Planning & Zoning Commission - workshop

All right. Good morning. We're going to go ahead and open this budget workshop the second day. So I hope we have a lot of people watching. And Mr. Benton.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're back for day two. And before I get started with some information, I'm going to turn it over to Madam Clerk and allow her to do roll call.

Mayor Jones.

Here.

Vice Mayor McPartland.

Here.

Council member Dodd. Here. Council member Nunn. Here. Council member Matthews. Present.

All right, so here we are this morning. Just to give you all a quick little rundown of how today's gonna happen. This morning, we're obviously starting at 9 a.m. We're gonna have facilities, parks, and cemetery. We will then go into the MIS department. Then we'll go into the building department. We have kind of a hard deadline of stopping at 11 a.m. this morning due to some prior commitments. Then we'll come back at one o'clock. We'll do the airport. then we'll have City Council City Clerk and City Attorney and then at 2 p.m. we'll start roads garage stormwater and then the final thing we'll discuss today is I'm prepared I have it completed the proposal for the two positions officer positions from the police department that we discussed at the end of day yesterday so that's ready to go it's prepared I'll have that document printed and ready for you all this afternoon and and we'll discuss that after we get done with roads, garage, and stormwater. So now I'm going to turn it over to Richard to let him get started, and we'll start with facilities.

Good morning, everyone. Facilities, page 81 of your packet. We'll go over this year's accomplishments first. We completed the replacement of the police department roof. That was... fairly on time and under budget. We painted upgraded riverfront restrooms. And then we analyzed the LED and chiller conversions, which we'll talk about in more detail in a minute. But we did that analysis this year. So our goals for this upcoming year are to design and permit the chiller unit. a complete LED conversion. That's something that you approved the other night and actually the company is on site today starting the audit. And then replace the gutter system at the old city hall. It's not your typical gutter system. It's more of a bunch of collection boxes and they're leaking and it's creating issues inside. So we need to take care of that. As far as our general operating personnel services, we had a slight decrease. We had a longtime employee that retired last year, so that resulted in somewhat of an increase. Operating expenses, I'm sorry, of a decrease. Operating expenses, we had a decrease. We didn't have as many building repairs and we don't anticipate because we do have new systems coming on or already in place that will allow us to reduce building repairs. And then we do have a capital outlay increase for door hardware, specifically for the doors and council chambers. And here at city hall, there's a few more that we need to update to make them function properly. Yes, external, external doors.

As part of that, are you talking about putting an automatic opening on one of the, one of the council doors? Are you going to continue to run them through?

Uh, we'll continue to route them through the main area there with the automatic. That's a little bit more detailed than just having what we have in the budget.

Okay. Um, We are fully staffed in facilities. We'll move on down to capital outlay. We talked about the city hall door hardware. Now we're getting into HVAC replacements, which kind of leads into the discussion about chiller units and where we need to go with that. We have budgeted for the last several years, 20 to $30,000 a year for AC replacements. That's not lasting. It's not covering the issues that we're encountering. For example, since Friday, so six days ago, we've had to spend $25,000, not for AC replacements, but for part replacements, fans, motors, those type of things. these units that we're replacing, uh, and I'll, I'll backtrack a second. We have 18 units between these two facilities, 18 individual units that doesn't include the air handlers. That's just the actual, um, uh, air conditioners. Some of them are 10 years old and we do have some that are two or three years old. Um, so we need to, uh, seriously look at converting to a chiller system, which, um, We had analyzed last year, and we had a train had actually come in and done analysis of chiller units, the LED conversion, several things within the city, and if we went that way, what we could save, and that kind of thing. So with the 18 units that we have, and some of them are 10 years and older, and some of them a few years old, converting to a chiller unit, and the chiller unit would have redundancy. So if the chiller unit went down, we wouldn't be without air. We're anticipating about a $2.5 million cost. But that needs to be designed and permitted. We're basing that on the analysis from Trane. But with that $2.5 million, just in energy alone, we save $14,000 a month. between the police department and this facility, we're spending almost $100,000 a year in electrical cost. Now that's lighting, AC, whatever's powered. But just to convert to a children unit and energy loans of about a $14,000 savings. That doesn't include maintenance, replacement cost, those type of things that we're funding either out of CIP are out of our operating budget. So, you know, we think it's really important that we look seriously at the chiller unit conversion and, you know, the sooner we begin design and permitting, the sooner we can do a conversion and start positively affecting the Avaloran budget.

Question on that, where would the, because typically chiller units are pretty large, ground-based, where would they put that?

Where we initially looked, and again, based on the engineering, is where the dumpster is.

Okay.

We could put the dumpster anywhere. Okay. And we can put the chiller unit anywhere, but closer to the source, the more cost-effective.

Well, the more asphalt you have to tear up, the more cost it adds, so that would actually help reduce the cost of putting it in. Okay.

All right. So again, we strongly believe in the need for this chiller unit. There's been discussions even before I got here about the need to convert. And we're at the point where I believe it's critical that we do that conversion. So what we have in the budget is $1.25 million for 26-27 and $1.25 million for 27-28 is what our request is. from discretionary sales tax.

What was that monthly power savings? 14,000 a month. Now keep in mind, that's just these two buildings, right?

We are also going to, uh, there is some evaluation about including the OC hall, the art club and the senior center in it, but their lights aren't on, you know, your lights need to be on or your H H vac needs to be on a lot to have that, uh, big of an impact. And our H vac is on quite a bit. Um, So there may be some additional savings, but anticipated 14,000 in energy and then maintenance and replacement costs and that kind of stuff.

Do we currently have our own AC techs on staff?

We are able to, no, we don't, but we're able to change filters.

But no, right. Simple stuff, but no maintenance. So we're still having to go out for maintenance. So that wouldn't change. That would change in the technology. We'd still have a maintenance contract. Okay.

But again, we, since last Friday, we've written POs for $25,000 for it.

You know, even at $18,000 a month, that's got an 11- to 12-year payback on the $2.5 million. And then within seven years or so, you're going to be right back into spending probably another $500,000 to maintain and refurbish the chiller units. So it's going to push that out to 14, 15, 16, 17 years. Sometimes I wonder whether an investment that has a long-term payback like that is – worth the short-term impact of the dollars. I mean, I personally think that's something we need to strongly look at.

The analysis had an 11-year payback. Is that what they were?

Well, at 18 grand a month, it's almost 12 years. And that's assuming that you don't have to spend any money on the chiller units for 12 years. And, you know... I mean, I guess... It's like everything you look at. I mean, there's... There's an advantage and a disadvantage. And to us right now within the city, the disadvantage is 2026-27 expenditures, not the advantage. And so to look at spending a million and a half dollars in 26-27 and another million and a half in 27-28 or committing to do that is the disadvantage that makes me think that It's not something that has to be done right now because the overall payback that is long enough term. So that's just my two cents worth.

What has been the maintenance costs for like the past five years?

Could you, so I'll give you a perfect example. Okay. And this happens consistently every summer since I've ever worked in city hall for eight years. Um, our units go out here just last week, uh, last Thursday that the entire downstairs, if you were in the building, it went out, it was out. All of downstairs was out. Everything except for this room was out. They got that back up and running, I think, late on Friday with repairs that I don't believe are included in that $25,000. I think that was before. Then Monday, upstairs went out. So this week, Monday, upstairs was out. They got it repaired, I think, late Tuesday. Downstairs went out again. so um and they're having to replace um coals um the compressor we have to bring a crane in so that's where the 25 000 just in the last week or so and this consistently happens throughout the year not every month not every two months but it's consistently every summer it happens and once or twice in the year that it happens and the delays are typically longer than this time i can tell you last summer and two summers ago downstairs was without AC for almost two months. They were running on temporary units that are in the offices that can't keep up. And that's an additional cost to us to bring those units in. So that has been taking place historically here. And that's why we're looking at the chiller unit. If not, we've got to replace every single unit that's on the rooftop here. I'm just gonna be honest.

