Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good evening, everyone. We'll call the Tuesday, 04/28/2026 meeting of the finance committee to order. Alderman Matthews is traveling for work. Alderman Wiggerson had a commitment this evening, but we do have a quorum. And I'd like to welcome Alderman Mike Anderson to the finance committee. Mike, welcome aboard. That'd be bigger. Next item on our agenda is pledge of allegiance. Please stand.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice Alright. Next item on our agenda is public comment. I do not see any members of the public here this evening, short of our library director. So we'll move on to item number four a, which is approval of minutes for the March 10. Any changes to those minutes from the committee?

None noted. Alright. Seeing none, the minutes are approved through unanimous consent. That'll bring us to our business items tonight. Item number five a is review and possible action for use of library impact fees on hand to fund a $30,965 change order related to the library HVAC project. Bruce, you wouldn't mind coming up and introducing yourself to the folks at home, and the floor is yours.

Yeah. Hi. Good evening, everybody. My name is Bruce Gay. I'm the library director here in Waukesha and happy to be in front of the finance committee tonight to talk about

the

HVAC upgrades project that we are hoping to finish. We have a series of minor, excuse me, minor change orders. What we found was several of the air damper controls in the boiler room needed to be replaced in order to meet the actuator warranty. A damper control for the library's kitchen hood needed to be added to meet ventilation and pressure requirements. There's a heater in the kitchen which needs to be kept in order for the Cutler Park bathroom heating unit to operate as planned.

If you know, the library kitchen right behind it to the north of it is the park's new Cutler Park bathroom. And so we have heat going in there from the library, and the the park's heater has not been used. It has not been working. And we want to add ceiling temperature monitors in the Carnegie room maker space and IT space on the 2nd Floor to allow, excuse me, local temperature monitoring. And the estimated cost from Lee Construction who was awarded the contract is $3,130,965 dollars.

Questions for Bruce? Alderperson Lundqv.

What is the balance of the library impact fees fund, and how close does it come remaining? How much will be remaining after this?

There's quite a bit more, but I know Joe will give you an exact answer.

Give me a second. Let me look let me look at this quick.

I guess is there'll be 150

happened thousand I to be doing financial statements for year end audit. And it would appear that we have see here, a $44,100 in the fund right now.

Is that before I'm sorry Rick, is that would that be before or after this $30,000? That would be before. Okay.

Sorry, Rick.

Go ahead.

That that that answers my question to for for funding it. But I think, Joe, I think I've mentioned many times that I would like to see the common council get in a semi annual update on the balances in the impact fees if at all possible. We can do that. Just put that in that Alderman Lemke would like to see it,

but

We we can't do anything about

do try to put out some sort of a quarterly report related to our strategic plan. Maybe we can throw a page in there with some of that information on there.

Thank you.

Sure. And just for the committee's edification, this item was brought before the board of public works back on the April 23, which I sit on and the change order was approved. And Joe is our new facilities director.

Joe Walter?

Joe Walter. Walter. Walter was there and it's not nice to say that he's the new Katie, but sometimes that's the best frame of reference for us is with Katie Jelacic's retirement. Joe is now taking over the role that Katie Jelacic held for many years at the city, kind of helping us manage all of our facilities. Joe walked through this and I'm looking at the change order that was approved to Board of Public Works and it matches to the dollar, $30,965. So any other questions for Bruce? Alright. With that I'll make a motion to approve the item as presented. Is there a second?

I will second that.

Second by Alderman Lemke. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Alright. Seeing none. All those in favor sign aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That item passes unanimously. Bruce, don't go anywhere. Item number five b is review and possible action to approve a budget amendment to increase capital expenses by $50,000 for a door replacement at the library. Bruce?

Yeah. So I I did add additional details there. This revolving door was added in 2005. Some brief Internet searching found that the average lifespan for revolving doors is fifteen to twenty years. So we do we did get our life out of it.

In November, one of the panels split off of the central pillar. We initially thought this would be a simple fix, but then it turned out as we had three different companies come in to look at it that the the the structure was basically rotted away to some degree, and the easiest and the the best warranty we get and the easiest way to do this would be to replace the entire thing. So instead of reusing that central pillar which is twenty years old, we'll get a new pillar and new doors completely, a whole new whole new revolving door.

