Town Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

I was outside.

Yeah, it looked like we're good. Well, that this one's dead. They changed the batteries and it's still dead. So Oh, it it it literally to me it quit right at the beginning and it hasn't worked since. So, we're ready to go now. All right. It is now uh just after 10:45. We're going to restart our session. We're going to uh get into finance. Director Groover.

Okay. Um the finance budget we really have no significant changes. Um one thing I will point out which we talked about earlier that our senior accountant will be taking on uh processing payroll because anything that has to do with with money going out needs to run through finance. you have to be part of what she already already does reconciliations and everything on all the payroll accounts. Um, so that's the main main thing that's happening is she's getting trained on that to start hopefully start July one.

I have a question.

Hello. Push the button up. Hello. I'll push the button. Um my question about that um bringing it back in house I'd like to know a comparison of what we pay to that company because you're talking about the payroll. Yes. I think I believe it is 45,000 and so this would um be cut out. It was cut out of the budget. Okay. So if we hire Well, if it comes back in and you're asking for another person, right? No, payroll is payroll is a totally separate animal. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah,

I'll wait to push the button later. Yeah. Yeah, Chris, just hold on to your mic. HR person cannot process Caleb. Okay. They have to verify that they can't actually run the checks. She don't want to. You don't want to. No. They don't want to be responsive. You don't want that.

That's for other questions. So Sean, to to your question, we're in administration now and that's where the HR parttime is and that's where you're going to see a reduction in operational costs for taking the $45,000 out from the Hera systems.

We've been reducing this contract for the last couple years and we got it down to just payroll with PAR systems for 45,000. Now we'll completely withdraw that contract agreement July one and it's going to be done in house with finance between finance and administration. Okay. Our little speaker. Okay. But still to bring it back in house, you're not hiring anybody.

We're hiring a part-time HR person. But this person will not be doing payroll. This is for everything else. Sonia's behind me and she she can speak to that. But this person will not be doing the payroll. Okay. What is she going to be doing? In your booklet, you'll see a description. Behind not in not in your uh presentation, but in your booklet under administration, you'll see there's Yeah. There's there's a job description for the part-time position.

2-27. It might just be beneficial for some kind of just just like Tabitha did, just like Eric did, what's kind of been going on and what needs to be going on. Okay. Because as you speak to it, what I want to do is a comparison of what we pay. Oh, but they're not doing any payroll. So, this new person is going to take over some of your responsibilities. Correct. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. My concern is when you're contracting something out, you're not paying employees benefits or anything. Now, the part-time person, do they get benefits? No. Okay. No benefits, no holidays. So, and if you'll see the contract withdrawal is 45,000 and we're trying to hire a part-time person for

and for clarification, the new HR um part-time HR assistant. All the person can do for payroll is to review time cards. Everything else needs to go through me or either the third party contractor or in this case after July one it would be Jess. Um we do need we do need two people always doing payroll for checks and balances. One runs the register, the other one reviews, the other one sends the money, the other one controls, the other one does um reconciles the accounts. So you always need two people doing a role checks and balances.

That's right. Now um what I would like to say first um there is always a misconception of the HR department what HR folks do. Um so um it's not just hiring and firing it's not just onboarding new people. So I would like to do a little rundown of the activities that I do as a department of one and then I will point out the ones that will be put under the part-time HR assistant. So then I have time to implement other programs that I would like to. So for example, I process bi-weekly payroll service awards checks, employee quarter and employee the year checks. uh submit federal and estate tax deposits, key journal entries for finance. I also have a lot of finance duties on me and risk management duties. So it's not I not only performing HR duties, I do finance and risk management. I manage and monitor FMLA, workers comp and employment, employment posters, random transcript program. I manage all the onboarding and offboarding activities. Maintain personal files, manage the e-verify program, enter new hires in the department of social services. That is one item that I want the new person to do. Manage the onboarding and the offboarding process. Um verify all HR related invoices and initiate check requests. So all our vendors for health insurance, everything, all those monthly payments come to me. I make sure that we're paying the correct amount, right? The check request goes to finance. I want that person to take that from me as well. Uh compile and prepare, compile,

prepare, and transmit um FIA, IRS, South Carolina Department of Revenue, and unemployment reports and payments. and I also key in general entries for finance. I submit data to the department of labor. I am the main point of contact for the municipal association for liability workers complaints. I complete surveys, audits, etc. Um I also serve as the primary contact for the deferred compensation program 401k 457. I process contributions deductions changes new enrolles um and also key journal entries for finance. I write, update and modify job descriptions, advertise vacant positions uh on our website, Indeed, the municipal association and um I assist employees on a daily basis. I receive an average of 75 emails per day plus phone calls and I have 100 employees. So, um that is basically what I do every day and I'm a department of one. So uh we have gotten to a point in which I need assistance, I need help. Um there are a lot of things that before me were not used to be done that as an HR professional it it's it's just unbelievable that things like this were never done. An example is in June I am bringing the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission a trainer to train us all in harassment and sexual harassment. Things like that that the town has never had done before. That to me are essential. Um we're going to do that

mandatory every year. Um I have brought a representative from empowered retirement to sit with employees to review their 401ks to enroll in new plans. I have done I have built this department in the past two years in I mean from where it was and Melanie and I are still fixing things every day. Um but I'm at the point in which I need help. So any questions? as the one who's got the microphone on the talk. Wow. Uh with saying that, is this person that you're willing to bring on, could they do any of the for you? No.

This is a very basic clerical position. Nobody can do for you except no sir. No one can do for you. And thank you for building that department for what you've done.

I will also say this. Uh we've combined our wellness committee and our safety committee into one group thanks to uh Captain Cali back there and myself that Sonia doesn't even have time to attend the meetings, but she does provide assistance. We've met with Ken Davis with risk management with Massie has given us policies that we need to adopt in order to get our insurance rates done. So we're working very hard on that. She provides back backup assistance when when needed as far as the policies, but she didn't even have time to to sit in on those meetings that take about an hour or two hours. So, we're we're meeting quarterly and we're trying to meet all the regulations that we need to to reduce our health or uh our insurance rates. That's what I want to hear. Yeah. And the other thing is that

save money. It's HR is very unpredictable. Some days you may need you may have 10 15 people needing something and some other days you you know it might be a little bit more lax l between but um again it's a 100 employees it's it's a lot for the department of one at this point it's a lot and I see my employees I say my employees I see the employees as my customers and I am here to provide support and good customer service but if I start getting tied up with other things. I don't want that customer service to go down here.

So, so question. Um I'm I'm my concern would be, you know, I'm just concerned about headcount because we, you know, there's already a couple positions we're talking about adding. Um have we done any sort of analysis to see whether a contractor versus a full-time FTE would or part-time FTE would be more or less beneficial? Um because a lot of times clerical positions in particular, they come with the same expertise and it's easier to get rid of contractors. It's, you know, so anyway, I'm just asking, have we looked at it an alternative of using a contractor support for your office as opposed to a

if I had a lot of things digitally? I maybe that could be an option. Um I would prefer not to have somebody that is not an employee. Um now I am basically the only person that doesn't have backup. I am a department of one and I cannot delegate anything to anybody who is not in HR. I cannot give the keys to the fire room to anybody. I cannot give access to anybody that is not in HR. So I need that backup as well. So this is not just about workload. It's also business continuation. If I'm not here for whatever reason, if I get sick, hit by a bus, something like that. Yeah. I I'm not giving the keys to or access to anybody.

Yeah, I I guess I'm not questioning that so much as I am questioning whether we could fill it with a contractor versus a a government. Rick, the problem would happen now with hair systems. When it comes to payroll, payroll is a time frame within three days, right, to get that done and things have to be corrected with a contractor that could be in Washington DC that doesn't get back to us in the same day that we need them to. That's been the issue with Paris. Any reason we couldn't have an on-site contractor? I don't know. We we haven't we haven't reached out to to know that.

That's my qu I mean I I I I get the need for the support. I do I understand that. I mean that is a lot. I mean I didn't realize we had 100 people to be honest with you just now. Yes. Um so I get that. I I the problem when hiring a government employee and like I said, we've already got some Miss Sean said earlier about the whole idea of, you know, we're going to have to be ready to explain why we're increasing our headcount, you know, three, four, five, whatever it is. Um, so I'm just looking at an alternate, you know, as an alternative. Could could this be one instead of eight? Now, the thing also with the contractors is you pay a higher I get that you pay higher price for contracting out.

Yeah. And this is a part-time employee that will not have any benefits. It's under $30,000 for $28,000 uh to support the HR functions and it's 15 to 18 hours per week. No benefits, no holidays pay. Okay. It would I I want to say it will be cheaper than contracting it out. Guarantee it would be okay. I I just wanted to see did we do any sort of analysis and that and that's all I And actually I'm providing a cost savings because we're getting rid of a $45,000 contract. Got it.

And we're adding 28,000. So there's a savings. That's that's what I was going to say. I think you have uh the money available that you're saving elsewhere to pay this person. So, you would still benefit probably 20ome,000 off of what you're saving with the contract work that you're doing now, right? Is that not the Yes, sir. Okay. That's what I was going to ask. You answer just No, I just want I got away from I I got a real quick one. Yeah, you're good. That's called. Thank you.

Okay. So, there's nothing in here that precludes you finding somebody from a unemployment agency in this. It somehow came out cheaper. If you budgeted the 28,000, we can reach out. So, yeah. I mean, so either way, you still have the options. We do have the options. Okay. And then just you ran through a big laundry list of things you're doing. What would be what of those things would you focus on more if you had this 15 18 hour person working with you?

Like I said, trainings definitely trainings. I have thought for instance of this training that I mentioned before with harassment since I got here two years ago. Next month is going to be two years since I've been here. I have not found the time to do that. the employee handbook for for God's sakes that has had to be put in the in the back burn because my daily duties the especially the daily clerical duties I get an email from somebody I need to change my address I had a baby I need to make changes I need information about my 401k I need this I need that it doesn't give me the time to concentrate on all those higher level duties

I'm rename this mic Sorry. So, turn it on. So, um it just is another question and again I'm not saying I don't support this. I'm just saying I'm looking at other potential alternatives. Is there a resource within the county that we could reach out to to help provide some of these u services like the training part of it you you just mentioned or I'm I'm just asking

to be completely honest with you. I would not feel comfortable working with somebody from the HR standpoint with somebody that is not in the department as an employee. Um, I have a file room downstairs. I have a stack of papers every month. I spend hours in the file room. I don't want somebody from outside doing anything like that for me. And I I I won't feel comfortable working with a contractor on an HR. I'm just ask I'm just looking at alter I'm just asking questions about alternatives. I got it

and I can tell you within the last three years because we we reorganized PBMZ um didn't have a didn't have an HR person back in the day and I did reach out to the county and their resources are very limited as well. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I I have worked for or county government for five and a half years in HR and there was never anything contracted out from the HR department for HR services. It is a big issue to confent.

Moving on.

Thank you. Next is um the parking department. Um that is just there's no change there. It's um things for supplies, the what we pay out to um pivot is in this budget. And then of course we have the revenue that offsets the parking and because they have taken everything inhouse, I'm not sure how that's going to work yet. So I had to leave the budget in here for now. Um so we may be able to reduce this in the future. questions on parking.

No, you you cover. Next is police. I know you got something to say.

Chris's mic. questions for the piggies.

Hey, good morning. Hey, thanks for having me today. This is much fun. Yeah, welcome to our world.

Okay, so uh for police, um no changes in personnel for assignments. uh get down to our percent uh I guess I'll start with the operational expenses because that's down 9% and explain why that's down 9%. Uh when we reorganized last year obviously that reduced our fleet cost a little bit as well. We also went through the fleet and um was able to identify a vehicle or two that we could also get rid of and

so we were able to swim on the fleet a little bit also the uh that's less for insuranceances as well and we talked about later earlier about our insurance costs also O reduced our bond to uh reduced because older claims are getting older and dropping off and it's reducing our premium as well and hopefully we can keep those claims down to keep that reduction. Um also the capital expenses are zero. We took care of uh all the our our large projects uh were completed this year. So we had nothing to add to that for now.

Um and our personnel services even though we're going up 3% it is down uh 2% or it's only up 2% instead of 3%. Just based on our current payroll forecasting. U one other thing I'm looking at my notes. Uh the operational expenses also went down uh in our communications line item. We also identified um other phone lines and things in the building and cell phone cost and we reorganized tablets and some technology that we were able to get rid of or consolidate to reduce those costs as well. Any questions regarding any of that? or anything else to do with a police budget.

She can be taught um the victim advocate. I know that that's on um we pay for that as it's needed. Correct. We pay for as needed and we're also reimbursed. A lot of it is reimbured from the state because it's a statutory required okay position. That's what I'm

and right now we have a part-time position and a vacant part-time position just because the state I believe um kind of mandates those two positions on our work chart. We're able to um as of right now we've been able to address any of those victim witness issues with part-time victim witness we have now. Thank you. hours. Chief, question. Yes, sir. These vehicles that you no longer need, you're getting rid of, we're not sending it over to planning and let him ride in black and white. Seriously? No, not seriously. You got the mic for that?

I don't think that would be appropriate, but hey, we can mark it up some way. I guess

I do have something stupid to say. Chief, I just want to make um did some research and there is not another municipality's police department going through budgets right now that is actually ever proposed any budget with a minus in front of any of their figures. So, I I just want to take my hat off for you all to be able to actually come back with your department operating at the caliber you do and actually saving us money year-over-year. Hats off. I just had to make that comment. Thank you.

Well, we like to be fiscally responsible. We are a big part of the budget, so we like to constantly review for it. And as much as I'd like to take a lot of credit for that, really, Director Guber and her staff, um, she we work very handinand with her. She's very good at her job. I'm just a dumb cop. When I want to do something involves money, I always go to her. I'm like, "Hey, can we do this? How do we pay for it?" So, great job, but it's not really do the credit should really go to our finance department. um they do a great job and they keep keep us aligned and make things happen so that we we can perform at this high level with the with the resources we need and still do it fiscally responsible. So thank you Director Rubber for you and your staff and keeping you straight.

Yeah, one town one team. I would say Melody's gotten very u gotten a lot better in the last couple years saying we will all agree with that. Thank you.

And if you'll just humor me for a minute. I know you're talking about positions and you're talking to to the events. Um right now all departments and my department social media is a big part of the marketing is is big for police departments and public safety. Um and um right now we're managing it in house and I think we could do a better job at it. We just don't have the time, the expertise, the resources to make our our website better, to make our um social media and our outreach uh better. Um, so if Tableau was able to get another person that was could help market, they could help take over the I mean, honestly, part of being with the police department nowadays is marketing police department, their service.

Oh, I get it. Yeah. So, that would be helpful to us to do a better job. We just, like I said, I I'm not really great at social media. You're just a cop. So, just a plug for her department for that position. I think would also benefit the other departments um for their their community outreach as well. Okay. Good job. Thank you.