What's the cost to replace any existing units? It depends on the size of the unit. I mean, we need that as a comparison. In my opinion, we need that as a comparison because, let's be honest, with all the units, you're probably talking, what, a million and a half, two million to do that. I know we can't guesstimate that, but they're not cheap, and once again, you've got to get a crane to do them all. I mean, I think that's got to be part of this discussion. If they need to be replaced and the chiller seems like a better option because it's it's cheaper on power than we need to understand the full replacement cost of what we're paying for maintenance. Now, I think that would help with this discussion because if we're just going on power alone, like, like council member Dodd said, that's an 11, 12 year payback. That that's not, that's not acceptable for the answer. So, but if we gotta replace all those units, then yeah, if, if we can spend a little bit more for a better unit, that's cheaper than let's go that direction. If that's what makes sense financially.

Well, and I know for instance, like this unit in here in, in, in the council chambers, It's only running on half of its ability because half of it's out. Now, if that half goes down, we're out in the chambers as well. That's currently, they are working to get the parts in. We've actually gotten Mid-State Mechanical has become our vendor to use for issues with our large ACs, our commercial AC units. They've been able to get parts quicker, but I can tell you in the past, it went directly through train because they come in and do our PMs every year and they handle In the past, they handled all of our repairs. We were waiting six to eight weeks to get parts because they were having to make them. And where Mid-State Mechanical has been lucky to be able to get us parts quicker, that's our concern. I can tell you, Trane, when they came in, they were the ones that recommended a chiller unit for both PD and City Hall. But we can work to get pricing on the units and bring that back to you all in the future. But it's one of two things. We've either got to replace all the units or we do a chiller unit.

I don't think we have an alternative option to not do anything. I just think we need those numbers to make this real discussion. I totally agree. That makes more sense. If you're going to replace both and the costs are similar, even if it's a little bit more than, you know, if it's, let's say it's half of the cost of doing the chiller, you know, then that puts it to a five-year payoff. And that's probably a willing option.

willing acceptable number just in my opinion yeah I think we should obviously I'd like to see the numbers on what it's going to cost to replace them as they are now as well so before we go forward with doing anything on this and as far as this budget's concerned it would be appropriate in my mind to put in the 26 27 cycle the cost I actually do a detailed design comparison and so forth and anticipate that in the 27 28 28 29 cycle you'll install the chillers um Because once again, we're not talking about, I'm not talking about whether chiller's the right way to go or not. I mean, I'm not an air conditioning expert, and it doesn't surprise me that it's probably an appropriate way to do it. Probably should have been done when they built the buildings. But the question is that this is the budget cycle we're looking at. And we're talking about committing $1.25 million in this budget cycle to do something that we may not have all the information we need to make that decision. And I'll tell you, government's government. Once you commit money in a budget cycle, it's confounded hard not to spend it. Okay? And my preference is that we put some money in this budget cycle to do the analysis and the work that needs to be done and then anticipate that we'll begin the installation during the 27-28 budget cycle and do the cut show. I don't know, for example, if you have a unit that's down and the contractor tells you it's going to take six weeks to get the parts if they can't get a replacement unit in a week they're not a good contractor they're not the people to have doing your work possibly because they've got warehouses of them sitting right in any river county so maybe the decision needs to be i'm not going to repair it i'm going to replace it right now okay so there are options that need to possibly be looked at i mean that's what you would do at your house If a guy comes into your house and says your air conditioning unit needs to be replaced, it's going to take six weeks to get the parts, you'd say, no, no, put a new one in. What's the difference in cost? Put a new one in. So there may be options to this, but I would feel more comfortable if we put less money in this current budget aimed at moving forward with that process and anticipate that we're going to spend the large funds later. We're going to know a lot more.

So just a reminder, this is discretionary sales tax funding. It's not general fund dollars. And there is no guarantee that legislature is ever going to change their dynamic on DST. Likewise, I don't know what projects are going to come next year. We may have to do more paving. So I would prefer to keep the funding here, get the direction from council that we're to go forward with We'll go ahead and work with Trane and other vendors and try to get some numbers prior to October 1st. But the direction is for us not to go with construction of anything, but the funding is there once we make the decision and we can move forward.

Brian, once you allocate funding, government gets spent.

I don't agree with that. We return dollars every year. All right. So that's fine. You guys, that's fine with me.

Okay. So my last input on this is you obviously have it in the budget. You're obviously replacing units. We've got units down, as you said, right now. I, my concern is I don't think you think we can wait two years to do this.

I mean, I'll be honest, something I would recommend it's hot in here. Now in council chambers, walk around and don't believe my word. Ask the staff how often the AC units go out and how much of a challenge it is for them. I can tell you last Thursday and Friday, I had to, I gave staff the authority to wear shorts, wear comfortable clothing because it was really hot in every single office and downstairs. And if we continue to push this off, we're just going to continue to have these times when the AC goes out.

If the funding is there, what's the time frame to do the work?

Well, we would have to do the engineering first. To go to construction, I would say at least nine months to 12 months.

To start construction, nine to 12 months?

Yes. And I can tell you, I know people, and it's not just us that are having delays on getting parts for for large units. I know at least three places within the area that have a similar problem with their air conditioning. There's a problem with parts.

And I have a good real-time example. The AC units for the server room. Server room is about the size of this table. Went out. We went out. We got an engineer to draw up the plans and went out to bid. Again, this is about the size of this table, $235,000. So a chiller unit's not going to cover that.

That's just no wonder I want to get out of this business.

Yep. So I just think come back with the numbers. So I think they can inform the decision between the two. The power savings is huge. So if we're looking at like or close to like numbers and the payoff is a little better, I don't think anybody would have a problem moving forward with that.

From what I just heard, we're looking at, the end of the 26, 27 budget cycle before you actually come in and ask for money. So I'm not uncomfortable with that. My concern is the 26, 27 budget cycle.

Yeah. And I can, I give you, I'll tell you this and I'll tell you this all the time. We won't spend the money. I'm not going to spend it until you all give us the authority. I just want to have it there in case the, the research and the data shows that you all say, yes, go forward with it. Then I don't have to wait until 27, 28, and try to squeeze $2 million out of 27, 28 when I could have already had a portion of that included in 26, 27. That's why we split it over two years.

All right. Well, it sounds like you have a consensus with that, right? Go forward. Yes. Now, next, Richard.

We can go through the facilities line item. You know, the big line item in the facilities is the janitorial services. That's for all the facilities in the city. And we are out to bid right now for a new contract. I think bids are due next week. And we budget $163,000 a year to cover all the facilities. Some of those facilities, like the PD, are cleaned seven days a week. The restrooms and parks are cleaned seven days a week. Um, so there's some that are five days a week, some seven days a week, uh, the community center, because it is so busy as clean seven days a week. So, uh, that's, that's a big, uh, element of, of the, uh, facilities operating.

I want to address it now. So we don't go further. Uh, that's 167,000. I lost 163 and it would take how many people to, uh, clean the facilities.

I believe the contractor now has six.

Has six people. So even if we were able to do that with three people, a maintenance worker one is a $45,000 to a $72,000 pay range. So let's take the low end. Let's just say we're going to pay the minimum wage for that at $45,000 times three is basically roughly $145,000 or $140,000 a year. And we're still not covering the amount of people it would take to do it, which is why this is going out to contract, just making a point for people to say, oh, my God, we're paying that for someone to clean toilets. Well, employees aren't working for $45,000 because they have benefits. So we would be spending three times this to have six employees to be able to do the job they're doing for $167,000. I just want to make that point when people say we're wasting money, we're not spending money properly. Us contracting this out is saving the city money.

And just, you know, it's way more than just cleaning toilets.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, no, I just use it because that's how people look at it.

Right.

I mean, so I want to put it in terms that everybody understands. We would have to spend at least twice that to hire the people to be able to do that job.

Does this also include their supplies?

No, we provide the paper goods.

Oh, so we provide that. So that's not included in these numbers. No, it's down the way a little bit. The paper goods?

Are the paper goods part of that cleaning supplies? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I suggest the people they've gone up in price a lot. Yeah, no. Right. Yeah.

