Common Council - Special Meeting

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[Music] [Music] [Music] Welcome everyone to our special city council meeting. Will you please stand and join me for the pledge of

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Can we do our uh roll call, please? Counciloman Alvarez here. Councilwoman Weidenbach here. Counciloman Hurst here. Councilwoman Parnell. Councilwoman Vazquez here.

Councilwoman Amler here. Counciloman Zilli here. All right. So, we have a um introduction of ordinances. We have ordinance 2545, solid waste fee. And then we're going to go into our second reading of ordinances due to a matter that came up. I'd like to when we get to our second reading, I'm going to prep because there was some false information that was shared online and by emails that I'm concerned if I don't address it, it might be a concern that different city council members have about the state of the city budget finances and where we're going. But I think it'd be better for us to start with just the proposal for the trash ordinance. Do we have someone who could read it? Maybe um Victoria.

I apologize that we didn't pray yet, did we? Honey, if you if you could lead us in prayer real fast. Dear heavenly father, thank you. Thank you for bringing us here tonight. We ask that you uh help us to humbly submit to your will in all of our decisions tonight and to bless all these people here and get us home safely. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. I pulled an Eisenhower, but I'm not going to say the bad word he said in his famous quote. Uh, Victoria, if you could read the introduction for ordinance 2545, um, solid waste fee schedule.

Of course. Ordinance number 25-45, an ordinance amending chapter 70 of the portage code of ordinances to repeal the existing solid waste fee schedule and adopt a new fee schedule as exhibit A. Let the record reflect the ordinance was read in its entirety. All right. All right. Well, thank you. Um, I was advised and I think it's good advice that we should have some presentation on this ordinance for a first reading. Even though normally this would just go to a second reading, we felt that in transparency it'd be good. And Mr. Reader, I understand you have a presentation.

And as um typical for any ordinance related to the sanitation department, we brought a standard portage city issued tote. my prop. That's our standard 96galon uh trash tote that we hand out to uh every uh every resident throughout the city of Portage. I just wanted to give some uh facts behind this as soon as a computer starts up here. Oh, there we go. Okay. So, some of the proposed trash fees that are going to be introduced to this ordinance here um is from our sanitation department, city of portage. So, um going to go through some facts here. We got 13,000 approximate residential uh service stops and that's done on a weekly basis. Uh that's 6,000 676,000 stops every year we make throughout the city of Portage. Approximately six 17,000 tons of trash is collected from the city annually from our residents. That's an average of six thou 2,615. Oh, right there. Thank you. That's an average of six 2,615 pounds per household. That's 1.3 tons of trash is collected. We got 19 full-time employees in our department. That's one crew leader, nine drivers, seven laborers, and two techs. We have six sidearm trucks, three rear loaders, and two grapples. The sidearm is that one special piece of equipment that comes by in front of the house and grabs a hold of this tower and dumps it. That individual driver cycles that arm 145,600 times a year. Just giving you some facts here. The sanitation department is the only city department that stops at every home 52 times a year to provide trash removal services in the city of Portage.

So the trash the city trash volume household service stops continue to increase as uh new developments are added to our community in portage. City growth is always positive but adds to services across city departments. This also increases the volume of trash every year. Our current situation um our trash fee has never been sufficient in meeting our department operational needs volume pricing based on the number of totes each stop has or should reflect the true monthly fee for our trash service. As you see the picture here, we recently had back a couple years ago the council passed that we changed the ordinance and now we provide two for the price of one. And that was a uh decision based on because of our failed recycling uh program that we had throughout the city. And um what we did is instead of collecting 12,000 13,000 cans, we just rewrote the ordinance to make it easy on the department. Uh we've come to a conclusion that uh even though that was the best choice then it has come to our uh it has come today that that provided volume at the price is really detrimental to our finances. So I'm going keep on going here. So this one tote right here in front of us, the city of Portage tote has a has the greater volume than one 20-yard dumpster when it's picked up 52 times. You could take this this can right here and empty it into a 20 yard dumpster about 48 times and it will be equivalent to that 20 yard dumpster. In the area, we priced it out. The average dumpster for the

area is about $475 for that one dumpster. So there is a a value that we're given to the city residents providing this to how much volume over the year it does. Remember it's 2,600 pounds that we collect from every resident in the city of Portage. So what do two totes equal? Two totes equal about two and a half dumpsters. Three totes. We do have residents with three totes out there and that's almost four dumpsters. And we do have residents with four cans that we provide and those are about five dumpsters. We have one residential stop in Portage that has seven of our cans here and they fill them up every week. Every week. All right. So trash fees should equal the volume by the user. I don't know if I we're under everyone understand what that means as we explain what the volume of this one can is. So what we're well what as we navigate the future of our trash service we want to meet the community growth and that's the strategic plan. Uh increased wear and tear on equipment as routes increase in the city. Replacing equipment with new requires additional finances and longer service routes add overtime for personnel and maintaining service at a level satisfactory or at a satisfactory level is efficient and uh that is our main goal. Trash service impacts our city has a challenging financial hurdle coming towards us in the next couple years. It's the SEA1 and that's going to be affecting all municipalities and communities. The current monthly trash rate right now does not sustain

