Village Board - Regular Meeting

Santo Smith. All right. I will uh call to order the village board meeting of Monday, November 3rd. Aaron, could you call the role? Yes. Trusty Saunders here. Trusty Casper here. Trustee Howler here. Trusty Deman here. Trusty Van Even Hovind here. Trustee Sin here. And President Buckley here. Thank you. Thank you for going in the right alphabetical order this time. Yes. No, she didn't. I know cuz I was she was towards the end because I was first and I wasn't prepared. I I think we need a nickname for Brian though cuz Venhovven BV.

Boom. There you go. Officially in the record. Uh first on the item items today is the uh consent agenda. We've got three items. the minutes from October 20th, an investment report from September 2025, and the theater license for the Argo. Uh, gee, we don't do we have an Argo. No, Adam's not here. Uh, any questions, comments about those three items? Hearing none, could I would entertain a motion to approve? I move to approve the consent agenda as presented. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. On to the report of the village officers. M. Oh, we don't have the village attorney here today. Would you like to make a report? Finance. Okay. Then we'll move on to the village manager. I have nothing this evening.

Village president. Uh, boy, other than thanking the civic foundation for a great pumpkin festival. I've got nothing. Any miscellaneous trustees? Clean choice. All right, then we'll move on to petitions and communications. This is an opportunity for anyone in the audience to address the village board on an issue that is not on the current agenda. Anyone here to address the village board for anything not on the agenda? Any US government kids who want to say something about sidewalks or playgrounds or anything? Okay, then I will close petitions communications and move on to general business. We have two items uh on the agenda tonight. The first is discussion action on accepting the lead service line replacement community outreach grant. Matt,

tell us some great way to start a budget meeting. It really is a new discussions. Let's This is a good one.

Yes, indeed. So, kind of in the final hour, uh we applied for a grant almost a year ago to help assist the village of Whitefish Bay with our lead service line efforts. Uh it was really a collaborative effort with this grant application that we worked alongside city water village of Shorewood as well as the health department to figure out the best way moving forward on a daunting task of replacing over 4,800 lead service lines within our village alone. And this was a great opportunity to partner and receive grant funding of $150,000 to help out with marketing, community outreach efforts, and to ensure that we have uh our best foot forward with this annual lead service line program. So, in late October, uh the DNR reached back out that we were awarded $150,000 to help out with our our um marketing, community support, and outreach efforts. And within the memo, it kind of goes line by line as far as what that means as far as those uh uh what we're going to plan on doing for this two-year grant. A bulk of that uh funding is going to be through our partnership with the Northshore Health Department where it's going to actually fund um a service worker, our case manager, community outreach uh coordinator to help out with uh questions, inquiries, and better communication channels for uh our residents if they have any questions with our lead service line replacement program. And with that, it's going to help out with uh door-to-door education and outreach materials, um engagement activities. So, a lot of uh one-on- ones as well as potentially different events that we could help financially support marketing advertising and another great uh opportunity for us to enhance our GIS with the lead service line inventory and really truly make that more user friendly that we could have a link on our website and people can really learn

about their own property, their neighborhood properties, the overall impact to Whitefish Bay with our lead service line replacement. So it is perfect timing since uh 2027 within our CIP is going to be our first year where we plan on doing one mile of water main replacement. So that that's going to be a lot of service lines that are going to be impacted within that corridor on on top of our PPI program and other uh service line uh projects throughout the years. So, this really does put our best foot forward by having all these materials, marketing, uh, and everything else because this is going to be a long-term goal for the village. So, uh, in front of the board this evening is to accept the grant funds in the amount of $150,000 for us to be able to move forward with this program.

So, this money isn't anything we can use towards helping people pay for the project, right? It is not. It was very specific with uh the grants that it's for community outreach purposes and education. I I notice on the bullet point it says funding for new Northshore Health Department outreach case manager. Is that a new case manager or an existing case manager?

It's for a new position. So, we reached out to Becky. um she actually was interviewing other people for other positions and uh she has a pool of uh very highly qualified candidates that would be a good match, but this would be a new position. It would be marketed for the 2-year since it would be funding for the two-year program. So, it's going to be a shared position between us and Shorewood, so it' be about a 50/50 uh split, but it's a full-time position. Are are they funding it through a grant or their levy? Uh also the same grant. So, Shwood received 150,000 as well for this. Any other questions from trustees? Good work.

Any members of the public? The question about this grant? Hearing none, I would entertain motion number one. I move the village board approve the lead service line replacement community outreach grant program agreement in an amount of $150,000 as shown in the meeting packet. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Ter. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. I.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. All right. We are now on to our second and last item on the agenda for tonight. Uh, which is going to take up a few hours. Discussion action on the 2026 village budget. Um, Jamie, would you like to start or Kelsey, would you like to start? which who wants to take it? Kelsey's going to take it. Okay. Um, so I'm very excited because I think this is my 12th or 13th budget and I've never had this many people in attendance for such an important policy document. So, well, they're forced to be here. So, I just right now those are minor details. We don't have to talk about that. Yeah. [laughter]

Um, so anyways, we are definitely very excited to present the 2026 budget. Um, thank you to Jamie who is incredible to work with and does all of the actual work throughout this process and then to our management team who spends a lot of time with their leadership and their departments putting together um a proposal. Both years I found everyone to be incredibly reasonable and understanding of the financial situation that municipalities are in certainly across the state and I imagine nationally. Um, and so I I think what we're presenting today is a very fair, reasonable request, but I do think that it takes um it it implements some very intentional steps forward in some areas that um I think are pretty critical. And so we're definitely excited to um talk about that this evening. We are going to try a bit of a different approach. And so we're going to start with like a big picture review. I want to make sure that everyone walks away with a good conceptual understanding. I call it an elevator speech, but somebody walked up to you and said, "What's the 2026 budget doing?" I want you to have a good um concise understanding of of what this budget's actually doing on a practical basis. And then at the end, we are going to spend time going through each of the departments and that's when Jamie's going to take over and talk about the changes and um we can talk through questions that you have about the actual budget book at that time. And I'll take questions throughout as well. So going to um Ann, are you in control? Yeah. Okay, perfect. So, um, going to the first page, the 2026 budget book was again presented electronically that was mailed out to the village or emailed out to the village board on Wednesday, October 22nd. It was also on the village website and a link was included in the board packet for this evening. There were two guiding policy documents that we utilized in the creation of the 2026 budget. U, both of which we actually developed throughout the throughout 2025. Um the board has spent

a lot of time uh planning financially and for our capital projects and so it was really exciting to see essentially the fruits of th of that work um come through in the 2026 budget. So the first that we all know very well is the 2026 to 2031 CIP which is was adopted by the village board on September 15th. I'm going to say this a few times but I want to make sure everyone understands it. The first debt issuance is planned for 2026. However, the levy impact will not be seen until 2027. So, although it's called a 2026 borrow, that first um principal and interest payment hits in 2027. So, we'll talk about that a little bit later. Um but I wanted to just provide some practical examples of how that was incorporated into the budget. Uh so, for starters, um the borrowed money fund um kind of talks about all the capital projects that are anticipated uh for the year. Jamie came into my office and was like, "This CIP is amazing." Um, because that entire section of the budget was done because we had had those CIP conversations. Um, during the CIP conversations, we also created a new policy for vehicle purchases. So now, um, everyone's on the same page that we borrow for all vehicles over $150,000. So, what that meant is that staff was able to create a vehicle model uh which allowed us to look closer at how much we're contributing annually from the levy to the DPW and PD um vehicle replacement fund. And so, the recommendation that came out of that is to actually decrease the levy contributions by $30,000 which was incorporated into the 2026 budget. Um Matt, this is a little bit budget aside, but I wanted to note it that Matt's already actually working on those 2026 budgets on the our projects on the designs getting um under contract with um developing the plans and so he's able to start work months earlier just knowing that we have these CIP projects in the hopper. The next document is the financial management plan. So although it's not

completed, we've had enough conversations about that plan that we were able to utilize it, I think, in pretty big ways in the 2026 budget. The first example is levy limits. Um, we actually wanted staff wanted to um create this financial management plan so that we could have a better understanding of what levy limits mean and what tools we have in our toolbox because Whitefish Bay is one of I would I would guess the one of the only not growth oriented communities that hasn't been up against levy limits historically and that's a very fortunate position. Um, however, we knew this time was coming and so we learned through that process about what's called a baited debt and I'll talk about it a little bit later, but 2026 budget is the first time that we'll actually be utilizing a beta debt, which is a tool um to basically assist with the limits that are placed on us as a result of that state statute. Um, next we um um submitted for a simplified water rate case. So that's a 3% increase that takes effect on December 1st for water rates. And that was really important because it's going to allow us a little bit to smooth in what we know will be pretty large water rate increases because the water rate, a lot of people don't realize, but water rates are 100% out of the control of the village board. That's completely determined by the public service commission based on their calculations. And so to smooth in with a 3% increase will result in a not as large increase once we do that full rate study um this next year. Uh and then lastly, it allowed us to plan for future utility rate increases so that we can try to spread those out over multiple years versus all of them hitting at one time. Now this um next chart you saw during the capital or during our capital improvement planning process, but I just wanted to show it again. We start with the financial management plan at the 50,000 foot level and then we kind of work our way down in terms of detail and scope um all the way to project

implementation. So as I mentioned we have the financial management plan then the capital improvement plan which is more detailed and then we get to the bianual borrow which will be in the first few months of 2026. We'll go through that process and then right now we're in the annual budget that's more more detailed but like all of them kind of flowing into each other. All right. So, many of you know this, but also wanted to talk about it. We have different funds in the village and it's just very important to understand because they're separate accounts. Think of them as separate accounts at your bank. And you can in some cases you can move revenue from one fund to another, but in some cases you can't. Um and so when we look at these funds, we almost have to think of them as their own separate entities that we need to make sure can kind of cash flow um on their own right. So the first four on the list there, the general fund, the library fund, the debt service, and the capital projects, those are all levy funded, meaning that the majority of funds come from your property tax levy. The general fund is your day-to-day operations. That's 70% of your levy is your general fund. The library fund is um your library operations. Uh it's just separated because statutoily the library board actually has authority over that budget, but because a majority of the revenue comes from um the village, that's the reason it has to be included in our budget um to show how that transfer would work. Um there's the debt service fund which pays for our um debt and then the capital projects sometimes referred to as uh fund 44 which pays for the capital purchases that are large enough that we you can kind of see a pretty significant change yeartoyear but they're not so large that we would be borrowing all the time. Um so like it purchases um smaller vehicle replacement items things like that would fall into fund 44. And then we have the water sewer and storm. Those are all utility funds. Um, in the profession, they're

called enterprise funds, which is a fancy way to say that you want they you they you want them to operate like a business. So, the the utility rates or the user fees that you take in, you want to pay for the expenses. Best practices is that you don't want to supplement those utilities with your general fund or your levy dollars. You can, um, but you don't want to if it's avoidable. The next slide. Um, so now going a little bit more into your levy dollars and how they're actually being split out in the 2026 budget. So we're looking at a 2.8% um increase in the property tax levy in the proposed 2026 budget. As I mentioned, 70% of those funds would actually go to the general fund and then we broke out there by levy fund um the increases. The 40% in the capital, that's not really alarming. That just that tends to happen when you have those larger capital projects. Some years it's lower, some years it's higher. Um the debt service fund, we actually do have debt payments uh sloping off. So that's why you see the negative number, but then again, next year you'll see that go up when that 2026 debt issuance um comes back up or hits the books. For utility rates, as I mentioned, we have a 3% rate increase that will hit December 1st. Um and then uh everyone will see it on their bill in April. There's no other utility rates proposed in the 2026 budget. However, um we are proposing a 3% increase for sewer in 2027. This next table um we show pretty much every year. Um and it talks about like an average resident, which I acknowledge no one is average, but it's as close as we can get to what a typical person would experience as a result of the proposed 2026 budget. Um, so for property taxes looking at a $69 increase for the water utility um increase that

3% that I mentioned, it's $10.86 for a total annual impact across all the utilities as well as the property taxes of just under $80. And the um percent change for that is 2.3%. Moving on to the revenue sources as I mentioned um for the levy supported funds the vast majority of the money comes from property taxes about 76% followed by intergovernmental revenue mostly from the state which is 9.1%. Um, next, expenditure by function. Uh, no surprise. Your largest expenditure is public safety. That includes both police and fire and accounts for 41% of the levy funds. The next chart shows your tax rate. Um, how it was kind of steadily increasing to 5.32 and then we had the revaluation and it came down um to 3.86 and then there's a proposed slight increase up to 3.96. This is not 2026 budget specific, but I think this chart is a great explanation of how your revaluation does not increase the revenue a municipality sees. So what happens is when all when your assessed value increases, then your mill rate, which is the multiplying factor, comes down um so that the municipality only ends up collecting a pretty similar dollar amount to what they had previously collected. Here's the tax rate comparison across the Milwaukee County um municipalities. This does include all taxing entities. So, it would include the school districts as well as like the technical colleges. Um but you can see I think it's this is a chart that it that we need to continue to talk about because it shows there's really high value in Whitefish Bay um for the services um in this you know the education that residents are receiving. So, Whitefish

Bay is currently the lowest um at 13.71 for a tax rate and then the highest is 23.81. So, moving into the 2026 budget summary. So, this is really like the this the story of the budget and I think it kind of boils down to three areas. Um service enhancements, investing in our staff as well as intergovernmental services and shared cost. So under the service enhancements umbrella um starting first with assessment services. So we did go out to RFP this year um to look at if there if there was a better service provider to be able to complete our assessment services knowing that there there were some challenges with the revaluation process. And so this budget does propose that we move um to a different service provider. Um, our hope is that through this transition, um, we'll see improved records, better customer service, as well as we've built into the contract an increased frequency of revaluations, um, to try to reduce the changes that residents are seeing in those revaluers. You're still going to see pretty large increases likely, um, but we're trying to level that a little bit more. Um, the assessment services contract does also propose a full exterior inspection in 2027, which is proposed to be funded by debt. So, the result of that is an $18,000 annual increase, or you could think of it as like a levy increase, and then $220,000 of borrowed funds for those exterior inspections. Uh, the next service enhancements, um, perhaps seen more by staff, but the hope would be, um, that it would flow through to the services we provide as well. is a new IT service partnership with the village of Bayside. Um so this partnership uh would allow us to join other Northshore communities. This past year we utilize funds from the state through an innovation grant to look at

this shared service as well as other shared services to try to determine if it would be most efficient um to utilize Bayside for our IT services versus our current contractual relationship. And what that um study found is that it would uh be for a couple different reasons. Uh one, there's long-term savings in software through that partnership as well as hardware costs. Um the goal is to transition away from onremise hosting for servers which are $100,000 plus um to replace. We're also hoping that there will be better continuity of service. Our current provider is very good, but he's one person. Uh so if he's on vacation or busy um in medical appointments like pick your item, it can be hard um to reach him in those moments versus having a full team of individuals who's on call and we can escalate as needed in those situations. We also are looking forward to better collaboration with partners. Um, we currently use a legacy version of Microsoft and so staff is very excited to transition to Microsoft 365. Um, Teams functionality in a collaborative Northshore area like we work in is pretty essential. Uh, we found that during the thousand-year flood when uh, Milwaukee County wanted us to submit all of our reports through Teams and we didn't have access. Um, and of course there's workarounds, but workarounds take time. Um, and so this is it's just going to be a lot more efficient services. Uh, the result is a $30,000 increase in 2026 on the that's across all the different funds. So it'll be rates on the levy as well as utility rates, but our ROI is showing that it would be recovered in 2027 through software savings. Um the next service enhancement which Jamie is very excited about and I think Joel as well. Uh so we our current

finance software is BSNA. So it's uh software that is supported or hosted on premise through our servers. We know that BSNA is moving to cloud just like Microsoft has as well. And so eventually we're going to have to switch. So, as we were looking at our budget this year, knowing that in future years budgets may be more difficult with debt issuances hitting perhaps with school district um expenses, we thought this may be a good year to implement it. Um so, it's our finance software for utility billing, payroll, APR. We're also proposing to add a building inspection and permitting module. We're currently using an access database that um without freaking out Joel too much, it would be very difficult if it went down. It's no longer supported. We don't have functionality to really make any changes in the core software program. It was it was built by someone who's not around anymore. Um and that's where all of our permitting um files essentially live. Uh so this would allow us to go to an actual software system that's supported. It'd be improved access for residents and contractors because we would offer online permitting for building services, some online records, um just overall better um services, improved functionality for staff. Um we don't work remote often, but like in those moments in a pinch if you have to pull something up to be able to access from the cloud is a lot easier than what we're having to do currently. Um staff's been researching this transition for several years, but again, as I mentioned, we felt like this may be a good year because we know that we have a one-time permit revenue next year with a pretty large development that could offset the the one-time implementation. And so that would leave us by leveraging those dollars, onetime dollars for one-time expenses, which is what you want to do, then it would just leave us with having to fund the annual cost with

the levy, which is $49,000. And that's across all the different um departments or all across all the different funds. And so the general fund or the levy is actually 30,000 and then the remainder would be paid by the water, sewer, and storm water um utilities. If I recall correctly, the fire department is doing the same thing this year.

