[Music]
at six o'clock
[Laughter]
yes sir i got my fair phone i'm gonna put on me
okay okay all right
core
you
i'm excited i was there
[Applause] well
so i gave it a number
spend all my time [Music]
we're actually going to have one at the farmers market this year
school stuff
usually
is all right
shirt
anthony says tell everyone i said hello and they look good on camera
thank you anthony that's your big smile
okay
[Music] um
uh this is the city council budget workshop thursday may 6
2021. y'all please buy red and join me in our invitation
my dear heavenly father we thank you for this beautiful day and this beautiful
weekend this beautiful city please bless us as we look at the city's
finances and do what's best for our employees our residents uh and our
businesses and uh please use us to
service your will uh
the united states of america as to the republic for which it stands
one nation under god indivisible
budget workshop our first one was a few weeks back when we had our
annual presentation from our financial advisors first tryon
tonight we're going to get a little bit deeper into what
staff is presenting to you all for our fiscal year 2021
2022 annual budget including all of our funds um
yes naomi reid our assistant city administrator and finance director is
going to provide you a presentation it's going to
be pretty high level um but she is happy to go into
details and answer questions and without further ado
you have it
thank you sean thank you mayor and council and our department heads
sandra our city clerk um i do want to start off by apologizing
for not getting this information sooner you will have the budget in full the
budget transmittal letter the fee schedule the budget ordinance
and all the detail for every line item
before you well before our first reading so hope to get that to you by monday
just in case you have questions um sean and i'll be happy to answer them
get what the apartment heads and get any clarifying items before we head the
first reading
i also did notice that i stapled two of the same pages to your packet so we'll
just skip right through that when i get there
like sean said this is our second budget workshop um the first one we discussed
are capital items for every fund left that workshop with some some
lingering questions and i got together and we developed the
budget as presented for your consideration our
first reading
this workshop i would like to get feedback and direction
from city council um to finalize the fy 22 budget
um i would like you all to review and and go with us through the assumptions
that sean and i made while developing the budget
and then understand our methodology for priorities we place on service
enhancements and our capital improvement projects
in the presentation
so a couple months ago city council got together
and met at a budget retreat where you all discussed in length your budget
priorities and goals and i left from that workshop and i
remember mayor mcglier making a statement and it was um after a long
discussion of what city council's goals and and for
fountain in and what his founding means to city council
it got a little quiet and then the mayor said to providing to preserve a sense of
community through shared experiences and so i took that that quote and um
framed it around how we were going to present the budget to you all
and have the department heads keep that in mind while they were developing their
budgets so we pulled from the strategic plan
document that kevin bronson prepared for us
um a few key items and it's delivering on city council's
strategic planning goals we want to make sure that that's at the top of our
our for our brains while we're developing the budget
um you all discussed in length addressing the aging infrastructure
throughout the departments um specifically in our sewer department
and our public works facilities you know we have needs there
and we are presenting to you a plan to to fund the public works facility
in the natural gas facility you all discuss
wanting to continue equitable and inclusive events to enhance community
relations uh provide quality service to our
community um and that's going to be through
some customer service initiatives that we partner with our hr director on to
train our our employees on good customer service um our
while the citizens are coming in to to to get those city services from us
um we also want to adapt to the growth sean does not like the word
um uh managed growth because it what does that mean and so he he came up
with the word adapting to the growth by balancing economic development and
preservation of fountain in his traditional hometown field
we also have funding to improve our city facilities and parks
and to increase personnel and professional development
um and you'll see that reflected here if you have any questions
i'm going to put that and grab some water
i guess for the record
people ask questions begin to reiterate our budget priorities
was to address the critical infrastructure
um have a heavy emphasis on our commitment to beautification
employee benefits um as well as employee morale
streamline our development review process and our new business processes
focus on parts and economic development initiatives
how we did that um we framed our our budget around the the
term provide and preserve and so as we go through this you'll
you'll see that we are either providing new services or preserving the services
we have by improving the maintenance on some of
the facilities or um even in putting dollars into our
employees um so the fountain and sewer system
improvements will be reflected in the budget
found in natural gas system improvements and road improvement
a commitment to beautification um our new public works director russell
slatten um he came in at the tail end of our of
our budget development process and took a look at what laurie and roger
put together and had some new ideas uh with the focus on grounds
maintenance and so we split out a division of grounds maintenance
in the public works department in this budget you'll also see
uh funding for um a code enforcement officer and also
funding to start the process on our jones to 14
streetscape project should we hold our questions feel free
um russell what does that look like from
the perspective of ground maintenance people-wise
