City Council - workshop

with love.

Good afternoon. Welcome to the budget review session, June 8th of 2026. I'd like to welcome everybody here and inform everybody of the public about the location of the Open Meetings Act posted in the city administration building sitting in the corner of the room over there and accessible to all members of the public. This time I'd like to ask for a roll call.

Granquist.

Here.

Arns.

Here.

Webb.

Here.

McCarthy. Beckman. Here. Jensen. Lange.

Here.

Hildebrand.

Here.

Mayer.

Here. All right. With that being said, Scott, go ahead and open her up.

Thank you, Mayor and Council guests and all the staff that are here. Just briefly wanted to thank you for creating the opportunity to be here today. I know it takes a lot of significant time out of your schedule to create the first of many hearings that we'll go through as we move towards a final budget approval in September. This is part of the process that's been implemented to try to create opportunity for public input, dialogue amongst elected officials and staff, and try to glean from that a working, breathing document that at the end becomes a representative of what the city of Norfolk wants in terms of the requests made by each of the divisions. in a manner that's fiscally responsible, that meets the needs of you and the people that you represent and the duty that you're sworn to uphold. So that's the mission. Many, many hours, many, many meetings led up to where we are today to create a beginning document. And I must stress, It's a beginning document that gives us a starting point to give you an opportunity to look at and review and hear from the division heads about what their needs are for their division to operate and allow you to ask those questions and then from there formulate any changes or modifications that you all want to do and certainly will allow public input in hearing the thoughts about those very things. So we'll begin with that. Sheila Rios has done an outstanding job in the absence of Randy Gates in working through the transition and preparing documents to get us to where we are today. Obviously, John Robertson is on board now and will be a wealth of knowledge for us going forward. Obviously, he's hit the ground running, having to get up to speed quickly with that, but we're grateful for the input of all the accounting folks that have helped us prepare the document, Lyle and others that have had a hand in that, and Jessica, many folks that have had a hand in helping prepare what we've got today. With that backdrop, thank you for your time. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for your willingness to have real meaningful conversations about something that's important to all of us and important to the community and keep an open mind in terms of how we shape this document going forward. So with that, I would turn it over, Mayor, with your permission, to Sheila to kind of lead in those.

Do you want to just kind of go over how the presentation is going to work? Because we're going to streamline it a little bit more than we traditionally have.

Yes, what we've done... To help expedite that is ask each of the division heads to highlight the key elements within their division, not doing any of the repetitive things that you would hear that are common denominators in every budget, whether that's COLA, insurance, fuel prices, any of those kind of things. So we're going to avoid the redundancy of those things because you obviously have seen the documents. You're aware of those things. Those are fixed costs that we simply have to absorb into the budget. So they're going to focus on things that are significant changes from the previous year or unique to this particular budget cycle and try to move through that quickly. They know that you have the right at any moment to stop them and ask them a question about anything contained there if they don't bring it up. and they're prepared to answer those questions to the best of their ability. If they can't, we'll simply do the research and get back to you on those collectively. But the goal is to move through there fairly quickly and allow you to ask questions and offer input as appropriate and move forward. What we're going to do different, I think, Kylie, would say is we're not going to have the tabling actions that we did last year that we have to bring all these things back from the table. We're merely presenting questions. and the formulation and approval of those will come at a later date. So this is an opportunity to gather information, seek input, and take that to the bank, if you will, and consider that going forward. So no formal actions will be taken on any of those things, which is a bit different than we've done previously. So with that backdrop, Mayor, I don't know if that helped answer any of it, but we recognize the commitment you all make in time, and so I'll shut up and save some of that time and turn it over to Sheila. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being here.

Appreciate that.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm going to give a brief overview of items affecting multiple budgets. The budgets include a 2.5% cost of living adjustment. We tried to base this on CPI. CPI was 3.3% at the time the budget instructions were issued in April, and a 3.3% COLA was used in the first draft of the budgets. During the budget balancing process, the COLA was reduced to 2.5%. This is below the most recent CPI as of May 1st of 4.2%. We try to get preliminary COLA information from other similar cities and local governments, but at this point in the budget process, many of them have not determined a COLA. For the entities that did respond, most have a 2.5% COLA. The budget was put together with an increase in property tax of $300,051. The increase matches the 4.2% increase in May CPI plus the increase in valuation from the big game TIF bonds that were paid off. We estimate the total increase in property tax will equal 2% base increase plus real growth per the county assessor. We won't know the assessed valuations until August 20th, so the property tax could change. The target ending balance for the general fund is to increase it a portion each year over the next four years to get back to the fiscal year 24-25 budgeted ending balance. In the first draft of the budgets, we were almost 2.9 million below the target balance. To reach the target, staff reduced the proposed expenditures by $2,780,354. This includes salary savings through attrition of six full-time equivalent positions. The budget includes using 782,000 of council priority dollars to fund general fund operations. In this version of the budget, the ending balance is 21,300 above the target ending balance. General fund expenditures increased 2.72% from the prior year. Included in the agenda packet starting on page seven is a list of expenditure cuts from the general fund budget. As division heads present their budgets, they will be discussing the cuts in their division. The council can decide to add expenditures back to the budget and with it a funding source or additional expenditure cut will need to be identified. A list of possible funding sources can be found on page eight of the agenda packet These include increasing MPPD lease to 12.5%, implementing a food and beverage occupation tax or a lodging occupation tax, or increasing property tax. Are there any questions on the overview?

So if I'm reading this correctly, what's in this budget is say there's $11 million real property valuation increase, we will keep the levy the same, but grab all that valuation increase, and then we will add probably 2% on top of that?

No.

Okay.

No. There's the levy rate, and then there's also the new thing where the county, the pink postcard is the 2% growth plus, 2% base plus real growth. So oftentimes the assessed value would be more than that. And so it would probably even reduce the levy a little bit. But for this budget, it is put together that we do think that the assessed evaluations will increase about the same as CPI.

So we're essentially saying a $300,000 property tax asking increase. The budget was prepared with $300,051 increase in property tax. That's kind of the number?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Any other questions before we move on?

One thing would be nice for the next, as we move forward to the rest of the budgets, maybe let's put that up, what that equates to, the COLA increase, any balance, and then that $351,000, just so we can refer to it, or just a If it needs to be put in here or if everybody just writes it down. So you've got that kind of fresh in your mind as we go through these budgets and what we're looking at.

Okay. Anyway, sorry to interrupt you, Lyle.

I guess you're up. Are we on number five now?

That was four, yeah. Lyle, I maybe do have actually one quick question on this. We have a salary savings through. the attrition of six full-time employees. Are we not expecting to fill those spots? Is that those six going to remain?

One of the considerations, Councilman, in this particular budget is savings through not filling vacant positions as they occur in six of the major general fund divisions that are represented. So in order to try to bring up a balanced budget, forward, that was a consideration that was put forward for you to consider. I think obviously the division heads have perspective on that and what the impact of that might be to their division, but in terms of trying to bring a balanced budget forward, that was a solution that was offered as an option for you all to consider along with all the other choices that are presented here in terms of potential cuts or ads or additional revenue sources. It's one of those considerations for you to all ponder.

Okay. I'll move on to the general fund revenues. So page nine of the agenda packet is a summary of the general fund. The total revenues are 35.8 million compared to 34.9 million budgeted last year. This is a 2.77% increase. Total taxes increased 3.04%. The increase in property tax was described in the budget overview. The sales tax is budgeted to increase $449,865 or 2.83%. This is the actual sales tax receipts from July 2025 to June 2026 and then adjusted for any known sales tax refunds. A business improvement district assessment of approximately 74,000 was added to the budget this year. License and permits decreased 132,550 due to decrease in construction related permits. Miscellaneous federal grants decreased almost 185,000. We were not awarded the safer grant, but this was partially offset by an addition of GEMT revenue, which is a federal Medicaid initiative paid to ambulance providers. Then a few lines down from the miscellaneous federal grants, there's a new revenue, which is the cash device tax. It's a small amount at just 20,000, but I wanted to highlight that we started receiving a share of this tax that's assessed by the state last year. Administration fees increased 99,000. The increase is primarily an increase in administration fees from the enterprise funds. The rate charged to these funds remain the same, but the use fees increased, which increases the admin fee paid to the general fund. And towards the bottom of page 12, you'll see that there's a big decrease in contributions. In the prior year, we budgeted a couple contributions that we ended up not getting. These were a contribution from the Senior Citizen Center to fund an employee in parks and a donation for ice bumper cars. Transfers in increased $480,140. This year we're budgeting a transfer from the capital projects fund to the general fund. This includes just under $389,000 of council priority dollars from previous years that was being held in the capital projects fund. So our total general fund revenue increases $966,241 from the prior year. Are there any questions on the general fund revenues?

Sheila, is that wages, everything, is the 966?

This is just the increase in the revenues. Just revenues, okay. Yep.

Thank you.

Trying to follow along and read at the same time.

Any other questions on general revenue or fund revenue? All right, any questions for the public on item five? Now we'll move on to item six. Review and discuss the police budgets.

Good to go. Mayor, council members, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight, or today. I know this is a difficult budget. Every division in the city is being asked to look hard at expenses. And I respect the difficult position the council and the city administration are in. Fire has needs, streets has needs, dispatch, parks, engineering, administration, and every other part of the city has needs. But I would ask you to see this budget not just as a problem to survive this year, but as an opportunity to secure the future we all want for Norfolk. I want to speak clearly about three things. Police division budget, the existing officer position being discussed today, and the consequences of not funding that position. First, this is not a police budget full of extras. Last year was essentially a maintenance budget, and this year is even leaner. Police Division overall budget reflects only about a 1.3% increase over last year, while wages, equipment, technology, insurance, uniforms, vehicles, fuel, repairs, training, and basic operations all continue to rise. In our budget, you have page three, line 11, and the salaries. The new CSO intern line is about $38,480. This is a new item, and I see it as a practical investment in recruitment. Northeast Community College and Wayne State College growing together have been a solid pipeline for our applicants, and this gives us a way to evaluate potential future officers before making a full-time commitment. On page eight, item 26, It's up 63%, but that includes a needed drug incinerator because the transfer station option is no longer available. It also includes gas masks and a rifle shield that are on a grant dependent, that are grant dependent, would not be purchased unless that grant comes through. Page nine, line 35, is up 10% for tows, but much of that money comes back to the general fund. As people come to claim their vehicle, they pay it back. So that should be pretty much a wash. Item 46 includes about $5,600 for a vacuum scrubber. That's tied to the construction of the new building, which may belong in the construction or maintenance part of the budget. Page 14, item 49. It shows up 354%, but what that is is two police radios for the SRO vehicles as we try to keep them fully equipped to answer regular calls and use them for other events and things. And it also includes 24 walkie-talkie batteries, which elevated that 354%. Page, I believe it's page two, or 21.

I'm trying to track here. Page 21 on the bottom of this? Yeah, on the bottom of that.

No, I'm going out the bottom of that. You see 14, 15, page 21.

What fund number?

Item 64, technology. That works, yeah. I might have had the wrong page. I apologize. Dyslexic, maybe, 12.

So fund 64?

Yes.

With office supplies?

Yes. 64 is technology for records management system, computer-aided dispatching, scanners, wireless access that we all had to share, risk management costs, and a few items that may need to be moved to the proper line now that there is one other thing that's not on there yet and through the uh... negotiations that uniform allowance will probably go up so it may be an additional eight thousand dollars eighty two hundred dollars When I look at this budget, I do not see a lot of extras. I see operational needs, grant dependent items, contractual obligations, risk management costs, and like I said, some items that may be on the building budget. That is why I asked the council before eliminating the officer position to look at every other lever available. Move construction related expenses where they belong, use grant savings if we receive them, review timing on purchases if needed. But please do not permanently eliminate an officer position that is essential to our staffing plan. For years, the Norfolk Police Division has been authorized for 43 officers and one community service officer. So excluding that community service officer, Doug Zuck, we're supposed to have 43 sworn officers. Right now, the CSO, Grant Gilsdorf is occupying one of those personnel slots that would eventually roll into an officer position. So this proposal does not simply clean up an unused position. It cuts us from the 42 officer positions that we budgeted for down to 41 while keeping Doug and Grant as community service officers. We already run lean. At 41 officers for a community of 26,300 people, We are roughly at 1.56 officers per 1,000 residents. FBI comparison data has shown agencies averaging around 2.3 officers per 1,000 residents, and with county agencies around 2.8 officers per 1,000 residents. Bureau of Justice statistics data also shows staffing varies widely. by community and agency size, but it shows three plus officers per thousand people. Small agencies with less than 2,500 people have 3.8 officers per thousand, and we're running at 1.56. I know every community is different, and those numbers are not a perfect comparison, but they do show we are not overstaffed. We are already running lean and cutting another position only makes that gap harder to manage. This position matters because police work does not disappear when you cut a position. Calls still come in, minimum staffing still has to be met, arrests still have to be processed, court still happens, training still happens, special events still have to be staffed, vacation, sick leave, family leave, injuries, deployments, and major incidents still happen. When staffing drops, the work gets pushed onto the people who remain. Our minimum staffing is five officers. There are many times when those five officers are already tied up on calls, arrests, crashes, transports, mental health calls, domestics, or reports. Having that additional officer available can be the difference between answering the next call right away or holding it. It can be the difference between staying proactive or only reacting. That is the objective consequences of losing this position. If we cut it, or if we freeze hiring too long, we'll have fewer options. We may rely on more overtime, we may reduce proactive traffic enforcement, we may scale back special assignments, we may delay training, and it may put more pressure on the supervisors. And if staffing gets tight enough, we could have to pull the SROs back to the track, or to the street. I do not want to do that. Our SROs matter. They build relationships with students, staff, and families. They help keep our schools safe. That third SRO position, which we've already filled, was part of the reason the city authorized 43 officers in the first place. If we shrink sworn staffing, we put programs like that at risk. We also have three members in the National Guard or Army Reserve. One officer has been overseas for the last year and is still not back. Another is preparing to leave for a year-long deployment. The same thing could happen with a third. We fully support them and proud of them, but from a staffing standpoint, a 41 officer department can very quickly become 39 or 40. And that's before we even account for training, injury, sick leave, vacation, retirement, resignations, or family emergencies. At the same time, the police division is producing. In the first five months of this year, as the end of May, DWI arrests are up from 37 last year at the end of May to 72 this year. Nearly a 95% increase. Traffic enforcement is up 77%. We have reduced accidents by 54. We had 414 last year at that time, and we're at 360 this year. We have recovered more than $40,000 in stolen property above last year's number, and we are doing that while calls for service are also up 18%. Those numbers matter. We are getting impaired drivers off the road, reducing accidents, recovering stolen property, and still handling more requests for service from the public. We have not lost an officer to another agency in two years. We are building momentum while still sitting at the very bottom of the comparability study. That tells me people are buying into the culture, the direction, and the future and the hope that this department has. But if we start cutting positions now, we risk damaging that momentum that we have worked hard to build. That brings me to the bigger issue. For several years, the city was able to lower the levy. I understand why that was done. Nobody wants taxes to go up just because your property valuation goes up. I respect that. But the city reduced the levy for multiple years while Norfolk continued to grow. Costs continued to rise and service demands continued to increase. At the same time, the police division was carrying large vacancy savings because we could not stay fully staffed. That helped the city get through budget years and helped make levy reduction possible. But that was never true savings. It was the financial result of being short-staffed. If the levy had been left alone or reduced more gradually, it would have grown with the community. It would have helped absorb the increased cost of staffing, equipment, vehicles, public safety, streets, fire, dispatch, parks, and services people expect. I'm not saying that to blame anyone. I'm saying it because we are now seeing the result of those years catching up with us. Norfolk grew, costs grew, calls for service grew, Public expectations grew, but the funding mechanism did not grow with it. At some point, we have to have the courage to fix the structure. That may mean looking at the levy, occupation tax, sales tax options, fees, timing of purchases, grant savings, construction-related expenses, or any other tool available to the council. I'm not here to tell you exactly which lever to pull. That's your role. But I am asking you to pull the levers that get this city over the hump. If we do not create a funding mechanism that matches the level of service Norfolk expects, we'll be back here every year fighting over one police officer, one firefighter, one vehicle, one piece of equipment, and one essential service at a time. That's not sustainable. I believe the public will respect honesty. They may not like every answer, but I believe they will respect a council that is willing to say, this is the level of service our community expects. This is what it costs to provide it, and this is the plan to get there. That is the future worth funding, so my recommendation is simple. For this budget year, please preserve the officer position. If short-term relief is needed, delay filling it until January or later in the budget year. Use grant relief if we receive it, which is looking positive. Move expenses where they belong in the budget. look at the levy, look at other levers available to you, but please do not permanently eliminate the position. And begin building a long-term funding plan that matches the level of service Norfolk expects so police, fire, streets, and every essential division are not forced to fight this battle year after year. This is not about empire building. This is not asking for something extra. We're not asking to increase staffing beyond what the city has already recognized as the proper number for us. We are asking not, to go backward right when the organization is finally becoming whole. We are producing results. We are building momentum. And my people are really motivated. So please keep this train rolling. Thank you.

