay. And then wherever the employee was in their old scale, they were then bumped up to like the next highest whatever within the new scale that that next highest rate. That doesn't mean that they automatically went to top out. It just increased their ability to get to that number. They got to that number. Yeah, I was under a different impression, but that's fine. That's fine. But if you do have that, can you send that to him? The old one? Yeah, the old one.

Thank you. Are these are these cities we're comparing against? Is it typical for them to do merit similar to we do or they just do cola or I think I don't know honestly. Um they I think they typically do just a cola. So how is how does the merit our merit then factor into this? So if if you adjust the merit, so the merit, it doesn't compound year-to-year. It's based off their total salary.

Um so if you take away the merit this year and you give them a 3% cola, you're not giving them 3%. Because that merit was factored into their salary last year, their total salary. It's not their hourly rate, it's their total salary. So when you if you take away the merit you're not giving them and you only give them a 3% cola you're not giving them a full 3% because you reduce their salary by their 2% merit if that makes sense. So is the merit just an automatic thing

the merit? Well I mean it's not automatic. They have to earn it but so we know what percentage of people get full merits. Uh, I I don't I would have to ask HR that. I'm sure it's quite a large percentage, but I don't know off hand how many. To go back to what Commissioner Hefner said two years ago, maybe it was three. I apologize for just throwing out the year, but you had stated about KPIs, key performance indicators, and that still sticks with me about making sure every department has goals, they meet their goals in order to get their merit. Are we tracking that? I

I guess that's a city manager and now you know but are we tracking that? Sorry, mayor. Yes, absolutely. As a matter of fact, each department head um does performance evaluations every year. So, yes, and their middle managers and other people are doing evaluating their people as well and they all get three goals and objectives as well. Okay. in our in our department. I can't speak for the others, but I think we had about 25% that did not get a full merit last year. Roughly, I think it was close to 20 personnel that were did not get a full merit for performance reasons. Yeah. I'm sorry it's always sitting down with you, but you're talking about adding positions and we're trying to figure out if how the budget goes. So, okay.

Thanks, Chief. All right. Any questions for Chief? Thank you. Get off the hot seat. Next is Chief Chandler with the PD budget and that starts on page 33 and then he will also cover drug fund which is on page 60. What was the first page? I'm sorry. Uh 33.

33 and then 60. Thank you so much. All right, commissioners. Thank you all for your time today. I could go through line by line in the budget, but I really just want to give you a true overview of the police department where we stand. The uh I keep y'all regularly updated about this continued successes that we have from y'all continued investments. And to me, those continued investments continue to lead to efficiencies in our agency. Uh most recently was the re-review of our strategic growth plan where based on our call volume, based on our reports, based on our crime, it showed us having to hire four to six officers per year to keep up with that level of impact in our city. Since our crime has continued to drop, since our call volume remains fairly flat, that now is just two officers per year to maintain our current levels of service that we have in the community. You know, I do know one of our or two of our police officers positions were cut. That does cause me concern. I understand what we're dealing with within a city. Uh but we are still a growing uh city, a still growing police department and our call volume uh is slightly going up 0.5% and what I notice is more development on Goldenberg Gateway that is coming online and that's why I requested the two officers truly looking at our data uh to maintain our level of service in the community. I would love to have those police officer positions back. Uh but overall our community, our police department, we are are rocking and rolling, moving forward in a very positive positive way. Um again, those investments in the technology that we have, what we're able to do and be a strong deterrent to crime since our biggest risk is outside criminals coming into the city. We have to work really hard about being

proactive. Recent numbers that I looked at comparing ourselves to other agencies, your police officers here, uh generate 48% of the proactive crime. The next city below us is a city of Gallatin at 37%. City of Nashville is 10% on their level of proactivity. So when I look at our team, we have fewer officers per capita than most agencies around us. And but they're working almost quadruple what other cities that have way more police officers have. Truly off being proactive and getting after it every day to protect everyone in this community. But I'm not too worried about the per capita number because I think if I came in front of you and said I needed 40 more police officers, that impact on our taxpayers would be absolutely huge. And what we continue to look at is it being efficient and is what we are doing working. And right now looking at all the data, looking at the trends, what we do in this community works and we're able to be efficient and save money. And by changing that strategic growth plan over a fiveyear period, it has saved us about $6 million because if we have to hire more officers, it's training, it's equipment, it's personnel costs that are impacted by hiring more officers. And u I'm just grateful that crime remains down. I'm grateful for a strong team that gets after it every day and works hard. Going through the budget, you'll notice that we've asked to uh increase our communication supervisor to a director level pay. This is simply because uh she continues to take on the burden of more of more personnel. When we look at the chain of command and personnel related to uh staffing in there, that staff has to keep growing with our impact uh with police dispatch, but really largely to the fire and EMS dispatching. We're having to continue to increase staffing in our dispatch center. Uh with that additional staffing

comes more responsibility, and she truly just needs to be compensated for that level of responsibility that she has. Uh but again asking for um three other dispatchers in that uh unit that's needed to take our unit to 12-h hour shifts. Right now they work eight hour shifts. Uh but to ensure that we have adequate coverage at every hour of the day. Uh 12 hours is necessary, but it also uh helps us align what we do with our drone as a first responder program. And that allows us to ensure a pilot is working at all times in that center to ensure the drone can be launched when it needs to launch during the day, no matter what time of the day. The other position is the evidence clerk for the Freedom of Information Act request. I know this request request originally filtered through HR. HR has a huge need with it, but we looked at the amount of requests that come in for that and it's majority police. Uh so instead of adding that position in HR, we're going to add that position within the police department just so they can do other things beyond just what would HR would cover. Uh they'll be able to help out in evidence uh with their workloads, but also mainly handle the Freedom of Information Act uh requests that come through. We're also going to be accredited next year and so one of our our accreditation manager a small number in there to move them up to accreditation manager to sergeant pay rather than the corporal pay that he's currently uh making. But overall with our operating budget, there's an increase of about 200,000. Uh but re excuse me, 300,000. But really uh that is because what has been added to that operating is 140 of that is with the mental health co-responder staff clinician that we had to move into the operating budget under contractual services. Uh that really came out of personnel. a lot of different lines were reduced, but working with uh city hall, of course, I would love to have it back, but I understand the situation that

we're in, and we're going to continue our level of service regardless. Uh the other increase as well is a safe city program with uh the first year of Safe City. It was around $189,000. That's moving to about $300,000. That's due to the drone as a first responder coming online. uh we worked through all the different planning phases, the engineering phases, all the different studies to get us to this point and the first drone will be installed at station 3 at the end of this month and then in October uh the second drone will be installed at top at on top of our facility at police headquarters. Uh but that's truly just how that scale of program continues uh to work with our safe city uh program. also includes our license plate readers, live 911, uh, and the PTZ cameras at all the different intersections. But again, I'll reflect back on this technology. It's a true deterrent, uh, to keeping criminals out of our community. You have those who who come here, but ever since we implemented these programs, that's when our crime numbers started to drop significantly. Uh, and our community is much more protected today than it was many, many years ago. Uh, I can think back to 2007 when I was on patrol. We averaged about 12 vehicle burglaries per month. Just in the first four months of this year, we've only averaged one vehicle burglary per month. Shoplifting remains down significantly. Theft remains down uh significantly. And we're even getting in a situation where it's harder for our officers to find proactive arrest. The criminals simply are not coming here. They're they're avoiding our city by the research that we do over social media conversations and different intelligence that we have. They talk about our city. They talk about not coming here. And that's exactly what we want to see. Uh every time I see a situation where there's a victim in our community, someone's hurt either physically, financially, right, or emotionally. And

we're doing everything we can to prevent that. And today we have less victims in our community. Our population has continued to to rise. But the numbers of crime are not rising, right? So then you add that to a rate. The rate continues to drop significantly here. But what we're doing is working. Uh we get constant um feedback from other agencies, from other chiefs wanting to know how we do it. They're shocked when we tell them how many police officers we have for a city that we have. uh obviously they're envy to our technology and they wish they had the same support that y'all give us every day uh to protect this city. Uh but they're shocked by by how we do it because we really truly do it with so much less than what other other resources that they have in other communities. Uh we are next to some of the highest crime rates in the city of Nashville with Antioch and Hermedage right next to our borders. We have a major interstate running through town and we have a very large shopping area. So that obviously generates crime, but when you work hard to be a strong deterrent, we see that uh crime lowering significantly. Other changes that I've implemented since becoming chief of police was I removed all of our task force officers. So we had two task force officers. They worked outside the city on our DEA and also on the Homeland Security uh child sex abuse task force. I put them back uh within headquarters uh to ensure that we had using our personnel directly benefiting the city of Mount Juliet every day. I've also realigned personnel since our crime is is not as much. We have less investigations, right? So, I've been able to move personnel out of investigations or not fill investigative seats within different areas of the department where we truly did have a need. Uh, and it's just looking at how we can look at personnel and how can we move them around more efficiently. I've also expanded our flex team. So, our flex teams work during peak hours of the

day, which is 10:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. During those times of day, our call for service volume is almost triple than it is from 10:00 a.m. to 10 or excuse me, 10 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. Uh, so we have more officers on the street every day when we have more call volume every day. And those flex officers work in our mall areas. So the huge success that you've seen with large theft interceptions, those are your flex team out there every day making those arrests. The large warrant arrests that you see every day. Those are our flex team officers working out there. And those are proactive officers that are not tasked with calls for service. They generate their own calls for service every day through their work and they're doing a very good job with what they do. So it's looking at personnel and how can we align that to be more efficient. Uh and that's why I truly hope we can get two of those bodies back added back in just so we can stay with our strategic plan after it was readjusted from four to six per year to two uh per year. Chief, um and I apologize for not saying it to our other chief, but we thank you both uh for everything you guys are doing. It's amazing to see the technology as well as all the social media. I mean, we can't put another feather any more feathers in y'all's caps because it's just great job. But so to go back to the technology side of things again because um you know I mean there's a cost there, right? With the drones and and the advancement. So um obviously they're not implemented yet. Uh is it going to be all uh uh both drones are going to be implemented this summer or do we have a timeline on that first of all? Yeah. So, at the end of this month is our first installation on station three. We chose that location first because our call volume is the highest around Providence Marketplace. Uh the second location will be on top of headquarters and that will come in about August to October.

Okay. Um and then from that point right there, uh so when we start looking at um you know the operations of those drones, do we have staff that's going to be manning those or is that going to be AI? No, it's definitely not AI. We do have to monitor the drone system through a pilot, part 107 pilot, and it's through our dispatch center. That's another level of efficiency that we have. A lot of agencies that start drone as a first responder program create a whole different unit called a real-time intelligence operations center. Uh but since we do our own dispatching in-house, we have civilians who uh are there that they're they're they're capable and they're they they have the intelligence to learn and fly the drone. So we've integrated them just to be more multi-purpose in what they do. Uh so not only do they do police, fire, medical dispatching, right? They also monitor all of our technology, LPR, fly the fly the drone system as well. And also, we'll start doing more crime analyst type work for our officers in the field. Where we are successful as a department is truly being proactive and being out there every day and supporting the officers on the ground every day. And that's why having them integrated within our dispatch center that works 247. They're always there to support our team out there in the field.

And that's these two dispatchers that you have added this year. Is that correct? Yeah, we added two advanced response or excuse me, advanced operator dispatchers last year. Right now, we're adding two more and that gives us the four pilots to work the 12-h hour shifts. Okay. And of course, we're crossraining our other dispatchers as well. Any dispatcher who wants to truly learn how to fly the drone. We're allowing them to go to training to learn how to fly the drone. It's only a $300 investment per personnel member. Uh so that's the training and that's also taking the test to be certified to fly the fly the device. Okay, thank you. Yes, sir. That was pretty straightforward flying it over California.

Yeah, they do have a parachute, which is nice to know as well.

That's all. That's the one question I have. Well, do they fall out of the sky? They do fall out of the sky at times. Thank goodness that they have parachutes. Uh but going just through the list uh down to our our capital expenditures simple replacement of vehicles only six this year it is a lower year uh for vehicle replacements. Of course every year before I submit how many vehicles we need I look at the current condition of our vehicles and the projected miles that they'll be at. Uh we typically it ranges depending on the health of the vehicle, the type of vehicle, but most of our Ford Explorers they miles out around 130. Had one get to 160 recently. So it just depends on on the health of the car. Uh we don't get rid of cars simply because of miles. It's truly mechanically is it done? And it's done and we were just done with it, right? We try to push them as far as we can uh with what we have going through is we in our drug fund we moved over a tactical rescue vehicle replacement that is an armored vehicle. Uh right now we're operating out of what's called a MRAP. It is a military vehicle. It's about the size of a dump truck. Some of you have seen it. It can only fit four personnel in it. Uh and it it was deployed out to Desert Storm. When it was done at Desert Storm, we got it off military surplus for free. It has its issues. It can't really be maintained by our city shop. We have to take it to the National Guard Armory uh for repairs on it, but it's big and we've damaged some roadways with it. We've damaged some driveways with it. We really just need something more uh unique to a modern police department, which is a a simple armored vehicle that's more the size that can be driven anywhere in our community. What made me add this request in was the recent response to the threats at West Wilson Middle School. We cannot drive that MRAP down parking lots easily. Uh and if

there was a threat at one of our schools with a lot of vehicles in the parking lot, the uh armored vehicle like an MRAP would just be difficult to drive through there. and having something smaller, more tactical available for quick deployment. That's why that armored vehicle request is here. It's not in the general fund. It is in our drug fund where we have about 715,000 in the bank for the drug fund. And out of that drug fund, I can spend uh just one time cost. It can't be anything that's reoccurring. What was the cost of this vehicle? 475. Yep.$475. making sure I was reading that correct.

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely not not a cheap vehicle, but those type vehicles will last us 20 plus years. Uh and thankfully with the new addition to our headquarters, we have a garage to put it in, so it's not going to be sitting out in the sun baking away and dying. It'll be parked in a garage. Uh and and will be maintained for many, many years to come. So it' probably be costneutral for the insurance for the big vehicle that we currently are destroying people's roadways and so so forth versus this one. Correct. I would say there's a lot less liability with the new vehicle than Okay. How about equipment on that? Is that going to be uh is that a onetime cost if you can be able to take out the drug fund as well?

