City Council - Regular Meeting

But Mr. Lee, he's having problems with that, too. So, he's on his way. So, let's get started. Well, so let me I didn't realize that Mr. Comi was um I didn't realize Mr. Combi was joining us via video, so I just printed the PowerPoint to PDF. Let me get Dennis to share that with her. Okay. Too. Okay. No, I have it already here. She sent it to me. I got it twice. Good. It's in the chat as well as on my um my um other device. So, okay. That's what I'm looking at right now. This is what you send us, right?

No, that's the budget document. PowerPoint. What else did you send? Uh that's the only We can go ahead and I'll send it out after. Okay. All right. And if you have it, it'll just be duplicated.

Okay. Mr. Slo is on its way. So, we'll I told him we were going to get started. I had a phone call about five minutes after we hung up this morning

on the very subject. I was like, "Well, you called it right." I got ready to send you send you the link to some of those codes, but I changed my mind. Thought you don't I'm I'm satisfied. I don't know if that would helpful for your people that maybe have a question. You could send them the link, but if you need it, let me know. I think some folks are if they're entrenched in their opinion, something I say that will change their opinion.

Yeah. Call good evening. I'm calling this session, this budget session on 6th April uh 2026 to order. Uh vice mayor is online and Mr. Slope is in route. I can grab it from here if you're comfortable with that. You may proceed, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, the intent of tonight's presentation is as Mr. Hamp wraps up um his leave, he'll be back this week. The charter requires us to present in public a budget, a city manager's recommend recommended budget by the first Monday in April. So that's the intent of this evening. We'll go through some details in the budget and also as we get towards the next steps at the end, we'll provide an opportunity next Monday to for better alignment or if there needs to be any more alignment on future years, we'll do a CIP presentation and then any alignment that's needed from this work session. So give council an opportunity and some time to digest um this evening's information and then some opportunities to ask questions of the manager if there are any next Monday. So tonight it'll be pretty heavy um general fund focused. We will spend a little bit of little bit of time on the enterprise funds. We did have rate studies done in two of those funds. So, we'll spend a little time there because the main thing that's driving the rates in those funds are um are the um future projects and then we'll work through um next next steps, potential work sessions, things like that. So, quick general fund overview. Um FY27 manager recommended budgets balances at a little over $77 million, which is four which is about a $4.9 million increase. That's a percent change of 6.9% and an FY27 managers recommended real estate tax rate which is the only change to any of the tax rates of 87 cents. And as we go through the expenditure adjustments and the expenditure changes, I'll highlight the ones that went towards that 87 recommendation because they're pretty specific in um pretty specific in nature. So the largest change which is generally the case our organization is pretty heavily um human resource uh pretty human resourceheavy. So the largest

change is $2,63,000 to salary. About a million dollars of that is an adjustment to the salary scales that continues along the same thought process and same line of the work we did last year um to replplot the salary scales. This just reanchors it to the new living wage. Uh last year the salary scale adjustment went into went into effect about a quarter of the way through the year. So it was in effect for about three quarters of the year, but that left about $500,000 and then there were about $70,000. Um and partially funded positions um more specifically the the three firefighters that were only funded for half your prior year. We have to fund those this year. Um health insurance increases. Uh we did plan for about a 10% increase in health insurance. Um, and then also because the health insurance runs on a calendar year and not a fiscal year. Last year's 10% increase was only for half the year. So, it's $150,000 to fund the remaining increase from the prior year and about $150,000 to fund an estimated 10% increase for next year. Uh, career development and statement opportunities. Uh those are where we work our officers through programs, our firefighters through programs, UT1, utility worker ones, concrete guys, single techs through programs. Um to get them to work through their pay scale to work them through the pay scales. We need to have funds there. Those funds go on top of the current year salary. So that ends up being a recurring expense every year of about $400,000 and then new full-time positions of about $240,000. I'll go um into a little bit more detail and it may be easiest to look at the um city manager's recommended budget for these on page two. Jeremy, thank you. So, on its face, it looks like there's four funded positions. A couple of those have offsetting funds from other spots, and I'll be pretty specific as we work through those. So we have the