We're running a little bit ahead of schedule, but um next we have

Oh, no. I know you. Good afternoon. Hey. So, we're the fire department. We do have a negative as well, and we're kind of happy about that. Yeah. Got to keep up with the Jones. That's right. Let the police out. So, actually, you know, I'll mimic what the chief just said. Uh, as far as uh the website, I think we do better a little bit with that. I think it not only does it help,

it helps multiple departments. Uh, one of the things I constantly get calls uh for child seat uh installs and stuff like that, fire marshall that come into my office where it should be going to the fire marshall or other things. Uh there's other things we can add into this website per se. I feel uh we do smoke detector alarms. Um, it would be great to have like a QR code where somebody can take a picture of it, fill it out on their phone, fill it out on the internet, send it into us. It goes to an email to direct to whoever needs to get it so we can go out and install these fire alarms uh that we could put different uh questions that you might have or anything like that that might alleviate a phone call or something like that that we can do. There's a lot of great things that we can do. Uh, we were talking about it on break and stuff like that. We have a lot of people that want to when they want to come here, look on our website to see what town's like, what it's about, what These are all things I feel that would be great things with it. Um,

before you move on, Chief, can I ask Yeah. My my smoke alarms inevitably go off the new batteries at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. Can I just call y'all to come change them? Certainly. Okay. Y have no problem with that. And if your smoke detector is over 10 years old, we'll give you a new one. you all this.

Hey, our our major highlights uh this year is we're actually reducing our part-time positions from 9 to five. Uh basically, we have one current part-time position. We're looking to add one more per shift. So, that would give us one part-timer per shift, and it would give us the additional uh part-time fire inspectors, which in this next uh monthly report, you'll start to see that we've started collecting. So, you'll start seeing that income coming in that's been going out for billing for fire inspections. Uh volunteer stipens. Uh we were at $15 last year. Uh we're looking to increase that to 20. Uh the county is at 25 currently. So, we're trying to be competitive with that. Uh building repairs and life cycle maintenance. Uh we actually have uh put into the budget to have a little bit of funding put in because last year we kind of got caught with our pants down with some uh plumbing issues and uh we had to take money from other areas to fund that. Uh so we actually put around $10,000 aside that if we have issues with the station or anything that we can take care of that. Uh we have an F-150 that needs replacement. Um and we're looking basically to replace that out. We're going to purchase that, not do a lease because we're looking to keep that for roughly 20 years or so and that, okay, it would last for us. Uh, that truck helps pick up a lot of equipment for us that we need throughout the year. Uh, we lay 1,000 ft of 5 in hose. Uh, it's hard to pack that all back up into the truck. It's a lot easier to take a pickup truck out there, throw it all in the back, take back station, train, put it back together. Uh, we also utilize this truck in training and stuff like that. the volunteers instead of having to use their own money, we allowed them to take this down to Georgetown to take classes. The recent two firefighters that we had go through use this truck and it helped financially take limits off our volunteers which is great. Um, Captain Le's forceful door prop. We're looking to split between our 1%

fireman's fund as well as the town. Um, it's around $18,000. The 1% fund is going to pick up 9,000 of that. Uh, this gives us the machine that you see down in the lefthand corner down there in the pictures. It allows us to force doors. Um, it practice forcing doors. It's not something that we get to do very often because nobody wants you to come to their house and force their door. It cost a couple thousand dollar to replace that. But if we could use this tool here, we can practice on uh being more proficient at it, causing less damage to the house and stuff like that. and it's something that we have to do when we gain entry to a fire or anything like that. So, it's a great thing for us to do. We're also looking for the fit test machine which is in the middle there. Every year we have to uh be certified that the mask that we're wearing is proper sealed for us uh so that we don't go into a fire, start inh handling carbon monoxide and die. Uh this machine actually fits test it make sure that we have a proper seal that the mask is proper. We have a guy that let's say he loses weight. goes put on that mask, that mask not might not fit from last year that it did this year. You might need a smaller mask. So, we definitely want to make sure that we have that machine to take care of it. The current machine we have uh is not the program is run out pretty much that it's not connecting to a current model of computers. Uh it's outdated. Uh the program is we can't get a new program for it. So, that's why we're in the process where we're looking for it. I believe the machine's roughly 10 years old currently. Yeah. So, that's where we're at. That's all I have. Oh, and one more thing. Um, the only other thing I'd like to see is uh we've discussed it multiple times and uh when we put in the PA fire recovery, we start filling for motor vehicle accidents and structure fires. We would like to see that it goes currently now into the general fund. We would like to see it a line item put in that that funding could go toward the training grounds for

building training spot. Okay. Yeah. One thing I had to write that you did.

I that's the question I was going to ask. I noticed in here that you do do not have no kind of funding for the training facility that you want to go for. Why? And I wanted to know why not because I think that you have raised some money that it could be spent out of our general fund that could possibly start building a training facility that we need. So that was my question when you answered it. So I hope that maybe that you will look at a line item back into the budget for some of that money back to to use for fire. Uh we also added in $5,000 into the training fund to go into help assist that yearly. And probably within the next two years or so, three years, we'll look at seeing what we need to do to get it going and purchased and ready to go.

If I could, Mr. Uh just for instance the exact thing would be what I was very supportive of us going out and starting to do that as well as adding personnel so that we could you know further follow up on that and do better in collecting monies and so forth. And then I would like to see Melanie a line item it broken out in the general if we could somehow just so I could see okay we made this much this piece of equipment cost this and you've made this much you say it's for training y

and you're that was all those monies were to help us toward getting you a facility with these things in it. Um, so I I would love to be able to see if we're keeping up with that and applying it as you need it because I want you all to have that money for what you need it for. Okay. You have some more. Yeah. I was thinking about writing into the budget ordinance that any revenue received can be added to this budget for training um purposes, the training facilities purposes. Okay. But we'd be able to we'd be able to see it, right? I mean, well, it's

so we can understand how we're doing versus it's a revenue line item and then we'd have a separate expense going on. So then, yeah, we would very easily be able to tell, okay, he actually paid for this, you know. Okay, good. That's Chief, I got one question. Um, you've got a line in here about grant expenditures, applying for $100,000 grant and 14 committed to. So, you want to just give a quick rundown?

So, every year we get uh it's a state grant. It's roughly $14,000 that we get. Um so, you'll see in there that we put in for more gear. That's one of our things that we're still trying to work get caught up. We have gear that's come outdated and we have new volunteers. So, we're doing that. So, there's $14,000. It's almost a guarantee that we get. So, that's what you'll see in there and it's a deduction and that's should be under the uniform uh portion of it. Uh that $14,000 is going to be on top of what we asked for in there. That's going to help pay for gear for us for free at no cost. No cost. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. Okay. Are you done? Yes.

Couple as you're replacing the Ford person. Uh, do we need a large vehicle like that?

Yes. Okay. So, like I said, one of the things that we just this week, actually, we went down to Sis Merles Inlet, Garden City at a structure fire. We laid over 1,000 feet of 5 in. Uh, you're talking 50 pounds a section. Uh, we had to put all that back into the truck. If we were to do it on scene, we would have had to roll it all back up to get the air out of it, put it back on the truck. It still needs to be cleaned, so we're going to have to pull it all back off. It's a lot easier just to throw it in the back of the truck, take it to the station, put new hose on it, clean it up, and get it dried out and do that. Uh so that's one of the reasons why we're keeping a pickup truck.

Um my second question is um could you give us some examples what uh your executive assistants been doing?

Absolutely. So, she assisted with the grant that we just received, actually, a $29,000 grant. She wrote that out. She takes care of our payroll and stuff like that, as well as that desk. SOG, she's the one that puts those together for them. We format them and stuff, she puts it all together. Uh the captains, when they need assistance and stuff like that, she's going out and help them. She's been a total asset. The fire uh the fire inspectors and stuff that we have, sitting down with them, going over codes, she sits in the meetings with them and helps keep notes for that. Uh recently we had 1% committee come which is a basically we get 2% of your insurance comes to let me rephrase that 2% of insurance that you pay into your homeowners insurance goes to the state. 1% of that comes back to the town uh that has the fire department. The other 1% goes to the state fire academy and helps fund that. Uh so there was a lot that needed to be learned. Uh it comes back to benefits that we get from that percentage and stuff for having that class. That class helped understand more benefits that our fire department can get. She helped to sit through that. She helps me tremendously getting a lot of paperwork done, getting phone calls answered, returning phone calls. Uh tremendous amount of help. To be honest, it was a lifesaver for us.

Okay. I just want to doc out loud. And my last thing, uh, as far as the raise to volunteer from 20 from 15, um, I could actually see us going to 25 since we've been ex um, really assisting Ory County. It seems like more than we ever have. So to kind of keep the competition of keeping our volunteers here, I I would recommend that. That's going to be one of mine. I I'll be honest. When when I put this together, I thought we were meeting their standards and at that time they increased theirs. So that's where we kind of

I just think since you know you guys have been, you know, you got your staff now and it seems like we we're doing more runs that are outside our town that to keep our the quality of our staff here. I don't think five hours is going to kill us. Thank you, Chief.

I'm just going to yell right now because it'll take a minute. Okay, it's coming down. But I'm going to follow up on uh Miss Sean's I'm going to follow up on Miss Sean's question there. Um I mean, I can see the salaries volunteer, but you know, the stipen 15 to $20 per call going to 25. Can you or director Gubert tell us what that's going to do to this $55,000 number? That additional five. Yeah. I mean, and I don't need an exact number, but I'm guessing it's not huge. 10 more dollars or just five more dollars? 10. Five more? Yeah.

10 more total. I guess asking it another way is that $55,000 calculated by 15 times however many hours or is there some set but is there some set number that we pay plus yeah so it's not going to be quite the percentage I don't think

that number of responses per volunteer per call and it fluctuates so we just did last kind of the 2% increase that we're seeing the call volume as a minimum for that response level to extra $5. So it's it's we left a little bit, but it's pretty much 2% more than call response from volunteers. One caller might get five volunteers. Based on but I guess you know if if $15 I don't know what was $35,000 last year and 20 takes it to 55. Is it going to be another $20,000 up to 75? That's what I thought. It's it's a there's some flat fees, five or six,000. So the 55 goes to 60ish.

Okay. I just wanted a ballpark. Okay. I think that's close enough for I would say it's probably 15,000 since we're looking at 35,000 what we had last year increased to 55 with the $20. Another 15,000 for five. So we're looking at 60 75,000. All right. So well 15 would be 70,000. So that would be the the high end of it. It would cost us about 15,000 if we went all the way 25. Okay. I I just want to get a ball point. Thank you. May I have it? Just one second, please.

I'm going to take Chris's turn. Um just just real quick just for clarification, we've been very excited about the way you built up your volunteers and we built up the department. Um the old golden rule that someone mentioned earlier about once you give something back makes it harder. So I'm asking why are you taking your part-times, right? I just need to understand that. So currently we have one part-time right now. The goal was to put three part- timerrs per shift. Um, we really haven't had a need to use the part-time very often.

Um, so that's the reason why we're reducing. It has nothing to do with anything else. Uh, I the one part-time guys probably put in 20 40 hours maybe if that. Um, we you what we utilize is our volunteers a lot. So, if we need coverage or anything, we ask them to come in, ride the truck. Gives them the experience that they need. uh gives them the call volume they're getting paid as well uh per call. Um and that's what we're using them for. So I just didn't see the reason to keep that level on there. Um I think we could use the part- timerrs that we're going to do more efficiently on the fire inspection side and we'll be gaining income coming in from that as well. Uh adding two more part-time fire inspector or firefighters will give us three per one per shift, three total. Uh, and I think that we'll be plenty with that.

Thank you.

Sounds good. Okay. All right. I think we can move on. It was my fault. Can you cover yours 30 minutes? You covered in five as I'm guessing. But yeah, I think I think that might be the natural place to launch after you. Or we can stop in the middle if if we have to. Okay. We know you're a very busy man, John. Dear

like every other Good morning, John. Button up. Push the button up. How's that? There you go.

Um, all right. We have the budgets and public works to go through. Um, as always, this is my 16th budget with the town. So, uh, bear with me if I go too fast. Um, we'll start off with the strength division, which is one of our divisions. Uh, there is, uh, not a whole lot of change in my operational budget. Uh, you'll see a little bit of an increase, and primarily that is not under our control. Utility cost. You have the town street lights are in there. You have a lot of utilities in there. Uh, costs that are out of uh, my operational control with my line items. So sometimes it can be a little skewed because it covers the whole town. Uh you'll see uh a capital expense which is higher than last year. Every year is different with our capital uh replacement program. Some years it's a 100,000, some years it's 200,000, 150, 250. All depends on what needs to be replaced particular year. Uh some of the highlights in the street department uh uh Mr. Vincent has uh put a a position in there. The uh some of the council has suggested additional person which we can talk about some more. Uh we have uh poss we have we added to our engineering budget for possible speed studies throughout town. Um a lot of you know it's been proposed to potentially change speed limits in town uh in the future. I have requests out to the state to get some of the legalities on that. So, we have some engineering built in if we have to do multiple speed studies on multiple streets. Um, the FFE, as Melody mentioned, they're moving all that out of our budgets into a life cycle maintenance budget. So, you know, furniture, building repairs, and things like that for overhead. In our capital replacement and street department, we have a a tra a backhoe. And then there's

a tractor with the mowing arm on it, the counterwe you probably see on the big ditches. Uh, that that's a like a 201 which new Holland tractor which need to be replaced and then a golf cart as well. So nobody's giving you a free golf cart like they did fire and uh no sir boom

and our ground division is pretty flat. Um you'll see that the capital is in this case is less than last year. Like I said it all depends on the year and the condition of the equipment. We are going to buy approximately a $9,000 uh pickup truck plow attachment to get some of the smaller alley parking lots in town. We did a pretty good job this past winter um with the snow. Apparently that's going to be an regular thing now. Right. Two years ago,

last January we did very well, but we had to hire a private contractor with a motivator to help us. Uh I didn't want to be stuck in that position again. So this January passed, we were a little more prepared. We had a couple of plow attachments for for our front end loader and one of our uh dump trucks. So we were able to do that without any hiring anybody. And uh this uh extra little uh pickup truck plow will just be to complement what we have. I don't anticipate expanding it any more than that to be honest with you. It keeps snowing. Well, times is changing. I never thought I'd be asking John for plow attack. Yeah.

Um, we were in better shape than a lot of our neighbors. I will say that. Oh, yeah. Maintenance. The budget uh budget is uh pretty flat. Again, a lot of those operational expenses have to do with our facility and utilities and things that are out of our control. Uh we uh we have a one-time uh cost for some fleet management software, vehicle maintenance software that we use which has gone from a a standalone product and this has been uh we've been talking about this for a couple of years. Uh this is a a cloud-based system that you don't get software anymore

that's for you now is a subscription. So there's a onetime cost for that and then we'll pay an annual maintenance fee on that. But it pretty much is the same company that produces what we have already. So it's not going to reinvent the wheel. We'll be able to use our old records and incorporate them into the new uh software. So we're pretty happy about that. We're into storm or anybody I'll go back up maintenance. Those are my general fund. Start something. Chris, can we borrow your mic? That was the general fund portion of public workers. Okay. So, I'll take any questions on those three divisions at this time.

Okay. I'm gonna I'm going to start with the uh the new position. Um I'm probably going to have to take some responsibility for that being in there. Um to to kind of set the the table, um after uh Chief Hoffman left and we had to scramble. Luckily, we had uh uh he wasn't Chief Davis at the time, but he had uh command experience and he took over. Um we kind of went through the a little bit with the and I mean since then he he promoted Chief Mickel to captain who's then moved on to chief and uh similarly with fire department. Um we hired in Chief Nelson and and then we had a resignation from uh our deputy chief at the time and uh we've since elevated one of the captains to senior captain and I was interested in succession plans and over time it's not so much succession but backup is what I've been concerned about. And uh I just want to say that I had a conversation with director Adair just earlier this week and um you you I'll ask you to run very briefly through how you handle backup, but I'm convinced that you really don't need an assistant director at this point. And I and I think that's what you're thinking, too. But I kind of want you to run through that scenario a little bit. And again, I'll take responsibility for how I got in there because I went into dire or administrator Vincent's office several times asking about, you know, what's the plan? What's the plan? But again, it's more backup than succession to to me at this point.

