Council - Regular Meeting

Spencer.

sharp.

We didn't know how challenging it was going to be this morning if he was all duded up, right? Oh, I love brown sugar.

Did you make it? I did. I'm impressed.

You're ready. Good. Good morning. We're going to call this uh workshop meeting to order and Councilwoman Skog is going to lead us in the prayer and pledge. If you will stand and thank you, heavenly father, we thank you so much for the opportunity to gather for the freedoms we have in our city and in our state, in our country. We ask that you would be with us today as we um go over budget um issues. And I pray that um we would be wise and use your wisdom and um that you would keep those safe that are available to be here in we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.

I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands indivisible andice for all. Clerk will call the role. Griffin here. Rodriguez here. Reynolds here. Bills here. Jenula. Scog here. Five present. Good morning, Clay.

Uh this morning you get to hear from our internal services teams, our genv budget related items. Um, as we get started, I just want to speak to the role that this team of individuals plays as we operate a a massive enterprise. Um, with over 800 employees, an over $310 million budget, uh, the projects that go on throughout the city, the facilities that we maintain, um, keeping everyone in order, in line, etc., um is hinged on the backend operations side of the city and this is the team that provides that for all of our um more public facing if you will departments. Um I also wanted to just share as as we kicked off the budget process and cycle in February um Mayor Hogab had had a couple highlevel things that he asked directors to really hone in on and focus on. uh one of them was his desire and the importance of retaining our employees. Um that we we worked to ensure uh that we focused on the benefits and pay um and those be the two things um that were the number one priority from his lens and that's what was communicated. It was also to work with an existing budget uh recognizing that we were going to have uh the annual costs, the the increase to health care, uh potential cost of living adjustment, etc. Um but for the most part, the goal was that if we stayed within our operating budget um as is, then we would have the ability to focus on the current employees, retain them, and then be prepared to recruit when we do lose folks. Um, so I I just share that as we go through our updates today. Um, and you hear of some of the opportunities that we've uh accomplished

over this last year, the challenges that are ahead of us uh and how the team plans to mitigate those or deal with those as they move forward in the FY27 budget. Um I also just want to articulate that while today's internal services uh the city has a diverse group of skilled workforce uh in anything that and everything that we do and in order for us to continue doing the work that we do and serving the community we serve. It's critical that we have that workforce to be able to do those things uh that's skilled that that stays with the city that we have long-term employees so that it's not a constant retraining and reskilling of individuals that come to the city. Um and I think just recognizing that we are fully aware that most if not all of our employees could leave the city and go to a different employer that would pay more. Um, and so we really stress the the value that comes with the total compensation package. Uh, as well as ensuring that we have a strong culture and team environment that folks feel like they can flourish and grow. I also want to point out the agenda is not in the right order. Uh, I did not communicate that back to the clerk's office. Uh, but instead of having to come up three different times, um, I put the three that I have first. Um, the slide deck that you have in front of you is the correct order. Um but just wanted to call that out so that there wasn't um confusion or more confusion as we go forward. So when we kick off with the mayor's office, our our priority uh and the lens that we're looking at is that we have a safe and healthy community where people prosper. You've heard all of our departments speak briefly on their goals. Um, and those goals all align to the city main four goals um that that go back to that mission or vision. From an organizational perspective, this is the ORC chart that we have for the city as a whole. Um, there are 18 direct reports

to the mayor's office uh between different directors and staff. Um, and our FY26 goals, as I mentioned, these are the four highle ones throughout the city. So maintaining that safe and healthy community, creating economic opportunity, excellence in government, and improving movement in and through Nampa. And hopefully you have seen in all the presentations um that those are aligned to both the budget requests and the budget of current what we're doing from the mayor's office specific on accomplishments. Um, we completed last week our third annual citizens academy and so kudos to Amy for getting all of that and leading that work and effort. Um, we also went through a mayor transition last fall. Um, we had uh a lot of time planning and effort into having a successful transition. Um, and as we started early in that process, uh, Mayor Hogabone provided Amy and I about a five-page document on the framework of where we were headed and what he wanted to accomplish both in the short term but also long term. Um, and and as you see as we talk about our priorities for 27, um, those continue that alignment. We continue to focus on the work that was of importance uh, as we continue to maintain and move the city forward. We also are focused on our America 250 promotion. Um there's a lot of different events that are going on throughout the community in the area. So we want to be part of those works. Our feds our our friends um I use that term lightly at the feds gave us some new compliance laws we had to follow with ADA. Uh and so while that was a significant undertaking, the good news is it's been delayed a year, but we were so far in the process that we're continuing the work so that we don't have to um try to quickly fix it next year. So we're going to continue with

those pieces. And that's been a large project citywide, not just out of the mayor's office. Another big focus is our emergency preparedness. Uh last fall we had a uh citywide scenario on power that all the directors and the leadership uh came together and identified and figured out how we would handle uh not just a large but a long-term power outage for the city. We've continued with the fire district transition. Uh something that's kind of been lingering out there for five years. Um last fall uh the first thing that the significant piece of those layers was dispatch uh dispatch for fire was moved out of the city services onto Canyon County. So those are being done now at Canyon County dispatched um facilitywise uh fire admin is um closed on a new property as of this week and so that's also exciting for them. We we focused last year as well on our standard operating procedures and ensuring there was continuity and in what we do and how we do it so that um people coming in and people staying had clear understanding and direction of what their their roles and responsibilities focused on. And as always, community outreach is something we continue to do. We also have the pleasure of having our um risk management and procurement director housed within the mayor's office. Uh so Rick Kennedy, the accomplishments on that side and his team. Uh there's that emergency scenario again. You also got an email and we've implemented citywide a rave system that allows us to do emergency communication out uh to folks that need to have pertinent and and quick information. We continue to work on reducing employee claims, building those relationships with our state insurance fund and ICRIMP to bridge those gaps. We've developed and implemented the first quote unquote

decentralized procurement policy manual um which is a big undertaking to try and coordinate things citywide and still have it be decentralized enough but provide the guidance and expect uh expectations for departments to know and follow in order to ensure that we're compliant with both state laws and also um being the best stewards of resources we can be. Um also working on that standardizing uh procurement process uh purchase Rex form um facilities NA police department our public works all of those departments of trying to have one singular uh form that's consistent across the board from the risk management side as far as focus for FY27. Um, and this this first one is going to be a a big heavy lift and it's definitely in partnership with uh legal and Preston and his team. Um, but really looking at the frequently used contracts across the city and ensuring that we have templates that we can use and not have to go to the drawing board every time. Um, and then providing these in our bids that we send out so that folks know exactly what the expectations are as they bid uh to complete the work within the city. We've also worked on uh and the team continues as far as 27 to transition the procurement process um from Outlook as far as here's emails on things to focus uh to leveraging our Tyler Munis platform to support that process and tracking it and keeping accurate records of things. On the risk side, um we're working on developing incident action plans for all of our city sponsored events and this is in partnership with Kenyon County Emergency Task Force. This is a great uh partnership that we have that our team leverages as we look to ensure that we're prepared in the event that we need to be responsive to citywide incidents. And then finally, looking at our safety

programs and emergency planning strategies. Many of our departments have very specific practices they would follow, water being an example. Um they have very articulated out what would happen in different events and emergencies. So continuing to pull those all together um and then provide additional training and staff across the board from the mayor's office priorities. Um, one of the things that, uh, I've continued to work on is this enterprise approach. And this is a I would say positive and negative. Uh, there's there's negative from the sense that it it limits somewhat of the ability to independently do and operate however a department wants to do that. Um, there's a lot of discretion provided to directors on how they run their team, how they uh, build that culture, that morale. But from an operations perspective, it remains critical that we um continue to work towards this approach to ensure and enhance our stewardship, build consistent policies and procedures, and then streamline communications. Community engagement is always something that is a a strong priority and was a as you saw early on in in Mayor Hogab's time, timely, relevant, and candid updates. And I think the candid is one of the things that that Mayor Hogab stressed a lot whether that was in director meetings or leadership meetings or just me meetings with staff or the community that we have to be commu we have to be candid about what's going on so that we can prepare for difficult conversations. Um our infrastructure funding uh this is continued to be a conversation. There's going to be a workshop coming up as well. How are we going to handle um and then prioritize infrastructure needs and funding? And then there's that emergency preparedness. Again, a very important aspect um to the city side of things.