communication director that would be fully general fund funded. Uh clerk of the circuit court um they have some new requirements coming down from the state on what they have to do um in processing of files that the state has funded a position for them. So that you'll see an increase on the an offsetting increase on the revenue side for state funded um or state shared expenses but that that position is funded by the state. Um there's a sheriff deputy position recommended. As we worked through the budget process, we saw an opportunity where the um employee that the police department uses for processing um for processing work uh is is leaving. That was a part-time position that we put $40 to $50,000 to a year. The sheriff can hire a jailer into that position and do both of those. And so what we did was we shifted the part-time work or the part-time position from the police department to Chris or Sheriff Johnson. Um and then we funded it at a full-time level because Sheriff Johnson feels like it needs to be at a full-time level. Um so that ended up being about $30,000 net. So that's not a full position. Um or not a full hit. It's a full position, but it's not a full hit to the budget. It's a hit of about $30,000. And then one street maintenance position. Um that's highway maintenance funded. And so at the end of the day, we balance the highway maintenance funds we receive from the state to the highway maintenance funds that we're going to expend. So there's no real net outflow for that. Um so the $240,000 um is for the clerk of the circuit court. We have to show that on both sides, revenue and expense, the communications director expense, and then the $30,000 of the sheriff's deputy is actually what goes into that 240. Um that's the net change to the uh to the salary line uh transfer to the bond fund for Wesbor High School debt service. That's contributes to 3 cents of the um 82 to87 adjustment that contributes to

approximately 82 to 85 um $900,000. Uh school increase according to the funding formula that's $561,000. VOTE eligible streets increase of $280,000. community vitality fund of $300,000. That's about a penny of the 82 to the 87 and an increase in transfer or increase to transfer to social services of $120,000. So if you're trying to work your math backwards from 87 back to 82, you've got 3 cents for the high school approximately 3 cents for the community vitality or I'm sorry 1 cent $300,000 for the community vitality fund. And then um in order to incorporate about an extra month, a month and a half of the comp adjustment because right now the salary adjustment is sitting in November. So to get one more month back to November. Um there a piece of that is the is the other penny and then the communications director makes up the other part of that.

Is that is that 3 cents? Oh yes ma'am. Sorry. Is that 230 or 240? Because it's written 230 but you verbally keep saying 240. Which one is it? I think I said 30,000 for the sheriff's position and that stuck in my head. It's 240. Okay, great. Yeah, sorry about that. And the 900,000 the 3 cents for the debt services in addition to the 3 cents that we had. So that be six cents we're setting aside or is that just

Yes. And I have a full um a full slide on the high school planning piece that I'll go through in just a minute. Um, but yes, that's it's actually 3 cents and a little bit of change because last year when we did the adjustment to meals tax, we didn't take the full estimated approximately 500,000 in. We used about 300,000 towards recurring stuff and then we put an additional 200 with the um an additional 200,000 with the reserves. So, that ended up being about 1.1 million, which is closer to like three and two/3 of a penny. Um, but yes, well, I'll go step by step through that, but yes, that's correct. That's an addition. Cameron, what was the question? I did not hear it.

