Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, and welcome to the March 16 meeting of the Olympia City Council Finance Committee. It's 04:30PM, and I'll call the meeting to order. Roll call. We have all three committee members with council member Kelly Green and council member Robert Vanderpool joining me, Clark Gilman. We have an agenda to approve.

I'll move to approve the agenda. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for tonight. All in favor, say aye.

Aye. Okay.

We have an agenda. Is there anybody signed up

for public comment this evening? There's no one signed up for personal public comment,

and nobody registered on Zoom for public comment. Thank you, Sean. Okay. The next item is to consider approving the minutes from the February 23 meeting of the finance committee. So moved. Second. All in favor of approving the minutes, say aye. Aye. Wonderful. And this brings us to the first item of committee business this evening, an update on the waste resources Carpenter Road facility.

And, Debbie, do you have any introductory comments for this? I do not. Well, then we will call on public works director Mark Russell to kick off the presentation, and you can introduce Ron and Thanh and your attorney and anybody on the. Yeah.

Welcome to the finance committee.

For the record, I'm Mark Russell, public works director.

And with me is Ron Jones, our interim waste resource director. And behind me is Tom Jeffers, the deputy director of. Thanks for having us.

I'm here tonight to talk to you about our

Carpenter Road waste resource maintenance facility project. So with that, our agenda is we've been working on this project for a very long time, many, many years, actually, as as I'm sure some of you know. So I'll give you some background, kinda catch us all up on where we've been, and talk about the Carpenter Road facility itself, go over the latest project process in it, including potential debt payments and the rate implications of that debt payment, and then discuss next steps with the project. Hope you're okay with that agenda? Alright.

Super. So let's next slide, please. Thanks. Just to ground everyone, I know you've all been to the maintenance center on Eastside Street because that's a aerial of the picture. And that building is almost 50 years old. It was the previous transit maintenance facility. It is no longer efficient for the operations crews that work out of that facility. They've outgrown the space dramatically. Major systems and building deficiencies exist. They're at the end of their useful life.

There's challenging environmental conditions. As you can see, we have at Moxley Creek on one side of the property. There's wetlands in the middle of the property. So there's just some environmental and stormwater challenges on the site. There's also steep slopes around the perimeter, so there's really not a lot of space we can use around it.

And the facility itself, the main building does not meet any seismic requirement. So if there were an earthquake, it would greatly hamper our response. We would be working twenty four hours a day. If that building collapsed or had something some major damage during the earthquake, it would really hamper our our response to the community. So previous building condition assessments have estimated that it would cost about $15,000,000 to do the needed repairs and renovations, and that also includes addressing the environmental concerns on the site and the storm water concerns on the site.

So that's a picture of our existing facility. Next slide, please. So given those challenges of the current site, the city hired a consultant back in 2017 to help identify solutions. They looked at renovating the existing building or rebuilding on the current site. They evaluated eight alternative sites citywide, including private property, and found that they could not meet our needs due to challenging environmental conditions, conflicts with adjacent land uses, and just higher value perspective private development needs that those properties can do.

So really, we didn't find anything, any other site in the city that would meet our needs. So the consultant, I'm really summarizing this. This went on for, as you can imagine, for years, actually. The consultant concluded that most cost effective course of action was to relocate waste resources, operations to a new facility at the city owned site on Carpenter Road, which you may know as the former fire and rain that was used by. You don't have to place department as well as the county.

Once we went so that would be the first phase the project. Once we did that, we would then build a new maintenance center to support the rest of public works operations on the existing Site 3 because it would have less staff there, less equipment there, and it would allow us to be able to use the space effectively with the remaining public works operations and maintenance there. Next slide, please. So just to give you some relative locations, the triangle there on the left is the existing maintenance center on Eastside Street. The Carpenter Road site is actually near the Martin Way and Carpenter Road intersection.

It's in Thurston County and Lacey's urban growth area. And the reason this site works is the proximity to the waste and recovery center,

which is showing off the far left far right, sorry,

off Marvin Road. And so our trucks, as they're going to empty it, they're driving right by the site. So they have to go from the city out to the work and then back. And so it actually is is somewhat on the way. So that's why it works for Rates Resources and not necessarily any other if not part of the works operations.

It is a race out there, but there was some strategy to that. Let's see. Next slide, please. So in 2020, we hired an engineering firm, KPFF, to develop a conceptual design and help us with site preparation. Now the key features are listed there.

We have staff offices. It would be ready for future electric vehicle charging since Race Resources trucks aren't the technology isn't quite there yet. It would have a truck wash station. It'd have covered for our waste collection vehicles and storage for container inventory. We'd also move our medium and heavy fleet maintenance out to this side so we'd have some fleet bays, mainly because waste resources, the bulk of we have other heavy duty vehicles, but the bulk of the heavy duty vehicles at public works really do belong to waste resource, so it makes sense to have that adjacency.

But our other heavy duty vehicles like our tractor trucks and our dump trucks would still go out to that site to have their remnants done. Now the existing location would retain might do the vehicle maintenance, the police vehicles, the cars, and the pickup trucks, and those types of vehicles. So what would that building on-site support? There would be approximately 40 public work staff would be housed in this facility, 20 collection vehicles, and seven support vehicles. We need a lot of space for large collection vehicles and container inventory.

In fact, our container inventory is spread out through multiple sites across the city. So we actually do need about one and three quarter acres to store our various containers and provide enough space for vehicles to maneuver to drop them off, pick them up.

So it isn't just the site to store them.

You've got a little bit of around to to place them and pick them up. And you can see how many carts and drop boxes and dumpsters would be stored out of the site that are currently at, you know, three different sites around around the city now. We try to consolidate that into one place. So since then, we've made significant progress for the new lease resources maintenance facility on Carpenter Road. We've completed the preliminary design concept or what I recall 10% design on the project.

We have received land use approval from Thurston County. The old firing range on the site has been demolished, which you can see in the pictures. It no longer exists there. And we've completed site remediation, and it was also approved by the Department of Ecology. Currently, mild sand and gravel is removing rock material under an agreement with the city. You may remember that agreement. It really helps us. It's a win win. It saves us money in grading the site, but it also gives them some rock material that they can use for their production as well. It was really a win win agreement.

So by the end of this year, we expect the site to be shuttle ready. It's like I said, the environmental work has been done. The colleges approved it, and the site is basically ready to move forward. So now the numbers. So big.

Just to warn you. This is the project cost estimate. As As you can see, construction is about $33,500,000, and that includes things like site development, constructing the building that I pictured earlier, furnitures, fixtures, and equipment contained within the building. As I mentioned, heavy duty fleet would be out there, so it also includes the equipment for them to do maintenance, and a truck wash station would be included in that price. As you know, we always carry a 10% contingency on a project.

For bid award, it's required. And certainly at this stage, it's needed. So that's we reached just over three twenty. Do have a question?

How recent are these numbers?

These are updated this year. This year. Yeah. So these are not from 2020. These we have the consultants update them to present hours or today's office.

