This is for us, we continue as normal regardless of what is happening. So we're going to be here for the next couple of hours to really go through our budgets and really focus on our budget itself and each of them within each of the different departments. So before we begin, what I'd like to do is give a couple of housekeeping rules so that both council and residents are aware of
how today's going to work and then I'm going to turn it over to town manager
Harubin, who will give you more specifics about how today specifically will work.
So because we're on this type of setting, we are having a meeting going on.
So for the council, when it is time or when you have a question or you'd like to
speak, please raise your hands so that you can be recognized so that I ever want to be able to hear you
because it does, it may get a little difficult to hear everyone if we're
consistently talking. The way we're not speaking please put yourself under
mute to prevent any feedback or noise from speaking or from happening. If you
have to step away please turn that video off and then after each presentation I've
opened the floor to discussion but I will go in the following order so I'll
with Mayor Pro Tem, Bob Niples, and I'll go to Councilmember Sweet.
Councilmember Dewey, Councilmember Osmond, and then I will end the discussion, and then
we'll have one final discussion before we move on to the next department.
With our residents, we will have the phone lines open, but they will only be open after
each department has presented their actual report itself.
We are asking that you focus your question to the presentation that's given at hand and please
never possible. Please don't ask questions that were already previously asked. We're really
trying to streamline that. We do have another way of doing, of accepting comments as well,
and questions and that is through email. So Councilmember Dewey is graciously accepted to monitor
or email, so if you have any emails, any questions or comments, we would highly encourage that
you email her at a-do-e-w-w-y at burrwoodheightsnd.gov, again it's a-d-e-w-e-y at burrwoodheightsnd.gov.
And that will help us even with accuracy as well, so if you have any call in, I will do my best
to repeat your question in hopes that I would get it accurate as an
accurate as possible. The email is always better for us as well. We will take
two ten minute breaks throughout this time. One, we will take it after the end
of section two and then one at the end of section three. So the section two part
is after the police department and then the section three is after the budget
summary accepts. From there, after that second grade, when we start section 4, we will not be
accepting any additional phone call. We will not be reading any additional emails, but the record
will remain open until May 13th until it is loaded on by the council. Again, we still encourage you to
email your comments and questions of councilmember Dewey. Of course, always email any of the council
some members, but Councilmember Dewey is going to be really focused on all of those events.
Council, open the floor. Are there any additional comments, questions, anything that I may have
missed before we begin or discussion?
Here and then, what I am going to do is now pass it on to
town manager Rodbent who will give you a summary of how today will actually work.
I'll
Good morning, thank you, Mr. Mayer.
I'm just a councilor.
Cory, I'd like to talk a little bit about the budget.
I just wanted to talk a little bit about the town's response
and the contingencies that we've taken
related to the coronavirus.
Know that to a person, every one of our staff
has been really working hard and vigilant and staying
positive and really doing a fantastic job of just keeping
We've been telling operations going as best we can.
It is a new normal and we've had to learn some new tricks, including Zoom.
But our town offices, we have switched to,
everything that can be done electronically should be done electronically.
We're not closed.
We're still taking calls.
We've only had a couple people come in this week and I appreciate that.
Same thing for a quiz station. If anything can be done electronically, we'd appreciate
that you do that. I closed our playground. It was with Eddie Hart was not something I
wanted to keep it open as much as I could. Lake Artemisia and the park and fanning parks
are still open. But really be careful. This thing is not planned and you know, like you go
If you're going to do a car, if you're going to be out in public,
seriously be 16 cars at least and wash your hands and be really careful.
The senior center is closed.
I miss seeing the seniors every day.
Hope you guys are okay.
The police have been doing a great job of checking in with everybody.
And if you've got some concerns, call.
We really want to make sure that we know how you're doing because
when we're really worried about anybody.
But cash collection is continuing as normal.
We take an opportunity while everything's
been closed and making a little nicer out here.
The seniors are going to like what they see,
but we did paint those poles that they could play about.
So the paint has been done, and the carvings
have been done, but the senior center
and over here in town hall.
So we're doing the best we can to keep things rolling
and just, you know, give everybody, give yourself some space and be patient. We're gonna get through this, the best you can.
And thank you to all the staff because, you know, we've got some folks that have been taking turns, you know,
working in the office to sort of live in exposure, but, you know, we couldn't have had this virus business happen at a worse time
because when it comes to the budget, everybody works double-time.
It works on the budget to get things done.
And one of the things I wanted to point out
is to start digging deep into the budget and recitations.
And I'll talk more about it at the end when I talk about summary.
But, you know, we look at this not only as a physical challenge
for all of us, but we're also looking at it as a financial challenge.
and some of the decisions that we made going into this,
I don't know, Michelle, how many verses we went through,
but Michelle and I, they're back for us,
they'll eight non-cocked nine per several days
working all day long and looking to do the best we can
to preserve the services that everybody enjoys here,
not raise the tax rate and seriously look at what's
essential and what we can put off a little bit so we're sure that we're going to have a tax money coming in and again
I'll talk a little bit more about the end at that at the end and please hold your questions related to that until after that
presentation but bear in mind that the budget that I put together is a imposed budget and it is our
recommendation to the council. The council has the ability once the budget is
introduced to make changes. So the budget process in general, the budget is in
ordinance. So just like any ordinance, it gets introduced and it has public
hearings. And along the way, the council has the authority to make a motion to
change the ordinance. That's how it works. Our fiscal year starts in July. Our biggest payments
start coming in in October, right? In my mentioned, in October. So we always take into account
that we've got a few wants that we need to flow on reserves because of the things that
we want to go to come in. So that's keeping that in mind. All right, as far as today goes, I'm
I'm going to go through the presentation for the administration and the one-third public
works and Director Hollis and the folks of the face department, Chief Ansley, I can
attend on her and talk about the face department.
Then at the end of the week we'll do a summary so that we can sort of show you all the format
that we've been playing with to get where we are.
So, with that, I'm ready for the presentation for the PowerPoint for the administration.
Mr. Mayor.
All right.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Thank you.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I believe we are having an audio issue.
I've got an email that there is no audio input.
Yeah.
I'm trying to fix it.
I just wanted to know if we could pause for a second.
right.
Okay I'm pausing
and council
member do I have
Paula guys where did you have your hand up was it was it in the camera or was
it on the chat so I don't I think it's about the little blue thing pops up I just
wanted you to know we're gonna look for it the only thing I wanted to remind
folks is when we say we're not reading emails it doesn't mean like we're
We're literally not going to read them all later.
We're just not going to put them in the meeting.
It's no big deal.
But yeah, I was, I just did the Ray's hand feature show.
There shouldn't be a blue square on my picture.
And then also next to my name in the chat.
I'll leave it up right now so you can see what I look like.
Yeah, I don't.
Yeah.
What
we saw in
2017.
For what?
It looks like there was another tab that had, OK.
So, Amanda,
you said there was an issue with not being able to hear.
I turned up in volume, are you at all able to listen in over streaming or is it just somebody
who called you to say that?
It was an email, I got to find them, I checked myself and she said she was trying to use both.
Okay.
Yeah, so all I did, it looks to me like volume is going out from what I can tell in the back, and I turned up the volume here because I like sitting next to the laptop to record what you're all saying.
I'm not sure if that will fix it at this point and let me also, oops, what did I do here?
I'll send them an email back saying, let us know if we can.
Yeah, okay.
Maybe it's the case that people need to do one or the other.
It's almost like listening to the radio while you're calling into the radio station.
I would say try watching her on your cable team B because we have an open zoom to other
outside participants, other than the folks that are staffed from the council.
Right.
The audio issue should be related to the television, not all of us are on, so can he hear each
other fine?
Right.
I did go to my computer to try to listen to it and I had a hard time hearing it. I thought I heard a very low and I'll go back and check again.
Do you want me to open up the first item here on the agenda?
Yes.
Okay.
The update is that the TV is working now, but nothing on streaming.
Nothing is on screen?
nothing on the streaming. So the audio is now working on the TV side, but what you
on our streaming version on our website. Oh, interesting. At least then hey that's something.
Well we did have, I'm not sure what was done with the carpeting and if there was anything that was
maybe disconnected, it might be an issue with encoder maybe it was bumped into. That sometimes
has an issue. I think if we have the TV version fixed, I think that we could tell people
to go there rather than look at our streaming. It would be difficult for me to fix the encoder
if that's the issue for the streaming.
And isn't it the case that we always re-broadcast everything that's been on the TV's?
Yes.
the website afterward. Right, and I can usually make a copy of the B8 and the
recording for the TV and then upload it to streaming with voice. That's that's
to other.
Yes, sir.
So, the world will continue to evolve.
Whatever it is that we need to do, hopefully, you know, if we have issues in terms of hearing, you know, we can only do so much at this point. You know, I know that one of the comments were that, you know, even with the phone, we had to keep on open a little bit longer because there's a delay between the stream and the TV as well. So we'll have to, you know, play with that in case that the comments.
Okay, I believe
are we ready to go back?
We can, yes.
Just let me know if you want to move down the agenda.
I'm looking for administration.
We can take it.
Okay, so that's okay.
But
no, I can't see it.
You can't see it?
No, I'm going to be in chair again.
Oh, okay.
I'm seeing that's on the big screen here and it's something all right let's see share yeah
how
about now
here we go here we go we got it okay all right just the word about the administration and
presentations from the departments in general so we are focusing our presentations on what we
call enhancements. That is anything that is over and above or cost work than we had last
year. So those could be in some cases increases beyond our control or also including projects
some of which are already funded, some of which would come from the funding. So the
The Administration Department is responsible for making sure that everything runs smoothly.
We are the glue that kind of holds together all the internal services and works with the council
to make sure that everything in the council gets carried out.
You can go ahead and change the slide.
Okay.
So
this
is just a talk about the staff that we have, so we have the chief executive officer,
financial officer, basically, you know, a conductor of a great sentry of employees,
assistant to the town manager.
This was a change that we made in a couple of the positions during the current fiscal year
just to make sure that there were more folks that were in an elevated position and just a administrative role.
So working on policies and other issues and we've also initiated some project traction this year.
So then folks can see where we are and put together projects that the council has approved.
And also to separate out human resources functions from the treasure because the treasure has an awful lot of treasure work today.
The treasure, as you know, helps Michelle Rodriguez who has helped me put this budget together and really done the heavy lift and tweaked all the numbers multiple, multiple times.
person who is conducting the show today.
I'm not sure I want you to mention that.
We have, you know, depending on the learns of your tricks this week, so far so good.
A person also makes sure she prides in administrative support to putting the agenda together from the council
and manages the elections and keeps track of all of the documents that are approved by the council,
and urgent control, and also has started to do some tracking of agreements and contracts that are approved by the council,
so that we can make sure that we're approving them in a traffic fashion.
And then we have the public information aid.
That position is currently vacant, but we've identified someone who was young and talented
at doing a lot of creative stuff, and I look forward to getting here in here, but now
it's not the time.
So we will get her going as soon as we can go in next slide.
The role of the council is clearly different than the role of staff.
The town council's job is to look at the legislation and consider the legislation that we put in front of them and to give us advice on where they want to go with policies.
Understand that that includes ordinances, resolutions, and some other things.
We operate in a system where on all basis, we'll take some time and discuss things through a work session.
So then we can get out of all the discussion out and then things after hearings of the necessary
the case of ordinances and then vote on them and read it down to each other.
The other pool of the council serves is to serve as the representatives of the town to
elected officials from other jurisdictions and with that I wanted to mention that we do
a do hold an annual legislative dinner and it's a great time for us to talk to the delegation
from the county and the state about the things that are important to us. Council members,
sweet time, attended the bond bill session on Saturday and on the cell ago and we did receive
word that we are receiving the funding. It's not a whole amount that we ask for but we are
receiving the funding from the state and the cost of the town to replace those on the
senior center town center bill. So that's great news and that's just so
that is great news and
how that is supposed to work. So our responsibilities are to look at the budget, to look at everything to
do with financing, and that includes looking at finance policies and purchasing and how
we spend that money throughout the year.
Right now, you know, my instruction to staff has been, you're very close, you're really
careful and how you're spending things that aren't purely operational, try and pull back
if you can't.
So, that's sort of where we are in relation to the virus, but that is our responsibility as
as far as finance is concerned.
Human resources, hiring, hiring,
most of staff, employee benefits,
employee compensation, personnel issues,
all of those, all of them in the administration.
And again, the table of televisitation
and communication with social media,
tracking of all the resolutions
and paperwork and other responsibilities.
Go ahead.
All
right, so I'll talk a little bit about the budget itself.
We have included 2% cost of living increase.
I'm not sure if that's actually going to keep up with the cost of living, but that is
the number that we've included.
Last year and in years previous, the town was able to do a 2% merit increase for employees
who have been employed for at least a year as of the beginning of each fiscal year, this
year in response to the virus, we have reduced that to one percent. So that is one of the
So we're going to move to the next slide.
Yes, please.
This budget enhancement is to actually take,
actually codify it.
Convocation is a process where all of your ordinances are grouped together by subject matter,
put that together and
this will allow them to be put in and over systematically, very
common for cities and towns to have to service.
And every time you do a change to your ordinance, they actually will make the change.
One of the great benefits of that is it will also be posted online, accessible through our
through our website. That's
a bit of a manual process. It has a $90-hundred-dollar
initial cost to quantify what's already accrued and then an annual cost for
the supplementation to be able to keep updating as we go.
