City Council - Regular Meeting

We will call our meeting to order. I'll let Misty get to it. Roll call.

Here.

Here. Here. Here. Here. All right. I do not see any citizens for comment. So we will pass that. And we will get to the phone. Where did Craig go ahead? You can't leave here. That would be a short meeting. I mean, I'm okay with it.

It means they know something we don't know. No. I told her I knew today was a rough day, so I only lost a few points.

That could be. That could be.

You know, I'm getting sleepy. We'll know it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

ARE YOU READY? YES, SIR.

DO YOU WANT TO JUST GO OVER THE LIST OF SIGNIFICANT ITEMS?

I WOULD LIKE YOU TO START WITH THAT REAL NICE ONES THAT YOU DID. YOU CAN START WITH WHATEVER YOU MADE BEFORE. digital copy have all this were we supposed to have access to all did you look at so did you I had to figure it out I couldn't flip the page unless I did down here flip through the page

Yeah, I didn't have actually see that. I had access to the spreadsheet of the budget. No cover sheet. I had, I had, like, a spreadsheet where you could go through 242526. you had all the different proposed. I didn't have a document like this.

an email is the one I just copied and pasted up there.

So I don't know why.

It's a little different. It used to be at the top. Remember, you just have everything up here at the top. Change it up now. It's all over here on the side. You can minimize this if you want to go full page. INTRODUCTION, HISTORY OF THE CITY, DEMOGRAPHICS, BASIS OF BUDGETING, TIMELINE.

BUDGET OVERVIEW, THAT'S WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT.

BUDGET OVERVIEW, YOU'VE GOT THE AD AND FLORAL ANALYSIS, TAX RATE DISTRIBUTION. AND THEN UNDER THE BUDGET OVERVIEW, I HAVE THIS SUMMARY OF SIGNIFICANT CHANGES. SO THIS IS THE LINE HERE. EVERY SINGLE LINE ITEM INCREASE, THERE'S A LOT OF INFLATION of the things we do are not in the cpi they don't have like body armor ammunition stuff like that so this is this is kind of the summary just like we have in the buddy IT WILL BE LIKE THAT IN EVERY FUND. THE SAME THING, PERSONNEL SERVICES, SUPPLIES, MAINTENANCE, OTHER SERVICES IN CHARGE, CAPITAL which is debt. by request it was just all inflationary increases but maintenance other services capital outlay and appropriations so other personnel costs we've got three different categories here first is position upgrades three position upgrades here there's accounting director to finance director uh stormwater duties, the code enforcement positions. Those are all in the general fund, and they total $89,000. Salaries, TMRS, FICA, workers comp across the board. Second category of personnel, salary increases. And having their 2.6% salary adjustment, that's basically based off the CPI through May of this year. The July numbers won't be out till later this month.

up to a 2.5% increase for rare.

The majority of our employees fall between 1.5% and 2%. We have a small portion that get the highest rate evaluations, and they'll be up there at the top. They'll get the 2.5%, and then we have some at the low end, and they get a 1%. But the line, it's kind of like a bell curve, any of that kind of stuff. You see the majority of them are going to fall between the 1.5% and the 2%. So, In the general fund, that totals $266,662. And again, that's not just the salary increases. That's the increase on FICA. That's the increase on TMRS. That's the increase on workers' comp. And for office personnel like me, workers' comp is pretty low. It's like three-tenths of one percent of your salary. But you get into some of the departments like the street department, So all of that, that number includes everything, not just the salary increases. And then the other one is the healthcare, and we're projecting a 15% increase this year. TML IRP came out and said that, or TML Healthcare came out and said that they're expecting an 11% across the board average increase. we did our last usage rate we were at about 134 percent so every dollar we were paying you they were paying out a dollar 34. so we're going to be above the 11 percent last year we were similar and we ended up with a six percent but I think that's because throughout the whole thing it was like a two and a half percent increase across but this year the costs are up across the whole system they set the rights Craig at the calendar year and the So our renewals in January. So we typically get our new rates in September. Usually we get them about a week or 2 after you adopt the budget. Yeah, that's what that's the way it comes every year. But our plan here is in effect January. So we actually make the adjustments to the employees for the salary withholding.

Help to to find out if they could give you an estimate what the increase might be.

I mean, we, we've already they've said expect across the system about 11 or they'll tell us when he checks with them last week, seeing if we'll get close and they're like, oh, it should be in the next few weeks. But.

Typically, we get it September what we've done in the past is.

It goes above this, then we'll look at do we need to look at changing. The deductibles and things like that are some of the coverage levels. Where healthcare works is we offer two plans. We offer basic, it's called basic, it's pretty rich plan, the PPO plan that is kind of our base plan. We have to offer that plan. Whether anybody takes it or not, we have to offer it. It's got like $100, it's got like $1,000 deductible, $20 per doctor visit co-pay. The doctor's office, you don't have to meet the deductible, the prescription plan. You don't have to meet. We've got a handful of employees for. For HSA, which I should say has. 3200 dollar deductible for family or 3400 for family now. 1700 per individual, but if your family got to meet. But the premiums are so much lower than the base plan that a lot of times the difference the employees can use to pay for their dependent coverage. Those employees that don't have it, they can sock it away in their HSA and use it to pay their deductible. So most of our employees opt for that. But we can't have the HSA plan unless we offer the other plan.

Do most people add money to the health savings account?

Some do. I used to, but I got too old. I started getting into the Medicare and IRS penalty phase. So I had to stop last year. But we have some employees that do. But most of them, I think it's just that the city is contributing to them for them. And there is a maximum, depending on your age. But we have some employees that put additional of their own pay. So you match that? Is there a matching? No, we don't match it. We just group. So what will happen for the employees if they opt for the HSA? Like I said, the premiums are about half what the other plan is, but we base the health care on the upper plan. So whatever the difference is, they can either apply that to their dependent coverage, or if they don't have dependents, that goes in their HSA. And if they reach the maximum, then it goes in their HRA, separate type account. HSA is there as far as HRA is there. But most of our employees now opt for the HSA, but we can't offer the HSA unless we offer the base plan. We do still have a handful, but I don't think we have anybody that has a standard plan, as we call it, because when I got into my IRS thing about HSA and stuff, I thought, well, maybe I should change that, but it was going to be like $14,000 a year. The impact for the general fund is $130,648. The impact on the utility fund is $48,566. And it's just because two-thirds of the employees are in the general fund and a third of the employees are in the little one-third, a little less than a third of the utility fund and a little more than two-thirds. let's see under maintenance the only significant increase we have in maintenance is adding another forty thousand dollars to the street maintenance line item that we do all the annual street repairs out of it fit it's what it was actually what david asked for you know one of the things where we're hoping is we're doing some of more and more of these streets like you know last year we went ahead and gravel streets have been costing us a lot of money because we go in and we have to blade them a couple times a year, bring in new rock every time we blade them. So last year we ran in new rock and everything. We went ahead and chip sealed them. Spent the extra money and chip sealed them. So we don't have to do that multiple times. This year we're doing juniper. They're actually working on juniper right now.

The chip seal lasts, you know, it's a lot longer, obviously. Five to seven years. Five to seven, yeah. And with the gravel, you're doing it every year, right?

A lot of them. Yeah, the untamed roads, pretty much every time we blade, we have to add bays.

Usually a couple times a year. Some of them have little inclines where the rain will wash it out, even more than that. So the hope is that some of this, and then as we've been knocking some of these other local streets, we're reducing the number of streets that need all that extra money just to keep them passable. So... So... I think we're able to stretch those dollars. We're getting pretty good. We're getting ready to do. This year's budget a bunch more, uh, micro seal. When you say we have about 150,000, we're fixing them.

Yep.

Yeah. So we'll, we'll knock out some more of those. So. But that's that's the number he added to it, but he did fit in, but I originally cut it out put it back.

So I just remember prior years for some of y'all. We we've had a big discrepancy, right? It's been this whole big we've got to get stuff in here because we're there's just no maintenance in there. So to see this this small of a number, I was kind of surprised when I saw the total number is getting to.

755,000 on that.

I've probably been the 1 that has advocated for that doing of the most I've fought for almost every year. Yeah, I think last year you said that what you had, you were comfortable with. I mean, I, I'm all for. More money in this line item to. Help prevent our streets from decay, but keep some of the good ones from going into if you're good with that funding level. I'm good with it, but I still think. It needs to be double that. We don't have the ability to make that double, but my opinion is, it should be double that. I know that that Greg deals with this and I'm sure you do too.

Craig. the city side and then the robinson you know citizen's post about the streets and you got this one guy that my wife actually taught him in kindergarten but anyway no she did good in kindergarten it's just after that that he was misdirected i think but in any event people are wanting to know which streets are

you know we're being done or considered or how soon that sort of thing the problem is is that we've said how many times have we put on facebook a list of the streets and a list of what we're doing and we could put it we could we could buy billboard and put it on 77 and they would still get on and go we're never getting anything done we're never getting any street i'll tell you what i would do i if i had a list that were saved i would just post that

Here it is. This is what's being done. You know what I mean?

I think I saw one somewhere.

Because it starts up this malcontent, and then you've got all these comments, and people are commenting on stuff they obviously don't know about. So I'm just wondering how we can curb that some. Especially Rick.

Well, you know, Ricky's just on a tear.

God bless him.

Sometimes you just have to ignore people.

And it's the people that take their Wi-Fi out of their house.

I did say something to somebody. I wish we could say it to this way. I didn't get their Wi-Fi. We can just run out there and go, all right, but that's probably $20 million worth of blacktop everywhere without engineering it, without thinking about it. And five years from now, we'll be right back in the same deal.

Or we can slow down and do it correctly, and it'll last a long time.

So I think we're just going to have to get to the point where there's gonna have to be another maybe when we get Greg drive started which is coming really quick so this month so so maybe when that happens it's just I mean I know it's frustrating but everybody's it's gonna take five years to spend it takes time they don't I know we all want it yesterday Me too. I'm not very patient, but I've learned you got to be patient here.

Yeah. Well, we're doing this in a year to two. TechSoc plans at 25 years ahead of time. Those that are being worked on by TechSoc today were started in the planning process 25 years ago. They were actually, the engineering was usually started 10 years ahead of time.