i didn't we didn't add any personnel we shipped it we were already
doing a ground maintenance through sanitation and
all we did was it was basically make sanitation dedicated
only sanitation and pull uh three people over
because we didn't have a supervisor and a crew lead
in sanitation so those crew lead came over as the
supervisor for streets and grounds and i took two workers
and we modified the way we were running our routes and we pulled those over to
streets around so really we only have three
people there now uh focusing on just uh just a couple hours
to begin with and then we'll grow as needed or as
we would have dictated by sean or city council
so which is going to require additional equipment
initially no uh it will be very minor if we
consume a lot of them such as blowers and weed eaters there will be some
eventually some lawn mowers uh possibly tractors but
they're they're not on the high end they won't
be anything like sanitation trucks or
anything like that well with under six figures that's all
like
you thank you um public works department has already started that process
with the funding that we did have in the budget for city hall grounds maintenance
um you'll notice that the sidewalks were finally pressure washed and the building
pressure washed as well some new planters
the light poles painted and our hanging baskets are up now
and so i think forming that division of the public works department you'll see
that really beneficial to the city residents
and just beautifying our grounds and and standing out like the great city of
mountain we are i saw as you walked in the entrance way
uh just you know what having some dedicated
employees just to that type of thing what that little bit of difference can
make on a regular basis exactly
i was curious about the planters and when their
water because when i was downtown a few weeks
ago a couple of them looked really bad they were water today
i mean they looked bad they're supposed to be water daily
we have a dedicated individual that goes around in the morning and hits every
platter it's supposed to hit every plattered hanging basket to keep them uh
fresh and rejuvenated okay because when actually it was eaten at
jay peters um for my birthday so late when you were doing that that may not
have been the schedule but it is the schedule
okay i was just curious and i meant to ask about it but i just when i saw the
picture i went oh i think they've been replanted yes
they've been rescuing the flowers just a couple days ago they were
replaced with
and we do have the replenishment um by season in our budget as well
next up is investing in our employees and i may spend a good bit of time here
on this slide as well as sean um over the past few fiscal years
we have put a lot of dollars into our employees
whether it be salary increases even just paying for the common class survey
um increasing our employer portion to our family coverage
but it has been uh very nice sitting down to the table
with rebecca going through our state health plan options and seeing how those
dollars are going to come right back into
families in the city of fountain inn so the cost of the city um it's 288 000
and that's an estimate we're still getting those numbers coming in as open
enrollment um it's going on um an estimated
increase of 30 to our health insurance costs and some
years we've we've done this dollar amount and salary increases so to be
able to do this um in this fiscal year it it does come
in great time for our city employees but we did rip the band-aid off this year
and then you'll see those personnel expenditures increasing overall about 15
plus or minus in some lines so it comes in about 15.94
um increase in those lines and that's that's a 50 dollar amount i've never
seen it since i've been here but um yeah i think i just want to reiterate
that and uh i think in the first year that i
got here i i think we just arcola
councilmember can you meet councilmember can you meet your vote
thank you um that i believe um around 300 000 yeah
it is what we had increased for for salary raises colas and things so to
do we are still having a two percent cost
of living increase plus almost 300 000 increase just for
the state health plan plus all the other things that we're going to
be able to tackle this budget here so it is
it's a it's a very healthy budget um but you know obviously our finances
are in good shape but uh but that is like naomi said that is a
huge band-aid to rip off in one year gotta take care of you
that's right um
so yes the cost of living increase um in our personnel
budget and also rebecca coming in as an in-house hr we did split
her out of department and so you'll see it in your budget
transmittal letter i'll explain it more in depth
but she is apartment 417 now split from department 411 where sean
and sandra and myself are um and that way we can really see the dollars that
we're committing to congressional development employee
screenings all the hr expenditures that that come
with an in-house hr department and so some of those items um in her
special projects and retention budget um 50 of that she's allocated to
sensitivity and diversity training customer service leadership and
some health and wellness initiatives
and this is just a chart um showing the percentages
of our total personnel budget that fy 22 personnel budget
including all benefits and salaries um eight million six hundred fifty two
thousand six hundred ninety two dollars um and
then that's across our governmental funds
make sure i'm telling you right and our natural gas and our sewer i mean i had
three different slides before i decided on this one
um and so you'll see the the 40 just under 50 percent of the public
safety budget which it's always like that for us
and for most municipalities anyone have any questions to try one
this is the right slide until um the next of our budget priorities is our
fountain in parks and channel chime in on this one as well
um the master plan for our pd terry city
park we're estimating that at about twenty
three twenty thousand dollars but we do eventually want to get a citywide master
plan um study done and it will exceed twenty
thousand dollars um our next item is our sanctify hill
park and that's our priority for fy22 we want to partner with lawrence county