I think that's a good problem because we caused real quick. There's a lot of
feedback or clicking or of some of the
discussion it's about. It looks like there's
three of us that are at
work
concerned that it might interfere
with the. Yeah, so I don't know
if. Happy to let it just let me
know when you're in person. If you
could try to mute and see if that
improves
the other piece to it
that I'm looking at is it does
not look like we're recording I
couldn't be wrong but I do not see
the red dot that's saying we're
It would still be reported on the television.
Yes.
It was a different recording system.
So you can.
The television broadcast not the Zoom program directly.
Yes.
That's correct.
We are recording through the system in the council chamber.
and then there's the zoom recording that's different and separate.
Perfect. Okay, thank you. Continue to have a minute.
Next slide, please.
Oh, wait a minute.
Services is just increased from the company under audit.
There's nothing changing about it other than time goes by.
things get a little bit more expensive. So go ahead and change the next one.
Health insurance,
not just ours, but everyone's health insurance goes up a lot this year. This year,
we are a member of the local government insurance trust, and we offer health insurance for all of
employees, employees that are paid
for by the town. What we have done is in
the
coverage,
you know, that will show up in a budget spreadsheet that's online.
The insurance costs went up, or
I can't see, because I'm sorry.
So back up.
The next one.
It's
not an increase.
So we had this year that beyond our control
is the
town participating for employees.
And it has gone up from 8.6%.
The current fiscal year to 9.38%.
As you can see on the slide.
And that is a $29,500 increase.
The next slide.
a couple
of things that we propose to consider on
our c and all of the functions that we have.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time.
needs to be replaced. They use it a lot, and it is an oldie-button duty. It has
actual digital numbers that are made out of plastic that flip over. There's
nothing modern about it. However, I will say that this is one of the
expenses that we may want to consider improving as part of the closed
budgets for them to you but I would recommend that we hold off on pulling the trigger on it
until January so there are some expenses that are not things that have to start
enhanced excuse me that have to start as a jar one and this is one of them and I would
encourage you to consider this but we would not spend the money in the project until we know for sure
that we're in a good place.
But the term, you know, related to the Catechon
is going to be active in this virus.
Next one.
We have custodial services before our buildings,
or all four of our buildings, I should say.
That contract expires the end of June,
so the end of our fiscal year.
Staffs in a great job of putting out
requests for vids for custodial services,
and as you would expect the price came in $2,000 more for the increase but I
think it might actually get a little bit better service. The current service
that you have the way the contract was written with them and so specific to
every single thing that they do is delineated with the cost rather than you know
please claim this room and that one. So that is $2,000 increase and that would be one that does
have to go into effect until I walk. So those are all and I think that's last slide for
all right. So those are all of the instruments. Everything else is basically state the same
for the administration department. So with that I'm going to turn it back over right now to the name.
I think your time manager, Brad, at this point, I want to open up for discussion and I'm
going to start with Mayor Pratim Papua, make those any comments.
I'm meeting myself so you can hear me, right?
Yes.
Cool.
One question I did have for Maria is on the Merit increase, and if that's compared to our
surrounding neighbors, I know everyone's going through this problem right now.
Our budget process is actually ahead of our neighbors, because your timeline is tighter
than theirs.
I have not consulted them, but typically everybody was doing two and two, and I have not
consulted with the other communities to see whether they are on the same wavelength as
well as the proposals concerned.
Okay. Okay.
Everything else? I don't really have an issue with. I do think it's a good
idea to hold off on the hares and the oven until January. It's probably important for
all the residents to realize that since there's a delay in income tax filings, there's probably
going to throw all of our taxes back in addition to the recession that's happening right now.
Other than that, I think it was a good presentation. I don't see anything overly controversial.
Thank you so much. I can't remember so many comments.
Not particularly on the presentation. It's very well done. I'm just looking at the second document with all the costs and everything.
was going to see if we got any new quotes for the chairs.
To be honest with you, we didn't get any new
quotes because those are really cheap kind of commercially available chairs that are used by a lot
of places that do catering but are not fancy. So would you go to anything and much more quality than
I mean, those are functional and they'd be fine, but if you go far below that, you're going to get into something that's not of a commercial nature, and I wouldn't recommend that you go, you know, we have to do things that are commercial, because we're a commercial operation.
You know, you're running out of place to people that are using it at their own discussion.
I wouldn't go, I wouldn't go any less quality than Boyvada doing his research somewhere.
Right. Sorry, that.
In the $800 increase for audits, that's just like an increase in their building.
We're not asking for any services that we don't have, that's their increase over time
for their services.
Okay.
That's it.
I'm done.
All you in.
Thank you so much.
Council Member Dewey.
Yes.
First, I want to thank you for putting this together and thank the Administration Department
it for the flexibility and nimbleness, I would say, that they've had to show. So thank
you all for that. Just a couple of additional things. Really, no questions as much as a
comment for me. So I definitely agree with this idea that for the chairs in the oven,
pushing those back until January at least. But I'm still, especially given the current
situation, I'm almost in favor of doing the oven in January and then waiting on the chairs
and I feel like, you know, given the last few weeks' events,
I've been sort of ranking everything in my head in terms of priorities,
and as much as staffing those chairs is a pain in the behind,
and there are a little bit questionable on the conference room chairs are too.
To me, given all the other things we have going on,
I would personally be okay with saving the chairs until June,
giving them their six months.
If I may, Council Member, we had a technician come in and look at that oven, and he was
so fascinated with it because he had never seen one that he prepared it for free.
And what he found was that someone, you know, unintentionally had moved the heat sensor,
and it is now working much better than it has probably worked in the last 10 years.
Well, that's comforting. I was sort of thinking of that as a safety issue, but it sounds like not something that they solid state that's better quality than something you're going to buy today.
If you want to get that decision, I would almost encourage you to do it the other way around.
Okay. No, thank you for that.
I'll prove the chairs because they're kind of funky.
No, thank you for that information. I was thinking of it the other way with the oven being the scary emergency and the chairs being.
I mean, you're not going to kill that of them, not seeing, you know, it's probably, you know, we probably asked a few years to it's life by it.
They just don't make them like they used to. They don't make them like they used to.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it.
You had a, you had a lot of comment too.
No, that was it. It was all jumbled together. Everything else made a lot of sense and it's in line with what we talked about. So I'll yield my time too.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Council Member Osmond.
Hello, everyone.
Good morning.
So, that was very nice. The Alvin works. Let's not replace the Alvin.
The chairs, understanding that we can always change the budget.
We can leave them in the budget.
And before January, we can determine whether we're going to use that line.
The chairs, pending what we learned from the situation of the pandemic.
question on the sanitation contract.
Are there standards in place that are performance-based,
so that if every little thing that they do is not a line item that you pay for, then
is there a performance standard and expectation that sort of a white glove test, you know, a written
performance-based standard that you can apply to tell them you haven't met the contract
You got the meat contract?
Have you met Obama-doors?
Yes.
This isn't a town manager.
She's performance-based.
They don't get paid unless they want this happy with the work that they get paid.
Okay, so there's a statement that describes the procedure for getting...
I'm working on the contract right now.
And I have the option to put that in.
We're not happy.
You don't get paid.
Okay.
If I was pretty fussy about things like that, I mean, this isn't our house, it's yours.
And we're going to make sure that this is the best shape we can make it so that she doesn't
sign off.
I don't sign off on a check ticket.
Okay.
Well, if that works and they're willing to accept that kind of contract, great.
Otherwise, if they're a little hesitant about that, if there's any way that they bond and articulate
what her performance level of standard is, performance-based contracts work really well for
genitorial services. An example, as you know, would be cut the grass, not two times a week,
but make sure the grass never grows above six inches. And then that way they determine the amount
of time they have to cut it, and that's the difference to be prescriptive in performance-based contracts.
And that's not this kind of contract. This is contract that says you come on Monday and
That's all I have I'll yield my time thank you so much. I will echo my sediments as well to the thanks for the entire administration department not only for this and putting the presentation together and for our wonderful treasure who kept on putting the numbers back and forth and back and forth, but also just for the rest of the day.
many and all the hard work that was put before us over these last several weeks as well.
One thing I will say is that, you know, I'm in favor of everything that's here. Hearing that the
oven is now working properly, I do agree with town manager Brad Ben that I do believe that
we need to get those chairs before we do the oven piece because, you know, the town center,
There's a lot of activity that goes on up there and I think it would help enhance our
town as well.
So, at this point, I'm in favor of everything that is here as well.
Council, I'm going to open it up to one final discussion if you do have any additional
discussion points before I open the phone line or read any of the emails.
Please raise your hand so that I can recognize you.
Council member, do it.
Thank you. Just a quick reminder to folks that these have come before us at work sessions.
So if anyone wants to look back, if there's an item that's an interest to you and you
want to look back at the detail discussion we had, you have a few weeks ago at this point.
I think late February and early March, those are on the website. So all of the information
is there too. If you just want to see the other time we talk about it as background, I just
Yeah, Mr. Mayor, if I may, thank you, Councilmember Dewey.
When we discuss them in work sessions, we gain more paid work than is online attached
to this agenda, but attached to each one of these enhancements is a form that staff
is prepared justifying each one.
So when you look at the agenda for today's meeting, you'll see now only the power points
but you'll see what we call budget enhancements and that has the details about what would happen.
We didn't buy it, and I'm going to put some money here so that's it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Seeing no other hands, Council Member Dewey, are there any emails that have come in before I open the phone?
Yes, there is an email.
From resident, this is Jody Culpa, and I'm room at TN Street asking about the co-cification,
wanting to know how would that benefit the town, and could it be delayed until the next
fiscal year?
Mr. Mann, so right now we have a town code that is not codified.
So when we want to find out what the history of something is, literally someone is going through
In a lot of cases, minutes manually, there was a lot of improving legislation in the past that wasn't actually legislation that was written with the Toronto Council.
So there's a lot of scrambling around to find things.
The standard process is that something gets approved and gets put into a format that is there for history sake.
We don't have that right now, so it's a basic function of good government practice.
I'm kind of being put off. Sure, you've put it up for a long time already. You know, I'll understand
that you also have a clerk who, as at some point, I'm blessed, I'm going to retire. And before
that happens, this needs to be put into a form that can be transferred from one person to
the other seamlessly without anyone trying to figure out what the last person did. So, it's
It's a best management practice that will just bring us up a lot of times.
Can't be put off.
Sure, we've been putting it off for a long time.
But I would encourage you to go forward and give this things right.
Okay, thank you so much.
Council member, do any additional emails of this time?
No, just that one.
Okay.
So,
with that, Mr. Mayor,
I'm going to introduce House Goodwin, who is going to go through the presentation and enhancements for the co-compliance department.
Before she does that, let me open the phone lines for any additional comments for administration before we move into my houses.
That's okay.
Okay, so the phone line is 30147495703014749570.
In
that maybe next time it'll be good to give the phone number, then read any emails.
That way, that delay can be taken care of, and we can put folks on hold for minutes we have to.
Good idea.
3-0-1-4-7-4-9-5-70.
Can I just say this whole process reminds me of when you see people interviewed on the
space shuttle or something, you know, you know, we're not floating around the air, but it
seems like the same kind of communication with people just so far far away.
Exactly.
Okay, you're having no phone calls. We will move into code compliance. Good morning.
Ms. Goodwin. How are you today?
Well, how are you?
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Good morning to everybody. Everyone is doing well and staying safe.
I'll go ahead and move right into our presentation for our advancement.
just to start with our mission statement.
So prior to itself, one adherence to doing our part
in guarding the health safety and general welfare of the town
by monitoring and requiring compliance with property
building and environmental regulations that work by the town
by French George County by the state of Maryland
and federal requirements.
and go to the next slide please, all
right.
Co-compliance staff consists of my fellow director,
a full-time focal client officer two, Ms. Tammy Demby,
and a focal client officer one Ms. Zelda Bell.
The client has several functions,
but just to go over the most prominent,
first would be our rental properties.
We have about 250 rental properties in the town currently.
We inspect the properties at least once yearly, just to ensure that they are maintaining
safety and sanitation standards as our ordinance is, for insurance and county code, and
the international community maintenance standards.
We also issue permits for a building right away, a roll-up dumpster and temporary storage for
properment,
licensing, we accept applications and issue business licenses for our talent
businesses.
In the property standards, we survey the town regularly and charge that to administer
a fair and comprehensive compliance program amongst our residential, rental and commercial
town properties to correct violations and hopes of enhancing property and community values.
For
zoning matters, code monitors, properties, for zoning violations that are forced by the county, we present to the town council and give recommendations in support of or not for variance requests and then we forward those recommendations will report the council's recommendations to the county board of appeals and then last but not least, we also process and keep track of personal property taxes for business.
So moving on to the next slide.
So code is recommended a discontinuation of the VAM program, in short we've seen an
extreme decrease in ridership over time, we just feel that the funds that have been
allocated for the VAM program in the past would be of better use to the department elsewhere.
This would be a cost increase of $2,000 and would actually cover 5 out of 6 of the departments
enhancement requests for fiscal year 2021.
So, just to give a bit more background about call of bus and how we arrived at this recommendation
as we all know, call of bus provides local transportation services primarily to the town seniors
and persons with disabilities, due to a decrease in ridership, we had transferred the VAMV
utilize for call of us.
We was alone to bring about in 2018 and then was transferred in 2019 because they had
a much greater need for it.
And they co-contain you to perform call of us services using our department view pool.
Within the last year, we had just one resident who was using the call of us service.
