City Commission - Regular Meeting

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All right. Call the meeting to order. Open it up to a work study over uh IT and finance department budget.

Okay. All right. Good evening. Um I just wanted to give a quick little uh introduction. This is kind of meant to be a high level. Um and we've got two departments presenting tonight. We have human resources and information technology and it also covers facility maintenance. So, um each department is going to do a presentation and of their department. They're going to do a narrative of what they do. Um they're going to talk a little bit about their personnel and their staff. Uh what kind of services are provided and what needs they have and then some financial information. So, as they present, if you'll just kind of listen through their presentation and then there'll be time after each one of those presentations for questions. So hopefully they'll be able to answer those. So go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for having us. What a better way to kick off than talking about our employees because that's what we do here in human resources. So um we are really in the business of people operations uh for current, past, and future employees for the city of Pittsburgh. Bringing together those with diverse skill sets and backgrounds and place them on teams to improve uh the quality of life in the city of Pittsburgh. So that's what our team tries to do. And who is our team? So uh like to introduce the the ladies that are sitting here with me. Um for for those that are watching this and don't know me, I know all of you know me. I'm uh Kim Vogle. I am the director of human resources. I've been with the city since um 1999. So quite a while, but only um six almost six years in HR now. So fairly still fairly new in learning um HR. Katie Hop is our assistant director of human resources. Wave Katie. There you go. Um she also started in October 2021 um like I did. And then um Lauren Oni Stan Dadler, sorry. No, you're fine. Stadler um is um our HR manager. And um Lauren kind of is in a unique position. She um is actually the um human resource representative for the police department. um they started that role in 2017. Um so she's actually the fourth person to be in that role. We do have her housed over in city hall so she can help all employees but um her main focus is to help um those here um in the police department. So, as as we look at our budget overview, uh you'll notice personnel services, uh most of our budget has stayed pretty pretty similar um throughout the years um going back from 2022. Um personnel services. I'm going to go through um what each of these areas are as far as personal services, contractual services, commodities, and then um our total expenses. And hopefully that will help

you um with the future presentations so everybody doesn't um unless you need a higher level breakdown um need to talk about those. But personnel services um encompasses our full-time salaries, our part-time salaries. Um so in our in our line item that's just um Katie and I for full-time um employees um because Lauren is part of the police department administration budget. Um, and then we do have, um, $5,000 for part-time salaries in our budget, too. Um, but it also encompasses um, health insurance, uh, group life insurance, state unemployment insurance, workers compensation, caper retirement, Medicare tax, social security, capers employment insurance, and then some departments will have a line in there for overtime as well. um we're all exempt employees, so um we don't have that that line in our budget, but so it's a total benefits package is really what is what is in our personnel services. So um Katie and I are not splitting 231,000 and and taking it home. Just so um everybody everybody understands that that's that's seeing this presentation um online. Um, our contractual services like like most departments um is insurance um communication which would be phone lines and um cell phone city cell phones, things like that. Our travel and training dues and memberships, advertising expense, contractual services, software licensing, ADP fees, which our ADP fees are about $91,000 of that. So that's the majority of that budget. And um then lease payments, so copers, things like that. So, um that's going to be similar in every department as well, those those um line items. And then commodities is just our operating supplies.

Tell them what ADP is.

ADP, and we'll get into that a little bit here in a little bit, but ADP is our um software that we run um time and attendance and benefits, uh payroll, payroll and benefits. So, it's a large chunk of our of our budget. So, uh we'll talk a little bit more about that. And then commodities is just our operating supplies and our office supplies. And as you can see, that's actually reduced quite a bit um since I've been over in HR since uh 2021. So um we have the two full-time employees and we have had for well they have had an HR for as long as I can remember, but um definitely since 2022. Um focus areas. I'm not going to talk about each of these because there these are what all the slides are except for um the bullet point on market research on pay and benefits to identify opportunities and gaps. I don't have a bullet a slide for that. So um oftent times employees come to us or supervisors or department heads come to us and say hey we think there might be some pay discrepancies. Can you reach out to whatever communities um have like positions? So that's what that is. That's what that bullet point is. Um, also they'll come to us and say, "Hey, Crawford County or Front or some other community has this benefit. Will you look into that benefit and see if it would if if we could if we could work that into our system?" So, uh, we spend a lot of time, um, researching what other communities do and seeing how we can help our employees. Let's see. Oops, we jumped. Um, oh, sorry. It's a touch screen, so if I jump, apologize for that. Um, so, um, employee benefits, we have, uh, spend the majority of our time on employee benefits. Our open enrollment is in October. Um, but just like a financial year, we have to set a

financial or set a calendar on how we're going to to deal with employee benefits and how what changes we're going to need to make throughout the year. Um, what rates are going to change. um and then have the benefits guide ready to put out um by October for what's going to happen the next year. So our our employees will know what benefits they want to sign up for. Um lot of time spent on on reviewing benefits. Um we had a hourlong webinar yesterday with um about prescriptions um and our plans and just reviewing those and and how we can better help employees and our and our benefits plan. We are self-insured. So um we have to to really look at those um each of these plans um individually. Health plans we have um our medical plan which includes tele medicine, prescriptions, flexible spending account and then dental and vision. And then um we have we offer several supplemental insuranceances um standard life accident death and dismemberment insurancees. Then we offer accident critical illness and hospitalization um supplemental insurancees that our employees can can sign up for. And then um same through thing through capers with insurance and then um optional retirement insurance or uh investment opportunities I'm sorry through uh capers 457 and mission square. So a lot of different things and then obviously counseling and mental health resources that we provide to our employees. So, um, so lot of different different benefits. Um, each one of these benefits have a different website and and a different and we'll get into that here in a minute, too. But, um, have different things that that these ladies um and myself have to have to, uh, manage for our employees that team member advoc advocacy. Sorry,

having trouble speaking. Um we have increased in the number of employees and dependents that are on our healthcare steadily. Um through the last two years um we had a total of 418 in 2024 and then 439 and then now we're up to 457 employees um and dependent on our health insurance plan. So, um, all of those we are helping with, um, often with, um, assistance with, you know, why they got a bill and and how how it needs read and what needs paid or can can you help us get pre-authorized for this, um, this event. Um, so we spend a lot of time doing that with our employees. Um, then we have supplemental benefits, um, employee concerns and disputes that obviously we we work through with them. uh the employee policy manual updates. Um go through that regularly to update education assistance, parental leave, sick leave requests, flexible spending accounts, and then the healthcare inquiries. And this is just a quick snapshot of one of the systems that that had the reporting for us because we don't house all this. We don't have all the reports, but this one we did get um this was just 64 inquiries on how to how to help employees um with mainly medical. 57 of those were medical. Um and each of those take many hours to work through um because we have IMA, our provider, and then HPI who actually does our healthcare. Um, so we go through several different um concierages and and ask Charlie teams um to help employees get the information they need. Recruitment and selection. We spend a lot of time on employee recruitment and

selection. We go to at least um 10 job fairs a year. Um Katie, Lauren, and myself all kind of take turns going to those events. Um we advertise on on social media. um mainly by by posters and things that we have created um that the one shown here, Lauren, I believe, created for the police department or helped create for the police department. Uh we take we started a employee referral program. So if employees refer applicants um they and and that applicant successfully goes for the through the program through the steps and becomes an employee, we um the employee gets a bonus for that. So, uh, that's been actually very nice. We've gotten several several, um, new employees through the referral program because there's no other way to to gain people than word of mouth from the people that already work here. I mean, just says a lot about about our employees to want to bring others in. Um, onboarding, so interviewing, we sit through all interviews um that are full-time and um, part-time interviews. the part-time seasonals at at the aquatic center, things like that, and returns, we don't always sit in on those, but definitely all full-time interviews. Um, and then the majority of the part-time interviews we are in. There's a whole pre-hire process that we have to go through with with the employees which includes background checks, um drug screening, um physicals, um and then at the police department, there's a little bit more than that um that um that they have to go through, but um and then we have to onboard them through NEOGV and then time and attendance through ADP. So ADP is where we set up all the benefits um and and time and attendance information for them in 2025. Here's just a snapshot of our workforce turnover um and retention. We