What would be the implication for the, you know, your minus one? What would that add back to your budget to add that back?

Right now we're at 1.3. I think it'll be about 2.2 if we add that back. Overall, account and dispatch, snare budget, the whole package, it'd be about...

So going back to your base budget there, let's go to that page. Can we quick... His final budget number. Overall ask. $108,000. $111,000.

Yeah, the 12.8. 614 or 64. If you retain the 50 or 60. If we don't eliminate the officer, that goes to what?

Almost 13. Add that back in.

If you add that $284,000, it'll be a 2.2%.

So it'd be a total of, hold on a second.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Essentially, we added $119,000 back into your budget. Yeah, $120,000. Okay, that's kind of what we're getting at. $120,000? Okay. Okay. So as we go through all of our budgets, keep that number in your mind as we go through the rest of the budgets today. Anybody have any other questions for Chief Weiss up here?

The stuff that got related to construction got added into this.

It looks like it. That scrubber vacuum. My mistake.

Okay. Sorry, Mike.

It's on me.

I need it before I can change it.

Okay. So you'll be taking that off that. Okay. All right. Got that.

The salary attrition numbers are depicted in each of the budgets that are applicable to six divisions under personnel and depicted here salary attrition for places 119. Okay.

Appreciate that. All right. Do we have any questions for the public as we're on the item number six? Okay. Any other questions for Chief Wise up here?

I'll just, Chief, you know, we could look back and say, you know, did we raise the levy enough and question some of those decisions, but just to share some information with you, in 2019 and 2020 budget, the property tax asking was 3.15, so $3,156,000. And 25-26, it's $6,057,000. So the property tax asking has almost increased 100% in five years. So we've leaned on that to a degree to almost double property tax asking.

I understand. And I know that we cut the levy, I think, four years in a row. But if we had just left it alone, we'd be or less or more gradual cuts would have.

Yeah, that's all.

And it's just our perception from where we stand. We gave back hundreds of thousands of dollars and even close to a million dollars some years because we couldn't get people to come here and work, you know, so.

So, Chief, I do have a question. So the budget you have here, that is set up with minus one Is that correct? Right now. Minus one officer, that's how it's set up. So would you anticipate that if that was not the case, would your overtime hours be reduced at all?

Absolutely. Okay. Our overtime, if we're fully staffed, we can manage that tighter and get that down.

Because that looks like.

But at what percentage? You know, it just varies because it's just unpredictable, like when something's going to happen or. How long the court's going to go and some of those kinds of things.

I understand that, but it would actually, if that could be saved there, it could go help fund that extra person.

Chief, where are you at right now, total officers?

Right now we have 41 officers. And we had one vacancy for community service officer, which we were going to... make the police officer part of that 43. So that's where we're at.

I do have one more question. You indicated calls are up like 18%. Of those 18%, how much of those will those CSOs be able to cover? Do you have a breakdown of that 18%?

I don't know what percent are their calls and what percent are officer calls. Not without doing some research. I can do that. That's fine.

I thought maybe you might have an idea what those 18% might have.

The community service officer is a very valuable position, and they do a lot of work, and they take a lot of calls and parking complaints and direct traffic and just any recovered properties and just minor things that you don't need a sworn officer to do. So it's a valuable position, and they do handle their share of calls.

So with that conversation... This additional person that you were looking to add, would it be a requirement that they be a certified officer?

Yeah, when you're talking minimum staffing, I'm talking police officers that handle real calls. I mean, they're real important stuff. So yeah, they would be a police officer. These interns will be trained pretty much like a community service officer. So we're going to get the benefit of their help when they're available, but once we get them coached up, so that'll be a win-win. They get the exposure to the police department and the culture, and we get to see what kind of dependable employee they might end up being. I agree.

I think it would be a good program.

Chief, so every year, I mean, what do we buy for cruisers? Is it usually three cruisers every other year?

It's usually three a year. Like I kind of hinted at, we're looking pretty promising at a grant that will pay for several vehicles and some other equipment for us. So if that comes through, the reason we got the grant, or it looks like we're going to get it, is because we're trying to expand our fleet so that the CSOs or me or anybody else that's in uniform has a fully equipped vehicle. That shift change, so you got six people coming on and you got the other ship tied up on a call and then you got no cruisers left because one's at the shop getting repairs or one had a broken windshield or the radio's not working in this one and people are coming to work on it next week. So it's out of commission. So we need a You can't just have six cars or seven cars or eight cars. You need to have more than that available. Because if you got everybody tied up and that next shift's coming on and now there's something else going on and they don't have any cars.

All right, thank you.

I do think, though, if we get that grant, we may not have to buy all three cars out of the budget.

Is that federal? Federal.

So, Chief, of the 41, does that count the two deployments or the deployment or not?

Does that work?

The 41 counts the deployment and potential for the other deployment?

That counts the deployment and the potential for deployment.

So both of them got...

Both of them are gone. We're going to be down to 30.

We'd be down to 39.

We could be down to 40 for sure. One might get back and the other one ships out. I don't know if we're fortunate enough. Not sure when the person will be back. I anticipate soon, I'm hoping. Been gone almost a year.

Chief, when will you hear about the grants for those cars? What is the timeframe on that?

I'm not positive. I was thinking that by the end of July, we might hear something. So it made it out of committee. And so when everything else, I just think we're waiting for all the appropriation stuff to go through. And maybe Scott knows when that would be or. or have any inkling on it.

I don't have a good forecast on that one. I don't either. It's hard to wait.

I just know we're in a good spot, and we're in line. Thank you.

I'll ask one. What are we saving by not having a dedicated person to the SNARE drug task force?

We... We've promoted another investigator, and what I would like to do is get a couple people now trained with the DEA schools to be able to assist, but I don't want them to be full-time SNARE. I want them to be investigators that can handle anything, be on call, but yet when we get a tip or something that we can run with or they need assistance with SNARE, that we've got qualified people to help them.

Is that happening now?

We're working on it. We just... January 1st, Hayden Johnson will start being an investigator. But we got to wait. I didn't tell you, but we got like six people in different stages of training yet. So they're not even online for us. So we got to kind of wait until we get people trained to fill in on the street before we put people in investigation spots. But Brent Teets was a... Just recently appointed to investigations, and Hayden Johnson will go there January 1. Also, since that person that's serving overseas is an SRO, and he's not gonna make it back for the school year, or we don't know, Hayden Johnson's gonna take the first semester as a school resource officer, probably at the junior high. Got that going too.

Anything else?

Right. It moves us to item number seven. Review and discuss a specialized narcotic abuse reduction effort fund snare budget.

Captain Mike Bowers, Port Services Captain for Norfolk Police Department. The snare drug task force is a task force of about 11 or 12 agencies in northeast Nebraska. Norfolk is the fiscal agent. Each agency pays their dues. Their dues come out to about $26,400. We also have a running balance of federal seized money, and every year we are lucky enough to have some federally seized money, and that's the entire operating expenses for the task force. We have one very minimal part-time employee for about five hours a week. It's a very static operating budget for only expenses for the co-location where all the investigators meet and have an off-site away from each of our perspective agency locations. The only real difference this year is that we need to buy another computer. But other than that, it's pretty much the same budget as last year.

So I'll ask again. Why do we need a computer if we're not going to have somebody dedicated to this job?

The computer is actually for the part-time clerical person who runs all the stats, keeps track of the disbursements sheets, manages the money and double checks the state patrol sergeant who oversees day-to-day operations. She's the checks and balances. It's a secretarial position, and she has to be connected to the city network to be able to do that, which means it has to be a city computer. She puts in five hours a week. We did have a full-time investigator. Norfolk PD had a full-time investigator assigned. Years ago, we used to have two assigned. Since the retirement of our last investigator and with our staffing level so low on the patrol division, we have kind of put that position on hold until we can staff the men and women in blue, and then we can look at how much time we can devote to that. drug investigator for SNARE, whether that be a part-time or a full-time.

I'll leave it at that.

Other questions?

Anybody from the public? Question about SNARE? All right. Seeing none, we'll move to eight. Review and discussion of the wireless 9-1-1 fund budget.

In Nebraska, we have a wireless 9-1-1 fund. All the cell phones that constitute the wireless telecommunications pays a fee on your cell phone bill. You see a fee Right now I believe it's 70 cents on your cell phone that goes into the state. The state divvies that money up to all the PSAPs, Public Safety Answering Points, or dispatch centers in Nebraska that have 911 capabilities. There's a base, 40% of that money is distributed evenly amongst the 63 PSAPs out there. The remaining money is divided, there's a formula for Population versus call load, all that's formulated in. And they come up with a dollar figure magically to provide the city of Norfolk. Our dollar figure this year is $112,000. And that's what feeds into this fund. It does have a running balance. There are very specific guidelines on what we can spend the money on. The money can be spent on anything involving answering a 911 call. We chose to spend our money on GIS software for our mapping for our 911 center, our CallWorks support, which is our call-taking hardware for when the 911 comes in, the server that handles those phone calls, support for that, and our CAD maintenance, our computer-aided dispatch for Central Square. We also maintain five radio councils and call-taking positions along with our telephone and communications expenses. These are the same expenses year after year that we budget in this account.

Mike, when did this start? I remember the council meeting when it came up, but I don't remember the year. Do you remember the year when it... Wireless? When did we start to charge on the wireless, yes.

I'm going to say in the mid-1990s when it started. I know it's been there since I've been in my position as captain, which is 15 years, and I think it was...

So has the rate changed at all or gone up as inflation and all that's hit in there? And granted, I know there's more cell phones.

State law initially had it capped at 70 cents per line. And the PSC, Public Service Commission out of Lincoln, took that 70 cents, maxed out that state law. State law has been increased to $1 per line. However, the PSC has voted to keep it at 70 cents per cellular line. So there is some leeway in there, but that money and the funding mechanism has totally changed. There used to be a formula that nobody understood how this money was divvied up. Now with next-gen generation, the PSC and the state of Nebraska are paying for a lot of our next-generation 911 infrastructure that used to be on us locally. And they have taken over that fee, which has actually reduced our cost to accepting 911s. And so it's kind of a combination of both the state and local funding, local monies, well not local, yeah, local monies that goes into the 911 fund.

So essentially there is some balance in there for inflation. versus what we had to provide.

But that has to be changed on a state level through the public service commission.

Right, understood that. That would be something we need to talk to Senator Dover about. Yes, sir.

Anybody else have any more questions on the 9-11 fund?

Seeing none, I think maybe Mike will have you jump into the dispatch budget.

Dispatch in Madison County is a cooperative agreement. We have an interlocal with Madison County to have the joint communication center. We have revenues of a telecommunication occupation tax, which basically every telecommunicator that serves Norfolk and has a line that terminates here has to pay that occupation tax. and the 911 surcharge, which is every hard line, not wireless, but every hard line that terminates locally has a dollar surcharge on it as well, and that's by resolution, and you pass that every year. So the taxes that come in are about $189,000. We have contracts with Madison and Hoskins to provide dispatching services, which total $232,000. We have some interest income that comes in, and what's not covered there is divided up between Madison County and the city of Norfolk. The interlocal agreement says that Madison pays one third of the leftovers, Norfolk pays two thirds. That was an agreement that we came up with years ago when we did the joint communications. Center after examining call load radio traffic with the prior administration that was at the police department last year after these hearings I Ran an audit and those percentages are still accurate So about two-thirds and one-third Really it's a static budget as well the two things I'll point out is that this year minor apparatus and tools is going up but I Couple hundred percent, it's a very low, I think we budgeted $1100 last year, this year we're all at 3600 and that's because my dispatch chairs are falling apart and I have to buy three of them instead of one of them. The other thing I wanted to touch on is the community service which is up about 66%. We have dispatchers that go out to the elementary schools and I forget if it's first or second graders and we teach them about 911 and how to call 911 It's been a very positive program for the division and for the educators as well. And we've been invited into all of Norfolk Public Schools as well as since we serve Madison County as well, we've been in Battle Creek and Madison schools as well. So we did have to up the budget a little bit for the coloring books and the stickers for those programs. But other than that, there's very little change from last year.

Notice the personnel change. You had 16 listed as dispatcher one, and then now you have six that are listed as dispatcher two. Can you kind of explain to us what that difference is?