Yeah, you're right. They Yep. They're actually, I think, just finishing it up. implementation. This also does align with our our long-term IT goals to both enhance cyber security but also to try to reduce or eliminate our on-remise servers. So eventually this is a step that we'll have to take. And then the next one, so moving now on to investing in our staff. So we have spent the last year and by we I mean mostly Anna and Jamie. So thank you to them. Um really working with our employees on health insurance. We've faced a few years of pretty large increases and we knew that that wasn't sustainable both from a taxpayer perspective but also the employees pay 20 12% of the cost so their their dollars as well. So out of that we worked with two different brokers. I think we explored six different plan options and a lot of modifications to those plan options and the result was a recommendation to move to the state health plan. We believe that the state health plan will offer more pricing stability long term, better coverage and more stable coverage for our employees. The village would continue to cover 88% of the monthly premiums. We would no longer be paying co-pays, uh, which is a direct savings of $27,000. There is a 2-year search charge to join the plan. Um, so we're proposing that that be funded through the 2026 debt issuance. I was just kind of curious. So, sorry I'm my voice is dry. So, I was curious. So, I looked at the 2026 difference if we had stayed with United Healthcare, which is our current health insurance offering, at the renewal rate that they offered versus switching over to the state plan. And there was a $146,000 increase. So, what what this tells me is like kind of what we're experiencing. This was a a pretty good budget year. I you know it's never like of course you never want a big budget year but the

reason that it didn't feel as difficult this year is that it's kind of a one-time opportunity that you have 146,000 that you don't you don't have to um be paying in your um across your different funds and so it was an opportunity to do a few different things that otherwise we wouldn't be able to. I I have a vague recollection that the two-year search charge there was a question whether you could put it on the debt issuance or not. We can put it on the debt issuance, but we do have to pay um taxes on it. Yeah. Okay. Whatever whatever that means. Yeah. So, we we have more questions about that, but Ellers has confirmed we can put it. Yep.

All right. So, as Matt's walking up, I'll just do a brief introduction. So, another item in investing in staff is the Department of Public Works. So, there's a lot of different things that are happening in his budget. Um, and it's one, his is one of those budgets that if you looked at it like line item to line item, you actually don't there's no like significant things that stand out. However, there the story is like a bigger picture story of how Matt has been working with his team. Um, it's you're not doing a full restructuring, but really looking at how they can operate as efficiently as possible um, moving forward. And so there's a lot of individual recommendations that have been incorporated into the budget that I'll let Matt talk about. Yeah, absolutely. So, when I when I see the challenges, it's over the last two years, it's really building the framework of opportunities of what's happened over the last few years. And it really stems down to that we've had staff turnover. And when I look at retirements and uh between Donald Edelbeck, our previous public works director, staff engineer, uh foreman, there's some crit critical people. even our mechanic uh retiring after 25 30 years does have a huge impact onto our department and just back of the napkin that's well over a hundred years of institutional knowledge within two years that was left within the department of public works. So, we're really trying to build that new uh framework, the the fundamentals in order to move forward with especially the CIP and making sure that all public works really has a sustainable model in order to best serve our residents, not only day-to-day with refues and recycling and yard waste, but project management and really integrating a full dynamic approach that we're really putting our best foot forward. So, we took a step back this year to see what that really means as far as not only to uh keep on supporting our DPW staff with the resources they need to continue with training and development, but also that sustainable

model, maybe there's gaps in those services. When you look at who's a main point of contact when we get uh public phone calls or emails or questions. So, when you go to our website and you hover over the Department of Public Works, there's line items. There's tasks between trees and sidewalks and uh green spaces and parks and facilities. And when we even do interviews, they're like, "What is Department of Public Works and how do you tell your story?" It's every facet that we touch within our village. But we want to make sure that we have that main point of contact is really critical from an accountability and um making sure that our our staff are successful with that autonomy at the same uh uh practice. So when you hover over all those tasks, it was pretty clear and we'll show that on the next slide is that there's a gap um there's a gap of who really takes ownership over some critical functions, especially the aesthetic value of our village. what's really impactful, meaningful to our residents, green spaces, boulevards, parks, playgrounds, the facilities like the village hall where we're at right now. Uh we have a gap in that. It used to be John Karns was our consultant that helped out with facilities. He retired. So, we need to fill that void. So if we go to the next slide, Anna, we can really talk more about what that means with uh kind of reimagining our org chart with all those different roles responsibilities within Department of Public Works. And in the gray all the way on the right side is where we're proposing on creating a new technician role that midlevel management is really critical to the success of our department that we felt that there was a bottleneck happening to the superintendent role that that was like a one-stop shop to answer inquiries and questions and concerns that we're trying to bring that back down and really flatten our organization to make all these technicians between our staff

engineer, foreman, mechanic, electrical services, water service technician, utility technician, and now a parks and building maintenance technician. That every single one of those employees at that level will be able to be a subject matter expert and really alleviate stress and being uh that one point of contact for all questions uh to go up to the top. So, we're trying to even that out by basically a promotional opportunity for an existing service worker. So, this wouldn't be an ad. It would just be a restructuring and giving an opportunity for someone to be promoted within. So, we want to do an internal promotion with this. And by doing so, having that point of contact, that new role would be someone that would oversee any mechanical issues with our heating and cooling system. So, they're not technically doing it, but just having a main point of contact to help coordinate annual semianual tasks. When it comes to parks and playground inspections or making sure that things look with a high quality value or our boulevards and the landscape planter beds, we'll have someone that can take that accountability on and a point of contact so we'll have better quality assurance, quality control when it comes to our parks and green spaces. Same thing with forestry. 8,000 trees we have within the village that are within public rightaway, not even accounting parks. So, there's a lot of responsibility, a lot of resident engagement when it comes to like how like when does my tree get pruned or I think this one has a disease. So, again, we just had a gap where that was previously going to our superintendent. They it's not expected that they can manage that volume of questions on a day-to-day basis. So by reintroducing and restructuring our org chart per se, it's taking that responsibility and trying to make our our staff at that mid level take that responsibility and we do have the skill set. There's a lot of

highc caliber individuals already on that level that really step up. I think they they really do a great job with customer service. So we want to keep on trying to support that and with that becomes like a succession model too. So really building up our bench for the next person is really important. So that's part of the story. Um with the technicians, we're asking for a 8% raise in order to ensure there is a difference between your service worker positions and the technicians. So when we took a step back, we were looking at what the current uh rate of pay is. there wasn't that much of a gap between what a a technician with that amount of responsibility is making versus your average uh service worker, your day-to-day worker, laborer. So, that's within the the budget. Also, because of the retirements and the the folks that have left us over the last couple years, we have about a $48,000 reduction in personnel costs. We really want to keep that flat and make sure there's opportunities to reinvest in that staff. So you'll see within the budget that there's little line items with parks and engineering services and uh what we can do is keep on trying to encourage training development utilization of professional services or contractors if we're feeling that the quality isn't where we want it to be. We still have that leverage within our budget in order to be able to uh support that new technician role or support our new staff engineer to ensure that we can keep on checking the boxes and getting things done in a timely process that we don't want a bottleneck where the workload becomes too honorous and it slows down where we want to be uh going into 2026. So I I believe that this is the best foot forward to make sure that we have an organizational flow. Uh and then we we take a step back and ensure that they're successful in their role. We keep on supporting that with professional services and contractors to

ensure that we have that high high caliber type of service that the village is used to and we want to keep it at that level. Just a question, Matt. Have you, and I don't know what the kind of standard model is for a DPW org chart, but have you ever looked into more than one superintendent, does this still put too much on a single person, or is that pretty standard to have one super with six different departments? You're correct as far as like how many people directly report to that superintendent.

Feels like a lot. But at the same time, I this is more of a common practice by having that one superintendent. If anything, it's more of that technician role that starts to widen. So then there's different opportunities for that. But I I truly believe that this is a the best opportunity that we have in order to make sure that we have that parks and buildings maintenance technician that would help because if you think before that role existed, all that stuff went up to the superintendent, right? So this still I think is the best way for us to try something different and try to stretch out that accountability in different roles. Okay.

I think the challenge like from an HR best practices is like the span of the control for that superintendent. Technically all of the frontline employees report up to that superintendent. So you know like that I mean that that is a wild span of control. That's what I'm getting at is that's a very wide array of things you're responsible for and it I think this makes it much better. It does,

but I'm wondering if it's still too much on that superintendent. Something to watch over time if that's where I'm a firm believer in continuous process improvement and this is a step in the right direction. change, you know, is dynamic and you keep on trying to refine things year after year, but we don't also want to change too much all at once because there's going to be lessons learned within 2026 that will report back to public works committee and the village board. So, I think this puts us in the right direction uh from just making sure that everyone's accountable to different roles, but then we'll see as far as that workload and the volume to make sure that we have lessons learned along the way. We want to build those texts as much as possible and then maybe consider having people report up through the texts in different areas. I mean, there's a lot of options, but Matt's right, like we got to we got to walk first. And so, this is a really really positive step to honestly to have like field leadership with eyes on parks and building maintenance will be huge. I mean, that's that's a lot of time that Matt's running out in the field having to look at things, having extra eyes, you know, taking different routes to and from his house to try to look at things. So, to have those eyes and that accountability, I think will be a pretty big change.

And it's flexibility still with the technician roles. Like, we're we're down two service workers right now. So, our utility tech is on a route and that's just part of the job is they know that they have to be flexible that even though that's their point of area and their subject matter expertise, we can still pull from those technicians to fill those gaps if it's absolutely necessary just to do those core functions dayto-day.

And sorry, one other question. You mentioned vacancies and departures. Is it do you find it more difficult to hire for these roles now or is it just that you have more vacancies? It's a It's not only a Northshore public works discussion that we have with other DPW directors. We we just talked about it with Glendale, uh, Fox Point, Shorewood. We're all feeling the same thing. Just given the competitive nature that you're looking for technical people with the CDL that's doing skilled trades and concrete work and you're you're pulling from the private side as much as the public side. So, that that's a tough part is we're all kind of feeling that at the same time. So, we're not immune.

And then last question on that in that vein, are we competitive as a place to work? Do you have the tools you need to go hire these roles?

I I think that that's going to be part of our ongoing discussions to be brutally honest. Fox Point has asked all Northshore managers and the public works for basically their salaries of all different roles from their service workers, technicians. So, it'll be interesting to see what that looks like from a comp study, not only with Northshore, but again on the private side that we're we're pulling from the same people as the con construction industry. And as far as uh skilled staff that want to get their hands dirty, it's becoming a thing, right, that we just don't have that much interest in people that want to work outside in the field anymore. Thanks. All right. Thank you.

Thanks, man. And then the last slide for this is um intergovernmental services and shared cost. Um so Northshore Fire Department um has an increase of 4.5%. They're adding three firefighter EMT positions with this budget and also have been facing um rising vehicle and equipment costs. We also saw um a small a decent increase in state shared aid. So we have shared revenue is up 3.4% and then transportation aid up 2.21%. And then um library their um mikthless which is their um shared funding in Milwaukee County. Our percentage of that overall pie increased. So we actually saw a 35.22% increase um in the funding that the library is receiving. And that's in large part um because of their collection materials and how many non-white Bay individuals are are actually checking out books from our Whitefish Bay library. Um, and so that has been very strategically invested in Nyama's budget to make sure that until we get to a place where we know that we can have three good years to know if it's level, we're just intentionally using that for um collections as as well as building maintenance should that be down. We don't want to see like a staff impact as a result of that.

Do we expect NA do we expect that number to drop once the Northshore um library opens up in Fox Point? I think

so. Well, we already know for um next year we're going up to 102,27 we're going up to 112,000. So, we're continuing to increase. I do not anticipate Northshore will impact us given how far away it is and looking at the behavior patterns of the residents as is. Maybe they'll grab some more of the Fox Point Bayside, but more of the Glendale come to us cuz we're closer. So I think initially people might go to just to see the beautiful new building but as we saw during the pandemic our patrons stayed with us they didn't switch to Shorewood or anyone where else um it's more that 15 to 20% of our annual circulation are Northshore residents that come in building. Um so again I think the pattern will change but I don't think it's going to impact us significantly and actually they're going to be closed for a month or two while they shift locations and we'll get an extra little extra bump for 2028 on that. Right. And so this next slide, I'm not going to read it read it all to you, nor can you see it on the slide. Um, however, I did just want to point out that it is in the board packet. Um, we call it major drivers internally or your budget impacts. So, if you want to see, especially as a resident, like a really boiled down like what's changing um in the levy funds, this is the page I'd recommend you go to that really outlines the entire levy increase of $375,000 is summarized um in this table. Right. So, moving next to levy limits. So, I mentioned it earlier, but um the state of Wisconsin, there's a state statute that limits the percent increase a municipality can implement in terms of property taxes by what's called net new construction. So, there's no cost of living increase. There's no inflationary increase. It is 100% tied to net new

construction, which puts communities like Whitefish Bay and other Northshore communities in a very difficult predicament. Um, so we've known that these challenges were kind of coming and as I mentioned, that's why we started the financial management plan in 2025. Um, so 2026 is the first year that we you could say we hit levy limits. Um, now it's not a a crisis because we haven't utilized any of the tools in our toolbox. Um, but but we have arrived um at haveing to work through this issue. So on the next slide, Anna, um it it kind of walks through this year we would have a shortage of $113,000. And so the first and easiest tool to use is what's called abated debt. So abated debt is general obligation debt that has a revenue source that is not your levy. So that's your TID borrows. Um we actually don't issue revenue bonds right now. And so it's all of our water debt as well as our special assessment debt. That's debt that is general obligation. So on the levy limit worksheet is what what it's called. It's shown as debt capacity. Um however we we use other funding sources to pay for that. So we we can actually intentionally use that um to make sure that we can meet our operating needs. What you want to make sure that you do is only use a beta debt for levy levy expenses that could be that you could easily borrow borrow for in the future. Otherwise, you would get into a structural deficit. So, if you used a a baited debt for a police officer's salary, if in the future that TID debt flowed off, it hit your 20 years, you no longer have that debt, then you would be in a situation where you would have to lay off that police officer. So, we do not want to be doing that. Um, so what Jamie did is look through our budget and said, "Okay, which items in a worst case scenario, which we don't think we'd ever have to do this, but in a worst case scenario could we borrow for if they needed to?"