Questions for Bruce? Alderman Anderson?

Just out of curiosity, what's the value or the reasoning to have a revolving door versus just regular doors?

Well, that question predates me. So it is it was a decision made in in the 2000 early two thousand renovation to add that entire front space. So as as far as I know, it was an architectural and design decision to make it look modern. I don't have a great answer for you on that. I can try to look back, but I don't know what it is.

I guess

at this point, it would probably cost more to reframe and reorganize that entry and put regular doors in than would be just to replace the revolving door, I guess.

Tony?

Yeah, if I can touch on that for a second. That's one of the things that I had considered too is should we change this to just a regular common door that opens and closes. But with the cost and what it would entail to do that, it would be a larger capital project. So I think this is a cost effective way to get us through the next ten years. But I would say at that point in time, we probably should have a greater discussion about continuing to have that type of door.

Hopefully, that'll be a conversation for somebody twenty years from now. Ideally. Mike, do you have anything else? Joe, could you walk the committee through where this $50,000 is going to come from?

Sure. Notice we did ask for it to just increase the budget. So as such, we are asking for this to come from existing cash on hand in the capital projects fund. We do have some accumulated interest earnings from past capital projects that is sitting in the fund that is available for such a project.

So will this require a vote of the council as well? Because we're in a sense correct me if I'm wrong, are we are we looking to amend the capital budget for this item? Yes. So that would be Well,

this is actually I mean, it's essentially gonna be a project with this capital item. So it will it will go I mean, just like even the previous item, it

will go to council. So but it's not it's it'll go council to be to be affirmed but it's not gonna require a three quarters vote of the council because it's not a it's not a formal budget amendment to the to to the capital budget. It's a it's an ink it's a change in capital budget.

Well, this has not been a this has not been a project. This is a standalone.

Okay. So then that answers my question even better. So this will be this will go this will go to council for a simple affirmation. It's not an amendment to the to any approved budget that the council's approved. Say that one more time. So I guess the question that I have is, when I see when I see budget amendment, I I go to the point of does this require formal council approval and are we amending the 2026 capital budget for this item? That's my first question. Because that's what I think of when I see budget amendment.

Well, the intent was that it had that it that we were gonna have to get an amendment to the budget. That was that's why it was written in there like that. This is not there's no existing project related to this. The building prod the old building library building project was complete. This is a relate there's the HVAC project, that was a separate project.

That was approved as part of the

capital budget. That was. And that that was just a change order related to that. And we're utilizing other funds for it. This particular case, we're asking to basically utilize funds in the capital project fund. And technically, we're not able to spend the money without the budget.

Correct.

But we're not

require budget.

But it's not these aren't I guess, I'll answer maybe answers my own question here. So in a sense, these aren't these aren't capital dollars that we're using for this. This is cash on hand that has come from interest earnings off of borrowed funds. Correct? That's where the the 50,000 is coming from?

Yeah. That's

correct. Okay. So But we we Like I said, I don't mean to make a mountain out of a molehill. I'm just wanting to make sure that this is so this this project wasn't wasn't in the capital budget for 2026. This is a project that's come up because the doors broke. Correct. So I think it's just a matter of of just approving this $50,000 with the the sources of the funds coming from interest earnings on borrowed funds. I was just I was just tossed a little bit by seeing budget amendment and wanting to make sure that we don't need a, you know, more of a more formal council vote or a higher percentage of the council vote because we're looking to amend the capital budget, which as we talk about this more and more, it doesn't sound like we're looking to do that.

Well, my intent was that in theory, if we do not have something in the budget, we have to be able to increase the expense budget to spend money.

Correct.

And so the only way to potentially do that would actually be to amend the budget.

So let's let's do this. If there's no objection to the committee, let's let's we'll call for a vote and ideally approve this item tonight. And then maybe we could talk a little bit more about how we How that passes the council. How we present this to council. Yep. Alderman Lemke?

If we can use impact fees to pay for HVAC changes, why can't we use impact fees for the door replace?