as they just recently passed the lawrence county capital project sales
tax and earmarked 53 approximately 53 000
of that to sanctify hill uh park improvements
so we know just from renovating emanuel sullivan
park that that's just really scratching the surface so
after some community meetings and the master plan that we will have at the end
of this fiscal year we'll be able to put a
plan together for for council's consideration and see how
we can partner and get the park renovated that'll be
more of a budget amendment for that one possibly we do have security partners um
there's some grant funding available part grant cdbg funding
um and we may come in that's right to kind of give council
background on that so we did have funds available this budget year
uh to do the sanctified hill park thanks did you stream that now
yes i have sir question yes sir okay now because 55 year part
is part of lawrence county okay and it's 53 000
so because we're in greenville county is it our responsibility to give to that
part or to reuse our foreign for the uh the business part
here let me let me get back to that here in just a second okay
okay so okay all right so we did have we had money available this year in our
budget to uh to do a sanctified hill
uh park master plan we hired a consultant to do that
real good price uh very reputable consultants
we've had our steering committee meeting already uh councilman dearberry
is part of that and we have set a date uh for later in
may we're actually going to have a kind of a
block party out there and the consultant is going to
have three renderings of uh of what the park could
be and we're gonna invite the community out
there and they're gonna all kind of vote on which
uh which of those three they like best uh lead the week leading up to that date
uh they're gonna be he's the consultant's gonna be holding a series
of stakeholder meetings with uh people like uh representative mark willis for
funding possibilities uh other stakeholders in the community
to get their feedback and talk about what they want
for the park but we're not going to have a real good idea
about what that part is going to cost until we get that so it'd be it would be
really a shot in the dark for us to budget for it at this at this time
but once we get that master plan back and it's cost estimates we can start
moving forward already talked to mark willis about you
know we've never received any lawrence county part money
um so that that's an avenue this would be eligible for cdbg funds
third there could be a host of other opportunities of funding
plus city funding as well so that could be a budget amendment or what happened
we just won't see the final number in this budget that's
correct
that's right it's not going to fall on lawrence county to
to do it um fortunately they were able to include it in their lawrence county
uh penny sales tax so that so we did have some funds towards that part there
but we want to leverage those dollars just because that is the only uh
improvements that are made to that park uh but to say that those funds are you
know if we could do a three or four or five to one
matching of that i think would be wonderful
i was very excited about the our first steering committee
it was a hard experience and wonderful ideas
i'm looking forward in the next couple weeks with him
um simply but meeting with the stakeholders and then
presenting some plans i mean just in the few minutes
that we were here once an hour i mean he had some
fabulous ideas so and so the plan would be uh what we are budgeting though
is to do a similar process but for pd terry city park and that's
what that twenty thousand dollars is for okay during the first workshop you may
have seen a number um listed in fy23 but after sean and i
talked that you know to hold that kind of money up
not knowing when it's going to be uh sufficient just
didn't seem like the the best use at this time
um and not being able to leverage or know what type of leverages we can have
for additional grant funding that's the decision but that is
definitely still a huge priority yes
okay so we did touch on a few of these things
um already but the overall budget highlights that that um
affect all the funds is that there is no operating millage increase or debt
service knowledge increase um there is a two percent cost of living
adjustment the 30 increase in employer health
insurance costs and an addition of eight positions and i
don't have those listed but the physicians are in the finance
department for an accounting manager and the police
department two sro officers one patrol officer and one code
enforcement officer in our planning and development
department um an additional planning and development specialist
and in department 424 which is our public works department
two cdl drivers so code enforcement's going to report to
police versus public works yes
and kind of your question earlier public works is getting a head count
edition of two with this budget
conversation for later but i know we've had issues recruiting cell
drivers
so what we've had success with right now as a matter of fact
um officially uh we had a couple of cdl drivers that were
working attempt to from capacity and they just were hired on as of what
day was last monday
the agencies that we're working with are specifically targeting
the type of folks that are looking for this kind of shift because again
yes it's difficult with so much industry around us and some of the different
um types of situations that we have um it makes it challenging but so far
we've done well um and they're continuing to work
with us that's been the better um avenue for us as opposed to direct
tire just simply because again um it's it's the nature of the beast
some folks just don't like it after they're
there so they get to try it out and we get to try them out so that's been
successful for us also too in the budget um
is some concessions made for staying competitive
so the hourly rate is also has a small increase but it
allows us to maintain a certain level of competitive support
but when we advertise for direct hires for cdl positions
i think it oftentimes gets lumped in with those people that have cdls
that are looking for jobs that are driving semi trucks
and i think they're all we're often overlooked because we can't