She was using it once or twice a month, and she no longer resides in the town, and then
since that time, which was in December, when she left, we have had any other requests
for her ride.
So, we're really not operating the program.
When we do acknowledge that there would be a need for alternatives.
So, you know, there's Metro Bloss, there's the Bloss that's operated by Prince George County.
There's metro access and there are buildings via program which provides free and low-cost
cab services and then of course there's always our ride sharing services like Uber and
Lyft which provides services 24 seconds so again just in summary we feel the funds would
be a better use to the department in other areas as the all of us programs not all can call
That's that. We can move to the next slide. Our first enhancer request is for network and software. This would be for
Compate for the renewal to use the Compate for this year. Compate is extension database, extension to the
department's functions. We store reports and information for our rental properties. We create our rental and business licenses.
We manage our property maintenance cases, create records of all our permits, and also use it now to keep track of our personal property taxes.
It's our primary method of record storage and communication.
So the software cost for this year is approximately $9,800.
dollars in a $3,000 increase from last year, and this covers the cost of the
software license fee renewal, maintenance for all the modules and detracting,
and co-comptages has an increase in their cost for the program, and then we also
have the additional module that we requested for personal property tax that's
caused the cost to go up a bit, too.
Having an enhanced request for training and
tribal, we're combined on this slide, but all Coast staff needs additional training.
That training would include meetings of the Code Departments, Training Classes,
professional works, some of the events we've filled would be valuable due to take place
outside of just our local area, excuse me, so that's where we included that request for
a tribal fund.
It's a proper cost.
We have to go out a little further for those training events.
This training, of course, will help us to become more knowledgeable and effective, better
understanding of safety, and just make us better equipped to perform our job function.
This enhancement would include costs for training and study materials, books, workbooks,
flashcards, especially in pursuit of certification for personal maintenance, and housing
inspection certification which is issued through the International Code Council. So the total cost
for training $2800 that's an $800 increase from last year and then $550 for travel which is an
increase as it wasn't included in the budget for fiscal year 2020.
So next we have to request
access for uniform. All closed staff needs uniforms for two full-time staff and one part-time
uniforms. We fill our essential for safety, identifiability, just professionalism and
cohesiveness. Total cost for uniforms that we gather through quotes with on-dee visa buy and
from other online retailers at $750. That's a $250 increase from the previous year and that cost
would include a uniform shirt, pants, an appropriate safety boot or shoe and jacket, as well
as embroidery cost for those items and replacement has necessary.
And then last and finally, also combined, our vehicle expenses co-recently acquired an additional
vehicle. It's the 2008 Dodge pick-up that came down from public works.
The vehicle is going to be
operated full-time, so we are, of course,
anticipating there will be an additional need
for gas and oil.
So total costs for gas and oil for $200.00.
That's the $300 increase from last year.
And I'm also going into the,
excuse me, anticipating a need for preventative maintenance
for this vehicle in addition to the one we already have.
And so we're asking for an increase of $100.00,
total costs of $200.00 for preventative maintenance.
and that is global.
Thank you very much.
Council, I'll open up for discussion.
I'll start with Mayor Bertel and Popponeckless.
All right.
So my understanding from your presentation
and from what you presented in the past,
he's seen what a home is.
Not great with math, which I'm not into it.
The only real increase is the complaint
is the rest sort of.
Right, kind of balances out the regulation of the event.
Yep.
All right.
Do you I'm curious to hear views get you see good value and
compete for you?
I mean, I played with any of the other softwares out there.
I haven't worked with any of the other softwares.
I like Conte.
It has its part, but I will say that their team is very active
they quit to respond and to help us work through the issues that we have with it.
It's now functioning on our iPads, so that's great.
So I mean, I like to call it the Compute Program and they are working in one enhanced in
a software.
They have Compute 2.0 that they're going to roll out in the near future, so we have a release
issue with them.
I like the program.
Thank you.
If I can add to that, I have used other softwares, and most of the other ones that I've
used are really designed for much bigger code operations than we are in our custom.
Literally, they take our forms and create the screens out of them.
and the value that is compared to our size would be hard to justify.
So the beauty of Concave is they're designing a system that they do customize for us
but the basic part of the program, you know, you're not starting from scratch
customizing the whole thing. So they're a little more geared to our size
than something like trackator track wise.
Okay, that's one of everyone's happy with it and sees the value and I'll be okay with
the increase.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
I was just waiting for Mayor Hertz and Bob Naples to turn on mute because I didn't know
he had anything else.
Next up is Council Member Sweeney.
I just want to kind of echo what Jason's at about the call of us
kind of equaling out
Or being like a net neutral or the rest of them and yeah, I don't really have anything
I'll do them that to ask so all you
Thank you so much council member doing
Thank you. Yeah, you know, I agree with that. I think that's important to know sort of the way this particular
departments, items are leveling out but I also think it's one of those that we've talked
about in the before in terms of actually budgeting for what we're spending.
So things like fuel that we need to.
I think it's important that we are trying to account for that stuff in the budget as much as possible, just in terms of accuracy and all that good stuff. So I think with all that said, in addition to getting that feedback on how concrete is working, the fact that it's now working on the iPads, I don't have any issues on the items here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Council Member Osmond. I think it's good that the dropping of the man will provide funds to support the other and
enhancements. I would just note that with the circumstance, with the pandemic, that maybe we certainly have to revisit the idea of travel and so that we can let that ride in the budget, but then reassess it for the end of the world. And I would ask that you know, the one that you know, in actions will do.
I would encourage you to let the conferences decide whether the conferences can be held.
They're all going to be relying on states of emergency.
All of the conferences that were to be held this spring have already been canceled.
So, you know, I can rely on the state of emergency to decide whether a conference is safe to be held.
It's probably the best way to go.
You know, the police conference was canceled.
I'm going to bet that your MML conference in Ocean City will probably cancel that soon.
But they're not going to hold those conferences if it takes an emergency
effort.
Understood.
I don't have anything further.
All right.
Thank you.
I really have nothing more to add regarding this.
I think everything is putting self-explanatory.
I'll let you answer my question in terms of whether or not the connectivity and the communication
that was a concern at the beginning, so the fact that that's working, I'm happy about
that. So I'm pretty pleased in terms of that overall with your presentation, so I really
have no questions or comments or concerns about that. At this point, I'm going to open up one last
time for council. I know that we do have a couple of comments that I'll get to, but right now,
I see councilmember sweep having his hand up. You want to make a sweep?
Oh yeah, I just wanted to echo
kind of what Maria was saying about like letting conferences kind of cancel and just the importance of
having that in the budget, even, you know, the one that we're going to approve it may because it's a lot
easier you know if this once this clears up just to go forward with the
monies and the budget as opposed to the new sort of this like hold on it until
a later date so that's all.
Okay thank you so much. Two comments that came
from our chat itself one was how many commercial license do we have and did we
get several quotes on uniforms to find the best price.
I'm sorry, I'm not forgetting mine.
Let me answer that question directly with staff when she sends it to me again.
I don't think that that question was meant for the entire council is from the staff member.
And I don't think it is related to this code presentation.
And the question related to uniforms, we get the uniforms largely from the same place
of the police departmentals and the organization where we buy them is the same place like
where the firing ranges and all Prince George County is buying their uniforms there.
I can't imagine you're going to find a cheaper radio or else.
Okay.
Thank you so much. One final open for the discussion for council before we open
emails and bookmarks.
Okay. Hearing none. While council member do is looking at our email,
our phone number 301-474-9570-301474957070. Council member do we any email?
else for code. No, no. Okay.
Thank you so much. The online is open 3014749570. And for the record
again, the email is adoe, so adoewe.
And
we will
move on to the Public Works Department and their budget enhancement and presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
The mission of the Public Works Department, shown in the screen, is one of those that it
would be really obvious that they do their job.
Everything that has to do with a direct service that's provided to every home in this town
on more than a weekly basis comes from your public works department. They're picking up your
trash, they're picking up your yardways, it snows, they're handling the snow, anything to
do with trees that fall on the roadway, anything with the public right away, those are your folks.
And they're out there, they do a fantastic job. So that's what they do.
This is a little bit
They're more on their mission and sort of the areas where they work, streets, sidewalks,
curb, gutters, vegetation, their monographs, and flowers are the kin.
All of your town events, they're the folks that do, don't notice because they're in there
before you can set things up and put things away when you're done.
The
organization chart made a little bit of a change, maybe that's a perfect thing to see right now.
A little bit of a change this year.
We had advertised for to fill the position of the director who retired and frankly we weren't getting the quality of applicants that we should have to run that department.
largely because we're an office law operation and we're not able to offer the
type of salary that was fitting up the job description. So I appreciate the
counsel's approval to look at that in a little different way so we're looking at
someone who has a public administration background and could manage a public
works department as well as they could, could department or something else, someone
who's really going to rally the folks that are down there, work on all the personality
issues, work on all the administrative issues, you know, it's a vital function and I have
to give a shout out right now to Rosalie Jones who has been really helping me out with the
She's a part-timer right now. She's working at home and she's learning some new tricks this week, too
But she's been doing a heck of a job to keep things running administratively
This weekend and last weekend, particularly so thank her for that
Know that the change to go into administrative manager does you some savings?
We have a number of positions in this department
We keep those positions now posted as openings constantly because it is a piece of the type of workers that are really valuable to everyone and it's a really competitive world out there, maybe not right at this moment, but we have always a need for CDL drivers.
You know, I understand we're a little bit different,
and I'm a public work department.
I need to know that when people have sent it to your house,
I would be like, what happened in the comments?
So we do a background check and there's a balance
between whether we've got something with the right skills,
whether we've got the right time.
So we will pursue, again, the best people that we possibly can,
but we'll often have openings.
So we use a lot of temps.
So, all right, next slide.
All right, so now look at budget enhancements.
We have a vehicle replacement fund, as you know,
and vehicles that are proposed and as funded to be purchased,
are being purchased to the vehicle replacement fund.
So this is long-term planning that the council has been doing financially
to fund fees, vehicles, made a little bit of a change on this vehicle
That's in front of you. The truck is in rough shape, but the truck itself is in rough
shape, but the dump body is in great shape. Whoever has a four-sided-by-stain steel dump
body, did you favor? So this is just for the replacement of this truck itself. This is a really
and poor truck as part of your concern and just a note about the way your financing for
these are done and relationship issues related to your audit, you cannot move the vehicle replacement
fund for some other purpose. It is in the budget to be used to be able to replace and you
can't use it for operations. So the next one
is for a new garbage truck, refugees
available, use it for recycling also. It replaces, well, the water replaces a
bit of a nest number here. It's actually replacing a much older vehicle because
the 2016 that is in line to be replaced will still remain part of art fleet. So in the
In case of these really heavy vehicles, you put them in as a replacement, but you actually
keep them so that you have four operable vehicles at any time.
I believe the picture at the bottom is our new truck that has just been built for us
that you approved last year, note that there is not a parking lot of trash truck sitting
in some way. When you approve a purchase and we go through the process of buying it,
never building that truck for you. So the bottom, the picture at the bottom is your
new truck, the new 22. That should be here and hopefully that next few, next few weeks
and happy giving it a very ride if you want to check that out when it's done. We have gone
to putting car tippers on the back of all these trucks, as you know during this current
fiscal year, we're actually going for it. We had the funding and we've gone with recycling
toners for all the residences, upping our game as far as the recycling goes and being
in a much better shape in terms of eliminating injuries to our staff. As we get this truck
market line will be in better shape to in some cases actually have folks be able to
use towers for the trash.
We're not looking to or proposing or suggesting that we purchased them but we will let folks
know which brand they can buy and where they can buy them locally so that they can also
be used for the trash.
The towers have the advantage of having wheels and laying on top of them and you know for
There are purposes also been in to being much better on the backs of our staff.
Next slide, please.
This piece of equipment, we run one leak back in and when it went down this fall, everybody knew about it.
So, this vehicle was actually in to be replaced quite some time ago, but for some reason that wasn't done.
Even though the funding sat in the bank and sat there couldn't be used for anything else, but vehicle replacement.
So, we are looking at getting that piece of machinery fixed.
Collective leaves with a lead vacuum is the most labor-intensive, the most expensive way
to collect it.
But being as we're a small town and those are the expectations of the community, we are
not proposing to change that.
We're proposing to stay with this kind of equipment.
I do not want to keep the old machine.
We have none.
repairs to it. We'll look to sell that machine because it's dusty. You basically run a big fan
and that fan and all that machinery gets all full of dust and everything else. So it's a really
tough machine and like I said you know when it goes down. So this is to replace our current piece
to the point then, every two, three, two, three, two, three, two, three, two, three,
Funding from selling a piece of equipment goes back in to the equipment replacement fund. That's actually in your code somewhere. So, the piece of equipment will be a place car or a trash truck. You can sold that money by code. When it's back into that fund, to help offset any increases that happen a number of times or the adjustments that we have to make in the type of machine read, just natural place, especially in case of equipment like this, where you're putting it off.
The replacement of the backhoe couldn't have come off this year.
It was ready to be replaced this year because there's still more life in that piece of machinery
and I think that the time frame that was put in your vehicle replacement fund was a little
bit too short for a piece of machinery like that.
And I have not put that forward in front of you, both for fiscal purpose safety when you can't touch those funds.
But because we're buying a couple of big pieces of machinery this year,
and Lee's machine looks at guys like to call him Lee Bird and track track.
Next slide.
We'll go
to the next slide.
Yeah.
