City Council - workshop

All right, folks, I've got 8.30, so at 8.30, I call this meeting of the Sagamon City Council to order. It's budget day. Welcome. Thanks, folks, for coming out on a Saturday. Appreciate it, y'all. So agenda is very, very general. We just called to order. Audit and participation, if there's anything you want to speak on about the budget, please come on up.

The only thing I ask is that everybody speak into the microphone, because we are recording.

Council as well, make sure your microphone's on. 2A is workshop for the proposed 2026-27 budget. That's really our big thing. We'll walk through it. A couple of housekeeping items first. I plan to take a break at about 10, a 50-minute bio break, and then again every 90 minutes, roughly. We have breakfast in there. If somebody's hungry, go get a snack. We are not bringing lunch, and that's on purpose. We hope to be done by lunchtime or shortly thereafter. So we are not providing lunch for anybody today. That's the big things I had on my list. vicki any other housekeeping items that i missed that's it we're good okay uh having a little internet issue today there won't be anything on our screens anything on the screens but we are still recording uh so speaking to the mic folks can still this i i think we're not recording live we'll upload it later so that's how it works right now so it will be as transparent as possible we just can't record uh as we go other than that i think we're ready to kick it off so gabe you'll kick us off

Yeah, Mayor and Council, you have your proposed budget. We have this posted online. So really kind of summary version, we're keeping service levels the same this year. It's difficult because that doesn't mean the costs are the same. As you've probably seen, a lot of costs have gone up that we can't really do a thing about. Utilities, service contracts, some of the bigger things. Our partnership with Fort Worth Ambulance Service is going up, although that's been a tremendous benefit. Reimbursement from the ESD. has declined, so a lot of things have sort of come together that end up we're paying more. We'll go through tab by tab or proceed however you'd prefer. Really the only kind of program additions are not in the general fund. One is a position for an environmental specialist. The position, if approved, would pretty much fund itself to focus on reduction of fat, oils, and grease in our wastewater system, specific to restaurants and operators. The other position would be a utility billing port specialist position up front, funded by the utility fund. So with that, we can dig into it tab by tab. That's kind of what we've done at FAST, or however you'd like.

I would like, excuse me, Kim to do a quick brief on some logistics is where we are for the demeritus, the schedule, and also talk about, excuse me, where I would have numbers as well. If you could do a little preamble for that, Kim, I'd appreciate it.

Yes, sir. As you know, the numbers are still preliminary. We'll receive the final certified values and those are the numbers that I'll use to do the actual required tax rate calculation. So these are all just based on the June estimates. In the past, the difference between June and our certified values in July i would say eleven out of the twelve well i guess i've been here almost this is my thirteen budget so i think there's only one year that that didn't hold uh... this is a year that i'm not as confident that i would normally be because tad is changing their ERP system, and so I'm not as confident. The only thing that I can guarantee you for sure is these numbers will change when you see the final proposed budget. The tax rate in particular will change, as will some of the revenue numbers. And that's always the case at this early time. There's no way to know exactly what it will be. It's just a little less uncertain this year. The other thing that I was mentioning to a couple of y'all is that we have typically used and you'll see on page. 11 of the budget workbook where I have the budget highlights, the tax rate impact for an average taxpayer. I put that there just because that's what we're used to seeing and we're used to seeing the average However, I do not think that this is accurate. I didn't wanna change it without talking with y'all first, just so we can be very upfront and transparent. In the past, we've always used average, and the average that I got from TAD I know is incorrect, and they've been working on it all summer, but it still just doesn't make sense. The average home value could not have increased like that, as much as it's saying that it does. But what I'm proposing to use instead is the median home value. And that's required starting last year. We have to have a taxpayer impact statement. That was required by House Bill 1522. And so on our website, we have that where we use the median. So what I'm proposing, and the median makes more sense.

Will you quickly explain, folks, mean and median, the differences, please?

The average is the total value of residential divided by the number of residential, whereas the median is the value that's in the middle. So anyway, what I'm proposing to do is to change, to use the median here as well as in the taxpayer impact statement. That makes more sense. Based on these preliminary proposed numbers, median value, if we went with the currently calculated de minimis tax rate, would be 106,062 cents a year for the median home value. And the senior value, the accounts that have a senior exemption, it would be an increase of $48.74. The median in 2025 value was $278,006. The median in 2026, the year we're talking about, is 268,766, so it went down slightly. That makes a little bit more sense when we look at the overall estimated certified values because right now, I say right now, the June estimates, we're about even where we were last year. even though we have a large amount of added value.

Okay, any questions for Kim on that? And quickly, we're doing the de minimis. Will you explain the de minimis system and the logistics for that as well?

Sure, the de minimis tax rate is an option based on our population. That's an option for us. It is the rate that will generate $500,000 more than last year. and that's on the same properties. So you'll see that the revenue's actually more than 500,000 because you can also calculate the increase based on the added value.

Great, thank you, Kim. Any questions for Kim on that? Just as the top level thing. All right, well then let's jump into it. Let's get into it. Any questions on the, I'm looking on page 11 as she was. Any questions on the summary for folks quick before we go into tab by tab? The summary's a great place to start. Wrap your hands around the big picture things. Any questions on those? Yes ma'am, go ahead.

I was just curious, Kim, on page 13, the cost of Tarrant Appraisal District Services is budgeted to increase by $5,450. I just don't understand what that item is. I never had noticed that before. So could you explain that?

So the, um, services that Taren appraisal district, uh, provides all of the taxing entities in the County pay a portion and it's equally distributed based on, um, our share of the total value of Taren County. And so that's what it's based on. They take their expenses and then they, when they do their proposed budget, distribute it. And that's what our share is this year.

And there's a look on that page that reminds us of something I wanted to highlight as well. This does not include a step raise for employees this year. This is the first year in several years we have not done that. We're increasing the TRMS contribution instead. We're going from seven to eight, which is an option now. So no step increase for employees. And actually, if you recall, employees were voted on this. So this is what the employees chose. And I'm glad we gave them the option to let them pick what they wanted. Long term, I mean, the TMRS's long term is absolutely fantastic for them and their financial futures. It's just a short term difference. So keep that in mind. And city folks as well. I want you all to understand what that means. Any other questions on the summary and just big picture stuff before we dive into tab by tab folks?

Yeah. But I just so that we got it and ask him here and then to go about it on page 4. I know he says. Is always like to start with. The big number of work down and we're talking about a lot of individual numbers which all roll up into one big number. So Kim, can you tell us just for the record what our proposed budget is for 2027?

The proposed expenditures across all funds is $68,653,300. So that after we get, that's what all of this means, that right there.

So I'll just start there.

Any other summary questions before we dive into a tab?

On page 17, it's under the summary for drainage utility fund. It's got low water crossing at Willow Creek Park for $250,000. We had the meeting Tuesday night. We discussed, I believe, was it 9 or 11 water crossings. Is this $250,000 for one water crossing, or is it for all of them?

For all of them.

OK.

How many of them are they?

Randy, I thought we were doing one to start off with.

Well, we are going to do one, but that's $250,000, not $400,000.

OK. How many of them are they?

I think it was six or seven.

So $41,000.666666666 apiece.

I realize just now that y'all are sitting in the sun, so I didn't bring your shades. I didn't think about that. That's the one bad thing about doing them early morning.

Charge them for the tanning services.

All right, other questions on the summer big picture stuff before we jump in? I had a couple questions on the fees, but I'll wait until we get to those sections, especially the senior fees. So I'll hold that.

Yes, sir. Just one. On page 16 under the CCPD, our sales tax revenue is, I think I remember it as about a 6% increase. But the sales tax revenue for the CCPD is estimated to remain the same. Why is the CCPD not going up in correlation with overall sales tax revenue?

We estimate the next year's budget based on our current year estimate, right? So we are up 6% overall. CCPD is a little bit different than the general fund and street maintenance for some reason. I don't know why that is. If you look at the numbers, it's not always exactly the same, but we're estimating CCPD revenues to be the same as the current year, which is about six to 7% increase based on last year. So it's the fiscal year to date.

program on page eleven so uh... to think you're great bob we make you speak in the night uh... so page eleven at the very bottom it talks about it four point nine increase of the annual And then the next sentence down, I think what it does is it's 4.9%. And then the justification of why it increased is the next sentence down, which says, issue of certificate of obligation to purchase the fire truck land purchase for animal shelter, re-renovation of fire truck. I defer to that is that the 4.9% increase is due to the debt of obligation that we did. Is that true, that whole 4.9?

So the total tax rate that's proposed is a little over 5 cents. 2.5 cents of that is debt, and 3.3 cents about that is operating. Now I will mention that the debt requirements are actually more, but we've got a fund balance in the debt service fund. And what we've done in the past, we did it in this current year too, instead of having a huge jump in the debt rate, we use some of fund balance to gradually increase the debt rate for the taxpayers. I don't, I'm not.

On page 11, it's a very bad, the last two bullets. The first one says the average taxable single family home value for 2025 was this. And then it has an increase. It says 4.9 increase there at the very end.

That's the average to average.

Average to average.

Yes, sir. Which we just talked about, I think is incorrect.

Okay, gotcha. So just from my mind then, What's in this budget, what is the overall increase that is being recommended?

The tax rate?

Yes.

Or the amount of property taxes? So the tax rate based on these numbers is going to go up 5 cents. If we use the median, the dollar amount would be $106.62. So it's 5%?

I'm sorry, did you?

I guess I didn't calculate the percentage, but I can.

Yeah, so it's confusing. We don't think the mean value is accurate this year, so we're using the median.

And I'm done with the median. That's why I'm confused. That's why I'm asking what the percent. That 219 number is realistically half that. Yeah, if I go with percent, no matter whether you use the medium or what, it's always the same percent.

So if you want to know the percentage based on the median.

And that's why we're recommended medium, right? And I think I absolutely 100% agree with you.

Yes, sir. So that would equate to 7.2%. Okay.

We're also potentially, when we get the final numbers, we think this might be a little bit of a less of an impact based on whatever the final numbers are.

That's true, these are preliminary numbers. And as I've described before in one of our work sessions, if values go up, the tax rate would go down. If the values go down, the tax rate goes up. Now that's not to mean that the impact, the amount of taxes is going to change, but the rate would change depending on the values.

Now, the following to my next question is, that 7.2% increase, is that totally due to the debt of obligation that's listed in the last sentence?

No, sir. It's debt and operating.

OK. Can you tell me the division between that?

So based on the increase of 5.7 cents, 2.5 of that is debt. is due to debt and about 3.3 is due to operating.

You say 3.3?

Yes, sir. Let's see. I can give you the percentages. So 43% of the increase is due to debt. 43% of that 7.2 5.7 the 5.7 cent increase 43% of it is due to debt So I got three numbers here I got the overall increase is 7.2% and then

Then I got 2.5%, which was debt. And then I got the other 3.3 was operating. The 7.2% is comparing...

the property taxes that will be owed on the median valued home from one year to the next, the actual tax rate increase of 5.7 cents is 43% of that is due to the debt portion of the tax rate, and 57% of that is due to the operating income. portion of the tax rate. And as I mentioned, the debt would be more had we not proposed to use fund balance to pay for part of the debt service increase.

Right. So if a citizen comes to me tomorrow and asks me how much, what percent, how much we're going to increase their taxes this year in a percent number, what number do I give them?

7.2. There you go.

Got it. Okay.

Again, a preliminarily.

That's right. I understand. Until we rack the gavel in a couple weeks or whenever it is, it's always preliminary, right?