Absolutely. A dispatcher one is an entry dispatcher, and a dispatcher two is going to be the person that's, the two criteria right now is that they're either a certified training officer, a CTO, which they have to attend training to get. And then they are responsible for training our new dispatchers. Our new dispatchers are in training for up to six months. So during this six months as a CTO, you're going to be glued to the hip of another human being for about two months. Maybe not all at once, but in that six month time period. And it takes a little bit getting used to. So we try and reward the training officers for that. The other is bilingual. If you are bilingual and certified through the city with HR personnel and Gustavo, you will also become a level two dispatcher and trying to reward those that can go a little bit extra in the dispatch center itself.

Makes perfect sense to me that they would have a little bit of a bump. Yes, sir.

Anybody have any questions for Mike on that? Hey, Mike, on the local agreement we have with the county, I think Stanton and there was someone else in that for the dispatch, has that equated to saving the city of Norfolk or the taxpayer of Norfolk money, or is it about a wash? I mean, how has this agreement benefited the citizens of Norfolk as far as the budget's concerned?

When we started... for Stan County 20-some years ago, there was a figure that was laid out there, and it paid for one full-time dispatcher. Since that time, back in those days, it was around $70,000 to $80,000. In the early 2000s, or excuse me, around 2019, that was renegotiated to $200,000. and CPI is built into it. So right now it's up to about, for Stanton County, up to about $230,000 is the contract with them, and Hoskins is much less. I think that's around $1,200 a month for basic dispatching services. So when you look at personnel-wise, three dispatchers, so yeah. I mean, there's added work that's needed to be done because of those contracts, Yeah, I think it's well worth the money.

Any other questions? Anybody from the public have a question? Seeing none, I think we will move on to the fire budget.

Pass for Chief Rogge.

All right, good evening, Mayor and Council. I've asked Assistant Chief O'Brien to come up with me here just in case you have anything that might get more into his wheelhouse. First and foremost, I want to thank you for the opportunity to get up here and speak with you. I know this is a long process, but it's an important process to the city. And it's good that we're all holding ourselves accountable as division heads and making sure that we're spending the tax dollars as wisely as possible. So we'll get right into our budget. So our budget this year... The thing I'll talk about first is enclosure 4, page 8 of 174, and that's the cuts page. The main thing that I would mention on there is the salary attrition that it shows of $103,903. That's one position. that we would be potentially looking at through attrition if you were to choose that. I'll talk more about that as I progress through. I'm predominantly going to be working off of enclosure 10, page 63 of 174, which is our basic budget information. So as you will see there, our total personnel costs go up 5.75%. What that equates to is $287,598 The budget as a whole went up 4.87%, so all but $2,000 roughly is in personnel costs. All of our other accounts, very little to no increase in those accounts, if not a dip in those accounts. The personnel cost, as you break that down and reasons why, the comparabilities that have been done for years and years and what's being done right now to bring some positions in line with where they're supposed to be, Another reason for this is that we have six now EMTs that have successfully completed the paramedic program at Northeast Community College and are just a few weeks from taking their national registry to become firefighter paramedics, which will take us from 26 paramedics up to 32 paramedics. And then we'll have our remaining two of the 34 are strong firefighter EMTs with future aspirations of becoming paramedics. That has been absolutely critical in our ability to provide Strong care. We're getting to houses in three minutes, 50 seconds on average inside city limits, and we're delivering the highest quality care we can. We just recently, July 6th, actually this Monday, changed our minimum staffing from eight to nine. And that was a huge thing for us in the city of Norfolk. That was directly related to the three firefighters that you allowed us to hire. They successfully completed their six-month probationary period. That usually takes anywhere from six to eight months before we're able to turn them loose on shift. And so our minimum staffing now sits at nine. There's honestly not a lot of other things in our budget that have really changed. When you flow through that budget spreadsheet, You'll see some different things, maybe some sharp decreases. One would be on page 64, which would be under travel and training, which is account 53. You'll see a 13.4% decrease. That is basically because two of our more expensive trainings that we send folks to, we're going to alternate years on those to try to generate more interest. One's an FDIC training in Indianapolis, and the other's an ImageTrend conference. So we move those to every other year rather than trying to do those every year. The other one is account 68, other professional fees. We just purchased through the CIP brand new... cardiac monitors four monitors and four mechanical cpr devices those come with preventative maintenance plans so we get a break on paying pm plans for those devices until they're a year or two old so that was very helpful to have happen um you know other than that there's not a lot that's changed in our budget like i said you know the thing i i wanted to visit the most about tonight is um I fully understand where you're at as a council. I'm not making the hard decisions you're having to make, but I get what we're asking you to do and what you're asking our taxpayers to do. We're staffed with 34 firefighters right now. One is in his probationary period. We too have some folks in the guard unit. We narrowly missed a year-long deployment for that young man not long ago, and We are sitting at 34. We're at 11, 11, and 12 on shift, and we have a plus one, which is easy to pick out when you look at our number and the way that's divided out. But that number is very much validated by many different things. The area we serve, we talk about our city population, rural population, and seasonal population to the college. Those are all factored into having our one firefighter per thousand population served. NFPA 1520, which governs suburban fire departments, that basically states that they want to see 10 firefighters to a working fire within 10 minutes, 80% of the time. Now that we've moved to nine minimum staffing, which was our target once our three recruits got through probationary period, When you combine that minimum staffing with an administrative person, myself, our fire marshal, Chief O'Brien, we get there much more often. And the ambulance service, which is 86% of what we do, going to nine, it might not seem like a big difference from eight, but that means we're getting to those calls in three minutes and 50 seconds, not just on the first rig out the door or the second, but the third one too. And it's irreplaceable in my mind. Again, I don't want any of the decisions you're having to make, but I very much would ask you to consider doing things other than having us wait to hire that position if we have an opening at some point in time. The longer we can stay fully staffed, we have great buy-in from our team right now. Similar to what Chief Tye mentioned, our morale is great. Done some exciting projects in the station that were driven largely by donations. Uh, things are going good. We just did a schedule change from a 2448 to a 4896 that we're seeing great results from. Um, I expect the overtime to drop. Uh, we saw some of that already before we went to minimum staffing of nine. Um, our callbacks have dropped. The calls are still coming. We were down last year, a hundred or so calls. We went from 35, 12 to 33, 88. Um, But that was still the second busiest year we've seen in the history of Norfolk. So, again, I would just ask that you consider all those things when we're trying to balance the budget. And I fully respect where each of you are at in your decision-making process. With that, I would entertain any questions you might have for me.

Chief, I see your pensions are up a little bit. Are you guys moving up a point this year?

So I appreciate you asking that question. The pension was driven by legislative changes, and that did bump up again this year. So that is part of our increase that you see in our salaries.

All right. And then the one firefighter we're asking to hold off on, what's that saving you?

$103,903.

Including pension, and that's total overall?

That would be the total salary attrition factor that was listed on the cut sheet.

So about $104,000?

Yes, sir.

Okay. And what is your pension at now? What is that percentage? I defer to you, Kylie, on the pension.

Yeah, the city's portion of that is 14% right now. It will move to 15%.

Move to 15%. Okay. So it's one percentage point. Okay.

Chief, you mentioned the change in hours has had great results. What do you, how do you measure that? What do you mean by that?

So Scott's bluff was one of the only departments that was running a 48 96 schedule. Excuse me. And Scott's was a lot different than we are, but there was a large trend in the fire service to move away from the 24 hour 48 schedule. And the reason for that is, um, basically the amount of time your days off touch the work that you're doing. So a 24-hour shift the day after you get done working. If the team would go home tomorrow morning, it's affected by the beating they could have taken tonight. The day before they go into work, it has an impact on what they might be doing that night, whether it's travel. So the 48-96, it seems like a long time to be there, 48 hours straight. But when you get a 96-hour period, the two days in the middle of that four-day set are basically untouched by work unless you have to come in on a callback. So it's allowing people more time with their families. It's allowing the mental health break that is driving the fire service right now. That all loops in together with the bunk room project that we just had done here with $87,000 of donations. We've moved from an open floor plan to individual rooms to try to get people their own rooms to be able to wind down and mentally decompress. What I see in our four walls is every three months we've been bringing our committee together that drove that change, and that was driven by the boots on the ground, not administration, and extremely positive feedback. When we started, we had 86% of our staff that wanted to do a one-year trial. Now we're about 95% approval rate after six months, and we have another vote that's going to happen before we hit the nine-month mark to make sure they want to stick with that. Grand Island is seeing the same results. They switched. Hastings is in the process of switching, and Columbus has been inquiring. I'm not going to speak for them and say that they're going to go to a different schedule, but it's really gained some traction in the fire service, and I'm glad it worked out for us to give it a try.

Chief, I do have a question. Police indicated they have a an increase of about 18% on their service calls. Where's the fire station when it comes to the percentages of their... Good question.

So we had 3,512 calls in 2024, 3,388 calls in 2025. This year, about a month ago, we were actually 120 calls behind that pace. But we've made up 30 calls as of today, and now we're around 95 calls behind that pace. This is about the time June, July start hitting where the call volume starts to go up. People are outside doing things, usually responsibly, but there's more likelihood when people are outside being active that we're going to have calls. I would say we're still on pace to around 33 to 3,400 calls. Well, one thing that I didn't mention that I, that I do feel is important. We had our ISO review in 2024. Those are five-year reviews and we, we maintained our two, our ISO rating, which is insurance services rating, uh, which is great. We're one of the few twos in, in the state of Nebraska. Um, the main thing that kept us from moving the needle to a one was staffing. It's just how many people you can put at your structure fire on a first alarm. We can use our staff that's on duty, plus we can get credit for Hader because they're an automatic aid department. I feel like in 2029, based on our minimum staffing being nine, what the consultant from ISO told us, that we have a pretty good shot at becoming an ISO one, and there's only a couple of those in the state of Nebraska. I'm hoping that the chance you all took on us and the trust you put in us to get us those staff has some reward on the back end.

And that also plays into insurance rates for the people paying their houses.

Chief, two questions. How many volunteer firefighters do you currently have? And say you have a fire today and it's a large structure fire and you need all hands on deck, how many of those volunteers will show up on average?

You want to speak to on average? Chief O'Brien runs that, so I'll let him speak to that.

We have 27 on our roster right now. We try to monitor that roster on how active people are being. We require that they come to 15% of our level ones callbacks, which is all hands on deck. And I would say out of that, we probably get on average 10 to come in, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually a pretty good number when you look at how many we actually have rostered. And we're trying to get that back up to 30 and move that to 30. We just had some inactive people that we had to sit down and kind of discuss what the reserves look like for them. So we're actually working on hiring next week, hopefully, for our reserve program.

So any given major fire, you could have up to 20, 21 people on site. Potentially. Yeah.

And I mean, that doesn't include all of our off duty paid staff that come in as well. That's just our reserve staff.

Okay.

Sorry. Thank you.

And that question, you know, when I mentioned the 10 folks within 10 minutes, 80% of the time, the math that's used for that is two firefighters to go interior, two firefighters to back them up, a ventilation crew of two, a search and rescue crew, and then an incident commander and a safety officer. So they're trying to get that established within the first 10 minutes 80% of the time, and then all your supporting staff, the reserves coming in, any mutual aid partners that we lean on. Mutual aid's tough. We have some great departments around us that do great things, but the volunteer fire service is struggling bad right now. I'm on a volunteer fire department in Battle Creek, and they're struggling. They're hurting, but they do the best they can to come help us, and we're greatly appreciative of that.

So you currently are at nine full-time staff, right?

So that's our minimum staffing number. We actually have 11 on two shifts and 12 on one.

Okay.

So with this budget, and if you did have a proposed cut, would you still be able to maintain those numbers?

We would maintain, yes. If we had somebody leave, to answer your question, we would maintain 11, 11, 11. Okay. By losing that person, the intent of that person was if somebody does leave on a military deployment, somebody has a shoulder surgery. We had two shoulder surgeries last year that they were out for. One was six months, and I think the other was four months. We basically moved that person over to make that shift whole. So we could maintain that staffing, but if anything happened to anyone, we'd be paying a lot of overtime to have people cover shifts to keep us at minimum.

Sure, that's understandable. Back to that.

protection class the possible change to a protection class one how soon could that happen well 2029 is when they reevaluate us okay you can request an evaluation in between that five-year window from what I understand it's just and it's a process now that we've moved to nine as of this past Monday that I'm going to up to a deeper into because if there's a way for us to get credit we can request request a reevaluation I want that I would agree with that So that's the intent. We just wanted to get to nine and then pursue that avenue.

Perfect, thank you. Fire's one component to it. There's water supply, dispatch, and other things that weigh into an overall formula that spits out that final radius. Yes, great point. Other questions?

Anybody from the public have any questions for Chief? While he's up here? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

That moves us to item number 11, review and discussion of regional 11 emergency management fund budget.

Good evening. I'm Bobby Reiser. I'm the regional 11 emergency manager. That covers Antelope, Madison, and Pierce counties, including the city of Norfolk. And the percentages that are divvied up amongst the three counties in the city of Norfolk helps everybody in the long run to afford one person to do four different jobs. So that's kind of where I'm at. So my budget on here, on page, enclosure 11, page 75, you'll see the $60,000 decrease off of the miscellaneous federal grants. So I have a grant, it's called the EMPG grant, and I generally get it every year, and it pays for half or a chunk of my salaries and wages and benefits. Last year, the 25-26 grant season, as you know how the federal government shut down, this was one of the grants that they held, and then in the process, gave, this is held throughout the entire United States. In the process, some of the states got more than they asked for, some got less. The ones that got less filed an injunction or jurisdiction kind of a stop to it and nothing has been released as of yet. So that's where that got stuck. Now I've received some paper or some emails stating that these funds are still coming. I have not yet seen anything. I don't think Sheila's received anything, but I applied for it, all that. And so it's a wait and see type of deal. So in essence, I worked in the red last year, not really tried to go as responsible as possible, but it did affect my budget. So this year between Sheila and Chief Rogge and I, we sat down and talked about how we're gonna handle this in the future. We changed that to get rid of it in the 26-27 budget. That's where you see the hyphen and the $60,000 decrease. And that way, that's where everybody's percentages have gone up. Their actual percentages stayed the same, but the dollar amounts went up. And if we happen to get that grant coming, as they say, then it would, in essence, be a credit back, is how we decided to deal with it. I will apply for the same grant coming up in the next few months when it's open, but hopefully that'll come through. So that's where you see on the non-revenue receipts, the 23,000 here, 416, that's why that went up that chunk. I did meet with my board, my regional advisory board is made up from some council member from Andrew McCarthy, from the city and then one commissioner from each one of my three counties. We met at the end of May and they already saw this budget and approved it, but we have to get it through you guys as well. Then if you go a little further, on this enclosure 11, page 77, under other operating supplies and materials, number 29, that went down 100,000. So how this works is I do a mini grant on the odd years. So 2025 would have been regional of a mini grant. And how that works is there's usually enough extra from this grant to send out applications to all the first responders in my three counties, including the city of Norfolk. That didn't happen because of this grant. So that's why that went down. And hopefully we'll be able to do that again. The board voted in January to postpone this mini grant. to see what the grant funds, if they come through. But then they voted in May to push it further. You don't really know what's going to happen with that.