Yeah, I'll elaborate on that. You know, each of the public works divisions, streets, sanitation, grounds, fleet maintenance, each has a supervisor who is uh uh an expert in their field. And I empower my employees. I've groomed my supervisors over the years to run their operation independent pretty much of besides me giving them special stuff to do from time to time, things that come up, special projects, emergencies and things like that. But dayto day they're running their operation. My assistant in my absence can close the payroll. She can answer any questions to the public. Uh I could go on vacation for many weeks at a time if I wanted to. I don't do that.

Don't do that.

But I could and the operation would still run flawlessly. U so for any kind of extended absence, a surgery, a vacation, there's a seamless uh workflow that will take place at public works and uh the public would not be affected whatsoever. Uh so my position uh which I explained to you is I don't know uh that there's any real need and we talk about wants and needs uh in my view for for this type of position at this time. You know, I think down the road, uh, five to eight years down the road when I'm thinking about get retiring from the town, I think we need to a year or two before that, we need to plug somebody in to to so I can train them to what needs to be done in public works because there's a lot of special stuff that my my staff doesn't do that only I do. You know, they need to know how to do that, how to deal with the agencies, federal agencies, state agencies, uh, grants, bids, all that kind of stuff that that I do specifically. Uh but until that time uh I I you know I just don't see uh I'm not asking this is a gener this is generated uh based on council asking Jerry to have it in there.

Mr. Mayor if I could John thank you for that. Yes sir.

Because you have, you know, one of the more one of the most vital resident facing police, fire, public works. Um and and we are concerned that you touch so many things. I I can just tell you from my perspective that has been the concern. It's not ever It's not ever been about, you know, replacement. It's about golly gee, what happens to this if John Adair gets, heaven forbid, in a car accident or something? How does this great big machine keep running without our superstar who's been here for 16 years? So, you know, that's that's so I appreciate you taking the time to explain that that

I I have that on my mind from the beginning. Good. You know, I've retired from New York City, as a lot of you know, and continuence of operation protocol, troop operations is is is part of life up there, particularly after 911. Right. Right. In my old career, we used to have to carry a laptop with us wherever we went in case there was another 911. Oh. So we could operate the department with no buildings. All right. So here you know my my what near and dear to my heart is smooth operations for public works the town and how uh services are provided no matter what happen.

Yeah John um like the mayor I talked to John briefly actually this morning about the same thing and you you've convinced me as well um and and I trust your judgment on on all that stuff. So the only suggestion I would have is the one area and and I appreciate what you said about all of your folks run their their operations independently. They it runs like a machine. Got all that. I agree with it. may want to consider as moving forward. I don't I hate to use the word crossraining, but just ensuring that they have some visibility, you know, across the supervisory chain, what some of the others do as well, because right now you're kind of the only one that sees it is the way I, you know, across. So, I would just encourage you from a from a professional development standpoint, whether they're being groomed ultimately to replace you or just their overall knowledge, the more you can get them exposed across the operation, I think would be helpful as well.

Yes, I appreciate that. And I and I do do that. I have each discipline like my grounds people are involved in street stuff. They're involved in peer stuff. My street people are involved in a couple different things as needed. I expose them to new uh disciplines and uh you know nobody's a specialist you know like we have a large event a hurricane there's no all hands

yeah we're just public works people at that point everybody shares the responsibilities uh there is uh there's certain uh certifications which I have which will have to go to whoever replaces me down the road but my staff doesn't need those certifications Mr. Mayor, I I'm I'm I'm on one of them people that was on board with with talking to Jerry. I I'm I'm I've been highly pushing to get an assistant to help or to follow you. Not trying to push you out. Not trying to get you done. Listen, you've been here 16 years. You do a great job. Ain't a person in this town that will say that you have not. But my concern and my biggest concern is you hold some of these license that nobody else on your staff has. You manage your staff. They I mean you say it runs like a welloiled machine. Take you out of the picture for six months and see how how well that welloiled machine runs. I totally believe that you need someone in your departments that knows basically what you don't. I I totally agree that we we need a backup plan to you. I'm not believe me, John. I thank the world of I think you're doing a great job. I'm not trying to I just looking after the town as a whole is we want this machine as they called it to keep running and I want somebody if God forbid it something happens to you that can step in and keep them people that you say runs like a whale oil machine I want that person to be able to step in and say let's keep going keep moving and that's the only reason that I believe me I don't like adding staff but they've

been a lot of conversations about that department and I'm not going to go into that detail of what was discussed between us council people but there was a lot of concern and it ain't only the mayor's position that's a lot of concern from a lot of council people not just him so with that being said I hope that uh you're saying you don't need that position and some of the councilmen now are saying they understand I I I'm I'm sort on fix. You need to teach somebody and get somebody else with them certifications that can step in and do something. God forbid you out for six months.

I hope it never happens. Yeah. But it can in a minute. I definitely appreciate your comments and I if I was in your shoes, I would have the same concern. uh if there was a six-month absent, you'd have to put an interim director in place temporarily if I came back. I mean, there's only so much sick time in FMLA you got before the town has to replace you anyway. Uh they can't hold your job for more than a certain amount of time once you're out. So, that that's an unlikely scenario. However, I I I appreciate your concern. Uh I'm confident in what I'm telling We'd rather have an internal.

We'd rather have somebody that we have outside. We don't I I hope that when it comes time to replace you down the road, 20 years from now, I hope we have somebody in there that can really step in. And it's going to take it ain't going to be somebody that can come in here and learn

in a year's time what you know because you can't do it. There ain't no way but a person you come in here and train for one year and have them to know what John Darren knows because if if you bring somebody in and then step them up by step and learn to teach them they're going to know in four or five years they're going to know what John knows and how John runs this town. But in that situation I hope it never happens but it can it can happen. You can go out on workers comp and you were saying that they can't hold your job. They won't hold your job for so long. If you're out on workers comp, they can hold your job for a long time without replacement.

Mr. I just want to say this. Um, this is this is one position we created that I'm not going to fall on the sword for. Um, I've talked to John many times. Sonia and I actually created this position and we had to really think about what could make this position full-time. Number one, when John came here 15 years ago, there was no succession planning. So, he learned everything from day one. He got certifications.

Um, we don't have succession planning with finance. Although these ladies can pick up the slack if something happens to me, but but we don't exactly have succession plot. My job, we do not. So, and you know, if you do hire an assistant director, there's no guarantee that he's going to flat without the director's decision. So, and there's no guarantee that he'll stick around long enough for when I retire someday. He might get tired of waiting after five years. I might not want to leave or

and he might he might be going through this again in five years. Um, I'll uh some of the certifications I have, I know that's a concern, uh, are elective, just so you know, they're not required for my position. I' I've gotten the certifications to make me a better public works director. If you're in charge of the town stormwater plan and wersheds, my opinion, you should have as many certifications in storm water and and and flood plane as you can. That's why I'm a CFM certified flood plan manager and I've went out and got certifications in storm water plan review. So all the DHECK projects that are permitted in town, the large acre plus commercial, I have eyes on that because I ultimately they're discharging a lot of water into our system and I need to understand how that's going how that's taking place. So, uh, again, not required for my position, but it's very, you know, if you want to be a successful, effective public works director who's also in charge of the town's MS4 stormwater program, it's a good thing to have, but somebody walking in the door wouldn't necessarily have to have that. Uh, especially right away. That's something you acquire over time, but you realize where the priorities are. Storm water on a coastal community in the flood plane that the whole town is basically flood plane. You better be concerned about storm water. That's a big part of my job.

Again, not required as you as you speak. And I've been on the storm water committee with you and you presented the storm water committee with a lot of information and you you helped with that. I'm just saying that the plans are or I would think the plans are is to have somebody who can step in and help you out with them kind of things to take a little bit of burden off of you to learn that position and get them certifications in your job. That's not doubting whatsoever what you do because like I said, I've worked with you on the stormwater committee. I've I've seen what you bring to the stormwater committee just in that department, let alone what you do in getting stra storm water drains put in and getting grants and everything else you do. You're a vital part of this town. Believe me, you're I don't know how else to tell you. You're a vital part of this town. And I just don't want to put the town in a position that could could happen. We're working on goods right now. Not just that it's going to happen. It could happen. Anything could happen possibly to you or anything else. And we need to have somebody that can run it step in it and help get that done.

Mr. R,

go ahead. Uh, I'm always um in favor of hiring within when we can. I um when I first looked at that this I didn't like the idea of going outside. Um I do appreciate with the cross trainining. Um I think there needs to be more of it. not just for what you do and you maybe you already do this but cost training from with each department also. Um let me tell you I your guys are incredible. They could be out in the heat or the cold and they're always smiling, waving at the residents. You can't get any better than you.

I mean they are for the conditions that they have for the conditions they have to work in. But um we're more used to the a high quality, we're concerned and um I just think more cross training is a need. So you can prepare if you do have an employee that wants to step up because I do believe for morale reasons, it's always better to hire within if you have qualified people. So keep that in the back. I will I will to this point though uh I don't have any staff that's really interested in in in my my job or my uh level of responsibility. Mr. Mayor, if I could uh it's not necessarily interested in we're just talking about Jerry having someone in an emergency that he can pull up temporarily. we have that

to hold things together internally crossraining that that's that's what I was talking about having to go outside to find somebody to try to replace you there I don't think it would be possible yeah yeah I have supervisors who could step up and do a lot more you know across the whole spectrum than they do right now and I do groom them for that as well because you know my goal is to be able and every manager's goal should be able to go on vacation without a formulary off. So I I have confidence that I have that. Okay. So I'm I'm really comfortable about that. Good. Thank you.

All right. If there's nothing else uh at this point, I think this would be a good time to take our lunch break. It's about 11:55 and uh then we can pick up with storm water when we come back. Yes, sir. So I'm looking for a uh motion for a launch recess. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we recess this meeting for lunch. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. None. Motion carries. Let's come back at 1:00. 45 minutes. One hour.

1 hour. Okay. One o'clock. Turkey consider not a whole lot. I mean,000.

Yeah. And we got the fire department thing which is And uh question more detail.

This conference will now be recorded. after allow Yeah.

I've already booked it. All right. Yeah, I get what you're saying. Let me just follow up on it. I mean, I got

Yes, I will check. I said where we show solidarity as a counselor in order to be solidarity we're all together you know these sidebar council discuss need to see. All right, folks. It is 1:00 and we're going to get we're back in session now. So, we're going to continue with director here.

Good afternoon.

The next fund to talk about in public works is the stormwater utility fund summary. As most of you know, we recently finished in uh actually not recently 2025, we finished the last uh phase of the north side drainage project that was on our agenda and that's been completed. That was about a $2 million project, give or take a little bit and about threequarters of that was funded by grants that we had gotten from uh American Rescue Plan money. Fortunately, we received a large grant from uh the South Carolina Office of Resiliency and another 500,000 from Ory County uh and that paid all but about three or $400,000 of that bill. Uh so we were very lucky there, but that's probably not going to continue and obviously so for this coming fiscal year, the stormwater fund we just plan on acrewing into the into the fund balance. Uh we take in 400 some thousand dollars a year. Uh and you can see on the slide about 485 we expect in revenue in this coming year operational expenses uh that that's everything from taking care of the lakes to uh various things we have to do for stormwater maintenance in town uh about 125 in operational expenses that will wind up being about $333,000 addition to the fund balance next June of 202 uh7 we will probably have close $2 million in the stormwater fund. And the following fiscal year when we have this meeting next year, we'll probably be talking about start of the engineering on the next project, whatever we decide that should be. Uh but for now, there's not really anything much to speak of in the storm water fund except for just let it build.

Uh our capital project summary. Uh and again, everything's in here. uh you have our annual road resurfacing that'll get done like like this year next spring and most of that gets reimbured from uh uh sea funds from the uh DOT which is administered through the county transportation committee. Uh I go every year and and beg for money from them. So most of that is going to be reimbursed to us. Uh we've included in here I was was mentioned earlier uh sidewalks. We've gotten uh budget numbers for sidewalks on Cedar Drive uh which is a long time coming. A lot of people have asked for it over the years. And pretty much this is this money that we budgeted is going to take care of uh all the way from 16th North connecting to that sidewalk there all the way down Cedar across the Big Lakes and tying in down 8th Avenue North into the Hollywood sidewalks

right past you. You're right on my corner. Yeah. right down. So this way people will be able to walk in a in a in a in a you know in a circuit throughout town staying off the road. What side of the street? On where now? Uh the eighth the cedar. More than likely the south side of the street but it depends on your side. The place with the least obstructions. Let's put it that way. We haven't had it drawn up yet, but uh just curious most it'll be coming down the west side of Cedar. Yeah. And then it'll cross over. So it could be really either side of a till it gets to Hollywood. Then you'll connect to those sidewalks and that can be taken all the way down to Miller Land if you want to.

Yeah. Also besides Cedar, we budgeted the money uh which was uh also a big uh street a lot of people have asked for over the years is Fifth Avenue North. Oh yeah. Yeah,

basically from Highway 17 up to uh Ocean Boulevard, that whole stretch there. Um the uh the concrete people I I I reviewed this the the street with they were they recommend to do it on the south side of the street. So that's probably what we'll do when the time comes. Each one of those projects has a little storm water conflict that we have to fix to make it continuous, but that's easily taken care of. So all that sidewalk is in this budget in the capital projects fund and that'll all be done in this coming fiscal year. We'll bid it out and we'll see what comes back. Okay. We can always tweak it um depending on what comes back. But that that's a pretty good budget number I got from Palmetto Cor.

Um uh the Martin Park master plan. Uh as most of you know, we got approved for a hard grant uh for some planning money for Martin Field. Um the state will pay uh 40 some odd thousand. We will pay uh 101 12,000 of that and um we'll make a deal with our engineering company to tailor their proposal to meet what the money we have available and that'll happen this coming fiscal year. Uh money will be going to the beach renourishment reserve. Uh there's money in there for the council chambers building uh to be increased. uh floral clubhouse renovations. As was spoken about earlier, most of you know we have a limitation on how much we can spend on the floral clubhouse because of its uh it's a non-conforming structure. It sits below the flood plane elevation that's required for that area. So, we're limited on how many uh substantial improvement they call it what we can do to that building. So, we have about 30 some thousand we can spend uh to fix that building up so it's ready to be rented out to somebody.

Will you finish that? Yes. Uh y'all were talking about raising that at one time. What happened to that deal? Well, uh it kind of it was an eye openening uh the number I got recently from a a company out of North Carolina who does this kind of work to engineer the new foundation and to raise everything up was in excess of $150,000. So we we kind of said that's not going to be something that we're going to be able to do. So even if you get bidded out, it's going to be in the six figures. Uh so I think it's unrealistic you know for that building to dump that kind of money into it. So we'll just stick with the substantial improvement what we can spend

five years that number will go back to zero and we can uh spend another 48%. is is is that five years u it won't be quite five years because that part of it was spent before the five years now is it didn't we spend the first portion of it two years ago maybe well last year in 25 we we did the HBAC yes and we did the roof we spent 20 some odd thousand dollar that'll drop off in four years four more years you know so we could do 30 something this year and then we could do in four years. We could do that amount of money. Yeah. But the part it's a rolling fiveyear period.