I don't know how you can anticipate a street needing to be changed 10 years ahead of time, or 25 especially, but I guess that's how they work.

I got one question. I got a question for you. Have you seen, have you seen your money go a little farther with the machine and repairing the roads? Yeah, the one. I mean, is that made up, like where you can do two to one or you can do?

Our response to that one time, the pothole request was six months.

Where are you now?

Two days. Because that one machine takes one operator. Yep. So our crew can say on whatever they're doing, I can jump in it and go do potholes as the requests come in. And then we go hunt for potholes after that.

Yeah. And I think people think that we hunt for potholes on Robinson neighborhood water instead of sea click fittings. And you try to get people to go, if people would just not. put it there, and they would take the same time that they go to Robinson Neighborhood Watch to put it on C-Click Fix, you would have all of their problems solved.

Then they can track it, get updates on what we're doing about it.

I usually don't answer because you're going to get into this long diatribe, long conversation with never-ending questions about it, which are usually ridiculous. It's tough. Anyway.

All right.

We will, Greg. Thanks. estimated increase in vehicle maintenance or something like that we're seeing some vehicle maintenance go down because the lease vehicles some of this handled through the lease stuff which reminds me some of you have vehicles that are due service in here um utility fund we have three seven one is the water treatment plant maintenance greg is asked to increase that by almost sixty thousand dollars and that's just because with the Demands from Walmart and everything we're going to be running the plant longer and we must be plant longer.

Do you have computer?

This is also adding 60,000 for what happens when I'm walking, mowing the 5 acre elevated storage tank site out there up John Bowden. That thing gets out of control pretty quickly anywhere where he's going. We don't have the staff to be out there mowing it and still maintain all the systems.

We got a budget figure. That's the link that I sent you.

Yeah, we'll go out for quotes. That's the contract. It's from the contract we just started for the parts from the city hall complex. Adding to it.

Okay, yeah, well, I was gonna say 1 of the problems we get with mowing and stuff is. A lot of the the companies don't provide workers come from their boards and that's 1 of the things we require in a contract.

I know David had a very hard time.

Company to do to city hall and do couple of stars. I've never seen this money is just for the additional 5 acres out there. No, this for just 5 acres out there.

They're going to be mowing John Bowden anyway, so we thought it would look better if it was all mowed at the same time versus us having to be able to pull somebody off when they happen to mow them. That would never happen. It would look better. It's all done at once.

And then the last one, I actually put this in. This is the collection system. I've almost doubled this, and the reason I have is because the last two years we've had to come in and make your adjustment and almost double it. Pumps go out, I mean, there are tens of thousands of dollars when the pumps go out and they're just a continuous. We're pushing up against it on the maintenance on those.

We've already used this entire way.

We're budget this year. All right. Yeah. Yeah, we've got a couple of stations that need to be reconstructed. It's just fitting into the. The process just you'd only have so many projects going on at 1. So, those are the maintenance increases, um, other services in charges. So the built in numbers in the volunteer fire department contract, that's an increase. It's based on a preset amount, which for the coming year, 17 dollars per account per month. And based on the number of accounts ends up being 144,429 more dollars. We've also got an increase on volunteer fire departments, workers comp. It's $9,625. Then overall vehicle insurance went up $10,290. Some of that is because we moved it on a new ladder truck, and we've got newer vehicles in the fleet. And then this cost is split between the general fund and utility fund. The transfer from an on-site server to a cloud server. So here at City Hall, we have a server that runs our finance system. It runs laser fish. It runs individual employee files and everything. And it's here on site. And we have all this backups and security and off-site backups and all that stuff and firewalls trying to keep people connected and all that stuff. Let's do the servers. What are we in our fourth year on the server, Destiny? They recommend replacing every three to five years, and we're pushing up on that fifth year. Because I think this year is our fourth year and next year is our fifth year.

Cloud service offers more security. Yes.

What we're facing is because of data centers, and data centers are the new evil. Computer stuff, it's another tech bubble. Those of you who were around during Y2K, remember the world was going to end because all the computers were going to crash and everybody's... Now the data centers are buying up everything. And so a server that this past year was $40,000 is now $112,000. And just seeing that on any kind of servers and stuff, because they're buying them up by thousands. So we're faced with that big cost and we've already been having conversations about switching to encode their cloud product because there are some different features, some additional features, but our offsite, like the water plant street department, things they have to VPN to get to encode because we don't have a direct connection with them. So by going to the cloud, everyone can access the data on the cloud. The software is on the cloud, so you can just log on a computer anywhere. So, when when destiny or Karen go on vacation, they can work while they're there because they can just get on process and all that stuff.

So, 1 question about that correct on the cloud that. With our own server, we have control. We have a copy on-site, right? So we back up off-site. Back off off-site. How about the cloud server? We're going to have backups. Those facilities back up themselves.

Those facilities back up. Cloud backs up. They have their own backups. See, right now, we used to have on-site backup. The problem with on-site backup is if a tornado hits, it's going to take out both computers. It's not going to go through here. So we actually back up off-site to something that does. I don't know if that happens. But there's additional parts that we have to have for that. We have to replace every few years to do all that.

So it's still going to have the ability to give our information if something happens to that particular club.

So when we back up now, something happened to our server here. We would have to first get a new server, and then we'd have to reinstall all the data that we have on the backup onto our new server here. With the cloud system with the software and everything being on the cloud. If this building just level, we can pull up a laptop and we have access to everything. All of our financial records, all the employees will have access to their, our email. Everything will be up and running. Even laser fish will go to the cloud cloud version of the laser fish. Citizens will be able to access most of the records. Misty has in there now the ordinances, the minutes and all those things that people are always making records requests for. They'll be accessible for the public to view and download if they want access. So that's that's one of the benefits of having it available. And then I don't know their transparency stuff and I learned from this and when citizens So, so basically that's basically that costs a split between the general.

Transition that's what that is.

I'm just trying to stay up because we're writing more citations and we're getting more revenue and tickets. We have to collect more fines and be part of the fine goes state. So. So that does have a corresponding for this also.

Look at Chief go get it fired up. Show him where the light bulb was.

The police department has additional technology and IT costs that they're pushing theirs up. Some of it, I think, just increases more differently now. Yes, sir.

Radio service and IT or CGIS requirements are pushing IT costs up.

And then we just also there are some changes to email security that we're having to do with Microsoft, and that's going to push. They have the lion's share of email accounts, so it's going to push them up more than everybody else. But that's just something we have to go to. It's just something. Something to make sure we stay secure. And then utility fund, the other service charges, sanitation costs are increasing by 68,451. That's a pass-through. That's the waste management contract. That's between new accounts and the rate increase we adopted this year. That's how much additional money will come in, but we'll also raise that much additional revenue on the other side. We'll actually raise more revenue when we get the billing fee and the franchise fee. Okay. So we'll bring more money in there. The wake of water contract is increasing their rates. So that'll cost us an extra almost $50,000. WMARS sewer is increasing. That's going to cost us about $83,000 a year. And some of that's not just rate increase. Some of that's volume increase.

Does the wake of water contract have a cap on it as far as what they can?

No, there's no cap on what they can increase. There's a cap on how much water we can take, but there's no cap on what they can. But again, the water going up is a rate increase. The sewer is not necessarily because we're using more.

So you're going to recoup the 51 to 983.

Craig, that contract has a minimum per day, correct, that we have to take from Waco?

Yeah, it's a take per pay. It's 500,000 gallons a day.

And I know Waco has indicated they would like to end that or amend that. Is there any way we could get in an amendment to that so that we're not having to take as much actually right now we're, we're taking up to.

Over 750,000, we had the approval to, but I haven't done it yet. We can take up to me today.

They've given us approval to take additional because of our. Algae problem without so under the current contract, if we go over it, that becomes our new. That becomes our new take her pay. which we could then force their hand to sell us more water, but they don't want that, but they're willing to work with us. So they're letting us go over it.

When you say up to a million a day, are you saying that we pay a certain amount that allows up to a million, or we pay however many gallons before we go over? We pay up to 500,000 gallons a day. Anything over 500, we pay.

We're going to have to still pay for it, but it's not going to have impacting on our contract. Because typically, before that, if you went over that became your new for that day, the Waco not wanting us to take the water there. They're not they don't want to pull that card on the original contract.

If we, if we 1 day did 600, then it reset and from then on, we didn't pay for 600 a day, but they don't want us to do that. They want us to stay at five, but they're willing to let us take extra water if we need it right now. We just have to pay for it.

Do we have to prove that we need extra water when we need it?

I had about a month worth of conversations before I got to approve. There's been a lot of testing and stuff, and we finally got it approved.

How much longer is left on that contract? The contract?

There's 25 years and we adopted 13. Oh, way to go. But we are, we are using it. So there's, we don't want to reduce, but is it open ended?

We're good with where it's at, but they charge me. Yes, that changes every year and it goes up every year. I don't have it.

There's no kind of regulation on them as far as to how much they can go to. How does it determine what's fair?

I have a question on that. Does the rate that we're paying Waco is underneath. Essentially what it costs us to treat the same water correct? My question is, we're charging customers a rate. Are we in a loose situation?

Like, no, we're not upside down on what I know.

Woodway's Woodway's been in an upside down situation for every drop they get from Waco. Their connection is, and they've been getting a lot. So they've been losing money and. They're trying to get a rate that will at least. Even now, no, I know we were losing money. Treating so we're in a good spot.

You like 1,000 gallons per 1,000 gallons.

I mean, you see what I'm saying is that I'm just going to be in a situation where they can come to us and say, hey, we want this. That's what happens when you get under contract. I didn't know how that. Yeah, we don't have a good deal.

Whiskies for drink and waters for fight.

Okay, trying to say whiskey from my bed.

They're charging us $3 and 59 cents per 1000. yeah. What you're charging is 3 dollars and 59 cents per 1000 gallons. We're charging commercial. 575 and then. Residential we're charging and starts it. And he goes up to 925 per 1000 gallons a month. So, so we're not upside down.

To cost us for 1000 gallons. That's what he just said.

What does it cost us? Yeah, that wasn't a tree.

That's a, you'd have to do an average of plant water is very pricey, but you got the ground water comes in a 3rd of that branch. Okay.

Is somewhere around what we're paying for Waco or is it more expensive for us to do it? I'd say we're going to average around $3,000. Okay, a little less.