our operational costs of service and lit is is currently being used to pay for landfill costs for over a million dollars yearly. I gave everyone a little pamphlet here, little document. Um you could see in the past four years we went into the 1 millionth range uh of dollars that we're currently spending on a lit. So that entered 2021 and then 2022 and it continues to grow. And uh recently we just uh redid our trash contract and um we got homewood u disposal uh is now um providing landfill costs for us at at a reasonable rate and we're saving some money there but it's not going to be enough. So, one of the proposals that we're looking at is uh if an individual is only using one trash can, the volume of one trash, we're as a city, as a department, is willing to go down to and give that resident a discount. So, if they have two totes and they're willing to give up that one tote back to the city, they will be looking at a discount and then every year thereafter it goes up a dollar. So 2027 and 19, 2028, 20, 2029, uh, 21. So the the four green markers there indicate a discount that that resident will be experiencing if they're willing to go down to one tote. For those that cannot go down to one tote and use two volume tote, then they're going to be looking at a higher uh increase in cost. So to those residents that want to use two totes or three totes or four totes will be paying for the actual volume of the trash used and

serviced in here. So one more slide here. So, we've done a study and audited our routes with tote numbers and volumes by user and sustaining our future trash service. With the proposed adjusted rates that you just seen based on the true volume of trash produced by each residential stop, we have calculated increased revenue that would greatly reduce the dependency on our lit. And remember, our lit is going away in a couple years and it will no longer be there to pay for landfill costs. So in 2026, in 2027, we should have an operational budget based on the fees that we just proposed that is self- sustaining. And this will eliminate one more fiscal challenge for the city and for our council when SEA1 takes effect in 2028. Any questions? If I could just add really quick, um, we have a senior discount, a veteran discount, and a discount for individuals who have disabilities living in the home. Those discounts stay in place under this proposal. So, if you are a senior citizen, a veteran, or someone with a disability, just using I'm not going to go through every number, but it would be $15 if you go to one can and then $27 if you stay with two cans. Anecdotally, and I believe with some data from the department, a number of our senior citizens are already using one can. That's not to stereotype anybody, but for a number of residents, this is actually it to begin a discount for doing something that you're already doing. To be fair, I'm also only already on one can and have been for a while. But I say that because to Ry's point, and I'll have more to say ahead of our next meeting, but I did have I guess two questions on the attorney side or things. Um, Scott, um, maybe it's just one. Does this require a public hearing at the next meeting?

It does. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we clarify that there's an opportunity to speak directly about this at our next meeting if you want to come with questions, concerns, um, if you think the rate should be higher. I don't know if anybody would do that, but to put it simply, um, there is also a public hearing in addition to the opportunity to speak at the next council meeting. Generally, Liz or Randy, would this also include the discount if they pay their trash all at once in January? Yes, it will. Okay. So, Randy, what happens if too many people go down to one tote? Would you like me to answer it? That's not generating new revenue. So, yes.

So, that's a big part of why we did um an estimate that we think is relatively trustworthy. I say relatively because sometimes you might think it's going to be an amount. The proposed city budget amounts are based on an idea of 55 to 60% of people staying at a um what do you call it? A uh staying with the two cans and then the other number, you know, going down to one. There's some fluctuation for people who go more than two, but that's a little bit harder to account for. Within the proposed budget, there is a paving um section in lit. It's not, and I'm just going to be as transparent as I can, it's listed as paving as a way to be on hold because I felt that there would be issues in the budget um if we had an area of lit that was called landfill as it currently says. I absolutely trust the board of works um and then Sandy our roads are to know that although it's listed as permissible use for paving in the budget, it would be money where if we start to have a deficit because at least for the first year too many people I shouldn't say too many but if enough people switch to one can then we have money for next year to cover that loss. Although we would have to come to the city council to say we need to move money from the paving fund to be able to cover this landfill. I felt that was responsible for really the reason of if we've done the work and we're telling you guys as the council that we believe this proposal is sufficient, it should be at least somewhat on me to come back and have to state that it was not. The second reason for that is because after next year we go into 2027 where we still have economic development income tax available to us that can be used, but we really shouldn't be. If we're at a spot where we're at a deficit, I don't believe it'll be a million dollars. But if I could just use a hypothetical, let's say enough people um switch to one and enough people stay at two that instead of a million dollar deficit, we

have a $130,000 deficit. I'd be coming to the city council asking for some money to move to cover that deficit. And then I hate to say unfortunately, but in light of S EA1, we have to make adjustments sometimes quicker than we want. I'd have to come back to you guys and say, well, in my hypothetical, we'd have to raise it again something transparently to try to get us into the black by the following year. A key thing for me, and people have asked, and we weigh it, what would it mean to privatize the sanitation department? And to put it really simply, it would get the city fiscally awful lot of responsibility both liabilitywise, moneywise. But even in studying other cities of our size that have privatized their departments, they're all currently charging a rate higher than residents are paying now. Usually about $24 to 26 is what we found in most cases a month. And without a bulk week, which we want to try to maintain, even if we have to make adjustments by policy, we're trying to maintain the bulk week available to residents through this year and test how that goes. I'll also add as a precautionary measure, if we're starting to see any deficits, I'd rather talk about adjusting bulk week, much as I wouldn't want to before we start talking about raising the rates again. But ultimately, this is the relationship between the fee and the tonnage because if you're switching to one can, presumably you're either committing to getting the tonnage low um or you're paying more when you exceed that. In a perfect world, maybe it'd be something more like the Jetson's episode where um George asks his wife um no Jane. He says, "How do we have a garbage bill for I think it's like a million dollars in the episode and she goes, "Well, it's because all the junk mail we throw out is charged by the pound. Um we don't have the ability to weigh anyone's garbage. So, um we have to charge a flat rate based on something." But you know that I'm speaking more to the crowd. But I hope I answered sufficiently for