Yes, sir.

Which again.

We get the final numbers on, what, July 24th?

24th, they're promising to us. By law, they're supposed to do it by the 25th, but that's a Saturday. So Joe Don said that we should get them on the Friday before that.

And again, just want to point out the 219 number. It's likely half that. That's OK.

This is the best guess estimate we have as of now. I absolutely understand that.

So to get a more specifically for it to be visual where we can see it, the numbers that you're using is for this little breakdown that's in the middle that's kind of tabbed out with the debt rate and the M&O rate. Is that the numbers that you're?

those are the numbers that i said i'm not confident what i was but i guess in full disclosure before i changed to use median versus average i wanted to discuss it so it wasn't like i'm trying to change the numbers to yeah no i understand that i just when you were saying 25 cents i'm like oh 24.2487 that was pretty close

And then, you know, the other 30 cents is, you know, the M&O rate's 33874. So just for visual, you know, for those numbers that Nick was looking at, I just wanted to point that out that it's on here.

Yes, sir. And the rate piece of it won't change. It's that average tax number that would change by using the median versus the average.

Sure.

Thank you.

I also had a couple questions on page 13. So the one I just put a thing is I did read the email from police chief Ragsdale about the situation we have with the police department, not the fire department, on being able to get recruits in. And I got a line here that says, what are we doing about ensuring integrity and when I say integrity keeping police and stuff in both both police and fire so we have to we're talking about the budget anything that we do is going to somehow relate back to money probably so to me this is a conversation that I feel we need to have as to what can we do to keep our to give both our police and fire the necessary tools to keep our police and fire staffed the way it needs to be staffed. So I feel that's a conversation maybe not here, but when we get to their tabs, we need to have, I just got it tagged here. Okay, so that's it. The second. Yeah, let's push that until we get to the police. That's right, police and fire. I just want to bring it up now. Don't forget to bring that up. Yeah, right. The next thing is down here. It says network email security cost is increased by 32 plus K, 32, 340. If this is a secure, we had our contract company come in and give an overview. I will be honest with you, it was awful. I'm a straightforward guy. There's things that is in my wheelhouse and things that ain't. This is something that is in my wheelhouse and I get reports on this in my company I actually work with on a weekly basis. And I, From their presentation they gave, I don't even see how they're justifying whatever we're paying them if it's more than $100. And they're asking for $32,000. Before I could support any increase to them, they're going to have to justify that.

I think some of that is the number of email accounts that we're increasing as well as Yeah, it's sort of. OK. But we can get you a breakdown, if that's what you want.

Can you give me a breakdown? Because I mean, one is, maybe they're doing a great job, and that was just a bad presentation.

I think part of it too was the difference in how we are backing up our files. So before we had a third party do it and now it's rolled into, and when Greg gets here, he can probably talk to it better. But now we're using the, I think it's the iWork people to do the backup as well.

Okay. So can we just, can we take an action item to break that down for us? And then also too, a bigger action item is, get them, I mean, at least give us some confidence that we're getting what we're paying for for a security firm. Sure, yeah. You can get more details. Cool.

All right, let's dive into some tabs.

I'm sorry?

I said, I'm talking to Gabe. Let's dive into some tabs. Are you done? I'm done with that one.

I'm going through my... Sorry. I usually send email. I usually send all my questions in, guys. I didn't get to review this until late Friday night, so I apologize.

Okay.

To be honest with you, I wasn't goofing off. I actually was on a business trip.

Sure. Braxel. Kim, I just have one question on page four. Sorry to go back. But on the total revenues, that's showing to be $75,405, or $405,061. So the difference there is the increase in the ending fund balance. from the beginning fund balance, correct?

Can you repeat the numbers? Are you talking a particular fund or total?

On total revenues, it's the $75 million.

Yes, sir.

And then the total expenses is $68 million and change. So the difference between those two is the difference between the beginning fund balance and the ending fund balance.

Correct. So you see, for example, in the debt service fund, I just talked about drawing down fund balance to help ease the debt service portion of the tax rate. Yes. The difference between the $75.4 million in revenues and then the $76.7 in total resources is the use of fund balance. So the biggest ones there are debt service, as I mentioned, about $300,000. And then the other biggie is the capital projects fund, because we usually issue debt the year prior. So it goes to fund balance. And then as we're working on the projects, we draw down fund balance.

OK. Yeah, that was going to be my next question, is we've got $18 million as revenue under the capital projects fund. and I wanted to know where that revenue was coming from. So that's debt that was issued in prior years.

Well, we're also contemplating issuing debt again next year. We're fixing to issue debt coming up in the next month for the design of the animal shelter and design of, I can't keep the phases of McElroy straight, but one of the phases of McElroy, and then next year, based on our initial five-year plan, we'll issue debt for the construction of the animal shelter and then construction, I believe, of part of one of the other sections of McElroy.

Okay.

So it's a little, it's not matching exactly right. So what we're planning on spending next year is what we're issuing this year or have issued in the past. And then what we sell next year, we would more than likely be spending in the next year, 27, 28.

Okay, okay, thank you.

All right, Gabe will step in.

Yeah, so we can just go tab by tab. I'm on page 217 in the back, which shows the request and what's funded. It's pretty simple, because in the general fund, there's not very many additions at all. However you'd like to proceed. General admin, the things that are included. would be our contract for Air Mason, which if you'll recall, that's the cloud-based, web-based personnel manual update that we're in the process of. Our benefits agreement for our broker, Hub International, that's one thing I failed to mention. The unknown right now, the big unknown, is our health insurance cost increase. We went out to the market. And our current carrier, Blue Cross Blue Shield, came back with a 20 plus percent increase, which we can't deal with. So we're looking at some plan changes and potentially another carrier. We don't have final numbers yet. Our broker is telling us that we probably got off lucky. Other clients are in a same or worse situation. When will we get final on that? Sometime next week. Yeah, sometime next week.

OK. And do these budget numbers reflect staying with Blue Cross Blue Shield?

So we included a 10% increase. So it does not. We're going to try to negotiate the best we can with whoever the lowest qualified broker.

What's Blue Cross Blue Shield coming in at right now for an increase?

26 or 23. 23% overall. Yeah. Some, as you may be aware, some carriers are pulling out of the market entirely. So like Humana, for example, doesn't bid in Texas anymore. It's just crazy.

So to quantify that number, so I'm seeing here at $43,000, it could be more than double if?

No, no, that's just the fee. So we pay our, sorry, the sun's in your eyes. Yeah, no, it's fine. we hire hub international as our kind of our owners rep to negotiate with the insurance companies and that's just their fee okay the previous arrangement probably we've had them for four or five years and they they earned their keep by a long shot the previous arrangement was the previous broker would get a percentage cut of whatever the total was they take one flat fee so yeah okay okay And they're also a big company. I forget how many dozens of cities they serve. Anyway, see, one thing that wasn't funded maybe four years ago now, three years ago now, and this was started a long time ago, we have a gift card for employees around the holidays. It's $50, so the request was to up it to $75. We didn't include that, although that could be something for consideration. Couple of the other minor items are just software-based subscriptions that we use pretty often. Canva for social media posts, JotForm is for surveys and that sort of thing online. Didn't think I would see this day, but the good sergeant, Mark Andrus, apparently wants to hang it up after being contract. He did our background checks, so this would replace him with a firm to do background checks.

Valerie, do you have a question? Who is doing the background checks?

Andrews was doing them, and then wasn't Carl doing PD? Yeah, Carl was doing some, but Mark Andrews was doing them.

He said he would finish this year, because he wants to retire.

And so that is not a net increase, it's neutral, right? So the amount we used to budget for the payroll of Mark is now just gonna be funded for our contract services.

So are we going to go tab by tab and then each tab go by if anybody has a question on the page? How are we doing this?

That's what I was thinking to do, go tab by tab.

Yeah. So we're on tab. What tab are we on now?

Well, Gabe, jump to the back, talk about special requests.

Oh, OK. Yeah, I mean, we're on general admin.

Because I've got questions on page 15. OK. which would be tab. What page are you on, Nicky? 15. And that would be, we're still on tab summaries. So I got four questions on this page. The billing, I think you said, I just want to get clarification on this, that you said the additional utility billing court specialist, I think you said that would be a wash they would bring in. They would bring in enough revenue?

No, the bullet point above that? would be the environmental specialist. So that would be funded based on fees and in the... That's what I got here.

Correct. So the fees will cover that one. That's what you're saying there. Come close to it. But the specialist and a core specialist billing utility, that will be a, that actually is a $72,000.

And that's in the utility fund, so no impact to the general fund.

That's what?

In the utility fund.

Okay. Yeah. And then the other one I had down here is funding to increase 50,000 for utility cuts. I had a question. Is this where people cut our lines?

No, that's where we have to cut out concrete to dig down and repair main.

OK, got you. Why isn't that just calculated into our general fund anyways? Because any time we, don't we use like historical records or something to try to estimate what that year over year, that cost?

So that line item, that's the purpose of that line item is so we can track.

Got you. And the next one down, it has a pump. Just curious what pump for 11,500 and power to pumps.

That's just the utility costs that run the pumps.

Yeah, but what pumps?

The pumps that pump the water.

The system pumps that move the water from... Oh, yeah, the pumps that pump the water up into towers and stuff?

Overhead and into the system. Okay, got you. I didn't know, so I didn't say. It's one of the things that wasn't in my thing, so okay. So I didn't understand the one based on the current trends in the proposed Fort Worth increase. My question here is, it says there's an increase in water by 15,000 and then a lower than of 22,000. So it seems like if one's lower and one's higher, then what are we saying here? Are we saying that we're going to come out ahead?

It's yeah. So we don't. So we started last year. If you recall, we had a rate model done. So instead of bouncing our rates around to match Fort Worth, we said we would commit to the 3.25% to have it more steady.

Okay.

The other, I guess, complicating factor is we budget based on an average year, so average usage. So that's why even though their rates are going up, I don't think we're gonna be spending that much more money in water just based on the current year trends of usage. And then the other, it's a little bit more complicated on the wastewater side. And this kind of goes into the fog program. If you recall, the engineer was here from Kimley Horn talking about the volume of wastewater. And that's only one factor. The other factor is the strength of the wastewater, right? So they charge us more money to treat the water, the dirtier it is. And so this fog position is going to help that piece of the equation in trying to, and Randy can talk a lot more technically than I can about BOD and TSS, but it's the strength of it that we're also trying to get down, which will also reduce the cost that we have to pay Fort Worth for treating our wastewater.

So we have categorized industrial customers in the city. They're monitored. We keep track of their strengths. Right. But you also have all the restaurants up and down the boulevard and all over the city that sometimes don't follow the program. They just dump whatever and this person will take care of that. A lot of cities are going to that for it's gone to a fog program. It really gets those people attention and it helps you with your wastewater bill.

Okay, so got that. I'm actually semi-familiar with that. Arlington does that. They actually take samples and if you're over a threshold, they charge you extra. You can even get fined. Yep. Okay, cool.

So we've got data saying that we have more of the oils and greases in our wastewater than we should or than we thought we would?

We pay for it, so we're just wanting to reduce it, get it down even further.