But we do it that way so we can control the inventory. We, we provide all that to them when they need it and all that kind of stuff. But in the, in the, uh, facilities of the contracted services area, there are about, um, 20 some odd service contracts in there. Everything from alarms, alarm monitoring, um, uh, inspections, of certain, uh, equipment that we have in the buildings, like the fire, uh, retardant section. There's a special one over at public works that has to be, uh, inspected, uh, fire extinguisher services. Um, so all those types of things are included in this, uh, area of the, uh, facilities budget. Then we have pest control, um, Buildings is a large line item. This is funds we use to maintain anything that goes on with any building in the city, whether it be here, PD, community center, public works, any of the facilities that we maintain, that's the line item we use to cover materials and services that we may need to fix something. Then we have water and sewer, electrical, rents and leases is in the facilities for public works compound.

And the storage shed.

Yeah, the public works compound and we have a facilities storage facility at the airport. So that's all included in there. Operating equipment, you know, if you recall a couple years ago, we installed AEDs at all the parks and facilities. That's where we buy the batteries, the replacement parts, the items that go in the AEDs. That's where we maintain our bucket truck from there. Not the motor, not the mechanical part of it, but the bucket part of it. Departmental supplies. Again, cleaning supplies or the paper goods that are used in the facilities. small tools, that's pretty self-explanatory. Gas and oil, the facilities department has four vehicles plus equipment that runs off of gas and oil, so that's where all that comes from.

I don't see a number change there. Is the price of fuel not calculated into that? We have ours because of the tanks that we have over at the airport.

We don't pay retail. Ours has gone up, but not like it has on the retail side. I didn't adjust that not knowing where we're going to be come October, I just left it like it was instead of increasing it. Now, facilities doesn't put the miles on their vehicles like the parks guys do. Plus, they don't have the other equipment that requires gas and oil. And they don't have the number of pieces of equipment either. So I was comfortable in leaving it where it was. We have uniforms, safety equipment. That's those PP&E stuff, the goggles and things like that, the ear plugs or ear muffs that they wear and that kind of stuff. We don't have anything in memberships and dues. Training and education, we left some in there because we do – Uh, all the backflow preventers and those types of things, our guys maintain, so they have to be certified to do that. So we left some money in there for, for their certifications. And then, um, the, uh, the, uh, $10,000 for the doors. So that's our facilities budget.

Uh, any questions on facility, any more questions on facilities before we go to parts and rec.

Parks and Rec it is. All right. Richard.

So Parks and Recreation, our accomplishments this year were the fully implemented See My Legacy program and sponsorship program. We added two 5K races, completed one year of riverfront grounds maintenance. If you recall, we took that over from a CRA was paying a contractor to do it. We took it over. We produced our first Kids Fest, which was very successful. And then we received several grants, but the one for the Zimbler purchase was one of significance. Our goals for 27 is complete the dredging of Main Street boat ramp in Swing and Bench Park. Those bids opened last Thursday. We haven't gotten an analysis yet of where we are with price, but we have three different funding sources to get that completed. So I anticipate that work to be done, completed by early in 2027. Close on the Zimbala purchase. We're in our due diligence as far as boundary surveys and those types of things right now. So that should, at least an agreement should be prepared here shortly. Increase sponsorships by 25%. we have a very aggressive sponsorship program. Now, uh, Lisa Phillips, our recreation coordinator started that when she first came on about a year and a half ago, uh, we've raised about $35,000 over that course to, um, um, produce special events and that type of thing. So we've been able to eliminate that from the, from our average Lauren budget. Um, We've just this week started our re-upping of sponsors. We have about 10 or 12 that have come on board. So that's been a very successful program, but we want to increase it by 25%. And then we want to look at transitioning some of our U.S. medians to a more native ground cover. There's nothing more dangerous than whether it be parks and recreation or public works, roads and bridge, than maintaining medians.

Is the state going to cover most of that?

No, sir. That's all us. But we're looking at it. We may test some plans.

They pay us to maintain those right now, right? No? They don't pay us to cut that or anything?

No, sir. Oh, I thought they were responsible for the median size and no?

No. That's all us.

At one point in time, kind of maybe goes along with the medium thing, but at one point in time, this was, I guess, when Al Minner was here. We took over the responsibility for a strip of the medium around certain streets on 512, Fleming and so forth. And they were planted... Sprinkler Systems put in, Wells dug, and then I think it was under Joe Griffin, he decided he didn't like them, so he just quit maintaining them, let it all die. 512 looks like garbage sometimes, coming down through there. First of all, the county won't cut the grass. I don't know what the cost would be if the city was to say to the county, we don't need you anymore, but that's kind of like a lot of things we don't need them for, because they won't cut the grass. Right now it looks terrible. But it looks really bad coming down 512. I've had individuals coming into town, like the person I'm meeting with at 11 o'clock. Last time he was here, he said, I drove down 512 and it looks like crap. That reflects on the city. That is actually the entry point, not US 1. That's the entry point to the city. And it reflects very badly on the city. And it might be appropriate for us to think about what we might be able to do with that. I mean, at least when the vegetation and the, and the plants were around those interchanges, it looked like there was an attempt to do something other than not cut the grass. And we do cut the grass on those pieces. It's pretty well maintained. And there was wells dug, so there is water there for sprinkler systems. Whether those wells were abandoned, I have no idea. But it might be appropriate for us to think about doing something with that. I know I always talk about not spending money, and this is spending money, but when somebody comes into town who is one of the leaders within the regional area and tells me that 512 looks like crap, it's time for the city to think about that.

Yeah, and I will state that I had a conversation with Lee at the end of last week or earlier this week and requested that he contact the county and ask them to reassess their contractor that they're using for 512. because it is historically and i've been tracking it they cut up to roseland road and then every other cut they come past roseland road so i don't know if that's in their contract on purpose or if it's the contractor not doing it um he he did reach out to them they said that there was a miscommunication with the contractor however they still haven't been here to cut So I'll follow up with him again on that, but we do, we maintain around the intersections for the majority of intersections along there. There's a couple we don't do, but the majority of them we do. And you're correct. I know when I started here eight years ago, all of the parts for the irrigation pumps and everything had already kind of been rated by as they were instructed to use parts from the 512 irrigation to repair other irrigation and parks. So I don't know if the whales were abandoned or capped at that time, but I know that the infrastructure for irrigation is no longer existent there. Um, but that's something we can discuss. We can look at as we go forward, um, and see what we can do along that area. Cause I agree with you. Um, but then it just comes down to a maintenance and maintaining it situation.

I mean, it might not be inappropriate to try to approach the county on saying what kind of a deal can we work for us to take over the maintenance of that grass area on five 12. Yeah. I mean, if they're willing to say we're paying a contractor X dollars and we'll give you that and you do it, then that's a nit to them. It's a financial wash to them. We might be able to do it for that. I don't know. I don't know what your experience is, for example, in the parks when we took over the grass maintenance and so forth in the parks, whether it's turned out to what the cost ratio was versus the contract versus us doing it. I don't know what your experience is on that, but it might not be that big a deal for us to think about doing something like that.

Well, what we experienced along the riverfront was a great savings for us to take it over. We were having to do some stuff anyway that the contractor was either not taking very seriously or not doing very well. Now the fact that we're 100% responsible for it, it's worked out very well.

I mean, sometimes taking pride in the city is an important thing. And 512 is a good example of maybe us not doing that.

No, I don't disagree with the mowing on 512. So that's something we can take a look at, and we'll have the discussion with them.