Yes. Yes. So all that number that you see is it it is equipped. Oh, that's including equipment for 450. Okay. Think we can get extra drone in there for that one. 450. You could. The other thing 475. Deputy city manager Mullins reminded me was our IMRAT vehicle does require two people to operate and it typically requires an escort as well when it travels through the city. Uh this other vehicle is much smaller. It's on like a Ford F250 type frame. Uh, it's that type of size, but it looks just like a larger armored type SUV rather than the armored dump truck driving down the road. That is pretty cool though. It is.

It It looks cool, but it's not ideal. Yeah, it's safer though than probably most vehicles, right? No, not really. I I would say getting up and out of it is hard. It's high off the ground. It's difficult for our team to deploy out of it. having something that's meant from a, you know, a suburban police department to deploy out of other than rather than driving through war zones looking out for mines. The other option is much better for us. Gotcha. How often did we actually use it deploy it? Sure. Couple of years.

Yeah. So we can't deploy it as often as we would like to just because of the size of it and depending on where we needed to deploy it at, but it would be used much more often uh than the existing one would be deployed. But to give you an example on when how many times we could have deployed it this year, probably around 20 could have could have but didn't but but did not. We only deployed it probably around five times this year.

Okay. And the most recent thing which really just caught my attention was the fact that our SRT team had a difficult time deploying it at the school. And that's one of our biggest threats in our community are large populated uh buildings, schools, and our warehouses. They have a lot of parking lots, a lot of skinny parking lots. And getting that thing up to the front door or maneuvering around other parts of the building is necessary. How many officers fit in the new one? 12. 12. in one vehicle. Yes, ma'am. Wow. Yeah. It's basically just an armored personnel carrier to get you close.

Wow. That uh that's a big chunk out of the drug fund. So, I I take it you have a lot of faith in the need in this.

I do. I do. And we've continued to talk with our team. But again, our our special response team continues to get better and better and more prepared uh with us. You know, now they have to pass certain physical fitness requirements. we put a lot more standards in place for them to get better and better in their training requirements. Uh so they have shown the ability to be a a class A team and they need this level of equipment for it. Uh but even on the the basics of it, if I have a police officer shot and needs to be rescued and there's an active shooter that continues to shoot, any officer can grab this armored vehicle and drive it to the scene to rescue that downed officer who could be pinned down. Not anyone can drive the MRAP.

That's enough in itself. Yeah. I saw an $8,000 capital expense for repairs on seized vehicles. Yes, sir. So, recently we have seized four vehicles. Uh we've got back into uh focusing on local drug dealers in our community who are operating and they have vehicles that don't have leans on them. We have taken those vehicles and then so they do require some level of repair but it allows us to not have to purchase undercover vehicles. Oh, so we're using this. We use them. Yes, sir. You're reusing them? Yes, sir. Okay. I didn't know that. Okay.

Yeah. I would I would be glad to get more in depth offline about what type of cars they are. I just don't want to let the criminal community know what our undercover team. Okay. I just wasn't I wanted to make sure we weren't repairing vehicles that we follow you. I follow you. These are vehicles that uh we have seen from drug dealers because we seized and they are now our property that we use. Okay. Okay. Well, we got 40 officers per shift that's out there. So, we got to have coverage, right? So, yeah. Okay. I got I got it. We're good. Vice Mayor is joking. We do not have 40 out there working. Citizens don't need to know. Listen. Right. There you go. That was for the recording. Yeah. I was going to say this is live.

Yeah. Well, just yesterday somebody had said, "Do we have 65 officers per shift?" I said, "It's about that number." So, it was good to see that that's the presence that people think and that's just the culture we implement. We want our police officers to be visible and they don't go park behind buildings and hide. They truly need to be visible. Anytime we have an officer that's visible out there on the street, it's a deterrent to crime. Oh, yeah. I believe it. It's a good number though. When somebody threw out a number 65 officers per shift, I was like, "That's amazing." Yeah, absolutely. It's good presence. So, thank you. Absolutely. So, that that's that's the overall on the general police department budget. Any direct questions on that?

Get to animal control. Also in the uh drug fund uh is a new patrol canine uh to bring our canines to three. Uh typically, you've seen we've have either one down or or one hurt. U there's been times when we have not had canines available uh to assist us. This will ensure ensure us that we do have another opportunity to have one of our canines available. I'm not having to ask for a vehicle for this. We do have a vehicle already equipped for another canine. Uh and it's simply that that cost there out of the drug fund. Jumping to the public safety communications budget. Uh this was a new generated department budget that Dana helped us with because a lot of of the police department budget was supporting all communications within the city, all communications infrastructure. And so now this truly captures what are we spending on uh the combined police, fire, IT uh city communications budget related to our infrastructure. Uh so the communication services was basically just uh pull it out of police, stick it uh in this budget here. Uh but the data processing services, you see our CAD system which supports everything within the city, police, fire, EMS. Uh Chief Folks mentioned how we asked for a a CAD replacement. Uh this is truly based on the needs of fire and medical where they needed. don't disagree if he's trying to achieve the goals he's trying to achieve that they do need this new CAD system for our dispatch center to meet those goals. There are benefits to us as a police department. Uh but we can continue to get by with the eforce CAD system that we have today. Uh but with the Motorola of Flex CAD with what fire is trying to achieve, I do believe it it can end up being a necessity to

meet those goals of the fire and EMS service to ensure that calls are dispatched automatically but also achieve the location-based dispatching uh that Chief Folks is want to achieve with his department. The tower upgrades that you see, we recently did a review with Metro Nashville IT Police Fire needs related to our communications infrastructure. Our current infrastructure is 15 years old uh which is about end of life for the system uh and will will not be supported with the system in 2030. The overall cost impact is $10 million. Uh so we went had conversations with city hall about how they would want to approach this. do they want to do a bond and and buy it all at once or can we do it in phased expenditures and we chose the phased expenditures. So we took the most important need first which was the tower infrastructure and that's at $2.9 million and that is what you see in the budget today. But there'll be another request next year and another request the year after to get us in eventual compliance with what Metro Nashville is attempting to achieve. But they are changing the level of encryption that the radios need to communicate on. We don't have that level of encryption in ours. So we will eventually need to upgrade our our mobile devices, our our portable devices that we carry on our person to meet that level of encryption and also our tower sites. With the direct tower upgrade you see here today though, it gives us more talk pass. Uh today we only have four talk pass meaning that on our system systemwide there can only be four conversations taking place at once with the additional uh services that police are doing with additional services that our fire and EMS are doing. You have to have multiple talk paths and so this increases it from four to about 16 talk paths. Uh we will also integrate other agencies that are not easily interoperable with us permanently on the system uh with WEMA,

with Lebanon, uh with u uh Tennessee Highway Patrol, with some other state agencies, getting them quickly integrated into our system where it's a flip of the switch to talk to them rather than changing it systemwide trying to talk with them. It gets very technical. But the tower upgrades also get uh connectivity as well to take us off the issues where we've had data lines failing. We've lost communications at both tower sites. It makes all the tower sites uh georredundant which means they can operate independently of each other. Uh so we if we have one go down it doesn't take all of them down. Uh today if one goes down they all go down and we can lose communication pretty quickly.

How often does that happen? It depends. Um, not Has it ever gone down?

It has. Yeah, it has. It went down last week. Uh, I would say four times a month. Sometimes it's it's a long time. Sometimes it's a very quick time. Uh, but there are probably, and Adam may have elaborate, but maybe five different providers that get our connection from our radio tower to the core, which is in Metro Nashville. Uh, and if any point in time that line goes down, uh, we could lose connectivity. Uh, and our people can still talk, but it's in a very, uh, archaic way of communicating. We lose all of our other channels. We all isolate to one channel. Uh, it sends our smart system to a dumb environment basically, uh, where it's just basic two-way communication rather than a trunked uh, type system. Would this eliminate the need for additional radios in like in the believe if I'm correct in the car you'll have an additional radio to communicate with WHEMA? Yeah.

Yeah, I believe so. That that eliminates the need for us for sure. I would assume the same for the fire department as well. Uh because instead of going to the other radio, they're just changing the channel on their system. Okay. What's the total cost for the overall project? near 10 million. Does that include the radios? That's another 10. That does include the radios. That includes the radios.

Uh but the looking at Metro's timeline, the radios and such would not need to be upgraded for about three to four years. So, we have some time with that. Obviously, equipment will go be more expensive in three to four years. Uh but just in the budget today is just the tower upgrade at 2.9 million, not the overall upgrade that's needed within three to five years.

So quick question. So last year, I believe around budget time, there was a discussion about that tower that was going to be installed. Unfortunately, I think it was voted down because we couldn't find a good place for it. Was that going to be part of this cost or was that a separate project? So, our what we've learned with the building after that tower project failed on our property is we do need a tower site at our headquarters. I believe they're going to achieve that with a much smaller type of tower. Uh it's not going to be a large cell phone type tower like you see uh because we have to get so many feet up above the uh tree cover uh to get a good line of sight to metro to our tower sites uh to keep that connectivity in.

Is it possible to do it at the fire station uh three because we got that extra land back there or is that even not an option? No, it will need to be at our headquarters because that's where the dispatch center is. Okay. All right. Now, I got a question on that. How far does that have to be from the building, the tower site? So, they've looked at it could have gone on top of our current building. Okay. With the engineering loads, they decided, let's not risk it. Uh, so it would need to be a standalone tower away from the building, but there's options on our property to put that. Uh, it's it's nowhere near significant as a cell phone tower looks.

Okay. If if we were going from four to 16, uh, it's a talk pass, excuse me. Um, is that going to take more dispatch people in the future? No, sir. Not at all. It just opens up the A lot of these conversations are taking place without the dispatcher being involved. Okay. All right. And that's part of the new technology as well. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

Did y'all city courts pretty flat? Police headquarters, you notice has has went up just with the new building and all the cost involved with that. And of course, animal control overall remains very flat. We're just asking to have one of the frozen positions added back within the budget. Right now, they operate at three. Uh we had one dispatcher who has been out on workman's comp uh for a long time, and so they've been operating with two. Operating with two is very dangerous in there. They have to truly have more. And to ensure adequate staffing, we just need four uh in our animal control environment. Quick question. So, because I know there's a line item in there for a maintenance and I know with the new uh uh police department that uh you know that maintenance technician through the city, is that an opportunity where we can save of not having these other contracts with our ABC mechanical whoever they are? Would that be an option? Because again, I'm I'm I'm I'm thinking towards the the warranty items, right, for your building along with the fire stations. That could be a cost savings. So, is that something that you guys would that be under partial your budget and or would that be split upon?

I guess it depends on how would that look how many buildings this person's going to serve, right? Uh but looking at just our building alone, we're still running under a lot of warranties that may go up to three years. Yeah. and our current maintenance cost is through total group around 15,000. Um I just don't think it supports adding a position yet. I do think maybe next couple of years the city needs to evaluate that and see if uh it is worth uh a savings to add a position to handle maintenance across the city.

Well, staff internally handling it. Well, the reason why I say that is because when you're dealing with warranty, that means you have the ability to have the installer come out and in a sense crossrain that employee to be able to get familiar with some of that technical equipment because that is sight specific equipment that could be a little bit of a learning curve. If you bring somebody in at the end of the warranty period, that's what I was looking at. So again, and if it's something that can be shared amongst the other departments with newer buildings and also still following the warranty side of things, there could be some opportunity for cross trainining as well as us getting out of these other contracts that we just keep renewing every year that are, you know, let's just say, you know, very u lowmaintenance items, you know what I mean? So I didn't know if that was an option that you guys had looked at. So it'd be something that I would definitely want to see if that be a cost savings. Yeah, I think the biggest like with us for maintenance is cleaning service. You know, I I'd love to have an in-house janitor janitor every

day. You know, uh because our cleaning service that we're that's in our budget is 825. That's a full-time employee really, you know. So if if it's if it's more cost effective to hire a janitor part,

I I'd much rather have that opportunity uh in house or if it's a full-time employee across the whole city, right? That means all the different buildings. I don't know what the overall We're still When is that contract up?

Thank you. Appreciate that. Everyone good? All right. Again, I know you stated at the beginning, Vice Mayor, about the support y'all give us and all the feathers you put in our cap. We don't take it lightly. We're going to work hard every day to maintain the support of y'all, but also our community, right? It's it's our community that have our back every day and allow our officers to do the job that they do every day to protect this city. Uh, but there's no doubt in my mind that each one of y'all that sit up here today uh support your police officers and we're grateful for that. I know y'all have a hard job to do uh managing the overall city city budget. Uh but we're so grateful for the support that you give us every day. Thank you all. Thank you.

You know, if there's there's no objection, I'm gonna I'm gonna recommend a 15minute recess. Hearing none, we'll reconvene in 15 minutes. Would you like a piece of candy, mayor?

And we'll call this meeting back to order. Um, Miss Hire, who we have, uh, it next. Yes, it starts on page 31. 31. Y'all don't have any questions left over from emergency comms or anything?

Fair enough. Um so our uh 200 contract services went up a little bit. Um kind of the drivers of that were we're adding um $21,000 for ADA compliance on all of our sites. Um to be fully compliant, we're going to end up being about a year early, which is better to be a year early than exactly on time. as I understand the ADA compliance moving forward, uh like day one, somebody could hit us and we'd have we'd be responsible for for paying that. Right now, as the law kind of exists, um they uh that's not the case. Um so whenever that comes into effect, I think comes into effect now 2028 for us. Um, so this will make us fully compliant. All files, fil PDF, all that'll work. Um, also we're trying to finish up PD scanning this year. Turns out we have more documents than we anticipated. Um, so that's causing that cost to go up by about 60 grand uh to finish up, but this will be the last year for scanning. Um, there might be, you know, some little cleanup, but it won't be near the cost. This is up 60 grand from last year spent.

How many years is this for that? Uh I think this is the fifth year, maybe the fourth. I'm down with year four. And what was the projected cost initially when we started this project? Do you remember? I do not. I do not. Um because I thought for some reason 180,000 sticking in my head. And it it averaged about that up until this year. This year we're at 220. Last year we're at 160. Um, but there there, you know, quite a bit of documents to get scanned in. And this the last year?