And and just to clarify, while the plan is to also replace the East Side Center, this is only a budget for the Carpenter Lake facility. That's correct. That's correct. So this

is the cost for that. My big picture estimate for them building on the East Side Side would be probably be another $50,000,000 to build that building on that East Side Street side. So this one's about 40,000,000. Mhmm. And then once that's done, we transition waste resources over to Carpenter Road.

Because of the condition of the facility there, we would tear it down and then develop a maintenance center for the rest of public works that you know about 50,000,000. We haven't done near the work, though, at just a high level use, you know, what what are our how big would SAP be and all that kind of stuff. Been on the wish list for your whole career. Been talking about this for a long time. Of course, we have design, construction management, inspection fees.

Also, we have permitting and fees from the county and and connection fees. So all the fees would soft cost, as you may be aware of, were about 3,800,000.0. So total cost for this facility, we're estimating at this time, is just over $40,000,000. Digest that for just a minute. So next slide.

So, obviously, waste resources, does not have $40,000,000 laying around. So we've worked with Mike and his team on what a potential debt obligation package would look like for that type of a project. So we ran the numbers for a $40,000,000 debt. And over thirty years, the payment would be $3,000,000 a year. So that would so if we increase waste resources expenses by $3,000,000 a year, that would equate to roughly a 24% rate increase on just the waste resources part of the utility bill, which I acknowledge is significant.

It does not include normal annual increases in expenses and other regulatory things, no wages, benefits, when the tipping fees that the waste and recovery center go up. It doesn't include any of that. This would really reset our baseline for the utility. So if you took the 2026 bimonthly rate for an average customer, This for 2026, it's about $65 every two months. That would raise to 81. We just reset that to that level. And so that at '27 or '28 as expenses rise, we

have our normal inflationary expenses on top. For comparison, what was

our increase last year? Our increase last year was about three or four it was 7%, but

it was about 3 or $4.

4%.

4% increase. Yeah. I wanna say it was,

like, in the $3.57 or anything.

Yeah. That's 4%. Our typical increases are in that three to five. You know, sometimes it's a little higher. I'm gonna talk about that on another side, but we have been increasing rates slowly over time to to just do the work we've done today for remediation work, the initial.

So any other questions on this side? Alright. So next steps would be because the site is shovel ready, would be to move forward with the design. As I said, we've been setting aside money in utilities capital for years to be able to do this. So we do have the money in the utility to be able to start and almost finish this side.

What Mike and his team did was really a high level look at that. So if we were gonna move forward with this in any detail, we'd want to look at that in much more detail of debt package and our funding plan around that in more detail instead of just high level numbers. And then we'd also need to look at proposing a rate increase over time. Certainly, we don't wanna jump rates to 24% in one year, so we would want to phase that in over time until we wanna start looking at what that might look like over time. So those are our proposed next steps.

So with that, Ron and I are here to facilitate the discussion and answer any questions you might have. I know that was a lot to take in. There's a lot of. So we can certainly.

So the

debt package on this 40,000,000 would be about 3,000,000 annually. And then when it was constructed, I assume we'd have to do the the same for it to redo a maintenance center. So that would be 3 and a half, 4,000,000 annually. So between the the two of them?

Yes. Depending on what the rates are at the time as Mark said, we'll go out and that's what he wants to do with your more specific information. This is a revenue back, yeah, though, for this particular project because it's backed by our ability to raise rates to guarantee that. Whereas a maintenance facility will likely be a different direction that we need to go. We

had capacity in counseling. Although we do have the water utilities there.

True. Yeah. So some of that Yeah. How

many waste customers do we have?

Residentially, right around just over 16,000, residentially. I would say that's really households. Billing customer is a little bit different number, but that's the household number.

So, Ron, does that include multi family? Because because that's the other 10,000 households.

And Right. That's another 10,000. So, no, that's a single family household. So this little bit of extra details. Like, a trailer park might have, say, 270 homes in it. That might end up being one billing customer, but we bill them 270 individual customers. But it does not include the multifamily mixed use where you're in apartment complexes, some of the smaller eight and twelve unit complexes, condominiums where they're treated more like they're really a commercial garbage customer, but they are producing residential type waste. And that is another nine to ten thousand in that range.

Questions right now? Not just a second. I was just doing some quick math. Well, let's

let's do math, and we'll we'll give Robert a chance for a second.

Yeah. It's quite a quite a number.

Let me and I'm gonna we just you asked this earlier, but I just the is this the new facility cost estimate? This is for the the the new facility. Right? Correct. This is not for renovating the current facility. Correct. That is just the new facility. Okay. And that you said that was 50,000,000?

No. My some original estimates, you know, years ago for Ben Billing on side street side for the rest of public works would be around 50,000,000.

To to to work on the current facility versus building a new one.

No. That would be we always that would

the basically, close to a

100,000,000 altogether. Altogether. It's a $100,000,000. Yeah. That's And,

yeah, we would we would keep the we would be doing we'd be building a new facility, but keeping the the original facility at the same time

for capacity purposes? Or

No. We would. Because the facility is in such bad shape and sold because of bias that it's not worth putting any more money into it. So we would build a new facility on the existing side. We have to work out the logistics. Can we move those operations somewhere else? While it's being built, can we build on the other part of the facility and that move staff into that and then tear tear down the other kind of switch around what's being used for lay down. But we haven't worked out on any of those logistics of

how we

would do it. But something like that would have to occur, you know, because we have to continue operations quality. So

raise resources, let's say, where we're at now and then move out to Kirk And River. Okay. So there would public works in general would still be in

the original site. Yes.

And then they would be a. Okay. I guess, the other the question I have here is because this is such a long amount of time with a lot of money being tied up, are there any other equipment facilities upgrades that need to be done between in the next thirty years since we're tied into this? You know? That's the only question I have. It's like, it's a $100,000,000, but I'm also thinking about what else needs to be replaced between now and thirty years from now. Right? Does that does any of this estimate include some I see that there is newer stuff in here, but I don't see vehicles, other that eventually need to replaced.

No. This is just the facility. So vehicles would be treated the same way as that they are now with the utility about replacement over time. And then based on their life cycle, This new building would have to be worked into our building and then during and have typical maintenance done for it over time. We certainly could not do anything on it for thirty years, so we would have to keep it current.

Just like city hall, it's about fifteen years old, and there's still work that we have to do on this building to keep it operational and and make it last fifty years that it would be intended to last or more, hopefully. So so, yeah, there would be ongoing renovations renovations, repairs, and maintenance that that people need to. Yeah.

That's quite a shocking amount of number number of I mean, my recommendation is just to that brings the.

We're just getting information. I know.

I know. But just so everyone else

is informed because this is

quite quite a bit. Mhmm.

I don't know if you have chance to do it. Oh, no.

Go ahead,

please. So I think I know the answer to this question, but I wanna ask anyway. A facility of this size and complexity, complexity. Do all of the cities in our area have this? Like, how do cities of our size or even a little smaller, like, manage this type of expense on a thirty, fifty year Mhmm.

Basis? It's a good question. Yes. They have maintenance facilities. Some are they're they're smaller, so then they don't need as much stuff.

