City Commission - Regular Meeting

I call this meeting to order. January 13, 2026. Will you join me in the flag of the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. [clears throat]

Would Pastor Mark Chambers come forward and and lead us in a prayer? Good evening everyone. Please join me in prayer. Holy Father, as we start this new year of 2026, we have a lot to look forward to as we, the city of Pittsburgh, will celebrate our 150th birthday. And we've come a long ways from the sounds and sights of yester years to modern days of growing and making our home city even greater for the years to come. We give thanks for all the souls of the past that guided it with a vision back then and to our current current leaders and citizens working together to keep Pittsburgh a city of prosperity and a place that we are proud to call home. Continue to bless Pittsburgh. Father, we ask you to continue to bless our city, our elected and appointed leaders, our fire and police, and all employees who with dedication keep our needs and safety taken care of. Father, we want to pray for our new fire chief, Jack Spencer, and our new park director, Chris Ly, and to bless their leadership for the future of Pittsburgh. Father, we pray for the family members of those who have lost their loved one this past Friday in the tragic situation that you will give strength and comfort. and to all the first responders who are involved in the investigation.

We also ask prayers for the suspect and his family during this tragic time. Father, bless our nation to work in peace and harmony. Bless our leaders and all citizens of our great nation as we prepare to celebrate 250 years of freedom. and bless this meeting tonight that may your Holy Spirit guide all things that are said and decided on tonight. We ask these things in your holy name whom we trust. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right, moving into public input. Darren, would you uh

A couple of people just got mentioned if uh Captain Jack Spencer or Chief Jack Spencer, sorry, that was his old title. and Chris Lloyd are two of our newest department heads. So, I thought we'd introduce them publicly and see if they wanted to say anything. Spirit, I'm just been with the G with the city for 20 years now. I'm just glad to get a new position and help uh continue my support with the city. So, thank you. And uh I just recently obviously been promoted, retired from Washington DC and really happy to be here and um just hoping to uh help grow the community and the fire department and keep everybody safe. Thank you guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks.

So, moving on into public input. We're going Hold on a minute. I' I've uh Hold on a minute, Ralph. I know a lot of you probably here to talk about uh taxes and uh I've reached out to uh hold on. I reached out to County Treasurer Joe Grizzlano. I want him to come and try to explain what happened and then he's going to be followed by Darren Hall and explain what happened and how and it's going to be civil to everyone out there. Uh there's something that we need to work on how we fix it. So let's work together.

Thank you. Joe Gersolano, 612 Villa Drive. Uh I'm the Crawford County Treasurer. Good evening, commissioners, mayor. Uh I first of all before I get started I I want I know how difficult it is to put your name on the line and run for public office and uh I I commend you all for stepping forward uh to serve your community and I I think all of you do an outstanding job for the citizens of Pittsburgh. I know I also know there's people out in the audience that have held public office in the past and some of them I've got to work with and uh I appreciate the work that they've done. Also, uh, I'm here tonight as the county treasurer and I'm I I I was first elected county treasure in 2004. I took office in 2005 when I went to my first uh conference of the Kansas County Treasures Association. Uh, when we had our there, we had to stand up and introduce ourselves and there was a county treasur there from Selen County. His name was Keith Lily. Keith Lily had been the county treasurer in Casseline County for over 50 years. And when we had our first break, uh I went over to Keith to, you know, kind of shake hands with him and introduce myself to him. And he said, "Joe, I'll tell you something. Uh if you two things, if you want to stay in office, do your job, which I I try to do, and keep your name out of the paper." So Dustin, I'm kind of [laughter] I'm probably breaking the second rule about uh of that advice tonight. But, uh, Chuck did, uh, come over and meet with me yesterday and and just kind of ask me what the ramifications would be on, uh, lowering your budget at at this point for the the current year. And I don't want to I Well, the county treasur collects and

distributes t tax dollars. That that's our job. Uh, I don't set budgets. I don't calculate the mill levies. I don't work with assessed value. That's all done by different departments and they certify the the county clerk certifies the tax role to me on November 1st and we try to print tax statements. This year we were delayed by about 5 days because we had a software issue that we were waiting uh on our software vendor to get programming to fix that. So, our tax statements were about 5 days later normally than I like to get them out, but we did, like I say, we just collect and distribute tax dollars. Uh, when you guys set your budget and when the county sets our budget, when everybody, any taxing entity sets their budgets, it's done in the summertime. And your budget is a dollar amount. Okay? Uh, just like your budget at home, it's it's not a tax rate. it it's a dollar amount. So, I'm sure that you all, you know, had several work sessions. You cussed and discussed and uh sweated and probably lost some hours of sleep during this time. But the the final decision was you came up with the dollar, the tax dollar amount that you needed to provide the services to the citizens of our community that you uh thought were necessary. those dollar that dollar amount was was sent to the county clerk to certify those tax roles to the to the state and then on November 1st those are transferred to the county treasur for collection. Uh unfortunately this year between the time that our county clerk sent out uh preliminary assessed values in June and final assessed values in

October, those assessed values changed and to raise the same amount of tax revenue that was requested, it caused the mill levy to go up, which nobody likes the mill levy to go up, but that the mill levy is just a calculation. It's still the tax dollars that we're still collecting the same amount of tax dollars that you all set in your budget and that's what we'll try to collect and distribute to you. So, excuse me. Uh there there's nothing nefarious going on here. There's not going to be a windfall of tax dollars that we're going to get and and send back out. It's it's the same amount of tax dollars that were budgeted. Our office makes tax distributions four times a year. As I say, we start the collection on November 1st. We then collect taxes through the end of the year, December 31st, and then that first distribution is on January 20th, which is next Tuesday, a week from today. That's the largest distribution of the year. This year as in normal years we've collected a little over 56% of our total tax role that will be distributed to all the taxing entities. Uh to give you a example from last comparison last year the first distribution was about 56.3%. This year we're a little under 56.1%. So, it's basically the same amount of uh percentage- wise of the total tax rule that we'll be distributing. Uh we have I I'm going countywide now. Uh countywide, we send tax statements on 28,465 tax bills are what we send out.

Of those 28 or 28,645, I'm sorry. Of those 28,645 tax bills, about 24,400 are real estate and about 4,250 of them are personal property tax statements. The city of Pittsburgh is about on the real estate uh it's about 9,132 parcels of real estate in Pittsburgh that that we send tax statements or actually has parcels of real estate in Pittsburgh. So it's about 37.5%. So, I'm doing a quick extrapolation. I have no idea if this is correct, but I'm going to make the assumption, which is probably not too smart of me, but uh if if the personal property tax statements are about 37.5% of the the total that we have, then there would be about 1,600 personal property tax statements, payment under protest. People can protest their taxes if they think the value is wrong. uh if they for whatever reason they decide they can pay the the taxes under protest. Last year as a as a comparison through the first half uh tax collections we had 95 parcels that were paid under protest. This year we have 101. So it's again in my opinion it's basically the same. It hasn't changed. Uh now if I I I don't have a good analogy for lowering your budget in the the middle of a tax year. So except that this is the only thing I can think of and I I don't know how good it is but uh it's the only thing I can think of. It's like we have a large, very large cargo ship that's loaded with freight and we're going down a narrow pass passage to our destination and we're unloading freight along the

way. So, we're 60% of the way down to that destination. And now [clears throat] you're not asking the freighter to make a course correction. You're asking the freighter to turn around, come back to the dock, unload all the freight, load back all the freight but a little bit, and then take back off and deliver it again. If we try to start over from scratch, which that's what we would be doing. If it's if your budget is reduced in the current tax year, then we have to go back and start over from from step one in our process. Our county clerk will have to re resertify everything. She'll have to pass it to the county treasurer for us to generate tax statements and send tax bills out again. We will be I I I I don't know the cost of this and the reason that I say that is because we are so far through the process now that it will it will take programming from our software vendor to make this work. It's not hit a couple of buttons, restart the system and it changes everything. That's that's not the way it work because works because when everything is certified it's it's it's frozen. Everything stops. We they stop doing maintenance. The appraisers office stops doing maintenance as properties sell as splits are made as combinations are made uh at the end of September. Nothing has changed until after tax statements are all done. Then they start uh doing maintenance on those parcels again because the county appraiser has to send out change of value notices for 2026 by March 1st of this year. They're already working on that. So it's not stagnant. This is something that changes all the time and

that's why I say I don't know what the cost will be because uh it it it'll be up to our but we'll have to work with our tax software vendor to get that done. we've contacted the the vendor and it's you have to send in a a call request and you know they'll get back with you. Well, we they they haven't got back with our county clerk yet to to give some type of an estimate on on how this is going to be. So, uh I'm I'm not and I don't want to sound like I'm up here saying I don't want to do extra work. That's that's that's not the issue. Uh it's I have a job to do and I'll do the job to the best of my ability. I always try to do the job to my best ability, but but that's the way it does. That's the way it works. So if if this is done, and we'll only talk about the city of Pittsburgh now, uh not the entire county, but if if this is done at this time, then we would have all those tax statements would be have to be redone. We would have to resend out all those tax statements. Uh there's going to be a change in all of them. They're all going to reduce a little bit. The majority of them are going to be by a few dollars. You know, $2, $3, $5, $7, something like that. There's going to be a few more that will be higher than that. But if I don't know what to do with those overpayments, uh if if we decide to do refund checks on on Oh, that one thing I forgot to say. Uh of our total tax statements that we sent out, over 11,500 of them are paid in full. So that those are the ones I'm talking about. Now, those ones that are paid in full, they will have overpaid. So they'll [clears throat] they'll there'll be an overpayment that has to be dealt with somehow uh for us

to do refund checks again and we have a hybrid system. Our accounting software is incode Tyler product I think probably the same product the city of Pittsburgh uses. Our tax software is called computer information concept CIC. It's a it's a different totally different system. They don't the systems don't talk to each other. So we have to do journal entries when we do tax distributions from one software to the other software and to push out the tax distributions. So to do refund checks, there's no automatic way to do for us to do a check would be it it wouldn't be handwriting a check because we do enter them in the into the system. But for everybody that we would do a refund check for, it would have to be entered into the system, each check individually, you know, the taxpayers's name, their address, the amount of the refund. Uh, and then we would we would have to mail those out. I'm not going to make the decision on what the amount would be before we would do refunds. That would be a decision that the governing body would have to make. Uh I I that to me that's that's not my decision to make but it there will be errors made that that that's it's going to be difficult to balance when everything's redone and there there will be errors made. Uh that's you know just I I want you all to understand that's the way that that's how software works. It doesn't it it doesn't work perfect when there's changes made to it. every time our software has an update on our tax administration. Uh we we always have issues. That's kind of why we had an issue on printing the statements this year. They made an update to the system and then it caused us to be out of balance for 5 days until they could find it and fix that. Uh

I don't want to ramble on forever. I think that's about all I have is does anybody have questions for me or or I can you I'll I'll stick around. If you've got a question, you can call me back up. The joke people called me and told me to watch the county commission meeting and I tuned in and watched it and there was a number of like 700,000 countywide, I guess. I think 700,000 is what uh is is the request that the that the county would make to to reduce their budget. Yes. Is there a number the city is

I the city uh if it would be a little over a mill if you if you're trying to take your mill levy back to what it was last year it's a little over a mill I think it's about $210,000 round

it's about $210,000 out of your budget now so if somebody so what's the best way to fix it this is my opinion it's a decision you all are going to have to make to me the best way to fix it is is the same with the count I mean there's not 700 $100,000 in our budget, they can cut out of the budget. There's just no way in my opinion. That's not going to be my decision to make. But I, you know, they they had 10 or 12 work sessions to try to come up with, you know, the the amount of dollars that were needed to fund the operation, and that's what they came up with. Uh, in this instance, in your budget, $210,000. It sounds like simple. Let's just cut it and and be done with it. To me, you would be better off to uh monitor expenses uh quarterly, monthly, whatever. And next year, you know, to reduce the the revenue that you're needed, the tax revenue that you're needed so that uh the the tax dollars come down, the the the tax levy goes down. That's to to me that's the way to fix it because you you determined the dollars that you needed for this year and I that I would think that's how you would you would you need those dollars.

Are we able to carry over that 210,000 if that's what the number Sure. You can carry over more than that and that would give you a starting point where you wouldn't where not as many tax dollars would be needed yet next year. Very good point. What's what's the window for doing that for next year? How does how's that look? It it'll be when you're doing your budget in the summertime started the annual work. Absolutely. It's just part of the budget process. But I would but I would say as far as monitoring expenses, it's something that you need to be doing, you know, to be doing now. And I'm I'm sure you all are.

I think Chuck I mean one reason Chuck asked me to say something. I think it's important to know that Joe's group followed the process. This is the process. It's this awkward. Um there's a lot of development in Pittsburgh right now. So there's a lot of changing hands and I mean for instance you know what we went through with the hospital that was I mean how often does the hospital sell? I guess to some people it feels like it sells a lot but I mean it's only sold a couple of times. When it sold it was in a non it was in a tax um status and so we had to go through all of our working papers that we got from the county in June and and look at that number because last year that number for property that changed use was a couple hundred thousand. Well, this year it was [clears throat] 16 million. So, we had to go back to the county and say, "Okay, what's in that 16 million?" And of course, 14 plus was just the hospital. So, we went ahead, if you remember, [cough] budget and took that out. Um the rest of it was um other property that was changing hands.

