Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm going bring this uh city council special meeting for budget work session Friday, May 15th at 8:30 a.m. at the beautiful Skyline Center to order. At this time, I'm going to take a roll call. Mayor Prom, are you here? Oh, yeah. Uh, council member Joiner, are you here? Here. Council member Andrews, are you here? Council member L, are you here? Here. Council member Santa, are you here? Here. Council member Clinton Quintana, are you here? But you're here and the chair is here. Everybody's here and accounted for. So, at this time, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager, Miss Becky Hog, Miss from Hulk.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, mayor proton, members of council. Appreciate everybody's time on this Friday morning to talk about the FY27 budget. Before we dive into those details, I do have a couple of introductions that I want to point out some folks in the room who you have not had the opportunity to meet yet. um when I call your name, if you wouldn't mind just uh standing and waving. Um but our new um director of safety and risk management, Jason Eves, I saw him walk in a minute ago. Uh Jason comes to us from Brunswick County um prior. Um so just across the river. Um he's been with us for a little while now, already doing a great job. Heather Cashwell is our uh director of recycling and trash services, solid waste services. Um she uh has a uh great background. Uh we put out the press release not too long ago. Um but she has been the head of solid wasteway services for other municipalities and she comes to us most recently from the state of North Carolina DEEQ. Um and then uh you have not uh seen the announcement yet uh but she was here uh meeting with staff and getting to know folks. So, Robin Slade is our uh director of um uh property and um asset maintenance and um she is going to be starting on June 1st. Um and she comes to us from CMS um where she was over was it 18,000 employees that that you supervise there. So, um uh so as big as that department is, it is um actually a very scaled down version of uh what she uh was used to previously. So, um, uh, fantastic new folks that we have added to, uh, the rest of our wonderful staff, um, as we move the organization forward. So, uh, we have a lot of information that we want to review with you today to, um, to make sure that the information that has been emailed out, um, is understood, that there's no additional questions on it. Um, of course, we want you to stop us along the way and ask questions um,

or ask for clarification. And then further on in the morning, we have um just some open time for discussion to hear from you all about what else is on your mind um and what other questions we can gather answers for you and uh continue the discussion at our next work session. So with that, we want to get started by reviewing some of the prior questions and answers that were submitted um that uh were actually uh posed in our last time together back in March. um but want to again just review those, get them into the record and um make sure that we don't have any questions. Um so we'll wait and get that pulled up. So, if we can actually start with the one that I believe is dated um uh dated the May 12th would be the first one. Yes, that one. Thank you. Okay. Um so, the the first uh was a request to just provide job descriptions for the new positions that were created as part of the reorganization. Believe there's 130 pages of job descriptions uh that were sub submitted to you. So, um, feel free to peruse those at your leisure. If you have any questions about those positions, let us know. We also um wanted to provide the current and proposed living wage pay rates by position that included title, title, current pay, and adjusted pay along with an overview of the pay compression challenges facing the city. Um when you um look at the pay compression um uh part of the reason why we are looking to move the entire uh pay scale um is uh because um if you were to stop at a

certain point then um the positions that are um kind of towards the top of that stopping point um would then potentially be getting increases that are higher than people who are already higher up the pay scale. And a lot of times um that is uh right at the line of demarcation between a supervisor and somebody that they are supervising. And so if you give a bigger raise to the person lower down the scale um and we we ran these scenarios and watched it happen, it would actually pop those um those lower ranking employees above their supervisors. um or it would um bring their pay so close that essentially there's there's no financial acknowledgement or incentive to be uh taking on those additional responsibilities, the additional jobs of management um uh and asking them to do that work. Um, at the same time, we are proposing right now a cap of no more than $15,000 regardless of your pay because we didn't want to apply these same principles to people who are higher up the pay scale, even though it is a much smaller percentage of our staff. If you were to apply a 19 or 20 percent across the board increase, you start applying that to large pay amounts and that becomes kind of an exponentially large pay increase that we didn't feel was necessary or appropriate. And we felt that it would send the wrong message about what we're trying to accomplish here, which is really about driving the dollars down the pay scale to the lowest paid members of staff. Um, so, um, we can certainly get into more detail, but if we could scroll to the end, I just want to show because we did some color coding just to help illustrate if we could go to that appendex. Yep. If we could just go to the top of that. Um, so it's it's a lot of pages here. Um, but but what we did was we wanted to uh to mark um these are actual employees working for the city right

now. These are not um vacant positions. These are folks earning a paycheck every day for the city of Wilmington. um and uh the pay on the left hand side is their current rate of pay. We then um denoted how that compared to AMI and then um on the uh the writer hand set of numbers would be what their pay would increase to if this living wage proposal were to be approved as presented and then what that does to their salary in relation to AMI. Um, so if you can just scroll down and show just all of the red. Um, just keep going until the red stops. So again, these are all, um, these are, um, a couple hundred employees right now who are earning below 60% AMI. Um, it gives their title and the actual rate of pay. Um, and then as you see on the right hand side, the proposed increase um, then pops them up to a minimum of 60%, but they're still below 80% AMI. Um, we then, if you can pause right there, uh, thank you. Uh we then have uh the line of demarcation of right now current pay they're between 60 and 80% AMI and then what the proposed increase would do. Um for a lot of these folks that are um kind of at the lower end right now of between 60 and 60 and 80% AMI um even with this increase they would still stay within that same band. So it is a healthy increase but it's not so large that it actually changes um their position in terms of how it relates to AMI. So, um they would still be below 80% AMI even with this pay increase. Um if uh if this was the only income that they had in their home, they would qualify for um assistance with housing if they were able to get into um any of those properties. So, um so while it's a very positive move, it it is not so notable that it lifts them above the 80% AMI. And we can keep scrolling. Um, so we had another um actually uh hundreds and hundreds of employees who

fall within this band. Again, you've got your firefighters here. You've got your police officers. Um you even have senior firefighters who are still there. Um and then it's not until um uh you are making right now about $50,000 a year that with this increase it would then pop you above um the 80% mark, but you're still below 100% AMI. Um and you understand the math. If you can just scroll through to the bottom just to see the the extent of again these are all um employees working every day for us. A lot of police officers and firefighters on this list. A lot of public works employees um who are also called out in exigent circumstances at all hours of the night to respond to issues that happen across the city. So then it's not until you reach about the $60,000 mark um that they are um already at 80% AMI and but again it keeps them in that same tier for quite a while. Um and um uh I so that's all there for you to look at um at your discretion. I will say um I do want to point out that some of the WNO employees are on this list. We're going to edit it, send it back to you. Um, all of the WNPO employees, their salaries are set by the WNO board. Um, so they actually do need to be pulled out of here. That's a decision that the WNO board makes related to their wages. Just this past year, they asked to be allowed to split off from the city's pay plan to allow the WNO board to make those decisions. Um and so um the WNO board will set those salaries and then the city is responsible for about 17% of that total salary cost. The rest of the cost is split amongst the the other MO board members.

Did you have a question? I was just going to ask, can you just remind us for context the reason that they're in our budget despite the fact that they're not our employees? Sure. Um that is an agreement that we have um where we we carry them um on our health insurance. Um we we pay their salaries. um but they are managed, hired, fired um by the MO. So essentially they're not able to act as their own fiscal agency. We handle all of the financing for them. So they are subject to our personnel handbook. Um but any of the management decisions would fall under um their executive director and their board and that's required by state law and where the agency did. That's correct.

Thanks. So similar um no boards across or no organizations across the state have the same setup where there is a uh local government that handles that uh fiduciary payroll side of things. Um I know we're not here yet in the scrolling um and I mentioned this to you yesterday. Uh I don't know if now is the time to discuss it but I do want to make sure we have time to discuss it today. I I want to look at that $15,000 cap and and look at the impact of lowering that down to 12,000. Yes. Um, appreciate that. Um, Council Member Santaita, um, we did have that conversation yesterday. We do have staff um, beginning to look at that. Um, preliminarily, we are a little concerned about what it does. Um, it's wherever that pinch point is, right? Um, so, um, a little concerned with some of the senior police officers, um, senior firefighters, some of those. So, we want to give that more analysis before we're able to fully speak to it. If it's something that we feel um can comfortably be done without having any unintended consequences, we're certainly happy to support that initiative if that's the will of council. Um we just want to do a little bit more investigation before we can speak to um the the pros or or potential cons of it.

I appreciate that and I want to make sure like we want to do our due diligence in in exploring what the impact of that is. Um and and I think part of the decision that we need to make around that is where that pinch point is and where those concerns are. How many positions does that affect to the number so that if we need to make some exceptions to that, we can talk through that. Sure. Sure. Thanks. Yep. Absolutely.

Um so we can go back up to um to the next question, but again all of that all of those uh titles and pay are there for your uh for your review. Uh the next question is um what happens to the sales tax distribution if a jurisdiction changes its ad valorum rate? Um uh we used um the original um tax amount that we brought to you in March where we thought that we might be as high as 6.26 on our budget proposal. We are of course down to 5.75. Um but we ran this um for scenario purposes. Um, so if you can um scroll down and show I believe there's a Oh, Laura, can you can you speak to this a little bit? Laura did this analysis. She's the the wizard on this front. So, um the number the number two that you see, we put in the um we made all assumptions that their everyone else's current um tax rate will remain the same because we just don't know what they're going to do. And then in changing ours, you can see the Wilmington is highlighted from 28.25 to 34.51. Um number three shows the percent change because sales taxes um divided by the advorum. And so we changed it based on the um current avalorum. Ours would go from 25.7 to 29.7 which is on number three and that's a 4% change. Um and then number four we made the assumption that every month would be the same. Number four we made that every month is the same and we know that sales tax comes in and varies from month to month but in this scenario you just have no idea what's going to happen. So, we made the assumption that the one month that we pulled in January would be the same and extrapolated that outward and we

would have $3.7 million more. Um, the one catch of this is when you change your sales tax, the first 10 months of the prior or the future year is actually based on the prior tax, right? So, you wouldn't see anything that would change until the year after. So it's like you've got to assume two years is when the impact would be felt. So So any change that we made this year that gave us a larger percentage of the pie related to sales tax distribution, we would not see it until the FY28 budget. It essentially runs a year behind.

You'd have two months. It's May I believe that changes. So you'd have two months out of the year um in FY27 that you would see any any changes. Thank you. Uh the next question was what's been the total increase in salaries over time? Um we thought that this was um a uh a great graph to help convey this um because there have been conversations about the increases that council has approved for staff in prior budgets. Certainly want to acknowledge that. Um and so that is the um the the tan um percentage um that you see at the bottom. Um but then we compared that to both CPI the consumer price index which indicates inflation and then we also compared it um in red that is to um what 60% of AMI is locally. Um and so um what this demonstrates is that um we have seen what feels like um and really are very notable adjustments to city salaries over the years. Um but uh despite that those efforts um it has still lagged significantly behind both inflation and then excuse me changes to AMI. So, um really what's that what that is saying is that um as much as we have been trying um with the increases that we've made, they they have just not kept pace um with the experience in um increased cost of living um that everyone is experiencing. The tax rate changes over time. This was also in your budget presentation. Um so everything is there. You've probably had an opportunity to um to look at that. Um but uh we have depending on the year um had um in prior years uh as high as close to about a three cent tax

increase. Um and of course we've had um revaluation every four years. Um that also plays into what we do with tax rate. I have a question about this table. Sure. So in FY25 the tax rate was 42 cents per 100. Yes. In FY26 it was 28.1. So is that are the numbers that we're seeing here that's relative to a revenue neutral? So it's it's it's um it's what was excuse me what was approved in addition to remaining revenue neutral. Okay. Yes. Because I just want to be what I think what this table doesn't really demonstrate is that the tax rate dropped dramatically.

Yes. From 25 to 26. Yes. Yes. and and we can update that to show that additional information kind of combine what was in the budget with this to give a clearer picture because you're exactly right that that revaluation did significantly drop the tax rate based on increased property values um and at this point we're just looking to move um up a bit um but it would still be lower than the FY25 tax rate um by quite a few pennies, right? And I I understand that that the rate isn't what isn't the number that people see on their bill, but I I want to be very clear in how we're talking about rates going up and down versus bills going up and down because those are two different numbers. Very much so. Yes. Thank you.

There was a question about tax abatement programs um that are currently available for Wilmington property owners. And um there is one for the elderly as well as disabled homestead exclusions. There's what's called a circuit breaker tax deferment and then um uh some specific exclusions for disabled veterans. There is a pamphlet that the new Hannover County Tax Department puts out. We included that at the end of this packet for your reference um or to make sure that folks know that it is available. What's the estimated appeals loss for Wilmington's tax base? We we talked about this in um in our uh budget presentation. Um but uh based on the appeals rate that is expected to be about 3.5% of the tax base or that's what was projected but then the actual loss that was experienced is about 5.1%. When you um add that into uh what has happened with natural growth, it essentially deducts from any of that natural growth that you may have experienced in the last year. uh which means that our overall growth rate from last year to this year is expected to only be 79% which is quite a bit lower. We were still relatively slow at a 1 and a half to 2% despite the the narrative that's out there um and despite what we're seeing in our neighboring uh um unincorporated areas of the county as well as our neighboring counties that are seeing much higher rates of growth. This is what's happening within city limits and it is much much smaller. There was a question about the types of parcels that are appealing their revaluations. Uh we looked at um Wilmington as a whole and what the value range was of those properties. um that doesn't necessarily indicate whether

they are uh commercial or residential, but it at least gives you a sense of the total value. Obviously, the higher the value, the higher the potential property tax amount that needs to be paid. Um but also then, um uh it doesn't take much and you start losing significant amounts of valuation. If you have a property valued at above $50 million and they put in an appeal and they're successful, that can really start to put major hits on the um the amount of overall growth that you're then going to see as a net result. Within the business district specifically, 95 properties appealed their revaluation. And again, you've got the dollar values of those properties. And Becky, we're

Becky, I I I want you to go back because you you went by that pretty quickly when you're talking about the the value ranges and and so we're sitting here with the book looking at a percentage, but I I want you to flesh it out so the public can hear where where the the the majority of this percentage is coming from within our community so the public can understand it. We're looking at it, but I I want them to be able to to hear it.

Sure. So, um, going back to the the top chart, um, the value ranges, um, there were 1450 appeals of properties in Wilmington. Um, you are correct that the vast majority are, um, below 500,000 and then, um, uh, somewhat similar, uh, but slightly smaller amounts in the 500 to 1 million and 1 million to 5 million total valuation. And, um, you do have much smaller numbers at the top of the scale. Um, we don't have uh the specific outcomes of each of those appeals right now in terms of um if somebody were to appeal their revaluation on a $400,000 house, was it upheld? Um, was it reduced by 10%, was it reduced by 20%. Um, we we just don't have those details. That's a process that is handled by the the county. This was the information that they provided to us. Uh, we can certainly uh ask for more information as those appeals are finalized. we should be able to get that exact breakdown. We just didn't have it for these purposes.

Just really want to clarify something. Go ahead, Kevin. I would I would I would love for us to to have that information because uh we're getting the emails that that are asking us are we crazy and u what we do know as elected officials and public administrators that a lot of people boast about the taxes that they pay and so they feel like they are the the better citizens of the community based on their uh area code. And um so you know I I I just want to be able to defend what's going on and and what the breakdown is and who's asking for the appeals if when when we're making a decision.

Sure. No problem. I I want to this is related to a statement that you just made which is the vast majority is for properties under 500,000. Just quick back of the napkin math. If you look at properties over a million it's actually about 44%. So that's where the plurality is is is those higher value properties. I just want to make when you combine all of them together. Yeah, thank you for that.

Becky, I I think I asked this before. So when will we know uh about the successful rebal? And then I I think Kevin might have been trying to get at this, but um you know I think if we had it by you know the total that was reduced by property value that might show. I mean, if if all of the less than 500,000 only added up to the amount that was given to one property owner over 50 million, obviously that's that's a difference.

Sure, we're we're happy to ask for that detail. The appeals process is still going on. Um Martha or Laura, can you speak to the deadlines and when that process is finalized? Okay. I I know that the I believe the deadline to appeal was this month.

Yeah. Okay. Um but they're still working through the appeals. It does take some time, but we we will we can also ask for what they have processed thus far to at least get what can be confirmed. Um and then all the others would just show pending. Uh there was a question about a two and three-year phased approach to implementing the living wage um that looked at considerations for inflation cost impacts and prioritization. Um we um we wanted to um just kind of go ahead and look at the the math of this first and the tax rate impact. Um so the full living wage uh as proposed uh costs about $14.2 $2 million, which is equivalent to right at four cents, 4.01 cents. Um, if you were to do about a 75% implementation, so um, so say we went up, um, uh, 75% of the way, leaving 25% to implement the next year, you would be looking at about 3 cents for the current budget. Um, and then a 50% living wage, you'd be looking at about 2 cents. um uh you would then uh need to raise taxes the following year to be able to implement the rest of it. Um basically whether it was the 25% 50% or whatever percentage you ended up at. Uh we think there would be some uh very minor impacts like less than a tenth of a penny for um inflation. Um we obviously don't know exactly what AMI would do in future years. So we would want to make sure that we were achieving whatever that number was next year. uh that we would also need to take into account. Um but um what we don't recommend is splitting it up in terms of well only these positions um because of the interplay of internal equity within uh the entire pay plan and um how you have

um everyone from frontline employees all the way up to department heads in a single department and they really kind of act as a unit. And so if you're only implementing for a certain portion um or certain lower positions again you start end up with that pop over their supervisors that that creates the problems. Um so um our recommendation is to treat it as a package and if you want to implement it as a percentage of the total package certainly that's council's prerogative. Um, but we don't recommend slicing and dicing that package up. Um, and say doing a full implementation for some and either no implementation or a partial implementation for others because of where it starts to mess up that internal equity. So, we wanted to um show the property tax adjustment scenarios for single family residential properties based on a couple of different valuations. Um again this was in uh in your budget presentation. Um but uh what we wanted to uh to show here was full implementation of the 5.75 cents um is what we showed in the budget presentation. But then um if there were reductions in the approved tax rate increase sort of the impact that that would have on those same properties essentially as you go down in the amount of pennies that are added to their tax bill. um what that would do. Um and uh want to be very clear, these are city of Wilmington only rates. Uh we continue to watch New Hor's budget discussions. Right now it does appear like they intend to stay flat with their tax rate. We know that um those discussions are not concluded. Um but that is what we're basing everything on right now. So this would be the only increase that somebody would see in their property tax bill for

FY27 if the county holds with what they are speaking to right now. Um so the full imple implementation of 5.75 cents for a a home valued at $445,000 which is the median value for a single family property in Wilmington. uh the 5.75 cents would add um $21 a month or $256 annually to their tax bill. Right now that tax bill is $1,257 annually or if they have a mortgage and put money into escrow, they're putting $105 a month into escrow for that tax for the city of Wilmington portion of their tax bill. um adding the $21 would bring it up to either 1513 on an annual basis or um $126 a month um compared to the current 105. Um scaling down the tax increase to 5 cents uh would save them $2 a month. Um so that would bring it down to $19 a month or $223 a year. You can see those corresponding totals. If we were to reduce it down 4 cents, it would then be $15 a month, which is $6 less than the full implementation. Um, uh, or $178 annually. For a $250,000 property, the Wilmington portion of their tax bill will go up $12 a month or $144 a year. Um, uh, right now they pay $59 a month or $76 annually. That would change it to $71 a month and $850 annually. If we reduced it to five cents, instead of $12 a month, they would be paying $10 a month. And it would go from $144 annually to

$125. and reducing it to four cents, you would be looking at $8 a month versus 12 and $100 a year versus 144. On the higher end of the scale, an $800,000 property, uh, city of Wilmington only rates, you are looking at $38 a month or $460 a year, $33 a month and $400 a year if you scaled it down to 5 cents or $27 a month and $320 a year if you scaled it down to 4 cents. Um, so the difference uh for even that higher valued home of $800,000, the difference between $5.75 and 4 cents is $11 a month. What is the opinion of probable construction costs estimated for the Pinerove South Greenville Loop Trail section 4 project? Um, that information was shared with you separately. is is m Mike Mike Mike are you able to um broadly talk about that in a way um that um doesn't hurt our ability to go out to bid and get competitive costs.

Get a get a get a microphone so that can hear you. Okay. So, you just wanted a little bit of feedback into the the OPCC of that project before it goes out to bid the the OPCC and um if you could I know we're going to go over the CIP projects before, but if you could just um broadly explain the project um and then also like likely timelines if we were able to procure the funding for it uh when we expect we could actually move forward.

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, that that project is a combination of a few different transportation bond projects. It includes the dual lane roundabout at Pinerove and Greenville Loop Trail. It includes the intersection improvements at Holly Tree and Pine Grove Drive and also the section 4 of the Greenville Loop Trail that connects between those two intersections. And uh currently we are complete with all the design. We are complete with the permitting and the bid package is just about ready to go. The step right now that we're in before we go to construction is utility relocation. We have a URRA, a utility relocation agreement with Duke Energy. right after school gets out um because of a lot of the traffic. I think it's uh June 6th on or about uh Duke Energy will go out and start some of their vegetation removal and relocation of their poles in preparation for the project to get underway. The estimates that they have told us is about 3 months to do that work which will line up well if we get this funding and we can go out to bid rather quickly. We can do that simultaneously. So, the project hopefully can get awarded later this summer, early fall after all that utility uh relocation is complete and and be underway.

Mike, what was the what was the original um cost on that or the projected cost on that roundabout in that location? Do you remember? Sure. Um, off the top of my head, if if we don't include the uh the Greenville Loop Trail that we kind of combined with it, I want to say between the two intersections, it was about $4 million. A lot of that got eaten up with uh utility relocation, property acquisition. Um they they were much higher than expected. And this has and we're not even talking about the Pine Grove uh re relocation of that uh stoplight there on Oleander Drive.

No. So that's that's a separate transportation bond project. Actually two separate projects. One with the Oleander Pine Grove and the McMillan uh realignment.

So these would I can't imagine us doing all of this without doing that because they all tie in to the same general area. And if you're driving up Greenville Loop Road and making a right on Pine Grove or if you're coming down Pine Grove from um Masonville Sound Road or coming up Holly Tree, it all bunches up there and the traffic I think now even on most of the day is is pretty much backed up a lot of the time. So, I don't know what are the what are the projected numbers in regards to traffic and I don't know if somebody in here can tell me that that are coming up Greenville and going up Pine Grove because it's it's it's significant because I know that we're getting seems like we're getting a lot of the traffic that's coming south of um the city that is coming down Masonboro loop road and then turning on to Pine Grove and making their transversing their way through through the community or going south toward um Oander going up toward the Mayfair area. Do we know what the what the numbers are because they're they seem to be pretty considerable.

Yeah, I unfortunately I don't have uh that uh traffic count information I could get it for you. But with regards to your statement about uh them impacting each other, our feasibility study, corridor study we did many, many years ago looked at those improvements out at Oleander in conjunction with the selected improvements off Pine Grove and Greenville Loop and Holly Tree. We evaluated them together because anything we did at one location would impact the other location.

And and I don't I don't want to throw anybody under the bus here, but in regards to the state road, which is Oander Drive, all the major roadways are owned by the state of North Carolina. Um when we were having this discussion about improving the intersection at Pine Grove and Oleander which is a state road and I know Pine Grove is a city road in in in past years when we have u done anything that had anything to do with a major state road. There was usually some participation uh in those costs whether it be stoplight um you know when we did the timing on those or we added lane uh miles or whatever the case may be. Was there any discussion with the state about their road, about their improvement to safety? Because they're always concerned about safety. They had no contribution to this one because we've always had a good partnership with them in the past. Is this just a new day in the state?

Yeah. I mean, do

on the transportation bond projects, any of those where they actually had intended scope and work in the area. I'm thinking for instance like like Dawson Worster Streetscapes. They planned on coming in and doing their uh periodic re millilling and resurfacing. Since we were coming in they we teamed up with them as part of a reimbursement agreement in the area that you're talking about. Other than the the work that was planned, although I don't think it's funded at Oleander and um uh College Road there, there were no planned improvements or suggested funding uh by DOT at the uh the Pinerove and Oleander. We had recently approached them and asked them again and they did tell us that there's no funding available for that.

But they're telling us because this is also driving up the cost. They're telling us when we can work. We can either work in the evening, which of course jams the cost up dramatically, or if we did it during the day, it would obviously reduce some of those costs. This is what I've been told. Is that is that true?

It is true. The way the project is designed and our encroachment agreement with them, they they have identified that area as night work only. When we bid it previously, they were starting to be more open to working with us on some of those, but the the bid that we had at that time was still uh way too high to uh suggest going forward with it. As we put that project out to bid, if we get the funding, we will re-engage in those discussions and see before it goes out to bid to see if we can get the uh the bids coming in. So, no help from DOT, but they are telling us when we can work, which also jacks up the cost. That's correct. Perfect. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike. Sure. Thank you.

Next question is, what are the MUN course rates and programs? Um, and then there was also a question about providing a breakdown of non-resident municipal golfers and punch card holders. I can scale down just a little bit. Oh, yep. It's okay. Uh, yeah, if you want to go down to the appendix first. So, um, this is all of the med rate information for 2026. Um, I won't go over it in detail. Just wanted to point out that it is there. And then if we can scroll up. Sorry, Dylan. You're doing a great job. Okay. Okay. And then the breakdown of non-resident uh versus resident golfers. Uh in FY25 there were um 63,310 rounds of golf played. That's a lot of rounds. Um about 27,000 paid the full greens fee. About 26,000 25,000 and change were local res excuse me residing in um either New Hover or one of our neighboring counties. and then about 1,200 were non-local that resided outside of that area. In FY25, about 13,800 rounds were played by discount card holders. 13,000 of those were city Wilming Wilmington residents and 803 were non-residents and then there were about 22,500 9hole rounds and again you see the breakdown. So vast majority are city of Wilmington residents um or coming from the close counties to us. Uh we talked

about um our rates. We also provided the rates of surrounding golf courses. Um uh I'll just say it's there. We won't make you scroll all the way back down. Oh, you're there. Um uh we did pull um from uh some of the the neighboring courses. So again, I'm able to compare those rates um depending on your level of interest in this topic. Um I I think it's uh safe to say that we are comparable if not even a little bit low on some of our rates compared to what some others are charging. Becky in in respect to the golf course. I mean I would imagine this is the one of the highest played courses. Absolutely.

I know in this area but possibly in the state of North Carolina in regards to 60ome thousand. And yet we're always told please keep the you know the rates down at those numbers. And I guess I'd like to have a a better understanding from the um from David Donovan who runs the course as well as not so much the committee there but but really to maintain this course at what people are asking us to maintain it at costs money. I don't know what you if if everybody's seen the price of fertilizer lately or stuff of that nature and gas and fuel and maintaining it. I know that these councils have supported the irrigation systems. Uh we redid the um the greens I think the first time in over a hundred year I would be 100 years this year obviously uh we we redid the um clubhouse and now we're about to do a cart barn. Mhm.

These things cost money and when you look at other courses around us, even if they're private or semi semi-private, it it's cost to play and I just want to make sure I want to be fair and I want to try to keep it as low as possible, but you also have got to make certain that you're putting money into this because the amount of play 63,000 rounds and I think on an average course is about a good course would probably be about 35,000 rounds. So, we're doubling that. Um, we're probably probably one of the most profitable public courses maybe in the country. And it's a good thing. I mean, it's a jewel, don't get me wrong, is a Donna Ross original. For those of you do not know who Donna Ross is, he's like, it's a big deal.

Big deal. He's like the guy that the architect uh the big architect Frank Floyd, right? but um in in architecture, but this is this to me I I know that the committee there always likes to try to keep the rates down, but we've got to make certain that we're keeping enough or we're adjusting it enough to make sure that we're maintaining that course at some level that people expect. And if they don't understand that, I'm sorry, but this is what we get paid to do is to make the tough decision. 63,000 rounds. We can't do it on shoestrings.

That's correct. Um great point with that, mayor. And we will go over the fee schedule later. Uh but this budget does include a proposed increase of $2 a round to help offset the costs. Um, essentially the the revenues that were coming in at the current rate were not quite covering all of the operational needs of the course as well as being able to um properly fund some of the capital investment that we know needs to be made to keep the course in good working order. So, there is a small increase proposed that brings us back into balance.

Does that tie also end with Inland Greens with the nine-hole course? Are these tied together? So there's there's they're separate fees. Um and there is no proposed change to the inland greens. Okay. And that number keeps do we know what that number is? The the number of rounds um for inland greens. Um I'm seeing a Amy, do you can you speak to rounds?

No, but I we'll have it for you in just a few minutes. Um, but we did increase the rates for inland greens FY26 last year. Yes. The current the current year was an increase. Amy, do we know what that number is as to what what that play I know it seems like that place is getting a lot more play than we anticipated. I think it might be in the fee schedule portion of your agenda packet. I'm not sure because I think that there's a comparison of recreation fees current and proposed. Um, but if not, it'll take me just a few seconds to get it. And the golf course advisory committee does not oversee that particular.