Um, uh, Councilman Slo wanted to ensure that the $900,000 for the Waysboro High School debt service was in addition to what we set aside in the previous year, and I confirmed that that was correct. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Um, salary scale adjustment. So, I wanted to go just a little bit more in depth on this to make sure that we're all on the same page on how the salary scale adjustment works. It's effective November 1st, 2026. It's generally been our philosophy is staff and what's usually been adopted by council to give a little bit larger raise further into the year. It shows a commitment to council to that new rate of pay. It helps the employee with their BRS if we can't fund it for the full year to do it as a partial year versus doing a smaller raise earlier in the year. Um it moves the anchor wage, it's currently sitting at $16.21 to $17.35. And just for reference to the living wage, um the city of Wesboro, which is what we've been somewhat trying to anchor, um our at least a percentage of our scale to and get some ideas of how quickly that that living wage is moving. And so how what what the um CPI changes, what the cost of living changes are actually doing to the employee, the living wage number is a good barometer of that. and it's currently at $21.17 and it moved up from um 1944 I believe. So just to recap um main thing is that this is effective November 1 and it moves the anchor wage from $1621 to 1735. What the million dollars does is it allows us to replplot everybody um where they currently are, replplot them in the new spot in their scale. So no worthy re revenue changes. Uh real estate tax revenue we had some healthy growth um in the um real estate tax rate by itself that just came from picking up of new subdivisions picking up of the first phase of the north of Grumman property. We detailed those out kind of in the council retreat and that's $900,000 and then one point $1.6 million in um rate adjustment. The new the new penny is about $320,000 total. I keep

using about 300 grand to estimate just because it makes the numbers round and easy to add. Um sales and meals tax 572,000 personal property $385,000. Just as a reminder, we used the actual book from last year to estimate next year's personal property. So, we feel good about that number. Um interest revenue of $420,000. It seems like the um the Fed rates holding our reserves are holding. So, that seems like a pretty safe bet. um state shared expenses. Usually that wouldn't pop quite that much, but um the state gave some expenses or gave some pretty big raises when the um minimum wage changed a few years back because they did have a decent number of those positions that they fund sitting at the minimum wage level. We're starting to see those trickle into the estimates that we use. And then also that clerk's position added in there. U business license of 250 and then VOTE urban and maintenance funds of 138. This is hard to see. I wanted to put it in here to memorialize, but there is um an easier spot to see where you can zoom in on page

six. No,

I think it's page eight. Yeah. Of your um page eight of your manager's budget. But so what this slide attempts to do is go through kind of all the supplementals that we received from departments, prioritize what we're going to fund this year. So that's going to be the 2027 column which is here. Then everything that's eligible for fund balances here. We have some reserves that we can use. We have um some reserves for the ambulance match. We have some reserves for the fire station that we can use um to pick off some of that those small um fire items. We have some reserves for the IT department. We have an EDA reserve. So, not all of that will have to come out of prior year's fund balance. There's not enough prior year fund balance to cover that, but we have some reserves that we can go into um to fund these that we're pretty comfortable using. The one thing that I will say about this column here, this is not a recommendation yet. We will bring an ordinance um in June actually recommending what it is that we would spend from fund balance, but it's more um showing council what is available to be spent from fund balance. are some things in there that we can probably move to a future year. A couple things that I've already moved to a future year, but you'll get a formal recommendation on this for appropriation in June. Um, what I would say is within a couple hundred,000 on 3.2 million. That's pretty close between the reserves, the fund balance, and then the CIP that we'll be able to fund most of those items, but you might see a few of them drop off in the recommendation um you all get and a few of them. We spend the most time tightening this column up before we give the city manager's recommendation. And then we spend a good amount of time tightening it up here. But for example, I talked with Sheriff Johnson this morning on the phone about the processing position. Make sure everybody was on the same page with that. And we got into a conversation about police cars and or sheriff's cars that we wouldn't that we would have gotten into either way that changed a