So that's kind of what I got.

Unless any of you guys have questions.

Kind of an odd one, I guess. I see some of the emails come through of training, specialized training, usually from grants, I'm guessing. Sure. Some of your grant funding dependent on participation or the quantity of people at those, where if you had more, you'd have the possibility of having more funding from grants?

I've never ever had a grant where that has been dependent. I do know some of the classes don't happen if you don't have 12, 14, 16 participants. Then if they're grant funded, the class just doesn't happen. But I've never had it go like the way you said it.

Good to know, though.

Could. I don't know. Okay. Anybody have anything more? Wonderful.

Thank you. Any questions from the public for Bobbie before she sits down? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to our next item. Thank you. Item 12. This will be review and discussion of the administration budget.

So I will be starting on page 84 of the packet. So overall, you'll find administration expenditures total $4,648,468, representing a decrease of $263,532, or 5.37 from the previous fiscal year. You will notice the largest increase within the administration budget is in account 67 legal fees. This increase reflects a more realistic budget allocation for retaining outside general counsel when needed for claims, summons, specialized legal guidance, and other matters that extend beyond the city's internal legal expertise. I would also like to highlight the significant reductions that have been made to the administration budget over the past several months. These reductions are reflected throughout the proposed budget Includes salary attrition of a hundred and eight thousand Norfolk public transportation of a hundred thousand our operational efficiency audit of two hundred thousand and the transfer of capital priority funds to chaff of a hundred and fifty thousand It's important to realize that these reductions were not necessarily the items staff recommended eliminating rather they resulted from a comprehensive review of the overall budget to identify reductions necessary to meet the city's financial targets and Of the reductions made, the item I believe is most important to consider restoring for administration is the salary attrition allocation. Every member of the administration team plays a critical role in the city's day-to-day operations and in providing timely, effective service to our departments, elected officials, and the public. Should a vacancy occur, the loss of that position, even temporarily, would have a noticeable operational impact on our ability to maintain service levels and respond to ongoing priorities. In total, administration has removed $1,828,789 in expenditures from our initial proposed budget. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Where is that sheet that you have up there? This would be page four of your agenda package. Oh, on the front? Page seven.

Yeah, it's the front. Of overall. All right. Yeah, enclosure four, page seven.

So Kylie, the Norfolk Public Transportation situation, are we partners in that or are we the sole funding source?

I wouldn't say we're the sole funding source, but we're a heavy contributor to them is what I would say. So we're not, from what I recall based on previous fiscal years, they have other outside funding sources, but we are a significant contributor.

So then my second question is, the reduction on their, because we don't see their budget, the reduction of 100K on that, is that going to affect their feasibility?

I mean, I can't speak for transit, but I will speak to the notion behind removing that from our budget was trying to focus on core city services and transit being not a core city of Norfolk. you know, organizational service. It was chosen to remove it from the budget, but Steve sits on that board, or goes to those meetings and can answer probably questions a little bit better than I can.

Thank you, Kylie. Jim, to answer your last question there, yes. Not funding that, transit would effectively shut down. They do receive some funding from United Way They receive about 95,000 from Great Dane out of Wayne to operate a route what they call route 6 from Norfolk to Great Dane I would imagine they would continue that at least for the duration of the current contract year Which I think runs out in November end of October with Great Dane they could probably continue to operate that service and just that service and If we drop the hunt if we if we drop our financing what happens to our hundred thousand just touch base on that that hundred thousand is matched with another hundred thousand from the state and matched with three hundred thousand from the Federal Transportation Authority So it it actually brings in brings in money to operate that transit service another thing to mention is they rent facilities from the senior center there. So they fund, basically they pay the senior center a total of $36,000 a year in rent. So not funding public transit also has an impact on this local senior center.

That's what I was kind of thought might be the case as far as the federal and state funding. That, okay, if we take the $100,000 out, it actually is going to take $500,000 out, if I heard you correctly.

Got another $400,000 in state and federal match.

which I see that service as being a service for a lot of the lower capital income people that way, or a lot of the needy people.

It is. It also offers aging in place service. It makes it easier to age at home, get rid of your driver's license. I'm facing that right now my mom's not going to renew her driver's license, so You know she'll rely on family and transit Any other questions I can answer are you expecting a resignation of some time with the salary attrition?

No, I mean, I'm not expecting it, and I'm hoping it doesn't happen, but preparing for when it does I

Yeah, I do have a question. The item 82 you have there, public art slash keynote. Can you explain that?

Yes. Okay, yeah. So in 82, we moved it from building an improvements capital outlay to account 68, other professional fees, since those are fees we pay, we did reduce that amount 16,000. Again, just looking at operational efficiencies here within admin's budget, the 9,000 that was left in account 68 is to fund the sculpture walk that we do annually. But we removed the other, lowered that.

So I see in item 78, you have transfers and transfer out. Can you explain that category? It's minus 160. I'm looking at your front page where we got 78, transfer of keynote of capital projects, transfer of property tax, transfer of council priority, and transfer of council debt. It adds up. Anyway, at the end of the day, it adds up to another minus 160. Can you go through that real quick?

Yeah, Sheila. Sure, I'll answer that.

Yes, so to fund general fund operations, we reduce transfers significantly. So what happens is then we don't have the transfer to the capital projects fund, and so we have to delay items in the CIP. So that's, you know, the normal transfer, our keynote transfer went down, Even the council priority transfer went down. We're only transferring $50,000, and that's going over to CHAF, but the other amounts are staying in the general fund.

What's that? You've got, we've got $150,000, $200,000, $615,000, $150,000, $43,000. That adds up to... That doesn't add up to $438,000. That adds up to what?

Where are you looking at specifically? I'm just adding all the transfers. I can't see.

Roughly 1.2 million. Yep, 1.2.

1.2, okay. So out of the admin's cuts, most of that is transferred out, 1.2.

Correct.

Except for the item number 68, which was my request, has been cut. And then we've got item number 10. are the other two big, big tickets. Okay. Does that include the $782,000 you talked about, council priority dollars? Is a portion of that right there? Because at the start of the conversation today, we talked about the $782,000.

Yes. That does include? A portion of that is council priority. That's not being transferred. Being transferred. Yep.

To utilize the whole for budget reduction.

Yeah, that's correct.

Okay, I got that.

Thank you. I guess I got one question on operational efficiency audit. So we are not going to go through with that?

Well, as of right now, it says it's not included in this budget. We'd have to vote that back in.

Yes, yeah.

I guess I'll just say what I think is that, you know, At a cost of $200,000, finding out where our deficiencies are could be far more savings than $200,000 across the city in all budgets from an outside perspective.

Yeah, we'll have to, I think what we're doing. I'm not asking for anything on this.

I'm just saying I think it could be. a cost savings in the long run versus cutting it from this budget.

The way I'm taking this budget, which is significantly different than anything we've ever seen, obviously, because it's cuts, a lot of cuts. So they're just illustrating what we've cut, how their budgets operate, what that means for the impact on their budgets, because about everyone's come up and said we can't handle the attrition part of it. And then it's going to be up to us to figure out and what's important to the council to go back in or stay out and how that's going to be funded. So I think that's just a basic way it's working tonight. So I think as you leave here, you're obviously going to take this with you and whoever's here watching, and you're going to look at this and go, well, this is really important to me. What does that mean for me to put that back in? Obviously, something's going to have to give either way. Or you run with what they're presenting today. But either way, it does...

give you a pretty good picture where we're at here so just right just because i mean this is a public meeting people are seeing this and so when they see that we're cutting norfolk public transportation that's not i don't think that's anything the council has the intention of doing i understand we put it on the table yeah but i don't want the public to think this watch this meeting and think that we're gonna close public transportation I see that we put it on the table, but obviously I do not support that.

I do think it's important that people understand that we do have to fund it, and we are putting money to it, and it does take cuts in your overall budget when you do those sorts of things, is how important it is. So everything has a cost. So I do appreciate this front ledger. I think it's good to look at.

Since we've listened to the police and fire budget, just one more thing on transit is, if that was to be reduced, and I appreciate comments just in there I did inform transit management that this conversation would be occurring tonight in a public venue and they might hear that transit a transportation cut from the city budget was on the table so appreciate that comment one other thing though is talking and staff it's talking to chief froggy chief ty we also know that the number of calls they get would also go up. So there would be an additional burden and cost on our public safety units if that was good.

Kylie, can you tell me, what are special studies?

So that's a good question. And one of those special studies is if for some reason something popped up where we needed to do anything outside of the scope of what we have currently budgeted administration and some of it I believe is related to potentially like economic development if we have to apply for a grant and they need something that's related to like a site or anything and we have to do something outside of the scope of what we currently do in house, that's what those special studies are for.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions I can answer? And again, I just to kind of answer you council member one web, these cuts are not things that staff want to see reduced. It was just looking at the overall budget and seeing these are potentials. We're not saying that these are definitive by any means. And I don't want the public to get that perception either. This is just, we, we hear loud and clear that property taxes need to remain low. And this is what we thought could help solve that solution.

I think that's the good thing to point out is that that goes along with police and fire also, right? If we want to try and reduce property taxes, there's going to have to be cuts that have to be made. And if we want these same services, we have to pay for it in some sort of fashion. And I was kind of saving this talk to the end, but it's really that's the impact is what do we have, what do we want, and how do we want to pay for it? And the truth is, in many cases, the property taxes, I assume, some other funding source is going to have to pay for these services if we want them in the city of Norfolk and so here we are presenting everything and obviously we're not making a final decision today but it's it's good information for the public to hear and to give all of us feedback of what they want and some will be happy and some won't but that's what we have to do moving forward is make that right decision make that best decision

All right. Any other questions here? We have an $835 expense for the Wall Street Journal and administration. Somebody explain?

So that's for our finance officer to review investments and maintain, be up-to-date with everything that's going on. So that is for, I guess, our finance department to be able to stay up-to-date with all that. But, yes, we have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

Thank you for that explanation.

Any other questions I can help answer?

From the audience here, I'd like to come forward.

Jim McKenzie. I also don't want to cut funding for public transit. I think that's critical. But again, our property taxes have tripled in 10 years to the general fund. 200% increase, tripled, however you want to call that. That's a giant outpace of the cost of living, the CPI. I mean, that's about 36% of that same time frame. So it's a giant outpace of government spending growth over inflation. And so the citizens end up taking more out of their pocket to pay for government services. So how do you balance that? As I look through the budget, I'm just going to talk a few things about admin. Under account 48, There's CIP software. I think that's fairly new in the last two years. We used to always do that on a spreadsheet. Now we're spending $10,000 a year for software. It's the incrementalism stuff that we have to look at because all that stuff adds up. Your total travel and training budget is $64,240. Do we need to really send all these people to all these conferences? Can't we cut that in half? I mean, to fund transit. I think it's worth taking a look at it. The dues and publications are 97, almost $100,000 in dues and publications. Lyle, that's account 55. You know, 55,000 of it is to the league. I realize I've been a league member for a long time, but as a taxpayer, you look at the league and that they advocate for limiting limiting the ability to control government spending. They advocate for ultimately higher taxes. So I think we have to take a look at that. I know you're going to laugh at that, Jim, but that's the reality. We've got special studies, $25,000 that's been mentioned. We really need to keep that. We outsourced ambulance billing to the tune of $60,000. And I know that was on one person. It was probably too much time spent on that, but why don't we put that on another staff person? Can't we bring that back in-house and have somebody in accounting or a different staff person do that to save spending $60,000? I guess I would look at it more closely to look at other ways to cut, again, to not have to increase property taxes as much, but again, I don't want to cut the funding for public transit because that's a critical item in the city. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Jan Einspar, and I just got off the Norfolk Area Transit Board. So I had a heart attack when I saw the 100,000 coming off of Thank you for reiterating this as a proposal. I think that system is what our government is supposed to be doing for its people, helping those that can't. But the reason I came tonight, because I didn't know about that, I also serve on the Public Arts Committee with Paula Pfluger, who's with me today. This is a committee of five people who had a budget of $25,000, all of which was used to benefit, every dollar was used to benefit every single person in this town because we have purchased sculptures and have put out art for the for the whole public to see they don't have to pay a dime to see it and yes Jim they had to pay taxes probably but anybody that comes into this town can also see it they can see it 24 hours a day this is something that the government of this town saw was important for the ambiance and the the attractiveness of Norfolk. And taking, you have cut that from $25,000 a year down to $9,000 a year. And as I understand, it was said today, that that goes to fund the sculpture walk. It goes to fund the Sculpture Walk because we took, our commission or our council, took $9,000 of our $25,000 budget and used it to help sponsor the Sculpture Walk. It was the decision of our council to do that. So to say that 9,000 would fund the Sculpture Walk isn't true. There's all kinds of art and public art that can go into this community. If you cut us down to $9,000, then we don't have the full $9,000 in order to help fund the sculpture walk. So I know that it is important. People worry about being able to make ends meet. But the thing that a government is supposed to do is to provide for everyone in the community. And every single dollar that you gave towards the Arts Council went back dollar for dollar to the community. We don't have any, nobody gets paid for anything, we have people doing it, the council meets, we don't have any overhead costs whatsoever. $25,000 a year, that, assuming we have at least that many people in town, some people say it's 26,000 people in town, that means $1 a year funds the ability to show beautiful things and increase and enhance the aesthetics of this town. It's not a dollar a day, which wouldn't even buy you a bottle of water. It's not a dollar a week. It's not a dollar a month. It's a dollar a year per person in this town. And I'm just asking you to consider the importance of art to this community. How do we remember the great civilizations? We remember them by their art. The Greek art, the Renaissance art, the Ming Dynasty art. It's art. That's what makes it. And I would ask for you to take that into consideration.