had a beginning count in 2025 of 329 employees. We onboarded 194 and we offboarded 141. So we had an ending count of 378. This was I did put a note here. This was ran at the end of end of the year. Only 308 of those were actually on payroll or paid through that last pay cycle. So there might have been some people on there that were either already offboarded and just not taken out of ADP, which is where this report was ran, or they just didn't have time. So, um, all 378 may still not have been active, but, um, probably the majority of them were. Our full-time of that, we onboarded 50 new full-time employees and offboarded 44 full-time employees with an ending count of 241. and why those numbers are really important. Um, a we've we've got a lot of turnover with our with our workforce and some of that is seasonal, part-time, seasonal, but all of those employees go through go through a process. There's a whole process for for everybody to get them onboarded and offboarded. Um, multiple five different platforms that we for sure have to have to go into. um WordPress, which is where we um put applications in. Then those go into our city website. Um Outlook, which is how we communicate with our staff internally um so they know who what's coming up for the for the new hire. Um then we have to process them in NEOGV and then ADP and then put that data into laserfish. So lot of different platforms that we touch trying to just get somebody onboarded. And then if they're full-time, there's another seven seven platforms um or websites that we would have to go on for benefits, for capers, uh for mission square, um what everything else. So, so

everything is a process. And when you think about that happening 194 times to onboard people and 141 times to offboard people, it's it's process. It's a lot. Employee recognition. Uh we few years ago started um a my favorite things just a few of my favorite things for employees a list that they all fill out the full-time employees fill out when they start. So employees so supervisors can call us and say [sighs] hey um Lauren did a did a good job. How do we how should we best reward her? And I can pull up Lauren's file in NEOGV and I can say well here's here's what she likes. Here's what her hobbies are. And they can they can take that. So, it's personalized and and uh you know, get get her something that she would actually enjoy. Um we do um we do the um employee service awards and those start at 10 years and [clears throat] then go every five years after that. So, recognize their our employees for their years of service. And then, uh birthday cupcakes monthly, pass them out to our employees so um we can recognize them on their birthday month. Uh so, that's that's pretty fun. And then we assist whatever department is hosting the uh the Christmas lunchon every year which is you know another way to recognize our employees and to bring them together and actually let them um interact with our retirees and our board members um so they're all invited to that. So um the team helps with that as well. our wellness and safety activities. Uh we work with the the deputy fire chief um with the the employee safety committee and that meets monthly. Uh we organize OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 classes. Uh do quarterly safety checks uh came at facility in inspections, fit testing, uh

review workers comp claims and uh discuss accidents uh prevention for for each department. So what what departments need from us um to to help with accident prevention and we encourage participation in in activities like corporate challenge which is hosted through parks and recreation um and then walk Kansas um which we have turned into a challenge um between departments or whoever wants to create teams and um Tammy Nagel's team always seems to win. Um, so, uh, so [clears throat] we try to make sure that our employees, um, you know, get out and and do things together and have fun. We have a physical activity policy, um, that states, you know, if you're sitting in meetings for an hour, you should you should stand up and take a break, um, and and stretch your legs. Um, and then we have the employee golf program to encourage walking. Cart's not included. Uh, [snorts] and then, um, our employee wellness and safety fair, um, which I'll put a plug in for for our employees that are watching, is at Memorial Auditorium this Thursday from 11:30 to 1

1 to 11 to 1:30.

11 to 1:30. That's that's why she's here. Keep me on track. Uh, 11 to 1:30 um, at Memorial Auditorium. And we we host that every year for our employees. Usually around 30 vendors for our employees to come uh, talk to. um just a great opportunity for them to network to learn about benefits um learn about um off doctor's offices um anything that that they may really um want to want to find out about that that we can get to the fair is is um for them. So lunch is provided there and that is provided by IMA um who you know helps us with our benefits is our benefit consultant. So we do not pay for that. Our workers comp claims um in in 2025 just kind of another you know it doesn't it doesn't happen [snorts] just um on its own and it definitely doesn't happen just with my team. But um we always encourage our employees to you know tell us if something happens. Um it's it's very important. Um we've had 49 work comp claims filed in 2025. Two of those were lost time. Um 30 of them were were medical only with um 21 open cases still and 17 incidents only. And these are really important. Um it's really important to encourage our employees to hey if something happens even if you don't think you know even if you don't think it's it's anything today please let us know about it so we can fill it out. So, um really kudos to our supervisors um for for reporting and then um to these ladies for getting it turned in to to c it um in a timely manner because that's it has to be done um so employees can be protected if if something becomes um an an injury. So, um FMLA, we had nine employees on um on

FMLA last year. Again, just a lot of tracking, a lot of data to keep keep track of for those employees. And then um of the 141 kind of an odd statistic but just wanted to throw it out there because seemed like when I first got here over to HR I don't I don't know if they um another kudos to our supervisors really and department heads. Um seemed like unemployment claims I don't know if we just didn't fight them very much or it seemed like we were just paying out a lot of them. But of the 141 people we offboarded and I don't know how many of those were actually terminated or just seasonal and left. Um but we only had four claims unemployment claims filed against the city um in 2025 and and only one of those um was awarded. Um, so that really says a lot for our supervisors. Um, really, um, helping their employees along, making sure if something is is not right with an employee that they're documenting it, that they're tracking it, that they're coaching that employee as best they can. So, by the time it gets to us, you know, it's it's really handled at a at a high level that that then we can defend um what happened. So, um, I'm I'm actually pretty proud of of that statistic. So some department needs um a complete human resources information system um neo gov or other um would be really nice. So all of those different platforms that we have to to touch um could be helpful if we could get that all consolidated into one one system. So we already have perform which is how we do our employee evaluations. Uh didn't didn't touch on that. Um but we we do employee evaluations annually um through through perform uh through neo gov platform perform and then we in 2025

um got on board which was extremely helpful because now we don't have to do everything on paper which is what we were doing before spring of 2025. So, um, so we do have the ability now to to, um, let new hires actually fill out the information online. So, that's that's pretty nice. But there are, um, other platforms that we could get that that would help. Um, so we could actually begin our hiring process, begin our application process um, through through um, attract to try to get new candidates instead of using WordPress. um on the back end of of our website. Um and then it would track the employees potential employees applicants progress um through the whole life cycle of their application and onboarding experience. So uh would would be a a big help to the managers and and to the team and to the and to the applicant really because they would know where they were in the whole system as well. And then um ADP we talked about briefly um time and attendance and payroll benefits. I we do a lot um this is this is done in conjunction with the finance team. Um so obviously through the while they're in Tyler Technologies and implementation I mean this is a two three year down the road they've got to get through that whole process first. But we're currently using ADP. It is not user friendly. um for our employees on the mobile app. They can clock in and clock out and that's about all they can do on the mobile app. Um so really need to look at something that that can help our employees um when they're looking at um their their pay stubs when they're trying to look at their benefits, things like that. Um on a mobile device, it would be really helpful if if we had

something that worked better than that. Um and our support with ADP is sometimes lacking. So, um to find something with a little better support would be would be nice. So, either through Tyler Technologies or NeoGV or or um any others. There's a bunch out there. So, any others that we look at, but it is it is a need that's coming soon. So, with that, um you know, we're just a group trying to pull everybody in the same direction really. So, um I know I kind of sped through it, I think. I don't know what time it is, but um so do you have any questions?

Um Kim, with the HR, the complete HRIS system that to have or look at down the road, are there any areas that you would see that that could save you money, save the city money or time or efficiency um to offset the cost?