couple of these that I haven't had time to get into the figures yet. But by the time you get an actual recommendation on this column, all those will be tightened up. This is kind of new from the previous year or prior year or 2026. We actually have gone through and tried to prioritize out at least based on on staff's thoughts um 2028, 2029, 2030 and unplanned. Uh, I think it might be worth we didn't end up because we have not previously put supplementals into the operate or into the final council budget. We didn't end up putting this into the council budget last year. We had some conversations about maybe doing it and just never quite got there. It may be worth spending some times in one of some time in one of the work sessions to make sure that one that we that that council understands what all of these are and then two um that we have them programmed how council would want them programmed. We don't have to do that this evening, but it might be worth spending a little bit of time on at some point in the but at some point before we present the or before we actually distribute the the final council adopted budget. So balancing and future planning continued. And so I did a more detailed handout with all of the assumptions on it. It's actually the very first one um on the ways high school funding. And this is where it kind of answers uh Mr. Sllo's question down at the bottom about the 2027 $2 million. So, as we work through this project, and we originally worked through a maximum a maximum price or an estimated price of about $60 million, and then the schools received, I think about $8 million grant. So, that worked it down to approximately 52, but we still don't have a guaranteed maximum price or well, they may have one now. When we work this through, we don't have one. And so, I used a project cost of 54

million because then things that pop up like what Dr. Castle was talking about last week, his $2 million of capital items. We have not. We've done a reimbursement resolution, which ironically enough, we may not end up using because of the grant funds, but we've not actually written the bond for this yet. We can write the bond as broad as council wants to include any school facility, as narrow as council wants as to only include the one parcel that sits there and anywhere in between. So, in an effort to try and keep um options open for you all as we work through it, I continue to use 54 million. I think that's conservative for a couple of reasons. We've funded a couple million dollars over there, but I want to make sure that we have the opportunity if we want to use the funds that we've already sent um that we can use them as a down payment or we can pull them back into RCIP or school CIP. You you're going to get some interest. You're not going to spend all that money the first day you get the bonds. So, you're going to get a little bit of interest there. And then we're starting to hear some things from the other projects that have been done previously or projects um that are starting to get a little bit older like Kcon's Middle School um where they have some needs. So, I continue to use 54 million. Worth noting though too that we've only increased the rate 6 cents of about eight that you need. So, if you decided you didn't want to do those things and you wanted to use all of the money that we sent over as a down payment and you wanted to estimate the interest that we're going to receive next year, you could do 2 cents or 3 cents. So, you've not you've not fully funded the project just yet anyway. So, while it's still hanging out there, I've tried to give kind of worst case or most conservative estimates. Um, so all those assumptions come up to a maximum payment of about 4.3 million. We have a couple of bonds following falling off over the next two years. Um 2011 we'll have part of the 2027 or part of the series 2011 and 2027

will fall off about 221,000. We only have to make that payment um for about 3/4 two-thirds of the year. Series 2 2011 payoff um the remainder of that actually it's about third of the year we have to make it. We we'll see the remainder of that savings in 2028 and then Kate Collins middle school debt falls off in 2029. So there's about $747,000 in savings about which leaves 3.5 million which is about 12 cents of tax or 12 cents of um debt service need and then or a little over 11. And then at the bottom we have three three and five. it ends up being a little bit less because we put more money with the project last year. So the goal all along in my mind was let's make sure that we estimate conservatively and do reasonable adjustments along because the other thing you have coming up is a real estate tax reassessment. Um so there's little chance that you've overshot. I don't think you get out of this with a debt payment of less than $2 million. There will be work to be done next year, but the hope is that you don't need the entire 3.5 million when it's all said and done. Hopefully, the numbers come in a little bit more conservative and we can use some of the reassessment from next year to offset some of this. Um, but trying to give worst case scenario all the way through. I went ahead and included with the same thought process. um NCTC um same assumptions only differences is $14.5 million but the same rate and the same number of years payment um of about 1.1 million and we have current debt capacity that we've been setting aside for I think this is the third or fourth year in a row of $520,000. So you're going to have debt service need of about 640,000 which is about two pennies. Um we're still applying for

