Council - workshop

Go anytime.

Okay, we're gonna call this meeting to order. This is our first budget workshop for the Wilson City Council. It is Monday, July the 27th at 5.30 PM. President Hines has been delayed and she's asked me to start the meeting. Yes, Bishop, if you'll please call the roll.

Yes. Mayor Charles Goodman, absent. President Sarkis in the time, running behind.

Turn your mic on, please.

Vice President Deborah Jones.

Here.

Council Member Meredith Martin. Here. Council Member Mike Cox.

Here.

Council Member Shannon Church.

Here.

Interim City Manager Terry Brevard.

Here.

Attorney Kirsten Bloom. Financial Director Stephen Bloom.

Here.

City Clerk Latricia Wright is out. And all other staff.

Here.

Do we know if Latricia is online by any chance?

Not that I see.

You don't know. Okay. All right. At this time, we will stand for the opening prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, we'll do that in the afternoon. Father, please be with us tonight as we go about the business of the city. Let us be mindful and respectful of each other and remember all the residents of our city who have asked us to do the best that we can for them. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. and allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. OK, we will start with our presentation by finance director Stephen Boyd. STEPHEN BOYD JR.: OK.

Hear me? Good evening. And welcome to the first budget workshop for 2026, 2027. Like I normally do, I have a nice presentation for you. I promise I've added a couple more new slides to kind of give you something else different to look at. But we'll basically go through and cover some of your normal basics. And if you keep going through the agenda there, you can actually follow along with the slides. Let's see what page that is. I guess that's page three. Keep going. Okay, so I usually start with what the goals are for today's workshop. There's a lot of things you can talk about. There really is nothing that's off the table in terms of what you're able to speak about. But what you really absolutely have to have today is a consensus on your preliminary millage. And again, for the millage, this is going to be what we call your high water mark, meaning once you set this, it is going to go into the trim notice, and you can always come down, but you can't go any higher than whatever you set today. And so the trim process in itself has got a lot of dates that you have to hit each of them, you know, and it's basically, you know, kind of parade forward of dates. And so I just wanted to, and I always remind you that this is the key one for today. It's not the only thing we'll talk about, but at the end of the day, once everything is said and done, you do have other workshops to go further into it. This is the one item that you can't pass by. So, okay, let's keep going then. I do, I did put in here in the next page, your calendar of your key events. And, you know, I've included two other workshops. It doesn't mean you have to do those, both of those workshops. I think we did last year, I think we did three last year. Most times we do at least two. So the next one that we have on this calendar is in August 12th. And then after that, two weeks later, the 26th. And we do that because in September is when your hearings start. And so you're going to have three different hearings. You're going to have a hearing on the fire assessment. It's a public hearing. And then you can start on the 15th would be your first budget slash millage rate. And then the 22nd is your final one. And so we've done in the past at least those two budget ones at 6 o'clock. But we used to do it at 5.30, and then it was just kind of similar today. It's for everybody to get here. So we usually start at 6 o'clock. And again, those are the key. Anything in yellow is key dates for the council. And just as a quick reminder for why these dates are there, you cannot have a public hearing on the same night as the county does or the school board. So that starts to shrink in September quite a bit, especially again with the holiday and stuff. You have to give the trim notices enough time to be received by the residents. So again, you can't have it too early in September. So again, this is kind of what we put together, and certainly some of this stuff could change if you wanted to, but you're going to have a hard time, as you can see, with some of these other dates.

Okay. The only thing I heard from Ms. Hines today is she has a hard time getting here at 530. So if we can make our workshops at 6, I know she would appreciate that.

Okay.

You'll probably hear that from her when she gets here.

Okay. The budget book that you have is very similar to what we've done in the past. Nothing too different. Just try to give you, we try to be as transparent as possible. There's a lot of information in there. And we put in a couple summary schedules. Obviously key things like the staffing plan, your property tax information. It's all in your budget book and we will go through that. in these slides at a very summer level, and then we can spend as much time as you want on the details. As I mentioned, again, your staffing plan is in here, operating, debt service, all capital. It's a whole, entire, fully baked budget in there. It's the first version. I think that's important to state. The department managers, obviously council, residents, everyone has opportunity from this point to continue the discussions, make changes. I know I've already gotten some feedback from some managers who weren't particularly thrilled with some of my cuts. We'll talk about that in a second. But again, they have plenty of time to kind of give me the feedback. You have in front of you as a site a new staffing plan, because one of the things as we go through this is to try and make sure I put in as many of the changes And so this one that you have that's outside, you can literally replace what you have in your book. And it's the most recent, I believe. But again, this will be updated as well as we go through this package. But there were some key changes in the last three weeks or so that my version did not have. that was important to have, including some, you know, utility movements. And so, you know, and I also increased the city manager pay in these versions. Doesn't mean you have to pay in that, but at least gives you a little more room as you proceed with that avenue. But again, this is, you know, what I'm calling version one, and there'll obviously be a version two. that you make tonight. Overall, the budget you have in front of you is about 6.9% higher than your current budget. Now, a lot of that is skewed with capital. When you look at the airport in particular, there's about over $7 million of grant-funded expenses in there. I doubt they'll get through all of that in one year. That's a lot. But it is in there as an approved budget. When you pull out all of the capital, and just look more at operating, staffing, and debt service, it's about a 5.5% increase. And so again, that's no small number, but certainly checking out the capital gives you a little bit better understanding of where we're at. OK, so I'm going to cover some of the assumptions of what's in your budget and what's not in your budget. Again, hopefully giving you a big, broad overview of what's you have in front of you are some of the key points. There are no new positions in there. There are positions that might have been approved during the current year. Those are there, but there's nothing new baked into this budget for next year. There are right now, as I counted, I think, over the weekend, 11 open positions. And again, the managers will have to review those open positions and see, if they still all make sense for next year. But right now, they're all in there. There are no CPI slash wages slash merit. There is nothing in this budget. This is a very bare minimum base type of a budget. It is balanced, but it was really difficult to balance this budget. And I'll talk a little bit more about why that is. But there is no increases, and that's why I put This is a chart that I've used before to give council an idea should they decide they would like to put wages in there at some level. Each of the columns represents what that wage would be. It does not have to be across the board, but it tells you per fund what it would cost, and that is a fully loaded number. It includes taxes, it includes retirement, a little bit of extra workers' comp, which would go up everything. It's a fully loaded number. So if you were to put in 3%, it would cost an additional $170,000 that you'd be putting into the budget. And you can see the breakdown by fund. And again, that assumes across the board to put the money into the budget. Now, again, it's a very tight budget. And so what really would then be, well, how do you pay for it? What are you going to either cut, you know, It really is very, very razor thin right now. One of the reasons why, your general employee pension rate, contribution rate for next year is going up. It's currently 4.86. It's going to 7.88. So not quite doubling it, but certainly a significant increase. That means for every dollar You're putting in the 7.88% across the board for general employees. The police pension wasn't that bad. You can see there's a little bit of a decrease in there, so not terrible on the police side. By the way, these are based on the actuarial studies that they've already completed. It's not a guess. They tell us exactly what the next year should be. um frs did go up as well a couple percentage points and that's just for fire uh 35.19 is what you're contributing now and it's going up to 37.74 percent um i also built into this budget a 10 percent increase for health and life insurance premiums don't know what those are yet we'll see as we move forward further it's usually Probably not until late August, early September that we kind of get some of those back. But have to bake something in there. Don't want to wind up short. Same thing on your other general insurances. I have 10% in there for workers' comp, GL, cyber, and then auto, which has been a biggie lately. It's at 25%. So again, doing nothing else. This particular page, those couple bullet points, shows you already your budget, your spending has gone up. You're doing nothing, really. And that's why it does make it tougher. Like I mentioned, all of the budgets are balanced and not using any cash reserves. Okay, let's keep going. I did not change, good or bad, the transfer from the utility fund. 1.39, it's the same as it is this year. Again, we've talked about this every time during the workshop. That's a pretty big number, and it is certainly the goal for the city to reduce that reliance on the utility part. And I'm just mentioning it now because you'll hear probably when your great studies come out that some of the commissions in terms of water and stuff, they are looking for cities to not be pulling so much money out of the utilities. And so ideally every year we would reduce this amount. I just did not have it yet in this particular version of the budget to do it. It used to be about 1.5, so it is down a little bit. But again, it is certainly taking money out of the utility fund. No cash reserves. Any loans that we'll talk about today, unless there's something brand new, I have already built in principal and interest. That includes any loan that's already been approved. And then I have some information in here on a potential new loan. It's already in your budget. So that's all there. We do share costs on certain departments. So the city manager, city clerk, HR, and IT. A couple of years ago, the council said, hey, I'm tired of having to go through all the different funds and add up all of this to come up with what the city manager really wants. So we put it all in the general fund. And then each of those other funds gives donations or shares a little bit of money in to cover those. At the very end of the book, you'll see those pages there. I just mention it because we don't usually spend a ton of time on that. Airport fuel sales is a very small increase right now in here. There's probably some more room on that. And then the millage rate. So for the millage rate that's in right now, It's at 6.75, no change. As we get to a chart down the line here, you'll be seeing the trend. That 6.75% is not gonna yield you much in terms of for the current year. I think it's about $58,000. And so ideally, in a perfect scenario, the increase in your taxable values would help offset any increase in spending. This year it is not. Like we did this year for 2026, next year has built in cash reserve increases. Coming out of 2025, which was not a great year, when we did the 2026 budget, we knew we had to put in and start building up our cash reserves. We had heard it from the auditor, and you'll hear it again from the auditor. And so this year for 2026, we do have some money in and so far it looks pretty good. And then this budget has some more for next year and it's just kind of a slow approach to kind of build those back up to where they need to be. fire assessments is in at the high water mark and again that's another decision that would be up and coming for the council as to whether or not to keep it up this 318 traffic enforcement fines when we did the 2026 budget we put in $200,000 for the cameras and it really has not achieved that So one of the things between 2026 and 2027 is to kind of lower that number to like 50,000, which is still good money, you know, additional money coming in, but it certainly was not what we had hoped for. I built in a 4% increase in the solid waste. It's basically a pass-through. So I've increased the expenses to cover the contract, and then the revenue would follow suit. We'll talk a little bit more about Fiverr towards the end, but I did assume as of 10-1, 800 subscribers. So 800 gets you basically a balanced budget for next year. Kind of that's your target. It is fair and important to note that 1,000 is really the goal once the loan hits the full principal and interest payments. So basically, when you did the loan, there was a construction-only period, and that will end at the end of, I think it's September of next year. I think you have one quarter's worth of payments next year that's already built into your budget. Then you're going to have a full year worth of principal and interest on that, and you really need about 1,000 subscribers to cover everything. So, certainly something we can talk more about, but that does assume that we get to one of those marks, which, when you looked at the plan, the original plan, that's not far from what we had expected, you know, to get 800, and then I think it was even 1100 after that, so. Okay, any approved utility rate increases, meaning they're already built into your ordinances or in the budget? I know there's, I really think that's gas and electric are the two. I don't think you have anything further on water or sewer at this point. I think you have some great studies that are in development that will be coming in front of you for those two. But really I think gas and electric are the only ones that are actually been approved to build it on. Okay, next chart just kind of shows you where the increases are year over year. So capital is going up. I mean, that's kind of, you know what capital is. Most of that, not all of that is being funded by grants. Your debt service is going up. The largest one that I wanted to mention is operating expenses. Now, I'm showing it going up by about $800,000, but it's important to note that a lot of that would be The additional cost of selling fuel at the airport. The additional cost of purchasing natural gas. Same thing with electric. A lot of this is really more about what you're going to need to support the revenue than it is, hey, why are we building up our operating? And you'll see that more when you go through the details. And then the personnel really is going to be a function of some of the other stuff we already talked about. The health insurance is built into that. you know, FRS pensions. So it's about 2%, but it's not a small number. It's about $120,000. So it's just a visual way of looking at the budget as a whole. So you can see kind of where the different splits are for that 6.9%. In terms of capital, I've kind of highlighted it on the next page. I mentioned the airport already. It's about $7.8 million. that's in here. And again, I doubt you're going to get through all that in one year. It's usually kind of a two-year process by the time you get through it all. But then next year, most likely, there will be new projects to add on to it. And then the CRA at the bottom is kind of what they have, the different things that they have going on. The communication, which is at the top, the radio consoles, that's actually in your current budget. has not been spent on this year. It kind of is a carryover. The radios are new. That's a smaller number. And then the Brush 72 replacement vehicle, that also is in your 2026 budget. Both the radio consoles, which is really just the installation of it. I believe that the chief's already got the actual consoles that she got for a very good deal. So the installation of it and then the... Replacement vehicles, those were both actually a part of a loan that we had not done yet and that was budgeted and approved in 2026. And I do have a further loan slide coming up here. Okay, so I mentioned about the property taxes. Obviously, if everything is going great, then you are able to keep your same millage rate but also get some additional revenue because the taxable values have increased. So it is showing that with a 4.53% increase. But if you keep your millage rate the same at a 6.75, you're only gonna get about $58,000. It's just not a lot to cover the rising costs in the general fund. And that, to me, the biggest concern I have with the general fund right now is just that You know, normally I even would put in some small increases in the first version of the budget. I think I've done most years. Something, just to kind of get you started. I couldn't. I mean, it took me about three times around the budget and a lot of scissors on some accounts just to get this balanced. It was a very, very razor-tight year, surprisingly so. And again, this is really just part of it. I tried and built in a little bit of an increase in some of your intergovernmental revenue, but honestly, at this point, they haven't even provided the estimates yet. They're not gonna do that until August, so I don't wanna overshoot on some of that, like your sales tax, your fuel tax. Those things you usually will get a little bit of an increase year over year, shared revenue, but those numbers are not published yet, and again, it's not gonna be five, 10%, it'll just be some small amounts to help out. This is one of the, you know, really the areas that's probably the most concerning. Now, on the next slide, I did include, and I've included this every year, some different options for you to consider and what that means as you're kind of trying to figure out this. Basically, what this means is right now you're at 6.75 is what's in your budget. that's already gotten you the $58,000, it's already baked in. If you were to go up to seven mils, that's gonna basically get you another, what, $50,000 roughly. And so every, you know, what's it, .25 mils is about $50,000. And again, you know, this is really just more for your, you know, review and discussion and kind of, you know, what you, you know, when you get to that point, you can certainly go through this and figure out what you'd like to do. I did include in the next slide kind of what that means for somebody in terms of the residents as you go take them from 6.75 up to seven. So what this means is that for every 100,000 of assessed value, okay, after assuming that they're homesteaded, this really doesn't assume homesteaded, for every $100,000 that you're assessed, basically, it's not exact, it's about $13 more that you're going to as you go from 6.75 to 7. So if you're at a half a million dollar, then you're just going to take your $13 times 5. I did a quick 100,000 just to kind of give you a rough point on what that means. Your $200,000 is $26 of an increase between each one. And that's the end, just so you know. Let's see. Then I did look at 7, which this is the 6.5 showing the different basically the different kind of assessed values. In other words, Thank you. So if you have, and I'll just do the half a million again for a second, which is kind of the fourth column. So if your assessed value is a half a million dollars, then you get your exemption of $50,000 off of that. Divide that by 1,000, and then you multiply it by your millage rate of 6.75. So your property taxes is going to be $3,037.50. And then again, for every 100,000, you can see how it goes up, just to kind of, again, it gives you some reference as you're making these decisions. And we can refer back to these later, once you get to that point, what it means to that. And I think I did one, the next one, I believe, is at seven, the same thing. Just to kind of give you the difference of like $700 there, even if you're going through for every $100, so. But again, when you're looking at establishing your high water mark, you can always come down. You would have two more workshops or whatever you establish it at. So you're gonna have two more workshops and then you have two more hearings. So you would have four more opportunities to bring it down. You have zero opportunities to bring it up. So that's kind of how that works. This is the fun stuff. We've talked about this before. It's this work as you're going through. Let's say, hey, I need another $100,000 for this project or that project. Well, how would you do it? Well, in the general fund, obviously, you have your opportunity now to increase your millage rate.