Yes. But the part we done earlier when we didn't we have some money spent on the back deck and all that we' put into that building prior to that? Yeah. We spent some money in 2019 which has fallen off already. Okay. That's what I'm going to name. Yeah. Yeah. We beefed up the foundation of the the porch in the back. We did some siding work and sheathing work to the building and some painting. That's all fallen off already because that was 2019. Whenever you're through with your mic. Yes, sir. I'm pass. I had proposed something with you that you said would be in the budget that the garden committee had requested in between the dog parks.

Yes. But I don't know the amount so small. Does it have to be It wouldn't be something we discuss here. Good. It would be something we would budget. We would we would buy it out of our normal operating funds. Okay. A year. It's just a few thousand dollars. It Yeah. So I just I just wondered I made a promise and I wanted to make sure those that might be listening.

Yeah. I should mention for the benefit of council who may not be aware. The garden committee has asked and this is probably something that should be written down for council to vote on because it is an expenditure in a park. Uh the garden committee has asked for us to establish a second community garden in between the two dog cars in that little space there. We've we've evaluated it and it is possible to be done. We could put it in there uh for $5,000 or so. Um and and you get about eight plots in there. So the garden committee has asked their liaison that can be done. It's feasible. If that wants to be included in the budget, it would come out of my normal operating budget. But it's probably something the council should be aware of and perhaps even less.

I I'm trusting you to tell me if I Yeah, it is, you know, is a park. It is a acceptable use. Uh but uh would you be the one to present the decision paper? I can bring a decision paper to council. Uh you know, you know, this coming fiscal year wants to do that. But okay. It's not something I don't think we need to include in capital. It's But I just didn't know if it needed to be included. But thank y'all. Sorry. Um and John, this also the money for the M Fuller Park reconfiguration that's embedded in here as well, correct?

Yes, I believe it was on this if not this slide. Was it on this slide? The uh the pickle ball court reconfiguration pickle ball court,000. It's in there. It's on the next page, John. Oh, it's on the next page. Okay. Yeah, I know. So, yeah, but that that that money is in the budget as well to convert one of the tennis courts to pickle ball courts. Right. For the for those that didn't know, basically the infrastructure subcommittee has recommended reconfiguring what's the two tennis courts at Fuller Park, reconfiguring it with two pickle bar pickle ball courts there and one tennis court. So, it's um and it also needed resurfacing anyway. So, we're kind of taking the opportunity to do that. So,

so does anybody have some other questions about the capital projects?

I might as well. This is the first year that we've had a official CIP plan. Yeah. Capital improvement. So, we try to go out five years. Um, this is something that you look at every year. Just because you have it on the plan doesn't mean it's actually going to happen the year we say it is. It all has to do with the funding available. And okay, it's a plan.

Um, if you look in your books, you'll see the funding sources are included. I just couldn't put it on the slide, but um basically those are all of our anything over $25,000 is on this plan. Okay.

Um you'll see the reoccurring right now because this is the first year we've done it. Um is life cycle and then John repaving that's an estimate and if you look like in your book the majority of the cost is reimbursed by CTC for that. Um and general fund would cover this. Um public safety equipment. We have the mobile radios and the fire SCBAs for this year. Um we're looking at security for the buildings. So I combine that into next year. Um this cascade, I don't know exactly what that is. It's a system that compresses air that we breathe inside fire and it's old and uh they don't make parts for it anymore.

Yes.

Okay. So, that is on here. Um then our went ahead and put our vehicles and heavy equipment on here too because wanted to have a nice big list. But here we but we um for the general fund cars that we have the three mills of capital that gets set aside um for the fire and the police vehicles. Hospitality normally pays for those. Um and then sanitation obviously sanitation fund would cover theirs. So this is the plan for 27. And if you look in 31 is when we're looking at doing the uh ladder. But the goal of this is to kind of have a plan and as we meet with different groups and committees, they have something they want to add next year to let us, you know, let us know so we can get it on here. There any questions on this?

No, this is this is really well done, Melanie, to give us a long term or a long range focus on what you're thinking. It's good. It's good. I'm going to turn this back over to John.

Thank you. Thank you. Um the sanitation fund as you know is a uh enterprise fund. It's its own little business. As Melanie said earlier, we raised the rates uh that we charge for sanitation like the water bill back in 2013. At the time I was hoping that it would last five to seven years. So we've been holding out and holding out and squeezing it. We had a lot of money in the bank at one time. Sanitation fund.

Okay. uh with the state fund. Um but like anything else, revenue and expenses at the end of the year, you're either adding to your fund balance what you have in the bank or if you're a little short, you're pulling money out of your fund balance. So that's what we've been doing for the last few years is paying our bills with fund balance. So it's time to deal with this. So you'll see a large increase in the projected revenue for 2627 because the time has come for us to uh increase the rates. Want to pass these down. I've made large copies.

This is in your package, but I've made large copies of this spreadsheet that Melanie has helped me create to illustrate what it is that we're talking about. Um this uh picture speaks a thousand words. So what we've done is we prepared a spreadsheet that talks about uh re actual revenue, actual expenses, revenue over expense plus minus and in the column on the right you'll see end of year equity what we have in the bank for the sanitation fund. So you can see based on the projections and we we brought it out to 3536 fiscal year. Okay. Now, the uh the orange looking uh uh line that says FY2627, no increase. You could see if you look on the the column all the way on the right, you'll see in 2829, we're going to be in the negative. We we're not going to have money in the bank to pay our bills. So, we can't let that happen, obviously. And so then we've added three options for you guys to consider uh which is uh a 30% a 40% or a 50% rate increase to what we're charging right now. You know, and again it seems like a lot but it's been 13 years since we've done this. We've held out as long as we can. So if we increase the rates by 30%, which I don't recommend, we'd be looking at this again about 3132 and doing this again. If we increase the rates by 40% that takes you out to probably 32 33 and we've actually wanted to give you a higher option than that.

Uh 40 I feel pretty comfortable with 40, but 50 would take you out to 3435 before you have to deal with this again. Okay. This the price of everything. A garbage truck that used to be under $300,000 is now $500,000. uh you know cost of personnel, cost of equipment, cost of fuel, uh you know, we have to our our revenue has to be over our expenses. And so it's really up to council. If you look in your packet, uh actually it's on the next slide. I'll have to look at the packet. You'll see a little spreadsheet that talks about uh what the rates would turn into with each scenario. So, if you raise the rates by uh let's say 40% right down the middle, the average roll cart would go from 1875 a month to 26 and a quarter a month. And then down that pink column on that on this spreadsheet, you'll see what it would do to all the different services that we offer. Okay? You have your summer roll out where they pay a higher amount for the three time a week roll out down by the beach in the R3 district. the winter roll out charge, the sixyard container, an eight yard container for the commercial establishments and the and the condos, but they would pay each time we tip their can. Uh, and I will say that all of those is considerably less than what others are in the area charging. somewhere in your book in the sanitation section, not in this presentation here, there's the same spreadsheet that shows what the the other waste haulers are charging. Okay? So, GFL, for example, um for a sixyard container charges $78 every time they tip it. Way more than anything we're proposing here. uh for a

a single garbage roll cart at your house, GFL charges $31, which is more than even our 50% proposal. Um and that doesn't include recycling, that doesn't include yard debris, and that doesn't include bulk. Our sanitation department offers a tremendous value to the town residents because we're coming to your house four times a week. If you lived in the car pines or in Deerfield, you're paying just for a trash can 30 to 30 30 waste management charges $40 just for that one trash can a month. Uh and they only come in one time. You're bringing all of your other stuff to the convenience center. We come to your house four times a week. So there's tremendous value in our sanitation services. Everybody knows who lives in town. It's a very good service. It's very inexpensive. So, uh, what we're proposing right now is a 40% increase to the existing rates, which would take us out to about 32 33, five or six years before we would have to consider another rate increase. You might get a little longer out of it depending on how expenses go. We have no intention of increasing headcount. Uh it's just a matter of what the market does to us as far as uh trucks and uh and people fuel and overhead that we have no control over. So um does everybody have any questions or that I mean to clarify anything with this?

Yeah, I want to get started here. Um again, you and I talked about this a couple days ago and I went in uh saying is there any way to do something more like in a 25% range? But after looking at this um well first of all 2013 was the last increase and that's held us for 13 years right? Um now you're projecting even with a 40% that would hold us only for about six or seven years. I'm assuming we're being very conservative here and and and looking at some worst case numbers. I mean, because you think that 13-year span went through some of the worst inflation we've had right after COVID,

you know, and then and it carried into 21, 22, 23, 25%. And it still lasted 13. We could get more out of this even perhaps perhaps. Uh Melanie's gone through the numbers pretty diligently with even our auditors to see what needs to be included in these actual expenses. uh and maybe she could elaborate a little bit on what is included in that number.

Basically what we did was the um the revenue for the um good for the sanitation um we did it 30 40 and 50%. Okay. So if you look at the orange column that is if you do nothing now our expenses are based on the budget of what we're proposing today minus the increase and we are doing a 3% increase a year. To me that's pretty conservative because we don't know what's going to happen on the expense side. Um, if you look to the the right where it says equipment replacement net projected sales revenue, we took all the equipment that's going to be needed each year minus what we think we're going to be able to sell the old piece for to come up to where our negative would be our revenue over expense. So if you look, we do nothing, it would be in the whole almost half a million dollars next year. for using fund balance, not in the home but using fund balance. Um so this this is considering everything. This is a um why

all things have been considered.

Um yeah, we've considered everything. So I did at first I was just going to use unrestricted um equity but after talking to the auditor she's like no I think you need to show both. So that's what you see at the top where we've been doing each year um where we ended up 2025. So we did we had did use some of our equity in prior year. Um and budgetarily this year we were planning on using almost a million million dollars. um because we had rollover equipment that we needed to buy and then we have um 654,000 that we were needing to use to make 2026 budget. So, I do think it's time to look at this and I think the 40% is a good option. Middle of the road, get us out. We'll see because we Yeah, we could have some interest revenue, but we're seeing that go down. So that isn't included in the bottom, the interest revenue. We're not looking at big revenue, but sometimes like we get reimbursed for some things. So that could could help out too.

We had we had hurricane Matthew in 2016 and we realized hundreds of thousands of dollars in reimbursement money from FEMA for picking up the debris in town, which we wouldn't spend anyway. Pretty much it was pretty much a windfall because the people are working anyway. You know, they're picking up hurricane debris. So, we got reimbured for that. So, it's no guarantee that's ever going to happen. No. No. Years and years ago, we used to pick up the garbage. I most of you probably weren't here, but we used to pick up the garbage in the car on a contract basis years ago. I heard about it. Uh, and we stopped doing that because we just don't have the capacity anymore. So, that was a lot of revenue that we had at the time that was coming in

providing the same service town residents get to another area, but we don't have that ability anymore. And so therefore that revenue has dropped off. That's probably one of the reasons why we had a lot of money in the bank. You know, our fund balance was in the many millions at one time.

Okay. So, so that kind of I think explains why we made it 13 years between the FEMA reimbursement and being able to contract and and generate revenue. Okay. So, we can't expect 13 years again. And and that's good. Um I mean that's understandable. I guess as I look at this again, I came in hoping we wouldn't go that high, but after reviewing the numbers, I'm wondering if we just don't bite the bullet and go to 50%. Um, you're still well below the commercial companies right now and they're probably going to have some increases uh at some point. And you know, after we just had that discussion uh where we had Ory County Solid Waste Authority in with the uncertainty there, um I mean, I I assume it's going to get uh the landfill is going to get approved, but

with that uncertainty, maybe we do want to build a little bit bigger fund balance. And again with what we're offering here with the bulk service, the recycling, the yard waste, even at a 50% increase, um 20 28 bucks is pretty cheap. I was paying 20 up in Michigan 10 years ago. Yeah. For private service. So I I might be inclined to go all the way to 50 here. Yeah. Anybody have a question?

I I I would disagree. I say I say we stick with the recommendation and if we need to adjust again, I'd ra I'd rather do it that way than just put I only want to increase as much as we feel like we absolutely need to. I don't want to go higher than than what you think. Now, if you guys believe 50% makes the most sense, that's fine. what I think I just heard was 40% and I'm I'm good with that. Um but I don't I don't want to give them any more money than I have. Yeah. Yeah. We could probably go till 32 33 fiscal year uh approximately five years before we'd have to readress it. And I think that's maybe if we get another year out of it, great. But that's what we're projecting. That way if there's changes,

you never know. We can pretty much guarantee that our tipping fees are going to keep going up as they as the cost of disposal goes up. We never want that landfill to close during our lifetimes because once you start exporting trash out of state that what we're paying per ton, which is right now like $42 a ton for the solid waste authority. That could easily be $100 a ton if they start bringing garbage to Georgia or something like that. All those transportation costs. We we went through that in my previous career in New York City sanitation where they closed the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island and then now they ship all the trash out to other states and the budget for that department is now over a billion dollars a year

just for that one department in New York City. It's a huge problem exporting trash. Just just to clarify a little bit, uh, our roll out right now or our pickup right now monthly pay for the town employee is $18.75. Correct. For one roll cart. Yes. For one roll cart for a town person who lives in town. Correct. If we increase it to the 50%, we're going to go up to $28, which is a $925 a month increase.

Correct. which will be around approximately $120 a year more for a resident to pay for just for that pickup service. So we can everybody better consider what our residence is is willing to fork out right now it that' be at 50% at uh 40% it's about uh $750 something like that in in cost. So we need to consider our town residents and what they're going to pack. I I honestly think we ought to go to the 50%, but I ain't sure that everybody would be agreeance to that. 40% sounds more realistic, but uh we all know if anybody attended our meetings when we had the the the U landfill people here, they told you they basically told you that it's going to increase. It don't matter what we do or what we do, it's going to increase. John's gonna have to pay more to do this. And it goes to show you right now that we're already in the hole. We, you know, we could be in the hole very easily already

next year. We wanted to give you the 50% option and on paper and show you what it would look like in case council wanted to push it out another couple years,

but 40 is the comfortable number. So y'all saying 40% is the comfortable number that you'd go with instead of the 50% and give it a longer life. Well, I wouldn't for the reason I'm recommending 40 is because I think we need to this is a huge exercise. We don't want to do this more than every five years. So five years is the minimum we want this to last. Now seven would be better before we have to deal with this again. But it's up what the council thinks that the public's going to be okay with. I mean obviously the service that they get I mean nobody wants a decrease in service uh for what they get. People love the sanitation service we provide. I don't think you want to take anything away that we're providing now. Uh so the other only option is to increase revenue. So you do a fiveyear plan or do a seven-year plan. Well, I hope I hope that a lot of people's listening to this and and will give some feedback on this budget of what they think our our citizens think about this because as it goes out, I want to know which one our our people the people out there who's using it, how they feel about because I don't want to be I don't want to be back in the same spot four years or three years down the road, which you're saying five years, but I you know, as the fees go up, We don't know. And I'd rather have a little extra than I had not enough.

Sure. Just so you end it off. Okay. Um, just so I understand, the sixyard container and the 8 yard container is commercial, correct? Yeah. The commercial businesses, a lot of them, and a lot of the condos on the beach, the larger buildings use containers, which I would say they're not recycled. That's that big container, right? Yes, some are. Some are.