Oh, yeah. I'm I'm sure there are um we we have to to dive into it. There's a lot of different ones out there. We've just already started with Neo Gov and so far they have been um it's it's an easy system to navigate on the back end. Um for us, some of the systems like ADP have um they're they're kind of pieced together from different companies and that makes it harder and that's why their mobile app isn't isn't very easy to use. Um but um companies like NEOGV who and NeoGV is a government-based um source. So, um, so they they've been really good to work with. Um, but I'm sure that there there are others out there.

You see the biggest savings would be, um, labor hours.

Yes. Support hours, um, the ability to to track um track information. So, we would have, you know, better tracking capabilities of of um, you know, what what we're spending our time on um would help. But I think the big savings would be um probably removing ADP. So I mean for that $91,000 hit that goes up and and it it is um and you'd have to miss you'd have to correct me on this. I think we're build per employee on that and per user. So So if somebody doesn't get offboarded and removed, you're getting build for that. And then and then we have to read them in at the end of every year. I was going to say at the end of every year for tax for taxes we have to put every back money back on and I feel like they do that intentionally and then you have to offboard them again at the end of the year. So and every time you call them you're on the phone for at least an hour on hold. Y

so it's a lot of time. [clears throat] We're talking about the overall employees 457. So is that employees that have worked one hour as far as part-time and then didn't come back? That covers everybody for this entire system. Everybody. Yeah, everybody that that hit the system through on boarding. Some of those could have been the majority of the Some of them um we have some departments that have full-time employees that are here one day and and then we have to offboard, but we still have spent all the time onboarding them, get them, you know, to get them to the system until the end of the year to clear them from a tax. Well, no, we terminate them immediately in the system and then we have to go unterm them

for W2s for W2s at the end of year. um because we don't want to be build monthly for them if they're not here anymore and we don't want them to run on reports. Um so and time in attendance with supervisors, they don't want to see them when they're having to approve time cards. They don't want to have to keep going past all these people that aren't there anymore. Is there one package of software that could do all of this stuff you've been saying? I would believe there is. Um we have only looked at bits and pieces of it um for now. So, but yes, there are there are total um HIS systems out there. [clears throat] Any idea of the cost on

I don't have those. The the biggest challenge will be there's so much go between the finance department because most of our costs are personnel when you're onboarding people you have to get all the benefits right. So once we get a new financial system because our kind of financial system hasn't been very good and a lot of it's excel and so I think I mean you we get calls every week from vendors that are of course their product will do everything we need it to do. We just need to make sure that the go the amount of time that is spent making sure that payroll is right is ridiculous. Uh the man hours and women hours. So, I think if we get the new financial system, we'd probably be more in position to answer that question about is there a legitimate solution that could [cough and clears throat] could take care of a lot of this back and forth that happens right now. ADP isn't the answer, that's for sure. But that's what we have.

You were saying something about employees having issues with ADP and being able to log in if they're on duty. So, what happens if they can't? Like, what's the process? So, if they're trying to What's the process if they can't log in? Like, how do they get logged in? They come to our office. They come in. Yeah. They come to our office and we reset passwords and and um walk them through it. But yeah, they come in our office or the supervisor puts their hours in a lot of the time if they have to like you know I can't clock in so someone will have to clock them in. Okay. Somebody else can load them though if

they can't. we can as well. But but yes, so if it's if it's on payroll day time, you know, the day that we have the Monday that we have to have it turned in, we can do that for them. Um but really we like everybody to be in control of their own that's you know that's their responsibility to get those those hours correct. So is it more so the that type of an issue or is there software problems with the program not working when it's supposed to? So that is a big issue. The other issue is they just that's all they can that's about the only function they can do.

Um managers really can't use it very well to go in and approve employees time cards. They you know they can't they can't use the mobile app that that easily. Um and then um employees have the ability to go in and change some things like I mean we encourage them to come to our office so things so things go smoothly but but they could um if they wanted to take out more in taxes um for state or federal taxes they have the ability to go into the back end of ADP on their own and and fix that um or if they wanted to take out um more in some of the other like any of their retirement investment opportunities but on the mobile app you couldn't do that. So, we just encourage them to let us do it. They could change their beneficiaries or their dependents or things like that, but but we we do that for them.

You guys can do that real time at the computer. It doesn't require any additional forms or any that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's just my request. Tax forms, yeah, they have to be done on paper if they come to us or they can come in our office and log in at the computer because the app on the phone is terrible, but they can log in at a computer, but not everyone has a computer. So, we have a computer in our office. they can come in and we can walk them through it so they don't have to fill out physical forms. Makes sense. So a typical week payday is on Friday. Payday. What day is payday on? It's on Friday. On Friday once a week, twice every other week? Bi-weekly.

Bi-weekly. So walk us through it. Department heads turn in the time to you or do everybody log on?

So payroll is actually um ran through finance. So um so they run it through finance. It's shared obviously um the Thursday every Thursday [clears throat] um we have a time set now usually sometimes every other Thursday is when we actually sit down but we have um a meeting with with the payroll with my team and and and finance team and talk about we have a a full sheet of um and I think I must have skipped this slide. Hold on let me back up. Somehow I stopped this slide. Uh we have weekly reports which are um end of pay period EOP um reports. So we log every change um that is that is made that will impact payroll. So um if somebody gets an increase, if somebody gets a decrease, if somebody changes a beneficiary, if I mean there are so many lines on this on this sheet, it's pages long. Um new hires, um terminations. Uh so we go through that um we have it scheduled to go through every Thursday but definitely before payroll week we we go through it um so we can check off yes this person should be correct in ADP and it's there are a lot of steps to each employee um but uh we work with the finance team very well and getting all that done

so nobody's punching a time clock nobody's p well in ADP they're they're putting the information in so every uh employees is responsible for putting their time in and then does the department head double check things and then it goes to the next process and you're checking it every week and then by monthly you're getting paid.

So um finance runs what runs the report that has to match up. Um actually we got a we got had an email that came through just today that said we're 80 hours off on payroll. We're you know who's who's missing? Um those reports come from from the finance department. Um because they they make sure everything from capers to insurance to I can't even Missy could probably tell you all I can't even tell you everything but that everything checks before they hit go on the checks but it's the employees responsibility to log their daily hours and correct and that correct and it'll flag the system will flag if it's not there. So, okay. That's what I was wondering because

it doesn't matter what job you're doing, there's always somebody who's not Yeah, there's missing time punches in the ADP system and it alerts um payroll and they'll say we have all these time exceptions and things like that and then the supervisor. That's why I was asking you what a normal day or week looks like. Okay. You're [clears throat] utilizing Yeah, we're utilizing uh their bank accounts to drop the their pay into. Yes. Um we don't do any any

we have a very few that are that are paper checks and then um the first run of of any new employee is going to be a paper check um normally um and then after that they should they should hit their account but um we still we still have very few employees that that are getting paper checks but almost everybody is direct deposit I would say probably like what five or six people maybe we really push for them to do direct deposit that way there's especially during seasonal time because a lot of these are teenagers and they the checks they lose their checks and things like that. So, it's just better for them to have direct deposit. [snorts]

If an employee has an issue with their their payroll, like they've logged hours but the system didn't work and their supervisor misses or something. What's the process? How do they correct that? How do they work into that after they've been system that you have now? after they've been paid or if they've been overpaid or underpaid once how do they see it?

Yeah, they they come see us. Um and then and then we go talk to finance about it. Um and then and then it just depends on on the circumstance. But um we, you know, if if it's an underpayment, we can there have been times where we could cut a check um within within the day um to get to them, especially if it was an error on on our end somehow. um if if they didn't clock in or out and just totally missed the whole day. Um which is really a really rare because um they do a great job of making sure everybody's got their 80 hours for the pay period. Um like I I just mentioned, we just had that email today um noticing the 80 hours was missing. So it's really rare that we would have somebody that would would miss time unless it was a part-time employee. Then really we'd have to verify with their their um direct manager to make sure they were in fact at work with when they were telling us they were at work and [clears throat] then go work backwards from there. Make sure it got put in the system um and and they got back paid for that. But yeah, we do retropay.