It should be the last year. Like I said, there may be some cleanup departments that are nowhere near the volume. Maybe we'll have 30, 40 grand or something like that, but we're trying to get it basically everything but clean up done this year. And then um most of the other lines have stayed about the same. Added a little bit to uh meals to do uh quarterly lunch and learn for staff. Make sure we're doing training on cyber security, how to use tools. Um try to get people in front of training. Um 314 went up a little bit. um mainly due to um four or five components but the key drivers were uh we're going to add MDM for mobile devices and then we're going to a different product for um email social media archiving things like that and so we don't have to look in five places we can look at one um and a better system to make sure those uh foil requests are accurate and easy to for staff to pull off rather than a bunch of different hands. Um, I believe our comm's line 250 245 stayed about the same up maybe just

a little bit. Um, we should see a savings uh with a new state contract, but I don't have those numbers yet. I they're estimating about 30 grand across the year that we'll save, but other contracts will also renew on out of the same line. So, I imagine it'll stay close to neutral, maybe save just a little bit. And y'all have any questions on operating? Yes, sir.

Not not a question per se on the budget, but um how are other municipalities leveraging AI technology to help eliminate or reduce expenses? And in our

in our area so far, most are um going to limited trials. Um The concern is data governance. Um what all do you give it access to? How do you make sure it's not sharing that data? Um for instance, OpenAI, which is kind of one of the more popular ones. Um you have to reach a certain license level to where you can say, hey, this data stays in the United States. Um you know, doesn't get landed in, you know, some of their other data centers wherever they might be. Um, so I think that's like 80 or 100 users a month. So it's pretty pretty big spin.

But there are municipalities that are starting to look at um using it in some capacity. I'd be curious to see what Wilson County uh I don't think anybody in Wilson County has went through a wide program. Um not that I've spoken to. Um now there are others in the state. I'm sure Nashville. I'm sure um the state is got a um I forget the name of her title, but she's over the AI initiative. I talked to her on um different tools, but we're looking at maybe deploying open AI in a more limited, you know, 20 to 30 user license. We won't be quite big enough to where I can just let it loose, right? Um because we won't be able to guarantee where it's landed.

What would be the use case? Um basically just whichever users think they can, you know, bring a tool to bear. Um, but the other concern I have is, um, having people know how to use the tool. So, how to write a good U prompt, how to get their data back out, but um, OpenAI is pretty powerful. There are, of course, lots of different ways to go. Um, but it it looks to be maybe the way to to at least try out. Okay. All right. Appreciate it. I got a question.

Yeah. Commissioner Johnson. Yeah. On um on 314, how did we come down about 100,000 than what they had requested on the software subscriptions? I guess that's for you. I don't know. It's cuz it's under the manager, city manager.

Where where you at? What page? Line 314 on page 31. That a lot of that's going to be different data collections. We could have went with a uh system that collected an additional amount of software that uh we chose not to due to the cost associated with it to not collect that at this point in time but we can still run it so efficiently as we do. Okay. Okay. Very good for catching it. Okay.

Anything else? Is it obviously I mean because I I was I I was actually talking about the AI with safety because I know some of their prompts um that is going to help out so we don't have to try and reinvent the wheel on some of these programs that they're trying to implement. But did we ever find out the state is implementing it because we could potentially piggy back off of those. Correct. The meeting is meeting canceled. So sorry he's breaking up. So, I did ask the state uh I can't remember her exact title, but the state AI person. Yeah. Um and there is not yet a statewide contract with any of those, especially at our license level,

you know, maybe like Nashville or somebody like that might be able to buy on a state contract, but I think there's a minimum number of users. Her recommendation to me was to buy the business license level. um you know if we had 200 users maybe you'd benefit the contract level but there's not yet a state bid or anything like that. Okay.

Do you have any existing titlements under your office 365 subscriptions with co-pilot? We have five uh not entitlements like included our license level is is uh that's a allocart. We have I think 10. It might be five. We have very few because we traled it and it's just not very powerful as you might know. Yeah. I won't make any comments on that. Yeah. Yeah, it's been underwhelming with its ability unfortunately.

Any other questions or comments? Thank you. Thank you. Uh, next we'll review public works budget with Matt White. That budget starts on page 49 and then he'll cover state street on 59 and the capital projects budget on page 62. We start on 49 49 through 53. Okay.

Good evening everyone. Uh also placed a uh packet on each one of your spots covers the highlights of my department. I'm not going to go line by line. So, I'm just going to cover some of the highlights from our proposed budget this year. Uh, if you see on the first table, that's our operating cost compared to the current budget versus the proposed budget. Uh, this year, we're proposing to reduce our operating cost by $259,000 this year. This is the second year in a row I'm cutting cost. Sorry. Uh, the second year in a row I figured out a way to cut cost. Um the next table uh is our personnel and operating costs combined and I'm showing a net reduction of around two $275,000 this year. Um my personnel request I'm not requesting any new positions or employees this year. Uh one request that I did have is to so we did the pay rate study early this year. One of my requests is to bring my positions up to the average of that pay rate study. This was denied by the city manager's office. Another request that I have, this was kind of a late ad because one of my employees just got their CDL license and they have the years of service to qualify for promotion to rideway operator. And so we've added that into the budget. Um, that's an increase of $5,130.

That's on your that's on your changes sheet. Okay. So, he he just got the CDL uh two weeks ago. So, uh he now qualifies for that position. So, I've added that in. How many vehicles do we have that he would be driving? Do what? How many vehicles do we have that he'd be driving? It's pieces of equipment like back hose and and things like and like a grapple truck for instance bigger types of pieces of equipment that require a CDL. Perfect. Question for Miss Hire. These the summary of changes to the budget. These are these are going to be placed in the budget for first reading automatically. Okay. Where is that?

The one we had at the beginning.

Okay. Um, so if the the requested pay rate adjustments were approved by the BOC, public works would still have a reduction of operating and personnel cost of $140,000. Um, most of my positions are when you compare the top out rate currently versus the top out rate at the at from the pay rate study, uh, most of my positions are in the 10 to 17% below average range. So, um that's why I'm requesting um that they get paid what the other 10 cities around it are getting paid. Uh and so I just ask that you reward departments who are cutting cost. Uh and so I ask if if you could uh pass an amendment on first and second reading to approve those pay rates, I really appreciate it. I I have a really great team of guys and I want to retain them best I can. So that's why I'm asking for that. Uh if you go to the next sheet on my packet that I gave you, uh looking at co capital cost items, uh this doesn't include our capital transportation projects. It's just other capital cost items for public works. Um showing a net reduction of 745,000 this year. Uh, public works did request a new salt plow truck to replace our heeno truck and that that cost is around $400,000. Uh, this request was denied uh by the city manager office. So, one thing I wanted to point out there's the lead time on this truck is 18 months. So, we wouldn't be spending the money in this next budget, but we need the money in the budget to make the purchase order. So, even if you approved it, we wouldn't be spending the money yet until the next next budget after that. Um, if the truck is not approved, that means we'll be stuck with our Heeno truck for two more

winter seasons and I'm not quite sure it's going to make it. Um, I have Toby here who's going to come up and give you more information on the existing HENO truck versus the new truck we're asking for this year. uh if if it doesn't get into this budget and we have to use the heo two more years, like I said, I don't know if it'll make it. And then if it dies, then we have to reduce the number of streets we treat during a winter storm. Um the other thing is this new truck we're looking for, it's multi-purpose, so it's not only going to be used during winter, it's a swap loader, so you can swap out the beds for different types of uses, like a dump truck or and Toby will explain that. So, I'll turn it over to Toby. Um, the the next three sheets in your packet are kind of information on that truck and some pictures of the existing one that's pretty rusted.

So, the truck we're going to replace is a 2014. Uh, it's been a salt truck all of its life. Uh, we actually went in this year and recoded the frame and everything on it. Uh, but salt eats metal. Uh, and this is the truck we use for our bigger roads, Mount Jerry Road, Golden Bear, Belinda City Parkway. Uh, so if it was to go down, uh, it would be a a major impact to our salt and ice operations. Uh, and really what the new truck brings to the table is a a technology that we don't have, uh, with GPS tracking and the ability to to spread salt by GPS. Uh, we can go in and set our rates. And if I drive 15 and if you drive 40, it still puts out the same amount of salt we need to be put out. Uh the stuff that we have now is we turn the knobs to three and three and hopefully every everybody drives 15. Uh and the same way with the brine. Uh this would give us an additional brine truck. Uh this truck, most our two brine trucks now are just gravity fed. They just brine right behind the truck. Uh this truck would actually have spray nozzles. as you're like go going down Golden Bear and you get to a turning lane, you flip that on and it will coat that lane as you go by. Uh so like I said, this this would take about 18 months to get in uh just for the fact of getting the truck and getting up. If y'all have any questions, I'd be more than happy to try to ask them.

Got a question. So the new truck, are we going to get it uh I guess sealed up under there? They're they do not make such a creature. They don't the but one advantage of the swap loader is because I can take the bed off of it or anybody can. It just sets off. It does help the cleaning tremendously. Uh both of our Brian trucks are swap loader trucks. Uh so being able to set the bed off and being able to get up under the frame and clean it does make a big difference. Gotcha. And then with the truck being 1600 uh with it being double axle it looks like carry more I'm assuming. Yes. The truck that we that we currently have now is a little single axle truck. Okay. Sorry, Commissioner. How many how many miles on this truck?

Uh, this I looked at the hours. I didn't look at the miles. It had about 1300 hours on it. 1300 hours on the engine. Yes. It's 2016. Uh, 14. Doesn't seem like a lot, but it it's not the fact that the the truck doesn't have like worn out burning oil, all that stuff. It's a rust issue. It's a rust issue because of the salt. Because of the salt. And that's mainly in the the bed. The bed, the back hinges, all up under it. Got like when you go to work on it. When I went to take some of these pictures, I went back told my guy like, "Hey, we got two hydraulic lines we got to replace. They're already cracked and starting to rust." Yeah.

And it went down several times in this last winter storm event. We had to get it back up and run into that. What happened to it? a golf hydraulic line just I mean when you the bad part about salt is you take a piece of equipment that sits for 360 days a year and then you run a marathon with it for two and a half days. So they naturally just give trouble. But when they start getting to that 10 to 15 years of age they just get more trouble. um this replacement um that you're looking at um this actual swap letter, have you have you are we looking at new or have we looked at used? Is there used?

There's I have not seen a used salt truck that I would want to that I would want to buy. Fair enough. Yeah, I can imagine if they're used. Yeah, we looked into the state to see if they they sell theirs if there was an opportunity to buy. They were like, "You don't want ours when we're ready to sell it."

Right. Okay. Yeah. All right. I got any questions on that? U move to the next page in that packet I gave you. U we'll talk about capital transportation projects. Uh the last page is our capital improvement plan for our transportation projects. Uh Dana showed it earlier. Uh I've made some updates since then. One of the biggest updates is the interchange moved up. So, we had to move up our $20 million contribution from 2031 to 2029. But if you look at the capital improvement plan, uh to do all the projects we're currently working on, we need we're going to have to spend 149 million over the next 10 years. Um back on this page here uh be before that the the requests.

Yeah, budget request. The last bullet point here, the it says requested by Commissioner Mle, but it says the Blinda Parkway pedestrian signal crossing, pedestrian signal sidewalk crossing, Blinda City Parkway at Ashley Furniture and Taco Bell. Um what what was the just effect? I don't know if it's a question for who's it for. It's something that came up at BPAC and

well, it's like a sideway sidewalk to nowhere. You're walking down the sidewalk and it just abruptly ends. There's nowhere to go. You can't cross the street. You have no choice but to you know where the exit ramp comes. Okay. Right there. And so you have no choice but to just turn around, go back. I'm picturing like people that they're trying to carry their tacos to Ashley or take the furniture to Taco Bell, but it's just the sidewalk coming to the end there. And I I guess you'd either have to go across the ramp. Either way would require some crossing signal. What's the cost on that, Matt?

Um it's in it's in the budget. Well, I got it here, too. Um I'm anticipating 30,000 for design and then 150,000 for the construction. Uh, so about 180 total. Do we have a design team in house? I thought we hired somebody, didn't we? We have an on call engineering traffic engineer who's uh going to be able to design it for us under our on call contract. So that's who we use. That's like half a heeno almost. Yeah.

Okay. But um it looks like FY29's going to be a big year. So um I guess my question you how we're going to fund all these projects. Is there a plan? That's something you'll have to start thinking about how we're going to fund these projects because we're just going to just take out a loan for all these or we're gonna reach out to the count Wilson County to help pitch in. A lot of our projects benefit both city and county. So, county commissioner just left. Oh, we had a county commissioner here. We did. Okay.

So, um new projects we're adding this year. Uh so, Spring Valley Drive extension. Let me kind of explain that. So, uh back in the 60s, lots were subdivided on this Spring Valley Drive right away, but and it they all front like a gravel driveway basically. So, there's no road. It's just a gravel driveway and public rideway because the county or whoever didn't make them build the road when they subdivided the lots. Now all of a sudden there's everybody that owns one of these lights are wanting to build a house now. So I reached out to city attorney who's and asked her who is responsible for paving this now and she said basic she ruled that it the city's responsibility now. So, I've added the money into the budget because because people are wanting to build houses and they don't have a sa a safe road for public emergency services to access the homes.

Where where is this at? District, you know, where Spring Hill Road and Spring Valley Drive meet there's a little cut off right away. I don't have a map to show. Yeah. Yeah. Between Spring Hill Road and Cedar Creek Drive, there's a rideway that connects the two, but it's just a gravel drive. We could take it out of the city attorney's budget.

Those are fighting words. Just kidding. So, so it's in the county or Well, no, it's in the city now, but when the lots were subdivided along this rideway and the rightway was created, it was done in the 60s. We weren't even a city at that point. So, how many lots are being built, Shane? Do you know? Five lots. 650,000. We're just now getting into the engineering on it. So, I just threw a number out. We won't have a accurate estimate until we get the engineering done.

Is there a legal obligation while we've got it? Yeah, because these people have the rights to build homes on these lots apparently and there's not a good road for emergency services to access like if fire happened or anything. It's just a gravel narrow gravel driveway. Are these individuals or is it a developer? No, it's all individual property owners bought these lots at some point and they're most of them are want to build start building. Two have started construction. Three are

Oh, three are on by one. Do we have a time frame that we would have to have it completed or could it be in I mean I would hope there's a way we can hold cos until the road's done because it's it's not safe for them to not have access to emergency services. The lights are in the city. Yeah, they're they've been in the city since I don't know when. We felt that.