Some are, but not as many as residents have two separate containers. Correct. Like the bars. There's certain restaurants and bars in town that don't recycle at all. So, is that part of that container? Do the businesses have to pay this to us?

Yes. Every time we tip their container, regardless of what's in it, they pay that fee. So, a business can have five, 10, depending on the time of the year, there's some restaurants that get their container picked up seven days a week in the summertime. Every time it gets tipped, they pay that $31 depending on the size. In my opinion, I think the commercial side should pay more than the resident side. It does, but it's still the same percentage.

The same percentage, but I'm thinking the commercial side should pay more percentage increase than the resident side. Only main fact that I'm concerning is they're not recycling. Majority of the businesses don't recycle. So I would I would feel better if say the residents went up 40%. But the container service container service went up to 50. That's certainly an option.

That's that would be my opinion and I think that would help people that are on a limited income in our town. And and you could also extend that to the summer and winter rollouts as well. I mean, you know, they they have property that they're general they're not it's a general rule. They're not residents. Those are folks.

Yeah. And and any property owner, just so I'll tell you what the ordinance says. Any property owner in the R3 or C3 or entertainment district, uh they are automatically on the roll out program unless they send us an exemption form. You can be exempt if you're a full-time resident or if you don't rent your house out. you have to prove that to us. So we send out about 1,200 letters in April. We just sent them out and about half of them about half and half about 600 are exempt and about the 600 participate in the rollout program. So, um, what we're reflecting there is, uh, uh, in in the roll out, the summer and the winter roll out program, we're reflecting the percentage increase, and we're increasing the fee, uh, uh, from 20 to $25 for the summer roll out and from 12 to $15 on the winter roll out program. So, the fees gone up a couple dollars. So, so it's the So the summer roll out at 50% 109 as opposed to 76 plus a fee of $25. Is that what I'm

Well, what the $76 is comprised of is is $1875 time three plus $20. Okay, that's your 76 and a quarter. So, they're paying for that 1875 can you rolled out three times. So, it's almost like they had three cans, right? Plus a $20 rollout fee uh for the month.

Okay. So uh so if you increase that uh 1875 to let's say 40% 2625 right so you take that 2625 multiply it by three and add $25 to it and now you have your new rate at 50 50%. Okay or 40% corresponding rate that includes the new fee of $25 that has to go up. We spend a lot of time walking Ocean Boulevard pulling cans out from the houses. $20 is is enough. Two things we were talking about the last rate increase lasted 13 years. Correct.

Well, you're into me for a million dollars in the 13 year. So, I would say it only lasted 12 years. 919,800. What is it? The purple's $98. Yeah, that was plan for this year. I know, but it's still a whole Yeah, we pulled out a fund balance to make pay the bills. Yeah. after the 13th year. That would be the 14th year. Okay. All All I'm saying is I know I but 13 versus seven is better than 14 versus it's only lasting us half the time with this raise. That's what the point I'm trying to make. And also,

can can we say Mel, I know you did the best you could. I'm not knocking it down, but when you give me that no increase for 2627, right, we're going to be in a whole $516,31. Correct. Okay. How come you're being extremely conservative, right? Because for 2526 for 2526, I'm in the whole 919,000. So you're saying next year I'm only going to be okay. That's what I needed to hear. So I'm going to be 919 plus 500. Okay. So if you look at the Yeah. last column, the end of year 1,400. Okay. This is where you see the equity going down. Okay.

It doesn't take a whole lot of years for you to get in trouble with that fun balance if you don't do something. In other words, we got to do something about this pretty quick. People need to understand they're paying it one way or the other. Yes. And they also need they either can pay it individually based on usage or we're going to have to go into general fund to cover the negative. Yeah. And and and pay me now, pay me later. The value, as I said, it's not in the $28 for the gold card. The value is in the three times a week we come to your house and we're not charging. Correct. Right. That's that's the value that you get. You no matter what you put at the curb, it's gone. It is that day. Yeah. You're not driving anyway. Nope. I'm good.

No, you anything. You anything but good. Flip it up. Yeah, flip it up. Okay. Just a question. Is there a such thing as a tax that is put on visitors that could cover some of this increase or no? Not that I know of. Okay. Okay. That's all. The only thing you could do is charge those areas higher rate. Your commercial pickups.

Yeah. Some of the the rental companies, the management companies, some of them have in the summertime from these larger houses, four or five cans all summer long. So, you're going to hear from some of these people. No, I like her. I like her idea. Go up 50 maybe in 40 on the res. I don't know. and and then commercial kind of the hybrid solution go up 50 I like that maybe maybe I don't know it's a special meeting microphone microphone give her the mic just don't give it to me

I'm sorry Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion. Okay. My motion would be that the residents would stay at 40% increase and the commercial side of the house, um, businesses, um, rentals, um, businesses including both whether they're real estate, all businesses, restaurants, so let me start over again. Uh, my motion is for the residents to go up to 40%. And the commercial side of the house go up to 50. Second. I'll second that motion.

Yeah. I think I think you need to say the not commercial because there are commercial establishments that have roll carts as well. I think you need to say containerized service. Is that okay? I think she's trying to say rollouts. I think she I think she's saying the summer and winter rollouts and the containers and containers. I'll But you do have some residents who who just pay the three time a week roll out who live here as well. It's not necessarily commercial. Some people just don't want to be bothered because they have people at the house all summer long. So it's kind of hard to bill it out that way. Is it? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. It's by category. take the whole category or not. Okay. I can't break the summer roll out at the two different parcels. So, there's no way we can do Sean's idea. Well, you canotion raise the uh the fee in in green on the roll outs a little bit more um to compensate for some of that. Okay, we're starting to kind of debate this already. So, with with what you just heard, do you want to um uh do you want to maybe reward that amendment or I mean that motion or or what

before we get into debating it? It's going to get messy. Before she amends it, let's get this straight to start with. Okay. I'm a little confused saying just run through it again. What what you just said? Well, what I said was the rollout program, whether it's winter or summer, is not all businesses. You know, there are people who are full-time residents who whether for whatever reason they have a full house all the time, whatever, they want us to pick up their trash three times a week, so I'll pay the money. I had somebody just yesterday

who came in who bought a house. He's from North Carolina and he doesn't want to take his own trash out because he says, "My family comes and stays in the house once in a while uh and no one knows when the garbage gets picked up." I said, "Well, if you're a renting house, you have to participate, but you don't have to as long as you get the can out there because we can't have a sanitation problem, a hygiene problem sitting under your house collecting rats u when there's nobody around." So, he says, "I'll just pay for the three time roll out and uh and be done with it and not worry about it. So, I don't have to think about it anymore." So, you have a bunch of those down there that are not commercial enterprises that do participate in the rollout program. Since Grand Strand Water and Sewer does our billing for us, we can't parse this out.

I have to put in a number for a category of service and that's the number. Okay. Um, so I I can't like split a category into two different types of people. That's that's the little limitation that I have. I understand. So if you if you wanted to raise the the containerized service, which which covers 98% of the commercial people you're trying to talk about, that would go a long way to covering the vast majority of it. Disabled res. I'm sorry. Elderly disabled res. Yes. They can't get their can. Yeah. No, we we actually for disabled people, we actually roll that can out for free.

Yeah, we have a list of Okay. Hey, hey, hey. We're we're degenerating now. Miss Miss Sean, you you have the floor. You've heard the explanation from Director Adair. Go ahead and make a motion. Okay. My motion is for the residents to be raised to 40%. And this the six and 8year yard containers be raised to 50%. So the summer and winter rollouts would be like the residents. So we're saying 95gallon summer and winter rollouts 40% six and eight yard containers 50%. Correct? Yes.

Okay. We got the motion now. Somebody want to second it. I'll second that. Okay. Um, Miss Sean, you you had technically have the floor because she made the motion. So, let her kind of got it, but I mean, basically, my concern is most businesses don't recycle. I think you know they're filling up those like you said you're picking up multiple that sixyard container may get picked up three times

right so they should pay more in my opinion um and I don't think the you know as a residence you're only putting it out recyclable is one day regular trash is one day so I don't think they should pay as much as the commercial and our containerized charges are even at 50% are way below what the area is getting

and and people I meant to say it earlier you know people say what's the value of the rollout program you go down to the garden city on a Saturday and take a look at the condition of the trash situation down there compared to our ocean blue and then you'll understand why the rollout's important anybody I want comment on this mic away from him. You guys okay? Um well, here then hand it to me because I'm gonna have to Oh, you got to clarify the motion. Yep. Do your job.

All right. So, the motion on the table is to increase the 95gallon roll cart, the summer roll out and winter rollouts to the 40% numbers that director Adair has presented with the fees at 25 and 15. uh and the sixyard container and 8 yard container up to the 50% numbers that are there. All right, with that in mo in mind, Miss Bonina, will you call the role? Miss Fallon, yes. Mr. Stamy, yes. Mr. Lawhorn, yes. Mr. Walls, yes. Mayor Prra, yes. Motion carries 5 and uh it's the 40 50% split.

Thank you, Director Adair. We want to continue now. See what's next. Um the peer fund isn't there's not a whole lot of change uh this year coming over this past year. We have uh put a little more money into repairs and maintenance since we've had a full year to see what kind of repairs with the elevator and the HBAC's costing us. The manpower stays the same. They're doing a very good job down there keeping the place up. As repairs need to happen, we're jumping on it right away. those things don't linger very long at all. Um, so next slide, next slide.

Here fun highlights. Uh, as you know, the surfer has opened at least partial part of the day. Uh, all four spaces are occupied and open. Uh, we have kiosk vendors, the crew to be stationed on the pier. Uh we have at least uh one or two, but we know for sure they'll be back this summer upstairs and possibly a couple downstairs for downstairs. So got some applications for council to approve.

Um and events tab is hosting events at the pier to generate revenue. We're trying not to use the paid lots, right, for some of that. So we just keep that peer revenue coming in. Um and the fishing fees will increase. So that revenue will go up a little bit in the peer fund as well that's already been voted on. Um so if anybody has any questions about the peer fund, I got one as I'm looking through here. Um the windscreen is that already budgeted from last year and we're good or

that we we we bid that out. Uh our desire was to build a stainless steel structure in that little intersection of the buildings to block the wind. The bid came back in a couple months ago for like double what we budgeted. Our engineers anticipated it would be about a $70,000 $75,000 expense. Bid came in at about a buck and a half. So we that's really not worth doing that for that. So, I've just I had it redesigned in lumber and wood like the shade structure out at the end of the pier and I just bid that out this past week. The bids will be opened on May 5th and then we can uh see when it comes in. It'll come in substantially lower made out of wood than than metal than the stainless steel.

Okay. So, our expectation is we do not need to put any more budget in. Certainly not in next year. No roll over I believe if we pass with the June 30th with it that the money will roll over that for that project. All right. Thank you.

I have a question just real quick. Mr. Mayor, uh John, if I could please thought about you in January when I was on the cruise and it was cold and windy on the boat. They do things like that on those decks all the time. windbreaks like that that hold up to extraordinary forces and so forth. Have we looked at maybe the technology or engineering behind some of the things that they do to see because I'm sure they're not paying 10 and half for every what we've designed is something that's going to sit right in that little intersection of those three buildings. Yeah. It's going to have two wing panels on it

offset from each other. I don't know if you've seen the original drawings on that. And pretty much it's a four-legged structure. Very similar to a pergola looking with no roof. It's basically a four-legged structure. Two sides, one on the drippy side by their door, one on the surf side offset from it on the opposite corner

to block that north south wind from blowing through the doors off the hinges is really what the problem. Uh, so I think when the bids come in in May, we could certainly have hire somebody and have this done on a uh, you know, you know, I hate to do it in the middle of the summer, but we could probably have them assemble it at night. It's not a huge undertaking for somebody to do just get the stainless steel hardware. You know, all the all the plating and and hardware will be stainless, of course, but uh, I don't anticipate uh it being very long before we can install this. And it certainly is cheaper doing it in wood than any other material. I mean, you go on cruise ships, they have glass panels, they have all kinds of stuff. Oh, yeah.

You know, which is, I'm sure, substantially more expensive than wood. Yeah. This is more of a comment. Um, ju just confirmed with Tabitha, and I'm sure you're aware, but apparently the peer plaque process is now up and up and online, so people can start, you know, potentially getting those peer plaques that we talked about. It's about to be. I believe Tabitha's got an application ready to go. It's live right now on the web. I just have not promoted it. Haven't had a chance to get it out to the public. Yeah. So, bottom line is I would hope we see a little additional revenue next year. Once I do campaign, you're going to start seeing. So, just a comment because I know that's been a long time coming. We've been trying to get that done.

That's why she needs some help.

Yes. All right. Well, that's it for my stuff. I'll give it back to Melody. Next we have the accommodations tax funding um in hospitality. So what you're seeing here is a historical trend of the state a tax funds, the local a tax funds and hospitality.

Good.

We are projecting state a tax at 1% increase over last year. Um we haven't got the third quarter in yet. So we don't know if we're going to see an increase. We see what we had last year. Um, I think I said this a couple a month or so ago that we overall the first two quarters I think were we were right around like a 2% over last year at that total. Second quarter was down, first quarter was up slightly. um for local a tax um and hospitality. You'll notice that the revenues in 2025 were higher than what I'm projecting. That's because we got some settlements that year. So, this is based on I went back and redid these numbers a couple weeks ago just based on where we were to date. Um, so this I feel pretty comfortable with where where we are, but this is one of those I keep looking at to see if we can make any changes as we move forward. So the accommodations tax fund, this is state a tax. I have included in your packet the recommendation from the a tax comm. This is the recommendation. Um minus the only thing different I'm showing you here is during the meeting they wanted to split this give a little bit to the surfer. Um but

based on the the rules we cannot do that. wonder.

So in what we have in the book, we are asked, you know, we have the 225 for what I like to call supplement supplemental agencies. Um, so you can divide that up all the way you want or take some back. This is this is now in your hand to decide what you want to fund. Um, but basically not much has changed from last year because this fund goes into a big portion goes into the general fund to help offset the cost of public safety and um um events staff people like John's people. Um May bike events we did lower that a little bit. Um we're seeing a decline in that. So I think we'll keep seeing what we want to set aside for that decline. Um so basically that is for the overtime and for a little bit of supplies and materials. As far as the police salary, overtime um operating expenses, the salary and overtime has that 3% increase on it and the u operational expense same as last year. the beach ambassadors that should get paid from here, those are in here, too. So, that money right there for salaries would get transferred to the general fund to cover those things. Um, we have a yearly ATV replacement because obviously those get beat up being on the beach. Um, it's uh $15,000. There is an offset of a little bit of revenue for that. So, I think it equates to I have it on We say 5,000 57

something like that. Yeah. For buyback. So you'll see that in my revenue numbers on the sale of an asset. Um on the fire side it's just salary supplements um for what they do for the tourists and town. And then public works same thing. They have the beach cleaning, the beach raking, um the restroom cleaning. Again, salary related. So I added 3% onto that. Um promote then the events everything is the same as prior year. Correct Tabitha? And um the promotion and advertising that was that's been at 30,000. Um so there really isn't any change on Tabitha's end. Then on the peer debt um we kept that payment with but they helped pay for that payment at 50,000 and again this little piece of money for the supplemental agencies. I have also included in your packet just for your information um the budget amendment for 2025's money just so you'll have an idea of what the committee asked for. This will be going to you guys next week um for our budget amendment, but I went ahead and included it in here just so you'd have a copy of it ahead of time.