uh pay those kind of hourly wages so this uh working with these staffing
agencies on this attempt to perms is working out great for that
the next slide you have here i thought it would be very important for our
council to to know that staff has been watching and
monitoring the impacts of the pandemic on our finances and
specifically our hospitality tax revenue and our business license tax revenue
um when i put this slide together and i know i'm a super nerd but
um the the april line here this dip this is when the pandemic started and so
we knew that we solved it but just seeing it on this this graph here
um it it it just makes me excited i don't know i like lion grass
um but you see this this is steady going along and we really didn't see that big
of a dip even um i've seen some other
municipalities the line dropped all the way down and some of our
restaurants were able to stay open and continue to to maintain their
employment levels but also keep the hospitality tax dollars coming in
another item here is december 20. this is our christmas festival time and
we see a huge jump in our hospitality tax revenue in december
even higher than in our normal years december 18 is pretty flat
compared to our december 19 a little bump but that's
that's impressive um and so i think that speaks to several departments
it speaks for our restaurants staying open um and
and maintaining a fun place for our residents to be and
eat and keep those dollars in town and keeping our christmas festivities
oh yeah i think if we were to really want to nerd out maybe naomi could look
at that i think if you were to draw a line um
from point a to point b there you you you could see
you can see the how it's gradually increasing and then you could even
project out um and i think what really excites
me here is that i mean you look at this april 21 here i mean that is much
much higher than july of 18. i mean our rh tax is gradually
uh increasing so i mean substantially exactly um and so we are on pace in the
next couple years to just continue to continue absolutely
but but i mean if you look even the restaurants
their gross income same restaurants that were here in july 18
their gross revenue is increasing as well
so the volume is of the restaurants is doing great yes we are getting more and
that helps but uh just seeing those restaurants do
better themselves is also encouraging
and i'll detail a little bit more of the dollar amounts and how
it increases your beer and i'll add that trendline
our next chart is our business license tax revenue by month
um also started this one in 2018 um all the way forward to 2021.
um this is when sean came on board he moved the business license and
permitting function from public works over to finance um and
we were able to do some auditing and and clean up that
process just a little bit and we had the staff to to commit to
that and you can see the the result of making that switch and so our
business license tax revenue has been consistently um maintaining high
levels which you will see um in the latter part of 20 that there
is a dip compared to some of the other years we did have passed an emergency
ordinance that deferred our tax revenues coming in so it's a little skewed um but
overall what's what keeps us um on track
there's it goes all the way out um projecting some more
but you'll see our licensed collections that we've collected to date
have come in and we've already exceeded our budget like we budgeted just over
700 2 000 in our current budget we are we
collected 723 000 and so we've exceeded budget and
we anticipate more receipts to be posted in
the next few weeks of the those ones that post date their business
licenses on april 30th and so they'll be an updated number and their
budget transmitter looked better so we did not uh feel the decline that
some of our other municipalities felt in business
license revenue
and that's why we're able to continue um with some of our personnel increases and
may increase our infrastructure improve our infrastructure excuse me
next slide chart um this is just a graphic of our
uh total revenue um in our general fund and you'll see
that um sean pointed out a little bit earlier that we do have a healthy mix of
revenue sources in our general fund um you'll see 18 of our revenues and
general funds made up of our licensing permitting
um and as sean was saying some other municipalities rely
uh close to 50 on license fees and so we are very healthy by
our taxes supporting our services and then our fees and licenses
um supporting our other services very healthy i mean it's just straight
down the center there um taxes revenues we can keep those
taxes um our millage rates low um if we can
continue to keep a healthy healthy revenues coming in
the general assembly um fixed the business license issue
for for the time being um but i i don't think that's gonna ever be off the
chopping block uh north carolina did away with their business license
tax altogether um actually south carolina is one of the few states
that actually still has the business license tax
um and but the fact that ours is only making up 18 i think is is good
for us um if that ever um came to be
while it would be a huge hit um there are some cities where it would
absolutely be devastating i mean they would have to lay off half their
employees right off the bat where i think we would
be able to to manage for a little while and that 18
includes our permit fees as well and so the total
amount of that is 1800 1 322 and so 800
000 of that is our business license revenue um
local tax
we recently went to greenville county submitted our application in greenville
county and we will be having our presentation
scheduled for monday at 4 o'clock um and so i had a really good
call with mr john hanson administrator
and he's looking forward to our presentation and so i
we went ahead and put those village dollars in this budget and that's the
increase
again another another chart um it's our general fund
expenditures um and you'll see our police and fire public safety making up
about 50 of that 9 million 186 dollar
expenditures across our general fund
i don't really have all my charts here i just didn't have time to give you all
more information um on that to break it down but you will
have it in your budget transmittal um with how the increase in our