Some cities very solid waste, though. Yeah.

Some cities don't have solid waste, so that's what you're getting at. Yeah. Some cities do not have collect solid waste like they do. They they privatize that. So then their public works might be smaller than that, but they all have some sort of maintenance facility that depending on the the services they provide is how big that needs to be and what type of equipment needs stored. To But to answer your question, not all cities collects all the wood. That

that was where my brain is. Okay.

Has there has there been any, to jump off that question, has there ever been any thoughts as to joint costs shared with the county or Lacey or any of our other partners on stuff like this? Because they also have to go through this. If you're talking about maintenance facilities, repair and replacement. Yeah.

No. We haven't looked at a regional facility Okay. In this particular endeavor. Again, MIC and and Tumwater contract with a private waste hauler to do their waste resources, but they still have the same drinking water and transportation, all the rest of public works functions. But, no, we have not.

Lacey recently moved into or expanded into a maintenance center in the last twenty years. They did that. I'm not sure what Townwater does. Okay. But there's I know that a county built a new facility out on the utility room. Yeah.

Yeah. Townwater's got plans for a

new facility on Trails End Drive that live right next to it, the old riding arena. So they purchased that property. They've had

it for years. They have plans for main new maintenance facility there because it's on their own. In

the Johns Prairie. There's a beautiful maintenance facility out there. Sheldon's. So are there any other South Sound cities that have their own waste collection?

Rainier had garbage service for a while. I'm not sure where

they sit now. Most of

the cities well, Irving Grove or the unincorporated county, and most of the cities just default to UTC regulatory oversight. And there are just a couple cities that do contracts. That's Yelman, I think, and I know that none of them provide municipal services. But depending on the numbers, like, 29 maximum cities in

the state of Washington will provide municipal service like like this.

We're do Tacoma, Marysville, Mount Vernon, Spokane, Cheney. There's a gamut of size to

Inhamclaw. Yeah. I just wanted to think about that, that we're within a minority of cities doing waste collection

right now.

And so I I'm also trying to think about the the East Side Center. This is well, these this project started just as I came on council, the year after I joined council. And at that time, all of council and all of executive staff had recently had tours through the east side center ten years ago to say, look. This thing's falling down around our ears. What, you know, what might be done?

And so I both hear really big numbers, and I also know that the numbers are bigger now than they were ten years ago, and we couldn't figure out a path Mhmm. Ten years ago to get to it. And it's gonna be a little bit complicated because I think your question was leading to some of it is utility, and we can use utility rate increases. And some of it is general fund, operations that we'll have to find mechanism. I think as Joan mentioned, but there are a couple of but we'd essentially have to go after new revenue to fund a a portion of that and a portion of it we could we could charge.

So that's that's something I would and and and just to add that it's not completely in this room, but it's, like, right outside the door is that Parks and Rec also has a very modest physical facility for their maintenance. And there were dreams early on about combining and cons at the point of rebuilding East Side of also providing parts and rec some space, and and there's a lot of cooperation between parts maintenance folks and roads maintenance people. We we already have sort of a bleeding across it. So I just I just wanted to add that to what's already a a messy conversation is that we wanna provide safe and efficient spaces for our staff to work. We have a wetland issue that have you toured the east side east side maintenance center?

No. It'd be a good tour to take.

I've done. You can I

know the area? So so the the footprint is constrained by The freeway? Yeah. Well, by the freeway, but but also because it's wet. Mhmm. It's I guess, I don't know which term of art or which old fashioned inappropriate word there is, but it's wet. Mhmm. That's so so I'm I'm thinking about that also that there's a there's there would be environmental benefit to to taking that project out. So

I yeah.

I I don't know. I think Robert's right. It's like, how how do you raise a $100,000,000 conversation even though it's multiple funding sources, multiple

buildings?

With solid waste, when so, so, you know, we're just coming out of conversations around fire department, capital. Trucks need to be replaced, is that on the same revenue? Like, let's say in a few years, we need to replace a handful of trucks. Would that also look at, like, additional rate increase on top of an increase we'd need to do to build this facility?

Not necessarily new rate increases because we're setting aside money every year for those now as part of the existing rates.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. We play into a re replacement.

Don't you? Yeah. We wanna make sure that,

yeah, we can go right now to that too

for the deflationary cost and making sure sometimes you you might come up small amount short, but it's not a huge chunk. But we try to plan for that,

so we're covering that. On a

life cycle, it might be seven or ten years.

So that would be included in in the system. That would probably be in the normal three to five or 6% on an annual basis if those costs continue to rise. Now certainly converting to electric when that kind comes from the technology because Advance far enough to do heavy duty vehicles like this, then that's something we need to consider because we have not been setting aside funds for for electric vehicles of the sizes. More than likely double the price of the, so we're

not putting aside that kind of. Yeah. Did did the initial engineering and scoping look at the availability of enough power

to that little stub of Carpenter out there? We haven't gotten into that yet, though, yet. My assumption is we should be brought in at this. For a price, of course. Yeah. Yeah. For a price.

Yeah. And, like, were they on the contingency? Or

Right. I I just I was it's with intercity transits looking at zero emissions bleed. Hydrogen. Well, hydrogen, but but the the bringing electricity was essentially like bringing in a substation like Saint Jude hospital pass. I mean, it was it it's it's a considerable load to do 20 heavy vehicles that run every day all day.

So I was just and I know it's kinda neither here nor there, but it but I I I do think as we consider sites that we wanna if we're making them EV ready, sure that it's not kinda have a last mile issue, that it's a real expensive additional transmission service.

Question may not have an answer, but but what is option b? I mean, I I'm just like, I'm sitting here with heartburn over, like, looking at, like, electricity and, you know, utility costs everywhere when we're talking double digits and double double you know, into the twenties like that. I'm just really struggling with that. And I, like, I I 100%, you know, I understand how we got here, where we are, where we need to be. Like, don't question any of that.

I just worry, you know, if an estimate today is $40,000,000, by the time we actually went to debt package and actually started construction, the inflation on that, the rate that construction is is increasing right now, 40 doesn't feel like a safe number to me. So I feel like this is all low and still rests on a very large rate increase.

Really, after the consultant looked at everything, they're really it's if we're gonna maintain the solid waste business, there really isn't another level option other than building a new bill to maintain the solid waste collection. You know, there are other alternatives, but as far as maintaining that service, I don't think there's another viable option. It's the existing maintenance center. It's just without.

Your your question makes me think about sort of where is the tipping point that might actually change people's behavior around waste and recycling? And part of me my my hope gets up with gas over $5 a gallon, but maybe it changes behaviors. And similarly, I'm like, 24%. But then I think so it's a bimonthly bill. That means about $10 a month per household.

And I don't know that $10 a month would be enough of a disruption that it would spur people to say, well, we should greatly reduce the amount of solid waste we create, or we should have some regional recycling. I I I just I because that that would be my dream was that we weren't hauling so much, especially with diminishing opportunities for glass and mixed paper to be actually recycled. But but I my my sense is that people would would be more inclined to pay $10 a month more and keep the garbage trucks rolling than to figure out how to dramatically decrease to once a month pickup or small small tenth or whatever. You know? I just Sure.