Uh the mayor's office, I do just want to call out the whole team. Uh Amy and Kim, Josh is probably at his window. No, not yet. He'll be at his window in a little bit. Um but I also just want to give kudos to to this team specifically. As everyone knows, uh it's been a rough couple months. Um, and so they've they've really stepped up. It's been a great team effort, as well as everyone else in the city, but um, it's it's been a a bit of a roller coaster. So, I just want to thank them and give them the kudos they deserve for all they've done over the last few months as well. And with that, I'm happy to stand for questions on those before I transition over to facilities.

Council, any questions for Clay at this point? Clay, keep going. Thank you.

All right. You bet. Um, so facilities, um, mission there, provide exceptional customer service and stewardship of city- owned facilities. And this is done through a dedicated team of 23 employees, uh, broken out into two distinct areas. Our construction program side of things, project management side of things, and our operations manager. Um this team carries a very vast array of responsibilities and expectations uh from the complexity of the buildings to the intricacies of needs of of individual departments and individual staff. Um but I think they do a they do a great job and if you look at our facilities, we continue to to upgrade and I'm excited to highlight some of the things that's been accomplished this year. One of the most time consuming I would say is when we end up with unplanned projects that come forward. Um, we've spent a significant amount of time over the last budget cycle of working with directors and department leaders to ensure that if there are needs coming forward within their areas that they're having that conversation with the facilities team early, both from a budget perspective, but then also from a project management perspective, that we're not over capacity in what we have for projects needing to be done compared to the staff that we have. Uh, so that is one of our focuses. We also know inevitably there's always going to be unplanned things that come up, whether it be something that goes out uh or a shift or change that that requires us to make some modifications to our practice. Streamline project management and ensure timely completion. Um as I sh I'm going to share this in a minute, but our project management team has just under $22 million worth of projects. Um I want to share this is not solely done by them. there's a larger team behind the

scenes on some of our more complex projects. Um, but uh with three staff leading those efforts um that's a that's a big ratio. Uh but also ensuring that we can be reliable and dependent to those that we're serving to ensure if we're saying that a project's going to be done by a certain time that the staff can expect that to be done. also working to ensure positive customer satisfaction stakeholders. And this is done by uh survey as well as anecdotal conversation and discussion with our staff as as we finish stuff up or folks are around the buildings. And then finally, uh retention is another big area for this department. Uh some of the positions in this in this area are very entry level and low pay and have what I would consider to be some of the um the harder jobs within the team of ensuring that our buildings look good and we're proud of them as we walk into them and as we have our community and our citizens enter them as well. Some of the achievements uh building construction and upgrades um for those that haven't had an opportunity uh you'll get to in the end of this month. We have a streets edition that's been almost completed. It is ahead of schedule, so that's always exciting. We have a new water admin building that uh we're we're working through right now. Um if you've driven by and seen either of those projects, um we have a new fleet building that's I believe last I heard we were at 75% of design. And so, uh trying to split that and break that up into um a first bid for the civil side of stuff to get the work going in June. We'll be coming back to to council for those pieces. Um, another undertaking which was provided to you uh was the initial presentation on our facilities condition assessment. Uh, this was a comprehensive approach to looking at our highest and most complex facilities in the city and identifying what we need to be doing from a maintenance perspective over the period of time uh to ensure that we're not

continuing to get further and further behind of our deferred maintenance. On the maintenance side of things, our custodial services manages 275,000 square feet of facilities this year between the water admin and the street edition. It's an additional 7,500 square feet, and we anticipate that to continue to grow as we bring on the fleet building uh and other properties. On the maintenance side, we had just under 1,900 uh work requests, and those are those are just the ones that get logged. I will admit I'm probably the worst about texting Alex or Dean and saying, "Hey, uh, can we do this or can I get this or can you fix this?" So, um, that's while that's a good number to use, we fully know there's there's more than that. Um, on the IH2C building, so you'll recall uh early in this calendar year me coming forward and giving uh some discussion on this building. Um, this is something the city has had in its portfolio for a couple years now and uh doing the best of utilizing the space and renting it out to try and have there be a net zero cost. Um there is a cost. Uh anytime we run a building, there's a cost. But one of the things that we are doing um and this this goes with the 27 priorities is we're moving some staff over to IH2C to have um some shared space as we have uh spacing issues in other buildings. um also taking a a approach of our master facility planning and this giving us some time and effort while we do the effort to complete this process and identify what do we need for the next 5 10 years on a facility lens. Um, you'll also, uh, for those that have been around for, uh, a couple years, over the last few years, we had, uh, significant capital budget items in that building, um, that we ended up pulling

out and reusing those funds on other projects because we weren't sure what we were going to do with it. Um, you know, it was back and forth. Uh, how do we operate? What what's the long-term plan for this facility? Uh, those items from capital have been put back in, and you'll see those as a request. uh with your capital budget for FY27. Um the other thing in our continued partnership with Idaho Hispanic Foundation uh to provide some of the daily operations of the facility. Um and so from a staffing perspective to having folks there as folks come in as well as helping manage the the facility and rental. One of our goals for this year from a revenue perspective uh is to try and reach 120,000 in rentals and space use for that building. Um, and this is a a more concerted effort uh knowing that we plan to have this at least for the next year. Uh, well, two years, if you will. Um, that that we can have a little more reliability from folks that say yes, we'd like to use this space. Uh, that's one of the things we've been running into for challenges is that folks weren't willing. We couldn't commit to it.

I'm going to interrupt you. Yep.

Council, um, before us, uh, we've got to make a decision. if we're going to have this particular property stay as a rental out type property or whether we're going to uh take it over and use it for internal facility and uh some relocate reorg. Uh so just keep that in mind that that's a discussion happening a little bit but it's something that has to be dealt with soon. So, um that's on the horizon far as uh those those facility issues. Keep in mind that the downtown building is uh will be freed up as well and what uh whether we're going to uh keep it, dispose it, um repurpose. So, those are two facility issues that are uh coming uh at us and really need to be dealt with as we do this budget here in the next uh few weeks. So,

Council President, if I could ask a question as well. Where are we at so far year to date in rentals on this facility? I think we're about 48% of budget. Um so, this last year we budgeted significantly lower because we weren't exactly sure uh what the space was going to be. I'd have to pull the budget numbers, but we just ran the report when we were going through it maybe last month, and I think we were just about at half of the budget. The the positive of that is the expenses often, especially with the contract services for security and those pieces, those are in line with what we do for rentals. So, while revenue is down, the expenses are also down. So, what would that revenue number be? Is I will get it to you.

Thank you. Y our our goal for the 27 is that we try and do a thousand in in use space a month. Um and that's a discussion we've already had with IHF of of how we can better coordinate. Um, again, part of the challenge for this last year has been that we weren't booking things more than six months in advance. Um, because we weren't sure what our intent was going to be as we approached this from a let's hang on to it for a couple years while we do this comprehensive facility plan um, and identify what we should do with that facility. Then it gave us a little more ability to say yes, we'll book something out that's a year out. the priorities and goals for the coming year for the facilities team. Uh these are going to be the same goals as we continue to move forward. Um continuing to track those and trend those um the the team from a planning perspective on the the project side. We work more and more closely this year. Each of the directors had a meeting with our facilities team both on the management or the maintenance and the project management side. Um and was able to sit down and ask what needs were and what they anticipated. So hopefully that plan versus unplanned stays the same. And then finally, what you will see um as we talk budget uh proposal or items, there's been a lot of conversation on project management structure. And this is not just in the um facility side. This is citywide. We have a overabundance of projects. Uh there's no question. Um they're all good projects. uh their prioritized projects as the public works team and and all those individuals come to the table and say, "Hey, here's our here's our highest need, our highest priority." Um our goal with this project management structure is to a look at do we have the right structure in place? Do we have the right people at the table as we're going