There's a lot of projects

and there's a lot of it. So, I think that's where it got caught, but but we submitted ours when we always do. We You kept the mill rate at the same rate. Um, every year once we turn our final budget in and you adopt it, it always changes because the process isn't to to keep the mill the same. It's to keep the tax dollars the same. In this case, um, this S valuation went down because so many things changed hands that it was over a mill increase. But I want to make sure because I've talked to Joe about it for a week and and he keeps sounding like he's blaming himself and I'm like that is the process. Um, this year it really jumped up because usually our mill changes about a a tenth of a percent or something. Um, but this year it changed over a mill and that's I think what got

I don't and I don't like I said I I don't deal with assess valuations. I don't I don't get my office doesn't deal with mill levies. It's it's everything is handed over to us and and we we're charged with collection and distribution. But there's no chance at the end for the county to come back and say, "Hey, now we're going to send your budget to the state in November or December. By the way, to get to the tax dollars that you wanted, your mill went up 1.15. Would you want to cut 200,000 or $210,000 out of to keep it even?" That just that's not in the process. So, that's what I think. Um, and and my household was the same. We opened it up. My wife's like, "You raised the mill a mill and a half." And I'm like, "I don't recall those meetings." Um, but that's what happened and I think that's what got us here. To Joe's point on we can save the money, but there's no way for the city to refund $210,000 anymore than uh I don't know that we could do it at all. You would have to do that. Um, but it does it does

the scream that it does the process. You said there were 9,132 tax properties to back. Yes. That comes to parcels in P $21 on the average. You would have to send and by the time you your cost to send out $21 would be 21. Some are going to be a lot less than $21. [laughter] Yes. That's the

And I don't I by the way I I don't know where that money is going to come from because it's the same way to to redo tax statements. I I don't have the money in my budget to do it. Uh I, you know, I I make a budget request just like the department heads do here and I I try to keep it as lean as possible because I I try to be responsible to the public also. I'm elected also. So, uh it's that there there's there's no extra money in my budget. I come from somewhere else over there.

Well, like I said, I and I'm sure we all have had calls about this. What we need to do, we need to do. And and that's why I wanted you and Darren try to explain to people that hasn't listened to this or hasn't watched a county commission meeting when all this happened like who has the answer, you know? Well, it's it's uh [clears throat] you know, it it's property taxes are never fun. That's [laughter] what I always tell. I'm I I always say I'm the least popular person in uh Crawford County most of the year, but uh we we do the best job we can and that's we try to do that.

But Mayor, I I do I really appreciate you calling me up and and coming to meet with me yesterday. Uh I you know, it it it helps when I I I think the more uh discussions we have, the more communication we have uh makes things better. So I really appreciate that. Well, thank you for coming, Joe. And and uh I don't know if you want to stick around a little bit. I will. Yes. Because there's people from the public's going to come up and have questions and absolutely you two are the best ones to answer questions. Now, I'll open it up uh to the anyone else that wants to come up and talk about taxes.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Ralph Mc George, 2301 North Ralph, Pittsburgh, Kansas. Uh my topic tonight's going to be on Pittsburgh pride and what I'm talking about that is our school districts that we have USG 250 which is uh Pittsburgh Senior High and Kogan and uh they've been around a long time. As a matter of fact, Pittsburgh established its first school in 1877, the first one uh the college established in 1903. That's 36 years difference. And then uh Kogan, they started their high school in 1936. And uh I know that PSU, they get a lot of hoopla on everything they do. And on the south water tower, they've got their names and stuff like that and their mascot on that water tower. And what I would like to see is the Pittsburgh Dragon and the Kogan Panther on the Northwater Tower. I think that's important. you five people can get that done and that's that's the respect out of all the students that we have that goes through that school system and through K through 12 is the foundation that these universities are built on. They're the ones that does the hard work to give the people to the college to bring them on. And I think we need to show our community pride or Pittsburgh pride for our schools that we have here today. And I' I'd like to make a request that we put uh their their insignas on that water tower. It's community pride, public pride. And uh I just believe in that. Darl, I'm sorry to hear about your brother. I know how it feels. I lost one.

Thanks, Rob. One more thing I've got. I'd like to see the uh city do turn out all the the payroll and all the the salary people and all the the hourly people once a year put it out and show the people what's going on and who who they are and who gets paid and that way they can have a better view of why we pay taxes and I think that would help and I think there's a lot of concern. We used to do that but it stopped for quite a few years and I'd like to see that happen again. Thank you. Thank you Ralph. Anybody else want to come up with public input?

Mr. Ber 1508 vendor court. Good evening city commissioners. Today is January 13th about two weeks into 2026. Which of the budget books is the administration going to use this year? It is time for the question to be finally answered. so everyone can know the cost to the taxpayer. To recap why this is important, let's review that on July 22nd, 2025, the city manager presented the 2026 budget to the commission. That night, the first words regarding the budget book to the governing body, the books had to be returned due to the changes needing to be made. A new version of the budget was being printed and compiled while a discussion of the five-year forecast was given. So, to make it easy to follow about the books, in July, the number one book was taken back. The number two book was given to the commissioners to study prior to the next meeting. Although it was to have been August 12th on the agenda, it never occurred on that date for the commissioners to have a discussion about the 2026 budget. The budget hearing was to be held September 9th. And the day after the July 22nd meeting, the budget and 5-year forecast were to be put on the website for the public to view. The presentation of the 2026 budget was given by city manager Darren Hall. He began by reading the city manager's budget message, which was almost two pages long. detailing funds and services and projects. It was stated in the first paragraph that the submitted budget was 74,90,951. Darren said it should be 74,726,135, which would be corrected. That is a difference of 1600 615,184. The financial consultant stated that there is no budget that's created to spend 74 million. Seems to be a conflicting message. The book's numbers have not been consistent since May. Again, how does that happen? Will the new financial management system be ready for the next year's budget process? If not, why not? In comparing numbers between the second and third books, I found the following discrepancies.

assessed valuations, tax levies, parks and recreation positions, FTE citywide personnel totals, reserves for the general fund and public utility fund, resources with graphs and percentages, property tax levy dollars, property tax tables, expenditures [clears throat] with graphs and percentages, allocation by purpose, percentages don't match, and no dollar amounts listed. All departments page with both revenues and expenditures. The advalorum page of assessed valuations, neighborhood revitalization and net assessed valuations, collected advalorum tax dollars, current delinquent tax dollars and percentages, the worksheet for state on assess valuation, and the five-year forecast must be included in this list. Many times throughout the budget discussion, it was stated that the expenditures lines are accurate and the personnel statement is accurate. That evening, it was admitted that there were errors that have since been corrected. repeatedly. They said, "All corrections have already been made." Well, that statement cannot be true. According to the budget hearing discussion on September 9th, the city manager stated, "The city wanted to put the most accurate submitted budget on the website for people to look at for 6 weeks. Time after time has been said there's been no mill rate increase since 2018." Well, that statement can be debated. The Crawford County Clerk published in the morning sun that the 2025 valuation for the 2026 mill rate is 52.006 006 and the levies are 179,626,310. How do you account for these new numbers which are quite different than the city of Pittsburgh numbers? It seems the second and third budget books are similar yet different. Darren J, Margie, and the former mayor wanted us to believe the only pages that needed to be reviewed and approved are the last two pages, which are the notice of budget hearing for the 2026 year and the revenue neutral rate numbers. And the only totals that are are the ones that go to state. The details that have been published in the budget books for years do have meaning and importance. You can't get totals for funds and

expenditures, revenues, mill rates, levies, and valuations without adding numbers together to equal a sum total. It is a complex document created with much effort and appreciated for the opportunity to have it on the city website for everyone to review. This is about accountability and transparency. It is about knowing how tax dollars will be spent or have been spent and having trust in those numbers. Now is the time to make this budget right in all categories. Even if the state does not deem it necessary, it is needed at the local level and for future examination. Thank you. Thank you, Christie.

Good evening. My name is Nara Garcia. I am the PHS head coach for girls soccer team in Pittsburgh High School. I'm here today not only as a coach, but as a player myself who grew up in Pittsburgh, Kansas playing soccer. And I know um I now work with girls. This is my third year working and coaching with girls Pittsburgh High School. This is my first year work coaching youth soccer girls. um which we have struggled having um a a place and space to practice and um to also have games. Soccer has been part of my life for many years back in 2016 when I played here as a teenager and still till this day we practice and com and complete wherever we are allowed to um to feel that they're given to us temporary borrowed or shared. We are grateful for any available space we could get but it is not consistent place that we feel that is safe and that we can have uh to practice and feel that is truly ours. 10 years of my experience I'm still seeing those challenges continue only now now with even more teams as youth especially trying to find space and especially since the soccer community is growing. As a player and as a coach I see this issue in different perspectives. teams are having to move from one field to another depending on daylight or field conditions. Sometimes we also have to share small areas with multiple teams or people limiting we what we can do for players and players development. Again, we are grateful for Pit State uh Parks and Reg and churches that have opened their fields to us. Their kindness has allowed us to keep our programs going. What our soccer community needs are a city supported soccer fields where players, youth, and adults can p practice and and play safely. The soccer community in

Pittsburgh is growing faster than ever. When a city invests in soccer fields, it's investing in families, youth, and stronger sensation of community. Coaches, parents, players, and communities are ready to help in whatever we can. And I believe with the city support, we can build something lasting, a lasting place where everybody can have fields they can call home. Thank you for your time and continue to support uh support opportunities that help that help this community grow stronger both on and off the fields. Thanks. Thank you.

Is there anyone else [clears throat] that would like to speak in public input? John Lair, 1608 North Java Street, Pittsburgh. Mayor and Commissioners, you know, the city manager works at the will of the commission. The commission works at the will of the voters. You need to remember that. And first of all, I'd like to see someone make the motion to rescend the budget and to amend the new budget. This is going to take some guts and it's going to take some people speaking up. Not sitting there rubber stamping everything, but speaking up. So, I just think it's time that we make some changes and this is the time to do it. Thank you. Thanks, John. [cough] [clears throat] Is there anyone else would like to speak? [clears throat] for you all.

Good evening. Roger Long, 1147 South 220 Street. So, obviously we know what we're what's going on here that I've been calling for the budget to be reopened and prop the budget to be reopened and reduced by a sufficient amount to make up for the overage. From my understanding, I appreciate Joe's Joe's helped me out quite a bit. I talked to Lisa Lusker, the county clerk, as well as we work through the kind of the discovery phase of this and figured out what's happening. Um, it's it's not technically correct to say that valuations have dropped. What happened is that a significant number of properties were included on the initial valuation estimate which did not belong there. They then after the and the budgets were built using that number, then after the budgets are built and submitted to the county clerk, the error was discovered. those those properties were taken off of the tax rules again which left a significant deficit and that deficit was made up by raising the mill levy. The in in this case that included the from what the county clerk had told me that included the block 22 properties a number of others that are owned by PSU and again this was a a error that occurred just in what was included and what was not. Um as as well as of course as Darren had mentioned the hospital. So if we if we go back and look at this stuff. So I I guess let me let me stop there for a moment. in considering that [clears throat] the properties that were were on the roll which have never been included on the roll because they have always been taxexempt or have been for for the a number of years a significant number of years then that number is what the budgets are built on for the city because all all of you and Darren correct me if I'm incorrect if I'm wrong on this but you're given the estim estimated revenue from the clerk or the treasur whomever it is and then you build your budget based on that anticipated revenue.

Mhm.