No. No. So Inland Greens um par 3 9-hole golf course is a recreation facility and it is part of the parks and recreation budget independent of the municipal golf course enterprise fund. Do we use some of the assets of the golf course of the MUN to help offset some of the maintenance cost at at that course? Just I want to be clear for some of the discussions that I'm

No, we do not. There is no sharing of resources. When Inland Greens was first developed, there was some consideration and interest from then city council of sharing of resources. So for the first year there was some sharing and the next year that was broken off and since then they've been completely independent from one another.

Good. And then the last I think there was the one last piece of the improvement to the course was the cart barn. Where are we on the cart barn? the cart barn, the uh uh design consultant is preparing the um construction bid package for advertisement. We expect to have that very soon. Now, we asked them to change the scope of the design. You may remember, but for the benefit of other council members who were not here at the time, that cart barn was originally part of a 2016 parks bomb project that renovated the clubhouse. And due to budgetary limitations, we value engineered the building of the cart barn out. And so when we brought that project back this year, we asked the designer to add the electricity component to be able to switch over to an electric golf cart fleet. Previously, the design just had conduit going to the cart barn. Now it will be ready for electricity. So that added a little bit of time to the design, but we expect to get the bid package any day from the consultant now. And then the transfer or the the changing over from gas to electric carts would take place over a a phased in period.

So um is that is that part of the replacement cost that is within the fund balance? How does that how how are we doing that?

The lease for the golf cart fleece was renewed this past year. It's a five-year lease. However, the terms of the lease allow us to trade in the fleet early and switch them over to electronic carts. It will um provide for an increase in the cost of the lease, but over time and because of the other benefits of electricity over gas powered sustainability preference by um the the riders, you know, we think that that will will pay off. Thank you.

Sure. And Laura did bring me up the fee schedule, but I didn't bring my glasses up, so I'll give the woman a glass. Thank you. Laura, are you able to speak briefly to that feed schedule? Um, mayor, could you Which exact Well, if I want if I want to take a cart, give me the the adjustment that we're making for the cart and for the fee. And then if I want to walk it, what is that? I know they're two separate I think they're two separate fees. I would imagine if you're charging me to walk at the same price you're charging me to ride a card, I'm taking the car.

I don't I can answer the MUN course fees. I thought you were talking about the Inland Greens. Well, I like that too because that that I'm hearing a lot from the people in Inland Greens, you know. Okay. So, um presently FY26 fees for a local uh for 18 holes on a weekday with a cart, it's $48. And with um uh and so weekdays with a cart is uh $48. Weekends is 36. Weekends is 36. No,

I think that this was inverted. It was inverted. It's It's 36 when you're walking. Yeah. Thank you. It's 36 to walk it. It's it's it's right here up on the screen. It's $33 to walk on a weekday. And it's um $36 to walk on a weekend. And then the cart charges 48 and 48. Yeah. And then the c the cart charges, if you can scroll down just a touch, Dylan, please. So then um it is $15 added to that to rent a cart.

And can I ask a question? Um, you had mentioned earlier in the in the slides where you were talking about who was local, you were talking about people from surrounding counties. Is this just city of Wilmington, people who reside in the city of Wilmington?

No. So, um, a few years ago, uh, as a marketing tactic and to replicate the way other local courses charged, the city changed MUN rates from a city resident, non-city resident to a local, non-local. And the thought process behind that again was from a marketing standpoint to attract more golfers. This was before we had 60 plus thousand rounds a year. though in the 3count area you paid a lower rate than outside of the area and part of the justification in addition to marketing was that because um it is an enterprise fund. So while from time to time there have been um grants or loans from the general fund the day-to-day operations were an enterprise fund so it wasn't being born on the property tax payer so we felt that that was justified. I will say that the discount cards that are available for purchase are city resident and non- city resident and the vast majority of those I think which demonstrated in some of the data that the city manager was showing you before the vast majority of purchasers of discount rates are city residents and that is a significant savings of them. I think we sell about a thousand city resident discount cards a year. So, we can entertain going back to the regular daily greens fee as a city non-resident as well. I think it seems to me like we're not having problems attracting golfers. It's, you know, so the marketing aspect of it I don't think is as important anymore. And it seems like we're competitive with, you know, courses that are outside of the city. Um, I I I think some of the challenge that came up in our budget discussions

surrounding that was if you have a large group of golfers come in and you're trying to get them out onto the course, having to check an ID and then be able to make a determination about a Wilmington address and whether it is actually within city limits or outside of city limits was creating a a bit of a nightmare to be able to smoothly get people through that registration process and and get out. And so I think that that was

that was that was certainly a fact. That has been a factor historically trying to debate somebody at a counter when there's 10 people in line whether well my driver's license says I live in Wilmington and you're telling me that I'm not a Wilmington resident. It um didn't create the um smoothest customer service environment. But I think, you know, that's historically and certainly as the golf course has evolved and, you know, different population maybe is more prevalent as players out there, there's um it's reasonable to to relook at that.

Yeah. I mean, I I think even if we just took whoever had Wilmington on their license, it would be, you know, I'm gonna send you over to the golf course advisory commission. You can

All right. But but no no I mean the great thing is that we are getting a significant amount of play. We have to maintain the course at some level of service that is good. Understanding that this is a very popular track and I just don't I want don't want to lose sight of the fact that we don't want to wear it out because we want to try to keep the lights rates as low as possible and we want to keep them as low as possible to get for for it's it's a public amenity which I think is good for everybody but you have to pay for it. I just want to make sure that we're just ahead of that and not catching up like we have in the past because we didn't put the irrigation system in there. We didn't replace the greens. We didn't do the work for years and then all of a sudden it piled up to the point where oh my goodness, we have to do all these things now or we're going to ruin the course or we're going to lose it.

Yeah, I would say operationally we're we're doing pretty well in terms of expenditures and revenues. It's the necessary ability to build up towards capital projects is the reason in my opinion the reason to keep looking at raising rates. Um we did have a significant renovation in 2014, but that's 12 years ago. Um we're recommending that we do a new master plan to see what the next major renovation would be. Um, I'll also just share for the benefit of council members who were not here before, we're guiding our recommendations based on a revenue study that was completed in 2020 um and did recommend more frequent but smaller year-to-year increases to fees. And so we have which was adopted by council and we've tried to follow that logic. And so since the 2014 renovation, um, we've increased fees since FY 2015 six times. Four of those six times have been in the last four years. So 23, 24, 25, 26 rates were raised with 26 just being a cart rate, but still an increase because of the majority of players um, use carts. Um, I think we didn't begin in 2122 immediately following the study because of COVID. But again, 23, 24, 25, 26, um, rates have been increased. Um, but yeah, great points. I think going forward, it's it's necessary to take a look at this every year in order to specifically build up that capital balance.

So, a way to maybe offset some of those rates, and I'm sure y'all have evaluated this, is inside the clubhouse in regards to concessions and the things and the wares that you sell. I don't know what that number is, but I would imagine just like any other golf course, you know, in in the area around the country, you you you know, you're going to receive a certain amount of revenue from within that clubhouse, whether it be golf shoes, shirts, hats, drinks, beer, whatever it may be. Do we look at that number when we're calculating what we're going to have to put into the course?

We do. We we track that on a monthly basis and on an annual basis. And one of the great things about the completion of the clubhouse renovation was that just the reconfiguration of that allowed for a larger pro shop, increased um retail space. And so we've seen year-over-year increase of retail sales and food and beverage sales since that cart bar, excuse me, clubhouse renovation. And I think there was a discussion at one time about uh I know that we didn't want to give up the beer sales because that's a big that's a big I mean if you play golf you drink beers from time to time if you drink but um we were talking about I know there was a discussion about creating some sort of a kind of a restaurant inside the clubhouse which I think was niched. I think some of the some of the um pipes and things that were were put in there, but was there ever talk about like a food truck going there or and and if we would charge them a number if if they would go park there for the day because I mean there's many rounds of golf we get out. I would imagine somebody wants a hot dog, a hamburger, what have you

there? So, we do sell prepackaged snacks in in the clubhouse. There is already the ability for food trucks to come and serve. There's a fee within our fee schedule that allows that. They're welcome to come out there. Um, it's a popular amenity during tournaments. During the clubhouse renovation, there was a roughen for a fullervice restaurant. It didn't really pencil out for us to um complete that. Um, from time to time, we have talked about an RFP um to have somebody come in and run a restaurant there. It's usually a loss leader at private clubs. So, we haven't really in in formal conversations been able to attract that lease to come in there and do that, but we'd love for that to happen uh in the future. It's just got to be profitable for both the lease and the city.

I would imagine that the city of Lington would not be running a restaurant. We we do not want some other municipalities do. I'm out of the food and beverage concessions operation. I don't want to get back into it. For those who have ever run a restaurant, it is a challenging environment to say the least.

Let me let me just chime in and and tell you how I feel or what I'm hearing. Uh we are putting way more thought into the uh feelings of golfers than we are into the feelings of taxpayers in our community. Uh, and I'm a little troubled by that because I feel $2 on the rates of people who choose to play golf. I had a really good golf course and I'm not there yet. I'm not playing golf. Um, maybe in my free time I'll pick it up. I kind of doubt it. But you know the willingness of golfers to go to MUN and play golf is um some freedom that they have. They choose to do it. If it if the uh fee schedule increase was too much for them, they could choose not to go. But property taxpayers in our community don't have that luxury. So, I want to see us put more emphasis on what we can do to uh benefit the property taxpayers in our community. And I'm certain that the people who play golf, uh they're willing to play more if they're going to get more. Same as same as property taxpayers, same as as the citizens of our community. They're they're willing to pay more if they're going to get more. And so I just want to make sure we're focused on delivering and and and being mindful of of what we're putting before our citizens

because I'm hearing a lot. I agree with that. I think we should question every single thing in the budget. That's what we're here to do and that's what we're going to do. Thank you. Before I leave, there are 38,000 rounds a year at Inland Greens. Wow. Thanks, Amy. Amazing.

Okay. Final question from this round um was related to information on firstte. Um that uh is a program that does receive some grant funding from the city. They currently have a $12,000 a year grant through our human services grant program. Uh they have a six-year building lease at our golf course where rent is a dollar a year, but they're responsible for all utilities and um they have a practice facility that expires a little bit later this year. That facility is maintained by our crews and they contribute over $51,000 annually to help support maintenance at that facility. Okay, that is that round of uh questions. Um we can dive right into the next set. Um and then u mayor perhaps around 10 o'clock we can take a a brief break. So Dylan, we'd be looking for the May 14th responses. Thank you very much. Um, so these are questions that have been submitted either during the budget presentation that was at council's meeting on May 4th or some of the questions. Um, we believe we've captured all of them. There may be a few more that have trickled in that are going to come through on other documents, but other questions that council members have asked since then. Um so again just want to run through these. Um so there was another question about the historical golf rates. Uh we've talked a lot about golf. Uh if that is there in appendix A if you want to take a look at the historical rate adjustments the amount um dedicated to

the capital project or CIP um uh what is the amount dedicated to it and how does that impact CIP capacity? So in this budget we have a proposed tax increase of 041 cents as part of the 5.75 that would be dedicated to our debt service fund. That funding allows us to complete approved projects that require additional funding. These are the large projects that we take on the large capital projects. Um and the overall debt service fund is currently supported by 5.77 cents of our current 28.25 25 cent tax rate. And um essentially what this allows us to do is to generate the cash um to be able to then take on debt and then be able to fund that debt service model uh to be able to take on very very large projects that we don't have cash on hand to be able to pay for outright. Um if the 041 cents is added to the current 5.77 it would bring our adjusted rate up to 6.18 cents going toward that. Um so um there was a question about well would we be able to reduce the 41 pennies in this uh proposal and take funding out of our fund balance to be able to uh to pay for projects. Um the issue with doing that is the money in your savings account, those are one-time dollars. Um and so um the 041 pennies generates about $1.5 million, but it um it generates it on an annual ongoing basis. So we would have those dollars feeding into the model in FY27 as well as every year thereafter. So, if you did not have the additional

41 pennies, you took the $1.5 million out of fund balance, you really wouldn't be able to feed it into the model beyond having essentially that that one year of payment, that $1.5 million of spending power, but then your fund balance is lower and you have no ongoing cash revenue coming in to be able to continue to feed that model and make those payments. Um so um that is not something that um would allow us to be able to complete the capital projects in our current CIP plan that is uh fund or that is uh set for the next two years all these projects these infrastructure projects that we've been talking to you about that would not allow us to generate the needed revenue to be able to complete the projects. So we wish it would um but unfortunately that's not how the debt model works. Well, brings me to this and I don't know if we have done that. Um, I would hope that we we will do it if we have not done it. My bigger the big numbers that I'm beginning to really see and have been seeing for the last probably 10 years is when we're having to replace sections of the Riverwalk.

Yes,

we've got a $12 million project I think is out uh we're trying to get a grant right now right in front of the Coast Guard dock which is city purchase which which we should have. We just made a a significant um completion of of repair in front of Elijah's and I don't know what the overall cost from that was. We're in the back right now behind um Pier 33 replacing that whole sidewalk section. Not that's in in the millions. And that river is obviously, you know, when it comes through here, it's tearing up that that bulkhead situation pretty significantly. So when we're having to replace it, it's 12 million, it's 5 million, it's 10 million. These are pretty significant numbers for a for a piece of infrastructure that supports the entire community, the entire region is one of the most popular now tourist uh destinations in the area. Uh and when the city made this decision many many years ago, it was made to try to attract people to downtown Wilmington, which I think we've done a heck of a job doing. I think if we haven't done an evaluation on that and at one time we were talking as a council years ago about the possibility of setting money aside almost like a homeowners association so when these replacement cost were necessary we would have a fund we could go into and and make those repairs on a much quicker timeline than what we're currently doing. Plus, it's holding us up on the on the on the finishing of the park behind the federal building and completing a park assessment and doing a park there at the Coast Guard property. So, what what is the case there? Because those numbers are dramatic, not including what we're going to have to do with roads or road resurfacing and all the things we have to do with storm water, which I know we have a fee for, but what are we doing about that?

Sure. Great question. The um the issue that we have right now is that there is not an extra million or two million sitting around in the current proposed budget or the current budget to be able to set aside into a fund like that for future use. So we would need to be in a position where we were bringing in an even greater amount of revenue that we were then able to dedicate to a fund like that. Um, we believe based on the current condition of the riverw walk that we are good for the current CIP with what we currently have planned, the bulkhead work that has recently been done, the additional bulkhead work um that we are pursuing the grant for. Um, but in the future CIP, the next round of CIP funding, we fully expect that that is going to be competing and will take extremely high priority for CIP dollars to continue to maintain it because to your point, the river always wins. And so, uh, we have to be continuing to invest in it to make sure that it is maintained to its current condition, if not actually improved. I know there's some desire to even extend it and and that only gets more and more uh expensive. Um so you would be looking at needing to um to either um increase from existing revenue sources or look to alternative revenue sources to be able to generate the kind of notable dollars that you're talking about to be able to uh take that pressure off of it competing for other needs within the budget. Um we have talked about a prepared food and beverage sales tax um at times before uh the Riverwalk if written in the appropriate way to be able to support tourism uses within the city. Um I fully expect that the Riverwalk would qualify for use of that

type of funding because it is a notable tourist draw. Um it is one of the best things that we're known for in terms of in our downtown area that brings residents. Um and a prepared food and beverage sales tax um is a separate amount of dedicated funding that would only be used for tourism related purposes that would relieve the general fund from needing to support those types of operations. That is something that takes general assembly approval. It would take um county agreement. It is a voter referendum. So, there are multiple steps that are required in order to be able to even have the potential of an additional funding source like that. But multiple other cities across North Carolina do have a prepared food and beverage sales tax that is able to be used for tourism related purposes. And um and it is a way to help capture some of the dollars that are being spent by tourists in our community whereas they are not otherwise paying property taxes um or contributing to uh the the things that they enjoy. Um they are able to do so. And um and right now our room occupancy tax can only be used on the convention center. Very very tight restrictions on what the city can use it for. So we are not able to take any of that revenue and use it outside of the very few dedicated purposes that the RO tax allows. Um but short of um another mechanism like that, I know we have invested tens of millions of dollars with the general fund to develop and maintain this infrastructure to date that has been competing with police and fire and everything else that we also need to do. um it will continue to require that if we don't find some other

and this is for the general public and I think this is a little bit of the unfairness. We are one of the few cities in the state that give our room occupancy tax to other cities. Think about that. 50% of the beach reourishment money comes from the hotels in the city of Wilmington. So we help in maintaining that infrastructure at Cury Carolina and Rice Beach and and and and kudos to them. It's a very important economic driver for development, economic development in our community. We, on the other hand, on the river side, on the downtown side, have primarily have taken this on from the taxpayers. And that's where where everybody's benefiting from this, but we the taxpayers of the community are having to pay for it. And there's and there's the injustice to it. And as we have helped our brethrens on the beaches to maintain their infrastructure, there should be some sort of a mechanism to help us maintain our infrastructure that is driving a lot of tourism to downtown Wilmington. That was one of the reasons that the city uh forefathers decided to make this decision is to build this riverwalk for tourist attraction for downtown Wilmington. And yet the taxpayers of the community are the ones fitting the entire bill, which I think is grossly unfair. And I think we just need at some point in time to have a much broader discussion as to other funding mechanisms to maintain this infrastructure because this river as as as the manager alluded to is not going to stop. It's it's a it's that river moves through there at about four knots. That's a pretty significant clip and it just rips everything in its path. In addition with whatever they're going to do with the memorial bridge, if there is dredging that's going to come north of the bridge for any kind of industry that may take place in the north, we don't have we even looked at those numbers because as they go deeper, your

your pilings go, but so so deep. How does that impact the entire riverwalk and who would help us in the event that that happens? is I think we need to look at some long-term thought on this because I think the state is moving very fast on this bridge which probably sounds like it's going to be told hope not but I believe it will be and then the mechanism in place to to possibly dredge north even even with this with with what they have done south of the memorial in stopping that dredging operation right now but even going north at 38T let's just say if it went to 42 feet which I think there's a permit to do that what does it do to Riverwalk.

Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons why we had the meeting that we did have with the US Army Corps of Engineers ahead of the resolution the council adopted because that is a concern. And even if the dredging stops south of the bridge, there are still going to be impacts north of the bridge because increasing the depth of that channel will increase the flow of the water, right? And and that will impact speed and rates and all those other sorts of things. So we we are very cognizant of that and that was one of the conversations that we had around the federal government looking to participate to to to support us. One of the one of the drivers behind the EDA grant for the the bulkhead work is again this was a problem that the US Coast Guard didn't address candidly and gifted the city of Wilmington. And so that's one of the reasons why we believe we're in a good position in pursuing that and we're continuing to explore those other mechanisms with the core of engineers and and the federal government as we as we move through this, but it is something we're absolutely mindful of. And Dennis, I was I think we talked about this at some point in time. There's been some discussion about the amount of um recreational traffic that's coming up the river now. uh and more voters, more people coming up this way to come dine and go out into the city of Wilmington downtown. I know that that our downtown, our waterfront, especially where you can dock, um we pretty much have not really spent a lot of time and effort in in um materializing that, making that a money maker for us. Is there a way? Have y'all looked at that possibility of monetizing the riverfront as a as an opportunity for people to come dock, pay a fee, and so it could help offset some of those costs? A

absolutely. So, we do see that as an ongoing revenue source. We're working now through the parking basically group to to do that because we feel like it's parking of a different nature. And the other thing that we like about that is it gives people another opportunity to come here without getting in a car. So again, if we can keep people off the roads and get them here other ways, you know, bus, transit, boats, that that all that helps, you know, the congestion and and safety as well. So, we're very interested in in expanding and taking advantage and monetizing our repairing rights.

And those repairing rights, does the city own most of those repairing rights? Because I I I've see some private sector folks that are tied to to the Riverwalk. I don't know. Do they own the site? who owns the dagger there. There are there are gaps where there is private ownership. And so part of this is stitching that together and being able to to identify what's ours, what's somebody else's, are there ways for us to cooperate to maximize things to the benefit of both parties. So all of those things are things that we're exploring.

Okay. And then Becky, I want to ask on the restructuring of the downtown, I know you folks are creating your own downtown team down here. Would the river walk fall under them or is the riverwalk going to still fall under engineering as a separate entity? How did where where does that fall into the maintenance of of our downtown infrastructure? So, property and asset maintenance will be responsible for maintaining the riverwalk. Okay, understood. Projects will be done by Very good. Cassidy, I have two points. Uh, first of all, mayor, thank you for highlighting that when it comes to the room occupancy tax, we are good neighbors to the beach towns. Absolutely.

Thank you for highlighting that. Um, second, I want to go back to the prepared food and beverage tax as a potential option. Um, I understand that that is a process that is probably pretty lengthy. Is that something that is reasonable for us to pursue and have in place before we get to the next round for CIP or is that something that we would have to consider even further into the future?

Because we have two years before the next CIP would begin. I think that is a very reasonable timeline to be um uh pursuing potential agreement from our neighbors and then working with the general assembly to um see if we can convince them to grant us that permission to put that on a a ballot. Um and then it would just be which which ballot makes the most sense if that approval was granted. you want to give ample opportunity for an information campaign so that people are informed about what they're being asked

to vote on. Um, so I think ideally a 12-month timeline is probably about the tightest that you could ever do that and that's if you kind of already have everybody singing from the same sheet of music. Um, looking to then engage in Raleigh. Um, I think an 18month is probably a bit more realistic. Uh but in any event, that puts us prior to the beginning of our next um CIP.

Yeah, that is I think that's something that I'd like us to start to consider and and make some early moves to see what that would look like because as it's been pointed out, so much use in downtown is by people who don't live in Wilmington. And I think it is totally fair and appropriate for the people taking advantage of those services also contribute to the cost of those services and that doesn't continue to fall on the backs of property taxpayers. Thanks. Who already has that in North Carolina? Do we know some example communities? Um, Charlotte,

uh, Meckllinburgg County has it. Um, so it's at a county level. So Meckllinmberg County has it. Um, Wake has it. Uh Dare County has it. Uh Cumberland County has it. Hillsboro has it. Do we know places where it failed on the ballot or has it been pretty well? It it's been a number of years, I think, since one has been put forward. Oh, a couple of other counties as well. Um so I I I couldn't tell you the last time one was added. A lot of them have been in place

for a long time. Um the the typical um math that you see is is that you know as much as um you know 30% of um all the revenue generated and and in a community like Wilmington with just how many tourists we have coming in on an annual basis being such a tourist destination I would expect that percentage to actually be quite a bit higher here are the ones dining out in your restaurants. Um and it's um that and then potentially um additional regular sales tax. Those are really kind of the only two mechanisms to potentially capture some of those dollars being spent by non-residents

that that funding would go that tax money would go to the county and then be distributed the same as the sales tax. No, there there are there are different distribution models that everyone who is the recipient of needs to come into agreement on how they would like to see it distributed. So, um you are able to um to use it based on um population distribution. You are able to distribute it based on um on your sales tax distribution. Like there's a couple of different ways um that are all laid out by state law. Um, I think population distribution would certainly be the one that I'd be advocating for. Um, but then there can be potentially sometimes little like additional side agreements like okay, your population plus 10% or something to kind of sweeten the pot a little bit um since there is such population disparity uh in a community like New Hover County between the different municipalities. But um what's really important um aside from distribution is what are the allowed uses that are written into the local bill that outline what it can and cannot be used for. And that's really what has tied our hands with the RO tax where it can only be used for convention center and related purposes in Wilmington. Um whereas our other neighbors don't have those same restrictions. um looking at like the Meckllinmberg County language where um really anything that you could tie to, you know, using it for special events. Um you could use it for community centers that had programming that um in theory might be attracting people from outside the county. Um so your uh your signature parks uh that hold your special events. So, Greenfield Lake, Live Oak Bank Pavilion, the Riverwalk, uh being such a a high uh tourism destination, um even some beautifification efforts. Um so, there's

there's there's a lot of um ability to really offset a lot of things in our general fund with that revenue. And um you know, if somebody didn't want to pay it, it's typically 1%. So, on a $100 bill, you would pay an extra dollar. um if somebody didn't want to pay it, you know, they wouldn't purchase something that was a prepared food or beverage. So, it is optional, which tends to make it more palatable than um some of the other levers that we have. So, what type of funding does the city have for parks maintenance? Um we have a presentation a little bit later so we will um get to that um further in our conversation this morning. And then how have actual sales tax revenues compared to budgeted projections in recent years and what trends or variances have emerged over that period? Um as we've mentioned sales tax is difficult to forecast because there are um fluctuations that can be impossible to predict. Um but um in FY23 we did see a higher thanex expected growth rate which was um uh see we had um assumed an 8% increase in sales tax revenue. Um but um if you can scroll down to the I believe there's a chart. Laura, do you want to talk through this? I know you put this information together. Happy to. um during COVID which was FY21 and 22 you can see that um every and this was experienced everywhere. Um it was shocking that we were getting the sales tax that we were getting over the course of um the pandemic but we also it was contributed by the federal stimulus that also went in there which was one time it was people at home doing home

repairs. Um there were just it it was a shock across the the nation really. um we knew that that growth rate could not continue and so it would started to slow down in FY23. Um but it was really FY24 when we saw the growth change and unfortunately we had budgeted um that grow that that change in growth happened after the adopted budget. Um, as you may recall, we are still getting sales tax into September um of the of the current year or for the year that's prior. And so we when we are doing the adopted budget even today, we only have about six months. And so it happened around the eighth month of that month or of that year and we only got a 2% where we built in an 8%. And you can see that we did not get the budget that we thought. So we are going off of um FY25 which was a flat rate. You can see we came in really close to that because we just kept it flat. FY26 we are starting to see the change but we don't really have any trend history after um COVID and what is really going to be the new normal and we we've been saying what's the new normal for quite some time and it doesn't seem to want to give us a normal. It's starting to look like we are going to have that normal start. Um, and I'm hoping that we do. Uh, but we have some extenduating circumstances again with the the unrest in the Middle East and um the tariffs that are going on. And so we are we are still cautious on what we're going to get taken. So, we're hoping that the new normal may give us um something similar to FY19 and prior where we were always about two to 3% higher than what the state is because of

the tourists. Um we could always kind of count on that. We can't count on that yet because we don't have any trends that we can look to yet. Um so, we're doing our best based on monthtomonth as we're looking at the past maybe year and a half, maybe 18 months. that's what we're basing it off of. Um, and then what we kind of know in the economy. Um, the previous administration always told me that it was like throwing a dart on a dart board, but I would sit there for months and do analysis and I still doing that because this is the one thing that will make or break the budget. And so we're trying our best to give you the best numbers that we have.

Okay. Is there any way and I would like to see this before uh I take a final vote. Can we extrapulate from our overall footprint the amount of entities that do not pay taxes, community college, the city, the schools, the churches, nonprofits that do not pay within the small geographic area that makes up the city within 52 square miles. I'd like to have an idea is because if we're putting this all on the back of the property taxpayer, I want to know what is the percentage of the of the overall land mass of the community that is actually paying the taxes because I because I know that when I talk to my my friends in Durm or um Winston Salem, they have entities there that also contribute to the overall health of the city in different ways. maybe it be Duke University or Wake Forest or Carolina. And it's interesting to see some of the parallels. I mean, we have a great university. I'm strong support. I hope they get the medical school. Um, but I also want to just take a look at it's a significant landmass that it's a huge economic driver for our community in regards to buying goods and services and renting properties and what have you. But also there's a significant amount of properties that are within the footprint of the city that do not pay taxes. And I think we just need to have a very I have to be sensitive to all parties and I just want to make I want to understand that because it's not as so much in the unincorporated areas or at the beaches. It's primarily in the city and I just need to see what what it looks like. You can color code it. You can say the ones in red are paying taxes, the ones in blue are not paying taxes. Whatever the heck you want.

Sure. But make it easy for us. And I think you should be able to get that from our GIS system. We should. Yeah. Easily. Yep. We will we will get to work on that. And mayor, for the benefit of the new council members, you can see that FY23 and FY24 have the refunds. Those can um entities who do not pay sales tax have three years to send their data to um the state and the state will reimburse them with refunds. And so every year um we are trying to figure out how much refunds we'll have that will take off of the sales tax we collect and there's just there's no pattern especially after p the pandemic.

So one other question and I've never really gotten a straight answer about this. Years ago the county passed a quarter cent sales tax was a referendum that the city very supported for them because at the time they were going to sell early gardens. They're going to do all these things because they raised property tax. So there was a referendum put on the ballot for a quarter cent sales tax that would go directly to the to the county and then they would, you know, maybe help us out a little bit here and there. They did come down on the collection of property tax revenue because I know we use the county system to do that on that quarter cent sales tax which generates a significant amount of money. I think it's over 10 million, maybe 15 million now, maybe 20 million. Do they get to keep all of it or is that in the in in the distribution of the sales tax revenue? I'd like to have a better idea of that quarter cent sales tax what that number is. It did pass. Yes.