So page 87, the Parks, Recreation, and Operating Budget. Personal Health Services is going up over last year, mainly because we were completely... staffed. We do have one open position now that's frozen, but it is what it is. Operating expenses are slightly down because, like I mentioned, we raised enough money that we could do away with our Avalor budget for special events, and then we reduced some of our contract services based on trends. And then the increase in capital, the $20,000 was to replace the doors on the restrooms. We typically use metal doors. I mean, wood doors wouldn't last. Fiberglass doesn't seem to last. So we pretty much have to use metal. They do last longer, but when they go, they get rusted, they go quickly. So it's to replace many of those. More cap... we just talked about the, the parks doors, um, park improvements. We keep a budget of 20,000 from rec impact fees for those things that come up in parks that weren't anticipated or, and we know we work closely with the parks and recreation advisory board on this. If there's something that they see because they're there, they have a, they're in the parks a lot and they have a different set of eyes than we do, um, that we can address those things. For example, I think it was Kildare Park. They suggested a bench and a picnic table. Well, that's where we funded that out of. Parks, fence replacements. There are several parks in the system that fencing is rotting because it's old and it's wooden and some of it takes a beating. So we think it's important to maintain a nice border around parks. So that's why we want to be aggressive and replace those park fencing. Usually we have some money in for playground improvements, but we've been very We've caught up with that. So we do have some money in out years But our playground improvements are basically caught up with right now the when we redo Riverview playground that'll be completely caught up Schumann Park court upgrades. I don't know if you've been to Schumann Park the tennis court surfaces are in need of resurfacing the fencing has some issues the gates have issues and The lights are, you know, we had a lighting study done about six months ago, and the gentleman that did the lighting study said, I've never seen such bad lighting than I'd have at these courts. So that's our priority is to get Schumann lights.

What was the reference to the bad lights? Were they just the way they shine? Just the age.

The materials, the age? The age, and it was the age. They're old, old technologies.

are they in possibility of falling down and hurting someone? They're not structurally bad.

They're just, they've, they're at their end of life for lumens and, and putting out lights. So we're going to convert to led and we're going to add, um, controls. Now, some of the lights they're under on controls and some are not. So after we do our conversion, everything will be controlled. So you can't go at two o'clock in the morning and turn the lights on. Um, Or at 10 o'clock at night, you won't be able to turn the lights on at all. They'll be controlled, like we do at the ball fields at Barber Street and the courts at Barber Street, that type of stuff.

I wish to go into a slightly different direction on this. Our parks close at dusk, most of them. That park there closes at dusk. Are the tennis courts really used at night?

They are.

I go by there a lot.

During the dark hours they are? Oh, yeah. It needs lights. If you're going to have courts, because there's basketball courts there too, it needs to be lit.

Yeah, I go by that park a lot, and there's people there quite a lot. Now, the question in my mind is I don't see enough tennis players. This is like the last year, year and a half. As tennis players migrate to pickleball, I don't see as much tennis play there as I used to. There's the whole set of courts, I don't know the direction, but away from the intersection of Schumann. There's a whole set of courts back there that don't seem to have much tennis play or fall on them. Have we thought about, as part of this process, while you're resurfacing, converting those to pickleball courts? They are already.

converted and we'll maintain that conversion.

I haven't seen any pickleball players on there, so it's surprising. I just don't see them, I guess.

So they're multi-use courts?

We've got basketball, tennis, and pickleball, and there's a my understanding is I haven't seen them yet, a hockey, roller hockey group that uses a facility.

And the Marty Fish Foundation uses those courts quite a bit for free instruction for youth.

Yeah, there's a kids group in there that goes, and I see a lot of people play on the The court's closest to the four-way stop intersection. I see a lot of play on that. And kids in there, I see a whole lesson thing set up with kids in that court. So I didn't realize you'd convert a part of those to pickleball.

Two of them. Okay. So we progress on with capital. We've got the Riverview Park master plan funds. We're Still on the lighting issue, the overall sports lighting retrofit. Again, we had this analysis done, and Barber Street is going to be in need of new lighting, and it will be LED. They have the controls already in place, and they function well, but they're at that point of some of them are still under warranty, but by the time we get to do this, everything will be out of warranty. So we'll need to look at doing a conversion to LED.

And can I add one thing real quick, Richard? So historically in the city we have used Musco lighting. They're the premier sports lighting, and that's basically what we have in a lot of areas. What we're going to do with the Schumann tennis court lighting upgrade is we are going to go with a different company. that's substantially cheaper. They actually, I think, did the lighting at Hard Rock Stadium. They've done in North County, Palm Beach County, and Palm Beach Gardens. They have a large regional park. They did the lighting there. but it is substantially cheaper than Moscow. I mean, to the tune of somewhere in 30 to 40% of the total cost of Moscow. So you're seeing about a 60, 50, 60% decrease in cost. So I think one of the things, and Richard had originally asked the sports lighting in this year, but I want to see these lights in action. I've seen them elsewhere, but I want to see them in Sebastian. And so we kind of want to install them at the tennis courts, see how they operate for a year. before we when we go out to bid for the sports lighting that way we have something to reference and and you all can see them in action in the city as well compared to musco and obviously we're looking to convert everything led but i think that that 2.3 number could see a substantial reduction if we were to be successful with another lighting sports lighting vendor

You're talking about the fixtures themselves. Yes. Manufacturer. So within your bidding process, you'll specify those are the fixtures that you want bid.

Well, we'll open it up to everybody. Um, but I'm just, I know that, like I said, Moscow is kind of the premier it's been known. nationwide and they are really good product. They have a really good control mechanism. It's very easy to do on your phone, really good product. I just think it could be beneficial to us to look at other options. So when that happens, we'll spec out that we want LEDs, but we'll allow any vendor to come in and as long as they provide sports lighting for athletic fields and can meet the Lumen qualifications.

So part of your evaluation criteria might be the type of fixtures that they bid? Yes. That's the way you'll do it?

Okay. And the warranties are important to us too, so that we don't have to, all we have to do is go check a breaker. If the breaker's good, then we call the company and they come do whatever they need to do.

Have we thought about doing a charge on the tennis courts like we do on the pickleball courts at the airport for lights?

We have not. One of the things with that is we would have to install the token system and how that, I think at that point, then we would get really involved in the electrical because at Pickleball, they all have to run every single quadrant that we have of lights runs back to the token machine. So then we would have to more than likely just restructure the entire electrical achievement, which would greatly increase the cost. I think this will be, Currently, it's very interesting if you've ever been over there at night to try to turn the lights on at Schumann for the four tennis courts. It's literally like if you've ever been in a hotel that has like the light in the bathroom ceiling that you turn the timer on. That's what it is at Schumann. You go over and you turn one of those timers and it turns the lights on. But it turns them all on. With the new system, we'll be able to just set the lights on at a certain time and they go off at a certain time. So it's just a very consistent way of doing it, and that's how we handle athletic fields. Actually, the two courts that you're referencing that are pickleball and tennis and the basketball courts are already on a control timer. There must go lighting over there. So they have a control timer that we set to come on at a certain time at sunset every day. and they go off at either nine or 10 o'clock. I don't recall what time they are, but they go off at a certain time every day. So now all the lights would be on the same thing.

And once those current lights go off, if you come in and turn that thing to turn them back on, it takes forever for them to really.

The existing technology.

Existing lights, takes them forever to come back up. If you want to play tennis, you go and turn them on and go have a sandwich and come back. A cup of coffee.

Yeah. Moving on, parks maintenance equipment. $66,000 to replace mowers and other equipment like that. We've, we use the 2000 hour rule. When something approaches 2000 hours, we need to replace it. So the mowers that this, this money would replace are well over 2000 hours already. So we're spending more in maintaining them than, than we almost are getting out of the function itself. So, um, We had the schedule for last year, I believe, and we pushed it out. So we really need to get some new equipment. And then, again, Schumann Park upgrades, different funding source for lights, court, resurfacing court, relining, and fencing repair. And then we may have some extra funds to do some parking lot upgrades if we needed to or playground upgrades if we needed to. And then the out-year Hardy Park grant match. And that's only if we're awarded, but that's what that would be.

So that's not until the 27-28 year? Correct. Okay. There's a lot of conversation about that upgrade on that park.

Yeah, we did have the public meeting. We had 13 folks.

Well, is that sidewalk actually potentially a safety hazard because of the issues related with it? I mean, I've walked it, and there are areas where it bumps up and, you know, somebody could fall. You're talking about the exterior sidewalk? Yeah.

I honestly haven't paid that much attention to that sidewalk. I've been focused more on the interior parts of it.

Yeah, okay.

I think your question probably is the interior sidewalk.

Interior sidewalk I'm talking about, yeah. The one that goes around the park.

Right, yeah. We've recently done some maintenance to that. Okay, so you fixed those potential. We took the roots out that were protruding. We shaved them down.