at least next year. The majority of our portage residents have been using that second can as a garbage can. And you can I highlighted it on the u the little spreadsheet there with the blue back in June of 2021 is when our actual recycling uh program was suspended by the public sector because of too much contamination. So I do want to add one thing. Um, Randy did his math, my office did our math, and then we also had one of the consultants crunch numbers, and I believe we added a 700,000 we figure we'll take in in revenue. Uh, correct. In 2026,

in 2026 by this rate increase, so it's going to help offset that one 1.1 million in landfill cost. Hopefully, our estimate is low, which it could very well be. It just depends. Again, it's rough estimates

and the goal is to be low because we'd rather be low and then adjust to having more. And Liz, I can't speak to all of it, but I've been really appreciative how your team worked with us because there's a difference between what we bill for bulk and how long it takes us to collect bulk billing, but I know you guys had some ideas. That sounds scary. Nothing draconian, but like just some ways we can do to address bulk billing to try to be able to make sure that what's being bu is closer to what's coming in. Again, in a perfect world, we'd get a 100% but that's its own process. Thank you. Are there any other questions?

Well, then we'll see you back. Well, we'll see you at the next uh meeting, Randy, with the second reading in the public hearing. That'll get us to the introduction of ordinances. Um, today was an eventful day and I don't want to make the meeting longer than it needs to be, but a number of things happened um, between some of our different city employees um, in their emails and online that was spread by people that if you guys have seen, I want to be able to at least address some concerns that were brought up. Uh this morning an email began circulating that was being shared by some city employees that had some false information about um what happened the previous night at a uh negotiations meeting with the street department. I want to be very careful about what I say because we don't negotiate in public and at the same time when a false claim is made and it's a false claim that's made by someone who was participating and leading the other the union side of the negotiation it's a very serious thing when such a claim is made. The email that initially went out this morning shared by a number of employees. It said, "Good morning. Um, we continue negotiations um for the portage street sanitation parks agreement last night. In that meeting, the mayor informed the bargaining committee. Victoria Vasquez will be the chief negotiator for the portage agreements. The inaccurate part of that is actually quite small. She's been the negotiator speaking on behalf of the city since the previous meeting. And I can't imagine that that wasn't known because it was communicated clearly at the last meeting that before the last meeting or two meetings ago that I wasn't going to be there because Victoria was taking on the role that I was having. Could be a misunderstanding. But then it says the city proposed a two-year agreement with zero wage increases in either year. They also proposed to eliminate local 150 health care for all city employees, current, future, and retirees, stating if they

eliminate local 150 healthcare, they may with may in all caps be able to offer wage increases. There's a lot mixed into this paragraph or these sentences. Um, to start, our intention in the meeting was to continue negotiating, working with new numbers that we could get, which I'll get to. Um the decision was made to leave and take this um idea of doing zero and zero and bringing it to them to vote. Um they demanded a final offer and what we communicated is at this time we are not in a spot where we can offer something with the money we have available. That was what was stated. It's not true that we proposed eliminating the local 150 healthc care for all city employees current and future or our retirees. What is true is that we're in a position right now where currently our city employees have a uh health insurance policy where they pay a dollar a year um for a policy. It's a great policy and it comes with a $300 deductible for single and a $700 for a family. I believe I'm correct. Just give me a thumbs up. Make sure I got that right. the cost of that and Carrie, can you tell me the numbers for single on the city? Um, single plus one and the cost. Yes. What we're currently paying for single, single plus one and a family.

Um, single is for nonargaining and this year is 9.87 a month. For single plus one, it's for family, it's $3,11. what that adds up to in yearly totals for all of our employees for this year is $8 million about. Right. Correct.

And to put it simply, $8 million is a very high amount that we are paying currently for the health insurance we have. We understand that it's good health insurance. And we understand that our city employees, both bargaining and non-bargaining, appreciate it a great deal, and they appreciate that it's a dollar. It used to be zero dollars every year. um state law states that you have to be able to pay something or be um charged something for the insurance. So this year the union came to the agreement with the city we would charge a dollar a year to get in compliance with state law. We did not propose eliminating it. What we proposed was asking the union for permission to get the data from our employees or for the union to be able to through its fund um give us the information we needed to be able to go to other companies and other funds that do health insurance for cities and their employees to see if they could take that data and then offer us the same or better benefits for our employees but at a lower cost to the city than an annual cost of $8 million a year currently. and which can go up. We made it clear that anything that we came back with would be something that of course they would review and they still have the ability to reject. But with the funding cuts that are coming to our city over the next three years, we are going to be increasingly in a dire situation of trying to figure out how to maintain city operations, how to keep all of our people union and non-union. And ultimately though, how are we going to pay what's currently an $8 million cost? That'll either stay the same or go up. You'll see when we get to the budget how strained we are. I will not speak to what's been discussed beyond the false claim, but like any negotiation meeting, there is a number, there is a wage, or there's benefits that are demanded by the bargaining unit, and then there's a number of funds that's available from the city that we're allowed to legally spend. And sometimes it takes a while to figure out what funds are available that