Quick question. Did I hear you say on the autism and the beachfront blessings we have some discretion? Say again what you said at the very beginning because I recall from the meeting that we really have discretion over all of this. Okay. But because I recall beachfront blessings did not actually want as much as they had put in for when push came to shove. Well, I think they wanted to be kind and because some of theirs up, but because they said as long as we were getting I believe it was four boards um what do they call those? Communication boards.

Communication boards that they were fine with that a tax committee. That's why they went ahead and voted on that. But legally with all the rules, we cannot do that. So I think this would buy them eight boards. Yes, this would buy them eight boards. They had they initially asked for the 15, but when they got in there, they wanted to give that money to um the surfers. They wanted to split it out of kindness, but legally they can't. Correct. But we can we can we can take back surfers didn't apply, did they? They didn't apply, so we really can't. We can take some away, but we can't really give it to That's what I was trying to get at. My understanding is they didn't apply. Yeah, you have to apply.

I I get it. I just That's what I was asking. Yes, that is the that's the main reason because they did not apply. Okay,

Mr. Mayor, go ahead. Um, the question I have, if we say for $15,000 they that's eight pools, correct? Correct. Do we have eight places in town to put those boards about that? Um, beyond that, we have a little point of contention. I I reviewed the town with the those folks and there are some parks that are you can certainly put them in some of the larger beach parking lots where the accesses are large.

Uh, but I did tell them in certain cases just not there's too much clutter in some of the smaller accesses. It's not appropriate for spaces. We have a little we have a I told them a place at the pier where they can put it right on the railing by where the showers are, but when we put freestanding sign in the ground, they don't seem to be happy with that. So, hopefully we can come to some kind of agreement pier location. Everybody wants to be in the pier. We can't have freestanding sign. Yeah. So, we'll uh certainly the parks a we could probably accommodate the eight signs, but you know, they want to continue this program in the future. I don't know how many places I go to. Probably not anywhere here in my thought when I they want to branch out.

They want to branch out to other Yeah. areas. Yeah. They want to use us as a as an example for everybody. Second question is, are you going to be able with your work schedule put up all eight? If this was approved for all eight, they do it. They do. I agree with the location and they do the installation. All right. I have a question. Okay. Then I want to get that you don't get it anymore.

Um, so in my breakdown, if you divided that 15,000 by the eight boards they want to put up, right? Come up to $1,875. Would it be better for you, John, do us to prove it that way since you have really don't have eight spots for them until? Uh, well, it's good either way. Okay. Either way, you know, if we we if we give them a number of maximum spots that we can accommodate, you know, maybe maybe six more spots. Uh and then whatever that number is, it was 2,000 a piece, you know. But, uh Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I I'd hate to have us spend money on a grant that's not going to be used in Surfside Beach. That's what I'm saying is that we're approving, you know, we're approving $15,000 for them to be applied to Surfside at $1,875 a piece. But if they don't have eight spots to put it in Surfside, I don't want them to use that $15,000 for something. Let me let me have that. Will you? Not yourself.

I would think if we put eight boards out in this next year, they lose some of their impact if we do that many that fast. I think actually four would be plenty because we we'd be putting one up and you'd be publicizing and it just, you know, I I think it would lose impact. It would actually be over population, over saturation. We bring the three locations in parks already that aren't installed. So that's three, at least five. Um, so I could probably get three along the beach front somewhere in the larger parking lots down by the ramps and things like that. Uh, you know, third, third, possibly the pier.

I don't know that I want to do that many in one year. I just again I think it loses some impact. But but I mean even if we had eight spots easily identified, I'm just thinking that's too many in one year. It just the impact is is lessened in my opinion. So I think four would be plenty. Well, that further that further gets the fact to where how do we approve the line item because okay, we want to do four. Do we give them the same 15,000 for four? No. Right. That That's what I'm saying. So, do we improve that line item that will approve this much per board?

So, mayor and council, they approved. They said it's going to cost 2,000 2,000 a board, which is four. It'll be $8,000. So, you can take the other seven and Okay, that's No. No. Heck no. Does this have to be made as a motion? Yes, it will. Yeah, we need to go ahead and close this out. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we take Beachfront Blessings Community Boards and just give them $8,000 and take the remaining portion and I ain't sure where to move it to yet. It's a discussion. We can move that other part somewhere else. We

We can do it. We can do it in two motions. Okay. Yeah, that's what I'd like to do right now is make a motion that we give them $8,000. All right, we got a second. Is there any other discussion on this? I think we've already discussed that. All right. Um, we're just going to yell instead of passing that microphone. Yeah. So, the motion on the table is to change the beachfront blessings communication boards uh at tax award from 15,000 to 8,000. Miss Medina, will you call the role? Miss Fallon? Yes. Mr. Sam? Yes. Mr. Laworn? Yes. Mr. Walls? Yes. May?

Yes. Motion carries unanimously. That is approved. Now, I'm going to ask Director Guber, do you remember anything that we cut that 7,000 might help before we get into making a motion? We did not. Well, we cut the um we cut Yeah, you don't have to um we cut the bike week expense to make it to make it work. And we cut out I had proposed sending a little bit more to the pier to help with that peer debt and we cut that out. What was the first one again? What was the first um the bike week? We went from 42 now. I think we were at 47 or

question. Was the fire department not cut? Didn't they take a cut in something? I thought there was something that was that's on last year's money.

What was it? That's the amendment that's coming up to you guys on Tuesday night. So So chief 7,000 more. Does that help you or not? Not not worth it. I think that money I think we've combined our expenses. So we're just I don't think I think you should put that money somewhere else. Okay. Yes. Can I make do we have another beach money for this coming fiscal year for more beach access favors and we could just add that to my available? Okay, so there's a there's a suggestion or the the pier fund the beer pier debt.

Yes. My question is, Melody, is $7,000 all we've got to budget out or we have to this $21,500 at the bottom. Is that extra money? No, that's the sum of those. That's the sum of those two line items. We have 7,000 and then we had was projecting about a thousand going to following the fund balance at the end of the year. So, say 8,000. Say you're saying $8,000. We need to budget some or you can just leave it and go balance. Mr. Mayor,

I'll make a motion that we take that $7,000 from the beach front blessings money and apply it to the No, the papa. Oh, the access papa. Oh, so 7,000 not the eight, not the th00and. So th000 stays at 5,000. Okay, we need somebody to second. I'll second. I'll second that motion. You got a second there. Did you get that? All right, all right. Any other discussion on that? All right. The motion on the table is to take the 7,000 that we just freed up from the beachfront blessings and apply it to uh beach access pavers. Mr. Medina.

M. Yes. Mr. St. Yes. Mr. Law. Yes. Mr. W. Yeah. Yes. Motion carries unanimously. So, you got another 7,000 beach access papers. There you go, John. All right. And just a note on what we're talking about for Tuesday night. Fire had requested something. Um, what they gave up, we actually have in the budget, proposed budget for next year. That is something too. Okay.

Next, we have hospitality. And I can let every the uh department come up and talk if they want, but um for police again um this funding here goes towards capital type items for police. So we have here their clock and axon and radio maintenance contracts. Um, we have the funding to replace two more vehicles with the enterprise lease. And then of course we have to upit those vehicles. So that is in there. And then we have the funding for the mobile radio replacements. We already did the handheld. So this would be the mobiles. questions.

Any questions for police? So, this uh the Axon body cameras, they're not going to be confused with drones. No, there's problems involved in these contracts. The sign contracts is body cameras, incar vehicle cameras, and tasers. No rooms. Thank you. I'm sorry I couldn't let that go. Oh, I know, right? What do we have? Yeah. Okay. Um, so we uh just a little side note, there are some snacks in the back if anyone would like to get up and get some. Um,

nobody's gonna be able to keep saying a little recess. There's really not much left though. Um, I'm sorry. Okay. Well, I I mean I guess yeah, we can do this department by department. So, each each will come up for a minute or so. Does anybody have any questions for Chief Mickel? We're all good. All right. Um, do do we want to take just a five minute recess because we're not going to do a three o'clock break. I mean, it's two o'clock and I think we're going to wrap up pretty soon. Yeah, let's just do a little five U I'm going to make a motion to do a uh I'll call it 10 minute recess. We got a second.

All in favor? I none recess in the back. 220. 220. Did y'all rehearse that? They're so good. They're so good.

Jerry, I'm 10 minutes late for our meeting. I wish y'all take that down off the calendar. No, no, no. Everything stays on the calendar. Everything stays on the calendar. Not the mayor's meetings.

We haven't done one of those in I don't know. Yeah, that's right here. I put it a little bit of smoke behind you.

Smoke. So I got that email back and then it's We want you to see how we interact.

True.

Yeah. I'm the one that got to get these presses. have one. Did you get the new girl?

No. I was with them all.

That's disgusting. Oh yeah. What's your week do? That's what I heard.

I wasn't last. I got turned around and looked at me. Why do I think I know you? I said my daughter. You got to order a meal. I believe. All right. I have two. She might have to like

say sorry everybody came in. Most time I just said, "Let's do this." I say, "Okay,

we're not and I started getting more.

But what I did find out

Yes, you can. I was just going to tell you that. So now, which I'm happy for now,

when that little lady gets back here.

Yeah, I got I got some because I don't qualify either. Oh yeah. Mhm.

The last six months of it. same service that we get.

We were, but we just were running out of capacity. As the town was growing itself, we would we would had to hire more people just to maintain that service. Catch this.

You see cover All right, folks. It's time, sir. Y'all be good up here. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. We'll behave. They want to go home. Now, like I said, that's a different thing. I told Skip that already. What? Oh, yes. That's a different thing.

You got You got to make a toast then. All right. Um, we are done with our recess. Let's continue with Director Guber. Next is the fire portion of hospitality and I will let the chief speak to that. But we do have some life cycle in here for fire and um police in the future if we need it. Um, so that's a portion you'll see in here when you look through your details is for life cycle stuff for the police for the fire department. Um, but I will the chief about the rest. He needs a truck, right?

So, the fire station repair of the roof. Uh I could let Eric talk a little bit more about that. I believe that we had some things mounted up on top that caused some rust issues and we that's what we're looking at with that for repairs. The funding for the F4150 we had already discussed earlier. The only thing left in it is the self-contained breathing apparatus. This is what we put on our back when we go into a structure fire that allows us to breathe. They have a 15-year lifespan on them. Um, and we're due for replacement. So, let me have that, will you? No, I just had Mr. Mayor, I have one quick question. How many are we talking about?

Uh, 21 to 22. I'm not exactly sure what's right here. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I know you guys, unlike most jobs, live where you work and uh kitchen remodel, I mean, it sounds like a nice thing to have. So, what what does that entail?

So, so what we're looking to do is replace the cabinets out, the countertops in there. Uh we'll add three small refrigerators in there and some electrical outlet for the current countertop we have is a laminate countertop and it's falling apart. You can see the particle grid underneath it. Originally, we were just looking at doing a refacement and doing that. After talking to Eric, he said there's been some water damage to the cabinets. He feels that we need to replace the cabinets out as well. So, that's what we're looking at with it. Uh, we have three shifts that work 24 hours, 48 off. Um, what we're looking to get is a small refrigerator. It's roughly $600. It's a smaller than average refrigerator that each shift could have their own uh food, so to speak. Uh, nobody tries to take anything, but you know, if you cook something when you come back in 48 hours, you kind of expect it to be there. And, you know, it's nice if each shift has their own fridge where they can lock it up and make sure it stay there. And then we'll have one refrigerator stays in the middle that's for condiments or whatever else it's shared throughout the whole thing. We're if we need to replace any appliances, which I think we're pretty good with for the most part, uh, it would include it in there. We also did submit in for a grant through Lowe's for a $50,000 grant for uh the repairs itself. Uh so hopefully we could get that as well, but this is a contingency if we don't get that grant. Uh we had it aligned for last year to do it. Unfortunately, we had some plumbing issues at the fire station that took priority and so we had to take that money out of it to do that. But uh we're beyond needing repairs for the countertops and stuff. They're falling apart and they're all particle boarding for Micah. Uh we're looking to try to put granite countertops in. I know it might sound a little bit fancier. However, with granite, we're going to last 20, 30 years and we're not going to have to worry about the micica and the water getting else. Uh we have a pretty good deal on the granite, you know. So,

all right. I think that's it. Next is grounds and streets. And this budget didn't change from prior year. Um we always put I'm sorry. Yes, it did. We have the ground storage building that we took out last year. Um we're getting ready to buy the land to put that on. So this is needs to be budgeted for this year. Um, but the other is the same as last year, the beach walkovers, the shower tower, and the beach pavers. Question.

And I will say that the uh the agreement's gone out to the homeowner. We're having their attorney once we get that back on the purchase of the property. Mr. Mayor, uh Jerry Melanie, um weren't we originally considering a half million dollars? That was for the building. Yeah, that was more than one building. Yeah, that was more than one building. It was 400,000. I believe it was 500,000 that he originally Thank you. Thank you. I just wonder why I like it going to, but I want to make sure he's getting what he

I was going to ask just run through the building anyway. So, go ahead. Yeah, this is roughly half the project that we were proposing several years ago. We were going to build a Huckabe back where we tore that building down and it was going to comprise of a main storage building and it was going to be a whole set of garages behind there. But over at Huckabe at Huckabe. Oh, okay. This lot next to public works where this building is going to go, right?

Is really only the equivalent of what would have been the garages behind that building at Huckabe. basically going to be about 125x 25 metal building divided into several sections for different uses, storage, workshop, things like that. That'll cover we'll be able to get rid of those storage containers we have at Huckabe, the rental containers, the the conx boxes, whatever you want to call them. And so that'll stuff will all come to public works after this. But that's why the number is so different. So it's because the location, you don't need all that. Yeah. Half the work that we would have done up. Okay. Eric Robinson had gotten some quotes on a couple of years ago. That's where that number came from. The original higher number.

Okay. Because we were looking at the program. So, we appreciate you, brother. Yeah. Saving us money. Still has to be procured. So, you know, we'll see when we come in. Hopefully, it won't be bad. Yeah. So, this I don't talk loud enough. This is going to be about half of what you were proposed originally last year. Correct. Yeah. The number you've seen in the past, this is about half an hour. That's going to be a plenty enough to do what you need to do.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. As I said, we're going to build a metal building about 125 by 25 in that lot next to us become part of our complex. And that's going to be for condition storage for things that have to be in heat and air like to dry. you know, they they you know, and then some of it's going to be, you know, unconditioned storage and workshop to, you know, fix things and build things, things like that instead of working out in the in the rain. Let me have that for a minute. Thank you.

Okay. So, you got uh some money for beach pavers, beach walkover, shower shower here, and we just added 7,000 from a desk. What's your plans? uh for these items, what what do you see coming up? You know, what specifically will you work on you expect through the next year?

Uh well, we haven't identified a walkover. Uh the shower tower, uh pretty much we've got close to 20 of them out there right now, so it'll probably be a replacement instead of a new location for a shower tower. Uh we've got the north and south side pretty saturated. There's a couple of accesses that don't have them, but the ones that don't have them, they're not really appropriate for the meta. They're very narrow. You go like 14 15 south. They're only like 12 foot access. You really won't want to put a shower there. Um and then u the uh the pavers again, you know, I'm I'm doing now uh in April, I'm doing two that you guys gave me the money for last year. Mhm.