through these processes? And how do we ensure that whatever that composition looks like is effective and successful for the city? Um, I say this as a budget on the budget proposal item because I I think as we go through this process and we identify what that appropriate looks like, um, we just want council to know that that that could come back as a request as we we look to identify deficiencies or or gain um, opportunities within the facility side specifically. Um, we do anticipate uh making a modification to an existing position uh and and elevating it um so that when we have these more complex projects that come in that the facilities team is charged with managing uh that we have the expertise and knowledge there to do it. But that won't be a new position. It'll be repurposing one and identifying some uh salary savings in other places to leverage that. Um I mentioned the capital requests already for the H2C. Um, and I think one of the the big projects that will be coming is this long-term facility plan. Uh, as council president mentioned, we have we have a lot of facilities across the city. Um, we have old, we have new, and everything in between. Um, and we have properties that have been well taken care of from a deferred maintenance perspective. Um, and we have those that maybe haven't gotten the dollars uh needed or necessary to ensure that that facility is is not top-notch necessarily, but still something we're proud of. Um, so we asked all of our departments this year in the budget process to submit a five-year both staffing and facilities need request so we can start forecasting what it looks like and where we need to be. Um, the last thing we want to do is get rid of a property to turn around and have to buy or build something that could have done the same thing. Um, and so I'm excited for that project. Um, and I think it'll give us some great direction for what we need to

do long term on our facility side. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions on those two areas. Council, any questions at this point? Clay, thank you. I if I could, I just wanted to acknowledge the facilities folks that are here. Okay, they left me high and dry. Heather, thank you, Heather. Um, I know Dean was here already this morning, so um but uh thank you. Thanks, Chloe.

Peter, good morning.

Good morning. Uh, for the record, Peter McFersonen, uh, PhD EDSM Oh, just wanted to see if you guys would look up for a second. Nice to see all of you this morning. U, happy to be here. Want to talk for just a few minutes here and I'll try to go fast. Um, on the direction of our chief of staff to uh, get into our HR and workforce development. So, director of workforce development, HR. Primary mission of workforce development and human resources is to align our people and cultural values with effective strategies that enhance organizational cohesion, deliver exceptional service, and retain top talent. We strive to foster a transparent, supportive, and flourishing customer service culture that provides opportunities for growth for every individual. uh our org chart. You can see uh where the various positions follow. And I want to introduce my team here in just a second. Uh I know we have a new council member, so perhaps she hasn't met all of our team. So happy to share our faces and some of our duties. Um just as a reminder, um our HR manager, Isabelle, uh Chris Aer is a new position for us this year. our compensation and data manager. And we'll talk about some of Chris's work here in just a second. Uh Michelle S, our one of our business partners, Michelle H, uh another wonderful business partner. We do have a business partner position that is currently vacant. And then we have our two coordinators, uh Yinia and Jonica. And I believe that most of our team is actually here today. So I want to thank them for being here. You could see them live and real in the back of the room. And then we also have a partnership uh with again another new position uh Tanya King who actually works and is employed full-time by the police department but works very closely with us in human resources.

Some of our core principles uh when it comes to our workforce development and and HR uh department. Um I won't take the time to read through all of these. I'm sure you've probably done your homework and and seen all of these. I do want to focus on just a couple uh that are of particular importance to us. Um our skills assessment and training performance management is something that we're continuing to emphasize uh this year. And then the one right smack in the middle, perhaps our most um concentrated and focused principle is our compensation and benefits principle. And I'm just going to read that for a second that we want to review and enhance our compensation and benefits package to ensure that we are competitive with our fellow municipal governments and to meet the needs of our employees. Every year we share with uh council uh during the budget season our turnover and retention uh data that comes forward. Uh I think it's important to look at multiple years to look for our trends. So we've gone back and tracked since fiscal year 2022. So you can see over portions of five years of fiscal year 26. Obviously we're at year to date at this point. Um looking at our turnover rates and then our retention rates as well as our top reasons uh for why some of our folks uh leave city employment. And I will just say um we're a little bit up and down as you look at the numbers um as we project for fiscal year 26. You can see uh turnover we're at uh 8% roughly with our full-time and 20% with our part-time folks. U I don't know exactly where that will go. I have a few thoughts uh that I'll talk about here in just a second as we look at at turnover and retention. But that does give you a little bit of a of a example of the last five years. So, I mentioned just a second ago that

we brought Chris Aer on into the department uh to help us specifically with uh wage and salary analysis. Um so, we have some some specific facts we'd like to share about our compensation strategy. Um, as we're getting our arms around uh our 800 plus employees, one of the tasks that I've asked Chris to do is to proactively look uh at all departments, all positions to see how we're doing when it comes to our compensation uh and how we compare, as I mentioned earlier, with some of our our sister municipal governments. Um, we have some challenges, some issues uh internally uh retention and equity. Um some of our pay grades have decayed over the last uh three to four years uh not keeping up with inflation or or cost of living. Um we have some external pressures, workforce competition, uh inflation, healthcare costs. Uh and then obviously as we look back um we've had some salary freezes in the past uh priority compensate prioritizing compensation and then as the aforementioned uh property tax we know 389 unfortunately what we'd like to have equitable pay uh job architecture competitive pay and pay transparency some of the steps or uh strategies that we think we can do now to help us with those wage adjustments on departments that have funding capacity and we do have some departments that have that. Uh increase pay grade ranges uh to match inflation. Review uh of our job descriptions which we're working through and it's an it's a ongoing annual uh process and to utilize uh salary savings possibly for retention purposes. And then you can see there we've got uh about nine next steps that we're starting to work our way through. And I just want to just pause for just a second. I am concerned. Uh I've been in this position about a year now. Um we

meet regularly every week in position control committee uh to basically listen and and make decisions on requests that that uh various uh departments and directors bring to us when it comes to compensation for employees. Uh so every Thursday morning we spend an hour and a half uh working through those decisions. Um, and I do think we have some challenges ahead of us as a city when it comes to employee uh wages and compensation and I'm concerned about that. So, those are conversations that uh and Doug's part of position control, Clay is as well. Those are some of the of the frank conversations that we're having, but I am concerned uh as we look to the next one, two, three years where we're going uh when it comes to to compensation.

Question president. Yes, Councilman. Well, Peter, I've been thinking about this quite a bit and I'm wondering um HR comes out of property taxes, correct? For internal services. Yes.

Okay. And so the reason I'm asking that is I know we keep hearing about comp competitive wages. So if we do that then we have to adjust our capital improvements right or can we set back those capital for what funds there is for construction to give to the employees

in in part yes but not generally capital resources are generally one-time resources a grant um a a funding impact uh that is not generally recurring. So where we let's take um we fund a lot of our capital for facilities through interest income. Well, interest income is still high right now. That will go down. So you can't plan on that in perpetuity. So we tend to rely on on property tax and sales tax for our operational ongoing costs. That's labor and all the operating costs. You can shift to a certain degree. Let's say you were to take streets and say well I'm going to reduce my capital outli through contracts of third party by bringing people in house to do the same job and that works. I mean you can make that sort of shift and that functionality works but we can't normally take capital cost and drop them into uh operational unless they are well unless it's the will of the council and those funds are going to be coming to us in perpetuity. Okay, follow up. So, the other the other idea that I that I was looking at is is is there a possibility that we could forego some of the projects and apply it to benefits. I I know that's a tough call. I know that. But so our employees, I realized the other day that when I was with Crystal and riding with her that there's some employees that are actually working three jobs besides working for Nampa. That's unacceptable to me. And and and at times we ask them when they're you doing their jobs that they use their own vehicles and that definitely a no for me. So the direction for us should be a priority

for the employees. So is it is it where we could use the construction costs that we normally get from devel from from growth and apply it solely to employees and not to anything else?