So, we're obligated to provide a paved drive public roadway that's up to our standard, current standard. It's a street, isn't it? Yeah. How long is this? How long roughly say? No, not that far. How much rightway will we have to road? 500 feet. Maybe 5 to 800 feet somewhere. Plus a culde-sac on the end. Sidewalks on both sides. No, we wouldn't do sidewalks. I don't think unless art does, but I don't understand. I heard city standards. So we would

well actually the the home builder is supposed to build this tech. We impose a special tax through the ECC on why not on the property the when this development went in it was designated as a road and platted as such. So the city is responsible for city roads. So when we annexed that in um it became our responsibility to take care of it. Really the road should already be in really going all the way back to Matt when did you say this was done? Sometime in the 60s.

Yeah. I mean it should have been required to be built at that time but obviously that didn't happen. So we've essentially been kind of lucky that we haven't been asked to build the road yet but someone has come along and now pushed the issue. So, so does this have to in include curbing gutter or can we just throw some asphalt in there? I mean, we can do what whatever we want. I think we were just going to do asphalt and then roadside ditches. We're going to do it. We're going to do it as cheap as possible. Millions. I don't think a fire truck can drive on them. Pump truck could.

Yeah. So, can we require them to put the sidewalk in? Yeah, I think they have to. Whoever's building the home has to beat our standard going to be this will be under sh or somebody building codes are changed. Well, I mean,

well, it's in I mean, if it's in our code, you have to put sidewalk along the public public rideways. And that's I actually think that in our codes that is for subdivisions. And is this considered a subdivision? They were subdivided in the 60s. It may have to meet the code at the time they were subdivided. Sorry, I did miss that question, but I was going to circle back to what you uh Commissioner Giles, what you just asked about requiring them to put the sidewalk in. We don't currently require individual property owners to put sidewalks in. for so it's not a subdivision coming in. New subdivisions you have to the way that's written up. These are already subdivided pieces of property that are being built.

That would just be like my subdivision down in my area or clear view or somewhere like that. Yeah. But we can put sidewalks in if it's the will of the body. But we were trying to do it as cheap as possible because this was kind of just sprung on us. It wasn't planned for. Um, next project, new project. Um, quick question. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm This may be another attorney. If if if we're going to hold back a CO because the house is done by January because we don't get the road done in time, are we at uh in any type of legal fault here because of the road's not going to get done for the fire? We're not going to give a CO and then all of a sudden, let's say that they don't get finished before this time frame, but then they want their CO, they want to move in or they want to sell their house. Can we be

My recommendation My recommendation to Matt was to build the road as quickly as possible so we don't run into that issue. I think maybe it was what Shane just said about how we can put something down momentarily that would still work for Yeah. How are they getting supplies in and out of here to build a house? They got like pack meals to carry the lumber in or but but how are they traveling this?

It was originally gravel. It has since filled in a little bit I think based on looking at satellite but it is somewhat maintained with gravel I believe. So it's a gravel road. road drive. Guess I need to take a drive of my own. See this? Yeah. What is the timeline of getting that road done, Matt?

We just started engineering um in survey uh one or two months ago. So, I expect the design to be done by sometime this summer. And then um we can likely start construction this fall. I'd hope as long as we don't have to acquire any right away or anything. Most time the county rideway was was larger than the city. So we shouldn't I think it's only 50. I remember. You mean the road it said? No, the rideway width is 50 feet from the center of the road.

Yeah. I mean just total width of the rideway 50T. Well, we I think we'll be able to fit it in then right away. It just be a narrow two-lane road. Okay. Tight lane standards. Yeah. Yeah. So, currently you have it split over two budgets. So, yeah. You wanting to combine it into this coming year budget? I really don't know how long engineering is going to take. Um, I expect the construction to span over into the next budget,

but I don't see an engineering I don't see the the blue. Yeah, because when you got two phases happening in the current year, I didn't split the colors. Oh, okay. 600 is 650 is not for the rip wrap and the proof rolled. No. Okay.

So, yeah, FY27 covers engineering and a little bit of con and some of the construction. Then FY28 the rest of the construction, but we may be able to get in same budget. So the 200 road is going to cost 850,000. Yeah. For 500 ft. It's I have to do a measurement. I don't remember the exact but it could be 800 ft. 900t. It's 950.

Wow. Um, other new project is Southeast Springdale sidewalk connection. So, the friends of Mount Julac applied for a grant through Piedmont Natural Gas and were rewarded awarded $15,000 for this small sidewalk project. Uh, this is just going to extend sidewalk from Belinda Parkway across our Will Sellers Park in Belinda City and tie into the trail that currently goes up to Rutland Elementary. So, it's it's a small sidewalk project, but pretty big impact. It has good connectivity to a park and a school. And so, friends of BPAC saw this as a a good small project that uh they could get a small grant for. So, that's in there.

Who maintains that? Who maintains that trail? I think that is the school property. Pretty sure. Okay. Except for the little piece that goes into our rideway to put the road. Um, another new project is our safe streets for all implementation project. So, this we recently got a $5.1 million grant for this project. Uh these are lowcost safety improvements to West Division Street, Kurd Road, Nonville Road, Province Trail, and Sunset Drive. These are things like guardrail, striping, rumble strips, things like that. U Sunset D drive does have a little bit of widening to create some wider shoulders. Uh but that's the only road with major construction. Um and then lastly was the project we talked about earlier that Commissioner Mali requested for Belinda Parkway pedestrian signal. And that's all I have. You have any other questions on the capital transportation projects or overall budget proper work? So the interchange moving that 20 million up. So that's uh construction. It's orange.

Yeah. Is there any way we could Do you think they'll takes they won't take it until 29 when the actual No, we can put it in right now into the So we sent them five million already into sitting in a LGIP account. It's acrewing interest. Uh, and then they just draw from that for engineering and rightaway costs. Uh, yeah. Well, can we split the 20 million over the next three budgets? Is that possible? I don't think we owe the 20 million in the 29 period. Don't owe anything, do we? No, we put in some money towards right away and that's the 5 million, correct? Yeah, that's the 5 million. Okay. So, we have a balance

that's going to escrow. Yeah, it's not on Oh, no. I see it. I finally seen it. I would suggest I mean this to your point $148 million over the next 10 years. I I think we probably need to have a special session for that. Talk about some of these projects and um set some priorities and see how this is all going to I agree. Get paid. We need paid for. What's our plan? 100 million over 48. Oh, next 100 million over.

Thank you. Yeah, I just looked at the total and then the years, but yeah. Yes, you're correct. Our projects like East Division, Cousin Grove, Beck Road, they're all going to be starting construction in that 20 or FY32 time frame. FY31 or 32. Uh, so between FY29 and FY34, there's going to be a lot of road construction in this town. It's going to be, but we just got to have funding for it to cover. So those projects I mentioned have we're planning to get federal funds for construction that covers 80%. We're still responsible for 20%. So what's on this on this capital improvement plan is it's only city funds only. It's only city fun. Doesn't account for the grant funding.

Okay. So, so if we got the 8020 that comes off the total of this, correct? Are you are you saying this? No, this is just our our cost. This is 20% there for the construction. Yeah. Okay. On Beckworth Road South. Um the 2.2 construction. Is that the quick start? Yeah, the quick start. It all we're waiting on is the electric poles to be moved. Any idea when they'll finish? Do what? Any idea when they'll finish? they said this summer sometime um but they're they're having to condemn because there's several property owners who wouldn't agree to the easements they needed.

All right. And then the rest of it is um the actual widening project. Yeah, correct. One more thing to add um before that plan session is on any of these projects. What are the bon voluntary contributions that um are going to pay a portion of some of these? I don't think we need we just I just need a total but like East Division Street I know we've collected some money from Amazon and from others collected 7 million from Amazon and then another million recently from

so it just to to show the right context you know because we're just looking at costs we're not looking at the revenue side we need to look at the revenue side of this so if there are some projects some commercial development that that's already been obligated to pay. It'd be good to know what that number is so we can get a true cost to the to the city. Yeah, we have that. Yeah, we've collected uh as of as of right now 5.1 million um voluntary contributions to go to projects. The projects are old Lebanon and dirt road widening, South Mountain Juliet road widening, Central Pike widening, central Pike interchange, Sunset Drive widening, and Lebanon road widening. Those are the

I'm not going to remember that, but if you can I'll give you a copy. Okay, perfect. Yeah, but in in the future the the future too. Not what's just what's been paid, but what's also Shane has those costs because he deals he keeps track of that through the developments he approves. Yeah. So we can definitely what we've collected and then what has been approved that's coming. Yeah. Over the next say three to five years.

Uh I did have a note here. I wanted to talk about Lebanon road widening. Um, so it's apparent that T dot is not going to fund that project anytime soon. Uh, so the only option is to go after a grant, but at that point, we would be responsible for 20% of the cost right away in construction. I'm pretty confident I can get a grant to do it. I just want to know y'all's from the our federal grant. Yeah. Would that still involve coordination with T DOT?

They would still have to. Yeah, we'd still the money would flow from federal through T DOT to us and we would have to have still have a contract like all our other grant projects. We have a contract with T dot and they would have to review all of our documents and plans and things and approve those just like any other grant project. Is this a new grant or is this an old I mean is this is this grant that we got the 25 million? No, this would be a grant through GNRC. Uh, this wouldn't be directly with FHWA. It's it's formula funds. It probably it would come from formula funds. Like those are the automatic funds, federal funds. I guess I don't really care as long as it's free and it's a grant. We don't have to pay.

Well, we would have to pay 20 to do it that way. I mean, we have to pay we'd have to pay our portion, but not What's the estimated total on that project? Right. My estimate for right away and construction is 60.5 mil and so 20% is 12.1 million with that and then we would responsible for engineering costs as well. We would have to start back on our engineering. So any engineering cost would be 100% less. You think that would get us on the tenure? Well, this route you're not you're not trying to get to. You're not trying to get on, but maybe if we get right away if we get the rideway done maybe at that point.

So, we've got about 600,000 I think it was in developer so far contributions earmarked for that. Yeah, big delta. How many? 14.1 million roughly 14 or 12. 12.1 is the match on the rightway construction. Then I'm estimating an additional two million on engineering. Okay. That we would be 100% responsible for just hire an engineer. It's a lot to it. These projects and they take eight to 10 years to the engineering work.

We've already got I thought we had the engineering. We have the NEPA approved which is the environmental document. So we pick up and start once we start back on the project we start with developing the rightway plans. NEPA's two years. New take two years. So that saves us two years there. So it's done. Does that ever expire? Yes. Um expires in five years and you just have to do a reval. It's not as extensive as doing it from scratch. Just a recheck of everything. How much was that? I don't know. Uh I wouldn't know until we get into a contract with engineering funds.

No, I mean what we've already have done engineering. How much have we paid? Yeah, right around a million. Okay. And that got us through the the planning document and the NEA phase. So, I'll talk to you individually if your thoughts on wanting to pursue a grant. So, I mean, why not? I guess. Yeah. I mean, so it cost us what, another 20 25% more if we wait. Yeah. Every year we don't do a project, prices go up. Yeah.

How much do we need to earmark to pursue the grant? Do we have to bring in any outside firms or is it can also be handled in house? So say that again. Do we have to earmark monies to do the grant? Like do we have to bring in outside help to help fill to complete that or do studies? So it's all in house. Yeah. Okay. I mean we would have we would hire an engineering partner to to start back on the project. Is that what you're asking design for the grant? Yeah. For the grant. No, no, no. Like when we did the Federal Highway Administration at one point was going to have to do a study on uh

the greenhouse admissions from the average car and then the no uh which socioeconomic classes were impacted or I don't remember all the stuff that we originally have to go through got streamlined. No. And I mean that just wasn't stuff we could do in house. All right. If y'all are on board, I'll start pursuing grant opportunities. I'm pretty certain I can get money. So, we'll see. Well, if it's there's no guarantee, but I'll do my best. It's based on need. Um I'm I'm just amazed that it doesn't make the 10ear plan. Me, too. Based on

and maybe we get through right away and then the project shuffle ready and then C dot says we'll fund the construction. I who knows how farong the county in Lebanon is on that side going towards nothing's been working on something. Not that I know of. You're thinking the division street. They're working on division street. I don't think they're doing anything. This came up a few months ago. I don't know. Maybe they were just talking about it. Yeah, I think they were just talking about it. Nothing's been done yet. Imagine that.

Oh, the safety that was a safety uh like a spot grant. Is it the right term? Yeah. All right. That's all I have. Thank you guys for your time. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir.

I do want to give Matt credit. He came in by far of all the department heads with the most conservative budget. It was for me it was the the hardest one to go through because he really was only asking for two significant things and both of those things got cut from his budget. Uh his pay pay scale uh additions and then the truck. He has consistently the last two years come in with very conservative budgets. He's lowered his operational cost. He does a great job with obtaining the grants and the the 10-year plan that you see in front of you. I just I I hated making the cuts. Miss Dana's the bad guy here. Um she gave me a certain number to get to. She gave me a certain number to get to and and that's how we got to it. But I do want to recognize Matt and publicly say that he came through with probably the best presented budget of of all the department heads. Quick question.

Yeah. With with the savings and then the increase of the two requests, how off are we from your original budget? So, because you know from this last little attachment that you sent over to us, right, that you dropped off, you showed 258, 275, and then with the increases, what what are those numbers? If you were to approve $140,000, 40k savings,

quick question, just because of that truck, you said that it would be interchangeable. We could use that truck for other things during the year, right? Is it possible just throwing it out there because we got sewer in the back there. Would it be able to because I know that they have a I guess an easier but or a budget line item. So is it I mean is it possible to be able to help to defer that or uh split that? It will be streets. Okay. Because I didn't know if because again you said earlier that that truck will be heavier duty and it could be multi-use. So, I didn't know that was an opportunity there for them to use it.

Yeah, we can put a sticker on the side of it with a magnet. Right. So, it's already on record. Well, I mean, no, no, no. All jokes aside, though, this truck's going to be heavier duty. And I didn't know if it would be used for any other purposes for other departments. That's all I was looking for. So, it sounds like it's not going to be. So, it's only for streets. Okay. Thank you. I'm not trying to break any rules. All jokes aside, but I heard nothing. Just didn't know how how multi-purpose it was gonna be. So, thank you guys. Yeah. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Good job.