You could increase the transfer.

Again, really not recommended at this point. And then I think probably more than likely what you're going to probably want to do is cut from somewhere else, you know, as you're moving stuff around. And so, you know, for example, hey, you know, we really need another $50,000 in materials. Where are we going to get that? Well, we're probably going to have to go to some other department, not naming any one particular department, and cut from there. But that's how you're going to do it. I mean, if you want to put in increases, I think your first thing you're going to want to try and do is see if there's any other cuts to do that before. And then you're going to have to probably look at your millage rate and say, hey, do I leave this up at a certain, do I give myself a little bit more room? Do I take it to seven? Do I take it a little bit more than that? We have not really increased the millage rate for several years on purpose. And I'm not suggesting you have to. I'm just giving you the options as you have those discussions on where you want to look at. The utility fund, obviously, it's not millage. You have your rate increases. And then again, where do you want to cut type of a deal? This is actually the new slide and my new favorite. We've talked about the different funds and how they're doing. This shows you how they've done over the last five years. And again, I'm not going to talk much about the airport. I mean, all in the black, really nice job that they're doing out there. Every year when you look at this, they've increased their cash reserves. So really not going to spend much time on there. It's just nice to see. The general fund, when you look at 2021, 2022, 2023, solid numbers there. Growth, not much. you know, again, razor thin, 2024 and 2025. So 2024, you had your hurricane expenses. So you basically had $100,000 roughly that you have not gotten money back yet for. And then on top of that, you put in about $76,000 in comp plan expenses. And so that, you know, takes that 313, you back out those two numbers, and then We had already budgeted to use a little bit of cash reserves in 2024. I went back to look at it. We had budgeted about $60,000. So between those three line items, that kind of explains why you got the $313,000 loss. Some of that was on purpose, meaning that you wanted to fund some things at the time. The comp plan you had to do, you had to do some of that. You got a little bit of that. By the way, that comp plan was not total city you know there was some grants that came in along with that this is 76 was what was not covered by grants you spent about 121 then hurricane and then you've got two years now hurricane expenses 85,000 and 92,000 obviously not planned and does not help now what's not in here is the 170,000 that is slowly making its way through the FEMA process for a reimbursement I know they've made progress. Again, I haven't included because I don't know if you could get it tomorrow or you could get it in three years. But the point that I wanted to make on the general fund first is your five-year period here is a $35,000 loss. If you get the $170,000 back into it, now you go from a $35,000 loss, razor thin, to a plus, about $135,000. favorable over a five year period. Not great. Doesn't necessarily do a whole lot for your cash reserves, but it kind of gives some perspective on where the general fund has been over the last five years. And now moving forward into 2026, what's not in there is the expectation is that now you have about a hundred thousand at the end of this year, adding to your cash reserves for the general fund. So now, now you have, you put back in the 170, you put back in a hundred, And then now your 2027 budget has about 150. And now you're starting to get yourself closer to where you need to be. And I do have this slide coming up that says what that looks like. So the general fund, while it is razor thin and has been for many, many years, as you can see, you have a game plan to get you closer to where you need to be. And that's basically what the auditors, when they come probably in a couple weeks, they're going to tell you the same thing. Your cash reserves are too low. Now you'll be able to say, well, we've got a plan. We've looked at that. We know that. We've got some money in 2026. We hope to get us back the hurricane. And now we're going to have some money in 2027. It's not going to bring us all the way back, but it turns us around and starts to build up our cash reserves for the general fund. Now the utility fund is an interesting one, and you'll see some really big numbers in 2024, 2023. And by the way, these numbers include depreciation expense. Now, depreciation expense is a non-cash item. I mean, you're not paying anybody for depreciation. But the idea is if your utility fund can cover your costs and your depreciation, that means you're generating enough money to cover your future capital needs for your assets. And you can see here, for four of the five years you work, Now, what the difference is in 2025 is you do not have a bunch of grant revenue that came in to help. You notice that in 2023, you had $2.5 million. In 2024, in 2022, you had $2 million. And so that's a lot of money coming in for grants. And then even back going to 2021, you had $900,000. In 2025, you had $150,000. It's a big difference. So 2025 is probably a pretty, a closer indication of what the city looks like without the grants, with depreciation and how close you are to where you need to get. The other thing to note here is within this 186 is also CalLink. And so CalLink had about $113,000 loss last year. So you take that out and you can see while the enterprise fund is not doing what you expect, And so the point I'm making with this is, several years ago the council put in some increases in rates. And this shows you why you needed those. Because without the grants, you would have been in trouble. With the grants and water rate, not just water, but in those increases, you're actually pretty close to being in a poverty depreciation. Now again, you still have to figure out fiber slash cuddling stuff, because that is something that's draining on 2026 as well. But again, I'm hoping this slide gives you a little bit more perspective as we talk about both how tight these funds are, but where we're kind of moving, where some of the positive is, and what the city has done. The next slide kind of highlights through where I expect this to be at the end of this year, 2026, versus where the recommendation is. So the recommendation is you want to have at least three months, 25% in your cash reserves. Now the airport, again, nothing really to say about that. They're, you know, going good. The general fund will have 600,000. And then again, you put in the 170 and then you put in another 150. In 2027 and now you're getting closer to a million of the million five So again progress not quite there the utility fund again there's some opportunities that I want to talk about in terms of Financing some of the infrastructure projects, but we've used some cash reserves But again if you put in here's 725 There was some money used for fiber and We reimbursed that, plus again you have another probably two maybe, no I'm sorry, I put $350 in for next year. So again, even that will get us closer to about a million for that. So not quite there, better after this year, but again it's just going to keep requiring putting in some money into those cash registers every year. And again, part of why it's good to see the airport on this thing is because that's what the airport's done. There hasn't been a year where they put a half a million into their cash reserves. They're just consistent. Every year they're putting in money into it. Even when they are investing in other things, they're still putting some money away. And that's why they're doing in good shape. So with all the stuff we've got going on, all the plans, projects, and stuff, Moving forward that's really going to be the goal is every year you put something away You know, it's a both of the general funding the utility fund until you know, we're built up So As I mentioned the 2026 budget did already have a loan in there And in addition to that I'm proposing we get about a $1.6 million loan to cover, assuming that you're still interested in the, assume the Brush 72 vehicle. I don't know where that landed. The consoles you have, so you've got to install those. You have to do that. The squirt truck you have on the way, that'd just probably be better to finance it instead of using cash. Your fiber project. I don't know when you're going to get to 800 subscribers. The original plan assumed you were already well on your way by January, February. We're obviously in July. We're still utilizing labor from the city every month. And so I'm assuming basically probably another half a million potentially that you'll need to cover to increase the project. Now, my guess is that number is high, but I don't know. I don't know what the damages are going to be back from PSI, if any. I don't know how long it's going to take to get to 800. Again, there's already interest payments. We made one already for 148,000. We have another one coming up at the end of August. I want to make sure that there isn't going to be a danger zone with that project. And you might as well finance the full cost of it. The original loan was $4.6 million. That's only covering the PSI project, the contract right now. It's not covering any city things that they did for the polls. It's not covering any of the city labor. And so you might as well finance the whole thing instead of using cash reserves. And then I built in another half a million into this. The way this alone would work is you would only pull it if you want it, if you need it. You wouldn't be making interest payments or anything on money you don't need. But there's other projects that are potentially coming up. And again, I would prefer to finance these projects. And so a big part of where the utility fund is and how it got to where it is, is basically the city spending on infrastructure and future revenue-generating projects, communities, new neighborhoods. So those communities were used with cash, which is fine. Now you're going to just generate revenue with them, but you really don't have any more reserves right now to just keep doing that. It made sense maybe five, six years ago. It just doesn't at this point. So I wanted to kind of build in a little bit of a cushion there in case you need it. Again, you can put whatever safeguards you want on that, meaning, hey, it's got to come in front of the council, whatever you want. But the idea being is anything that is five, 10, 15 years, you might as well finance it instead of using your cash now because you just don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, what you're going to need. and that's part of what hurricanes have shown us. For many years, we didn't have a ton of hurricane expenses, and then all of a sudden, we get $200,000 in two years. So I did get a very, very quick, rough, and dirty quote. For a 10-year of this, it would be quarterly payments of about $50,000. And the way this would work is each of the funds, based on what their particular purchases are or projects, would get a piece of it. And then there's a 15-year option as well. Again, obviously this is not something you're deciding today, but it was a good opportunity to kind of present it. Certainly, a couple of these purchases, chiefs have been waiting for pretty much most of the year to decide to get the vehicle and the consoles. And the square truck we already know is coming. But again, this is just kind of the preliminary time for you to kind of look at this and get an explanation as to why it's here. I do have a couple slides on your property tax reform for next year. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because I've already kind of taking a lot of time here today. But I think most of you have heard about this and know what's going to happen. First year, you know, would be $150,000. The exemptions would go up to... Second year, it's going to go up to $250,000. Obviously, there's going to have to be a vote on this November 1st before anything happens. One of the things that people don't talk as much about is that this thing also puts a cap on the non-homesteaded properties at 5% instead of 10. So again, that's not a small impact as well. Based on the numbers that we were provided, the first year, it'd be about a $300,000 impact for the city. And then by year two, about $400,000. So that's a lot. And again, we would have to figure out ways to recoup that should that actually get voted on and pass. I do have a couple things in here in terms of offsets. Nothing on this list that's going to make you happy, honestly. You know, increasing the non-homesteaded millage rate is not an attractive option. None of these things are particularly attractive. Certainly there have been plenty of discussions about impact fees for the city you'd have to take a look at you know again what are you going to do you know lean on your fire assessment you know how far do you go with that because again that's outside of the property taxes are there any other assessments that you would want to do to kind of recover again three four three hundred thousand dollars four hundred thousand dollars those are a big numbers to replace My hope is that some of the state revenue sharing type stuff, like sales tax, that they would do something to help me generate some revenue off of that. Again, but there's no promises right now. They're not even looking at that, honestly. But this is just something I wanted to kind of bring in front of you. It's not a great picture, but certainly something we might have to be looking at when we do this, when we're sitting here next year at this time, and just kind of taking a look at each of the services. What are we gonna do to kind of claw back and figure out how to pick up or generate $300,000? And that's all. This is on your agenda.

