Remarks by Erik Altmann
304 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 13
“Well, I'd like to see that personally. So that sounds like a deeper dive on the cash flow issue, essentially, right? That seems to make a lot of sense if we have the time to do that. Unless our CFO suggests otherwise.”
“And so you would consider the difference between scenarios three and four to be at the level of giving guidance as opposed to passing a motion?”
“But you are waiting for, we, there is a formal motion that we need to adopt, right? Which,”
“So we could have this on the agenda for next week, which would give you the go-ahead to continue the planning, right, essentially. And then we could be prepared by November 17th to give the final guidance about the structure. assuming we have some more information about how to do that. So I lean toward this idea of planning around what the budget will bear, recognizing that there are trends that we can predict that will have a substantial effect on the budget, and if we can structure the debt service to be complementary to those predicted changes, I think that makes a lot of sense to me.…”
“So just to put on the record where I'm leaning at this point, of the options before us here, I'm back to preferring three for the reasons that our CFO indicated, but sort of a hybrid five that was an even tighter match to our budget projections makes sense if there's time to develop that before the 17th of November is my thinking. But if people want to weigh in, now's the time to weigh in.”
“I have one last question. Steve, you had mentioned, and this went over my head a little bit, you'd given a scenario where there was a $10 million bond and a 4.5% interest rate, and that meant $450,000 that we weren't spending. Was that assuming 4.5% difference between”
“Okay. Good. So do we have, I think, sufficient direction for our next business meeting and then November to weigh in on details of the structure? Are we all comfortable with where we're at? Yep. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the presentation. Next item is a pretty natural segue, the Financial Health Review Committee's final report, CFO Kincaid.”
“And I'd like to welcome the chair of the Financial Health Review Committee to the table. And thank you and your team for all your work.”
“So the recommendation is that the city report all fire protection related expenditures. Are there other things that we're not reporting?”
“Okay. Jill, is that something that came up in the discussion about are there things that may be slipping through the cracks?”
“Okay, thanks. Okay, sorry to interrupt, please.”
“But that is an issue, right? Because if the DDA changes, right, then they, and that would wreak havoc with a position that takes a long time to recruit, and you want to keep the people there, you know, in perpetuity, right? So that is an issue.”
“I mean, for my part, we spend money on a lot of things. And our legal budget is a pretty small proportion of that. So I'm not sure why we're focusing on that as opposed to focusing on other things. And I want to try to steer us away from the idea that our legal costs are a problem, because I don't think we're thinking about that right when people sort of make that allegation. I think, you know, we spend the money we need to spend to get good legal advice that saves us from a lot of other problems. So at some level I'm not opposed to, you know, making our expenditures transparent and obvious,…”
“So we probably will want to cycle back to this, but I do have a question now while we're here, which is about the change from 60% pension funding to 60% long-term liabilities. So my question about that is, long-term liability is a pretty broad category, right? It could include, for example, bond debt, right? I'm not sure how that's going to play, because it opens the door while we can just borrow a bunch of money on bonds and then pay it off with the income tax. If the focus was really on paying off the OPEB, couldn't we just change the wording from retirement liabilities to retirement and…”
“Yep. And then the other question I had about the OPEB issue. So I understand that if we fully funded OPEB, then a switch turns on, and then we can pay current benefits out of planned proceeds, right? Do I understand that correctly? Out of the trust. Out of the trust. And that money would presumably... income earned on the investment that would then be spun off to help pay for the actual benefits. We can only do that once we have it fully funded. Up to that point, we have to just keep contributing and then pay the benefits out of a separate pool. Am I understanding that correctly?”
“But we can't draw until we're fully funded? I don't believe so, no. OK. So that's some sort of statutory thing that says we can't. Yeah. So suppose I almost got the sense from the discussion at the meeting and also from the report that as it stands right now, we're sort of wasting money, but I just want to check my understanding here. Because I don't think we are. So if we could in principle fund OPEB with a bond, and we talked about this way back when as one of the options first time around. So suppose we decided to do that, then we would pay off the bond with the money that we would…”
“It would have savings to the budget. Correct.”
“Right. And the whole point is to get it fully funded so that we don't have to keep making those payments. Right. Right. That's sort of the whole point. Okay. Right. Just wanted to check my understanding.”
“No, and I wasn't thinking about that. I just wanted to use that as an example of paying two different ways. You're paying the same thing.”
“Audrey, you were going to respond to some of these points, Steve's question about the...”
“So the last time we did this, there was sort of a two-pronged effort. There was the city manager-led effort, and he worked tirelessly giving presentations in the community from people's living rooms to larger audiences. And so that was about nuts and bolts and the facts. And that was something that the city could do. And then there was a separate organization, which was a campaign committee. And that was something that the city couldn't do. I mean, we could do that. as residents and we did that but it was sort of a two-pronged approach and it wasn't and then there was fire right and to some…”
“So that does seem like it's sort of squarely in the purview of the city manager's scope, but that's then another thing, you know, and we're engaged in a search. And I think that's probably an ongoing discussion that we have to assign high priority to? Council Member Singh, did you have?”
“Okay. So I think, um, The conversation about the income tax needs to be sort of a continuing thing, I think, moving forward. And this isn't going to be the last time we talk about it at council. But I appreciate your words about how the horizon is shrinking.”
“challenge I think whether it starts in earnest before that I think is up to us and maybe it's an ongoing conversation it depends on what our time horizon is right we have to think in terms of elections which election is are we going to do this and if you know we pick an election then we work backwards and that's maybe something we all need to be thinking about right now”
“I'm sorry, I had a question about number five, the talent incubator. So I didn't quite understand that recommendation. Jill, could you elaborate a little bit?”