All
right.
So at some point, we started purchasing all our own tables and picket tables and tables
and all of those sorts of things for our public events, events like burn on high-stay, national
night out, and this picture on bottom right is where they've been stored.
It's a little hoop house thing covered with a tarp that is far beyond its useful life.
There's actually some mowers in there.
What I'm proposing is to purchase, on a note I would call Connick's box.
It might be using shipping containers and other public works programs that I've managed.
that are relatively inexpensive. We have with us this help talk to the folks of code in the county to find out what our requirements would be.
So we're proposing to buy, I don't want to get a used one per se, I want to get one that's pretty new.
But a different kind of container that's watertight. You can invest a lot of money and all that equipment and you need to be able to restore it.
next slide.
This fiscal year we were able to replace the overhead roll-up doors on the main
public works building. I appreciate the Council's approval on that. This is just continuing on with
that program. The current doors, so you've got your main public works building and then you have this
little smaller building with your face and the property to the right of it, and that building
is holding some equipment, but it's also holding your hazards and materials, storage, and
the doors and insulation on that building are, well, if it was somehow a property, we'd be
the issue of a code violation, don't look out, don't look.
So something about it, I think it may have made you know,
maybe a homemade job to install the doors there,
but the doors and the tracks, the rolls on the tracks
and the doors don't match.
So it is more than several times that the doors just slump and
fall all the way down the bottom and you have this huge gap where
George is not covering the opening.
So we are looking to request the view to place the overhead
George for that storage building.
We can go on to the next slide.
And this is what we talked about.
I know Councillor Cumberstreet wanted us to look
in this grand insulation.
We have not found, I did not proposing this to you
to talk about what type of method we will use.
we will work with the professional companies
to find the best thing that they recommend,
but this is the picture of the installation in that building.
Clearly not really exciting anything.
So this is probably well-intended
that most of the themselves building installation
is all far enough and it needs to be replaced next time.
Oh, that's a good one.
Let's see.
All right, there we go.
So, two weeks ago, we had the folks
from a food scrap composting company
come in and speak to you.
This is sort of their minimum low service.
The picture shown here is one that is a wrap-off in college park.
So this is the cost for a wrap-off,
They're probably actually being in the backyard here in town hall to be collected once a week for 35 gallon containers.
And they don't provide the signs for free, they'll give us the graphics.
The signs in the post and the little compost bags that people can take home.
Residents will still have a choice to go through them for a subscription service if they want to pay themselves on their own or a collection at their home.
But this is just a cost for a weekly collection, the model of this company uses is that folks start out by using the minimal level of service or drop-off and come location, and then you look over time how much you can increase that to see whether you can get to the point of marriage,
a curbside collection, whether it be description-based,
being the resident case for themselves,
or through a service paid for by the town.
The potential for reducing your waste
through collecting key waste is enormous.
You are a vigilance recycler.
You will find that if you do no composting whatsoever,
However, the majority of what you have left in your cash is probably plastic wrap that can't be recycled by anybody anywhere or food waste.
So this is an opportunity to sort of plant that seed and see where it goes.
$2,900, I think in an auction itself.
It's nothing else in the value that education benefits people around.
Next slide, please.
Road Repair, you know, Michelle, Mother Sharp, Professor, thank you Michelle, we have reduced
what we're looking to do in road work this year.
Then when we're saying road work, we mean curves, gutters, anything associated with the
roadway that needs to be done in the professional opinion of staff and contractors at the time
done, these funds are dedicated funds that come from the state, and the portion of the
tap to Z. You collect, there is a percentage of them that goes toward the road work. So
that as a source of these funds, we are not looking to for this particular enhancement
to cut into any of the reserves that you have in place for this type of infrastructure work.
It's a little less than we've done this year, but I would say it's really important
to keep up with that process because before you got behind, you got behind and then you
ended up looking at bonds in the past and, you know, if you've done a little every year
and keep up with it, especially if you know you have a problem in one place, it's probably
the best way to manage this.
The list of streets here is not completely finalized because, honestly, I don't know that we would be able to do all of these.
The list of streets is the size that it was before we dialed this budget back in the last couple of days.
There are also a couple of ones and two things around town that will get done out of this
and by out of a little bit of a budget that is in the budget or top of work operation itself.
This $30,000 is not coming from general funds.
So this is coming from the Infrastructure Fund that you have set aside to do work of this
nature.
So this is a proposal for $30,000 to look at carrying out some of the initiatives that
are included in the walkable type-by-pool task force.
staff was set up to have a meeting all together to start going through all those
recommendations individually, but then the virus came. And we ended up turning that
meeting into the meeting for how we're going to respond to this. So we will get
back at that, but it probably will be a few weeks. You know we have some concerns
about actual speed close that were included in the proposal but so I will say that
this proposal is not for anything specific other than poor items that are listed in that task force
report that are low hanging troops and that may be lost. I'd love it. Yes, it is. Yes, that's what I'll turn it up to the name. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you, brother. I'll open for discussion at this time. We'll start with Mayor Bertam Papinicholas.
Can I hear you, Jason?
Mayor Richem, can you unmute yourself, please?
Thank you.
It helps the client meet.
Okay.
The quick question for you, on the leaf backing,
is that it is a very expensive piece of equipment
and appears to be very manpower intensive.
I wish we could have been able to ask this on the survey,
but we will have to get it, I think.
But can we start actually finding out
How much value residents put in it?
Because I know at least for those of us who live on Edmundston,
there's very hard for that leaf back in the pick up anything.
And I'm wondering if there's other streets in town.
That might be a similar situation where you just don't get value for it.
We'd be happy to.
As you know, I mean changes to always programs in actually 16 towns
of the time. One of the ones that I worked on was in Rockville, and another one in NAMPLUS,
and we moved from the back of Maine to people bagging their leaves and that sort of thing.
That's the thing that I understand is that's the alternative. But we would be happy to, particularly
when we're getting into, you know, actual each season of fall, collect some data for you,
so we can give you some anecdotal information, at least about who's banging on, and who
is relying on us to vacuum them up.
Um, and then just a couple of quick comments, um, it seems like we've done a lot of work
on that level of work's yard. I'm awfully concerned, I'm glad we're focusing on it now, but I'm
not fully concerned that we've overlooked
of course building improvements,
and I mean that's because it's out of the way
and nobody notices it,
but I'm glad to see if we focused on it
the last couple of years.
Hopefully, do you think that this is the end of that,
or do you think there's a little bit more
that we have to do next year?
I think there's probably a little bit more
you have to do next year.
I think we've been facing ourselves
and doing the worst of it first.
Many times I've had some of my offices were departments and I can tell you that because they're not open to the public,
those folks end up sort of being the stepchildren, it's their part of the funding goes.
There's some decisions that were made over time doing some things down there that have turned out to be more costly in the end.
You know, the softens were not petted, so we just filled them in with plywood, there's some of those decisions that we need to catch up with.
Right now, you know, I'm focusing on the building envelope and those properties.
So, you know, what keeps the inside and the outside out, but trying not to do anything terribly costly all the time.
And then finally, I'll admit I was a little skeptical of the composting idea, but I've really
come around.
I think it's a, this company has great model.
I love the fact that they're local, I can go 10 minutes away and get it and a college
park has implemented it, so I've got a need for the visit.
I agree.
I think, well, residents might be a little concerned with this other program.
I think it'll pay for itself in tipping fees alone.
Okay, I'm very happy to see that with that.
I will yield my time back.
Okay, thank you so much, Council Member Sweet.
Yeah, thank you for doing that.
I'm glad to see about the insulation even though
So for the shipping container that is replacing the shed, is that just one container?
We'll keep the wind in the rain out a little better than what we've got going on down there.
Yeah, and it also looks like it can be locked additionally as well.
Absolutely.
Right now, there's no lock on the tent.
Right, yeah.
I mean, unless you can somehow get past the like tart that's just straight over the entrance
of it.
Yeah.
But yeah, other than that, I understand what based on this kind of saying about the
leaf collection, but I know it's not, I'd be interested in seeing some of the data that
we collect in the fall as opposed to how many people are using it, and that sort of thing,
but I know and I can echo what Murray was saying that when it was down I was getting a lot of
calls and emails of people like asking when it was going to be fixed where it was so it was
deaf and for people that I normally don't hear from so I think it's I think it's
life enough and it's a service that's popular in our town where I think we would have to keep
doing it or I would be in support of continuing it even though the maintenance of those can get
pretty spendy. Yes, sir. But what boils down to is, you know, we put the leaves on the
container or the residents put the leaves on the container and it's a really popular
service. It would be difficult to change it right now. Yeah. But that's it for me. All
you and Claire. Thank you so much council member Dealy. Yes thank you. A couple of my questions
were answered sort of thinking through the big picture of the public works facilities and stuff.
I think overall for me it boils down to if we've got expensive equipment it doesn't do any good to
not take care of it and keep it safe and present it from the elements so you know I appreciate
the work to make sure that we're taking care of our stuff so it lasts so that
all makes a lot of sense to me. The other thing I'll add on to is on just as
everyone knows I'm excited about the compost program. I've heard some good
comments, some positive comments from folks I've spoken to about that and one
thing I really appreciated about compost crews, model and presentation was
they're sort of intentional steps program right like this idea that we're
going to start with a central location,
and they weren't advocating for us to immediately go
to some giant complex residential pickup thing.
So starting out really simple with the education,
and I think you're right, it's paying for itself
potentially in tipping fees once we get this up and going.
And from our neighbors in college, it happened really quickly
as the participation increased there.
So I'm excited about that, and I want
to thank Tom Manager for giving that research
And I will say Council member doing it, but my attention is to sort of keep an eye on how
it goes.
Yeah.
If it's the case that it does ramp up faster than we expected, so more than what you're
but before right now, I will bring something back to you
to offset some of the to pay for expansion
or second look page.
Awesome.
Yeah, and just that reminds me that again,
we talked about this and if folks didn't tune
into that meeting in College Park,
it was something like six to eight months
where they had really increased the number of bins
that they had because people were excited
and people were participating.
And when we talk about tipping fees, the bottom line is that when we take our trash to
where it goes, it costs more per pound of trash that we throw away than it costs to do
other things.
So when we see how much trash in our trash trucks, we can think a little bit more.
Anyway.
Thank you.
It's an avoided cost.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Council Member Osmond.
Back to what my fellow council members have said in the proposals that are presented
to us.
I think for me, the movement toward a more sustainable economy and for the environment
and for ourselves, I think the compost is in that direction of being more sustainable
and the idea of reducing tipping fees is great, which brings me to the sustainable question
for the least and whether it's vacuum or bagged, I have some simple questions.
Where are the leads, what happens to the leaves after they're vacuumed or bagged, is there
a cost that dispose of them or do we have a yard or work off of them, is my one question
because I think as we move toward a more sustainable way of being, I think the cost of the vacuum
it's using false fuels, et cetera.
You know, it's not a sustainable solution.
It's maybe some others may be.
And then the other question about what happens
to the liauses, could the bags be something
that would be delivered to residents upon request?
And would that cost less than operating and maintaining
a meat vacuum?
I have an answer to that.
I'll answer your last one first.
For the town that provide bags to people,
probably cost more than this machine. Most of the bags are made by stone
container and the craft paper, they're pretty expensive. So, now again, you just
can move in the cost of one type of container being a back-and-trip to a
different kind of container being the bag. So, that's sort of the balance. We
take our leaves and our yard waste to accounting, to simply, and they are
windrowing them and turning them at the silliest managed by a Maryland Environmental Service,
which is a quasi-state organization, and all that material is bed and bagged and sold
as leaf girl.
So, when you buy leaf row, which is great stuff, by the way, anybody's going around there.
When you buy leaf row, you get back the stuff that you put in, and so that's what happens
So it's a pretty close-loop sustainable operation.
If you were to look to do it yourself,
it is very hard to permit.
It's very hard to get a permit to do composting yourself,
but we'd be particularly hard here because of our watershed
and because of all the setback in requirements
and stormwater drainage issues,
I don't bet that we even have a place in town on a qualifying.
Ideally, your food waste and your yard waste would be composted together.
That's the future. That is the future.
Despite what the salespeople for the compost crimson said,
that is the future. And anybody who sites an operation
that's only going to do yard waste right now
and now you are going to stand to these gaps and lose the sight of what their options are.
So it would be really hard for us to do ourselves.
We do get compost back because we use it.
When the folks are going to do the throughout collection,
I will work with them to negotiate and get some of that material back
so we can use it for our own town.
So it sounds like there's a closed-loop system that's managed in the leads and I like that.
And we get some form of discount on the rebind and the stuff back from them or we just get
it prepared because we gave them the leads.
How does that exchange?
We give it to them.
We pay a minimum amount for it.
It's, you know, we get truckloads of it that we meet for the folks with the vegetable garden.
What we pay is nominal.
It's less than paying for tipping fees at the winds of the garbage.
No, it's less than paying for bags and stuff that you're going to buy the same materials from home.
Oh, okay, I was misunderstanding.
So the stuff that we buy at, the ready-made bags of ever grown or whatever it's called, they buy the truck hood.
Okay.
We'll get a dump truck shop.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
No further questions.
I'll tell you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
You know, I'm just going to add to my council members.
I think, again, everything is very reasonable, just like Mayor Bertrand Papinecola said.
I was a little concerned about the compost piece,
but as I thought about it further
and saw really what College Park was doing
and how effective it was in College Park,
I was very, I'm really excited at this point
to see how that works with our town.