We'll have to dig into that. Yeah. This this this was when um Jason Thompson was on on on the county commissions. I remember this debate. And remember, um, I remember that there was one more reason that was

the transportation one failed. This was a this was a quarter cent sales tax. And I want to say I'm going back now maybe 10, 15 years. But I just want to know what the quarter that quarter that they now get in perpetuity. What does that generate? And does that go directly to them or is it taken out from the the tax the sales tax distribution? Follow me? I have to have a better understanding. That's a significant number that they get specifically that goes into their coffers, which is totally different. We supported them on that at the time because of the needs. They didn't want to raise property taxes, got it. They wanted to go up on the on the on the sales tax and they did. Um, so I just wanted I just because when I look at the precincts that took that over the top, it was the precincts in the city. And I just just always been curious about that number and where does that where does that money go? I know it goes into the county conference, but is it any way, shape, or form distributed in any other way? Never been asked by anybody in this community. I just want to know.

We're happy to look into it.

Uh, how much funding was budgeted in FY26 versus 27 for nonprofit programming? We have earmarked in the FY27 budget $783,466. that represents a 3% increase over FY26. Um, and in FY26, um, that was the last year of two-year contracts for the agencies that received funding, uh, which was what drove us to have the conversations with council previously about the, um, RFP process that we will be embarking on this fall. We will be bringing all of those RFPs to council for your approval prior to them going out to the community. Um and then um the responses will go through CRACK. They will make recommendations and then those recommendations will go to council for your final approval. Um so um so right now in the FY27 budget, it's a slug of money. Um and that is what we would be looking to distribute. It would be council's prerogative if you wanted to um use all of that money. if you wanted to appropriate additional dollars based on the requests that we do receive, all of that will come to you this fall. Um, but right now we have a baked in 3% increase in the FY27 budget.

What's the history on the 3% increase? the history just related to trying to get more um nonprofits some money and it also keeps it within that 1% of the financial management um that allows them to h the city to provide 1% of general operations to that that we have a policy that we strive to provide 1% say that again it has I think it's a half% half of 1% towards nonprofit funding that's Okay. And how long has that been the policy?

For quite some time. Longer than 2016. So, thank you. A quick question. Sure.

I like the change to process. as a regular applicant to um city agency funding for a long time. So, I really appreciate the new model um and I like that it's going to help enhance services that the city um is responsible for providing and focuses on our strategic plan even more than the previous application was. So, um profit spread their own type of leveraging other fundraising dot totally on board and I wanted to make sure my understanding of it is more

so the the grants will be made through that RFP process the language is kind of powerful. It's more of a contract that wasn't on.

Um the language is really powerful because when like the federal government shifted from grants or maybe never did them, they they call them contracts. Like there's specific um performance, you know, that that it's not just here's some nice here's some money because we believe in your mission. It's here are the things we need you to do and here's a time frame and here's the money. And um I feel like that's a much um different model than just here's a grant. Like there's a perception of grants that um they're just a never-ending flow of money into a nonprofit. And I think that's not where our um outside agency relationships are headed. So

sure, we we do expect that there would be performance metrics as part of that RFP. Um, and then per part of a what we would call it still call a grant agreement, but that it would be asking for regular reporting that they would be depending on what they're being asked to perform, whether it's um, you know, attendance, whether it's, uh, completion. Um, you know, just being able to show the return on investment for those public dollars. Um certainly it's the will of council, but something that we've been talking about internally since this is a slightly new approach would be with council's approval when that RFP goes out of having um say like a a year um uh of you know go ahead and perform this get us the the data back and then if it's successful and council wants to continue it based on that first year of data then could we sign a longer agreement ment with that nonprofit entity to continue that work so that they can rely on the funding for a longer period of time because right now if it's only every two years that can get very stressful. Oh yeah. um on a shorter time period, but being able to say, is it a four-year? Is it even a five-year? Still contingent upon council funding annually because you always have to approve the annual budget, but that with this set aside that we have in our budget that um essentially you can count on this funding if you continue to perform the metrics that we saw in that first year or whatever we laid out for them. Um so, so it is um we would still call it a grant. we but we would have some more specific metrics but hopefully then it leads to a longer term under which they could rely on the funding from the city.

Yeah, I like the um the model a lot just the um and I'll I'll stop at this but the um grant sounds more like philanthropy and that's not what this is. This is correct a contract for specific services that um the city is is providing and um not a slight to the nonprofits. It shows the value of the nonprofits um not like as a handout so much as we need this service and you're the best one to provide it. So

yeah, it it really shows that partnership of we're trying to provide X service and this is um uh both an you know economical and and efficient but also powerful way to provide a higher level of service through these partnerships than what we would be able to provide with existing city staffing. Did you have a question?

Good morning everyone. Um, so thank you to you Becky and the staff for everything that you've done to put all of this information together for us. Um, being a person that has worked with several nonprofits over the last five, six years and also have a love for them. I I hate to even ask this question, but um, to the mayor's point, we have to look at everything when we're trying to balance this budget. So, in a way that it doesn't affect our taxpayers um as heavily as it is looking at this point. My first question is how many nonprofit organizations is the city using for this particular program? So, currently um if we can get that number, Miss Schuler's on her way up. The total is in your packet, but it's probably around 25 contracts. Uh some agencies have multiple programs that they're funded because we're funding programs and not necessarily the agencies.

And with that, I noticed that we do a 3% increase. And so is there a possibility? Again, I hate to ask this question, but you know, do we put a pause on an increase for a couple of years in order to help balance the budget um or decrease that increase by some percentage?

That is the will of council of how you would want to move forward with that. the way that what's the benefit of this new model is that we haven't made any um applications or awards at this time in or recommendations. So whatever um amount is ends up in the budget is what we would be putting out for those requests for proposals. So you do have that benefit of having it this model this way.

Thank you. So just um for clarification, the 3% increase was 22,000 almost $23,000. Um in addition, I just want to make sure very clear we do have two processes. So the technically we do have some other nonprofits that are in there. So that's the civic development partners. They're on their second year of a three-year contract. Um and then I would assume that we would look at that process on that once that um is over and um re-evaluate how we do that. And you can find that on page 53 of your document, the recommended budget document. So there are about 10 um of those still going to be receiving funding. Um and mayor, going back to the sales tax, it's article 46 that the county gets and they made last year 19.4 4 million and it is not distributed to other jurisdictions

enough. Can we take David? Go ahead. I just want before we leave this topic about how many RFPs do you think we're going to release? Oh, Rachel left. We don't have to go over specific goals and details and objectives right now, but I'm also trying to think about workload for a voluntary committee. We had roughly about eight at the most that we would be putting out uh depending on some of the topics. So, um at most eight, but probably less. Understood. Thank you. Thanks. So, let's let's take a break. We've been at it 10 10 minutes 10:13 10:30. So, we'll take a break for 15 minutes. With that, we stand journ.

We're going to bring this meeting back to order. We need order. Okay. I need to do a roll call. Mayor Prom, you here? Still here. Okay. Still there. Uh, council member Jordy, you here? Here. Council member Andrews, you here? Council member Law, you here? Here. Council member Santu, are you here? Here. Council member Clinton Quintanana, are you here? here and the chair is here. We're all here and accounted for. Back to you, Miss Hawk.

Thank you very much. We will dive right back in. Next question. What is the amount currently in the mobility project fund? Um, the neighborhood traffic management project receives the majority of the revenue from our vehicle tax. So, $20 of that $25 fee that is imposed goes to this fund. Uh, we are not able to use that revenue for uh DOT roadways. So that revenue needs to be used for improvements on local streets only. So that is a restriction on the use of the fund. Um we currently generate about $1.8 million a year that goes into that fund. We do have two positions that are partially paid for out of that fund and that is our transportation project engineer and transportation planner. They uh were specifically authorized if you remember the adoption of the vision zero initiative. um that is where they are focusing their work and um and that is to um put improvements um into roadways that will reduce pedestrian and vehicular deaths and serious injury from accidents. So it's really increasing the safety of our network through a variety of approaches, not just um infrastructure improvements, but also um programmatic changes, speed limit changes, enforcement. Um it's a it's a multifaceted approach that uh this that these dollars will help fund. Um work uh was not done um for the first uh little bit that this view was generated um to the fullest extent of the dollars that were available. So there is a little bit of a fund balance that exists right now. I will say one or two projects will easily gobble that up um if they are of any size or scope. Um we also look for lowcost improvements. So, um just even lighting and paint and some of those things are much more affordable. But right now, we have an available budget

of about $2.5 million. And um with the FY27 budget, we expect to have an additional $ 1.58 million that would go into that fund once you uh remove the portion of salaries that come out of the dollars generated. So, um we do have staff on board who um are beginning to put this plan together and uh we have more staff coming and um we are also currently in the process of implementing some speed humps that council heard about previously in some high-speed local streets around the city. Lots more work to come on this. Um, but we hope to have a couple more projects that we can talk to you about more specifically just to give you more of an idea of what's coming in the FY27 budget and beyond uh at a future work session.

Hey, Becky. Becky, go ahead. Go ahead, Kevin. Two questions. Uh, how does this change if if that fee is reduced or eliminated? uh we would not have money to put those pedestrian and vehicular safety programs and infrastructure improvements. We would not have any dedicated money to be able to fund those. So you would have a a plan and identified problematic areas with no money to fix them.

So ground zero, not ground zero. Sorry. Vision zero is totally connected to this license plate fee. Absolutely. Okay. And the and the two positions are directly connected to this license plate fee as well.

That's correct. We fund 70% of their salaries out of this fund, which does free up a little bit of their time to be able to work on DOT street projects. um so that we have that expertise on staff, contributing, working with the MO, um working with other city staff. So, um we are keeping within the bounds of how we're allowed to use those dollars, but the vast majority of the work that those positions are completing are directly in support of vision zero and local street safety network improvement. Okay. Thank you. Sure. I have a question. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Becky, you mentioned additional employees to come in the future. So, um so not additional um funded positions so much as people starting work. So, so we're we're not needing to add to our FTEEs, but as an example, our Department of Transportation director has a lot of experience with Vision Zero. Um and so their expertise will be coming on board. um their salary is not paid for out of this fund, but they will be able to provide um additional resources, guidance and um and vision um and actual boots on the ground work uh to this initiative. They start June 15th.

Okay. Thank you. Becky, um, with respect to the coordinators and to the folks that you're going to be putting in this department, um, I know one of the things that we've always, we've been talking about for years here is the goat pass where, uh, there's there's, um, spots where there's no sidewalk, the sidewalk gaps. The sidewalk gaps. So, this individual or this group would be evaluating those gaps. Yes.

And then where we could put sidewalks or finish those gap, complete those gaps. Is that correct? Yes, Meritt, that's a great example of some of the kind of lowhanging fruit that um is um easy to implement when you have this dedicated fund of money to be able to pay for the construction. So identifying them um doing the um appropriate level of engineering. Some require full engineering, some it can be very simple, but the the point is to be able to move to get them filled and move on to the next instead of waiting and and having to do all of that. Um and this fund will directly fund construction projects like that.

Well, we were and I I guess this goes back to the engagement side of it. when we're talking about sidewalks or or trails, um what I didn't realize when we were talking about the actual physical infrastructure we're putting in place, the amount of capital that we have spent in purchasing right away. Yes.

And I guess for the life of me, if I'm a resident and you want to put a sidewalk in front of my house, I'm going to say, "Heck yeah, take it." And I think the engagement portion of this is going to be is more critical to be able to talk to citizens as to why this is important and why we're putting it here and hopefully get them to dedicate right away instead of us having to evaluate it, take them to court. do the I mean it's it's insane the amount of money that we have spent on purchasing right ofway that I thought first of all that we already had but more importantly the cost of putting in public infrastructure that's going to improve their property and improve just the walkability of the community and I just think that we just I don't know how you want to do it but I do think the engagement portion of this should be that we knock on somebody's door and have a discussion as opposed to sending them a letter and saying we're taking your property because as soon as you do that to me. I don't care who it is, they're going to buck up and say, "Wait a minute." You know, government wants to take my property. At the same time, government is putting in infrastructure that is improving the area and the neighborhood and the conditions of that neighborhood. So, are we going to have can we change the mindset here? This is insane what we have done. Yes. In regards to some of this,

we agree a thousand%. Um myself and other members of staff have seen success with that approach in other communities of starting with that conversation and um in many cases the resident is excited to have that pedestrian improvement in their neighborhood or along their street and they are willing to actually donate the right of way. Um or you know just a simple conversation and a fair market value assessment. um then we we pay them whatever the you know $5,000 $10,000 may be whatever the value is of that little slice of rightway that we need. Um so we through the realignment have staff now that are um available and capable of having those conversations um and going out and doing that work. and we were able to do that without needing to add to our FTE count for the city um by just reorganizing what they were doing and what they were focusing on. Um so we do very much expect for all future projects that is the first approach. Um, so ideally in a an approach like that then the properties that are then needing to go to actual condemnation that are getting tied up through court process that you then end up paying far more than fair market value just to be able to settle it and move on that that becomes um more of the exception rather rather than kind of the standard rule that it has been historically. Um, so, um, we we've already seen that initially with some recent conversations of some folks who've expressed an interest in sidewalk and we said, "Hey, if you can get your you and your neighbors to donate the rightway, we can get you a sidewalk." And they said, "We will happily give you ours and I'm going to go talk to my neighbors." Um, so, uh, so we expect to see positive outcomes, which then also lowers the overall cost of the project.

It also allows us to move faster on the project because we're not needing to go to potential litigation and we can keep moving. The and the last point on this is um on the sidewalk. Yes.

And no no disrespect to any engineering group or anybody. We've had this model that says, "Well, we've got to do it this way. We got to take down these trees and we've got to have it this way." And I have seen sidewalks that have mirandered through trees. You know, as passionate as this community is about trees. We want to try to save as many as possible. And sometimes a property owner will be reluctant to give us right away because they're afraid we're going to chop down their trees. Is there a way? And and and I guess we the other part of this is that the pvious concrete when you want to get around these trees and what have you. I would imagine that we're um clever enough, not clever, but we're smart enough to figure out a way that we can Miranda a sidewalk around tree.

Absolutely. And that and that's part of that conversation as well because if if somebody's willing to donate dedicate that right of way, then we have more flexibility to go up into their yard and meander around the trees rather than just saying we're focused on bulldozing everything in this straight line. So, so changing the approach absolutely changes design also changes potential outcomes. Thank you.

I have a followup for that. A lot of the um because we talked about residences and the um the residential property needing to be um acquired, but a lot of the sidewalk gaps u that I think would be priority are in commercial areas and or DOT roads. Um, so what does that look like? Especially with the DOT road like Oleander is a good example. Like there's some sidewalk and then there's not like I'm assuming the rightway is already there. It's just paying for.

So sometime sometimes there is dedicated rideway and sometimes there isn't. And a lot of times when a current condition remains, there's very little opportunity short of funding from an NC DOT project. the opportunity presents when somebody wants to reszone a parcel or change a use. And then we can say through those mechanisms, you're going to need to put sidewalk in across your frontage. And then of course people then criticize because well now there's sidewalk here that ends at the end of those properties that doesn't connect, but we at least got that segment built by the developer who's moving through that process. and then you look to to build on that and and and complete that network over time, but recognizing that it does take a little bit longer unless you've got willing owners, just like with the residentials. Okay, question about current vacancy rates for first responders. The table below indicates um current vacant positions in um both our fire department, police department, and then also first responders that are not police and fire, which includes grounds tech, solid waste, storm water, and streets. Again, those are employees that are also called out in exigent circumstances at all hours of the night to respond to issues around the city. Um but currently um based on uh when we pulled this a couple days ago, we have um 12 vacant in the fire department, 41 vacant in the police department, and then 54 amongst the um the other uh areas that I talked about. Um what this does not account for is also the deployable number. So, um if somebody is going through training, if somebody is out on FMLA or um out on military leave, um they are not here and able to perform that work. Um but they are um uh still

on our payroll and um uh but they're um but they're not included in these numbers. So, the actual amount of um deployable numbers, if you will, would be um lower than what is indicated here. So Becky on in police I guess in particular and fire I would imagine they have these classes obviously you have to get certified I mean you have to go through school and then you have to get the certification what is the number on the certification part of it so if you have a class of 20 people um what is that certification costing the city and then in addition to that are we paying the officers why they're going through the training program

yes so we put on our own police and firemies. So those are both run inhouse. So uh we certainly dedicate staff time to put on those trainings, but there isn't like a tuition fee or anything like that. We do bring on both police and fire as full-time employees so that um they're on our payroll and they they are ours. Um they don't get snapped up by another agency. Um, so they are receiving um it's a slightly lower amount um but they're essentially receiving just slightly lower than the regular starting pay for a a certified police officer or firefighter. So you're looking at about um 48,000 plus benefits for a firefighter, about 52,000 plus benefits for a police officer. The amount of training, it's about six months to get through the um fire and EMT training. Um they then need to test. Then they will go through field training. Um it's about four months to get through B, but then it's a longer field training process. Depends on where the officer is, anywhere from 14 weeks up to north of 6 months that they would um be going through field training. Um and then uh we have them, they're on their own, but they would then be very green and um uh without the level of experience that you would have from somebody else. But um minimum you're looking at 9 to 12 months um once you bring them on board and put them through training before they would be able to be considered like fully operational and not you know tied with a partner still still technically going through training. So at the end of the training process and we put the money into it and I think this was a discussion that we had when when Chief Williams was here.

We can't I guess have a contract with them that says you can't go to another agency or the FBI at whoever take tries to take these folks. So we train them pay them and at the end of the process I mean there's always the possibility that they could go somewhere else.

That that is very true. That was part of the reason why we pulled our police academy in house was that it kept them under our roof um and they weren't necessarily um having the access to be poached like they were um with regularity before. Um that being said, nothing stops them. We're not able to have them sign contracts or have clawbacks. um that's just not something that is allowed in North Carolina, that is allowed in some other states, but that's not something that we can do here. So, um we always lose a couple. It's the conversation that I've had with both Chief Mason and Chief Zuda about the ability to tap into our overhire numbers. We're a long way off from ever even needing to have that conversation with the police department, but we certainly hope to get there with these proposed pay pay increases. But on the fire department side, they know that they're going to lose some folks through the academy process. They either decide this isn't for them. Um they're not able to pass the testing or they decide that they're more interested in another organization. And then also um what typically happens after the formal coursework is over and they get into the day-to-day job, you also tend to lose a couple who are saying this is this is more than I thought it was going to be or I'm not actually cut out for this. when they get to those real world calls and having to respond to real life situations that can change on a dime. Um so um we always lose a couple after that. So you're sort of constantly having this um this churn of knowing you're going to need to refill the next academy because by the time that schedule comes around, you're going to need all of those people because of the vacancies that you now have in the department. So they're always thinking about the next academy. Do we know within the fire and police the percentage of folks that are are that can qualify for retirement now? Because I would imagine if somebody's thinking

about it or it's close to it, are you plugging in those numbers to determine is it 10% 5% because knowing that those folks are going to be moving out of those jobs at some point in time very quickly? Yes. How do you backfill them and how long does it take to get them there? because I don't want to get back into a situation where we're making this if we make this adjustment that we're coming right back and we're having to put a ton of money in for retraining and all that because here again it goes back to we're right back to square one. So yeah, have y'all looked at those numbers?

We we have looked at those numbers. I don't have those percentages offhand, but I've had conversations with both chiefs of identifying actual people that we know have indicated they're eligible for retirement in 3 months, 6 months, even 12 months, and they fully intend to go on that schedule. Um, so that is where the overhire number is meant to account for that. The problem that we're having right now is we're not getting the um the size of the applicant pool that can backfill those folks fast enough to be able to not then drop even lower and have this gap of time where you're down even more people. um the way it used to be uh back when um say the the police force was um something that everyone wanted to be a part of. Um they would get hundreds of applications and you you would have the ability to sort of refill as quickly as you were losing them or maybe even slightly faster. That allowed for that overhire to then level out in time. Um so uh I have said to both of both chiefs that um I fully support keeping the overhire and um we are very hopeful that with the changes that we have proposed that we could be back into a scenario of needing to tap into that. You're always going to lose a certain number every year to retirement, a certain number every year to leaving for whatever reason. Um, but if we can keep a number that's much close to fully staffed, you won't feel those one or two the way that right now every additional one that's lost is it's painful and it's felt because it's that tight right now.

And in the budget, not only on the employees, I want to know on the equipment.

Yes. all the things, the the the bulletproof vest, the radios that we just bought, I think last year or this past year. Um, all the I I guess the technology piece is the piece is a has always been a little fuzzy for me, understanding that they're wearing body cams, understanding that they have cameras in the cars and looking at a at a police car today looks like an F-15 fighter jet and when you walk inside. So, the technology is dramatic because it it's audio, it's visual, it's all of it. GPS is following these folks wherever they're going. We I I guess you all have a pretty good idea. So on the technology piece of it, the support apparatus for the department. Is that included in that number or is that is that part of the overall uh is that does that follow the employment of of the of public safety?

So in the numbers that we put forward to council, we were able to identify and it's a little bit further in the packet. We were able to identify that about 4 cents of the 5.75 can be directly tied to investment in police and fire. So that includes the proposed pay increases, that includes the um increased cost for retirement and health insurance, but it also includes the increased costs for the equipment that we have identified that we uh feel cannot wait that we need to invest in additional investments in technology. Um and then also included is that in that is um our two dedicated IT staff that will be assigned just to public safety, most specifically the police department because of the amount of specialized technology and software programs that they have to have operational 24 hours a day. Um right now they are being served by general IT and um so they are as responsive as they can be but having two people assigned there full-time with that specialized knowledge we feel will be what's required to deliver the level of service that that department needs in order to stay fully operational. We've had some things go down and you have to kind of put a call in and and again it takes some time and so being able to respond.

So this takes care of all the things center the whole operation in respect to the camera systems the drones everything that we have.

So it it does not fund any of it. It funds the status quo for all of those things. So there's there's no additional funding in this budget to replace or expand the camera system downtown. It also does not include any funding for the drone program that you've heard a little bit about. Um that would be over and above what is included in the FY27 budget. We have had some conversations at both the state and federal level about special funding for both of those initiatives. We continue to have those conversations and we are hopeful that some of that funding will come through. Um but uh short of that um everything on that front would be certainly keeping what we have in a state of repair and operation but nothing nothing new.

So the two dedicated it to police by themselves. Do we have the same thing in the fire department?

Go ahead Mary. Um so they would be supporting the fire department. Um, so they're dedicated to public safety, but they would be housed out of the police department. Um, uh, not that the technology isn't important in the fire department, it it's just a different level of what's required in terms of, um, what can go wrong. So, a lot of times they'll have say like a single unit in a truck because every firefighter gets on the same truck to go to a call. Police officers, there's one in every car. And so the amount of technology is just exponentially higher because of how police are deployed compared to fire.

And those systems are upgraded. How often? When we talking about an investment in in in these vehicles or the technology the technology I know changes almost on on a yearly or monthly basis. What does I'm sure you have calculated that into these equations. Correct.

We we have. So um the contracts that we have with the technology providers so they provide you know if there's a a software update or things like that having that 2year 3ear 5year contract they're keeping us up to date but of course there is a contractual increase every year of 3% 5% whatever it is to stay up to date with that service provider. Um uh so I think there are a few small requests for new technology in this budget. Um, but there isn't a a major needle mover that is required. Um, we feel like we're we're overall pretty happy with the technologies that we have right now with the exception of a few that we're looking to add.

Yeah, David, for those two um tech positions, and forgive me if I have the wrong vocabulary here, are they specifically within law enforcement, are they tech support or are they tech investigation as well? So, they would not be investigation. They are they are um IT professionals that are keeping the the equipment and the technology and the softwares operational but they are not doing investigative police work. Thanks. Question. Yes sir.

So we're hiring two IT people for law enforcement and fires. Law enforcement fire and then we're also implementing a IT security specialist. That's correct. And then we're And you just said something about no significant changes in the software, but I thought I saw somewhere about uh a new lease or some changes with the software. Am am I mistaken by that? It was it was

because there's there seems to be a little bit of a redundancy here and we should be able to eliminate it. There's a redundancy in what way, Mayor Prom? I'm sorry. I mean, as far as technology, information technology and um positions. I mean, if you're going to be it, you can and most of our stuff is in the cloud and we have IT people. So, wouldn't it be cheaper for us to just expand their plateau? Go ahead, Mary.

There in the budget, Laura just showed it. I don't know what page you're on in the back. police has several items that are associated with technology um that that do require support. Uh the two positions, one of them is a support tech position. So really, you know, boots on the ground, helping staff as they come into shift to do that kind of work. The other one is behind the scenes doing a lot of the programming which most of these systems require when they do upgrades. We had an issue the other weekend with it where Microsoft or someone comes in and does an upgrade and we don't know it and then police turns their equipment in their car on and it doesn't work. So, it's doing some of that behind the scenes work as well. Uh both positions would be housed uh like uh the manager said, but they they would be IT professionals in our IT department and they would be continued to be supported by the rest of the IT department. That's important to note. We already do a lot of this work but like most places it's as we continue to expand our systems and we continue to improve service it is an area that we always look at right we get the you know for example public records the new thing is another system we're adding in different things and so the continued demand on staff time and resources uh and so this just helps us be more responsive in a 24-hour period to police and fire which is also important to note. Um, so it does expand our capacity in those areas, I think.

Yeah. I Yeah, thanks. I I think to to sum that up in a different way, yes, we have existing IT staff, but they are spread too thin right now supporting the entire city to be able to dedicate the amount of time that is necessary to support specifically police, but also fire to the level that they require at all times of the day. Could could we could we go into some of and I've always been a little bit confused about this on the retirement process and what the state is requiring. I think it's coming from the state treasurer's office.

Can we get some clarity from on police? I know because police and fire have their own deal and then the rest of the rank and file have their own you know kind of our own situ. Can we what is the request coming forward from the state? Sure. to the cities, counties in regards to retirement contribution because I think that's one thing that that unfortunately our citizens don't see or don't hear sometime and I think it's our job to make certain that they're aware. There's also requirements that are coming forward from the state to increase. Can you can you can you break that down for me because it gets a little bit out there?

Sure. So, the North Carolina retirement system mandates that an employee contributes 6% of their salary to the state retirement system, zero exception. Um, and so that percentage has not changed in a very long time. Um on the other side, the retirement system also dictates the percentage of salary that the employer has to contribute on behalf of that employee to the overall pension fund and it is based on the category of employee. So you have um a rate for law enforcement, you have a rate for fire and then you have a rate for everybody else. Um and so those percentages uh in the last number of years have changed annually. They are set by the state. We do not have a choice. Um and um they have increased again this year. I think we're looking at over $700,000 in increased mandatory contributions um just to meet existing payroll. um we have calculated those percentages in when we're talking about the living wage and the amount of dollars that we will need if you fund that. That includes all of the benefit percentages as well. So that is an all-in number. Um so that that is uh one bucket over here. But even if you did nothing with the living wage, we would need to come up with $785,000 or so in new dollars just to meet existing obligations for the next fiscal year based on current payroll. The percentages based on the category. Um I'm looking across the way. It looks like she has that information.

I do for for non-public safety or non police officers. it went from 14.3% to 15.1. And then for um Leo, it went from 16.08 to 17.1, which was pretty much a 6.34% increase. And that's off anybody's salary is 17% there. And I saw some numbers earlier uh about the health care. Is it 3.5 million? That's correct. That's our overall healthcare plan. That's our for the general fund only. So it's about four million systemwide. Excuse me.

For the general fund only, it's 3.5. For the system where we have all employees located in other funds, it's about four million. And and that's that's 3.5. Wait a minute. You coming?

So let me let me let me say it again. So um we went out to bid for health insurance. We looked at um becoming fully insured or staying health insured or staying self-insured and um even going through that process keeping the benefits comparable to what they are today which a previous benefits survey indicated. They're not that great compared to some of our neighbors, but we couldn't afford to improve them. But even keeping just keeping everything the same, it is going to cost us 3.5 million more dollars in general fund dollars in FY27 compared to FY26 and then an additional 400 to $500,000 spread out across other funds that we have employees being paid out of. So, your solid waste fund, your golf fund, wherever those employees salaries come from are making up the additional half a million dollars.

Um, that represents um a uh I believe a 14% increase over our current health insurance premiums, which sounds astronomical, but when you look across the state and the country, the average increases are between 20 and 26%. So by that measure it's low. Um but it is it is the equivalent of one penny just to um fund the the same program that we have today.

I have a question in this public safety list. Uh before I get to that thanks for putting it together. It's really helpful to understand how much of uh this proposed budget is going to public safety because I get asked about that more than anything else. Absolutely. I have a question about an item at the bottom of page 21 of this document which is the police and fire mental health program. Yes. So I want to start by saying I'm fully supportive of investing in that. I I understand that this number is this for the creation of the program and can we expect that to go down over time or is this going to be a recurring expense that we need to plan for?