departments were operating you kind of kept them
flat because even personnel was going to to jump up there so our normal operating
we kept them flat as much as we could
so next we'll talk about um our capital and um
if you recall when i can't remember his name right off now
first trying representative came and did his presentation um there were a few
items that um staff had to to make a decision on based on council's feedback
and um it was how to fund some of these larger
debt funded items through the iprb um and that was to increase our debt
service millage of the we was presented at that time five meals
four point six meals um so sean and i went back to the drawing board and
uh looked at our our new models and and we saw that we had an
opportunity to to decrease that and actually just
wipe it out completely by using hospitality tax
um dollars and using that fund to pay a million dollars towards the jones 418
streetscape project and so some of the other assumptions for
our capital um is that all transfers except for the
reduction and certain transfers made in the previous iterations of the model
were tied to the issues of our current 2019
installment purchase revenue bond um they are projected to remain flat
some of our transfers and so you won't see many fluctuations in our transfers
from our natural gas onto our general fund
we just moved the lines that they were going to transfer into
um it's wordy i don't want to read it all um but i do
anticipate in the future a millage increase um if
we want to continue funding our capital projects at this level
or we will diminish our fund balance to a detrimental
level we do not or our revenues will have to continue to go up so there's
lots of balance and things to go on but i think um
we do have a village bank and we can use it and it does help with some operating
and i'll include that as well um just for your consideration but this
month this budget does not include a village experience
how many years since there's been a village increase forever a long
long time long time ago and while our revenues are great and they're doing
well and and naomi can attest founded finances have
never been in its greatest shape but we found ends also probably never
tackled the level of projects that were
attempting to tackle right now with the emanuel sullivan sports complex
a new public works facility a streetscape
you know we we're going to need a new city hall
we've got some big ticket items plus we have to continue adding personnel
um we are we're going to have to raise raise millage um at some point
and naomi and i agree that it's best to do it incrementally
um rather than you know a few years back when we when we raised that
public works fee it was a shock to the system there
because it hadn't been done in forever i think if we were
to gradually do it it's not such a shock to the system
next slide just break down our financing plan our funding plan for some of the
debt funded projects in our general fund we identified 11.7 million dollars of
near-term capital projects that can be funded with debt they break
down it's five million dollars for our public works and natural gas facilities
with one million dollars of that being funded by the general fund a million
dollars being funded by the sewer fund and two and a half million dollars
funded by the natural gas fund uh the next project is a 2 million
dollar 418 street skate improvement project
again with a million dollars being funded by hospitality and a million
dollars funded out of general fund where will the other half a million come
from from the public that's 4.5 i think it was supposed to be
um again in our sewer department super funds excuse me rehab replacement of our
sewer line um of two million dollars and our fire
related expenses which is the substation three it's not reflected in
our operating budget because it's contingent
on the fire service village increase being collected by greenville
county and those funds uh do not touch our i want to highlight
just a couple of things um one i don't want to underscore the
importance of the streetscape improvement if you've
been looking at greenville news in the post and career greenville lately
while we cannot always be looking at our peer communities to see
what they're doing but if you'll read cities cities of
simpsonville and malden are about to undergo two huge
streetscape improvement projects um and i think in order for us to stay
competitive in the golden strip um i think this is
something that that we really need to do i think they're trying to emulate
what we've already done in our downtown um
and and i really think that the the amount of private investment
that will flow into that south main street there once that streetscape is
done uh we'll more than pay back that two
million dollars over time and then as far as the the sewer line
improvement our our sewer engineers have estimated
approximately four million dollars left to rehab our entire
uh sewer system all of our remaining clay pipe
all of our remaining uh manholes we have a current ria project right now
that is undergoing and what we've done is applied for a
state revolving loan uh fund for that two million
dollars which is virtually interest-free it is like one
percent interest uh we've not been approved for that yet
but if we if we are um that is a wonderful wonderful way
to uh to pay for that um if we can get that 2 million plus that
raa done we will be have one of probably the best
sewer systems in the whole upstate we will have almost a virtually
uh rehab sewer system we could have the whole sewer system
rehabbed within the next five years which is pretty incredible
we're watching this will be another conversation for another day
but um the eligible uses of the arp money we're getting
for silver infrastructure that could lessen
this burden yep um so what let's say srf
decides we they don't want to fund us that or
if we want to uh to add to just finish out the rehab or
use that money to pay the debt uh payments on it
but yes the arp funds specifically said water sewer and broadband infrastructure
so those stimulus dollars can definitely be used for sewer rehab
we do commit could continue to monitor um
every outlet we can to get as much guidance as we can
to make sure we are being as creative as we can with those dollars