So I'm really in favor of that as well.
You know, again, really working to get public works
facilities and you know really up to date I think is very extremely important as
well and I really appreciate the walkable biteable recommendation that was
added into this presentation I think that's it's very reasonable but I think
it's I think it's very important as well with it so with that I have no no
concerns about it at all at this point. I'm going to open up the Florida discussion one last
time before we check emails or phone calls.
Okay, here you're in none. The phone number is
going to be 3014749570 while you're making your call if you have any. Councilmember Dewey are there
any emails. Yes, thank you. There is one email comment again from Jody Copa
Eddie on Ruitan Street and it was a comment on a question just segment a lot
of people rely on the leaf vacuum including seniors that can't bag them or
afford to hire someone to do it. So it was just a comment about the question on the
police. Thank you so much. 3-0-1-474-9570.
I really feel like we need to come to
a pretty good. I just treasure Rodriguez.
And at this point we will move on to the
last budget presentation that we have, and that is the police department. Before
we begin, Chief Anselick, I just want to just say thank you to your department and
to you for everything that you are doing to keep our town and our residents safe and
all the updates that you have for us. I think it's, you know, times like this are really
stressful to a lot of people and what your department is doing, we couldn't be any more proud
of you and your department for what you're doing to keep our town safe. So we thank you for that.
Thank you, Mayor. And then again, like you said, we're in this together. So we'll get through
Okay, I think we are ready for the Police Department's presentation.
Lieutenant Onger,
hello.
Everybody can hear me?
Yeah.
Good morning.
So we'll just start off with our mission statement as you can see here.
The Burrow Heights Police Department is dedicated to providing a law enforcement service established
by the Municipal Charter town ordinance in the Maryland law.
All the services are provided professionally with the best possible value for tax dollars spent.
The driving force of the BHPD stems from a firm commitment to be professional, innovative,
self-evaluate, responsive, motivated by dedication to duty to the residents, merchants and visitors of Burma Heights.
next
slide just shows our staff and current chain of command kind in a linear
fashion obviously chief of police at the top directly under him is administrative
his administrative assistant mercy around also our clerk next is me obviously
second command under me is currently corporal crowds detective recent
promoted to detective.
Troll commander Sergeant Rooney followed by all the officers
on that fall under him.
In addition to that, we also have public safety aid program
and intern programs that are headed by Clark Morales
and Corporal Crafts.
We all just like to talk briefly about some
of the major programs and events that we dedicate
to our citizens and business owners of the town, most of you are familiar with
National Night Out, how that we do.
We've done cocoa with the pogo, senior citizen appreciation lunch ins.
We also offer training to some of our local merchants and businesses, i.e. active shooter trainings. We've conducted a couple of those for folks in the past. We also work on public service announcement videos. We just recently finished one with off server Fino.
in regards to April being women's month.
We've also held multi-cultural events,
like I said previously about our PSA program
in our intern programs.
Like I said, these are just a few that we create
and we certainly dedicated management for,
like I said, our residents and business owners of it.
Moving on, we're just going to roll right into
our enhancements for 2021. First one being the new Ford hybrid police
interceptor. I think you're going to start seeing more of these being utilized
by police departments. You're going to slowly see them trickling out. It is a
hybrid. So what that means is it uses both gas and electric power. Now where it
really is beneficial to us in the town is at slow speeds when it's idling is
personally using the fuel so it's hard to see on the slide but you can see it
it's available online as well if you go to Ford's website you can see the
breakdown versus regular fuel versus a hybrid and you can see roughly the big
number is it'll save you about 930 gallons of fuel a year as to make it.
So the
total cost for that is $50,800. That would be fully equipped, marked, light,
siren, all the stuff that's that we need.
We can move on to the next one.
Something we think is important for the police department. This is something
we're asking. It's a new enhancements, a new, it would be a new budget-prime item.
And that is second language pay or Spanish language pay benefit.
The work that went into prior to is, and I don't know if everyone has it, but Clark
Rallis contacted other police departments in the area and we compiled a spreadsheet
to just compare and look at what other agencies are doing.
We think it's beneficial to us, we think it's a great hiring tool, and we also think it's
going to help us, you know, as far as retention.
More and more, right now we have two employees, obviously, that we have Verfino, who speaks
two languages that we have, sort of Morales, who speaks Spanish, and I can tell you, we
their services a lot.
It's I think as far as Spanish-speaking folks I think it's
more and more moving into Burbank Heights and I just think it's something that's
necessary in need.
Asking for replacement body arm obviously you know these
best-state lives they can certainly prevent fatal injuries due to firearms and
or knives and these are replacement vests. If you didn't know the vests do expire they
have an expiration date mainly because the just due to break down the Kevlar wears out
over time just because of sweat, just the elements it just breaks down the capability
of the Kevlar. In the picture you can kind of see two different styles. Those of
these are worn by our officer. The one on the left is typically worn under the
uniform shirt and the one on the right is typically worn over top of the
shirt and the one on the right, obviously you can attach items that are
necessary so it alleviates some of the weight when one officer's hips. So it's
It's just really reference for our officers how they would like to wear them.
But roughly they are about $1,000 a piece, so we're looking to replace, like I said, two
of those.
So we can move them.
The next enhancement would be one time purchase of kind of in order here.
Portable radios, what we use in the left, that's what officers wear on their hips.
The Saturn picture is a new radio for the new vehicle that is the radio that goes inside
the car and then also for the far right you can see an MBT mobile data terminal.
Obviously we all know the vehicle is the officer's office and that computer is important
to be able to do their job when they're out on the road.
And obviously the radius we know is that vital tool that's our line of communication that's our safety for our officers.
That is a cost of $12,000 combined, you know, for all three.
Locality pay, if you didn't know, we already offer that to officers who reside within five miles of the town.
It's an existing line item.
we're just asking for an increase.
Our newest officer, if you didn't know, he lives within
five miles, so he is privy to that benefit. So that's where we have to just raise that
line. By $2,400, so you can receive the locality pack. And obviously that's a big benefit
having folks that live close to Birmingham Heights. And that's just great, a lot of times
need, etc.
I don't want to align with that. Our newest officer typically all our officers typically
do a year of probation and after that year of successful probation is an automatic promotion from
private to PFC and that's at a cost of $1,300 for our newest officer upon the complete successful
probationary period.
We are looking to replace the neighborhood bus trailer. If
you don't know, the current trailer is dilapidated. It's, you know, falling apart. It's
leaking, you know, it has roof leaks. Things that shut up in our opening things, that
clothes are really closing the way they should. So we're looking to replace that with just a
newer model of the picture you see is it's slightly shorter trailer. It's also
that it comes to a beam in the front. The replacement would be about five to about
six thousand dollars. In addition to that the new trailer would have lights on the
outside. I believe it has more options for electricity, spots for generators,
et cetera, something that I think would just be more useful when we need it.
And the last thing I'd like to talk about is the public safety taxing district.
What is it?
You can see here it's just a special public safety taxing district, it's an area within
the corporate limits of the town of Irving Heights, it's created by town ordinance, and it's
It's designed to enhance police fire protection and rescue services.
This isn't something new, this is already existing.
What we're asking to do is just take some of that money and put it in other areas
where we think it would be more beneficial.
If you move on to the next slide, you can just kind of see where we're looking to move some of that money.
Previously, I was kind of the officer in that, you know, assigned to that area, a political
press, like I said, has taken my position on that, or working on meetings and stuff with
the merchants and the business owners, who are directly affected by this tax, and where
we think it's useful, but obviously, do use a convention and training, we think it's essential
to get the technical grass trained up as a detective so we think that money can be really
beneficial in those areas, gas is oil, we don't know what gas prices are going to do right
now they're super low but we just like to be safe and anticipate you know many rise to that
area,
the remaining money going in capital outlet can be used for equipment different tools and
And then obviously, whatever's left is people were thrown into uniforms just to help
with costs in regards to uniforms and equipment.
That is the end of our slideshow or budget presentation and I yield my time to the floor.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate it.
We'll open a discussion starting with Mayor Bratana Poppanoeklos.
All right.
What question did I don't remember, and this is either one for Chief Lieutenant
Onger, maybe Maria, how much more expensive is a hybrid versus a standard
transmission?
The data do I go and answer that there.
You know I don't I don't recall
I don't have anything in front of me, but it's it's I know looking back at last
last year's budget it was significant. Last year's budget we were looking at the Dodge
the ragas and I know compared to those it was maybe about $8,000 difference. I want to
set or is it going to be slightly more expensive but I'm sorry I don't have the number to
try me but I'm sure I can get that to you. I don't remember the exact number but I do
You know that the style of driving that's done in town, not necessarily
commuting, but in town, perfectly suited to the way a hybrid works.
You know, when you apply the brakes to recharge the battery, if you're doing
the top of no driving, this is what those are made for.
And I don't remember the exact price, but we'd be happy to get that for you.
I was nearly curious because as much as an underpoint out, we're going to
say money on the back end with gas, I was just wondering how quickly that price
difference would pay for itself. My guess is two to three years. That's probably
what I would guess is, but we'd be happy to do that research if you want.
Cool. It's just a thing that I was interested in, especially, but I agree that
hybrids are much more suited for the type of stuff we do in town. I know I've
heard both chief and the number I think in the past
complained that you have to drive the other cars on the
highway really not family change.
So I'm glad to hear we're going to Hyberts.
I am interested in getting a number eventually on how
quickly to pay.
Second language pay I know is increasingly becoming
important in the community. I'm glad to see that we are offering
benefit I think it makes it much more competitive with other towns and I would
finally just like to point out that even though it sounds like we're adding a
lot of stuff to the budget because we're not buying a second car I believe our
budget is lower this year. My understanding correct?
Tech of ES. Okay. Cool. I will yield my time back. Okay, thank you so much
count them up personally.
I would also like to express my gratitude for coming up with the
second language pay. I think that is a really great thing. I don't have, I think we got it at
a previous work session, like what other towns around us are offering their employees first
second language, but I don't have it. So this like $2,500 per person per year is about on like an average
really area. I can actually go to that council. However, as you know that some other agencies
or allied agencies are paying less than what we're recommending. However, their starting
pay is tremendously more than what we're starting on our clerk.
And then is there some sort of like fluency test or something like that to get the second
language pay or how is that to turn?
Yes, the town manager and myself will discuss that in regards to certain type of qualification.
And then I guess like this is probably an obvious question if I put one and two together,
but this is like her second language.
So someone was fluent in a language, like in a different language that maybe wasn't
Spanish.
Like friends who are Portuguese or something would that, they would then be eligible for the
second language as well.
That could be for a further discussion, but right now Spanish is the most criminal language
which we are utilizing our Florida police officer.
Also, if you don't speak Portuguese, say, resolution, Spanish. So, she's trilingual, or I like to call it polyglot. But that, but right now we're going to just be focusing on the Spanish abilities.
Oh my God, it's a really fun word. Thank you for the second.
But yeah, that's all I've
got on you. Thank you so much, Council Member Dewey.
Yes, thank you. I don't want to add much more on the items already discussed, but I think
almost all of these are sort of either in the category of basic stuff and basic equipment
that we need, or we need to be able to retain and
compensate people in a way that makes us competitive so
we can have our talent in compared to our community.
So I think that all makes sense to me, although these
questions are all good.
The thing that it sort of stands out to me that I was hoping
to give an update on was the trailer, because I know we had
a discussion at a work session about that.
I know lots has gone on since then.
That was unexpected.
But I think sort of at that meeting, at least my takeaway was, for the trailer to make
sense.
We also at the same time have to think through the neighborhood watch, and if that group
at this point is able to function so that right now it makes sense to be investing in something
like that or not.
So I just wonder if I could get an update and maybe the update is that there is no update.
I can answer that, hopefully.
The neighborhood watch, I constantly communicate with mygadic, a lot of the items inside the
trailer right now, we basically take it and make the personal potential equipment for
our officers.
So when you listen to that a lot, we thank you.
They would watch the personnel for making sure that there are equipment there, that now
we are utilizing through this pandemic. But as far as moving on, that is something that we're
trying to have further conversation with the personnel from neighborhood watch as well as
off the crowds who is in charge of that force of the town manager. Right now, of course,
is very low percentage as far as membership, but I'm confident that as we move on later
in the future, hopefully, that we will people be interested in that program.
Mr. Mayor, if I can add to that, the piece of equipment that was brought up the first
not the right size and not exactly the right thing to be used practically. Now even sort
of moving where it was easy to move it but it's too long to make it around the corners
and you know I think there is an interest on the police department's part to make this
new piece of equipment one that has a little bit more tactical application so that if there
or in a situation where they need some support from some equipment, whether it's the equipment
that exists in there now or some other, that they have a good way to transport it
and a good way to store things that keeps it out of the web.
You know, the move to look into something that has lights on it and
you know, set up more functionally with the way the generator works is smart idea.
From the budgetary standard point, you know, thank you to Court of Harvard for asking
to go back and find what piece of legislation the Council actually asked that said that
the money had to stay within the compliance of funding was trailer.
So there was never really a piece of legislation that went along with it if there was no kind
of funding.
So the, what has been happening is that money that was not spent during the fiscal year
by the neighborhood watch organization was being put into the only dedicated account
that you have for the role over to purchase a trailer.
That amount of funding for our exceeds at this point,
the cost of the trailer that the police department is proposing to buy.