Okay.

And then the W Mars now that they have increased the W Mars.

We are paying.

$1.37.2 per 1,000 gallons. We're charging $2.89 for residential and $1.89 for commercial. Which is better. We used to, before our rate increase, we were charging 77 cents per 1,000 for residential and 89 cents for commercial.

commercial and wrinkles is charging us like a dollar 25. the next one's the enhancements so we're still we don't we don't charge our customer a fee to use a credit card right right I'm anxious to see what happens in Waco now that they adopted that.

It's already showing you a budget of more for those fees, correct? Their expectation is that the credit card usage is about to spike. There were some departments. Waco? No, for us.

Waco just passed it and they're going to charge everybody to use a credit card. So I'm waiting to see some account delinquency go up.

Woodway switched last year to where they were charging the processing fee directly. Um, I do at the family center and we get a lot of people that are. Not happy that we're charging that 3%.

You see a difference in pay. Not the record.

I mean, most of our people are. Oh, yeah, you pay it whether you see it or not. I can add it to my chart to my fee, or I can.

There's no subscription.

Is there an annual fee on the sirens?

Of course, we'll have to pay $25 a month for the Waco radio in each of them. But that's going to come out of our radio. But there's not an annual fee.

Polls are supposed to be in.

We can crawl to the top and the sirens are still trying to get through the straight hormones. Yeah. all right all right uh let's see so and then i also have let's see same thing with the cloud the on-site server to cloud the customer service enhancement we just talked about that's one of 30 000 that that's not just the credit card fees that's also understanding correct me if i'm wrong destiny that also covers the cost where the customers can get online and see their use their person not their uses to the meters but their get online to view the

Yes. And then starting October, we'll make the merge where they can see their bills, their utility, their wire usage, set up alerts. So they won't have to go to two different places. They can do all in one.

Yeah, it'll all be in one. Because census, when we went to the census system, they had the portal that gave us the access. So all of us that are on there now, that's what we're doing. Well, they also told us after a certain number of years, it was going to go away, and so it's going away. But ENCODE has that same system, and it's integrated with their billing. So when we flip over, you'll be able to see your account, your bill, your usage, everything on one location.

So you can set your alarms on that too?

Yes. Have you seen it? Is it more user-friendly than the census portal?

okay they're better but i'm assuming the code is same or better i didn't initially think it was worse it's pretty it's kind of the same but it would be do you use the utility app now i don't do that side jennifer does but i go into the usage side and look at set my alarms see how much i'm using tracking every month It looks similar to the app where you can go in and see what your bill is and pay your bill.

I was giving a heads up that census was about to eliminate that. I was like, I hope there's a plan. I like it. I mean, I use it anyway. I don't know how many people do.

We're going to have those features. It'll just be So this might be .

Well, if it's in the one place, same as Bill, that's a step forward.

Yeah, that was one of those where they didn't bother to mention that to us until after they were about three quarters the way done installing them. And they said, oh, by the way, the portal's only, what, three years, five years? Whatever it was, it was like, it's only good this many years, and then it's gone.

One of their competitors gave me the heads up last week.

But the system itself has been really good. We've not had any issues with the system itself.

I don't think we lose meters.

If we lose a meter, it's usually because somebody's clipped a wire or things like that. And I think we've really helped our customer service with our Morning continuous usage reports, and then we send our customer service. Houston, he'll call people or go knock on their door and say, you know, you're running all the time. And so we're not seeing these. These bill adjustments we used to see all the time where people would have these leaks and they get these huge bills because we're, we're nipping them in the bud. So. It's been, it's been a real positive. They don't pay their bill for five months, and then they get out there and say, look at my bill, it's $700.

And it's like, well, you didn't pay it for five months.

Actually, now, if you just don't finish your second month, we don't turn you off.

There's no more five months.

So, yeah, we've become very cold-hearted.

The city was actually, the chair members, they started. We weren't helping our customers because we were just letting them pay a little bit and they were getting deeper and deeper. And we had customers owing us more than a thousand dollars on water bills because we wouldn't turn the water off. They get in a hole they couldn't get out of. So we kind of worked with them all over about six, eight months and let them get caught up. About our new policy, we shut you off.

Sorry, didn't we do a program to help some of those folks out?

Use some of the code my funds to well, we need to be directing them to the right. Okay. Yeah.

Only the word we could not turn anybody off.

That's a lot of people that got caught up because of that. Program and you could.

Yeah, because we actually had some people got caught up. And then they fell right back behind during COVID because we couldn't shut them off.

On the alert, Craig, how soon is that? How quickly does it detect a leak issue or more quality of usage?

Within the same day. Within 24 hours, I can tell you, because they called me two or three times.

Called me last year.

Every time we have three months of no rain, the miles of pipe out there go to bust. Or rather, they drop it.

They'll call me and go, ah, you're a meter. You can set a usage alert so you can get it. I get an email every time.

People in Robinson don't understand what a great deal that is. Because on the other side, so I've had that happen three times since I've lived here in three years. Where a pipe breaks 10, 15 acres up the way and I didn't know it. And then the girls call me and go, hey, it's been less than 24 hours. On the flip side, Waco, my building downtown that I got for sale but I'm not in, I have an event one night and I leave. 30 days later, I get a call from Waco. Oh, hey, your bill almost tripled this month. We just thought we'd let you know you might have a problem.

Thanks for the one.

It was the, somebody left the thing going on the. the bathroom and so the water was continually running but i hadn't been down there so i mean it you're talking a thousand bucks worth of that the ladies in here calling you and telling you you got a problem i mean people they'll save people lots and they'll save me a lot of them but i know there's more people out there that it's done but it's a great thing that we have that even the big city doesn't offer yeah i won't even talk about it they won't even have a conversation about it i told them i said well we got this out here well you're not getting out of here

It also has a program that will reduce your increase from a break, whatever your increase of usage is, by half. Yes. If you approve the bill.

But what's happening is we're finding these so soon. When's the last time we got one of those? Well, we've had a couple this last week, but $20 is... Yeah, I mean, they're a lot smaller because instead of the water running for a month, it's running for 24 hours. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, we don't... yeah i had that happen at my house before all this i i'm necessarily knocking on my door one morning at like 6 30 in your front yard and my service line broke he just found that with no pressure in the house so get a plumber out and he fixes it well apparently he didn't glue it properly and so i come in got the adjustment because it it lost a lot of water when it broke and uh got the adjustment then a month later still kind of green so i don't notice anything and then i'm driving home one day we've been really hot for a few days everything's brown and i got this green spot that goes like 600 feet down from my front yard down the side and i'm like and so i come in here and have them pull them up and i've used 44 000 gallons because when the connection it slipped it didn't break so i still have water pressure and everything but you've been probably running for a month And I couldn't get the adjustment because you only do 1 every. So, I had to pay so. I should have waited because the 1st, 1 was a lot smaller, but I don't have that problem because I have alerts. See, the 2nd, if I go over 300 gallons in a 24 hour period, I get an alert.

So, you don't.

But you don't have to set a lot to get notified. No, I don't know.

No, you don't have to set it, but you can see it running.

Now, we don't have anybody on the weekend checking it. Yeah. Doing that when they come in before they were on the report showing her. All right. So you're on the utility costs increase utility costs. It's just on the plant more running the pumps more. more wastewater moving through the system so we're using more electricity and the capital outlay so we have one split between the general fund and utility fund that is uh city hall security camera door lock system our door lock system we have cameras we have door locks they're not integrated It's an old systems in our locks. We've been having issues. We had an issue. What last year was the back door would suddenly we've done the weekend and all the doors would suddenly just unlock themselves.

Yeah, a month or so ago, but every. Adjusted for an hour, but we were having to use a lot like an actual key.

So what we're recommending is to go to a system that connects the security camera system, because it also needs upgrading. It integrates all together, so when certain locks are used, you'll know which cameras may see who's on that. So if we've got people coming in and going out or that kind of thing, we can better monitor all that. We have that in there. And then the other one in the general fund is the smaller piece of playground equipment, which is the smaller children, the three to five, looking at replacing that. They've got some costs that range from the mid-20s to about $50,000. I think we probably want to do something better than the mid twenties. Those looked a little on the smart side, but we'd get a pretty nice system for about 50 to 60 and you're looking about 20,000 dollars for installation. So, we had the parks board had their town hall meeting. Couple weeks, you know, sir, sir. You said, or sometimes 1, Saturday in July.

This was to was at the 13th.

it was the second saturday in july was it 11 11 yeah yeah so they had they had a there was some discussion in there and one of the things they're trying to do is get a separate 501c3 set up where people can make contributions to make purchases for things in the park and so one of the things we talked about maybe to help it along is if we could come up with funding to replace smaller piece of equipment that kind of becomes a look what the potential is to do this and let's you know we're talking about something that has shade built into it and all that and then hopefully that might help them with a fundraiser where they can then go back and if they can't raise 100 of the money to replace it and we've even talked about instead of having two separate pieces like we have now having one bigger piece because you know the two that are out there are supposed to be like the 6 to 9 and the 9 and up, but those kids playing on all of it. They don't. They don't separate out which side is there to claim on.

So. So, we were able to fit that in now we.

The budget does go a little bit in the fund balance. I want to say it's about 14,000.

This mouse does not move well on this tabletop surface.

Try flipping your pad over with the card. Yeah.

Let's bend your caps.

No, works better on the cardboard.

So right here the expenditures over revenues are 12,300. $16 and 51 cents. But we do still have a 221 day fund, but ending fund balance.

All right. We do preventive maintenance. You get the sewer lines stocked up. It's a jetter that we run through the sewer lines to get the flow going again. Ours is 2015 that we currently have, getting where it's not real dependable, so we just timed up there.

And under appropriations, it's just adding more leased vehicles, still trying to get caught up. So the animal control vehicle is well past its serviceable life.

The problem is it's still running.

Yeah.

I'll save it up close. Yeah, it's in pretty rough shape. Take it from a car guy. That one, we don't even send it. You only want to send that one to the auction. It's just going to fall apart.