If it was used for parks, see, we can take some of the hotel motel tax and buy used some for parks to carry some mulch, you know? Yeah. I'm just asking like I'm not trying to break any rules, but Kenny to figure it out. Maybe we get some more furniture stores, sell more furniture. It doesn't hurt to ask. Maybe we can. Hey, you know what we could do? Get some more furniture. Put a fire hose on it. Get rid of the pumper truck, right? Too bad we can't use the proper truck as the actual

Hey guys, what do you what do you have for us? Storm water and wastewater. Well, we're here to talk about the enterprise hunt 69. Starting on page 69. Yes.

Yeah. And I've got a couple things I just like to go over in the beginning. I'll tie this in. First of all, I want to thank the board and fire and EMS too. But in our line of business, it's insurance knowing that we're one phone call away if we have issues with, you know, employee dangers. And I'll go over a brief list just so I make sure you guys know what our storm water and our sewer operators deal with. High voltage. We operate with 240 volts to 480 volts. In these pump stations, we have biohazards. We have harmful gas hazards that we deal with on a daily basis, confined space, challenges of the weather. Um, our guys have to have diagnostic skills. We deal with high pressure sewer lines, uh, trench safety, technical equipment operations, our vac, our pump trucks, our our digging equipment, all requiring those skills. We also have something I don't think a lot of people think about. We have night hazards. Uh whether we're working in storms or whether even uh just unfamiliar territory, as we all know, when you're out at night, it can look totally different the next day. Uh we also have extended hours of operations. When I do an interview with an operator, I tell them, I said, "We may be gone for 20 minutes or we may be gone for 20 hours." And we have experienced that multiple times. So we prepare accordingly. Uh we have crane operations training with our crane certifications cranes and I say all that to bring it together in our budget and please don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say. But

Matt was just here and he talks about not hiring people and reducing his budget. Take the ice storm for instance. My crews were operating the night shift. When there's a storm, when there's a city emergency, we're called upon. City beautiful calls on us. City Hall calls on us. Fire calls on us for assisted help. All these things are what we do. And I am not complaining. And I'll say this, Matt has tried opportunities to give us credit, especially when he was getting awards and recognitions for the ISA. I am not saying that we're not here for that. But what I'm asking for is in our budget, I've asked for two I asked for four operators. Um, city managers cut it back to two. I need four operators to operate the growth that we're experiencing because in the budget, we'll go over in a minute, we're asking for a new camera van. Okay, that van or truck needs to be in operation 24. Well, I should say 247, but five days a week, eight hours a day. Um, all that will do, two operators, all that will do is man that camera truck. I need to get ahead on maintenance. And when I speak about maintenance, the things that we have to do are unpredictable. And then there's maintenance that we have to do that's very predictable. And even going back to the ice storm, when we were assisting and running the night shift for 12 hours, we also had a sewer line break at 11 degrees and we were out to 1:30 in the morning fixing that on top of working all weekend to assist. And again, not complaining, just

giving you guys some information on what we're asking for. Um, but our guys are highly technical. They are certified by the state. They all have CDLs. I have one operator that's in the process of CDL. Uh, our sewer guys are state or state certified. Our storm water guys are uh certified TDC level one. We have credentials that other departments don't have. With that being said, I requested a si well I requested more than a 6% budget, but uh Miss Hire and I worked it out. She proposed a 6%. City manager backed that down to 3%. I think we can support that. Uh the rate study that was built in in the rate study also moving forward, but we need technical people. We need to be competitive with our technical people. And I tell them all when they when they're hired, it takes about two years to see all the things that we do. A lot of your cities have specialized areas like you may have a heavy equipment operator, light equipment operator, you may just have a dump truck driver. Our guys do it all. You know, today you might be in a small excavator. Tomorrow you might be in a large excavator. They work the same. Now you you have to have the experience to operate them. But that's the reason I'm asking for the 6% along with the support staff that we have. Our inspectors um our inspectors know what is required because they were sewer operators. They they worked in storm water. Uh we we we have to have the caliber of people that are going to make sure these installations of storm pipe and sewer pipe are going to last for years to come. And so we're very technical on that and they're certified. So again, I just wanted to present that and why we've

asked for what we've asked for. Um I'll go through the storm water budget. Nothing outstanding there except for man I'm sorry I don't have page numbers 69

69. Uh the only real thing is you'll see in red is where we've asked for 6% it was reduced to 3% on the pay. Um there was some cuts made on just general maintenance. Uh transportation equipment, we're okay with that. uh city manager provided us with a truck that was available so we don't have to buy the ranger truck for that. We are requesting a side by side enclosed. It will have a sweeper attachment. It and we have also asking for ditch ditch attachments because we're in the ditch business. Um the purpose of the sweeper being added to the side by side along with the other functions that a side by side can do get us to remote areas of ponds when we're having to cut, clean, inspect. We get calls quite often from city beautiful requesting assistance on clean up on roads. So they call for the sweeper. Okay. Sometimes the sweeper is is unavailable or we can come out and do a rapid response if we've got this side by side with the sweeper attachment can also help out with construction uh dirt that gets left behind from construction sites. So we brought that in. Uh also you see this KCI storm water gauges. We're asking for these are monitoring gauges. We can put them at the um eastern side of Stoner Creek and Cedar Creek. We can predict rises in in the water of the flow during a heavy rain event. Uh we could get ahead of some at least some warning on flooding. We can also trend and track flooding or trend and track just normal flows. We'd also put two on the western side of these

creeks to get an accurate monitoring of the flow. we need to do any any remediation of our streams or just some general knowledge, that's what those are for. Uh we would have remote access through satellite on those.

Um and the rest of our projects that we're doing and I'll let Shane go over the project because he's heavily involved with the engineering on on the storm water and then I'll pick back up on Thanks. Um, page 71. I'll just start hitting the projects one by one. Uh, for budgetary purposes, Weston and Clear View have been combined under Weston. Um, I've told this in multiple staff meetings and Commissioner Hefer, especially uh, in Clear View with your district. We're making this the gold standard project of the storm water utility along with old Lebanon dirt road light widning and the Belinda city culbert repair. Um I've been heavily involved with the residents. Just to notice I live in Clear View so my my neck's out on the line with these residents to make sure the project is done exceptional. I like to get perfect but if I can get really really good with this then I feel very accomplished with this job. I talked to the engineer today. We hope to go to bid after Memorial Day. So, um we'll hit this with sewer later, but um we think we're going to get very optimal pricing due to the fact that uh the ARP money has dried up and uh contractors are looking for work. So, we're going to get a lot of good competition on pricing.

What insurance? You said insurance. No ARP funds. No, no. Before that, uh, you said that you were going to be working with the insurance company. No, I've been working with I've been working with the residents. Okay. Because I live in the neighborhood. Okay. For some reason, I thought you said insurance. I didn't know where insurance was coming from. Uh, no. I just I live in the neighborhood. I've met all the neighbors that are all the easements that we had to acquire from the residents. Okay.

I did them all. I didn't hire it out. I went and got all the easements myself. Um, and I'm just want to show that investment in the community. Like I said, I live here and I want to also do a good job for our residents and make sure that each one of these residents come back comes back. And uh I may have been uh persuading them to come to a meeting to talk about this project once it's finished. So y'all can see the the funds at work with the utility. So, Belinda City and Clear View and Weston will be going to bid hopefully within the next couple of weeks. Um, Commissioner Mill's project with Southeast Springdale and Sunnyme. We've combined that. Uh, we're in we well within uh design right now. We're going to need an A wrap. So, that will extend the permitting part and we hope to get going with the construction and bidding at the end of the fiscal year. Um there's also a line item which is included in our master plan to uh fund the storm water portion of the old Lebanon dirt old Lebanon dirt road widening. Uh that'll be over multiple years. I think Matt had given me the estimate of 2.4 million to do the storm water portion between uh Kelsey Glenn and Page Drive. That's where predominantly all the storm water drains to currently. So, we'll be undertaking that that cost within our budget as indicated in our master plan. And two new projects that we're looking to do is a full-blown systemwide assessment. As Mr. Forkham says, we're about 30 35 years behind on storm water. So, we've got to start with a full-blown systemwide assessment. that

will be multiple years. And a project that um public works and oursel and city hall we talked about doing is uh investigating and mitigating the uh road over topping on West Division just past Mount Juliet Elementary School. So uh that's what we hope to do next year and providing you that goal for the next five years. We hope to have two projects in construction and two in design at all times going forward. Um, we've built enough of our reserves. We've made the appropriate uh allocations in our budget to make sure that we've got appropriate reserves handy in storm water. So, uh, we've got a good plan and looking forward to getting this going. But, like I said, I'm really excited about Clear View and Belinda getting under construction and uh, along with Old Lemon and Dirt Road. So that's three projects that we hope to be going on in one year.

So this is being funded out of the storm. Yes, sir. Storm water. Would it be fair to say that Oh, sorry. No. Storm water funds, not general fund. The storm water funds. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Enterprise. Yeah. Okay. Thank would it be fair to say that Southeast and uh Sunny me will go to construction summer of 27. That is our intentions. Yes.

So our goal is to have annually two projects in engineering and two under construction at all times at all times. Keep it going. And to add to that, we're seeing what we call pre-COVID pricing on these bids already. A lot of your contractors are looking for that. We we've got a significant reduction on our latest project that we were not expecting. We come in less than half of what we were projecting. What would look at? You got a lot of construction companies that look for like capitalize on that. What line is your reserves in? Does it say uh is on page 69? I'm I'm missing that.

The reserves aren't listed on that. They're they're in the ordinance in the front. So, so storm water uh is starting off with a fund balance of 5.3 million. And what page is that on? That's on page four at the very front of the book. Does that take in consideration of the of of looks like it was a 6% increase

this storm water? Yeah, that's sewer. You're talking about sewer. Oh, I'm sorry. Increase storm water. There's no increase in the storm water fee, but they've collected 5.3 million so far to spend on projects and operating personnel cost. We were recommended to evaluate that rate at the 5 to 10 year mark of the utility. So, we're not touching that for another I think two to three years at least. So, we'll gauge reach back out and gauge to see when an assessment will be needed on that one. The rate for the storm water utility.

Okay. just because I know the commissioner Heftner brought this up about the, you know, discussions with Metro for for sewer. Well, when we get to sewer, we'll talk about that. Okay. I just didn't know if that was in this topic or whatnot. Yes, sir. We're just wrapping up the story. Okay. In the Sometimes they do overlap, right? They do. Yeah, they do. In the grand totals, you got 5. What was it? Two. 5.2 grand total of storm water. We got 5.2. That's the That's the starting fund balance.

And then uh total budget 7.7. Yes. And they're going to have 3 million in revenue. They're projected to end at 87,000. And what I don't think that they'll spend. And what I want to add to that, like I said, two projects are going out to bid. We'll revise the bids accordingly uh once we get the actual pricing in. So, like I said, we're we had a sewer project that came in well under our estimates. We're hoping that for storm water as well. So, that'll that'll be good savings.

And it's likely these will be covering they'll probably be pushed. So, it won't they won't probably will spend the entire budget amount this year. question. Quick question. Uh the storm water because I know there was some discussion about the um the ponds and the credits and all that. Are we keeping track of all that where the residents for example, you know, that have detention ponds and so forth, the maintenance on that as well as uh yes, Mr. Matters has that information. he keeps up with the credits requested. The number is very low.

Is that for the request of of the savings or is that he he can explain? Okay. Because I know that was a concern what three years ago I think when that was all brought up.

So any property owner that's got a storm water control measure um can request for the reduction. Um there's several page forms they have to fill out. There's some supporting information they have to provide to us. Um, off the top of my head, I would say we've probably had less than 20 different property owners and individuals apply for that, but it is available for anybody that does have some an SEM. Um, and that is when manual was passed with the original ordinance that that's when that came in effect. So, it is there. Not a lot of folks have taken advantage of so far. So, is that something that we want to at least I mean obviously it'd be a good reminder for the folks, you know, because again, they're just seeing a bill and I know it's going to take money out of our revenue, but still doing the right thing to look out for the citizens that are upkeeping their detention ponds and so forth. So, are we sending out any type of reminders that said, "Hey, if you do have these that you could potentially have a credit of some sort?"

No. keeping up your your near ponds, the maintenance that does not qualify for a reduction. That is required as for a long-term maintenance agreement. Um neighborhoods, HOAs are required to do that from here and for forever redeveloped. That is not the same as a credit. A credit is the engineering water quality and water quantity portions that you say that you have put on your site that qualify for you for production. So they're not the same thing. I mean it's the same pond. I understand how you but it's not the just because you cut the grass doesn't qualify you for a reduction.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand that. But if you're like dredging out the the pond and and and making sure it can hold the amount of flow, right? That's part of that would be maintenance. That would not beuction. Okay. Yeah. I guess we'll have to talk offline because I definitely want to understand a little bit more about that because I know I don't understand that. Well, it's just because the state had pushed it out there. So, I want to read more towards it. So, I thought I was very clear, but apparently there's some understanding that I may not understand later. So, I'll catch up with you this week. Appreciate you. Yes, sir.

Uh, I might have I have a question and you might can answer it. One of the reasons Andy started pushed for this storm water utility. Um, and my district is blend city. You know, it's very old. And then back in the safe water act or whatever it was, we no longer could used to long time ago the city would come in and kind of clean out the creeks and whatever. And then when that passed, um the city couldn't touch it because it was protected under the whatever it was. Uh so spec specifically, I'm talking about on southeast that creek. Um, so one of the reasons he pushed for that because he was telling the resident over there that when we have uh resources in the storm water utility in some cases um if the water is damming up or it's causing erosion onto the person's property um that we would have the resources to do something about that. So, where are we on? I know that we have other projects that are taking priority,

but as far as um the creeks, where where are we on that in the storm water utility to be able to help to clean out some of that?

So, currently our crews do clean out the bridges uh that are across the roads that are in the rightways. Um, I wouldn't put maintenance yet, but that would deal with what's in the right. But as far as what's in the the creek going on private property and doing any type of work, we can only perform work that's in the right way. I mean, we're doing that currently. We've got crews, let's say we get a rain event and some of the the debris and things that you're concerned about, it washes down and it comes up against one of our bridges. We've got crews that come out and clean those out. Uh we did bridge uh Brookstone for example this week uh and got some positive feedback from the residents there. But we do actively do that as far as maintenance. But as far as going on private property um in waters of the state, we're we wouldn't be allowed to do that from the state and we wouldn't do that on private property. But anything that's in the rightway we do maintain.