My next, unless somebody has it, is page 16. And on this one, there's just, I guess, more of a kind of a curiosity down here. It says police expenditures, expenditures, trust fund. The very first one, it talks about confiscated. And I got in here, you know, do we have a list of what we have confiscated? And it doesn't give me what we've got. What do we get for those confiscated? So what are we confiscating and what are we getting confiscated?

so most of the confiscations have been like vehicles okay so we confiscate a vehicle once the court awards that to us then it goes for auction those monies come back into that expendable trust fund that's where our canine is actually funded out of okay there's been some jewelry in the past it was a dope dealer kind of deal where he had a bunch of jewelry. We seized that. It went to auction, generated around $50,000 worth of revenues. These are all things that we file with the court when we believe that whether it be a vehicle, be jewelry, be cash, that it was the proceeds of illicit gain through drug dealing or crime of some type. And the courts agree with us on that, then they'll award that to us saying that you're not entitled to that because you gained it through criminal enterprise. And so that's kind of how those funds work. can't tell you how much we bring in any particular year because it changes every year depending on the case volume that we have so we may go this whole year without having a significant drug dealer type bust that would warrant a seizure we may not have a case involving child crimes where there's video and audio equipment things of that nature that we'd also try to seize and something like that So this comes about on occasion, but it's not a routine thing. Now with narcotic possession, So when those are filed with the DA's office, if in your possession you also had, say, $1,000 in cash, but you have no meaningful job, the DA's office would actually seize that money as well, and we would see 50% of that. So the DA does some stuff on their side. We see a portion of that seizure, but they would also get 50% to fund their operation. I guess it's their narcotic prosecutions and things of that nature. Right.

Got it. Let me ask this. In 2025, how much did we do of that?

I'm going to let Kim look that up to tell you exactly what the funds were, because when we do a seizure, it takes three or four years before we actually see it.

Oh, yeah, depending on how hard they find it, right? Yeah.

So typically the only revenue we budget there are interest estimated interest earnings, because like Russell said, it's too unpredictable to actually budget. But we have. So last year, We had 23,000 that we collected, which we refunded this year because sometimes we're ordered to refund it to the person.

That's ordered by the court, right? Yes, sir. That's all court-driven?

But the year before that, in 2024, it was 70,000 of collections, and I think that was the jewelry case.

And then the year before that was only like 2000 so last year was 23,000, but we had this give all that back.

Yes, sir.

So it was really 0. After it all said roughly roughly yesterday. The next page I had. Is on page 18. And. It's down here, this tree planting. This will make the third year that we've allocated $10,000, $5,000 from each fund. So what I don't know is, okay, so we've now, in my mind, two years that we've done it, this year's almost over, we've invested $20,000 in tree planting. Can somebody tell me where my trees are? Because $20,000 is a lot of trees.

So they're throughout the park system, and you'll see it when we complete our inventory, and I'll provide that to you. We've got it throughout the park, and it doesn't take much to equal $10,000 in trees because they're expensive. We're not buying. We're buying trees that are over here.

So with this, you guys are doing the estimates now. You feel that we do need to spend another $10,000?

Absolutely. Okay. We're losing trees every year down in the park.

Yeah, those great big, what are they called? Willow trees. Sycamore, I think, over in...

Hackberry, we're losing those. I mean, they do provide shade throughout the park, but when you lose them, you lose them. They're getting old. Yeah, they're big.

Okay, good. That's all I had. That's all I got for that section.

All right. Okay, keep going. Yeah, so any questions on general admin, that'd be the summary tab is page 28. Already kind of went over the...

Question on page 29. Just explain the showing an increase and then a decrease in the salaries. Just to clarify what that actually is.

Yeah, it was a position reclassification. It was temporary.

So that was going to be my question was, you know, overall, were there temporary positions in this budget from last year that were temporary that were making permanent?

Yeah, good point. I felt mentioned that. So the two positions the city council added last year was the video position and then the assistant who reports the lead and helps Vicki. Those two positions are funded fully.

you know on bill on bill if not one time correct we had added them on a temporary basis to see when we can make them permanent so they're on the one which the library one was a full-time position but it would not happen yet it was a forty hour position but it was temporary and the other was a part-time position so the no the you remember kevin our video guy we added him full-time mid-year he's full-time but we said we'll come back in two years to make sure we can fund it one of them we could only unless we came up enough money in our general budget to cover it by law we could only have them for i think it was two years right is that right kim no we you know we

try to have ongoing expenses funded by ongoing revenues, but I don't know of any two-year rule. OK.

But specifically on page 29, I'm not sure what the title is, but the position that helps Vicki as well as other departments

used to be part-time, so that's why you see the change go down in part-time, but increase on just the regular salaries. That's the reclassification of that position. But it is funded, both positions that Gabe mentioned are funded with ongoing, as an ongoing position now, with ongoing resources.

I thought one of the positions was at the library, part-time, it wasn't, that's a different one?

There is a part-time position at the library that's funded with donations fund. And so you'll see the transfer from library donations to general fund going up to reflect the cost of that part-time position.

Okay, that's where I was mistaken.

And then the other position that Gabe mentioned, the videographer, is in the communications budget.

Okay, and we now have enough funds in our general to cover? Yes, sir.

The proposed budget is covering both of those on an ongoing basis.

Okay, good. I was just going to say that position, the videographer, 10 out of 10. The videos that they're producing are fantastic. They're so popular.

I couldn't believe how popular. BPAP's a damn celebrity.

And between that and the little podcast shorts, I mean, that's great.

Well, it's funny or sad, I don't know which, but people, we put out a lot of... written information. They won't read it, but they'll watch it. So, you know, that's the way we've got to connect with people. Visual, yeah. Hey, the videos are, yeah.

And we've got numbers to prove that. Can we get people to follow the numbers and track the interactions and the views? And that's really good.

So I did have a question on, it's on page 29, the contract services, human resources. Can you explain what that increase is for?

That would be, so we're transitioning from, and it's really not a net change. from contract, Mark Andrus, a former sergeant, did background checks, now we're just gonna use Affirm, because he's retiring, fully retiring.

I had a question to jump because I didn't understand it on page 21. Item for administrative oversight review and services, and it's got city manager, assistant city manager, finance director. Yeah, exactly. What is it? Because it's got a bunch of numbers here and management analysis will spend half day.

kind of what is that section four meant to be that is just the justification for the inner fund transfers so that enterprise funds the drainage utility fund need to pay for their share of administration and so that's my way of justifying those transfers so i'm not just picking a number out of the hat yep cool good

That's all I had for this. Yeah, on page 31, fourth item down is the community website maintenance. There's zero cost associated with it. Is that no longer being utilized? Is that somewhere else?

That was just transferred to communications, I believe. It used to be an admin, and then when Pedro got his own department, it was transferred there. So, yes, sir, we're still doing that.

Okay.

All right, Gabe, keep it going.

Yeah, so next tab would be Municipal Court. There's really business as usual, nothing noteworthy to report, unless there's questions. That'd be page 38, starting at 38.

I didn't have any questions on that.

OK. Can we move to fire? Yeah, next tab, fire. That's starting at page 44. There were some. Let me flip to the back.

I just had one. I think I know the answer to it, but 51. I was reading through the . or whatever you call these. Special request. It's a special request. And I didn't see our fancy ladder truck. Is that because it's covered under a debt of obligation?

Correct. Yeah. OK.

So on page 51, the exhaust removal system for both stations, is that going to be part of the renovations for station two? Or is that going to be an addition?

No, that will come out of those funds for the renovation for Fire Station 2. We just didn't get that out of there in time. Okay.

So we're going to get both stations covered under that? Correct. Okay. And then if there's money left over from the renovations, will we be able to allocate that towards some of these other requests like the thermal imagers and such?

Yep. Potentially if it's I think kind of our thought would be if we have, and we're hopeful it will, but from the certificate of obligation, if we have some money left, we had thought about doing a needs assessment for PD. You might have recalled we talked about that, like an architectural needs assessment. And that would be dependent on whatever the final cost and delivery and all that for the apparatus is. Some of the smaller items, I don't recall the thermal imagers.

And we wouldn't want to pay for operating costs out of debt, right? We're paying debt over 20 years. We wouldn't want to use it.

I think your intent is it would be spent towards public safety. Like Gabe mentioned, I know there's a needs assessment for the PD. We're going to try to fund that through that. So. She did such a good job on station one crunching numbers. I figured maybe we could save some money to get some of this stuff. We're going to apply that same focus, and hopefully we are successful. Fire department's so generous. Thank you.

So we're going to cover item four under the money from the debt of obligation that we've already approved. But items one through three, we don't have covered anymore, right? They're non-funded. That's correct. They're not funded.

I have a question on the exhaust system. I thought we had plumb station one completely for all the exhaust.

We did, and we did Station 2 as well. That's already been done. The big change is adding the ambulances to the bay. That kind of reconfigured the... We need more in Station 1. I understand Station 2, but Station 1, I thought we had plenty of those. We have to have another drop at Station 1 because the apparatus that was at Station 2 won't fit over there anymore to accommodate the ambulance. So we didn't accommodate for the extra apparatus at Station 1. So that's one of them. And the other components are so we can connect to the ambulance. and they swap those out so much they can't have the adapter on the ambulance, so we had to come up with a solution so it will fit any ambulance they put in there and take some manual work for it. So that's what that is.

It's a definite benefit. I want the ambulance at that station as much as possible. Absolutely. That's a fantastic thing. Whenever I see it there, it makes me happy.

So we want to capture their exhaust like we do all the fire trucks, and that's basically what this is.

I don't mind feeding those folks whatever we need to do to keep them at our station so we get great coverage.

They're a valuable part of our team, and they're treated just like a member of our department.

And I had a question related to that. At one point in time, when I walked to the fire station with you, Fire Station 1, we had talked about the door situation there and being able to park that ambulance inside versus outside. And has that been resolved?

The refresh my memory.

We were talking about how the door, they didn't have access. So someone had to open the door for them or something.

Oh yeah. Because they weren't stationed there at that particular point, but that hasn't been rectified. They have access to the station and open the doors just like the fire truck. Perfect.

Are you talking about station one or station two? Station one. One. Okay.

So I have a question on the ambulance service. It was a 43% increase. Are we anticipating as much of an increase next year again? Or can you kind of walk us through some of the, I know there was an initial kind of getting it off the ground, figuring out what our costs were going to be and everything. and so is this a result of the increase a result of just uh they're figuring on cost and what we're being charged now is is a lot higher than what they were originally anticipating sure so whenever footwork put that on there was a lot of unknowns right a lot of uh capital expenditures that medstar was kind of behind on that fourth had to absorb

There were personnel issues. They were using a lot of overtime and all that and transitioning people. So our first year, 24-25, our allocation would have been $254,000 based on the information they had at the time. They prorated that because it was mid-year when they did it. We only paid $54,000. That was based on a unit hour. Best guess at that time is how we're paid. For every hour we use the ambulance, there's a fee for that. Every entity pays the same cost. So the following year, it went up 135,000, because there was another, a full year that they had the ambulances and all the personnel still absorbing all that and getting their hands around it. So it went up. This year's pretty considerable amount of junk, but confidence is high that they've got control of the cost and know what it actually expends. They don't have a crystal ball because all those costs, particularly public safety, keeps increasing. Everything we buy keeps increasing. So I couldn't sit here and say that it's not gonna go up, but the percentage increase, I would be confident in saying we shouldn't expect that same amount next year. It should be relatively close that through their personnel and they've had to change the deployment to the fire stations versus out in the field, they're doing a lot of measures to cut costs keep personnel and making sure they're providing good service. And now we're two and a half years in, so they've got a lot better grasp of it. I couldn't imagine everything they went through to get us here. I wouldn't anticipate this significant of increase going forward outside of something really significant happening. They have had some capital expenditures replacing ambulances because the fleet was in pretty poor condition when they absorbed it. So that's a big part of that. And the unit cost per hour has gone up and that's what drives that. But part of the cost increase is because we're busier in our own town considerably more. The strip right down here on McElroy with the nursing home and that they run a lot of cost to those facilities. So it's a pretty substantial hit to our cost for that. It's good they're parked so close.