for development we also have two hundred thousand dollars in our solid waste fund
and that is two vehicles and a piece of equipment
um initial budget was 562 thousand dollars before
uh russ took a look at it and um removed one arm bandit um and so he
the system that you're going to use you might explain in the back the pickup
truck and that additional piece that will go into that
truck to pick up um be able to cull the stacks we talked
about oh yes it's called a uh and basically
it's very a smaller unit it's an f1 they have 250
with basically a dump body on it and what it does is it's got multiple
uses one usually if somebody calls and uh says
that you didn't pick up my garbage we sent a garbage truck out to pick this up
which is how incredibly inefficient now we have an
f-250 we can send out it doesn't we don't have to have a cdl
driver to pick them up also allows us to get into the uh narrow
streets and service them we can actually use it
as another garbage truck because it does dump
in the back of our current garbage trucks and uh it also can be used in
special events and with parks direct on uh they have big events
anybody can use it because anybody can drive it so it's a multi-faceted machine
so that will replace our 2017 master lease that paid off
this april as well as well as our geo bond debt 2015
issues paid off in april 2021 as well
some of the cash funded items um that we've included in this budget
and our police department is our watch card
camera system um that's eight cameras i believe yes eight
cameras um a lighting and equipment package for
four vehicles a striping package for four vehicles
and ndt scanner printers as well we are funding using our same mechanism
of the enterprise fleet management program and and that's
why it's not shown on our capital so it's actually a
monthly lease payment and we're going to be replacing
um four police vehicles
we're replacing four and adding four we're adding four okay just add it
in our special events department um they continue to improve our christmas
festival um and we're going to um
add to our in-circle entryway there needs to be a lighted feature because
it's kind of dark it's going down that way
and that's at six and a half six thousand five hundred dollars
and then eighty thousand dollars uh for our commerce park stage pavilion we're
still uh getting some quotes but they're
coming in either with sixty thousand or a hundred thousand for a cover over
the stage a billion each year we rent from professional party rentals and
the the amount of events that we have for our
sounds of summer we're spending about twenty thousand dollars a year in ten
rentals um yeah
they give it a much more professional
this time in addition to the fireworks
it was awesome
it is included in the budget um in our natural gas fund the
cash funded project um it's a mix between his cip
um this is eduardo's plan for a new meter replacement a vacuum
machine you know the clayton newberry interconnect um install high pressure
steel that's a that's a high dollar project
and he we've just met recently and they come in
a little bit higher um but he said he'll give me a number as
soon as he can lots of subdivisions
the total cost is 2 million 763 000 dollars in cash funded capital projects
for the natural gas fund um we do maintain our days on hand we do
maintain our debt service debt ratio coverage
um and so the fund is still healthy and should there be an emergency would be
able to to maintain 212 days
of service to include these projects and all the other allocations to the fund
it was not many years ago that we would have not been able to cash funds
all of these projects
and still have that kind of cash on hand and may i say that i can really confess
is one word
um
budgeting 2.7 million dollars in our current fiscal year we budgeted
around the same dollar amount year-to-date
um for our subdivisions just because it depends on
when construction is gonna start um we've only not only
but we've spent seven hundred and ninety three thousand dollars of the two lane
that we created so the fund um can handle this but it also
can still handle if the projects were to somehow miraculously come online
the push line would still be able to handle it these are estimates that we
requested for each subdivision so that we have them and this assumes
these subdivisions going
and so what we do if we phase them um and then they'll push out many some
three to five years for some projects um in some projects for nearing the last
four to fourth or fifth days
our sewer fund um there's there's one item that was
previously budgeted for in our current fy 21 budget
but we deferred it to f122 just to give time for um for us to get
in and use the the funds um already available
on some other smaller cash funded items and so we met and just gonna defer right
to the next fiscal year in a couple months
but that is an item that's still needed
a lot of words you have any questions
this is just more about the methodology that we that we used
to fund these projects and just wanted to make sure council was aware of what
um the plan we select the scenario to to leave the
debt service village at its current level 11.6
and have the general fund operating revenues fund balance cover
cover the difference um and so this is what it does to our general fund
um you see our net earnings drop in 2022 in 2023 and start to pick back up in
2024 um but we felt that we were okay uh the
fund can handle this still because our unassigned fund
balance continues to stay um at appropriate levels this
goes back to our conversation about the village increase
if there's a huge expense our veterans can
continue to drop and our unassigned undecided fund balance will continue to
to lower as well but we do feel that this is the best way to go for this
fiscal year by not letting the additional debt
service village i anticipate you know in the next year
to some some even higher revenues as as
fox hill business park comes online some additional
subdivisions come online some additional commercial comes online
some of those business license taxes and things but
we also know that we've also got a lot of big ticket uh projects that we need
to start tackling as well
which is again there's a very high level overview of our
proposed budget that you will get um and consider for first reading on next