All right. Now, what about um if a tree falls behind one of the houses on Springdale and kind of dams up the creek causing backwater? Um

that would probably be on a case to case basis. If it was a down tree that was causing some backwater, um it would have to we would be looking for some type of significant uh contribute contributing to flood. Um, but it would be on a case- by case basis. In other words, what we wouldn't do is if there wasn't a creek there and the tree fell in somebody's backyard, city crews would not be dispatched to go do work on that private property. But if it was u if it was causing a flood damage, we would most certainly take a look at it. Okay. We do evaluate each and every request. Okay. We don't just say no. We we look at it.

All right. So, what would they do? Just call your department. Is there a form they fill out? Just just call us. Okay. Call public works. Uh they'll dispatch to myself or Adam. Okay. We go out and look at every call we get. We don't we don't just dismiss. Okay. Right. We have we have done what Adam's talked about in the past. It's just you got to be careful. So people want vegetation cleaned up just you know because they may draw mosquitoes or something. You know we don't we don't do that. But if you've got evidence of some disrupted flow, sure we'll assist. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Okay. Thanks. I just I also want to say because of his department that I I believe with all my heart that that we have seen a lot less flooding in the city since we implemented um the uh that department because I remember years and years ago and and and all the flooding that we had and when uh we did manage this now we just don't see it. A lot of people thinks that they blame the the construction on these subdivisions that oh it causes flooding. It's really reduced flooding.

Well, I agree with that because um back when Andy Hills here in Adam we went out remember the problem over there um cuz in what was it in 2020 or 2021 that flood over there was worse than 2010. And we traced all that back to a um compromised um drainage situation in Mundy Park. And because of that, we in in the storm water uh utility, we were able to fix that. And this cover under Belinda City, I mean under Belinda Parkway is an extension of that project. So I I agree. Um, so I've not we've not had thankfully, knock on wood, had any flooding over there since that project.

Yeah. For the last two years, we've also had a drought though. So, a major one the last 18 months. So, see how it works out. Well, it's the the the heavy rains though that come really really quick that does the most damage most of the time on that. Sure.

And so, I was I thank you. I'm glad our city implemented that years ago. We needed that. We had to too. We had to comply with uh wastewater. Is this still the same theme as the workshop from last Monday? Um, well, wastewater I've said pretty much I I really need the additional two employees back. And another reason we're under a lot of pressure, especially from the spotlight of Wilson County. Yeah.

Uh, and the crisis of the sewer, we've been approached even by a senator for assistance. Are you aware of that? You know, the request The county system is not working well. We, as much as I don't want to think about taking on somebody else's problems, we are equipped. Uh, it seems to be the governor may be pushing to ask us to assist or maybe even beyond asking. We may get ball. It's not. I don't look at it as asking us. I look at it as asking the people who pay the utility bills because they're going to have to absorb the cost.

I mean, can we do it? Probably. We can do a lot of things, but at what cost? I'm I'm concerned that the decision is not going to be ours.

Yeah. And I'm concerned too about this recent legislation that basically if there's a sewer line within I guess anywhere near, you've got to grant out of city sewer. from what this is going to potentially obligate us to. If I remember right from that presentation when we're looking at 5 million in depreciationish, we just more more and we've got to have staff to support that. The experienced staff again I don't think has to for more operators. I had them in the budget last year and because we were trying to be helpful to the budget, we we we waited and a lot of that was because of the EQ basin. The EQ basin should be completed in October. So, we've got to we've got to learn that and learn quick. Now, I have all confidence in the world. We've got the staff to do it. We've got the resources. We will operate it properly. Uh we're also working with fire on developing some plans on um find space rescue. This is the 8 million gallon tank. If you guys haven't seen it, I would love to take you out there. It is well under construction where you can get the scope of what it is and what it looks like, but it's going to be a dangerous environment. It's going to require a lot of safety. The entire tank will be treated as fine space. That's serious. There's going to be a lot of gases in there. We got to look at that for employee safety plus keeping it operational. So, that's going to be a big step for us on baseball side. So, we really want to be prepared for that. I think we have a stellar record on injuries and not having injuries, but at the same time, I appreciate our fire department. We've already had a lot of conversation about this working together to give them some opportunity to train and give us opportunity to train with them. So really looking forward to that. And

along with that um there was a service truck that was also removed and this is under lift station

77.

Yeah. you look and you see a diesel 4x4 350 service truck was removed. So, we have two that are in that was not removed. But what we've learned because the size of the equipment that we haul, the gas trucks, they don't support the trailers with the excavators and the skid steers and all the equipment. They squat takes more gasoline per mile than it does diesel per mile to operate them. So, I'm just we're we're trying to cycle out gas trucks and we bought two during COVID and they were very under equipped for what we needed, but that was all we could find. We got those ready to sell. We're wanting to sell as much as we can on the inventory. So, that's why we're switching to these.

What year are the trucks you're selling? What year are the trucks you're selling? Uh, they are 2020 22s I can be repurposed back to the other departments for

well we talked about that I mean very open for that Matt needs them or city hall needs them it's just they're not real efficient for us it's kind of the same scenario the fire was in on not having enough equipment space they're short wheelbase box they have a utility box on but we can't pull a trailer time to put a trailer on it almost like frame just kind of because we we carry heavy skid steers and excavators. So they're they're okay for a house call, but we tend to do more with the bigger truck. We haven't put in the surplus yet.

Oh, no. No, we had pass. Okay. I just we have

to if if you transfer a truck that's in sewer you to general fund you have the general fund essentially has to buy it from you yeah for a dollar well come on appreciation yeah yeah depreciated value well the frames are bent they're not worth that much It's all the capital expenses including the salaries, payroll that are tied to the sewer come out of the sewer fund. Yes. Correct. Not hitting the general. It's isolated in itself. Everything related to sewer and storm water the same way. Storm water isolated. Y it's not funed by general and they're running in the black currently right now, right?

With the reserve always. So then what would be the benefit? I get called before a big board. Yeah. But what would be the benefit? I mean like what I mean like there's not a whole lot of benefit for us taking the guys out if we've if we're not going to hurt the general fund then. Not yet. We'll see. What was it? One truck you're selling.

We Well, there's other trucks that we requested some rangers for our inspectors. They've got some 2016 models, 2017 model. We've got four trucks to sell plus a camera van. I think we got four trucks that we're sell. We don't have that on here. Yeah, we have four. And also, we're looking to buy a camera truck. We have a 2017 camera van. We can't get We can't get support for the software. I had to stop the bleeding. We were spending too much money trying to keep it going. We have it operational right now, but we only use it for emergencies. Other words, if we need to get in the line to see what's going on, it's available. We need we need to have a camera in the ground five days a week just looking for eye and eye for any breaks, obstructions. When we clean a line, we need to go back inspect it. It's also this this truck that we're requesting can run off lithium batteries instead of idling. Uh it can run through storm pipe which it has the extenders as far as expanding the size of it so it can travel through storm pipe. So it would be used multi-purpose for sewer and cold water. Um that truck is the brand that we have when I came to work here in ' 06. I operated the Hughes brand all the way up to 2017 when we got rid of. So, it the the design of the Q's camera is still the same. They they've upgraded the definition of the camera, the software, but it's still the same tractor setup that's tried and true. We just can't get any support off our current one. We really need to keep a camera.

Is it possible to take one of those F250s that are gas, put a new bed on it, and be able to make it your camera? We talk about retrofitting. Um, to answer your question, honestly, we did we did explore that. Yes, we could. It's a 5-year-old truck, right? 2021, you said. No, no. The camera van we have right now. No, no, no, no. The two trucks that you said. Oh, okay. We're going back to the service truck. Yes, sir. Sorry. Sorry to jump off. Yes. Um, to retrofit one of those trucks, right? They're short. They're not the extended wheelbase. They're the short wheelbase. I don't you talking about retrofitting that for the camera? I'm just asking see if there's any opportunity to save

the transit van that we have the camera in right now. It's not the van. It's it's all the components. Okay. With the camera and they don't support the software anymore. Gotcha. They keep giving me these bills. Okay. Well, it'll cost you 60,000. This cost you 80,000. I'm like, no, that's enough. We're not We're not going to keep throwing good money at outdated. Okay. So, that's where we're at. that uh also here on the page that we're on about the uh the remove diesel truck, we've got an arc flash study and training. We're behind on our arc flash. Last time we did a study was 2015 every five years. Yes, sir.

Yeah. And then every time that equipment changes, you need to update your study. So, it's a living document. Yes. And so, as I said, we are and if we're making this, I mean, if we're making businesses do it, why are we not doing it? So, right. So, it's $179,000 for the arc flash study and training of all our lift stations. They go in and evaluate, check voltages, vice mayor probably tell they they they go in and check everything, making sure safeties, you know, safety checks are in place. and FPA70 DME. Yes. Yeah. Very well aware of.

Yes. So that's on there. Uh you also go down the same page for 188,000. We're requesting the asylum view EQbased operational software. So what this is, my biggest fear with the EQ basin was, okay, I know how to fill it up, but when you're operating under five million gallons per 24 hours going to Nashville and you got a full tank of 8 million gallons, how do you feed that back into the system once the event's over that required you to fill the tank up? I'm like, I don't know. Our low flow changes every day of the week. As it gets closer to the weekend, the low flow changes. Sometimes gets a little narrower sometimes. Well, what this is, this is operational AI generated software. They go off of nautical weather guidance. They tell you when to fill it up. It also activates the pumps to fill it up. It also activates the pumps to send it back into the system. It takes all the the user error out of it based off of the software. You can also have remote controls of bilateral controls from home. So the operators don't have to get up and physically go to the EQ basin, get on your phone, operate it that way. So that's what this is about. Zylm is a company, national, global company. This is what they do. And we felt like that was a really good opportunity for us to take a lot of the guesswork out of operating because as our seasons change, so will our flows and and what we deal with. So it's like, okay, we're going to need a couple three years to evaluate how to operate this EQ basin. I think this takes all the guess work out. This is what what that software can do.

What's the maintenance on that Inca basin? So, um, is that a line tank or is that unlined tank? Do we know is a concrete coated tank? The maintenance, this is really going to be cool when you hear about it. Guys like to play with anything cannon on it. So, they it has four water cannons on the upper catwalk and you wash it out. That's how you do it. You wash it, rinse it out, lift the water can. We've got a six inch water line that feeds the tank and then we got full water.

But I'm saying like the uh uh the inspections and all that. What What's going to be the cost on all that maintenance? Uh it will be general maintenance as far as the pump station side just what we do now. So we can all do that in house. So yes. Okay. I didn't know there was going to be additional cost that we looking at. So, not mentioning the name of a sister city, they would hire one of the Nashville companies come out do all the maintenance repair on our pump station. We have always done our repairs. Okay. We have guys who are very eager to learn. You say, "Hey, this is something new." They're gone. They're out. Okay.

We we do our own maintenance. That's why we have the big service trucks. We have full tools. We replace we replace pumps, gears, seals, you know. Now, occasionally we have to take the electric motors to Nashville and have them repair. We do all all in house.

Okay. Um, the sword required because it's a one tank has to be done every years. Oh, I thought it was like I thought it Oh, so you have to clean the sides,000.

Usually it's usually maint starts on 74. Okay. On page 74, the sewer maintenance. Um, we failed to roll over line 942's construction and maint 75. Yeah. Sorry, it's the next page.

Okay. We failed at line 942. We failed to roll over. We put a million dollars in for uh construction and maintenance and repairs of pump stations. what we're doing. A pun station's life is around 20 years. We have close to July my last count 26 of the pump stations that we've been able to maintain beyond this life cycle. So what we do is we keep this money in to keep doing re rehab on our pump stations. We have one right now it's uh out for bid. the electrical. We've had some electrical problems. We're redoing the electrical system. We've got one that has what they call slide rails where pumps slide down. They need to be replaced and repaired. So, we we use this line item to do our general repairs on our pump station. Some predictable, some not. So, we're going to have to add that back in yet. So, we want to bring that back.

It's on your page. Yeah, this page two. Okay. So, she's already got it in. Okay. Anybody got any questions? on the general side of sewer and operations before Shane talks about the project. Sure. The 5% is that on page 72 under sewer service charges. Um yeah, it's it's yeah, it's factored into the operating um Yes. Sewer service charges. It's factored into that number. That's rates. The rate. Yeah. Well, that's the the 5% increase in rates is factored into that covering the rate. Yeah.

The total fund revenue uh item 37210 or where yes. Okay. And then well I guess you maybe aren't ready or you haven't got there yet but on page 79 shame the project.

Uh as Tim mentioned we're wrapping up the EQ basin project. They've told us October. Uh we've prrated the amount that should be remaining. We'll get I'll get with Dana as we hit June 30th to make sure that we roll over the right amount. I think to date they've already spent about 12 million of the 18 on the job. So I'm projecting but by the end of the year we've spent 15. Okay. So they're they're on track.

Um page 78, Creekide Drive Interceptor. This is what I wanted to mention to you guys when we were talking about projects going out to bid. We had 5.5 budgeted. The project, the low apparent low bidder came in at 2.1. So, we had 11 biders. So, we're we're trying to use those indicators to see what the market's going to look like in the next couple of years with regards to construction. Um, so in addition to that occurrence and the interchange being moved up two years, some previously scheduled uh interceptor projects that we had along Stoner Creek, we're going to fasttrack those so that they are upsized in time that the interchange is complete and businesses can have all the sewer they want because uh those projects were already in the pipeline. We are just up uh fasttracking those to coincide with the Central Pike interchange. That would be Pleasant Grove interceptor and the last phase of the Stone Creek interceptor. Um project we've got on North Mount Juliet Road u trying to work with economic development in city hall. There's a section of properties between uh the light at Northwest Rutland and Western Drive that the zoning changed couple decades ago, but the sewer capacity to serve those zones didn't. Um, so that we've been Tim and I's opinion in working with city hall that we recommended that if we change the zoning and the use and we can't serve the sewer that that that in

essence is a pocket project for us to accommodate the sewer for the new zones. So that's what the North Mountain Juliet Road sewer extension will be. Um, as such, the last three projects that we've shown that don't that are blacked out with our function codes, um, with the metro contract coming up in 29, we will assess our rates at that point to include construction for those projects. With that and um, Golden Bear Pump Station is still going on with design. We uh just transparency, we had not included that within our budget because we didn't know what legislation your the board will be bringing with regards to that portion of town. Uh we were asked to put that back in. So, I just wanted to point that out to you that we've got uh enough construction funding to get us through the fiscal year because it will be a multi-year project. We've not we are still working to do land acquisition, easement acquisition, and wrap up design. So, we're we'll be ready for whatever the board decides to do with that project. So, we're still working on that one and uh we'll proceed with construction based on how this budget line item goes. Y'all got any questions?