Okay. So, the city builds its budget based on the anticipated revenue. This year looked like a windfall because suddenly revenue is revenue collection is looking really high except that was not a correct number because of the error. So now the budget's been built on a fantasy number that did not exist. It's kind of a Christmas vacation deal where Chvy Chase thinks he's getting the big the big company bonus. So, he orders the swimming pool for his family house and then he finds out he's getting into the jelly of the month club or whatever it is. Not quite the not quite the big boost that he thought. Well, the same thing happened here in that an unrealistic number was worked off of and then it was realized, oh, that's not correct. So, instead, we're just going to raise the mill levy. And the the commission at the time voted simply to pass the budget, which is, as Joe said, is is completely correct. and then the clerk has to take that [cough] number and figure out how to raise that revenue. Once the error was discovered, the the answer is to raise the mill levy. So, I've I've been uh when I've come and talked to the commission a few times, I've brought some actual used a couple of actual houses that belong to friends of mine here in town as samples. So, I've got one that's in the Lincoln Park area. These are pages three and four of that little document I sent you. The Lincoln Park property saw its tax increase by 8.06%. um 70 a little over $71 for them. The Woodgate property saw a tax increase from the city alone, just the city's share of 9.42%. So almost 9 and a half% tax increase on that person. Um any one of them, as Joe said, they're they're not gigantic amounts, but 80, 90, 100 bucks. I think the Woodgate one was Yeah, Woodgate's $140 and the Lincoln Park one's just shy of $100. But, you know, we we think, well, people should be able to make that up because it's inconvenient for the city government to have to relinquish

this money or the county. Of course, it's inconvenient. It's inconvenient for those people that are struggling to buy milk or eggs to have to fork over an extra $100 to the to the city. If you turn back to page one on this presentation, I just want to bring a couple of things to your attention. This is a couple of years old, but this map of Kansas shows the counties and the cities including we do county which managed to stay revenue neutral in 2024. Uh that's most recent year I could find data for but th those number of entities managed to maintain the same budget the next year as they had the year before. That's that's what that indicates. Um at the top of this we've got the actual hard numbers for the houses. This is a little the second table down. You see the actual individual property tax increase. First is the revenue neutral statement. That was thing that was mailed out back in August or September telling people what they could expect. That at the that at that point based on what the city's proposed budget, those houses were looking at a 5.67% increase or a 7% increase in taxes. And I I came to the city commission at that time at the revenue neutral hearing bringing that up and it was it was kind of argued that no it's not it's not actually that much the well after the budgets were after the assessed values for the county were corrected that ended up being that eight 8% and almost 9 and a half% tax increase for each of those instead of the roughly 6 to 7% I talked about. So, I've um brought a couple of super short recordings I just want you guys to listen to. This again is from the revenue neutral hearing of when was that? September I think September or August. The two houses are going to pay roughly 6% more this year than they did last year. That's the actual increase in property tax if you vote to exceed the

revenue neutral rate and go ahead and accept the full valuation increase.

So, that that was what I was warning the commission at the time. Obviously, that was I was not aware of any of this other stuff that needed to be taken off the tax rules, but it was obvious. And Stu, I think if if you remember, you were you were kind of questioning me because you were like, there's no way it could be 6%. We're being told it's less. Are you sure you're not getting things doing the math wrong and thinking it's two and two and two? Um Darren, at in that same meeting, you had you had stated this after I'd made that made that presentation. I know Roger said five or six. Um Jay gave a pretty thorough presentation that's been picked apart by a pretty mean accountant right there that keeps us in line. They said it looks like it's between three and three and a half% on this S valuation. And that's what we've been telling the commission. So if it's 6% and we misled them, then I I I don't know how it could be. But that's where we're at.

And that's and that's an average. Roger. I I fully understand. Well, then say that because I think it's fair. I I am the the houses not every house gets the same percent. Correct. We did the calculation of the growth and we took out the new growth which is anything that wasn't on the tax rules last year that won't affect your property. That was included in there. And then the estimate that we had said that we would have three and a three and a half% growth on a regular property on somebody's property bas and and when we looked at inflation which was about 2.8% 8%. We figured that was close enough. I stand by that comment if the and you know, right?

But you're picking one property out of the of the tax bill. I think the another question is out of the 8.96 of the top line. Mhm. What is it if you take out the 1.52? Did you say that? These You mean if you remove that 1.152? Yeah. Happen at the end. Yeah, that's I I think Joe's numbers are right. It's a little over 200,000 210 maybe whatever it is. No, I mean what's the percent increase per I mean you picked out a couple of houses but I think it's I think it's important to understand that that one increase was significant. Well, if you if you reduce that that's 200 is going to make it about a 25% reduction. Maybe a little more. Let's call it 30% red. That's a significant jump. I mean that 1.1 it.

Yeah. Yeah. I think we've talked about that earlier in today's meeting how that happened. that that was nobody's intent had we known that those No, I'm not I'm not at all accusing anybody of intentionally misdoing this. Well, you're playing a recording with everybody's voices of my voice saying, "Well, you said it was 3.5 and this property is 5.6." So, I want to be able to say our intent was the average was going to be 3.5%. I don't know what this one property is, but we also need to account for the fact that the mill increase of 1.52 was a significant increase on everybody's percentage, right? that brought them up in this case to eight 8% and almost nine and a half percent. The my my point being in these two which are pretty representative houses are in different Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

One over over towards Lincoln Park, one way up by Woodgate that are in very different economic neighborhoods [snorts] and neither of them was anywhere they they were not close to 3% at that time. Now it was is there I don't know without without seeing all the numbers it's it's hard to tell. I think that's kind of what Joe was saying is it's how [snorts] many 9100 I mean pick two out of 9100 say yeah we all we all get that the property tax went up higher than any of us wanted it to.

Sure. Okay. Now, the the next point I guess I'm making is that that number was that number the the estimated revenue that the city was going to get from property taxes was higher by a significant amount than it was the year before. Is is that correct or is that not correct before the 210? Before the 210 was the part that was attributed to the the correction to the error you're talking about. I'm talking about just the the numbers you were building your budget off of that that [snorts] you were presented with. Absolutely. Our our cost went up considerably and that's why we thought it was important to capture that.

Well, I I don't mean the cost, but I mean the actual when when you looked at the numbers and the numbers you were given from the county or your own estimate said we are going to bring in this much from property tax from property taxes that number the anticipated revenue was significantly higher than last year. Sign what sign? Well, I guess I don't know. It was higher than last year. Well, so are our costs that it's offsetting, right? Is it there seems to be some idea that we can pick a time and just freeze our revenues and we're going to be able to just pay for everything. Um that's our struggle every year with the budget. Sure.

The expenses have gone up for piping, for gravel, for human capital, for equipment, just on average in the utility division 30% in the last four and a half years. Yep. that has to be paid for by something or else we're going to have to cut something. And at this point, we've had a commission that was riding the momentum. When I got here for the first six years, the assessed valuation went down every year and we didn't do anything and there was a lot of needs. So, we put together the budget every year based on the assessed valuation and we got to the point where it's like, hey, it's actually turned around. There's growth in the town and part of that growth affects everybody's pro. Do you live in town? Sure.

Just right outside the city limits. But you don't live in the city limits. But if you live in the city limits, your property taxes are going to go up as your neighbors properties improve, as old [snorts] houses get torn down, a new house gets built.

That growth is what we count on to hold that mill levy flat and use that growth to offset those 30% increases and everything that we need to do the business. So when you say it went up significantly, that's one of the things that we look at every year is to make sure that we're not just putting it in the bank, but we're actually using it to offset the cost. So this year in the budget, we put in a 3% increase for all the commodities because that's what our estimate is for property and liability insurance and everything else. That's why we were comfortable with the three and a half% number that we had on the assessed valuation for everybody's property. It's not I mean significant is relative, I guess, is what I'm saying,

I guess. was was the actual increase only 3 and a half%. Cuz from this we're looking at this thing being a 9% increase as it stands now. If you remove that 1.1 if you remove that that 1.1 then let's say on the high side we drop it down to take 30% off that that still leaves this at somewhere around

our number has two numbers in it. The number we have has an estimate of what the existing property is going to grow by and all of the new property that's coming on the tax roles. And so it's very hard to get to where you're saying. That's why it is an estimate. And that's why I'm still saying I was told at the time by our experts it was three and a half%. If it's six, I don't know. But it it seems like a lot to me. Um it does. It's more than we intended for sure. Yeah. And then the the question is with knowing all of that now, let's fix it. We look at it every year. Let's let's fix it now rather than putting this burden on people.

That is a county and and I'm glad Joe is here because he's going to kill me for saying this and if he wants to swing at me I'm standing here, but the valuation process and all those bills are a county action. If they want to do that, we'd be happy to go in and I'm sure we could ask the commission if you want to take um the mill levy back to the 50.854, 854, which is what we were hoping it would be. In the last four years, when we've had it set at the end of the year, it was when a couple was within a couple of hundreds of that number. But that's a county process that's driven by the county. The mil the valuation system is there as they totally understand that. But but the action is dictated by the city by each taxing entity.

Well, every every one of them is independent of the city. the city commission makes their decision and then would submit that to the county clerk and the county county clerk and the treasurer would act on that decision [snorts] by the city commission. It's not that the county will tell the commission what they can or cannot do. The city the city commission city commission taking

my my proposal would be to reopen the budget and reduce it. If you took it down to the 3%, which when the when the commissioners voted on this, you were told that and and Doc and Stu and I guess Chuck and Cher were here too. Um when you voted on on this to exceed the revenue neutral, you were told it would be a roughly 3% increase on people's taxes. And that's ends up because of errors, because of whatever. That's not correct. It's it's 6% on average except then we add in the missing the phantom properties and now it's almost a 9% increase that you voted on. You didn't know you were voting to raise people's taxes by 9% but that's what you did because of the consequences of this.

So what you're proposing is that to as Joe alluded to earlier is to give people their money back

or issue a credit for the second half payments. Yes. Whichever the case is, if they've if they have already paid the year the full year's property tax, then after the calculations are done, the county treasur would mail a check to them or direct deposit, however the case may be. In the case of people who have only made the first half payment, the second half payment is not due until May 20th. And so there's plenty of time to work through the calculations. It doesn't need to be a hair on fire moment, but it does need to be done. work through the calculations, determine what the credits would be and issue that towards to be applied to the second half payment. Issue them new tax statements and they will pay the difference between the credit and what they've what they've uh have remaining based on that number.

Well, I one other question, Joe, you you said you don't have you don't have room in your budget to do this. Absolutely not. So, it would have to come from somewhere else. The cost would come to the city in in this case. the cost would come from some part of that refund. If it's in in in Joe, I'm completely spitballing in broad terms. It may be two or $3 per person to deal with this. If you subdivide it out between everybody, that's probably a a fairly safe estimate in terms of printing, postage, envelopes,

envelopes, everything, right? So, two to three bucks per person. Some people, as I said, yeah, per check. Some people may only be getting $ 20 or $30. Others are going to be getting over $100 back. Some some will be getting significantly more depending on the value of the properties. Didn't you say how much you thought they were going to get back? I think Doc did. He he'd estimate on the numbers. $21. You know, there's a lot of variables. Sure. The total value the house in Woodgate. It depends on what your value went up. The county appraiser has to set a value on every property every year.

So, it depends on what that value did. Some values didn't change at all. The real estate market is very strong has been and some values went up 10 12% probably. So those are the ones that saw a significant tax increase. You know it's it's it's the real estate market. It's the the county has to put a value on it. There's a market value. So as we're as we're talking about this keep something in mind. When I was um talking to the school board yesterday spoke with JB Elliot some the week before on this he talked about the students that they've lost. They've lost I think he's had 119 students total and a um more than a few of them maybe up to 30% moved to Northwest Arkansas from what they've been able to determine. Why would they move there?

Lower taxes. I expect

lower taxes and probably better better opportunity. A lower tax environment creates a better economic environment generally. And here we are. We're we are seeing the the people we most want to retain, which is young families, are leaving. If if if USC 250 lost 119 students, that's a significant number of families that have fled. And from from the people I know who have left, almost uniformly, they did it for number one, better opportunity, but a significant part of their decision process was the tax environment that they're facing here. Um Tim Shalonberg at the legislative sendoff said it pretty well the other day. This is the perception is this is a government town that that so much of the processes here, so many of the opportunities are dictated by government.

Tim also said, oh, excuse me. Go ahead. Yeah. No, no, that he also said he he opened up with a very strong statement about property taxes. Do you want to recap what he said there? I I honestly do not recall that. Y'all have to I'll recap it for you.

The state is looking at property tax. The country is looking at property tax. The League of Kansas Municipalities is looking at property tax. And if you think that there's a silver bullet to solve the property tax equation, the silver bullet is what revenue is going to replace it because you are going to need fire stations and you are going to need police officers and you are going to need a court and you are going to need parks and you're going to need administration. And he was very clear that searching for something um is much bigger than we have been doing here in Pittsburgh. It's been going on statewide until [clears throat] you find another revenue. Um there's a caucus up there right now and bipartisan in the House of 41 people that had jobs in cities and counties that are looking at the impact of all these decisions on property tax because everybody wants to cut them and nobody wants to pay them. And there's somebody like you in every community that's coming out saying, "Hey, they went up, you said three and a half, they're up seven, they're up eight." We get it, but ours are up to match the costs that we have. We put our, you said it earlier, we put the budget together, not on the mill rate as much as the number we need to fund the services.

We don't have an extensive reserve. We aren't piling the money away. We can't invest it. We are paying for the services. We have 14 parks. We have a growing and and one thing about police and fire which are heavily supported by the property tax. The voters have voted in this community repeatedly to supplement the property tax because it only generates so much because they want better police and fire and roads and economic development. So his message was, you can keep looking for it, and they're going to keep looking for it. And we have at least a dozen initiatives from the meeting we had Friday with this with the league about how we can reduce the property tax if that's what we want to do. And I've already explained that to DJ and the commissioners that we will have options in the budget. But this idea that everything is going to be fine if we cut property tax is a farce. the communities that don't have a property tax have an electric utility. Um we if you look at our income tax at the state level, Kansas pays 24% of their a normal canon, this is from the league yesterday, 24% of their um pay goes to the taxes,

right?