What about overpay? We've had employees that have had to had to reimburse the city for that. Do you do it with the next pay next pay period or not? I don't handle that. So that would be on the finance side, but um but I don't know that we've had any Bitcoin. We do Bitcoin. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I don't think we've had any so much on the [clears throat] front end because it's so hard when when something goes wrong. So that's what I was referring to, the amount of work between finance and HR to make sure payroll is right because it's very rare when it's wrong because when it is wrong, it's just a pain to fix it whether it's an overpay or not.

We usually catch it beforehand between, you know, between finance and us. We work so closely together as a team and then get it caught to fix it before it gets pushed through because then it's a nightmare to fix. You guys have issues with direct deposit changes and those kind of things employees. She says yes, she says no. If they try to do it on their own, that's what we encourage people to come in because a lot of times they don't know how we do it every day, multiple times a day. So, if I usually encourage people to come in and let us help them change it because they'll get it mixed up where they'll have some going into an old account or they'll tell us when payroll's already finished and processed that they close their account. So, we've had a couple things like that, but not very often.

If you try to pay an account that's been closed, then you wait till the next payment cycle, verify their new information, and then resend. Or the the bank usually bounces it back and then we have to reissue it in a check form. Yeah, they go weaver check. [clears throat] It you guys good for now? I mean, we're not going anywhere. We can always follow up, but it's a [clears throat] it's a good overview of I think there's good job. Yeah, great talk, Kim. Thank you, Kim. Katie staff touch screen must have made me miss a slide.

That was funny. Good guess. You don't know who you guys want. [clears throat] That's not very healthful wellness. Okay, Jeff, we can go a little long. I mean, obviously. Okay, I'll try to I know Kim took some of your

leave you guys plenty of time and we'll we'll go through that for questions. So, uh, we've tried to, Kim and I tried to kind of coordinate our format here [clears throat] a little bit to make it a little easier for everybody. So, I'm Jeff Bear, director of IT. This is, uh, Pat Walker. He's our IT manager. And that is Howard Tony, our facility manager. And I've got Chris Yetbacher here. He's our GIS administrator, which I'll get into what GIS is in a little bit. Map mapping pretty much. So you guys probably already have some idea as to what information systems is, but what we technically are is we're trying to help all the other departments [clears throat] be the most efficient and secure and reliable that they can be. I won't read the the jargon to you uh exactly. Uh but what we typically are in IT and facility maintenance, which the reason we're together, there's a long backstory on this. um everything in facility maintenance just tends to keep moving towards IT needs and a lot of the IT needs always need to coordinate with facility maintenance. So we're always needing each other all the time. The other similarity to it is we're an interdep departmental service. I mean that's what we are. We we do have some things that public interacts directly with us but for the most part our departments are here to service and assist other departments in their operations that they do. So being that's the way it is we kind of manage everything very similarly and there was a lot of overlap and as employees changed and so forth they just sort of merged together and it's been a I think pretty successful [clears throat] merge at this point. Um, so this is kind of who we are. I'm here I'm here to provide that strategic leadership for the city um and oversee all the things like cyber security,

digital services and our infrastructure where I leave the day-to-day operations to like Howard and uh Pat for their individual departments and then we kind of coordinate from there. I've got listed here the name of the employees that are there. Some of them are here today. Two or three of them are in the back room actually filming the meeting tonight. You've probably met some of them. Uh Ryan and James. Um and then our facility guys, not all of them can be here cuz they're still out doing things for the for the city at this point. So this is kind of our budget overview. Um and I won't get into what the personnel and contractual Kim I think did a fantastic job overlaying that. As you can kind of see, we've stayed fairly flat with the number of full-time equivalents at the bottom of four and a half in just it. Um, and then in 2023, that went up to five and a half as we brought on some interns and things like that. Um, our numbers did take a pretty good jump in uh 2024 as you guys are probably fairly uh little fresh still on the on the cyber incident that we had. a lot of the things that we had planned on doing over the course of a five to six year window kind of adding to our digital and security footprint, we had an opportunity with that cyber incident to just kind of do a lot of them all at once. Um, so there is a pretty large jump from 2023 to 2024, but they were planned in our CIP and our uh long-term plan. We had just hoped to be able to do it a little slower for the sanity of our own employees, but no time like the present. So that is what you will see there. There is one number on here that if you're looking uh at the far right, you'll see a pretty large discrepancy between the uh contractual services of what is budgeted and what is actually going to be spent. That is because this budget does not necessarily

reflect all of the other interdep departmental money like you saw with Kim talking about ADP. That was in her contractual services in her line item. And there are other line items and other funds that when the money comes down to it at the end, we are actually coding them into the appropriate fund. But if we just overbudget that, it will get a little uh irresponsible. So, we're trying to be as conservative as we can. You'll notice from 2022 to 2023, there is a pretty good consistency there, but some of those one-time hits, they just have not really caught up with our our budgeting process because the budgeting process is a couple year process. So, those will eventually get there. I think the the thing to remember is this is all fund based accounting for us. So, a lot of departments are going to come here like Kim for example, she may be 100% funded from a general fund. IT services because we're an interdep departmental department. We are funded from all of the funds that all of the other departments are in. So that would encompass things like the public safety sales tax, the utility funds, and you can just kind of add all those together as they're doing things, we're doing things, and those are somewhat reflected in these budgetary uh overview. [snorts] Um, real quickly just the IT focus area and I will repeat the same exact budget overview slide for our facility. I've just tried to keep the two divisions separate um for ease of uh explanation. So our main focus areas in IT 100% cyber security everything we do security first security first security first um after that it is a lot of help desk uh statistically I think Pat and I

we counted up and on average over

100 tickets a week. Yeah, over over a hundred support tickets every single week and every single one of those are top priority for whomever or whoever uh submitted it and we tried desperately to get to those. Some of them are a little slower than others because the request may be a little bit larger and it takes more resources and time to get those done. But that's a pretty big priority for us uh in it is to make sure that we are helping each and every department or citizen or board or whatever that initiative is that is benefiting the city in some way that we're supporting them. uh with that turnover that you saw with Kim seeing that there's so many onboarding and offboarding. That's where it gets really really hard for us as well because when you have that many people on boarding Kim's got seven to eight systems to put people in. I've got 65 different systems that we will put people in depending on their roles and then vice versa to take them out. Uh, and again, if you don't take them out after they're fired or or retired or chose to leave, that's a security issue. So, that's a priority. Uh, so we spend a lot of time every day onboarding, offboarding, and getting people ready. And then we have to take it one step further. When individual departments have an entire division retire or transition or get promoted, a lot of times there's not that continuity within the department as to how to do that job anymore. Um we we tend to know how to do those jobs since we're the ones helping to set up and configure and maintain those roles. So, we are really trying to go through and help uh you know, employee A when they're brand new learn how to do those tasks and make sure they are set up and ready to go. And it can be a pretty daunting task. I mean, sometimes weeks on end for an

employee before they're really comfortable depending on the type of employee. A part-time employee is much easier than a a full-time employee and so forth. We also take over or took over or were tasked I guess with radio communications about four or five years ago and that's been a really hot problem for the city of Pittsburgh uh and our public safety division for police and fire and we have a pretty good solution that we've got moving forward where we're partnership with the county uh so that we can have that countywide communication for all first responders. Um, that's just one of the tasks. After that, you know, we're handling all the cell phones and mobile technology [laughter] for all of our employees as well as the landlines and telephones and alarms. Uh, as you know, we just recently went through the data center. Thank you guys for doing that. We're actually starting that project on Thursday. Uh, so we're super happy about that. Um, and then on top of it, we've got the water treatment systems, Visca systems. Uh, all of these systems that we're talking about rely 100% on a GIS backbone. GIS is the map. It's, you know, all of these things that we're talking about, they do live out in the in the community on a map. you can see them and how they all interrelate and network whether it's a water line, a crosswalk, a traffic sign or our fiber optic that's running underneath the the you know the ride ofways and so forth. All of those are managed through our GIS system which Chris um we're lucky to have. Uh after that we do support I listed on the second column some of the departments uh needs that are there some of the larger more overview there's like I said 60 some odd systems in the city that are not listed on here but things just like our police CAD system that's