Not too long ago I walked around that, and that's about the extent of how far I can walk with my back anymore. And it's a really pretty walk around that. It's a nice walk around that. But there was a lot of areas where you could trip if you weren't paying attention.

Okay. Yeah, we just have to be careful. Like that one, it's funny because we have differing classes of walkers slash runners. And so originally at one time we tried to make it kind of a softer surface and do some crushed rock and things. Well, then a certain group didn't like that because it was too. So we kind of got a really consensus on doing the coquina, the harder surface. And that does lend itself a little bit to when roots are protruding or objects come out. Yeah. I think that, you know, the upgrades to the park when we get to that point, if we get the grant will be a really much needed thing at that park. Cause it is one of our most used parks on a daily basis consistently.

So we did solve the safety issue in the sidewalk that the public input was brought up twice. We shaved the roots. Okay. So is that solved the problem? Yes, sir. Okay.

And where the holes filled in, because that's been another where they shaved them. They left the holes.

I hadn't heard that. Yeah. If we could take a look.

I mean, they were just shaved last week.

They've left the big holes and the soft dirt.

Okay. We'll look at that. Just have somebody look at it. Yeah. Thank you.

Moving on to page 89. Uh, just a brief, um, overview of our, of the line item operating budgets, other contracted services. That's things like, um, Whatever we have to pay for the minutes for advisory board, you know, we're doing AI now, but there is a little bit of a cost to that. For our grant writing and monitoring services, that's included in there. And then there's some other like special event related contracts that would come out of that. Pest control for all the facilities. You know, we do have concession stands in Barber Street that require a lot of attention as far as pest control goes. We're not proposing any travel for next year. Our electric cost seems elevated, but that's based on everything that we have functioning today in the parks. So when we start doing the renovations, and especially at Schumann, You'll see that come down quite a bit. Water and sewer, we are diligently trying to become more water smart. Uh, last year we added up, uh, another well here, um, uh, and adding different controls and those types of things, because those are, uh, uh, because we do use potable water in most locations in some locations. That's really, uh, important to do, uh, to take, keep track of, um, Buildings that would be funds to maintain the buildings within parks, the restrooms. We do have a building that part of our parks maintenance operation and concessions. Docks and piers. We kind of bumped that up this year because we're seeing our docks and piers show a lot of wear and tear. So we bumped that up a little bit. Operating equipment, you know, it's whatever the guys need out in the field to do their, what their functions are. Irrigation systems. Up until recently, it was irrigation systems were as finicky as HVAC systems. But they seem to have, the guys seem to have gotten that under control. Grounds maintenance. just those expenses that it, you know, like for this facility, and that's really not ball fields, but it is common areas and those type of things.

Richard, the internet services, I thought everything was dealing with the computers were sent over to MIS. What are these charges?

That would be like for the lightning detection system. Um, and the cameras in the camera program, the camera system.

Yeah. So all of our cameras that we have in parks and the lightning detection system, all of the internet services provided for each of those is included in this. Is MIS maintaining the cameras? Uh, yes. I mean, it's, it's through a, we have a program that they're, they're stored on. Okay. All right.

Uh, fertilizers and chemical supplies, you know, In a typical year, we probably would have increased that based on the way fertilizer prices are going, but we decided to decrease it and just reduce our level of service for fertilization and look at different ways to add nutrients to the soils other than typical fertilizer. Small tools and equipment are the weed eaters and those type of things. We have uniforms, safety equipment. We have 14 guys in parks, so we want to make sure that they have updated safety equipment every year. Dues and memberships, that includes, we do have membership with the Florida Recreation Parks Association, but as far as dues go, we have certified pesticide and fertilizer applicators and those type of things that have to be maintained. Training and education, we do quite a bit of, because we do the medians, we want to do a lot of maintenance of traffic type training so the guys are up to date on safe practices and that type of stuff. And then there's some other infield trainings that we need to have them do so that there's correct operations

operation of the equipment that they have Brian you running pest control through the parks still all the pest control for like the canals and stuff or is that separate so the parks that they stay handle the IPM plan for parks and facilities the stormwater IPM is run through Karen and Lee through currently I saw the email that came through so I afforded the email to Karen Lee this morning and ask them to look into that.

I was just wondering if we were doing stormwater, where the money is. We'll find a separate line item.

Any questions on parks and rec before we move to cemetery?

No, sir. During the survey that was done two years ago, or three years ago now, I guess, of the city, parks and recs were the number one item. And we have a really robust park system in Sebastian, and you guys do a good job maintaining it. And I think it's...

know like something that's important to the citizens and something that we need to absolutely yeah i think it's important to look at the performance measures that are on 81 and 86 i mean facilities takes care of 57 facilities here and as well as you know the parks and everything it's over 400 acres worth of uh maintaining as well as you know five miles of median that they're cutting and everything i mean it's it's a lot that's there people think oh They're only thinking the Barber Street Sports or Schumann Park, and there is so much more that the city is responsible for and, of course, taking great care of.

Yeah. If we were to look at the number of parks or the acreage in parks per capita in the city, we're well ahead of a lot of our neighboring cities and possibly many of our neighboring counties in that. So we have a pretty robust park system. Very much so.

And I would say as far as public restrooms, they're always clean when I've gone in there. I think I've had one complaint in all the years. I mean, you don't get that anywhere else. Maybe we should make them pay toilets.

And the one at the Yacht Club was a nice hotel for a guy for a while.

Yeah, that's the downside of making things nice is some people take advantage of that. Moving on to the cemetery. Uh, some of our accomplishments where we completed design of the new administration building. Uh, we issued a contract for the new administration building, um, that they're in permitting now. So construction there will, um, begin shortly and County sewer. The County has extended the sewer to the cemetery. We will hook it up when we, during the construction process, but that's, it's there for us to hook up to.

Good.

Our 27 goals are complete construction of the building, implement GIS mapping of the website if Ross and GIS has been working on a system so that the public can go to the cemetery map and find a loved one or just there on the map. That's going to take some time, but he has started that process. And then install a second well and split the irrigation. We only have one well. We have 13 acres on a sand, a lot of sand, 13 acres. We, up until six months ago, we were irrigating almost 23 hours a day. If we add the second well, we can greatly reduce the amount of time that we need to irrigate. We've already reduced the time just out of 23 hours a day of irrigation is ridiculous. And we see the downside of that. Even as much rain as we have, the areas of that cemetery are very dry and that kind of stuff. So with the new well, we'll be able to split that and irrigate more efficiently.

Now, you anticipate running the construction of the new building through this year's budget completely? Yes. Even though it's going to be a carryover? Because it's going to go in the next year being built. next budget year being built.

Yeah, so the PO will be issued this year and the funds will just, the remaining PO funds will just carry over to the next fiscal year.

And just anybody who's watching that thinks we're spending money, we sometimes are, but that's coming out of the cemetery trust fund, which the cemetery is actually, it's not considered an enterprise fund. I don't think it's considered enterprise, but cemetery trust fund pays for all of that. And that comes from the sale of plots in the cemetery. Right.

And we'll have a further discussion on that here in a second.

Yeah. And likewise, this building, the old building that was there, I am so glad that that building is gone and we're going to have a new building there for our employees over there at the cemetery. Plus it's going to provide space for folks to come in and look at plots and talk about those things over at the cemetery. So this is going to be a great addition to the cemetery.