And so she was pretty easily able to pull out $632,000 of abated items. So the easiest one is our Northshore Fire debt and capital. I believe it's only us in Bayside and River Hills that don't borrow for that. So that's a very easy one. Brown Deer, Glendale, Shorewood, they're already borrowing. Um we direct levy for it. Um but if we needed to, we could borrow the DPW vehicle replacement. Um, ideally we we don't want to be borrowing for some of those smaller vehicle purchases, but we could if we needed to. So, we're we're proposing to use $113,000 of that $632,000 capacity. Um, which would leave us at an unused capacity of 518,000. Um, so I'm pretty hopeful that we could make it through next year's budget without with still being able to use a baited debt. So, I think we're sitting okay. So for 2026

without a beta debt, we're 113 over the levy limit, I think, is what you'd say. Do you have a prediction for 2027? So a typical levy increase um that I looked at when I first started, so tell me if I'm wrong, is somewhere between 200 and $700,000. So I I think it we could pretty comfortably say that I don't anticipate going beyond a baited debt next year, right? So, let's say it's let's say it's $300,000. You're you would anticipate us having a $413,000,000 uh you over the levy limit and use of a beta debt in 2027. That's correct. Okay. Yep.

And so that's going to catch up to us 28. It is 28. It is. Yep. One one other just technical question that I probably I should have known this from years ago, but is there an aspect of is there an aspect of um use it or lose it in levy limits? Yes. For net new construction? Well, and what about a big debt? No. No, cuz that [clears throat and cough] excuse me that comes out of your beginning levy for next year. like the debt that you you use as an adjustment out next year. So, no, not with that.

What I'm saying is if if we came up we needed to spend another well $518,000. Mhm. We would technically be able to do that because of the abated debt number that we have. Does that help us for the following year? Yeah. Okay. No. Yeah. The only scenario which we wouldn't get into is net new construction which this year I think was like 58,000. So if that number for some reason was wildly high in a year you would want to make sure that you capitalize on that otherwise the next year you don't have an opportunity to use it. Okay that makes sense.

All right and then the next slide which we are to caution everybody we are not there right now. Um but we probably will start having to consider alternative revenue sources. So, there's a lot of items on this slide, which I'm not going to spend time going into, but that other Northshore communities and other communities throughout the state are already utilizing. Um, things like a garbage and recycling fee, um, a wheel tax. So, those are all things that we could explore in the future um, once we kind of work our way through a beta debt capacity. Can I ask about the garbage fee? Is that typically like a flat fee for garbage services or is that a pay by the pound? I know some municipalities do that.

A flat fee is what I'm familiar with. I I don't know of pay by the pound. I think that would be costly administratively to implement as well because we'd have to be measuring or weighing everything. Is there is there someone in Milwaukee County doing that right now? A garbage collection fee? Yes. Payback. No, the garbage collection fee. I do. I'm sure I know privatiz privatized their not Milwaukee County but it's it's pretty it's pretty common but I don't I don't know specifically of the Northshore communities but it's definitely common. Yeah.

All right. And then um moving into the debt impact for 2027. Uh so this table is a little bit difficult to read but we talked about it during the financial management plan with Ellers. Um, just as a reminder, this chart does not include the $1 million that's included or that's been added to the scenario due to the health insurance sir charge as well as the exterior valuation. So, in this chart, the 2027 debt impact from 26 to 20 from the year 2026 to 2027 is $21 plus if you added approximately Oh, no. Good.

Oh, man. All right, I'll send you the slide deck. You're gonna miss that. [laughter] All right, so then um we'll add an additional $14 for the million dollars not included originally for an estimated average home impact due to debt alone in 2027 is $35. Now, that that definitely could adjust because I know Ellers is recommending that we don't that we pay the principal off in a shorter period than 20 years, which is what that $14 assumes. So, it may end up being higher, but those are all conversations we can have at a later time, but I at least just wanted to give you a rough estimate. Is that stripped out of your levy limit? So, if we cut it to 10 years,

theoretically, that's a higher levy for that payment, right? Is that 100% taken out of your limit calc or is it only the interest like that debt service adjustment? How much is it? All of it. It's all of it. Your total payment for the year. Got it. Okay.

And then last but not least is your geo borrowing capacity, which you should always be asking if you're going to issue debt. Um you have plenty of capacity and our projections are not concerning in terms of best practices or the util utilization of debt um as a tool. So, just a reminder that we talked about that with others as well. So, next we'll go into more of the nuts and bolts, the dollars and cents of the budget review. My I'm going to hand it over to Jamie, but my recommendation is um we're going to utilize still PowerPoint just to like keep us on track. Um but for you guys um wanting to follow along in the budget book included in um the packet Jamie put together links. So, there will be an you know a department name at the top and then there's a link. So, if you want to follow like department by department through the budget book, that's probably the easiest way to follow along. And I think you'll you're going to take questions throughout, right?

Yeah. Yep. Perfect.

Yeah. So, essentially, we have a slide for each department um kind of showing what the drivers were in that specific department and what their overall um expenditure increase was. And I'm going to kind of just hit those high points, but feel free to uh ask any questions along the way. Um, so just to start on October 20th, we did have the Northshore Health Fire and Water um, Commission come in. So there's not much detail I'm going to go into on those, but you obviously saw all those presentations. So just a reminder that we did discuss all of those. Um, and then the [clears throat] impacts to all departments. So also kind of things that I'm not going to hit on on every slide are that we added a 3% wage increase. Um, we switched to the state health insurance. So, the single health and dental rates are down 6% and the family health and dental rates are up 3%. And kind of as Kelsey said before, that's compared to in what are we budgeting? 18% across the board before we switched to the state plan. Um, so those are very those rates are down a lot from what we originally had in our budget. And then we're also ending the co-pay reimbursement which was about $28,000. Um, so that's coming down in every department. And then for WRS um for the non-represented employees so for like the non-p police the total contribution increased to 14.4% which is split between the employee and the employer and then for the protective employees or the PD um the contribution increased to 22% but the villages share decreased from 15.1 to 14.8 and those numbers are just dictated by the state. Um so then the first department we'll discuss is the village board and that department changed pretty much not at all. Um the budget went down $178 so there were really no significant changes. Um

this Yeah, good job.

You lost the game. Then um village manager the change in expenditures from 2025 was 1.7% or about $4,000 and all of those changes came through in the personnel costs. So whether that would be um you know we hired a new admin assistant at a higher rate or or health insurance changes or those sort of things is what's driving the change in the village manager department. And then finance department um that one went up $19,000 or 7.5%. Really the big change there is what we talked about before with the BSNA cloud. Um it's the 13,000 increase in software support for BSNA. I believe that all of the annual fees get paid out of this department. Um besides for what goes to the utilities. So, it's not like we allocate to finance and PD and building services for everyone that uses BSNA. I think they all just come through here, which is why there's such an increase. And then we had one individual change health insurance from opting out to single coverage. Any questions so far?

Does using the cloud, would that possibly allow people to pay their utility bills monthly? Um, I don't think it it would do. we wouldn't have like a monthly bill or like a dollar amount you'd want to pay monthly. So, no. Like, no, I don't think so. Like the software doesn't make it easier for people to pay. No, no, it would still be due within the 20 days. And I mean, unless we switch completely to monthly billing, which you could do. Yeah. I mean, that's that's I've always heard that's like a terribly hard thing to do, right? So,

I mean, it would more be that people could just pay a portion. Like, we have some people that just pay $50 every month and then by the time their bill comes, they have a credit built up and then like that would just have to be a personal decision for someone. Yeah. Unless we completely changed how we were billing, plus do meter reading every month instead of every quarter. Yeah, it would definitely be an operational change, but places do it.

Yeah. usually um like in Sussex we switched to monthly when we had a huge increase because of radium treatment and so you know maybe eventually with the lead you know the water main replacements and the lead service lines it may be something that you want to look to do if that quarterly bill gets really high um but you're absolutely right there's higher administrative costs with that not just in the meter reading but also in the you know accepting the bills and all those things. How how many or what percentage of our water meters do you know are manually read versus digital or is it mostly manual? No. No, I think it's pretty low. It's mostly digital. Yeah, I I know there's going to drive. Yeah. Oh, it's not like a cloud-based dig.

No. Yeah, it's driving, but it's something where like our garbage guys can like do it as they go. Put it in their truck or the water text or Yeah. Right. Got it. Get the police drone to just That was Yeah, just do a flyover. Certainly a reason [laughter] to really strong. Okay. [clears throat]

All right. Then next department is elections going up 97.5% and that's typical where um it goes up and then it goes down based on four elections next year and only two this year. And then we are also going to have a polling place change which I don't know the last time that happened. Um, we're going to be moving from the Lidell Community Center to DPW and it's going to be nice and cozy, but I think it'll be good. We'll have more control over our building, um, being able to get in and out and mostly Lidal told us we couldn't be there anymore. Um, really? Wait, wait. Yeah.

No, it's not. We understand. Um, just all the children in the school and people coming in and out, they weren't comfortable with that, which I we think is completely fair. So, we're going to use the break room at DPW. Aaron and I visited a couple times before we made that decision. It's going to look different. Um we're going to have we have some things to work out with Matt still, but he was very accommodating. Um yeah, we're there's going to be donuts.

Yeah. And pizza and all the fun things. Um so that is just that's a change coming in elections that Aaron and I are working through. what um as someone who has or someone whose polling place is [snorts] was Lidell um I mean that was a that was a pretty big space even when they switched to just the gymnasium that was a pretty big space or we yeah I do think that space was too big I don't we didn't use most of it um I mean the DPW break room is going to be tight but we will find a way to get people in and out in an efficient manner Yeah.

Okay. Um, two things on that and they're not budget related at all, but have we considered doing some sort of I don't want to call it a dry run, but a dry run to see how many people at one time can be in there. How many how the the in-n-out situation? Um, I just I I worry with with 2020 with the elections that we have in 2026 that going doing a a brand new location without uh some sort of a test run could could cause issues.

Well, given the chance that there is a primary, that would be a dry run. We barely see any turnout in primaries, right? Um I also think Aaron and I put a lot of thought into it before we made the decision and Erin's she was doing election election training last week and tried to talk to me about it every day. So, um I I think the thought is going into it and it'll I I think it'll work. No, I don't think thought's not going into it. I'm just I we we I mean we don't have a lot of options in the village for where we could do it. Um, did you guys consider adding that over to Cahill? Way too many people. Cahill gets long lines as it is. Well, kind of.

Yeah, kind of. Or here. We considered here, but the parking here is bad on election days as it is without adding 3,000 more people. Is that how many vote over there? It's close. Yeah, roughly 3,000. And the library is not even bad. It's the same thing with the parking that's already bad, right? Well, but like Yeah, I would say adding How about the Argo? Um, and then of course [snorts] my next statement is the same statement that I always make. Um, let me guess. Communications. Wow. [laughter] Yeah, we are going to

um I can't imagine why I would. We are going to send postcards to every person that could vote there, including apartment numbers where people aren't registered. Um, awesome. We will have signs up on election day. We will sign out during 2025 um tax payments for everybody. We had signs out during 2025 elections. Is it two districts or is it just one? It's three. Three boards. Erin, you maybe know the answer to this since you've been taking training, but um you know, every 10 years we pass a ward map and on that map, I believe we have the polling places. So,

Maxine Miller has already helped us with that map. Um we to to change that there's like a pin where it is where the polling location is. She's helped us with getting that moved and there's like steps to go through through the Wisconsin Election Commission that we're starting right now. And you're working on like ordinance and resolution changes that will be coming to you guys in the near future. This is a possible change that the village board will see and vote on.

Yes. Because it's in our ordinances where each ward votes. So, we would need to change or have a resolution and change ordinance to make this. I for up until that moment I thought this was like an administrative change that was happening and apparently that is nothing else. It is but it is you know is that Lidell is not a viable option. Sorry for all the questions. It's just No, it's okay because that is out of our control. That's the school district. Okay. Well, I trust I'm going to say we'll see. Okay.

All right. Let's move on from elections. Um so Village Hall the expenditures went up 9%. Um that was about $8,000. So most of that was the increase in our phone and internet cost due to switching our phones to Ring Central when our other phone stopped working. [laughter] Um and then the other increase was just in like the utilities um paying to Wii Energies and also our own water bills I believe come out of there. Is is 7% like a typical rate utility rate increase? Feels high, but uh that was it's not a big dollar amount. It's just%

No, I think we were budgeting that closer to what we were actually seeing um in the past couple of years. Okay. [snorts]

And then um facility management went up uh about $1,500 just 7% and there were really no budget impacts or significant changes occurring in those accounts. And then for the assessor, as we previously discussed, that is going up $14,000 um increase in contract costs with the new assessor. And then we would borrow for the full reval. Um, Acurate did submit lower pricing. I don't know if that's something now, Kelsey, or later or I don't. Yeah. Do you want to Anna talk a little bit about that?

Um, so Acurate reached out to follow up after the last board meeting and I had told them we were looking to negotiate um, and they just knew it was with Associated. So Addie came back with a proposal of doing a three-year kind of blended exterior walks. So what that means is over 2026, 2027, and 2028, they would do a third of the village exteriors. Um, and then still a market update in 2027. And so the cost over those three years would be 90,000. Um, so they did drop the cost of the exteriors and then as uh Kelsey said in her admin update last week, I believe that Associated did not drop their cost when asked about a 5-year contract.

And I did explain it to them that the board saw it. We understand there's there's implementation costs and saw it as an opportunity to try to smoothe in those implementation costs over multiple years. Um, but they were they were pretty quick to say that they're pricing firm. For the purposes of tonight, we're just basically evaluating the $67,000 budget item. We're not really evaluating firms. Um, so, uh, how do you want to handle this? You want to put it on a future Well, the their their contract will be on a future agenda, correct? Yeah, correct. We were just some contract will be How about [laughter] that?

Yeah, we just wanted feedback. I mean if if the pricing coming down from accurate is something that you wanted us to explore more that that would be helpful direction to know otherwise we'll continue with you know yeah working on the contract to be able to bring that likely to the next village board meeting. I mean their pricing was already lower and that doesn't negate any of the Yeah. other concerns. Yes. It wasn't it wasn't the it wasn't really the the the price. I mean, I don't I I'm not I don't like to throw cash around, but it wasn't really the price that we were concerned about between the two firms.