grants on that. you have um a reassessment coming up, there are a couple of opportunities that may not end up having to burden the rate itself where you might either get the grants to offset it or you may get some um natural organic assessment growth to offset. But so I wouldn't I'm not to the point right now where I would recommend let's do another um rate increase for this, but just want to keep council aware that there is potentially one sitting out there. The other thing I always try to get to is the year that you're borrowing. If you're borrowing in the fall, generally you pay a payment, your first payments in the spring, and that's a roughly a half of a payment. And so trying to get that reserve, if you will, to roughly half the payment is pretty good practice. when we go talk to a um creditor or to a not a creditor to a rating rating agency and they have to rate us if we have to go out on our own um which for a couple of these we might not fall in line um with the um VR pool, they like to see that we've started to set up a pretty healthy reserve and that your council has shown a pretty good commitment to getting this project getting these projects through enterprise fund rates. Um there's a couple of pretty acute drivers in all of the funds with increases. Um and then there is a driver in the storm water utility fee, but it's not hit us just yet. So there's no rate increase recommended there. So we've got 5% in water, 5% in sewer, um and then $2 per month for refugees. So, I have um kind of written out the cost drivers, but the next sheet is um in the packet that I handed out is is a something that I did kind of for internal use. But as I started to look at it, I thought this is maybe helpful to kind of show the debt burden that the debt burden

that we're trying to take on in those funds in addition to the um amortization scales where items are falling off. So, we can start with water even though it's second on your list. Um, with the two big items there, the Chandel drop pump station and the PW building and the we're thinking that the Chandel drop pump station, there's a reimbursement resolution in for that. And we're thinking we're probably going to have to borrow in the fall. So, a half a debt payment next year. And then the next the the year after that in 2028, that full debt payment comes online with a half a debt payment for the for the water funds portion of the PW building. So that's about $840,000 in debt next year. So 360 this year, 840 next year, 962 the following. The reserves in the water fund are healthy. Um we have been putting money aside for those projects. So, as you get over to the running difference on that, um part of the rub with the water fund is there's no debt reduction. We have one big loan in the water fund. We do have um we do have uh the um VRA outstanding item that we adopted last meeting where we're going to do a refi or a um um a refinance basically on that part of will hit the water fund, but it's not going to solve all of the difference on the running on the right. A couple of things though with the water fund, we have seen really healthy growth and really healthy um just kind of organic increases in that fund as we bring new developments online. So I would be hardpressed to say we should do more than five or estimate more than five in any of these years because of the new growth and both of those projects are estimated pretty conservatively. The Sheno Village booster station, we've got a grant in

for that. Um I think it was the BRICS grant that got pulled um that then we put in for a state grant that I for what I know we feel okay about. We also haven't heard back. We could probably put in and will put in for a BDH a VDH loan which will have a preferential interest rate and um pro could potentially have some principal forgiveness with it as well. So, while the debt schedule shows it going negative by the time we get to the end of it, it's not enough that probably won't be overcome by some of those pretty conservative estimates. And if it's not, we can have those discussions in two years versus right now. And the plan on all of those rate increases, um, the 5% rate increases, and you can kind of see that at the bottom, is to put 3% of the increase rate increase towards debt and 2% towards inflation. And if you get a year where you don't need the 2% inflation, you could put some of that towards um your debt service as well. So then the sewer, same thing. You've got the sewer plant upgrades, the PW building, and then some system upgrades that are going to start to hit us in 2030. Um and probably going to have to borrow for during 2030. Uh that fund again, I think the current increases are are definitely justified and necessary. You have a really big debt reduction. um though in 2032 that actually puts that running difference in the negative. So you might get to 2032 and realize or even 2031 and realize this is in pretty good shape. Let's just do the inflation adjustment. Um also the way that we meter um or the way that we charge sewer is we meter water. So as water continues to see pretty healthy increases and the fund seems to be in pretty good health, you'll see the same things in sewer. Both of those funds have really good fund balance. I would not go any more aggressive on the debt um than what we've recommended, but I do think we need to show some good faith towards the debt so that if we do have to go out for borrowing, we don't find ourselves in a