But I appreciate your dream, but I feel like even if people did that, like, let's say Yeah. Half of the 16,000 household was reduced, the bond payment is still gonna be the same. So then rates on

the other half are gonna have

to go up to I I meant rather than expanding, what if we stopped Gotcha. We didn't provide an alternative, and we just said, if you do more than a five gallon bucket of garbage, you're on your own to go out to Oxford. I mean, you know, that but I I I don't I think this is a highly valued utility. It's one that's had strong customer satisfaction in our surveys. So so that that's it's just a challenge for me.

The people are happy with the service. It's gonna be expensive to continue to maintain it. But I and I I just I dreamed that it would be a tipping point where we'd say, what are we doing bringing all of this garbage through our, you know, through our lives? But I guess I anyhow, I'm I'm talking out loud because that's I I wondered as I looked at a $100,000,000, well, is this a time to to dramatically change how we manage our infrastructure and and how we haul our waste? I think probably not. Vehicle miles traveled are increasing. Yeah. I

I also think about, you know, playing devil's advocate here. People are gonna you know, some people would be like, you're raising your your rates. Mhmm. And you still I still can't recycle glass. Right? Sure. I will hear that from people. Sure. And I will also hear, oh, PSE's also raising rates. Like, what's you know what I mean? And it's you know, I I fear people feeling nickeled and dined in a in a in a in a bad economy. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And understanding that. Right?

I heard on the news that the economy is getting really good. Oh, wow. I don't know. Because the because the oil is expensive. Well, we just said everything's going great. So Yeah. A part another part of this is time frame

Uh-huh.

That that we there's both some time before we would need the 50 or the additional $50,000,000, and there's a potential of phasing in the rate increases. So it's not all at once we start collecting Mhmm. The equivalent of that that bond repayment. So that anyhow, in in terms of because I know in this particular moment, PSC rate increases are getting a lot of conversations. But but that's that's another I think another piece to consider is that this is something that has been in the works for more than a decade and will take a minute to to implement. Right? So

Well, I would counter that just a little bit in that it has already been in conversation for ten years. And even while it feels like we've got a little bit of time, it also feels like this piece is required to start thinking seriously about the maintenance facility. So this has to go or or, you know, first. So say even in a really optimistic time frame, couple of years to construct a facility like this at that scale.

Yeah. We would probably if we start a design now, it would probably take a couple of years to get everything ready to go and then probably, you know, eighteen months to two years. So so we're we're probably looking if everything went perfectly, you know, four years before we move.

That's okay. So I wasn't I wasn't trying to take away from the urgency, but I'm saying that the impact might come across five years. And it would it would be a increase in rates, but it could be leveled up across five years rather than being a a sudden sudden shock.

I guess other quest other thoughts I have is, there other cities in the situation as which has been brought up already, but are there, like, grant programs from the state? Is there is there some sort of way to come up with, you know, at least a portion of this that isn't through bonds? Right? Is there any sort of, like, general government way or for the state process to help fund some of this? Because it seems like such a huge amount of money that it almost feels like the state is the only body I can think of that come up with

this money and and sort of.

Right now, it's a little weird place, but that's the only thing I can think of. Right? Is there anything that there any any programs that exist?

I'm not aware of any grant out there Yeah. For this type of little facility. There might be some small ones to like, we've got solar panels on the road Mhmm. For the electrification part of it. But I'm not aware of any grants to go on this type of infrastructure. There might be all I think that It's always it's not guaranteed that in the public works trust fund loans, but that's what I do, but it's a loan. It's not it's not a grant. So there's still so there's some loan. And that's why if if we move forward, you know, this is look at a a funding plan in more detail.

I have so many questions.

I know. There's a lot.

I know. Have we in the time that either of you have been here, have we had a conversation or had a conversation with the community about us not providing this as a service? I mean, I'm hearing, like, the folks around us do not do municipal management of this. What have we ever asked that question?

Not in the twenty years that I've

been here. We haven't

had that conversation, but I do understand prior to that, it it came up from and maybe Ron should should talk about this. So what my understanding is it came up from the chamber concerned about commercial rates and commercial solid waste. And so there was a a discussion then about it, about prioritizing that part of solid waste. And I think they figured out how to make some things that made the chamber happy with with but I think

that was, what, twenty five, thirty years ago.

1994. So before my time, I came on in '98. And when I started in '98, they were implementing the change that was necessary. Yeah. It was over the commercial garbage rates, as I understand, getting that fixed. And so we worked in '98 to fix some residential. It was about the subsidizing and cross subsidize, which is really hard in salt waste.

I think every even private sectors do that, but it's hard to keep it in clean boxes running. So Yeah. So then we we did

a bunch of work on commercial in 2004, and then, well, then again on residential in 2003. So we've made a number of adjustments along the way in efficiencies to to maintain. Yeah. The council at that time, yeah, chose to maintain municipal collections. So we've been in municipal since, I think, it was 1937.

And, Ron, could you describe the mix of municipal and private collection that happens downtown? We have so so we have all the garbage collection.

So that's kind of the way the state law is set up. You can either hands off, which is you can call it under the UTC for rate setting. So that would be Lacey, Tumwater, the unincorporated, and some of the other city, Dakota. Or you can do it municipally, or you can contract out. So you that establishes garbage territory. So, like, Lemay has the garbage territory for all of Thurston County except Olympia, and the two cities that contract over the provide that service for those two cities as well. So we have all the garbage. Commercial recycling is open competitive market, so we can't full control that. So that is open. We have always just you know, it makes sense to have LeMay provide that service as opposed to us competing with LeMay because our recycling flows through Lemay anyway.

So it just makes sense that way. So downtown, we're collecting the garbage. Lemay would be collecting the commercial recycling with the exception of a few little places where we do it in, like, a drop box. That's a very big thing or with the residential multifamily. We provide multifamily recycling to all we provide it to all of them take it, not necessarily through the taken off. You know? So it's kind of the downtown and really the rest of the city. Mhmm.

Are there any questions that you or or parts of this that you hope they'll continue to pursue before we hear about it again, counsel?

I mean, personally, I'd be very interested in counsel hearing about privatization options. Mhmm. And that would be you know, I don't love that conversation, but I feel like I'm still a little raw from our budget last year and having to look so hard for a million dollars, one point, whatever. You know? So to think about numbers like this plus the maintenance facility plus and I and I recognize that this is on on revenue. So Mhmm. I get that. And I agree with you. I think, you know, $10 over two months. But but, again, I just feel like just $40,000,000 is realistically a lowball.

Or I guess that's just where my head is at in this day and age where inflation is happening so fast. So for me, I just would be curious of, like, is there a viable alternative? And it might not be good. It might not be the right one,

but I feel like I'd rather have the information then.

Because I feel like right now, it like, taking this to counsel, the option is $40,000,000 or

that's it.