So I had one more question. Go ahead. So on the uniform expense, can you talk a little bit about what the increase is there? Yes, sir.

Through the ESD in the past, they had a grant opportunity every year. That amount was $25,000. One year it was $30,000. But we continually use that grant for our PPE, our bunker gear. So that has obviously went away through the ESD. They've created their own fire department. It absorbed a lot of territory, and that grant opportunity went away. and over the last probably seven years departments have had to adapt to having one set of ppe per fireman for two of them for contamination purposes how we have to wash and inspect that gear so we've essentially we have 27 shift firemen so we've doubled the amount of bunker gear from 27 to 54. So that cost is our replacement program every year. We replace between five and seven sets of the coat and pants, and that's about $3,800 for just those two items. And then depending on the year, we supplement the boots, helmets, hoods, and gloves. But that's what it takes to run our replacement program. So everybody keeps two sets of bunker gear at all times. After they have a fire, they'll come back and wash their gear, and they have to have something in the meantime.

sure no and i think that's great i would just you know for transparency purposes i don't know if it's possible to rename that from uniforms to uniforms and ppe is that possible just so that you know because it sounds like it's kind of sure just a name change yeah i mean i just think for you know because otherwise people are going to be like well what why are shirts that much more yeah i think it's consistent across all the departments called uniforms sure i don't know if that's something that isn't i like bunker gear that certainly makes it very clear That sounds expensive. It sounds like a fire department SWAT.

Chief, back to ambulance real quick. We've been going with the footwear system for a while, and, of course, the costs are going up. But I'm assuming, and this is on an extra opinion, on the services, you think we're getting our money's worth, we're getting good service from them or better than before?

We do. The service delivery has been improved from what we've experienced in the past. particularly having the ambulances here and some things that a typical citizen wouldn't see is the ambulance crews are in with our fire crews. They know each other's names. They eat together. So what that translates to, if you're on a call, you already have a personal relationship with that person. Just the cohesiveness and the way they work together is much better. The trust is there in each other's knowledge when you have a critical patient. So it's translated in a lot of positives, but that's a really big one. And certainly having the ambulances here, now they cover other areas outside of our city that we don't typically go to, but having them here is a great benefit. And is this is the same personnel that come pretty much so you we get to know they do know that they're their own shift their shift is 2448 currently I think in the future that that is looking to change but so they work across all shifts but there are 6 assigned people to station 2 and 6 assigned people to station 1. So most of the time, it's consistently the same focus.

I just want to note, too, this is a much cheaper option than us providing the service ourselves. I mean, just the price of ambulances right now is almost what it would cost just for what we're paying for a year.

Yeah, what's an ambulance cost these days?

They're up over $250,000 now. No, the average ambulance cost now is a little over $500,000, equipment and everything. So it's kind of out of sight.

Yeah.

In two years to get one. Yes.

Right. That is confusing. Any other fire questions, folks?

Anything else you want to add? No, I'll answer any questions you have. We've obviously had some line-out increases of everything we have. I'm prepared to speak about anything fire department budget related, but I think you hit the big component.

Okay. Are we ready to go to police? Yeah, let's go to police.

I only had two things in the police tab. One was at the end, the number three, the jail door maintenance. I had to highlight it. My only concern there is... What risk, if we don't get these jail doors maintenanced like it says here, what's the risk?

So there's two risks. One is the door doesn't lock when you put somebody in it. had this happen on one one occasion so far so inmate when the jailer was not back in the jail he was roaming around the general area where our staff normally is the other issue you have is when you want the door to open it won't open that that's the concern we have in case of fire or something like that we couldn't evacuate the building and so having these doors maintain moved in is there any overriding anything like that to get in and it is now functions so we have key key override for all the doors say this maintenance is is the internal part of the locks of these locks are starting to stick that's where this maintenance comes in there to dismantle the lock they're going to move everything back up readjusted calibrated and put it back in the door so everything works with supposed to work so even so

There's a risk. You have to tell me how significant the risk is. To me, when I look at risk, I measure risk. One is, what's the probability of it happening? And if it does happen, the second thing is, what's the criticality of it? It sounds like to me that the criticality is bad. It is bad.

And my concern is more on the front side of this, though. It's when the door doesn't latch when you have somebody back in the jail. Yeah, the jailer has other responsibilities that pulls him out of the jail for a few minutes at a time, taking paperwork to CID, things of that nature. Walks back into the jail, and now somebody's hiding in the kitchen area. We don't keep knives and stuff in there, but now you have an ambush situation that could occur. Hasn't happened, you know, like that, but did have somebody out roaming around the jail cell. And they could common jail.

Traction place. Well, he's gone to and that would cost us even more money than this.

As far as the fireside goes, I mean, we got the water suppression and whatever in the building. That's not as big a concern for me. But if there were to be a fire in the building in those locks, not disengage like they're supposed to, then that would.

Well, if there was a fire, I'd be more worried about smoke. mm-hmm okay so I mean I think to me looking at this looking at risk I think this is up we got figure out somewhere else in the budget to cut three thirty five hundred dollars to get this done yeah I don't want somebody to be arrested for a reason and they should not be a death that's right yeah don't want a death chamber So can we pencil that in, Gabe? We've got to figure out what we're going to cut. Yeah. We can add that. The only other thing I had on, and it goes to police and fire, was what we talked about at the beginning. And we're there now as to we seem to have a, within our emergency response services, police, maybe not so much I haven't heard from fire, but I'm assuming there's a thing, but definitely in police, we can't seem to get good candidates again. How many are we down now? We're down six right now. How many? Six. Six. And so, yeah, I've been, when I read this and when I read your email, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, if I, again, I always, everything is like, okay, You know, I'm all you always have people coming and going. So, you know, you have two or three, you know, people retiring, whatever. So I'm sitting here thinking, what would cause me to go that my police department is staffed good and then I've got a concern. I'll call it yellow if you're using a what to call a stoplight. Right. So is that five or six people? I'm down and also in a yellow. And then when I go red to where it's actually now impacting. Uh, Our citizens' safety, so to say. We're not able to cover what we haven't. I'm sitting here trying, and that's what I've been doing. And so to me, it's like, okay, if it's six, we're down six police officers and we've got 50, right? 42. 42. That's a significant number of police officers that we don't have. It's got to be impacting us. Yes, sir. In a pretty significant way. So we've got to do something to – we've got to come up with some way of getting boots on the ground in our police department.

And I think that's the million dollar question. I can tell you just this past week what Dallas has decided to do is allow neck and hand tattoos and nose studs trying to up their applicant pool. What applicant do you want and what do you want them to look like? The profession as a whole is just really having a hard time attracting young folks into the profession. I think if you look over the last five or six years, what we've seen in the media and in society in general, I mean, really not one of those careers that people want to subject themselves to anymore and i don't know how you overcome that because every organization out here that hires police officers is short and the top paying organizations are still hiring people trying to fill vacancies those of us that fall in the middle of the pool you know we're having to hire people as well but we're struggling just a little bit because there's you know just here in the metroplex there's 18 agencies that pay more than we do starting off and they top out in six figures in three years You know, we can't compete with that as far as dollar for dollar. What we do here in-house is we provide a significant amount of training. TECO requires 40 hours of training. Our folks are seeing between 80 and 100 hours of training every year, so we can offer that. We are tattoo-friendly. We don't allow beards and uniform. It's something that we can look at. Everyone that has beards still has openings as well, so I don't see that as being a big change as far as attracting applicants. We engage in a lot of wellness programs as well. officer that's employed with us. They receive five or six emails a week from a wellness program that we subscribe to that we purchase. And so they're receiving updated information on officer wellness. We offer workout opportunities for them to work out on duty. There's just a number of things we're doing to make things beneficial for troops. But the last two that I lost voluntarily that left, they left for opportunities. It wasn't money. They left for less money, but they wanted... A specific job like narcotics task force. I don't have the staff to offer that. And we never will. Well, we've had task force positions before, but that's back when we were two officers per thousand. Right now we're at 1.54 officers per thousand in this city. So when there's a perception of increasing crime, And largely, I would tell you that's what it is. It's perception. If you look at our crime trends, we're really pretty stagnant and steady, if you will. But the belief is there's a higher impact of crime here in our city. How do you overcome that? I mean, the old school method is throw officers at it. It's more visibility. So the more officers you see, the more safe you feel. Right. You can't keep doing that either. So to me, there's two parts.

One is if we can, we keep the officers that we got. And so part of that is, there you are. I'm looking down there. You moved on me. Do we do an exit interview?

So we do exit interviews with many of our employees. If it's disciplinary related, then not so much. If you're leaving because you're being forced out, we don't do an exit interview with you. But as I say, the last two that we've lost, really the last three, we had one retirement, And two officers that were young officers been with us for two years. They left both of those officers left for opportunities with a task force that we don't know. And that happened.

So that's what I'm saying. So there's nothing inherently. So that's what I'm saying. You look at that to see if there's something inherent that we can actually. change right uh... if it's not that so so to me one knob is keep them if we can when the person's ready to retire they're going to retire but we know that we you know evidence so we can we can estimate it then the second knob is what can we do to get more officers in and you know we definitely to some extent things like beard versus no beard tattoos on the arm versus no tattoos on those men but the actual quality of the person. I have to agree with you. We have to hold that standard. The next thing is, OK, what can we do to lean into it? To me, I'm like, OK, how many police academies do we have? And are we engaging with those police academies strong enough to get them? And then this is what I don't know. Totally out of my wheelhouse. I know that every university out here has criminal justice degrees. And I know that a lot of people watching NCIS and stuff, they go join, and they want to get a criminal justice degree. It seems like, to me, Could we be talking to University of Texas at Arlington, University of Texas at Dallas, TCC, to these students that's going in, getting these criminal justice degrees, and I don't even know what the cost would have to ask, and get them tied in to say, hey, go to the academy and we'll pay for it, and you sign like a three-year contract.

Is that something we could do? So it is something you can do, but what the lawyers will tell you is you can't enforce the three-year aspect. So if I say you have to do three years with me or you owe me for the academy, it's really not enforceable. And so I can send them to the Academy. They finish that with their degree, and they turn around and go to Arlington making more money. Because Arlington requires a four-year degree, or 60 hours is what they require now. But you take your degree and go to Arlington, you're making more money, and you have more opportunities than you do with me, but I paid for your Academy. Yeah, there's a catch there. But we are sending people to the Academy. We are paying for Academies to get them through and get them certified. I mean, that is one of the things that we've started over the last five or six years. Used to, we didn't do that, but we do that now. It's just a really...

So, ask me, what's our credit hours? Do we have a number of minimum credit hours they have, college credit hours they have to have?

No.

Okay. You can come to us with a GED as long as you've gone through the academy or if we hire you... Do we have a program? I mean, I've just seen that you all had your police academy. Do we have a strong relationship with both our, how many high schools we have here? Do we have a strong relationship with our high schools in getting, mentoring them when they come out of high school, going into the academy?