What I have proposed to the council is taking this trailer and putting it in the vehicle
maintenance fund schedule so that it has a non-useful life or a projective useful life,
something that you're monitoring the way that we have it with the current trailer.
and that you buy the trailer as specced out by the police department and all
work folks say obviously whoever's left the neighborhood watch but the remainder
of the funding because it's almost double what you really need to go back into
the vehicle the place that fund to be used towards other vehicles in the future and
that that rollover of the funding from funding not used by neighborhood watch
will discontinue. So this trailer becomes a piece of more equipment just like every other piece of little board put in the town, that becomes part of the vehicle replacement fund and the certain amount of money to put in the budget each year towards its replacement once it's used to light this up.
And I would like to add real brief, I will say the new, we received one of the hybrid vehicles
from last year's buzzer, we're still waiting on the second one for, it's obviously way
behind in the production of those vehicles because of the demand, but I will say the new
vehicle is already equipped with a hitch, which will make us able to move that trailer, which
is good.
Obviously in the past we hadn't utilized public works to help us move that around, so that's
and obviously another event that I just wanted to mention.
Thank you for that contact, I appreciate it.
Thank you for the council member.
No, that's it.
All right, thank you, council member Osmond.
Yes, thank you Chief, okay, no, you're on a big believer
in support of local policing.
The close to the police are, the community is better.
And so I appreciate your work in putting together
the advancements for the budget and support all of them. I do have a couple of
thoughts. The trailer for emergency preparedness, I've never quite understood when
the town first got that, why we had it and what's in it, but I believe in
emergency preparedness. So chiefly you said you're using equipment from that trailer
now. May I ask what specific equipment are you using from the trailer? There
There were several bloods, Tyvex soup, blankets, goggles.
We were able to put together equipment that a lot of police department was actually
waiting for Prince George's County to come up and replace or help them out.
So before we were waiting for the Prince George's County to supply us with some masks, we were
ever put together a package for all broadcasters for our co-personnel and
Burden Heights and some for the time manager and her personnel as well as some
other ally agency. As you know there's a lot of equipment in there that we can
use such as stretchers blankets first aid equipment so there was a lot of
useful equipment that we have taken from the trailer.
All right, that's good to know. Thank you, Chief. And so the replacement of that equipment
is that included in a bunch of announcements?
Actually, that would be with the neighborhood watch budget in itself that they're not
asking for any additional. But of course, they could use that budget that's there now
to replace what's been taken.
All right, and I think the idea of having it more tactical
small than with the lights to the generator as explained
to us during the work session was very positive.
So thank you again for your budget.
I have nothing further.
I support it.
I yield.
Thank you so much.
And you know, I really have no additional comments.
I think Councilmember Duane kind of hit everything that I was going to say and ask, you know, just that I'm in full support of all of it, you know, including the trailer itself.
So at this point, I'm going to open up one final discussion before we go to email and phone.
Are there any additional discussion items or discussion from the council?
Seeing none, again, the phone number is 30147495703014749570, while people are dialing
if there are any, how's the member, do we, are there any emails?
Yes, we do have an email.
This is three questions from Jody Kulpa, Eddie Onrootans Street, so I'll just read all
three, so that way, whoever wants to take them, can take in whatever order.
The first question is just clarifying if the language pay is one time or an
increase annually. That personal salary. Second question is, the last time best
were purchased, she thought they were through a grant. She wanted to know if
that was still possible. And finally, that trailer replacement will come from the
reserve fund, correct. So just confirming that. So if anyone could take those.
I could take the language you could take the other, the language would be an add-on, not just a one-time deal.
It's a benefit. I think that would be something of grateful use to retention and approval.
As far as the escot, I can tell you undoubtedly that at the police department we look and we try to utilize any
in all grants that are available out there. Just recently I was able to obtain it
but ran through the jet recently for additional body cameras so we do look at
that unfortunately we do not as far as this purchase for the best we do not have
a grant right now that's not to say that something's not you know won't be
available in the future but unfortunately right now as far as I know there's no
so grants available at the moment from Vess in the trailer replacement.
I don't believe that was already answered.
I think that was paid for or will be paid for by funds that were already there.
When there's a valic grants out there, definitely we would go out there and try to utilize that.
I mean, you've got a grant to train Australophena in the academy, we've got grants for the body cameras, and what else have we got in grants for?
We have the Secret Service grant that we get yearly, we will be on the task force.
So we drive this to see any type of grants.
Right now, let's see if we can see.
Thank
you so much.
At this point, we will open the phone lines.
301474-9570.
Okay.
Hearing none, at this point, we have finished with our budget presentations
And at this time, we will be taking a 10 minute break.
Right now, it is 11.14, or we're going to break about 11.15.
Let's come back at 11.25 during this time.
If you could mute yourself as well as turn off your video
at this time, but we will return at 11.25.
I'm just going to do a quick check-in to make sure everyone is present of Mayor Pro-10,
Papa Nicholas. We'll do a sound check real quick. Mayor Pro-10, can you hear me?
Council
members, sweet. Looks like he's. I'm here. Wonderful. Thank you. Council Member Dewey.
Council Member Osmond. Here. Okay. And then we have the town manager brought that.
All right, and everyone else, welcome back. Thank you so much for being prompt with us.
Next up, we are at our budget summary. So right now, we're on the FY21 budget spreadsheet
as well as the proposed budget and the PowerPoint itself.
So I'm going to turn this over to Town Manager Bruffett, who will give us additional information.
Thank you.
Clerk Harper, if you could put up the PowerPoint presentation.
Okay.
And this time, I want to make sure that
Treasure Rodriguez is with us.
He's in here.
Alrighty.
Okay.
A little bit of
recap of my experience here
the last year and a half or so when I started, you know, Michelle
I wasn't really working on building the budget.
It wasn't expected of her.
And I really want to acknowledge the heavy lifting
that Michelle has done not only just
to learn this process to put up with me,
but also to really make it so that these slides are
or something that everybody can see.
And we've got comparisons from one year, the other,
and some history and some sort of background.
I mean, there are a lot of things in sort of the purchasing
world.
We would kind of do it organically.
Now we had much more of a connection
between how people are spending money
and the budget that was approved.
We have more work to do on the front.
And you can work on your fiscal policies and processes for your entire life and never have
them be just what you want.
So there's always a lot of work to do, but we've, you know, a little bit of tweaks here
now.
We've had clean audits.
But I really want to say thank you, Michelle.
She and I were sent stuff back towards each other as late as 9 o'clock or 9'30 last
so we built a budget and then we toured part and we built it over again when all
those virus business started coming along. With that said, I'm going to go
through these slides and talk to you a little bit about our fall process and I'm
gonna ask that Michelle if you have something that you want to comment on or
something that we discussed and I just missed it, you know, jump in. So start with the first
slide, first of 13 here, just to give you a visual of the change in the revenue. Our
revenue for the general funds is going up by $60,000. Some of that is the increased property
evaluation, we do a constant yield budget here, so no real changes there, the increase.
And also, we'll say the smaller your town is, and the smaller your budget is, the more
any change makes a huge difference.
Whether it be a staff, if I'd only have one of somebody that does something really special,
So, if I work in a much bigger community, I might have five of those.
And I might be able to spare one and only have four.
Here, if you've only got one, you know, everything that everybody does,
and everything that we put in this budget, we look at it from zero-based,
meaning we look at it from starting from zero dollars.
What does it cost to provide the service that you,
One, we have to provide, one you want to provide, and one, you know, we'd love to if you could.
So we start from zero, and that's how we go with this budget.
And then we went back again over the last week and got really pussy and really prudent, and we reduced it more than you're,
than what you're seeing for the first time.
All right, next slide, please.
Okay, so here is your, the highlights for the spending.
We have kept it, you know, as close as we could.
So there's a $273,000 increase, and this is operating in capital.
Change of increases 7%.
Okay.
This is a source of your funds. They don't change that much. We get some grants here and there, but the grants do not cover your operating expenses. During the course of this coming fiscal year, we will add a policy where anything that is comes in, we rent money.
actually have to be account for the budget and appropriate. Right now you've got grant funds
that come in and then you spend the grant funds to do the project but those funds should
follow through every part of your portfolio and your audit. So for example, we got $62,000
proof. There should be a process where you approve that as a member to your budget because
because you just increased your capital budget and your operating budget, which everyone
case may be, you need to improve that that is now part of your budget. So it's a,
most people just feel like a paperwork exercise, but it makes your audit a lot cleaner, because
the money's coming in and the money's going out, it should come through your operating
and capital. So that source of revenue is not listed here because that's not the way
your budget has been operating for the last 20 years. But you're going to start to see
us put some policies in place to get that one up to speak to. All right, next slide please.
All right, so here's your real estate taxes which is the lion share of the money that you're coming in.
You can see there is almost a $90,000 increase and that's a nice place to live, the
property is valuable.
There you go.
The percentage of what we get in through taxes is restricted specifically to road repairs,
road repairs include current better and whatever needs to be done associated with that road
So, when we go through and we look at funding, you know, part of, sort of, mental exercise
when we go through is the difference between restricted and unrestricted costs.
So, you have a certain part of your budget that, through taxes, it comes to you that it's
restricted to road rate repair.
You cannot, for any reason, use that money for anything other than what it's that's paid
for.
As you do a cash flow, okay, well, you can, because it's in the same bank account, sort
But when it comes down to what your decision-making process is, you can't decide to use road
rate repair money to pay something's out.
So those are the changes, $89,000, which you know in our budget is, you know, a good piece
of money.
Next slide please.
First of all, property tax, both of the uses of that, the restricting and non-restricted,
there's no change.
There's no change in that $220,000, $12,300, $20, exactly the same as last year, next
slide please.
These two, also, no change.
So income tax and your refuse and recycling fee, as you recall, we increase the refuse and
cycling fee a little bit last year. It is still not to the point where it covers your whole
roughies operation. You know, and that's something in the future you may want to consider.
Know that, you know, however you decide to finance it, you'll always have those base costs, so
you know, it doesn't make it so that you can change a whole lot in terms of what an individual person
So, you know, you always have some UV options that are actually probably more fair, so that
people that recycle paper may less, and that sort of thing, but right now, I think you
got a little bit more realistic, but you're still really far off as refugees and recycling
doesn't come close to paying for what that operation costs.
So that's the next slide, please.
License of permits.
Thanks for the hard work of Hollis Center staff.
You have caught up with some rentals that were operating
without licenses before.
Changes in some things in your town.
You've got more rental licenses than you had before.
We've got 18 new licenses, so that increases out a little bit.
The disposal rebate fee that has changed.
So not all, a lot of change in revenue there.
Go ahead and next slide.
Peace and fines.
The interesting thing about the fines going down is,
it's really just another one of those reality checks with the budget.
It certainly was no one's intention, but, you know, good work,
done by Michelle and auditors and figured out that $20,000
was actually being, that from the speed camera was actually being put
in as revenue twice in the past.
So part of it, if your budget changed this year, $20,000
was fixing that, was fixing that.
So somewhere along the line, it was being put in as revenue in two places.
So this is just tighten that screw and get on the poster.
It was realistic.
Is that right, Michelle?
Does that make sense?
Thank you.
It's just doing it all on you.
Good view.
All right.
Miscellaneous stuff.
Miscellaneous, correct.
Thank you.
So in miscellaneous, we actually went down a little bit.
the last payment that comes to the town for the town's impact fee as you were
or the Cranball Station projects that has already come in so that shows to you
on the revenue side as $23,000 less than a prior year. Next slide.
Please aid that
That number doesn't come in in time for us to have the most up-to-faite number as far
as your budget goes, so we have opted to just leave that as they say, and we'll just accordingly.
Highway user revenue, you know, I got a little bit more change from that this year, it was $7,300
$100 and a paid and program might buy a manhole cover, but you know we'll take it so highway
easier fees. We dedicate those funds towards your road work including the current
gutter and everything associated with repair that road. Next slide.
Here are your budget enhancements that your staff just went over with you. Just put them
All down on paper, so you can have a look, understand that this is a total list.
Some of this money's already there because it's restricted funds, collected for a specific
purpose, vehicle replacement, being a big one.
Go ahead, next slide.
Public safety tax in district.
No huge changes there.
those are restricted funds, you know, we always have a discussion of how we put certain things
under that program but it's set up as a specific fund or a specific purpose, $2,000 change in
that program is not a big deal. Okay, next slide.
All right, so that sort of takes you through all the
The budget changes and well the enhancement service staff, you kind of went over a little bit of what the health insurance changes and how good part of that is going to be absorbed by some offsets that are going to come from staff.
You know one of the biggest sort of stock prices that the staff is taking is going from a 2% merit increase.
to 1% and it was a hard decision but that was probably the best way to offset that.
I don't know that we did a slide for it but I want to point out to you that one of the biggest things that we had talked about
We've got the course of the work sessions and over the course of last year with the use of fund balance
Fund balance and sometimes it's called free cash and the amount of money that you have left over
From one fiscal year and put it in the bank and you keep it there
To be used for rainy days water balance, you know as you've been doing here and balance the budget from the previous year
This year we
reduce the amount of money that you're using to balance the budget by almost 30%
it's the total is 57,977 people individually want to go look at the spreadsheet that was
implanted to be up to the spreadsheet as far as the presentation but we reduced it from
you know last year we spent $277,000 out of fund balance this year we reduced that
a $149 that. So we significantly reduced the amount of money that you're using to balance
the budget because you made a, well, twofold. One, you know, we kept the cost down to
bare minimum. And the other is that you did a reality check with the budget last year and
And you really looked at how we were actually spending the money that was in your budget.