spot where you're having to do a 10 or a 15% increase in a single year. The next fund is the or the next item is the landfill fund. The big pressure there is mostly inflationary pressure and then you also have your landfill capital and rolling stock. So that fund is not very big and it's rolling stock heavy which rolling stock appreciates and it's human resource heavy which human resource gets more expensive every year. And so what this kind of shows is a plan from 2026, which is prior year adopted through 2031 of reserve funds, refuge fund contribution to the landfill and then um projected actual cash needs and then do we have a surplus or a deficit. As I programmed this out, this year, most of that increase was needed for the rolling stock and for the human resource adjustments for the salary reapplyings from last year and this year. So, I didn't count anything towards the landfill funding, but I have $2 towards 2028 and $2 towards 2029. And that actually gets you to the negative 23,684 in front of on the bottom corner there is actually that's a positive. That means we got to the point where we have um a projected act a projected actual cash need that's greater than um or I'm sorry reserve funds plus refuge fund contributions that are greater than what you might need. So, the um goal I had there, if you do all of the, um landfill contributions from us to, um Augusta County Service Authority out on an average, it's about $860,000. So, the goal there was to get um to get the contribution per year every year to about 800 grand. And as we continue to see them have to build new scales, do projects, things like that, I think it's

a safe bet that you will need that $800,000. For a long time, we benefited of from um not having to build a new cell for a very long time. And now you're coming to a point where you're going to have to build a couple in kind of quick secession. And then it's kind of like those other funds where the increase on the front end is modest. Continue to plan the increase throughout the next couple of years. And if you find yourself in a spot where you don't have to do one of these increases, that's great. Or if you find yourself in a spot where the inflationary pressure hits you hard again or you have to add start replacing, right now we replace about a truck by the time you do a knuckle boom or one of the trucks. We replace about a truck a year. If you get to a spot where you've got so much growth that you have to add another route and you need another truck and we have to replace a truck and a half a year, you could use the increase for that. So again, I think that the increase this year is certainly necessary and we'll continue to monitor the increases over the next couple of years to see if we continue to need them. My hunch is that building landfills is not going to get cheaper over the next couple years and getting the trash there is not going to get any cheaper, but if it does, we'll dial back the rate increases as we get further out. Storm water fund. Um, and Todd, I might get you to help me on this one a little bit. Do we have the new per We have the new permit but not the requirements or we don't even have the new permit yet for the storm water fund.

Well, we have the permit but we don't have the the exact requirements and we haven't done the the plans for the quality. Yes. And so that's the most expensive part.

Right. And so as they start to get action plans for how they meet, they being public works and the stormwater crews, start to get plans for how they'll meet quality requirements, it'll be a whole lot more clear what projects we have to do and how much those projects cost and we'll be able to actually put a capital plan together that gets funded um by probably by read study. Um but since we don't have any of that this year, that fund's in pretty good shape. Um I think there's some money in there. I I don't think I know there's some money in the fund to go after a SLA um a state a state fund that's split 50/50 um in the fund balance of that fund. Um so you may end up seeing a project there because you have money in your net position or in your fund balance to fund it. Um but I don't see the the pressure in that fund to do a rate increase increase this year and we did one last year. So that seems to have kind of stabilized that fund. Has the quality requirements changed

that that we might see something surprise us? They haven't increased them, but it but we can expect to pay probably about what we've been paying, which I can't tell you what that is, but we spend millions of dollars. Lucky been lucky with grants bill. A lot of them. I'm trying to think the one at the end of Ohio, you know, was a multi-million dollar project. Three something million, but we got half of it. No, it was air park $3 million. We got half 50% grant. So, we've been lucky. We're expecting three, three and a half million. We're actually in good shape compared to a lot of folks around us because we got in front of it a little bit. So, it'll be some, but it's it's not going to be it's not going to kill us. No.