The Hollenstein Center offers law enforcement classes. We do have a strong relationship with them. That's the kids that are interested in following through with the law enforcement type of career. So we're in pretty good with them. There's three academies here in our region. We're in with all three academies. We visit with those academies on a, when I say regular basis, it's almost a weekly basis to identify cadets that may not be sponsored through other agencies so we can start looking at them, encourage them to come to us. And a lot of that just comes down to what they're looking for. The last academy at Weatherford had five, I believe it was five cadets that were not sponsored. When you start running backgrounds, they're not gonna get hired in too many places just because of what's in their backgrounds. Just because they're not sponsored doesn't mean they're an eligible candidate for us. Absolutely.

That's what I said.

The basic fundamental, they have to pass a background check. But the majority of people that we hire want to be here and they stay here. We're not losing people to...

uh... higher paying jobs traditionally we lose them because they want opportunities not necessarily pay and they're willing to take a pay cut to get the opportunity how about interns i mean like please do we have an intern program i mean i i know in engineering that's that's the way we get people in we we bring them in as interns we so so say so kick the cars and then

either the end of their junior year going into their senior year if they're good we offer them a job we get them locked in so i have two officers that came through an intern program with us it's just not something that we see very often there's doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interns out there that are looking for opportunities but it is something that we entertain i say two of my officers were interns with us as a non-police role they actually worked in records and back in cid to help out and decided they want to go to the academy. We helped with that, and they're with us now.

So on request number six, background investigations, in there you specifically ask that basically there's a delay in getting offers because we don't have this background check service. Would this help obtain the search?

So it does help. It's kind of a new service that we're looking at. We've estimated a fee there because we may do backgrounds on 15 officers before we get one hired. Not necessarily because they fell out of the system. It could be that they've accepted a job somewhere else could have changed their mind, decided they didn't want to come into law enforcement, whatever the case may be. But, uh, when you're looking at, you know, $650 per officer to do the background, I can't tell you what that fee is going to be. We've, we've estimated the 10,000 assuming that that would get people hired. But Carl Johnson was doing our backgrounds for us as a reserve. Uh, he hung up his, his final coat this year and decided he was just going to be done. And so, uh, The sergeant who does the backgrounds now also is overtraining and uniforms, a number of things. You just put a lot of pressure. That's why we've proposed this as a background process. Kind of free up that. It's the initial part of the background, though. It's not the full background. So they do the initial part. That's all the legwork. And then we get into the looking at the criminal stuff. Have they been charged with anything? Do they have anything in their history from another agency? So this background is really the initial stages of that. It's all the social media, the public records and things of that nature.

So I have a couple questions. So this sounds to me more like less of a retention problem and more of a recruitment problem. And so proactively, do we have internal recruitment mechanisms? Are we offering incentives for current officers to refer their friends that work for other agencies?

So nothing that we pay our officers for, but our officers really are good. If they have a friend that's going through the academy or looking for a job, I mean, they talk to them. Our officers seem to be pretty happy with our organization and where they're at. So we've hired a number of people that are friends or family or friends of a friend type deal that get recommended to us. And one of our officers is actually there. That's the word I'm looking for. It's their reference to get in the door. It works pretty well, but we don't actually offer an incentive or anything for our employees for that. But our employees, they want to see us full staff, too. So I mean, they're recommending those folks. The incentives that other agencies offer are actually Your relocation assistance, you have sign-on bonuses. There's agencies out here that are paying $10,000 for a sign-on bonus. We don't offer anything like that. I don't know that the city's in a position to be able to afford something like that. When you start looking at recruitment in our profession right now, it's literally all over the board, people trying to attract people, and every agency that I'm aware of has openings. I don't know that there's anything out there right now that's making people want to make that ultimate decision, hey, I want to be criticized for every action I take and then be held criminally responsible because someone's trying to kill me. So that's where the profession is right now, and that's really what seems to be the driver

keep the apples we've seen in the past from being available today yeah just i just don't i don't know how effective it is to especially go to these uh... academies because most of those officers are already spoken for uh... it's kinda feel the same way about the graduations but if we can entice them with altering the perception of like, hey, we are actually a smaller town. I know that happened with Grapevine and Keller that it's a little bit safer feeling. So the officers tend to be drawn more to that. And so I don't know if with our new videographer, if there's something that we can do to put out there to help change the perception. I know we're doing a lot of the community efforts with BPAP and some of those videos are great, but maybe on the recruitment side of like, you know, here's the cool things that you get to do as a Saginaw officer. Maybe we can do a recruitment video or something like that. I mean, we got to be more proactive, I think, with recruitment. And what about the graduations? Do you guys go through the graduations and recruit? Try to.

Okay. We're involved with all of our high schools here, say more so with the Hollenstein Center because they offer the law enforcement classes. So you're already showing a propensity or interest in law enforcement. So we really try to talk to those folks. I more meant the academy graduations. We're not at every academy graduation, but we're at every academy multiple times every month doing presentations, trying to convince people why we're the better organization to come work for. And so a lot of those folks are previously sponsored, as you mentioned. But there's a good number of applicants that are in the academy that are not sponsored. They're paying themselves. And so if you're an interesting applicant, we can get you on our payroll. We will finish paying your academy so you don't have to pay at all, knowing that you're going to come to work for us.

So if we pay for someone to go through the academy and they

decided to go somewhere else do we recruit that money no is there a way for us legally to be able to do that from what we've understood talking to legal is really there's none it's i know in the private sector we can yeah i've literally signed them myself and and i've had people underneath me sign them where we've done stuff paid for their college or done things And they have to sign a two-year contract. And if they break that, we prorate it. And I absolutely know that in the private sector, we've went after people and made them pay it. So I'd definitely be interested in maybe getting Brent to explain that to us. And Juan, maybe you're right. There's a special law out there that one of our congresspeople have put in that says dial can't do that.

Yeah, and I don't know what the stipulations are on that, but I can tell you we've hired officers from other agencies that fell within their three-year rule where they had to reimburse, and the officer never had to pay anything, never come out of their check because it wasn't legally enforceable.

Yeah, that's something I definitely would like to hear from you. Why? Because I definitely know in the private sector we can and do help.

and so we we we don't do that now and yet still pay for academies but i don't lose people like that that we're sending to the academy right you know if we pay for the academy they seem to stick with us it's the folks that go through the academy on their own where their second job or whatever yeah they're really looking for opportunities and the opportunities are task force positions with DEA with FBI, but not products. That's what they're looking for. Yeah.

What about military recruiters?

Do we have relationships with military recruiters so that when they get out of their four year assignment or whatever, if they're an MP so we have in the past, we don't have any that I'm aware of right now with military recruiters, our folks that are working with military as recruiters We were in with several folks when Carl was here, and he's retired military, so he had a number of connections that way. We still have a couple of military guys, but they don't seem to have the connections that Carl had. Carl was a command master sergeant that is high in the unenlisted rank that you can get, so he had some definite ties there. don't have those now.

It seems like to me, if I'm looking at inputs coming in, one, we got our high schools. And you say you're involved in that. I don't know how many high school students we've had that's actually made it and came back to be police officers.

The thing with the high schools is difficult, because you've got to be 21 to get licensed. They graduate at 17 or 18, and by the time they're 21 and getting out of an academy, They've already done their research too, and they realize they can go to a lot of places that Start off a lot more than us.

Okay, so then you got the military You got the police academy at the time people go to police carry most of them's already locked in and Then to me you got back to the universities of people who's getting a that's playing around dabbling around in criminal justice, right? so Look, it seems like to me. We need to need to focus on figuring out how people coming out of the military and people in these universities around here, if we can tie in better there. I don't know. I would be interested to hear about that. I don't know how to help you. These are recommendations you have to tell me and counsel on me. But I can tell you that you're a critical component to the safety of our citizens.

I had one idea and thought on that. We are not giving a step raise at this time. Would it be beneficial to maybe mid-year look at this for public safety, depending on budget, depending on numbers? Would that help with recruitment and retention?

I think money always helps towards recruitment. I haven't had an applicant yet tell me that they're going to come to work for less than what I was offering.

Well, if we can allocate some money to like a sign-on bonus type thing where we pay a certain amount, and then once they're here a year, they get another.

I still would be leery of that if there's not a way to enforce that if they leave in a month.

Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir. Sorry, just a couple things for consideration. The TMRS thing that we're considering in this budget, tremendous benefit. I know public safety, there's probably not a firefighter or police officer that hadn't looked at that and realized the impact that that has. Another component is doing a salary survey, preferably at defined intervals, whether that's every five years, whatever it is, to prove competitiveness or to make adjustments when necessary. That's big in public safety. I know generally in our department, and staff has discussed that to some extent. We'll bring it back to you. There's a general thought amongst the firefighters and maybe the police, too. We may be behind on some of our holidays, whether we need to add another holiday or two. That's something through our policy review we need to look at. Those are things that get looked at that matter, that we need to be considering. And that's staff's responsibility to bring that to you.

OK. That's something we can control. So that's a positive.

Chief Ragsdale mentioned the training component. I can't underplay how big a deal that is. We promote that in our department. They promote that in our department. You'll see in our five-year plan, we're gonna ask for a training officer here pretty quick because our bandwidth to be able to do that in-house gets stretched, but that's a, particularly in the fire service, that is a big deal. If we do a lot more training and a lot better training than a competitor A down the road, we're gonna get that person and we're gonna keep them. That is a big deal. Our paramedic pay that we had in there too, that's another one to look at. Paramedics, obviously we do a lot of EMS, very competitive, making sure we're recognizing what that is worth through our incentive pay and doing that. That doesn't specifically speak to the PD, but that's just public safety in general. There are things that we need to continually evaluate to make sure we're staying competitive.

I thought we committed to doing, was it every five years, an independent evaluation of where we're at?

Yeah, every five years. So we're in, what, year three? Year three. Yeah, and I would say, too, Melanie has gotten records requests and such, but since we've done our study, the markets, it's moved. So, you know, our goal is to be competitive and I think.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I don't know how y'all do it, but I can tell you when we go to Texas A&M or any of the universities for engineering, I mean, we, We roll out the red carpet for them.

And it's like every position nationwide. People with skills, whatever the field, are in high demand, and the supply is pretty slim. Kind of lower skill type jobs, entry level, we don't really have a problem, but we've talked about public safety. Our water, wastewater operators, Glenn Reeves was telling me the other day, I forget, is he a bee operator? You know, off the top of your head. See, okay, so he has some combination of licenses where there's only like 15 in the state, and it's just a very competitive... And they know that.

Those folks that have them know that. They do. Oh, and there's...

I mean, city and fire, there's recruitment, but there'll be cities that send mailers to our city like, hey, come be an operator. It's like, you know, hey, that's sort of unfair, but...

i know we you know in the public perception especially with some you know employees are overpaid whatever welcome to my world i'm happy to to have a fact-based uh conversation about the numbers so i i want to seriously consider it mid-year if we can do something from a public space safety perspective and if a if we have the funds to do it and b would it help and would it make a positive impact so i think let's put that down and major to at least take a look at that discuss that

Yeah, I don't, from what I can see in my interpretation of this, money alone won't solve the problem. We've got to change our philosophy in hiring. I like the idea of think out of the box, hey, you know, some extra holidays or floating holidays or something like that. We've got to do our thing. And to me, I don't care what we have to do. We've got to pick up and we've got to think more out of the box of who we're going after. And it's probably going to cost the council, the city needs to understand to get good police officers and keep these young ones coming in, it's a new world for them. And what used to get them in here 10, 20 years ago no longer works. And we're going to have to change our approach.