thursday um this is the end of my presentation
but if you have any questions for me i'll be happy to answer any if i
don't want to answer it off i'll get
um
[Music]
it was quite laid out very um supports away with childhood understanding
so i i've communicated all along that there was a lot of work put into that
um their layout plan so i've been appreciated
and by y'all taking the time to it step by step
i'm able now the questions i did have you can answer them to the point where
i'm very well pleased thank you sir um before you
you ask on it one of the kind of the hot button issue that it seems comes up
every year although it's not um the grand scheme of our over 20
million dollar budget every year is is the amount of funds that
our three organizations apply for with hospitality tax
what staff is proposing this year is uh is to not fund any of those out of
our hospitality tax this year and instead use our federal
stimulus dollars to fund those at whatever level council
wishes one of the the
one of the items of guidance from the federal government on the on the 3.9
million that we are to receive and we're supposed to receive half of that
here in some kind of may or june is that you can
give those funds to two non-profits in your community
especially ones that were affected by coded
and we know that beyond center was tremendously affected by koben
the museum and the chamber were as well and so we felt like this was a good
opportunity for us to use those precious hospitality tax dollars
in our budget this year for projects personnel and other things
and use those dollars that are coming to us from the federal
stimulus money um um that we you know this could be a
once-in-a-lifetime thing use those for for that um without
got those partners requested yet they did
they made their requests um i we told uh the chamber and in the art
center that that was our plan and the museum and they were good with
that but they are going to be kind of waiting for that next conversation on uh
at what level does this council want to fund them with that 3.9 billion that's
that's coming that they asked for an increase
we got we've got 300.
that we would have been able to find those three organizations
at the level that they requested i'm sure no way
i think i'd like to see us so one of this money
is for intended uses um and if we don't use it
we send it back and it gets somewhere else and uh
one of them is for businesses and non-profits affected by the pandemic to
the lesson of the burden so in my view this is a conversation for
another day because i think it might be best practice for us to actually adopt a
resolution on how we plan to spend so with
but the idea is it will also be opportunities for businesses
and non-profits
to be able to kind of lessen the really about recovering and you know
relaunching or what have you um what we are waiting on the u.s
treasury department will issue guidance we think
next week give or take and that will give us really
exactly how and what we can do well i know we've talked about this before but
i would actually want to see some kind of plan
as to how they begin to use it because there's been no good solid checker
balance over the past few
i don't include their packets um
what's
i would like to up i would like to say that
wait a minute let me get straight okay i would like to say that now
i don't agree with it i was going to be uh revealing
this is what affected also by copenhagen now um and with the reveal
it keep going up one year down one year so they were not the only one that was
affected by the coca-19 so if it's not gonna be used
for the grand purpose that the government is giving the kill
i'll say send it back because i don't think we should give it to one
particular business that's my thoughts and i won't speak with that one all
right no dude thank you sir um what i would say in the
grand scheme so let's say council was to to
out of that 3.9 million to fund those three entities at the
at the request that they asked for this year i think that that totaled around
500 000. that's in the grand scheme of things
500 thousand out of 3.9 million is still relatively low um
and that 500 000 um would have been a lot more than we could
have funded in one fiscal year out of our
hospitality tax funds um so i just i say that so
that it's possible you guys could even be more generous
with the chamber the museum and the yacht center with these
stimulus dollars than we could have been in our annual
appropriation of our hospitality tax dollars
that's right i just want the employment for just giving money you know
years because this is you know that's like the stimulus
it's just one time thing how are they going to maintain
their operations um what is their plan because they're
all you know if they all have boards they
need working on their own fundraising their own funding streams
and not solely rely on the city or all of that i mean i want i'm for
helping them but there needs to be a more
this particular use of funds arp in particular
we've also got food banks that have had increased we've had
uh education entities so this is not think about i'm thinking about it as how
do you get everyone to re-emerge and then
using it again this is all dependent on what world
the treasury department the fine print on all this is
but we had talked in recent months about reinvestment incentives for local
businesses and a lot of it potentially having this
be a way to contest that that out as a pilot um so anyway
there we'll see what we can do but yeah i do have to be
yes
um i'm kidding i feel i'm with you 100
thanks anthony you're welcome hey thank you
he said that we're nodding and smiling um um if you don't mind we'll go
to uh any other questions number six and i just wanted to thank um naomi for
her hard work on this um
another interesting budget here last year was interesting with kovid
this was also a copic year i don't want to get too far
into the hipaa stuff on that but we've had a lot of staff issues health issues
and things like that so it's been it's been tough i i do think we would like a
little bit of guidance on uh process going forward
do you guys feel like you have enough going forward to
have first reading on our budget for next week next thursday
okay yeah i'd like to see it you know that'd be good