But we didn't get a copy of it.

Okay, yeah, sure. Use your mics, please.

I'll make sure you get a copy. It's not a copy of mine.

Oh, maybe not. No, I don't know. Yeah. I'll send it.

I don't think any of us got a copy of it. Okay, take care.

Your turn.

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So the original loan was $4.6 million to cover the fiber project. If it was modified, then some of the money that we had expected to use to cover city labor and some materials was changed over so that the whole 4.6 is going to PSI. So there's no more money in that loan to cover city staff or any other materials. In essence, the loan is short.

So where, we've used all the money from?

Well, I have, we, the city has not paid the final amount to PSI, pending the final, you know, liquidated damages and all that good stuff. they have one more payment of about $600,000 that we are withholding. But if we were to, again, I don't know what the images are going to be. My hope is that it at least covers the interest payments, which again, 148 will be basically about $200,000. So my hope is to keep about $200,000 of that $600,000, but I have no say in that. That's just my opinion. If you were to say, okay, we have no choice but to pay the $600,000 to them, that would mean the full $4.6 of the loan would have gone to them. And then the city would have used cash reserves to cover about $400,000 of this project. And that was never the intention. And obviously this project, you know, it was originally planned works. The original plan worked until it wasn't completed on time. And so now you're going from, you know, basically hopefully starting generating revenue in January to it now being August, basically January of last year. No, no, January of this year, 2026. I'm sorry, January 1st of 2026, and I think even December, and one of the meetings they said December, really. So you're basically about eight or nine months short of revenue, and so the city, if you don't keep all that money back, if you don't say, hey, we're going to keep the $600,000, I don't know if you have grounds or not. I can't say that. I just want to make sure if you do that the city is still covered. that that $400,000 or $500,000 of additional costs should be financed like the rest of the project was, honestly. And so I believe that's either a 10- or 15-year loan. So half a million dollars over 15 years, when you're going to have subscribers paying you to cover that, makes a lot more sense than taking half a million dollars out of your precious cash reserves and just basically being done with it. So that's my game plan. That's why I'm bringing this to basically say, hey, if we were to redo this, if we went back to the very beginning and said, you know what? It's not going to be done until August 1st. How much would you need? And you probably need about $5 million, maybe a little bit more, would be what the loan amount would have been. And so now, in talking with the bank, they're like, well, it's probably not cost effective. to go back to that loan and extend that amount, because you're gonna have to do all kinds of things and legals and stuff. So since we already had some other purchases that we were gonna make, I said, well, what if we just kind of consolidate it all together and come up with a small loan to cover both? And that's kind of what I presented to you. A way of kind of covering it all, as well as giving you some cushion. Now, I think two years ago, for John Henry Park, the city already had about a, million and a half line of credit. And it was there to cover that part. But the beauty of it was we pulled the money when we needed it, paid the bills, and then it took them a while to pay us back. So if we didn't have that loan, we would have been out a million, a million and a half or something. So it pays to have something of a line of credit of sorts to cover things like that. Especially when you're only going to pay interest if you use it. And so that's always the game plan. It's just giving you flexibility and make sure that you don't get caught with it not having enough money. Like now, the city is working on a gas project to extend to the airport. But there's no revenue yet for that. So right now that's coming from cash reserves. But again, why? Why not finance that? You're gonna have people at the airport for years to come that are gonna be using gas to cover that project. So it's just a different approach than what we probably have taken maybe five years ago in terms of how we pay for projects.

Another question since we're talking about with loans. Was any of the money tied up, well not tied up, any of the money used where it was the loan that before Mr. Brevard had left, it was a, I call it a rainy day fund.

That's the line of credit I was just talking about. We have not touched that. We did not. We paid it back as soon as we got the grant funds. We paid it back instantly, and then it just closed as it was, you know, it was only supposed to be intended to be like a two-year line of credit. It closed, it was never used again, it was never used for anything other than what the purpose was, which was that part. Not that part, the improvements. Yeah.

Anyone else have questions? Nope, not yet. Okay, all right, then we'll go to item number three, start with the budget introductions. Thank you, ma'am.

So I'm going to go over tonight, I'm going to go over staffing plan for both myself and the city clerk. And then each department will, at that point, break down their budget for you. Just kind of lead off real quick, some of the key takeaways that I got from Mr. Bloom's presentation is that basically from what I'm seeing here, any pay raises are going to have to equate to cuts from the current budget. Is that correct, Mr. Bloom?

Unless there is an appetite to increase the military. Military, right.

So I will tell you just some general math. We talked about the fiber a little bit. We can get on track for that number. But we're going to need additional resources from outside. Once again, incurring costs to do that. As it stands right now, we will not reach the 800 based on the installation today. Because I've been told that if you're looking at, we're doing four to five at the most a day. just do the simple math and then of course I'm missing something here those numbers are not going to tabulate into the 800 not close yeah not close so so we're going to definitely have to look at that um there's going to have to be a lot of discussion about the money um and psi and some crosswalking what the contract said and what was done to see what effect that had if any and um So we will be doing that in the coming weeks. I can most certainly assure you. I can tell you right now, for my goal, obviously, we talked about what I need to be looking at. The biggest thing I'm going to be looking at, other than the budget this year, obviously, is the fiber. So I'm going to be spending a lot of time on that in the coming weeks to kind of get a good idea of where we're at. Going back to the, that was some key takeaways I wanted to put in there, just in case I missed it. I don't think I did. The biggest would be the pay raises. It means we're going to have to cut some money somewhere. When you look at the city council budget, y'all's pretty much stayed the same. There was really no increases there that I saw. City administration, you know, of course, is myself and the city clerk. And there was a slight increase. I'm not sure why, but I've talked to Stephen about that. in one of the positions and then I think we're coming in at about $677,419. That is in your new staffing plan that was handed out to you. That is the most accurate one and that's all I have right now for at least my part of the budget other than kind of maybe setting the tone for the future. I'll just say that I'm probably not going to entertain filling any open positions. It seems to me, unless I've totally got it wrong, that we seem to be holding the line at best on our responsibilities. And probably considering the budget that Steven presented here tonight, holding the line on those open positions is probably going to be the smartest thing to do. Obviously, the IT position is one that we will look at filling. But other than that, I think we're doing pretty good where we're at right now. It's hard work, we're working hard, but these open positions I think are gonna become pretty pivotal in the future for anything that we need to do considering what they are. Obviously I have no control over the fire and police department, but my recommendation for that would be to do the same. hold the line on positions, carve that precious income, and let's see what happens, plus considering what's happening in November. That could potentially create some big problems. The $300,000 or $400,000 shortfall from the ad valorem taxes next year, I don't know where it's at yet. Check out that. And obviously, you know, you can only do so much with the citizens that we have on the I mean, we only have so many resources that we provide, people, we provide utilities to, and it's only gonna go so far. So, that's part of the raising. So, I don't have anything right now other than that. If you have any questions of me about my comments that I just made, or if you have any questions about the city administration part of the budget, I'll pass it on to the department head, if y'all are ready for that. Madam President, and I'll sit here quietly until y'all are ready.

Thank you. Let me just say that if public works under roads, there's only one person listed under public works under roads, and I don't know how one person can do it. I mean, it's got an open position, so if we don't fill it, I don't know how they can do it. by themselves, as bad as our roads are.

So from my understanding right now, we're pulling from different departments, so like, and mowing season's about to be over, right, Jonathan? So like, Jason Fox has been helping out on streets and parks.

Correct me if I'm wrong, sir.

And we've just been pulling from where different areas are to help fill those gaps.

Other duties as assigned.

Yeah, the other duties as assigned parameters.

is what we're utilizing you know i don't know we could put a million dollars in our roads and we would make a dent over the next year you know we need grants yeah the problem is right unless we get something from the grants or something like that you know the road department is simply running around i'm sure we're not doing hot patch if you're going cold patch it was not the best I mean as long as it's a right on mower you just tell me the day before and I'll come dressed and go out and mow.

It's a road department I'm worried about. We can pull somebody from Streets and Parks and I'll take their spot.

I'm not giving up the position. I'm just saying we'll hold off on filling it until we get a better handle. Obviously, I would feel a whole lot better probably over the next 30 to 60 days when I get a better handle on whether to meet those goals for the fire department. And a lot of this may change. Right now, I'll be honest with you, I don't really know how we take on any additional burden considering looking over the dial of the ship and understanding what's coming our way. Fiverr is a big one. Do I think it's doable? Yeah. I think if we can find the right contractor to come in and help us out, hire the right person, maybe we can reach those goals. But we're not going to do it too deep. like Dave has, not on four installs today. And these four installs we're doing today are literally the ones that are pre-wired. Those are the ones that the fiber's going to the house, it's going down the house, it's already got the box on the house. I mean, there's a minimal time that the technicians are spending there hooking things up. And so these are all being done pretty quickly. And so the tougher installs are the ones that are not the free wires. We have to run the wire to the house, or bury it to the house, and then hook it up. So, yeah, I'm not going to give up the position. I'm just saying that as long as we can keep our head above water without filling positions, I think we're better off working with it.

Yeah, just to clarify, the four or five that we're averaging today is mostly scheduling limitations. It's just that's how many we get scheduled a day. It's not that we couldn't do more. That's just kind of be where the scheduling is when we put the word out and people call making appointments. And we're having to deal with everybody else's life. Oh, I can't be there at nine, but I can be there at ten. So sometimes we have a gap in there, and that's when they're doing other work, prepping the routers and doing things to get ready. So the limitation, potentially we could, if we could schedule one of these installs that is pre-wired, the average on those is 30 minutes to an hour, and it's usually done. There are some exceptions to that where you may have other problems if you don't anticipate, but in theory we could do seven or eight per technician a day if we got those scheduling down and got people to actually call and make the appointments. But that's kind of the other thing we're fighting. Oh, I can't be there. Can you do it on Saturday? Now they're coming in and working overtime to get them done. So that's the limitation.

So we're not going down a list and calling people in?

Yes, we are. We're sending out emails and lists. I'm doing 30, 40, 50 at a time to the pre-registered customers trying to get them to come. That's why we're concentrating on the pre-registered customers because those are the fastest way to get more people on as quick as possible is concentrating on the pre-registered customers because the drop's already done. That was the plan. That's why we did it that way. We have some mixes in here where we've made appointments and done for people that didn't have the drops. Some of those take four to six hours to do. So you can only do so many of them a day, obviously. So that's why we're focusing on trying to get the pre-registration customers done first. Because that's the way we're gonna get the most on as quick as possible. So the four or five a day, again, is not a limitation of our capacity or what we could do. It's just that's kind of where our scheduling is averaging right now.

Who's calling in scheduling?

The customer.

That's why I'm confused. So the customer has to call in?

No, they don't have to call in. They basically go on, we make up an account, set up an account for them. Either they do it themselves or we walk them through it or we do it for them. They set up the account, and if they're talking to Alex, they usually make the appointment then, at that point.

But you call them.

I'm talking about the ones that are already registered.

Yes, those are the ones we're sending emails and notification out to get a hold of us to make an appointment. That's all we can do is ask them to call. I've got some that call, some that email, and we call them back and we make an appointment. So, I mean, that's how we're reaching out to them is we're trying to do it a few at a time so we don't get overwhelmed and have... waiting list of people waiting to be in hooked up right now I think I didn't look today but whatever it was Friday I sent you Terry we had 40 49 I think sitting on the list that are waiting for an appointment you know we just aren't scared well but it's just not a matter of them calling in it's a matter of when they can accommodate us coming to do their install

In a perfect world, I can say, hey, I'm going to be there at 8 o'clock to hook up your internet.

Hey, I'm going to be there at 9 o'clock to do yours. I'm going to be there at 10 o'clock to do yours. In a perfect world, that would work great. But when you're having to accommodate people, you've got to work around their schedule.

Good night, Nick. I'm really getting into your business now. Are you looking at a week's time or are you looking at a schedule, a calendar of a month and say, okay, you're available?

Whenever they want it, as soon as possible. When she does an appointment, she'll look at this calendar and say what's available and then offer them what's a day good. Hey, I've got a 9 o'clock. Is that good for you? Yeah, sure. Let's do it. Or, hey, I can. I've got a doctor's appointment. How about you come back at 12? She's just scheduling it that way.