The sort of long-term approach and the vision would be, since I've been here, our employees per capita since we've been growing has declined. We have per capita fewer employees, but it's better to have employees that are more fairly compensated than just more. You know, I'd use this example. You can shop at Walmart or you can shop at Costco. Costco in the 1980s was the first discount retailer to offer insurance to employees. And the CEO at the time, who I like to read a lot of things he wrote, he said, how can we not? Because the customer service industry And the experience is better. The employees are compensated for that. And I think anything to the good of our employees would all of us be very appreciative.

And do we think going up to this 8% TMRS will make an impact on new folks? We really do?

Yeah, it's hard. So we did the survey, because I talked to the mayor about that. And 91%, I think, of employees preferred that as opposed to a step. i think we're going to have to acknowledge you know if we don't do it now we'll have to acknowledge it in the future because a number of other cities smaller than us our size are picking up cleburne in our area aledo hudson oaks i don't we're going to have to acknowledge it because i think

I think that's something we can control. We can do that right now. That will help at least a little. Yeah. It won't hurt, but it will help a little bit. I'm just curious how much it will help. I don't know that.

You know, if someone is paying attention that would be, it'd be a difference maker if somebody wanted to, you know, say do kind of a lateral type transfer and finish out their career 10 years or so to a city that's a 7% contribution to 8% because it makes a difference, so.

um that's that's why we proposed it as far as the recruitment that it's just a tough ballpark everywhere i mean we're our city's not unique all right i think we've talked mayor i just want to make one not to be debbie downer but i want to make a point too that um the funding for the tmrs increase is only nine is only nine months of the year so next year we'll have roll up costs so

Not to give everybody false hopes.

Yes sir, so next year we'll have 12 months worth of funding for it so we need to keep that in mind too and not give people false hopes that mid-year we may get a salary adjustment and be able to fund even if we could fund it in this year we have to look going forward and make sure it's sustainable.

So, so, Gabe, can we and Greg, Greg, I guess it fall to you, but I'll ask you is can we get a multi level approach? Like, okay, what can we change in our in our recruiting? What can we change in our. you know, salary, and then what can we change like in holiday, extra things, including maybe a bonus, whatever. What can we do across the whole board of these different things that we feel would allow us, because we're not, Ragsdale's not asking, the police department's not asking to yet what they are, but it got, didn't get, and the reason it didn't is because we can't even fill the slots we got now. So, I mean, the step one to me is we got to be able to reliably fill the slots we got. And so I'm looking, can we put something together and present that to council so that then council will have something to chew on to say, okay, we can support this.

Yeah, I think we had talked about that before as far as holiday pay. For the number of holidays, we could look at that. You know, I had mentioned our little employee gift card increase. We're not proposing it. It's $25, but every little bit helps. So yeah, happy to bring that.

Yeah. I mean, like I say, there's two parts. One is keeping the employees here, but two is getting them in the front door.

Yeah, agreed.

And that seems to be, you're going to always lose people. There's going to be people you hire. that either they want to go somewhere else they retire uh it's i know in engineering it's about a uh it's a about an eight percent no matter how good you do there's gonna be about eight percent of people if you're in a big hurry thing that they just don't work out so our insurance benefits a lot also because a lot of cities don't put any portion toward the Okay. Well, and again, it goes to the front end. When we go meet these resorts, we need to really sell Saginaw. Hey, you know, pat them on the back, take them out, feed them a taco, whatever. Look what we're giving you that these other cities aren't. We're a smaller city. I mean, be a salesperson. Use car salesperson. I mean, really sell that thing.

there are some things we're doing good equipment is one of them we have great equipment the police and fire department we promote that it instills pride in our staff yeah uh the facilities the big deal right where they work they want to enjoy that and have pride where they work we're doing that i know the pd needs a needs assessment and look at theirs at some point in the future but There are some things that we really do well, and we promote the heck out of that. Now, does that help you pay your electric bill at the end? No. But those all add up to make somebody want to stay here. But we are doing a lot of things really great. The department head's using all the tools within their power to do it. There's just some things that require further deliberation.

So if we're staying in, let's say we get our within line of our competitors out here, money-wise, then you're absolutely right. It's these secondary things that then, because there comes a point where money, they're getting paid, so money isn't no longer the driving factor. They start looking at vacation time, how well they're treated, training, education, things like that. And that's what I'm saying. Maybe we're just not doing a good job.

So talking about vacation time, what is the initial, for officers that start, what is their initial vacation time? What do they get? It's two weeks. Two weeks?

Two weeks. Okay. If the city hits the population of 30,000, it would trigger a three-week requirement.

Okay. Can we proactively change that and make that an incentive only for public service or for emergency services that they get a week, or would we have to do that equitable across the board?

I might be a Gabe.

The council could do that. Yeah, I mean.

But you're right about not doing it for folks or it's not for everybody else. That would cause a factimony. It would have to be equitable. Yeah.

Yeah, across the board for full time.

Well, I can say a lot of other cities, emergency medical things is different on the.

different than others yeah so maybe i mean it's something that we could look at that's probably a lower monetary impact than just increasing salary i think i know we've got a break here pretty quick but one thing that we've noticed with kind of all the departments that uh schedule changes have been important so when the fire department went to the 4896 i know the fire guys have told me they really like that um most of this most of the cities um outside is on 410s now which has been really positive a lot of cities in our area are going to 410s and close like city hall on friday i think that's something we talk about in the future you actually increase your service hours and friday uh fridays are dead here um as far as walk-in traffic so most people if they're taking a window type service are coming in early morning or late afternoon so little things add up

Any other police question?

Yes. Request number four, barricade rentals for special events. I know last year, I believe it was 80,000 is what we- That's right. We ended up budgeting. This is less. To me, this is important, whether we find it in the budget for each of these events, but this is life safety. It says Baton Rouge, but it was actually New Orleans that this happened. This is happening all over the place right now. I've been involved with the FIFA stuff that's been going on and a lot of pre-planning and stuff like this. It's something we can't just ignore. It's the world we live in today.

So what would we use which which for this $20,000 which which? Which programs would we use it for and what are we using it for?

So we've used the barricades last year for the parade and for training grain. So we were able to limit vehicle access to pedestrian areas. It worked out pretty well. Last year we budgeted $80,000 because we thought it was going to cost more to get the barricades in and get them set up to keep vehicles off of pedestrians, but the company worked with us quite well, able to shut everything down. I think if you were at Training Green last year, you saw that it would be not to say impossible to do you really have to work to get a car in the pedestrian area and there's going to be lots of advanced notice you're driving to the park for a good bit come to the chain link fence, but this cost represents those reductions were we didn't need as many barricades is what we thought we did instead of trying to get the 80,000 were funding 20,000 which does both events. The interesting thing with Baton Rouge is Baton Rouge uses these same barricades for their events. They had two streets that they did not barricade out of convenience, and the courts actually held them liable for not blocking those streets. Once you start having public in certain areas, if you don't make some kind of attempt to keep vehicles off of them, the courts have said, hey, this is... It's predictable. If it's predictable, it's preventable. So what are you going to do to prevent it? And I don't have enough squad cars to park around the events to keep cars from getting in. So the barricades are our cheapest option and definitely do a pretty good job of keeping pedestrians safe at our events. That's what our whole goal is.

Could we use other vehicles in the city as barricades? So we did a really good job stopping that F-250 over there.

Yeah. You know, Public Works is normally involved with us. They have their trucks out there blocking intersections and all the barricades just make it to where those vehicles are available to us for emergency response. We have the barrier gates. It's not someone having to jump in the vehicle and move it. It's literally a gate that raises up, gets somebody through, and you lower the gate back down, your barricade's back in place.

The thing about these barricades is nobody has any respect for them until you need them. And then when you need them, boy, you need them bad. Right. So if we did add that, it's up to council, but Paul, this is your forte.

To me, if we're going to continue having these events, we need to do this. There's no question about it.

If we do that, that would be another $20,000 along with the $3,500, so that means you're now up to $23,500 that you've got to figure out what to cut out of the budget somewhere else.

Yeah, we can add it. That's what everybody likes to do.

Yeah. It sounds like we need to, in the future, just plan for that to be in the budget. Because it appears it's an ongoing cost. It's a special one time now two years in a row. And as long as we do training grain and we do the holiday event, then we're going to need it.

And I don't think the citizens are going to say stop doing training green or the holiday event. Those are definitely popular, absolutely.

All right, any other police questions? We've got a lot here, and I want to take a break.

I mean, I guess, does council agree that this needs to be added in for a safety thing?

I think everybody's good with that, with the 20,000. Yeah.

Yeah. So it gets us up to 23,500.

OK. All right, any other police questions before we take a break? All right, so at 10.13, take a break. We'll be gone, we'll be back at 25 after, so 12 minutes. All right, let's go ahead and get started. We're on, I guess we're on Public Works now. All right, so Public Works, so Public Works starts on page 64. So questions, comments on Public Works, folks?

I do have number three, Joyce Bender. I'm pretty sure we need the sewer system in the community. I mean, in one of our buildings.

We're repairing it. You speaking to yourself? Yeah, sorry.

Well, number three on the Joyce Bender Community Building. If y'all need a sewer system, I'm pretty sure we need to check into that one, don't we?

I mean. It's been causing us trouble, so we're going to replace it. You are? I think. Kim?

We're going to do it in the current year in the Enterprise Fund. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. One note on public services relates to actually a work plan project. We had talked about a potential street maintenance fee. I had occasion to talk to the city manager of Fort Worth earlier this week. Sounds like their council through the budget process is moving that direction. we may look at that in the future and let's say it was adopted and we implemented it that would add uh or allow capacity to add kind of a standalone street maintenance crew so what happens now randy jared could tell you is you know those guys get pulled off on other projects and uh you know a lot of the things that are really important for extending the life of our pavement go to the back burner like crack ceiling and spot repairs and so we'll come back with a workshop on that we may but like i say we may be able should we adopt a similar fee in the future add some stats is that something we could adopt at mid-year yes potentially okay let's let's put that on on the list to look at it mid-year i think that's a great idea i think if fort worth does it that will give us a and we can learn from their experience as well right um page 65 just clarification we got the increase

And salaries is that we face position where we made that permanent or what position is that. We repeat that so first line item salaries. It's got an increase of 75,000 735. I'm just curious what that position was. Assuming it's an added position.

let me get back with you and i can't remember specifically what that was

Oh, I had a sidewalk question. We've got sidewalks listed two or three different places. And I'm trying to understand why we have, because we have sidewalk replacement here, we have other sidewalk stuff in different places. Somebody walk me through why we have sidewalks budgeted in different areas and how that works.

We have a certain, I guess, base amount that's been there for many, many, many years in the general fund and then We have in the Capital Projects Fund, I think it was the 2020 COs, we had a specific amount allocated for sidewalks. I think we still have a balance there that we're using. And then we can also use it in the Street Maintenance Fund as long as they're replacement sidewalks and not new sidewalks. So it's just different funding sources to fund as much as we can to replace sidewalks.

And I'm definitely pro sidewalk repair. I know that's very important for mobility and people walking. People tell me on my sidewalks I can't hardly take a baby stroller or a walker or something on sidewalks. It's important.

I want us to make sure we- So it was before my time, so I suspect that in the general fund there was a set amount that was budgeted and then they adopted the street maintenance sales tax and so we augmented the funding for that. And then, like I said, we have some CO proceeds that we've used for it, too. Okay.