I don't know that I can add much to what Jan just eloquently presented, but I'm Paula Pfluger by the way. I too think our community of 26,000, 25, 26,000 residents deserves space that reflects who we are and what we value. So I'm here to ask also that you maintain the 25,000 allocation for public art. Not as an expense, but think of it as an investment in our future, our city's future. And help us, we like to help you provide beautiful spaces where people can gather. People are proud of their community, where they can come together. We support local artists. And we just want to make Norfolk more welcoming to residents and to visitors. We know that that promotes economic development because when people want to come and enjoy those spaces, they tend to shop here, dine here, perhaps stay overnight in our hotels here. So that's what I hope you will consider. I believe it's a modest investment for what we get out of it. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi. Carol Weander-Gaster. I also serve on that committee. I just didn't sit with the ladies. I just want to add one brief thing, and that's the importance of that small amount of funding, $1 per citizen per year. The importance of that as it expands out when people like myself, the art center, are looking for additional funding, right? Because I can say that local businesses have helped me fund what we do at the creative district. Families help fund what we do at the Creative District. And it's great that I can also say, and the city helps kick in to the arts in our community. That helps foundations in Omaha. That helps national funders think that Norfolk is a place that they should also fund, because you have put in a small amount. That's why it's important to me. I also agree with what those ladies said. But it's also financially important to expand the impact of the arts in our community. And if you have any questions about that, I would love to chat more about it. But tonight, carry on. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? Molly, you got anything? No?

Let's carry on.

All right. We'll move on to item 13. This is to review and discuss the group insurance fund budget.

All right, Jessica Dvorak, HR Director. I'm going to go through this very high level. At the top of page of 97, the fund revenue detail. Our total projected revenue is up by 9.72%, rising to 6.6 million. This is an increase of about 585,000 from last year's budget. So the city employee shares, if you turn to page 98 for the breakdown, the city's health insurance transfer share is increasing by 10% to 5.5 million. Billings to our employees, we'll see a slight adjustment of 2%. So this is 2% on the employee and employer. side of the premium shares. So the contributions are increasing next year by $821,671. The expenditures and claims, that's on page 99 and on to page 100. The total expenditures are projected spending is rising by 15.72%, totaling to 6.9 million. And also shown on page 100, we have a 52.58% increase in our baseline group insurance line item moving to 1.8 million. This is primarily driven by specific reinsurance adjustments. We also have two costly lasers next year totaling to 550,000 that we must account for. Our claims projections also on page 100 are expected group benefit claims are seeing a more stable incremental increase of 6.46%. And so we're budgeting up from 375,000 per month to 400,000 per month to just ensure we account for claims next year. And then if you go back to 99, our total expenditures are outpacing our new revenue for the year, so we'll be utilizing a small portion of our reserves. And our fund balance is projected to decrease by 4.99%. It still leaves us with a safety net of 6.6 million to start the following year. Some things that I've presented in the past to be a little more strategic with our group group insurance And I've also spoke to John about this is to introduce on January 1 some high deductible HSA eligible plans which would result in lower cost premiums to the city as well as the employee it's something that we'll see in next year's budget what that impact will be to our general fund. And so we also have Stuart here. He's our consultant for our insurance plan. He audits and does RFPs. We currently use Blue Cross Blue Shield. We're looking at bundling our dental and vision into Blue Cross Blue Shield. That was something I mentioned a few months ago in my presentation. He's available if you have any questions tonight. But I did want to go through this fairly high level. Are there any questions?

Can you explain, again, what Laser 1 and Laser 2 actually mean?

So there were some employee cases where they went into reinsurance. The claims were over, I believe, $125,000 at the time. We've adjusted that to $150,000 now. So I'm not giving their names, obviously, but it's situations that happen for major medical circumstances, and that could be a member on our plan that's not even an employee. So any member of our plan could go into reinsurance, and if they see that this isn't ongoing for future years, they go into a laser, and then they're pretty much locked in Stuart can explain that even more of how those work. But they're very rare, typically, but they do happen from time to time. Does that answer your question, or would you like Stuart?

Thanks, Stuart Lee with IBC and Sioux City, and we do, as Jessica said, the consulting. We work out with Blue Cross, UMR, your prior carrier. So we present your claims and present your case to them to try to get you the best rates. The laser is, so you guys buy a hundred in the past, you bought $125,000 reinsurance per employee. So you're the insurance company. You hire blue cross just to process the claims and you get the discounts that they get from the providers, the hospitals and doctors. But you guys are buying from HM life, a reinsurance company. Reinsurance, after that $125,000 that the city pays per member, then the reinsurance kicks in. So if somebody has a $700,000 claim, the most you would pay would be the $125,000, and we moved it to $150,000 recently. So what we do is we analyze all your employees' health conditions, and then we work with the reinsurer, and we figure out what's the best reinsurance for you guys. $125,000 was good in the past, but we could save a lot of money by going to $150,000. So a laser is... You have a couple of employees that have pretty or members that have significant health issues. They knew they were going to be four to 500,000. So the insurance company said, we're not going to cover them for the 150,000 anymore. The city has to pay the first 400 or 450 instead. It can be an advantage to do that, especially if you know those people aren't going to come off the plan early. Let's save that money. Otherwise, reinsurance companies get charged to make up for that cost, right? Reinsurance companies don't lose money. So they lasered those two members, saying the city's going to have more responsibility up front for those. Does that make sense? How often do we rebid? We look at it every year basically and we moved across a couple years ago because they offered significant savings and we saw UMR was not providing the services that you guys, they kind of declined a little bit in service. Blue Cross is a good carrier, obviously. They have significant discounts. But we look at everybody. We represent you guys. We don't represent Blue Cross. We're on your behalf. So we don't care who you're with. We also bid your reinsurance every year. So we take that out. It's transparent to the employee. You can stay with Blue Cross and go with any reinsurance company. We can talk about the high deductible health plan a little bit. Yeah. So the high deductible health plan that Jessica has asked us to look into would provide pretty significant savings to the city. There is an impact on the employees. So what we would do would say, how can we make up that difference a little bit? Because the high deductible health plan doesn't have office visit co-pays and things. But if we could save, let's say we're saving $500,000, what if we gave each employee $1,000 to use for that? you have 200-something employees on the plan, you'd still save 300 grand. It would give them the opportunity to go to office visits and things like that. So it could be a very good win-win for both the city and the employees. And we're analyzing that. It doesn't, go ahead.

I was going to say, so the premiums for high deductible, you won't know until September, correct? Right.

We've already told Blue Cross we're going to look at it. And when they run your renewal, they're going to present it at that time. So we'll show exactly staying as is. We're going to look at some higher deductibles just with your current plan and then those high deductible health plans. And it could be an option of offering your current plan and then offering the high deductible health plan as an option, and let the employees choose, because it might be less cost to them out of their paycheck, and we can design things so that it's advantageous for them to look into that plan as well. A lot of employers do that. They baby step into moving everybody to a high deductible health plan. First year or two, you offer some savings, offer some incentive for them to do it, and gradually get more people on those types of plans.

And obviously this budget is based off of starting October 1. These start in January. So there's some finesse that goes along with trying to predict some of those costs that match up perfectly.

Any other questions?

Do you anticipate, you know, I'd have to ask, have we had an ending balance reduction in this fund for, I don't remember the last time we had an ending balance reduction.

Yeah, I'm not sure about that.

Okay.

I'm sorry, what was your question?

Well, our ending balance is a reduction of 350,000 out of the ending balance. We're dropping the ending balance down 350,000 this year from the previous year. My statement is I don't remember us doing that in years past.

Our goal is to keep it around 5 million, and so we want to make sure we're leveraging this budget to help our general fund. Okay. We, it's kind of a guessing game, too. We don't know what claims are going to happen, but we're taking that risk of that amount to help offset some costs.

Inevitably, over the course of time, there's good years and there's bad years, and the good years help us absorb the bad years.

Yeah, I just didn't, I mean, that's not sustainable. For 20 years, you're out of balance.

Everything's dynamic. We've got to keep evaluating everything as we go along.

Okay, that's why I'm bringing it up. It's kind of an odd number. I see where it's coming from, but yeah.

It's really just kind of factored in as we did our analysis, and so we evaluate with IBC periodically, not just once a year. So we do monitor the claims monthly to kind of stay on pace. Any other questions?

Thank you. Thank you, too.

Any questions from anybody here this evening about that particular budget? All right, that moves us to review and discussion of our engineering budget. Item number 14.

Steve Ramos, public works director and city engineer. I'll present the budget. So first first I want to start off just a little bit of background on the engineering budget It is presented today as a function of the general fund budget So that's just kind of where we stick it from a category perspective How is that budget actually funded? It's just what I want to run you through I Pulled a couple numbers back in 2018 the engineering budget was eight hundred seven thousand twenty eight dollars and Every year we transfer money out of water, sewer, solid waste. In 2018 we transferred $521,067 out of our enterprise funds to fund some administrative services and also to help fund engineering. The balance at that time, the $285,961 then did come in from the general fund to fully fund the engineering budget. I don't recall exactly when, somewhere around the 2019 budget or 2020 budget, we increased those transfers. In the current fiscal year, fiscal year 26 budget, the engineering budget is $973,831, and the transfers out of the enterprise funds into the general fund to fund engineering and to fund some admin services was $1,258,000. $228, so significantly more compared to the 2018 budget. We were less than what the engineering budget was. Somewhere in there we shifted that and now we're, like I say, we're about 29% more than the engineering budget this year. The fiscal year 27 budget is for 994,403 And throughout the enterprise funds, the budgeted transfers into admin are 1,329,894. So I give you that just to paint the picture that really engineering, although we're presenting it as a function of the general fund budget, really it's funded through your enterprise funds. So cuts, if we need to have a conversation about adding staff, it really has no impact to the general fund. Our the engineering budget is on pages 102 and 101 and 102 are the summary sheets And I'm just going to just touch on the highlights here six point nine one percent increase in salaries and wages Total personnel cost increase four point four six percent and Travel and training you'll see that's up a little bit last year I had zeroed out the asphalt conference state asphalt conference and state concrete conference. I've added that back in for myself in this budget Next page Account number 60 What we got here It's account number 64 office supplies that 2550 a 30% increase and We're replacing battery backups this year. And then for the admin assistant, replacing a dual-screen monitor system. Under line item 68, other professional fees, that $3,150 is an increase in our bridge. We have a few more bridge inspections this year, so about $3,000 in our bridge inspection contract with JEO. Overall total engineering expenditures are up 2.11% for the year. Historically, going back to 2017 to today, our average increase over that eight year period is 2.4%. Any questions?

So now this budget includes personnel changes of $126,000 you're reducing or no?

When I had prepared the original budget, I had an extra position in there in the engineering staff. It would be a young engineer or engineering grad. Yeah. As a function of going through the budget reviews with the city administrator, we've cut that out.

The one for about $142,000? Yes. That is cut out, but now... we're still looking for another engineer. Are you still looking for an assistant engineer?

We still have an open position for an assistant city engineer. So we didn't cut that, we just cut? We cut, yeah. So historically, if we want to go back in history, we used to have three. We used to have Dennis Smith, John Heine, John Cahill. When I started, those were the three engineers in the office, and we had two technicians, Larry and Dean. Now we have three technicians. We just hired a third technician. And then from an engineering perspective, we have the assistant city engineer opening and myself. So just as a function of growth, workload, there's more workload there than we can get to. We're touching probably the top, we just hired this technician, so he's gonna help. We're probably touching about the top 50% of the workload. Losing the assistant city engineer has an impact on that, so we're down on that. We just had an EPA review. There'll be more information coming up on that. There's just a lot of stuff there that we don't touch as much as we should. And so one of the conversations I've had with Jessica is do we need to find a junior at UNL or SDSU or School of Mines and say, hey, we want to lock you in here when you graduate. Here's a little bit of a scholarship. And we know a year or two years down the road, we're going to fill that position. So we have those kinds of conversations. Who knows? Somebody knocks on the door. We've had a couple. Anna happened to knock on the door. She was aware we had a position that was in the area. We had a young engineer here a year ago, Laura Ternus. Again, she moved into the area and knocked on the door, and we opened up a slot there for her. So if somebody knocks on the door, we certainly have a workload. We'll entertain that. If that happens, we'd come back to council and say, hey, there's an opportunity in front of us. We'd like to pull the trigger. And again, financing for that, we would look to our enterprise funds to help finance that.

Right.

Any other additional questions for Steve? Anybody from the public have any questions for Steve Wise up here? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to 15. I'm going to review and discuss the street budget and we'll... Oh, there you are. Yep. Going to do that.

I need one.

I was handing you out a paper you can follow along. I'm just going to read the first page, and the rest is for your own benefit. That's some of what I'm talking about. Good evening, Mayor and Council. So the budget prepared for the 2026-2027 has been completed and transparent. It was discussed with division heads to operate with one less employee as we move forward with the growing community. Upon hiring approximately five years ago, the city wanted change in how the street division operates. A reduction in staffing directly affects our ability to maintain current service levels. with fewer employees and available to form. Maintaining the same level of service with fewer staff is not sustainable over the long term. The street division helps many departments throughout the year. When I was hired in November 2021, the city wanted change and morale was low. We have improved both. The city had just gone through an annexation and at that time I was told that we would be possible to add two to three more staff for the lane miles. We have hired one additional operator and currently have two part-time retired individuals that help with streets because of the care. We would not have the part-time help if we had enough staff or we didn't have the work to be done. We had an electrician in 2023, and that is housed and paid out of the street division. 50% of the work is for other divisions, and we have a part-time electrician that also is housed out of the street division. We went from 468 lane miles and today we are taking care of 529 lane miles. That does not include gravel roads or alleys. To be efficient for snow removal, we began ordering snow plow trucks with wings when we perform full plow. We send out all 15 trucks and four loaders and provide this service for the entire city in about four hours. at one time, depending on the size of the storm. The staff does a remarkable job, but the job can be demanding due to the storm cleanup and taking 12 to 16 hours, and staff shouldn't be behind the wheel more than 12. We already rely on other divisions helping when needed. Sometimes we have no choice with the timing. It is essential that all hands are on deck and all trucks and loaders have operators. We hold staff to higher level snow removal service than they've ever done in the past. We have started a storm sewer cleaning program and have jetted and cleaned every inlet in town in four years after miles of ditching and pothole repair. We haven't used any cold mix in four years. We have purchased two attenuators for safety of the crew and the traveling public. Do we leave one behind now and not work safely? This is just a few of the many duties required. Street division has been down in person since June 1st with hiring freeze and is already starting to affect what we're working on. We should be striping and many other things, but it keeps pushing out, being short of help. Do we want to go backwards? There's a couple other pages there for your reference if you want to look at those as well. As far as the street budget goes... As kind of like everybody else said with the attrition, I guess if you want to, as far as the full-time position, if it was taken away, it would save $97,321. As far as the personnel cost, it's about 1.3% reduction overall in that personal cost part of it. In the operating supplies and material, probably the biggest change is the uniforms. We went to, everybody went to a vendor now. They come out, pick them up, deliver them back. We've had some of the guys, their washing machines have gotten ruined with some of the material we're using, so it's the replacement washing machines. It was easier to go to the uniforms. So that went up $11,000. And we were having trouble finding some of the clothes that they all wanted to wear so they matched, so this is just the best way to go about it. Minor and tool apparatus, it's not a big dollar amount, 1,300. Just some of the stuff we've moved into other areas where they fit better. Rent went up a little bit. Bigger reduction in garbage fees, and some of that is from when we first started cleaning storm sewers, the amount of trash that we were paying the transfer station to get rid of it. The numbers have come down some, and we'll see what it does as we start through the storm system this second year. Down into the utility and maintenance. Some of it is not big numbers, but it's big percentages. And it's just kind of drilling in on where we're at each year for cost for the building electricity, the gas and stuff like that. Our street light electricity, it's up 2.31%. Just don't know where that goes from year to year. We've cut it back every year. We've kind of left it the same this year for the most part. That's another big one. Insurance and stuff, that's out of our hands like everybody else's. The governmental transfers, that transfers in and transfers out. It hasn't been in here before. Steve or Sheila maybe can talk on that if you have questions on it. But that's normally not in there. And then the machinery with the percentages so high as last year, we had taken all machinery out. So far it's in there this year. One of the purchases is one we carried over from last year, and the other one is one that was on the replacement, the small equipment replacement list. And with that, that is the street budget. If you have any questions.