the city can legally spend for wages, benefits, what's being demanded, and a number that we can legally spend through funds that we have to be or will have to be able to pay what the employees bargaining want. We're not there yet with the unit that covers the park department, the uh sanitation department, and the street department. I'd like to get there, but trying to explore what we might be able to pay as an overall cost for comparable or better coverage for our employees is something that I don't think would be right for us to try to pass up in this time if we can get it. And if we can't get it, if there are companies that come back after getting the data and say, "Yeah, we're not going to be able to have you guys covered for anything more or anything less, I should say, than what you guys are currently paying." we would come back to the union and we would say,"Well, unfortunately, you were right." Not unfortunately because we don't want the employees to have their coverage. Unfortunately, because we'd hope to be able to get a savings. It was also said in the year that um we may give the savings. We said that it would come up in negotiation because of course, and I'm just making up a number, if we were to switch health insurance providers, get the same benefits or better for our employees, and we saved $2 million in the process out of what's currently 8 million or higher, we would of course understand if they wanted to negotiate more salary or anything else to negotiate based on some of those savings. We just wanted to also make it clear that we would want to see some of those savings being used to offset the cuts coming to our city funding over the next three years. It's a dire situation we're in and we're trying to just make sure that we're covering all of our bases. I say this also because there was a false claim made in it that um we were going to replace it with Valpo's system. That's not the case. Um there was a point where Valpo was mentioned. and so was the city of Hbert in regards to the fact that those cities have different

health insurance policies than we do and some people like them, some people don't. But at no point did we say that we were going to switch to that. The information in that email is strictly not true. And the fact that it was sent from someone running the negotiations, who told our employees to share this with employees and retirees is simply inappropriate. Also, at no point were retirees brought up because we wouldn't be bringing anything like that up unless we actually saw the numbers of switching. In addition to that, there have been some accounts online, some of them clearly fake profiles because someone's first name was Yuri and their last name was Tarted. And I truly believe that that is not someone's real name. I also think that it's gross and inappropriate to make that a fake name if you're going to do fake names. But in regards to the claims, I'm going to address one that was a couple that was put on here. It said, "Found out some interesting information. Our portage street and sanitation department and park department has been without a union contract since January." I would call that misleading at best. That part of the claim, we're in Evergreen right now, and we don't want to be. We want to be able to negotiate in good faith to have something we all agree to. But the contract is still in effect in Evergreen. At least that's my understanding of how Evergreen has worked. Is that fair to say?

All the terms of the contract under Evergreen are in effect.

So, all the terms of the contract are in effect. And then it says um I've been told the mayor is offering a two-year contract with no raises um and no um back pay and also wants to mess with the health insurance. I believe I've already described the insurance and as noted, we don't want to be offering a 0% and a zero percent. We want to be working together to be able to offer something better than where the current financial situation is. Um there's some other things said, but where we uh get to there's then some claims that are made that say that how can it be that we don't have money to give raises if and it goes on to state that our human resources director got a 100% raise. That's just not true. Um we did not give a 100% raise to the human resources director. That's false information being shared online by an account that I'm not sure is real or not. Police department got a 6% raise one year, 6% raise two-year with backay. That's also not true. The police departments on a one-year contract with the 6% raise and they did get backay. Um there was a period where well I want to be careful what said negotiation, but in terms of what we negotiated with the police, we found backay to be appropriate, but it's a one-year contract, not a two-year contract. Police are getting ready to go into negotiation again with us for next year. City Paul employees 3 to 5% raise. That's not exactly false. I would just have to go back and see what employees they're referring to. But some of that would have been last year's two I think it was 2.5% cola that we did.

If I'm remembering the percentage right, it was 2.5

utility services 3% one year and then 3% year two with backay. Again, that was something negotiated with the utilities. I can't speak too much against that except for the fact that it was negotiated as a dollar figure, not straight percentages. If someone did the math and found a percentage or generally that's fine, but I'd also add that utilities negotiated entirely within their um budget amount that we had factored in. Then we've got um also hired an assistant to the clerk treasurer. Um I'll allow Liz to defend her people, but I think that you're doing a great job and your people are doing great there. And a chief of staff and the list goes on. Well, I'll just state that my chief of staff position was an already budgeted position that existed as was the position that currently is called the human relations um director or I'm sorry, the uh what is Norma's title that you changed it to? Sorry, public specialist. Those positions already existed within the city budget. We just filled them.

Can I answer mine? Go ahead.