We we expect it to be a reoccurring cost. Um we to put a little bit more detail into what we're proposing. Uh we looked at a number of different models for mental health support for uh specifically for our police and fire uh departments. And the model that we landed on that we felt gave the highest level of support um and the most autonomy was um there's a local provider in the city that specializes in mental health support for first responders. Um and um so what we would like to do is um contract with them on a number of fronts. Um so um one of them is for some of the pre-employment work of making sure the employees that have to go through pre-employment psychologicals that they're able to provide some additional support there. Um uh but also um on an annual basis, everyone in those departments would need to have one visit a year. Um it's just for an hour. They can sit there and not speak if they don't want to. Um, but it's a it's a good way to have an annual check-in um within a safe space and share whatever they might need to share. And um what other programs have found is that then breaks down the bar the barrier and the stigma of what it means to be seeking mental health support. Um we then uh want to provide um uh a program where anyone in those departments can go seek individual services on as often as a bi-weekly basis that the city would pay for. It would be completely confidential. The information would stay with that provider. Um but we would be funding the program. Um and um and again there's been a lot of success with these programs in other areas. So we believe that this is um an appropriate number that um will likely account for all of

the expenses that we that we would incur under that model. This is the first time that we are embarking on this program and so until we know actual usage because it would be based on an actual usage basis. Um until we we get those bills um it's a little bit of a shot in the dark. Um, in many ways, higher bills are a good thing because it means that folks are getting the help that they think they need. Um, but, um, we we feel comfortable with this number, but it would be a reoccurring expense. Okay. Uh we we talked about um the details on the public safety items that were authorized in the budget and what were included when we say that it accounts for 73% of the proposed tax adjustment. That is in appendix C. Um, again, that accounts for um the wage increases, benefits, increased costs, the equipment requests that are being made uh that are new in this budget, um, additional contributions to some of the reoccurring expense lines to pay for uh, future fleet and things like that. Um, and then the IT professionals that uh, we discussed a few minutes ago. A little bit of a revisit to the question in the previous packet, but what would the living wage look like if staggered over two years? Um, uh, 75% implementation this year would be about 3 cents and then about a penny in FY28. And then similarly, you're looking at just under two cents for FY27 if you went 50%. Um, and then that would jump up to a little bit over two cents in FY28.

I have a question. I know we talked about this earlier, but I have a question related to this. When we do that live when when you've done that living wage calculation based on 60% of AMI, if if we were to stagger this, would we then need to rebaseline against whatever AMI is next year, which leads me to my next question, which is if we support this, how often will we be rebaselining against AMI? Because I'm just going to be really honest. I'm I'm I'm ready to support this now. I don't think we can do this to taxpayers every year. So, I want to understand what it looks like to rebaseline.

Fantastic question. Um the big hit that is being proposed this year is due to how low our wage structure is now compared to 60% AMI. We are that far off. for about 20% off in our lowest pay rates to bring us up to 60% AMI. AMI is set annually and so it is something that we would anticipate looking at annually. The good news about AMI is that it tends to only fluctuate slightly yearover-year. You rarely get huge increases in AMI from year to year. So fast forward to this time next year if the full plan is implemented and we would first look to AMI with the the slug of money that we hope to have in every budget for employee pay increases. So, um, if AMI was flat and we had the equivalent of a 3% pool, that would allow us to keep the pay structure the same and propose that that 3% pool be used for merit increases because there's no merit in this budget whatsoever because of how expensive it is to get up to AMI. If AMI were to increase by 1 and a.5% and we had that same slug of money, then we would propose increase the pay structure by 1 and a.5%. Everybody moves the 1 and a.5% and then we would use that remaining 1 and a.5% for a smaller merit pool to still try to move employees through through the cycle. So short of there being catastrophically strangely high

jumps in AMI, you're not going to have this level of pain year-over-year. But it gives us a an outside third-party vetted number to say how are we doing related to this adopted pay philosophy and funding that first and then whatever's left over that's merit. So if we do run into years with excessive inflation that we have seen prior, then um in those years we would anticipate having to say it's important to keep up with AMI. So we're going to put our dollars into that. And if that means that there's no money left over for a merit pool in that year, that's what we've been experiencing for a lot of years.

Okay. Um I want to I want to zoom this out a lot more and talk about the philosophy in and of itself. A lot of organizations that I've worked with, they use a market rate as their benchmark versus AMI. Is it based on what you just said, is it true that AMI fluctuates with fewer swings than maybe a market rate does? Like the increase in AMI tends to be a slower rate than increase in market rate. Is that true? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, so market rate depending on uh supply and demand of employees can say skyrocket with it or you know some of these harder to fill positions and then it can tank. Yep.

Um if if the economy does something different. So this is a much more stable number um that um that we're using as our floor and then looking at internal equity looking at the market for those positions. So, say it did swing really high, we might need to bump like say just it into a different pay band, but that would be a pull out um separate from a living wage conversation.

I appreciate that and I I the reason I wanted to dig into that is because I think this philosophy buffers those swings for taxpayers and it makes it much easier for an organization to predict what's coming and to absorb those changes and so that we're I'm going to go back to where I started. I don't want to have to go to taxpayers every year to ask for something this big. Um, and so it sounds like this philosophy is putting us in a place where we're going to be a bit more steady and stable in terms of the changes that need to be made. It

absolutely. And the other thing that um that we look to do is we will keep an eye on what our competitors are doing with their pay scales to make sure that we're not, you know, falling way behind. But this also takes away that race to the top that sometimes happens in specific positions. So we do feel confident with the way that this lays out with our existing internal positioning for these positions that um that the positions that are particularly hard to fill um that it puts them in a in a position compared to our market where we're satisfied with that number. We believe that if this were implemented for police and we can get that starting pay up to 62,800 or whatever the number is that that is going to be a high enough number with the other work that we are doing internally in terms of the culture building and the leadership of Chief Zuda and his staff there um that you combine those things and we become an employer that people want to come to and the pay matches um in terms of it's a competitive rate um and we're kind of putting our money where our mouth is in terms of saying we care about you and we want you here and we we understand the work that you're doing. Um, so those things go hand in hand, but what we won't be doing is saying, "Oh my gosh, our neighbor is now $300 higher than us. What do we do now? We have to to hop." Um, so again, you you look at it to make sure you're still in the ballpark of where we need to be. Um, but overall we feel like that puts us in a good position when you look across both the region and the state that that's a number that we should be able to both recruit and retain employees with. Uh there's a question about what revenues are categorized as restricted and unrestricted uh within our

governmental revenues. Um so restricted means that um they have specific uses um that are set by others. Um and uh so that includes the funding that we get um from FEMA for homeland security purposes. It includes funding from New Hover County for specific shared programs, agreements, and services that we have um in partnership with them. The Powell gasoline tax has restricted uses that are set by the state of North Carolina for specifically for road maintenance, repair, and construction. And then we also have a small amount of peg channel support that is through our cable uh cable agreement um where we can only um pay for certain things uh with those dollars on unrestricted intergovernmental. Um these are dollars that come from the state. Um uh but they include um ABC revenues, beer and wine tax, court fees, pipe natural gas, telecommunication services, utility franchises, and video programming. So these are dollars that come from the state, but they are unrestricted, which means they would just go into the general fund, and we can use them for whatever purpose we want. I will say most of those uh fees are going down uh in terms of the revenue that we tend to get from the state on an annual basis continues to uh decrease yearover-year. It is not heading in the right direction. I'd say beer and wine sales tax tends to go up a little bit, but that's a that's a that's a different thing. Um but these others um uh they those numbers are falling uh year-over-year, not not increasing. Yes,

not sure your mic is on. There we go. Um I understand that as far as like the uh telecommunications and um video programming and all that, but AB ABC revenues are also down. So it ABC revenues are the one that go it it went up a lot during COVID. Um uh it it fluctuates year to year. So, that one does tweak up a little bit, but when you look at the net result of all of those revenues, those increases in ABC taxes do not offset the losses that we're seeing in the other lines.

Just while while it's on the screen, looking at the court fees, um we we had at one of our neighborhood traffic meetings people who said, "Well, just put more just put more cops on the street, have them write more tickets, and that will re that will generate revenue." And that's incorrect because fines for traffic tickets do not come to us. We get a nominal court fee per case. Um I guess if if the case is charged within the jurisdiction, but it's not as simple as oh catch more speeders, the tickets will pay for the cops who caught them. That's not how it's distributed. But I will say we elect judges in North Carolina. And because the general assembly has decided to make judicial elections partisan, I feel perfectly fine telling you all to take a look and research the judges in this county who do and do not actually assess fees on people who have been convicted of a crime.

Thank you for clearing that up. That is a common misperception that we hear a lot too. Uh the question was what is appropriated fund balance and why is it eliminated? So um in the FY27 budget there is a proposal that there is no use of appropriated fund balance. Um that is really the kind of budget that you want every single year. Um so that means that we expect that our revenues will be able to meet our expenses without needing to dip into our savings account. Um dipping into the savings account can be okay um if it is for a designated one-time use. um if we've been saving up for something and we've decided that it's time to tap into it. Um but um one of the issues that happens is once you spend those dollars, they're gone. And so keeping a healthy fund balance to make sure that we can anticipate what is not expected that happens over the course of a year is very important. Um, and then also that we have um enough one-time funding in our regular budget um because that then feeds into having new one-time funding next year for new one-time purchases. If you were to carve all of that out and pay for it with your savings account, next year you've got less revenue and you have new one-time expenses. You've spent the money in your savings account. Now, how do you buy those things? Um so um again it sometimes has a place uh but the reason why there is nothing in the FY27 budget is just there was nothing that came up that was necessary. What you'll also see in a budget document under the amended column um those are budget appropriations that council has approved over the course of the current fiscal year. So if there is any required or needed use of the fund balance over the course of the year that comes to council as a fund balance appropriation request,

you vote on it and then that shows up in the amended budget. One thing that you might recall um are the Motorola radios that we had to purchase uh pretty hastily because of some failures and interoperability issues that we were having. That was something that we did not anticipate we would need to do in the FY26 budget, but we were able to bring that to you and using fund balance and some other funds that we had, we were able to move forward with that purchase. The radios are now fully in place. All of the interoperability and failure issues are behind us. How much are we making on our interest earnings? Yes. On our savings account,

I know they were probably restricted as to where we can place that money. So, so interest earnings are not restricted unless the the interest is earned off of restricted funds. Um, but um, uh, interest rates have tweaked down a little bit. So, it's not quite the amazingness that it was before. Um, but, um, we are pulling up that number now. I guess what I'd like to know is what what the total number is. And then I guess are we investing in tea bills or just general interest rate just parking into money market fund?

So so we invest in a variety of things. The vast majority of it is um through the North Carolina trust um that is managed through the LGC. So um we are restricted in a lot of the things that we can invest in because they need to be stable funds. You don't want to lose the principle. Um uh so you can't invest like you can with a 401k to make sure that the taxpayers's principal dollars are protected. Um but we do have some alternative investments that I know our finance staff manages um to try to maximize the return on those principal dollars. Was it like 4% 5%? What is the average?

Four. It I'm I'm hearing 4%.

Martha Martha's coming up. It fluctuates, but we I would say it's somewhere around the 4% like 3.9 to 4% right now. But what we're doing is we're always re-evaluating. We do um evaluations of our cash inflows as well as our cash outflows. And so our largest expenses are typically debt payments and payroll. And so when we are investing money, we actually try to anticipate when the larger cash flows are going to outflows are going to be so that we can have investments kind of line up with those. So for example, yesterday we actually invested in some funds because we got great interest rate. It was right around the 3.8 3.9%. And we're always looking at overall we want our maturity average maturity to be less than 12 months. And we don't invest in anything over five years. But we h we do have percentages that kind of vary based on, you know, we want to make sure we don't have too much money in one type of investment.

So that and that money comes back into the general. It does. It it does. And um as the manager was alluding to earlier, like for example, interest earnings on certain types of restricted funds might be treated slightly different. So those restricted funds, that money has to go back into those particular it does, whatever it is, stormwater fund, whatever it is. Exactly. But on the general fund, that money can then be I guess we have more latitude

and how we could use those funds if we wanted to offset some cost. So it's yes, it's considered unrestricted revenue. Um and it is already incorporated into the proposed budget in terms of um calculating and projecting out what we expect to earn in FY27, which is always a little bit of a crystal ball um because we don't know what will happen with interest rates. Um but that is already incorporated into the revenue proposal. Um, and uh, and so those dollars already have homes. And I would imagine just because I got a question about this, just just for the record, we don't invest in Bitcoin. No, we do not. That is that that is not considered stable.

Clarifying it for the record. Correct. Correct. Thanks, Martha. We can start our own coin. I guess we could. Yeah, we could. Uh and uh Laura has the amount that is budgeted for FY27. Yeah. So for FY27 it's 1.5 million. And to give an example, this one does fluctuate with the economy. FY25's actual was about $3 million. Um FY26 we only budgeted 1.3 million. So, it does fluctuate a lot um and can hit the budget depending on the economy, but we do plan on bringing in about 1.5 for FY27.

And but before that, there were years where it was it was basically zero because interest rates were negligible. Uh there was an itemized list of council's operating budget that is um up on the screen for you. Um, that does include the pay for council members. Um, and so didn't know if there were any questions or additional detail needed on those. I've already talked to you about this, Becky. Um, I think we should cut out payraises for council for this budget. I don't know what the appetite is uh with others for that, but I didn't take the job to get a raise five months in. So, I'm I think we should cut it.

Yeah, Cassie, we talked about this as well. I I think that's appropriate to not include any um increase for council when we're looking to to try and put so much into pay raises for others at this time. I I do think that it's important to note that it would be virtually impossible for a working age adult to do this job without also working another full-time job or being independently wealthy or being retired. Um so that's just the nature of of how our council is structured, how our city charter is written. um that it does exclude people from doing these jobs because this is not a full-time job that somebody could run for then do um on their own. You have to have a different source source of employment. Um that's not the problem that we're trying to tackle today, but I think it's worth saying and um I would support not having any increase for council.

I I could get on board with that if we if we look to eliminate the assistant city manager position. If we look to eliminate the uh assistant chief uh position uh and we and we hold off on some of these highle hiring that that we're doing until we fill some of the intermediate and lower level positions within the organization.

Uh can can you help me understand that trade-off Kevin? because you know 20% of city council salary I think the total is something like $335,000 and I think the the trade-off that you're proposing is much more substantial than that and I think has the potential to impact the level of service that we want to provide to our residents. So I'm trying to understand the the reasoning behind that.

Sure. I can help you understand that we have we currently have a city manager. We have a chief of staff. We have a deputy city we have two deputy city managers. So what does an assistant city manager do? Okay. Because in the last in the budget proposal we talked about the the discussion was had about I think it was 59 57 positions that were eliminated. That saved us about $500,000. Right. And I know right now looking at the camera, there are two people sitting there together that make $500,000 or close to it. And so again, we're talking about redundancy and eliminating uh positions and overdoing this and overdoing that. So let's let's start at the top. That's how I feel. And if we if we talk about um WPD, we have a chief. We have two deputy chiefs. Um, so what does an assistant chief do when when we're looking to fill lower levels of the police department and lower levels of the city of Wilmington?

Thanks for explaining that. I think, you know, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the importance of those positions. Um, I'm specifically bringing up our positions.

What do you think of those positions are currently that we need? We need more highle positions than we need people that are going to actually do the work. Well, I mean, I think we need positions. We need to fill the vacancies that we have at every level. Um, I think in an organization the size of this with over,00 employees, I think having folks with experienced leadership and operational expertise is incredibly important. I recognize that those positions are expensive, but I think our I'll go back to this. I think the residents in our city deserve that level of lead leadership. Um, and and as a leader in this city, what I'm putting forward is I've been doing this for 5 months. I don't need a $3,000 raise. I I would prefer to cut that out um and make cuts where it's reasonable without uh limiting the services that we can provide to residents. No, I understand that that you've been doing it for five months. So, you you you're just getting accustomed to the juggle or the balance in this position. There are people who've been doing it for for years. I mean, I I don't it doesn't matter to me. I'm just I'm I'm talking about these highle positions that that's that's where I'm concerned. I'm concerned that we don't need it. All right. So, just how I feel. Going back to the to the assistant chief, I know that I think that was put in last year's budget. Was it not or was it eliminated? I I know that there was some discussion about an assistant chief

that that we have two deputy chiefs. We do that position has existed um prior to to me being here, prior to Chief Suda being here, that was in their organizational structure. It was just never filled. Um so but but let me go back. So on the positions because I think we've have an appropriation or appropriated funding for 280 officers. We do. So the money's parked. Correct. Correct. Correct. So as they come in, we have the money to pay. Correct. I'm going to ask a question this way. So in that last year's budget, just so I can be clear because I think we had a discussion about the assistant chief.

That money was set aside for an assistant chief that was that was in that budget. or was it not in the FY26 budget? I would need to defer to others. Can someone give me a clarity on that one? You're referring to the decision made last year to not

Okay. So, the POS just I want clarity. So, the position has been funded, correct? It was just never failed. Correct. Okay. All right. That's that gives me a little bit more clarity. Yeah. So So this is not new funding and this is not a new position. Okay. A better question is is the position needed?

I I would I'm seeing a headnod from uh Chief Zuda. If he would like to speak to that uh more, he is welcome to. But based on my conversations with him, I feel very confident that that is a vital position to the efforts that um he is leading in that department that will certainly um also be helped by the existing deputy chiefs. Um but that uh this extra position is is very important to where he is. Well, come on. Come on down, Chief Zudman.

He's coming up. Yes, sir.

So, yeah, the the question is is is the position needed and and and if so, can you just en enlighten us all here of what what is the assistant chief going to do? Because we've operated for many years without it. Um, and I spoken to uh the previous chief and it was a position that he it wasn't it wasn't his idea to bring it back.

Okay. No, thank you for the question. I certainly can't speak for the former chief. What I can speak to is uh my assessment of the organization over the last seven months, almost eight months I've been here. Uh we are in the process of trying to do some reorganization within the police department to make sure we are providing services in the most efficient effective manner we can uh in order to uh spread those responsibilities appropriately uh and provide uh the appropriate uh staff with the appropriate level of uh chain of command. Uh it is very helpful to to have somebody in that role uh that can help oversee a lot of the initiatives that we want to be moving forward uh over the next several years. There's a lot of things that we want to do to better provide services to the community. Uh to have someone in that role uh is something that I think will help us move forward as an organization and by uh ultimately provide better services to the community.

Chief, um can you sh I always have I'm always um I can't remember these numbers, but what is the call what is the level of call service calls that we are getting in the department? Um I've heard I mean it's been all over the board from time to time. I know I would imagine I would imagine it's pretty high. Yeah. Over the average over the last five years is around 150,000 calls for service a year. So if you do the quick math on that just simple math about 400 calls a day our officers are answering. We do have a presentation with those numbers um in your packet.

But while I got the chief there because of an email we saw the other day. Chief, how many calls does the the typical officer for WPD answer a day? Uh, it's going to depend uh depending on the number of officers that are working on any given day. Uh, that fluctuates. Just give me an average. I have to get my math out here, but 400 calls divided by the number of officers that are working in that given day. Uh, I' I'd have to pull the numbers uh to see that to be honest with you, Mayor Prom. Okay. Well, like I'm here all day. Okay. We'd be happy to pull them and and get them to you at some point. Thank you. Yes, sir. We're gonna we're gonna Is the chief coming back up? We're gonna have another a separate presentation.

Yeah, we'll we'll we'll run through those numbers. Um I think um minimum staffing you're looking at about 17 a shift on patrol, 400 calls a day. You're it's about 12 calls per per officer per shift. 20 That's if it was 24 hours a day. Obviously, you're going to have fluctuations based on time of day, type of call. Some will be very short to respond to. Um, others will take up hours of their time. I think I think that's Is 17 is 17 a dramatic number? Is it an exhaustive number in terms of minimum staffing? Well, just in in general,

I'm not sure the question you're asking. Are you talking about 17 being the number of officers or 17 being the number of calls? 17 17 calls per officer. No, per shift. It it was about 12. So it was about 12 calls per officer per shift if you look at minimum staffing for patrol. So that

right. So I'm asking I'm asking if 17 is exhausted for an officer. So what I would tell you if I'm tracking what you're asking mayor prom what I would tell you is that uh there are staffing models out there from the IECP which is international association of chiefs of police as well as some other um kind of bodies in the profession that look at best practices. Uh in a perfect world you split uh officer's time into thirds give or take. Uh a third of that time should be answering calls a third of that time should be spent on administrative duties uh which is a variety of things I won't bore you with now. And then a third of that time should be unallocated time. Meaning that's time for our officers to be out in the community proactively engaging with our community members in a non- enforcement setting. So getting out of their car and walking down the street talking to people, you know, stopping and shooting a basketball with a kid on a basketball court, you know, speaking to the the lady who's sitting on her front porch and seeing what her concerns are in the neighborhood, talking to business owners, those types of things. And I will tell you that it is challenging to accommodate that 30% of unaccounted time right now. based on both staffing levels as well as the amount of calls per service that our officers are answering in a given day.

Gotcha. Thank you. Yes sir. The chief when depending on the call it goes up and then when we had these discussion about the unsheltered if we have an individual that is in need of um primary care at the hospital. The officer then is taking that individual to the hospital.

Correct. And at that point in time, does that officer have to stay with that individual or is it passed on? I know that in traffic accidents with the with the uh traffic investigator that's kind of passed on to to that person taking all the paperwork and what have you. What happens in other instances when somebody has to either be taken to Rlay Road to the jail and or has to go to the hospital or I would imagine are there any other scenarios besides that?

Yeah, it just really depends on the circumstance. you know, if it's a medicalonly issue, uh, and it's somebody that we may have in custody, uh, there's a lot of times where the jail will not receive, uh, those individuals who have a commitment order on to go to jail unless they've been medically cleared first, right? Because they obviously don't want to be running a hospital inside of a jail. Uh, so a lot of times if someone has a medical issue and they're in our custody and they have to be committed because they've committed some type of serious crime, we may have to sit with some, we had one not too long ago we sat with for several days, 24 hours a day. we had a police officer sitting with someone who had a medical issue uh who had committed a violent crime who had a commitment order. Uh sometimes with mental health patients that can depend uh there are times where we were able to hand off the mental health patients to the staff at Novant. Uh they're willing to basically take custody of them, but there's other times depending on a lot of variables. They may have to stay with those patients until they're at a point where they they're no longer, you know, a concern from a safety standpoint. Uh but yeah, there's a lot of time that is spent um just being with people that are in our custody.

So if you have to arrest somebody and take them u to the jail to the county jail, what does that process what what's the time constraints on that officer and then if that officer is taken out of service to take that individual to the jail, who backfills that time?

Yeah. So, the scenario I'd give you is if an officer, you know, out in the hallway here today arrests somebody for crime X, uh, he would take that individual in front of the magistrate, which operates out of the police headquarters on Best Street. Uh, goes in front of the magistrate. If the magistrate determines that that individual deserves to be committed to the jail, we will then drive out to Blue Clay Road. Uh, we will go out there, uh, get into the jail, get secured. There's a process for turning that person over. Uh, that takes some time there, uh, and then come back. So, you know, that could easily take uh on a good day uh an hour uh and and on a bad day probably a couple hours depending on again how many people are in line at the magistrate, how many people are in line at the jail for intake. Um and then basically while that officer is, for lack of better terms, out of service, uh the other officers uh in neighboring uh districts will help cover the calls for service.

So, to the based on the 150,000 calls for service, we'll be clear on this. Is that overall or is that just patrol? Obviously, you have patrol that takes care of traffic issues and and accidents and out there patrolling. You have others that are, I would imagine, investigators, detectives. Um there's a litany of different, I guess, job descriptions within the department. Is the 150 for all of it? Because if somebody's, let's just say, uh, the house is robbed and they want to check back with that detective or whoever, is that part of that overall call service volume or is it is it in addition to that?

So, uh, that that scenario you give of a house that's been a robbery has taken place, there's one call for service for all of the officers that arrive there and handle that, however long it takes, whether it's 10 minutes or 10 hours, right? uh if you know 3 days later the detective needs to go follow up and do something related to that, that would be an additional uh call for service. If he has to go to let's say the Walmart to look for a witness that maybe works at Walmart, right? Uh that that would be a separate call for service on that day. U but yeah, these these calls, so you're not going to necessarily the overwhelming majority of these uh calls for service are one-offs, for lack of better terms, I think if that's where you're going. Uh, but there are some times where there are follow-ups that require additional work other than the original crime. That would be a separate call.

So, let's just say I'm just hypothetically saying if you have 30 officers out there on the street on any given shift that are out there um and then somebody or a couple of them get taken out of service for whatever known reason, we have to take the entire cavalry and bring them back downtown late in the evening at 2 o'clock in the morning when all the bars let out. the arrest of the city and I've heard this from the previous chief and the previous chief before that. You're taking the entire the entire force literally and moving him to a specific location within the city kind of expose the other portion of the city. How do you backfill that kind of stuff or do you or can you?

Yeah. So, well, we if a scenario that you gave if we have to go to one area of the city regardless of where that area is to you know because there's a large scale incident there that requires the majority of the staff we have currently available. Uh we rely on our partner agencies a lot. uh New Hor County Sheriff's Office primarily being the first call. Uh depending on the nature of what we're dealing with, certainly we could contact the highway patrol. They have limited subject matter jurisdiction in North Carolina, meaning highway patrol here can uh stop and enforce traffic ordinances, but they can't enforce criminal ordinances, right? Uh which is unique uh quite honestly to North Carolina. Um uh so that uh but we have other partner agencies and neighboring agencies that uh we have uh with uh that if we became short staffed because of a large scale incident, we would call on them to help us backfill the city and and handle the priority calls. Right.

So So the patrol division for the sheriff's department, if you're if you're bringing a significant amount of personnel to a specific area for an incident, you can you can make that call and say, "Can you back us up?" you know, from Monkey Junction back door, whatever we can and regularly do and and vice versa. You know, if they have incidents going on in the county that uh are draining a lot of their resources and they need us, we'll provide resources to them as well. And you would I would imagine that on certain times of the evening or day, you understand where I guess incidents are going to whether it be traffic issues later in the afternoon when people are leaving town, coming in in the morning or Friday and Saturday night downtown where you have to have more resources.

Yeah. So we we are constantly trying to track both time, date, and location of offenses uh and looking at data to best deploy our resources. Again, we do a lot of that in conjunction. We have three different task forces with the sheriff's office on a day-to-day basis that we work in the city with to try and make sure we're targeting some of those uh either higher volume areas or uh just areas that require additional resources for us. Thank you. Thank you. And Becky, let me ask you the same question about your assisted city manager. Sure. What's the question?

Is it needed?

I believe it is. Um, we spent months uh locked in a room um going through the realignment and we did take a very hard look at that position because we didn't want to keep it if we thought that the organizational structure could be managed without it. um where we landed was that we felt that the the portfolios and what was expected of the existing or the other executive level staff that um it was going to spread them too thin. Um we created um uh the portfolio under them is really focused on what we're calling community excellence which is um uh once the position is filled um is really going to be looking at um certainly their own standalone work but also opportunities to really plug in across the organization um to be able to um have meaningful improvements in in a variety of different departments. So, it's elevating sustainability, it's elevating resiliency, it's elevating community risk reduction, it's elevating community compliance, um planning and zoning is in there. Um affordable housing and our grants program. Uh economic development is going to ultimately live under there. Um so, we expect that to very much be a um a working assistant manager position. Um but it is it is absolutely something that with the the prioritization that we are trying to put on um uh get you know getting out of our silos um and really um understanding what is the work that needs to happen and how do we maximize it um that that is a position that is needed. Um quite frankly I I feel like

some of the existing portfolios of the others are still heavier than I would like them to be. Um there is not a lot of free time to um to go about um meeting uh meeting with others um just kind of uh proactively and naturally. But that is um that is just the nature of the beast right now. So um we we did not put forward any position in the proposed org chart or the the implemented org chart that we felt was unnecessary and it includes that position. And what's the salary range for that position?

Um it is a step lower than the deputies. Um I'd have to look at the exact range. I think we were expecting it to be in the maybe the 190 range or so. um which is less than um what it it it was currently a deputy city manager position. So we actually downgraded it through this implementation uh which will save the city a few dollars. Yeah. But both city managers make about $200,000 per year, right?

They're they're uh one is one is below just slightly below that one is slightly above that. But yeah, that's about right. And then our chief of staff makes 195. That's correct. Okay. So, the assistant will be right there. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

Uh, next question. What are we spending $20,000 on for employee activities? Um, this is a central line item for um, uh, employee holiday lunch, um, appreciation, service, awards, things like that. um across the entire city. When we um hold some of our all hands meetings, we'll have some snacks or things like that to um help keep them interested. Um and uh so it's $20,000 across the whole organization. That averages out to about $18 an employee if you look at the number of staff that we have. What specific e economic development initiatives that are listed for $65,000? What is that for and what were they last year? Um so this is one of those line items that is sort of for um items as they come up. So this may be for um building condition evaluations, assessments, appraisals, environmental assessments, engineering services. Um so that is what uh what funds those as they come up and we expect that to continue. Um, we have a fantastic candidate for our economic development position that we are currently checking references on. Um, and we expect to have that position filled in short order. They're very excited about the opportunity. Why has legislative affairs increased so much in the past few years? Um, the council may recall that we introduced you to EQV Strategic um, at one of your prior board meetings. So, they have come on board. Um, so Tony Mchuan is still um helping us on the um environmental type of lobbying um at both the state and federal level. EQV Strategic um is stepping in on all of council's other legislative priorities. Um and so combined they they work with Carara um but it's uh it's the combination of the

two. Um in prior years we had Maguire Woods um was a separate lobbyist um that we had. So this essentially they they went away for a little while, but this essentially brings us back um to uh a model that we had previously with Meguire Woods.