So as far as the cemetery operating personnel services, uh, if you recall two years ago, we kind of reorganized, uh, we, we, we had two employees. We still have two, but we don't have a, um, a Sexton. We have, um, ground groundskeeper or maintenance workers, uh, three and one there. Um, so the increase is due to typical salary insurance and, and, and pension cost increases. And then the decreases are just a reduction in some contract services.

that budget is fairly tight anyway because it is coming out of the trust fund and and um so not not a lot of room there yeah and as we get to operate operating the operating budget um just want to jump in here because do you all have any questions on operating because we are tight on time and I want to go have a quick discussion on something potentially coming up in the cemetery regarding funding So anything that jumps out or any questions, obviously you can see the operating on page 93 has reduced from last year. Um, it's a reduction in the budget and no major changes or anything really other than just reduction changes in that. Right. So if you have nothing, okay. So I'm going to kind of start this and then I'll turn it over to Richard on this. So if everybody could just turn the page one 98. So to kind of look at this, this shows the cemetery trust fund projected balance. You can see the typical lot sales and interest income at the top is somewhere in the range of $150,000 on an annual basis is what we bring in. We're replacing the building. We're looking to replace and install a second irrigation pump and well, a dump trailer. So we're pretty much going to have most of our capital things replaced after this year. However, if you look all the way to the bottom, you will see, or sorry, look at the permanent endowment. The permanent endowment is what we're allowed to spend on operating expenses. That's pretty much our full $187,000 that we budget on an annual basis for the cemetery. $187,000. It's not a big budget. It doesn't have a lot to cut. week show that beginning this year after fiscal year 26 27 we're only going to have a balance of thirteen hundred dollars then we have our capital which is below that which receives a percentage, and Richard will share this with you, but every single lot that's sold gets split per the ordinance, split between permanent endowment, which is maintenance, and non-endowed, which is capital. We're going heavy in capital continuing, and not to say we're not going to have any capital expenses in the future, because we could have some columbarium niches or things such as that, but I think our bigger need is going to be funding the permanent endowment for the maintenance side of that, because if not, that then is going to have to come out of general fund. Cause we have to maintain the cemetery. We don't have an option. Um, so we've got kind of two things and I'll turn it over to Richard. We're going to bring it back later, later before the end of this fiscal year to look at adjusting rates, but we're also going to come back and ask you all to adjust how we allocate those rates into the funds at the cemetery. So Richard, can you provide them details on how the fund is currently set up?

So in the ordinance, um, Section 34-2 is a trust fund. So it talks about a cemetery trust fund established and administered by the finance director, the permanent endowment. A permanent endowment with a minimum amount of $375,000. It doesn't give a percentage. It says we have to maintain a minimum amount of $375,000. Established proceeds will be used for sole purpose of providing funding for operations and maintenance of the cemetery. Section C then talks about the proceeds from the sale of the interment sites and cemeteries shall be deposited in the trust fund One half of the deposit Shall be added to the permanent endowment that where we have to maintain to 375 and the other half go into another trust fund that is used for plotting acquisition watering system installation and basically infrastructure of the cemetery capital. Funds in the cemetery trust funds shall not be used for any purpose other than stated in B and C above and shall be invested in accordance with the city's investment policy. As a part of the consideration of the purchase of internment sites, the city obligates itself to use the proceeds of such sales for no other purpose other than stated in this section. So what we'll plan on doing is coming back to you to adjust that language. Uh, like Mr. Benton said, so that we can, um, use maybe the trust fund is one versus two separate pieces. Uh, at the same time, we're going to recommend increasing fees, but, um, uh, that's going to be the gist of our,

uh, ask is to adjust the language in the trust fund so that we get, you're going to ask, you're going to ask that we combine the operational and the capital expense funds into a single fund.

Well, we've got to continue to discuss that. I, my personal opinion is we still keep it separate. However, we now a larger percentage of every purchase needs to go into the, into the maintenance fund, which is a permanent fund. Um, Right now we're splitting it and I don't, you know, and that's kind of not, it's not working cause we're, we're not only bringing in like annual revenues this year. If you, I know if you look up top, but annual revenues in the permanent endowment, this current fiscal year was $57,000 that we will. So we will, we'll also request the transfer transfer, um, of funds, but that's where. We kind of will transfer some from capital, but then I think more of like a 75-25 or an 80-20 split because capital is going to have funds and, you know, capital projects out there at the cemetery that are large or few and far between. This building will never have to be done again as long as any of us are ever here. So in the wells, we're building a second well, which will help us facilitate the first one. Not to say we won't have the need to replace some irrigation pumps and things like that. That's going to happen, but those are a lot less costly than what we're looking at from expanding.

Would that not be done through the maintenance side of the permanent endowment? I mean, to me, in the cemetery, the cost is going to be maintaining the roadway, cutting the grass, doing that kind of stuff, that's pretty much all permanent endowment.

That's all permanent endowment.

Yeah. So if you were to move a larger percentage of the revenue into permanent endowment, which is what I think I'm hearing you say that you're going to do, I don't have any issue with that at all. And I personally don't have any issue with raising the prices of the plots in order to – because the cemetery has to maintain itself. And, I mean, we're looking here on this particular cycle, we're looking at increasing the non-endowed, balance pretty dramatically over the next seven years or so. Just shifting that transfer would make a lot of sense.

How long until we think we're full at that cemetery?

We've got that whole new section over there. We haven't even really touched that. new section and we've got substantial you know time before that ever happens based on historical trends now obviously you know we saw a big boost during covid of of of people you know coming to our cemetery and um but i think that's kind of slowed back down and we've normalized back out a little bit so it might be worth thinking about setting up a third fund long-term maintenance

Because there is going to be a point, and it might be 10 years from now, but there is going to be a point in which you're not receiving revenue from selling plots or you're receiving a very small amount. That doesn't change the fact you've got to cut the grass, you've got to maintain the road, you've got to irrigate the grass, you've got to do all that kind of stuff. It might be worth thinking about building a reserve for that particular purpose that's separate from the capital fund fund.

or we're separate from the maintenance side of the permanent endowment yeah and i and our hope is that we build enough on the permanent side to kind of start to cover that we should start to see excess building up as we increase rates because the the you can look the budget isn't going to drastically increase it's going to nominally increase on an annual basis or hold pretty steady there isn't a lot there that's expense wise that that they could even adjust numbers so you'll see that the capital is what hits us but then you know we can We've gotten most of that capital out of the way with now. I think now it really comes down to we've got to be able to fund the operation and maintenance on a daily basis.

You're probably looking more like an 80-20 then.

I would think so. We'll go run the numbers. We've got to identify the fee that we want to charge. We're obviously going to do a quick study of other areas to make sure we're not completely out of the ballpark, which I don't think we're going to be. We'll address that and then we'll determine what the best ratio of the of the percentage it's going to be.

That's a good idea. That's good. I like having that second pump in there too because that's going to save a lot of water. We just waste a lot of water over there running them almost, what, 23 hours a day or something?

We're down to about 18 now, but still it's a lot.

Just wanted to be open and transparent that I was going to come to you all and show you the current fiscal status of the cemetery. Any other questions on the cemetery? No.

No, we're going to take a, who do we have up next?

We've got MIS next.

And then we're going to take a 10 minute and then we're going to have MIS. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Dodd, go get your coffee.

Thank you, sir.

All right, we're back in session. Mr. Benton, what do we have?

All right, thank you, sir. We're going to go to MIS, and I've got Barb here to discuss her budget. Thank you.

What page are we on?

Sorry, page 38. 38?

Good morning.