Yes. Yes, sir.

I hope so. We're holding a lot of the that we're already working with and we feel that way. Yes.

What has happened is is under a previous president's administration a lot of a lot of funding was put in place for infrastructure that money is all used. Current administration has not done that. So that's why there was a lot of construction going on infrastructure upgrades. But I'm kind of polling each contractor that we work with. Hey, are you busy? No, we got people standing around. I'm sure there's going to be some other signs that we should be getting some very competitive prices. So, you think it might be half that or even less than half that? I would not commit to half.

I understand. I I don't know. I do anticipate though the rate the pricing is definitely coming down. Well, that was about half. That other one was about half. It was a little bit different project. Okay. Um and you you've got to look at the business cycle. So for a short period, you should see some price cutting, but then as as the inventory of of construction companies reduce, then they may uptick again once the market regulates. you know, if if you're studying from a business standpoint,

get some uh projects together and try and get them bundled that way, too. Well, we're we're we're trying to keep things moving. Again, we our goal is to keep even storm water and sewer, keep two projects in engineering a year and two on two under construction is what our goals are. But you're right, the the iron's hot now. So, we were wanting to try to push the work and get it when the pricing is good. And I think you know I believe uh the 11 dirt road that was a pretty competitive bid project as well. So we got competition. I think that breathes the best result for for the city.

All right. The um I don't think you talked about it. Let's I zoned out. Uh the 7 million for the golden bear. That's what we were just talking about. Okay. So that's a two-year Yes, ma'am. project. So then there would be another 7 million next year. Well, depending on We'd like to at that point we hope to by this time next year know have an exact bid and we'll fund the remainder of it the next fiscal year. I do I do not believe in this next budget we would we would spend the full do not believe that

we would probably go under construction if approved next spring would be my guess. So without this um there really would be no development along um Golden Bear up there Leon Road

unless a developer comes and upsizes a sewer between Bender Ferry and our pump station at Highway 70 that that answer would be no. It' have to be developer driven but without this project. But keep in mind once construction is approved we have capacity but it's allocated right now as it sits but it's not used. So then we could readjust capacity once you approve construction. We have capacity sitting there but it's already spoken for. But once we get approval for the for the construction of the pump station, then we can move the numbers around.

I think she was asking about uh Golden Bear work, weren't you? We don't have We've already That capacity you're talking about is for Benders Fair, isn't it? Well, it's the Golden Bear Gateway Regional Pump Station is I understand. But when you defer when you talk about the the capacity, aren't you referring to um vendors ferry up through there? Correct. Right. It's part of it. Part of it. Yes. Okay. So, I think what she's saying is this would this would open up um the opportunity for Golden Bear on the south side of Yes. South of Lemon Road.

I mean north of Golden Bear. It would open up both. Okay.

One more the asset list of all of the throughout this whole process of all of the equipment that you guys have. Are you guys tracking all this? Yeah. tracking it in what way? As in like you know making sure all the PMS are being done but also just tracking the assets for kind of what you guys were saying earlier for depreciation and so forth. Is there any concerns there? I add I I I keep the asset listing. So they sewer has its own asset listing. Okay. And it's depreciated every year.

Okay. I just didn't know if that would help out for some of these pump station projects and so forth. So just didn't know. Any other questions?

Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. It's me. Um, my budget's on page 29. Yes, sir. And work will be here anyway. You want to see if the city attorney wants to do her? She don't have to stay. I'll call Sam. We're going to be here anyway. You're right. I actually forgot to put Sam on the agenda, so I apologize.

So, it's fairly easy. Um, Dana did add to her changes to the budget sheet uh a decrease in about 88,000 for my department. There was just a clerical error on the salaries portion. So, that's why that has decreased by um 88,000. Um, I'm sorry. I'm trying to find your page. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, it's my bad. Uh, 23. 23.

So, the on page 23 under the personnel side of it, it's it's Yeah, it's it's 466491 is the total. Uh, subtract 88,000 from that. Which number? It's the total personnel cost the gray bar. Oh, are you talking are you talking about the 363? No, no, no. Total overall. So, it's not it's not just that one line. It's the total overall. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. But would it not? It will, but not by 88,000. The 88,000 is is is all Yeah, it's going to come out of different uh lines. So, it would produce that uh 466 to 378 484.

Yes. Yes. Um, and so besides that, there's basically just I would say three major changes to my budget. The first one relating to salary. Last year, I got a half year salary approved from staff attorney. Uh, so this year I need a full year. She actually started today. Her first day was today. So you will see her around. Her office is right across the hall from mine. Her name is Miranda McNotton. Um, so I'm very excited about that and so thank you. Uh the next big change would be the contractual services. That's my 200. Uh previously before I even um started here, it was a large number. Last year it was at 100,000. Um we've reduced that by half. This line item is essentially for emergencies when I don't have time to request a budget amendment. So things um like a a sexual harassment complaint has been made and I need to hire an attorney who specializes in investigating that. I don't have time for two amendments. So that's where that would come from. Hopefully I don't have to spend it. Um but it's there for emergencies. The next overall biggest change is just related to the fact that I did add um another another staff member. So you'll just see various increases to account for that. The biggest one being line item 233 uh that doubled that is solely Lexus Nexus that is the research database and so that accounts for uh now two licenses so two people can have the research database. That is all you have questions.

No over time. I don't get overtime. And Storm sewer, you guys had like hardly any overtime. Like 2% 2%. Amazing. Sorry. Getting late. I'm getting tired. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you.

Mine's on page 29. Um, under personnel there is um request for an assistant finance director. Um, as the city has grown, um, my department has not grown but by I think one person in 2020. um that was mainly due to the tornado, but it also assisted me in having a backup for payroll and a backup for AP because I did not have one at that time. Um so I don't know exactly where I'm going to put this person in my office. Um but uh it would help to have the backup and um to be able to monitor things uh a little bit better because it it's a lot obviously. Um but um also if it's a budget constraint issue, I will live without it. Um under contractual services, there's uh amounts for payor and ADP. Both of those are payroll systems. Payor is our current payroll system. Um, and we are transitioning to ADP on July 1. The payor is in there as a safety net in case something does not transition correctly. Um, and we have to go stay with payor. Uh, so that's that's what that's there. Hopefully, we don't need it. Um, and it'll just go back in the general fund, but it's there just in case. Um the other large items are the audit uh and actuarial services under 253. Um those are contracted prices. Uh believe this may be the last year for the audit under this contract. So I'll probably be bidding that next year. Um the actual

extraarial services um fluctuates year to year because they'll do a midyear review and then a full review. Uh this is a full review year this audit was

um under data processing that number is to cover our local gov server for our general ledger 29. Um we also have a computer um not a computer a software program called debtbook. Uh debtbook monitors our uh our long-term debt, our bonds. Um it's also used for a new Gazsby requirement for leases and subscriptions. And we just um put into place a contract module that will help us monitor all the contracts. Uh Sam and I are working together on that one. Um and that will alert us when a contract is coming due, we need to um review it uh or rebid it. So that's been a great um great tool to have. And then the um the grant software is to help monitor our grants. Um and same situation where we'll upload uh so we can keep all the information into one specific place. Um I think pretty much everything else stayed status quo. Um, we're not voting, of course, but personally I would like to see the assistant financial director position for $124,779 removed.

Question. Quick question. So, so you take vacation, right? Mhm. And who who handles all of that additional load while you're going? My current deputy. So, we have a current deputy. Gina Gina. Okay. So, is she capable of doing everything that you do right now? Everything? No, not everything.

And this new C and and this new deputy director would be able to do everything. Correct. Yes, that would be the that would be the goal to have somebody with a um more of an accounting background. Gina's been here forever. She's fantastic and she knows this city by the like the back of her hand. Sure. She's amazing.

Um she doesn't know the financial like reporting side. Um, and then there's I would love some help with um like managing more of the utility side of it, too. I have Ashley. She's incredible. She's my building manager. Um, but I would like somebody to be able to help look big picture and plan better. That would be helpful. Um, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. One more quick question. Would this other person be able to go and help cross train these other departments that are obviously, you know, that could be improving on their budgets? Would that be a That's something I can

I'm just trying to think, you know, is there anything that they could be learning through the, you know, the budgeting process to know so when we do come through these things and the next commission through here, you know, is able to help streamline the process a little bit, tighten the budget, make sure that we're not missing any gaps. So, do you see this as an investment or what are your thoughts for redundancy for the city? You have a family emergency, something goes on, you're and you're gone for 30 days. I'm just the deputy director's role. Well, she's just said the deputy director role currently that's in it doesn't have the ability to do all these things. That's what I'm asking.

How long has she been doing it though? Um, how long has Gina been the She was the deputy when I got here eight years ago, right? So, you take vacations, you're gone, whatever. So, she has stepped in. She She can do the job. She's not a CPA, but she can do the job. So, when I asked you out in the hall if you requested the position, your answer was no. So who was it that requested this position? You redundancy for what purpose? Redundancy because our current CPA is requested.

I was asking like well I went to the city and and asked them said hey what happens if we have you know Miss Dana leave? Well what happens if we have any other department manager leave? Should we hire an assistant? That's what I'm asking. Listen this was on here just as a discussion. this the only time that we can discuss about it. Right. Right. So, this is where we're discussing it. It's a good thing, right? That's what we're trying to get out here. Good thing. So, but again, I mean, the city is also like we have everything else with, you know, redundancy. If we have a current C a CPA in here, that's the director. The deputy director is not fully capable of doing everything from what you just said.

I'm sure we have plenty of other department heads where the deputy is thought. I mean, should we put someone in every department just in case they leave. We have a fire chief and a an assistant fire chief and that assistant fire chief can do the exact same thing. We have a police uh chief and then we have a captain. Well, at at one time he was a um a deputy captain or chief. Deputy chief. Thank you. It's late. But that was a redundancy. What if Matt or Shane leave? Who is there someone that can just step into their role? They're cross-trained.

Matt and Shane, I listen. This is just a discussion. That's all this is. Well, my opinion is the financial director did not ask for this. It's just growing government. I don't think the position is needed. Personally, I would like to see it deleted. I might agree with that. This is a department growing, not a not a government. It's government. We are in good. There's no reductions. There's not a single red font on that page. Is that by mistake? Was it over? She's very good at her budget. I run a very tight budget.

Well, you didn't request that, so I would think that would be in red ink, but that's okay. I think we're already beyond that. But yeah, I was Okay. Yeah, I agree. I don't I mean, there's a lot of positions that we removed that were requested. I mean some critical critical positions that were removed um from other departments and we have a deputy director. If the deputy director isn't capable um of replacing you, god forbid um something happened or extended whatever then maybe we need to take a look at our deputy director.

That was the whole topic right there. Thank you. Because I think the deputy director is the standin when any deputy director is the standin in the event that the director is not there. Maybe I'm wrong. I what I heard is she's doing a great job and there's a there is a gap there. Yeah, she can she can do it. She can't do everything that I do as far as like the financials, but I was out for knee surgery for over a month and the department ran fine. So, yeah, she she can handle

do financials. She can she can't do like the audit and like the financial report. There's there's just there's like CPA type items that she doesn't know as well as I do. So, she can run the department. Just can't do the financial, right? There's just some topics that she she's Well, there's just things that there's just things that I do that she she doesn't know. How come we haven't cross trained her in the last eight years since you've been here then? Well, I mean, she that's the whole purpose of a deputy director. I mean, a deputy finance director is to cross train.

I mean, if she if she if there was something she needed to to know, then I would definitely have her know it. But like the budget, I do all the spreadsheets for that. I do the depreciation schedule, which is a massive spreadsheet. That would that's like once a year things that she I do. She doesn't need to have that piled on top of everything else that she does. There's things that she knows that I don't know to be honest.

The whole reason why I brought it up is just because of a gap. That's all. And it was an opportunity for this board to discuss and just want to bring it out there that there's a gap in the process. That's all. And if the board decides to take it out, that's fine. But it's just a discussion that you know what's the gap and how important is that gap? Finances is very important for a city to run efficient. And if we've got a gap in the process, last thing we want to do is is, you know, let's say that extended time is a lot longer. Our deputy director can't or, you know, can't handle it. Then what? Then we're going to go back to the whole thing of what if. So that's awesome.

Let's hear from our deputy city manager. Uh, I just want to be fair. Um, Gina's very good at the job that she has and there is a gap between being a CPA and not being a CPA. Uh, Dana went to school for a very long time to learn what she knows. U, that's not to take anything away from Jana and her ability to do Thank you. the job that she's assigned. We're not I'm not saying that. Yeah. I'm I'm just saying that from from what you had stated earlier, there was some things that that you can do that she can't. That is there a concern there? That's all for the city side. Is there a concern if there was a Well, I hope I'm not going to go anywhere.

I'm not speaking any ill on you, but I'm just saying. But yes, I'm just saying is I mean I think there's I mean there's I think there's things that are unavoid unavoidable if you know something were happen to me. That doesn't mean that I have to have somebody there with me to back me up just because I might be gone tomorrow. Yeah. Well, if something happened, let's say that you did have to have hope nothing, but you were out for a while and and there wasn't there was that audit type exposure that happened that needed. Could we not fill that with um contract label to do that to assist Gina?

I actually think that that MTAS can provide assistance if something happened to come and Gina would work with them. does a great job. Okay. Yeah, she's fantastic. I don't want to take anything away from her at all. No, absolutely. No, we're not I'm not saying that a long time and I think she does great. Yeah.

Yeah. I think those are good points because like I said under John, not too many years ago, we didn't have deputies. We might have like somebody that you knew was in charge and the other person left. We didn't even have a deputy city manager until Miss Sheila. So, it's not uncommon to have somebody that you they've got the title, but they can't do everything the other person do, but they can run the department and do 99% of it. So, that's not uncommon. That's probably the case in a lot of departments where you have somebody that's got a title of the deputy, but u it's hard to be perfectly redundant to where if somebody did leave in any department, you know, it's like Tim, for example. Tim, are you saying neither one have true deputies? I guess you'd say that's a perfect example in their skill set, but they've got backups they feel like can do the majority of the work.