Federal income tax is number one and it's double digit. State income tax is number two. Then you get down into this the the county and the the city's property taxes and the school districts. And then below that there's some sales taxes. Those are like 3%. The reason property tax is so difficult is number one, people get hit with it and they have two chances to pay it. The income tax you pay every time you get paid. The the sales tax you pay every time you buy something. We've got this process in in Kansas where you just get it you get a bill and you have to pay it and then the other half comes due pretty quick. But if you ask the counties, can we spread that out over a month? Can we do? Well, that's really expensive, but it's the it's the it's second to the lowest tax that you pay out of everything else. But it's property tax, but it's about the only one that completely goes to your community.

Sure. So, nobody's thrilled with property tax up here. And and believe me, I don't see a face up there that in the last week hasn't told me we're going to do something with property taxes next year. But I think putting it on the county who followed the process to a tea and obviously the city set our mill rate thinking it was in good faith and going to pay for the services. Um we all need to do a better job probably of knowing early on in May what properties are changing use, which ones are coming off, which ones are coming back on as far as tax abatements because that's a big impact. But by no means is anybody up here gloating that we put it to the voters and got a higher property tax. I don't think that's ever been

and I don't think we can I think it's very arduous to put it on the county to go back and send out bills. It's it's going to be extra work. Yeah. Can't we account for it next year? I mean, is that not appease? Well, if we if we account for it next year, then you're saying that we're going to drop the mill levy back down to 50 and we're going to knock out another $200 or $300,000 minimum off of the budget on top of that because the mill levy was raised for this money that should not have existed in the budget in the first place. And the mill raise and so just to be clear, the mill at 50 is 50.8. Yep. So it's closer to 51.

50.854 right now. and and I have not met a commissioner that's sitting up there right now that didn't tell me that they are expecting me to possibly cut at least 1 to two mills if not more out of the budget for next year to to do something. So I think that is the plan and we're going to start on it in February. But I want to be real friendly to the county and not sit here in a city meeting and say without the commission can do whatever they want. If they want the county to go back and do that, they can say it. But I I think Joe made a very good point of he followed the process correctly. It it didn't come out with the result everybody wants. But going back and refunding it um is going to be extremely difficult. And he's convinced me of that and they've convinced me that they're going to address whatever they can in next year's budget. So I'm not and I'm sorry for talking so long. I just I appreciate your

You guys understand that [clears throat] property tax is important here as it is anywhere in the state. We want it to be as low as possible and it is a critical part of funding our our our operations here at the city. No. Well, of course it is and nobody nobody's expecting it not to be. In this case, we're looking at the city's going to bring in a total of almost 9% extra revenue this year compared to last year. So, which part of that is that 3% that you were talking about? Well, part of like I said, I I don't have it broken down like that. They give us the valuation number. I mean, if you've ever seen the spreadsheet. Yep. Um, the biggest number that jumped out to us was we were like, why is this so high and it came back to for the hospital?

Well, it was a hospital and more. That that that one line item in last two years ago, I think was 245,000. This year was 16 million. Right. Had we not have pulled the hospital out, we would be looking at a probably about 13% because 60 I mean, we'd be way up there. We'd really be having Well, that's what the school district is looking at that they they didn't pull the hospital out. they didn't know about it even.

So, and I think part of that's going to be addressed by um you know in March we'll have the the the chamber and the university here for their economic development contracts and part of that discussion is going to be let's literally look at the stuff that's come on and off the tax roles the last 10 years with all the incentives we've given out. But, um our costs go up every month. I mean, we just added a park this month. Um we finally have three new police officers that we hired. We're as close to being full police force as we've been in seven years. Um, we budget every position and our entire budget, the whole thing gets appropriated. Um, if we don't spend it, it goes to reserves. And I think right now we go through every year for five months, we give them the five-year forecast, which shows exactly where we are in reserves. And we're not high above minimum. We're not running, we're not running hot, and we're not um flashy with our money. I mean, we buy what we buy. But I I can't I mean I can't just pick a house out and say it's three and a half%. Roger. I got 9100 homes or whatever he said. But our best guess was it was three and a half to 4%. And nobody was happy um when it came in at 8.9 or nine or whatever you said it was. I'm looking at the red number.

Yeah. They and those numbers are straight from Joe. But that's never happened. I've never seen that 1.1215. Sure. That's crazy. Um but it did happen and stinger. But I also think it should be known that we're consistent with what the increase that the county accepted and the school district and there's a reason for that because we all are operating in the same economy and the cost of providing services is ever increasing. Sure. Unfortunately, none of none of your residents see those kinds of increases. What do you mean? There nobody nobody's pay is going nobody's pay is going up 9%. That's what I'm saying. Got a pretty good wage salary. since wages went up 35%. Grocery bills, but seeing

No, no, Doc. I'm I'm sorry. You misunderstood. Nobody's pay is going up that much. Their expenses are they're absolutely they're getting hit with that and more, right? We have 300 employees and five four years ago pay study and we brought them up I think I average 12 and a half 13%. So, there are people in this community whose pay is going up. Um, and I can tell you it's not enough because we're already looking at the utility division and they're probably three and four bucks lower than they need to be. So, um, life is extremely expensive and we are doing the best we can.

Yep. So, last [snorts] question for you on on this part of it. the when you were working off those initial numbers, when you were building the budget, if the if the anticipated revenue had been $300,000 less, could you have said, "Nope, we have to have that extra 300,000 300,000." And come to the commission and said, "I need a mill or a mill and a half raised." The only time I've gone to the commission and asked for a a mill raise was the year I got here, we had a million dollars in the bank and which was right after 2008 crash. So it was it was bleak. Y

um and then when the revenue neutral or when the property tax lid went into place, we put three mills on to protect ourselves from being limited there. Um I have never recommended the budget in the last 5 years that went over the the existing mill rate. Totally totally understand and agree. And my my point to ask you that is that this money the the budget would have been made without this extra money had you known about it. [clears throat] You would not have built a budget this large if if if your choice had been build a budget this large knowing we're going to raise the mill levy or leave the bud leave the budget two or 300,000 lower. I got the information I got when I got to make the decision.

No, I that's I don't I don't know that. I'm not blaming you for that. I'm I'm simply saying that in the normal budget planning process when you you get the anticipated revenue numbers you build a budget to roughly equate equal that because that's how you that's not how it works. You know what we do every year when we build the budget the first thing we do is you forecast trim. No, we do we do a five-year forecast and the first number we plug in is the existing property tax mill rate is going to stay the same and we're going to live off the growth.

Right. And now if we get to a point that we can't do that, um, we'll obviously go back and say, "Hey, we need to increase the mill rate." But for the last four or five years, that's the number we've stuck with and we've taken that growth. And half of that growth this year we determined was new stuff and half of it was going to be a three and a half% average increase on a taxpayer and and like and you know, I mean, that's a projection that we have to make six months before. I mean, we're doing that. It's hard hard to and that budget went into effect two weeks ago. So, that's another really frustrating part. But yeah, we don't we don't put the dollar amounts and start chasing the mill.

We we set our promise has always been we're going to set the mill rate. We're going to keep the mill flat. We're going to live off the growth. And that was only because it finally got to the point that we could do that. For six years, we couldn't even do that. It was always going down. Sure. And my point in asking that is that had this stuff been calculated right, that number to keep the mill sta stable would have been lower than what you worked off of. I'm not going to I get the numbers from the county, man. I'm not going to No, no, I'm not I'm not blaming you for that. What I'm saying is that in in the real world of doing this stuff, had you been presented with had you known the correct number, you as you're working through this assessed valuation number,

the actual assessed the taxable assessed valuation number. Had you had the correct number instead of the one that included [snorts] all of the non-t taxable properties, then you would have had a completely different workup to the budget because the budget you pass would be showing a $200 or $300,000 deficit. Every calculation on the property tax starts with assessed valuation. You're correct. Right. that and that and so that's my point that in a in an alternate world where this had not happened this budget would be that much lower at a minimum because your goal understandably is to keep the mill roughly at the stable level

in my opinion that budget is $210,000 too high there you go and my I guess my so higher than we planned

yep so my question to the commission then is what are we going to do about this? We're just going to tell the commission, tell the city residents that they have to eat it and we're just going to do promise to do better next year. When I um because when I was talking to the county, Bruce Blair brought up the idea that it could maybe cost $70,000 to do this. I thought that was probably a high estimate. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. We'll find out. But so I I put out a poll on the citizens page just to see. 93% said even if it's 90 even if it's a $70,000 cost, they want a refund.

Aren't we taxing by if if somehow the the county come up with a way to refund at $2 to3 per person per taxpayer? Aren't we adding another tax on that by make costing two to three dollars? you're you're paying $2 to $3 per person extra to get in some cases $7, $21, maybe maybe $100, but sure. Um, is that fiscally responsible to Well, that's that's going to cut into the amount that they could get back. I know. I know. But I mean,

well, I don't know. Is it is it fiscally responsible, but from that I I was going to pull the numbers up, but they were they're a little bit under 600 people answered the poll. 93% of them said, "I don't care. I want my money back. I mean, yeah, I I know now that's poll you're talking about, but I mean it's, you know, well there that's I the very unscientific it's a very unscientific poll. It's Facebook. I mean, yes.

You know, but [snorts] out of that out of that number of people who responded, 93% said, even if it costs $70,000 to give us back our few hundred,000, we want that done. You think they understood that that was going to cost them $2 to $3 to do that or that it was just going to cost the county $70,000? Well, I mean that $70,000 comes from somewhere. Well, I know, but you think that in that poll that that's that they totally comprehended that or they just said, "No, I don't care what it costs."

Well, if it's $70,000 out of 40,000 residents, that's two bucks a piece almost or buck, you know, buck 70 a piece or whatever it is. I think we're we're running back into the same circle here. We we're looking at the the concept of information wasn't correct. Not to fault. It just happened. Yeah. We were told that it was going to be this amount and then it changed. Um the citizens were told that the numbers were going to be a set amount of numbers and they're different and it it's unsettling. I don't I don't feel comfortable with any of this. I mean it you look at this budget. We've looked at this thing so many times, myself as a civilian, sitting in those seats for months,

and [snorts] then now we're using the budget and we're it's still being brought back up that it's inaccurate. And then now we have a situation where the budget is part of the inaccuracy causing something else. And and ultimately that's what's being said, but it's not what's being said. So the the data on that budget was built off properties having a valuation that shouldn't have been on there. That's that's the way I'm perceiving. That's That's not accurate, Commissioner. The The process Joe, you're going to need to get back up here. The process was followed. There's nothing inaccurate about how this was done. It's just [clears throat] the nature of the development in the community. You just You're saying that there was properties on there that were a part of the revenue trail and

and that happens every year. No, every year the county goes in at the after we've submitted our budget and people protest and people do things and properties change and they come off. Um, this year because of the properties and the nature of them and I don't have the detail. It was like those decisions are a lot of them. Can you come to the mic because I'll take a break for a moment. Take it away. [clears throat]

There's several payload protest hearings that are finalized. BODA decisions, board [clears throat] of tax appeals decisions. That's where people have filed for an exemption and at the time when the clerk sent the uh assessed value at the time in the in June uh then between there and the 1 of November the exemption orders came through. So that the the value was was reduced. Uh it wasn't inaccurate. it that's how we accurate it

it does happen every year normally it's not that the value always go between June and and the 1 of November the valuation always decreases some because it can't it can't be raised the the appraiser can't go in even if there was a mistake made and it was too low he can't go in and raise that until the next year so it it it does always reduce a little bit who owns the rule that at the end of the year instead of giving us the mill rate we submitted they give us the tax dollars we submitted Is that a state rule? That's what I mean. When you set your budget, that's what it is. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yes. Every year every year our mill rate gets tweaked at the end. I mean, it's it's I don't like it, but it happens every year. This year,

the mill levy changes a little bit. The the tax dollars stay the same. That that's that's why that's why when I was talking about there's nothing nefarious going on here. The tax dollars that you're getting are still the tax dollars you're getting. They haven't increased. You know, we're working off the best information we have in September when we submit that budget and it was accurate. It's just we don't we didn't know it was going to change that much. Joe, please stay up there for a second. So, I guess my question now is going back and forth on this. How do we stop this from happening? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again because I'm hearing that it only happens a small amount and that's the norm, but this is not a small amount. This is a much larger

That's I So, how do we prevent this? As I I I I would say better communication, I you know, uh if there's if the if we know there's properties that are before the board of tax appeals, you know, those are pending, they might come through, they might not, but that valuation, you know, probably should be reduced from what's sent out to the taxing entities when they're going to estimate what they're

that would help us because we're working off of their spreadsheet and we did catch the big number but we didn't catch all the numbers or maybe they didn't even know at the time but we called and asked and we worked on it for a couple of weeks but it still changed [clears throat] at the end and not to our favor. I mean it I mean this the first time there's been a you know change like that. It's usually a tenth of I mean it's usually it's usually a tenth of a mill.

Again that's my concern period. it doesn't do this, it doesn't do this, and then it's happened, but then it's still kind of, well, it happened. We'll deal with it later. And it's just I don't know. There's a lot of back and forth. So, I I feel like we need to talk this more and get more information and dig a little bit deeper. I don't know. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. I don't know.