In certain realms you could do that. Um let's take for instance public utilities. um where we have water, wastewater, irrigation and to a lesser extent streets. You can shift the use of dollars for capital purposes uh to operational to a limited extent. Um much of our capital projects are based on fund balance. So we've accumulated fund balance over the time. So to the extent we're spending fund balance then no you couldn't. the extent you want to cut out a project or two, that would be a discussion topic you could entertain. Um, however, if in the case of the public utilities, you might be it may not be the the wisest long-term course of action because we know we have uh deteriorating pipes and if we postpone the repair of those to pay staff, that's a I think it's a complex dialogue to have before you say it's a simple yes or no. Can you use Can you use enterprise funds um for employee benefits? Same answer. Yes, you can. But I think each one would need to be taken carefully. I think we have um a pretty rich overall benefits package. Um, labor is probably where we're struggling the most in terms of competitive the competitive arena with what our sister cities are doing. Um, but for instance, this year for us, healthc care is going up 9%. you know, and we're trying to uh offset that by creating a new health care offering that will appeal to some people who are in certain circumstances that

will cost them much less than a full service type of a healthcare process. So, we're trying to increase the benefits offering to something that's more appealable to certain segments of the of the city and it is their completely their choice whether they go on that or not. Um if not, we will have continue to see increased cost in healthcare. Um it's just uh we can get into that more in in a different venue, but uh we need to be looking across the city in virtually every account and and beginning to pin down what are the real costs we have to absorb. Where should we start cutting and what what should we start building? But we want to obviously build on the staff. We want to the staff is very important. Are there other costs we could contain? Can we look at printing costs? Can we look at uh travel costs? Can we look at other operational costs and reduce those in order to make sure that we're supporting our staff and the benefits the way they need for a city to operate? And I think those are the dialogues we need to have going on in the next couple of years to really pin down some areas where where we can cut some things out. And maybe it's a little bit of a sacrifice, but the sacrifice is for the the benefit of the city and employees so we don't continue to be a training ground for Meridian and other places.

Okay, last followup, sir. So, is there have you done a a statewide survey of how other municipalities are paying their employees and where that money comes from? Yeah, Councilman Rodriguez, we have and we're working on that. We do that annually. Um, specifically, uh, to the valley, obviously, right? Because those are our biggest competitors, if I could put it that way. Um, so that is something that we're tracking. Again, I think with Chris's new position, we're really we have a person that's now dedicated to that that is literally looking at the wage analysis across the city. We haven't had that before. So, we're trying to get the data to quantify that, but yes, the short answer would be yes. Are we doing anything different than they are from other cities? Um

I'm trying to think outside the box here. So, yeah. Yeah, we have maybe a few thoughts and we can we can share more on that if you'd like, but um I mean for the most part, city employment is city employment, right? from a benefits and a compensation standpoint. And if I may add, on behalf of the staff, we like your idea. I think we'd support your idea of of compensation for employees. I just wanted to point that out. So, thanks for bringing that up. We're a man of the people. You got a lot of smiles out there. So, appreciate that. Thank you, council president. Yes. If I could uh of the survey of the cities, I'd pref I would like to see specifically Meridian, Caldwell, Idaho Falls. I I'm sure Boisey matters, but it's such a different beast,

right? and having ACHD as a factor and all these different things I just I don't carry it doesn't carry much weight for me. Uh one of the questions that I have right now if you have the answer is the differential in pay between us and Meridian and us and Caldwell right now in the Jengov funded positions.

We may have to get you the specific numbers on Thank you. Yeah, very very much by department what they do up there. So our critical infrastructure staff, i.e. streets, wastewater, etc. I would like to know that differential because similar to what Councilman Rodriguez experienced. I went on the ride along and got to see how much deferred maintenance we had and who was actually going to be doing those projects if we end up levying or doing whatever else to support some major infrastructure improvements in the upcoming years.

Yeah. uh I heard similar comments made even to the extent I can't remember the exact percentage but a quarter of the staff have to be on state welfare benefits just to feed their family. So, I'm not saying that this it's the fully the city's responsibility if it's part-time work to bring them up to a full-time wage, but if full-time people are committing 40hour work weeks, I'd like to see at least that gap tightened and coming up with some creative ideas. And I think we're going to have plenty of creative ideas in this budget cycle. I know I have a spreadsheet running and so it's something to consider.

Thank you, Council Griffin. We are collecting the numbers. Um we do that annually like I mentioned earlier I think now with Chris um dedicated to that full-time we'll actually have more data for you more details. We'll look at those specific cities. I also concerned about Meridian. You mentioned Boisey U with the levy override. That's another challenge obviously for us with with Meridian right just just as a neighboring city and I think it's a point that we have to raise and I don't I don't think they're out of the striking distance for the city of Nampa. Competition raises the tide. Unfortunately, it's competition in the public sector and taxing dollars, right?

Uh but we we have significant infrastructure deferred maintenance and it's something that I've been saying from the get we need to be really considering a potential levy come November.

Peter, please continue. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh priorities, 100% of supervisors complete our supervisory skills training. Uh we've hit that the last couple of years. So we're excited about that. We're going to continue that goal or priority. Uh 85% full-time employee retention as you can see on the earlier slide that uh kind of es and flows sometimes 65% part-time employee retention. Uh same similar statistic and 50 days or less on average to fill our vacant positions or vacancies. And I know we've taken a number of questions uh council president but happy or maybe even unhappy to take a few more. I think we're good. Sure. Thank you.

Good morning, Charim, your city clerk. Here's a department overview. Our primary mission primary mission is creating a team oriented environment that provides excellent customer service while showcasing accountability, expertise, and transparency. Um we have a huge focus on legal compliance and we the preservation of city records. Uh you can see there is my team. We did this in the order of heights so you can see who are the two shortest people in our department. Here's an organizational chart. The clerk's office is only made up of seven people. Uh and on the right you will see a snapshot of what is on our website of all the various items that the public can access if they need assistance um on getting a service or a permit. We are the city's official recordkeeper and uh we maintain the uh minutes for city council planning and zoning commission. We are also the custodian of city code, ordinances, resolutions, contracts, agreements, and proclamations. I also receive and process city claims, and we manage and maintain the city cemetery deeds and internments. Our compliance responsibilities include the city licenses and permits which is title five of your city code and Idaho open meeting law, public records request act and we are a passport acceptance facility site. We are high volume. This is not a statutoily required task. It is something that uh we have chosen to do. Our FY2026 goals uh we wanted to achieve a ratio of 85% schedule to 15% walk-ins for passports. Uh we are averaging a ratio of 85% and above each month. We

have had almost 450 walk-ins for passports since October. We want to achieve an average of 100 passports processed per per week. We are actually averaging 116 and we have processed over 3,600 passports since October. One of our huge goals is 100% compliance with the open meeting law and the public records requests. We confirm agenda noticing for approximately 20 boards and commissions. And we have had over 650 public records requests process since October. And then it's also the 100% compliance of our city records retention policy. That is the primary responsibility of our city clerk archivist. um he has been establishing processes and compliance protocols with each department's record coordinator. Our recent achievements is the updated records retention policy. It just recently received final review and approval by legal and uh after we finalize it, it will be coming before council in uh about a month. We have been improving our customer service. We've added passport photo services. That is a service that has been asked by public for probably about 2, three years now. They wanted a one-stop shop. We expanded passport appointments and we also recently purchased a handheld translator. We have been discovering an uptick in different dialects of the Spanish as well as different languages as Russian and Mandarin. Here is a table on our licensed and non-licensed data. As you can see, there has been an uptick on quite a few of the different permits, for example, concessionaire permits and peddlers and solicitors. Also, our non-licensed process, which is in the bottom table, you can see a huge jump in our passports process from 2024 to 2025. Many people don't realize that the

clerk's office, even though we're internal services, we are a revenue generating department. And we obtain those revenue by passports and photos, licenses, and permits. As you can see, in FY24, we uh made a little over 295,000. We jumped up in FY25 to 312. And in FY26, our partial so far is already at 251,000. We get those fees that are set by the US Secretary of State for passport processing as well as alcohol related fees which are set by the Idaho State Liquor Division. To dive in this a little bit more, our revenue, our passport and photo services again FY24 we are at about 168,000 and FY25 we jumped up to 194,92. That is uh when we started our photo services which was in August 19th, 2025. We had 231 photos um done from basically about 6 weeks. And in FY26 we already are at 174,539. A lot of that has to do with the photos which are um a little over 1,700 and we have processed 3600 new and 445 renewal. Again, we do not get any fees for the renewal. We just do um a courtesy review for them. For our licenses and permits, um again, that revenue is licenses, alcohol catering permits, and concession air permits. In FY24, we are at 127,000. We dropped a little bit in FY25 at 118, but we are already at 76,935 for FY26. I do want to note that that number um that dollar amount as well as the numbers that you'll see uh down by the number per calendar year they do not