But if they say, okay, I'm not available this day, but I'm available on this day, is she going to schedule them for that day? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Or is she not going to have that available?

No, absolutely. Whatever they work out for. We've got appointments set out two or three weeks in advance at this point.

Okay, that's all right.

So, I mean, it's just a matter of having to accommodate the people as well because, you know, they've got a life and things to do too.

All right, Mr. Barton.

Well, what may have to occur is what I'm hearing from Erin, what y'all are talking about now is – When Spectrum installed my WAPA, they gave me a dating account. And maybe that's one of the problems.

I would definitely agree because now you have people who can't be signed up because we're waiting on somebody to pre-register. That's exactly right. And now we're falling behind. No, no, it's not that. It's not that people can't sign up.

The problem is if they do sign up, it takes so much longer to do that installation. We're not turning them away. We're scheduling them and we're doing them, but we're trying to focus on the ones that have the drops already in place. Because of the ones that have the drops in place, we can do more of them quicker because it only takes 30 minutes to an hour as an average to do those installs. If they go run the fiber from 600 feet down the street and have to go to every pole and do all that work, it might take them four to six hours to get that one customer hooked up.

But if you have three, four, three or four or five people scheduled in a day, And it only takes you, what, 30 minutes to install one that's already pre-installed? Well, it's just an average. It could be 30 minutes to an hour. Then now we have how much more time in the day that we can actually do?

Yeah, we do. But we are scheduling when, like I said, we're scheduling what we can. And when the people do call or sign up that don't have the drop, we're still doing them. We're working them into that schedule. So we're allowing an hour per install. And when they go out and do an install, if they're 30 minutes early, hey, they'll get on the phone and call the customer and say, hey, we're a little bit ahead of schedule, can we come now? And most of the time they'll say yes. You know, because they've accommodated us because they're waiting on us to be there.

Okay.

We're not turning anyone away by any means. It's just that we're trying to focus on the quickest, as quick as possible. As many as quick as possible. That's what we're trying to get done. Because we know where our goal is to be where we need to be.

Right. But if you're not getting those quick, those Quick enough.

But I can't make the people sign up and get an appointment any faster. I didn't say that you could.

What I'm saying is if people are signing up, even though it may take a long period of time, when we only have two people to install in a day, then somebody who just signed up that you need a full install can be installed.

Yeah, we are doing that. That's exactly what we're doing. We're doing those exact steps.

That's not what I was hearing, so that's why I'm asking the question. Yeah, but that's what I said.

That's what we are doing. We are not turning anyone away. When they call, we make an appointment. If it's a full install, we schedule at least four hours to do that install. And if it's an already pre-registered customer, we schedule it for an hour. Some of those may get done in 30 minutes. Some may take two hours. You never know until they actually show up on customers residents or business and they find out oh well I got to run 150 foot of fiber through them you know all the way around the other side of the building that's going to take longer where if I got to go through a wall and run a 12-foot cable hook them up they're done they do that one in 30 minutes so they're not all cookie cutter it's not that simple I wish it was but it's not Well, no, but that is the quickest way because those customers are already, they have the drop to their home or their building, and they have the NID on the side of the building. So for us to do an install, we have to go from the NID and run a fiber into the house or the building. Whatever how it gets there, that's what determines how long it may take. Plug the equipment in, sometimes it works automatically, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't, we have to, in the back end, go in and do the manual process to get them activated, which takes longer. Okay. It's all a varying mess of how can we get this accomplished, but the ultimate goal was to get as many on as quick as possible, and that's why we're focusing mostly on the pre-registered customers.

Okay.

Because those are the quick ones that we can get done quickly.

And those are how many? Is that 800?

Well, yeah, there was about 850 total, counting the RV park and the town.

Okay.

But even at our rate now, if we averaged four and five a day, we're doing now well in eight months we'd be at 800 and then in ten months we'd be at a thousand at that rate so I mean can you wait eight months no no so that's where we're at okay we got to look at how long ago the people who pre-registered signed up if that was a year and a half ago we sorted that list by date okay And we started, I saw a fair way to do it. We sorted it by date. We started at the top and started emailing out in blocks by date.

Right, right. What I was getting at was we have to take into consideration maybe the reason why some of these people are not reaching back out is because they've already acquired services somewhere else, especially if they're like working from home or it's needed for a business. They didn't really have the opportunity to wait for a year and a half or however long to get the service. And then also the other part I think mr. Brevard had a good point if you're allowing the human element to take place Then you know when it's time to sign up they go. I'm busy on this day. I'm busy on that day I can't really have open accommodations versus this is your block of time I'll be there between 1 to 5 on this day or this day Which one would you like and then you go ahead and set them in stone and like I said we're able to get more in and Because it's always quick and easy and we move more. We just typically call them and say, hey, we got an opening. Do you want to come by today? It makes it a little bit easier on this side because it takes that human element out of it of trying to go around an entire list of people's schedule. So that might be an option of just saying, hey, we're trying to get you set up as fast as possible. You signed up on this date. Here are three options of blocks of time that we can get out there versus being like, let me know when you're available. That might help.

To try.

Yep, they do that to me all the time. Just recently. We'll be there between 8 and 12. 8 and 12. I have a whole day today. But that's what we're not then. Granted. We're different.

We're trying to be different and be better.

That's fine. But if you can get more people in between the 8 and 12, then it makes a whole lot of difference. I got something to go like even less.

If you've got 800 people on a list, I'm saying send all 800 of them something that says we're going to install on the first, not be finished, we're going to install on the first time, first serve basis. Let us hear from you.

Well, in a nutshell, that's what we're doing. We're announcing to them that they are available. 15 or 20 at a time. Like I said, I've got 39 sitting out there right now waiting for an appointment.

I sent them all.

And then they're still going to be sitting on a list a year from now because we're not through them yet and they're still going to be mad.

But you won't have to wait for them to make an appointment. They will be waiting on you.

I think they're still going to be...

If it, by the line, it comes down to we need a contractor to come in and help, we'll hit those goals. Yeah.

Yes, in a nutshell, if you hire the contractors we talked about from the pricing we got, you're going to spend, call it two and a half months of revenue to pay those contractors to get them hooked up, and in two and a half months you're making money. It's kind of where you have to spend the money to make the money deal, and that is doable. It's going to take more focus on getting more people to sign up, obviously. That's when your neighborhood door hangers come in, because then you can keep up with the flow.

And when they can go do the whole RV park.

Well, that's the goal, once we start in there, they're gonna pretty much be one person in there all the time. Right, cuz right now I only have two, but yes. Yeah, maybe two. And she's working on scheduling 20 to 25 at a time per section.

That would be wonderful.

Which will add to the numbers as well, and those will go pretty fast. Those they can probably knock out in 15 to 30 minutes.

That's about good then.

Anyone else?

No, I think that's enough for me. We'll get there. If we don't, y'all can fire me.

And I'll say before you got here, we did not look at the budget summary or the staffing plan or the property tax before we get to the individual departments. We did not do that. So that's probably where we need to go, because we've got to get in on preliminary millage tonight before we go home.

What are we doing? The property tax?

I mean, in the book, we haven't done the budget summary, the staff, the whole staffing plan. He did his too, but we haven't done any of the rest of them. And the property tax part is where we would normally set the . And then the general fund starts with these guys that are on our agenda to make their own. I think they have presentations to make. I know a couple of their departments do.

No presentations tonight. Why not?

That gives us what we got to do. You're joking, aren't you?

I'm joking.

I'm joking. Can't you say that before 530? Yeah, exactly.

Gee, y'all should get that already. All right, so we need to go with the... So we'll go to the property tax section. Section.

Before we...

before we do that in the staffing plan there are people that are part-time Steven who have part-time hours who are marked part-time but it says their count is one instead of a half it just makes our count seems so high and we catch a flight for that at all honesty so all these I mean I've got so many circles here that are reading

um part it says they're part-time and that this this whole group's got 300 hours and they go say they're a full-time employee okay yeah i think in the past we've put one one body one equals one well some of them do have 0.5 oh there's only one that's that part would be interesting there is one the custodian actually does work in two spots Right. So you divide them in half. Everybody else got a one.

I mean, I hear somebody who works 800 hours, but it says their count is one instead of a half. And then there's, let's see, there's another one here that says only guy has 1,600 hours in a year. It says they're full-time. And there's five right here that say they're full-time. They've only got 300 hours a year. So I just, you know, if you're going to make the count lower or more accurate when people look at it and say we have 110 employees, we really don't. We have a half and a half and a half and a half. And two of them only make the whole. You know what I'm saying? It drives the number up. Like if you look at the whole... staffing count. Now that number probably is pretty correct because it has the, it doesn't even have the fire, well yes it has 35 people in the fire department and they're all part time.

So do I consider them all half?

I mean we still have 35 people. But when you look at over here on the other side, I mean, we still have 35. But over here, there are only half. Not a whole, because they don't work that many hours. I mean, I don't know. It just seems like it drives the count up. This is when we have 132 people. 35 of them are part-time firefighters. And most people don't realize that out in one two, three, I can actually count them, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. 10 others, 10, 11 others are less than 1,040 hours, which would be a hard time to play and don't give it a pass. I mean, I don't know, it just,

I can, let me think that through and see what the best way.

Could it be helpful for us just to add an additional column that differentiates between total full-time and total part-time employees?

over here on the count.

I mean, I even have counsel on the count as well in there too.

Yeah. Yeah, we're part Tom, obviously.

I mean, that's what I can do is I can leave the ones but do a better breakdown on how that really, you know.

Sorry to interrupt.

I didn't say that. Whether we do anything about that or not, I didn't say that.

Oh, yeah.

I forgot. I'm sorry.

So since we're on full-time and part-time individuals, we need to make sure that we add in health insurance for these people because if they work over 30 hours, we have to offer them per the HR manual only health benefits.

30 hours a week. Yes, ma'am. 30 hours a week.

No ma'am it's not um described in FLSA it's not defined as what part-time is same with our HR manual it just says full-time is Scheduled 40 hours. That's the only definitions that we have right

I think there may be a couple in the airport that are real close to that, but the rest of them are nowhere near it.

Oh, one person at FIRE is Donna. She works, what, 32? 32.

32 a week, yes. I'll be straight up. That's the oversight on my part.

I'm sorry, ma'am. We need to lower it to whatever it needs to be.

Is it 30 or under 30?

It is under 30, so 29.

I was like a plan. Yeah. Can't afford benefits.

That's what makes sense. I may not even do it. If we ever wanted to hire them to be part-time, then they need to work part-time hours. Yeah. There should be no more time. Now, what were you saying about that week or something? We don't have any part-time utility people or... No mail.

Okay.

Don't see it?

There's one person at the airport that only works 800 hours. But that's not close, so we don't have to worry about that. Must be the fill-in person. We got a plan.

so basically what we're gonna do is um come open enrollment uh we are going to go ahead on certain people that I've already have a plan with when it comes to open enrollment they have to fill out if they work 30 or plus hours and they do not want the benefits regardless they have to fill out at open enrollment the they can waive it all so I've already got that in preparation and we're working on getting that set up it's the ones that I've already it is certain individuals that have been they work over 30 and they don't want the benefits and So with open enrollment, because we have to offer them, they still have to waive them. So we have a plan set up for that.

But this is not for part-time people?

29 or less? No, ma'am.

Okay.

You're talking about people who are 30 and over?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. There are two people in a family shelter that are working 30 hours. Okay. And I can work on that. Gotcha.

And they're part-time as well? They are part-time. Gotcha.

All right. I think I got it.

Well, no longer lunch.

Yeah.

Still have three days, but they have a lot longer lunch. Not really worth that long. Yeah. An hour for lunch instead of 30 minutes. You still got to count for that one.

You don't have to pay for lunch. Jesus Christ. All right. No drinks. You want to talk about no drinks?

I don't. I got this.

All right. So currently I'm really trying to 6.75. Do we want to go up on it? I do. Do you really? I do. I really, I really, really do. That means that sounds bad, but I'll have to say it too. I'm not like I'm doing this thing. Not, you know.

But I can tell you we haven't gone up for six years. And that's a problem. We haven't gone up since 2021.

I would say, even though because we don't have a say there,

I can tell you if we go to 7, this is not a reason to do it, but if we go to 7.25, we can actually do a 2% raise, which may not be what you want to do with your money.

I actually had a question about that that ties into it. So my question was, because I've only been present for, what's my third? My third budget. Have we given all the budget meetings that I have been to or budget sessions I've been to, we have given the employees either a 3% or a 3 point? For one year, we gave them, due to the clerical era, a 3 error, a 3.5% increase. How many years in a row have we done that? Do we do that every single year? Has it fluctuated up and down?

No, I've been... I got a no and I got a yes. No, it's been that way every year. Every year? Yeah. Okay. And I don't know.

I think it's been three or four. Three, three and a half or four every year.