that public safety records management uh as you know our financial system that we're putting in that's going to take a a hot minute to get done but is vital to the system that's one of those systems that are heavily involved in on uh the get-go. And as far as uh then you have, you know, hundreds of other systems, our park re recreation, our point of sales that we do for places like Kitty Land and JC Ballpark and our concessions, cameras and artificial intelligence where we can augment to reduce the workload on our staff. We are heavily leveraging. Uh the goal is to kind of make our our people more efficient at what they do and make it easier and more effective. Uh and AI is pretty handy where it's appropriate. When not appropriate, we try to stay away from it. Um that's kind of where we are tending to focus on the IP. [cough] [snorts] Our needs, I won't go over it a ton here. Um we we can break them all into four categories. the identity and access management man that is our people. That is how they access our system and that is the number one uh new trend in cyber warfare. If they can get to your people and get them to do things like fishing attacks and so forth, that's your perimeter. I mean, that's your fence and wall. Um, in the old days, you might have said your firewall was or whatever you want to call that. That's number two. That's endpoint protection and management. That's what's guarding the inside of your network and kind of the gatekeeper to it all. Super important. Very, very important, but it's not enough. You have to you have to help the people. You have to protect the systems. Uh, number four, that's our data protection and governance. I don't [clears throat] think you really understand the need for that until you've actually went through

a cyber incident. But once you've been hit and somebody says they've got a copy of your data, it's really important to know what they could have. Uh or more importantly, they can they can say they have everything, but if you don't have a great idea as to what they could have, they can say whatever they want. you know, they can say they got in and have, you know, the keys to the kingdom and every record you've got, but they might not. And but if you don't have an absolute record of what you've got and what's out there, you're pretty much at their at their word. And since they're already criminals, I don't know how much you can you can count on that. So we have really upped our game with all of our software to make sure that our data protection and governances are uh in line with the industry standards and then our network security architecture. Um what we have found and I don't know if Pat you want to kind of go over a little bit of that or not but segmentation in a network I I kind of look at it like a a ship and a like a submarine. you take one hit, if that sucker can't be segmented off, the whole boat sinks. Um, traditionally, our network isn't designed that way. That's not the way it's been. Um, we are redesigning our network every day so that we can stop that lateral movement and so forth. One of our big approaches with this is actual physical separation. In the past, we've had the ability to run fiber to most of our facilities and around town. So now we're going to be able to leverage that and split a lot of our facilities and networks off into their own segregated networks so that there's no contact. Uh we can put places like concession stands and uh remote buildings and things that just have bare minimum stuff out there that requires internet access or some level of network connectivity separated out and there is no physical tie back to our core

networks. So if those network networks were to become compromised, there's no link to our core network. they won't be able to get to police, fire, administration, financials. That's a complete separation and the most secure way we can go. And with that, it also adds a layer of quick recovery. We can take that, you know, compromised area, resolve it, bring it back online, and be confident that we know things are back in order and that they haven't gotten to any of our other systems, files, data, you know, all the important stuff at the core. So, that's a physical change that's happening. And you know it takes that perimeter uh puts a perimeter around those as well as a perimeter around our existing networks and gives us a real safety net so that there's no way to get compromised across the the various networks. U some of that is huge cost savings. The traditional approach is to just buy another firewall, you know, and put it in there to guard that traffic that goes from, we call it east west traffic, the stuff that comes from Darren to Tammy and vice versa. And those things are just so expensive. And they are so

so expensive. I half a million dollars for a city of our size to do something like that. Um and we've decided that that's not a a fiscally appropriate response for us. So we are going to take and redesign the entire network, which we're already uh doing. And that will cost five digits, not six digits kind of uh thing. and we can do it over time. Um, so all of these systems that we're putting in, they have to make sense financially. They have to make sense for the end user and they have to make sense for our insurance carriers and things like that so that we can say that we are HIPPA compliant or [clears throat] uh PCI compliant on our point of sales at the concession stands and things like that. A lot of times we are um we're stuck with those compliance frameworks and we have to uh we have to be able to pivot what we're doing and that's that's kind of what we're doing. We've we've learned a lesson. I kind of put it at the bottom of this slide and it's it's a motto we live with every day. the proactive infrastructure protection, those things that you guys are approving and and getting us, it is so vital for the city and because it will prevent that costly downtime, not the cost of necessarily adding all of the the support and the proh protections, but we haven't even talked about those soft costs of, hey, we're down for 3 weeks or a month and we can't collect utility billing and now we've got late fees and that whole thing just gets astronomical and it affects the the citizens and that's not something that we're we're willing to do. Uh so

that's where we're at with it facility. I'll go a little quicker. They're a little bit more straightforward um with some of the things that they do. They've they've maintained uh pretty flat revenues across the board for uh revenues um costs for all of their their sections here. Sometimes they go down, sometimes they go up. That is directly related to our luck. And I'm going to use the word luck because at the end of this you're going to hear why. Uh the truth of it is our personnel services aren't much more than they were in 2022 because we've kind of redesigned what we were doing. We actually went down an employee because we believe that we we don't have enough employees to do what we need to do to begin with and we don't have the funding to do what we need to do. if we had the employees. So, we are leveraging a lot more partnerships with local vendors uh to do things like our heating and air and plumbing and then we come in and we do the preventative maintenance and maintenance. So, all of these numbers are kind of they go across the board like that. Um and so we are at three full-time employees in the facility maintenance division. We focus on three basic areas in facility. Like I said, we've dropped an employee. We're we're going through this. It is literally what can we do to prevent and predict this maintenance. How can we extend the life of an asset, whether it's a the roof at Lincoln Center or the HVAC system at fire station one that we just, by the way, completed the uh implementation on, it's running well, and again, thank you for that. Um, so we are always looking at everything we can do to prevent that from happening by, you know, doing inspections and preventative maintenance, taking care of what we've got and so forth. The other one is the emergency maintenance and

corrective actions. Sadly, we do more of this than we should because we're down on critical systems almost all of the time due to the age of things and deferred maintenance. So, we have had to really redefine our roles and how we can respond quickly to keep things bandated until we can get back in here or find an appropriate plan to move that forward. And then the traditional focus area, you know, you can your mechanical, your electrical, your plumbing, uh fire protection, and then a pretty large one that everybody always forgets are elevators and and access systems. And those are not cheap, but [laughter] they're also necessary for a building with two floors and things like that. Um, and our goal is just to make sure things are safe and operational in facility. Okay. So, the needs, we are lucky because of the preventative maintenance and the banding and the skill of our employees, but you can only ride on luck so long. Before I would go to Missy one day and I say, "Hey, we lost the entire Well, this building is a great example. Last Friday, we lost a drive on one of the rooftop units that affects this room." Exactly. And the entire court system and this half of the lower level of the PD. The drive failed. Um, we're lucky it's it's not 22 degrees in here right now because of the preventative work and those emergency plans that our facility team have uh worked diligently to make sure we have a plan for these sort of things. But this building isn't brand new anymore and those units have done wonderful for as long as they have. But like fire station one, it was time and this building is approaching its time. Um, we've got some pretty big buildings in the city. uh nothing bigger than Memorial and

Memorial is a poster boy for what deferred maintenance looks like. The last major renovation at Memorial Auditorium was in 1984. I don't know how old all of you were in 1984 or where you were at in your stage of life, but I can tell you where Memorial was in 1984. I can tell you where it's at now. It's not pretty. It's It's got some problems. Um, we've got some plans to do things, but a building of that size, they're big numbers. They're always big numbers. And when we have a plan to fix it, and it's a a pretty well thoughtout plan and a CIP and so forth, a lot of times those things just get bumped continuously because we have something else emerge that was a bigger nightmare or emergency at the time. And if you do that long enough, 1984 turns into 2026. And you can do the math on how long some of those HVAC systems and air handlers and plumbing are inside of that building. Uh again, the memorial staff and the facility staff have maintained it well and and you know, she's a good building and she's solid, but she could use a little bit of love and I think she turns 100 this year.