So in your question, I also heard the question of whether the private callers have similar rates. Mhmm. But if if their rates are 25% more to start with, that's different than if the rates are on par with

Yeah. Yeah. No. To be clear, like, that's you know, when I'm thinking about what is the information, it's all of that. It's, like, how, you know Mhmm. The the private haulers around here are like, are are our neighboring cities happy with that? Are other cities happy with that? Or, like like, where is where is Olympia sit in the scope of, yeah, that entire landscape?

Robert, what do you think? What else would you wanna know, or what else would you know?

I think about I think it's a not a thought that I had it coming out

of what Kelly just said about the

the global on the cost. Right? I think that, you know, I was just looking at interseat transit work for this next week, and we're we're because the prices keep going up, occasionally, we'll have an agenda item that is an adjustment to something we approved last year. And so I'm very concerned about that because we're dealing with a lot of moving parts. I think having the worst case scenario in front of us about how much it would cost with with with if if inflation keeps going because, you know, we could buy something or need something that is a part of that, but because it's a million moving parts, potentially, a $100,000,000 is a lot of different things going on.

I'd be very concerned if we approve it and the public supports it, we we get, you know, we get that that that support to move forward with something like this. And then, you know, six months in, have to make an adjustment. That's really difficult for the public. You know what I mean? And I think that that's something I wanna hear a little bit about because I you know, this is asking a lot.

I'm gonna also be interested in hearing that has do you has has other cities other cities in the situation that we're in, what what have they done, which is have they gone private? How are they doing the expansion? That would be I would you know, I wanna but what are, you know, what are the things that other cities do to guarantee if they go private that the needs are being met public- for the public. Because I know that when the strike happened up in Seattle, Seattle has in their language, their contract, because I- I had a family live up in Capitol Hill, I I talked to them about it, where they where the city find the waste company, because they have that in the contract, that they have to provide the waste even if they're dealing with contract negotiations or something like that because there's a guarantee in the contract. So I I would be very interested in in seeing what protections are so that the public who are skeptical of something like this, they have something to hold on to.

Right? Because Mhmm. It has to be guarantees when you do something like that. Yeah.

Well, Mark, Ron, Todd, is there anything that either this conversation's brought up or a question we didn't ask that you were hoping we were gonna ask if you were gonna answer before we wrap up? Let me give you another chance.

No. I don't think there's a question. You have an answer. All the good questions. What are the next steps? What and I would need to probably work out with the ENTJ. But what I'm kinda hearing is a comfort level maybe coming back to the full council. Mhmm. We can find a study session or something like that to basically give this presentation to them as well and see what what direction comes out of that. Is is that a a fair next step, or do you want us to do some more homework? Or

That was my just clarification that If your direction is to go to a study session, do you want some of these questions answered before that study session? So let me maybe between the two of us, we can clarify what that is. One is what are other cities doing who are in this situation? And regarding privatization, what do others in our area do and what are their rates, cost of that? You guys jump in to get through.

I just wanna make sure we have everything covered. And I would be okay with this being an add on at the study session. For me, I don't feel like I need these answers answers before, but having that be part of this whole At a pretty high level.

Right? Yes. I agree.

Just really high level. Yeah.

So I'm hearing maybe what how our rates compare to the private callers around us. Mhmm. How much are And

what type of cost controls they have in place to maintain those rates? Is that did I hear that right?

Maintain the rates, but also, like, meet future needs of the community. Right? Because glass recycling is super important to folks, and they want us to do that. But, like, you know, what what do we what do we you know, if we're gonna go, you're gonna go, what are you gonna what are you what is the community gain from this? And how can we guarantee that it's gonna be there in the future? Mhmm.

It's open. As I respond to your glasses. I've come up a couple times. So all the glass in Pearson County, whether it's from Olympia or collected from the private sector regionally, all of those conflict deciphers. So that glass has not been recycled in

two decades, something like that.

A glass bottling plant in Seattle shut down July 2024. It will never come back. So glass recycling is really hard. It's been really hard for twenty to thirty years. We have a new state law, the product stewardship, the EPR law.

It will kick in beginning 2030. The state has seen now they've heard five times for a bottle bill or a container deposit bill. So with the EPR bill coming in 2030, that should set some things in motion to where we should see some changes with respect to recycling. We should also that gives us some way to get reimbursed for some of our costs on recycling, and that's everybody that falls statewide recycling. But this could start to change the landscape for, say, glass.

So this kind of taking it out of the collection side of things, of the curbside collection, and moving it into a product stewardship model where now the PRO, the product stewardship organization, will be responsible for making recycling happen in the state. So there's kind of like there's our collection. There's other collection, and then there's this other piece over here that's gonna help work on recycling. So I just wanna respond to that because I think there is a little bit of a I get it. It's recycling is not always easy to follow, so it can be confusing.

So I just kinda wanna respond to that. So so we're kinda on the same page. That's informative, particularly if a private organization tries to come to us and say, we will do this, this, and this. Having a having an understanding of what the actual reality is Right. Perfect. Definitely helps. Yeah. Yeah.

There's glass to glass in Portland. There's a glass name remanufacturing. There's glass that comes out of Pierce County and goes to Portland to call those glasses going to Portland. They are set up for the immediate trucking needs, And then also glass to glass is kind of at their capacity.

That's right.

They don't have space to take or capacity to take anymore. So even if we were to figure out a way to ship it out of Thurston County, they have a path to challenge in actually what we do with it. So Mhmm. Yeah.

Just because this has been a concern of mine for a long time. Yeah. The the difference between recycling and sorting your garbage and then having people pick it up and giving you a star is two different many different things. And at least at one point, a couple of years before we stopped picking up glass separate curbside Mhmm. That the the concrete recyclers who were grinding it up for roadbed material had enough.

And so we were hauling the separated we were putting the separated glass back into the garbage and hauling it off with the waste. And so it was maddening. And so I understand there's a convenience argument. People have said, well, it'll fill up my garbage bin. I create a lot of wine bottles. It should have a separate place for them to go. Right? And I that that could be a real concern. Mhmm. But but the truth is we as as Ron was describing, there just there's not an industry or a place that either refills or recasps that glass into something else right now.

So so it's, you know, it's just we need to have the crate at the gas station next to the pot machine so you drink your pot and put it back in the grate. You know? That worked fine for a long time. You know? I but I I I think that that's the recycling is is as we we I mean, both the the recycling and the the potential electrification of the fleet are two really big design and infrastructure considerations about whatever happens next with our waste utility. It's the the evolution of those two things. So yeah.

And I just wanna say that what I'm hearing from you is you just wanna put our utility in context Mhmm. Of what's happening within our region. Yeah. Right? Where do we sit with our rates, the services that we provide, and then just bring that as part of the conversation here. Then I heard a little bit about the worst case scenario regarding inflation. I don't know how

we would do that, but but seen in

the big picture of the full maintenance center cost. Did I get that right? Yeah. Can I

ask one more question about this? So we've already sent out have we started the community survey here?

No. I'm finalizing the questions now. Okay.

I just you know, not to put that in there, but I am I am I'd be curious where the public is on this.

Yeah. I think right now, you will I would think you will be better served to just understand the context of where we are right now before we jump ahead to talking with the

community about this. I just

a baby step first. Okay.