Okay. So after three years, everybody's getting basically at that point a 10% raise. After how many years? After three years. If we give a 3% raise every year, it's approximately 10% raise every three years.

Yes, sir. I think it's a lot, but I'll update it every year on that.

Just remember, minimum wage goes up a dollar again October 1st, so if you don't give some type of raise, you're going to start following further behind, and you have compression issues.

Correct. You said some type of raise. You didn't say 3%. No, some type of raise. Right, right, right.

A dollar would be nice.

Well, yeah. I mean, I just think we need to, like I say here, I'm that person. Just because I know that our budget is what it is. I'm not necessarily opposed to raises, but I think, We don't have to give a raise every year, or we don't have to give that amount of a raise every year.

I know I looked up the CPI to see what it was, what Social Security was giving. That's the easiest place for me to go to look. And they're planning to give it 3.9. All right, they will. Because that is, it may be even more by the time they get there. But what were they giving before? I think they gave it 2.5 before. One year they gave almost 6. Because it was but it fluctuate kids out there. It is what I'm saying.

That's something that yeah, we don't do we don't vary He did right go with a straight problem.

Yeah Yes And as of next year Y'all have to do the CPI increase because of the $15 an hour raise because it had to be $15 by 2026 and then it was to be adjusted for so many years after and by the CPI.

The law actually says that?

The law actually says that.

September of 2027, after that, that's when, after that, then you're going to have to replace them. September of 27. Of 27. So you got, I think there was actually one employee I had to actually move up to 15, by the way, in here. There's some hard times. So everybody is at a minimum of 15 right now. Yeah, right.

And include part-time?

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

So to clarify, the required CPI increase that you just referred to is only for people at minimum wage rates?

That's next year. Right now, all you have to do is make sure you're at the minimum of $15. September of 2027, that's when it becomes mandatory that the $15 is going to get increased by whatever the CPI is and so forth. So if it's 4%, then that's what it's going to be.

So we've been doing 3% for at least five years that I've been around. Have we been above the CPI?

No. Sometimes we've been lower and sometimes we've been higher. I would think, yeah. But usually we're lower. Because one year it was $6,000. Yeah, let me see if I can find that. I'll keep talking.

You can.

Mr. Blue, for the raising property tax, I thought I heard or read somewhere where they talked about raising the millage rates to compensate, you know, for the property taxes, you know, to prepare for the future. Is that, are they still?

Well, that becomes an option. It's not going to become a requirement. So if you are, again, throwing out numbers here, but if you are homesteaded and your taxable value is, again, taxable value, not market value, is $150,000 or less, it doesn't matter what the millage rate is. When that first year comes in and you get your exemption at $150,000, you're not paying taxes no matter what happens to the millage rate. If you are a non-homesteaded, That's when you, you know, those are the properties that are going to be hit harder when the military goes up because they don't have the exemptions to compensate for it.

I thought it was something that one of the cities was talking about it, saying that we need to shoot here to be prepared for what could happen in November.

I think that's probably just to be safe. Keep in mind, as a part of this bill, there is a small, it's not small, but there is an action item that's required for them to potentially go find ways to get rid of property taxes on all homesteaded properties across the board. I mean, after these first two years, it doesn't mean it's going to stop there. So, you know, it just really does... uh... premium you know what do you do you know trade and that's why you see some of the cities that are starting to you know say we're going to increase this now because we don't know what it's going to look like in a year or two we're not going to have that much of an option next year or the year after who knows where so yeah they're freezing it they're freezing it so you can't you can't raise the assessment you can't raise your village

i've always been one to bring the millage up a little higher because we hadn't done it for such a time but if we're looking at like here to increase to get raises we're not doing anything to put money in in our different

Oh, that's not what I was waiting for.

During COVID, it was 2.3 and 1.4 in 2021. It went up to 7.22. It was 6.5.

2023, it was 3.4. And 24 is 3.1.

And last year was 3. And this year, I'm seeing...

like 3.67 or something like that so three and a half is what i'll let me look up social security just that's that's what it the historic annual cpi that's what i asked for and that was over 10 years was it yeah the average over the last five years has been between 4.2 and 4.7 nationally it's been a little bit different in florida Right. In some places you go and it asks you what region of the country you're from. And it does do it by what region of the country you're in because some states are worse or better than others. And what I did was do the historic annual CPI, which is from the government. But Meredith's right. They do have some that are different for each state.

I think that we need to recognize that it's a need. We have budgetary needs that have to be met and we're going to be probably experiencing that shortfall pretty soon and it would be wise to make sure that we're not behind the eight ball as we move into that. That new era that's probably coming down the pipe. But at least it would give us some time if we raised it. And I'm not necessarily saying exactly the number that we should raise it to. But it would give us a little bit of hopefully room to then figure out what we would need to do to adjust. to the additional costs that we're gonna have to incur if we're not getting them from the ad valorem taxes. So in other words, if we did end up having like a storm water assessment or something like that, there would be a delay between when we decided to do it and when it was implemented and when that income was coming in. And by increasing the millage rate this year, it would give us some buffer to cover our operating expenses until we could get those assessments in place if we needed to.

Anyone? Mike?

No, I say, as I've said in the past, go higher. Approve it for that. We don't have to go higher. We can always start lower. But at least it's there. So what would your higher be?

Where is 625?

725, 7.25, or 7.5. But as long as it's used for, as Meredith said, budgetary things that we need.

Sam, any thoughts? You don't have to have any, it's fine. But there you go.

Is it possible to have that stipulation on it? That we decided on the 7.25 that it be used for these purposes and not... No.

Because what we're going to do is we're going to have it and then we're going to talk about the budget. The entire budget.

Yeah.

So is there any way for you to give us a number for 7.5 and 7.25? Yes, it's up there. Is it up there already? It's right up there for you. Is that it? Yep. See, I can't read it. So for 7.25. There you go.

So if you go up to 7.25, it's an additional roughly $100,000.

Right, but I meant as far as like the amount annually per 100,000, whatever it is. Oh, okay. That's what I meant, I'm sorry. I don't want to be clear. Right.

Because then it kind of gives us an idea of how much the...

It's an extra $157,960. Right, but I want to know approximately how much extra the citizen is going to have. Is it? It's a couple down, actually. I think the person was seven. Yes, I think it was a couple.

So it's right, but it would be like $12.50 plus $12.50. So that's $375. Okay. Well, if we did... Oh, see I read that totally wrong.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So where do we want to land? We have 7.25 and 7.9.

I was trying to look at it from how it would be seen across the board. Having such a huge jump as the highest number. I know it's not the highest option, but everything it needs is to look for at least a 7.25 because that's a $25 difference for the residents. The 7.25? It's more than that.

Yeah, it's 30. Going from $337.50 to $362.50.

For every $100,000 of your property value. So if it's $200,000, then you can multiply it by two, so forth and so on.

which could be a lot.

Exactly, and taking into consideration every other cost that just continuously rises for the residents. And I know that that's our highest, that would be our decided highest number that we could always go down, but at the same time, I'm just trying to feel like, I'm just trying to keep in mind how the residents will feel. So we just wanted to know where we want to start.

Yeah, I guess my approach would be having been in Shannon's chair three years ago where I thought it was mileage rate, not mileage rate. Yeah. That's the way that I kind of, I verged it with like, all right, let's start high and then whittle, you know, whittle down out of the budget. And we don't, if we get enough out of the budget, which is painful, but then we don't have to hold at the highest amount. But if we can't get it out of the budget, then we have to hold it whatever the highest amount we decide is.

And it depends on if we want to do a raise or not.

Right, which is part of the budget.

Because if we don't do something, it's not, there's no raise in the budget. We'd have to add it and he'd have to bring it back and show us what it looked like. I know I wouldn't want to go any more than 7.25. I agree.

So consensus, well, 7.25 raise your hand. So we'll do 7.25.

Okay. And again, that will go into the trim and get, you know, the 7.25 and get mailed out along with the date and time of the first public hearing.

And I think you bring that to us at our next meeting to actually ratify it, right? Don't we have to vote on that before?

You don't, but I certainly can if you would like to. We do not. It's really consensus.

Because it's preliminary?

But again, I don't want to shortchange it. We haven't in the past, but we certainly can if that's...

So only at the very end do we sign it and certify it?

Oh yeah, first you're going to sign it. I remember doing that. Well yeah, the first public hearing is one time, and then you get the second time you're going to sign a resolution. You get all the resolutions and stuff. Gotcha. That's the way to do it.

Got it. Do you want this back? Do you want to pass that?

If you want to keep it. Okay. And I'll be back to you at the end.

All right, good.

Let me take this out of the way.

Now I'll put mine in the bigger book.

So we did So, I'm going to go to... Well, we didn't do everybody, right?

So, we want to go to staff and plan and start page four.

So you kind of, so we talked about, well, we managed to talk about this, right? And council.

And council.

All right, so we want to do a community development?

Who's actually going to run the community development?

Charissa Bain. Yeah. Not on here, okay. a comic about that fiction. Animal Children.

Do you want to talk about Animal Children? Gee. Are you on me now? No. No. This is over Animal Children.

I'm sorry, what'd you say?

Do I think I'm worth more? Absolutely. We've done a lot with that shelter in the last 10 months. I mean, where do you think you were?

Let me just say that we learned our lesson about giving individual people rankings and not giving everybody. I just asked her. I asked the Lord.

Right, right. We're not saying we're going to give them. Just ask her how much money she works. She says she works a lot. Oh, that's helpful.

Just say more than that.

This is definitely more than that.

But other than that.

That's the service and billing.

Without any increase in pay, everything else can stay the same. I mean, obviously everybody wants a pay increase, but everything else should be fine.

see see you now uh i am the same as uh macon microphone please i told everybody has to do it i forgot to do it uh as far as my budget goes uh i am good with my budget if the city decides they want to give pay increases of course my guys will take it but right i think my budget's fine besides steven taking a razor blade to it but Are you okay as well with your open positions remaining open for now? I only have one open position and that was Major Fortney. My plan is to fill that position but with a behind the police officer to fill that position to put more boots on the ground and then maybe later on making a transfer later or promotion later. uh somebody up with was still at that point still uh so you still won't cost any money to the budget so where it says you have a police officer opening you'll just hire somebody and that's fine then whenever you're ready to promote to major then you still have that slot available if needed yeah i have no what you're saying right i have no officer positions available so you need to give stephen the name that goes in this open position yes we and stephen have already talked about that so okay yep so what's what's the first name trevor

Okay, thank you.

And the rest of them are reserved.

You only have one reserved person?

And those are the part-times that all got counted as one.

Yeah, I have five reserve positions. And me and Steven have talked about this as well. All five of those positions are filled. Three of them are filled with police officers. One is filled with a reserve dispatcher, and one is filled with a reserve animal control officer.

Assistant, I would say, not officer, assistant.

So should we change...

What it says?

How it says it?

We will be renaming that. But I did that to save on having to come back to the council and ask for additional personnel. Since I've been here, we've always had 13 police officers, including myself. We haven't asked for an increase. That is the reason why, as far as Major Courtney's position goes, I'm going to hire another police officer to fill that position. which would give me more boots on the ground, which is more what I'm concerned about is less top heaviness and more people on the ground. So that's the plan for that position. And then later on, eventually making a promotion. Gotcha.

Okay.

I have a total of 30 people in my department, 13 full-time patrol officers, including myself, three reserve officers, five full-time dispatchers, one reserve dispatcher, one admin assistant, one animal control officer, one reserve animal control officer, one crossing guard, one custodian, and I currently have one opening, which we just talked about.

and i think he spells charles different

It's got a Z in it, I'm pretty sure.

No. Matt, are you positive? Does he not have a Z in his name anywhere? I swear to God.

It used to be that way, but it's really not.

It's really not. Oh, he writes it that way. But it's not.

All right. Anything else? You're good with everything and these, and then we'll get to the races later.

Yeah, I'm good with everything. Steven and I have talked about the install of the consoles, incorporating that into the Fox for Loan he's looking at. As last budget, when we made some changes last year, I told you guys that I would go for possibly two years without purchasing any vehicles. This will be year two coming, but I'm not asking for any vehicles at this time.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay.

Chief Archie. Chief Steele? You're next.

Yes, ma'am. Just so you know, Assistant Chief Willis will be making the presentation for both of your budgets this year.

Awesome. Practice. Let's go.

Are we on the staffing plan, or are we on their department under general funds?

We're on the staffing plan.

Well, that's not what they're talking about, and that's not what he was just saying. Staffing plan looks good. I mean, they're two totally different things. Sorry. I just have a question.

Or maybe that's it. I have a question about overtime. Just purely an educational question on this sheet.

So my question is why some of these folks who do not work full-time for 2,080 hours

But then their overtime amount, so I'm sure this is just me not understanding that security.

Is that your pay sheet you had missed ever? Yes. Okay. They get an overtime rate when they get called out from the house to come in. They don't have to hit the 40 hours before they get that overtime rate on that staffing plan.