It's a Yeah.

So, it's her birthday, so she could probably use some love. Um, but each one of these items on this bullet point, they're nothing less than 100,000 a piece. It's pretty it's pretty daunting. Um, our elevators and lifts, we got four of them in that building alone. Um, if you count the stage lift, those are $200,000 a piece minimum. And they're just going to need work. We're buying our time and so forth. [clears throat] Uh, but we've got a good plan to get there. We just need we just need some time and some good luck to get there. But once we get past the tipping point, this preventative maintenance, it doesn't stop anymore. This is the new way facility maintenance maintains things. Um it's not even that they didn't maintain them before. It's just they're old. Um, then our HVAC replacement. I don't know if you want to kind of allude to some of that, Howard, but

Well, I mean, it's just like at home, you guys have, you know, 20 25 years on your unit. We've got them out the wastewater that five to seven years is about the lifespan between wastewater and uh the water treatment plant with the environment out there. these uh the commercial they're about a 20 year lifespan on them. We get longer you'll get longer than that sometimes. Sometimes you won't even get that long out of them. The fire station they got to what 16 years out of those out of the ones that were at the fire station and it was getting to the point that all summer long we had two units shut off so we could get through the summer. So, I mean, they're getting they're getting wore out

and when they go, they go and you hope that you can just wear a coat in the building or it happens at the right time. But at Memorial, if you've sold out a show and we don't have air conditioning in there, it's the middle of summer. And we we do preventive. We we spend I mean, we go through and clean every unit twice a year. We do spring and fall cleaning on the outside units, maintain filters on them, but I mean the stuff just wears out.

Big buildings, big work, and those equipment have done well. They're good equipment, but um that is kind of the deal. And our go away and it is pretty much deferred maintenance. We don't look at it as a budget strategy. It's a risk strategy because at some point when it does blow, unless, you know, we come in here and Darren says, "Shut the doors or turn off an event," you know, we got to get it fixed. We creep we creep along because there's money in the public safety sales tax initial issuance for fire station one and the police station, this building.

We have Memorial has a dedicated tax um thankfully. But the the the general takeaway is there's just out 20. How many buildings do we have total buildings? Over 50 total. I mean, and these are the newest ones.

Yeah. These are some of the bigger and and the newer and more popular, you know, in town. Um, if you've driven around town lately, you'll see some of the work that facility maintenance has done. The parking lot behind the best. You wouldn't necessarily say that's a facility maintenance issue because when was a parking lot a facility? But it is. It is a facility that we maintain for security, cameras, lighting, and electrical. Um, I don't take care of the roads. That's Matt Bacon. He'll he'll take care of the concrete on there and parks will take care of the rest. But we have some of those skill sets built into our department where it's just a better fit for us to do. Um, so we do and then we try to augment other departments where they can't necessarily do things. If you've driven around Lincoln Park lately at night, uh you'll notice those shelters and the parks are starting to really get lit up and looking a lot better and we're putting roofs.

That's just two of the pictures of the of the 20 different places that we've went through and started to do. Um and that's we're not going to I mean we're not going to stop. We're going to keep doing that so that the public can feel better about these facilities. And thanks to your street light increase from last year's or the current year's budget, we were able to put 50% more lights out there. But we are focusing on the public areas. So do you see AI being a benefit for you going forward? And

Oh yes. Yes. We use it right now every single day. Our risk modeling and our log detection. Uh there's not enough time in the day or enough staff in this building [clears throat] completely to monitor all of the systems and logs for security for vulnerabilities and risky behavior and stuff like that. uh and AI does that and it takes us having to go through the logs to look at I mean we have over 100 plus servers in these 60 some odd systems

to go through those security logs manually you can't do it in in a given day and if you don't do it and something were to happen and you find out that oh it was in the log that's unacceptable. So those log detection algorithms that go through they're invaluable for us. However, the attackers are also using AI. Uh, but we're trying. We we think it has to be done responsibly and where appropriate.

All right. Any questions for Jeff? Uh, before we get out of this, I I will I have just something I need to talk about. We have to reduce cost to taxpayers. And I thank Darren for having the departments come and talk to us about what the needs are. And I thank Kim and Jeff for being here explaining stuff. Thank you.

But also, you know, we got to look everywhere we we can save money. And somebody told me to check into the pecards. So I talked to Darren about pecards. I think we have 91 people.

92 91. Yeah. P card is a personal credit card. And I want to thank Tammy and and Jake Jacob for short notice. They gave me 20 25 PE cards for it and HR since they're here tonight. And I had a stack probably that high, would you say, and more to come. But when I got to looking through these PE cards, and I know this doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people, but

it is taxpayers money that's going for this. And I was disappointed in some of the things I found in these PECARD charges. This the top one we spent 2,000 and most of these PE cards the limit is $5,000 right there. Yeah. Most of them are 5,000. Yeah. So, one charge on here, 23 $2,399.99 for a treadmill, a water treatment plant. You know, I I don't know why we need a treadmill there. I'm not asking that question. I guess I am. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess I am. We do have uh workout equipment at all three fire stations as well as the police department and any employee can use that equipment. As far as I know, that's how it's always been. So why do we need

need a need a treadmill there? The next one I come across is uh a pecard for IT supplies and I looked at this and supporting documentation for IT supplies was to Walmart. We bought CocaCola. We bought a 12-pack of GV, whatever that is. uh sun-made raisins, a bunch of different stuff that I don't know why that is it supplies.

One of the reasons we would do that, we don't do it a lot is our staff work 24/7 a lot of times. Uh you know, for example, when we're responding to something, they can't leave the office. We don't get to go and do some of these things. And having a snack available in there actually sadly keeps them in their chair longer, which means I can I can get more understand that. But if that's the case, you know, I don't think the

the taxpayer should pay for that. I mean, if you anticipate being there, pay for your own snacks was my thoughts. I see a lot of charges on here for for HR for snacks, drinks, and you know, over and over again, snacks and drinks. Why is taxpayers paying for that? I mean, if you if you are going to have snacks and drinks and then there's a lot of uh lunches on here. Now, I can understand when you I was on the fire department and I went into out of town for training and when you're out of town, the city pays for your lunch.

I work at the bus bar now. When those bus drivers take trips, they get a meal when they're out of town. when they take a trip in town, they pay for their meal. So, that's all I'm saying. If there's a lunch in town, that should be on the employee, not the taxpayers. There's just several things on here that there's not supporting documentation. There's stuff that shows uh what was spent, but nothing support what it is. So, you know, this all adds up. This was just a year with two departments of taxpayers paying for things that I don't think they should be paying for. And I don't know the rest of you. I think you ought to all of you have a copy of this or at look at this [snorts] uh the PE cards because there's we've got to cut expenses and that means wherever we can cut and that's including snacks and lunches and whatever that might be. treadmills. You know, why are we buying a treadmill for water treatment plant when we have three stations and a police department full of exercise equipment that's could be used. Uh we we just have to change how we do things, you know, just because we got to cut costs. And a lot of people think we're at we want to cut employees and none of us want to do that. But there is some things that we can cut that the employees are spending money on that I don't think is a a need. I think it's a want and we have to eliminate the want. So, I would encourage all all of the commissioners to look at some of this stuff, get the information for the next department that comes in here and then, you know, it's hard to hard to uh justify spending taxpayers money when we don't have to.

Kim, do you want to address the snacks?