So, it's very similar situation. Only thing different. They just hadn't actually classified somebody as deputy, but that was done before Dana. So, Tina's phenomenal. She's been here over 30 years and we hadn't missed a beat at any point when John was out before and even when Miss Dana has been out. So, it was just out of respect for the vice mayor made the request to get in front of you all for conversation, not to knock anybody by any means. Yeah. And there is a benefit to a succession plan. I think we we've seen that across all the departments of understanding a succession plan and having one in place if needed. So I do think there's value in that.

Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I'd like to hear about pages 21 and 22. Okay. I I know everybody's tired. It's been a long day. A lot of us started out this morning, at least a couple of commissioners in the room were at an event at 7 o'clock this morning. So, thank you all. Thank you each one of you. Thank goodness we had that pizza and uh that was donated by the way. So, no cost to the city. So, we have a little bit of budget savings there. But, uh city manager portions is pretty simple that you will see there is a position that we move from city beautiful not because Marty's not doing an adequate job. Page number. Yeah, page 21. Sorry about that. 21.

Yeah. And it's uh it says at the bottom it just talks about we moved the current facility position maintenance position which that's been a big benefit because they they can fix anything. I call it the Swiss Army and I for almost like a MacGyver that's Robert Marty's very familiar with him. He supervises in we'll continue to supervise him regardless of which budget it's in. The reason we moved to the city manager is that there had been a request to possibly add because we had added a fire station and the city hall uh new not city hall the new police building uh that might I think vice mayor I'll defer to you on that but that was something you'd recommended that he can understand the the benefits of that probably better than I can because he's a sub subject matter expert I think you say so sure if you want to speak to that that's the only difference on the the page

page 21 line uh It's actually it's not even a line item. It's actually down there underneath line 147. And the reason why I wanted to bring this to the uh to the board's attention is a couple things. One, um the police department actually has a lot of high-tech um equipment in there. You got fan walls, you got VFDs, uh closed loop, uh you like water loop systems in there, a lot of maintenance, and it is going to take a lot of learning curve. And currently right now um we are spending um you know Miss Dana I think you can let us know that you know like that maintenance cost for all the different HVAC companies all the service costs. It'd be great if you can throw that number out sometime this week or next week to the commission and let us know what we are spending in repairs for HVAC and uh also some some plumbing again because that HVAC technician should be able to do plumbing and some electrical and controls and so forth. So, um, again, as I had mentioned during, uh, the police department, um, conversation with the with the chief, um, even though he thinks it may not be beneficial this first year because we're under the three-year warranty program and we are using the third party company to cover the warranties, but there's still a cost behind some of that. So, um, but with that equipment, there is a requirement to do maintenance. So either we're going to pay that third party company at a higher rate to do the HVAC and the plumbing and the maintenance that's automatically tied in or else we're going to be able to do it inhouse. So at that cost right there, uh that was what I was looking at. Wanted to bring it to the board and see um if that was something that you guys would consider just because of the fact of um HVAC companies today typically cost about 250 bucks an hour for commercial rates and uh that can easily get up into 150 $200,000 on just just general

maintenance. That's not including afterhour calls, emergencies, and so forth. But if we were able to bring in a full-time maintenance person, HVAC person, they would be able to do the work, whether if it would be crossraining the folks over at the parks, crossraining the general maintenance folks that we currently have here, and then obviously being able to maintain the very expensive buildings that the citizens as well as the tax or taxpayers actually just invested in. What is a 30 something million dollar building? So, tax input generators. That's generator PM as well. Yes, sir. How much do we spend on all spend on maintenance for contract on HVAC? That's what she's gonna That's what I just asked her to come up with. Yep.

Do we think we would defer 100% of that cost or It'd be about Yeah. No, no, no. It it'd be about a 7030 because your major PMS for your generators, you still got to do your low bank test. Okay. Which would be your 30 and you know about that 30% but the 70% would be all in house. Yeah. I didn't think it'd be 100%. That's what it's 7030. So are you talking about the 30% for I mean how do we know this individual will be certified and some of that uh I assume that some of the maintenance on that you have to be certified in certain areas for that warranty to be correct

maintained. So, how do we know how many of those require that type? And how do we know this individual would have that'd be sort of hard to find someone would have all of those credential credentials? Yeah. I mean, it really Yeah, that's typically your journeyman level or above. Well, I don't know anything about that. So, I do. No, I'm not questioning what you don't. I'm just saying historically like three years, maybe two years. Yeah. Yeah. We can get that data for you. Again, it was just a discussion item again for all of us to be able to look at long term. May make good math sense. Um, I have a question.

So, do we not have an in-house person that could really do that role? Not at this current time. We have a facility maintenance person as part of Marty's team, the city beautiful. Again, I refer to them as sort of Swiss Army now. They can fix just about anything, but there might they might not be credentialed in everything that the vice mayor is talking about. Uh, are you talking about facilities maintenance or the building maintenance technician?

Yeah, the building maintenance technician. If that position was hired, our current person that's at level two would answer to them, if that makes sense. If they don't, then this the person we use now we're utilizing in every facility all across the city. everything, even things outside of the buildings that we're out repairing along with, of course, public works does a lot of that as well and other departments. We have a lot of talented people out there that can do things. But if you look at somebody specifically for facilities maintenance with all the new fire halls in the police department, things of that nature, Clemens Road, other things, this person would have different credentiing.

All right. Well, again, my personal opinion is it's just not a good time to bring in a $93,000 position. Um, I'm going to request at first reading that that be removed from the budget without expense we don't need right now without finding out what we're spending currently right on. Yeah, let's find all that out. But more than likely, I'm I will be motioning to have it removed.

Okay. Um, as far as the next page 22, uh, you will see an increase of 100,000. If you recall, last year we put 100,000 in for the two old houses, but we kicked it to this year, hoping that we would have a way forward on the property. Still feel that way this year. So, it's in there basically as a just a placeholder. Uh, hopefully we'll get something worked out on the property back here and not have to utilize that money and pass that cost on to a potential contract. So that's just an error basically as a placeholder and um most the other line items are all reductions. No other additional increases.

Very good. Any questions for the uh for city manager? Correct. No, I don't have anymore. All right. Well, next last item is closing remarks and questions. Are we not doing city beautiful? Yeah, I've got it here. City buildings. Yeah. Personnel. I can do You want to do city buildings? I'll do city beautiful. Dana, yeah. Uh on you'll see the land easements at the bottom with the million. That's basically the last payment for the ECD incentive.

So that'll that'll roll off after this year. It would be the last year of that at Costco. Yes, sir. And then the other only I'm sorry. No, no. I just didn't know if Marty had anything to add. That's all I Because he stuck around this whole time. So, I didn't know if there was anything that they need to add. Welcome to Marty. I say he lasted all the way. I didn't know if you seen him back there. Your city beautiful. I didn't forget about you, Marty. Okay. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Uh our city beautiful I did ask for uage for our city uh page 24.

24. Thank you. I did ask for our city beautiful guys to uh move up to our facility maintenance budget for increase. These guys are uh we actually do more than pick up trash. We out here every day heat, the rain, the snow, ice. would come out whenever we need it. But if these guys are out here every day and we know if these guys not have here every day, we know what J is going to look like at the end of the day. But these guys I mean these guys deserve I feel that these guys deserve this kind of pay increase or adjustment for the budget and I would just like you guys to please take this into consideration to you guys.

Would this kind of make them evil equal? Sorry. Uh equal sorry it's been a long night. Well, 10:00 equal to the um like last year for the mowers and parks. Okay. And we do mowing as well.

Do we work on Saturday? I mean, do you guys work on Saturdays, too? I thought so because I seen them out there. I didn't know that was a special request, but they're out there on Saturday. So, there's some residents over there at the Dunkin Donuts that was giving some of your guys some kudos. So, it was great to see that because they were thanking the individual that was out in the truck uh on Saturday, Chick-fil-A hours. Yeah, it was great. So, I'm telling you, I could if if there's a one of those signs missing in the road or the crosswalk, I can call Marty and he's out there on Sunday to get it. He's out there anytime. Call Marty's guys are cutting painting or planting. They're the They get everything nobody else wants to do. Yeah.

That's the job they got. So, and on Saturdays when everybody's at home. Yeah. So, it was great to see the the folks from Dunkin Donuts. They were giving you guys I thought they were taking them some donuts. I don't know. I didn't want to get involved there. I just thought it was great that I'd like to have a Can I give another example?

Yeah. We got them out instantaneous this week to clear out a section of fence in front of Texas Roadhouse because that's where the new sidewalk's going through and and I'm trying to get a section of that fence removed because it really serves no purpose because I think it creates a better greenway. I think it creates a better look for that property and that corner especially the road improvements going to be coming. And uh we had a couple guys get out there this week quite a lot of work and got every bit of that cleaned out. Not only does it look 10 times better, as soon as I get this information back from T dot, hopefully take that se section of fence out and make it a lot nicer in the future. Yeah,

it may actually make way for us to get the sidewalk done sooner. And the reason being is is we're still having a hard time with the guide wires on the poles, the poles that are over there if we can slightly adjust where the sidewalk goes. Not only can you get it in there quicker, but I think the end result is better. We I mean in instantaneous something like that can pop up in a minute. I want to commend the commission because when this whole idea of a city beautiful program came up years ago, you know, it was like what is this going to be again and it's morphed into something really special that sets our city aside to to me different than any other city. So, thank you.

And the other thing that we are asking for uh we do have a side by side that from this last leg so I did put something in the budget for a new gator. We do have one. We have two. One is going out and they they both use they both matter fact our mechanics don't bring that hunk of crap back here the garage. Exactly. By a local business maybe helps offset the cost. Actually just the one that the other one that we just got this past year we actually donated by uh Green Day Construction. I was able to get the United States

and the three golf carts got they were nine grand a piece. They were all brand new and donated by golf. Oh, we'll give some good news though. The city chambers will be donated the remodeling for that. The one we're looking at moving to the OPD and also the pavilion at Veterans Park and the pad will be donated as well. Okay, I think that now I think concludes everything. You want to talk about city buildings, Marty? Or Dane, you want to cover that? N. All right. Trying to help get y'all out of here.

We probably know basically the buildings have been sort of mothballled. We cut off a lot of the services to the building minus heat and air of course because that water and things that nature to save us $25 a month just on the water taps alone and any water fees there. So we pretty much the small volume and we're maintaining. Most of them are shuttered. The only building we continue use is the old fire department and we use that just for stored equipment, things of that nature right now. So you should see most of those items went down.

And we did combine the building under us. So that way we've had issues in the past for more than we had a bunch of people calling different vendors to try to get them to come out and we find it's easier. One person is getting the information and one person out. That way it's easier on. I like it. Thank you, sir. No questions, man. We should put you first. You're the easiest one. We should have let you get out of here sooner. We should put fire and police last. Does that make

Yes. One one more is personnel. What about page 80? There's no page 80. So I mean that's time to go then. We do anything in there. If y'all have any questions for is that personel personel administration.

I have a um I'm going to be okay. So earlier on this is page 28 under personnel request to move HR generalist pay scale to match the office manager the amount under this year's column is 9209. Well that amount was wrong. Um and then you were going to check out for the top out pay which of course you wouldn't earn in one year. So this is actually that 9202 is to move uh her into that position, right? Or into that pay scale. Sorry, not that position, but into that pay scale.

Okay. I thought that 9209 was incorrect amount. No, that that should be correct. Should be correct. Yeah. All right. Which line item is this? Was looking at it earlier and thought that number was off. No, nobody said anything to me about it. But um based on where she is now and the office manage moving her into that would the total cost would be 9202. Yeah. I think that what it was is there the next step from when you go from one the position she's in. Yeah. Normally it' be another step in between the top out. Yeah. Is it literally jumps from Yeah. I think she's going straight to top basically

like a $7. Um, so because of that, can we change that to do midyear, make it effective January 1st? Okay. Can we just do it or do I need to motion for that at first reading? Uh, if everybody's okay with it, I can just take it have it ready to go first reading input. Which employee is this? And I mean like what position is it? HR generalist. HR generalist. Yeah. And what line is it? It's not. It's the under the personnel request on page 28 at the top. Okay, I see it. Moving it. Change it to happy January effective January 1st.

Okay. Um, and also if if you guys have concerns or express them to Kenny. Um, and then if multiple of you have concerns and enough of you have concerns, I can we can update the budget before it gets to first reate. I was going to ask, can you go ahead because there were some changes already that aren't reflected in what we have here. So, can you you want an updated copy or Yes. You want me to go ahead? Yeah. these all of these uh the changes that I gave you earlier that list they've already been made in the budget. So, but just not in the copies not in the copy you have. So,

I didn't want to print out a whole new copy just to have those cancel the changes in there. So, you can't make changes after this gets publicly posted for the first reading. Correct. Yes. Once I once I present it to you guys on first reading, then I I can't touch it again. It's it's in your boards. But before that, I can get it to you changed if enough of you express concerns. We can I would like that very much. I'm having rotator cuff surgery on the Friday before the first reading. So, I'm just not going to be in a good place for that meeting. Um, the sooner I can get that, the better. I can I can

you'll have like you'll have it the week before like you'll because you have to post it. Yeah. So for first reading you'll have the updated version the week before um at at a minimum. But yeah if you have any changes that you you know you want feel very strongly about definitely talk to Kenny and then we can make those changes before it ever gets to first reading. Okay. I would love to have this as presentable as possible. because that just makes it easier on me between first and second reading because I have to post it um in the paper and that means I have to make the changes and get it in the paper. What are we going to know about the state rate?

I don't know. That's out of my email. And if that if that state rate does not come in at first reading, there will not be a property tax rate in the budget. that rate has to I have to have that rate before I can actually use it in the budget because we can't pass a rate until that's available. I had heard June think it's

I mean hope I hope so and I'm I'll definitely keep reaching out to the county. She gave like I said I've got an estimate of it. She said they were just waiting on the state. So I'll just reach back out to her and see if they've heard anything. Give a second. Yes. The 8th of June. 8th of June and the 22nd of June will be second reading and I don't know the 29th maybe third reading.

Just don't just don't bring it up and don't even get a second this year, please. That was a nightmare. We don't get a second on the budget. Where does that leave us? Uh, that left me in a lurch that year. All right. Well, is there anything else or or we want to delay up a little bit to hit the full five hour mark. All right. Well, there's no objections. I recommend we adjourn before we have to do a budget amendment for overtime. All right. Hearing no objections.