Thank you.

You have a column that says regular hours is while they're in the station waiting for a call. When it says overtime, it goes to that figure when they are in the truck fighting a fire or a crash.

The straight pay, she's correct. The guys that are scheduled to be there on duty crew that day, the two guys that we have currently, we're going to talk about that later, two guys we have there on regular pay. If I'm sitting at the house on a Saturday afternoon and a car wreck goes out and I respond to it, I get my overtime rate to go run that call out, if that makes sense.

Does your overtime rate start when you get the call or when you get to the station?

It starts when the call comes out until the call ends. That's the way it's documented in the cash sheet.

So if you're not actually at home, but you're 30 minutes away and take 30 minutes so you get time from that time to...

It's just the way it's documented in the CAD sheet. I'm just telling.

And the CAD sheet is the thing that we got recently, right?

CAD sheets to print out from dispatch. We're dispatched to Levy County right now. At the end of the call they actually generate an email and send it to all the firefighters so they can sit down and have the accurate times to put in the reports and that's how we pull the payroll report is off the reporting system.

I haven't had one because I'm still learning the process. So does the overtime hours go to everyone who responds to the call? So if one call comes out and there's like 10 of you guys that rush out to it, it goes to all 10? Exactly. Okay. I'm still trying to understand that.

What that does, there's the two guys at the station. Call goes out, we pay the backfill of the station. Car rent goes out, they get there and they can handle it. That's fine. We have two, three, four, five guys at the station on standby. If they get there and it's an extended extrication, we'll roll one or two more trucks. That second med call goes out, we'll run to the second call. We try to have the station staffed at all times.

That makes sense. I think my question was more along the lines of the pay for all the trucks that respond to the call versus the ones that are still staying at the firehouse.

They get paid whether they run to it or not. They're there for the call.

But they get paid the regular time, not the overtime. The two guys on duty can get the regular time. The other guys get the overtime. And then everybody else gets overtime.

Okay. I don't know. Must be Aaron. He's reaching for his pocket.

Please turn all devices off.

Put them on vibrate. Thank you.

Any other questions about the staffing plan for our work? Public Works Utilities. Any changes in your plan?

My budget was I could say the same, but it was mentioned that we wanted to hold off on hiring the gas in the streets and parks department. But in the streets and parks department, we only have two, which they are more in right now, which they're trying to keep up with that. So I would recommend we do try to hire at least two people in the streets and parks and two in the gas department.

All right. We're going to have it between you and the manager.

I think the two in the guest department are compliant, aren't they? I mean, don't you have to have two?

Yes, ma'am.

And also, I'm down one inmate supervisor, which the one we have works four teams, so he's off on Fridays.

So are you saying that you need to hire somebody?

Yes, ma'am. Which ones are you recommending to hire?

The positions and streets and parks and gas. We can hold off on the water right now.

So it was my intention to hold off on the my intention is to hold off on right now the assistant utility director utility director and you say gas is a compliance issue yes sir okay

Yes ma'am. How many do we have now? We only have one tech. We have two. One tech.

Michael Warren, he's not a supervisor or anything, right? No, ma'am. So you have to. So you have to for compliance, right? Technically. Gas tech, technically.

Sorry.

There's one open position for gas tech.

But if you look at the very first person. Right, that's one.

I think my question would be, how's the inspection going to go on the 4th of real F1?

So forgive me for taking over, but far as the

To answer Mr. Brevard's question, far as the audit this year, we're going to be fine because one just left or basically because one just left. So far as the auditing goes, we're fine. But far as next year showing proof of what we're going to do next year, we won't be fine. So it will not be gate this year. We'll talk about it and make recommendations how we need to have more for the following year. So we do it this year or we do it next year. Keep in mind with the one gas tank, you're correct. The other gas tank is also a half a meter reader. So it depends how you want to look at that, right? Because we're down a meter here right now.

Well, I understand people are doing dual roles. Yes, sir. I think my question, certification-wise, where are we at?

We're barely legal right now. Then we'll be fine for the audit because one just left coming up. Yes, sir. But not for next year. Correct.

So the gas tech training now is not certified?

No.

so one's 100 certified and one just got certified but because he just got certified he doesn't have the hours in them so yes and no it's a hard answer to answer without sounding confusing it's not hard you you answered it all right so you have to have a certain amount of hours in order to be compliant yes ma'am and one of those will be your master evaluator this year which nate hasn't made his mind up yet which one he wants to do it with so if you go and you hire somebody

In that position as a gas tech, they still won't have those hours. So then how do you make them compliant?

You will by working a full time. Within the next year, they will be compliant. By the next audit, they will be compliant.

Or you have to hire somebody who's experienced. Yes, ma'am.

Not for $18.26.

I started to say, but not for $18.26.

I don't know how to answer that question, Terry. I know McDonald's is paying $16, Woolworths is paying $17, so I don't know how to answer that question.

We didn't ask what everybody was paying. I didn't know how to answer the question. Well, too, when the auditor shows up and he sees your one guy's gone, he'll give you the recommendation that you need another one. Yes, ma'am. Then we'll have our answer. Yeah. Because that's what happened before, that's why I remember it.

Yes, ma'am.

Gotcha, okay.

So lemon fee, gas tax, street department. But you're not doing the utility directors and assistant at this time? No. Okay.

And you're leaving the titles as they are?

Yeah. everybody's in place where they are right now and then i i'm not i have no intentions of back doing anything uh with those two positions okay we'll just leave it there yes ma'am all right so water's fine electric did we say whether or not we're going higher than our fee or we're not So I thought lineman C, tree trimmer, and groundsman was paying for something.

wasn't the tree trimmer when that's supposed to be where we hired Davey yes and I thought line I thought all three of those positions were paying for Davey tree okay that was what I was under this year next year I thought we had 200,000 to pay well we do but come next year Davey won't be here

Right. The $200,000 is coming out of this year's budget. And it shows somewhere, because I saw it in here.

Oh, okay. Well, I was under the assumption we couldn't... Well, at least I was told we couldn't hire that correctly for two years.

So we don't have these two years, just this year? I mean, if we don't have a tree trailer, we're going to need them again. Oh, yeah. That's the only problem with not hiring one. It'll just get bad again. You can change the policy. So lineman B but maybe tree trimmer.

Am I correct? Yeah. Okay.

No lineman B.

No lineman B but tree trimmer.

No groundsman. But maybe tree trimmer. We used to have two tree trimmers.

One was a groundsman. Yeah. We had a tree trimmer and then a groundsman for them.

Okay.

Hmm. So Cody and Kirk, when they first started, one was a preacher and one was a grandpa. Oh, that I can't answer. I don't know. And he's shaking his head yes. I couldn't tell you. Yeah. They have this bond with each other.

So soil treatment, collection, that's fine. All right.

Can I back up one second? I'm so sorry. Sure. I noticed that the chief has a dispatcher that makes 1,060 hours. Which chief? But I think that's only 20 hours a week. I was going to say, yeah. Your dispatcher, that one's only 20 hours a week. That's making 1,060 a week.

Yeah, she's part-time.

Well, she is. I'm just making sure she's under 30.

Yeah. Yeah, she works, what, one day every two weeks or two days every two weeks?

Yeah. All right, sorry.

It's okay. All right. Airport. Is he online? Is Benton online?

Give me a second.

Then he wants.

Go ahead, Benton. You got a room.

We're just staffing plan. I went off of this department. I know.

I just asked if he wants to. If nothing's changed, you can just tell us nothing's changed. And we'll keep moving.

Benton, are you there?

I can hear everybody talking but I couldn't

There we go.

Yeah, I just put him on. Can you try it again?

Okay. There you go. Let's see. Okay. Try to go back to the app. No, that's his phone.

We're only on the staffing plan, not on the... So, yeah, just ask him if there's any changes.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's the only changes that I really have is to the staffing plan.

Okay, which is what we got. Do you have it up there to show to anybody?

Okay.

Can you ask me if that's what... So can you just tell us real quick if you... Somebody messed with the knobs again.

I think I got it figured out. Somebody what?

So you wanna wait on that? Okay. So, Benton. Yes, ma'am. So, when we get ready to come back to you, cuz we just wanted to know about your staffing. But it's like you have a lot of different, you have changes that has- I have changes to my staffing plan, yes ma'am.

I'm requesting one additional part-timer.

And then there's some job descriptions that we're going to kind of change around here and there and kind of do a rework of the entire staff at the airport.

So, I mean, that's kind of the big changes that are coming from the airport budget. I'd also, with that, kind of like to remind the council that the airport's budget is independent of the city's. So, you know, it doesn't really affect

We're kind of just out there operating on our own budget. So I mean, if you want to go over some of the changes in the staffing plan or wait until a different time, we can do that too.

Yeah, we'll go over it when we get to the budget. Okay. All right, thanks. So one additional position, and then...

On our staffing plan that we have in our book, there is no additional request.

Right. No, I understand. And that's... Stephen and I talked about it, and from what I understand, Stephen kind of just gave you guys the bare bones, and we were going, all the department heads are going to give our presentations as we go through it.

So, you know, that's the only additional staff person that I'm requesting is one additional park timer. And...

then there are going to be some requested changes to pay as we come down the line, which sounds like you guys want to come back to it.

Yeah, we'll come back. You may make you first since you're in the conference.

Yeah, I mean, the sessions are over for the night, so you guys have my full attention. Does it work? All right.

Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye.

I think we're good where we are.

All right, so we'll start with the budget.

Can I keep it in order?

All right. All right, we'll start. Yes.

Do you have a question?

Question? We might have an answer to it.

I just have one question. In my, in Nate's public works facilities, I have an Ian Finnan. I don't know what that's about.

Say that again louder.

In facilities like that, I have an Ian Finnan. I don't know who that is. Or we don't know who that is. I'm sorry.

I think he's the guy that cleans.

He's the cleaning guy for the PD. I don't know how he got to public works.

He's in the facilities budget. He does both? But he's in the PD budget, which I have no...

I think the way they did it last time, I think Stephen split it last time because he was doing two things.

If he's half over there and half over here, then...

But I don't know if he works over here. No, he's not coming over here.

I was going to say, I thought one of our guys... Yeah, Tom does it here.

I'm not trying to start trouble.

That's up to you. Last year it was requested that... That position was going to serve a dual role. That was lower. And I don't know the reason behind that and how that works. So if that's not the case, then he's 100% cheap for you? Is that how it should work? Yeah.

So he's been 100% for you?

Just you? Yes. He is now?

He is now. Before, like Brooke was saying, before, the custodian was split between the PD and Animal Control. Airport. Airport. And I think Steven, I thought we changed it, but I guess we left it that way. But he doesn't do anything for that airport or other works that I'm aware of. He just cleans for the PD. Okay. I'll move all these hours back up to

Okay.

So anywhere that he's allocated, Steven, in the budget will move over the PD?

Yeah, it's just facilities is the only other place. Okay. That was the ask of the workshop last year was can he end the facilities. Thank you.

All right.

So we're going to go to the general budget, and we'll start with... We'll start with police department.

Okay.

And it's page 26. Page 26. William General Fund, correct? Yes.

Page 26.

So as I said before, nothing in my budget, under my power, changed. But under the power of Mr. Bloom, there were some changes, which me and him have spoke about, and we were able to work those changes out. And I do believe with the changes that he made, the budget was only affected by 0.7, Stephen? Am I right? Yeah. Only affected by 0.7, so not a very large increase in the changes that he made. But as far as everything, the line items in the budget, I'm completely fine with for the police department. so we can if you like i can go down the list of some of the things he cut and he can give you the reasons why if you want okay so for holiday pay uh for the law enforcement side steven took a 28.6 percent uh reduction in that and i believe as me and mr moon spoke about it was because all of that revenue for holiday pay wasn't being used is that correct correct steven

Yeah, so basically I looked at his overtime and his holiday pay and his special events, kind of put them all together and realized even though he had a $35,000 budget in 2026, if you look, his actuals for 2025 were far below that and his projections for 2026 are far below that. So he hadn't been using 35, so I cut it down to 25.

So are they being characterized properly, categorized properly, excuse me.

That was one of the problems we experienced that we finally, I think, Kim and I got with, what's the name of it, Kim? InfoMark, got with InfoMark and was able to straighten it up because they were taking the revenue out of different areas. That was zero in those areas out. And Ms. Stephen talked about that. So we're gonna try to make this work. Hopefully it will. If not, I think Stephen has some way of moving some revenue around.

Yeah, so to the Chief's point, I think some of the holiday pay was winding up in overtime. So that's why I looked at the two of them combined. And if you still look at them combined in 2025, it's what, about 40 for the two lines. So I'm still putting in there 58. for the two lines. So there's still more. There's still plenty in there. To the chief's point, though, we've got a square away where payroll is coded, and so as we move forward, we have a better indicator of which is truly holiday pay and which is truly overtime.