I always thought we left the last conversation as a we should try to get it lower if we can and do our due diligence, but we're willing to go this route regards. Okay, great. Okay, then we will move on to court. Um [clears throat] expenditures went up $3,000 or 1.6%. There was no um significant changes from the prior year in the court department. And then legal services, we did budget um $20,000 higher. So that is 20% and it's just increased based on increased usage in recent years.

Yeah. You have uh Emonson Davis there. Is all of that additional increase to them or is that also I know we hired some outside firms as well to deal with a few issues. I believe it was all in that line. That's [clears throat] correct. Yeah, we have a separate personnel attorney. Okay. That that Oh, the other outside council was paid for by the developer. Wasn't paid for by Oh, yes. We also have an employment attorney that we use outside of this line.

That's just wait going way too fast here. Uh yeah, the attorney contract uh pro wow projected for this year is 170. The budget for this year was 90. So significantly over. Yes. And it's an increase of 20,000 from 90 to 110. So that does include um the 170 some of the reimbursement from um is it Sendex?

Yeah. So, so it's our development agreement. So, everything that is paid by the developer still flows through this account, but we have a different code that we use um because then Aaron actually invoices them. So, today Jamie and I were working on this. The nonreverseable the non-reimburseable spend is actually $57,000 currently and the reimbursement um Yeah. So, basically what's actually coming out of the levy is 57,000. Oh, so actually significantly under budget. It it Yeah. Okay. Well, so so we're going from 57 to 110. Yeah. I I I think after looking at it today, it would be fair to say I overbudgeted.

We we didn't have the we didn't have all the breakout and we didn't have the separate codes, so it took a lot of leg work to figure this out. Um but I I think we could take it down. Okay. Um, and I probably one of the more interesting numbers is simply the the number of hours we use per year of it's mainly Chris, right? Mr. Jacles in the budget book. Yes. Okay. You're looking to know that information. I would. Yeah. Like that's the the question, right? We don't have that information yet. Yeah. Just, you know, what is our trend? And I I know we've been a little bit more diligent, for example, at this meeting whether or not we have Chris here or not. Yeah. Um and perhaps we should be more diligent.

Yeah. Our our management team too, we've started a new process where I have multiple people return review invoices. Like we've really after last year really tried us down. Good. I know also it's not all Chris. Like he has a team, he has staff, he has parillegals. Uh if it's available, I'd be interested in looking at the billable hours that they submit and how those are broken down. Um, so you're saying you want to see like a three-year annual number of hours or Yeah. I mean, whatever they report, however they tally their work, whatever we have on that, I could You saying they want the invoice, right? Saying Yeah. Yeah. Are you saying on an ongoing basis or are you saying in

maybe on an ongoing basis? Yeah. I mean, I guess I I would just be curious how they're using staff and if Do you want that like a memo for the board or just you dig into the file? I just like to look at it. Yeah, that's Chris's thought. Chris and I did spend some time talking. We have been talking for a year about this, but the last couple days have spent some time talking about it. He is open to the idea of a retainer. So, I plan to explore that with him. He does have that arrangement with Bayside. Um, and given the escalating costs, I think it might be a good opportunity to move forward with that. Um, so that's something else we'll look at. We also, of course, you could go out to RFP as well if the board wanted to, but a retainer would be a way to know that there's an established price.

Thank you. [clears throat] Okay. None of that, none of that legal services is court. Nope. They have their own um attorney line and CDA has their own attorney line of through. So when you look at legal expenses throughout it's how about land no that'd be here. So it's really it's um tid one t three the court services and this are the only ones I'm thinking of for codes I think so yeah oh water oh yeah the utilities get built but that's pretty rare. Yeah that's like when he's negotiating a cell tower which is happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's all happening. It is.

All right. So, I will touch on the high points of police and then if you have any specific questions, Chief would love to answer them. Um, so for the expenditures in police from 2025, they're up about $60,000. Um, 44,000 increase in personnel costs. So, the health insurance did changing did help that go up a lot. And then we increased the holiday payout budget by about $18,000. That is to get it more in line with where it's been the last couple of years. I think it's been underbudgeted. Um and then other changes are um about $14,000 increase in weapons and ammunition due to taser costs being moved from software and an increase in the contract. And then there's about an $8,000 increase in software costs due to increasing the Axon video storage costs and flock camera renewal. And then they did decrease fuel. Um we're starting to see those costs come down um since when they spiked a couple years ago. And then just a little more information on their changing personnel costs. Um their overall the personnel costs are kind of all over the place. Um their wages went up $47,000. The holiday payout went up 17,000. But then with the decrease in WRS that was down6,000 and co-pays also we were budgeting 16,000 for police. So that's down. And then um the health insurance was about $33,000 increase but and then the retiree insurance there's less retirees or they're on single plans. So that's $26,000 down. So I know that was just kind of a lot of numbers but that all comes together to get to that $44,000 increase in personnel costs. Um

could you explain the bullet point about taser cost moved from software what is it? So they were in the software line and then they moved to a different line but then the increase or the contract also increase license or something. So uh the owner of taser acts on um they work on five-year contracts. So um when we get new tasers we pay for them for five years. Same with body cameras. It's a 5-year contract. Um, so we're at the end of our 5-year contract for the the taser. Um, so we have to renew the contract. Do you do we own them or are we just leasing them? It's licensing them similar to a a lease. Yeah.

Wild. If if it runs out, do they stop functioning? Yeah. No, we just wouldn't we'd have to send them back. Okay. Wow. We're just we're renting them is in essence. Oh, we have the taser. That's [laughter] Yeah. All right. For the fuel prices, I do we have fuel contracts at all or is it just pay as you go? I just want to make sure we're not exposed at all if fuel prices go up or how do we project that? Um yeah, we have we use uh we have a contract through WEX.

Um so we get pricing through them. So, police department and the DPW um both use WEAX and um I'm pretty comfortable looking at the past years with that number. They come to you or No, we can use WEX has a huge number of gas stations that you can use. So, generally we go to the gas station at Hampton and Santa Monica. When you say you have a contract, does it lock in the price or is it just giving you a discount? It's giving you a discount. Okay. It's a state. I think it's for the state of Wisconsin. Okay. So, you're still kind of exposed to market moves, but you've got some hedge against it, I guess. Yes. Okay. Um Okay, Chief. Go ahead.

I was going to say if you've seen a stabilization in uh uh ammunition prices. I know those spiked uh for a while after CO. If you've seen that stabilize. It definitely has stabilized in the last year or two and it's much easier to get, but we had a long wait times for a while. One other one, uh, ready rebound last year we talked about a little bit. Have you found value in that for the the department? Is it continuing to to do what you wanted it to do? Uh, we've been lucky this year. We we really haven't had to use it. I believe the DPW has used it.

Yeah. I had one success story recently where a staff was injured on the job and he was highly sus um suspected or I'd say highly he didn't want to use it, but I pointed out the poster. I said just give him a call, see how it goes. And within the following day, he had his physical therapy set up and he was back to work within a few days. Um so his limitations as far as uh losing work hours was dramatically reduced and even he came back to me and said I would have never thought I would had so much success using ready rebound. So it's one employee but he was he was like one of those uh skeptics per se going into it. So it was a surprise to him and now he's an advocate and telling other staff. So so far so good I would say for DPW. Good.

Back to fuel costs, I have to channel former trustee Dick Foster, who would ask who would ask um uh when are we ever going to see a hybrid squad, so our fuel costs go lower. I'm pretty sure that Ford has stopped making hybrid police explorers. Wow. We tried to order one five years ago. No, well maybe four.

My belief was two years ago, two to three years ago and it got cancelled. Um and honestly the it's probably a very good thing because other departments that have them have seen um tremendous issues with them. They're not built to sit in idle for hours and hours. Uh one other police uh question and that is about the overtime column or category where we're projected actual for last year was 308 this year projected 300 but we're budgeting 150. What how does that work?

So we've had I mean the we've had a ton of shortages this year. we have uh still two vacancies that we need to fill. Um so I think overtime cost is just it's when we have higher overtime costs, it's actually the money is I guess we can say used from the salary line where the sal we're not paying as high of a salary because we have less officers but it's creating more overtime to fill those vacancies. So they kind of offset each other. Yeah. You you wouldn't want to levy for full salaries and full overtime. you would just be over overlappinging because those vacancies create that savings that you use for the overtime,

right? And it's not like case driven over time. It's mostly that there's just not people here. How is your staffing looking? Uh so we have two people who will be starting November 18th. Um that still leaves us two short. Um and we have two retirements that will be in the early part of 20 early to mid 2026. So we still have some work to do. He'd be four short at that point. Yep. Just as much as Matt is having trouble finding people, we're having just as hard. And it's not just a White Fish Bay thing. It's a law enforcement national thing, especially Milwaukee County.

And but refresh our memory, you we do have a program where we'll pay for a portion or all of their training at MATC. Yep. Unfortunately, everybody does that. I was going to say don't allow have that as well. That's no longer Oh, quite our thing. Are we doing anything going into high schools or going I mean high schools would high schools would be tough because that's a that's a much longer term. Yeah, I know, right? They have to be 21.

Um but we do go to career fairs. MATC hosts career fairs. Uh we've driven out to Platville. Uh we go to policemies. Um we try to get our name out there. Um, but you're literally competing with every other agency in Milwaukee County. I think there's a bigger agency in in Milwaukee County that is like 25 people short.

I And I was thinking about it before when DPW was out there, too. I I mean, I just think that we aren't doing a very good I mean, especially in a community like this, we're not doing a good enough job looking at options beyond going and getting your four-year degree. And I mean, I think there's some really lucrative possibilities and how we can get that word out. I don't know. It's not your problem, but but it's just something I'm thinking about. It's just Yeah. Chief, have you lost candidates that were going through the process that chose to go somewhere else, or is it just hard to find them to begin with?

Uh, so it's a rush to get your hiring process done as quickly as you can. um which we've been successful at at advancing people forward. Um we had one person um we lost out on one person recently, but I I believe that's because um MPD just got they just announced a big pay raise for for their officers. So that's the one we lost out on. Okay. Um other than that, we we have a pretty good success rate once we start the process of getting them started here. Okay. It's literally just finding people for a vacancy. We have probably like 10 to 15 applications right now where, you know, 10 years ago we had 200 applications.

Okay. Is MATC the only show in town or is MATC, WCTC, um, most of the technical colleges in Wisconsin? And is the pipeline from uh forgive me if I I I butchered the name, but the community service agent or the those are just as hard to hire right now. Okay. I was just curious if that pipeline if if you see people starting in that role transitioning into becoming an officer. That's the goal. And we've had a few successes with it.

Uh I think we have three people in our department that started that way. Um it's just hard to find people for that job, too. Um I I can't find it right now. So I'm going off a recollection that there was a line for um revenue for state grants that was lower. Yes. some my recollection that was lower and it wasn't lower by a significant amount but it made me recall that um oftentimes the police will have um certain operations uh whether it's you seat belts or pedestrian safety where you're looking for people

and that's why it's a little bit lower some of those numbers have come in lower well my my question is that in the example of um crosswalk detection It's not a sting. What do you call that? A it's a traffic enforcement.

Traffic enforcement on crosswalks. Um where you you usually kind of announce that it's it's a it's a grant related process. Um and just knowing that the grant number is potentially going down, but but regardless of that, what's what is there something that stops us from doing that on a regular basis without a grant? and and would that be something that would need to be put in the budget to to do that and execute that because I I think there's general agreement probably in the the board and the population that we like that that's a that's a good you know use of time.

Yeah, that would be I mean we'd have to to look at how that would impact our overtime because that generally requires three officers to do that. Um, and so we have to keep our minimum staffing level for that shift and then have three two to three extra people working. Um, but we we could certainly look at that. That actually that grant actually did not go down. Fair enough. Yeah, we can we can certainly look at that

regardless. That's that's a a popular, you know, event or event is not the right word, but an event a popular operation that you do. And I've always wondered why we can't do that ourselves without, you know, being hamstrung by a grant and and and not doing that more often, you know, regardless of state funding. Yeah, it just takes a lot. It's it's labor intensive for a department that's already short staffed. Okay. Currently, fair enough. Just keep that in mind that it's definitely something that I've always been interested in and I think others. It's one of those, you know, popular things, tasks. Thank you.

All right. Any other police questions? Okay, then we'll move on to public safety. Um, so expenditures went up 80 about $89,000 or 3%. Um, so this is just Northshore Fire operating. So this increased 3%. So previously when Kelsey was presenting, we said Northshore Fire went up like 4.7 maybe. Um, that includes the operating debt and capital. So just the operating budget went up 3% and then our share went down by a little bit and then the Bayside communication budget increased 4.1% and we are 16.25% of that budget.

Am I crazy that we used to just refer to it as BCC and not BACC? Is that just I I was like BAC. Anyways, yeah, we invented the A this time. Okay. I think that's what's in the budget line. I don't know. I Yeah, it's all over the budget line and I was like, what is back being? [clears throat] I've never changed it. That's what it was when I started. Fair enough. Um, all right. Public safety.

Okay. Now, DPW. Um, so we kind of tried to tee this up already. Um, the change in [clears throat] expenditures from the 2025 budget is about $3,400 or.1%. Um, we mentioned that the personnel costs are down 47,000. So that is due to a much younger workforce with the retirements and turnover. And then we also did shift some of the allocations to um primarily the sewer is seeing a little bit more um based on we use three-year averages instead of kind of just using the last year's actuals. Uh so that's part of the change. And then we also um are doing the increased DPW um contract support. So, the lines that we kind of put that in are the engineering consultant, the roadway safety fund, um parks landscaping, and then I think we have a parks landscaping and a landscaping/park maintenance account, which both got some of that um contract support. And then we included $7,000 for Kill Tennis Court Maintenance. Um solid waste disposals increased by $15,000. And that's just to we're trying to get closer to what the actual costs are that we've been seeing the last couple of years. And then we decreased vehicle replacement by $33,000 to $100,000 flat. Um, and that's kind of what we're thinking is going to be what we can maintain going forward in that account. So, do we have any DPW questions?

Matt, is that enough contracted services to kind of accomplish your goals with where your staffing's at? organization for our staff being fairly that that does give us resources to go out and get engineering support for parks for so all all those I truly believe will help make our staff

how about around park maintenance and landscaping I guess when you say safe number is it enough to to improve those things or if you had more, what what would it accomplish you or what could you do with it other North communities just outsourc so increasing it by $15,000 that would get dedicated personnel or staff that that would be a transition to more contract services. Do I know exactly what that would get us? Not necessarily. I still be a step in the right direction.

Okay. Will that new tech help oversee the seasonal workers to help make the boulevards better? That that's the ultimate goal. I think you nailed it with that main point. I think there needs to be more supervisory oversight for seasonal I was one story about how that went and direct I think that will show that

I guess I I think it's worth considering whether we take some of that legal spend and that it probably is a little high in the budget and reallocate it to additional contract support. It just feels like they might be able to use the support in this kind of transitional year. It's something to think about. I think the legal budget feels a little heavy and if I were thinking of where I would move that, I would move it here at least in part. It's I think it's an area that we could invest in and and see some improvements and support the staff, too. So,

how many seasonal staff do we hire annually? Just as a note, Matt, I think you are a bad example of the shenanigans of seasonal uh you know DTPW workers as you have developed into a very successful DPW director. You [clears throat] never you never know. [laughter] story still being written. Jacob,

uh, there's a line item here about the lighting lease, which is going from 72 to 36,000. Are we in our final year of that lease? Yeah, that'd be my guess. Think so. So, it went to 36,000 in 2025. It's staying at 36,000 in 2026, but I think that's the last year.