Before I start, I want to give a full picture to the public and the council of other things that MIS does that are not necessarily reflected in this page, but they do affect the personnel which we are currently looking at as The personnel is a large portion of the MIS budget. And I want to state that the MIS does a lot of behind the scenes stuff to try to not only maximize the value for the city, but to also provide public services that they take for granted, that they may not always realize that it's the IT department doing. We repurpose a lot of existing hardware whenever possible to offset some of the costs and difficulties, especially in this procurement environment. It has been a noticeable reduction in how much hardware we're having to purchase and still provide the functionality that we provide to the city. MIS also runs COS TV. is a public platform that they see all the board meetings live and we maintain a 24-7 community programming distributed via Comcast cable. This includes those off-site live broadcasts such as the veterans events and the annual city fireworks, not just coverage from the city council chambers. This is a specialized production and the AV work is something that is outside the scope of most typical IT departments. We also provide, within our budget, public Wi-Fi for the city buildings. It is kept fully separate from the internal city systems and data, and it is provided at no cost to residents and visitors using city facilities. MIS also runs and directly maintains the low voltage wiring in the city security systems. This includes troubleshooting and parts replacement. We strive to avoid calling in third parties to repair or service equipment unless it's something that is outside our tool set or the complexity of the issue requires third party intervention. We also interface with every department within the city. We help with software questions, data organization, process improvements that never generate a work order or a bill to the city. We also bring a breadth of wide technical expertise that help a lot of different departments that a normal, typical IT department also does not bring. That being said, we had a reduction of two staff in the IT budget this year. And it was done, one, for a cost-saving measure and also to help the city better efficiently utilize the staff and the budget that we are provided with efficiency. We are maintaining our current status of operations and we are moving forward with those changes with minimal impact. If we go to, are there any questions on page 38? On page 39, you'll find a summary of all the capital projects that the MIS has currently appropriated for. The first one, the AV equipment, which is an ongoing yearly budget to help us manage the replacement and maintenance of the current AV systems that provide those public services to the city council chambers out in the field Because cameras age they fail and that is what we are out to do this year is to replace cameras for the field along with replacing the cameras here in city as city council chambers because they are starting to cause us issues. The computer upgrade and replacement, we're asking for $35,000 and this is a standard five to seven year replacement cycle for laptops and workstation peripherals. We are running into difficulties with the procurement process, but that is not because of the process itself as the money that has been budgeted in years past does not buy as many computers as it used to. a laptop that used to cost us $2,000 is now costing us $3,500. Currently there are 205 workstation and there are over 43 servers in either physical or virtual environments. that are all maintained by the staff of five full-time employees. We're not even getting that far. No. Last year alone, six PD laptops to replace those cost us $37,000, I think. Those are the rugged units. They took up the bulk of our budget last year, this fiscal year, unfortunately, because what we had budgeted for, those numbers did not stay true. In fact, the numbers are so volatile right now that even like a grant program that we applied for in December, those numbers are over 100% increased from the time that I applied for that grant to... It's all falling. That is correct. And so far we have been able to stay within budget, but we are definitely, it is reflected in our budget. We've asked the vendors to give us their numbers ahead of time if they're getting an increase to let us know so we can try to budget appropriately. Okay. So in that budget, we're gonna replace as many computers as we can. That number is extremely volatile right now. We're gonna replace what we can, stretch what we can, and go from there. Network infrastructure. This is an ongoing replacement for aging switches, cables, modules. It keeps the network running, keeps it part of keeping it from falling out of compliance gives us some future proofing and also helps us maintain and expand the networking capabilities as we need to. The big one this year is cybersecurity infrastructure renewal. It is a project that we did three years ago. It came in front of council and we are having to renew its licensing this year and it was paid for out of DST and that's where it will, that's where it's been coming from. We've made the budget on, based on list price of what we are replacing and praying to God that the vendor does not change their mind drastically as we know our government prices are lower than that. But it will be coming in front of you because of the cost at that time. And the outdoor security updates, the cameras and parks, this year we have...

Your staff has been around quite a while. You have a good job of holding on to people. Is that really enough training money?

I'll handle this one. I cut their budget. I don't want to put them in a difficult situation. Yes, I did cut about $1,500 out of their training budget. It's just got to pick and choose what i can and can't fund and and unfortunately that was one of the results of things that got cut um and then i will just highlight one other thing i know barb probably has notes on this but um up the next one up dues and memberships so this year we did uh budget or we are budgeting uh roughly twenty eight thousand dollars a little bit over to convert to office 365. what's happening is our current office system um We are losing, Barb, can you explain that better in technical terms?

Okay. Right now, the city is running on aging systems. Microsoft is forcing our hand. We are trying to come up with a plan that not only protects the city going forward and keeping us in compliance, but also gives us additional features and more growth. My. The plan that MIS is putting together that we've almost got the pricing together. I've actually sent out the official quote quote request to the vendors that have state contract for this to get the official quotes and everything. We're trying to do our due diligence. We understand that we're taking on an additional bill that can impact the city, and we also understand It's going to impact the budgets going forward, and we're trying to make the correct, responsible decision. It's actually $30,425 that I have currently set aside because we currently have other office products in there.

And where's that? What line item is that? Dues and memberships. Okay.

So within that line, because you'll notice it's a substantial jump, there's two line items that are quite large.

So when you migrate to 365, you're going to impact training citywide because you're going to have to train staff members on the use of it. Is that an EMIS budget or is that going to be any?

It should not change that much for the staff. Okay. They're already using Office 2021. Okay.

Okay, so they're training on Word and Excel and so forth?

Yeah. Their stuff is not going to massively change. It's on the IT side that is going to...

I don't like 365. I've tried to use it. But that's on my personal computer, and I don't gain anything for it.

MIS has a lot of reservations going there because we lose... Not only do we lose control, but if we push out to the cloud and it's entirely... we lose the ability to go backwards. So it's a one-way switch. So MIS has been talking with vendors, has gotten a whole lot of feedback from other IT departments around the city on how they are managing the cost, because Microsoft just jacked the rates on the licensing 13% to 30% across the board in July. Hence, the quotes have already changed.

So is your $35,000 in dues and memberships also include the potential of your staff having to go through some training on 365?

We have an existing purchase block with a third party that has already been put on notice to assist us with this, and we'll include that training.

Okay, good.

Also within that line, since we're there, there's $22,000 worth of cybersecurity and compliance tools. This includes password management, security awareness training, stuff that you all get the joys of experiencing. Crazy emails.

I know, right? Your HR department says that you have to.

Behavior modification, it works very, very well. Law enforcement data compliance, threat intelligence, server recovery software, backup software, mobile device management, and device licensing for field operations. The next biggest item in that line item is the GIS software. We handle the licensing and subscription costs for the GIS software. Almost all software within the city, with the exception of what the enterprise funds pay for, all is reflected in the MIS budget. That is why no other department has computer supplies. You don't see the subscriptions in there. It is all reflected within the MIS's budget, and we strive to maintain the licensing costs and make sure everything is efficiently used appropriately.

We'll come back to that for just a second when you get finished. Go ahead. There's two line items in different categories, and I just wanted to go back to talk to them. Computer supplies. There's one in the PD that has 1,500 and one in roads that has 1,300.

PD has their own line item because they fend some stuff through a JAG grant, and those items that I do not, they communicate with me, but I do not handle those grants and those fundings directly for them.

And computer supplies for roads, that's their plotter ink and plotter heads. It's not technically computer, it's their plotter for the sign shop. So it's their ink and heads.

And they cover that out of the stormwater fund?

No, it's in roads. It's under computer supplies. It's $1,300 in computer supplies under there. It's plotter ink and heads. It's not like mouse and keyboard and software and stuff.

We try to keep that as centralized as possible. That way if somebody, if we have something that one department needs and we already have it, then it's just readily available.

Okay. And your computer supply line, I see that it's a $10,000 difference between.

That I can also explain. So this year what happened is we've made the decision to For emergency operations, we have two Starlink pieces of equipment. They are the enterprise and monster good bandwidth with government emergency SLA. So the equipment was much more expensive. We bought the equipment outright at 8,000, where are you? $8,284, and we bought that outright, and one of them's out at the airport EOC, and the other one is a portable unit that is used by MIS not only for the remote broadcast, but is also available to go to any facility that we need to pull up internet in a hurry.

Okay. So...