Will that help? Thank you. Can you talk about, on page 66, we've got building maintenance and repairs.

Specifically, I guess I should be looking over here.

What are we going to repair with that? Is this general or just we have some targeted areas?

It's just a general fund that covers every facility that we have in the city.

Literally just for anything that comes up? We don't have any targeted needs right now that we're going after? Okay. And we need it. I know our facilities, some are getting some age and will require repair. Okay.

Mr. Flege, that was the additional inspector position. We added an additional inspector knowing that the current senior inspection manager is close to retirement.

OK. Other public work questions, folks? I don't let Randy and Jared off that easy, but I guess we will. Okay. All in, all done? Let's move to parks.

I just got a comment on parks. There's been some requests for the pool, equipment, and then softball renovations. I notice a lot of facilities, cities that have aquatic centers, pools, and then sports complexes and stuff, they sell advertising. And I think that's something we, you know, costs keep going up, and I think that may be something we should pursue to help not only generate some revenue, but also help promote our local businesses.

I don't want our facility to turn into a NASCAR driver, but I wouldn't mind promoting local businesses. I wouldn't want to take Apple or something like that. A local business, that would make a lot more sense.

Mayor and Council didn't add any of the requests, but one note with the voter-approved bonds, some of these items we potentially could use our park bonds for, softball complex renovations, that sort of thing. It's long-term.

Do we have any money left over from... The last bond that can be applied to some of this stuff.

We do have some funds left from the last bond, park bond fund 2021, I think. We still have a playground down by the dog park that we're going to be doing. But yes, we do have some funds that we're going to be.

Are we doing the roof of the rec center with that money?

Yes, we did the roof of the rec center.

With leftover bond funds from 21, right?

Yes. It is complete, by the way.

Oh, it is? Oh, all right. I hadn't heard. Do you like it, Vicki?

I do.

Okay, good.

Glad to hear that. I'm curious about the utilities. Is that the rec center? What is using utilities for parks?

I think the biggest increase there was water.

Okay.

So that's irrigation at the parks, the right of way, medians, those areas.

Okay.

But across the city-wide, there's an increase in electricity and- Sure, yeah, no, I know that.

I just, parks specifically. So is the irrigation, is that cost broken down to only parks or is it just all the green spaces pretty much?

It's by meter and location of the meter. So it's a general fund department, so it pays for water just like any other customer.

Okay. All right, we mentioned this briefly the other night. I'm hopeful in the near future, we will do a joint council and parks board meeting to talk about some of the bond stuff going forward. What would be the appropriate timing for something like that? At what point would parks be ready in the bond? Anybody got any ideas?

I think any time. I think any time is a good time.

Do that before the- Right now is a good time, I think. Let me do it before the- Schedule it. Maybe after we get through the budget season, look at in October, November timeframe?

Absolutely. The sooner the better.

Yeah, let's put that on the- Yeah, we can do that.

Another thing related to the tables, dog stations, park benches, if you'll recall, we've talked about signage. We haven't made any final decisions yet. The thought is once we have a established sign template logo, of course we've got to we've got to pay for the design and you know the specs and all sort of that but if you've gone to parks in fort worth or elsewhere a lot of their benches and you know that's incorporated the city's incorporated so the idea is to have you know saginaw benches specific signage so um that would be another item to come yeah i like the idea of having consistent signage across all our parks we're a little disjointed now just because a little time

I'm curious, have we ever done like a survey or some kind of way to count how many people are using the park, like Willow Creek Park specifically? Because in the morning I just see a ton of people.

We know that we have, but I think with the cell phone data, some of those companies, it's probably easy enough to get. I know the market has done like cell phone data to see where people are coming from and that sort of thing. But yeah, we can look into that.

I mean, I wouldn't want to spend any money on it because it's really just a matter of curiosity. Sure. At this point. A lot of walkers. Yeah, it's interesting.

We know people are using. We just don't know how much and how many. Right.

And I don't know if with the fishing pond that we had talked about the potential of doing that, maybe that those numbers might help with grant funding and things like that.

Yeah, that'd be another item. We're not issuing any bonds of the newest authorization this year for parks because the idea is we want to spend what was left from 21. But that would be another discussion, you know, for next year, the pond amenity and Also, the next playground upgrades, which after we're done with the Willow Creek playgrounds, it would be William Houston, Sagewood over off Basswood, a little small one, and a handful of smaller ones.

The smaller one up here by the softball company?

Yeah. That pavilion as well, right?

I thought the small one up by the thing, I thought that that was covered under the last bond, that they had enough money.

No, the smaller one we had under the last bond was one down by the dog park. If we can fund this one, if we've got enough left, we're going to do it.

And I want to commend staff for it. We've got a lot from that last part bonds, more than I would have thought. When we started that, I didn't really know what we could get for $4 million, but we've got a heck of a lot done. And it's kudos to y'all. That's saying stuff that's visible to citizens and people enjoy it, and you can really see where your tax dollars go.

I can attest to Opal Jennings and Brian Swangler parks, the volume of people using those two parks now compared to prior is quadruple. I mean, it's unbelievable how many people are there every day.

Now, talking about those, we did have some, I've seen on Facebook, we had some vandalism on those.

We did have some vandalism. We turned it over to insurance.

Yeah, Corey talked to the adjuster Thursday.

Melanie, can you leave your microphone closed, please?

Corey Smith talked to the adjuster on Thursday, and so we have to get some information to him, and then based off what we initially paid for it, then it'll be gone through TML, and then we'll get back to figure out how it's going to be repaired or replaced or whatever.

Yeah, so... The cost of the vandalism costs the city versus, because people talk about having security cameras up, but those come at a cost and they're not cheap. Especially if you have security cameras, you gotta have ones good enough that allows you to see the person to identify. So I know that's expensive. So that's one of the things that we have to address when a lot of people say, we need security cameras. If we put security cameras, they gotta be good enough to where we could see the person to be able to prosecute them.

So I talked to the chief.

He may have left because this was coming up.

But the cameras that he was looking at, I think, Lee, were they not? like flock cam cameras and those started like 30 35,000 and yeah one one that's good enough to you know to identify it even higher than that yeah so you need if you look on the facebook comments you know yet half the people say yeah we need them and then half the people say i don't want you Spying on my kids. Oh, yeah. In the park. Yeah, right.

I understand. Well, I just wanted to, from a cost standpoint, that, yeah, okay, he got vandalism, but the vandalism's costing me this much. These cameras are going to cost me that much. It's cheaper just to fix them. Unfortunately, fix the vandalism.

Yeah, and I know, as far as the ones in Willow Creek, I had talked with Chief Ragsdale about... Bicycle patrol and and increasing that and and I think it's helped quite a bit in the Willow Creek area But I don't there's not really a solution for those parks that are not Convergent so, you know, I think honestly us putting it out on on faith on our web page and let the public know that Vandalism going on.

I think now there's some eyes open now that yeah are watching and

No.

A lot more than they were before.

That's good.

Good.

Yeah. I mean, it really makes you kind of sick at your stomach. It did me when I looked at it, because we had this beautiful park we just did, and you got one or two people that just ruin it.

Unfortunately, Opal Joe's is right across the street from Fort Worth. Yeah. Yeah, we'll blame it on Fort Worth. Send them the bill. Yeah, send them the bill.

All right, other questions on parks? We've accomplished a lot on parks. We've got a lot more to do, but it's exciting. Parks are something that are very visible and people really, and it contributes to quality of life.

Mayor, just one brief comment. You remember we did a design town hall for the playgrounds. I think our intent is to do that again. People really enjoyed it. If you remember the folks that were there, there was a girl scout that had some ideas and people could pick. So we'll do that again next slate of park replacements.

All right, anything else parked? All in, all done? Next, community services.

I just had a general comment on the communities, or rec center in general. It seems like our people using the rec center is going down over time, the last couple years. Do we have, have we done any analysis or asked as to... why that number's going down you got your microphone on nick yep okay it's on we can barely hear you don't hear that i'm gonna say it to everybody too make sure you talk your microphone yeah so do we have any as to it i don't think that it has to be down too much i mean we can get the numbers to back that up could the part of that be also moving the seniors over to their facility from

Yeah, I was reading somewhere.

Yeah, I was reading some words in here and it said that the fees went down this year. You mean the fees we collected? Yeah.

How is that? Yeah, based on the trends. And that's more the classes and programs that they're offering. But I think there is a plan for increased.

Could we get maybe, I mean, because I understand it takes three data points to make a trend, and I know we don't have three data points, but I know last year there was some concern, and we did. I think you all went back and normalized. You removed that so that we could do that. Remember last year that was a big thing. I said, well, let's take the senior citizens out because they shouldn't have been there to begin with. But yeah.

One thing, and maybe even our next regularly scheduled meeting, Vicki was gonna talk about our facility rental fees, especially related to deposits, to adjust those up. That may have a small impact. I know there's been, it's not for lack of effort, some classes that they've been trying to offer, but they haven't taken. There was like a programming class. You remember my youngest son was interested, but I guess not enough people signed up, and the price. We have more classes in the works right now.

It just takes time to build those up.

It's not an overnight, but we do have more classes coming in. Good. Good. I think, too, on some of these sort of facility repairs, you know, I want to be pretty cautious right now and a whole lot of things. But these are things that I think in the year we could certainly come back and and revisit and, you know, the facility. We've added a lot of money to it, but it's just based on age that it needs some.

One that jumped out at me is number five, the air duct cleaning. How bad is it? And I'm surprised it's never been done. Bad? Yeah. I mean, is that an air quality issue, like a health issue? Patrons notice that.

We keep it factored in as much as possible, but it is an issue that patrons are noticing.

Okay. If folks can't hear, Vicki said the patrons are noticing the air duct and the lack of cleanliness. So that's something, number five, something I would want us to at least consider and think about what we can do. Maybe we only fund part of it or we mid-year it or something, but that seems like a healthy statement.

$75,000?

I'm wondering if there's a way that we could split that or coordinate with bond funds or park funds to try to see. I mean, because it's a pretty substantial expense. But if it's going to lower the use of the facility, then it's not good to continue down that trend. I want to have clean air. That seems important.

And use of the bond is a good idea. If we can. I'm not sure what the rule is.

I think some things, if they're recreation related, we can make that. I don't know specifically about the air ducts, but yeah, we can look at that.

It's going to affect the cleanliness of the building, too.

And I had a question about the salaries, the part-time salary increase. Is that one person? And would it be better to have a full-time staff member? Is there a need for a full-time staff member in lieu of having a part-time?

The increase was actually moving the switch yard slash special events person that used to be an admin is now in the community service. So it wasn't an additional position. It's just repositioning it. Got it.

OK. And the second part of your question, I think at some point in the future,

definitely a full-time person because there's events planning year round plus the stuff that pops up and so yeah i just i didn't know i mean i'm looking at the full-time salaries and and it doesn't seem like it's a lot so it seems like a lot of reliance on part-time and i'm sure that there's probably some part-time employees that would love to move to full-time so if that's something in the future that we can look at i think it's important that's a good point

Just going back to the duct cleaning, that may be something we need to start looking at. Y-nighting for all the city facilities. I'm looking up at these ducts and they probably haven't been cleaned since we've been in here. You're probably right, yeah.

I'm thinking about number eight, ADA lift, chair lift for the Aquatic Center. Are we at the point where that is an ADA issue? Are we at some risk there for ADA exposure because it doesn't work or doesn't work well?

Okay. But it's happening to elements, so it is something that's going to happen.