On your machinery equipment, the 120, that's a one-time cost then for this year? Yes. One-time purchase, okay. And then item number 78, the $500,000 transfer. Subsized transfer. Can you explain that?

That's an accounting process for the sales tax coming into the street department in this next fiscal year from the sales tax bond. Oh. From the police station. So it needs to come through here to get to CHAP. Is this the first year of tracking? Well, obviously the first year of tracking. This will be the first year of sales tax coming through, yeah. So the police station will be done here. This this next fiscal year and you anticipate this going on to this fiscal though. There'll be a little bit There'll be a little bit that 500,000 is what we're okay, and just all right all right.

Thank you else you Nope all right that makes sense then yep Well I do have a question back on item number 11 There's a line in there. It's called lead pay and Like 10,400. I don't know what that is.

Okay, so when I first came here, we had two full-time lead workers, and then one stepped down from that, no longer wanted to do that, and then now Tom Marks has just retired. But to make up for the one at that time when that was happening, we would appoint somebody else on the crew that could do that. And when they are appointed to do that for the day or weeks or whatever it is, they'll get an extra $5 an hour for taking on that responsibility. This will be the first year coming into this budget. I'm not sure where this number will land, but that's how we'll do both of the positions. Some days you don't have any, and that's how we went to this. The winter months, unless we're hauling snow in the night or something like that, there wouldn't be any lead pay. Those times there would be when we're out plowing, you don't need to pay the lead pay. So it's a way for guys to step up if they're wanting that responsibility. A lot of times when you put them in positions, you're in those until you retire, just like Tom, which is great, but a lot of times they sit there and that's a lot of the remarks you get is there's no room for growth. Some guys want it, some guys don't. Some days we have three lead workers. It all depends on what you're doing.

Plays into leadership development. Plays into leadership development.

I think that's been a great program that Will brought in. We kind of mirror that. I think fire and police might do something similar. I can't quite recall, but it helps create redundancy in the crews, giving different crew folks the ability to lead. It also recognizes different expertise by some of the crew members. Some might be really good at paving or good at operating a piece of equipment. So it allows us to recognize individual expertise and it's been a great program.

Will, you had noted, and I saw it in here too, we have electricians, signal tech, but you noted when you were talking about that that they do other things, which I realize that because last summer I saw them working considerably on running the electrical work at Liberty Bell Park. Is that a build-out expense, or are you just absorbing that now?

So when they're doing the work for the other divisions, the labor's staying out of the street, but the materials, the different divisions are paying for it. The labor span on the street? Yeah. Why? Well, I mean, I don't know exactly. I mean, a lot of it goes for general fund, which we're all, you know, a lot of the divisions are general fund. I don't know how they've done in the past. They never had an electrician in the past full-time like what we have now. I guess there's ways to probably look at that if it needs to be separated out. But that's how it's set up now. And then their house down there, I guess we have the room for them or made room for them down there when we added that position. So that's just how it is now anyway.

It somewhat skews costs for not only the street department, but costs for a project. Correct. Because it's, well, yeah, we've got this amount for the lights, but we don't have anything in there for being hooked up and all that. And in my mind, that's not a fair situation.

That is a hard one to track because even though they're based out of that division, it's impossible to guess where they're going to be working at, what division throughout the course of the year. They just save fire thousands of dollars probably. Those electricians have saved taxpayers easily tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of time. Just today, we just... Yesterday it was had a problem here call them Didn't have to worry about a Electrician site visit they were there and right away in the morning actually failed again. They came back but Get what you're saying.

It's just hard to track what division will be so up to about a year ago It was literally hard to track now we have an asset and we have an asset management system in place and so you know all of will staff and

And that's what that last page you guys had was tracked.

So we are able to track that now, and we could bill that back to the individual divisions or projects. Like Will said, internally, if it's a general funded division, we have a general fund charging back a general fund. Yeah, it's not necessarily putting the cost in the right bucket, but historically, we haven't charged back to another general fund.

Some of my contention is that we're not saving as much as we think we're saving.

You don't think so? No. So if we had to call an electrician twice for our front door for two different visits, is one example?

What you need to maybe consider is having an electrician on a retainer to come in and do things shortly that way. And then the fee isn't up here. It's more, you know. I just think for a long time that's been that way. And I don't think we're saving as much as we thought we were saving.

Okay. I would disagree. You work in the realm, though. But I see how much they do. But it's noted and appreciated.

Out of curiosity, and I don't know with street repairs or newer streets how this actually all works, but I see the cost for rock salt went up $2 a ton. I get that, but the amount of rock salt and the amount of de-icing material stayed 1,500 tons or 15,000 gallons respectively. Do you feel like we're using less? Have we reduced that down over the years or Do you keep it as a just-in-case? A lot of it's just-in-case.

How do we budget that? You'd have to go off of, like, a five-year average, which we're coming on that. I do know that 90% of the salt that gets put out is through brine, and we make a lot of brine, I think. I don't know, Matt, do you remember what we just did? But it was... crazy amount and you just got to have it. You don't know. It's a crap shoot. Here it's a little easier than where I came from up there. We went through tens of thousands of tons of salt and you were ordering that a year in advance and you don't know what your next year is or what you're going to use the year you're there. It's a little bit like that here. A little warmer here so it makes a big difference. We leave it at 1500. I'd say last year I think we used around that between 1,000 and 1,200 ton probably. That's kind of what it's been the last. As soon as we go out, the brine trucks are the first thing out. And as soon as we can't keep up with it anymore, then we call guys in. So those five trucks that are out, immediately one starts to snow more or less to try to keep up with it. Once we lose the battle, then we go with the other stuff.

Trust me, I'm not complaining about what you guys do. You guys do a hell of a good job. And we've heard that you do a hell of a good job. I'm just curious on how that works.

The 15,000-gallon, that is the beet juice that we use. And we're kind of all over the board. One year we only use one load. This last year we got two loads. And we only use that when the temperatures are certain degrees because it can actually make the roads kind of a slippy snot too. It's got to be more so cold. You just don't want to put it on a warm road because it can make them slick as well. So it's really just kind of driven by the temperature on that stuff. Just want to make sure we have it in there. Also, you need three loads one winter that we're not, you know.

Out of curiosity, where do we get this? From out of state?

The beet juice comes out of Minnesota. They're looking at putting a terminal over in Iowa. I don't know what they have yet. They've added quite a few the last few years. It's used all over, but this one still loads out of St. Paul. Normally we get it the same day. They're pretty good about getting delivered.

I have a question for you, Will. I noticed the gallons of paint are down. That kind of brought up a Question from the past. How is that outsourcing going for the painting?

well It's kind of all over the board we thought maybe we could save some money outsourcing it I Don't in the long run I know we did and I think some of it has to who you have on the crew and what they get painted in the day of internal as well last year I We pretty much painted 99% of the whole town. Some of those streets don't need paint every year, so we know them numbers will be down. Ped crossings we know, parking stalls a lot of times, we know we gotta hit those every year. And then we, the light winter on them, not plowing, helps them big, you're not plowing that off. So we kind of based it off that going into this year that I think we didn't have near as much. There might be a street out there we missed, the guys missed or whatever. But overall, that's what we looked at into this budget here. This year, we probably won't do a lot of long lines. A lot of times, like we were up north and did a lot of plowing, we were on every other year, every three years. It really depends on the plow season, though, a lot of it, by scraping them. It takes that reflectivity out of them. But it's another one that's hit and miss. You've got to leave it in there, not knowing. But last year, as much as we did, we're thinking that we'll be much less this year. Anybody else have anything?

One last question for you. It's a little bit on the lighter side. On 84, you're buying a new pickup. Why the hell is that 2004 not lasting?

Well, it just meant its life, I guess. If we had to give up one, we'd probably give up the pickup before the hot box just because of the amount of times we've put down with that and the miles that we pull it to get hot mix. But that's why they're both in there. Like I said, the pickup was a carryover from last year. We're getting by. The hot box is one that we made up for small equipment CIP that was in there for this year. If I had to replace one or the other, I'd rather do the hot box and the pickup just because of the service that we need to do with it and the miles that we pull it to get hot mixed a lot of times. The hot box itself is in pretty decent shape, but the chassis and stuff underneath is starting to get warped pretty good. There's the suicidium back quite often. For brine, last year we made 32,000 323,782 gallon of brine that we went through last year. Salt, we went through 536 ton. 536. Tons. Tons, yes. One third of it. Yeah. So he's just trying to guess. One of these years we'll get hit. We'll get hit the other way. I'm not saying we need to do it. Yeah, we don't need it. We could use some moisture. Yeah.

I agree. All right. In the spirit of moving forward here, are we getting more questions for Will? Anyone from the audience have a question for Will on street budget? All right. Not seeing anybody, I will move on to item 716. I'm sorry. Discussion of the fleet budget.

That was pretty straightforward. With that one, we don't have the reduction in staff there. It's a small group that we need to keep where it is. The biggest increase on that is the group insurance, so that's 4.56 over the personnel cost. Doing the same thing with uniforms for fleet. It's a big percentage, but it's only about $3,700 increase as far as, and that one will be starting here in the near future with the same company. It'll be laundered. They'll pick it up the same day and bring it back. To skip down to utilities and maintenance Everything pretty much stayed the same the Building ground and maintenance is up. We put a second garage door back in there last year. We had two in there We removed one to replace one and just trying to keep the maintenance preventive maintenance up on the shop We're getting there. I think another this year and maybe next year and we'll have them all replaced from when it was But we've been trying to do two a year to just keep up before they go down. They start having trouble and Office equipment maintenance, I believe that's a couple computers. If I turn to that. 48. Yeah, we got two computer upgrades. That's what drives that up. And then we moved a couple other things in there. If we get the dielectric software, that's added for the annual fee. That hasn't happened yet, but we're looking at that. And so that's what's bringing that cost up there. Legislative affairs, I mean, it's pretty much flat. It's a decrease, actually, but small amounts. Other administration fees, 220%. That's, I don't know. I've got to look at what it was.

Office supplies? Not office supplies, Will? I don't...

I've got to check on that one. I'm not sure what the citywide wireless access point is. Scott, do you know? Citywide access point?

Yeah, it's driven by IT, and it's split out per division. So that's added into this? It's in all divisions.

Okay. I was going to say I couldn't remember it, but yeah, that's a new cost. So that's pretty much the fleet budget. Do you have any questions?

Any questions for Will on the fleet services? We've got five people working there. Anyone? Anyone from the audience have any questions on item 16? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to item 17. Thank you, Will. Review and discuss the park and recreational budget.

All right.

Here in council, thank you and good evening. I know this is quite a challenging effort for you and it's very much appreciated. I'll go ahead and try to paint the picture for what staffing level decreases would do for us. I think before I get started on that is just kind of look at You know what we've done in the past five years and what how where we've come so parks and rec we've taken on significantly more responsibility We've expanded our parks. We've added recreation opportunities events. We've completed major capital projects We've secured grants and donations of six point four million dollars, and we've done it all without adding a single permanent employee the only The only summer help that we've hired was for the ice rink and that was covered by the fees that we have there. So we've done all this extra work without adding any staff We are working smarter. We're finding ways to accomplish more with the same amount of staff. We've invested in equipment that saves us time instead of additional labor costs, better mowers. The wood chipper, it was good to see that out in the storm last week. We didn't have to take 12 trips to the landfill because we were able to chip those branches up. and be a little more efficient with our time. And so that equipment is very helpful. We've reorganized our staff in geographic working zones. We're reducing the windshield time, seeing less drive time on our staff. We've implemented online registrations for programs, swim lessons, campground, that's all been very helpful for our staffing levels. We've improved communication through our website and social media and the Parks and Recreation Board. and we've emphasized accountability with our staff. We've reduced overtime down from 60,000 to 16,000 from where it was just five years ago. So this all tells a story. Skyview visits are up 12%, Johnson Park up 81%. That's in the summer months, June through August. The department revenue has increased from 472,000 to 738,000. That's a 56% increase. Our athletic field usage has doubled roughly 1,200 games and practices each year. We're now at 2,400 games and practices at our fields. We're serving more people than ever before with the same staffing level. We have not asked for any more. This year's budget. What you see before you is not what we presented. We did present a staffing increase of just 1.02% and an overall staffing increase or overall budget increase of just 1.78%. We feel like we're doing well. We didn't have to meet inflation. I think a lot of the new things have decreased. Some of them are... Our needs, when it's new, you don't have to fix it as much. So we're done better with equipment and with our facilities as well. So this 1.78% overall was to maintain our current level of service. We've done more with the same, but we are going to struggle and probably can't continue to do more with less. So the budget before you is approximately a 3.58% reduction from our request. The most significant impact is the $93,069 reduction. Our preference would be to reduce our seasonal health. Even though that does have an impact on us, this would translate to an 8% reduction in our seasonal and summer staffing. These are the people that maintain our parks, prepare our ball fields, staff our concessions, teach swim lessons, operate the ice rink, support recreation programs, and support special events. So if staffing decreases, we should expect a reduction in what we're able to provide. That means fewer operating hours, fewer program opportunities, less maintenance, potentially less revenue, which I don't believe is reflected in the budget. There are also indirect costs. When seasonal employees aren't available, this means less time completing projects in-house, more overtime again. A Berryhill playground is also a perfect example. Our staff intends to install that playground, but if they don't have the time available, when we do the installation, it saves taxpayers $50,000 to $100,000 in each installation. If they don't have the time, we're just unable to do that. So we'll likely need to hire a contractor to do the work. So the savings that we gain in one budget line item will reappear somewhere else, either in a loss of revenue or the cost of hiring out the work. So I'll go through our few highlights. We'll start with code 26 on page 137. Yep. Yeah, we just have a little bit increase there for better mowing equipment, just allowing our crews to cover more ground with our smaller mowers and hopefully fewer labor hours. Code 29, the higher costs, just the cost of chemicals, pool chemicals are way up. Flowers, forestry supplies, and janitorial projects just across the board have been increased. Our janitorial supplies, clearly when you have an 81% increase in in usage of the park, you're gonna have more supplies needed for that. Page 138, code 31, lease costs are increased, are associated with the first street put in lease. Code 40 on page 138, just higher electricity, natural gas, water, and sewer, and building and vehicle maintenance costs are all covered. on the increase there. Code 64, page 142, we are replacing more than usual our aging computers. We have two more than usual. They're just falling all on the same year. And the citywide wireless access point that Will just mentioned as well. And then the one thing that we do have is we are In talks with the YMCA, the D-League, we want to talk with the public schools. We are looking for kind of direction on indoor sports and also for soccer in our community and to look at what's the direction. So these funds are set aside for either a needs assessment or a feasibility study for that.