So this is so a lot of these questions that we're getting into with the page numbers, these are some of mine. Um I'm I'm skeptical of how much money we're spending on lobbying. Um just just very candidly with you. most of the people I mean what are the lobbyists doing that we are not supposed to be doing as elected officials with our own peers in the community and our our fellow elected officials right like hopefully we all have some sort of relationship that is professional respectful hopefully somewhat productive with all of our representatives irrespective of party um we we go up and we try and talk to our members of Congress I want to understand and and we don't have to do this right now I think this is probably a follow-up conversation because I'm going to have a lot more detailed questions But I really need to understand what exactly a lobbying firm is doing for us that we as elected officials are not supposed to be doing with our colleagues. Um I understand that there's going to be some expertise that these folks have when it comes to specific um areas like for example I know there's there's things around natural disasters and flooding and and I appreciate the expertise that comes there but I just really am skeptical that that we're getting the results for what we seem to be paying for some of these things.

I appreciate that Council Member Joiner. Um certainly happy to have a larger discussion on that. What I will say um with confidence about the work that they do is that um while council is able to get up to Raleigh a couple of times a year, that's where they're based out of. They're on the hill every single day um or most days um and they are talking to representatives um beyond those that represent Wilmington. Um so they are um running the city's um initiatives and objectives um into the corner offices um into um you know other members of the general assembly um beyond beyond the ones that that we specifically work with. Um so that is where their work really comes in. I know Cara um can probably speak a little bit more to that. She's standing up in the back. Um so I guess the question would be do you want to go into more detail on that now or do you want to set it aside for a future conversation? I'll follow up and and ask to schedule a meeting within the next couple weeks before we take a vote.

Okay. Thanks. I will say go ahead. I was going to say before we move away from that, how how often do we get an update from our lobbyists on the work that they're doing and the conversations they're having?

Uh the frequency of our communications is high. So I speak with them every single day. So we have two lobbying firms and I speak with representatives from each on a daily basis and then we have formal meetings on Fridays at 11:00 a.m. so that we can kind of all group together um talk about our progress on the legislative agenda items as approved by council and the developments that have happened in DC and Raleigh. Um I just returned from DC this morning and on the drive here spoke with all of them. So, it's very frequent. And to answer your question, since I'm standing here, um, Council Member Joiner, I just want to point out that $96,000 is an incredible bargain. Um, and we have achieved that through a combination of kind of splitting up our lobbying portfolio amongst me, um, EQV, and, um, a second contract team. Um, we are at about a third of what the county spends. I don't want to discredit any of the hard work or diligence or expertise of the people who are doing this work.

I want to highlight the political environment we're in and the value of the money that we're putting into it for likely outcomes. That's where my skepticism lies. Thank you.

And right and rightfully so. I I will say that a lot of the lobbying efforts not only are when we're trying to play offense, when we're asking for things and we're all going in there together say we need this for that, we need this for this. The bigger thing from my perspective, the value proposition is the defensive position that these folks help us with. For example, couple years ago, there was a huge debate in the in the state legislature about taking sales tax revenues from municipalities and giving them to rural areas. and we said absolutely not. And although the League of Municipalities was helping us on that and although the Metro mayors were helping, there was a litany of other groups including independent um lobbying firms that each community hired to also get in there because this thing came very close to passing where because our legislature is predominantly dominated by more of a of the rural uh groups in the community, rural parts of the state. And we felt very threatened, all of us did, that that sales tax revenue that we desperately depend on was going to be taken to other parts in the more rural communities that are not having to make decisions like this. We're having a obviously a huge debate and discussion about interbasin transfers. One of the biggest economic development issues that are impacting the entire state of North Carolina. This is not going away and we're going to need the efforts of everybody to try to stop this. Um, you know, people worry about their businesses and small business owners. This will have a direct impact on us like nothing we've ever seen. And yet, we're kind of moving into this slow motion of of a catastrophe. And I mean, I've reached out to the mayor of Raleigh about the possibility of us talking with that region and our region, but we're going to need those lobbying efforts to coordinate those efforts because it's going to be extremely difficult to get over. And I will say that also serving on the film commission, although the film commission through the um folks

that are there with the cineis space and with dark horse stages as well as within the commi within that group itself has hired two lobbying firms, one to work the senate, one to work the house. And I can tell you without those efforts, we would have never been able to get at least into the senate side because the senate side was always more difficult to deal with. But I see them being more of an asset for us when we get into these situations with our legislator friends who some we don't know. Obviously we know the ones that represent us. But they may sometimes what they have a tendency to do up there and I think they do. I'm just this is my opinion is they may want a bill passed but they'll use somebody in the western part of the state to help pass it. And you think well this is going to impact the eastern part of the state or our part of the of the state. and you have somebody that's totally disconnected from us that has no reason to even be filing a bill filing a bill in the middle of the night. This is where the asset proposition comes in for me personally. But I've seen it real life and I you know please you know you should ask those questions and make sure that that our citizens understand that because I do believe we have a role to play. Yes. But that's a 24-hour a day job up there. And those folks, they pass leg legislation in the middle of the night. As you well know, some of those leaders elect those especially the majority leaders will call a session in at 12:00 at night to pass a bill when trying to get everybody there. It happened to Deb Butler and you know when they push something through there or trying to push something through there when she held it up. But this is these this is what we hope that these organizations are doing for us is be our eyes and ears. I would like to see a little bit more effort in respect to some of the transportation initiatives that we talk about because

we're getting this part of this part of the state, especially in New H County, city of Wilmington, is not getting the support I feel that other parts of our rural communities are getting right now. And I may it may be just something I'm feeling, but I don't think we're getting it at all.

I want to I want to rephrase my question, Cara, because I I don't think it was clear what I was asking. How often does council get an update on the activities of our lobbyists? Not I understand that you're working with them regularly and I'm I'm very glad to hear that. My question is more about how often are we getting a report on the outcomes of this work. So you vote on our legislative agenda typically in January after it's formulated and once it's approved um you all are instrumental in kind of socializing that amongst our delegation. from that point. Um, depending on what the issues are of the day, obviously we're looking at the next two weeks hopefully getting a state budget. Um, depending on the the cadence of meetings by separate committees within the legislature. Um, different different uh agenda items get attention at different points. Um, I will when does council hear directly from our lobbying teams? I would say that I am employed to be the intermediary between the the lobbying teams and council.

Um, I I just want to be clear. I'm asking how often do we get a report on the activities? I'm not saying how often do we do we talk with them. I um as it's been established, I've only been here about five months. I I'm curious if there is a cadence to what what we learn about the results of that investment and those outcomes or if that's just as it comes and goes. I just don't know. I think that's a very good idea and we could set up a more um formalized report on that value and the ROI that has come to exist because we don't know

so so so to that question I guess it's what frequency would you like those reports is it is it monthly is it quarterly is it you know of if if you tell us the frequency that you want to hear from them then we can ask them to be generating that information, understanding that it may be a little broad and high level to not get into perhaps some sensitive conversations that they wouldn't want to necessarily put into a public record, but they could at least give you some idea. So, I guess the question is what cadence would you like to see and we will make that happen?

I mean, I think a starting point would be maybe as we're considering our legislative agenda for the year, we get a report of the activities for the previous year. Does that sound Oh, absolutely. At well, at a minimum, you do receive an an end of session summary and and um but I think maybe it would what I'm hearing is it would be valuable to receive that on a regular basis um more frequently starting soon. Very good. We can make that happen.

And for example, when I think it was last year, I I forget this the Senate bill and Carrie you jog my memory here. There was a provision that the homebuilders association was pushing forward in regards to resoning that no matter what we decided they could overrule us and do whatever the hell they wanted. Correct.

What was that Senate bill? I can't even remember. Was it Senate Bill, House Bill? I can't remember which one it was. That was an allout effort on all of our behalfs, including our lobbying efforts to stop that bill. that bill had a lot of momentum uh within some the legislative uh folks I know you folks were at the time dealing with it also in in Mech but what can you kind of I know that that's a fluid moving operation when that starts to go down the path and there's all kinds of conversations happening all over the state legislature and in state offices

we play offense and we play defense and it's not just about getting the things that we want it's also O about uh preventing bad things from happening. So protecting local revenue author uh authority, making sure that these decisions aren't as tough on you and our city leaders because we have the ability to control things for ourselves. Um and all of our alliances statewide are important in protecting those things. But um at the end of the day, the ROI is astronomical because $96,000 compared to what value Wilmington gets. Um our I'm just going to brag. I guess our our teams are strong. Okay. Um, we represent Wilmington very well and $96,000 is something that can be recovered in a matter of a day in terms of going out and getting grants, talking to the right people, making the right connections, being sure that we take advantage of our advantages. Um, and and I would say that as the mayor was referencing, when there is something that stands to impact our community in an extremely negative way, something that would essentially eliminate the need for a planning team at cities across this entire state, you can you cannot even imagine how important it is to have um alliances to stand up against that.

Thanks, Cara. So I would I would like the cadence to be at least monthly to start. Absolutely.

Okay, we will do that. Uh why is the office move line item increasing? Oh, I apologize. I don't have a question per se, but just um thinking in terms of Carara and her position. I just want, you know, several of you to know that there are many people and organizations, not just here in Wilmington, but across North Carolina who have a CARA in their um in their organizations. And I'm speaking about banks and so forth um because of my background in banking, but keep in mind that has also helped a great deal. So I, you know, whether something is too much or not enough, I think it's worth it having um Cara and team as um on on our team on our side and being able to reach out to her for the necessary information. I just want to put that out there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh why has the office moved slentline item? Uh well, a what is it for and then why is it increasing so much? Um, so that is um for um lease properties um that we may have. So if you'll recall, we sold our uh parks uh maintenance property to NC DOT for a very tidy sum that we were happy to collect, $4 million. Um but uh we are currently building our new facility. And so in the time being there was a lease lease back provision in that contract so that we can stay in our current facility while we build a new one. And uh so we expect in FY27 that that will cost $161,000.

Remind us what how long we think we'll need to keep up with this lease. Uh so we expect just about the 12 months. Um uh we're currently in construction on the new facility. Um, but we do expect it to last uh we we're funding it to last the duration of FY27, but we shouldn't we don't expect it to need to go longer than that. So, we we shouldn't expect to see this in FY28. That's correct. Okay.

If the community investment program is being reformatted and it's based on RFPs for identified goals, projects, and needs, how do we come up with the final number of 783 since it's no longer itemized? We talked about this previously that it was um uh one half of 1% of revenues. Um certainly if council wants to decrease that number, increase that number um that is your prerogative. What is the jump in CDBG home grant and loan administration and is it due to increased federal funding or an increase in the amount we're putting up? Um so that program is funded through a combination of federal entitlement funds and general fund support. About 73% of the funding is provided through the general fund that supports staff and operation requirements necessary to administer the loan programs. Um so uh with the living wage uh impacting 11 employees that is a portion of the increase as well as the increased health insurance and retirement contributions. Then there there's an additional $70,000 in that line item. We're fedally federally required to create a five-year HUD consolidated plan. The time has come back around for us to do that. And so we expect that that will cost us $70,000. Uh what is the value of the loss of Pender County revenue on page 57 and 107? Um, this is really tied to the discontinuation of the Sable Helicopter program and um, so the impact from Pender County not participating, it's $6,125. So pretty nominal. Uh, internal audit authorized positions go from one to zero. Where's the work going? Audit committee needs this highlighted. So this is not a change in our internal audit program. This is not a change in our internal audit staffing. um this is just a change in where that position shows up to be budgeted. So

Michelle Barber is there on the first row. She's still our internal auditor. She will continue to be our internal auditor. So the net change um in those departments um it there's no difference between FY26 and 27. It was just how positions are allocated in different departments. There was a request for job descriptions for production and engagements. Were the four employees in Sundry already or are these new roles? Um these are not new roles and the employees were not in Sunundry. Um the engagement staff were spread out across a variety of departments. So they were embedded in storm water, they were embedded in fire, they were embedded. So they were only doing that work in that specific department. um that was great, but if there was capacity um for them to do more, they were only in that department. Um so we have pulled all of those positions out, put them under a central communications and engagement team, and they are now responsible for all engagement and education across the city. So that puts more hands doing the work. It allows for them to uh to do other work as time allows. um and has really increased our ability to output public engagement efforts utilizing the exact same number of FTEEs that we have had for years. What does SEM stand for and why does it need 12 new staff? So SEM refers to storm water control measures. Um those are engineered systems that manage the storm water. Um they are mandated um and uh the staff that we have supports construction, inspection, maintenance, environmental compliance and other municipal public functions. So there are not 12 new employees in this budget. Again, this is just related to the realignment and where they are showing

up and how they are funded. So through the realignment, we were able to look at the work that was actually being performed by staff. The ones that we were able to uh legitimately tie to storm water to have that fund help pay for those um those staffing costs, we were able to uh reallocate the funding source to help pay for that staff. But again, we're looking at the exact same number of FTEEs that we had. It's just a reallocation of existing resources. and what's the logic behind moving the sustainability manager to community building? Um, so kind of as I referenced before, this concept of community building um was really a priority that came out of the the realignment of um how do we lift up um all boats in the community in a variety of ways. So, um, sustainability was doing a good job, but being buried in the public works department. Um, there was really, um, kind of a singular focus on recycling instead of all of the other things that sustainability can be. And also how um as we look at projects and programs, making sure that that sustainability voice is in the room um looking at um are there ways to make this program or this project more sustainable um aside from just an approach to recycling. Um so um so it's really elevating that work to a more across the organization approach as opposed to kind of a singular focus as it has been. Um so they will still have recycling under their purview but that will not be the only thing under their purview.

Um thank you. Thank you for that explanation. I'm happy to hear that it's about making it an organizationwide position. My my concern with it, and you've alleviated this concern, but my concern with it is that in my opinion, having it in public works had the opportunity for it directly to be tied to how we build things as opposed to how we think about things. And uh I want us to be building so like this is very closely related to um resiliency in some ways. And so it's important for me that the sustainability be as much about what we create and like how we build the city moving forward. Um, and my concern with it is that I I don't want it just to get plugged into community building in the sense that it becomes like a programmatic theme that's like public facing but not integrated into the work we do. So that was my concern about it coming out of public works.

Sure. and and and that that actually speaks to why we did what we did because being where it was, it wasn't having that influence and it was also disconnected from the resiliency work. And so by having those folks together with the community risk folks, they're able to have visibility into everything the organization is doing rather than being two or three layers deep inside what was the public works department. So we've done this with that intentionality so that there is engagement in all those projects and we are committed to sustainable design and construction. We may not pursue things like lead simply because of the fact that paying for the plaque costs money, but you can do everything that would have gotten you the lead certification without paying the half million dollars for the plaque. So doing the right things in the right way is what we're about. chasing awards and and and banners and and things that you have to just pay for to say we did them. Maybe not so much, but that's absolutely part and parcel of the way we operate.

How many school resource officers do we provide? Uh we provide four to supplement um some of the schools within city limits specifically at Williston, Hogard, New Hover, and JC Row. Um, Becky, I this is news to me that we provide SRO officers. Can you can you tell me the why for this? Why these aren't um from New Hunter New Hunter County Sheriff's Office? I do not know the answer to that offhand. Um, I'm looking at the back of the room. Generally speaking,

generally speaking, these pro the programs are supported within a geographic boundary. So these would be schools within the city of Wilmington where that support would be. And very often a lot of school systems. They only look at at school resource officers as being in K8, middle or high and or high schools generally not elementary schools. So part of that is the specific need of the school district and their approach. And then those sort of responsibilities get shared across the geographical boundaries when you have a countywide school system like New Hover.

Um, and we can do this in a separate conversation, but I really want to dig into how we got to not because not every middle and high school in the city is on this list, I believe. Um, and and so I just want to understand how we got to this decision. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I just want to understand it. Um, because this is, and I'll own that. I just didn't know this. this I was under the impression that all school resource officers were from the sheriff's office. Um and so understanding this decision is important to me. Do you want We can revisit it. Do you want to come back to it or unless you have if if you know the answer I didn't want to put you on the spot if you didn't know the answer.

Thank you. U Dennis said I think is accurate. Uh this is a part of the reorganization I talked about earlier that we're going to look at. We're literally looking at every position we have where they're allocated. Uh the sheriff's office does provide uh school resource officers to every school in the county. These do supplement uh those four that are listed. Uh but that's something we're going to look at to see if there's sense to continue to do that. Is there sense to expand that, contract that, whatever it may be? I guess not to put too fine a point on this. the what I really want to understand is is this a level of service that the county should be providing but the city is providing because the county isn't funding it. That's really what I want to know. Yeah. And that's uh I would like to know that as well. So, we'll look into that. Thank you.

But but to be fair and I just I know a lot of this transpired after Sandy Hook in regards to police officers in schools. I remember that because we were getting it and people just wanted safety for their kids and obviously Coline changed the whole scope of school resource officers back in the '9s. But going back to to the issue with the school resource officers and the four that we have, we do have pretty good relationships with the count with the sheriff's department and they do help us in the evenings, especially in the downtown areas where you have the joint task force and I'm sure there's other joint task force. So there's kind of a give and take on some of these things. And sometimes I think in most of the high schools, if I'm not mistaken, Chief, don't we have a sheriff and a police officer at those high schools? Because I remember at New H I think there was a sheriff and a police officer.

And I think some of the value of that uh not to interrupt you, Mr. But I think some of the value to that is uh uh intelligence gathering quite honestly uh for any type of you know criminal activity that may be going on either in the school or activity that may be going on in the community that then spills into the school or vice versa. You know there's an altercation in the lunchroom today. Um if our officer is in there working that they know that you know student A and student B who live in wherever they live in the city there may be issues uh because of that it's spilling over. So there is a intelligent sharing. You you stated it well. We have a great working relationship with the sheriff. So I don't my limited understanding of it council member is that it wasn't because they weren't providing services they should. It was to supplement those services and continue that communication.

Okay. And again I I want to reiterate I'm not going into this assuming that it's bad. But in I think with this budget especially our responsibility is to turn over every stone and this is a blind spot. And so I just want to understand it.

Thank you. I I just want to say my my question is about chain of command and what happens if there is an emergency where multiple units have to respond across multiple agencies. Um candidly when the very one of the very first questions I had when I got on to council was having an understanding of what would happen with an emergency at one of our schools where multiple agencies were responding. And the answer I was given at the time was that uh all available units would respond, but ultimately chain of command at a school, no matter where it was in New Hver County, would turn over to the sheriff for to to lead the response once it was time to hand over chain of command that that many people were there. So I want that was my purpose in asking this question is it was news to me that we had officers who were at these schools and so I want to understand what happens in that scenario.

Yeah. And so what I would tell you is that the officers that we do have in those schools, their chain of command still reports through the Wilmington Police Department. Uh to your other scenario, uh I feel very confident in my relationship with Sheriff McMahon that if we had a large scale incident in a school, we would use what we call a unified command structure. Meaning that would be us there uh running a portion of it or combined working on how we run it with the sheriff's office, with probably the fire department, with you know, Novant, with whoever else is there depending on what the nature of that emergency was. But uh best practices in public safety as we get bosses from each of the responding agencies together in the physical same place so that we can make sure that we're not either duplicating resources or we're not getting in each other's way of providing the services especially in a critical incident.

Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, do you want to break for lunch and we can keep going? Yeah, let's break for lunch. All right. When when do you want to come back? We I mean we can take a little break but continue to give us 30. Yeah. 30. Okay. 30. Thank you.

I bring the meeting back to order. I'm already settled. It's Friday afternoon. Okay. Take a roll call. Mayor Pro Tim, are you here? Reluctantly. Yes. Council member Joy, are you here? Council member Andrews, are you here? Council member Law, are you here? Here. Council member Santu, are you here? Here. Council member Clinton Quintana, are you here? I am in the flesh, sir. Okay. The chair is here. We're all here and accounted for. I'll turn it back over to you, Miss Hulk. Like sitting in a time share presentation.

Uh all right. Uh next question is, why was there a 75% jump for reserved fund balance? Um Laura has the the details on this, but um really in general, this is um to anticipate um increased fuel costs um that we are experiencing across the city um more than anything was uh the jump in that. And so if those costs are needed, then those dollars will be allocated out to the departments um as those needs arise. Um but this is really kind of a a central holding location um for dollars that are needed to run our fleet. Um also in that fund um unfortunately we occasionally have accidents and need to repair vehicles. Um and so the dollars sitting in this account um help cover the cost of that because we are self-insured. So um we have to take on those costs ourselves. Why the drop in interest earnings for the convention center? Um we do operate as a multi-year fund for the convention center. Um so we are just um looking at um less interest revenue in this upcoming fiscal year. Um interest earnings that are received but not appropriated that stay those stay in the fund. Um so we're just basically projecting an interest earnings amount. If we exceed that, that would just go into the convention center fund balance for future use uh for something related to the convention center. But you're you're projecting a 44% decrease in interest earnings period.

Sure. Martha has raised her hand. The convention center fund is a multi-year fund. And so what we're doing is we're projecting the interest rate earnings that we need in order to balance the budget. The additional interest earnings that we may receive will still remain within that fund and we'll have the ability to budget in the future if needed. So since this is a multi-year fund, it kind of operates a little bit different than the general fund with an annual basis. But this one, the revenue if we receive more will always be available and it but it stays within the convention center bucket.

Correct. Okay. I I just because it stays within that bucket. I don't Is this like we're having a highly conservative estimate for interest earnings or this is explain to me this the multi-year nature of this? Uh so this is just what's needed. So, with a a multi-year um like if we had savings one year like last year, we could use some of that money because it the available budget would still be there because it's not on an annual basis and so it's more of a cumulative effect. So, this would be like cumulatively overall this is what we need in the the fund this year.

So, so it's not that you think that the interest this account is going to earn 44% less than last year. It's that you're spending some of it down. Uh it well not necessarily down but that is correct. It's not that we think that the earnings will be 44% less. It's cumulatively this is what we needed to balance the budget. So we any interest earnings that are above what is currently budgeted are still going to be in that fund and available to appropriate if needed later in the fiscal year. I understand. Thank you,

Martha. Real quick, when you invest that particular amount of money, I know in the general fund you don't want to invest in anything over a five-year period. I don't think you can. In this particular fund, can does it does it follow the same same guidelines? Yes, we use the same principles. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thanks, Martha. Why are we keeping the alleyways at $100,000 if there are no bids in that range? Uh we have been putting $100,000 aside toward alleyway improvements um because they are very expensive and we do want to see them improved. Um so this helps chip away at the total dollar amount that is needed to ultimately improve them and it will help us um make some smaller improvements in the interim by using these funds. Um so it's still an important project. Um we just we don't have the dollars to put a giant slug towards it to be able to knock it completely out. Um, but we do want to see these dollars still put towards this effort so that we can move the needle on making these improvements. Becky, and I know that we we've been talking about alleys for years, and I know some alleys are much easier to maintain and take care of than other alleys,

but specifically when we started setting this money aside, was there ever an assessment to determine which of these alleys we really want to focus a whether the traffic pattern is a lot more uh active and and make the improvement to that particular alley to begin with and kind of take them systematically because I think most of them are south of uh market going toward

dock. So I believe there are three alleyways um that are the highest priority. There are to your point other alleyways, but before we can get to those, we need to get to the three. We are currently rescoping the work because the bid that came in to do the uh infrastructure work that we felt was required in order to um fully uh uh beautify and improve the alleyways that came in higher than expected. So that rescoping is happening. Um we look to put it back out to be able to still do some work. Um but this is just a a small um kind of drop in the bucket that is needed to ultimately be able to fully fund those

and you've assessed which ones probably I mean in regard to drainage utilities and all all of that is is is it primarily um that is more resurfacing or you are you going in there doing the full monty with drainage and everything? So that was the initial look was to go go in there and and relocate all of the utilities below grade and and then be able to resurface it and everything else. And so part of the challenge was the timeline that was put out in the in the original bid really wasn't feasible relative to the the utility relocation. And that is far and away the the most expensive part of this work. And so one of the things that we're exploring is potentially leaving some of those overhead utilities in place because we don't know that it's necessarily required to put them below grade, but doing the rest of the work that we need to do as far as making sure the water is being diverted appropriately and that we've got we've got enough uh uh enough done so that we're we're good when we go to resurface. So identifying what actually should be moved around. We got gas lines and some some drainage and and and the the storm work that needs to be done. But there's also been a request recently to evaluate converting one of the pedestrian one of the alleys to pedestrian only. So we're also evaluating that request. That was something that just recently came in due to some investment that's coming into the area. So we're taking a look at that too and seeing if that also changes sort of the approach for that particular alley. So there's there's multiple moving parts on this right now.

What are measurable outcomes that taxpayers will see in exchange for the proposed increase? Um there are a lot of them uh that we feel very confident about. So um being able to track our voluntary employee separation rates um we do expect those to decrease. Um, we expect increased employee retention and workforce stability. So, we'll be able to show the befores and afters. Um, uh, same thing with recruitment success for long-term and hard to fill vacancies. We um you know there's a lot of work going on um in how we deliver services and our response times and being able to track those to show um you know we believe that the investment in staff um in return for the work that we're expecting of them that we'll be able to show that in our response times um and the improvements that we'll see there. the capital project delivery and completion rates. Um being able to uh finish up projects that have been longstanding for uh uh years and years in some cases. Um and delivering them on time and on budget from here on out is something that we fully expect. Uh having reduced vacancy rates across departments is also trackable. Um of course increased competitiveness of employee compensation benefits. So we can compare that to our neighbors as well as the private sector. I know there's been some questions about how our proposed salary rates um may or may not compare to the private sector. We were looking at that data yesterday. 19 of the 20 positions that we looked at were below what the private sector pays. Even with the pay increase, um they would remain below what the private sector pays. The only one that was a bit above was landscaping. Um, but the work that we're asking our staff to do is different than your contracted landscaping. Um, ours is right-of-way maintenance, which is a different um,

uh, level of risk, um, and expectation, uh, compared to going into a property and, you know, doing things on a residential basis or that type of thing. Um, so, um, so that one's really not quite apples to apples anyways, but those other positions, um, uh, you you have to have a love for public service to want to come, uh, work in local government. Um, because if if you're after the dollars, um, that is that's just not something that we're able to compete with on the private sector. We understand that.

I have a question here, really a request. Since you've baselined this data, when when and if we pass this living wage, will you come to us with six months until tell us where we are with that? I will be thrilled to do that. And then another recommendation or request is is this data that we can post on some of the publicly facing dashboards that we talked about earlier in the year.

Uh we have a a communications uh staff member who is actively working on those dashboards now. I saw some of the work in progress a couple of days ago and so this is uh perfect examples of what can be fed into that dashboard and can live uh be a living document that would change as information is fed into it. Yeah, I I really love the idea of residents being able to see this, you know, when when they want to get this information because, as you mentioned, when folks come into to doing work in the public sector, there's there's got to be a love for that and I know that our folks do really great work. And so, I just I want that to be represented as much as possible to the residents of our city. Thanks.

Yeah. And the uh capital projects dashboard that we promised is done. We're getting ready to launch that. So, there'll be more to follow on on that very shortly. That's great news. Thanks.

Um we uh before you scroll off of that, um we also have um a uh every two years we complete uh resident survey. And um so that is also another good metric to look at how our service um is or isn't improving in the eyes of the public. And we've been doing that for years and years. So there's a lot of good historical data that we'll be able to look back and see are we making the positive movements that we hope to be through that process. So how much of the proposed capital funding the um 41 pennies how much of that adjustment is for new projects versus cost overages on projects? So, there's only one new project in the remaining two-year capital improvement fund. Um, that is for the Greenville Loop Park, and that is just for the design work uh to be able to complete the mandatory construction deadlines that we have in our agreement with the endowment. Um, so we do expect that through this increase, we'll be able to slide in that design work in the next two years. So then when we have the new round of CIP funding, then we will be able to immediately start construction um with that that new funding to be able to meet those timelines. Um and uh we'll be talking about the CIP projects a little bit later, so we'll skip past those for now. Were all options for smoothing this increase fully explored? Um they they were. Um, I I I really cannot um stress enough the amount of work that went into um being able to I I call it ratcheting down the proposed tax increase. Um when we came to you a couple of months ago, we thought we might be as high as 6.26

cents. Um half a penny doesn't necessarily sound like a lot. Um but being able to carve that out of what we are proposing. Um relook at interest rates, relook at borrowing options, relook at what can potentially be done differently or funded in FY26 for with some remaining dollars versus 27. Um staff has spent hours and hours and I have spent hours along with them um looking at that, pushing on it to to bring that down. Um, so it is of course the the will of council regarding your interest level in implementing the living wage philosophy in any way, shape or form. Um uh so if you want to split that up, that's certainly your prerogative, but we do feel um as high as the 5.75 cents may feel um that it is really reflective of um quite frankly a a baseline that we believe is necessary to deliver the work that is expected of us. As I've mentioned, that tax rate increase does not include additional funding for a lot of other things that we have talked about that we know are important. Um, but we did feel like um straightening out our wages and then putting a significant focus on public safety investment was really where we needed to focus this year, getting the funding that we need to complete the capital projects that have already been identified and approved. um being able to move on those was really where we needed to put our efforts. Um trust me, if there was a way to to make that lower than 5.75 would have happily brought you that budget, but that that is where it landed.