Yep.

like that when we had parked up there with the parts falling off of it so the good thing about that i talked to when craig and i were discussing this one is you know we're buying the box we're leasing we're buying the box we're leasing and we're doing it all through the lease but the box is the least purchase so the box remains are so we can add the box to the next truck

Yeah, we're getting a climate controlled carrier box because 1 of the problems we have is animal control goes out, picks up the dog, puts it in the box. Now, this time of year. Yeah, I've got to take it to the shelter. They can't go to the next call because that dog won't survive. So, with the climate control carrier, they can go out and pick up multiple dogs and then make a trip over. They don't have to.

You don't have to make a trip time and fuel. It won't be any.

Well, it also, it also. Also saved goodwill, because we don't want a new story about dogs dying from the heat. We already know the kind of news stories you get when somebody finds a dog.

I was just going to say, and you answered half the question, but the plan wouldn't be to allow animals overnight. In that climate control, but yeah, you'd already answered the question.

No, it's not going to become an animal shelter. It's just for transport. Yeah, I mean, we right now, we've got a big metal box. We, and it sits out in the sun all day and then we stick the dogs in it.

How's our new animal control for us to do really well.

How long was the delivery of that?

The box was eight months for mortar. So we can't do much with the truck without the box. So it's looking like at least eight months. I'm sure the truck and chassis will be here first. We'll be waiting eight months on the box.

And then two additional police vehicles.

One is a patrol, one is an admin vehicle, patrol replacement vehicle. And then the last thing is the vehicles we added last year for the police department, we only funded them for seven months because that's what it was. So this is the rest of that cost rolled in here.

And I think it puts the police department... How many more patrol vehicles do you guys have to replace? Yeah, most of them are pretty much done, aren't you? Yeah, we'll be able to...

we'll be getting rid of one 2018 this year and we'll have one 2018 left so that'll be our oldest unit and then we'll just go into replacing them as leases are up so trying to find we were saying our maintenance costs start to level off i know last year we had to come back for some more money mid-year but now that we're keeping them newer cars are

And its cost is so right now the annual costs on the vehicle lease is the police parts 260,000. So, with what we were adding this year is probably going to put us up a little over 3. But the cost of each individual police vehicle patrol vehicle is 77,000. How many years do we have 16 patrol?

I want to say about 6 or 7.

Detective vehicles. These are all up for you for your reasons.

Pro people still patrol vehicles of 4 years. The new ground control truck is a 500 lease.

Then in the utility maintenance, we've got the Houston, our customer service guy. The guy goes to tell everybody their water's running all the time. It's time for his truck to be replaced. So that's here. And then two additional pickups for utility maintenance. One of these is a three-quarter gun. One time. One time. And then another pickup for the water plant. And I think that gets your vehicles pretty much. Yeah, we check. We've got everything. The PD vehicles, they're not going to have a whole lot of money above their residual when we take them back. These other vehicles, we should see some money out of the residual when they go back, which will then offset the future replacement cost. At least that's the theory. If we don't see that, then we'll regroup and we'll start

Craig Hass, MnDOT Consultant, No, sir. Craig Hass, MnDOT Consultant, Hey, Craig, I got to go back. Craig Hass, MnDOT Consultant, That cost of transfer from onsite service Craig Hass, MnDOT Consultant, $42,000.

But that's disposition, the old stuff transfer the new stuff description yeah now it isn't that's an annual cost, what is it that's an annual costs that Tyler.

So, so, of course, the driver is 37,000 a year do we have something that you might have self licensed technology systems as self-advocates.

Tyler, the question on that is, do we have services to go with that cloud base? Have y'all have y'all done that yet? Yeah, well, I'm just saying, have you done the transfer to cloud yet?

We work with the third party services because we have our own internal.

We just discovered that. Your permitting won't work if you don't have GIS.

We don't use Tyler for a permit.

Okay, good. Well, there were problems when they went to this Tyler's cloud-based system that things weren't as advertised and there were additional software needed to get caught up. But y'all use permitting through Tile.

We don't do permitting through Tile. We use Civic for our programming system.

And it's already online. It was understated that you needed GIS to be able to use Tile or cloud services for permitting. It was like, oh, just make sure to make it work. So I was just concerned that we were about to walk into that same trap.

This is just for the court and finance and payroll and things we do right now. Taryn's back there making faces. She was trying to tell me something. I couldn't see her.

I was saying I'm supposed to look.

Yeah, it was quite a surprise and they're hoping the county can bail them out with the.

Yeah, no, we, we don't all of our permitting and everything that's all. Part of the same suite as our website, our secret fix all that civic civic plus civic go suite. And so it's already stored off site.

Just silliness. This is public record, right? Everyone sees this. If you get bored under those two columns for the $42,000, you might want to add 50% of the cost to transfer from on-site server to cloud server, because you're going to have some finance nerd out there that goes, see the city duplicated.

So he's saying just go add the 50% to your line. Yeah, I put it down here. Yeah, you did great on that one. Just say, just add the 50% number to both sentences.

I did this Sunday afternoon.

Oh, I'm sure.

I got in here and I started looking at it. I've got this bulleted wrong because these four are all supposed to be bulleted together and this ended up as a title. So I started doing that. It's like, well, that's not right. And this is supposed to be bigger like this. So I got to go back and clean it up a little bit. I was sitting there on Sunday afternoon going, And I was done. I was just like, I'm done. I'm going to put it on there and I'll deal with it later.

Greg, what about annual fees? We see that that's changing to the cloud service, 41,652.

That is the annual cost. Annually? And that's the Tyler, the Laserfish. The setting up so that all of the employee folders and everything, the public folder that has all of our stuff on it and all the Microsoft licenses. Yes, sir.

The setup will be a one-time fee.

Okay, there's a setup. So that won't replicate. That's $11,000? Yeah. Yeah, so that $11,000 won't replicate. So it'll actually be $72,000.

Because it says cost. to transport from on-site to clouds 41.67. Probably should say transition.

Probably should say transition. Transition. But that's an annual fee, the 40.67.

No, it'll be about 36,000-year median. It's taking 11 grand more.

But as we were talking with first day before yesterday, we spent $112,000 for a server. Now, four years from now, we'll probably spend $250,000 for a server. Or the tech bubble will burst. We'll all be living in caves again.

Where the cloud will disappear.

You can't use local systems like Synthetic Plus or Tyler. They won't make it where you want stuff, Sean.

Yeah.

They'll eat each other.

That's what Civic Plus is. So they're all going that direction. Because like Tyler's new stuff, you have to go to the cloud to get their newest. They don't have an on-site version of their newest software. You want to go with their newest, latest, and greatest package, you've got to go with the cloud. Because otherwise, you're using updated versions of old software. And that's what they're all going to do. It used to be you bought something and then you paid an annual maintenance fee. You don't buy it anymore. It's just an annual subscription.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering on that. Again, it says cost to transfer for that. Yeah. I'll lead you to believe it's a one-time fee. I'll reword that.

All right.

I wrote this for tonight. No, I get you. Okay. I'm just trying to understand it myself.

So it just makes it so that this this makes it so much easier to have.

So that's pretty much that's all that's all we're not adding any positions. Now I did. I did talk to David. So we have 2 straight David Kaufman. We have 2 street positions that we have not been able to fill. Essentially for two and a half years now. Three years. In fact, we're going to reallocate some of that money in the current year because we're not spending it to go ahead and do a new Chipsy along Cooksy. Because it's already in the budget and we figure we might as well utilize it and fix another road. Are we underpaying or just... We're underpaying. Nobody likes to do hot, dirty work.

Well, they're scared of the work.

So how are we getting the work done without those two?

I spent half my day with them.

We hired like three. Three guys in the last 18 months.

The younger generation just come with no experience and they want to be on our most expensive piece of equipment in two days when they walk. They don't say anything when they leave. They just don't show up.

We're not having a lot of luck hiring people.

Is there a large pay gap between these guys that are going to work for the street company, like these paving companies and all that, versus what we're looking for? All those positions you're looking for.

I don't think so, because there's those that are looking for benefits and things other than money. And then there's some that just want the cash.

Would it be worth it to us to pay more to get those two positions?

Well, the problem is you're not going to just pay those two positions because that ripples through the entire salary structure.

So really, we don't need those two positions. We might as well box mix it, take it out of the budget.

Is the two positions, is it making your workload, is it really stressing the workload or does it slow you down? How does it affect those two positions? What would be the difference that they would feel?

Yeah, it's good. It just depends. We have to modify how we do the work. We talked about that 750,000 for street maintenance and 6070% of that I spent on contractors.

And we had this conversation two weeks ago about do we look at repurposing that money to contract out more work? Because it comes with salary and benefits. Those two positions come out to about $150,000 a year.

So there are companies, well, Southwest Maintenance, right? There are companies that do stuff that we could hire to do that street maintenance. Yeah, this guy lived in, my wife taught his son.

We use Southwest maintenance.

We use Viking to do the microsurface. We use Waco Paving mostly on asphalt, but we always quote those at least three competitors. But usually we use Tex-Mex for most of the concrete stuff just because they're lower bid.

So that's on 60, 70% of the work. The other 30%, which is street maintenance is what you're going to do.

Mowing, potholes, base failures. Like I said, we're filling in the gap. It's hard to find a contractor to come and do potholes. We don't need that because we've got now two dirt patch machines.

How much of the mowing do we contract out and how much do we do ourselves?

We just started this fiscal year with contracting the park and the facilities here. City Hall, Senior Center, Fire Station.

John Deakins, Community Center in the lot across the street, you have to be concerned about workers COMP when you hire those people we're talking about on the next year, they have.

John Deakins, A contractor has to have workers COMP if they don't have workers COMP and their employees hurt on our property, then we get to eat it, I can see how it would pay us or save us money to hire.

companies come in and do this kind of stuff on a contract basis, rather than paying and employing the salaries, et cetera. So, yeah. Sometimes it does.

Contracting out the mowing for the park was the greatest thing we ever did. Boy, that's your, that's your coal mud there.

Yeah.

Because that was, that was a huge deal.

That was the thing. I know of Ray being here at least 12 years, and he's a workhorse, and he mainly did 80% of that mowing by himself. And we'd add two or three guys to help him when he got behind or during the growing season. But even then, when you contract the mowing, it's done consistently every week.

Since you contracted that, I've heard zero complaints.

We can't do that. In the budget part that I read, the note said it was six months of mowing. So only 26 cuttings a year. So the growing season is past 40. So will it be every other week?