Yeah, that'll be nice that that'll roll off. Um I I'm always fascinated by that and the utilities which is the line above. Um of course kilowatt hour numbers or cost per kilowatt hour keeps going up. So um I perhaps next year thumb just mental note to perhaps uh do a 5-year analysis of I think it's 5 years of um did we accomplish what we wanted to do which was to decrease the utility usage by whatever percent. Uh another comment was about let me get to it here um EAB treatment. So for 2023 it had 215,000. The next year was 202. Uh this year is 215. Next year is 215.

I thought in the process of this we switched from an annual to every every other to every three. I believe we did but that the costs were not it [clears throat] didn't really change the cost. Right. Seriously, just coincidentally and not exactly the third that we were decreasing it by. That's suspicious. Yeah, I mean that's what happened in three years and contract service for this every year.

So, is there any chance that our biders are looking at this document and saying, "Hey, they they have 215,000 allocated for this. Let's make sure our bid comes in right at that.

But it's only like your three companies that typically give us back and they're pretty consistent with all three of those and then it's even this last year there's the same exact little bit that we actually had split 5050 between the two contract same. So I I believe that it's gotten as low They can but still be competitive. Well, we're still that every three years keep the same budget. Matt, that 215 also includes tree removal plantings. Is that all the same contractor or different

do separate contract that used to be three separate contractors but we felt that we got a better price point by packaging not only our reason project as well as library but we found that contractors can be more efficient effective and it's more cost beneficial village by packaging those plane comes on that same line item so treatment removal well but so if we have a tree removal for nonab reasons we have a different line item for that it's right above it

well the tree inventory replacement trees, but I'm surprised that we, you know, that they're like, "Oh, you're taking this down for EAB reasons. You're taking this down for a different reason." And submit an invoice that has the two categories. That's That's great. Is that coding though? Is that more how we track it internally or is that how we Because I'm just laughing because Matt thought that these line items were combined, right? Wasn't it these two? And then Jamie, I think it's it's just a discussion internally about how it's coded and it it those lines may be combined, but I don't know. I'm just It's the same bucket. Same bucket of money, same number of trees. Yep.

I I was working John Edelbeck for years to to rotate from an every two years to an every three years. And we finally got that and we got nothing out of No. No change. No change at all, which is irksome. Imagine if you didn't do it though. Well, I sometimes I now I'm thinking that if I didn't do it, it would still be the same. I just I'm But I also think we want to separate out EAB and tree removal anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to, you know, there may come a Look, if I'm a EAB company, I'm not doing anything with EAB anymore.

Yeah. If I'm a company though, I'm looking at these budget items and I'm trying to peg what is what's what do they pay for this and it's just too coincidental. Do you know what percent we're at for Ash? I think our 20% down to 10%. But that's our goal. We're not at Do you remember where we were? Cuz I thought we were in the low 20s. I think it was 17. That rings a bell.

Tell you where we are. Okay. I didn't want that back. I mean, because there, you know, there's a point at which, you know, we'll stop addressing EA until the next thing comes around.

Well, and and I've always been interested in let's go one out of four years instead of one out of three. Let's see what happens, you know, and and and that if if you're if the end goal is to get rid of this as a cost, which I think is a good idea. I mean, it's it's a lot of money every year. Um and over the course of now 15 years, 16, um it's a huge amount of money. Um that if you said, "Look, we're going to go to one out of five years of treatment and and then uh callull the trees that look sick, then that is a way of landing the plane, right?" Anyways, you figure that that's not for a budget meeting. That's for something else.

Matt, one other question. Sorry. in your in the budget book, it talks about goals for road pavement conditions. So that's going up in 25. I think makes sense. But I guess what's the what's the long-term path on that? It was a pretty big drop from 23 into 25 or is it just how they rate it or how does that work? If you think of it, you're using qualitative quantitative goalist. So, it's not like we dramatically went down that far to another. It's just how uh she interprets the road conditions to create that consistency in the model and we just use that based on strategy but this changes.

So So that's the difference between the 713 and the 674 is literally okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um and is that just roadways or is it sidewalks as well? Just roadways. Okay. Any other DPW questions? All right, then we can move on to building services.

Those expenditures were up $38,000 or about 10%. Um, so I think I misspoke before when I said all the software costs were in the finance department. The cost for the annual fees specifically related to BSNA cloud for the permitting is $12,000. and that is specifically in the building services department. And then there's also $10,000 of expenditures related to reimburseable reviews that are done by Clark deeds. So there is offsetting revenue. It's just you're not seeing it in this department, but it is um making an impact in the department. So does anyone have any questions for Joel?

Um it's almost not a question for Joel. It was actually from the memo about Wait, so does this have does this include the new position that you're discussing? So it doesn't yet. Nope, that'll be at the very end. Very end. Um then I'll So we're going to discuss at the very end. Great. Then I'll pause my question. Okay. I think you guys just let Joe off really easy, but Oh, we should take some.

No, it's fine. Fine, we can move on to the health department. Okay, so the health um expenditures went up almost $8,000, 2.7%. 3,000 of that is related to increase in personnel costs related to the school district. And then about 5,000 is related to the increase in the Northshore Health Department contract. [clears throat] What is the history of us funding through the village the school district nurses? I don't have I'm just curious how that happened. Thinking of long-term levy limits, it's kind of a lot of money. Well, I've heard it's just how it's always been. We do the nurses, they do the crossing guards, which I think Chief would tell you he doesn't want to do the crossing guards. That's a really good deal. A really good deal.

Um, but I think it's based from when the health department was in the basement here and we then the nurses worked in the school district from the health department. When the health department moved out of here, it was still the agreement that we would do the nurses. So, I don't know. But pretty much I think if we get rid of the nurses, we take on crossing guards is my understanding. I imagine nurses are more expensive than crossing guards, right? The school district does reimburse us for about half of the cost. Okay. Oh, okay.

They Yeah, they they reimburse us for half of most of the health aids and they wanted an extra one, so they reimburse us for a full health aid and then I think we pay the full nurse is I think what the agreement is. Okay. I was just curious how it originated. Yeah. Should we pay the full nurse plus their health and dental? I think it's the full everything full. Yeah. It's like an employee, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's at least 15 20 25 years of doing that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's probably not common movies. You wouldn't see it anywhere else, but um All right, then we can go on. Oh, well, so

go back. Kelsey, you was in a text, I think, about a grant that had been received. Or was that Am I confusing this? That's the one that Matt presented. That's one of Matt. So, that did not change any of the math that we heard from from Becky two weeks ago. Um, and at the time there was some commentary about increasing the increasing the either portion that we pay andor my suggestion was to add to their foundation u amount amount. Did you discuss that at all? Was there any further discussion on

and and then this would be the time the board would chime in and suggest an amount or possibly zero. My understanding was that Becky was going to come back to us if that was something she was requesting.

Yeah. And she's um she's happy to do that. I did have a follow-up conversation with her. Um I I was trying to figure out I I hate just like throwing numbers out there. So, I was trying to figure out, okay, what what would be a number that would actually mean something. So, I looked at like the different scenarios they ran, but the difference was like $25,000, which I didn't think you guys were wanting to go that high. Um, so then we talked about like other capital item related items. She said that they need new computers which are $1,500 each. They're from 2021. I did ask about contributing to the foundation.

I thought of the foundation the way that I believe you were thinking where they're trying to build up a corpus and then use the interest long term. It's actually just a a tax vehicle for people to be able to make donations that they can write off on their taxes, but then they flow directly into operating. So they're not actually on an annual basis. They zero it. Yep. So for us, because we're tax exempt, we there's really no reason to give to the foundation versus just increasing our contribution. So they're they I'm disappointed that they're not trying to make that a long-term vehicle instead of just donate to the operational fund.

Um what she did say and actually Nyama might be able to speak better to it, but it's also if the village were to want the money to be used for a specific purpose, then the foundation is a means to be able to basically earmark dollars for specific purposes, which could be opportunities in the future to kind of collect money within that. But it hasn't been the way they've been trying to utilize it. Well, they it's only been around for three months, so

it's not the way that they envision it being utilized, I guess, right now is the way to say it. Well, I mean, in in honesty, that's that was my purpose was like giving them, let's say, $5,000 as seed money to start their foundation so that perhaps other communities would donate the same and maybe we could get that ball rolling over the course of several years, but if they're just going to use it in for operational expenses. Anyways, that's my feedback. Um, Jay, did you have any I'm still Well,

I I'll I'll I'll echo your sentiment. However, that doesn't um uh that doesn't um make my desire to increase our um increase our contribution as it were um any less. I mean, it's I I still think it's it it's ridiculously important and uh something that I would be interested in in having us. You know, I Kelsey, you're right. 25,000. No, I I'm I don't I'm not I'm not ready to go there. But if you know I if we did some sort of um you know some sort of payment and made it very well known within the Northshore communities you know maybe there's maybe there might incentivize others. Um but I think that um from from that perspective it it I think it would be good for us to um you know as Kelsey as you mentioned something specific like a capital request. So it's not just so you know we can say we helped fund this which is going to help you know the public health in the in in the Northshore. I don't know that computers really um tickles my fancy uh because I mean I understand that everything any money what you know the money that they would spend on computers you know can go you know can go somewhere else if we pay for the

computers but I I mean I I I'm up for suggestions but I do think that that funding them at a higher level is something that we should give serious consideration to.

I do also want to note this grant although it's not offsetting the direct costs of the current case manager I mean there's also admin costs and additional you know it's another person in the office that helps as well. So I although it's not specific dollars to this program there are admin costs included in that that likely they would end up benefiting from too. Um, so I know it was welcome news from Becky. Yeah, I'm happy to do whatever whatever is directed. I I couldn't come up with Becky like with Becky a specific item or an operating expense that was easy to tie to. Um,

is your inclination that us doing something like this might encourage other Yeah. I don't I don't think so. I I'm also happy to bring it up at the next Northshore managers meeting that this was a discussion and to ask if anyone else's board had similar discussions and I can bring that information back if it seems positive. Um but I don't I I don't think so. I don't care if nobody else does it. I mean I would would I love for this to be a jump start for the other six communities? Of course. Um, but I don't want, you know, I don't want nobody else is doing it to be our our reason for not. No. I I

No, no, no. I am not saying I'm just I that was a general So, I guess I would say that if we were going to put something towards it, in my opinion, I'd like to put it towards that outreach person because that is the person that is pretty public facing, has direct, you know, direct contact with the public. you know, people are actually going to see a certain segment of people are seeing her, you know, or seeing that job, whereas other things would be less visible. So, if we were going to do it, I would suggest that

I agree with you. I think something public facing um it is good not only for the health department, but I mean for us, too. I mean I it I think it it it

sorry I it as as the PR guy it may I think it makes us look good but at the same time um something public face I mean it's from what I you know from what I hear from you know from public health employees I just happen to know some in other parts of the country they're like it's the the the need is just so great and I don't think that people in the Northshore quite understand why the need is so great. And I I I wish Becky could, you know, further talk about why, you know, why that is and what specifically we might be able to do. But I think Terra suggestion is fantastic.

So if we were to do say $10,000, how big of an impact would that have on our I mean what what would people feel? You're saying $10,000 towards the case manager that's in the fire department currently, right? You know what I would suggest? Instead of 10,000, I would suggest one month of whatever that salary is plus benefits, which is probably like 8,000. Just lost it on my head, but that's a statement of like we'll pay for a month because I know they had like seven months. They they had it funded for. Is that how they are is that how they're quantifying is but yeah, Becky and then that makes a lot of sense

where we're like, "All right, we're going to give you a month. Maybe you can get five months from somebody else, you know, a month from every one of the other just PR, you know, like I I don't dislike that. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I I I think and that's easy to that's easy to describe, you know, as to what why we're doing it and what we're doing. Um but I'm curious to know what impact that would have. I mean, I it feels like that wouldn't be a huge impact for taxpayers, you know, on on the budget overall and yet it would feel impactful to the health department. I I think so based on the presentation that they gave us,

I think that would be a big deal. I mean, and and at very little cost to um our taxpayers, if any. I mean, here I'll I'll toss you a couple bucks if that's what it is. I I just just I it's it's too important for us to ignore, I think, if we have an opportunity to do it. So, I think there's two of us. How does everybody else feel about it? I think there's three three of us. Are you in?

Yeah. All right. I think I think I would be fine with a gift from our community to the Northshore Health Department, but if we're serious about increasing efficiency or outcomes or health in the Northshore, then I think we have to have a a conversation about what those goals are and what the most effective way to accomplish that is. Um, I don't care as much about a public facing component. If they decide that computers are the best use of funds, then I think we should get them computers. Um, but but long term, if we're going to be serious about this, if we're going to do this, then I think we should have a deeper conversation about goals, benchmarks, and how much we're willing to contribute and whether our residents are willing to contribute.

I I don't disagree with that. Um, I do think, you know, any money that any additional money that we that we budget, you know, I like I said, if we paid for their computers, they could pay for the extra month or it's the extra month or the the month versus the it it all it it it all ends up being a kind of a, you know, just just depends on what we want that money to go to, you know, what we want earmarked. Um, and as opposed to the, you know, just a a blank, you know, a blank statement of here's money.

I don't suspect a lot of people are going to know we did it other than the health department. And that's fine, too. But it it's the managers will,

right? I mean, that's what I mean. But I don't Yeah, I I in that way I'm kind of with Jacob on that. you know, whatever they feel like they need. But I like the idea of quantifying it as to this is what we prioritized as it sounded like a need that we thought would impact our residents most. So in her memo to the managers, she outlined the community case manager um budget at a prrated 65,000 to be offset by pending CDBG grants. So if you take the 65,000 divided by 12, it's 5,400 would be a month. Well, that's but that's not benefits. Or is she included benefits in the 65? I mean, she's

I can't imagine that's there's no way that that includes benefits. Yeah. I mean, she would know though like Yeah. And it's all everything's in aggregate, but I I agree. Yeah. Just observation. I mean, benefits, paying her, you know, minimum wage. Yeah, I mean even 10 and just you know it's it's essentially it's a horse appease in that way you know

it's a contribution to their operating budget is what you're really doing whether they use it I agree with Jacob whether they use it for computers or a month of services I guess dictating that seems not necessary it would be more if we're going to do this we would be saying you had a funding squeeze and here is something to backfill it we trust you to operate your budget effectively. That's how I would do it. That that being said, we've heard from both the health department and the North Fire Department, you know, specifically over the past two years about that position

and how it is making an impact. So, I don't feel bad about your marking it. We we can quant we could also quantify it and say it's the equivalent of that. But in terms of how they spend it either way, I don't know what the mechanism to actually earmark it for a month of salary is. Maybe that's where I'm hung up in the weeds again. But it would be more of a request than anything. I mean it would be us and them saying this is what you know this is what we're using it for. Yeah. Um I mean we you know I I don't want to make it contingent on

you know because I know that you know like when we work with you know at at my job when we work with you know some of the charities we have to specifically earmark it has to be done this way but that I mean I I think it would be more of a it would be a general fund contribution but one that we are requesting go towards this is symbolic in the end. It's symbolic more or less.