I guess I'll I'll dispute one part of that. This this this issue did not come about because people contested their property taxes. This came about because a significant number of properties um from the list the county clerk gave me, including the block 22 full list of properties were inadvertently added to the taxable roles and then they were removed. That's that's the information I was provided. It's not that some homeowners contested their property taxes and those taxes were removed or that that somebody's little business became non-T taxable or something. that there were a lot of properties of a large value which came off the rolls not not came off the rolls for the first time. They were never on the rolls but because of an error they were accidentally put back on the rolls during the crucial time when the numbers are generated for the revenue estimates. Those those numbers were then corrected after the budgets had passed and that necessitated the mill levy increase.

That was the bulk of it.

That that was my that's what I was told. I've got the list at home. I guess I could have could have brought that with the description of the properties, but one of them I fully remember was the block 22 properties because as as it was explained to me, they've pre previously been under ownership and and Darren, if I'm way out of hand here, let me know that they were previously owned by a developer. That developer leased at PSU. They paid the property taxes every year, but because of whatever agreement, they were refunded those property taxes as soon as they paid them. So there was never that revenue was never actually going in to the city to the city's account and now PSU I believe has taken ownership of the block 22 properties which changed its status from whatever abatement was agreed to to to completely exempt

because of a board of tax appeals decision. That's what but the the board of Okay. So see they had to file for exemption. It's not. Yes, you did. Yes. They filed for exemption and it was before the board and the board granted them the exemption. But it's something that that has in actuality not generated generated property tax. But was was it under neighborhood? Yes. It was a neighborhood revitalization plan, but it was part of it was re was refunded back to the developer under neighborhood. Okay. Part of the taxes were distributed. They were coming in. Okay. There you go. Yes. Another large one was the were the business school as well. And that's why we didn't catch it, right? And again, I'm not I'm not blaming you or I'm not blaming somebody. I'm on the hospital board. I'm like, this is not going to be this.

Yeah, we're not pay nobody's paying tax on us, right? But that other one is I mean that's [clears throat] we didn't know about it. And so, right, and I guess to DJ's point or Commissioner Perry's point. Yeah. I mean it's there are so many incentives and abatements and things going on that it just gets you know sometimes it gets c you get caught in something and I think this is one of those deals

made a significant number of these but so there there you go it's just wanted to clarify that. So, I guess ultimately my recommendation to the commission is to make a motion to reopen the budget and see what reductions can realistically be made without harming services. I I had prepared a motion of that with an actual dollar amount on page two of this thing. That's for $56,000, $774. That is what the estimate was if you took the almost 9% increase that the city actually saw versus the 3% that the commission had were told they were voting on. That's that's where I got that number.

Are you recommending that gets refunded? Um, yes, sir. So, the city's going to cut refund checks for the 210. Well, the city's not going to cut a refund check. The city's simply not going to draw that revenue. They're going to reduce the budget by that amount. And we've already drawn the revenue. Well, right. Then the You're just saying we're not going to spend it. You're not going to spend it. The county clerk and treasur are going to issue either rebates, refunds, or credits towards the second half payment. I mean, that's whe whether you What are you thinking of that? I'm not wild about it, but the to him the dollar amount doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you tell him to give everybody a nickel or give everybody $50. It's a matter of what's going to come out of the school. Is the school district doing it?

The school district is not doing it. Is the county doing it? That's the countyy's waiting on you to decide. So, we're going to county's waiting on the city. The county is waiting on the city to decide. Nobody wants to pull the trigger. They're all scared. Are we sc I don't know if we're scared. Well, it's a county process. No, it's it's How does the county have a process and they're waiting on the city to decide? the the I'm I'm saying the county commissioners don't want to have to make a decision until they see what decision the city commissioners make. City commissioners probably don't want to make a decision until the county commissioners make. County commissioners have a $700,000 decision and they're going to make it when we make our two or they they may find some number in between and they're the ones that going to have to do the work

and they're they're everybody is going to have to do the work. The city commission we're not sending out any we don't we don't bill for property. No, but the city's going to have to re you the city staff, the city manager, the city commissioner is going to have to re-evaluate the budget, find where they're going to make those cuts and then present that modified budget to the to the county at which point the county treasurer, county clerk will have to do all of their work to determine that. But my point is, Darren, that my recommendation is we should take the lead from the county. It's their process, but I'll defer to the commission on this for sure.

But it's I I just want to point one thing out. It's the county's process in the sense that you are directing the county to adjust to adjust the mill levy and deal with this. The but you the city commissioners have to make the decision for the city. The county doesn't tell you whether they can do it or not any more than you can tell the county commissioners how they're going to vote. Well, I was prepared to come in here today and recommend to the city commission that if the county wanted to go forward with this, then we would participate. Yeah, but the I was never I was never in the I mean, believe me, there's plenty of things that were processes that we own that we do

and that we have to redo and and fix, but this is the billing of county pro. All the property in the county is a county function. So, right, I mean, Joe's just explained he's the one that's [clears throat] going to have to do all the work and how BOD works. It's going to be the city followed our process to the tea. Um, and so I I think it's a little odd that the county would come in and say, "Well, we'll do whatever the city wants." Immediately,

no, that's there. What what I'm telling you is that from the standpoint of making that political decision to reopen the budget and cut it, the county is holding the breath to see what the city commission does. In the same way, nobody wants to be the first one to step out on the dance floor. And the school district didn't school district is hamstrung by the fact that so many of their their their property tax revenue is broken down into four funds. Some of which are dictated by the state and some of which how much they get from it is actually dictated by state payouts that won't happen for a few months. So how big was their number? Their number their actual total number was I think 12 and a half or 13%. Because they had in dollars I'm sorry.

Oh in dollars. I'm sorry I don't have the number in front of me and I'm Is it more than us or less? I mean, no, it's it's more. Ours was two, the county seven. It's more. Well, right. The the school district obviously encompasses more than just the city. And on top of that, because they did not even remove the calculation of the hospital from their from their initial budget build, they were they were working off of what they thought was a bigger number. So, their mill levy increased 2 point something. I don't remember what it was, but it ended up being higher higher than because of that.

Well, it sounds like what Darren just said, uh, he was going to make a recommendation [clears throat] for the city to follow the county lead. And, you know, it shouldn't be the other way around. It's county should decide what they're going to do, and if that's what they're going to do, then that's what we'll do. You know, uh,

I realize this is uncomfortable. Something to keep in mind, the the the county process that Darren's referring to is a simple the process of the county the county office is involved having to do the work to actually make this happen. The county the county does not tell you what to do and no part of the county is is involved in deciding what you do. When I'm saying that the county is waiting, I'm referring to the county commissioners. They want to see whether you're going to sack up and actually give people back their money. So if if if you're telling me the school's not going to do it,

the school is not going to do it. They are in large part hamstrung by state rules on when they get their funding. They don't based on discussion I've had with the superintendent, they don't even know how much of it. If they collect too much, the state keeps it. they they will only let this let the school district get so much as a percentage of what the state gives them from other funding sources. So, if the county decides not to do it, do you expect the city to do it?

Well, I I would hope the city would. I mean, we we are here in in the case of Chuck and Cheryl, I know you two voted against the the exceeding the revenue neutral rate and against the budget because you felt it was too high. That's it's something when the when the commission did vote on it, they they voted on it because they were they were told it was going to be roughly a 3% increase. And I know Darren that we can't pick one house, one house here or there, but looking at this, even without that mill levy increase, it was going to be more than double that for total revenues collected. Total revenues collected were over 6%.

I'm just I'm just trying to understand one one thing. During the budget process, three entities, the city, the county, and the school district, we're going to increase. We're going to go over the revenue neutral rate. Correct. I don't need an answer. It's correct. They were going to go over the revenue neutral. Everybody voted to exceed the revenue neutral. That is correct. The school district did it. We did it. Yep. Um, we did it on a on a 3-2 vote and it became a it became a big issue in the election. Yep. Now, fast forward to January. There's this problem that we all share. The county shares 700,000. Yep.

The school districts is somewhere north of us. And we have the smallest impact of 200,000. And we have to be the tipping point for the whole process to happen. I don't understand that. Why are we always in here beating up this city commission to be the leader in a community when we have the smallest budget? And everybody can laugh all they want, but all of our property taxes are spent here. Um I I just I don't I mean why isn't the county if this is so important leading on this? I'm going to be talking to them too again and pushing them to do this because ultimately nobody wants to be the first one to do it. That's that's your short answer.

But everybody wants to see well if if if the city decides to do it now the commissioners get a lot of pressure. They have to do it. And if they if you guys decide to keep all the money, then the county commissioners get to say, "Well, the city didn't do it, so we're just going to blow it off, too." And that's a decision that the commission will have to make if they want to say, "You know what? We voted against this earlier, but we want to let everybody keep their money. We want to keep the excess anyway." And yeah, is it is it going to be a headache for the county clerk and the treasurer and the appraiser and reworking through this? It absolutely will. It's going to eat up a lot of manh hours that they probably would rather spend doing other things. And it's going to take some amount of money. As as Joe said, it could be couple bucks, could be three bucks per per person who a check is mailed to. But on the flip side, this is what people are expecting. They're they are they were taxed excessively because the budgets were built on fantasy numbers that should never existed. The fact that that fantasy number was there was not any of your faults. But it's the reality that that fantasy number that should not have existed is what you built your budget off of. And now when the commission voted to accept that budget, they thought they were voting for a 3% tax increase. Turns out it's a 9% tax increase. So that's the question. Is that is that what you want want it to be that we're just going to leave it at a 9% tax increase? Almost 8.96%. That's how much extra you're bringing in in taxes this year. Now, is that is some of that valuation? Of course it is. But that's the thing that the goal was to not increase the taxes this high. But here we are with almost a 9% tax increase. And that's that's my question to you. What amount do you want to tell the taxpayers, you know what, we're going to let you we're just going to

keep it and wink wink, we promise we'll do better next year. Well, I go back to that same question I asked um Joe Grizzlano about the carrying it over and being good stewards of the of the taxpayers money. I I think that's the most responsible thing to do is to carry it over and say we'll spend $210,000 less in next year's budget. Um and it's an open meeting and you know I mean that's a that's close to a promisary note that you can make. Um, I just think I I just think it gets watered down when you start taking two and three dollars um, you know, for supplies and postage out of someone's refund and and it's and it's unprecedented um, here anyway. Maybe somebody else has done it. I don't know.

It's happened in the state before, but you're right. It's extremely rare that this would happen.

It's extremely rare. We're in uncharted territory here. [clears throat] Um, and you know, I I bet Joe would agree. I think he even said, you know, there are going to be errors. Um, so, you know, what happens at that point when when we don't get that right or or in in his case, the county doesn't get that right. That's that just adds I mean, to me, it seems more responsible to keep it bundled up and deducted off of next year's. Um, I mean, that's my opinion. Um, but I also don't know that it's even I've never I I don't recall ever making a motion to do something this large or or even half this size in public input. We haven't even made it out of public input yet. So, I don't I don't know whether this needs to be an agenda item at the next meeting, which I would think and then maybe the county

that'd be that'd be an answer for Henry on on the

procedural part. It seems like an odd place to make that. I don't know if it's should be a non-aggenda reports and requests, but I mean I guess we can do it at any time, but um I I feel like we ought to if we're going to make that type of decision, probably schedule it for an actual agenda item at the next meeting so we can have a little more input on it and again maybe maybe take the lead on the county commission's reaction to it. Well, and something I want to make clear that any any decision you made tonight, if you did make a motion, is purely to direct city staff to to begin digging into the budget and finding the necessary cuts that they make they can make to meet. You could even set up for different dollar amounts. What happens direct city staff to give you two different answers. What happens if you take 200 off and what happens if you take 500 off? And figure out where that is. You don't have any decision you make is not binding on actually executing and telling Joe to proceed. It's simply a decision to say we want staff to give us the numbers on where they would make these cuts for the dollar amount we we're telling them.

But Roger, as a non- city resident, you're not in favor of doing the the carry over to next year. I'm I'm not. And and from the and and that's your opinion just like Sure. My opinion. From the 93% of the people who answered my poll, they're they're not in favor of carryover either. And I I could not have made that those questions any more clear. Do you want your money, even if it costs $70,000 to issue a refund? 93% said yes. Well, that's the only question you asked. Or do you want a refund? No. The the the other question was or do you want to have them keep it on the promise of re of being better stewards and doing better next year or that was the other question

or reducing your next tax payment or next year's tax payment? No, the yeah the the the explanation included that some people would get credits issued, some people get refunds, but this process that we're describing would cost up to $70,000. That's that's what the question was. I think it'll c frankly I think it'll cost you more than 70,000 because you're not including the amount of time that his people are going to have to spend doing this. We're not that's coming out of his budget because they could be doing other things.