And we've been that part of what may pinch on this is along with the other funds, the the fill rate in that stormwater fund has been a little bit low in terms of positions. And so we've been able to kind of sock money away into net position because of not filled not filled um sock money away into net positions because of unfilled positions. If that starts to go away, you may end up with that same pressure that you're probably going to start to feel in your general fund and your other funds where we really start to have to think through um do we want to budget for you SLA grant match of $200,000 a year or $400,000 a year. So that way when that year three comes and you need 1.2 2 or $600,000 to match that grant. We have the funds there. Um I don't think it's come through in terms of the fill rate and things like that quite quickly enough to impact this year. I don't see anything in that position that's alarming. Um when I compare it over a couple of years from 2025, but we might get to the end of the 2026 aer and say, "Yeah, then that position went down some this year because we spent some out of fund balance." um probably need to think through do we need um a dedicated line for rolling stock or a dedicated line for um slap grant match requirements but I don't I'm not I'm not to a point that I would recommend to Mr. Hamp to recommend to you all to do that and he's not to a point that he would recommend that this year either. More FYI on the horizon. So that's kind of the end of the the numbers piece. the a couple of things to point out on um the next steps. So, our plan is um to wrap up work through the CIP um and to do a CIP presentation at the regular meeting next Monday and also at the regular meeting um give an opportunity for the manager to talk a little bit about the city manager's

budget as well as council to express any alignment concerns or issues. Um our hope would be then shortly after that meeting to go ahead and advertise um advertise rates and advertise budget amounts. Um generally and I need to um work through this with with Linton site. Usually the thought process has been you can go down but you can't go up. Um, so I'll confirm that with them before we see you all on Monday if we have to have an exact rate or if we can say let's advertise 87 and do we want to continue to work on it or are there items that you all aren't seeing in here that you really want to see that we need to advertise higher and continue to work on them. Um, our plan would be um if we if it's needed April 20th, which is the Monday after that, to do another budget work session. Um, I'd recommend focusing on current year alignment in that if we're not there yet. Um if we are there with current year alignment I would say that that one may not be needed. Um April 27th that's a regular meeting. Um at a minimum I would do the um ordinance introduction and if we had got if we've gotten to a point where um we were able to advertise the public hearings in time go ahead and do the public hearings that evening as well. Um, but I want to confirm, like I said with Linton site that we've got some flexibility in the rate if we go ahead and advertise the public hearing and see if we can just advertise it as a rate not to exceed something along those lines. Um May 4th I have a budget work session where we had kind of planned through um align any alignment based issues that we hear back on the public hearing and then future years um that kind of far right piece of that supplemental chart that we were looking through earlier. Uh May 11th um would be adopt all necessary ordinances and then June 2028 would be a fund balance appropriation. Um that would be

the CIP which we'll present on Monday and then July 2026 would be that second column CIP that we pointed out the small cap. Um we've gotten in the habit where we've done that in June if we can get the if we can get the work done quickly enough um and just dated the ordinance date for July 1. um just to take some pressure off. It's hard enough at times for a lot of the stuff and that is equipment and things like that that need to be order ordered and it can be hard enough at times for the guys and gals that do the purchasing and that to get it done in 12 months. So to get it done in 11 or 10, which is how long it ends up taking us to adopt the ordinance can be even more difficult. So we tried to pull that back. Um so I may do that again this year if we can get everything if everything's running smooth and I can get it pulled back. I will try to do both of those items um in June. And I don't know why that says June 2028. That should definitely be June 2026. We're not going to wait until 2028 to do a CIP. I'll update that before I send the deck out this evening.

Really planning in the future. We that's we're trying. Um so I don't have anything else prepared. If you all have any questions about number specific things, um I'd be happy to answer them now. Or if you have any general questions, I'd be happy to answer them now. Or if not, we can you guys can digest and we can catch up Monday. You council folks can digest, not guys.