Just I I I'm curious. I'm curious. Yeah. It is something that, although it's been years in the making, I I don't think it's a thing the public isn't aware of. Yeah.

So which I'm I'm not understanding which question or which piece. Well, just

I mean, we're looking at a $100,000,000, but then versus the alternative. And I wanna know if we're dealing with these big changes, I wanna know where the public is on.

I sort of understand. Is it their their satisfaction with solid waste services that they receive?

I mean, we have Or

is it that we have to build a a maintenance center, and it'll be expensive? Or what what's what's what's the sort of feedback you're looking for?

Well, I'm well, if if is the public okay with the $100,000,000 facility versus private and the alternatives? I wanna know where people

where where the public is And and and then just to be clear. Yeah. We need either great improvements or replacement of our public works maintenance facility Mhmm. Regardless of how solid waste is handled. That's true. Yeah. So so that's that's a that's a need Mhmm. Either either way. It's not so much a a referendum or a choice for the community.

It's it's

I guess we can we can keep limping along for some period of time, but but we would serve the community better with our new public works maintenance facility.

Our community survey is asking about the level of satisfaction with our waste resources utility, and I just wanna reiterate that we've done this survey many years, and it always comes up very, very high in satisfaction about the services that we provide and the quality of what that is. I agree that if council wants to look further at this, we absolutely should do more in-depth conversations. But I think, again, just doing the high level comparison of where we sit within the region and how our rates compare would probably be a good first step. Can I add one more question on the worst case scenario? Yes, please.

Because Jared Gilman kind of has my my wheels turning with the electrical conversation in those initial estimates. Like, if you're talking about electrical capacity for, you know, say, a future fleet that has 20 trucks that that need that level, like, is that factored in, or is there any way to even ballpark what that added cost would be out of that site? Because I can't imagine that existing utilities would serve that level of electrical need because that could put a number on the construction. And and it's not to say maybe that wouldn't have to be a thing that would happen now. Maybe it's just built to allow for that in future, but I'll be curious.

I wanna say that design allowed allowed for that, but not

it's like preliminary if you will. Mhmm. Like, BV ready. Right. But it wasn't the power coming in.

Yes, And maybe that's the right place for it

to be. I'm not sure what exactly. I know that we touched on it

a little bit. So Yeah. We they didn't look at, I don't know, PSC would even estimate that unless you were serious about doing it. We could try to find out if they would give us a ballpark on that, but certainly have the building ready to take it without having to redo something on the building that was wet. Yeah. Or

Having the conduits installed. Yeah.

Within the building. Yeah. And having a place to put chargers and the conduit and all that kind of stuff. But as far as bringing the virus, it's a valid question. I just don't know, you know, who can get that unless we're ready to do it, but we can ask the question.

Could there sorry. I was just could there be some educated get from whatever IT had to do with their facility just in terms of upgrading that. I I think

what what in my experience, as as IT was looking at this, it was bringing on special energy consultants and legal advocates because you become such a large consumer of power that now you're negotiating sort of like an industrial plant. Right? You're you're not just agreeing to pay the residential rate for enough to power a fleet. So it I don't see them to have that level of conversation. No.

No. But I'm saying to get it to numbers, they're reluctant to share numbers other than they'll just give you here's the commercial cost per per kilowatt. Mhmm. And I don't know that that's really where it would end up, but it's and and it'll totally depend on how many fleets electrify and at what pace Because right now, there's not much competition for those big loads, but they're good. Mhmm.

Yeah. Anyhow, I'm I'm sorry to bunny hold down that. That's another fascination I have about the the vehicles will become appliances, and the the real cost will be the the fuel to run them. And, anyhow, so that's probably having conduit and knowing that you're EV ready. Probably. It's just fine. Yeah. So are we okay? Yeah. Just thank you for spending an hour with us to consider both the the future and and checking back in about the the challenges you have right now with the facility.

Yeah. Every eleven years or so. Yeah. I'm kidding. Kidding. I work

far better than we were ten years ago. Yeah. Think we're not.

That's well, we can talk about what what I understand is you want us to to bring a similar briefing to the full house and find the time to do that. Yes.

So we we have some additional information. Information.

Yeah. Make sure we meet expectations. I

I don't know how much of that

we find out without really diving into it. So I think the way Debbie put it is is in context of of how we compare to others versus really researching Mhmm. And diving down the rabbit hole on certain things, whether her or other. So, you we can talk We can talk. Later, but I, you know, I'm sure what what we can And

I don't I just wanna

detailed answers to the whole question. Find out without really diving into it.

And and we realize that Debbie's been working with you on at the high level of this conversation. Mhmm. So I I hope that tonight, a sort of a focus group and a conversation might might not shape what comes next in full council. Yeah. K.

Thank you for your

time. Thank you. You.

A lot.

Thanks, Brian. Thank you, Todd.

You too. Thank you.

Well, I'm glad we're all here. Joan Boots has created another budget spotlight for us. This one on some of the some of the interesting funds that the city has Good

evening, committee. For the record, Joe Mitz, senior budget finance manager. I'm here to present the budget spotlight on. And I did say fun of history instead of fun, because it is fun. Oh, yeah.

It's never fun. So the city of Columbia operates 55 different funds, each with the designated each was designated to ensure accountability, transparency, and compliance with legal and contractual requirements. The state auditor's office, because we set our ordinance at the fund level, audits at the fund level. So it audits all 55¢. And so it's, you know, imperative and important to maintain clear separation and use of those resources.

It it is essential. So today, we're going to discuss three funds. I just picked them out of the. I didn't think you wanted to pick for all 55. No.

So fund $0.00 6, which is the development fee revenue fund, has a lot of movement and is always under our looking glass or magnifying glass. I'd be willing to do that every year, and so I thought we should discuss that. Fund five zero six, which is the facilities internal service fund, is a new addition. And then fund five zero seven is the fire fleet fund. It's also a new addition. Now you'll hear me mention the numbers because for the state auditor's office, the number of the fund means something. Anything below a 100 is a general fund. It's a governmental account. And so anything in the 2 hundreds would be a debt account

or a

debt fund. 300 would be capital. 400 would be an enterprise fund like our utilities. 500 is internal service. So we have two internal service here, and we have a general fund. So we're gonna be reviewing. So accountants like numbers. Finance likes numbers, but we know that everybody else likes words. So

So the first one we were gonna start with

is the development team from a new fund. Again, fund zero zero six, so it's part of the general fund, but we've called it out so that we can track it and report on its use. It was established in November 2015. We were collecting funds before then. They were just collecting the general fund.

So in 2015, we decided that we needed to track better the income that comes in from the development funds permitting, and so we created another fund. At that time in 2015, we also had a consultancy report, and they said that we should be collecting 85% of our cost. So the general fund is still supporting belt because we don't wanna adjust it beyond the health system. It is good for the city as a whole to support development. So they decided the consultant said 85% cost recovery, so 15% should be recovered through the general fund.