I guess we we need to see. I don't know. Does does that mean they're going to end up having 100 hours of overtime at the end of the year? I don't know. But the the other the alternative is that we're going to keep the money. The city's going to keep the money. The countyy's going to keep the money. We're just going to let taxpayers deal with it and take it in the shorts and then next year we're going to think about doing better. And I personally I don't have faith in that. And I don't think many of the many of the taxpayers do. They've they've seen it's it's just the inevitable result of how government operates that they're going to spend the money that they have available. And I realize costs have gone up. Everybody knows that. But there's there's also the simple fact that if this had never happened, if this two or $300,000 or $700,000 in the part of the county, if that number had never been presented as a possible number without raising the mill one or two or three mills, nobody would have built their budgets this high. All these budgets would be lower. But they were they the budgets were set where they were because those funds were available with keeping what they thought was keeping the mill state steady. And now we're faced with the situation that oops, we had to raise a mill because none of these numbers we're working off of were accurate. I think we're all in agreeance that doing nothing is not an option. We have to do something about this and and what the best option is, what makes the most sense, what's the most fiscally responsible, uh what takes the least amount of time. I think um I agree with us too. need to make a plan to address this and weigh things out.

I guess my my question I'll I'll leave you with this. My question would be that at the very least make a motion and a formal vote tonight to direct city staff to present you with options for cuts in different different dollar amounts. Well, depending on what option we go with, we might not even have to do that if we just carry it over. Well, that's what I'm saying. But but if if you don't make any decision tonight, now we're two more weeks out. The second half statements go out on May 20th. There there [clears throat] this is something that's going to take some time. I would guess it's probably a month or more of working through the process to get this. So it's not a decision. Wouldn't be better. Wouldn't it be better when the budget is developed that we do it at that time? Because that's when we're going to cut.

Correct. No, I'm saying you're going to open the bud. The budget you've already passed. You're going to reopen it. Make the cuts off of that. Well, I'm thinking for the next fiscal year. next fiscal year is a whole another party. Yeah, we're talking about the budget that you have already passed that you're going to reopen it and say, you know what, we're going to make cuts off of that even though we've already begun begun working through this budget. I have another question. Will the state allow that?

Everything I found is it can be done. It's it's very uncommon as Stu said, but there's there's nothing that prevents you from reducing it. If you were to ex exceed the budget, then maybe you'd have to. And that I guess that's another question. The city has certainly ex spent non-budgetary items to the tune of what seems like a lot of money. I don't know what the dollar amount is. I think you said it's happened other places. Do you know other places that I I would have to find out. I I know that there was a I assumed you knew since you said that. So you know where they are? I I I don't know which one it is. I'll I'll dig into it more.

You said what everything you found it could be allowed. I'm not disputing what you have to say. Jay, if how long has you why I keep calling you Jay, your brother. Joe, how long have you been doing this? 20 years. 20 years. So, you could probably have some somebody you could call at the state and see if this is something we could do or

I I mean I I I don't know. I I I think you know Lisa has contacted the department of municipal budgets and you know they said it's it's probably against state statute but to to make changes at this point because everything's been certified to the state that the state gets money also. So but I I'm not going to I'm not [clears throat] going to put my neck on and say you know because I I don't know if the state would back that up. you know, it was one person find out

I I will, you know, I I will say that the the information that I that I told you guys, I have also visited with each of our commissioners individually and told them the same thing. I it's it's better to try to make cuts in next year's budget than to try to redo because we don't I I don't know where you're going to cut $700,000 out of out of the county's budget. I mean, there were some pretty big increases made in a few department. First of all,

if [clears throat] it's legal, that's the main thing to start off the ball rolling because it takes a lot of heart to admit we have a problem. And we're all admitting that there's a problem, but we owe it to the taxpayers to make sure that we're doing everything we can to correct it, but if if the state the state first and foremost has to tell us. So, I I don't know, you know, that that you would get a definitive answer. I I I don't know the answer to that. I really don't. But if they're the top elected or whatever informational, they should be able to tell us because I'm sure we're not the first people this has ever happened to. I think that it this, you know, 20 years, I

I can't It's never happened here. No, not not not not in the last 20 years or way beyond that. But I think we owe it to the people to make sure that we're doing everything possible because we don't want to throw good money at bad money. You you you did it. You did it when you set your budget. Your budget was a dollar amount. Everything was done the right way. That's the dollar amount you said is the dollar amount you thought you were going to need. And that that that's the budget. Uh the levy that that that backs into it with the assessed value. That's just a it's a mathematical calculation. The budget is a dollar amount. That's I think we should do what Steve said.

We should make it an agenda item. We should look at it, come back and discuss it, find out from the state, and go from there. Well, I think what you mentioned while ago, BJ, if you say that again, because counties are waiting on us, the county is waiting on us, we're waiting on the county. Why can't we have some kind of work thing with the county? I'd like to speak to the county commissioners on this. And that's a very good idea. Get their point of view and where they're looking at it and then what options they're looking at as well. If we all work together. Absolutely.

I think that's realistic and the people are people are going to accept that you don't want to make a rash decision. But the what what we also don't want to see is that the city and the county just decides to set this aside because it's too much work. We get that it's too much work. Everybody's working hard, but that's part [clears throat] of the job. That's that's why you're here. You you weren't electing to take the easy way. So, I'll leave you with that. A portion of this money also went to the state. Correct.

The Well, the state did. They they left their mill levy exactly the same and their their revenue increased by just shy of 6%. It was 5 point something%, I believe. So, are we going to try to claw that money back because some of that money is in in No, no, no. The tax paid is paid. No, no. You're the each entity is paid separately. You're not you're not going to try and claw money back from the state. The only money the city has is the money that the city collects for the city's budget. You you you're not touching anything from the state when and Joe, please correct the state mill levy is in statute. It's it's one and a half million and you it doesn't matter what the value is. Doesn't matter. That's one and a half mills go

and that's paid directly that's paid directly to the state. Correct. No, it it's paid on your tax bill and we it's I mean you collect it and then you pay the state directly. City never touches that state the state didn't get any more because of this situation. They got their one and a half%. Correct. Because they got their one and a half mills. I got more they got they got their one and a half mills. They they they collected the valuation growth and Joe I I defer to you. I just don't have that in front of me. but it was just shy of 6% 5 point something I'm not sure

percent in actual revenue increased by the state. So there you go. I I'll leave you with that. I just ask that at the very least you you make a concerted effort. I I would recommend a motion to open to explore this. Make it an official motion that you want to explore this and vote on that. Let's see. Are you in favor of at least exploring the option of giving people a refund? I think we owe that. I think we Okay, I'll I'll step away. Thank you very much. We appreciate you bringing all this in. I know it's taking up a lot of your time and it's obviously a lot of work for everybody for everyone.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you very The only thing I would say about that if that's the how we're leaning on making a motion at his, you know, his advice is that we don't I think we I think we should say we're going to explore it. I don't I don't think we determine in the motion that we're going to make a refund. I mean, because it may be a carryover. So, I mean, I would make that motion that we explore this more and have a conversation with the county commission. Absolutely. and um you know possible setting. I was gonna say we can set it up with the county. Absolutely. You mentioned a while ago Joe now I got your name right. I'm calling him Joe

Stew. Yeah. And I've been 12 plus years we've never voted on anything in in public input. Do we need to wait till non-consent agenda or do we vote on that now or I mean legally you can you can vote on it now if that's make a motion you want throughout the session. So what's the motion? So the motion is is to to look into this further and work with the county um towards a a resolution on on um what to do what to do on the overage. So there's just couple other things we're going to have to try to find out if it's legally we can do this. Right. That's all. Yes. Package that all into that somehow. I don't

Henrying what's Yeah. The motion could be as simple as just saying we uh I I move that we look into this further on on how on what to do with the overage um of the So you're going to make a motion to explore this with the county commission and to check with the state to see the legalities involved. Yes. Yes. That that's your motion? That's my motion. Is there a second? Second. Let's do it this way. Roll call. Brooks. Yes. Hi. Yes. Manel. Yes. Perry. Yes. Sig league. Yes. All right. Thanks for explaining, Joe. Take a Tylenol.

Thanks for coming. Joe,

can I say just one thing? I'm sorry. I apologize. This might been a long one. I don't have a silver bullet, but I do have a suggestion. And Darren, you you can find this out. And the state has the power to do so on these tax exemptions that we have in the city of Pittsburgh is huge. I mean there's a lot university has a lot the hospitals [snorts] the churches and it it's just a lot of money and uh with that going on the taxpayers have to pick up the blunt of that now from what I understand the state can change the tax exempt where they pay like a third or twothirds of their tax exempt and onethird comes to us and that I think you can check on that if you would please

can you you the state has a tax exemption that they would get to the state can control the tax. I mean, the money exempts they can give. We can't and they if the commission could, I'm sure they would. But like if you got Oh, you're saying the state exempts the university 100%. Can they do twothirds? Yeah. Yeah. Just to reduce it down to where the citizens get part of that because it's revenue loss and the citizens of Pittsburgh have to pick that up. I mean, could you just check on that? you know, I'm not sure, but I think you can. I'll check, Ralph. Thank you very much. Yep. All right.

So, are there any other public input items that we need to talk about? Having seen none, let's move on into the consent agenda. Mayor, can we take a like a five minute break? Why don't we do that? Kind of a bathroom break. Maybe we're going to take be in recess for five minutes and uh come back at 7:20. I appreciate that. Do we need a vote on that for a bathroom

the consent agenda excluding item B, item C, item F, and item G. So moved. Second. Seconded. Uh, the roll call vote. Brooks, yes. Hi. Yes. Mel, [snorts] yes. Perry, yes. Sigma, yes.

All right. Item B, approval of resolution number 1298 authorizing the city to enter into a lease purchase agreement with Clayton Holdings LLC for equipment [snorts] to be used by the public works and public utilities department in the amount of 1,326,43349 approved by the government body on December 9th, 2025 and authorized a mayor mayor and the city clerk to sign the resolution on behalf of the city. I know we approved that, Matt, but could you go through that and kind of explain what this is about again? Um, really it's it's an additional doc. So, we approved everything. We're entering a contract with Clayton Holdings for all that purchase of equipment. And really, this is just another document that they've requested to have us uh initi initiate and execute to say that it's all approved. So

nothing's changed. We bid the financing. Yeah, we bid all the financing. Yeah, this is part of the final contract documents. [clears throat] This actual resolution wasn't uh prepared at the time that you approved the the bid at the last meeting. And so this is a just the formal step that the bank needs in order to do the lease purchase agreement official. So if there's no other questions, I'll make a motion to approve item B. Second. All in favor say I. I. I.

Uh going to item C. Approval of staff recommendation to enter into an agricultural land lease between Campbell Farms LLC and the city of Pittsburgh in which Campbell Farms LLC release 90 acres of tillable land and grassland located at 4303 North Free Kings Highway in the amount of 5,250 for the term beginning February 27th, 2026 and concluding February 21st, 2027. seven and authorize the mayor to sign the lease on behalf of the city.

I spoke with you, Darren, on this one. I just had a couple follow-up questions and that's why I asked to have it pulled. It's nothing crazy. Just the what was the initial purpose of this property for the city? What is it? Industrial park. Industrial park to advance the city to grow north. I mean, it's in the park on the north side. It's it's definitely north of the the rest of the city. Okay. And then the the lease is are they actually farming it doing processing and growing on it or is that

Yeah, he farms it. He um has been doing it since um I think the last three years, maybe four. Um and he just it's a way to keep the property maintained so it doesn't just go to saplings and stuff. But yeah, he farms it and he pays us um you know 5250. I remember there was another agenda item that came up with this type of lease agreement for the airport and I was just want to make sure that I had a good grasp on it. So yeah, that's similar process. It's just land we own and it just it just seems like if it's just sitting there, we might as well have somebody out there keeping an eye on it and and and making some money on it. And if somebody else was interested in the same thing, we'd kind of go through the high bid on

Yeah. I mean, it's only 5,000, so we don't bid it, but um he approached us and he's done other work for us, so he's pretty But yeah, if somebody came in and really made a fuss, we could probably have him compete if we needed to. All right. Move to approve. There's been motion to approve. Is there a second? Move to approve the second. Second. All right. All in favor say I.

I. All post same time. Pass. Item F, approval of the appointment of Bla1 Mine to a to a first two-year term and the reappoint of Criana Mulan, Darcy Schultz, Stephanie Watts to second two-year terms as members of the downtown advisory board effective immediately and to conclude on December 31st, 2027.

Yep. Good evening, mayor, commissioners. Uh we had a current board member request to vacate her position on the downtown advisory board before her term was uh complete. Um which changed the agenda request for this evening. So that's why we're um asking for a adjustment there. Um we will need uh to be updated to fill all board positions on the downtown advisory board. We're needing to fill um Michaela Crystal's unexpired term of the property owner on the board. In order to fill the open positions on the DAB, we would need to change the designation of two positions and appoint and reappoint those that had applied to their designated positions on the board. So to clarify, uh Michaela Crystal, who is currently uh designated as the property owner on the downtown advisory board, our downtown advisory board has to have certain positions filled by property owners, a downtown resident, hospitality representative, a retail representative. Uh, so in order to fill those board positions, it gets a little difficult. Um, so we not only had terms expiring, but we also had someone that wanted to vacate their positions. So I've prepared um the the motion needed in order to fill all the positions on the downtown advisory board, and I can uh read that to you. Uh motion would be to change the designation of the position on the downtown advisory board vacated by Michaela Crystal from property owner to at large and to change the designation of the current DAB member Stephanie Watts from at large to property owner. To appoint Jeff Brooks at large to an unexpired term effective immediately and to expire on December 31st, 2026 to appoint Bla1 Mine Hospitality to a first two-year term. and to reappoint Trianna Mulan at large, Darcy Schultz, downtown resident, and Stephanie Watts, property owner, to second two-year terms, effective immediately, and to conclude on December 31st, 2027.