So generally speaking, impact fees are used for expansion or upgrade, like larger upgrades. This is a replacement.

Okay. Thank you.

The HVAC project itself was a was a large improvement to the building. So I would just say isn't that.

Thank you. Alright. Any other questions? Ideally, I have not confused this issue more than I needed to. So I'll I'll tell you what. I'll make a motion to approve the item as presented. And is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Anderson. So we have a motion and a second. And I think what we'll do is we'll ideally approve it this evening at at committee. And then perhaps we can chat a little bit about how this is presented to counsel. All those in favor sign aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Item passes unanimously. Bruce, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Brings us to item number five c, which is review and possible action on a recommendation to carry over 119,454 from 2025 to 2026 in the general fund. Mister Shurrow.

Thank you. All right. So I have this is a standard process that we always ask you. We ask you for review and for approval. These are several common items that we bring forward each year of unspent items really that related to specific grant funding or very specific activities that we carry over.

And as you can see here in the listing on top, the top half of the screen, that is what we're actually asking for, for the general fund carryovers this year. And I just thought it would be good to kind of give you an idea of what we did last year, and that's on the bottom half. The biggest differences that you can kind of see here relate to the first line, which is really related to like the senior management recruitment. In past years, it has actually been those funds have been utilized. And knock on wood, we haven't had to utilize them or utilize them over the last year.

And so we actually when did the '26 operating budget, we did not budgeted any funds for this line item because we knew we had this carryover. Usually we budget about 35,000 to $40,000 to utilize for recruitment services for senior management positions. But because our carryover looked like it was pretty well unspent, we decided to remove that in the '26 budget process and utilize the carryover in total. So that is the complete unspent balance for that particular line item. And it looks like it pretty much doubled.

So if we have another year where we don't have to utilize that, we'll continue not to specifically budget for it in the 2026 budget and we'll probably ask for the carryover again next year. So just to kind of give you an idea, that's the biggest piece. This change about $42,000 36,000 of it relates to $35 of it really relates to that line item. The other item that's a little unusual that you don't have every year is this planning item for $13,000 They are, as you probably know, in the middle of a zoning code update. And that project is actually budgeted in two different spots.

One, we had some ARPA funding that went towards it. Those funds are almost completely utilized, there's a little bit left. And then the remainder was supposed to come out of the general fund, which they had kind of assumed in the last year's budget and about $13,000 is still left related to that in the general fund.

And Joe, wasn't it as Joe, Tony, wasn't there a situation where that project took a little bit longer to get done because there was a change in the consultant or not a change in the consultant, but maybe a change from the consultant on who was working on it? Or do I have that wrong?

Yeah, I'm not familiar with that being the case. I know that Jose Levine is the consultant that we've been working with. I don't know what the current status of the project is in terms of the amount that's been spent to date. But I believe that this amount does get us through implementation and working with them to complete the project.

I'm not worried that this is actually related to any additional change orders. It's just what was kind of under contract when the year ended for '25. So we're carrying over whatever was remaining in the ARPA fund that was already committed and then what was remaining in the general fund that was already committed. So those really with those two line item differences, that's really what's driving the difference from last year's 77,000. And I

guess my only other question is I was just surprised to see that we had over $7,000 in building and grounds carried over and that typically is not the case because all of us like asking for stop signs and no parking signs and such. That was Alderman Lemke?

I was in the committee and

said no, no, no, no.

Thus we have $7,000 to carry over. And

that does ebb and flow, right? I'm not going to say anything about that. But that does ebb and flow. I mean, I think there has been years where it's been close to the same amount as it is this year. But definitely you can see last year was only a couple of thousand dollars. So yes, as it comes up, things are addressed.

Any further questions from the committee for Joe on this? Alright. I'll entertain a motion to approve the carryovers for the general fund. Alderman Lemke.

I make a motion to approve the carryovers as presented.

Very good. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Anderson. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Alright. Seeing none, all those in favor sign aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Item passes unanimously. Item number five d is a matter of report. So this does not require any action, but it's a matter of report as it relates to capital carryovers from 2025 to 2026. Mr. Shiro?