In part of the fund history is we used to track all of the development fee costs in the general fund. We collect the revenues in the o o six, the development fee fund, And and then we do a segment of moving the coconuts, trying to figure out where the money is. So in 2023, we found that if we just moved all of the developments into the development coupon, we can better ensure that we're we're getting closer to that 85%. We're not getting the 85%, but that is the goal for the for the policy that was attached in more in the packet. But, anyway, so in 02/2023, we moved development fee out of the general fund, put it in to the development fee fund, and now we move money from the general fund to support development.

Any question? Where's the p or the queen? Could

you could one of the

things that struck me in the the creation of this was that we formalized quite a bit of community planning and development, charging city departments for work that

we were doing. I can't can't remember

what the interfund transfers or whatever you called that indirect recovery. I I know I get the lang I get the precise language wrong. But could you just tell the story a little bit about, like, if public works maintenance is putting in a pedestrian bridge over a creek, so they they need CP and D to come do work and how that that that was just one of the things that was a point of discussion as this was Certainly. Sure. So the

city still pays for all of the fees. Whatever department was was occurring, they pay development fund for the permit, which we don't have to follow the same laws.

I guess that's the simplest. And really, it's just I just I was so sure we could give ourselves a break, and it did not happen. So then we charged full freight for each time we needed somebody to do any piece of CP and D's work for a city project.

So I think part of point of

the central point. And I think that's I think you're getting at a point that I hear from the public quite often is is person, you know, who's a smaller developer is like, wow. You know, this is this is a higher higher impact on me as a smaller developer versus someone who is a bigger developer. And they're like, I'll just pay it. You know what I mean? Mhmm. So there are people so one of the one of the tension points for for, you know, very small developers, people that are, like, I guess, three people in the band. Right? And they wanna develop ADUs Is that the fee structure is that is it is it because they're dealing with tighter budget, right, with tighter cost, look. You know?

And one of the of the struggles they have is the speed feels like a higher cost to them versus someone who's a bigger developer, and they have access to more money. You know what saying? Like,

as a percentage of their Of their of their development. Yeah. Their Their capital, it feels bigger.

You know?

It's the same dollar

amount, but

a large development company is gonna have a bigger pot to work from. Yeah.

So it is an resource. It can be a a point of conversation, I think, with the public sometimes around development. It's is there a better structure? I've asked that question a million times, but it seems like state law sort of. Or

So I I'm actually discussing just the fund, the kind of the structure of the accounting of it. The development fee funds are actually put through ordinance every year. Mhmm. And, you know

The rates.

The rates. Yeah. And so that would be more of a rate presentation as opposed to how do we track the money and make sure that it's going to the the services that it that it's supposed to be paid. Mhmm. So a fund basically is, you know, development fee fund comes in. It was paid for a permit. We wanna make sure that it goes to services that were paid for. So it's similar to a utility fund in that aspect, except for it does have a high overlay of, you know, general fund support in that, you know, you have to have your accounting. You have to have city hall rent. You should have space for people to come and meet with the planners or those types of things.

And so part of it is to ensure that that that happens also is to help supplement the general fund for the services that we provide to the development Mhmm. Activity. And so it's it's kind of a back and forth, give and take. I think what you're talking about is more of a rate discussion Mhmm. That would be that are probably with.

And we do have the in the budget process, there is a rates rates stay where they they you just spend a couple of hours talking about all the different rates. Mhmm. So

Right. So, yes, it's a it's a good question, but the question of fairness to the permit applicant is kind of at a different place from this is how we account for the costs of CP and D, how much we try to emphasize recovering, having fees paid for the cost of staff there. Mhmm. Because that that's we set this goal, but that that was not by state law. That was a choice we made based on a consultant recommendation that we should be putting 15% into and and, of course, the builders had a different opinion about what that percentage should be Yeah.

As we as we were doing that that work. But one other thing I wonder is it's it's both just a fund, but it was also to me, it was a mindset change to consider it sort of self support, much more self supporting. Do we charge the same indirect for administrative services to this department as we do to parks or public works or whoever else, or are we able to charge more to them?

Or No.

No. Okay. So, actually, next month is our our cost allocations budget spotlight. Okay. So that will be a a more in-depth conversation next month.

But you we cannot use a different metric to charge a fund for. Okay. So there are we we do things like the number of permits, the number of FTEs, how many invoices you do this pay a payroll's process, how many legal requests are are made, how much time that hits on the agenda for council. Those we get all of those numbers, but there's probably I think there's, like, close to 15 different criteria and measures. And then for each of the different departments and services that we provide, and then we say, okay.

This is the cost for rent. This is the cost for finance, legal, all of, you know, all of those things. I think it's to beat up across all departments regardless of fund. And then the the funds that are not federal fund, we pull the money. Although, if we did all of the departments, it just needed money. So but we just we pull. So everybody receives a cost allocation. It's just you don't see it in the account.

That but that's that's helpful. We so we don't burden the we're trying to recover these costs, but the the the they're not burdened any more than any other department with legal or accounting or payroll or Right. Human resources. Yeah.

And, again, some of the work we'll talk about it more next month, but some of it is based on the needs of people and HR and the

number of recruitments and all

of the different criteria that we've established.

Okay.

Okay. So our next one is the facilities internal service fund. We started that in January 2023. And the reason for that is that it was part of the general fund. And so we would calculate out the city hall rent and divide it up, and we, you know, tell all these funds that they owe us this kind of this money for their use of the city hall or any other city building that has us he was still working. And we said, you owe us

this amount of money, and then we

go into the general fund. And facilities would never actually see the benefit of that. They could not put money aside because it was in the general fund and hold it for a 100% that was coming. At the end of the year, we sweep all of the general fund dollars, and it was in the fund balance. And that's part of our our ordinance. And so moving them out into their own fund gave them more accountability. It also gave them the ability to save money, basically, and anticipate those larger repairs and maintenance type items.

Is this same model used for, like, IT, some of those other things?

So IT is in the general fund. We IT does have some money set aside in the sub general fund of zero zero three. And so that those money is that we track separately, and so money can build up

a little

bit. Facilities wasn't set up that way, but, also, facilities has buildings that are not on the privacy borders. And so you have to And so those we also put them in from the general fund to the facility's fund to support the library.

Center's

a little different because we do have the lodging tax, the first 1%. Mhmm. Some of it there's some. And, you know but, anyway

But it's about the so I IT is meant separately to replace equipment. You're asking about, like, computer Yeah.

Stays to Like, it's a similar thing. Right? Like, facilities has to maintain buildings that people use,

and so they're getting a little bit

of money for that while IT has to maintain, like, IT infrastructure and capability and network. So it's not a request. Was just trying to

Yeah. It's more about the size. Think it's a little bit more. Usually, the repairs or or new structures, but, you know, I mean, a $100,000,000. Or like this evening, the, you know, panels out and so the lights are cheaper. So, you know, it's a whole it's kind of a difference, Whereas IT can go, okay. You know what? These these laptops, I saw it's five years. We caught this amount.

We have a PC replacement. Yeah. Kind of.

Yeah. Yeah. And but it's in a cell phone that we track separately, and so it it's a little different.