And so I I like the symbolism of saying we're going to pay for a month or if it's two months or whatever the number ends up being that's appropriate. Um it's the symbol of it and and and I don't care if we have any formal agreement on any kind of incumbrance on the money. They can use it for whatever they want. But but our but our dollar value should be a symbol. Yeah. But I do think that the reason it's coming up is because of that position. Which is the reason I Yeah. Yeah. I'd be less inclined to say, "Oh, we got to make sure we have $10,000 worth of lead paint up kits than this particular position." A weird pause. I thought you wanted $10,000 worth of lead paint.

Yeah, it's really hard to get. That's what [laughter] it's nine o'clock in my brain. I don't know. We get Who's the Is it Joel or Matt can fix our clock? Do you want to get someone over here to I I just to get up right now and do that? We let Joel off easy on his So come over and fix the clock. [gasps] So is there agreement? I hear it seems like agreement on a level of on a contribution. Is there agreement? I I honestly don't understand. Maybe I'm naive, but I I don't Do our residents use this these services? I mean what how does the average resident I mean I don't I don't understand it like what what that is a great question. What does the average res I've never I mean I've lived here for 10 years. I've never

Let me just ask you this. How many how many people do you think fall in Whitefish Bay you know who are elderly and fall because and and oh by the way and maybe Chief can say how many people overdose in Whitefish Bay because it's more than zero. Uh what's the other those fall under that category? food insecurity, which uh you just got the data on uh people in poverty. There's like 540 people in Wishbay who are under the poverty limit. So like there's there are dozens and dozens or hundreds of people who would

utilize this. But you're not wrong to to to say, wait a minute, I've never used the health department. I don't even like I get my vaccinations from wherever from right here. Fitz Fitzgerald Fitz Fitz or in the village hall I do Fitzgerald it's kind of an invisible service and I mean if you think about we really want to be serving I understand

yes I mean that terra is not wrong but at the same time because I mean I I had this I had the same thought your your general general person who has their private insurance and has the ability to, you know, the the majority of the majority of people in in Whitefish Bay, a clear majority aren't in specific need of that service. But I I don't I don't think that's a I personally don't think that's a reason for us to turn the proverbial blind eye.

But then you would say it's incumbent upon us because the vast majority of people can handle it. I mean, can do things on their own? it. Why should we have anybody in White Fishbay who's not able to access services? Yes. I mean, this is the vehicle is through the health department. And wasn't it to take the strain off of EMS services? Yeah. This initially what it started with. Yeah. Is that still the case? Does that still Yeah, they're still doing that. Yeah. That's what the position that's that's what Chief Whitaker talked to us about when you know during his presentation that last year and this year

and not just for falls multi, you know, people who are frequent callers, you know, it's more like a case manager so that they're not being non-emergent, you know, non-emergent needs. Is there any statistics out there for what our usage rate is like of the of the budget? I've had that exact question. I mean, we have usage rates of the health department that gets adjusted every whatever six years. Um, I've been interested in knowing what the case manager how they're spread out. I mean,

it and our what is it? It's 17% 18% usage of health department. I would bet that the case manager is probably around the 17 10 to 17 is probably my my guess cuz you're right. There are other communities that have higher usage higher usage of that particular item of the health department but again ours is based on 17%. Sam did you no no no um I can get you those I was just trying to look through this quick. Well there bunch of different categories but

um I don't think I don't hear any massive resistance to this. We probably don't need to give you an exact answer right now. Or would you like I mean because it's going to be I mean budget going to be in the budget we adopt in two weeks. So yes. Okay. If we want to do this I think it's possible. I mean again the legal fees we have in this budget are pretty high, right? Like the legal cost I think 20 20,000 is what you could decrease that by the legal I was going to say 25 but that's fine. 20. Okay. So, could you put 10 of that here and you're still whole right at your percentage?

Oh, man. Well, I I got another idea. I was a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give him 10. I was going to give him 15, but yeah. Um I'd put the rest of that probably to that DPW contracted services of that movement if everybody else is interested. I don't know. Feels like that. That's fine. I also, you know, what's our what's our total budget? We can always go after the vehicle fund too if you want. Your your favorite thing. I already did that. I know. Your favorite thing.

I will say I there was a story just last week about Milwaukee is [snorts] up against it borrow like borrowing from other municipalities and they I was I I want to applaud the the the brothers Whitaker for having the uh the the the starting to have that foresight because Milwaukee is up against it on fire fire for fire especially

I mean it's specific I'm sorry specifically um but I'm thrilled that we are looking three four five years down the line I it's um yeah so the 20,000 in legal fees because I don't really want to take it down from budget. So that we're at I was just talking wasn't the legal the attorney fees way higher than we ran outside of reimbursement. That's what I was thinking. October in there yet. Oh yeah. I mean keep that at 90. We'll keep it a flat budget to budget which would give us 20,000. So 10 to DPW, 10 to health.

If you think that gives you enough legal. It just felt like we probably won't have more next year or just leave it. I'm just thinking if we want to move things around, but I just told him to knock. I would Yeah. Or just or just add the the 10 and and that's fine. I mean, it's it's not huge numbers, but if we're trying to hold it to this number, I'm open to either. It just felt like that was a little high. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm I was good. I was going to move 20 of the legal fees to Matt. So, we could also divide 10 to DPW, 10 to Health. Um Jamie also did look to add $10,000 to the budget. Was we changed the levy from 2.8 to 2.87%.

2.87. Yeah. 10,000 is that's big. I mean it doesn't change the tax rate though. Like that's it'll change by like cents. Yeah. Cuz what's the Yeah. Yeah. I know. I just I was I I'm surprised it's Yeah. Me too. I was just doing the math in my head. It just clearly that's why I'm a writer and not a mathematician. But in cents than in percent I I mean if we want to play if we want to play around with numbers to keep it at this fine if it's 07% I I'm sorry I did that's we I'm having a hard time caring about

07% you were going to lower the lawyer fees. That's what I was thinking is those werep those were too high anyway. So it would just be instead of sending all that to DPW, you split it. Yeah, it wasn't like looking for places as much as it was just Okay, that seemed high. That's fine. Um I I I would make one more s plea for the symbolism of the number. I I'll come up with something. Might be like 1.5 months or something, 3.14. Well, whatever. Or six weeks or you know, some some number is fine. Okay. Health department issue over to the next one. [clears throat]

All right. And then rounding out the general fund is the contingencies, transfers, insur insurance, and others. Um, so the change in expenditures in 2025 was up half a percent. So this is a combination of there not being any transfers to fund 44 in 2026. So earlier when Kelsey was showing the chart with the levy by funds and the fund 144 was increasing quite a bit um it was due to it being offset by a transfer from the general fund balance in 2025 for the server. That's how we decided to fund that. And then um but those that decrease is offset by an increase in our insurance with Civic by $10,000 and that's all of our different insurance lines we have. Um, and then there's a $41,000 increase in IT for Microsoft 365 and a change to Bayside IT, and we will see long-term savings with that. And then the $53,000 in onetime costs related to the switch to BSNA cloud for implementation. And those are offset by permit fees that we wouldn't anticipate to see going forward after next year. It just kind of a one-year bump that we have those permit fees. And then that is kind of we normally go over the expenditure departments in the general fund. So that's what we had prepared but open to any other questions that people have on the general fund.

Professional consulting fees. Is that just kind of your your consulting budget? It's like 20,000 in the manager. Yeah. Well, it's in this it's in this contingencies. There's a $10,000 contingency and a $20,000 consulting fee and then a 5,000 of professional services. Yeah. Yeah. So, we have the the professional consulting is $20,000 for like a planning consulting and consultant and 5,000 for just miscellaneous stuff that we need. Yeah. Okay. Is that's what we had in there last year too? 20. Yeah. Was that for the strategic plan? No, I think just general and then so it's just like a conting a broad

and like I for like our affordable care forms like that comes out of there. or we have uh do that for us, that sort of thing. Because I mean Anna has her planning degree, but we don't have a planner on staff. No, that that's fine. I was just curious. Did Did you at all So firstly, where are we with the I don't know contract with Bayside? Have we are we going to sign it? Are we That would be something the bills board would approve. And so that's gonna like we'll do that in the next couple months and it'll start January 1st. Yeah. So my thought I have a draft that I still need to review, but if it's ready, my thought is I'd bring it to the next meeting when the other budget items come.

My only comment is just looking at this budget page, technology and contracted services. It's hard for me to What is that? What I This is your your expenditure detail. I would look at the the memo I sent out is a lot more helpful

and that well that's fine. just looking through this and saying um there are some items I I I would be curious to hear what Bayside it says about these line items like archive social um are they going to be doing anything differently with website management uh the cloud backup the tape backups those things we would lean on them for expertise and they may look and go oh yeah you don't need that anymore kind of thing that's all you've 100% done that like in hours and hours and hours these these 15. So if you look at the memo there's side by side for every software and we talked about what items we have to have a year of overlap.

You have to clean up your desktop. That is ridiculous. This is where I That's also what mine looks like. [laughter] Oh god. Everybody should take a look at this. This is so yeah we looked at okay there has to be a year of overlap for some software programs and then some we in state as long as you have vetted this with them I'm good with it. Yep. A few that's part of what the state innovation grant paid for beauty. So any other questions on the general fund or we can move on to the library. There just one other question. And it may not fit here, but did the fund balance year-over-year, like you're projecting a fund balance change for total of like 336 grand? That's favorable, right?

Yeah. And and the budget was to actually go down, right? So, like was the net impact like 500 grand? Yeah, I think so. Drove that. Um Joel drove part of that. He's already at 130% of his budgeted revenues. Um, and also I think we had a very significant amount of vacancies. Pretty much every department had a vacancy at some points. Staffing. Got it.

You do want to be careful. I know we talked on the phone about this, but you want to be really careful with building permits. I have moved through layoffs. If you overbudget in in good times, then there can be some pretty significant staff impacts on the back end. So, what Joel and I and Jamie have worked on is trying to like stabilize that and then use years that we know it's going to be higher, you know, for those onetime expenses. Do we take all 336 of that to the OPUB line? Um, well, that's a big number above. So, Kayla,

yes, Kayla thinks we need to revisit our fund balance policy. I also, we are due for an actuarial study for our oped. So I think that we I would like him to come present when we have it just to kind of talk about how our what we have set aside relates to what they expect our balances are and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think definitely in 2026 we're going to is your sense that that is going to get smaller what we contribute there. I'm thinking ahead to levy limits and to what we are adding to fund balance every year and just I it's going to become a lot tighter calculation as we go forward. This is a lot of money to add to the fund balance. I just want to make sure we're thinking about that.

Yeah. When we were talking, we said, you know, some of this permit money that is over this year, we could use for onetime things or that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, if I guess if there's any way we can not send all 336 of this to Yeah. post employment if we don't need to. If we need it, great. Yeah. Another option is you could pay for your exterior valuation with that. Yeah. That just takes it out of the borrow, right? Oh, yeah. with the that probably what you would want to do is reduce the s the sir charge amount since that seems to be taxable but if there's an openness to that I think we could

what was the cost of that I I was really surprised when I saw this amount of like fund and there's still 3 months to go so I mean it could change but are we pretty much on track to hit this 336 I think so yeah I mean how much is the exterior reval need you need 20 years of this to [laughter] Um, how much was the rebell? 220. Okay. Yeah.

So, why don't we look at that a little bit closer? I I thought originally about use paying for the onetime implementation cost, but knowing that we have that large development permit. It's pretty easy to use that money next year. Um, but yeah, I I I agree that you have options, especially since we're issuing debt. I mean the direction could just be we can take a look at it and then as part of that d debt issuance we can bring forward a proposal to use. Which part of the debt issuance is taxable? It's the search charge the health insurance search charge. So that's what we're going to want to reduce but we'll work with others on that. Okay. Got it. There I assume you like closed the books December well February 1st for the previous month.

Oh um it's like April when we'll be done with 2025. Yeah. One thing that along that same lines with the fund balance numbers and I'm trying to remember what happened last year when it was negative and the year before that when it was positive. Um it I I would like to see a an annual memo on why what is the contribution or subtraction from fund balance and why did that happen? I mean, you can rattle off it's 130% of Joel's fees, but it would be good to see that. I would once a year tell you to read the MDNA that comes with the financial statements. Oh, the MDNA. Well, can we detail memory every year? So,

can we re can we reserve surpluses for future operations? Are you not allowed to do that? I mean, you kind of are by putting it in a fund balance, but I'm thinking again of things you have to levy for in the future. Theoretically, you've overlevied in this case, right? For what you've cost, can you set that aside for future years or is that a not good? Yeah. No, you I think what we need to look at is So, Kayla was saying 50%, we're at 30%. Um, so I do think we're going to want to fill that bucket more. The fund balance should be at 50. Yeah. 50% of what? Of next year's um like expenditures. And I do know in our should be

in our rating that was a comment that we received um was that it should be higher and our debt rate and our credit rating. Yeah. Yeah. Um I mean our credit rating overall is very very good. Um but the few comments that we received one of them spoke to that point. What is that dollar? It's like 30 to 50%. What's that difference? Roughly six million. Yeah. What's the expenditures? Why don't we run that and we'll get back. Yeah, we can we can talk about this one, but it's just some it was a big number. It was worth looking at. So,

all right, we'll do the library. So, um library revenues from 2025 increased $80,000, which is about 8%. Um of that increase, 11,000 is the increase in the property tax levy. As we previously discussed, the member reserve fund is about up about $27,000. And then there's a $10,000 transfer from fund 22 for collection materials and $36,000 in fund balance usage from a 2025 donation. Um, and then we can go to the expenditures and then I Nama will be able to answer any questions after that. So the expenditures are also up 7%. Uh, 21,000 is an increase in personnel costs. $10,000 is an increase in IT support for membership to library IQ. Um I believe that's something that McFliss was paying and is no longer

No, that's one we're doing on our own. Okay. That's one they're doing on our own.

It's um it's a vendor where it uploads our collection data and our circulation data every month and then gives us uh reports at a much more nuanced level to be able to say what hasn't gone out, what has gone out. Um, so as we lean into strategically doing our collection development to increase the member reserve fund, used to be called reciprocal borrowing, it helps us see where to shrink it, where to grow it. Um, so we're looking at growing the actual children's collection and moving the adult music CDs and DVDs to the adult side so they have room to grow. So we'll have to shrink the some of the adult collection and using that enables us before when I analyzed the collection it might take me 40 hours manually in exile to do it there we did not have a product to do it with this I was able to do it in an hour.

Cool. Um and then you know as you can see the impact on our reciprocal borrowing going up. Thank you. And then other expenditure changes for the library, uh, $37,000 increase in building maintenance, and that's using the fund balance of the previous slide for a donation they got in 2025. Uh, the MCFIST membership costs are down to about 15,000. And then the library collection materials are up 32,000. Oh, so the Hoopla is the 10,000 that MCFIS is not covering anymore, right?