My position was also in there. it just wasn't filled in 2024 and I asked it to be filled in 2025 actually the end of 2024. So that position was also in the in the salary ordinance. So, just to be kind of clear from there, whether or not this was done intentionally or not, these claims being shared online either don't understand or they do understand, but they don't want the people reading them to understand that within a city government in Indiana, we are legally set up with different funds and different sources of revenue for those funds. And there are different things you're allowed to legally spend those funds on. And if you'd like to learn more about that in detail, you can come to my mayor's Monday meeting where I'm going to be breaking down all the different city funds, what we're allowed to use them for. So, for example, we can't take money from the sanitation department and give it to the police department to give them a raise. Not unless an attorney, well, not unless I come up with a very unique idea and it gets past somebody like Scott or Dan Bartniki, but I don't think they're going to tell me that we can. The issue that we're in as we get through the budget is you're going to see that with the cuts we had, we reached a point where last week we even after the budget committee hearing, we were then informed that based on cuts that are anticipated by the state, we had to cut the budget even more by Liz, I think it was 2.6 million more in the general fund, 300,000 more in NVH, and then 191,000 more in the parks. So even from there, there was money we were planning to have next year that we now are aware is going away, which is also why the paving fund shrunk from its initial over a million dollar amount and has gone down to 750. We're doing more paving than that next year, but it's just to say how we have to move funds around to keep it going. So

I think we actually cut the paving down to 600 and some. I think you might be right. Unfortunately, um we

all that all that said and done, I just got to be able to explain that what we're going into is a very rough budgeting situation and it's something that you guys as the fiscal body need to be, you know, keenly aware of. I want to touch base on some of the major changes we are pursuing going into the next year to be not so doom and gloom, but to know clearly we're talking about things like changing the trash fee to offset what we're currently using and the part of lit that's going away that subsidizes it. As you guys know, recently as last week, we started working on a plan for residential allocation areas with imposed fees to bring in additional um revenue that we can use. But going beyond all that, there are really three major initiatives that I'm going to be working on going into the new year and hopefully we get it done as soon as possible. But some things really take some due diligence as well. And we're hoping to have cooperation with the bargaining units where they come in. And I've been in communication with some about this already where they come into play. To start this um morning, I met with our Portage Township trustee, Brendan Clancy, to discuss the beginning of a fire territory within um encompassing at least the Portage Township unincorporated area and our city. It's possible that as we study that and bring on a consultant that we're looking at to kind of prepare that, we would be inviting other municipalities to participate. I'll have more to say about this in a future meeting. But to make it simple, a fire territory when done right creates a new taxing unit that's able to finance a fire department that can provide equivalent or better service for the area covered, but then also frees up our city's general fund. I don't mean free up. I know we've got some firefighters here and we've got a chief back there. I Or maybe it's just the chief. Sorry, I thought we had one more. Oh, no, that's just Kurt. Sorry to mistake you.

But it allows us to be able to rearrange where um revenue can go into our city general fund that can either be used to enhance what we have for the rest um or it can be used to offset the losses coming with SCA1. There's a benefit that fire territories are not as at least yet as hardly impacted by sea 1. This is something that was discussed with our fire chief's administration as well as with our firefighters union prior to my meeting with um trustee Clansancy. We are in preliminary steps, but we're both taking it very seriously and we are open to seeing what might come of this territory as we create it. We're also in the process of consolidation. A minor example is the ongoing consolidation we're working on between our port authority and our parks department. Reaching a point where port authority assets such as the marina might ultimately be moved into the park department becoming a park asset and then leading to most likely the dissolution of our port authority or the maintaining on it on a much smaller scale that it's currently at with the park being able to merge the operational costs and future fixes needed for the marina. The bigger adjustment that I'll have more to say about certainly by the next meeting is the transition from our current city's current system of having both a street department and a utilities department and moving towards the direction of having a public works department which is funded primarily as the utilities department currently is but with the addition of MVH moving over to it consolidating the departments to be able to function as both a street department and a utilities department. We have nearby examples that we're studying including Velparezo in Hbert. I lean a little bit more to study in Hbert because we have a department head who used to run that one. So we've got a lot of experience with how that goes. Tracy and her team and Liz have been fantastic with looking in what that transition might mean to and what we're moving towards with this public works shift. And it's something that the union has been aware of prior to these

negotiations and prior to these unfortunate things that happened today. But it's an ongoing process. And finally, as noted, we as a city have to take a look at health insurance. Cities of our size are generally paying 3.5 to four to near about $5 million for health insurance compared to our city spending $8 million for health insurance. I'm not claiming that we know for sure how much we can save if we're able to find a provider that would be able to provide our employees with the same great coverage they have, but at a lower cost. Hopefully, we need to be transparent if that doesn't work out. But in the long run, I can't deny the fact that as a city, one of our biggest costs is a health insurance cost. And even when meeting with other mayors who are dealing with the devastating impacts of SCA1, nobody can comprehend currently how much the city is spending on our health insurance when we talk about it. There are other cities that spend less than we do who are panicking about SCA1. We should not be acting as if somehow us having the same problems they have and a greater expense is something that we can't talk about or something we can't um try to figure out how to address. I say all that as we go into the budget to note that with this budget you're going to see that within it different funds that are able to be used for different legal purposes to fund what we call the city. But you might see situations in the budget that might make you ask questions and Liz and I are prepared to answer them. as is uh different uh department heads who are here tonight. I say that though knowing that the city does not have one giant bank account. Your trash bill, your utility bill, your storm bill, your building department fees, and your property taxes do not all go into one big bank account that we can use for anything we want. That's why when someone says, "Mayor, I really like those pickle ball courts, but for the money you spent, couldn't you have used that money to pave my street?" And I tell that person, I promise you if I legally could have, as much as I now

love pickle ball, I totally understand that if we had money that could be used for either the park department infrastructure or road infrastructure, we would pick road infrastructure almost every time based on the cost. But we have to use the money that we have in funds that we have and in ways that we legally can. And I really appreciate how hard my team worked to put together a budget that made what I hope is the smartest use of it. And then if I had any concerns at all, they got addressed when Liz and her team looked at it. And then we came and met together and spent multiple days combing through. And then we found out we had three days to make a couple million more in cuts. And so here we go. That gets us to the reading of ordinances. So we have ordinance 2546 2026 on budget. Melissa, would you be okay reading that for us?