Is that the cycle? The growing season is once a week. And then the cooler months, when it slows down, is every other week. Does it even need to be that often, like in dead weather?

They need a loan in December, January. That's how they make their money. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I use. We just contract with them for what we need them. My contracts for mowing are 42 weeks, 42 to 46 weeks. So, from. Early spring to I forget which holiday. In in in late spring, it's every other than it switches to every week through. Late spring all the way to something like that. It's 1 of those and then we kick back into every 2, but those contracts are 42. so this 1 is a little short of that. So there might be some, some gaps where we still have. Some higher grass, it'll be better than what probably it's an improvement where we were.

Well, actually, we started in April.

If you feel it's good, I was, I was about to argue for more April and September is like, 656 months.

I think what you say is that the reason the number is short right now is we only have a half year worth of contract for free.

Is there no way during certain times of the year that you can put them on up and say we're going to call you? You've got a rainy season that happens occasionally in an off year. I'm just, I don't know, I'm trying to think of it out loud with you.

No, we've got a

a call week before last I think that people get concerned when you can't see the words on the stone wall at the park yeah when I got here it had no landscaping and we added knockout roses and Montana and now it's growing to where it's covering up the sign so I called our contractor and couple days they had it done it's a it's a separate cost you know it's still better than taking your guys off the street which is what everybody wants to do yeah when mowing slow they'd clean out the beds they train the trees running and cleaning and stuff like that that's the highlights um capital projects

The five year street reconstruction. Allocated for 27, this is actually great drive drive. Talk to the engineers, I should be getting ready to start doing the survey for tape and. And we just finally got the. Stuff for bidding out the streets for us to do the recommendations. So, David and I are going to get together. John Vile- sometime later this week or next week and see if we can pick four or five streets we think will be a good start and see if we can put that together and give it a try and see how that works out and that'll come out of that 3.46. John Vile- But then we have

Just that alone will calm down some of this.

Say, can we find a street close to Ricky?

Can we just pave right in front of Ricky? Let's do it.

Let's do it. I don't even know Ricky. Where does Ricky live?

South. Rosenthal. You know?

Ricky, we're talking about.

I was asking Stephen behind you.

Greg is a bad guy. I don't do Facebook.

He constantly commented on the Robinson.

He's been on fire for a long time. He's been on fire. He's got the auto shop.

Hey, but still, y'all, not everybody can see, but Jimmy had the best. You beat me to it, and I'm so glad you did. Because I was sitting there going, what's the best way to, and I hadn't, as eloquently as you, as calmly as you said it, Jimmy gave him the whole, you know, hey, look, we're not, we're not very, We want it done now too, but you got to understand that there's planning, there's engineering, there's this. I mean, he wrote him a paragraph like that.

Yeah. Best way to do that is write what you want to say, read it. And then delete it. Delete it. Start over. None of it is going to work the first time.

It's time consuming, you know. But I know that you're good at it.

I almost copied it just so we could send it maybe if we needed it because it was what we all think written down.

Rule of thumb, if you're angry, write it and wait 24 hours, go back, reread it, then send it.

You know, once the work starts, they'll be complaining about it.

I said that. And then as soon as the work is done, we'll have a period of nobody noticing or saying anything, and then we'll find something. They'll complain about speeders.

If we're going too fast.

Once you start explaining, the explaining never ends. I was telling you, with some people,

you say and i'm not going to be adequate facebook account you're a master at listening to excuses right this is this is great drive this is the street portion of great drive right now because of contingency yeah i explained to you we got a whole section that we're going to probably have to reconstruct and we've got to get some drainage easements we're working on that right now we've got 4 different places where water crosses, and we have to upsize all of those. And so we're going to have to get some drainage. We'll work on that. That will be the most valuable land and Robinson is a drain. Even though they're right now, water runs through them, but because they're not easements, we can't go in and make any improvements to it. Some of them, some of them, it's some pretty washed out places on the people's property. We'll actually clean it up, but they'll probably want to make us pay for that.

Hey, Craig patient day, like, I thought roads were done during certain months.

Right so the entirely so that so I was just looking at that. It's going to start in October and complete in May.

Some of the work is going to be utility. Which I'm going to get to that. There's that part, but then we also have. improvements this is so for the industrial lift station which is a down the road project we're going to need a larger gravity line from flat creek up to where the new house property is which is across from harrisville plan is to get off the road there but most of that section of road there we don't have either side and so we haven't put the utilities in the road so we're going to have to we're pretty confident we can pipe burst the existing gravity line so we don't have to open cut that so we're going to have to open cut for the new force main we don't want to go put a brand new paved road down in three or four years come back to build a lift station and put cut a trench down the middle of it for the force go ahead and put the force main now as part of this project so that and then we'll just cap it where it goes off the road up past hamilton heights across from harris village there about where our lift station is right now and we'll just cap it there and that way it'll be there and it'll be in position for when that upgrade needs to happen so um that's estimated at 1.39 million This is one screen, but there's two screens here. And so if I move my mouse too much, it leaves this screen and goes on this

I can get an upgrade and make the night from Irish, maybe, from the next meeting. I'm just wondering. You can get a bigger TV.

You can magnify the screen. I actually did magnify it. Oh, you did?

You can make it even bigger if you go to the three dots.

Yeah.

Zoom, it's right in the middle.

Oh, no. All right.

didn't want to there you go what he's what he's trying to say is he didn't want to overstimulate charlie over here so yeah that's right he wanted to see you see now he's trying to slide yeah like what you can't shoot next time next next year put the rule for the council on this side guys in front he's saying i know what you're saying

For $10,000, you can get really good eyes and you can see this. You remember two years ago, I had to stand up there to do this. I remember. I do. I was going to say, where's your pointer?

Craig, I don't know if those are really good eyes. They're expensive eyes. I'm just seeing the typos.

I'm sure you're going to see typos. Oh, look, you picked out the I once.

I'll say this.

Second line. Let's see. Second line. Once right there. You're almost there. There you go. There you go. That was right when you were really hungry Sunday night.

No, that wasn't.

Thank you, Jimmy.

Gun advocate. One.

That's the end of that project. So we have Greg drive.

We have Greg drive, sir. We have the 5 year street plan. We have the. Water well number 11, and this is a really high cost, but some of this is because of the, um. For the grant application, there was a little padding put in there. Did you file the time? Right? We did get the grant application at a time. So appreciate the extra meeting. But, uh, we close on the property the 19th this month. We've already got it under contract and we've got a closing date set. So we'll step the property in.

Are we going to start immediately on this once we close?

timing is well they haven't even designed it right yeah yeah all they've all we've done so far is just the preliminary especially the ones we have okay yeah so we're and the grants i don't think i think they're going to determine by the end of fall who's on the grant list and then by spring they'll decide how much everybody's going to actually get so the grant funding won't be available until probably in the spring but the engineers have to design everything that's

don't just have to design here's the hole and here's how deep because they have to design the tank and the pumps and everything three acres of jerry bikes it's at anderson lane 77 and anderson next to the cell tower got it and it's high fits got it yeah city of hewitt went through this same thing and they got underway in 23 and they just now put that well online so i've told our engineers we're going to be faster than that

they split their contract they didn't bid it all out at once they'd finish one phase and they'd bid the next phase yeah they phased it and they ran into some hiccups with that we're going to bid it all as one contract yeah probably they may have been limited on room so they couldn't have too many people there at one time but there's what two points up acre 2.6 acres there so yeah

it doesn't make sense to split it but i mean i guess it might be something and then the others work water treatment this is the project that's currently underway the water treatment plant you're piping in apartments improvements that is a 420 day project um it was supposed to start in june but we're delayed because of our algae issues we're still trying to that and What is it, 11 weeks to get the piping or something?

First of October before we can get the pumps, five months on the piping. But the intention was to do some of the work on the raw water line while we're waiting on these parts to come in. But the algae has us where we can't take that line out of service. So we're just kind of spinning our wheels right now.

Did you see any end in sight in this algae condition?

70 degree weather well we need to quit putting water in there then i've got some chemical i'd like in-house to try to apply but we can't quit putting water in there because i got to run the plant so our hands are tied on that right now and he's pulling water daily out of the river the plant

But the pump pulls more than we can use, so the extra flows into the reservoir.

And that's where the algae is going.

And that's where the algae is going. So every day we're putting new nutrients in for the algae. Because, you know, we did a test in April, and then we put in these sonic things, but then he started putting all this fresh water in, and he ran the test last month, and the algae had increased, what, 500%? Wow.

It was getting all those fresh nutrients out of the river.

So now the reservoir is going to, What's your estimated date we're going to go over the spillway? A late weekend or early next week. Put the water in there. The extra water that we're not using to treat has to go in there. And so it's going to overflow the spillway. And so we have to cut the channel to the flat creek because we don't want it to go in the new reservoir because we don't want to contaminate the new reservoir with the algae. So we can't have the over-spill. It's just like everything that's gone wrong can go wrong because it's stupid.

That's why we were trying to get that piping in and put the lower sections in that one bead that's dry right now. And then we could start, instead of wasting that water, put it in B, but five months to get the piping here. Yeah, everything like you said.

It's also coming through the strata form. I say it's also coming through the strata form. Yes, it is.

Yes, it is. I'm sure. Well, let's expect a certain type of pipe and that's hard to get. There's other pipe we could get.

Probably from China. Right. A slow boat from China.

Are we using stainless?

Probably so, yeah. Yeah.

As opposed to ductile. Because I think they think we could get ductile quicker, but the engineer doesn't like ductile. Right. Which I kind of get for something exposed to the air like that in the water, that is not necessarily your best choice. So we even went back to the manufacturer to see could we pay like a premium to get at least part of the pipe first, the part that's going to be in the water so they can get that installed so we can start filling the other reservoir. And apparently we couldn't get that either.

We can, but by much it quits when you get it.

Is it in the US or is it out of the US? Let's just go get it ourselves. All right.

Is it called China? See if they have it. You know, Mandarin. So those are the capital projects. And then the debt service is just, I'll just go over it real quick. I find it's about 50-50. This is the annual debt service for both street It's mainly streets. There is still some fire station and firing and stuff in there, but it's almost 50 50.

I know I know you've already broken out the volunteer fire department. Expenditures minus the debt is there any way. Would that ever be broken out? So you see it with with. The trucks and the station costs.