reflect our current alcohol license renewal session that we are currently in. Uh you have been seeing we have about 170 alcohol renewal licenses. You saw about half on your count on your agenda uh last meeting and you'll see another part uh coming up. So those are not included in this. Our FY2027 priorities, our main focus has been the licensing and permitting system as well as the preservation of city records. I put a quote in here. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. I said that because I thought it was important that you notice that the licensing and permitting system has been u one of our priorities probably for about two three years now. uh we have uh been working in uh cooperation with it and unfortunately both of us have uh been experiencing staffing challenges the last couple years and we made a um concerted decision that we were not going to move forward unless we had a very high quality product and uh we are hoping to start moving forward um next month. I believe you are fully staffed with your project manager and um anticipate that the entire licensing and permits of the clerks uh will be online by the end of the year. This is a huge huge uh priority and um it will be a wonderful benefit not just to the clerk's office but also for um police development services uh parks and wreck and uh economic development because currently right now we are doing a manual process for approval workflow and this system will uh be able to notify the departments when something needs to be looked at as well as uh provide notification to the license holders when

their licenses need to be renewed. Again, that is currently being done all manually. And as I mentioned earlier, we had70 alcohol license renewals. Our FY2027 budget proposal summary, we have no additional personnel that are being requested. Um, you are going to see uh an expansion of job specific training resources and certification programs. Basically um our sole resource has been one organization that has been AIC to provide us training and certification. After doing some research with some other municipalities, we discovered that um there are some other organizations that would be um more in line with our size. uh AIC has a tendency to focus more on the cities that are under a 100,000 and uh the international institute of municipal clerks has 10,000 um members and they also provide training resources and certification. Uh we are also looking at the institute of certified records manager. I think it's very important for the city's official recordkeeper to have someone that has that certification. We are looking at having our archivist go through that two-year program. You'll see an increase in anticipated revenue, but you'll also see an increase in related operating expenses. And again, that has to do with the passport photos and that's all I have. Are there any questions?

Council President,

yes. Do you have an anticipated cost of what that would membership do would be to join either of those recordkeeping organizations rather than AIC? Off the top of my head, I don't have the exact amounts. I know that um I did submit that to finance. Um I want to say for the city clerk and the deputy city clerk, it would be under $500. And um for the um certified records manager, uh he has to first apply and then needs to be accepted and then goes through all of the different training. And then once that training um excuse me, that certification is done, then there's an annual fee and he has to do continuing education.

That $500 is annually, correct? Or is that monthly? No, that is annual. Thank you, M president. Yes, counselor. Madam clerk, um the building that the city has over by Lloyd Square, um across from the 1918 bar is full of records is my understanding. Are you the custodian of those?

Where's my Of course, I don't see my archivist. If there are um city records um then we are aware of them. We have been doing an inventory. Um, I don't know off the top of my head exactly where all they are. Um, we do have Okay, perfect. So, those records are public works records for projects. They're not um permanent records. They they came from the gym here when the gym was taken down and the UB building was built.

Thank you for that. And and just to follow up, I was I was just curious how much how often we've gone through those and if they're just sitting there collecting dust. Uh that building is an eyesore in the community in my assessment, but my understanding it was it's full of important stuff.

So, uh Council Member Reynolds, um our archivist Peter Ktos did an inventory of all the city departments. Um I believe he did go over there and uh he was also checking the temperature and the security of all those records, looking at those records, determining if there were any that were um at that point classified as historical. If they're historical, they are being brought back to um the city hall because we do have a restricted access and a temperature controlled vault. Um you can explain some of the other

um the majority of the records they they're not accessed regularly. Um they're things that um with the that could be scanned and um gotten rid of at that point um once once we had scans of the important documents within there. Um but they are they're not regularly accessed.

Thank you. Uh yeah, that was where I was getting with that was wondering if we could scan those and store them digitally and not pay for the space. Thank you. It's a tough act to follow Char with her wonderful radio voice, but I will do my best uh to replicate that. Um, some studies say for early morning meetings that have heavy agendas, um, a good joke can help keep focus. And so, everybody just needs to know why don't sharks eat lawyers? It's just a professional courtesy reciprocal. So, think on that one a little bit. Um, it's my honor to be here before you this morning, council. Thank you for your time. Um, if we had more time, I would brag more on the wonderful team that I work with. um Rick Kennedy, Kirsten Squib, and Dustin Gilmore. Behind all that we do is an underlying value that we want to facilitate good government for you and the city and that's through ethical and trustworthy legal counsel and it protects the city and also to help achieve objectives. Our organizational chart, we're we're pretty lean. Um some comments came up, how do we compare to other cities? Um specifically Caldwell Meridian, they have five of me. um they have two of me plus another in the queue plus a policy and research analyst and so we are doing our very best to keep up with the wonderful and immense workload that we have here. Um we do have an attorney um application out and interviews will be coming this month. So we'll welcome those reinforcements for our 26 goals for the legal department. Um proud to say that we hit all of them. We not only hired but retained a parallegal and the amount of workload as Kirsten might add um she I promise I wouldn't have her come up

here. Um she does an immense and tremendous job. We've with these constraints we brought in a a law student, a legal intern. We call them law clerks and they have helped improve response times and workload being creative under these constraints. Um a big goal that I've pushed in the legal department is to help educate and inform our staff. Think of legal as the oil that goes through a big machine. There's a lot of cogs, a lot of gears, and legal is one piece that kind of touches everybody if you think about it. And so, we want to help train city departments. We've already presented internally and externally on legal matters and compliance. Um, we've helped mitigate legal risk for your city and we've done that through those trainings. Um, we came in with a blank slate. As you know, we're in a storming and norming phase. We're the equivalent of a startup business right now. And so we've implemented a goal of ours was to find a task management system and streamline task tracking. We have done that and that has helped speed up the process of task review and completion. I want to highlight some um some goals and achievements that we've we've reached. Sometimes you wonder, you know, what is it that attorneys may do? And I'll try to highlight just a few here. Um Clay had hit on this earlier. We have a contract database right now that we're building. Before we had contracts just kind of spread out all over the city in little silos. We are now trying to bring all those together into one shelf, if you will, that departments can grab off the shelf that's been pre-approved, has legal stamp of of approval. Um, I know we we're glad the Ford Idol say Ford Idaho Center conveyance is behind us, but just want to highlight there was an immense amount of legal work and our team did a commendable job helping fulfill that. Um, we helped negotiate a um a very thorny um issue with Midway

Park. Um, legal took the lead with um in reaching a settlement. Um, recently we had a human rights commission come to the city. an former employee was asking for a million dollars. Upon reviewing it and in a 10-minute phone call with the commission referee, not only did I settle that for zero dollars, but the case was dismissed in 10 minutes. And so those are the type of risk exposures that we're trying to be the Kevlar for the city to protect you from. A big philosophy that we believe in the legal department. Um oftentimes lawyers are used called, you know, I like to think wet blankets. We're the party poopers. can't do that, can't do this, rules say this, x y and z. We have a philosophy and a mindset to give turn nos into yeses. How can we help your project uh be facilitated? How can we find a legal path forward? Um other achievements we recent um recently presented to a statewide uh audience for all city attorneys and planners too in which our city was selected to present and train on some of the more complex legal issues across our state. That is a testament to our hard work and research and knowledge base. Um we helped draft the first ever uh bylaws for the city. There was a um on the purum sewer um trunk extension, there was a very very strategic and crucial lake covers reimbursement agreement that required a lot of negotiation and working with development services, I helped negotiate and draft terms favorable to the city. Um we've draft new code chapters and if uh that is a fun exercise in brain cell damage. If you've ever tried to draft code and then think how you can poke holes into it, just just try that. It is really challenging. Um, we've drafted entirely new chapters. And on the policy side, this is an area I want to emphasize. We want to instill and create new policies that protect our cities. We've done so