Sure.

Ordinance or resolution for appropriations and tax rates. Ordinance resolution 25-46. Be it ordained resolved by the Portage Civil City that for the expenses of Portage Civil City for the year ending December 31st, 2026. The sums specified are hereby appropriated and ordered set apart out of the several funds named and for the purposes specified subject to the laws governing the same. Such sums appropriated shall be held to include all expenditures authorized to be made during a year unless authorized, expressly stipulated, and provided by law. In addition, for the purposes of raising revenue to meet the necessary expenses of Portage, Civil City, the property tax, levies, and property tax rates are specified are included here in budget form 4B for all funds must be completed and submitted in the manner prescribed by the Department of Local Government Finance. This ordinance resolution shall be in full force in effect from and after its passage and approval by the portage civil city. Let the record reflect it's been read in its entirety.

Are there any questions, motions or as it relates to the budget? I'm sure there's some. So only briefly uh my question will be directed to clerk treasure Modesto and I ask this question every year. Are we able to afford this budget as it currently stands even pending or post um the most recent cuts that were made?

Yes, we are. And I do want to say we've worked diligently probably for the last two weeks we found out that we had to cut close to 4.1 million out of the general fund which um I got to commend my staff, the mayor, um Tammy Burke, Carrie Belt, Leanne, chief of staff, I don't know if she's still here. Um all the department heads stepped up to the plate um told us where we could cut. uh Chief Crayle, Chief uh Candiano, um chief um Superintendent Randy Reer. Um Tracy's not here tonight. She's at a conference, but she um the superintendent for even the um uh utilities pitched in and said, you know, we can help you here and there. and she raised the pilot uh $100,000 to help us for next year and also took on uh some additional costs like a 25% for two of the girls in my office which my my my um office is was going to be self-sufficient as far as city funds instead of dependent on any of the utility funds. But um since two of them are doing work for utilities, she said that she was willing to pay for 25% of their salaries, which helped out a lot. Not only taking on that responsibility, she she took on two um street department employees to help balance out MVH. Um and you'll see that in the um salary ordinance where things have been shifted in um MVH to sanitation. And um the budget was a long process. I would like to thank the budget committee also. They worked hard on it also with us and I can't say enough of all the help that went into this and how much preparation we did for this budget and it is a fundable budget.

It's not a sustainable budget. In 2028 we have to figure out going into 2027 it's going to be even tighter budget. We're going to have to probably cut another $2 million off the budget. Um it's I can't say enough that we have to look to other avenues to get additional revenue or to make more cuts. And I just want to commend the mayor for taking a hard stance on the healthc care issue because that's a very tough decision to make. I don't no other mayor in the city of Portage ever tackled that and I want to thank him personally. I give him a lot of credit. Well, thank you,

Councilman Alvarez. Would you forgive me if I did one more movie reference? Please do.

Do you recall in the part of Apollo 13 where there's a problem with the thing that believe makes the oxid ship and they bring in these geniuses and they really were geniuses in real life and in the movie but they basically take one thing and another they say you guys have this much time to make this fit into this using this and they give them the copies of everything that's in the ship. That's a lot like what this budget process felt like, especially the second round of the budget process when the additional cuts were brought in by the DLGF that we had to estimate for to get this budget approved. Having about three days to cut $2.6 million from one fund, $300,000 from another after already cutting $600,000 from it, and then $191,000 from another. um when we previously had it down to $91 difference between being funded and not, it took tremendous effort. And to give some examples, I mean, I could be here all night, but like one of the most easy ones is the transition with leaf pickup. Right now, we've always had the leaf trucks as something owned by the utilities department and then the streets department actually did the um the pickup of the leaves. I'm sure as council people, you know, you guys know how big a deal that is in the city around this time of year. This year will be the last year that the street department is doing it in their normal way or what's been the normal way. Next year utilities is taking it over and we are setting up to buy three new trucks for example where I believe it currently takes and uh Randy, how many people does it take to do leaf pickup with our current trucks? Three. This gets it down to just one truck driver. So we can actually have three trucks, each one operating in a different zone next year. So to some extent, we're using money we have this year to save money next year. That's one example. You know, then we've got things like, as Liz said, you've got a NIPCO bill that we have to pay in a