Any questions? Only question I have is I would like to to see of of those items not recommended for funding specifically uh um uh expenditures and salaried positions to understand the cost associated with those requests. Um, specifically the um, and maybe this is in this table that I haven't flipped over to yet, but um, I was specifically interested in the uh, deputy director of elections. So 73,000. Mhm. Okay. I I say I was nodding not affirmation, but that I heard. Let me look at the

That's the only position that I that I I've sort of uh you know I think we're fortunate to have Lisa and I I um I think in terms of succession planning it would might behoove us to step in and consider mentioned the word retirement a few times. So if we don't I just feel like we're just we're leaving up to chance. We are if we don't if we don't lean in in this in the 12 month election cycle a year cycle we seem to find ourselves in. We don't want to get caught behind and the early and you know how with the early voting has done and and the amount of hours and getting to have somebody in there to to shadow and and and and support her.

Um I think we're otherwise we may be just leaving it to chance with whoever we get when she's ready because her part-time now is not interested. She's already retired once. She's not interested in retired. Yeah.

Yeah. So I had to that's very similar conversation that I'll share with Miss Jefferson with one of her electoral board members came with her to her meeting this year somewhat because they're supposed to have a pretty thorough understanding of how her budget works and somewhat of the same concern. And what I shared with Lisa is um we have programs and ability between vacancy savings and other departments and the city manager's contingency where if she wants to have overlap. So you can never force someone to give you overlap. She could walk in tomorrow and say, "Tomorrow is my last day and I'll get my three-month retirement check when it comes." Most folks give you at least three months because that's how long it takes for that first VRS check to hit. Some folks give you a lot longer. And so the conversation that I had with Lisa is usually we try to keep the position thought and the um that sometimes they run parallel but we try to keep them separate with the with the thought process being if you need um overlap you need overlap to train for institutional knowledge. if you need more hands, you need more hands,

right?

And so regardless of what council decides whether to pull um a position back into the current year or push it out even further than what we have it programmed, um we would put her in the same program. If both the electoral board, who has the authority over hiring, and Lisa wants to do that, if she came to us and said, "We wanted to do a six-month overlap and I want to go ahead and start recruiting tomorrow," we would say, "Go ahead and start recruiting tomorrow. The only thing we really need from you to make sure it's actually a onetime cost is from retirement paperwork, but you can put whatever date on it within reason. It's not going to be three years, but you can put, you know, within six, nine months. So, if they look at it and they say, "We're going to need three months recruit and we want six months of overlap." We're going to be pretty helpful as admin in that process, knowing how much institutional knowledge that she has. And I can go through um probably three to five examples of varying from one month of overlap, from one week of overlap to six months of overlap over the last since I've been in this position that we've helped the department make sure they got every piece of institutional knowledge that the department wanted to give or that the department wanted and that the person leaving the position wanted to give out of that person before they left. So I assured her regardless of what happens with this spot, assuming your electoral board wants this type of assuming your electoral board wants overlap, assuming you want to give overlap, um we'll help you effectuate that transition as seamless as possible regardless of whether you need an assistant. Let's just make sure we're talking about assistant is actually needing it because you could hire the assistant and they could be a great assistant and then you could find yourself in a spot when she does want to retire that the electoral board says or Lisa says that's not the guy or the gal and we don't want to hamstring them into having to move up if they can't. And we also don't want to maybe you've got a great candidate that doesn't ever want to be the person but wants to be a really good assistant that you don't

want to pass them over just because they don't want to move up. So just a at all for clarity. You have questions and if you have others you want more detail on or blown out detail, I can give you something closer to what I gave you at council retreat um with the detail on it. I just truncate these because they're you'll end up with a hundred little things on it if I don't do some of the detail combining. Yeah, I got you. Vice

comment, do you have any questions? I do not. Mayor Lee, hello everyone. Good to see you. I can't see you. All right. Thank you. Uh Cameron. Um if there's no other questions, do I have a motion to adjourn? I'll second. Thank you. Thank you. We are journ. Thank you. Thank you.