already for four, three departments, four different policies. Actually, as of this morning, five a new one came in, I think, for clerks. Um, and that's a big value ad to the city. Looking forward, what does 27 fiscal year look like for us? Um, we want to respond to a 100% response rate um to any written legal opinion requests from city council and chief of staff within 10 business days. Um, so far we are pretty good at at meeting that goal. Um, and as hit on earlier, I can't emphasize enough, we uh need a shift. What my observation being here a year and a half coming in with, I'd say rather fresh eyes, kind of a blank slate, I noticed often that we were being very reactive to situations, whether it was with contractors vendors, um, other law firms, and instead we want to be proactive. And this is where instead of reacting to their documents that come to us, let's flip the script. Let us have our owned contracts that have terms that protect the city that are fair, but also protect us, and we put slide that across the table, so to speak, and presenting our own. And lastly, um we want to draft and review 100% of requested ordinances, resolutions, and policy documents within 15 business days. Uh that's a good ambitious goal. I think we can meet that for uh budget proposal summaries. Um again, with those that kind of fresh eyes coming into this as a new, you know, startup, if you will, um what I see I crimp will cover a lot of our risk exposure. As you know, there are certain events that they will not cover. Um, one that comes to mind first and foremost is judicial review. That is one that I crimp um will not cover and there could be um tens if not six figure legal fees involved to defend a judicial review case. That's just one example. Where would that money come from? So

proactively, I've been working with Doug Rine and the finance team to look to establish a contingency fund because we do need to have that in our arsenal, if you will, uh to help defend the city if and when an uncovered um expense comes our way with a lawsuit. Um I do want to emphasize that I'm very much interested in forging a long-term relationship with the Cany County prosecutor. Under the legal department, there is the civil side, which you see me on almost exclusively. There is also the criminal prosecution, misdemeanors and infractions. Um, now for a few decades, the county co county prosecutor's office has handled that and we continue and anticipate continuing that. We will be partners and I want to forge that relationship to establish hopefully a long-term contract that's predictable and beneficial for both parties. We actually will be meeting with them next week to review that. Lastly, um for the budget proposals that you'll see from our department, we need resources uh for our staff to give trainings to our internal city departments. We need to create time and space capacity to allow us to prepare and present these trainings. Education, I think, is powerful and it's a great prevention tool for risk and it empowers our staff. With that, I will stand for any questions. Um, if you have any,

council, any questions, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

Well, good morning. And for the record, uh, my name is Butch Shyman, and as of this week, it's been my great privilege to be the CIO for seven years here at the great city of Nampa. So, with that, uh, for the IT department, um, wh went too far there. Okay. Isn't it great that technology uh acts up for the CIO? All right. So, our department overview, um, you can see it there. We want to provide u safe uh reliable and uh technology for this uh to help other departments serve the city. We operate behind the scenes and that's really the key here. Um I use this I date myself with this example but um I tell my team we are the telephone company and for those of you who remember when the phones used to be on the walls with a cord used to have a dial tone. How many of you ever called the phone company and said, "Thank you so much that whenever I pick up my phone, I have a dial."

You never did, did you? I've never heard a dial tone. For some of you, haven't. For those of you who ever picked up a phone and there wasn't a dial tone, what was your reaction? Dirty phone company. What are they doing? Right? You complain. So, when you don't hear when we don't hear from you, we know we're doing our job well. And that's really what we want to do. We want to be like an official at a ball game. You shouldn't know we're there. We're regulating. We're keeping things running. We're making things operate as it should, but you shouldn't know we're there. And that's when we know we're doing a good job. Mr. President, yes. I want you to know, Butch, that I'm the only one in here that remembers a party line. No, you're not. You do?

I remember my grandma walking into her house and she'd say, "I'm listening to a conversation on Yes. Yes. So, I do."

That can be corrected. Very good. Well, this is our organizational chart. Um you can see here that um we have actually reduced our numbers um due to some reorganization that we did over the last couple of years uh to focus our f folks in the right places. And so we're we're trying to do our best to maintain a high level of sec of of uh infrastructure and operations for the city in the most effective ways. Um very proud of the team. There's a number of the folks out here. raise your hand if you're on the IT team out here. These guys are awesome. We are very fortunate to have these people and they are high quality and so I'm very proud of all of them. Um so for our uh accomplishments over the last year um we set a goal to provide a greater than 90% service level agreement. Uh industry standards 85% when we started this. Uh we last year raised it to 90% because we want to be above industry standard. We don't want to just be average. Um, SLA compliance. I I apologize. You've got the you've got in front of you. There's a little bit of eye candy there, but I went across to all departments, talked to all the directors, and we came to an agreement of the response times that would are acceptable for tickets that come in and based on the priorities, low, medium, high, and critical for incidents, and low, medium, and high for service level or for service requests, excuse me. We've been maintaining uh about a 93.7% SLA compliance. We've we've slipped a little bit in a couple of areas. The challenge with the reason we can't be higher than that, everybody goes, "Well, why can't you be 100%." Well, we depend on third party vendors for a lot of our stuff. And so those responses from them, we can't always control and so they don't always respond within our windows. So that's that's where we're at. But we're very proud. We're keeping it above the 90%. Uh we want to provide a 98% or greater uptime for the IT network. Uh we put a lot of things in place. We've got

redundancies, we've got failovers, and we've got all kinds of things to keep uh that going. Uh ultimately, I'd like to get to to 59s. In other words, 99.999% uptime. Um so we've got some work to do there. But uh we're very proud of what we're doing there. We had one major uh incident this last year, what we call a major incident where it really affected um one particular area uh and it was because of rodents decided they wanted to eat some of our fiber. So uh but we've got that resolved. Uh the other one prevent 100% successful ransomware attacks. We're going to talk about this in just a minute. Very proud of what we've accomplished there. Um, and I think you're going to find uh in in just a moment when I show you some some results of some things that we've done to be very proud of of our security team and our overall IT team for maintaining that. And then IT service satisfaction levels of 9.5 or higher. Every time we complete a ticket, we send out a survey and we ask how did we do uh rate us 1 to 10 and we have a goal to keep greater than 9.5 out of 10 which is very aggressive and uh we've been able to do that. So currently we're at 9.52. So some of the achievements, I'll go through these really quickly. I want to leave a lot of time for our finance director because uh I know he gets it. So um I do want to just highlight a few things. We migrated to a new anti virus system. I won't uh disclose what that is because there's nefarious people that like to get a hold of what are you using and we're going to exploit that. But I can tell you that we've gone to more of a proactive approach than a reactive. Historically, the software we've had has allowed us to say, "Hey, there's a problem we see over here. You need to do something about it." Now, we have software that tells us, "Hey, there's some potential issues you need to look at before one of those things arrives." So, we're very proud of that. Uh we've we've done some good things there. We've

uh streamlined some of the permitting um the end user experience. Um, we've achieved a greater than 90% reduction in the number of the tickets for the clerk's department. So, I'm sure they're happy uh that we were able to do that. Uh, I want to go to this next page because I really want to highlight um this one. Um, we did a penetration test. So, for those of you who don't know what a penetration test is, we bring in people from the outside and we say, "Hack us. Find our vulnerabilities. tell us where we we failed and where the nefarious individuals out there in the indust or in the world could hit us. And so we brought in the National Guard and they walked through all of that and looked at the vulnerabilities and opportunities for us to improve. We've got pages of things that we can improve upon. But I want to highlight uh where you see the three asterisks there on that top bullet. We from them have been determined we we place in the top five uh for agencies our size in the state and I'm very very proud of our IT team for that. The security team is the one that um has put these identified the things we need to do but our entire IT team carries those things out. So uh just kudos for them. We're in the top five. So uh I'll let you read the rest of those things in your in your uh to save time here but we'll we'll move on. uh FY27 uh priorities. Again, the goals we want to keep we're going to keep the uh 90% service level agreement. This next one is is where we're changing. Okay, I want to add the this new goal. We're going to look to create more self-service for our our end users out there. When things go wrong, they call the help desk or they put a ticket in. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go out and click a button and say, "Hey, how do I solve it myself? Can I get it done?" Um, we're going to be looking at ways to do that and make that uh improvable so that we can reduce the number of incoming calls and then tickets coming in so we can free up our current resources and we won't have to

add additional resources in the future. So, that's one of the things we're looking at. Um, additionally, again, we're going to keep cyber security on the top of the list. Um, you guys don't have to watch the news very often to see this happens all the time around municipalities around the world. uh and uh we're we're trying to we're trying to protect us and then also we want to keep the network up. Uh we want people to be able to get their work done. So that's our goals there. Uh as far as budget goes, we have no new uh FTEEs requested. Um our you can see our numbers went up just just ever so slightly. But this is I want to I want to bring this up. So there's going to be further discussion as we go into the budget discussions and things like that. You're going to see an increase across the city for IT costs. Um software and hardware is going up. I don't know if you've been watching what AI is doing to the hardware industry. Um if you look at the price of the uh stock of the semiconductor just down the road, uh they're about $800 a share now. Um absolutely incredible.