Question about economic incentives. Um so we have a couple of economic incentive agreements uh that exist today. Um they uh they typically are paid out over a number of years based on um a company either moving into the area and delivering a certain annual wage to a certain number of employees and being able to deliver on the number of jobs created at a certain wage level. It also um can be used for expansion or retention of existing businesses who might otherwise be looking to leave or they want to make their footprint bigger but they're looking for a little bit of assistance to do that. So we have a couple in place right now. Um we have one um with um the Galleria that is um paid out through 2043 that is an annual incentive of $30,000. Live Oak Bank. Um this is one that has made the news recently that they um they have made some shifts in their plans for expansion where they did sounds like give the state notice that they would not be pursuing the state economic development incentive grant that they had in place. Um we're looking to have conversations with them to sort of understand um how that applies to our agreement with them. um what has been delivered versus what um will not now be delivered and if there is um the ability to pull any of that back if that is appropriate, we would certainly be pursuing that. Otherwise, um if it makes sense to just not continue it, then that would also be a part of it. So, that one we're looking to likely have some changes in the near future. Kind of stay tuned as far as where exactly we stand with that. Vantica is another one that we are currently paying $16,000 annually based on performance standards. Um that one is about to end. Uh this would be the last fiscal year that that would be paid out

in FY27. Mega court um there are um uh it was signed midyear in 2023 and again we're looking at uh this being the last year. That's a $40,000 annual payout. Same thing with GE nuclear FY27 being the last year for a $50,000 annual payout. And then port city logistics goes for another couple of years that is only $9,000 a year. Um and also typically these incentive grants are in partnership with the county. So there is um typically a corresponding dollar amount that the county is giving them as well.

Becky. Yes. And then on the bottom of that uh chart, it says uh economic incentives miscellaneous for FY26 adjusted. Can you remind me what that's about? Laura, can you speak to that? That one line is there for council to use if and when um a company comes off cycle, it's there so you don't have to appropriate your fund balance and you can respond immediately because some of these things are timesensitive and so we budget those so you can respond immediately. But it wasn't spent. It It depends on how many opportunities you have in given each year. The one for FY26. It says FY26 adjusted 450,000.

I'll have to look into why that increased. Well, it's it's zeroed for all the other years. It's just 450,000 under FY 26 adjusted. It says economic incentives misk. What What page are you on? Thank you.

I'll have to dig into that. I'm not quite sure because I don't recall. Oh, that was the ones that I got to look it up. So, I don't want to give you something that's wrong. We will look it up and let you know.

I was gonna We also um do have a summary of fee schedule changes. The entire fee schedule is at the back of your packet with track changes. Um what we have in front of you is um just the ones that did change trying to make a clear to read chart for you. Um so we've talked a lot about golf so we will skip over that. Um, Dylan. Yep, it is. It's in the after the yellow page.

Dylan Dylan may need a little bit of guidance if you don't mind.

So, we're not going to go over them line by line. There's just a couple that we wanted to point out to make sure that you were aware of um and that um you didn't have any questions on Okay. Um, one that we wanted to talk about briefly was um, parking fees. Um, if Chance is Chance in the room. I see Chance. Um, if Chance can just speak to this briefly. Um, we have some larger discussions that we know that we need to follow up with council on related to parking. um in some of the residential areas, but wanted to specifically call out a proposed change um in our central business district.

Uh good afternoon everyone. Um so the two parking fee uh recommendations that landed in our fee schedule for this FY27 budget recommendation was one the first was just an activation of parking fees at our United Bank building which is 115 North 3rd Street. um that's historically been utilized for tenant only parking and what we've seen is after 5:00 and on the weekends a lot of folks are slipping into that parking lot kind of unmanaged unchecked and and parking for free. So there's a demand there and we just like to capitalize on on that demand and and make some revenue. Uh the second is kind of a look at our on street meter rates. uh this is kind of a data-driven decision. We uh looked at kind of geographically total transactions around the entirety of the central business district um both on spreadsheets and data but also visually. And what we're seeing is um the outer limits of the CBD have uh much lower occupancy and much lower transaction rates than say the core of the CBD front street, second street and the cross streets. So, what we're recommending is for the entirety of Third Street, uh, from Market going north all the way up to Cowan, um, everything east of Third Street and then everything north of Red Cross. So, basically kind of a long inverted Oklahoma shape. Um, to uh, best way to I've used that a few times. is the best way to describe it in my head at least. Uh we're recommending reducing those hourly on street fees from $3 per hour down to $1.50 per hour. Uh we think it will potentially attract more folks to into utilizing those

space. Uh some of the visitors downtown that may be a little more price conscious and also don't mind walking a couple extra blocks to save a couple bucks. uh but really data driven um in areas where I think those meter spaces along third and north of Red Cross uh encompass about 15 to 20% of our total meter spaces downtown but only uh relate to less than 5% of our transactions downtown. So big uh chunk of inventory where a lot of people aren't parking and we're thinking just a lower rate per hour might attract uh more vehicles into those areas and also uh open up spaces in the core area where where visitors might be willing to pay a little bit more per hour. I think that's it on the parking side. There was a map. I don't know if the map made it into the

into the packet. On the decks themselves, do we still we have 30 minutes free parking in the parking decks themselves? We have 30 minutes free at the Market Street and Second Street parking deck. I think all the other decks we have just a kind of a a behind the scenes 15minute grace period. But Market and Second is still 30 minutes free. Okay. And then the evenings when the bar crowd comes, is there just a flat rate? Yeah, flat rate Thursday, Friday, Saturday evenings. Uh the flat rate begins at nine o'clock if I'm not mistaken. And right now it's $8 flat rate after 9:00 Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

And and and when you're looking at the vacancy or occupancy of that deck in those time frames, what does it look like? Do you have any number on that? It it varies weekend to weekend, day by day, but we're regularly nearing occupancy. I'd say almost every Friday and Saturday evening uh at market and second street. Okay. And then and then the rate thereafter is how much per hour?

Um outside of that flat rate uh so the the Thursday, Friday, Saturday is just a flat rate entering after 9:00 up until the next morning at 6:00 a.m. So there's not an incremental beyond that. Um the other hourly rates outside of that start at just a dollar for the first hour and it maxes out for 14 for a 24-h hour period.

Okay. And then when you compare, if you haven't received any, I'm sure some of you have, when somebody goes into a private parking lot, and I didn't realize how many private parking lots there are downtown Wilmington, and I'm getting the call or we getting the letter. If somebody's so irate that thinks it's the city's uh deck or parking lot, not deck, but what what is the private lot number? I do y'all have an overall number? Do they follow each other or is it is it much higher?

It's case by case, owner by owner, management company by management company. I would say in general, the starting fee at the lowest private deck that I'm aware of is probably five or $6 per hour and that's the first hour onward. Uh some of those max out around 30 or 40. Uh some of those start at seven or eight dollars per hour and then do not have a max beyond that beyond that rate either. So you say 10 hours at $8, it'll cost you $80 for that time.

So when we when we're calculating all of the parking that the city, you know, the decks, the on street parking, um and then you in calculating how much of it is how many private parking spaces are do we have a a number?

We have that um I don't have that in front of me in my head. I think in my head total uh public meaning city, county, CFCC plus private lots, Pier 33 and such. There's over 10,000 parking spaces downtown. And if my memory serves me correctly, the city manages, owns, or operates little over 50% of that number. So, there's a big chunk that is not operated by the city. Some of them public, some of them private, meaning, you know, the county and and Kayfair Community College. But uh overall over 10,000 publicly.

So So let me ask let me ask this question because there's a lot of misinformation sometimes that goes out there. They're parking in a county deck or they're parking at the CFCC deck because there's no signage. Sometimes some of these operations, the number there on the CFCC deck and the county deck, the county deck mirrors our our our parking. Correct. It's it's close. Yes. Close. Yes, sir. How about on the CFCC? It's it's comparable. Same thing. It it varies by location. I would say CFC and county are fairly close. They start at a dollar per hour and then they max out maybe around 10 or 11. Uh they do the special event rates of 10 flat rate. We do 10 or 20. So it's comparable maybe slightly less.

So if we have a half hour free at our parking deck, does the county on the county's deck? The county has an hour free still at their at their library deck. We've got the half hour free. and Cape for Community College when they allow public parking in the evenings and weekends outside of student and staff. I can't they do not have a free hour. Okay. And then on the on concert venues and stuff like that, I know CFCC has participated and now they open up their deck. Is there a flat rate for that? Yeah, flat rate at the deck and lots um I believe is $10 flat rate. Um, and then our event parking at Skyline varies from 10 or 20 depending on the size and scope of the event.

And then on the employers downtown, the restaurant tours especially where they have a lot of staff, do you contract out with a lot of those folks in regards to their staffing needs? Yes, sir. I think there's over a thousand monthly monthly parking spaces that are contracted out to individual users to you know a restaurant paying for 30 of its employees to businesses. Yeah, it's wide wide range but yeah there's over a thousand uh monthly contracts that we we support.

And uh last I'm just going to um ask I know with the with the um technology that we have today I would imagine that a lot of people pay by credit card or the license plate so we know where they're coming from. Is there any way we can get a number as to where these folks are coming from? I mean, I hear all kinds of innuendos that some are coming from Wilmington. They're not coming from Wilmington. They're coming from Brunswick County. I know they're coming from everywhere, but can we get an idea of where the majority and those numbers because I think it gives me a better indication of who's paying these rates and why, you know, because

we can pull Great question and I think you and I have spoke about this before. um we can only pull that zip code data from one of our technology partners. It's text to park and we only use text to park um for a portion of the transactions on street and our two surface lots. So yes, we can pull that data but it would only be roughly 40% of the transactions just in those areas. We don't we don't we can't pull that at our parking decks currently. Really? Yeah. We can't. The credit card companies won't let us won't let us pull that information. So, interesting. Okay.

But we can certainly get you the the text to park portion obviously and it's it's probably comparable if you were to look at all the transactions or at least close, but we can we can put the the text to park zip code data together just to have a um have a rundown. Uh if my memory serves me, majority of them uh are are local and then it kind of spreads out there to the Raleighs, the Charlottes, Columbia, South Carolina, geographically kind of just starts them starts to spread out. But we can we can certainly pull that data. Thanks, Chance.

Sure. Um, again, not going to go through these, um, but just want to draw your attention, um, to some of the increased rates that are proposed for some of our parks and recreation facilities. Um, we had a lot of conversations with Amy Batty and her staff about their cost recovery models and um, identified some areas that were not presently meeting the adopted standards for um, at least a portion of cost recovery. So these numbers bring it more in line with um that adopted policy that um that council endorsed a number of years ago. Um so we'll continue to refine this in in future years, but that is the basis behind these proposed changes. Um so if folks ask why are they going up? Um it it's due to the actual cost of being able to um open up uh provide and maintain these facilities and having available staff there um and all of that. So, um, uh, quite honestly, some of these numbers probably need to go up even more, but we didn't want to hit them too hard all at once. And so, um, we'll look to continue to tweak them in future years, but we felt this was a a good start in moving closer to that direction.

Becky, I had a question, um, about the MLK kitchen. Yes. Um, I didn't see anything on there. Did I miss it? So um so if it's not in this document, it didn't change. Okay. So so the um the entire fee schedule is um is listed elsewhere. Okay. Thank you. I had a question about athletic programs at MLK where the adult athletic programs for youth and single day events go up from $60 to $100 per day. Yes. Are you asking for the reason behind that increase?

I am. Okay. Um Amy's walking up.

Thank you, Council Member Spears. As the city manager um remarked when we got to this section, you'll remember that a couple of years ago, city council adopted a cost recovery policy for parks and recreation fees that was based on a study and recommendations uh for cost recovery nationally. um we tend to look at the um National Recreation and Park Association for data and benchmarks. And so at the time of the study overall, we were collecting we were covering 19% of our costs if you don't include our two performance venues, which tends to skew our data. And so if you include those two performance venues, we're at 27%. Which is the national average. But we want to be careful not to just focus on that overall number and then not look at the remaining programs that, as the city manager said, need to be looked at every year in order to maintain the cost recovery levels that we've identified. And so when we presented that to council, we um based it on scale. And so programs that most benefit the community and have the lowest cost to the city, we categorize those as we want to recover between zero and 20%. And then the scale goes all the way up to the fifth tier, which is almost exclusively an individual benefit. So, in that first tier would be something like a basketball court or a playground um where we're not trying to collect anything at the far end, a concert uh venue or a food and beverage operation, you want to recover at least 100% if not

more. Uh golf fees would be on that that individual end as well. uh tennis fees and so the specific fees that you're asking about athletic programming that falls into the second tier. So a considerable community benefit but also an individual benefit and so with the adopted policy we want to try and recover between 20 and 50% in that category and we weren't doing that. So this starts to move in that direction. Um, a good news with this recommendation is the amount that we're increasing. We're requesting for 20% of that to be set aside as committed revenue. And I know this is something that has interest to you in the past. So with that increase, 20% of that increase will stay at the community center for future improvements and maintenance to that facility.

I hope that answers. Give me an not really. Uh, give me an example of what a single day athletic program is. A single day athletic program can be a clinic, a basketball clinic, a any other kind of sports clinic, youth or adult, right? So, a youth or adult sports clinic is going to go from $60 to $100 per person. I think that that may be listed as up to It's up to

Well, it says up to 60 for Yeah, but it's up to Okay. Well, I mean, we need a specific what's we on a sliding scale based on what? Well, um it's difficult to anticipate at a Right. I I missed your last qu comment. No, I was just saying like the sliding scale is based on the event. I would imagine

it is. So, some events cost more than others, and it's difficult at one single point in time to anticipate every athletic program that we'll be doing in that year, especially considering that we're preparing our budgets 18 months in advance in advance of when they take place. So we don't want to lock in a single dollar amount because if there is an affordable program say for at risk use then that would be on the less expensive end of that up to number. If it was a really popular event and we got you know say a former professional athlete end to come do a clinic and there was high demand for it across all demographics then we want to be able to recover more of that type of program. So, it's just giving us the flexibility knowing that we have a wide range of programs that we're offering throughout the course of a year.

Yeah. But can we categorize like if if we don't define it, then who defines it? So, I I I can send this presentation out again, the presentation that we provided to city council upon the conclusion of the fee study. Um, but we did recommend that we use categories instead of specific programs because of what I just said that it's it's just hard to anticipate more than a year in advance every program we might want to offer. But I can give you I can put together a list of programs that we know right now and what category they would be in and what we anticipate to charge if that would help.

Yeah, do that. So, so to to Kevin's point, when we when there's a when there's a tennis tournament at MP Park and there's several I mean I don't know how many teams come to those things, but sometimes you'll have tournaments there. Correct. That's correct. And we raised those fees last year. So, we started last year raising the fees based on the policy because that was the first year that the policy had been adopted. And so, we started with um a a small stab at it focusing on those tier four and tier five things. So to your point and to the point of the policy, we raised our rates for tournament tennis tournaments last year and for tennis clinics. Okay. And then and reservations.

So does this tie does does the other facilities that we have like in Cino Park where you have rugby tournaments, you have soccer tournaments, you have all that or is that a totally separate entity with their own fee schedule or is it tied into this

each athletic facility? So as we don't categorize MLK as an athletic facility, it's a community center, but we program heavily there. Athletics, especially for youth. Our athletic facilities being Olsen Park, Godwin Stadium, Enino Sports Park, etc. Those have their own fees listed in the fee schedule individually for them. Okay. Enino is a little bit different because we contract out management of that, right?

But they Yeah. Their Incino's fee schedules are for Inino. Olsson's are for Olsen. Athletic programming is is not tied to that because again it goes back to our philosophy that you know participating in say an adult ultimate frisbee tournament that's benefiting me as an individual. it's having a secondary uh economic impact on the city, you know, based on the tournament, but it's more of an individual benefit to me as a taxpayer. Whereas things at the community center and athletic programming and particularly for at risk youth, the the philosophy is that has a benefit on that child, but also on the community at large and for years to come for that child. So that is on the lower end of that five scale tier that we adopted.

So Amy, can can you do this for me? Let's just do a comparison of the individual athletic programs at each facility and also the uh attendance or popularity for each facility. you know, because we just had a presentation about Inino Park and you know, when when we get these presentations, if it's if we're talking about the golf course, we're talking about soccer fields, we're talking about even tennis, um you know, everybody's raving about how popular it is. And but when we make these feed schedule increases, it doesn't it's not displaying the same. It's not there's no equity in in what we're seeing as it relates to MLK and and I got an issue with that.

Well, but let me let me go one step further and and this is a question uh Amy. I know coach um Grab that does the soccer and I think she does it over at Maids Park. Does is she getting charged a fee for for that clinic that she does there and training and everything? I mean she does a great thing for the community and how does that work? And that's an example I would imagine like that's using one of our facilities at at Maids for example. So how does what do you charge? That's an outreach clinic and again that would be probably 20% cost recovery that we would recommend

and again the average nationally the cost recovery that um is the average the median is 25%. Okay. So when Lenny says but is that go ahead. Is that targeted at is that targeted at inner city youth or is that just a overall soccer program? That's an overall parks and recreation agency. So that's taking into account every program that agency provides from the lowest cost to the highest cost. So, from inner city athletics to uh a a zoo or an amphitheater or pickle ball. No zoo. We don't have a zoo. But anyway,

we don't Yeah, I just want to make that clear. Um but we're at the new park. I heard we're getting alpaca. I mean, goats at the new park. Hey, hey, wait, wait a minute. It's a different portion of this meeting. Oh man,

I think what may be helpful and certainly um we'll debrief with the city manager and um and our budget staff, but there there are many um new council members who have not seen the presentation that we did at the conclusion of the fee schedule. And it it lays out all these five tiers and it has examples in each tier of what would fit into that category. What would logically you would would fit in the 0 to 20 bucket, the 20 to 50 bucket, the 50 to 70 bucket, and the 70 to 100 bucket, and the 100. So, this is a question I was I forgot to ask. When Lenny When Lenny Simpson was running the tennis clinic there at MLK, did did he get charged or were that was that

the city does not char? No, the city does not charge outreach contractors to come,

but there's still a cost to the city. So there's a direct and an indirect cost still to the city to provide equipment and for um and for non-direct costs for wear and tear on the tennis court for the recreation supervisor who is scheduling that. Um so we're trying to trying to really capture the cost so that the taxpayer understands what it costs to provide these services. have an individual I think you have one or two individuals out at um Imp Park that teach some tennis clinic and I'm not talking about the main um tennis court. I'm talking about they've been there for years having some kind of or classes or whatever they do. Do we

there are tennis clinics and tennis camps that take place at Althia Gibson tennis complex and we charge for those and those would be at a higher cost than what we would call an outreach athletic program for an atrisisk youth

right well since the mayor brought up sorry but this is a little near and dear to me uh since we're talking about empty and and we got we've received the emails about the the anonymous letters and emails about Emp Park and the conditions over there. Um, you know, let I would love to see I I hear you talking about the presentation and and I imagine the rest of the my fellow council members would love to see that presentation, but I I want to see how how these funds are are actually being driven and what they're going to

it it would be really extremely helpful because people are giving us a different side of things and we want to be able to help. Well, I do. I feel like we all do, but I'm just speaking for me. I can't speak for everybody.

I If it's okay, I want to take a second um because we did this with the golf fees earlier this morning. We did a comparison of some of these fees compared to other places in the region. As as somebody who lives in a household with a single income earner and children, I will tell you $40 a week for a summer camp is that is incredible. I mean, a typical summer campus is upwards of $150 in this city. So, I understand that that the increase in these fees impacts our community, and this is real money, but these are these are programs that we're providing at incredible cost savings to our community. A fitness center membership for $70 a year, you're going to pay that and more per month at other facilities. So, I want to recognize that the increase does impact our residents, but these are still very affordable programs in the market comparatively.

Cassidy, yeah, you you're right, but that we weren't talking about um the fitness program. Oh, yeah. I wasn't summer camp. Yeah, I wasn't arguing with you, Kevin. I just I want that was a comment that I wanted to make about this page. I'm not I'm not arguing some of the other points that were made. I do want to see all the numbers that that you uh referred to. Okay. I'm sorry. I just I was just talking about that drastic $60 to $100 increase.

Yeah. I This is Shaima. I would also like to see that report as well. Um, I'm I don't I think I'm hearing Kevin correctly, but your concern is about the underserved youth, if I'm not mistaken, and families who can take advantage of these programs. Am I right? You are right. And the discrepancy u compared to other facilities, right? So, it's it's a multifaceted thing. Maybe I can only explain myself better in person. I gotta start coming in person. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't Why don't you show up in person? We'd love to see you. Oh, because I work.

Um, absolutely.

To the to the last point, um, I also want to remind council that we do have a fee assistance program. So, for um with the exclusion of permits or reservation or membership fees, um any um parent or child is able to um apply for that. And so that would apply to a youth athletic league, a clinic, an afterchool program, a summer camp. And we closely pattern that after Raleigh's program. And the eligibility criteria is households below 60% AMI andor residents who receive um SSI, SSDI, Medicaid, food stamps, or subsidized housing. And so qualified people u receive 50% off um for each program that they register for.

Which is good, Amy. And this and I promise I'm gonna stop after this on this topic, but imagine if it was just affordable and and and you didn't have to do all of that, right? And I and I get it. I've been talking about how the designation of the fees flow for ever since I've been on council, but at the end of the day, if it was just affordable, it would be affordable. And you wouldn't have to say, "Hey, I'm on SSI. I make below the 60% of the AMI or I get food stamps. Who the hell wants to do that?

I wouldn't at at the risk of I I understand what you're saying. I do. Um and and it's really valid. Um but I I'll go back to the city manager's original point that we were already under um compared to other agencies. And so we're just try and that we're probably still going to be on the low end if this recommended change to the fee schedule is adopted. So I I think an objective analysis would say that we are still affordable and we're below the average of what other parks and recreation agencies are are charging. Um and but I'll just I'll leave it there and we'll certainly start working on gathering the numbers that you requested.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thanks, Amy. Um, again, don't want to go through these line by line. Um, but we do have, um, a few changes under planning and zoning. Um, storm water. Um, this is something that tweaks up a little bit every single year. So, we're looking at a, um, 30 cent increase per month between FY 26 and 27. Um, I think you can keep scrolling. Again, happy to answer any questions as they come. Do you want to talk about the outside contracts for police services? If you can scroll back up a little bit, Dylan, thank you. Um, so we are looking to increase those fees. This is for entities that need to hire our officers off duty. Um these rates were um created in alignment with the new Hanover County Sheriff's Office um to match what they are proposing um because often um you may have one or the other um serving at a various event. So um so these are on par with the changes that they are looking to make um at the county level. Um the only other one that I think was completely new in there um was related to um it was it was maybe on a different page. Um but we are looking to implement a film permit for the first time a firm a film permit fee. Um right now um those permits are um allowed uh to be granted without any fee. Um there is a staff cost. Uh it takes time to make sure that the application um should be approved, that everything is accounted for and managed. Um so we are looking uh to propose um a um $50 fee um to film at facilities. Um and then um uh that is per request. And then if you want to

have an unlimited number of permits, you can pay once and submit for as many things as you want. Um, that would be $500 annually. Excuse me. Can you go back? So, let's just say let's just say if um Cinepace were to buy that fee or pay $500 for that, any production company that would come in under them could use that permit. If they it if they filed under that that permit application, um then we would view it we would view it as one. Um it it would be in how they filled out the application.

Okay. And it's also per project. So not per as many films they have that year. It's per project. So it's okay. So what So if a production company comes in there, they pay the $500 fee. Let's just say this I guess they're filming something here called RJ Decker and they're all over the city. They pay that onetime fee of 500. They can get a permit anywhere within the city. Not per episode or per per shooting, but for the Skyline Center. Oh, that Well, that that's independent of Sky. Well, you got other facilities. You're at other facilities. I'm sorry. I just want to be perfect. So, then that would be

Yeah. So, okay. So, it is $50 permit. You can choose that option or you can choose the option of $500 per project per year. So RJ Decker knowing that they're going to film a lot in one year all over the city, they pay $500 one time. Okay.

And uh the staff recommendation was based on a lot of benchmarking. Um about 15 different cities and uh I believe Savannah uses that model. And because we have a type of city that has a one-off where you would want to pay the 50, but we also have the R.J. Deckers, it made sense to do the two options. Thank you.

Okay, we will um thank you. Um going back to the um $450,000 that was um listed under um economic development incentives. Um that was actually the commissions that council approved that needed to be paid to Capefir Commercial related to the lease out of this building. So that that came before you this current year. Um so that uh brought them up to be fully paid um for their lease commissions. I I think that we whether it's council or whether it's staff, like I think that we need a better we need to better define what capital E, capital D economic development is. Um and and that's a conversation that I want to have with my fellow council members, but like we got to get our arms around that.

We uh we agree um those commissions um will not be continuing in the future. Um we are taking that work in house. Um, so we do not um expect there are some there's some contract language that if they renewed years from now, there may be more owed. Um, but in terms of um future leases, we agree that is not what we would define as economic development. We have existing staff who can now manage that in house. Um, so those commissions um so that will be a direct cost savings in our budget in the future to not have to pay those. And I think to that broader point, we've reimagined the economic development role and that's what we're hiring for is for somebody who's doing this work with a focus on on raising every boat as the manager said earlier. So really focusing on quality of life and and impacting individual residents through economic development. So whether that's about our MWBE practices and the way we go about purchasing things, filling in gaps in the ecosystem here, we don't need to be doing the same thing that the chamber is doing or the same thing that WBD is doing, but figuring out where we fit in and and really being focused on the economic life of our residents and and their economic mobility more than nobody thinks leasing a building is economic development. like it just know that nobody here thinks that that's economic development.

All right, that concludes that round of questions. Um so, um we are going to um keep moving um into our parks maintenance funding. Um this was a question that came up during the budget presentation. Uh we have um Sally Thigpen who's our assistant director of landscaping. Daryl McCall is our newly promoted assistant director of facilities management and Mary Vigu um who is um over that uh department until Robin starts in a few weeks. Um uh they wanted to bring this information forward um and answer some of the questions that council had about um maintenance of parks and landscaping. So um we will we will pull them uh forward and um and have them go through this information. All right. Well, why we we tracked down one of the staff members who I think was heading trying to move uh an interview. Uh uh I want to start You have the clicker, right? You'll have to move it.

No, you're fine. Um if you can go to the first slide. I wanted to begin and take a moment and just uh highlight a couple things as we go in before we get in the presentation because we're going to talk about a couple things today. A question was asked about maintenance and so we want to highlight the difference between the maintenance we do out of our operating budget versus the maintenance that we do versus capital. Uh we also want to talk about bathrooms which I'm glad lunch is now a distant memory behind us. Um but also wanted to take an opportunity to talk about the new department. Um because as you'll hear I get really excited as I talk about it. um because of the synergy that we've been able to create in just the short amount of time. Uh and so what you have in front of you and most of you have seen this is the org chart. And so when we imagined this area, it was beginning to think about how do we pull together those things that number one have been a challenge as an organization, but also that we want to create that one city. I need y'all to come up. Come on. uh in terms of getting, you know, things together uh and and and tearing down those barriers uh to providing so that so that the answer is yes. Oh, I don't need everybody. I mean, Courtney can stand. Well, y'all can all come up. I don't care. So, we'll begin with Robin is our department director. Uh we are glad to have her here. The rest of them stood up. Uh so, I'll introduce everybody. Um we we looked at putting fleet services which used to be under finance. I always get the question of how does fleet end up finance. In my career it's always been under finance. Uh some of that has to do with the funding mechanism but it didn't make sense here. Uh and we think about who uses those services. A lot of it is this area uh landscape maintenance. And it's so funny is that we were developing this. Um Dennis and I would look across table at each other and we're going to go anything with a mower we're going to

throw in here other than an athletic field. And so poor Sally literally it was anything with a mower we we have thrown in here. Um with that that idea of how do we create a standard level of service uh across the organization and in the community uh and those synergies facilities um is another area which has been a challenge for us over time. Um, we've had different functions. This building occupied as a standalone facilities. Uh, and then we had overall city facilities. And Daryl's going to talk a little bit about that. Um, and then last but certainly not least is property management, which is a whole new area and that's why they indicated about the rentals. Uh, and in terms of leasing of this building, we're bringing that back in house. This is really going to look at our surplus. How do we sell property? Um, Courtney uh, Salgatada is our division manager over that. I meant to introduce people. She was just recently promoted. Some of you may have seen her. She's been with the city a while. Uh, John Fortune is our fleet manager. Most of y'all know him. He's with the city what, 20 years, 20 plus years. Started as a mechanic, worked his way up, so he's now an AD over fleet. Uh, we'll introduce Sally Bigpen in a second. She'll go in there. And then Daryl McCall was just promoted to over facilities operations and so be nice to him. It's his first time speaking at council. So, uh, so he's a little nervous. All right, next slide. Just as a highlight, our overall budget as a department is 27.8 million. Uh, a huge hunk of that, so that's that's a little misleading because it looks like a lot of money, uh, is fleet services at 12.8 million. And that a lot of that money is in terms of the replacement of vehicles. It includes the maintenance but it's also the purchase is in that amount. Um so it's not just operations. Uh so I just want to be careful. Fleet operates

as an enterprise fund meaning we charge uh and and recoup the cost from the organization for those services. Um it has it worked out perfectly. The math 100 authorized positions within this area. The bulk of them are in landscape services. was I think it was what 86 80 86 80 something 60 60 you have 60 and it was 86 in the general fund

uh and then there were 14 in fleet uh and so we're going to go through this I'm going to turn by the way that is the remote control mower I just want to let you know that and so one of the things they let me do was go out and do it use that it's used in storm water for drainages it is actually way harder than it looks and people like almost like hit each other in traffic watching them use that remote but enables us to get into ditches. So, it's a really cool piece of technology. All right, Sally, I could keep going, so I'm going to turn it over to you.