Yeah, I I do want to answer that um real quick. Um and and maybe we could um write our justification a little better, but we had um we discussed earlier the 200 nearly 200 people we were onboarding and offboarding every year. um those sit in our office for an hour at a time um often and and so um those are really there as you know employee engagement opportunities um for them to come in and and um be able to talk to us and and grab a tiny candy bar. Also, the 10 um job fairs plus that I talked about us going to, a lot of those snacks that are coded to our department go out to the hundred plus students that are coming through at Pit State or whatever at our table. Um so they're not necessarily all in our office. Um they go out to to PSU twice a year and and um all the other job fairs that we do, Missouri Southern and and places like that. So, um they might be coded as snacks, but but they're marketing um and and things that we're giving out. Um for instance, um we buy, you know, bags of chips and put little little quotes on them that, you know, that that say fun things and we pass them out at at at job fairs. So, um they might say snacks, but necessarily not meaning that they're sitting in our office and and I'm eating them every day.

Well, I understand You're talking about the interview process and how many hours you spend going through this and I worked for 25 years for a fire department and that was a 24-hour job. Well, I'm not talking about we paid for our food. The taxpayers didn't pay. We're not eating them necessarily, but the people coming in to

I'm just saying maybe we maybe we're trying to reduce expenses. We don't do that anymore until we can get expenses down that I'm sorry. We have a lot of people that come into city hall. HR is right off of uh the corridor that leads to my office. There's not a meeting that goes by in my office where I don't offer whoever is coming in, whether it was a gentleman that you saw the day that was trying to rip somebody's head off or three people that want to open up a new business. Um we offer them all waters. If we're in there for longer than an hour, I'll probably walk to Kim's office and grab the basket of snacks and put it down in the middle of the table so they have something to eat. the employees at at the city know um the travel policy around feeding themselves. They understand that um if they're in town working, they don't buy lunch, but if they are having one of their employers, one of their employees in and they're having a coaching session um somebody's had a good couple of months, they wanted to take them to lunch, that's encouraged. Our PECARD expenditure um for the year for 2025 was $966,000 um off of a $57 million spend. It was less than 2%. Um it buys everything from equipment to um I can't I don't understand um what the treadmill was for, but um right now we give away golf memberships to anybody to encourage them they can't use a cart but to walk. Health at the city is a big deal. somebody leaving to go to a fire station to use a piece of equipment may not be practical, but like I said, I'm not familiar with the treadmill, but the general consensus at the city is it's hard to get employees. Um, we've done everything we can from pay studies to increase benefits, clear through the retirees. We have a very safe environment and we spend a tremendous amount of money. We have a $72 million budget. 40% of it is people. And part of taking care of those people is making sure that they feel like that we care about them. And if that means that we

need to spend some candy bar money or um some Coke money or take somebody to lunch, um I completely understand that if we were in an area where we were bleeding money and we were losing money. Um I understand that. But this is a very small cost for an environment that makes it real friendly. So when people come here, they go home at night and they're proud of where they work and they feel like we care about them. And if you guys want to come up with a policy, I'll obviously implement anything that you want to. But I think when it comes to city workers and people that come into city hall, which is a hard place to come because if you come to city hall, you're usually there to pay a bill or pay a fee or pull a permit and pay for that. And if they want to sit down and they want to take a second, I think it's okay if we have some snacks around and some water. So that's all on me. If it's something that that you guys want to change, I'd be happy to do whatever you'd like. So is there is there not a current policy on what can be spent on and what cannot be. It's just kind of

for snacks and water. No, just for the cards in general. So the $5,000

to the PCard policy. The pecard is is it's a very structured accountability tool. It's a best practice. Um it's been here for over 10 years. And the only reason that it's a best practice is because we have every employee sign an agreement that gets a PCR that makes them accountable. Every employee has to turn in a receipt and we were just at staff meeting this morning for 10 minutes giving them the right act about we need your receipts turned in. Every one of those receipts gets approved by their supervisor. When I got here, I walked into a store and I'd been here two months and somebody recognized me and I was buying parts for my kid for my car

and they offered me the they said, "Well, aren't you the city manager?" I said, "Yeah." And they said, "Well, we'll give you a 15% discount." And I said, "I'm it's Saturday. I'm buying brakes for my car. Um, we had so many revolving loan accounts at the businesses in town that we ended them because that is where waste fraud and abuse takes. The Pecard is a very structured system with checks and balances all the way through. So, we are accountable. Um, and that's what you were looking at today. You're looking at receipts so we know if somebody bought snacks and if they don't turn in a receipt, they don't get reimbursed and they can also lose their we take cards away all the time. There are 300 full-time employees. There's 92 cards. Um, our accountants audit our books every year. They audit the PECards. It's a very safe, It sounds crazy, I know. Why would you give a 100 people credit cards? Because in my family, if I gave everybody in my family a credit card, I would have a third job trying to figure out how to pay for it all. But it's a totally different animal, the city. It It involves a rebate. So, we get a rebate on what we spend, but everything is listed and it's a strict accounting thing for us and it's something that's worked for a long time and it is a best practice, but I know it's hard when you understand when you think about it and credit cards and oh, what's structured and um it works very well.

So, you're talking about a response structure on what's spent and how you track after the money is spent, but there's no policy on what they can and can't buy, what they're not supposed to do with it or I don't have PECard. We have a PCard policy. I don't have it in front of me, but um

I mean I have a policy about everything, but I also think people understand and we've gone through this in the last two years. If somebody abuses their card, the finance department will come to me and say, "I've got some costs on here that I don't agree with." And I if if they're coming to me, that's the top person in the city. It's not like it just gets lost in finance. And we've looked into it and we'll clean it up. So, yeah. Um we have a lot of policies in the city. Some are written and some are informal, but um we try not to have it be where everything that every employee does has to be written down in a book or they're going to find somewhere else to work. Is this something that you go over with the employees on a regular basis? So on the dos and don'ts, every employee that gets a card is given a policy and has to sign that policy saying that they understand.

But I'm tracking is that something that's reinforced throughout the use. And then how often do they review the pecard receipts? Monthly. So every month. So, as they're turned in, um, each supervisor should should review those monthly and if there's something in question, they should they should discuss that with their employees. And most of our finance departments are usually staff. Good. Why would that? [clears throat] And I hear what you're saying, you hear,

Darren, about the uh the snacks and stuff to the employees. But I also understand that we have to start 2027 budget 27,000 in a deficit. And if we can use any of that deficit money by not buying snacks and and uh drinks and treadmills, that's that's something I think we should look at before we start cutting. We're not cutting employees, but that would go towards that 207 that we're going to have to start off with [laughter] the deficit. And our plans are to even go lower than that. So, I know it's snacks. I know it's drinks, but that would be an easy easy thing for me to say, "Hey guys, we're just going to have to not do that. We're going to have to start low." And you know, I think that's what we should do. And like I said, I don't the other commissioners want to look at this some of this stuff, ask for it. I think we got to look everywhere to cut expenses.

Can we get an answer on the treadmill? Does anybody here know why we bought a treadmill? No, I do know that that um several of those employees had their own equipment there. So, I don't I think we just need to answer as many of the questions as we can. I mean, that's what we're here for.