We have to have two points of entry to the pool and that would be point number two, so we need to have that.

Okay.

It's working now.

I got, okay, thank you. Do we cover that in the off-season?

Does it not have a cover when we're not using it? We have a cover, yes. Okay.

Beer, you owe me one. Nine, the buffing and waxing is recommended. So if we don't have that done, because we just spent a lot of money to get that refurbished. If we don't get this recommended, does it void a warranty or anything? What's a negative side of not spending that $5,200?

After the first year of use, it's just going to buff out any issues that might come up. So it's a preventative maintenance to finish off the first year of use.

How are the numbers at the aquatic center since the fee rate fee increase?

Okay. Yeah.

So knowing that this would probably be an issue, I looked at the numbers on Friday. So oddly enough, attendance is down, but oddly enough, Revenues are about the same as they were last year. So with the increased fees, we're, you know, earning about the same amount, but fewer people are, you know, paying those fees.

So we were down last year. So now we're down again this year compared to last year. Is that when we say that? So we're two years that we've dropped.

But we increase the fee anytime you increase the fee. Yeah, I understand.

I'm just trying, again, I'm... Because last year we said that people using the pool was down. And so again, this year we're saying people using the pool is down.

But it's because of pain.

It was expected, I feel like.

We've had so many phone calls.

We're not coming.

I mean, that's okay.

I mean, that could be part of that. It's not because it doesn't look good and it's not safe and clean.

And I think it's better for the employees that are working there if the volume is lower. It's providing a better quality service, at least I feel like the lifeguards are. So what do you mean by it doesn't look good and it's not safe?

No, it's not.

The decrease is not because it's not maintained. Okay, gotcha. We've got great facility. Yeah. It's just I think the price point hitting them, that increase was great.

do we want to look at i don't what what was it reform where did we go to somebody remind me i think we doubled it because we doubled fees kind of across the board it hadn't been increased since it had been open my understanding is that day pass uh traffic is somewhat consistent but the season pass has been wiped out do we want to lower that a little bit not go where it was but I mean, here's the tricky issue. It costs the, it's pennies on the tax rate, and it's a service, so it's like, and this is not unique to our pool. This is all similar pools. They're just costly. I think you're seeing a lot of HOAs that have pools having similar decisions like, hey, can we even afford this?

And I'm not expecting us to make money, make a profit on these products. I just don't want to lose too much money.

We just don't want to lose any more. We set a limit. We said that the citizens of Saginaw was willing to offset the cost up to $130,000 per year. and we haven't said anything about capex capital expense we the city also citizens absorb that so i mean me just i think that's i think that's generous i think that's considering how often this service is used during the summer things like that i you know i

I mean, the costs have gone up. Chlorine, I looked it up when some of these people were complaining, the price of chlorine went up 70% since 21. I mean, chemicals have gotten expensive, labor's gotten expensive.

I just feel like the alternative, what we're looking at is the alternative is we have a closed aquatic center that rots and everybody drives by and says, why do we have this facility and nobody's using it and why is it closed and so you you're in a situation where you're not gonna make everybody happy and i feel like as uh council member junkers junkers felt said it's it's when people get used to it it i think it's going to be better i think we just stick consistent for now we're not the revenue hasn't gone down much it's about the same so i feel like it's a fair trade-off and it's just going to improve but i do feel like having pavilions and classes and renting out the facility after hours and things like that, if we can look more into that, it might help increase. Yeah.

Mary, go ahead.

And talking about the pool, in the five-year plan, page 85, the last item is to consider expanding that pool. And I think that is a big cost. But say five years from now, if we could maybe add that to a bond election or something. I think we would be more competitive with these other cities, you know, and we would get more interest in the pool and, you know, be able to justify the cost. So I think that is something we should be considering and thinking about, say, five years from now.

I'm not in competition on something like this. I'm absolutely not in competition with other cities. I'm trying to provide an extracurricular activity for, in a lot of cases it will be lower income citizens who, one, can't afford to go to NRH 2.0 or these other more expensive, or two, have a pool in their backyard, or the HOA doesn't already have a pool. that that's what i'm that's what to me that's what this is is bringing that service and i realize that and want to do it but there is a dollar amount that to me that we can only get and last year we set it at 130 000 and i think that's i think that is reasonable i mean to offset that. And people can complain, but just like Paul said, you go through this budget, every single thing is increased. Electricity, water, you name it, it's increased. And we can, we can fund all of this. We can say it's 100%, but okay, let's take her down to zero, and then the council's got to find $130,000 somewhere else in this budget to cut. Or we go to all the citizens and you take that and you say, we're going to now, not seven... Not 7.2%, but whatever that is, we're going to increase your taxes more to cover this.

That's only two knobs we got. So that was going to be my next question is, could we look at what it would look like if we decided to subsidize it wholly and go to the citizens for a tax increase and say, but it's to offer the aquatic center for free? I mean, I don't know, because then it's putting it back in the citizens' hands. That's a problem. Hmm?

then it would be probably a, I mean, if it's free, you know.

People would be screaming because you'd be at capacity and you'd have to turn people away.

Yeah. It's like an event.

Yeah.

You know, you can only do so much. I really just think it might just be sticker shock this year.

Yeah. And the so-called competition is going to be raising, you know, like anything else, they're going to be raising their rates and now we're going to have a bargain compared to what they're offering.

Because we don't plan on going up next year.

If the demand was super high, I would agree with you. I would say, yeah, we should look at expanding, but because we're not turning people away, it's hard for me to justify. It's a tough pill to swallow to spend $6 million on a pool that nobody's using now.

So maybe competition was the wrong word. I'm just thinking if we could upgrade that and make it more like what some of these other cities are offering, maybe not to the extent of NRH2O, but just make it a more fun place to go. I think that is something we should consider.

How many other cities have aquatic centers? Does every city have an aquatic center?

A lot of the HOAs are now, they put the pools in.

For the first 10 years, there's not a lot of maintenance. They're all now hitting maintenance. We've had HOAs come to the city and try to give us their pools. We're like, no, we've got our own pool. It's I've heard from multiple HOAs that the pool, that little thing there, is the single biggest expense when you calculate everything up. Sure, yeah. And that's what we're facing here.

Yeah, I'm just thinking, you know, I know that we're not looking at comparing to other cities, but at the same time, that's the perception that we read on Facebook is, you know, Well, this other place is cheaper. This other place offers more. Is that fact? Because everything on Facebook is the truth. Right, exactly. So what are the facts? Are the facts that other cities do offer this and it is cheaper? Or is it the same? Or is it actually factual that they're not city facilities and they're just branded

I can tell you a facility like NRH2O, which is not a great comparison, it was built to generate revenue to the extent that it can cover its costs, and it's just not an apples to apples comparison. What is comparable would be like Fort Worth has neighborhoods with community pools, and they're in the same boat in that they're costly to maintain, but they serve neighborhoods and areas that don't have like an HOA pool, or they don't have the ability to go to Hawaiian Falls or whatever. So it's tricky.

And that's kind of what this is, because these over here, there's no HOA where City Hall is.

Well, and I think even though it's a price increase, if you're buying a day pass and you're a resident, it's $10, right? And do you have any ballpark idea how long people stay? An hour, two hours? Probably about four. Four, okay. Sure. So, I mean, I would say, again, no one likes price increases, but for what it is, you can bring your kids for a couple hours or more for $10. That's as good as value anywhere.

And I haven't heard any complaints except for the family passes.

That, I get.

Yeah, and I get that, too, you know, if they're not going to go. But then you've got to do your math. They have to do their math and figure out if it's going to be comfortable to buy or not.

Maybe instead of lowering the cost, maybe we could do a sale. We could look at the family pass. I think right now, what is it? Family pass is four? I'd have no problem and could support moving that. Because my family, I had four kids, me and my wife. So if all of us went, it was six. I'd have no problem moving it up to that, something like that, if that's really the problem. I was just thinking.

The 350 by four, by how many days are you open?

Yeah.

I'm just thinking. I'm right there with you. I'm thinking a sale because I know with subscription model stuff, it's like if you buy the whole year, you get a discount, right? But sometimes they'll run like a Black Friday special type thing, and so maybe there's a way that we could at the beginning of the season say, if you buy it right now,

Early bird pass?

Early bird pass. If you buy it right now, it's $100 off, and then that is going to... it's going to tempt people that, well, maybe it's not something that I would buy normally because it's too expensive, but if I buy it now, it's cheaper, and then you're splitting the difference.

If we had to close the pool at all this year, I know in the past we've had some hot days that we've had to close because the pool deck was too hot or shortages of lifeguards. No problems like that.

Not yet. What degrees do you...

what degree would you have to close it if it was too hot in texas i know that that was one of the things people were complaining about because in the past we have had to close because of staffing issues or staffing things that's a different thing but we haven't had that issue

I think that's important too to note that that was part of the reason why we drove the increase was because the lifeguards had said that if you cut it back they're not going to return because the hours they needed the hours so I think it's I don't think reducing the fee is an option.

Somebody remind me when was that pool built? From the IT department.

Mayor? I think 2006, 2007. Yeah, 2006.

Was it? Okay.

When was it?

He said six or seven. I was thinking seven. So it's almost 20 years old. Yeah. It is, yeah.

It's right at 20, so. OK. All right. We've had good discussion. Anything else on recreation? Or this is community services, sorry. Anything else here? We've got some thoughts. All right, let's go to library. Ellen's here waiting patiently. Maybe not patiently.

I don't think we should close the library. She moved the clock so that it would go faster. We traveled in time.

This is our first budget that we've had the new library open, isn't it?

Son of a gun.

You haven't stopped by during the week summer reading program, but it's hopping like usual. We've also managed to attract a roving scooter gang of 12 to 15-year-olds. They like to do wheelies and tricks. So anyway, they haven't harmed anyone yet, to my knowledge. They do a drop-by through the facility. They did scoot through the facility, which we don't condone.

Not surprising.

That's probably going to impress the ladies. Hey, guess what I did?

ellen you're here anything you want to add on your uh your stuff i don't think i have anything um just that we love our building it's uh like like gabe said it's busy all the time everybody loves it we get all kinds of great comments when people walk in the door they're just like oh It's great. This is the first full year that we've, well, the first year we've been able to plan for the new building. So you'll see, I think the utilities are scary looking and stuff. But yeah, we're just getting settled in and trying to adapt to being over there. I'll answer any questions you have.

Have we got our punch list totally worked off yet?

We're still working on that. Lee's working really hard to finalize, you know, warranty items and stuff like that. I know we've had workmen over there a lot lately just trying to finish all that up. So still working on it, but it takes a while.

One comment I shared with Lee, my daughter's son continues to be a preschool teacher, getting fold-down steps for the bathrooms for the children.

Ah, yes. I've seen the emails on that. Yeah, we can look into that.

Yeah, we're looking at that. We're also looking at replacing some of the bathroom fixtures themselves that we've had some issues with. In the coming months, we should be able to finish up the playground equipment on the back side and hopefully get a backup generator installed. We're also looking at... If there's any complaints about anything that we get on a regular basis, it's the landscaping. So I'm looking at getting basically an extended warranty from a landscaping company that put that stuff in to extend a maintenance contract for this coming year and see how that works. But other than that, we're getting, like Ellen said, we're getting all the warranty issues wrapped up here shortly and should be in good shape.

So did they come in and fix the landscaping issues?

Well, we've been able to maintain them between our public works folks and the landscaping company.

So let me let me assist we got a warranty.