I'll make a motion to approve everything you just said. Okay. Been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. All say I. Motion carries. Thank you. Thanks, Kim. Item G, approval of the appointment of Anthony Albertini to the first three-year term and the reappointment of Elizabeth May Smith to a second three-year term as member of the land bank board of trustees effective immediately and to conclude on December 31st, 2028.

The reason why I asked for that one to be pulled uh solely just questions on previous practice and legality. So the the person applying to be the legal representation as a non city or Crawford County citizen um their home of record on their application shows in their work location shows Witchaw Witchaw area. Is that normal? Is that a is there any conflict with having somebody that's not anywhere near the area to be on this type of a board?

No. and his intent is moving here. Um, and he's working with the firm um that Bill Walker works for, which was who was our previous legal representative. Um, as you can imagine, these positions are difficult to fill because they're very specific per position. So, um, that's why Anthony had interest and plans to move here anyway. Um, and is, uh, from St. Paul, Kansas. So, um, he was willing to take on the role and come back for the meetings and be a part of it. Okay. So, his his uh application said 3 to five years uh to move to the area was his plan. Um anybody else have any concern about that much time frame? [snorts] It seems

it wasn't an attorney, but they're so hard to find. It's I mean obviously our goal is to keep if we had somebody that was local that was competing for him, I'm sure we'd give it to the local person, but So, he has three to five years to move here. Is that what you're saying? No, he's his intent is to be here within three to five years. His intent is to move to this area, works for the the same firm. So, yeah, I just want some clarity on that. If it was if there was any issues with him not being from the area and being on the the board that oversees the land bank, it's kind of a big deal. So, yeah, you're comfortable with that?

Yeah, as long as And he said he could make the meetings. We just need it as a legal representative uh sitting there helping us as an attorney. So that that's helpful in in the board decisions. How often? So guidance for that meeting once a month. So the land bank's tied to the city of Pittsburgh where clearly it's part of the process of getting rid of old properties that are condemned and need refreshed. So does that attorney speak with either the city attorney? Is it any effect infection to make sure things are the way they are or is there any anything you guys do jointly or with the previous one? Was that

that board DJ Commissioner Perry? That is a very strange board. That board is set up by statute. So, it's really not part I mean it is a city board but it's very independent of the city. So, I think everything with the land bank separate from I think the land bank kind of Oh, go ahead. I work with Kim when she needs Yeah. assistance. Okay. Yeah. Nud nie brought that up about the land bank and that's how we're trying to generate funds of property that probably not paying property tax or hasn't for a while right so yeah I mean that's one tool we have we have sheriff sales we have the land bank which is going to take a vacant property and put it in productive use absolutely

so what if a nonprofit buys a piece of property so that will that stay off the tax ro for whatever reason they need But non I mean if it if they [clears throat] turn it into a church or something like that it would. But if they just build a house unless it's a Habitat for Human I don't know which houses are Yeah. I mean they're they're if they build a home on it and sell it to someone else it's going to be it's going to be untouchable. Yeah. So and I've talked to you about this one Kim. I give you No, I got a number from you.

We tore a house down recently. I don't know if that went in the land bank. if it did. I told the property owner that had the issue with this being in such disrepair and homeless people living in there and finally the city tore it down. They were interested in being able to purchase that piece of property joining their their land. So as a situation like that, will they possibly become the first maybe person interested in we sell it to?

I think it depends on if that property was donated to the land bank. So, um, if the property owner didn't choose to donate it to the land bank, then we wouldn't have really any say in that. If they wanted to buy it, they'd have to go to that property owner. So, I guess that would be up to the But if it was donated to the land bank and then the land bank sells it, that's what I'm saying. If it was donated to the land bank and that individual is interested in purchasing that parcel or that property, they would um go through the the appropriate procedure and then present to the board as to what their intent is for that property. Maybe they're expanding their home, maybe they want to build a garage, maybe they want to expand their yard. Um, and then the board would then make the decision on whether to sell it [clears throat] to them or not.

Well, hopefully if that's the case and that's what they want it for, the board would give them priority if it's right next door. So, ideally, if it's a buildable lot, we'd like to see a home built on it. As we know, there's obviously a slight shortage there. So, um, but again, I can't speak for the board. Uh, so I don't want to speak for any of the board members, but we like to see a house built on a buildable lot if it's possible. Okay. Any other questions? Move to approve. Second. Been moved and second. All in favor say I. I post. Oh, sorry. Thanks, Kim.

All right. Consider the following. Quick claim deed. Debbie Brock is requesting that a city execute a quick claim deed so that she may close the sale of a current currently undeveloped real estate in the city research park in development park. Addition that the city transferred to she and her husband in 2005 but retained a right to repurchase the real estate. Yeah, mayor commissioners, that's uh in 2005 they developed that area. This is one section that they didn't develop. She's in the process of selling it to a commercial entity the other day and realized new title search that we still had a right of first refusal. So, she came to us and Henry um worked on the appropriate documents and this would just clear off that for us so she can go ahead and sell it and get it into use. Right now, it's just a grass land by the railroad track.

The person that's First thing, do we know who they are and what their intent is with the property? No. No. I asked but I got shut down. So, is there any question other questions? There's a motion to approve. So, moved. Second. It's been moved and second. All in favor say I. I.

I. All post same time. Motion carries. Item B, community development block grant project 23 PFO26. Time extension request. Consider staff recommend request to submit a time extension request and contract amendment number two Kansas Department of Commerce for community develop block grant project 23 PFO26 Washington [clears throat] school childcare project to explain the date delay hold out [clears throat] date and to update the completion date.

Hello again. Um so this is we have done this before with this same project. We have asked for an extension prior to due to the bid process and not being able to um fill the needs for contractors to get the project done. The project is now complete both buildings. So the historic building and then the addition. Uh so that's the building that sits to the north of the historic building. The addition is what use CDBG funds. Okay. So that's what the extension is being asked for. The primary reason we are asking for an extension uh when we would normally be closing this out or closing the grant out is because there are not any students occupying the building. And in order to close out, we are required to report on the uh 51% of the low to moderate income of those utilizing that building because we use grant funds. So to just briefly summarize, Washington School is open. Both buildings have a certificate of occupancy. The historic site or the original Washington school is being operated and does have enrollment and students are there and teachers are there and um everything is going well and Candy Rushing is here as our provider and she'll speak to you about that in a moment. The other building is not occupied at this time because there's not a need for that based on the enrollment numbers. So I or the city cannot report on the people occupying that building and the students. I can't say if it's 51% LMI based on income range because there's no one using it yet. So, we are asking the Department of Commerce, who's very supportive of this, for an extension of another six months so that we can start some enrollment this spring, get students occupying, and then we're able to report on it. So, um I will bring Candi rushing up. She's here and has patiently waited this evening um to visit with you all just a brief moment and and tell you just a little bit about it and then we'll answer any questions that you might have. Good evening, mayor and commissioners. Um, my name is Candy Rushing. I own and

operate Grow at Eden Early Learning Centers. I have two additional centers. Um, one in Iola, Kansas and one in Parsons, Kansas. This is our third location. The location has two buildings. It's a very nice campus. Point Forward has done a wonderful job renovating the facility. Um, a building that many saw needed to be torn down. there was a group that had a great vision for it and now there's a lot of little young feet running around the halls and the rooms and it's just a delight. The public um has been very supportive. Businesses have been supported. Families are really excited um about this opportunity. Um we do have 20 students enrolled right now. We have a lot of space. Um we have about 20 more joining in January. We have an open house tomorrow 9 to 4. come and go. Anyone can come and ring the doorbell and tour the space. Um, we also have an additional tour openhouse day on the 22nd and the 26th this month. Um, I've had a lot of requests from previous students that went to Washington School that want to come and tour. So, we figured that the best way to do this is to just give the public an opportunity to come. We have a very safe and secure facility. Um, so you do have to buzz the doorbell because you cannot just walk right in. Um, we are a monastery based program. So, we have a lot of play-based, hands-on activities and learning happening at our facilities. It is 100% teacher engaged. There are no screens. We feed children very healthy foods in a scratch kitchen where we make fresh marinara. Um, we do not serve things like fried foods or quick, you know, throw in the oven. Children of ages under five years old do not need that type of food. So, as a kinesiology major, it's my um my mission to provide the child with a with a whole health a wholesome um experience and that is what we serve them and what they see and

their experience during the day. Um we're very thankful to be in Pittsburgh. We were invited to come and operate this facility by Ron Scripps. Um and I'm very honored to be here in Crawford County. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah, I I I have some and I I met you. Do you don't remember me? I was at the groundbreaking Washington school. I didn't remember you, but at the the kickoff the other day, Kim and you came up and talking about this project and I had some questions then and you answered them. So, I'm going to ask you basically the same question. Sounds good. So, and I got one more. I just what you said. You own facilities somewhere else. Sure.

You're not going to own this one. And you're going to lease it, right? We are currently leasing it for 10 years with the opportunity of first right of refusal if it were to be sold after 10 years. Okay. And I ask you [clears throat] because I drove I go by that twice a day in my school bus. I don't see much activity. You said you had 20 people on kids enrolled in Old Washington School. Mhm. I asked you about the other building. Is it furnished? And you said partially.

Partially. And why is it partially furnished? uh because furniture costs a lot of money. So, we are working to um seek additional grant funding or um take potentially take out a loan. Um and the board, my non-n not for-profit board will decide how we we handle those extra furnishings that we need. Um and so that is the reason it's not fully furnished. So then my next question is a lot of money was spent privately and grant money. I don't know the the total amount right now, but I'm thinking and you still need further money to furnish that building.

Yes, the money was for construction. And the other money that was received through a great Patterson grant that we received um went for uh playground equipment that is going to be installed the second week of February and uh artificial turf. And then you also told me that you weren't going to open the other building and furnish the other building until you was at full capacity at Washington School and that's why you needed a six-month extension and I asked so in 6 months you're going to be full capacity and your answer was not in six months.

So I asked then would you come back for another six months and I will not wait until we're at full capacity to put children in the second building. Okay. So, that's different than you told me at the meeting. Uh that you would probably come back or Kim, one of the two said you'd probably come back and ask for another six months and then possibly it might be two years before you met full capacity at Washington School.

Yeah, it could be one to two years. We're seeing an incredible growth in just this first month. um opening up during the holiday season is very difficult uh because families have a lot of time off from work. So we just saw such a slow enrollment period in November and December. Um but we are seeing I gave a challenge to my team to bring in 20 families. We have an amazing referral program and um they've met the task and they're exceeding the task. So we may be full faster than I expect and anticipate. Um you have a wonderful community here in Crawford County. it took a little longer to fill um fill my spaces in my other facilities. We have a lower population and and maybe less commuters traveling in during the day, but it doesn't feasibly make financial sense to open a second building before we at least get more children. you know, for me to see sort of the um growth and the growth projections and how quickly we grow, it's very difficult for me to tell you that, you know, in 6 months I will go ahead and open that building or we'll be ready to open that building. So, I cannot put a definite answer on that for you. But I will not wait until we're full capacity to then open that second building. The addition does not have a kitchen. It does not have a gymnasium. It does not have offices. there will be a lot of shared use between the two facilities through a contract. Um, but to open a to to move children over to a building right now after they've just started with us would would not um be responsible.

And then you have told me that you have to have you'd have to hire staff for the new bill. Uh, will you be the licensed daycare provider for both? Yes. And I don't know the process of hiring staff, but that has to go along with sometime you make the decision. Well, now we're going to start putting people children in the second building. So, you should have that [clears throat] whatever staff you need already in place.

Um, very very likely we would move staff and have staff potentially work at both locations. Um, and and move staff that we are training right now to be the directors of that building. I have three directors on staff right now. And so that's very likely that we could move one of those directors to be the director of the second building. But you directors, but you will be the sole life provider. Correct. Yes. Yes. Uh and you know told me one of the buildings are forprofit, one's not for profit. The historic building is a for-profit building and the addition the new building is going to be a not for-profit and that is due to the tie of the CDBG funding. And one more thing I sure

told you at the tour of Washington school and I was under because I was told there was a waiting list for people in your facility and you told me that was not so right uh you know the needs there definitely the need it says I don't know we come up with thousand spots that's needed is that factual is that so what I'm getting that is there's other daycarees. How do you come up with the children you need to fill and and the other building has to be was it 51 or 56% LMI 51% LMI

51% LMI. So are you you anticipate with the other options that you will have any problem filling your need?