Which, it should all be fixed, because I entered them into Edmunds on the back side.

Yes, moving forward should be good. We've done a really good job. I mean, the supervisors have stepped in and filled those gaps. I've stepped in and filled those gaps, which has cut down on a lot of our overtime. So we're proud of that. I mean, we're trying to do what we can to be financially responsible. So I'm okay with a 28.6% reduction at this time. So moving on, we went to investigations. Investigations, as you see, took a 58.3% reduction. Knock on wood. Thank God we haven't had to have any overtime for any major investigations taking place. If you remember back a couple years ago, we had a couple homicides and things that took place that... ate us alive as far as overtime goes. But so far, knock on wood, we haven't had those cases pop before. So there hasn't been a need to spend that overtime. I'm not saying that tomorrow something can't happen, and we're spending a whole lot of money on investigations.

So this is one of the lines where the chief and I said we would have put it back to the 6K. So your next version will have the overtime investigation back to 6K, just because it's Hopefully it becomes a line where it's a contingency and not needed, but it's not that much, and if it is needed, I'd rather have it there.

So it's no longer a negative?

Right, it's not going to be as zero as a UOU.

All right. I'll be here a while because even this I'm butchering on my budget. Let's get to payroll taxes. We'll go down to... 0.2% out of work was comp, which is something we're proud of. That means we're having less injuries and having less claims, so I'm okay with that. Salary and wages and training. We've been doing a good job of being able to find training for our guys and girls that have been region-sponsored. It's nice that I am the chairman of the Law Enforcement Trust Fund, so I know which classes are free. So I can send the guys and girls to those classes, and those classes don't cost the same money. So we've been able to save some funds on that as well. So I'm okay with that. Professional services, Stephen just wiped that out 100%. We've incorporated that into some other areas that we've been able to fund professional services out of. So I'm all right, okay with that one.

Actually, Chief, that's another line that I did put the $2,000 back in in version 2. Well, thank you.

Just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

All right, so we'll go down to our postage, which was cut down 50%. We're okay with that. We're not doing a whole lot of sending out letters. Most of it's through email. As life goes on, repairs and maintenance of equipment. As you know, we bought body cams a while back, so we haven't had to have a bunch of repairs done to our equipment. We just got new radios, so everything seems to be working pretty good right now, so we haven't had an opportunity to have to spend that money. Miscellaneous suspense, down 37.5%. With that, we can find other places to do things out. Training and school seminars, I just talked about why those are down. Vehicle maintenance, this is one that me and Steven are going to talk about because we're pushing these cars now for, let's see, the newest vehicles we have are 2023. and we're going on 2027 and I think our oldest cars are 2018 maybe. So our maintenance cost because we did not buy cars last year is going to increase. We're seeing that already because of the wear and tear on the cars. So tires are more, oil changes are more. So that's one area that I'm going to speak with Steven about maybe getting that put back because all it takes is one breakdown and we're right back in the hole again so so so unless the council disagrees i was going to put that one back to 53 for the next budget that was actually one of the areas we increased in our last budget when we were able to move that money around we increased our vehicle maintenance because We said we were not going to ask for cars for two years. So I was a little shocked when I seen that one was changed because we had already kind of worked that out. So the council don't have a problem with that. I would like to put that back due to the age of our vehicles.

I'm cold. Go ahead. All right. I'll fix it for you.

You all right?

Can you fix the air somebody, please? He's the expert fixer.

Materials and supplies, 41.2% reduction. I think we can make that work, but what's Stephen has there? Our uniforms, 25% reduction. We just bought some uniforms recently. We will have to buy more later on, but currently right now, uniforms seem to be holding up pretty well. We bought a new brand, and they seem to be doing a lot better than the old ones that we had, the polyester. We actually have some that breeze now. How often do you typically buy new uniforms? Uh, uniforms is one of those things where it can happen at any time. You can get out with something, you run through the woods, you jump a fence, you rip them, you tear them up. um it's a constant thing the vest from interior wise wear it on the inside of the material so maybe once every two years okay so we can get by with it right now we don't do like the no we buy them right we buy them as needed yeah we don't have a stockpile just sitting there you know wasting so we just buy them as if also needed we'll buy them But the Uniform Fund also covers our Bulletproof Vest, which currently right now we're still under the Bulletproof Vest Grant, which means they pay 50% for our vests. So that saves us some money on that as well. Because the vests are running around $1,000 right now.

And that's it for that. All right.

Communications. All right, communications, holiday pay. Once again, it was one of those areas. It took a 75.7% reduction.

I don't know how that's going to work. So again, if you look at overtime and holiday pay, those two lines combined, it makes more sense than you look at them individually. So overtime and holiday pay in 2025 was $6,400. It's a little bit under $12,000. So for those two next year, I have $14,500. So in essence, his budget for next year still would be a three-year high if nothing were to change with those two lines combined. So it looks goofy because, again, it's the same scenario. Some of the money that's in overtime probably will belong in holiday pay as we move forward. But when you look at them two together, you're OK.

So when you come back, are you going to have them separate, or are you going to have them together?

Well, if I can get a better indicator from the chief as to how those two numbers split, then I can take that $14,500, split it however he wants. I just, you know, before, the budget, the percentages are based off of an $18,800 budget. That's where, you know, so I just basically trimmed it back to... It's still a three-year high, and now we can move it around so that the percentages make more sense.

And a lot of that overtime pay and holiday pay, you know, we were short-staffed, so we didn't have as many full board as we do now. And once again, we ran into that same situation where holiday pay was being taken out of overtime, like this year, which has cleared out our overtime. Luckily, Kim and I got it fixed. So now to get a real accurate number won't be to this year, next year's budget, because of the mishap of taking holiday pay out of overtime. So hopefully we got that squared away right now. Other than that, everything else that he did in dispatch, contractual services, 30%. It was only $500. He took it down to 350. Repairs and maintenance. This is $1,000. He took it down to 550% reduction. Traveling for them, great thing for us. Our dispatchers are not doing a whole bunch of traveling, so I'm okay with that. Materials, supplies, dropped it down from $3,000 to $1,000. We can live with it. Uniforms, this pet doesn't use a lot of uniforms, so we're okay with that reduction. And other than that, communications, I'm good.

Okay, any questions? The loan repayment, what is the loan for debt service? or the police department. Is that the same question? I don't know what that is.

That, again, that's a future for when you get the communications loan for the installation of the consoles.

Okay, and the capital outlay, that's $125?

That's the actual installation cost. Okay, so we need both? You need both, because up top of your revenue, you're going to have a loan proceeds, and that's $125,000.

Okay, one is the debt service.

One's debt service. Right, and then the loan proceeds will line up with the expense here. Perfect.

Thank you very much.

This is not specific to the police department, but it is in the police department. The question for Stephen, a lot of places, the retirement has gone up significantly everywhere. Can you explain why that's gone up and why it's so different from department to department, but every department has gone up?

Well, it's going to depend upon, there's two retirement plans. So the general plan is actually going, three actually, I'm sorry. FRS is for fire only, and we get the rates. The state sends us the rates and they're higher. So all I do is for every dollar, I'm putting in whatever their rate is. And the same thing, the general rate is not quite doubling for general employees, but it's going from like four something to 7.8.

And this is the 185.

Yeah. I think it went up too. It's marginal. I think it was, yeah. So the retirement, basically the actuaries for the two pension plans, they do a complete review of both pensions. based on current staffing, the yields of the investments, and they tell us, hey, here's how much you should put aside and contribute into the plans next year based on every dollar. So it's just a calculation of that percentage.

So it's a 65.2% in communications. Then over in animal control code enforcement, it's 176%. And then back in Police Department is only 9.5. Can you just educate me on why those numbers are so different?

Because it's going to really depend upon the salaries changes over year over year and what type of plan that they're in. So it's, you know, again, for example, the position, the major position, was in drop. So there was no actual money going into that particular position in the current year budget. Well, next year, I had to put it in. So now that is, again, all of a sudden you're going from zero of pension to 100% for that position. So it really just depends upon, but when you look at the staffing plan, there's actually columns show you per person what each retirement is based on which particular plan they're in.

Okay, thank you.

For the retirement, did we, were you able to add in the line item to cover the retiree health that we passed?

I did not add anything in for that, no.

Okay, we probably should add that in because we got one collecting now, which is fine. We have open positions that we can use the healthcare from for the rest of the year. And then we have another one who's eligible this year. Okay.

Yeah. So that, again, if you retire, then you get the flex type, I guess, of sorts. But yeah, that NAPI goes in there until I guess, I forget what age do they turn before that.

The police department are in a different tension by embedding that to the communications people and the animal control. Yes.

What was that, Steven?

It's till what age?

So now she's 25 and out. We will pick up three years of your health care.

So we'll be, you know, start putting that into the budget.

Alright, last but not least, animal control code enforcement. Not very many changes. Just on the advertisement side, Steven set that at 50%. And on the vehicle repair and maintenance, Steven and I talked about that. He's going to have to increase that because he only allotted it for $1,000 bucks. That's one tire and one oil change. And you're at $1,000 bucks still. So we need to increase the vehicle maintenance under that category. And other than that, we're good.

Miss Jones.

I'm sorry. It appears that there are two animal control code enforcement officers. I don't know that there really are, but if you look at it, it's got two different positions at 100% each and two different rates of pay. So I just need a little clarification on that.

One is a... I think his name's Isaiah. He's the part-timer.

Yeah.

And Christy's the full-timer.

Looks like they make almost the same amount of money.

I have that position in there at full time, by the way, so that's going to be some of the savings that we'll, you know.

That should save, yeah, we'll save it, but we need to make sure it doesn't make it under 30 hours.

Yeah. Oh, no, he doesn't. That'll save all that.

That's the first one?

That's the first one. Yeah. It's part time. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That was the only question I had on that area.

Shannon, did you have a question? No. And that will change all the, in fact, that will change the retirement and health insurance and all that will go down and not be such a huge percentage. It will.

Same as mine, Ms. Mary. I think we're cutting something. That's good. I thought I was supposed to try it. We're working all those races.

Doing my part.

Looking good. I'm good.

Thank you.

all right so the next one would be the fire department and then page 31 wait it's page 31 but miss bj's putting the presentation up oh okay you can follow along your book it should be pretty close while we're waiting our oldest vehicles of 1994 and our newest ones of 2022 so Going back to what Chief Rolls said.

He said we don't run the wheels off a truck. Friday night I'm sitting at a birthday dinner for my son.

I get a phone call from a firefighter. Answered the phone, he said, Chief Willis, the front left wheel hub is on fire on the rescue. So he had to put the fire truck out and then get it back to the station. It is back in service now, but to say we run the wheels off the truck is literal right now.

I think he hit from beginning.

Hit F7, I think, BJ. Nope, maybe not. I spelled everything right. There's a shortcut to make it play.

click on the second slide you can go around one by one all right run through this we've got a couple big ticket items uh stephen got a bunch of the stuff in there we're each one of these we're going to go through one by one here in a few minutes through the slides so it includes adding a third person to each shift we'll talk about that we need some additional mobile and portable radios the new squad is a continuance from this year's budget item and then the The little ghost in the room. We had talked last year about a new fire engine to replace engine 722. The best we could recall, it was supposed to be included in a low-interest loan with a truck for the utility department. I was just trying to figure out where that ended up. We're not going to put it in the budget this year if we don't get it, but it will need to go in next year. We'll talk about that here in a few minutes, too. I believe that was a Walt Nichols project. And then the small, minimal increases, and we'll go through all those one by one, too. Next slide, please. All right. Y'all, we've had a bunch of questions about the staffing for the fire department, so I figured we'd have a little history lesson on this. January 1st, 2025, volunteer response is becoming harder with the state regulations on Firefighter Ones, and the city crew is getting busier during the day. The city crew used to make up 75% of the fire department. What they would do, medical call goes out, whoever wasn't real busy and they were on the fire department, they'd go get a truck, run a med call. We didn't run a whole lot of med calls back then. Structure fire went out, city crews shut down, they went and got fire trucks. The good news was we didn't have to call for the utility crew because they were already on the scene. They could kill the power, gas, water, and everything else. Not sure what happened there, BJ.

You just hit the space bar and keep going through the slides.