building that's used by both streets and sanitation. We didn't have enough money to cover it all through MVH. So where we legally could, we moved it over to the sanitation fund, which has the money. These are a lot of simple shifts, but it's not simple work. And I want to echo what Liz said. This is a fundable budget, but it is not a sustainable budget. And we basically went through to see if everything goes well next year. And I don't want to exaggerate, but there's never a year where everything goes well, right? The snow always tends to happen after 3:00 and before 7. You know, there is a certain point where if we have enough emergencies, we might be in financial situations where we need to come back to the council to either reappropriate or transfer funds, which is something that we do at least twice a year every year. But given the constraints and cuts we have, Liz and I don't want to do this because we wanted to set this budget up as best we could so that this doesn't happen. But it we have to watch where the funds are in real time. In some previous years, you would have a department with a budget and you have what's called, as you guys know, an appropriations report, and you look at, well, this is my budget. I can spend this much within the budget, but there's also a funds report that shows what the city has. And in the city's history, this is not to beat up on any person because when I came in, I also needed to learn how important it was to follow not just the appropriations, but the funds because if revenue is not coming in as you project, doesn't matter that it expects that revenue in the budget. You need to see if it's actually coming in. We're going to be watching that together on a weekly basis and going over it with our department heads. We're being a lot tighter on how expenses are approved. And although we don't want to, we're prepared to come more often to the city council to say, "We're having a problem with this fund. We think we can solve it in this way." So, I agree with Liz. This is a fundable budget, not a sustainable budget, and we're going to have to cut more for 2027

in addition to being ambitious on how we get revenue. On that note, I want to highlight how much new revenue is being generated by our planning and building departments through changes to how they do things and how you guys upped the building fees as new homes and things are coming in. We also have new revenue coming in as the council um worked to get our um sanit sanitary systems improved because what that does financially by making it that new neighborhoods are paying for their own installation. It turns the new rateayers into revenue generators for the utility department which is soon to be I believe the public works department. Um the other spot that I really got to commend are things like our fire department. When we came in, we had chief, is it fair to say we do about $6 million in billing each year, but $6 million in billing is not the same as 6 million in collections. When we came in, we were at a 21% collection rate. Our assistant chief Johnson and his whole team, but you know, under Chris Gra's leadership, they did an excellent job spending the time to get into more insurance networks that actually increased us to get into the 30%s. And Liz, we were both surprised, I think, recently to find out um how much more revenue came in this year than in previous years, I believe. Not trying to oversell it.

Yes, we did. We were we were very surprised. Um I know that's a lot of work on again Roy Johnson and Chief Cray and his team to um make sure we're getting our collections up. And although I don't mean to hurt anybody's feelings because I had a great time at the uh pickle ball grand opening. And as noted, the money we spent on building a pickle ball, you know, court was not money that we could have spent in road paving or on salaries legally. But that said, it was money we could spend on park infrastructure that generates revenue. And so with things like pickle ball and other programs come into our parks, that's also something that's going to generate more revenue for the parks that will, we believe, ultimately get our parks on a path to being self-sufficient. It's not going to happen overnight, and I certainly can't claim it's going to happen like next year. But Kelly's leadership and her determination to make the park self-sufficient in time is something very admirable, and she's worked closely with all of us on. So, you're saying that uh we will do everything in our power to make sure that not to drop another Apollo 13 quota. Houston, we have a problem. That's correct. That'll be all. Thank you. Was excellent. Where is Doug Ross when you need him? Because that was an awesome thing for the paper right there. Hope Doug's okay. There any other questions? Um, or any motions related to the budget?

I'll make a motion to adopt the budget as is. I second. We have a motion and a second. Liz, when we do budgets, do we typically do roll calls or do we generally do I'm not trying to put I just feel like that's more appropriate for something like a budget. Yeah, we got to do a roll call because everybody has to sign it. Okay, thank you. And I'm getting better at remembering these rules, but I'm glad Colin is here. I think we have a motion and a second, so yeah, you can proceed. Okay, I'm ready. Councilman Alvarez, yes. Councilwoman Weinbach, yes. Councilwoman Hurst, yes. Councilwoman Vasquez, yes. Councilwoman Amler, yes.

Councilwoman Zilly, yes. unanimous. Thank you guys. Don't forget, I need your signatures before you leave. Thank you guys for your work.

Thank you guys for the time you put in. And I also just want to add, I would love to be able to get this process going sooner next year. I can't promise that because again, it's sometimes a lot like a space mission, but it's something that I know you guys care about, too. And I think that the sooner we start next year, the sooner you guys can be even more involved. That gets us to ordinance 2544 2026, a salary ordinance. Um, Councilman Alvarez, would you be um so kind as to read that? Absolutely.

An ordinance establish or excuse me, salary ordinance uh ordinance number 25-44. An ordinance establishing the amount of salaries and compensation to be paid to all appointed employees and officers of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana for the year 2026. Be it in hereby is ordained by the common council of the city of Portage, Indiana as follows. Uh salary schedule as presented by Austin Vont, mayor to the common council, city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana. Let the record show that the proposed ordinance has been read in its entirety. Thank you. I'm gonna start by um just or would it be better to wait to see if there's any questions? I mean, I had something I could say, but you know, I'll just say that if I did anything wrong in my time as mayor, something that is worth noting was I think how the salary ordinance was done either the first or second time around last year. We heard from you guys. Um and we wanted to try to apply better principles for how we do a salary ordinance for the incoming whole year. to start not having it as individual votes because that creates a lot of issues when you quite frankly know who all the people are, but secondly to apply a better um metric and standard to how we look at what is a colabased, you know, raise and then what are raises based on a position and what that position um does. One of the things that we would love to do is a full uh wage study for the city. Now, that has a high cost and it can take quite a long time. And I mean this with no at all disrespect, but because so many of our wages in the city are negotiated by contract, it might take some time for the wage study to be realized for every department. Because at the end of the day, for non-bargaining employees, it really comes down to what's set by the salary ordinance. For bargaining employees, that's still true. but we can have a wage study that says where we're