We'll continue to do that.
There have been some cases where we've come back to you and said, okay, well, we have some
slack and salaries, and we'd like to use that to get the building made and stuff done.
We have made some changes around in the pro forma, the spreadsheet that you're going to see
more for tracking purposes. We have made a separate line item for the elevator just so that you could
specifically see how much money is going to enter the repairs and cost for that elevator.
It's a ticking time bomb that will need to be dealt with at some point. We may want to, you know,
We tried to look at it, see, maybe a Honda would work,
but obviously that didn't happen.
But you may want to look at it, and this isn't the year
start of a lot of new stuff.
But you may want to look at it next year,
and maybe you may either look at some other financing
or pay for it over time, but we weren't going to have
to do that out later one way or the other.
So, we have given the elevator, almost like we need to do that elevator name or something.
We've given that elevator its own separate line on them so that you can follow.
The other thing that you're going to find is that we propose you to start a vehicle replacement fund for police vehicles.
and what we've done and it's included in this budget is we've taken the
vehicles that you bought in this current fiscal year, this year 20 and just
the year 21 and started it from there. So figure out how many years those, I'm
giving you seven, seven, seven years, so each year, starting, you know, your
proposed year, as you add new police vehicles, you know, some money will be, it'll take you a while to catch up, but at least you're doing it without, you know, really significant expense.
So, that sort of where we are with the budget, I do have one more really short PowerPoint
show, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the schedule first.
As you know, you normally publish your budget in the April bulletin.
It was my decision, but I didn't think with everything that was going on that we were ready
so it is not in people's hold and as they normally have expected it, the code is not required to be published there, it requires it to be published.
So it is not in April, because we just weren't ready, this budget, Michelle's been not ahead with it.
This budget looked a lot different two weeks ago than it looks today.
It's not a behavioral one, but it will be, isn't it?
Yeah, it will be in future years when we get back to whatever the new normal is.
But we are planning to put it in the main one.
If we've gone ahead and published it, at the time that it needed to go, it wasn't wrong.
It wouldn't have been more you looking at today.
So, I made that decision to pull a plug on that until Michelle and I were...
Comfortable with what we're giving you. You have, as you normally have, you have two budget hearings coming up. One, at introduction. And one of your, your adoption date will make 13. We will be pretty good at this Zoom thing by then, because that's how it's going to be. There definitely no public meetings of more than 10 people.
before May 15th and, you know, don't hold me back and see how long that's going to last.
But the schedule is up there for you to see.
The mayor is holding the record open.
So between now and May 13th, residents have the option to contact their council members,
either, you know, through their emails or through the town
to give us your opinion and let us know what they think.
And as we go along, again, I and Michelle put this budget together,
so it's really proposed as a town manager's budget.
But it is the policy of the council,
and it is the council's option to direct changes
and won't do what we're told.
However, a lot of things that just can't be cut, I'm going to let you know.
I want to, with that, we had put together three slides that talked a little bit about
our budget and savings position and person if you can switch to that one.
I'm not.
It's not really a thing.
Right.
I was unable to put that up with all the preparations this morning, so we do not have that
I can try to get it up in five minutes, and we can maybe take a break if you want to discuss it.
No, that's fine. Let me just discuss it.
After the tax, so that people can go back and look at it,
we'll go ahead and email it to, I should show you, go ahead and email it to the council.
So, as I've done in the past, what I wanted to just sort of do for you is tell you where
we are in terms of our fund balance and the money in the account and where I think
our position is, as far as going forward, Michelle, one of the most of our payments come
and follow to the county for taxes.
From real estate taxes or the biggest portion of the money comes around September but
more in October.
So if we're a federal budget and to my mind we need to be prepared to make it through
to September or October to make sure that the money that we anticipate coming in actually
comes in, then we need to know that we have enough money in the bank to get there.
And we have to do that on a normal basis, but this year, looking at it, I mean, people
are, you know, especially small business people, you know, I have a lot of people in that category
that mean a lot to me and they're really hurt right now you know we're all hurt for them if they
can't pay their taxes we don't have that revenue so that's why we really didn't propose up a
lot to you that's new this year but we we wouldn't be in a better position to know in October whether
some of the things that are sort of tangible items that we can give to us enhancements should
realistic we go forward or not because you know you're going to prove a budget but the money just
doesn't come in the money's not in the back. So we look at having monthly expenses about $225,000
So with that, you know, to get through, um, is this two months of temporary have here?
Yes.
To the end of September?
Yes.
So to the end of September, it's about $1.5 million.
Um, am I saying that right?
Sure.
Okay.
So then you know we have to make sure that or we have that much that we need and then
if we took that out of what we have and we've got 2.3 million right now in the back.
So after we take into account what we need to get through the month of September we've
about $800,000 uncommitted.
So you're actually in a pretty good fiscal situation,
provided the air clears sometimes in October.
You're only taking from that $800,000 that isn't committed
to balance the budget using a free cash or fund balance.
So that's sort of how our decision-making process was.
You know, we know we need to get through the month of October,
but we're holding our breath on some of the expenses
to see that people could do what they need to do.
I think it moves us to sort of keep our eyes on
how things go. We give you a monthly status of the finances every month and pay attention to
where those numbers are, because trust me, you know, we've loosely go over stuff like this,
and you know, what you got an eye on. Especially this week. Especially this week. Yes, we've also
Any questions for me, anything that you think I've done the same thing, Michelle?
No, I think you're doing great.
I just want to comment, even though there are several projects that are on this project,
none of this is really all happening to lie one.
So, uncertainty is there of what's going to go on and lift this virus and everything going on.
You know, when are we going to be getting taxes?
Of course, income taxes are coming late because we have a later duty.
But not necessarily everything's happened throughout the one.
So as many of the costs in the projects that we have,
that we can refer to having late arm in here,
we're definitely going to be doing that.
And I think we've been doing that for the long run.
Not only this year because we have the pandemic,
but even during fiscal 20.
We've been monitoring the projects, checking to see if it's okay.
I remember the beginning of this fiscal year,
Director Hall.
He said, Michelle, can it start from a straight project?
No, you can't.
Ten is the money coming. No, it hasn't. And when they've started on the came in, I said, okay, we got the money
You could do your project. He's like, all right, I'll do it. You know, it's something that we are always constantly monitoring our project
Yeah, you're a proof of the budget doesn't doesn't grow money on trees
We we approved
Project to be paid for about out of the road fund
And the money that comes from highway user
I don't pull the trigger on that project and lay some of that contract until the money's in the back.
Because who knows?
My personal opinion is that government movement is doing a fantastic job.
The general assembly could go back and say, oh my god, we need to look at some of them differently
and change their mind on some of the money that they put forward and approved.
because they're wanting their approval that exists so that one isn't in their
bank so I think we're all sort of all kids in Needles to see what's that
happening. So thank you man. Thank you so much and before we open the
discussion I just want to echo town manager broadvents thank you to Michelle I
I know, you know, this is, you know, a budget is a working document, but whenever something
like this, the pandemic that we never thought was really going to get as bad as it did, and
the fact that you're spending countless hours with Town Manager Broadvin as well to get
this done, you know, we can't say anything more than kudos and thank you both to you and
Town Manager Broadvin, because I know you guys are really, really, really working countless
hours to get something to us that made sense, while even really focused in
considering the residents and the employees of the town. So thank you so much
to both of you for all of your hard work with this as well. Thank you Mr. Mayor.
I will add that Michelle was supposed to be on the cruise.
I got canceled last
minute. I was supposed to be enjoying the sun but there's been having so
Well, don't worry, we have Sun coming up one Sunday.
Thank you, man.
Thank you.
So with that, I'm going to open up the discussion to the council.
We'll start with Mayor Progett, Bob and Nicholas.
All right.
That was a good, good overview.
I really enjoyed it.
I'll be honest, the thing that keeps me up at night will be losing something like the highway user revenue,
which I know our general assembly tends to read like a little income bank, which would
obviously impact some of our road projects, but we have enough reserve there in case that
happens.
Would you say you want to, do you want to recall how much money is in that account?
In the infrastructure reserve account?
The one specific for road work.
I can't, but it's over 500.
Okay, so the answer is yes.
Okay.
We certainly could.
But that's not our preference obviously.
Yeah, and if we decided to do that, we will be calling back to you
because you not only improve the amount of funding, but you know, appropriation.
Right, right.
The tax you never had in appropriation was never part of your approval.
Board appropriation was never in your budget ordinance.
No.
Yeah.
So the source of funds is as important as how much.
All right.
Couple of quick questions.
Just doing back-to-the-on-world math as we have, after we take out what we use to balance
operating, the operating money that we took to balance the budget and the fund balance.
I think it'll be like $6.60. That's called $2.5 months. Can we foresee getting in the way
that long?
I don't think that was the right answer, I have a different child right now, no one knows
that answer.
I will tell you, for what it's worth, I am the Secretary for Maryland International
City County Management Association and those of us who are on that board are a constant
of communication, and those of us that are the town managers for North American
Georgia's County, we are in multiple times a day conversation about what
each of us are doing and decision-making process and that sort of thing. So we're
we're all working together to figure this out, you know, I've always been for
working with this, but yeah if I knew that answer, you'd know it already. Okay. So a couple
of other questions that I had, I was looking over the spreadsheet and I noticed, and I know
this question comes up and will come up so more I can anticipate it better off, I think.
Why does our income tax number never go up? I know the state uses the number, but we bring in
I mean, quite a bit more than we anticipate every year.
I mean, I happen this year.
I'm just curious why that number has never moved in three years.
I don't know.
Maybe it was that number, I don't know why.
Okay.
Yeah, we know that's not a number of weeks in, right?
Right.
There's another mistake it gives us, right?
Yes.
Come straight from the Alchemist's office.
Okay.
And go ask the comfortable.
They might keep something with sales.
Problem.
I'm pretty sure from that remember the funds come in, it trickles the answer, it can go
state, then the proportion that goes to county, and this is what's our little share of.
Okay.
I also noticed that there's only six months of spend on respiration, when do we close out
two, three?
What about what?
I'm sorry.
When do we close out this quarter ending March 31st, so that we can add back to the spreadsheet?
This spreadsheet only has six months of data for this unit's budget.
Well, it's a lot easier for people to map it by half than it is anything else, but that's the reason why it's a normal practice.
So you just have to be a budget.
Whenever we pay all the bills for March,
so the numbers probably be in the vehicle.
OK.
I was just curious to you on my part.
All right.
I'm good.
Thank you.
I just got some numbers.
Thank you. Michelle, on the PowerPoint, you sent to our e-mail. I don't know if it's just
leave, but I don't. There's no information in it. It just has title slides. You have to
hit the open PowerPoint. That's what I had to do. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's working now.
We went through this last night and if you don't open it as a PowerPoint, they don't show up that way.
It just shows you like a preview file.
It just shows rectangles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't really have anything like burning questions that I have.
So, I'll yield my time and speak up if I have anything that I think are all looking at this red sheet.
Okay, thank you so much, Council Member Dewey.
Sure. I think, I think we've had a good question.
I don't have anything specific because there's so many unknowns.
So, I'm really understanding that what we're going to have to do is just keep our eye on the ball every month or a long time.
And we can make our best guess and look into crystal walls and that's what we're doing trying to be conservative.
You know, that's why we're not getting all fancy with stuff.
That's why we're not, you know, keeping a conservative mindset especially now is important.
So I just appreciate and call for us all to be looking closely every month.
And we have no idea about how long this whole virus situation is going to impact so many things.
So, the more we can stand top of it, then I appreciate all the hard work, but I guess together twice.
Not pleasure.
It'll be fun.
All right, thank you so much.
Council Member Osmond.
This was a very good session.
It was well organized.
My first experience was last year.
As I said in our work in session, I missed having lunch with everybody,
but considering where we are,
in trying to stop this spread of a virus.
This technology is actually proven to be successful.
So congratulations to getting this format put together
and for hosting it in this manner.
The only...
That's Carson's work.
Thank you, Carson, for figuring this out.
Because I was about to run away
at about 11 o'clock on Wednesday.
Carson did the head of the synonymous and I appreciate it.
Great, and I would say that conservative thinking that's gone into putting this buzz together
of Echo Council Member Dewey is a prudent.
I like prudence.
I wanted to note, as we hear in the Federal Government, there's a big stimulus package
and I wanted to ask you to tell a matter of your broadband with all your excellent, extensive networks
and connections that you have from your years of public service.
as anything come out, either via MML or whatever,
as our analysis being done from the perspective
of local government of the stimulus
to see what changes may occur.
Like, obviously, the delay in the provision
to provide one's income tax right is one thing.
Do you know of any others,
and I'm sure you all are on top of it,
but if you could share anything about that stimulus,
I appreciate it.
I'd be happy to, as I get it, my focus next week is going to be on things of that nature
as well as some other timely issues that have been affected by, you know, just not being
able to operate normally.
So that is among my priorities for next year, you know, I've gone through processes where
we had to collect all kinds of information to get reverse of money back from FEMA, hurricanes
and blizzards. I suspect some of it may be similar to that. So, recuperation of cost
and chief hammer can I have talked, and I've talked to the books of fireworks about, you
comes out from the federal government, maybe from the state,
but the state's probably going to be a pass-through cost,
but we'll be digging deep to give as much of that as we can.
As I know, I think about it.
I'll keep you guys posted.
Excellent.
Thank you.
You're my time.
Thank you so much.
I really have nothing further to add on this.