We don't typically break it out here by what it went for. I can get to that number for you. I actually have the number somewhere. I did it a few years ago from the fire station. How much of that a year ago? For the fire station now, I mean, it doesn't sure is this software doesn't really allow you to, like, break out the debt. It lets you do it by debt issuance and by whether it's tax supported or utility supported, but it doesn't let you say this many dollars of this went to this project and this many dollars.

Yeah, I remember you had broken it out and I just, I bring it up because if you looked at the overall. For the fire department, it's just under a 1Million, but that number is much, much higher because there's several pieces of the puzzle not there.

2324, the fire station debt service was 141,000. That's all the trucks in the station that's fire station debt service. We're up and we have the fire advisory committee.

You know, that sounds about right.

The engine payment was 116 at the time. The engine's now paid off with the ladder truck.

The ladder truck was the ladder, right? I have the numbers for the ladder truck. I'm still in the department.

I'm still in the department.

I'm still in the department. I'm still in the department.

It's for utilities for record order.

WE CAN'T COVER THEIR PAID PEOPLE. THIS COVERS THE VOLUNTEERS WHEN THEY'RE ACTUALLY LIKE WORKING.

WE PAY ABOUT $50,000 A YEAR FOR WORKERS POSSIBLE FOR OUR PAID PEOPLE.

WHILE THEY'RE VOLUNTEERING, THEY HAVE A PROGRAM.

they go out and fight a fire and they get hurt on a fire they're covered but if they're working in the station and being paid by the volunteer fire department then they're not covered it's just a game of which peanut you put it up but which cup puts peanut under

that we provide our part-time employees and our full-time employees provides coverage for if someone that works full-time at hewitt works part-time in robinson gets hurt in robinson there's a percentage that helps cover their hewitt pay also so obviously their their hewitt job is not protected if they get injured here so it's a risk that they run and i actually require all the other fire chiefs to sign off that they can work part-time for us

yeah yeah that there was a

I think about 20 years ago, there was a big deal in Fort Worth over that same issue of volunteers. There was a little town called Sanson Park on the north side of Fort Worth that wasn't too far from where I work. And about half their volunteer fire department were full-time Fort Worth firefighters. And they got called out to a fire at a church. And two of the Fort Worth firefighters who were volunteering, an 18-year-old kid, went up on the roof of the church to vent it. And the whole roof caved in, and all three of them were killed. And so the city of Fort Worth came out and said they were not working for the city of Fort Worth. They were not entitled to the death benefits of Fort Worth firefighters. And it was a fire association. They were running candidates against council. It got really, really ugly. So the city finally said, fine. And then they passed a rule that no Fort Worth paid firefighter can volunteer at another fire department.

So in West, you had a Fort Worth organization.

Yeah, the Fort Worth has is very clear. They don't let you work. And in fact, after that, they stopped doing a lot of mutual aid and you had to start paying the city of Fort Worth.

Even the Dallas firefighter wasn't a member of West. Correct. He just saw a smoke and lived in West and he just knew he needed to go.

Yeah, I think Fort Worth changed their whole policy. They would not allow their full-time firefighter to go. just it was really ugly it was it was on the front and everybody's like this is ridiculous they were fighting fires and it looks like they weren't fighting fires for us you know our taxpayers are going to pay this and they weren't fighting fire for us but it's just so much political pressure and they actually the fire association got a couple council members elected and it just got really ugly so um

That's the budget in a nutshell.

Anybody got any specific questions that we didn't cover?

I had about 40, but that was because it appears I was looking at staff version of the budget and didn't have this available.

Can we wind them down to a couple?

I'm going to just say I need to take a whole just thorough look at this before I ask. So I'll just get with Craig.

Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, did you go into the ClearGovs?

The LinkedIn ClearGovs? Whatever email I got that said Craig has invited you to. So that was the one you got.

That got sent out like a month ago. You should have got another one this past Saturday that said, here's the budget. Just got to click on.

email on here but this is maybe i did maybe i just but when i pulled up i sent an email out to all of you saturday that says the budget's ready and i explained to you about the no new revenue tax rate and all that and it had a link to this i think what i did was in my search bar just searched for the budget and it pulled up that email and that's the only thing i'm giving you your email it's right there it's in your yeah how did she send me a pdf well i'll go back and see if i have that i'm sure i do

It's in your file. You can get this on the city website, too.

I already have this PDF now, but I got it when I was in this room, so I need some time to digest it.

That's fine.

I can get a five-minute session on how to use it.

Any of the other council members have questions at this point?

I have one 30,000 foot question. Craig, we're looking at two and a half cent increase that brings in slightly less revenue than last year. Instead of me nitpicking lines, if we were to look at a rate less than that, I'm assuming you and department heads have an idea of where there could be hey we can postpone this we can save your list i mean that list was explaining where all the increases and i mean that's that's what are you saying all those dollars are all those new dollars are going today yeah i'm not saying that's my position i'm just saying yeah if we were discussing a rate less than

Oh, and we do not have to have a public. We're not required to have a public hearing. I didn't verify that.

My only thoughts, you know, and I don't want to have a cut in, like, staff. I just want to do it like, if there is an opportunity in. Capital outlay or or. I don't know, can you stretch a computer a year longer? Whatever, you know, to find that.

Well, I want to piggyback off of that because usually in our budget workshops in prior years, we would also talk about upcoming things. Like it wasn't for next year, but the year after next, we need to be thinking about X, Y, and Z. So kind of going to your point. Are there things that can be put on hold, or are there other pressing things that are going to be sneaking up on us?

Yeah, if we push something, is that kicking a can going to cost double?

So a lot of what we're trying to do, we've talked about this a lot, is getting away from these spikes in costs. Like, we see the vehicles going to the cloud, so we don't have to come up with 12,000 dollars per server. And then a few years later, and building those into annual costs will then just have incremental increases. So that's what the goal has been across the departments. You know, even sometimes we may have the money to buy something. We're going ahead and doing it on like a 3 year plan. so we can keep those costs. And part of that is because the legislature keeps ramping back our ability to raise money. And now they're talking about capping expenditures. You know what I'm saying? We're going to capture expenditures. So we're trying to get away from that, but we're going to have this big, huge cost in the coming years. So to your question, that's been a concerted effort over the last 10 years to get away from that. So we won't have to say, well, you know, we can't do something this year because next year we're going to have this big increase.

So I always think about like growing from the analog, the digital, digital communication system, the,

with our department the cars the cars for the street department you know whatever it may be and it's always been yeah when seeing the cars I mean the cars is one and especially with the way vehicle costs have gone up and not just I mean police vehicles are but all of them we used to be able to get a pickup truck but three or four years ago we get a pickup truck for 22 000 maybe they're now 45 50. And we're not talking about a real fancy truck. We're talking about... Which is all we want to lose. You know, just trying to level that cost down. Now, again, we're still reviewing that. We'll come up... I think next year will be the... 1st, turn over the 1st, lease vehicles are not police vehicle. And so we'll see if that's going to pan out and get that benefit. They told us we would get from those vehicles.

Another reason with the lease there was during. It was difficult to get vehicles and enterprise was sitting on bulk of them. So they. They have what you need and it's easier to access versus.

i don't know what was happening because what you guys were saying is it's time for a new vehicle well we don't have the money so we'll kick it the next year and then suddenly we've got a vehicle for 12 13 years that we're spending maintenance you know a huge amount of money on maintenance try to keep it running so i bring it up because i just want to make sure that you know if and when because i think we're in that environment of some type of tax

You know, reproduction, whether it's forced by legislation, or we're, we're being recruiting ourselves that we take care of staff. And, you know, versus because I'm, I'm in agreeance. It makes sense to smooth those purchase out year over year. Is this herky jerky trying to budget for that allocate funds for that? It's difficult. And in the face of what the legislation is doing, your, your hands are getting tied more and more. I get you. I hear you, but it is. We're, we're hamstrung. We have to make reductions. I want to make sure we're taking care of staff and then just being prudent everywhere else. That's it.

You know, and that's why we made the effort to do the increases this year. So I will tell you so far, every other city I've looked at, we're the only city that's not based on what we discussed last night, raising taxes. Every other city in the county are raising taxes. And again, we had a windfall of new construction that allows us to do what they're not doing. But I also know the reality here, if we go push the tax rate up even higher, you're going to look at a much more serious pushback there. So the employees here have the potential to go up 5%. And I think in line with Hewitt's doing 4%. I don't know. What's Woodway doing?

It has not even been released.

I don't think Bellmead's doing as much. Their tax rate's going up.

and a half cents is that what you said jason that way yes yeah they've historically been under the low new revenue they've been reducing it every year for four years come on so my my thoughts um woodway's been reducing them below the no new revenue rate or just reducing the rate reducing the rate sorry i've been reducing the rate i'd have to go back well they they've been doing that no new

TO THE POINT I THINK IT MIGHT BE HURTING. BUT WOULD WAY, HUGH AND BELL MEED HAVE SOMETHING WE DON'T? They all have a 1M to almost 2M dollars a year more in sales tax than we have.

Well, so so here's my thoughts, because we've been preaching and talking about economic development is the way to reduce the residential. Property tax, but the current reduce the future future, but we have just seen historic. Historic economic develop in our city and raising the rate. I mean, again, you're not down, but that's how that reads, but that's how it reads. And it just seems like. I don't know a good a good punch. I mean, it's not I'm not saying anything about anybody if you don't if you don't.

So, 1 thing that I've learned in my 18 months here is that we're behind. all these other cities we have 77 employees that do the work of 90 plus people i guess and there's things that we want to do that we can't because we don't have the money because you would have to raise the taxes too much so my opinion of that is is that that windfall of money right there allows you to get what you need even if it's a it's a large deal this year we're we're creating three and so it's going to oh you see a lot going to staff in my opinion with the three new positions that add the stuff then you've got you know capital projects we're trying to you know hit a few things that the people in town want i mean none of that would be able to be had had had you not had the windfall of the economic development in the money. But if you, so just my differing opinion of you gotta use that to get the things that you can't, that you would have to raise taxes for over here.

My thought is I agree with you. My thought is historic economic development. And that is still the most, we added no employees. That is probably the most conservative wishlist that it could be. It's not, yes, there's new view. Yeah, it's not out of control by any means, but it barely put a dent in it. Just barely.