at with the department, but there's still negotiation going on and then you guys play a role with that as well. What we've done in the meantime, and I'll ask um Lynn if you don't mind coming up, what we went through and what Lynn spent a lot of time doing this year was going through and learning regardless of title, what does each position do um in each department, what essentially is the actual job description? Then we weighed those job descriptions against people in cities of our similar size and our economies. That's not always easy to do because there's different factors that come into play, but see what match those descriptions and then see if there were areas that we could either catch up or hold depending on where they were in comparison to other cities. Um, you also, I think, sent it to uh some consultants who checked the homework, if you will.

We did. We reviewed close to a 100 job descriptions and then put the FLSA the uh wage and hour division exemption with that. And then what we did was we benchmark that against the 2025 AIM wage study which is the cities and towns in Indiana. So we put city of portage with similar demographics, economic status. Um we also sent those that we thought were on the cusp to a wage consultant in Lafayette which does municipal studies all of the time. And as the mayor said, the current estimate is probably 40 to 60,000 to have a full-blown, which I do recommend. I think once the coffers open up and we're able to do that, I think it would add great value. But, um, in the meantime, I think what we did was able to shore up some of the standardized job descriptions and, you know, pair those with equal classifications across the board. So, I'm very pleased with that. I had sent an email earlier and welcome any further discussions if if anybody has any questions. The only thing I'd say before is that I understand that with the cuts coming with SEA and as noted, it's not that there's one giant pile of money or bank account that we can spend on anything. There's different funds that we have legally available to spend on different aspects of the budget. If there are concerns from the council members about sea and how much we should be cautious, I understand and I respect those concerns. But I also want to state that within the budget and within these different positions, we have positions where if not caught up, we could also run into a position where in the future we might struggle finding someone to take on those job responsibilities. And so I think that that is the tough I like to say harmony, but I think this is more of a balance. Where is it that we have to be careful with how much money we're going up? But at the same time, if we don't, what happens in the future if we lose a position or someone holding a position and we're not competitive in

such a way to get somebody in? And as noted within this salary ordinance, there's no changes for any bargaining employees of any unit because that comes about when we bring a contract to the council for consideration. Thank you.

Are there any questions you guys have for us or anybody? And if not, is there a motion on this? Scott, I would like to ask, would the new law department line item, can that be voted on separately from the rest of the ordinance as it is being that's a new one? It's already created. Um, you guys voted for it and created the position at the last city council meeting. It's in the salary ordinance because it's already there. To do that, you would need to have a separate motion that would that would be approved by the council to pull that particular department out for a separate vote.

But I don't see why you would do that. That's not a new position. It was already approved by the city council unanimously at a past meeting. What I'm asking then, are you assuming that we're voting on the entire ordinance all together as one unit or are we taking it line by line by department? Absolutely. Um would vote on this in all good faith as one ordinance and I don't know why we would pull anything out, especially positions that already exist. No, uh new position is being created except for what you would argue are transfers between certain departments. Some people going from the clerk treasur's office to utilities. If I could ask why you'd want that taken out, it just doesn't make sense to me.

I was looking at whether or not we're voting on the entire ordinance as it is or if we were going to take each department one by one. Oh, no. That as I said at the beginning of this, I think that what we learned last year, all of us as new people except for Colin and Ferdinand and Gina, giving you guys a lot of credit here, is that that's extraordinarily inappropriate to do. the salary ordinance in my opinion should be passed as one unless you have a particular concern about something but that's right that I guess that's what I would say if if there's something of concern you can make a motion that we pull that out and vote on it separately and you get a second we can do that you can recommend an amendment to the salary ordinance you can motion to amend

one of the and the other thing I would point out is is that we just passed the budget that includes these within the budget budget, correct? The personnel service, the or the salary ordinance is standing outside because it's a requirement of the of the DLGF to have, but the actual salaries are are in the personnel services that were just passed. Yeah. But that's why it's better to do the budget first and then you do the salary ordinance because if you pass the salary ordinance first, then lower the budget, now you have the issue where the salaries sometimes might be higher than what the budget accounts for. So yeah, you don't want to pull something out unless you have a reason to pull it out. But I don't know why we would. That's why I'm asking. I'll make a motion to adopt.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second to adopt. Um Liz, could you do a roll call? Yes, I can. Councilman Alvarez, yes. Councilwoman Widenbach, no. Councilwoman Hurst, yes. Councilwoman Vazquez, no. Councilwoman Amler, no. Councilman Zilly, yes. At a time, so the mayor will break the tie. Scott, does the ties It goes to the mayor on a salary ordinance? Yes. I vote yes.

Motion pass. Thank you. Any other matters to come before the council? Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. And we're adjourned. [Applause] [Music]