Um, and then $10,000 is offset by the transfer in from fund 22. And there's a $12,000 digitization project using the increase in the member reserve fund. Um because if that money went away in the reserve fund, this would not be a cost that would continue to go forward. Um so then just be my curiosity, the digitization project. I remember 10 [clears throat] years ago we did the Mimi Bird digitization.

We've been adding we digitized the women's club directories. Um between those two, we get about a 100,000 hits a year um worldwide on the online collection. We digitize the yearbooks. The school won't let us post them online, but people can call us and say, "My grandma was this name in these years." We can find the files and email them. We're looking at digitizing the women's club scrapbooks, which they have quite a bit. And then potentially also some old Norfish Bay nows from the 70s to the '9s. Um, and I I keep piling things in the basement. So just as we have that chance to do something 12,000 will enable us to get a lot more to add to that online collection. Thanks. So Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to ask about Hoopla. We're one of the only libraries that have hoopla. Correct.

Um this year it's down to I think five or six of the 15 libraries in Milwaukee County still offering Hoopla as it continues to get, you know, exponentially more expensive. It's a pay peruse. So, the more popular it is, the more it costs us. Um, we've gone from six sort of circs per person um each month to four to two. And we're still going to hit 15,000 of our $115,000 collection budget this year just on Hoopla. And people would in our survey we just completed, someone said they wished we we had Seattle Public Libraries Hoopla and uh I'd like to have their budget for that hoopla. Um and so actually next year it will be down to just three libraries with Hoopla and the others particularly MPL planning to sunset it next year. So we may end up in 2027 with just us offering it or us having to drop it too.

And it is only for White Fish Bay residents. You can't it's correct. So those who are not opted in just like Canopy or some of the others that we offer you have to have a a White Fish Bay address in your account. So if someone from Shorewood comes and gets our card, that doesn't cut it. We have a separate code in there for where you actually live. So you're finding I mean enough people are finding value that it's worth continuing to have.

It is. I will say um before the reduction to two circs, if people in your household used four circs per month, it was the equivalent of your entire tax bill for the library going just to hoopla if there because it's it's about you know 12 bucks a [snorts] month. So that's that's the cost of it. So cutting it to two still is is it's a huge impact. So if as it becomes more popular, it's just not sustainable. People across the country have been dropping it. So have you I mean but you you're not interested in dropping it cuz it's getting used so much.

Scott loves it and our patrons love it. You know, we're very tech adoptive. We'd love to be able to continue it even if it's just at two. But if it starts to hit 20 25,000 a year, I don't know how we can do that. We'll just have to see how the next year goes. Yeah. I think hoopla's business model would suffer that everybody's dropping it. You would think we were just at conference and there that what they came up with as the next workound really wasn't a workaround. So yeah. Okay. Any other library next?

All right. So then the [clears throat] debt service fund. This is um pretty much it houses our principal and interest for capital projects and as well as any portion of Maddak or Northshore fire debt that we pay. Um so the revenues and expenditures both are down $56,000 and there's a $40,000 decrease in the property tax levy which as Kelsey has already said many a time we will see this go back up in 2027. And then Anna, would you like to go to the next slide? Um, so then the last fund that we have that is funded by the property property tax levy is the capital fund which is fund 44. Um, the change in revenues and expenditures is up $7,000 or about 2%. There is a $110,000 increase in the property tax levy though, which I mentioned. We saw the corresponding decrease in the general fund expenditures because that revenue is not coming in. Um, and then a $53,000 or 45% increase in Northshore Fire Department capital. And there is a $47,000 decrease in the what our additions are. And then we have the detail on the next slide. Um, so for PD, they're just looking at getting um three new computers. Village Hall, we need two laptops and then some IT things that if anyone has questions on, Kelsey can speak to. And then PD is looking to do a vehicle lift, a pallet rack, a waste oil tank, a scanner, and then also a laptop replacement. And if anyone has questions on any of these, um, department heads would be ready to speak to it.

I I do I think I ask this question every year. Every year here it comes. Every year. I don't earth are computers this expensive. Yeah. [laughter] Can we have it vetted by Bayside? I I'm just I'm I'm dying to know how how what 20 something00 for a desktop is getting us because or I sorry bad math $18 2,600 2,800 bucks for ridiculous amounts. I just I I I please vet this with Bayside. Um and additionally,

you're making me nervous. Well, and it was funny to hear the health department has $1,500 laptops. Why? Like, can we go to that store? No, I I'm I'm just I I It's something I ask every year and I I never seem to get They are lower. Yeah, this is down from last year. They were last I [clears throat] spent probably more than $1,000 worth of time getting them down. Are they leases? I think they came in at 3500. Are they leases or are they just what costs a lot of money is the actual setup. Yeah. It's so it's the time to spend to image them and to like get them up and running. Um which it is it is fair to say with Bayside um you know they said they have a formula model so we a little bit closer.

Have we looked at leasing them or do we just not buy enough to make it worth it? It's the tops are like 800 bucks. I mean come on. Why I'm just thinking of how a like a company leases them. It's just a refresh cycle. It's just a running not that expensive. Yeah. That's what it's the setup cost. Okay. Which they would have to do. Yeah. I didn't know if it included both or if it was just the actual physical device. But um

additionally, the dual Cisco core router is $35,000. That is an incredibly expensive switch. Um please have Bayside vet that. I I I I I I tried to do some research today on like switches, you know, I I ran a network at a company with a 100 employees and we never paid more than like $1,000 for a switch. They're, you know, they they last forever because they have no moving parts. And seeing this $35,000 one, that makes no sense to me. So, please ask Bayside to vet that because that does not make any sense. Yes, I will do that. Um I think that one's going to be a little bit tricky because they haven't been as involved in that, but we will do the best that we can.

Yeah, I I mean I don't take this as an approval to spend that money until Yeah. somebody says they would be the ones actually procuring and buying it side. Yeah. Okay. Again, the switches are thousand pieces of equipment, not 35. Anyways, next year I'm gonna have Bayside come present the IT budget. [laughter] This is the roughest one ever. The last one gets there at 9:00. So feel free Paul would bring me in some I'll show you what it looks like. Yeah. Yeah. 350 and I would know the total that's well but even the don't even

you need to ask if B you need to ask Bayside if we even need this is what my comment is but okay we can move on we don't need to labor that Matt how often would we use it daily okay can I use it [laughter] perfect because you have one of those right you worked it into your contract slicker [laughter] and moving on to utility funds. Yeah. All right. So, um this is kind of

Can you go back just to any questions on this? Right now, this is the end of what we fund with the property tax levy. Um so, we will still circle back to the new position question, but we're going to kind of jump into utilities, which are mainly funded by user fees, and then just the other funds that are included in the budget book. So, this is kind of the good time to ask if you have anything that just impacts the levy, but we can also circle back at the end to any open questions.

Okay. So, then the water utility. Um, we have revenues increasing about $75,000 or 2.83% as we've mentioned a handful of times. There was a 3% inflationary increase which will appear on the April 2026 bills. We budgeted 11,500 for a conventional rate case in 2026 and then expenditures decreased 27,000 or 1%. Um there was a $21,000 or 6% increase in personnel costs. So that was as I said before a little bit of shifting to DPW but also the 8% increase in the tech positions. One of those tax is pretty much primarily housed in the water utility and the other one is part-time in the water utility. And then really there was a decrease in the principal and interest in 2026 of $127,000. And then um there was increase in software support for the BSNA cloud as well as a $8,500 increase in GIS cost for a required update. So that updating GIS is seen in the DPW department as well as all three utilities and then the capital projects and the debt proceeds are included as directed by what we have in the CIP currently. So any questions on the water utility to

refresh my memory all all of the salaries are whiteish bay employees not Northshore consor water consortium employees. I mean, we Yeah, we pay. You're directly paying. Yes. Yes. But for Northshore Water, we just have uh an amount we pay monthly. Yeah. I was going to ask, how's it going hiring a new director? It's posted right now. Yeah. You're not going to apply, are you? All I care about.

You see that? Uh, let's see. Cellular rent. I just want $180,000. Okay. It was interesting that in 2023 it was 43,000. So it's quadrupled in three years. Just saying. I have no question. Just wanted to point that out. Yeah. And that's more there was there was a new Gazsby standard in 2023. So I will say I'm all about the Gazsby standard because it was allocated that stuff. It was allocated more to like the lease revenue line below it than because those are leases. So differently. Yeah, it's not it's No, it didn't really change.

Rental. That's our what we lease out on um the water tower. Is that going to be a problem in the next couple years when we have to repaint the water tower? No. No, we just Yeah, we just do it. Just paint them. One guy holds it. Yeah, I think that pays.

All right. And then the sewer utility um revenues increased $80,000, but it it's a little um like confusing to explain. There was no rate increase, but we have a revenue line and an expendure line for MMSD charges. It is a pass through, but those I mean their rates just keep going up. So, both the revenue and expenditure lines are up by $100,000. So, it doesn't have a bottom line impact on the sewer fund, but it does look like the revenues are up 3%. Um, and then expenditures increased $158,000 or 6%. So, it does have that impact from MMSD. And then $30,000 increase in personnel. I think we moved um we we shifted some of the DPW labor allocation to here also um just based on what the three-year averages were. And then also the corresponding software support and GIS costs for the required update. So pretty um status quo I think. And then the storm water revenues increased $500. Yay. Um I think that's interest income maybe or some other account that I increased a little bit, but there's no rate increase. Expenditures are up $314,000 which we expected. um $31,000 of that is the principal and interest increase um related to the borrowing for the storm sewer collapse. And then also same as the other utilities, the software support and the GIS costs are seen increasing as well. So I and I'm sorry that I I don't remember the answer to this question, but I thought we were doing an increase in storm water utility to offset the um the collapse.

Yeah, but that increase was in last year's budget. The increase in revenues was in last year's budget increased. This is the first time you're seeing the storm or the principal and interest coming on. Well, we budget for 25. So, we we raised the rates going borrowed last year knowing and raised the revenues knowing like and the way we raised the revenues is that that we wouldn't raise them again related to this to the um borrow essentially. Are you talking about the eru? [clears throat] No, we we raised storm water rates last year to fund this borrow. We just haven't paid any principal or interest yet. We borrowed, but we just haven't actually made a payment. So,

but the revenue increase was reflected in the 2025 budget. Yeah. Okay. And and just so no rate increase that that's that's the eru charge, right? Yeah. Okay. Just Yeah. um for this and for sewer, how's the solveny of those funds? I know we're not proposing to raise them, but knowing that future years might have increases in water and other things, is it is it a good time to consider some kind of an increase in these funds or what what are your thoughts on that?

Um I think they're both doing okay. I think we are looking at a sewer kind of inflationary increase next year. Okay. And then after that, it's more I think kind of every other year is what we're thinking for those two funds. Um or and trying not to hit them when the water um is increased. I mean, yeah, we definitely could increase it a year earlier, but cuz storm's not supposed to increase until 28, right? I believe so. Yeah.

Okay. Do we think we're going to be way like out of line by 28? that it's going to need to be another very large increase just knowing the age of the storm infrastructure or do you think it's did did we get it to a place last year where we're comfortable leaving it for the next three or is it better to slowly scale that up in storm? Yeah. Um and this isn't something that would have to be decided now. I mean obviously the last time around we incorporated or we implemented those storm water fee increases. It was mid year. So, I think this would be a good question for Kayla when she comes in because we did adjust some of the debt. If you remember, we added some more money for Storm. Um,

oh, so you can actually raise that outside of the budget cycle, you're saying? So, you could budget to hold it flat and you could say, "We we see it getting out of whack. We want to raise it." Interesting. Okay.

Yeah. Um, any other utility questions? All right. Then other funds that we have included in the budget but that don't they don't have any direct impact to the levy um so just gonna going to do high level is the special assessment fund. It's really paying down debt related to special assessments. Uh the last payment we have there is in 2031. Uh the borrowed money fund is debt proceeds and projects. That's all directed by the CIP. Um and then we have three TIDs. So TID one the expenditure period ended in October of 2025. remaining expenditures are per developer agreements or admin costs. Uh TID 2 is really just Bowmont Place and that developer agreement and then TID 3 was established in 2025 as you all know and really all we're seeing in there is um admin costs currently. So not planning on going into further detail unless anyone has specific questions. Um, but again, they're included, I guess, as moreformational, I would say, but they don't directly impact the levy or any fees that are charged directly to residents.

Mental note, we usually have a CDA meeting to approve the the TID budgets. Uh, I don't think we have that on the calendar for the next two weeks. We just um Oh, that's okay. Yeah, I think this year was different because TID one we spent so much time doing the expenditure period close out like TID 2 is literally just bow place and what we paid in a developer agreement. No. Yeah. So I mean maybe procedurally but it got people I mean I don't procedurally I don't know but it got people in the CDA thinking about what is the expenditures for particularly TIG one. Yeah. But don't you think you spent a bunch of time talking about this?

I did. I I don't I don't really have a problem. find out procedurally if we need to do that. Yeah, I don't think so. If not, I think you probably owe the committee a memo. Well, yeah, and that's that's a good conversation point because it was on my radar. I know they wanted to see the annual report and so we have the JRB meeting we're working on scheduling right now and so my thought was to do a CDA meeting because as part we're going to schedule a meeting for the CDA as well to review that annual report. So maybe next year that should Yeah, works for me. Just usually it was you had the CDA meetings to who would recommend a budget to the village board. That's all. Okay. But Jamie's right like we worked on

the budget of TID one forever. So Okay. All right. And then um next slide I think I'll turn back to you Kelsey.

Yeah. So this is the second to last one. So we're almost done. Um, this is talking about the new position. So, this is not in what I would call the base budget. So, not in the budget book that you reviewed. Essentially, what happened is that we were creating a budget assuming a 17 18% health insurance increase as well as some other kind of worst case scenarios. And when um all those challenges were kind of worked through, we stepped back and said, you know, actually this is a pretty favorable budget year. Um and next year because of the debt hitting and also with the potential of any changes with the school district, we don't see that being the case next year or maybe in the future few years. So, as a staff, we kind of looked at and said, "Okay, if there's something that we would do in addition to the base budget to try to address service issues that we know exist as well as to address some staff workload issues, what would we do? Um, or how could that be structured?" And essentially with this position, we're trying to pull work away from three areas that um you know, workload has been an issue. Uh so starting first um in the position would be a building inspector but it would serve kind of three different areas and I think consolidate from a customer perspective like streamline how those services are delivered. Um so starting first with building services so the position would spend roughly 50% in building services doing field inspections permit support and maintaining full building counter coverage. Um, so in terms of opportunities, that would free up the director's time um to focus more on higher priorities such as code updates, which have been difficult to get to. Um, as well as a setback map revision, which I think Joel and I are the only two in this room that desperately want that before he retires. That has to happen, [laughter] which I hope is a long time from now. Um, but then other strategic initiatives. Um, also currently we do

not have full building counter coverage, which just is unfortunate. like you have people coming in to try to pull a building permit and if Vivian's on break or on lunch if we don't have backup which happens daily um that means those individuals sit and wait in the lobby or come back at a later time and so not ideal from a customer perspective that will be addressed though with the online ability to get permits online correct yeah so that would open up a different opportunity I'll say like you know I think they their counter will still see a lot of people for sure. Um, but you're you're it's fair to say that that that that would um address an issue. We potentially could set up a computer, too. Maybe that could be utilized. So, I I think it does open up opportunities. Yeah.