No. Um so a twofold question there. Um, with the LMI, I do not foresee any problems fulfilling that building with 51% LMI. Um, over 50% of my enrolled children are receiving Department of Children, Children and Families subsidies at the Parsons facility and it's in the neck of 75 to 80% in Iola. I don't foresee there being an issue with filling it with 51% LMI. about the the filling it with children in general. Um the first 15 families were from homes that their parents were caring for them full-time and those children ranged from 1 year to three three and a half years old and they were just never in child care. The families just were able to afford staying home with them and now they want to go back to work. So those were all full private paying families. Um, and then, uh, there are families that are potentially out there that didn't have resources for their preschooler. Um, I know the district, uh, looks for preschool spaces. And that's something we've talked, you know, to the district before about is is a potential long-term partnership um, with preschool spaces and and figuring out how do we meet the needs of the children that are not in school right now and preparing them for school. So I think there are a lot of children sitting out there that are not in places that um are giving this high of of an high quality of an experience and uh word of mouth is your best marketing. So if you'll tell everybody that you know we'll get 150 on a

wait list you about I has con you know we've granted an extension for construction understandable

we're we're going to grant maybe possibly extension for you to get children and I was concerned with the other day you said it somebody told me it could be up to two years and I talked to Darren we've went through this CDGB before And you know that holds anybody else up that if we don't you know what I say in a timely manner. So the one before I'm not using it for you but I know it was forever trying to get that done. But I'm I'm glad you told me you have plans to start filling the other building before you're at capacity school because that's what what I was told. I understand my obligations and I I don't want to speak for CDBG, but I do believe that they have also notified the city that it's not going to hold you up from being able to open up another application. So, um with the with that knowledge, uh I still understand my responsibility to fill the building, but also I'm a business owner and we want to make sure that we are taking care of uh the children, the families that we have brought in. And if that means caring for them all under one roof for right now, then we need to do that until we are all healthy and wholesome and we can expand out and move into that second building.

Well, you've answered my questions. I don't know. I spoke with you too the the other day and I appreciate your input. I apologize. [clears throat] I don't remember what you told me on numbers. How many children are for each building? We are licensed for 127 children in the historic building and we have submitted to KDHE the possibility of having 133 children in the expanded building which is a total of 260 children. Um we have our occupancy permit from Kansas State Fire Marshall and the application is now complete with that occupancy letter and then KDH will come in probably within the next two weeks to give us our temporary license.

Then the you were explaining uh I'm sorry I got a couple different questions. you were explaining that uh Southside the historical building is forprofit and the other building with the non-kitchen is nonprofit and it's tied to that grant. Um that was the option to be able to expand and get that building as opposed to having the extended space or having the buildings connected [clears throat] spoke on that but I don't know about the construction process or the phasing of connecting the buildings. Um, I do not I was not privy to those discussions in the beginning, but I do know that the CDBG childcare grant um does state specifically that the provider needs to be a non nonprofit provider. That was the controlling reason for making the other half nonprofit. That correct? You said that to me. It was the first time I'd heard that.

Correct. And we've been following this very closely for some time. So, uh Okay. Um, and you think, and again, the concern with the mayor, the six-month window, looking at trying to get to that 51%. Um, I did I asked the other day, too, what your efforts were to try to get those children in. We keep hearing, I think for years, the city's been hearing there's a demand, a high demand for this. So, networking obviously. Yeah. I mean, you could have one classroom with 10 students in it. As long as six of them were LMI, then you would meet the requirement for CDBG. So, like I said, it's just a matter of us getting to a healthy point where we feel like that moving children or enrolling children in that building makes sense.

You said something uh in regards to older children uh being the focus moving forward that will help with that. Yeah, absolutely. Um the the facility is is actually for two and a half years old and up. So, no infant and toddlers will be in that second building. So, that building will prioritize older children above two and a half years old. You feel that market will be expanding faster than the younger kids? um about the same pace.

Yeah, about the same pace. There are a lot of new moms with infants that really want to get in the facility and um I will be very responsible in in bringing them in in a in the pace that's best for uh my staff and and uh who we have caring for those children and those infants. Um but I will say have very healthy new mom community here. So we are doing doing our best to get them back in the workforce. Thank you. Yeah. Could you explain L and Y for people who don't know? Yeah, low to moderate income. Um, actually Kim is probably the better. No, I mean low to moderate income. That's what I Low to moderate income. Yes. And then why fill the the south building first before the north building?

The south building was completed first and so we were able to get licensing on that building first and it has the kitchen, the laundry, the all the common facilities. So it makes the other the second building I wouldn't have been able I'm still waiting on a temporary license from KDH for the second building. So we wouldn't be here today with talking about enrolled children at all. As far as the not forprofit side and the profit side, that's the first I'd ever heard the split. I always thought everything was not not for profofit.

Uh no, I run both of my other businesses as for-profit businesses. It's the model that I know best. So I'd like to continue to use that model. And so the way it made sense for us was to just run them both as separate entities. Um so 100% separate and they'll have some shared services. So they'll be there'll be some shared exchange of expense from using the kitchen and using the laundry facilities. So when you talked about the monastery is that a separate license altogether?

No. Monasuri is a philosophy um developed by Maria Monttoauri and um Montasuri is very misunderstood. It actually was developed for children that were in the asylums that needed special care, had special needs. And Maria Monttoauri developed um a hands-on play-based program that she saw children start to thrive in. And our mission is that we want to be as inclusive as possible. We don't want children to be omitted from care uh because they have high needs, behavioral issues, um emotional regulation problems. So Montasauri method and the way we prepare prepare our environments and the classroom really helps children um that do struggle um in those areas of being able to regulate themselves. So we do a lot of practical life activities um that might be simply learning to care for a plant, pouring water from a glass pitcher to another glass jar. We use glass cutlery or glass plates, glass cups. Um, and all of those things are to help teach a child really young um, how to care for something and how to be intentional because that develops concentration skills. Um, so we do a lot of practical life activities especially when they're young. But it's a whole the Montasuri method is a whole philosophy in itself.

Sure. So Kim, this one's mainly something I need to ask you. No one else can apply for a CBDG grant until they're completed on the 51 LMI. CDBG community development block grant um has different types of grants you can apply for. So applying for um another child care grant until this one's closed out probably not likely. Applying for a community center grant or a different aspect um they would probably support that. So that's what I wanted. Yeah. So they have different categories and and if it's a larger category, you can't we couldn't apply for two in one year anyway. They're not holding anybody else up.

I I don't I I don't feel that that would be from the Department of Commerce and conversations I've had. Again, we've had these discussions. Uh Jenny Erley, who we're sending the letter to, is fully aware that we're asking for an extension. They support that and they understand why. We just have to do the formality of asking for it from the city of Pittsburgh. Um so again, we're not in trouble. Um everything's okay. It's just that I can't report on children that aren't there. So [laughter] why why six months? Why not? You can do a six-month. Last time we did a fourmonth extension. You can do a six-month extension. We didn't need to do a 12 month because I don't think it'll take that long. But again, I just wondered where they came up with six.

Sure. That um SDK RPC, our grant administrators that we work with suggested the six months because that was kind of safe in the mix when she was interested in taking enrollment in the spring. So uh that's our option. and our hopes are not to come back and ask for another extension, but I'm not going to guarantee tonight that we won't have to. I have to be able to report on that LMI uh in using CD CDBG funds. So, that's just HUD rules. That's the rules we're going to follow because it was a lot of money and um it's a wonderful facility that we needed. So, it seems funny. I think like with what he said, seems like, you know, we were here from the very beginning, we talked about this forever, that there wouldn't be enough money to to do the things that you were talking about as far as the furniture and stuff on the other side. And I would think that there would, but you know,

I don't know the difference in costs between um regular child care furniture and monastery type of things or no, not necessarily monastery, but I meant just furnishing and getting it rolling and playground equipment and the whole nine yards. So, yeah, that's why I was just I would assume it's more expensive. I guess it's more expensive. Yes. Um, you know, and I asked for uh some some upgrades to be made like uh electrical outlet covers um the tamperproof electrical outlet so it was outfitted with just your basic electrical outlets throughout the building and um it's an upgrade to put tamperroof ones in but that's much safer for children. Why wouldn't that have been a a on there anyway?

I wasn't part of the design process. So yeah, I don't know. You would have thought it would have. Yeah. I mean, if you know you're gonna have kids there, that's a definite I'm sure it's just a budget thing. You can put a plug in it. So, the old school way put a plug in it. That's a big budget for that thing. And uh how we didn't have enough money for what your needs are mindboggling, but

Well, it is it's beautifully done. Um it is fully sprinklered. Um there were some expenses that were very costly um to get that building, you know, where it is today. Um, but I promise you that long term you're going to have a greater gener, you know, most you're going to see the benefits in the next generation from having it. I'm a big fan of the non-screen thing. That's awesome. Any other questions? Any other questions? [snorts] Move to approve. Second. Been moved by second by DJ. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. Thanks for explaining. Yeah, thank you.

Where we at? Ordinance number S11 13. Consider approval of ordinance number S113 amending ordinance number S109 [clears throat] fixing the salary and compensation of officers and employees of city of Pittsburgh, Kansas.

Good evening, mayor and commissioners. Uh, I brought this salary ordinance to you on December 9th. At that time, a lot of discussion was was had and a motion was made to adjust some wording in section three that has been done. And so, I'm just bringing it back to you tonight. So, you know, I've I've said this over a number of years that when this [snorts] happens, it does create a morale issue with other employees when we budget 2 or 3% whatever it is, and then employees get raises on top of the 2 or 3%, sometimes 9 to 12%. And it is a moral a morale issue. So, I've tried to get that changed and couldn't do it. But uh I did make a motion to amend this and working with you and Henry. Uh the wording you use was s I'm just going to read this last part. City manager this is section three. City manager at reasonable interviews until the maximum amount is reached and and as may be allowed and paid from time to time as authorized by the city commission. I didn't like that wording. you said it was the same thing. I was told that uh I used that word and it had to be the exact same words from the minutes of the meeting and I did go back to the meeting and use I seen that I use those words but we're speaking with Darren. Uh I want those words changed and evidently I can change those wording uh at this time and I want that change to as authorized by the city commission. I want to change to with with consent of the city commission. That means we talked a little bit Kim that you [snorts] guys go through the process. Evidently, there's a board that say department head has an employee that uh is worthy of an

a raise you and I'm not changing any of that, but at some point I want to be able to hear what it is. not just me but the commission and we don't do that in regular meeting. We'd have to do that evidently when the executive session. We can't make decisions during the executive session. So, we come back out. I don't know if we mentioned the name or just go ahead and approve the race. I don't know how that works, but like would you read that again the way you're going to have it? Okay. The whole thing or just the portion I want to change? Well, you [clears throat] got to read the whole thing because it's going to require a motion. Okay. I'll read the whole thing and the whole ordinance or this the section of the ordinance

section of the

All right. This section of the ordinance I wanted change read it had city manager authority. City managers are hereby empowered to employ qualified people to fill any department head position at an annual salary at no more than the maximum amount allowed herein and to employ qualified people to fill any position other than department head on an annual salary or hourly hourly wage at no more than a maximum amount allowed herein. Employee salaries and wages may be increased by the city manager at reasonable interviews until the maximum amount is reached and as may be allowed and paid from time to time. And that's the part that I wanted to amend the ordinance and put the words in uh let's see where was that the maximum month uh and be allowed to be paid from time to time if you wanted to add with the consent of the city commission

you wanted to change as authorized as authorized by the city commission yes I didn't like that word with consent of the with the consent of the city commission not authorized all the gone approval is gone I want to say with the consent of the city commission. So as authorized by is you want to take that out and put with consent of the city commission. Okay. Any questions? What do we need a motion to? I'll make a motion to So can we can we make the motion to approve the ordinance as is with the change?

Correct. So moved. All right. Second explain that one time. So I moved that we approve this ordinance as is. Um well, we approve this motion with the changes that the mayor wants changed um with the consent of the city commission. Strike authorized by the city commission and insert with the consent of the city commission. Is that Henry? Is that okay? That's permission. Yeah. Second. You second. Made a motion. There's a second. Roll vote. Brooks. Yes. Hi. Yes. Yes. Perry. Yes. Sigley.

Yes. Thanks.

All right. Is there any non-aggenda reports and requests? Moving into executive session. An exe executive session is necessary to discuss personal matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA 754319B1 to discuss city manager 2026 goals and letter letter of agreement. Motion to recession to executive session for 30 minutes to discuss decision manager 2026 goals and letter agreement pursuant to the non-elected personnel exception under KSA 754319 B1 with the meeting to resume in the commission room in 30 minutes. Is there a motion to recess into executive session?

Make a motion to recess for executive session. Been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. I carries. We will recess. [music] [music] [music]

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No decisions was made, no votes were cast, but we're needing additional time. So uh another executive session is to necessary to discuss personal matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA 754319D1 to discuss city manager 2026 goals and letter agreement motion to recess an executive session for 30 minutes to discuss the city manager 2026 goals and letter agreement pursuant to non-elected personnel set Mr. I I asked you to change it to 15 minutes.

Oh, yeah. Oh, did I say? Yeah. Uh, scratch that. Uh, motion to recess an executive session for 15 minutes to discuss the city manager 2026 goals and letter of agreement pursuant to the non-elected personnel exception under KSA 754319B1 with the meeting to resume in the commission room in 15 minutes. So move. Second. Been moved in second. All in favor say I. I.

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back from executive session. No decisions were made. No votes were cast. I entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor say I. I. I. Motion carries. [music]

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