816 as of this morning. Not that anybody's watching closely, right? Yeah. No, and and that's that's just the reality. Uh any there's a there's a large vacuum cleaner uh that is sucking every piece of memory that is available and it's going right straight to AI. Um so those are the things. One of the things that you're going to see uh with this increase is um we're trying very hard as an IT team to save the city money. And one of the things that we can do to save money is if we sign multi-year uh agreements with our software vendors, they'll lock in a price and keep us from getting those 5 to 7 to 10% increases annually. So, we can lock it in for a longer period of time. So, we'll have some situations where we may be able to get a three-year agreement or a five-year agreement. The challenge is that first year because you pay it up front. you pay the cost of that three years or that five years upfront, but then it's the price goes down next year because you don't have to pay that cost again. So, you've locked it in for those years. If you don't do that, you'll pay less for that first year um as an overall, but each year the price goes up and in some cases we're seeing 30 to 40% increases in some of these software places. So, we're we're trying to hold the costs down for the city and we've been able to negotiate some some competitive prices there. All right. And finally, capital budget. So last year, the IT team specifically made it a point not to have we had zero capital spending for FY26. Um, we were able to assess our servers, assess our hardware, and we were able to say that we did not need to uh spend any additional capital last year. This year, we can't kick it down the road any further. We can't put our servers and things at risk. It's just not feasible for this city. It's it's too great a risk. So, we've got some things there. Our our biggest expense request there is for some backup storage appliance. Our

old appliance is outdated. And where you would really notice it today, all things being equal, you probably wouldn't notice it. Where you would notice is if something crashed and we had to do a serious backup to the city, it could take us a couple of weeks to get recovered and that would be catastrophic. So, we don't want to do that. And with that, questions. Council, any questions for Butch? Good news and some challenge news. Yes. Appreciate it. Okay. Well, Doug, we're going to hit the shortest amount of time for finance, which is unfortunate. I'm not sure

because I think we could use a whole workshop just talking about uh budget and where we're headed.

So, I'm I'm going to hit the highlights and skip most of most of my my my presentation here. Let's just go through this really quickly. Um, just really quickly, if your finance staff stand up, Michelle, Chris, Leslie, Vanessa, Sandy, just Okay, this doesn't work without them. They do a fantastic job. This is just the OR chart. One of the things we've done this year recently that was a success is we we were working on the PECard uh usage. And I'll get into the I'll skip right to the goal on that one. Uh we put a new PCR policy into place where we're requiring pre-approvals of all PC car purchases. So nothing goes out the door without uh some well there are a few exceptions like uh when Doug Adams does uh licensing renewals for cars that we don't need the pre-approval but everything else really is you know primarily a pre-approval. So we're reducing the peak usage and funneling that through uh more to AP. We're focusing on improving the budget to actual accuracy every year. It becomes uh more critical and we're going to have to shift from improving budget to actual to actual um as I mentioned earlier looking at costs of individual processes and beginning to analyze them more deeply. What do we want to do to cut costs because there's some areas where we just we're going to have to figure out how to cut some costs. Um there's the updated PCART policy. We received the distinguish distinguished budgeting award for the second time created mentoring relationships and increasing budget accuracy. Their achievements that's not all but that's where we're going. Um the priorities hold our operate operational costs flat with prior year to fund critical labor and benefits. That's coal and healthcare. That's not just finance that's citywide. And to your point, Councelor Rodriguez, uh we want to do

this in a way that is um financially beneficial to both the city and the participants of healthcare. So, we have a I mentioned, we have an HSA program we're going to offer this year, which for those who want to do that, if you're single and you don't have any healthcare issues, you can go to an HS HSA, which is the high deductible, and literally pay no premium. And so, you can save money and the city will save money. um question President. Yes. Doug, that's a whole different uh discussion between you and I and I'd like to continue that further time. I I'll hold that. We we we put significant time to that, but I'm more than happy to speak with you on that one. Um

we want to develop our internal capacities, our leadership, our the bridge building, the fact-based analytics. That's one of the biggest areas we have a challenge in finance is data. We are washed with data, but we do not have an easy system to extract and share and extrapolate data. And you need data in order to make factbased decisions. And build succession planning. That's critical. Um the budget for the finance, just the finance budget, my finance budget is about $1.6 million. It's primarily flat. The only increase is due to the the COLA 3% labor COLA and the benefits portion for the healthcare and Percy. Operational costs are down $3,000. But I am going to propose both both for finance and HR, we do all of the work for the health trust basically free. We the health trust is a separate entity. All the premiums, all the costs roll through a separate entity. They're not part of the city. The only thing the city does is we actually do the payroll deduction for the premiums that goes in to fund the healthcare. But, uh, I receive, and this has been the case since, um, I started here, $10,000 a year from the health trust to do all the work I do for that. And that hasn't changed. And so, I'm probably I'm going to propose an increase of 20,000. The health the um, HR receives 30,000. I'm also going to propose an increase to that, which means the health trust would pay more to us for the services we do for the city because we're putting in exorbitant time.

President. Yes. Um, Doug, we I I I contact you quite a bit about the budget. Yeah. Uh, and I'm just wondering, and I know that I'm taking your time away from what you do when I do that, let alone five others here that that do the same thing. Would it be beneficial for you or uh to assign a leazison within your department to me or to us? Would that work better for better turnaround time for information or in discussion?

I think that's something we can talk about because it depends on the topic. If it's healthcare, it's it's probably going to have to go through me. If it's if it's um budget, it can go through Leslie. If it's accounting, it would go through Michelle. So, we we could talk about that. I just wondered about the turnaround time because I know we're taking time away from you and you have to deal with the mayor and everybody else. So, I don't want to Well, thank you. Well, my goal is to give the council facts and information to make good decisions and we'll find the best way to do that. I don't mind. In fact, I enjoy the conversations with council and anytime that I can get them, they are always productive. Um, but yeah, that is sometimes it's time challenging. Well, it is and I'm just wondering about your time. Sure.

I enjoy talking with you and getting the the skinny on everything that we do, but sometimes you get bogged down, especially the budget season is is the is the hard time. Yeah. Okay, again, let's let's come back to that one and find out.

So, here's here's the the B budget process overall. These are the things I want everybody to understand. When we started this process, the request from the city was not to cut existing costs, but to hold steady, to reduce the amount of increase that everybody had, to keep that to as zero as possible. So, nobody's been asked to make cuts, but they've been asked to not do increases because we know we're going to have healthcare 9%, I crimp is up 8% right now, wages three, uh, no new staffing, but we will bring that to the council with these are the requests, not in the budget. So, council will have the opportunity to look at that. Uh, operational cost, keep non- labor and benefits flat with the last year. That's the goal for this budget season. Capital budget to capacity and not above. we keep budgeting above our capacity, not financial, our physical capacity to do projects. We need to address that and we've had conversations with some some council members on that. Um, we need to communicate needs and challenges to council before the July workshop. This is really going to be important if you as council and I've heard uh several of you mention the desire to really look at some of the um uh some aspects of the budget in deep uh consideration. The time to do that is now before we get to the July workshops. If we get to the July workshops and you as council proposed significant changes to the budget in the workshops, we may not have the physical time to get that built into the budget before the filing deadlines are due to the uh state. So if you have issues, my recommendation now or questions, please get with the department. So get with me regardless of the time. Now is much better than in July. July is a good time to look at it, but let's get things on the table before then so that we don't have a huge uh roadblock because we have the the workshops are on the July 15th

and 16th. I think the public hearing is on the 15th. Um and I'm required to file the um the compliance with this with the uh Canyon County on about the 5th of September and it just be challenging um council president Yes, sir. Would you like those things to run through you in the interim and then to Doug or do you you want each of us to give our proposals to Doug? No, I'd appreciate uh coming to me. Okay.