And and this was recently created. In 2023. And similar and we're gonna talk next about the fires. But this this con we've had in the last couple of our meetings this conversation about if if we're always counting on year end balance for the, you know, the following spring, we're gonna spend leftovers, and that's how we do fleet replacement, and that's how we do building maintenance. We just did that with year after year of zero going to those those needs. So to me, creating this fund was about being more intentional about capital facilities like this.

Good.

And so this is also another new plan. This one started in 2025. The ordinance was put through in December, but we actually started it in 2025. If you didn't approve it, you would just have had to do a lot of accounting.

Good.

So thank you for for proving that and saying, yes, that work. So the fire fleet fund was also part of the general fund. It's part of the fire department's budget. But they're also more of an internal service and enterprise. In that, we service eight different fire districts or departments in the area, and we service our own fire vehicles.

And so we were building a rate model, providing all of that service that we weren't building ourselves because they work in the fire department. And and what they were just looking again, general. And so we weren't able to tell if they were sustaining themselves and our rate model was right. And so and, also, we wanted to be able to probably be able to put a little bit of money in their rate model to upgrade equipment or buying lifts or those, you know, those types of things. And so this gives them that ability and also makes it so that we can easily identify that it is sustainable and it is supporting itself.

So those were just the three off the top of our heads, kind of of the ones that we've talked about, new new funds that we've created, but I don't think development team, which is always. Thought I had history on that one.

Can I ask you to talk just a

little bit more about the difference between a fund and a line item in the general

fund of of what what other protections how do creating these internal service funds create additional protections or or guardrails around that money compared to just having it be another category under the general fund?

So in the general fund, according to our ordinance, at the end of the year, none of the dollars for you. It gets swept into the fund balance. Mhmm. So when you have a separate fund, it can't be swapped into the general fund fund's balance. So it does it does get swapped into their fund balance, and you do appropriate every pair for all all three to five funds. So the protection is is that the the dollars in that fund have a purpose. And either it's either internal decision making. It's regulatory. It's legal or contractual that we have to follow. For example, a transportation benefit.

Already have the license fund. Yeah. But then we brought on the sales tax fund, and that'd be a separate fund. And so it is in its own fund. We can try to send out, and we can see what that is. We can make sure it's used for the the I think it was mostly for. Yes. And we can make sure it gets put towards that use. And so lets us control and report and analyze those.

I think it really just having as I joined the city of Olympia, the ability to track and monitor and set aside funds as Joan pointed out with the fire fleet fund, That fund in particular is almost operating like a business, really, and we wanna make sure we can track those costs and the rates as June pointed out very specifically. So I think this is not only transparent, but accountable to our public in a way that doesn't just sweep it into that kind of mysterious end fund balance on the general fund. And I say mysterious because it's a big amount of money in a city our size, and it makes it difficult for the staff we have who are in charge of these lines of business to really be able to save. That's really And

you heard it a little bit tonight with the waste resources trucks because they are charged a fee of a replacement fee every single year for those trucks, and it goes into one of these funds. And then when they go to replace it, they have already been collecting that money. So it helps smooth over those large expenses, which I'm really excited about the fire fleet fund because, you know, as you saw, they have big expenses coming up, and then this allows them to save that money. We know where it is, and we know what it'll be used for. Yeah.

I think, overall, it's just good stewardship of the resources we have allows us to track and be able to put a report out. As Joan mentioned, we're audited specifically on each fund, so it's very accountable. And

the line items, they go away at the end of year.

Something something of interest on the fire. I'm just because we used to we've we've always set a rate. But until 2025, we never billed fire department for that rate. And so we never were able really to, you know, to see how much work was done off for the city. And so, therefore, was our rate correct? You know, were we was the job on supplementing it, or should should we be charging more? But then you also can look at the mechanics who provide service provider, and you can say, how does our our rate compare? And somehow we can make sure that we're utilizing the dollars to the best best use.

Yeah.

Mhmm. Good.

Well, we're up to reports and updates. Is there anything from my committee colleagues report wise?

Unless

we find the regular materials and anything.

Well, let me check. That's all we need to do. But Never

mind. I

have nothing to report.

Mike? Well, just a couple of things that I think are of particular interest to you. The budget team led by Joan published the 2026 budget on a website and then are submitting that to GFOA. We're in a long line of recipient of that award in the city of Olympia. They worked really hard on that.

You know, sometimes once council adopts the budget in December, the work stops there, and it really just begins with this team as well as continuing to monitor. So I just want to thank them for their hard work on that. As well, I think you'll see some exciting things in our coming out if you haven't visited the priority based budgeting page. Please do that. That's really great, and we'll be adding some more I'll just give you a little bit of a a a teaser, some hands on ability to kinda get into the monthly financial report in a less than static way.

So we're excited to keep working on that. The team just done a great job with that. Otherwise, last month, you heard about the investment policy, and that's coming to full council for consideration on your consent calendar on the March 24. I think it's the twenty fourth. Yes. And then tomorrow's a different item.

Meeting couch. Yes. All of that. Good.

Otherwise, I think, you know, it's just a busy time while finance is pulling together all of the data for the annual comprehensive financial report. We pretty much close I say pretty much closed 2025. A few things still come through as we're paying the police retro pay. Mhmm. Once that was settled, we accrue that back to 2025, and we'll be paying that out on the pay date of the twenty fifth.

So there's a lot happening there that report is due at the May. And we will begin the audit cycle, and all that will happen. But I'm proud of the team. They work really hard with a lot to do. So that's all I have to offer this evening. Joan, could you just tell us

a little bit about the GFO organization and this award that for years and years we've received for our our budget presentations?

So GFOA is the government finance officers association. And every year, we send off the budget document to get reviewed by them. And they have a list of criteria to make sure that we're communicating with the community and that we're trying start our plan and our processes because the budget document is an important policy. And so for the last forty one years, we've received it. And so my whole goal is for on my watch, it's not too.

We are pretty lucky in that one of our members is a reviewer for other entities. And so we did a little sneak peek and a little bit of help on the things that we've made so that it's something that we can improve upon. We're not having to sell our other document. And I wanna say that it's our document is five eighty five pages, so I'll be just sending out little quizzes. I've read it.

Didn't you read the whole PPV report too?

It's a prestigious award that takes a lot of work, and I think speaks well to the Yes. City. Congratulations.

We'll be sending that off this week to for dialysis and get their feedback. It does generate a list of things that we wanna improve the line, and then we'll find out probably in September and Sherry. I wanna say a

little bit about the budget document. You know, I have a lot

of history here in the

city of Olympia, but when the budget document is done, it is a huge reference material. If you wanna know anything that happens in the city of Olympia, you can pull that document. You can find the number of employees. Right. You can find what happens in the city. About the employers. Yeah. Exactly. It's kind of it's just a wealth of information as a reference document. So yes.

Are we are we

getting excited to see

this tonight? I'm on forty two year streak.

Well, with no other business before us, we will ensure at 06:05, and we'll meet again same time next time.

Meeting in the council chambers.

The council chambers for tonight. That's all. Apologize for saying no to you twice during this. To try to find other words.