So if you don't do something like that, then you're just gonna fall further behind.

Yeah. And I don't want to lose any of that economic development. By adopting a rate that we can't realize that. That property increase, so that value increase in the future, I don't want to get in that situation, but I just. property tax reform is needed. This is a broken system. For us to have this level of economic development, historic, if you looked at the chart he handed out at the meeting yesterday, over the last nine years in there, it's huge. That's exactly what we hired and tasked Craig with. But man, this year it feels like we're just scraping pennies just to get a little bit of it. It didn't get us.

That's the reality. So, my, my 1st, my 1st, 4 years here, we could go pay percent a year. My 1st, 5 years now, we can go 3 and a half percent here. And I mentioned this last night and I mentioned it for so when I was an age. Housing bubble burst in 2008. late summer fall 2009 property values came in they were they were flat 2010 2011 they went down each year my council said we're going to hold the tax rate we're not going to lower we're not going to raise it to the no new revenue rate or back then they called it the effective rate to bring the same amount of money we're going to hold it to protect our taxpayers our employees went five years with no pay raises And when I left there in 2016, we were 1.2, 1.3 million behind in revenue. We were never going to catch up because the most we could go up a year was 8%. And it took the whole 8% just to keep up with cost increases. So there was no way to ever catch back up. So if you lose it, it's gone. There's no, well, we'll go ahead and take it now, but then, you know, we'll make it up in the future. It was at 3.5%. You know, a 3.5% increase on...

going to interject that's why you're looking at that so jenny living here 46 years and being an adult you're not seeing a lot you know seeing no taxes and that's what the citizens want for until what the early In the 80s, I was Republican precinct chairman. I had a guy that worked with me on that. That guy literally told me, I'm moving out of Robinson because we don't have city taxes because I know that it's going to... It's a broken model. Yeah. He literally did. I mean, you don't hear that often, but that's exactly the scenario that occurred. We didn't think that we had an adequate structure and, you know... Right? A fee structure. And so he moved out of province. So what I've seen is what we are is behind the curve. We've been behind it. We've been behind it for many years. No money, no taxes to fix street deterrence. And now we're in a predicament where we're in. Because so long, people did not want any taxes. And so what Craig is saying now is that those first four or five years when you had to increase the taxes 8% those years, That's kind of because we were already behind the eight ball from all the years we didn't have taxes and not really, even though we had taxes, it wasn't enough. It wasn't very high. Nobody would ever approve it. You know what I mean? You couldn't,

They escaped the Haman case. In 89, they passed the first tax rate, collect first tax, got a CO. That same year, they recalled several council members, seated a new council, recalled the bond, sent it back, canceled the tax rate, and it took four more years to get it done. And we're still trying to fix those same roads today. You've done some good research. We're still trying. We're still talking about the same streets. We didn't. Not new streets, guys. We're still on new streets. Uh-huh. It's crazy. So I've been preaching that for a while, but we're just at this confluence of, we've just got historic economic development, but this anti-tax right now, this environment that we're in is picking back up. We're in an anti-tax town and always have been.

It's because we're so far behind all the way. Complain on one hand about the streets and other issues that we need to do that we don't have the money to do. On the other hand, they're going to complain about taxes being a zero, you know, neutral tax year. I mean, that's ridiculous. We got to have the money. I don't want my taxes to go up either, but I'm just saying, and they're not, I mean, based on what we're saying, but I think we have to take care of the future by not going down too low now. I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot by not doing the 53 cents personally.

Does this council have the fortitude to stand behind that?

I mean, I'm not running for re-election anyway, so I don't care. I mean, you know what? Even if I was, I wouldn't care. I mean, I'm not here for a salary or any other damn reason. I'm here for the same reason you are. And that's why I like the... chemistry and the makeup of our council. I think we got a bunch of people that want to see our city prosper. I think that's what we have. I think that's the chemistry I see and I feel in here. I have questions about you because you know people say that. But guess what? You've proven to be awesome. I wouldn't. It wasn't based on my knowledge.

Can I believe I'm going to jump on Charlie's back? Again? Wendy, you know. I'm thick-skinned. No, I'm with you. There's no reason for me to sit in this room to worry about 1%, 2%. Don't have to sit here. I can go to the house. I got plenty today. So in my opinion, again, of looking at what we are looking at, the roads are the reason they are because of what's happened over the last how many years? Mismanagement of this, not doing this. Not enough money. And that's the whole point of the opinion. But part of my opinion is, is that if you are going to run your city by listening to the, it really is the few in my opinion. Okay. There are some smart people in this city that understand exactly what we're doing right here and why Even though this is a couple of cents bump, it's still really not a tax increase. Some people's taxes are going to get lower, but things are going to happen. If things are not going to happen, then there's no really reason to sit in this room. If we're going to sit in the room because we don't want people to gripe because you made two cents increase in their number so that you could do exactly what we're doing on the sheet, then I got no reason to sit in this room anymore. I'm really making fun of Ricky Bobby when I bring him up.

You know, I mean, I say that for that reason. I mean, because he's an ignorant individual that doesn't know what he's talking about. And he's going to spew all this stuff like so many people do on Facebook. And I'd say it to his face. I mean, come on, let's be real about this. And the whole reason what Craig was talking about, about the CEOs that we did. I mean, people like to drop their IT. When we were looking at 17,000, I said, and I asked the lady, Our lady from Austin that does our municipal, she's a municipal tax company that works with us on our account. I said, hey, what would it cost us if we did the whole $33 million? Remember that? That's a person that lives here that doesn't mind if my taxes go up for the right reasons. But guess what? It wasn't that much more. We went up to like 1.0 something.

I'm glad to see you all too far.

And now look, we're going down 1.08.

I got no, in my opinion, I got no reason not to tell you what I, but the people here want to see some results. In my opinion, not doing what he just put on the screen takes you right back to no results, but you kept people happy.

I agree. I bring it up because, you know, I like to play devil's advocate. because we're not saying you don't have to begin but concerns or questions either with jimmy i'm not i'm just telling you my overall thing if there's something we can cut and save i'm for it let him go let's hear it yeah i'm sorry just plain death advocate in this scenario i do because of the environment we are all in and our roles are to listen to constituencies i don't care about politics but all people regardless But it is a part of it, even though I agree with you, the vocal group is typically our minority. But we have people at this table today that don't necessarily agree with things up there. So I'm bringing it up to get the discussion going.

We've got seven people on this thing. We can roll. And you do have seven opinions, and that's good. And I've never not been one that you're not going to know where I sit and stand. Yeah. You heard my opinion. Anybody else got an opinion?

Just a little perspective. So you kept the rate where it is now, you're going to forego about $386,000. If you go up to the voter approval rate next year, that's going to bring you in $208,000. No, but that's if all current costs stay the same. I can tell you right now the current cost next year is going to go up more than $200,000. You just saw just a 2.6% salary adjustment and a I figure the average merit increase on 2% is $266,000. So just to try to hold down on salaries, you're talking about more than we can statutorily go up next year if you don't have no new construction. Now, we're going to have some new construction next year because Amazon's on the tax rolls this year for like $1,600 because when they went out and did their survey, it was just a piece of vacant land with a bunch of sunflowers growing on it. so but yeah and that's the problem is you you forego that and again you know yes some individual properties are going to go up but we never sold the new development as there's people think the new development should be well let's get all these new business so our taxes can go down you're getting the new growth and the new development to try to curb how much their taxes need to go up. Because they're not going to go down. It's just, the only way we're going to go down is for you all to sit here and start deciding what services you're going to limit. That's the only way you're going to ever.

I just wanted to make sure that was spoken in this room.

Yes. I mean, that's just the reality. And the thing is, the same people who, first of all, I've been here 10 years. We have the same number of employees now that we had when I came here. We've just moved them around. I think we might have one more, because I think you had 76 when I came here, and we're at 77 now. So we haven't been adding a lot of people. Now, we've streamlined and added processes that make it more efficient, but salaries here were ridiculous. I mean, police officers were making in the mid-30s. Sergeants were making in the low 40s. I think the chief was making under $100,000 a year. I mean, it was just crazy how low our salaries were. And so we've been playing catch up on salaries the entire time I've been here to try to keep good people. And we still struggle with that because everybody else is still ahead of us.

We've got to go up. Y'all are sitting here. We've got to take care of our people. We're not going to get 90 people's work done for 76. We've got 77 people doing 90 people's work of work. That's not going to happen. We're not going to keep those people if we don't.

I mean, I wouldn't say it. Their county tax is going to go up. And I'll tell you, the county, everyone else in this county that I've seen so far that has published a notice or their budget online, they're going up. Their taxes are going up, not just their rates. I think Waco is keeping the same rate, so their values actually went up because they're The rate they're going to adopt is $75.50, I think, and their no new revenue rate is $72.9. So they're actually raising taxes. So everybody around us is raising taxes. If we lower our rate, we're going to be the only city in the county to not only not increase taxes, but we're going to give away revenue that we need while everybody else is raising theirs. Because Hewitt's going to the de minimis rate. I think Bellmead's going to the de minimis rate. I don't know what Woodway. Woodway is going up, just they're not going up very much. I think we figured a cent and a half maybe in their proposed budget.

80% of the people just want to know that what their money is being spent on is the right thing. You want that. I want that. 80% of the people, the other 20% are going to grot no matter what happens. 80% of the people want to know that the money we're spending is going to the right place for the right people for the right thing.

if we can prove of that and we could tell them what craig just said i mean what else do we need i mean recorded i hope that everything's being reported because i don't i'm not ashamed of anything i might say well and the other thing is we didn't have this new construction this year let's say it was just a typical 10 million dollar year we'd be coming in here talking about going up to 55 and a half pushing fit because our voter approval rate is like 56.7 And our current rate's 50. So we'd be going up 6% just to fund the, and not funding everything we're funding this year. We would have to make some pretty serious cuts to get there.

Yeah, I know on the Baldy track or the WIT foundation or the WIT, whatever. A lot of that's kind of kept tight-lipped. Are there any other future nibbles?