Thank you, Mayor Mary. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about my absolute favorite topic, parks maintenance. Um, and the talented and passionate team that manages um all of these spaces for us. As I said, we have about 60 authorized positions. So, this is just an overview. We've got two distinct areas. One is the beautifification area, horiculture. This team is responsible for our downtown parks and landscape beds. They manage our greenhouse and irrigation program. Um also our integrated pest management program um and riverfront park. Um the park maintenance team take care of everything all of the stuff that's in our park. So think petway stations and benches and um bike repair stations. Um they do all of our uh trash and recycling removal, custodial, playground inspections and maintenance. Um and they also maintain our river walk and docks. Then the other section that's um fairly newly formed uh in the realignment is the landscape services area. So we have that segment of storm water management. So vegetation management in our drainage easements and ditch mowing and creek assessments, landscape maintenance, that's most of our park mowing, street and rideway mowing. They maintain medians and alleys and vacant lots and traffic calming devices. And then of course forestry, I've had the opportunity to speak with you about them quite a bit, so I will um just gloss over that right now. So it's about 744 acres, uh 47 parks, 30 miles of trail. Um, this is just a few images to illustrate some of what I was just describing. So, um, this is our greenhouse. It was really pumping a couple of weeks ago. A lot of these plants are now out in the system. About 30,000 plants are produced there every year. Um, just an image of signs. You don't think about all the signs. They have to be kept clean and visible and readable for the public. So, we manage and maintain all of those. Um, of

course, the Riverwalk I mentioned. Um there's some trail resurfacing and a court resurfacing project that we recently worked on. So why is maintenance important? Well, of course, we want to make sure that these spaces are clean and safe and ready for the public and for the incredible programming that our parks and recreation department puts on. And we also want to make sure that we're providing routine maintenance to extend the life of these amenities and to reduce the long-term costs of our capital maintenance program. So, how do we do this? Well, we do have internal standards that we've developed to guide our work. Um, the maintenance standards define the expectations of the tasks that our teams are performing, the frequency, so how often these things are getting done, and the quality of that work. And then we use our asset management and work order system to track those task completions, the frequencies, and the associated costs like labor, equipment, and material. So, here's a an example of the different levels of service. This is based on the National Recreation and Park Association levels. We use four of them. Um, and this is the level of care at each site. That's based on the volume of use, the age, the amenities, and the available staff and resources that we have. So, a level one is going to be daily or weekly maintenance. Level two will be a bi-weekly maintenance. And this is probably the bulk of our um locations and assets are are getting a two-week service. Level three is going to be a three-week service. And when you think about mowing, uh you're going to really notice some longer medians because if they're on a three-week cycle, you think in the summer, if you get past that second week in your lawn, it's starting to look a little woolly. Um, but we just want to be transparent about the level of maintenance that we're able to um, perform in these areas. And of course, there's lots of things that are going to throw us off of our standards and our frequencies like weather, staff being

out, equipment being done um, down uh, vandalism, special projects, emergencies, um, and, uh, the addition of parks or streetscapes as they come online. So, that's just a few things I wanted to mention about that. Don't try to read this too closely. Um really I just want to um illustrate that we are measuring our performance. We are getting more robust data coming out of our munus work order system with help from my friends down on this row. And um we're going to be spending this growing season evaluating how we're doing. I did want to just show a snapshot. This is a mowing month of mowing. Um and where the red line is is 100%. So, that's where we're hitting every single uh site, whether it's a traffic calming device, a park, at the frequency that we planned. You can see we're not making it here, but it helps us to ask the question, okay, what's going on? Is it because we don't have the staffing levels, or is it because March was incredibly dry and we didn't have to service some of these areas just for mowing? We were probably picking up litter and doing other services at those sites, but not mowing. Um, so I just wanted to illustrate that this is one of the tools that we're using to measure our performance. Just wanted to touch on our uh landscape maintenance CIP. So there is a capital maintenance program uh funded at about 3.7 million in FY27. Uh that's going to be focused on bridges and walkways. We've got some funding for pool painting, greenfield park structures, court resurfacing. We do have funds for trail repair um and then annual maintenance um at our river walk and docks. So, what I was describing before was more of our routine maintenance program. This is the capital maintenance bucket that we have um that we deploy each year. We did have some questions about Greenfield Park. So, I just wanted to

highlight some of the investments that have been um deployed there in the last 10 years, about a million and a half. And then we do have several upcoming projects, a mix of routine and capital investments that'll be happening. So, um, repairing the roof or actually replacing the roof at the restrooms and the boat house and that's already scheduled in the in the CIP. Um, we'll be doing uh some vegetation management inhouse. Um, the Lionsbridge reconstruction you'll hear about probably next week. Um, so I just wanted to highlight some of the investments we've been making into the park both from a capital and a routine perspective. So, unless there's any questions, I'm getting ready to turn it over to Daryl McCall. We do work closely with facilities have been um to address maintenance needs and vandalism concerns and also the capital maintenance program. Um so with that I'll turn it over to Daryl. Thank you.

It's not fair guys following Sally. She's a seasoned vet speaking. This is my first time attempting this so go easy. Um speaking to the mic.

Sorry sir. Sorry sir. Like I said first timer here. Um, I'm excited in my new role. I've been in about three weeks and here we are already. We're going to hit the ground running and try to make some improvements. Um, I really just wanted to touch high level about our division. Um, to start off with, um, believe it or not, our in-house facilities team is maintaining over 1.8 million square feet of buildings at this point. Um, that includes city and park facilities, of course, the Skyline Center, which is, uh, what brought me on board with the city of Wilmington. Um, I've been running this place for two and a half years now. It's been a privilege. Um, we're currently trying to manage all that with 13 FTEEs. So, that that's that's very tough. Uh, that's a struggle. It's a challenge. So, we're looking at innovative ways streamlining consistencies with contracts across the board. Um, so with that, um, we're we're funding our two areas of maintenance, um, out of two different buckets. So, we have our routine maintenance, which is basically your recurring day-to-day tasks that funnel through our work order system. Um, that includes just minor painting, minor carpentry, everyday plumbing, electrical repairs, HVAC. Um, a big part of that though is we are always uh 247 emergency phone call away. So, that's covering every one of our sites um for stuff that happens outside of the norm. Um outside of that, we sort of have an overarching overall CIP that's spread across the table for um for all the building needs. That's for items like roof replacements, building renovations, modernizations, um ADA compliance would be some good examples of that. Um do I have a clicker? Okay. Okay. Thank you. You don't. Um, and how does that pertain to this topic of parks

and um, more specifically the park facility restrooms? Um, I took all day earlier in the week with some staff and we toured every one of these. Um, I wanted to get out and see what we're up against. Um, it was very obvious we have a lot of opportunities. We have a lot of challenges as well. Um, opportunities being they're in desperate need of a modernization, right? These things are dated. Um several of these facilities um need significant repairs, roof replacements. Um if you're asking me, it's a good time to look at those facilities and look at replacement versus sinking money into an old structure. Maybe we put our money towards the good with some new and involve the modernizations we need. Um, one of the challenges that we cannot ignore and talking with staff is the most challenging issue is our vandalism. Um, it's you can see the pictures. Sorry for that. It's a little scary. Um, these were not on my tour. These were just um taken over the years of the more significant issues. Um, but talking with my staff is very frustrating and and tough to fix something one day and come back maybe the next day or the next week and it's it's in disarray again. Um, and it's really diverting our city uh staff and financial resources away from other city needs. Um, and so with that, it of course ties into the public impact. Um, I certainly recognize that the rest areas are like one of the most visible areas of service for the city. Um, it is a public right to be able to to use these facilities. Um, but with some of this um, vandalism, you know, it's taken these areas out of service for an extended amount of time. Um, when plumbing fixtures are ripped out, um, locks are dismantled.

Um, so we we're looking at that. Um, but that is an issue for us. For the final slide, I just wanted to touch on a key point that custodian services are currently being shared between facilities and um Sally's group and landscaping. Um it's sort of obvious to me that there's a greater need for more consistency and more frequent service. we're not visiting these places every day. So, it's concerning of what the public might walk into when we're missing those days of service. Um, so that's another great opportunity. Um, and then with that, I just sort of highlighted some of the um common areas of maintenance um that tie into vandalism. Um, we have gotten smart about some stuff been replacing instead of porcelain fixtures, we're going to stainless steel. They're more vandalproof. We're going to shatter resistant mirrors. Um, now these aren't the prettiest things in the world, but they're going to stand up um better than your standard components. Um, I hope to be a man of few words today for my first uh experience. So, uh, if it's all right, Mary, I'll turn it over to you because I know you want to talk about some of the other ideas and um, creative solutions we're working on.

Yeah. So, we're we're not in front of you today asking for anything. This came up as part of the conversation of the unknown amount that we need and some of that is with the restructuring. We just need time as Sally indicated. We're working on looking at data uh using that information to make decisions moving forward. Um but also when it comes to the bathroom, one of the thing we're thinking about is what are some of those creative solutions? I think uh we've spent a long time looking at oneizefits-all and when it comes to the bathroom solution here because it's a problem and we know this and having some of these facilities down for long periods of time isn't acceptable for our community. It's it's it's it's we've got to be creative across the city and look at it differently. So what is a solution at one park is probably not fitting at the other. Uh, and the other thing we talked about internally as staff is that we need to stop catering to the lowest common denominator. Meaning these are very like plain bathrooms. Usually we're we're not putting in investing in them or getting the community to invest in them. So there's no sense of ownership or pride in the parks. And so how do we create that in those communities? How do we, you know, reduce that vandalism so that when they see it, we're taking care of it? Uh, so we've got some ideas that we're working on, some lowhanging fruit that we're going to continue to work with staff on in the bathrooms. Uh, and then look at what are, you know, what would we need in the future to kind of change this, but really, I mean, I know it seems like we're talking about bathrooms, but there's so many of them, and when they're down, that's very impacting on the communities in which we're serving. It's also a safety issue for our staff uh because they show up in the mornings to clean those bathrooms and typically the locks have been unlocked. Uh they're finding people in them. Um and so it's a two-fold issue of safety and also you know you've seen some of that damage and and some of

those bathrooms go out of order for several months. And so just how do we change this? Um and then last slide I've got this department has got great synergy and Monday you're going to hear me talk about a new park which gets at a whole another level of synergy. Um but we are really looking at this whole one city and collaborative approach and it's outside of even just looking at asset and property. Um we're going to start pulling in some other departments uh to really think about what is that creative problem solving. How do we look at it maybe from from a different design concept? We really want to look at how are we measuring it? How do we partner uh with our strategy staff and report and plan on this and then really understanding our current resources, right? Uh we've only been at this since March amazingly. So, how do we look at, you know, pulling all the mowers together? What did that mean? That may not mean we hit our targets any better, but maybe we find additional capacity or resources. So, we just wanted to share some of that. We know the questions have come up. uh doesn't mean we won't be back at some point with an ask. It just means that as part of this budget process, we want to work through where we're at. So, we'll take any questions that may have.

I have two questions. Um first, for the park restrooms, what are the hours for the restrooms? They vary, I believe, and it can depend on the locking mechanism and and where they're located. you know, we're looking at some of that in terms of do we rotate staffing differently twice a day in some of those communities where instead of a electric lock, it's a physical lock. So, but they vary.

And then um my second question is um how are we engaging with law enforcement on some of this vandalism because I believe everybody in our community has the right to use the restroom. Nobody in our community has the right to destroy it. So, how are we how are we working how are you all working with WPD to increase patrol to find folks that are doing this and sure that you know we incentivize them to not do it anymore?

Sure. I mean, one one of the biggest issues that we have is there are not cameras at a lot of these locations and so um when the vandalism occurs, nobody has seen it. It's found after the fact. So, it's it's for all intents and purposes an unsolvable crime. Um so um so on the list of things looking at cameras was one of them to try to increase that to be able um to monitor the the bathrooms better. Um with the existing staffing concerns that we have in the police department um they get around and do as much proactive patrol as possible. that if they're running call to call to call, the ability to kind of go through a park and the likelihood of capturing somebody in the act is very very low. Um, so I think that cameras are probably our our better friend. Um, uh, that would then help us solve it and hopefully also deter if people know that they're on camera, they were seen going in, um, they came out and it was destroyed. Um, that that may help. Um but uh we feel like that is probably um one of the best areas to focus on.

I just want to say this out loud. I I know this is we're only going to put cameras outside. We're not putting cameras inside the bathroom. As that was coming out of my mouth, I'm like I'm hope I hope that was clear. I just want to be very clear. Cameras will be outside. We would never put cameras inside a bathroom. And then a followup. When when is the vandalism happening? Is it when the restrooms are closed and locked or is it during open hours? Is it a combination of both?

Yes, all of the above. Uh, and with the locking mechanisms, they've gotten smart. They'll wedge something in that anybody with mal intent can find a way. But, uh, we've also got some great I forget where the picture was. We was it which park was it? That we put the roll down doors on Abby Park. We we've now changed some so that uh they won't that hopefully to improve that. So, that's the kind of stuff we're looking at. Um, and we also want to engage police in looking at the environment around them so that maybe there's a way to engineer them differently in terms of lighting, some simple low hanging fruit. It could be cutting down vegetation to where you're creating more of an open inviting space. Um, so that you know by design we may be able to get at at a reduction.

Question. Great looking doors. uh very very familiar with um those type of doors similar to being used on residential properties when you're trying to keep um squatters out. Are those doors automatic? Okay. So, someone has to come and inspect the bathroom before you lock the door. Correct. And is that in place now? We just installed these. What have they been in there? Two weeks, three weeks. So they're they're somewhat new. So the two times a day there's someone that comes to unlock the door and then to lock the door and those are the two inspections throughout the day. Correct. Yes ma'am.

Okay. So this may be a model we implore in other places but again we're not look not necessarily one size fits all. What's the cost of that? I don't know. Does anybody remember? Do you remember what it was? So, two doors worth $6,000 just installed. We just It's the staffing on the other side that we need to look at and what that looks like, too. Thank you.

I was at a an NLC conference once and and ran into a national vendor called Portland Lou. I don't know if anybody's ever heard of them, but one of the things that they do, and we might consider this with the design of our new park especially, is their units are designed so that um like from the knees down, um there's no walls, so you can see when somebody's in there. And the lighting's automatic. And they also use like a c I think it's blue lighting so that addicts can't find their veins apparently with that kind of lighting. Portland Lou. Um it's called Portland Lou. And even if you don't use that company, like look at some of their design because they are designed for um you know, anti- vandalism, anti- drug use. I think there's some good design ideas out there, especially considering the new park.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions about park maintenance or facilities maintenance at this time? Again, the takeaway is, you know, we we feel like with the staff being put together in a different way and looking at things differently, um we have existing budgets that we feel comfortable operating in for FY27 gives us kind of a full year to find our feet um with the new resource allocation to then have a better sense of what might be needed in the future. Um but for the FY27 budget, we're comfortable with what's been included. All right, we want to keep rolling. Uh we um want to talk next. Um there was a request to um to just go through our CIP projects again. Um not in great detail. Um but just to remind uh council and the public of what those projects are that will be delivered in the next two years if uh the tax increase is able to be supported to have the necessary funding for those projects. Mike, if you want to come up. So, I'm gonna have Mike Nlekicki come up to walk through the individual projects, but you can go to the next slide, Dylan. Um, just to remind everybody which projects we're talking about. This was introduced in an earlier work session with council to discuss the projects that were negotiable, non-negotiable, funded, funding challenges. And and that is really the focus of the ask that's in the recommended budget is the the dollars to complete these projects. I think there have been several sort of misnomers over the years that we haven't spent all of a certain bonds proceeds and that's factually inaccurate. You know, there's uh an idea maybe that some of this is cost overruns, but the reality is you can't have a cost overrun if you've never started a project. So, you know, I I think we have, you know, we have to talk about the actual factors that sort of got us here. Whether that's something

wasn't scoped adequately. It wasn't it wasn't guesstimated originally upfront at the right level or the cost to acquire the real estate to make something happen was outside of what was sort of expected. And so, with the realignment and the creation of this new design and construction team, now we have sort of a sole source that's responsible for delivering those projects rather than individual departments. sort of owning their capital projects. So, make sure that we're going to have those departments as a customer to the design and construction team, but really there's one-stop shop for all of this. And so, they partner through the design and and then ultimately through the delivery to make sure that that we're meeting the intent, but but it all lives in one place. And so we're refining everything from our contracting to our real estate acquisition approach, which we touched on earlier and knocking on a door rather than sending a letter that that's that's a global sort of thing. So all of those things are being put into place to help us deliver these outstanding projects, but recognizing that whether they were conceived of so long ago that the cost to deliver them has just changed or things got to a certain point and were stopped due to a lack of funding and they've got to be picked up for whatever reason. We're back now to try and complete all of these promises that were made so that when we come back for the next CIP, we can stand on the fact that we've delivered. We've kept our promises and then folks can reliably trust that when we come back, we're going to do what we said we're going to do for the price we said it was going to be in the time frame that we said it was going to be delivered. So, with that, I'll let Mike go ahead and walk us through the rest of the projects.

Sure. Thank you, Chief. And uh you know this is the the slide that you've seen at uh previous budget work sessions that shows our funding gap but we can go to the uh the next ones and I'll just briefly walk through the projects that have the funding challenges and um if you have any questions please ask the CFC bulkhead that is the uh the bulkhead and riverwalk that's behind the the college boat building uh downtown. It's an area that uh is old. Uh the infrastructure is failing with the bulkhead. It's an old timber bulkhead and this project has been funded for a few years and it will include replacement of the bulkhead new riverwalk and some of the amenities there. Some of that shortfall if you recall a couple years ago we had to reallocate some of this funding to help balance the budget a few years ago. So this will help replenish that. The uh the and I apologize that one's just starting design. We have a uh consultant under design to start that bulkhead project. The front street bridge rehabilitation project has been awarded that was brought before council. We are actually having a pre-bid I'm sorry pre-construction meeting next week. So we expect that to start soon. Uh there'll be a period of a few months where we're going through extended submittal review for the various rehabilitation of the structures. We do not expect the the bridge to close and detour until later this summer, but we will make sure we coordinate with our communications and engagement group. And again, that's replacing the the top deck and doing some rehabilitation on these substructures. Okay, we got the EDA grant package that is associated with the Water Street bulkhead. Uh this is the one that we uh we purchased and uh from the Coast Guard. We are going to be this fall updating and doing the Water Street Park project in front of the federal

courthouse. This is the one block north of that and we are compiling a grant package application with our consultant and expect to submit that in the next couple weeks uh with an ask of about 17,500,000 with an 8020 split with us providing 20% and we uh brought that resolution to you all in a previous council meeting. This is the Pinerove Bridge replacement. The replacement of the existing structure the way it is now is funded, but as part of a uh bridge improvement program grant we submitted last year. The intent was to try to replace this entire stretch through the 600 ft causeway due to flooding issues. If we just replace the bridge in kind, it addresses the structural issues but not necessarily the long-term flooding issues. So, we still may go back. Uh we're still waiting to get a little bit more information on the grant. I don't know that they will be awarding that grant. So we are looking for an opportunity for another notice of offering. But in the meantime, what's being asked here is for the full 650 ft across the full causeway uh third street and an street traffic signal. This is a partnership with NC DOT. They are managing it, but we will be providing reimbursement for this project and the uh the shortfall is just to cover some contingencies. It may not be realized, but again, this is to do a full signal at Third and An Street.

When when is this expected to be completed? I'm sorry if I missed that. Yeah, they the it's the construction hasn't started yet, but it should be starting very soon. Uh, that's what we've we've been keeping up with DOT and asking them, but it's funded and designed and we're just waiting for the construction to get started. So, we don't have an estimated completion date yet. I don't, but we can we can ask DOT again if they can provide us one. I get a lot of questions about a lot of questions about this intersection. Thanks. I will follow up on it. Thank you.

Uh, Pinerove North. Uh, we discussed this earlier in the work session. This is uh the realignment of that skewed angle. Uh it's a safety issue, dangerous intersection there at Oleander and Pine Grove. It includes some realignment, widening and turn lanes for the McMillan near the elementary school. That project is has been designed is complete. It was bid out. The uh the costs were significantly high last year. We elected not to award, but with this additional funding, we will go back back out to bid and continue our discussions with NC do about the restrictions associated with the uh the nighttime work. Uh this is Water Street Park. I had mentioned this a few minutes ago. This is the section of the property that we received from the Coast Guard in front of the federal courthouse. The design is just about complete. We are probably a few weeks away from wrapping that up and then being able to get it over to purchasing to start the bid process. Pinrove South uh Greenville Loop Trail section 4. Again, we spoke of this earlier. This is the dual lane roundabout at uh Greenville Loop and Pine uh Pine Grove Drive and the intersection improvements at Holly Tree. And there is the section four of the Greenville Loop Trail which will be the last section that connects uh between those two intersections and connects section two and section one on Holly Tree Hooker Hinton Writesville. I know this is uh been a project that's been out there for a while. Happy to say we we are into construction, a few months into construction. So far uh going pretty well. Uh there are mostly the work that

has been completed is underground utility work, storm drain, water line relocations. Um we're we're about to start getting into some of the grading and installing the multi-use path, but that is underway and is expected to be complete next spring. Writesville A sidewalk and roundabout. Those are three transportation bond projects including a roundabout at Wallace and Writesville A and two long sections of gap fill for the sidewalk. We talked earlier about these goat paths. This is one of those project that helps fill all those gaps. We are well into construction. I'd say we're probably about 50 50 60% complete. It is moving well. some of the uh the budget gap there we've talked about previously is associated with some of the increased costs for real estate acquisition.

I have a question. Yes. Um Rightful Avenue is a good example of this. There gaps in the sidewalk on both sides. What are the um how do you decide which side gets the sidewalk? You expect the other one to like over time and change of use

come together or is there is that just good luck? Yeah, for I mean for this project the the funding initially was to just do one side. So we did perform a feasibility study at the start of it. And we're not necessarily just looking at where all the gaps are. We're also considering trees, real estate, utility conflicts, various items to help balance it. And then we ultimately decided on which side makes sense to go forward with. This covers the uh I want to say the north side, but as far as your question about the south side, yes, that would be something over time that would have to fill in or we can look at it with some of our uh you know our mobility and vision zero projects as well.

Good. because I um I was actually the company I work for owned a property on the other side of Writesville and of course we're when we changed use we were forced to put the sidewalk to nowhere and then when the sidewalk for the whole thing came in it was on the other side so it seems like a waste of resources sometimes when we um don't have it all planned out. Yeah, we would we would love to do both sides but you can see the expenses that goes into these projects.

Appreciate that. Uh Independence Boulevard screen wall. This one's been around for quite a few years as well. Um, it is more of an aesthetic project uh to help repair some of the facade as it has aged over time. Uh, probably 20 plus years old at this point. And uh, that project, the plans are complete. We just need to finalize them for bid and we can put this out for bid if we get this additional funding. And it is along Independence Boulevard from like the mall down to Writesville Avenue. It's a large kind of sound screen wall that you see there. A lot of vegetation that's overgrown on it right now. Uh Lion's Bridge reconstruction. I know there's others in the room that are more familiar with this than I, but uh that bridge has been demolished uh with regards to safety, immediate safety hazards, and we are looking to uh reconstruct that bridge. There is from what I understand a grant out there that we are waiting to see the results and depending on that will allow us to move forward with this project. Uh Greenville Loop Park design. Um I understand there's going to be a big presentation on Monday if I'm hearing right. Mary, what's that? A different park. I'm sorry. Um so anyway, this project uh most of you should be familiar with. Uh we talked about it earlier. We did contribute $1 million towards the purchase price uh being funded with the uh the endowment. We do need we are asking for the million dollars to get the design started due to the uh the time restrictions to have this complete within a certain amount of time. And the last project on this list is Car Avenue Trail. This is another transportation bond project that we have

brought brought to it's probably closer to 90% uh finishing up a property acquisition. We did uh with the help of the MO go through their grant application process to get some federal funding to help cover some of these and the the shortfall that you see there. Uh we are limited to the amount of risk and contingencies we can put in those applications. So that that shortfall covers those as well. And that's uh that's really it as far as the update for all the projects. Be glad to answer any questions questions. Okay. Do you want to take another quick break? You want to keep going? It's up to you.

You want to keep rolling.

All right. We're going to keep rolling. Um the uh the last bit of um prepared material that uh we have for you that we were going to go over um was just uh Mayor, you'd talked about it before with some of the uh calls for service um related to the police department. So um Chief, are you able to uh come up and speak to the the presentation? Um, all right. Um, so we talked about call service a little bit earlier. Uh, we're just going to kind of give you an overview. Uh these are basically broken down uh one large category which is all that 150 on average uh thousand calls for service a year and then directed uh and self-initiated. Directed are calls that a citizen has called in uh and ask for some type of police service. Selfinitiated are just that the officer uh in his or her daily travels observes something uh and takes some type of initiative to you know uh interdict with either a crime or get out with a suspicious person or whatever it may be. Sorry, wrong way. So, when you look uh at the numbers, uh we uh are in that top row for each section there, uh you can see the numbers uh over again that 5-year window, about an average of 150,000 calls for service a year. When you look at that comparative uh to the next line, which is New Hover County uh sheriff's office, uh you can see they're averaging about 132,000. We'll break those down in in future slides here to show you a little bit better uh what those look like. We've included all the other agencies in uh New Haven County.