I'd look at the receipt, but I do know that we replace the treadmill at the at the water treatment plant. I mean, those guys don't leave the facility when they're there through their shift. Um, you know, and you're right, PD and PD and and Fire both have workout facilities. Fire has one at each facility. You know, each one of those facilities are now locked down. The one at PD isn't. I can't come in the front door and get through it. I gotta have secure access. I gotta have signed off. The one at fire station number one is upstairs. Those upstairs quarters are also locked off. So to an extent with the public works and utilities, if they want access to that, we know most of our staff within our fire knows their people. Police knows their people. Public works and utilities know their people. Um there is some other equipment up there. It was replaced this year. I don't know if that one is actually to our facility. I'd have to look at the receipt, but I do know we replaced one. um you know and and they you know we try to make it available for for public works and utilities as well to use that facility because PD and fire and we're under lock and key into their own you know I mean getting in a firehouse is only coded now we have door codes on everything and everything so they're locked in for their employees. All I'm saying is we need to

and I understand that if that's and that's and this is an easy way. We'll do some more looking into that and that's we don't there there's a person someone has a personal gym up there as well that they put in there along with that treadmill. We just we had an existing treadmill up there that someone had um actually was a personal treadmill they had put up there cuz they wanted one before they came into shift or after they got done with shift and and was just cleaning up. and um you know they asked to asked to replace it after it got wore out and so we did that accordingly. But I understand your point and and those type of things. Well, you know, we're we're trying to do some health and safety stuff for our employees as well.

So So can we [clears throat] safely say that uh any employee can go to the one of the firehouses where they have their gym equipment and utilize it at any time? Those are up in their living quarters. So they've they've discouraged that in the past. Well, sure. I would too. Can we put them someplace else? The way the way the buildings are built, I mean, are fed up. No, I've had requests for recliners. So, they can't use, [clears throat] but we've always encouraged people to the police department has a couple.

Was put in when we first build the stations. Employees could use it. And then they put the keypads. I guess when fire department goes on a call. Well, [snorts] they might leave a door open. I can understand that they typically are are automatically locked. If those employees wanted to work out, they couldn't. And the fire department people there, they would let them go in and work out, I suppose, wouldn't they? They wouldn't have turned them away. You know, that sounds like a coordination piece. But let's circle back to the So, we have existing equipment. How was that purchased? Was it done through pecards or was it done through a request from the department through the

No, the the the specific if we're hung up on the treadmill, the specific treadmill that we're talking about was someone had originally picked one up at a yard sale or done something. Someone had originally, one of our previous employees years ago had picked one up. Um there's also a piece of there's a universal machine up there. same type of deal. That's in the upstairs in the uh chemical feed room of the upstairs of the water plant tucked back in the corner that there's not a gym set up. There's just one up there in that concrete structure that some guys had picked up [clears throat] years ago over that. And then the staff had been using um before their shifts, after their shifts, those type of things. And that treadmill went out and they asked for it to be replaced. And so as a health and safety measure, we we replaced that treadmill. The previous

back to what I asked, the other equipment that's existing for the other departments to use, how was that purchased or PD and fire department, the fire departments and the PDL? Those some of those were uh were purchased originally when the building was constructed and as it's wore down, they've just put it through their normal operating. Those are pretty expensive. Yeah. the fire department guys bought their own equipment and brought it there and if that wore out we didn't ask the city to replace it we paid for our own stuff

well and and somewhat to that extent uh uh Chuck for example like on a coaching session for lunch and so forth I've been here since 19 well it's been a minute 2000 I think is when I actually started I can't tell you how many personal lunches I've personally paid for for my team in coaching because I don't want the city to have to pay for all of these. But it is important. I can tell you last year looking and getting ready for my taxes, I spent a ton of my own personal money to do things like that. Employees are are buying their own workout equipment and they're doing that out of their own personal and as it ages out, those employees aren't here anymore. And these younger employees, they they aren't they aren't looking to invest or or do some of those things. Um, so at times when you have a coaching session with people from other departments and you all go to a lunch, it's it's a workrelated thing. I mean, it's because you you don't have time in your normal huddle or work day to actually sit down and and actually learn about your employees and the processes and how we can do things better. And the majority of those are are paid for personally by well Pat and myself as we're doing it in it. I can't tell you what other departments are doing, but uh then occasionally, yeah, we will have one and we'll have a vendor here or [laughter] another agency that we're working with and we'll pick up the bill. Then they pick up a bill

for the lunch for the who whoever they're trying to sell their product to. Like a vendor and so forth, but a lot of times these are not. They're interdep departmental. Well, we don't like that. And keep in mind, [snorts] it's not a best practice to have a vendor buying us lunch. Every time that I've been out with a group of people and a vendor and the vendor offers to buy lunch, we buy it because it doesn't look good if we're doing business with somebody that bought us lunch.

So, every one of these is a one-off. Um the general policy isn't written. I think I I can't imagine there's an employee walking around city hall that thinks it's okay to um charge their lunch that day because they just felt like doing it. I I don't do it. I buy some people's lunches when I see them out and and I pay for that on my own. But um if we need to come up I found

if we need to come up with a policy that you guys want to come up with that that that regulates all that we'd be happy to do it. But I think it's a I think we have a to always consider the kind of place that we are saying we are for people to come work. It's a tough environment to get employees. It's a small cost. It's a nice benefit. And uh in g in in general public servants, I haven't met one yet that said they were making enough money and that they were good. So um we try to make up for that. When we did the pay study four years ago, five years ago, we didn't take everybody to the top of their range. We took them to the mid-range because that's all we could afford. So we all understand the tax money and the difficulty to to compensate our employees. But I think um in general if if you guys want to come up with a policy to regulate snacks and water and Gatorade, I'm in.

Businessman in this room who doesn't spend some money on marketing for his company and for his employees. And I think if we're going to do that, then let's put let's put it in the budget and say we can spend this amount of money for this particular marketing effort for the next next budget. as a line item.

So, so to that to that point, um I I [clears throat] pulled up our I pulled up our um our budget to show that um the commodities line item, which which has reduced down to under $7,000 in the last four years is what our operating supplies and office supplies come out of. So, um, any of those, um, tools that were that were used, um, snacks, drinks, anything that that's used to help, um, promote employee engagement or, um, or we take out to to job fairs or whatever, it comes out of that that line item that has has been reduced down to pretty minimal um, less than $1,000 a month we're spending on on, you know, employee engagement and office supplies. Well, all I know is we told in taxpayers we are going to look for ways to reduce expenses and if if this one of the ways we can do that, you know, I think we got to look at it.

I agree. um to to kind of speak to that. We we literally are going through every line item in our budgets so that we can uh make sure and we actually have some pretty creative ways that we think we we can try to do those uh cost savings and hopefully that that we can save even more and that's what we want. But we're looking across the board every day. the departments that come here. You give us some ideas where you can spend less money than you did the year before. That's that's what I think we all want, you know,

and that's what we heard and that's what uh we're working on. And as as we find those cost savings and we and we implement them, there will be a reduction. I don't know if I'll come back to this this room every time and say, "Hey, I saved $800 this week." You know, but but if I find something fairly substantial, I might Yeah. I'll come up at non-aggenda and let you know so that we can we can champion that because Thank you. We're not alone. Thank you. Other departments are doing the same. Before we move on, I think Mr. Mayor, you should a lot of people were looking at their watches as they came in the door thinking they were late for the meeting and explain to them what's

Oh, well, we're still in this and we're about to wrap it up. We we've been in a uh budget study session with IT and HR and we're going to do that. I believe that every meeting going forward, we're going to have different departments come in just like it and uh HR has done and they've done a good job. You know, I think everybody's on the same page. We got to find a way to reduce costs for the taxpayers and still provide which we do an excellent service to the taxpayers. So, that's where we're at. Um I don't know if there's any other questions. I don't know if anybody wants to take Go ahead.

Say something real quick. You're wrong. I just it this meeting was set up in conjunction with the commission's intent to be more involved in the budget and to give more information to the public about how the budget's functioning, where the money's coming from, where it's going. And I think we've done a big chunk of that tonight. Thank you both for your presentations and putting all this together. And Darren, I appreciate you putting your work into this, too. It's going to be painstaking at times because we're asking tons of questions that haven't been asked before. And I don't want any department to be worried about coming up here and speaking to us and giving us the information. The more we work together, the better we can do for the city and for the people that live in it. And again, I appreciate it. So, go ahead. Need five minutes to

I was going to say if anybody does have any more questions, we're going to take a little break. Five minutes. We'll be back here at 6:07 and start the regular meeting. Thank you.