Yes, sir. Thank you. So every year when we get kind of done with our year end process, we look at basically both sides of the carryovers. One you just approved. The second piece is really the capital, which the reason why it's a matter of report or policies allow us to carry things over there unfinished without any specific approval.

But it is customary that we report to you what those carryovers are. And so the last couple of years, we've kind of looked at it this way where let's like historically breakdown in categories what the carryovers relate to, but then also kind of look at, well, how do we stand up against what we've done in the past? And so as you can kind of see in the left side of this, this is kind of like a table of the major things that are still kind of ongoing that we need to wrap up for the year. And so like the we'll just kind of look at like each department's major things. You can first see there in Public Works, we bought $3,700,000 that is sitting in their particular carryover categories.

And I can tell you for the most part, you can see a lot of it's related to flood mitigation and storm pond improvements. There's I know that they have some projects that we've had in the past like related to Area 7, flood mitigation improvements and the second category of that is there's I believe a couple several $100,000 relates to storm pond upgrades. Some of that is being of shoehorned together with what they have planned in 2026 as well. So anything that didn't have a contract, they're making sure that both what was left over and what's happening in 2026 is going to be accomplished with whatever they bid out. So in actuality, a lot of those projects have already had bids and are already moving forward.

So the engineering has a good plan for those items. And then the other thing I want to mention here is fleet in general. You can see that each of these departments have several items related to fleet. This last year was kind of like the first full year where we've been trying to get everything really centralized related to fleet with the city garage. And so we've made some really good first steps in doing so.

So basically not just the maintenance of all of those fleet items, but also the procurement and then even the sale of the old equipment. All of that is running through the city garage at this point in time. The vast majority of the items you see here in fleet and equipment is on order already related to the carryover. And so my discussions with John Weinckoff, the fleet manager, is that he anticipates a lot of this being received, if not already received this year by at some point in summer. So and I would imagine that a lot of the equipment that's related, that's on order is needed.

So that's it sounds like he's catching up with all the departments. It's requiring a lot of coordination and discussion. But I would say that we're getting really close to being where we want to be. So that's kind of like for all of those three items, had a lot of discussion with City Garage. And then just the other thing I want to point out here, in the IT side, we have $3,400,000 related to CAT RMS.

That project is ongoing. They're really getting into the details now. And so we do anticipate that project really to move forward by the 2026. So I will if you ever need an update on that, we can maybe pull in Chris Pofall, the IT Director to maybe give us an update. But I don't have one specific today, but I do know from what I've my discussions with him that that is definitely moving in the right direction now.

So any questions on the governmental side? I do have one more tab that I want to show you for the business type activities. But any questions on this particular slide? I guess I should also mention the graph that's on the right. You can see at least when it comes to this carryover at $8,100,000 is the lowest carryover that the city has had in seven years. So we again are moving in the right direction when it comes to utilizing our projects and staying on top of them.

Alderman Anderson?

And I think you touched on this a little bit earlier with the purchases already being made.

And

if I'm misunderstanding this, just let me know too. I mean, the carryover is because what we plan to do in this year didn't occur or didn't get paid in the year that we're in. How much risk is there for now carrying this money over and still wanting to do those projects? But now the price of those projects go up because we didn't do it when we thought we were gonna do it. And now we're not gonna have money. Even though we carried over the money, the the cost is higher than we anticipated. So does that cause problems? And it's a great job lowering it comparative to the other five years. And I think that's what the goal should be going forward. How much risk is there, guess, is my question?

I mean, there's some. I mean, obviously, if especially if something that is not started or under contract. A lot of the things on here are under contract. So we kind of know what the costs are. Occasionally, if it's something related to the exact same category that kind of wrapped up, We will utilize those funds in the same category in the next year's projects just because they haven't been out yet. We want to make sure that those funds are available to cover any contracts. So I would say for the most part, contracts exist or the orders existed. Because I think the people that are responsible for these understand like, yes, the construction cost inflation is going to hit us every year. So we got to make sure we at least have some cost certainty when it comes to these

Thank you.

It's a good question. Thank you.