Well, there's a nibble today, but they need 720,000 gallons a day of water. And we told them that they need to go nibble somewhere else. There you go. They need it by January of 29. And we're like, yeah, that's not going to happen. But that's the only nibble we've had recently. And a lot of that is, and I'm sure the mayor can tell you this because he's a business guy, but there are a lot of people sitting on money because they don't know there's too much uncertainty out there right now.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

Inflation, the wars, the fuel costs.

Billions and billions being spent, trillions on AI. There's a lot of uncertainty in the markets because of that. What's going to happen? Yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty.

There are a lot of people just waiting and seeing right now. Perfect.

And some of it's based on residential too. We're starting to get the residential development now. You have late this year and early next year about 300 units coming online for single family homes.

Lots anyway. It takes longer than homes, but your home building slowed down. And again, part of that's because costs have gone up. Now, housing costs are coming down some, so that's a good thing. That might stimulate some new growth. John Vile- And some of our values went down $72 million.

John Vile- I'd like to put on the agenda at some point to talk about because I know some builders, some that live here that don't live here and there's bound to be a way that we can streamline or help those people in some of the ways that they've explained to me as far as, I say, you're not doing it right. You're doing what other people can do. But there's bound to be some ways that we can become more builder-friendly so that we can build more. I mean, I disagree with some people in this room about that lot that I sold with a guy that we didn't let him put air-conditioned controlled units in. Why not? Now it's just an ugly-looking damn field. You know what I mean? So we've got to become more, I think, friendly, not to the point of selling our souls, so to speak, or not requiring good standards. I think we've got to become friendly to those people if they're going to my opinion from what I'm told and what I've seen I could be wrong they could be wrong I'm not saying anybody's wrong in here but we've got to come to some kind of compromises about that in my opinion if we want building to go here and like it could just that's my my thought I think we need to discuss it talk about it as a city see how can we help you How can we help you Craig? How can we help our city more effectively work with people who want to come here? Because I've got several people. I know that aren't building here. My nephew's 1 of them build rock construction. Tom said, Charlie, I'm just not going to do it. You know, he sold the unit that he had over here that were like a scene and all that. Because it's just, he said, he called me one time and said, Charlie, what can you help me with? I said, I can't help with anything with that because guess what? I don't handle day-to-day operations. It's a week mayor, week council situation. We have a city manager and we have city staff that run things. What we need to do is make sure that we're builder friendly. If we want to see building happen here, we've got to become builder friendly in a lot of ways. I don't know what that's going to take, Craig.

city needs to grow in that regard we've got the land for it we've got the potential i've sat through two of those meetings in my time as mayor you can educate me because there's a lot of the the shortcuts will never be the the problem is always the shortcuts everybody wants shortcuts when people tell you well that's not the way waco does it and then you yeah it is and it it just becomes they want it they don't like rules because the rules cost money they want to do it cheaper and so being builder friendly means getting rid of the rules that are protecting the people And the businesses and the housing places that are done, and after sitting through 2 meetings of all those building guys sitting there and turning in the room like that, not saying right about a public like, they just want to cut the rules. They want to do it. they all liked how how long ago was it done like that because they all mentioned it before there was rules right they wanted to go back when there was no rules that's all i've ever heard in two meetings with all these guys is well used to we could do whatever we wanted well yeah now somebody's in charge that knows what so i'm not saying compromise that's what i did say is without compromising on standards what can we do that's all i'm asking what can we do if anything

to help bring builders here. Anyway, we don't talk about it and think about it. Nothing's going to happen. Anyway. I always say that. Back to the moment.

Anyway. You can educate me on it. One of the comments I got, we've made some, haven't we? Anybody any other council guys comments for anything that you want? I don't want anybody to leave here. They got a question that they want to ask now.

I think it's a, I think once again, great job. Great. I really do like the upfront commentary. So we don't go by section section. Like, we used to. So, I think this was good. I'm like, Jimmy, I need time to actually digest it. So, if anything comes up, I'll send an email to you guys. I don't want to send everybody because then I don't want to send it. But I don't see anything at a surface level that to me would be earth shattering. So. I'm comfortable with it. I'm not saying I'm going to prove it or anything, but I'm comfortable with what I'm seeing, but I will.

we'll have it on the agenda on the 18th for public hearing so if you have any questions before that it'd be nice to hear them so i can try to answer them before that but but yeah i mean we we didn't go over so pd asked for video cameras we deferred those a year that's 40 000 a year crank that up they asked for some other software we deferred There were things that got cut from the budget.

And they needed more units. We didn't give all the cars to you that you needed.

Yeah, they didn't get the street department. You didn't get any new cars this year. Then they got what's added on the street maintenance line. So, you know, there were things that were asked for that were removed from the budget. Now, they don't show up in here because you have to go into that other link and go in and look at. You know, on the far right side, there's a little box and click to activate the columns. You can activate the department request column next to the proposed column and you can see things that were not included because the request were much more higher than what this budget is. So there was things cut out of the budget. These were just things that we felt.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to address this was a lean budget. I was accustomed to us usually going at that higher rate to give us some wiggle room, and then we can drop down to whatever. So I was actually a little surprised yesterday, but I felt, you know, honestly, between Greg and the staff. This is what they live and breathe every single day. Their recommendations are a whole lot smarter than mine. So if they're comfortable going with a lower rate, then I'm comfortable with that too.

We cannot understand a budget like you do because we don't do your job. I have a very small amount of understanding compared to what you do. We get to see what you do every day. I have to trust you with a 10-year track record. You're doing the right thing with our city, and I do. But what he's saying, what they're saying is we just want to scrutinize, close it up to where I can look myself in the mirror and say, I did my due diligence as a council person.

That's all the link. I sent you all weeks ago that lets you go in and back then the departments were just submitting their request. So you could go in and see every single department request and they do it different. Now used to be, you have to go each department. It just is every single line. So you can go line by line in the department numbers and it tells you which department you can search it. And you can hide and you can hide in open columns to make it easier to read. There's just on the I'll show you right here.

So I'm going to look at see that.

If you do that, I do recommend using a PC, not a laptop or a phone. Get on the biggest screen you got.

Yeah, you definitely need a big screen. That's the operational budget. So this is what you're going to this is what you'll see if you go in there and you go to the all funds budget. And then this gives you all the individual departments, but you would go up here to worksheets. And so this is the worksheet view.

So the link that I had only gave me access to the worksheet view.

That was what I sent you weeks ago, so you guys could get in and start looking as the departments were doing.

So I got a question. Jimmy, are you, both of you, looking at Jeremy meeting with Craig at some point? Because I wouldn't mind meeting with him.

I can't meet with all of you at once. But so you can go to right here on this bar side. Okay, so right here there's a little box that says columns. If you click that, you can go down here and you can tell it which columns. So you can go down here and start closing columns. You just pick the ones you want to look at. So if you just wanted to So this right here, it should be one that says department final requests right there. City manager proposed. I'm going to close that. And that'll put those two columns side by side. Yeah.

That's what I did. And I just want to make, you know, you scroll back to the left and you can see the comments.

There's some more columns to close with. Yeah, the one thing the new version does is it puts the comments and stuff over here. Used to put them next to it. That's the one thing I don't like about it.

And you can't drag and drop columns?

Where is it? I think you have to just turn them off.

You turn them on and off.

You can get rid of like 90% of what's there. Just look at three columns.

Some will gray out. There's like part of it open. So you can just shut all these grayed out ones too. So you can get it down to just, even the additional information you can take out.

On the general information, you can take out the

You probably want to leave the department. You can take out the fund. You can take out the account type.

And ID, because most people wouldn't.

And ID, the type of project. You can change the width of these columns. I didn't know if you saw that or not. These stay fixed.

And you can also, there's a couple, you can click on the actual description. It'll bring up another tab that shows you.

And then some of these, we itemize them now, because there's more than one thing in those lines. So like technology expense here. This is administration. So you click the down arrow and it'll show. It's itemized. This is ClearGov, LaserFish, Microsoft License.

Click on the Tyler Cloud because that was an increase. Anyway, it would show you what... It showed that's half of the Tyler Cloud cost. And then it has a funding package. That's probably what you click on.

can also go up here to funding packages and you can see it shows what previous years too you can go to the 20.6 funding packages there's also little attachments and this will show you all of the uh i think it's easier to view the attachments when you're looking at each line item yeah usually if the departments are asking for something more than inflationary increase they'll do an attachment

So you can download it.

It's not set up.

I might be showing my hand, Jimmy, but I'm actually for spending more, taxing a little bit more than we're doing if it means that we're going to improve our services. You can in a substantive way that I should say in a substantive way. I should sell this.

I know what you're saying.

I'm just telling you. You only have read only access to this room before he referenced it earlier about street maintenance. Fought hard for nickel didn't get my name. I know your heart.

Well, that's why I said that it seems to me that we still, even at this juncture right here with what he's done, which I think he's done a wonderful job, and kept it at a number that will be the least offensive to taxpayers. But we still can't come up with enough money to get enough positions to get us in the Woodway, Hewitt type.

but i mean with the square miles we have with the population we have and what we have to do we're not ever going to have enough people to do work to be clear i wasn't advocating for a little we don't but it is important that that discussion happened in this room during this workshop somebody voicing exactly why i bring a lot of things up that i bring up i'm good i'm happy to have it i want to hear it needs to be a part of the conversation every time

And it's not that we shouldn't scrutinize.

It's our job. It could have been here. I'm just saying. That's recorded. I wanted to speak to a bit of time.

Where are you going this time? We're going over at 6 o'clock. I understand that you can listen in, but you can't come to the meeting. And they come to public hearing. I'm just going to the conference.

And we raised it considerably higher.

You raised it almost $0.06 last year. And it raised... Taxes almost a 1M dollars more for desert. I'll say this.

I'll say I don't want to speak to others, but I wanted to make sure that conversation was. At least broached everybody. I'll spend their idea.

I'll be honest with you. We can raise the tax rate a couple more cents, but I've been here 10 years. I know the reality here and. You know, we've talked telling people we want to see enough development because it will benefit to them this year is all the people that were already here. And again, not individuals as a group, their taxes are going to stay the same. They're actually to go down a little bit. Everything that's new in the budget this year is being paid for by new businesses. It's not being paid for. All the new dollars in here in the general fund coming from from new growth and new development.

I just want to make sure it was spoken. And clearly this guy. All right. Anything else? Y'all ready to go home? Yep. All right. 750 winter.