And then so this money, the 7,000 plus what I would have had in hospitality, uh, plus what we rolled over from a tax, leftover a tax, we'll all go into this coming fall. We'll probably do two more with the beach access papers. Uh, a walk over. Uh, it's going to be a little more complicated than in the past only because the one person I had working for me who was an expert carpenter who did these for me is no longer with the town. So, we're going to have to probably farm it out. It's just going to raise the cost. So, we'll see where that goes. I'm not quite sure yet. This is new territory. That's all I got. Okay.

Yeah. Just keep moving. I want to be home at 3:00.

In this budget, we also have the veterans memorial wall. Um, we budget 8,000 for that every year. for the upkeep of that. And then in the non-EP departmental part of this budget, um that's where we have the Ory County processing fee for a portion of hospitality that comes from them. Um we have a transfer general fund for oper operations related to tourism. We have um transfer to beach nourishment reserve the 50,000 and then transfer to the pier for operations related to tourism. And then we have fund balance. I'm adding to fund balance 181, um65. What you're going to see, I have gone behind the scenes. I've asked each department, fire and police, give me all your equipment. I want to know all your vehicles. I have it kind of like they I do on the CIP program. Um these things are they will come on the CIP program when they um are due for replacement again. But I'm making sure behind the scenes that we are putting enough money aside every single year. So when it's time to buy these things, say SCBAs, how many years are those good for? 15 15 years from now that money is going to be there.

Thank you. And speaking of money being there, um I haven't seen anything through here about our emergency fund just in case we have a June or July hurricane. Did I miss it? Yeah, that was in the fund balance. Uh very like one of the first slides. Okay. I guess I overlooked it. Can you just real quick say where that is and if we're what we're doing with it this year. Sorry about that. Disaster recovery is also committed for 1 million five on the page. Page five. Yeah.

Right there. Yeah. So we are at 1.5 right now. I believe we raise that to two. So we will whatever we have revenue over expense this year we'll put a portion towards that. And and at this point I mean obviously we have to finish this work but you have any idea what that number is for for an end of this year? Not yet. Okay. Not yet. Okay. Thank you. put her on the spot. I missed it. Sorry. Haven't even gotten there yet.

We haven't let you get there yet. Oh, I wait to get back to 47. So, um I'm just I'm so I'm trying to make sure that we are set for the future for those items that we need. Next is our local Apex. Um again we're looking you'll see the revenue looks like it's down from last year only again we had portion of that settlement got split to local a tax. Um basically this fund is a transfer out operations to the general fund. We have a processing fee there too to Ory County. Um 50 grand going to beach nourishment fund from this. So that's total of 100,000 between the two going to beach nourishment. And then um the rest is peer for operations related to tourism. So these two um incre little bit increases from hospitality and local a tax going to the pier will help cover some of that um deficit that we saw in the prior year. That concludes what we are proposing for Hopard 2027 budget.

No. So, mayor, um, if there's there's no further discussions regarding the budget, there's a few housekeeping items. So, I'd like to go back to some of the items that were seem to be some not controversial, but maybe let's go through them one by one and just make motions and if there's no motions needed, we just move on to the next one. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

So, in your proposed budget, you talked about four part-time firefighters. We went from nine to five. It seemed like there was some question, some questions, but it didn't seem like anybody wanted to increase additional part times. Just keep it as it was closed box. That's true. He doesn't even Well, we we don't have I we've already discussed these. So, if somebody wants to make a motion, just say, I'd like to make a motion on these. Otherwise, it'll stay as it is. The savings from 9 to5 is 111,000. So, that's what we saved in the budget. So if it's in there, we don't we don't say anything unless we want to change it. Right. We had some discussion. Yes.

But nobody made a motion. So he's just going through one more time. Does anybody want to make a motion at this point or just let it carry through? So we'll need to redisuss. Nope. Sorry. Thanks for clarifying. Move on. In the PB&Z budget, we uh Mark talked about code enforcement going from fulltime to part-time. There seems to be some discussion on that. Mr. I'd like to make a motion that we keep that position as a full-time position and and just hire a person into that position. This is a motion. Yes, a motion. Second, Rick.

Okay. So, so I'll start the discussion. Well, actually, Mr. Stamy, you should start the discussion. We start the discussion with I think that we'll be better off if we hire a full-time person into that position and and have a town staff person to be able to fill in some of the other jobs that he needs to be filled in at the time that need filled in instead of hiring in a part-time person and and and not maybe not not getting where we needed to be with that person. But I that's where I'm at with that. Okay. So what Yeah. Yeah. You can set it down and then I'll make sure there's a good

Okay. So, um, if we choose to do this, there's nothing that precludes us if we found a good part-time person from changing it back to part-time and saving the money. So, we have actually more flexibility if we make it full-time. Am I correct? Correct. That's all I got. Interesting. Any other? All right. The motion on the table then is to take that part-time position and change it back to full-time and fund it. All right. Mr. Medina, Mr. Walls, yes. Mr. Lawren, yes. Mr.

Yes. Miss, yes. Motion carries unanimously. So, it's a full-time position and we'll need to fund it and make some adjustments when we come back. Okay. Um, in facilities budget, we did unfreeze the facilities labor. Didn't seem to be much discussion on that. Carry on. Part-time HR assistant for administration. It is a part-time position. No benefits. $28,015 is

Mich to hire the part-time position for human resources. Um I think just just make the motion and then Yeah. N will discuss it if you get a second. All right. Go ahead, Miss Sean. Secondbody. Oh, I I thought I heard correct. Sorry. I just feel um

when I don't have in front of me a list of things that are not getting done compared to what you want to get done. Um I think we need to uh the roles need to be stationary and um the SOPs needs to be updated. So I am not for the second position at this time.

I'll take it.

Mr. Vincent, I'm going to put you on the spot. You want to tell us what this will bring to us besides uh Sonia's uh well I mean basically the job description that's proposed draft that's in your book of is basically what we're asking for this person well I mean what what do you see the benefit do do you see a real benefit? Do you see the the the need I mean I I know whenever I was in any job I always saw the need for help right

but you know as running this administration do you see the same thing that Migall is seeing that yes we were thinking about a full-time position and we cut it to part time um we think part-time can can start this person to get into the role of the HR assistant help out Sonia so that Sonia can actually work on other things as Well, um, this person can definitely help us with our safety and our wellness program, which is a big deal. Um, so it's it's well worth it. Does any other part of staff see a benefit? Do you know? Go ahead.

I work very closely with the HR department and she's slammed just as much as I am constantly. Um there's a lot of phone calls and things that other people if you don't work there you don't know about. Um there's a lot of work there's a lot there's a lot of work to do on the HR side and she's gracially doing some of the um journal entries and stuff and we are helping her as much as we can on our end but she definitely needs an assistant. There's there's confidential files that my department can't get into that we cannot help with and we're pretty stressed then too. So that's just my two cents.

Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry. I just I'm just going to say if you remember, we didn't have a full-time HR person three years ago. So this position has evolved into what we should be required to have in every town even two square miles. There's a lot for 82 to 100 employees that we have full-time and part-time and seasonal. There's a lot more every day.

Mr. Mayor, I also made wanted to make a comment that we had senior councilmen who are not currently on council now that at the time were pushing for SOPs and updates to our handbook and and and and with everything that's now we have a true HR professional in that seat who's been here long enough to get her try to get her head around what all needs to be done and take us to the next level where we need to be. she can't get to the things the council has been asking her for my two years of term uh that I would really like to see done. So, I I would support the position if it can help her be more successful in what we need and taking better care of the employees of our town.

That's what I'd like to see. Thank you. And and just one more uh just one more question then I'll let you do that. Um is there any uh liability type risk for having a not fully staffed substandard HR department? Have we been just kind of running a risk for a couple of years and being lucky or there's always liability? Yes. and and another member of staff wants to say something

um with doing in between us having HR somebody sitting in that HRC all of you know that you know I stepped in and I helped as much as I could. You got to think that during that time there was a lot of things that went to the wayside that either made us not in compliance, not organized, all that stuff. So it has taken Sonia quite some time just to try and get things where they need to be. So you know risk management that like they said the handbook all these other stuff things are stuff that she hasn't even had a chance to get to in two years just trying to get us where we're supposed to be. That's all I got.

Any other discussion? Okay. Is there not? Okay. Um, then the motion on the table is to eliminate the part-time position. So, uh, Miss Medina, will you call the role? Mr. Walls. The vote is to the motion is to eliminate the position. I want to keep it I want to keep it in the budget that you vote no. Yeah. Thank you. Don't tell me how to vote. Don't say yes. Don't tell me how to vote. Mayor, I would say no. Mr. Laworn, yes. Mr. Stamy, no. Miss Fallon,

yes. I'm going to vote no. Um, so it stays in at this time and it can of course be revisited as we have the whole council at the uh final review. Next on the list is the assistant director of public works. Go ahead. Oh, so this is yours anyway, Chris. What are you doing down here? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we eliminate the assistant director to public works. Second.

Second. Second. Just give her a chance to catch up. Do you want to say anything more? You got a second if you want to just start. What I'd say is it with talking to John and the administrator uh it seems like it as for right now it's being handled. So if they going to tell me they're the professionals who I answer to or talk to and they tell me that that's what they need. That's the way I'm going to look at it. I agree. All right. Um, no other discussion. Then the motion on the table is to eliminate the assistant director of uh public works. Miss Medina, call the role. Miss,

yes. Mr. Sam, yes. Mr. Lawhorn, yes. Mr. Walls, yes. Mayor Krauss. Yes. Motion carries and the position carries unanimously and the position is eliminated. Okay. Lastly, is the tourism and community development coordinator a full-time position for the events department? It's in the budget. Yeah. I mean, do do we want to make a motion? You have to somebody want to make a motion to remove it? Right now, it's in All right. I'm not hearing anything. So, okay. Pass it down. I figured we

I make a motion that to to add on the full-time tourism community development coordinator with the caveat of removing the part-time person from the I'll second it.

Okay. So to replace basically to replace the parttime with a full-time position. Okay. Go ahead and you you it's your floor. I just think it would be more beneficial for the town to have another full-time person in that category of events. Um, you have a part-time person that uh, you know, they don't work over what 20 25 hours or up to 30 maybe. I think you would get more beneficial out of a full time in that area. And then, you know, next year if you you prove that you need the part-time person back, then go for it. But just keep adding positions. It's it's not going to go over with

who with I think

was following up on that. Um I tend to agree with Sean. I think that adding a full-time person will give Tabitha the more relief that she needs. It might not be exactly what she wants right now. And we can look at this in midterm and and go back and budget a part-time person in the business ain't working out. But as for right now, let's just let's look at the full-time person and put somebody in that position full-time. My main concern with that is everybody keeps saying we can go back and and look at it and prove it better, but in the interim you're going to lose a very trained, qualified person that probably isn't going to be around for us in six months or whatever. I I I think it's a it's a a skewed doll motion. I don't I don't think we should do I think we should give it to her the way Tathan needs it. That's my opinion just real quick.

And I guess the way I look at this this is that um this position probably can more clearly than any other justify um its benefit um through through increased a tax and h tax which we keep striving to uh improve and business licenses. Not that I'm saying all other positions aren't equally important, but it's harder to uh to see the benefits of those. This one I think we would see it. Obviously, we won't know until we do it, but I think we will see um some returns on this within the first year even.

Anybody else? All right. The motion on the table is to replace the events uh part-time position with a full tie. So, it would eliminate the current part-time position, but it would re be replaced by full-time. All right, Miss Medina, Mr. Walls, you're voting to change from Yes. replace part-time with fulltime. Yeah, I think I Okay, I'm trying to understand that what the way I want to leave it the way she's requested it. So, yes, correct. Thank you. I'm just trying to keep up with Yeah, I know. It gets it gets weird with the word. Want to make the right He voted no to not change.

I don't No change. Mr. Lawhorn, no. Mr. Stamy, yes. Miss Bon, yes. Mayor Cra, I'm going to vote no. So, we'll leave it in as it is right now. And of course, we'll still have to finalize the We have some other Yes. And that was the uh Yes. You you made motions on the sanitation fee to go to 40% for the resident, 50% for the businesses, and the a tax you split the 15,000 with 8,000 going to beach lessons and 7,000. Did they vote on a 20 to 25 station?

Yes. 25 and 15. They did. That was included in the A tax beach blessings. It went 8,000 beach blessings and 7,000 to Johns. Favors jump. Mr. Mayor, before we move on, since we were on events, I'd like to go back to making a motion on the table or put a motion on the table that we let Tabitha go back and fund a Christmas float at the Christmas time parade for the council where we would be a solidarity. Just just make the motion. Well, the motion to to uh add the float back in.

Hold the mic. Second. All right. Now, go ahead. Now, now I'll go back into saying what I started saying. I think it's a a great deal to show solidarity in our town as as we all go on a float instead of uh some riding in a Corvette, some riding in a golf cart, and some riding in a another float somewhere else. I think as a council, we should show solidarity together as a unit, whether we like each other or don't get along with each other. I think at that point in time we need to be together and that's the reason I'm making this motion. I don't like the deal of having the problem of everybody don't know what they're going to do.

Anybody else? Mr. Mayor, if anybody knows me, they know I am totally against the expense of a flip. And you can pass it. I'm only one vote, but I can guarantee you I will not be on that floor.

Mr. Mayor, I'd also like to have Tab I mean got Tabitha to come up and explain to where she could get the money from, where it's going to come from, and how we would pay for that. Uh that's that M Miss Sha is in her rights of refusing to ride on the float, but I hope she would. Yeah. Just What is the expense? It's $750, right? For the float. If they don't go up this year. Okay. They went up $50. It' be $800. Exactly. Where in your budget can you come up with $800? It ain't going to change nothing or you're not going to ask for $800 more dollars to pay for this.

I'm not going to ask for $800 more because once we were talking about it earlier, I can go in to my new events budget and use that if you want. If you wish. Yes, ma'am. And I think if at that time I think we all would look at it. $800 is not a whole lot of money. Uh I just I hope we all look at that away. Go ahead. I just uh I just wanted to reiterate a point because we've kicked this ball down the road quite a few times and she has already expressed the fact that she can easily cover the cost of our float with the sales of the other floats.

Correct. So, it's a net zero. But accommodations events aren't ever really set up to make money, although she does it. Um it's to promote the talent. That's what it's all about. But anyway, the float doesn't really cost us anything out of our accommodation taxes. And never never never does it cost the residents of this town a dime for anything the town does. Thank you. I know everybody can have their opinion. They don't have to be upset with me.

I know. But the my attitude is that money could be somewhere else more beneficial that the entire town experiences it. Um just because I'm setting my foot down and no I will not be on the float but it does not mean I'm not part of the team. I just feel that money should be placed in a bucket where the residents have more access to the benefit from it. It's the ground I'm standing on because it'll be one float for this, it'll be another float for another group and I think it just goes on and on and on.

Anybody else? All right. So, the motion on the table is to include a town council float in the Christmas events at zero change to budget total budget. Miss Medina, will you uh call the RO? Mr. Walls? Yes. Mr. Lawhorn? Yes. Mr. Stamy? Yes. Miss Bon? No. Mayor Craz. Yes. Motion carries four to one. So, we'll we'll look to include a float in the Christmas parade. Sorry for interrupting that process a while ago before it got off to No, it's a good Oh, it was a good point. No, no, no, no big deal. Um,

okay. Now, we can get back into any any other items in the notes. No, but uh under the budget calendar, our next work session is April 23rd. Yeah, that was a big thing. Oh, feast. Yeah, we have to approve it. It was in it was in the front. Very first thing in front. Do we have to vote on the town comprehensive on? We do not have to vote on that. That's automatic. Well, it's not automatic. It's it's already included. It's in this budget. Yeah.