So, we've got Ritzville Beach, uh Carolina Beach, and Curry Beach there as well. When you look at the next slide, uh this is going to break it down. Uh just basically a a visual depiction of the previous slide to show you uh calls. Again, this is total overall calls. Uh as you can see uh obviously the the city stays pretty busy there. We look at the next slide. Uh this is breaking down uh those into directed patrol calls. So again those are calls that are citizen requests or administrative calls for service. Uh when you can see there our numbers and represented in the orange are about double uh what uh most of the others are and you'll see that on the following slide but certainly a large volume of the calls for service that we get are are citizen initiated calls for service. So on the next slide as you look um that's just combining all the other the blue is combining all the other agencies uh in New Hover County police agencies and you can see that uh we're again significantly higher. We handle about 63% when we compare to all those other agencies countywide. Uh for the next one, what we've done is we've taken a um just a snapshot basically which is a month uh of March to show you kind of calls by nature for the top 15 calls as well as days of the week and hours of the day and what that looks like uh on the first slide uh in terms of your typical calls uh and that cycle. Uh that's pretty standard for any month. That's not unique to March. You'll see very similar numbers in terms of your busier days. Uh Sunday being the the slowest day and usually Friday being the busiest day. Uh to the far right, you'll see the call natures there. They're the top 15 drivers there. Uh you'll notice most of those are not violent crime. That's great. If we had violent crime in those numbers, that would be significantly uh difficult. Um so you can look down and see kind of

what the the top calls for service are uh in a lot of those areas there. But as you can see for the month of March of uh we looked at uh about 58,000 I'm sorry that's off the data is off on that one. I I'll have to get you sorry. Yes, I apologize. Top 15 calls for service uh for that is not for a one-mon cycle. That is for a a year cycle there as you can see. I apologize. I misspoke on that. When you look at the next slide, uh this is uh this slide you could put in any urban area, literally anywhere in America, uh for calls for services. Looks consistent to about anywhere you go, especially uh of any size. Uh you're going to peak uh in kind of that late afternoon hours and then you're going to be at your lowest usually around 5 or 6 a.m. in the morning. Um we basically allocate the staffing that we do have available based on some of this. Now, understanding that, you know, at 12:00 in the afternoon, there are a whole lot of people that are working that aren't necessarily wearing uniforms, uh, but are available to respond as police officers if they need to be. So, your detectives, some of your administrative folks, things like that. Uh, when you start looking at, you know, your 3:00 a.m. 3:00 a.m. hour, uh, what you see is what you get, right? Uh, the number of officers that we have, that minimum staffing level that we talked about, that's what you're looking at in terms of the number of officers that are immediately available. obviously with assistance from outside agencies. When we look at that, we also want to do is give you a little bit of comparison with workload to uh both other local agencies uh as well as some that are similar size. So, we've looked at uh some of the local agencies on the smaller side, uh we've already seen the numbers on the others that we showed you, but for Burgall, Leland, uh Jacksonville, and then High Point Nashville in terms of populationwise are are probably the most similar. So, as you look at Burggo, I mean, not that anybody would expect obviously them to have workload similar to an urban

environment like we are, but that just gives you kind of an idea. So, when we talk about bringing police officers in here and keeping police officers here, you know, one of the first things I heard about uh when I when I came here is we've lost so many officers to Leland over the last several years. We've lost droves and droves of them. Uh and we go to the next slide uh and you look at Leland. Um, we're going to compare for numbers so you understand call volume, what they're looking at, but I will also tell you that policing in an urban environment is very different than policing in a smaller town or in a rural county. Uh, they are completely different types of policing. Yes, police work is police work and we all handle 911 calls and all that, but uh it's a very it can oftenimes take a different type of person uh who wants to put on a badge and uniform to work in an urban environment as opposed to someone who works in a either a rural county or in a in a smaller town. And that's not again throwing any shade on any of them. All very important jobs no matter where you work or what uniform you wear, but uh a very different workload as well. When you look at Jacksonville, uh you can see the numbers there. Uh again little bit bigger city. Uh you can look the populations are down at the uh bottom there. So certainly bigger than Leland or Burggo but obviously you know roughly half the size give or take of of Wilmington. So you can see the numbers there from a comparative basis. And we'll chart this in just a minute so you can see how these kind of lay out against each other. So this would be for High Point. Uh so High Point pretty close about 115,000 population similar uh size in terms of swarm positions. And you can see call volume there again, which is uh um significantly lower than what we're we're looking at here. And then lastly, uh Asheville. Again, Asheville a little bit smaller at 93,000 population roughly. Um and you can see kind of the call volume that uh they're looking at there split out. So when we look at benchmark cities and local agencies, what we want to do is try and compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. Uh so what we did

is broke that out in the next couple of slides to look at uh calls per budgeted position and also calls uh per part one crime. Um and those all these numbers are generated which are the most recent two-year numbers we could pull which is 23 and 24 calendar year. Um and then we'll look at pay as well in just a minute. So in the first slide what you're looking at here is calls per budgeted position. Um you can see with a couple of outliers there at the beginning being uh Jacksonville and Enslo County. Um you can see what that rate is. Uh we're depicted in the orange line there at Wilmington. So 487 uh calls uh per budgeted position. If you look at that on the next slide, uh we have crime part one crime which are more serious offenses, usually violent offenses. Uh that's per budgeted position as well. Um and you can see we are 1 2 3 4 5 six uh if my math is right. um in terms of uh part one crimes for a budget position. When you start to look on this slide, it's a little hard to see in smaller numbers, but uh I don't think I've got a pointer on this or maybe I do. Yeah. So, if you start Probably won't show on the screen, I would imagine. All right. Uh but if you look I'll do my Vanna White for you real quick. You got a neighbor of ours, obviously Carolina Beach, Lelandber, uh, Jacksonville, you've got Rightful Beach, and you've got New Hover County over here.

Can you say that into the mic real quick?

Sorry. Um so as you look over here uh when we're comparing you know we are here Wilmington uh depicted in this area here when you start looking at those that are more local uh the other ones here are more comparative on the statewide basis but you've got Brunswick County uh that you can see here is as well less than half uh and then other local agencies you've got Carolina Beach Leland Burgau if you want to call Jacksonville local um they're there beach handover county so what you see is a pretty significant change when we're looking at part one crime. And again, part one crime is your more violent crime. Uh crime that usually takes a significant amount of man-hour to work. It's not a call you go and spend 30 minutes on. It's oftentimes calls that we send four, five, six, seven, eight officers or detectives and they spend hours and hours working. So you can extrapolate that out and see how how we're busy here in Wilmington. And the last slide to look at, this is just a salary comparison. And this is as of I think about 3 weeks ago or so when it was pulled give or take. And these are numbers that were provided by those localities. But for us reaching out uh you can see at the top of that paychart is uh Leland uh at about 586. Uh and you can see uh we're down just slightly below uh the average there at the the 52 and change. Um and you can see all the numbers in between there. But just a graphical depiction of kind of where we stand currently uh in terms of a lot of our competitors. And these are just the ones that we reached out and kind of uh looked at. But I what I will also tell you is from my experience over the last 29 years of doing this job, you know, when people started in policing when I did, uh you would go to a place or an area and that's where you would kind of be. Uh this generation is much more mobile. Uh we just had two officers who are leaving to go do police work in Washington State. Uh you can't get a whole lot further away from uh here unless you go to Alaska or Hawaii, right? Um, so, uh, the idea of that

we're just competing with what you see here, certainly our most immediate competitors and the ease of that, but, uh, a lot of our folks, if they're not tied to this area, uh, which again, we all know, uh, there's there's a lot of us that, uh, are not from Wilmington brings in a lot of transplants, right? And so, what we want to do is when we get these officers here, we want to keep them here. Um, and the package that's proposed to you, I I would argue, is definitely a good start in making sure that we're able to do that from a a salary and benefit standpoint. And then certainly we're working on a lot of things internally as the manager mentioned earlier to to make uh the Wilmington PD a place that folks want to not just come to but want to stay to and make careers out of. So I'll leave it at that and I'll ask uh any questions you may have. Any questions chief?

Thanks Chief. Uh final item um that we have um right there at the end behind this presentation. We do have um some tax rate comparisons was another question that we got in that Laura put together yesterday. I believe this was really quick. So, is is this is do we have that in the packet that I can be pulled up on the screen?

Look. right behind the presentation. So, um, under new Q&As's, the new Q&A's tab behind the presentation that you just saw is a there's blue and white bars on it. Yep. Um, that is looking at um the tax rates around us. Um, the question asked what our tax rates were. So, um they are looking for the file to pull up on the screen.

All right, we're in business. Turn it over to Laura. Um, because we we did this really quickly, it's probably not sorted in a way that is going to be helpful right now, but but I have that and I will get it back to you. So, if you look at all of this data, you will see that um it was important to show where we sat compared to other jurisdictions. And one of the things that is really telling is when you look at what 1 cent generates, it it talks about population, it talks about their assessed values, it gets it's an index that helps you see where you sit. Um and in this data, we are third Wait. And okay, so let's go back just to the tax rate. Sorry, I was looking at the wrong one. Um, with the tax rate, we are third. Um, when it comes to the lowest rate, so we are at 28.25 right now and the highest in this is green is Greensboro at six um 67.25 cents. I mean, I want to spend more time looking at this, but I also I quickly went and highlighted communities with a assessed value similar to ours maybe plus or minus what is this 10 billion billions were the lowest I think of comparable assessed value cities.

I' develop I mean I'm just pointing out something that I see right away. Um

that's interesting. If you get back to what I was talking about originally when I thought I was looking at the right table, the um one cent generated, we fall 11th um in this at 3.5 million. The first is Burg which is local. It's only $40,000. The highest is Charlotte, which doesn't shouldn't surprise anyone at 23.1. Um Winston Salem is above us at 3.9 and Concord is just below us at 2.4 4 million. Um I we will send out these res resorted for you so it makes a little more sense so you can see those indexes um and where we where we sit. So apologize but this was really done last minute. We tried to get what we could for you so there was something that you could digest.

Yeah. Thank you. The so the question came in yesterday so we wanted to have something to present to you. Um so again we'll we'll send it out reformatted. Um but I do think that there um is a good story to show in here regarding um the uh both the individual city tax rate as well as the combined tax rate when you have to pay both your city and your county tax bill. Um that compared to um many many many other locations across the state uh we are really quite frankly at a a fraction of um what you might pay in some other localities. Interesting. Any questions about that before we move on?

Okay. Um we um we know that we have received a couple of other questions that we are still pulling um including what the proposed pay rates are for police and fire from our competitive market. Um, so previously we just had what they're paying right now, but with published budgets we're going through and pulling that information. So we'll be able to send that to you. Um, and also a question about hard to fill positions. Um, getting that list. We started pulling that yesterday. Of course, we talk a lot about police. Um but actually some of our hardest to fill positions exist um in our fleet department, in uh some of our equipment operator positions, um some of our maintenance positions. Um so um we understand that police and fire gets a lot of attention, but a lot of those other positions are very difficult to fill. Uh fleet mechanic, as an example, you are directly competing with the private sector. And so being able to find a heavy mechanic that will take the job when they can make significantly more money in the private sector and and an engine is an engine. And so it is directly comparable. Um right now we just don't compete. And so uh we have positions like that that um sit vacant that have been vacant for extended periods of time. Uh we will fill it. They will then get a higher offer and they will leave. Um and so that is a constant area. Um, so we want to make sure that we're lifting up those other positions for council and the public to understand that um, there are other needs across the city that remain a challenge with the current pay structure that we have. Um, with that, that is all of the prepared information that we have for you. We wanted to um, leave uh, plenty of time. We we know we've done a lot of talking. And there's been a lot of good questions. Um, but we wanted to um, uh, just leave some time for you all to ask

additional questions that are on your mind. I know all of you have been going through your budget document. If there are things that you want to lift up, um, ideas that you have, um, we want to hear those, record them. If we have initial feedback, we're happy to give it if we need to go back and do additional research to make sure that we're capturing that so that we can prepare that information in time for our next work session. David, you have a question.

Um, I'd like to take our attention to three different places in the budget. I'll start on page 105 of the recommended budget, which is under the police department. This is budget modification B, $29,000 for technology. Um, I guess it's a software expense. This involves artificial intelligence and I would like us to wait until we have a city uh policy on artificial intelligence uh before we move forward with anything of this type. Um so my request would be for this to be removed from the budget. Um the second item that I would like to bring up for discussion is on page 124 and I guess asterisk. I'd also like us to have an artificial intelligence policy because we don't have one in place. Um, and I've been looking to see what some of our peer cities and what some larger cities are doing and I think there are some great jumping off places. Page 124 um under the parking fund budget modification a $375,000 for a new capital project. I would propose that we delay this at least one year to save $375,000 from this year's budget. So that is part of the parking fund. So that is not part of the general fund.

Okay. Um so that is a dedicated um uh revenue source. Um so that so that doesn't affect the tax rate. So that does not affect the tax rate. Okay. Page 130. And for clarification um does that change your stance on that item? It does. Okay. I'm not asking to do anything with that if it's not going to change tax rate. That's what I'm wanting to explore right now. Sure. Uh and then page 130, technology replacement fund. Is this a part of the general fund? Just the whole fund to begin with? No, it's not.

Okay. So, for computer replacement, that 831,735, what portion of that would come out of general fund or where how is that organized? Because my proposal would be if this is hardware only, I understand software we're going to have to pay leases. We're probably under already contract already under contract on some of those. My my suggestion would be to delay some new purchases of hardware and to let let us continue to use some of the hardware that we have to try and find some savings.

There are a lot of Jen I I I was hoping I could find you in the back. Um, Jen Clif is our um, interim IT director and so she can speak to what that funds and um, what the uh, positive or negative impact of reducing that fund might have on operations.

Um, that fund that line item on that fund the 81. So that is strictly computers, peripherals. Um it's not touching servers or switches or things like that. So yes, we can hold off. We are already starting to push out our replacement. We had tried to tighten it up and between getting the the devices and things like that, we've already started pushing it out. So it is doable if we wanted to reduce that a little bit to push things replacements out a little longer. We were doing a fiveyear, it was turning into a six-year. We kind of brought it back down to a four-year replacement cycle, but we're starting to move back up. So, I don't not certain how much you're looking to think about cutting, but it's doable.

Well, I I appreciate that and I'd like I'd like us to explore it. I mean, if if you look at the year-over-year, it it seems pretty clear this is sort of a dedicated amount of money that we're saying this is a continuing process. We're dedicated to updating our hardware at this rate and I it looks like we're at a good cadence, but if it's hardware, not software, I think we could slow down that replacement and and try and find some savings here. Sure. Thank more detailed jumping on what David is saying. I I think looking at a five-year replacement cycle and what what that would save us would be a good starting place. six years, you're starting to get into, you know, an archaic uh technology. So,

yeah. And we and I will be honest, we do have six-year-old ones out there. Um, and we're always prepared to replace them first and quickly, but and we have some people use them a lot less and less uh heavy on them. So, we we try to stretch them as long as we can, and then if it needs to be replaced, we do that. But, we really do try to not just replace very good shape computers out there. But we're we're happy to run an analysis of what a five-year replacement cycle would look like and what the cost differential would be.

I have a question related to um you know, one of our speakers at our last meeting asked about um what we had in our budget for homeless services. And I know that I had asked back in August for um a cost breakdown of what it would cost to implement the uh strategy for unsheltered homelessness that we all worked on in uh 2024. And I know that Bill had asked for um uh later on in the fall asked for um you know a recommendation or cost of uh you know providing either land or building or uh whatever for a low barrier shelter. and I'm wondering what is the status of of those requests.

Sure. Uh Rachel has already come up. I will turn it over to her.

Thank you. So, we did put out some requests for information and have begun some conversations uh with link. Uh they were one of the uh submitts. We've also encouraged them though to work collaboratively with some of the other submittals, especially our local partners because I think that there's room at the table and in the plan for a lot of different um avenues for collaboration. We did not budget a specific amount with that request for information. We would be putting out a request for proposal as part of the next step for that physical piece. As far as the budget that we have, uh we have some dedicated funding both in our affordable housing and with our federal funds that could be a piece of that, it's obviously not going to be enough to be the whole. And so that's where we would be looking at one of our partners, whether it's link or whomever else may be uh sort of awarded that proposal uh to see what they would be able to leverage and apply for additional funding uh with what we have and some of the other partners. So that's sort of where we are right now. Generally speaking, uh, our homeless services based off of what we are allowed to put out with our CDBG, community development block grant, that's about $124,000 that we'd be able to put out next year. And that's more for uh services, not necessarily like the hard fixtures. We are able to use our affordable housing gap financing to uh sort of build that. That that's about $3 million right now. And so that's sort of what we're working with that helps We also um have the four social workers that are included in the FY27 budget. The cost of salary and benefits is about $500,000. Um uh we have a couple of them who just recently started. Um and uh so they will not be dedicated just to homeless

services. It would be anybody who might be um in need of connection to services that a social worker might benefit uh or they might benefit from a social worker, but we understand a large percentage of their work will very likely be dedicated to those populations. Right. And I understand that and I understand that we, you know, we have a lot of people out there that are um directing people to services, but the service that they need the most is housing. And if it's just not there, we don't have any place to send them. Sure.

And just to to add, we also have this Monday and Tuesday, we'll be hosting some permanent supportive housing technical assistance as part of our with the HUD technical assistance grant. And so again, really emphasizing the need to focus on that housing aspect of this. you know, we we are one the largest funder to our continuum of care, which is a lead agency that helps coordinate all the partner agencies and then we also through our municipal service district pay for the street outreach through block byblock with uh WDI. So, we are sort of having that that touch in the beginning and then still with that emphasis on the actual housing units as the solution. Rachel, um there was some discussion about Good Shepard expanding their um operation and Martin. Are you aware of that?

Yes. So, they have uh additional property uh surrounding their Martin Street uh complex. And so, they're in the middle of a capital campaign to expand. They'll have some new family beds uh for for shelter as well as uh updating where they're administrative, what they're able to do there, and then build additional permanent supportive housing. They've not submitted a formal application to us yet, but we're obviously in conversations with what that looks like when it gets to that point. Are they the only ones at this point in time? I mean, is Salvation Army coming forward with any additional housing or is uh first fruit? Not at this time. We have not heard any.

Okay. And and I think it's important too as we look at the tax credit projects that come before us, we work with both the Wilmington Housing Authority and uh through their voucher programs, the Trilliums through their vouchers, all of those different options so that as these new um affordable units come online, they're able to partner with coordinated entry and through the COC to help get some of those folks off that list into some of those units that we're supporting in other ways. So, it's not just the permanent supportive housing units that are focused on those homeless uh individuals, but also all of the units that we're developing at Affordable. Yeah. Yeah. And then also looking at some of the preservation and rehab. As you know, there's some conversations with potential largecale redevelopment of some properties, whether it's the housing authority or some other potential units that may be expiring tax credits of how we're able to preserve the affordability, maybe not the physical units because they're outdated and need to be um better utilized for density and intensity. But as we look at that, that's also something that we've been having conversations about um investments in that Um, I want to revisit what I brought up this morning, reducing the salary increase cap from 15,000 to 12,000. Two questions. First, when do you think you'll have that analysis available? And then second, if that isn't reasonable or feasible, can you propose a number that's lower than 15 but meets our needs?

Sure. Thank Um we we expect um again we're partly through it. So we expect next week um to be able to complete that analysis. Uh happy to email that out to council as soon as we have it um including then a recommendation um to either move forward with that um or if there is a number in between the two we would absolutely offer that up. When you provide that, can you provide a CSV? Yes. Thank you,

Becky. Several years ago, there was a discussion about this living wage issue and I believe the county took the initiative at the time in regards to what they were going to be paying their average hourly salary or average pay average number. I I what is our number as compared to their number? Because there was this has been a discussion. This is not new. This is something that has been talked about. Some folks think it's new, but it's not new. I thought ours we had moved ours up to about 17 per hour. Nobody would make less than that across the board and then there was another number that the county had that I think was higher than ours or they had gone to a number higher. I think we started it at 17 and they went above us.

That's correct. Um, our minimum hourly rate right now for full-time employees, the $17.38 an hour. Um, the county is north of 21. Um, it so um we we can get that exact number. Um, but uh the county did adopt a living wage uh philosophy a couple of years ago. Our understanding um is that um they they just moved the floor. um they didn't necessarily move their employees with the plan. They just made sure that everybody was making at least that minimum amount which created a um significant compression issue at the bottom end of their pay scale. um because you had people um then coming in basically making um equal to um you know people who'd been there for a number of years, people who were previously in higher uh higher paying positions. Um so um so they certainly have a higher starting hourly rate than we do but uh I'm not sure that on the implementation side it didn't create a lot of unintended consequences that we are trying to avoid with ours

excluding fire and police because I I have that number. I know what we're looking at there. on the other um numbers on the pay scale in regards to everybody else that's involved because I know some people are going to make it look at very simplistic and say everybody across the board is making this for the city of Wilmington. And I know that we have different ranges for the job description. Uh whether it be an accountant, whether it be an engineer, whether it be an attorney, uh whatever it may be, those other uh classifications that will take additional funding or whatever the funding, can we have a can we have a specific number on those that you've identified of? I'm I'm not sure I follow the question

of of the folks that we're dealing with in regards to those specific departments that have more specialty orientation tied to it where you're where you're where you're really competing heavy with the public sector. Yes. Private sector, I'm sorry. Where you're trying to get an engineer or we've been waiting two years. We're short on this person. We're short on that. We're not meeting what the market rate is and we're getting beat by the private sector for those particular positions. We do we have a number of of those positions? that we're that we're actively trying to get into the city and we're having to go higher on the pay scale.

So, um they are either sitting so we're we're bound by our pay scales. Um so, a lot of them end up sitting open. So, we mentioned the the heavy fleet mechanic a few minutes ago. That's a great example of one that I think it's been open off and on for two years. Um I'm sorry, five years. Um five years. Um so you you get somebody in uh they then leave for higher pay it then sits open again for months and months. Um so that one is a constant battle. Um so we have a list of those hard to fill positions. Um and um we can then um put some additional data next to it in terms of some of them do have a private sector comparison that we would be able to say like on the fleet mechanic uh example where okay this is this is one that's been hard to fill. This is the current pay. This is what the new pay would be and then this is what the average market rate is in the private sector. We can uh we can put that all together for you. And then the other the other point I want to make is that um anything that we do do, let's just say because 70% of this is tied to public safety and our good friend Ed McMahon will look at our number

and at least try to match that, I would imagine. And they will then he will then go to the county commissioners and they will carve out a piece specifically for sheriff's numbers. I'm sure you've taken that into consideration. We have um as mentioned, we will not be coming back to you saying everyone just increase their rates. What are we going to do? Um we do understand that um becoming the the market uh leader on some of these positions means then that everybody's going to start trying to chase you to um to catch up, if not try to pass you again. Um if that were to happen though, um there's there's a couple of things going on. um one with the compression that the we understand the county is experiencing um uh that creates a difficult situation when you're then trying to hire an applicant who has years of experience who's already certified uh because you have a whole slug of employees currently doing the job in your organization that are making a low pay a lower pay rate. Um, so by by implementing this appropriately, it avoids that compression that then if we get a certified applicant who say they make an application to both the city of Wilmington and the sheriff's office and they have three years of experience, we can then slot them in appropriately on our pay scale that takes into account the years of experience that they have. um that if you have a lot of compression, you're not necessarily able to do because you don't want to upset your existing staff by bringing in a new employee to then be making more than people who've been doing the work for a number of years. Um so, um so we believe that we will have um the flexibility that we need to honor those years of service that somebody may have earned elsewhere. Um and um uh and it is also a very different job to work for the city of Wilmington versus the sheriff's

office. Um uh one of the least popular things to do for a lot of folks who work in law enforcement is to work in a jail. And um uh it's um uh some people love it. Uh but a lot of people that is not where they want to be assigned. If you work for the city of Wilmington, you will never be assigned to a jail. Um and that is not something that um the sheriff's office would be able to promise their applicants.

Sorry, one one more thing I wanted to touch on because we talked about economic development earlier. Um I asked at a previous budget session whether or not we would um be able to fund the North Carolina film partnership at $100,000. Um, I would like us to fund the North Carolina Film Partnership at $100,000. That's an economic de That's an economic development initiative that we already support. I understand that it was previously through ARPA funds, but as we come up to speed and build an economic development strategy and vision, this is something in our community that is in existence and is ready and just needs us to continue to fund it. So, I would propose that we have that as well. I certainly that is the will of council from a procedural standpoint. Your economic development grants um are currently in the middle of a two-year cycle. So, um, those dollars have been allocated for the FY27 budget and then it would be next year that there would be a new round of grant opportunities through the similar RFP process that we're looking to implement for the community grants this year. Um so that is the will of council but um I would say that that is um out of alignment with the procedural process that has been um adopted and followed by council to date in terms of how those outside grants come through our budget and are allocated to um to community partners. Um but again I would defer to council regarding how you want to proceed on that.

I'd like to speak to that as well. Um, I've had some conversations about that grant and the NC film um, incentive and actually Wilmington was the first to uh, get behind that project and I was spearheading it along the way. U, but I would I I I am typically in support of it, but I want to know how many people we've How many people in our area have actually utilized? How helpful has it been in this area? That's that's that's going to make decision. Um es especially for $100,000. So I I would like to see how effective it's been in in our community. Um I've asked questions about it along the years. I don't know. $100,000 is a lot of money, especially right now.

Mayor Prom, are you referring to jobs? Yes, I am referring to jobs because um I mean $100,000 and and from what I'm seeing is probably just well we know about administrative fees. So it could just be u a pot of money that goes towards keeping the film initiative going. But how many people are we actually how many people are they actually employing or

right? Um I and I can only speak from a channel perspective and the work that we did with small businesses. I actually support um Councilman David Spear um Joiner on this because, you know, from a channel perspective and small business owners, a lot of them were employed in some capacity, whether it was catering to um some of those setups or helping to set up some of those um um I guess what do you call it? Stages, sets, things like that. So I don't have exact numbers but and we actually hosted one of the film festivals one year. Um it it is there is some impact. I agree that I don't know all of the impact. So I would like to see those numbers.

Well, I'm talking about the the actual people that are involved in the training program that get that get to trade and start working in the film industry. Gotcha. And I am familiar with um two of those small business owners. Not sure about everybody else. Yeah, I think um the fil so the film partnership does the internships for on film projects,

right? So that's what they fund the interns. So it helps the productions definitely want to um support film in general. It's one of the things that built Wilmington and what we're famous for right now. the word that the things I've heard about the job market is that there's not even enough projects, film projects to keep the people who are already in the industry working full-time. Like there's a lot of um people not working in the film industry. So that's a that's the only um concern I have. I don't want to give people train pay to train people to um go on unemployment. So um it's a hard it's a hard uh decision, but I think maybe 100,000 might be a little high. And to um your point about the procedurals, is there something else we need to have them put a grant in or a request in of some kind?

No. And and to clarify, we're actually um coming into the second year of a three-year process um for those. So, it would actually be FY29 before that would come back around to you all. So, I apologize for that. um uh the the I guess what I'm trying to say is there's there is currently no procedure. So there is not uh an application that um exists that would be put out as part of the FY27 budget. There is no additional pot of money for something that is economic development related because all of those dollars are spoken for due to a previous uh grant application process that dedicated funding for three years. So FY27 and FY28 are just continuation funding from that prior award. There will not be new dollars that people would be applying for until FY209. Um so you would be making an exception um that you are presently not looking to make for anybody else

and and that's thank you for that procedural clarification. They are funded through the city currently through American Rescue Plan Act funds. And we're on notice that when those when those monies dry up from the federal government, that's the end of your cycle. Or when those when that money expires, that's the end of your cycle. They also receive money from the state of North Carolina, except the state of North Carolina doesn't have a budget. So they're not getting any money from that. So my interest in this revolves around the fact that Wilmington is a unique uh we are unique in North Carolina's film economy. So if the state's not stepping up to the plate on this point, I think that it is worth us looking at taking a step outside our normal procedures to say that we are willing to step up to the plate. So um it sounds like there are a lot more questions. Uh folks who have questions, are you asking staff to answer those questions or are you saying that you need follow-up conversations with the partnership?

Staff would be happy to reach out to the partnership and ask them to provide the information that's been requested. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Becky. I just wanted to say that um and I've been asking this every year that we've been through budget cycles so far. So, um, and I I like what's being done with the, uh, community funding. Um, you know, putting it through the CRACK. I think that's awesome. Um, I think that we need to think about a similar situation with the economic development funding. um when that does come up and at at a very minimum um have a couple of council members that are part of that committee so that we can make sure because in previous years I mean we did have things brought to us basically with a bow on them from staff and and we didn't really have any input as to you know which projects we wanted to fund. So that's just something I'm putting out there for when that time rolls around again.

Yep. We we expect that to be a different process moving forward. Thank you. And I can share a um uh impact report that was sent to me from the film partnership with some I mean pretty impressive numbers. 13 productions um were assisted and 200 jobs in um New Hmer County alone. So and they're statewide. So um my comments weren't to tell them, you know, that's not a good investment at all. Just review it closely. Um, so we know we're putting our economic development dollars in a place with good returns. 200 jobs in North Carolina in how many years? 200.

How many years total? 200 in um New Hmer County and 7,000 statewide, but it was just created with ARPA funds, right? So there's not like a long history. So that's got to be in the next in the last couple of um years, right? 2020.

Let me I have a little bit more clarity on this. When we gave the ARPA funding our share, I think the county gave up put 200 in. We put 200 in. Remember, all film productions have unions. So, these individuals that they are training are not union workers. So, we're literally paying the individual to be trained, hoping that we can also or and with a relationship with the union that the union would take them in and train them doing the process, but we're actually paying or the group is paying their salary with the hope that when they get finished with the training process that the union would hire them, pay union dues and all that. So, it really comes down all these productions are under union contracts. So, the union actually hopefully building the relationship with the individual that they're helping to train that we are helping to pay for will eventually be hired by the union, thus being part of the film um industry. Now, the state was involved in it. City, the county, Winston Salem also put in some money at the time. Um, and I think in this um this year I think that the county is I think putting in some money. I think they've been that's one of the things I would like to know. Is the county funding any of this? Which I believe they are, but I'm not certain 100%.

I asked her yesterday. She said yes. Okay. She she did say yes. Yeah.

Okay. But then then again to Kevin's point is how many specific jobs were created where the individual that has been trained is now on board with one of the unions whether it be IATSI whether it be the teamsters because the union has to hire them. Uh so it's a tricky situation with the film industries how you how you train these film workers and hopefully get picked up by the industry. Um they're very protective of their union workers which I understand. Um, so and it's been a good partnership as far as the training aspect of it is, but I would like to know because they have done some really good training with and I've met some of these folks. Um, I just like to know how many have been picked up by the industry itself.

She said the county gave 100,000. 100. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. A long day. Thank you for everybody's um cooperation and questions and know we got a tough budget ahead of us and hope we make the right decision for the community.

We've uh we've made notes um on the questions that have been asked. Uh we will uh continue to pull that together, ship it out as it becomes available. Um, just want to remind all of you that um, as additional questions do come up, please continue to send those our way so that we can uh, do any analysis that needs to occur and get that turned back around. We know we're on some tight timelines um, and want to be as responsive as possible to what you're asking. Um, so just continue to email. Um, uh, multiple emails is fine. Um, uh, any time of day or night. Um, uh, but again um, I I do just want to um, thank staff. Um this is a tremendous amount of work to pull this together um to do the additional analysis that is required. It is really all hands on deck uh endeavor and um they've just been doing a tremendous job. So I appreciate everybody's time and attention today and we look forward to talking more about it next week. Thank you.

Very good. That was set in journey.