One more time. Alright, so around January of 2025 we started with the duty group. It started with two firefighters being paid from 830 to 435 days a week and nobody on truck nights outside of those normal business hours. We still rely very heavily on the volunteer response and it it worked back then. Next slide, please. Her next segment. In the fiscal year 2006-2007, the call load's going back up again, 28% increase. You can just hit it again, TJ. We went from 664 calls to 850 calls over about a two-year process, and we approved having one firefighter on call at night and moving the duty crew to seven days a week. So now we're 830 to 430 seven days a week and one guy on call at night. Next slide. So when we paid that one guy at night, he was on standby. We paid him three hours of straight time for standby, and then he got paid his overtime rate for every call he ran at night. In the fiscal year 2014-2015, the call load is going up again. We're at 16% over a seven-year period on the increase. Hit it again. You hit it two or three times. All right, so now we're at 977 calls, 07-08, and we're now at 1,138 calls on 14-15, so we're getting a little busier. October 1st, we moved to having two duty crew guys, 7A to 7P, and one guy paid four hours for standby at night, plus the calls he ran. In the fiscal year 2016-27, it shows a 40% increase over the last two fiscal years, or an additional 458 calls. So then we moved to two guys, 7A to 7P, and one firefighter paid all night from 7P to 7A. In the fiscal year 21-22 shows the calls. The calls are trending again to go up, this time increasing 25% over five years or an additional 400 calls. Fiscal year 16-17 had 1,596 calls. Fiscal year 21-22 had 1,998 calls. We can probably call that 2,000. So during this time, we're dealing with COVID. Somebody's coughing up there. We're dealing with COVID response, so it's skyrocketing. At the same time, the county's having a hard time running calls in Morriston. We're running the calls in Morriston when they don't have staffing, and that's when we're billing the county to run those calls. Around February of 22, we moved to two guys from 7A to 7B. then two firefighters from 7p to 7a which is where we're currently at right now fast forward at the end of fiscal year 25 26 williston fire rescue is projected to run around 2300 calls between 23 and 2400 calls depending on what estimator you use this would be about a 12 increase over the past four years and then about 200 calls more we're back to the amount of calls we were running there in the coveted levels and while we were providing the calls of morriston The problem is we're not. These are all mostly in our zone now. What we're requesting is to have one more firefighter per shift. This will allow two personnel to respond to the initial minor call and leave one personnel at the station for the next call. It doesn't sound like a big deal. It happens a lot. If it's a serious call, multiple trucks can respond to the same call initially to establish a safer operation initially and then move on from there. Here's your little line graph to kind of give you an idea where where the call is at with the years being at the bottom so you can click it again about three or four times there you go we had a 10 increase from last year we're about 200 calls over where we were at at this time last year and it seems for some reason the amount of times we have two or three calls going out at the same time is getting more and more it seems like there's not a weekend where i'm not Supposed to be at home getting honeydew, let's not have to leave and go run a call, because there's no guys at the station. On the safety aspect, it gives our crews a better chance with the interior attack. If you only have two guys trying to make an interior attack on a structure fire, first off, it's not safe, and it's virtually impossible. Someone needs to be on the outside and the incident commander a safety role. And it gives more coordination to the incoming crews. They can run the pump panel, see where their water levels are at. They can look at the house, make sure the roof's not about to collapse. All the stuff we're trying to do. More guaranteed coverage at the station. You're not waiting on someone to come from the house for a second call. And then it's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are three of the four busiest days of the week for us. for last year. I went back seven or eight years. It seems to be pretty close all those years, too. And it just so happens that the off-duty response is the lowest on Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays because our guys like to go have a life. Hit the slide, please. There's your call load by the day of the week. Friday's the busiest, followed by Monday. We know everybody hates to ruin their weekends, so they wait until Monday to call 911. And then Saturday and Sunday's right here as well. Hit it, please. Adding the additional person, this was just going off some of the numbers Stephen had that I ran. It looks like it'd be about a $227,000 increase to the payroll, the retirement, and the salaries. And Stephen can confirm that later, now that he has all these numbers. Hit it, please. All right, the new radios. We were on a VHF radio system forever. The radios were $500 to $800 a piece. FCC regulations forced Levy County to build a new P25 compliant radio system. Don't ask me what that is. I cannot explain it. Aaron probably can. And go away from the current VHF system. The police department was required to do it as well. The county built a multi-million dollar system and invited us to come on it just like we were on their other system. We had about 25 portable radios, and we had one mobile radio in each truck. When they came to us, they said, hey, we're going to replace your radios. Well, they kind of had to do it evenly and fairly. So they pretty much eliminated our 25 radios and gave us 16 portable radios. The NFPA recommends you have one radio per seated position in the truck. We're not close to that. I don't expect y'all to buy us another 18 radios this year at somewhere between $5,000 and $7,000 a piece. So we're only going to ask for four. All 16 portable radios are assigned to the trucks. For an example, the squad and the rescue both have two radios assigned to them. A lot of times we have three guys riding in the trucks and one guy's without a radio. The engine has three. We have four or five on a structure fire. There's two guys without a radio. That's kind of a pretty good no-no right now. In the future, our radios will be linked to the air packs. So when they have an air pack on, it's linked to the radio for radio communications inside the building. So it's not one of them that you can just go grab a radio off another truck. It's actually got to be assigned to that seat. Hit the button, please. The new squad, it's just a continuance from last year. want to slide back one if you can it's a continuance of last year um the specs we went through the specs with the fine tooth comb kind of figuring out what we want to do we visited a couple vendors to see the difference in the quality of beds that they build They've been emailed to the attorney. She's going through central bidding, I think, is the program that y'all use right now to see if there's something we can piggyback off of. So far, she's sent me four of them, and those aren't going to work out for us, but she's still looking on some other stuff. That truck's going to replace a truck that's 26 years old and flat, worn out. We called to get a replacement steering box for that truck about two years ago, and they said, yeah, you need to go to a junkyard to get it. They don't even make the parts for that truck anymore. The cost is going to be about $240,000. It's going to look a lot like the squad we drive now. It's just going to have a different style bed on the back. It's more built for a squad rather than a brush truck. The one we have now works. We have to repair some of the shelving and stuff in the trucks every once in a while. It'll be a lot more suited as a brush truck. So we're going to buy a new squad, take the current squad, and make it a brush truck. Put the button, please. The fire engine I talked about a few minutes ago is going to replace the engine 722. It's a 2008 American LaFrance, and I believe it was the last one to roll off their assembly line before they folded up. And you know when you get the last truck off an assembly line, you get spare pieces. The door handles on that, when they tear up, Captain Maddox goes to Napa and buys a door handle for a 2008 Dodge 1500 pickup, and that's the door handles that are on that truck. So it's just kind of piece milled together. That new truck's going to cost about $1.2 million. It's going to be a two-year wait, currently, is what they're sitting at right now. Same design as the current engine. The newer engine that we have, with some minor changes, just due to industry standards and safety factors on it. That's what I talked about a minute ago. We believe Walt Nichols is working on a low-interest loan to include a truck for the utility department. We just needed an update. Like I said, it's not in this year's budget. We talked to Mr. Walt, and if he Doesn't have anywhere to go. We might have to put it in next year's budget. Hit the button, please. The small and minimum increases, we asked for a $2,000 increase on traveling for them. We all know that the travel costs are getting higher. They're not getting any cheaper. Our guys need to be able to go to more trainings and seminars and conferences to learn. Basically, we send guys to these seminars and conferences. They learn a lot of stuff, come back, and we'll do in-house training over here so everybody gets educated on it. She's hungry like I am, probably. The last conference we attended in Indianapolis, myself and Captain Maddox went up. We met with 20 different vendors that we currently use to see what new projects they were coming out with, what new updates, and met with 10 other vendors that we were looking at going with. So it's very beneficial. Instead of talking to somebody over the phone, looking at it on the computer, you can actually go up there and lay hands on it. You can tell if it's 3D printed or if it's actually manufactured somewhere. It's very beneficial. Next slide, please. The other way. Office supplies, we asked for a $300 increase. The equipment inspections, a $1,000 increase. Y'all remember we got the new ladder trucks. We have to... have that ladder tested every year and we're also made aware that the cost of the equipment inspections going up some of the stuff that we were paying to have inspected we are able to do in-house now so it should offset a little bit but this is kind of where we feel the budget needs to be at for the bigger projects next button please news and subscriptions we asked for a 1750 increase Last year, we came to you for a new report writing system. It's called ESO. The report writing system that they sold us, and I'm going to say this, and it's nothing against ESO. They sold us a NIFRS program. The state had a requirement February of this year. You had to go from NIFRS to NIRS. When ESO switched from NIFRS to NIRS, completely different program. It did not work for what we needed it to work for. A lot of people are unhappy with them throughout the state, so we chose to call and cancel that. We have talked with First Dew. It's another report writing module. It also does your hydrant checks, your hose testing checks. The big thing that I like about it is the fire inspection module for Mr. Danny. Right now, he's taking a piece of paper and going out and drawing this stuff out and marking stuff. He takes a tablet, goes out here with this fire inspection module. He can mark stuff out. He can take the property appraiser's overhead view, download it to it, and make the marks that he needs. When our guys go out and do a fire pre-plan, If we look on there and it says there was a fire extinguisher there when Mr. Danny did his inspection and it's not there, we can mark it. It doesn't tell Mr. Danny to go back out, but when Mr. Danny comes back in three, six months, he says, hey, when the fire department was here last, that fire extinguisher wasn't there. I need to make sure to go check that. So they interlink a lot, and it's very beneficial for both us and him. When he goes out and does an inspection and we go to the fire, we can pull it up on the on the computer and see what exactly we're going to, what changes they have made if we haven't been in that building in a while. Click the button. Building maintenance. $3,000 increase. We all know the fire station is well beyond its expiration date. The band-aids are being fixed with bigger band-aids. We had to have some plumbing issues taken care of in the bathroom not too long ago. And the guy said he remembered putting that band-aid on that same problem seven or eight years ago. Unfortunately, that's the only thing they can do is keep doing Band-Aids. The low-bid roll-up doors we got years ago, they're not lasting. Going up and down, especially with the wind load coming in and hitting the doors. All the flooring in the station needs to be replaced. Paints needed and general repairs are just increasing. It's an aging building. That building was originally a 20-year building, and we're 15 years past that 20-year threshold. We're 36 years into a 20-year building.

Tell me about it.

Let's just say when I was in kindergarten, they were building that building. And I've been graduating for 21 years. 23 years. I'm sorry, I'm getting older. Fire prevention education, increasing it by $500. This goes to buy a lot of the stuff that we hand out at the Fourth of July, the peanut festival, the Christmas festival, when all the little kids come to the fire station in kindergarten, that type stuff. And unfortunately, the cost of those is increasing. And we're getting more and more kids around here, if y'all haven't realized that. We got all the private schools call us to go out there and do stuff, so we're trying to take care of everybody.

Hit the button, please.

Vehicle repairs and maintenance, we're proposing a $5,000 increase on this. The overall cost of having somebody fix the truck that's qualified just continues to go up. Their insurance is going up, so therefore they have to pass the cost on to us. And also we have the increased number of apparatus in the fleet, and our fleet is getting older. Hit the button, please. Materials and supplies, it was just a small increase, and that should cover any minimal increases that we see. It's not a whole lot of different stuff we buy every year. It's just the stuff we use all the time. Fire hoses, nozzles, foam, that type stuff. Hit the button, please. Vehicle fuel. We all know vehicle fuel prices are going down. That's why we asked for an increase on that. We're in the more calls. It's just a bigger bigger cost to us hit the button please all right this one right here might pay you for a loop keep hitting it keep hitting it keep hitting it keep hitting it one more time hey you're right there so i went back and broke this down off 2024's numbers gainesville fire rescue they're a full-time department with eight stations they ran a little over 32 000 calls they have 19 staffed apparatus If you break that down, that's 1,660 calls per staffed apparatus. Ocala Fire Rescue, full-time department, seven stations. They have 15 staffed apparatus, ran 18,000, almost 19,000 calls. Averages out to 1,254 calls. Your Williston Fire Rescue, part-time department, one station, providing coverage 24-7, operates like a full-time professional agency for a fraction of the cost. 2,057 calls with one staffed apparatus, just to show you how busy we actually are.

Hit the button, please, man. Hit it again.

All right. Williston Fire believes in providing a full-time service at a part-time price. We've continually done this for many years. We have grown accustomed to doing more with less. It's not fun, but we make it happen. all we are asking for is a few items that allow us to continue to serve the citizens of williston and the surrounding areas safely efficiently and professionally one more slide we've requested an increase in funding from levy county for the area that we're contracted to cover if you're not aware the city of williston and cleveland airport's about eight to eight and a half square miles our first due response district with inside levy county's 118 square miles that's weird we got a big area to cover like i said we have gone in there and asked for an increase we should know about that here in the next month or so the trucks have been requesting approved for last year's budget the budget process but weren't able to be purchased in this last budget year like i said we're working with we're working with the attorney we're trying to do everything right to get the right truck the first time the small minimal increases and a few line items are primarily to cover the rising costs we can't control We have asked for some very minor upgrades with some computer programs that we use that long-term makes our jobs easier, makes processes easier for business owners, city staff, and residents, along with saving us time, which allows us to complete other tasks for the same pay. If we can save 10 minutes per report and we're running six calls a day, that's an additional hour that we gain that we can be doing something else rather than sitting there typing a report. One more slide. That's all, folks. Do you have any questions?

We're never going to get the money.

Ma'am?