And it's gonna be used also for the pay study when that recommendation.

Can can I make a comment about the cobalt thing and I understand it's it's dependent on the the pay study and all that. I just want to kind of I am fundamentally opposed to colas. Um and the reason I'm opposed to colas is because I believe it disincentivizes the very people we want to incentivize which are our best performers. Um, so, um, while I understand there's probably not a lot of options this year, I would like us to be looking at alternatives and hopefully the pay study will give us some of those, whether it be a hybrid to to have a step system of some sort or or whatever it might be. Um I I have city I just I have problems with just giving automatic raises to everyone where there's no performance aspect of it. So that's all I want to say.

Duly noted for the 15th and I'm going to follow up on that with that. I'm not a big fan of couple raises either. I'd rather see a step increase or some performance level that we do while while we're on it. Do do you have any update where we are on that while you're on the case study?

No, now we are just waiting. We have provided all the information, all the JPQs, all the questionnaires, everything that they have asked us for and now um we are just they have already reached out to our competitors to put it that way. city of Myrtle Beach, North My uh for comparison, for market uh research and all that. And now we're just waiting maybe a few more weeks until we hear back from them. Now, if I may say something regarding um to address what Mr. L is saying with the merit increases, I think that is already something outdated and if we have an issue with low performers or high performance, we need to put that on the managers.

Oh, 100%. So we can still do a cola or a step plan as we're trying to do and not not look at the low performance or the high performance. Everybody should be at the medium level or higher. We shouldn't have any low performance. And I have a an answer for that. You have a low performer. Well, they want a performance improvement plan or show them the door. Agreed. Um I I don't want to get into the whole Yeah, I mean we're opening up a whole can of worms here. Yeah. Let's wait for the face. Let's table that. And I understand what you're saying. I I don't necessarily agree with it all, but also keep in mind that everybody around us is doing quotas every year. We're going to lose work force to those other places.

Again, let's let's table that and talk it out. I understand what you're saying. Mr. Mayor, can I

don't understand why we're not voting on this. We voted for the cola last year. So, I don't know why we're not voting on it this year and getting a quota every a cola every year should not be automatic. I don't care if it's 1%, 5% or whatever. And I really get tired of people comparing Surfside Town to Bory County, Myrtle Beach. They're bigger than us. And I'm sorry. If somebody wants to go make more money, then go. But we can't cater to people that it's a great town to work in. A lot of employees are happy here. But I'm really tired of hearing, "Oh, we got to we got to give them this cola or they're going to leave." Well, my attitude is then lead. I like our employees. Do not get me wrong, but my job sitting in this seat is the job for the residents. And let me tell you, we have a lot of people in this town that are on limited income and they're not getting no 3% cola.

Okay. What what I'm going to suggest is you can make a motion to eliminate the 3% cola and replace it with something else or no raises or whatever else you'd like. You can do that. I'd like to make well my thing is like to make entire Okay, you can you can bring that topic up when at the next review. Yes. Yeah, that would be fine to do and I would suggest you make a note of it so that we can have that as a uh detailed part of the discussion specific agenda item. I guess you can make that motion to make that a specific agenda item at the next meeting.

Mr. And I hate to get off on this topic, but it ain't our fault that council members are not here. And I and and I hate to say because two of them are not at this meeting that we're postponing something to accommodate them. And that gets to my gets to being trying to schedule work around their work. And and I have a problem with that. If I'm not here and you've got a for quum and you got something on your mind, you should go ahead and vote on it whether you like it or whether you don't, whatever the outcome is. Well, we can't force her to make that motion. So,

I agree with you. But I'm just saying that Miss Sean, I'm sorry that they're not here, that you can't make that motion. But you shouldn't, if you've got something on your mind that strong, you should go ahead and make a motion. Whether it passes or fail, you can always bring that back up. Well, do do you want to make a motion to include as an agenda item next meeting? That's what I would suggest. I'd like to make a motion to the next meeting on April 23rd. Is it 23rd? 23rd. That we readress the 3% cola. Second.

Yeah. I'll second it just for discussion of the problem. Okay. And I think we already heard what you said. So, is there any other discussion on this? So when when do we expect the pay study done completely? Well, here's the thing. The last phase of the study is the one that takes the longest. Okay? Because once uh the management company presents us with their plan, then it takes a while to define the plan according to what we So and so it's unlikely that the pay study will have an impact on next year's budget from a pay standoint. Is that correct? Am I hearing that correct?

You wanted to. Okay. Um, since our first reading is until the end of May, I'm hoping by then. May end up being second reading, but there's 3% in here. So, we have something to work with. They may come back. I I don't know what they're going to come back, but felt like we needed to do something. things are not getting cheaper as you all know. Right. Right. So, we wanted something in here to has a starting point.

I I get that. And and I to to kind of clarify where I'm coming from. I I have no problem with the amount of money we would be devoting to pay increases. My my quibble is how we distribute them. You know, if that makes any sense. I I would prefer we take the same amount of money or whatever it is and find a better way to make sure we're to try to reward the folks we feel like should be rewarded the most. Maybe some people get a 5% raise, maybe some people get a 2% raise based on performance. That that's my position. I'm not against giving people raises. I want I want to retain people, but I also want to retain the people that are doing the best work for us. um you know and it's to me it's an incentive for those that are maybe in the middle or down at the towards the bottom to improve. That's how I look at it. Anyway, I have no problem with the amount of money we have to vote and I have no problem with having a placeholder. Um my concern is will we have anything to replace it for this year? That that's kind of where I'm coming. That's my question.

No, you Just one more thing to keep in mind. Um 3% may sound like a lot, but we do have some employees that are right above $40,000. So 3% is giving them $1,200 in failure, which is 100 bucks more a month, right? Just think of how much all things are going up. And for these folks making right about $40,000, 3% is basically nothing, right? that that's kind of why I want to I want to reward the folk. I want if there's a guy making 40,000, if he's one of our top performers, I want to give him more. That that's where I'm coming from.

I understand. I I just disagree with the fact that uh how we solve the performance issue. Okay. But but right now, all we're doing is we have a motion on the table to revisit this in two weeks, right? I I think we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves right now. So, it's just we're going to look at this again and maybe maybe come up with a plan on the spot. It's going to be hard. I said even in two weeks we won't have, you know, I get it back, but at least we can kick ideas around for two weeks instead of two minutes.

Yeah. It may be a question. Can I make can I make one comment because I have done some interviews and I have I have I have some done some discussions with other m municipalities at MASC and I will say to you that I'm not sure that that 3% placeholder I'm not sure that this this thing if we decide to implement it in this budget it's going to blow your budget up cuz I think I think we're are very antiquated. I've already taken that into account. Okay. I hope so. We are not using the fund balance all the fund balance that we could be using.

So, we're using some operational revenue right now towards some capital things that we could be using one time money for. Okay. All right. So, if we continue, we're we're getting into I just want to make that one. So, we have a motion to discuss this in two weeks. That's basically all it is. Well, we've already discussed it. So, not letting. So, yeah, I don't want to keep discussing it now. Let's think about it, kick some ideas around, whatever. Come back in two weeks on staff side and on council side. Um, if there's nothing else. Okay. The motion on the table is to bring this back in two weeks. Miss Allen, yes. Mr. Stam, yes. Mr. Laworn, yes. Mr. Walls, yeah. Yes.

May Yes. Motion carries unanimously. She's making an agenda item specifically to address cola or some other plan next at the next meeting. The last thing that we need to look at is the comprehensive fee schedule which is on in section one page four. I'm going to interrupt one more. The next meeting we were talking about some people might have conflict. Okay. All right. We'll get into that.

You want to do that at the end. Okay. Um just what is proposed is in front of you red line but I believe there was a couple other things that we wanted to add. Um one was for it's the uh special events application process fee. So um we we it takes time to go through those applications. Most municipalities charge anywhere from $25 to $100 for those um application processing fees. So, I'd like to um I'd like to come up with the right one for us per application and add it to the fee schedule. So, I'll need a little bit of time for that.

Then we can bring this we'll bring this back to the next one. We I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware, go through it, right? See what's being proposed. And then the second one, you want me to do that, too? You want me to announce the other one or just hang on? Okay. And then the other one we need to um just make a change to our FOYA information which could be um the flash drives uh etc. But I just need to add to FOYA plus any redaction fees. So those are the the two pieces there. Where is Foya in here? It's not in events, right? section. The very first section you're looking at. Oh, earlier. Okay.

Administration. Administration. Copies. Okay. So, you're going to add items to this. Correct. And they will be what? It's a plus reduction fees. Okay. Because we don't ever know how, you know, how much that is. Okay. So, you're going to bring numbers to us next meeting? Yes. Yes. before that, right? And and similarly with the the other one, that's a new fee. That is a new Okay. All right.

And one last uh another thing we wanted to address was um the false alarm fees for fire. They would like to change theirs to um match the police where after the second you start getting charged instead of the third. That was that was the third thing. What page is that on? That is on page one-8 and refers back to 17 for police, right? The charge of the second after the second. So it go first, second for free, third plus they start getting charged. So same as the cops, right? Exactly the same as the police.

So it's the same. Smart. Okay. So, and then this sanitation fees is going to get marked up based on what we just did today. Correct. Okay. And then, you know, as Mark said earlier, he has you can go through everything that he read on and his. Okay. Here they are. 111, 112, and on.

Okay. All the way to 116, 11, 117. Okay. And I did look at those. Any anybody want to make comments on the PB and Z fees? Because it's like seven pages with a fair amount of markups. But we already heard briefly from Director Broer that we're way behind on some of these. I'm going to trust that he's done the appropriate research to keep us competitive. Yes. I mean, if nothing actually sticks out, we have two weeks to discuss it. So, if you just go through the schedule,

just a question on on section 17 of the public works. What is the sidewalk cafe fee? It's a permanent several cafes are we have several now I get the wooden spoon but I I've heard that there's a fee that we charge folks like like decor places or whatever if they want to put something on the on the sidewalk that there's a charge for that. That's not the case.

Yeah. No, I some people may have been confused. Every year I go Yeah. Each year our sidewalk cafe permit that we issue to these businesses runs from July to June just like the fiscal year, right?

So when I go out to hand them their new applications, usually like in May or June, I'll go to the existing ones. I see things that shouldn't be out there on the sidewalk and like u somebody will have an A-frame sign or a bunch of chairs out there. See in that in that area like Third South and Surfside Drive, there are zero setback lines. So pretty much your building line in your property line. So you can't have stuff out beyond that unless you have a sidewalk cafe in front. So I So I tell them you can like there's a place right now we have to visit on Third Avenue South. I don't remember the name of the business, but I noticed driving by the other day, they had a row of chairs out there leaning against the building that can't be out there. And I've told them last year as well, they can't be out there and they brought them back in. I said, "Unless you want to get a sidewall cafe permit, and then we'll let you."

So, if they want to put something outside of the property, whatever, what have you. I I get I get, you know, the wooden spoon and and but like I said, if they just want to put something decorative out on the sidewalk that that would require them to have a sidewalk that they have. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's authority to use our property to help their business. Got it. I I I wouldn't Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We We have We had one business on Third South who actually did that last year. They had a big planter out there and they actually paid the fee to have it out there and they issued them a permit and That's and that's that.

Okay. We set we set that up what two years ago, three years ago where they had that area that they could rent or lease in town sidewalk area. Wasn't that that's something Duke's added about three years. I'm not sure if I know what you're talking where they put the chairs and the tables and the restaurants. At least that's Yeah, the same thing. Well, but we just started that. It used to couldn't do that. used always was it not? Yes. Recycleable cafe permit. It has been recently in the license. We haven't changed it in 10 years. I didn't think we used to have that.

Yeah. Yeah. We we've never had more than two or three at a time participate. And then you have other businesses who have merchandise outside, right?

Like on Surfside Drive, there's one or two of these little knickknack stores that have had merchandise outside beyond their building line. Even if it which is prohibited by our zoning law can't have outside display unless it's certain things like firewood or propane or things like that like you see in front of like food line certain items out front or golf carts are allowed. Our zoning ordinance provides certain things are allowed for outside display but not everything not general merchandise. So I've had to educate a few store owners on that as well.

Thanks. Would it would it make sense to maybe revise the wording on cafe? Uh I I don't know where that is. I Okay. Yeah. Would it would it be beneficial to to indicate it's more than sidewalk cafes? It could be. It's a sidewalk encroachment. Maybe we should change that on their space. Yeah, it should be cafe slashen encroachment.

And and I don't know that if you wanted to put a planter outside, you should have to pay as much as you do for tables and chairs out there. Maybe we should revisit that. We priced the cafe based on size. So if it's under under a certain amount of square feet, maybe we come up with a third rate, right? Third price. Yeah. You know, something under, you know, 25 square feet. Okay. Maybe it could be at a lower fee or something. Yeah. that it might encourage people to make it look nicer, but they don't have to pay $300. As long as they comply with the rules of the cafe, which is maintaining a certain amount of pedestrian, free pedestrian movement on the sidewalk. Could you look at that before the next meeting? Do I need to make a motion? Okay.

Mr. Mayor, go ahead. Is it possible for me to get numbers? So, we want we cut four part-time fire departments positions. Okay, I like to know that total amount and then the new positions we added. I get somewhere in this book 111. The four part-time firefighters equated to 111,592. And then the new positions we add um the HR assistant $28,15

um I think we we have this internally we can provide it in two weeks to show just because soon as this meeting is over what's going to be said oh you added these positions and I want to be able to explain what we took away and what we're bringing in on book as new. I think it would help me as a representative to the public. Yes. But you also got to remember that's another position that

we've got the spreadsheet entirely. We just have to reassign those today. When you do the fire, remember to put in the volunteer increase because that's kind of offsetting the part-time. I mean, that was that was your rationale, right? Okay. Zero. That was around 15. Well, that's it's 15 plus. Didn't we add volunteers? asking you guys another

but but what I mean is uh did you change the number of volunteers anticipated because of reducing part times or not? No. Okay. Okay. All right. So then it's just the $5 addition for 15 or whatever it is. Okay. Okay. So when's when's the 23rd meeting? So the 23rd u I hear some conflict for the morning. I think we do have it all day. So it sounds like we would rather have an afternoon. An afternoon would work better for me. I mean 12:30, 1:00 would work perfectly fine. Okay,

I could get here. I think do if you guys all agreed from 1 to 5 that we could get done what we need to. Then I don't think the hotel would have an issue. Do we I I don't think we're going to vote on this fee schedule. I mean, if anybody wants to make a motion on the fee schedule right now, we can, but but we're going to get markups on it anyway from what we just talked. So, do we want a motion for the meeting on the 23rd or you just going to schedule it for one o'clock? Schedule it for one. Okay, everybody okay with that? All right,

mayor. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion we would adjourn this meeting. I'm looking to smack every piece of hair off your head. Loud, buddy. We're not going anywhere till somebody seconds. All right, there heard a second. Any discussion? Second on the All in favor? I oppose? None. meeting ajourned and I can hit my best I can do

every one of you

know