Yeah. Not a not the 29,000. Not a $2,500 [laughter] one. We won't do that. Um, did I miss anything in your side? I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of questions, but well, the the only other thing I would add is um like you said coverages. The one thing you didn't mention was vacations and that

that is very problematic when we have so many inspections or if a sick day, it just throws everything into a a spiral. So having an extra person obviously gives you the opportunity to ab absorb and adjust just a a little more. But um yeah, I think other than that you covered every um everything from my side.

There was a really good chart in the memo that basically showed um Joel and Mike's efficiency in comparison to a lot of other communities. I mean the reality is they're um very very efficient. Um, so you know, we were kind of talking about like if we we were in your seat and you'd probably ask like, well, you've been getting by, like why now? Um, and I think what this presents is an opportunity to kind of get ahead of what we know is eventually coming because Joel Joel and Mike have worked together for so long. They have so many years of institutional knowledge. Joel can answer a question that would take me hours to try to figure out. Um, and so eventually that well come dries up. you know, they won't be here forever and ever. Uh, and I think operating at that level of efficiency will be difficult in the long term. Um, but is is working to a certain degree right now. Um, engineering services. So, 40% of this person's work, the goal is to take um responsibilities basically off of engineering and DPW's plate. this year and I'll give Juel and Matt kudos um they've done a really good job at looking of like how we could streamline um drainage permits and so outsourcing to Clark deeds which we actually receive a fee that pays for that. So that's something that Spencer was doing as a staff engineer that we now outsource without having to use any levy dollars and it's all streamlined through Joel's department. And so before they were bouncing between Joel for a building permit to get a drainage review and engineering and they've streamlined it and it's worked very very well between the departments and their communication I think is really what has made it work well. So that's kind of a model of like what could be uh for other areas. So specifically in engineering and DPW, looking at um this building inspector assisting with inspections for driveway approaches, conducting preliminary reviews for private drainage concerns, and then supporting lead

service line replacement outreach and inspection. Um so in terms of the opportunity or what could be gained, the goal is to take that work off of the sound engineer and the DPW director. Um as well as just knowing in 2027 that that year feels a bit like a freight train. Um, for us, I mean, definitely in Matt's area, but kind of in all of ours of special assessments and how do we spin those up from a revenue, you know, from a finance side and how do we build out um, customer service models that can answer the questions at the level that we would expect in this community um, is a bit worrisome. And so I think having a building inspector with the level of customer service that our building inspectors have and the knowledge of going into people's houses and explaining they're used to working and talking to people who are doing this work. I think this position would be it would be well positioned to be able to provide a really high level handholding customer service experience for the lead service lines. And then last but certainly not least, um property maintenance is a really bizarre function in the sense that it is there there's a lot of property maintenance challenges in this community. We receive a lot of concerns from the public. Historically, that work has been placed with the assistant village manager. However, really it's Joel, but the building services department helps with inspections. And so what happens is it's a very decentralized um you know difficult process like anytime that one person doesn't fully own you know all the pieces of that. It just kind of tends to get lost in the shuffle um or we can't don't have the responsiveness that we'd like to see. Um, and so to transition that to one department, I think would be a better product for the public, but also would free up Anna's time to be able to assist Joel with some of those code updates. Um, she'd likely collaborate on that as well as focus on some other high priority areas that a role like hers should be focusing on versus um, code

compliance issues. So, if the board were to be interested in funding the position, the levy impact, so that's not the full cost of the position, but the levy impact would be $73,552. Um, and so that would be that would result in a levy impact change from 2.8% to 3.35%. And then the remaining 40% would be funded by water. So, one question I have, maybe it's for Joel, maybe it's for you. So, uh I think in larger communities, these three buckets could be three separate jobs. How difficult is it going to be to find a candidate who will be maybe not even excel, but be competent in these three different areas?

Yes, I

that's a really good question, Peg. Kelsey and I uh have talked about that, but I would say we would the last time, which it was a long time ago. It was about 10 years ago, we posted for a building inspector position and we got we got nothing. I mean, we got probably five, six applicants. One had the credentials we needed, but was an absolute no. So, I would say I would I would envision that if we hired somebody, we would need to train them to become an inspector. Um, property maintenance, that's just a matter of training someone. Same with the um the uh helping Maxine out, freeing her time up to actually, you know, put her talents in the right area. Uh, a lot of it is what am I inspecting? What are the specs? getting familiar with that kind of thing. That doesn't require any credentials. Neither does a property maintenance. So, it is unfortunately every inspection we do on a um single family home does require state credential plumbing, electric, building, heating. So, that individual would need to obtain those certifications. We might find one that already has it. I mean th this proposed salary would would draw the attention of people who have those certifications. So I would hope that we would find it. We have trained before. We can train again. In fact, there's no bad habits when you train. So I I don't mind looking at that. I mean, yes, would it be a drain or a another thing to do in the department? Absolutely. But, you know, I would say we doing it now is the time because trying to get an individual when you're going into the lead service replacement program isn't going to work.

I mean, you can't just grab somebody and say, "Go do this." You know, it it it would be, "Hey, we got a year to get ramped up to get all this stuff into this person's wheelhouse." So,

okay. totaling off of Jacob's question and then it it was even um more so it's something you just said what this is going to sound strange but what would we post the job as you know cuz you said the last time you posted for a building inspector you at zero.

And to to say that this is a building inspector position if someone is, you know, looking for it is kind of um is I don't want to it's not the whole truth. Um, you know what, you know, what kind of what kind of experience do we have here in in kind of a, if any, in hiring a combined role? And do we want to call it a building inspector? I

I would say yeah, we would want to call it that. Um, prior to me being in White Fish Bay, I I worked for a contract uh company and you would do all these things. This is this is what an inspector does. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. And it's most most municipalities would have their inspection department doing the property maintenance. So, that that's not uncommon at all. Well, Jacob, you said it might be a full-time employee. Most of the time it's maybe that department and how they divvy it up, but but that that is not uncommon at all.

I mean, [clears throat] that's that's just 10% of the the the bucket. I'm I'm more worried I I was more worried about the the 40% engineering, public works. Um I I I was not under the impression that that's something a building inspector would typically do. I think you you see I what I have found is that the inspection department is a catch-all for a lot of these other duties and sometimes it is I mean so with the drainage reviews I mean to get pretty specific we would be the first point of contact it may be necessary to bring in Maxine and use her expertise on a drainage situation but at least she's not the first point and it's not sucking that time away most of these are downspout issues. Right? Like we have codes that we enforce on downspout. So it would be logical that we would be the first to deal with that. If it was something uh a little bit more serious with a topography problem, sure we can bring in an engineer, but Maxine's running out on these things and it's it's small problems.

So it wouldn't surprise a potential candidate to see this as as part of the requirements. No other duties as described. Well, I but you put that in bold, but that's a lot of other duties. It I mean that's Joel. The piece is like so the lead service line inspections the private side his team would be doing. Yep. Yeah.

So that's no different. I think what is the piece that jumps out to me that is a little bit different well is different for building inspector would be the communication with the resident explaining. And so that's why we feel like this health department position is such a good compliment because the health department position could help de develop the communication materials that this position would then implement because this position isn't developing communication materials. They're building a knowledge base where they can explain to a resident, this is what to expect. We're going to have to come into your house. This is going to be the impact. Here's the cost. Here's where you can call. Those types of things. and and that that can my concern there is that the community has come to expect thanks to Joel and you know how much I love heaping you with praise um thanks to Joel has ex come to expect a certain level of customer service um and so we need to make sure that any potential candidate knows that that's that's expected of of of someone in that department because you know it wasn't always the case and now it is

[snorts] uh that people love working with Joel and Mike and it's you know something that would be very important to make sure that we weed out can can you speak a little more on how this fits into succession planning I think we can see in other departments the challenges around retirements all at the same time does this smooth out the the tenure of staff or do you see it that way? Well, it it depends. I don't think we can say that we're going to hire someone who's young, right? Like No, I'm just curious like how from a skills standpoint, does it fit into backfilling skills that you're going to train somebody on skills? Yeah, absolutely. Difficult to train on that. Yeah, the goal would be Yeah, because

spread your knowledge base is maybe a better way to think about it. Yeah. I mean, Mike and I roughly the same age. Mike's been here 20 years, you know, half DPWF building services. I've been here 18 years. Um, it's we what we're looking for Yeah. is that next person who we can plug into, develop, bring that on and that I mean it it doesn't happen overnight. I'm sure

like I said, I've worked in several municipalities and there have been disasters that have been there and the people you you really need time and overlap with the right person almost like an apprenticeship or mentorship program. I mean I we have it in the trades. It really needs to be in with the inspection departments who I think but it's especially White Fish Bay. I mean, White Fish Bay's unique and and you you need to provide a high level of service and a lot of um inspection agencies or just even inspectors are there to plug in their time and get out of there. But I mean, there's a lot of phone calls in White Fish Bay. There's a lot of handholding. There's a lot of talking things through to people or with people. And it's not a bad thing, but it is time consuming and it does take the right individual and it does take um the right training, I think. So, um I don't know if that answered your question.

No, it it does. It was more about the mentality of, you know, what what kind of candidate are you looking for for that and and I think the way you answered it is

yeah, it has to be somebody flexible. It has to be somebody who's willing to do lots of different things. But I don't know, that's what I love about the job because there's tons of different things that we are involved with and none of these things um cause me any alarm or pause. I I would definitely be leaning on uh my co-workers as far as that outreach and and that [clears throat] but that's we all learned together with that. But then is there is there any flexibility in the allocation between general fund? How does that work versus utility funds or or is it is it formulaic or is it kind of an estimate?

Yeah, we just figured that you know the 40% is probably lead. I'm saying could it be 50 Think about it. I don't know. Yeah, we don't have to answer today, but well, and it could be adjusted from your year. That's good point, too. Yeah, like in 27 it might be more than it would be in 2029, for instance. I'm sure we could find that number of dollars to move in some kind of salary or staff. Just take another look at the calculation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we just had a conversation about levy levy limits and basically, you know, chunking up 73 grand out of that limit. Yeah. I'd prefer it was less than 73 the rest of our lives. Yeah.

Um, so that percentage becomes more important. Yep. As time goes on. Yep. Kelsey, do you have a do you have a trend in headcount over time, too? like in general. So like for staff, is it easy to get or I'm just curious like what is our staffing level today versus five years ago? I I was curious if it went up or down. Pretty flat. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't change in the five years I've been here. Okay. Oh yeah.

My guess is it would be lower. It would be lower than it was five years ago. Okay. Okay. Um, so what is the sense of the board in terms of approving a new position? Um, I'm feeling like our staff is telling us they need it. Mhm. Yeah. Any

else? Um, one of the concerns I had with Kelsey was just that, um, while I'm, you've made your case for a building inspector, um, I've also been relatively sensitive to the DPW and Matt Collins workload. And I'm I'm somewhat comforted to see the for what was it 40% in theory DPW effort. Um I so that's my only concern is that that I before this memo came out I was thinking adding another person to the DPW was actually um more appropriate but I'm just voicing that I'm I'm in favor of you know making sure we

willing to give one and a half employees I'd take it. Is that your offer? I mean, I think I don't think the one employee that you're talking about. Um, you know, I didn't know this was a bargaining all of a sudden. [laughter] Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, a little Matt and I have we've been round and round about this and he can speak for himself as well. I think the way that it's helped me as I've struggled with this mentally too is that you take the 40% of this position plus the 50,000 in contracted services plus the elevated technician and like he's got he's got a position um across those and what we have talked about is with with Matt's department it's more difficult because it needs to be a stepped implementation needs to be very intentional with how we go about the changes to try to figure out like what is the right solution and we don't have like a magic bullet at this point to like really fix everything. And so if he decides next year, I really need staff support, well then we look at those contracted services dollars and try to roll those up um to do something different in his department. But yeah,

the only thing I would add is the redistribution of that person to go into building services also is a it's a support to me and our organizational chart because like you said there's so much staff reporting to a superintendent, but the more that we would add within DPW is one more person that we would have to mentor and guide and be responsible for the lead service line and how to make that work. So using Joel and he's a subject matter expert on those things. He's been through it before with John Edelbeck. That's a huge help for us to have that mentorship program that he can dedicate additional time and resources on those technical things and then offset where we can continue to grow Maxine and her development so she's not out doing driveway inspections and drainage that we're we're building that framework unilateral between the two different departments. So this is definitely I see it as as a win for public works as well because it helps offset that future workload and it gives us that time to build that framework for a full year as we're doing design and engineering in 2026 for a mile of water main relay. They're along for the whole entire ride and that's really important that we're not hiring someone too late in the game where it becomes a spiral that they can learn with the whole entire project management team from cradle to grave with this. And that's going to be important for me. It's going to be important for our our residents that we're putting our best foot forward with a very major lift for 2027 that we have a full year to work on the health department side of things as well as a new position to recruit, hire, train, develop. So, we're ready to go by January 1st, 2027.

So, material help to the public works. That would be huge. Okay. Anyone uh you don't you just need staff direction on this. Anyone opposed to adding this position to the budget for next year which yes increases the levy to 3.35% increase going once twice. Looks like you get new position. Yay. Uh all right. What is our next slide? Um, still awake.

Yeah, barely. No, I'm actually doing great. I stay up late. Joel's probably very tired. Um, so this week any changes will be incorporated. Um, so I think Kelsey and I, we have direction on that. And then, um, November 17th is the public hearing and budget adoption. Excellent. I don't know if you have a member of the public that wants to speak. Is um there's a member of public here. Did you have any comments on the budget? Nope. Okay, that's right. Uh I love that you're here. I mean, that's Yeah, I I I just I I I'm not going to lie. It's You're way better than the high school student.

[laughter] Mike used to be an Idle Wild person and then he moved away from my street. Yeah, [laughter] I I'm just leaving Idle Wild. How dare you, servants? Hey, one last comment. One of the things for budgets. Um staff usually prints up a co a paper copy. Um do you guys use that paper copy? Anybody? Do you treasure that and save it in your library? Actually, I do save mine. We haven't printed it for years at all, but I'm actually grateful that you didn't print it because another one that I'm not Well, so you it used to be we'd get that paper copy for this meeting, but now the last couple years it's been the following meeting,

but we haven't printed it for years since we went to Clear Gov. I haven't printed them. They swear I got it last. No. So, what happened is we were printing them for this meeting and then there was all sorts of changes and then there was like taped pages in the book and it was not good. And then since we went to clear gov we have not printed them. I think the combination this year of clear gov and the powerpoint presentation was fantastic. Yeahation is awesome. I have the two I have the two tabs. I've just been going back and forth and yeah I I'm thank you for taking that being said the budget presentation being arrived at 5:59 p.m.

Well that was just so you could follow along. I didn't know it was there until 20 minutes ago. [laughter] Anywh who um All right. Well, that concludes our evening tonight. Uh 9:03 and we just need I move to adjourn. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Sam. All those in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you all to the many hours of time that this document represents. Hello. Obviously Jamie and Kelsey and Anna and Chief and all the department heads and Joel because thank you and good night.