What line item was that?

It's item 68, code 68. Okay, thank you. Sorry. And then code 79, just setting. Yeah, I don't have the notes on that one. Yeah, so this is the contribution. We are adding a little bit to that for the baseball program. baseball turf replacement. We are working on that turf agreement now with the schools. And I believe 12,500 is funds that we have that are going to be expended next year. But those are from the Northeast Community College that will go towards that. So next year, it won't be at 30,500. It'll be 12,500 less. So in your capital outlay, you note that

Amphitheater video screen, but you had it in last year's approved budget Why did you did those get paid for last year, or do they just not happen?

They didn't yeah, I guess just the way they If it's if it's in them if it's in the left side it just winds up on the right it Those were complete you already did those items. They just showed up again.

Yeah, okay Yeah, it kind of looks like it these are those that and then we're doing them. We're not gonna do them now We've done. Yeah, okay Okay, thank you.

Yeah Any questions?

You said you had a $72,000 reduction in mountain climbing, and what was that?

Yeah, we had a climbing wall in there for recreation for our events to have available at our events. These are both the ice pumper cars and the climbing wall would be revenue generators as well. It helps to increase our revenue at our events. But we did take that out to keep the Keno dollars where we could manage the budget, I think, so.

I see you have $80,000 still in here for ice bumper cars, though.

That's correct.

Oh, okay. But you took out the climbing wall.

We did keep one of them, yeah.

Okay. Is that a continuous deal with the ice bumper cars?

That would just be a one-time purchase.

Oh, it's a purchase.

Okay, because last year you... We did not. We were hoping for a donation. We were unable to secure it. Didn't get it, so you didn't spend it last year.

Gotcha. Okay, thank you.

So... Along that line, what are the ice bumper cars? It's not the ones that kids can't skate good?

No, the ice bumper cars are actually what they sound like, like a bumper boat type thing, and they have special wheels that grip the ice, and it's for a fun activity. I don't know if you can pull up a video of it.

So how many of them are there? This will be for eight of them. Eight of them? Yep. Because from what I see, the area is quite congested anyway without those. So it would be outside of skate times.

It would be outside of skate times.

But we don't do it right now. No. So is there a reason that we have to do it this year?

No, it's something that we are looking to do. There's the pictures of them there. And it is a great revenue generator for the ice rink. I think it would increase this about 20,000 a year. So it'll pay for itself in a few years. And they have them in Sioux City, in Mitchell as well. And they're a great activity for people.

So do they, can we get some feedback from them for how much revenue they actually do generate?

Yeah, I was actually in Mitchell when we installed these, and it would be around, it depends on how many hours you run it, is really what you're looking at. It depends on the amount of hours. The amount of hours that we could run it here, not being an indoor rink, it would be around $15,000 to $20,000. I think it would be more in the $20,000 range.

Are you figuring in the additional employee time to work? If you're not even during regular skate hours, and I'm already hearing from some of the hockey side of things that they don't get to use it as much as they want to. We're going to add one more thing to this that limits other Sources or increases somebody having to work there.

I Kind of find it hard to believe that it's really going to increase much revenue Yep, I can I can send out a full revenue report on what that would cost and staffing and hours and and also revenue So they pay for themselves and how many years I Would think four years we would have it done It always depends on fees too.

Like Jim said, it's a very small ice rink. It gets used. It gets used by a lot of people. And the people that do use it wishes there was even more time to use it. But then you throw in one more thing and then we break into that time of what's already being allocated to people. So I'd be cautious of it. I think it's probably a cool activity, but I'm wondering if we're just not the right size for it.

And I guess that's what I would, I worry about the size, I worry about, I don't know how big Mitchell's is. If Mitchell's is three times the size of this, yeah, there's a reason that it's successful.

So you only use one quarter of a full ice rink for these at 10? at 10 of these units. So ours is perfect size for these units. If you're doing dual activity, yes, you wouldn't be able to do ice skating and this activity at the same time.

Yeah, again, I question the value of it because I don't think the four-year payback period is realistic. I just... That's meaning you're generating $20,000 net, not gross.

Nate, I think what I'm hearing is they want you to come back with a proposal for a bigger ice skating rink. That's right. No, that's not what I said. I'm joking. I'm just joking.

That's not what I said. I thought I'm on Skyview. Yeah, let it get cold and do it on Skyview.

Right. Any more questions for Nate?

Did I get down to your infrastructure area down there? I see we switched out from last year. We had memorial bleacher repair.

The memorial bleachers and also the 4th Street tennis court fence did not get done last year because we had a few – I think we reallocated the funds for the mini pitches where I think those funds went.

So my question is on the Memorial Field bleacher repair, So we've got $41,000 in there for that. Where are we at as far as the safety situation then? Because I see we're pulling the $41,000 out for the memorial bleacher repair, and we're gonna go in and put irrigation in, which if we pray a little bit more, maybe we don't need the irrigation, because we got irrigation in at $80,000.

I guess I didn't know that got cut.

Jim? No, it's... Jim, that got moved over to the Capital Projects Fund, so we can talk about that tomorrow. But it's in there. It is budgeted this year.

Okay. So is the irrigation stuff new, or was that in before that? Is the $80,000 for irrigation in new?

I believe that's new.

Or I shouldn't say $80,000 for irrigation. We got $50,000 for irrigation... and 34 Fourth Street Park tennis court fence.

What was the question?

Is the irrigation in, is it two new line items?

Yes.

Okay. So is it a must? Again, we hear wants and we hear needs. So is it a need because I've been here since 1976, so that's 50 years, and apparently Berry Hill and Westside Park have not been irrigated in between in there, and they...

That's correct. In the council retreats, though, we've talked many times about making sure that we're doing projects in all the communities' parks and not just in a few. If you look at the irrigation at Central Park and Johnson Park, It makes a significant difference. We also, Berry Hill, we get complaints about the weeds in that, and we're putting in a brand new playground, and those sand burrs, you know, we get a lot of complaints about those. We had those at Johnson Park, I mean, sorry, at Skyview as well near the playground. We irrigated that, and we haven't had a problem since. It's the best way to maintain the turf. and especially if it has a lot of activity on it, and also it's the best way to keep the weeds out.

And again, I understand that. My question is, is it needed in this budget year?

That's for you to decide. That's what I was getting at.

All right, any other questions for Nate? Anybody from the audience have a question for Nate while he's up here? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to Item 18, Review and Discussion of Planning and Development's Budget.

All right, I'll just follow along with you.

All right. Good evening. Thank you. Uh, Val Grimes planning and development director. So planning and development, this budget is basically a maintenance budget from previous years. I'll get into the one thing that is definitely not a maintenance budget. Um, but we do have one employee available for each type of service provided. So you will see that we do not have an attrition like some of the other, because we would actually lose a service if we lost a person. But you will see there are some budget items this year that are main for efficiencies, like the hotspots. Because the elements system, that new software system, the asset management, however people are describing that, we are so close to being done with that. I think we have about three more permits left. based on, you know, we want to be efficient as possible. We are trying to make that so that our inspectors are as efficient as possible and getting the information out to the contractors as efficiently as possible and having that back and forth a little easier with this maintenance system. So the hotspots were in last year because I was hoping that we would be up to that point last year. We were not. It took until this year. So it actually, we have a percentage reduction in 48, the item number 48, because I did move the hotspots. That is essentially allowing the inspectors to take their computers out with them in the field and operate in the field now. So I got that and moved it down to 60, where did I move it to? To 62, because that's where we have all the rest of our cell services and such like that. So you will see a higher percentage in that. It's pretty much the same dollar amount, just kind of shifting, but that's why you see those percentage differences. Otherwise, without that one main thing that I'm going to be talking about, we would have essentially a 2.02% total increase in the budget as a basic maintenance. The one thing that you will see in there in number 68, other professional fees, is a comprehensive plan update. We did start this in 2016 and adopted it in 2017. So it is about 10 years old now. There is no requirement that we have to do this every 10 years. A lot of the update comes from, are we growing? Have we accomplished goals? What do we want our next future to be? And so I just want to do a little bit of what is a comp plan. Some of you know it. Some of you maybe don't. I know we have the public tuning into this too. So a comprehensive plan is a short and long-term blueprint that guides the community by providing a vision while giving governments the policy framework needed to coordinate growth, prioritize spending, and protect overall quality of life. The vital functions of a comprehensive plan, it's kind of what it says, it's comprehensive to the whole city. It guides development. land use by mapping where residential, commercial, industrial, and recreational should go. It prevents uncoordinated and costly sprawl and acts as a legal foundation for zoning code and subdivision regulations. It provides a blueprint for public spending to help prioritize public infrastructure, transportation improvements, and parks and rec spending. Promotes economic growth in housing by outlining strategies for attracting and retaining businesses. that create tax revenue, and while addressing housing supply and affordability to ensure residents have living options. A lot of it empowers citizen voices. So we talk a lot about transparency, getting the citizens involved, and how do we manage our city. This highlights that by acting as a vehicle for building community consensus through public meetings, surveying, and letting them help shape the growth of the city. It secures financial support because a lot of state and federal agency often require or strongly encourage communities to have an updated comp plan for funding. And then also it protects against legal challenges. So when we have difficult land use or controversial land uses coming up, then The courts are more likely to uphold the ruling if it's in the comprehensive plan that says this is what we're trying to do. The comprehensive plan currently was and should be used for a multitude of processes. The water master plan that was updated recently, the comp plan is pulled into that. The transportation plan uses the comp plan. The parks and rec plan should use the comp plan because it's it's comprehensive. We should combine all of those things really into this. And then some of the legal is if we don't have a comprehensive plan that shows us where things are supposed to go, if we don't have one that shows our entire jurisdiction, that makes it very difficult for me and you all when like a zoning request comes up. the state statute asks, is it in compliance with the comprehensive plan? If the comp plan doesn't say that, how do we answer it? Because it comes into play if somebody asks for a zone change and it's not in compliance with the comp plan, and 20% of people within 300 feet by state statute oppose it, you all cannot pass that zone change on just a simple majority. it has to be a super majority of that. So there's legal things like that that come into play with the comp plan. And also the strategic plan section in the budget books that get put out on the internet, that includes portions of the comp plan because those are our goals and objectives. So you'll see that in there pulled directly from the comp plan. And talking about having been able to accomplish a lot of the 2017 comp plan, here's what some of our goals were. Create a vibrant riverfront that serves a spine for new residential, commercial, and rec activities. Continue to develop downtown as a regional destination. Enhance recreation opportunities. Diversify the number and type of cultural activities and entertainment events. Provide and sustain highest level of water, sanitary sewer, and storm water service. Develop a multimodal transportation network, which engineering has been working on. And provide outstanding professional public safety services. So I feel like we've accomplished and checked a lot of those off in the last 10 years. So where do we want to take the next 10 to 20 years? It's a great opportunity, like I said, to engage not only the city council and commission, but the entire synastry, industrial partners, business partners, schools, because we brought all of those guys together the last time we did this too. And what's done and decided today affects this and the next generations because hopefully what we decide today and build today will still be here in 50 to 100 years. And that's what we're trying to help guide us as staff you as the council commission, because we're all trying to, as the comp plan today says, our vision is one Norfolk moving forward. And I believe that we have done a great job doing that. And if we're all pulling in the same way, we can do it continually. So that's just generally what the comp plan is. And I know it is a, difficult ask during this time. It was brought up last year that I didn't want to ask for it last year. I was hoping this year would maybe be a little better because it's hard listening to people saying, I'm cutting, I'm cutting, and I'm standing up here asking for something. It's hard for me to ask for stuff. It really is. But I believe that this would be a great thing for our community because you guys started that this spring with the strategic planning. And this would just keep it moving forward and really put it into a policy that is available that everybody can be part of for the next, hopefully, 10 to 20 years.

Val, I know you mentioned when you first spoke, when was the last one we did?

We started it in 2016 and adopted it in 2017. So it's a solid year to get through this by the time you get all the data and the surveys and meetings to try to get everybody's input.

And as a rule of thumb, a 10-year window is appropriate on those, isn't it?

The last time before we updated in 16, it was 15 years old, but it was really out to date. Smaller communities that aren't growing as fast as us, they can go a little farther. But 10 years is probably a good look. So 10 to 20 is pretty much what your plan is written for. if you're not doing a lot of growth, you're not accomplishing a lot of those goals, you can go 20 years. But we've done a lot of it, so it's about time.

That big annexation puts a crunch on that.

Yeah. One of the things, too, that kind of is driving this is our transportation plan was done in 2006. So our master transportation plan is now 20 years old. It is time to update that. And Talking with Val, if we're going to update that next year, and we'll talk about that maybe tomorrow as a function of chaff, but it would be very desirable to do both at the same time and maybe even use the same consultant to do both and save some money. I think I've got about $250 budgeted for the transportation plan, $200 here. We combine that, like I said, we might be able to save money, but we do need to move the transportation study forward. So it makes sense to me to do this at the same time.

Questions?

I would just suggest, Val, if you want to have a meeting that you just bake something and we all show up. I will try that next time.

I take requests.

So, Val, do you or can you find out what the 16, 17 costs were? I mean, it's 10 years later and we got a lot of inflation in there. I just don't want to be too short on it.