Alderman Lumpke?

And the reason we were so high in 2021, 2022 through 2024 is because we got a lot of ARPA money and we're finally able to spend it because the supply has come back?

So it's a good question, but actually not. The one funny thing with ARPA, it's not really a capital projects fund. We used a lot of that stuff towards capital, but we it wasn't in our capital projects. And we kind of separated that on purpose because of well, there was a lot of different motivations for it, right? So we definitely put some capital in that fund.

But this, the big reason for some of those big spikes, we had a lot of building projects, right? So like when we built City Hall, for instance, we budgeted for the whole thing and then we just carried over to the next it took a number of years to finish the project and we just carried that over. So like when that spiked in for the $26,000,000 in 2021, that was probably the last big spike with PD Building and the City Hall Building kind of getting wrapped up.

Other questions for Joe or Tony? Joe, I know we talked earlier in the day but I forgot to ask you. The $4.61 for fire, that do know if do we know if that's an engine or if that's

I think the vast majority of there's two different things. I think it's one is the I think the two main items are the hazmat truck, which is under is on order and being built. And the other item was related to an ambulance re chassis.

Okay. Very good. I know the hazmat truck is I think being out outfitted. Saw it at City Garage recently. Great. Okay. Yep. Other questions on this item? So there's no action on this. So Jove, yep, you want to go to your next tab?

Yep.

So I just wanted to kind of give you a brief overview on enterprise funds. The biggest pieces as you can see here of this $13,300,000 is really sitting in clean water plant. Everything that every capital dollar that comes through clean water is usually a very large project. That the biggest two items you can see there are the Phase three facility improvements. That project has been on in CIP for four or five years now.

And really the reason why we did that was we kind of went to from borrowing for a big majority of the large projects to trying to cash fund the project. So really that project is moving, everything's under contract when it comes to those improvements. It's just that we've been rolling that project from year to year so that we could cash fund it. So we couldn't budget like the whole $20,000,000 in one year because we knew we didn't have the cash flow for it. But we did, if we broke that up in three years, we did have the cash flow to cover that.

So this is really just finally carrying over the last bit of it so we can finish the project. So that I know they have Phase four already on the horizon and also even looking at updating their facilities plan. But this is really just a wrap up the project that currently already exists. The other the $4,000,000 related to pump stations, there's some improvements in consolidation that's still going on. I believe that affects about three or four pump stations. So that's really what's driving that $12,000,000 related to EnterpriseOne. But like I said, all of their projects are underground, they're major or they're at their facilities. And so you're going to see a pretty large dollar. When we pass the capital budget every year, that's pretty typical.

Any questions on enterprise funds from the committee? And gentlemen, just for the committee and viewers at home, can you remind us as to why the committee votes on carryover for operating but we don't require a vote for carryover on capital?

So on the capital side, if it's going to I think the rationale relates to the projects already been approved. And so in this particular case, we're just trying to get them finished. And I mean, that's also the reason why we want to make sure we are under contract so that, hey, that budget that passed from the past year will cover those costs, right? So that was why Alderman Anderson bringing that up, making sure that those do get moving because we want to make sure we have that certainty. But yes, that's the rationale is that council has already approved the project, we just want to complete it. And so that's why I believe we have more flexibility when it comes to capital versus the operating side.

Very good. Could you go back to your other tab, Joe? Sure. I just this is we are in a much better spot than where we have been in years past. And I give a lot of credit to to Joe and the staff. I also give a lot of credit to the idea to centralize lead operations under a fleet manager. And I know John is doing a really good job. I just would like to get this down even lower. And but I know we've got a couple of outliers with the CAD RMS project at a million 4. The other thing I will will say is that there there seems to be some progress in Park Rec and Forestry as it relates to getting their projects done.

And I know that they've received a lot of help from engineering in terms of project management which has helped with that too. So I think this is a very good spot. So gentlemen thank you and and please extend the thanks of the finance committee to your respective teams. Anything else on this gentleman?

I don't have anything for carryovers outside of what we discussed.

All right. Any communications? I don't have any tonight. Any referrals? Any objection to adjourning? Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you folks.