Okay. And those costs will not repeat. And another place that the city manager made micro cuts. That was generous. As I was trying to say before, I run a very lean ship budget wise. I strive to make sure that we try to utilize everything we've got for everything we can. So I understand the budget stretches. It's why you don't see equipment leases for copiers because it was a deliberate decision by the city manager finance and MIS that we were going to try to stretch out the printer fleet as far as we could go. Now copier fleet is getting a little bit long in the tooth and we are starting to see more frequent failures of some of our heavier use machines and it will probably have to be a discussion in the probably not this fiscal year coming up because I do have some suggestions on how to rotate machines around to extend the life. But we are going to probably have to have that discussion in the 27, 28 fiscal year about redoing the copier fleet. But it's one of those things where MIS, we strive to try to keep the cost down for the city. And I think it reflects fairly well in our budget as we only have one contractual service this year and it's for a system upgrade that has to be done by the technician. We had some prerequisites that we had to have done this year. We have now got them done but I'm like we're been dealing with other things and it was decided upon my staff myself the vendor. We were going to wait until the next fiscal year when the next big update comes out from that vendor. So we only have to do this once. We don't have any travel on per diem because it was one of the things that while we might go to a conference or so, we don't it's a value add to the city if we can get there. We are on a lean ship and honestly if I'm If we go to a conference, it's few and far between. I elected not to go to the CJIS conference for instance this year just because there wasn't a value add there for the city. There was no value to add to it. So it was one of the things that I decided to cut. When it comes to cellular telephones, we only have two employees that have cell phones and that is because they are on call and they need that phone where I can actually reach them. Internet access. As of last council meeting, you guys saw the contracts for Comcast and AT&T. We've been able to negotiate and get contracts and get those costs down while still being able to increase the bandwidth, which is necessary to be able to do Office 365 or any of the other cloud platforms that probably will come down in the future. Postage, we don't send anything. There wasn't any reason to budget anything in there anymore. Express mail, most of the vendors are providing shipping, We still keep some in there because we always seem to have to ship at least one thing a year. There's no equipment leases for the obvious issue that we're not paying for printers, we're just paying for the supplies. The RNM office equipment is the largest line in my budget at $103,000. It's made up of 23 different software maintenance support and licensing contracts. There's also other cybersecurity and network protection tools in here at about $30,000 and this includes the VPN software that our officers, um, zero trust network, email threat protection, and security and system log monitoring. The LaserFISH platform that the public interfaces with, WebLink, LaserFISH, it contains all our public records, maintains them for compliance reasons. That actually increased this year and it is almost $20,000 a year on its own. This line item also contains the electronic signature platform DocuSeal that we use instead of DocuSign. Add a significant savings over DocuSeal. Our email archiving platform and compliance tools for text messaging and social media archiving. It also includes deployment software that makes it easier for the IT staff to get computers out in a very big hurry and keep the fleet up and operational. This line item also includes the city website at almost $11,000. It keeps us ADA compliant and it also provides the maintenance support and hosting. RNM operating equipment, it's not used any longer, it just is there for historical purposes. Departmental supplies is just our flat fee and it's the stuff that is specifically used by MIS. Paper, tools that need to be replaced and stuff that is very, very, very specific to MIS. The computer supplies as we went over before, it contains that one-time allocation for the Starlink and while the number, it covers all of the ink that is not covered under maintenance contract because the current printers are still under maintenance contract so we do pay a monthly fee for every printer and copier and it affords us the toner We don't have a lot of toner or ink expenses, but we do have one-offs. So it covers the ink, replacement keyboards, replacement parts, and that sort of stuff.

You talked about earlier on those fleets moving that around. Are the contracts, will they allow you to move those? Or is it based on a service?

For the printers and the copiers, we have two... Yeah, two copiers that are still under active lease payments and they have to go through the company to be moved. They also are at least utilized. We are in discussions with the appropriate departments to take over those payments because if it moves somebody else has got to pay for it then where they are to replace the failing machines that we have admin services and the clerk's department are the ones that are the most heavily used and that maintenance contract i'm not sure what line item finance has been putting putting that under but so

the each individual, um, department is paying for their, for their lease contract. It's not coming out of this.

So, so let me clarify something. So we leased all new printers and copiers four years ago, five years ago, six years ago, six, six years ago, that lease ended a year ago, a year and a half ago, we made the decision at that time to purchase everything instead of going and get a new lease. So we don't have a lease payment on anything. The, what she's referencing is the payments that come out. There is actually a new one, two new ones out of public works that came on board after that their lease is still active. So they still like stormwater has a lease payment, uh, that comes out there. So that one does have a lease, but other, the other departments don't have a lease payment because we now own those. We purchase those.

Okay. And so do you run the contract with the ink and the maintenance contracts and the ink?

The maintenance contract is paid by the city, yes.

But does it come out of each individual budget or does it come out of MIS?

Yeah, I can't give you that answer, but I'll give it to you right after lunch or after we take our break.

I know it doesn't come out of MIS as a whole.

So I'll start looking while she finishes.

I'm in no hurry.

All right. Good job. Anything else for Barb?

Any questions? I think you did a great job, but I think it was last year we spoke about these printers and everything as well, and now we're hearing, obviously, they're going downhill even further, so obviously there's going to be some changes that need to be made in the near future when it comes to the purchase of new printers.

And that's one of the things of why we're looking at moving the existing ones that are under lease that are lightly used to places where we have the machines that have an extremely high page count on them and they're starting to show their age. It's just reallocating the machines that we have to the places where they're more needed.

You can do that for so long, but at some point in time we'll probably need to reconsider the possibility of Rethinking whether we want to go through a complete retrofit with a new lease or whether we want to you know What we want to do about I don't know that outright purchasing all new printers is a good business decision But purchasing them off lease at the end of a lease period to extend the life is a good business decision now We may be at the point where we need to rethink that whole thing, but that's it.

That's a 2728 probably exactly it's like and we are making considerable efforts to try to discourage printing. MIS provides on every single city machine not only a full PDF suite, but the ability to print to PDF. We are in the process of changing everything we can to electronic. in order to stop the paper waste, not only because of the cost per page, but also because we're trying to promote ourself as a green company. And the only way we can do that is to make sure that we're doing everything in our power to promote that behavior.

So I'm going to jump in here. So two updates. One, I just got text from the finance department. They were there watching and they're on top of it. So, Jen Smith, thank you. But R&M office equipment in every department's line item they have. I'll just give you an example. Finance department. So the way our monthly our contract is for the maintenance that includes the ink is we're charged per copy.

Right.

So R and M office equipment for finance department, which is one of the most heavily used copiers in this, in the city, their budget is $5,450, um, for an annual is their annual cost. And that's estimated, um, based off of the historical from lat from this pet from fiscal year 26.

Okay.

Um, so that's how it's budgeted and everyone, and it's per copy is how we pay the maintenance fee that includes ink and them to come out and fix it. My recommendation as we go through this, and we'll continue to evaluate it, and I know it's something that's going to have to be discussed next year, is that we probably look at going out for new copiers, but the individual printers that people have, those are a lot less used, and so the wear and tear on those is a lot less. So I don't know that we need to do out a big lease like we did in the past, but I think we have to look at something in regards to the copiers, because I can tell you that She mentioned the clerk's office. They print every single piece of paper that you all get.

And that printer is going to be more expensive because of the functions on that printer. Correct.

Yeah. And I think we don't have a ton of copiers in the city, but those are the biggest cost as well. But that'll be something we start evaluating this year and being prepared for next fiscal year, next budget.

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. And I was just sitting here thinking, you know, people talk about the budget and us not having money for this, or we're saying we don't have money for this. But you think about this back in the days some years ago, We didn't have all these computers, didn't have to pay all these hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for software and the maintenance of these computers and all of that. It costs a lot of money to maintain what we have here. And I'm glad you talked about this. People don't understand this.

That's a good point. To put it in perspective, I just did a little math here. They're maintaining a public television station. They're broadcasting all the meetings. They're supporting all the Zoom calls, all the Zoom processing. They're supporting all the computers for this organization, and they're doing it for less than 4% of our general fund budget.

Yes.

I think that's pretty confounding good. I mean, I was in this business for 35 years. I sold contracts to clients because I could say, you're spending 12% of your budget on this stuff, and I can knock it down to nine. This is pretty good when we're doing it for less than 4% of a general fund budget. It's excellent.

It's actually really good. And people don't understand.

I think you're getting a good purchase out of that.

And I understand that the printers, that people don't think anything about it. They think it's a little HP printer. But eight years ago, the last printer that I put under lease to do, it did a little bit more than what the clerk's office does. However, I was at $700,000 for that one printer. So it's not like you're talking a couple hundred dollars or $1,000, whatever. Yep.

So, um, what we'll do now is we're actually going to have to move the building department to after lunch. Um, so starting at one o'clock, we'll go building department, then we'll proceed into airport city council, city clerk, city attorney roads, garage, stormwater, and then we'll end the discussion. So there's a chance we're probably going to go after four o'clock this afternoon. I would pretty much guarantee it. Um, so just we'll, we'll break now and we will come back at one o'clock. Thank you, sir. All right. Very good.

Thank you.