The 1617 came in around that 90 95 I believe And so I did ask a consultant prior to knowing the budget was going to be starting here in the spring I asked a consultant that had done these recently and Blair and somebody else kind of around that area have just updated their comp plans and both of them were running 180 to 200 and he said based on our size and 200, so that's where I came up with that number.

I was hoping for 150, and he said 200, and I about fell out my chair, so yeah. Comments appreciated, though, Council Member. Yeah.

And, yeah, if we could combine, you know, some mapping and that sort of thing with the transportation, that might be helpful, too.

All right.

Other questions for Val?

I do like your idea, Steve, maybe trying to put that traffic plan along with the comp plan.

It would be interesting to see where MPPD is at on some of their. Comprehensive plans also with future development within our community. You know after we had that retreat with with them and Saw the level of economic development they participate in I think there might be some opportunity to talk to them to see where they're at and then might be an opportunity to do more combo work with this particular plan and if not if we can afford it is there a way to Get a price on what a comprehensive map would look like now if somebody could update our map with our current City limits with the comp plan you have, so you're not utilizing an old comp plan without the adequate border on there. So just to put that out there as we're having a discussion.

And also, depending on when we would pull the trigger, it's possible this would span two budget years, so you could split the 200 across two budget years.

That's kind of what I was going to say, too, depending on when we start it. You know, it might be half this budget and then roll into half the next year, too. It might be a little more palatable.

Good idea.

All right. Any other questions for Val? Any members of the public this evening have any questions for Val? All right, Val. Thank you. We'll move on to item number 19, and that's the review and the discussion of the library budget.

All right, Mayor, Council, thank you so much. Appreciate your continued attention and engagement throughout this meeting. As other divisions have talked about before you, we're one of the divisions that has a salary attrition budgeted in. So I want to skip that kind of talk to the end and look really high level. Our budget starts on page 154 of 74. And if we look at that really high level, there's not a lot of activity when it comes to major dollars moving around until you get to our capital budget. So at the next page in that 84 line, and that's a 100% increase because last year our budget was $0. So we didn't have any capital needs last year. This year we need to replace our two self-check units that we have. They were purchased in 2018 as part of the renovation and expansion. They have outlived their usefulness. They are still running Windows 7. To upgrade those to Windows 10 or 11 was a $5,000 cost, and that did not seem like a good investment when the components of the units are at end of life as well. So it's just time to replace the unit themselves. So that's that $25,000 budget there. Um, so then if we skip back up to the top, to that personnel, I just want to give a little bit of background, um, comparing the library now to what it was in 2017. So in 2017, before the renovation and expansion, we had an FTE of 15.64. We do the renovation expansion. We grow our building by 75%. We take on new services. We have, instead of one meeting room, we have three with operable walls that have to go up and down and furniture that has to move. We started doing notary service. We added a maker space. We do training now on 3D printers and laser cutters and all kinds of stuff. And we've taken on all this extra. And our FTE now is 16.03, which is only an additional 15 hours a week from when before the renovation. So in order to offset that, you know, over the years, we've added technology to be more efficient. We added online registration. We added access online to your library accounts. You can renew your own books and do a lot of the library functions that the library staff used to do over the phone online. So we've tried really hard to be efficient. Efficiency matters a lot to me personally and professionally. We care a lot about what we do and we care a lot about being responsible with that tax dollar. So we've tried over the years to offset adding more services that people are asking us for and not adding staff along with that, finding other ways to be efficient. So we feel like we're already working at capacity. We're as lean as we can get and still do the things that we do. So for us, if we look at losing a full-time staff person, we have to reduce our workload. What that would look like could take a lot of forms, but we cannot provide the same level of service that we do now with 40 hours less staff time. So I just want to, Just wanted to give a little bit of that background and perspective of where we've been in the last eight to 10 years, staffing-wise. And that's pretty much all I have. If you have any questions, happy to answer any.

Jessica, I got some, I asked Gloria, who used to work at the library, I said, why do we have so many supervisors? And she gave a context of saying, where they were struggling hiring a library director, they moved a few positions into the supervisor role. Now that we have a library director, why are we still sticking with that model? And I understand, listen to you talk, you're paying more, asking more, instead of hiring more, but have you looked at that structure?

We have redone our structure a few times. I've been at the library almost 14 years, and in that time we have been at four supervisors, we've been at five, and then we went back down to four. We haven't evaluated combining that into less. It's something we could look into, but we have four departments in the library. We have tech services, youth services, patron services, and circulation, and so it just makes sense that each of those has its supervisor. each one of those people supervises three to five people, so that's a nice, it's a nice organizational structure, it works really well for us. I wasn't aware of that history, that there, before my time, there were less supervisors, so. It's a good question.

All right, any other questions? Anybody from the public have any questions for us this evening? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go to Item 20, Review and Discuss the Housing Budget.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Rita Heinemann with the Housing Division for the City of Norfolk. So we're... A little handout coming out just to educate you a little bit on what all the housing agency does in a quick synopsis. It's two pages, we do a lot more than that, but it gives you an idea of the people that we serve, the different programs that we assist with throughout the community of Norfolk. On our budget, not a lot of change on the first page, 163 of our budget. but as you flip over to the second page of the budget on the percentage, that'd be on 164. We had insurance on line item 61 asking for an additional $5,769, which is a 175.03% increase. So with the construction that we've been doing and the development of the tax credit properties, between Lyle and I, we figured out that there was no liability coverage for the office once the Kensington was sold. Usually a housing agency might be housed in a building that's owned by the housing agency, but where it's rented, there was no liability coverage if somebody came in the offices, that sort of thing. And I discovered that and reached out to Lyle. We found out that LARM will not cover housing agencies, housing authorities. And so I went to Housing Authority Insurance, which is a reputable company in the housing authority world, and the cost came back at a little over $5,000. So I'm putting in the budget this year. Last year, Section 8 acquired that cost because we had to have it in order to get River Fork Villas to the new tax credit property closed out because we had leased it all up and everything, but we had to have that. so I'm coming to the council to ask for that going forward. In the past, it was, like I said, it was covered through the Kensington's insurance, but now that we're in a rental situation for the offices, we've gotta have it. So that is in there, and then office supplies last year, we're a lean budget for the city, but one of the things was office chairs where the public sits, Things are breaking and we're just trying to fix them as best we can. We were able, because of some training costs that we didn't incur this year, we were able to get chairs for the conference room where the board meets and where the public comes to sit through housing choice voucher briefings, to do their paperwork when they lease up. We were able to get some new seating because every time you went back there, there was a broken chair, plastic breaking. you might be sitting close to the floor because the chairs don't raise up and down. They're probably like 30 years old, so we were able to do that. So I put in here for kind of the front lobby area this year.

I understand sitting on the floor.

You're down lower than everybody, yeah. So anyway, it would be the front lobby area and then a couple of the office chairs for the staffing. So on that.

That's under your item 60?

And that is under item 64. Item 64. Yeah, on page 164.

The rent for your building.

Where does that show up on this sheet?

I believe it's on the first page.

I was looking for that. I'm just not saying it. I just can't find it.

I know it's in there. I know that it's a $180,000 contract for 10 years. Okay. So I can tell you that off the top of my head.

So yeah, 18,000.

I think it might go, well.

18,000, it'd be 18,000 a year.

18,000 a year for the offices that we're renting and we're in a 10-year contract. Probably seven years, or we've got seven years to go with that contract.

I don't see it either.

I didn't, I thought it'd be under overhead, but.

Paid from a different fund?

It might be. Can I look into that and get back to you?

Yeah, that's fine.

So that was the notable increases, the percentages as you can see that went up are those two items. We're continually growing and so over the past two years we've acquired quite a few more units, three different properties. We're building another right now. It's going to offer another 28 units to the community and There's future plans to work with developers to do even more. And so with that growth, I had put in, and it's on the cut sheet, for a vehicle. I'll pull it up. For maintenance. So right now we have six staff, and we have 441, once Benjaminville is completed, units and or vouchers that we take care of, which is all the inspections. We have to do annual inspections. Intermediate ones for ones that might not pass an annual inspection Brandon does all those plus he is doing the bulk of the maintenance and all those properties and so down just to give you a little comparable in Fremont we had 605 units and section 8 vouchers and there was 18 staff, but there was other grant programs in that too. There's a couple others and in public housing, which is a little different up here, where we don't have the public housing, because that's kind of heavy on staffing for public housing. But usually 100 units per maintenance man. And Brandon's getting to spend maybe half of his time as a maintenance man, and then he's out doing inspections and troubleshooting so that if we need contractors, if an issue gets bigger, eventually, you know, I would like to ask you for an additional person. I can't get anybody hired at the projects just as a contractor. They don't want to come in and just get an hourly rate. They want benefits. I've tried. And so we're right now paying contractors to come in and do work at 60 bucks an hour. The projects are paying to get different things fixed that are above what Brandon can do with his time and, and staffing. So I guess, for the future of that, but it would save him time as far as if we added a vehicle that had, where he had lockable service truck, that he had little boxes on the sides. He could put tools in it, he could put materials in it. Instead of driving back and forth across town several times a day trying to get the materials and the tools that he needs as things come up, he'd have it right with him, the majority of it. I know he'd still have to go out to Ace or Menards or wherever, but, or the lumber yards, but it would be readily accessible. With that increased growth, we have contractors hired that do snow removal. The snow removal is paid by the projects that receive the service, but there's always extra cleanup and things that need to be done, and he'd be able to zip in there with a pickup and push that snow out of the way if something gets missed or there's an issue two days later, different things that come up. And so that's why I was asking for a vehicle. We're housing division, and forgive me, Lyle, I think we're usually at the end. We get the last resort vehicles handed down to us.

I can talk about the vehicles here a little bit. Oftentimes those vehicles get passed down from division to division. By the time that we sell at an auction, there's about every ounce of life that's come out of it available. And surprisingly enough, we've been selling some of those on a website called GovDeals. GovDeals.com for everybody tuning in at home. That's where we sell them. And we've sold them almost from coast to coast. People will come and pick these things up. Started around the COVID time. Fleet will and the fleet maintenance folks do that.

It's surprising. Actually, there's a new market starting up right now with pickups, especially work trucks, because the new cost of a truck has gotten to a certain point that it's actually become cheaper to rebuild new brakes, new motor, new tranny, rebuild the truck. And then you've got almost essentially brand new truck because the technology from 20 years ago hasn't changed much for the computer systems are putting in trucks. Right. So on work trucks, you're seeing, at least in my industry, you're seeing some of that just going and rebuilding. That's just, you're not spending that much, you know, so. Just something to consider. The industry is moving that way because nobody can afford an $80,000 truck.

Yeah. So we try and get every ounce of life out of it we can. If that means a trickle-down effect from one division to another, we try and do that to the best of our ability. Sometimes they're just not available.

It's actually, what it does, well, in my industry, it works out better because now you've got a truck that's totally depreciated out and the value's kind of stuck here. Now you just rebuild it. And it's actually holding its value better than the newer ones when you drive off a lot. So it's thrown out there. It's something that's changing in the industry because of the cost. So something to think about.

Yes, any questions? We also generate income that comes back in. I've got in there anticipated for this year. Obviously, all we know right now is January through, well, July, June. at this point, and so it's about $250,000 that we bring back in through the Section 8 management fees, and then management fees for all those projects we manage. And as that grows, then more will come back into the city. There's incentive management fees. We just cut a check to the city for 5,000 and some odd dollars here last month. We got an incentive management fee on one of the tax credits. The neighbor work zones, they gave us 60% of the incentive management fee, which was nice. So that got sent to the city in that, but about $250,000 approximately will come in after Benjaminville is built.

Rita, you mentioned before that you need like one employee per 100 units is maybe an average. What's the number of units that we need to take care of?

So 258, I put on the front just to give you all the different projects and kind of give you the numbers, but 258 of those are Section 8 vouchers, which he has to go do the inspections, him or Julie. It's usually him unless he's not there. But the remaining 441 minus 258, that would be the remaining units, which is well over 100 units. And with the growth that we're experiencing, if you want me to continue, growing because I've got developers that want to come in and work with us. It's just increasing the load. Sometimes I think new, it sounds like you're building new, but new isn't always perfect. It's what I've learned with doing all these projects and things. Everybody thinks it means everything's just going to operate perfectly and it doesn't always. There's always little surprises that you can't anticipate. We get calls, whether it's the older projects from the 70s or we get more of those, but then we get them from the newer ones too from time to time.

Rita, this is kind of outside the budget question, but how often do you get where people can't afford their rent and you have to evict or get behind on rent? Do you have something that helps them stay in there to kind of get caught up?

So we don't have any emergency housing funding, anything like that. Generally, housing authorities don't. After COVID, the federal government came up with emergency housing vouchers. A lot of big cities like New York's, Los Angeles and that, it was kind of the way to help keep people housed in those big cities. I think the more rural communities, Nebraska, many of the communities in Nebraska didn't apply because they had enough vouchers available that they didn't need the funding like those cities experienced in that. We get calls from time to time on, I'm being evicted, what can you do for me? And at that point, when people wait to the point that they're being evicted, there's nothing. If they're out in the public in a unit, there's nothing we can do to help them. But if they get on our wait list, they think things are not going well, let's get on the wait list six months ahead, we might be able to help you if you're income eligible for the program. We're kind of the last resort, but then I think people wait till that crisis situation arrives, and then by then it's too late for us to be able to help, but we're the last resort before homelessness many times.

We'll do a little research on the rent. It could be an NH and over-cousing agency thing too, but let us dig into that and we'll bring something back next time we discuss.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Any other questions from the public for housing? Then we will move on to item number 21, the CDBG budget.

Well, in the CDBG budget, there's not a lot of activity this year. We were previously awarded a downtown revitalization grant for 435,000. This grant is still in process. We're budgeting to receive the remaining 90,000 on the grant this year. This grant is for facade improvement projects and infrastructure improvements downtown. So included in this budget is 400,000 of grant income and expense in case we decide to apply for another grant during the year. This 400,000 and the remaining downtown revitalization grant of 90,000 are the only grants that we have budgeted. We're also budgeting to spend the 200,000 of program income that is available, so then our ending balance will be zero. Is there any questions on this fund?

Your mic.

Sorry. Anybody have any questions on item number 21? All right. So that would conclude tonight's review. Do we want to do a short talk? I guess everybody kind of knows what we're doing tomorrow. It'll be the same sort of... And that is at 3 o'clock, correct? 4 o'clock. 4 o'clock. Why do we have 3 and 4? Did we have 3 tonight? No. I swear to God I saw 4.

You were here for another meeting.

Well, I know. That's true. I was here for a meeting. Maybe I just got screwed up. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for coming out, and thanks for presenting. And any other questions before we go? Going once? All right. Call it a day.