I think everyone from the council has
really expressed their thoughts.
So at this point I'm going to open up the phone lines as well as the email 30147495703014749570 while the
phone is here and people are dialing. Councilmember Dewey, are there any email questions?
Yes, we have one question from Jody Colberti on Ruitans Street which was just clarifying that the
property tax rate will be kept the same and so the question word-for-word is will
the property tax rate be decreased to generate a constant yield or will it
be kept the same and result in an increase in property tax?
Have it answer that so there's no increase in property tax. We have absorbed
or internally, largely to be perfectly honest with you,
it was sort of the most of those increases your staff,
your staff, because you normally have been giving staff
a 2% merit increase, and we've reduced it to one this year.
Your health insurance costs have gone up,
and your staff has absorbed a good chunk of that cost.
two weeks ago we might have proposed that to you differently so no there is no
change in what we are asking the taxpayer to contribute but hopefully that
answers your question and thank you so much Ruby zero one four seven four nine five
seven zero and
Michelle are using injured people here
and he told me she would know.
It's for private sex and we're gonna be okay. It cannot be early, early, early enough for that
to happen for me. This isn't after this week. At this time, we are moving on to the fourth section.
I would recommend a five rather than a 10 minute break is that okay for everybody or would you prefer a 10 minute?
I'm seeing a five from council member Dewey.
So we'll take a five minute break.
Please mute and stop your video and we'll be back at 12-15.
Thank you.
just a reminder.
This time, this is the Council discussion, so while the record will be open for any
comments, questions, concerns, this would not be the time that we
recognize them at this meeting, but the record will be open until May 13th. So, any comments, any
questions that you have, please feel free to email or call any of the council members.
Our information is on the back of the bulletin as well as on the website, so
So, at this time, for council discussion, I will do the same thing.
It will be open to discussion, but I will start in the same order that we have done before.
So, I will start with Mayor Prattam, Papa Nicholas.
Where should you start with me, first?
What all do we think we need to discuss here?
I know we've had productive day of presentations.
I would discuss the budget enhancements for the last few months.
So I guess one of my questions that I have for this group is while we think we need to discuss at this point.
Maria, you're muted.
What staff was hoping for was any, so this is a work session. You can't vote on anything or work session. However, work sessions are for us to educate you and you dedicate us. So if there's any, you know, guidance that you want to give us before we fine tune anything for its introduction on April 15th.
And now it's the time to sort of suggest what, you know, if you want to see option A, option B, that sort of thing, that's the best way to use this time.
Well, let's go to everyone else and we can come back to me if I have anything.
Okay, so I will go to council member suite with this route.
Jason just passing that on to me now.
I mean, I'm kind of in the same boat, I don't really have anything pressing to talk
about.
I kind of want to digest the spreadsheet a bit more now that we have it, just kind of
make sure that everything's going along well.
I think that, you know, in terms of what is being proposed in some of the presentations today,
there was nothing really that stuck out to me in terms of anything that, you know, was like,
well, I don't know if we really need that. I know that we have kind of discussed in a previous
work session, we have discussed like the chairs in the senior in the town center and the stove
over items like that but that sounds like it's kind of being taken here but my
off base on that or we just because we're just changing like a time table around
purchasing for that. That's that's the way I understood it was then we were
changing one of the recommendations was that we put a stove up a stove on the
year and the way the purchase of the chairs until the year and you know that's
fine but in the scheme of things in the size of your budget that's not gonna make
a difference yeah I have what happy to do yeah it's all good so yeah I mean it is
just some sort of clarification, so we had talked about the need to create like a police vehicle replacement fund.
And this project has been proposed to you, we have begun.
That spreadsheet, we've started to work on that spreadsheet and we'll get that to you in the next week or so.
or it's already done that's just didn't get online but we have begun to do
that. So every vehicle that you purchase beginning current fiscal year, fiscal year 20,
will go into a vehicle replacement program. So from vehicle that is proposed to
the purchase and this fiscal year that you're looking at, this fiscal year that
you're looking at includes one seven of the costs of that vehicle. So the spreadsheet that you use to
looking at has all of the other sea vehicles in it, it will be the same vehicle replacement
part. There is no separate, there will be no separate police vehicle replacement part that will be a
the town of Pearl finds a pretty good place for funds and the police
vehicles will be added to that fund.
Okay, I get it.
And that will be ready for us before this budget is approved or...
Well, the funding is already in this budget that you're looking at.
Right, put this friendship in the car.
Go.
It'll be a chart that has three vehicles in it.
Okay, I see that. Thank you, Michelle.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just speaking from, you know, what I've seen in everything.
I would encourage councils to really think hard and, you know, but forward money into updating the installation
and then some of the stuff in the public works yard,
I know Maria had said words that people
who work in government understand
which is that public works is not necessarily
publicly accessible or public facing yard.
So it typically kind of gets pushed down
because people are not interacting with it as much,
but the isolation has done issue ever since I've been
on council on this shed as well.
I mean, these are all things that have been pushed
for, and I think it's worth our time to invest in, you know, maintaining those facilities
so that our public works team can work more efficiently, and that their equipment is
not damaged by some sort of brick storm.
But other than that, I will yield my time.
All right, thank you so much, Council Member Dewey.
Sure, thank you. You know, comment on individual items, so I'll just sort of talk big picture.
First, I'll just quickly answer the last question that was asked by Jody about the rates
saying the same or changing.
She sent me an email, so I'm going to try to clarify.
We didn't quite answer it all the way.
I don't think so.
The rate is remaining the same.
So if property assessed property values increase, revenue is predicted to increase slightly and
that is on the power point.
The summary power point, age five, is where folks could see that, just to be clear.
So the rate is staying the same, so you see that page five in the summary column.
So for, you know, from my own perspective, I always go back to, this happened to me
last year too, the items that I see as, you know, ones that I maybe hold off on or skip
those tend to be the ones that come out of restricted funds, the things that I think we could
wait on a little bit longer, and so it makes it a little challenging, right, so things like
the cable, as much as I think that's a good thing, it could wait, but we also have restricted
funds for that. So there's stuff sort of in that category that I feel comfortable moving
forward with because of the source of funding. And then I've seen other things, what comes
to mind, we talked in a work session about the sort of police special, really it was called
a special escort vehicle basically, and I think that that's no longer being requested, so
sort of pared down the thing that I was most so thank you for mentioning that because I forgot to
but before we went to a couple days ago, there was a 60,000 dollars in worth of money.
Yeah and you know G-Fans were gonna talk about it, you know, the most important thing
to tell us right now in those police officers and you know you added an officer
So we didn't want to go out of that, so we took that vehicle out of it.
Yeah, that's great.
And so, you know, I saw that had sauce peering down.
I saw some things that come from a source of funding that make their situation a little different.
And other than that, from my perspective, the remaining things that I see are pretty basic things.
We're talking both first mess, we're talking keeping our buildings safe and our equipment maintained and that sort of stuff makes a lot of sense.
So other than, you know, what I mentioned before about us keeping our eye on the ball as things right now are a little flupy as I'm honestly.
I'm comfortable going forward as much as we can.
I think one of our goals to Council Member Dolly was to not sacrifice too much this year
to compromise next year.
So you know, if you discontinued funding and your vehicle replacement fund, or you didn't
fix the building that was leaking, then cost you more next time around.
So, um, you know, we took some of that off the table.
I appreciate that.
We got to think a big picture a little bit, but I thank you very much.
So I'll yield my time.
Thank you so much, Council Member Osmond.
Thank you, Mayor.
I just had three things I wanted to share,
not so much for discussion, but just to contemplate
In the military, we're trained on contingency planning, which means worst case scenario.
Not that it's ever fun to think like that, but I want to know that if there is a tremendous
unemployment for a long time, and incomes go down, income tax go down, we'll need to be
prepared to have our priorities for how we will adjust to budget threats that may be caused
by the pandemic and the economic aftermath.
So in terms of enhancement priorities,
in terms of operations in maintenance and services,
priorities, worst case scenario,
we may want to at some point have a conversation
about what is the most essential critical thing
that's happening with absolutely fund.
And then if we don't get funding, what will we not fund?
So that's just a thought to put in everyone's head, not a fun goal.
Now second, there's a thing in life we call it inflation.
And I noticed in this budget that the concave, the audit services and others are having a gradual increase in their price.
And there's many things that cause prices to go up for people who offer services for more money.
I don't know if one of the reasons for why those organizations are selling us services
at a higher rate, but one thing to consider is if they're going up at a rate that's higher
than the trending inflation rate, then that's caused for me to think about maybe looking
at other providers.
Of course, technically content is the right solution, and auditors you've been with with
a really long time that you don't like to change,
just to keep an eye on how the increase
is from organizations selling this thing to go up.
And if that's very far above the inflation rate,
then that means the marketplace may need
to be spoken with again,
and in terms of finding other providers.
The third thing is I just wanted to thank everybody,
again, for all their hard work
in putting this box together, the late hours, the recognition of the circumstances we face
with this pandemic. And it's been quite a pleasure to work with you all in the second
budget season. And one day we'll have that lunch again together. Are you?
Thank you so much. I will come back to Mayor Breton Copp and Nichols.
All right. Thank you.
I probably look like a lot of the same things that have been said.
One thing I will note is that a lot of the stuff that we've talked about being able to do without
like new chairs and oven language pay has been mentioned not in this session but previously
and buy some residence in common between them.
All this stuff represents such minuscule amounts of the budget.
For instance, both things that I've talked about are about $5,000.
That's a tenth of a percent of our budget.
So I understand that some folks may think that they can do without, and that's fine, but we
You also need to think about in a year or 18 months down the road, whatever recession
is caused by what's going on is going to be over.
Everyone is predicting that this will be a fast recession going in and a faster recession
coming out because the cause is literally a violence.
And it's not some structural inefficiency like previous recessions.
So I think I need to consider that right now we are probably okay, we just need to keep
an eye on it as a council and as a staff and be prepared to at various points during
the year.
Might want to set up a mid-year check-in, have a check-in and say September, October time
frame, do more check-in points to make sure that we are on the path that we expect as
much today, and be prepared to make more adjustments during the year. As opposed to necessarily
trying to cut back things now when we, as Maria says, and as I think we all know, we honestly
have no idea where we're going to be next week, little alone, pretty much.
That's my
That's my thing. I'll yield my time.
Thank you so much, Council Member Osmond, you had your hand up?
Yes, I did. I appreciate what Mayor Votem has just said.
And I wanted to say there's a phrase that I once heard in life that I think is an important phrase to think about.
Penny wise pound foolish.
And the concept of that cliche is that if you're more concerned about little pennies here
in there, you might be missing the bigger things. So, I don't believe one ought to be penny-wise
and pound foolish, I think, recognizing the proportions of dollars as they relate to each other.
Thank you. Thank you so much. My, really, my only comment in listening to everyone through this specific budget. One of the things that I've really noticed, even more so now was that our town manager, our treasurer, everyone that has their hands in their hands.
in the budget are so detail focused and detail oriented
and really monitoring very closely
that I feel very safe and secure with what they're doing.
So while Mayor Pro Tem is saying,
do a check-in in September, October,
I do agree with a check-in,
but I also know and I could probably speak
for town manager Robin that anything that comes up,
any changes, any necessary things that occur, we will find out before a particular meeting
would occur. And one of the things that I really and comforted in is the fact that
town manager, broadband as well as Treasurer Rodriguez, took the time even last night up until 930
to really look at our budget and really have those conversations with everybody to really
say, look, this is a situation that we need to address, and we're on the front end of
it. We're not on the back end of it. And I feel very confident, I feel very secure with
this budget. I'm not stressed in the least. You know, everything that everyone has said,
and I think is valid, appropriate as well as, you know, I think urban heights, you know,
I think we're in a very good place at this point. We're not knowing what is to come. I think
we've really done our due diligence and I know that we will continue to do our due diligence
with everyone that's in their particular and specific departments understanding where
we're at at this point. So, um, with that, I mean, everything that we talked about today,
um, you know, I'm really not concerned at this point about it. It's, you know,
it will come when it comes and we will, we will address it and deal with it as we need to,
or we're doing the best that we can with, with what we have and the information that we have,
and just as a reminder, to even our residents, keep in mind that the budget is still a working
document. It is very fluid and we go back in and out and I know town manager Rod
Ben and Trezer or Rodriguez will get it very closely to ensure that we're
right where we need to be so that we're not really playing catch up at that
point. So with that I you know again I think I think both of you and everyone
that's involved in this for keeping us really where we need to be in this time
at this point any further comments from the council from town manager
Tracer Rodriguez, any departments?
Mr. Mayor, if I may, I was going to ask with the mayor of council and staffs down just for a second after the
and just to remind folks that the record is open, you know, email councilmembers can have any thoughts on the budget, but you're going to have two hearings, one on April 15th, one on May 13th, and final vote from the council on May 13th, but those are your opportunities to, you know,
a little deeper.
Staff is certainly here to answer any questions for you.
The easiest way to reach me, so give me some time
to research your answer is if you would email me
and brought that up at www.feroantide.gov if you've
got a structural budget question.
Please let me know, and I'll give you
an answer as fast as you can.
Thank you for everybody.
And with that, we've come to the end of our budget session.
Do I have a motion to adjourn?
I'll give you a motion to adjourn this budget session.
I will second.
Okay.
And further discussion on it.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Right.
Aye.
We've got 10.
And we've gone.
Can we get more guys?
12.
13.
16 and 15.
16.