I'd like to suggest that we're going to be getting pretty focused on these budget issues and pulling together uh what I'll call a workshop type meeting. And if council members want to attend, uh, so I'm trying to lay out a a forward thinking layout, you'll know. So it helps me know what the questions are and so forth as I prepare some scheduling uh options for council to sit down. I believe uh the next six to eight weeks in all cander and I'm taking Doug a minute of your time but uh the next six to eight weeks are going to set the tone for the next six to eight years and we're in that type of uh decision making on budget and finance and what we as a city are going to be about what we can do can't do what's priority what's not priority

and uh so that's that's my observation And so the um we're going to seek your input. The one area that I would really request the council deliberate in a little more um intentional process is if you're talking about anything related to uh wages and reorganizations and structural changes, those are best done as as a discussion before it's brought out into the public because you're the the final starting point of a discussion will be won't bear a lot of relationship at the ending point and you have a lot of things that can go on in the middle that can cause a little bit of discord and so cancel.

Correct. And so consequently that's why um to avoid having open meeting violations etc. Uh we get the information in we get the information back out. Uh we try to avoid the circular and we try to keep some of this conf confidential. That's been our challenge in in some of the spring issues here is confidentiality of what we're trying to discuss. And and I'm candid with everybody in the room and some who may be online. Um it's difficult to cover some of the issues that we need to cover and stay within the confines of the law. And uh it's also difficult when we don't have confidentiality. The next thing you know, something that you think you're having confidential conversation on, and within 24 hours, two people are emailing you saying, "Gee, why are you going to do this?" What's worse is if it's IP, the Press Tribune. And it really makes it difficult. So consequently, sometimes we end up having to have discussions right out in the open and and share our laundry when it's nicer if we didn't have to. And then people take offense. There's no offense intended in us reviewing the budget issues and where we're headed as a city um under the confines that we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, it's the organizational uh challenges that uh create some of our our own challenges, if that makes sense to you. So, if you hear something, verify. If you want to know something, pick the phone up and call Sebastian.

He's got his ear to the ground better than anybody I know. But certainly, I would appreciate being kept informed or copied. if you have questions or concerns or something comes up and you want clarification, is this for real? Is this what's going on? So, directors, you you got to keep that communication moving.

I think one of the challenges that has been alluded to is while we while we need to look at cost, we need to look at internal processes. We need to look at a bunch of things, things I used to do aggressively in Albertson's because the free market forces you down that path um that we need to start doing here a little more aggressively. We're on a a path. Every year we trim something, we cut something, we refine something every single year. Um, but we're, if you take internal services, including HR, finance, IT, clerk's office, you look at any one section in those, and we're one point of failure away from a real problem because we do not have robust staffing behind the scenes to cover us. Now, I can't say that's across the board, but succession planning should be something we should be looking at. How do we plan for the future? We know that uh uh we have increasing costs that have been mentioned by by Butch and I look at the HR the um I crimp and these are things we can't avoid. So we have to find ways to avoid other cost increases but we need to maintain the core functions of the staff and that's really a critical essence. So with that I'll just really finalize by talking very briefly about general government. So general government is an org inside fund 100. Fund 100 is where finance, police, HR, we all reside in that general government. But but there's there's one org for all of the funds that come through. That's 1320. That's where we keep all of the property tax monies that come through for general government. The sales tax monies, the um um interest income, and those uh are the central funding source for all of general government. And that's 1320. We'll go through that more detail when we show the budget for you on the year. But that one, it's all dependent upon what we're getting from sales taxes and property taxes and interest income. But it also is the area where we transfer

costs out. So the internal services costs that we we aggregate here, we allocate those most of those cost out much of those costs out to the enterprise funds. So all the work that finance and HR and IT does eventually gets charged out to water, wastewater, irrigation. So that that's another that's the third funding source, but that's the the essence of it. So um I have a question. I'm done. I have a question. Yes, council.

So So uh Mr. Mr. Bills, the problem with that I that I perceive is that the direction that I will be heading is p is is uh is employees and removing money from different sources. So um is not going to coincide with maybe what finance has the numbers that you have to readjust. So yeah, I think that's going to be difficult and so because if if if because if it passes then the numbers are going to be going all over the place. Well, and you have to readjust and that that's the problem.

That's what I worry about. Well, I understand what what it comes down for us uh both as leadership within the city and city council uh is we have to determine uh a new stated priorities of what the city is responsible for, what the city is going to be responsible for, and how do we accomplish that with within the confines of our current economic and taxation environment and so that I'm looking left and I'm missing missing you. Um, so what so it's not it's not that we're trying to create issues for employees or we don't want to take care of uh the fact of the matter is we have a limited source of income. And so that's the reason for the the issue over whether we run a police override levy and whether we run a uh capital projects override levy is uh I believe a discussion item.

Right.

The other part is is that um we have to determine uh where we're going to put our energies in terms of what we're taking care of. At what point do we say we and not to step on Cody's uh if he's still here or not um he possibly left but in all cander just as an example how many parks are we going to have as a city? How how much further growth do we go in that particular arena? Uh how do we fund a uh substation on the north side? Uh that is truly going to be a need. So what are the priorities for us? And right now our roads and infrastructure uh in my mind is crisis and uh so how are we going to accomplish that? I think we have to think outside the box. I've got some ideas I plan to share with council and uh to get feedback and where we're headed. Well, I think that's

so the next six to eight weeks, I believe, is is a very much a turning point for the city of Nampa in in many respects. And so, I think uh we just got to work together and collaborate together and and bring those issues to the table and help make good decisions. So, I appreciate your team and absolutely, we'll do everything we can to uh support council in the decision-making process. Clay, thank you. Appreciate the team as well and it Butch. So, council president,

grateful that the PC works and things happen, you know, for some of us who aren't as sharp on those issues anymore and so your staff is is always cordial in h having this DIS work and other things. So appreciate council

if I could could we request that we add two additional workshops in one specifically the talk about wages and the discussion on the direction we go for that what I'm hearing from Doug is we can't do this on uh is it the 27th I don't know what the date is in July uh that's one issue and then maybe a second being discussions of current where we all are looking at potentially cutting or I would say reallocating because I depending on how next Thursday goes I know for me I have 700,000 that I'd like to reallocate not cut but reallocate and I know that makes a difference for you in your budgeting uh

so so you'll see something coming out from me today and uh tomorrow thank you

um and you'll I'll be asking each to respond with with times to connect. Uh there's a couple issues that uh are before us on this coming Monday night's council meeting. We're set an agenda today and uh so there's uh so I'll be continue to communicate and encourage you to communicate back but not circular and so that we can uh keep head you know these issues moving forward. Doug final word. uh just I I encourage again higher degree of involvement with the individuals. If you each of you want to address some specific things and fine-tune the budget, that's easy fix. If it's a massive across the board change, obviously it takes more time and and it's not that we don't want to do it. We structure may not have the time to get it done to legally meet the filing requirements for the for the state. So that's my that's my concern.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, council president. Just as a reminder, I won't be here on Monday. Neither will Councilwoman Jenul. Just as a reminder, I didn't realize that. Graduation. I I think you had sent something out on that. I I forgot it.

But as you know, my phone is on and I will pick up the the the call. So, whatever you need in the inter So, a couple of those issues I'll follow up individually uh with. Okay, good. Thank you everybody. Appreciate uh the steadfastness and uh we'll keep moving forward. Meeting is adjourned.