um just to make sure and i would recommend
folks ask questions
especially there's two readings of the budget so if there's time to
do you want a minute or do you want me to go with mine first do you want a
minute please okay
all right back in
december of 2018 you all uh passed on second reading an ordinance to
grant a sanitary sewer easement to valley the adventures incorporated
over real property owned by the city it found in
what we're talking about here is this uh piece of property
right here on valley view road um it's for a townhome subdivision
at the time of the developer i believe was randy brewer
um he is uh my what i've heard kind of overextended
himself he got involved in too many subdivisions all at
once he is he is since he's out of the
project he's sold that property another developer has come in
um for this project to work they needed two sewer easements
from the city of fountain inn
and they are exhibited um here these were the two sewer easements
that the city gave this developer for for this project to happen anytime the
city gives uh sewer easements where we
normally get something in exchange in contract terms that's called
consideration what uh what the deal that i worked out with the developer at that
time was instead of paying money for for
those two reasons what we did was if
you recall this is city-owned property right here and
this goes back to the uh the whole woodside village
thing that happened before i got here where we started to develop the the
property along diamond tip and fairview streets
found out we couldn't because it was encumbered by the federal government
and so they had to do a land swap we and i i took that over the finish line
but what we did is we had to take some other city-owned property
in the city that we had and they identified this portion here
and uh said this is going to be used for recreational purposes
and instead that's not going to be recreational so you can develop that
so we had this property here and it has a humongous duke power line
easement through it um it's got wetlands it's it's kind of a
hot mess of a piece of property can't do a whole lot with it um former
former mayor sam lee we were talking about
what can we do with it he said well since you can't really
build on it build any structures why don't we try to make it into a dog park
and so when they needed the two sewer easements
from the city um i said well that's fine why don't in the ordinance
[Music] um it's not important uh we'll give
we'll have the ordinance says that
in exchange for the grantees agreement to perform grading and
clearing on the site of the uh proposed dog park and that was
that was it that was the vague language that we gave them that
said instead of payment for the sewer easements
is that you they would clear and grade um
for for the dog park well obviously things got kind of weird when
that developer that agreed to it is not out of the picture new people come in
and we had this preliminary uh site plan developed
for for this dog park one of the big problems with this
this dog park is access issues um we tried to get access here uh
bilo would not let us have um uh parking through there um
it's county own road you got the duke there
couldn't get curb cuts so the only way to get
access to it was actually going to be through the development
so the parking had to be here and so if we were going to have a dog
park we had to get we have to get an easement an access
easement from the developer
so this is what we proposed to the developer so this is their their
townhome subdivision here and so we said well
will you grant us uh an access easement so we can get
to the dog park and they said well they didn't really like that idea
given they didn't really want public traffic
going through their subdivision to get to get to the dog park they like the
idea of having a publicly owned amenity right there that their their residents
can use but they didn't love the idea of having
just anybody going through their subdivision but they said you know what
so this was a private town home uh this is a town-home subdivision
which can have private roads private roads means that this hla is going to
have to pay for the maintenance of those roads so they said well we will
give you that access easement if you
allow us to have public roads and so we we said well maybe
okay well now we're back to the point where you know they've cleared
and graded and all that kind of stuff well they
budgeted when they bought this this property ten thousand dollars
to do the clearing and grading and all we have ever provided them
was this site plan we have we city has never invested
in getting uh grading plans or any civil site work
done anything like that all we said is while you guys are out there clearing
grading go ahead and clear and grade for us too
and the developer needs a little bit more
than that for for uh to go out there and and grade uh
appropriately there's permitting there's wetlands
there's there's quite a bit that's necessary
developers come back and said do you mind
we budgeted the ten thousand do you mind just uh we'll just stroke the city a
check for the ten thousand dollars so basically five thousand for each eastman
so that's the first question tonight is whether or not you guys are willing
to accept ten thousand dollars for those easements
rather than them clearing and grading and if that's if that's the case
then we also need to make a decision about what is the future do we want a
dog park there or not um because if
um if we just take the 10 000 that means they won't clear and grade it
that means that we're going to have to budget funds at some point to
actually get this project to completion um i had an opinion a probable cost
that took out clearing and grubbing erosion control rough grading all those
kind of things because we told them that they were going to do all
of that and the total uh that the engineers gave
me this was a couple years eight 2018 was
93 000. more than that now and then if you
add all of that on there you're probably
looking at 200 grand to get this dog park there
if we are not going to do the dog park
yes sir
yes councilmember why not give
it is appraised but it also it now has to be for recreational purposes
the city has to own the property and it has to be for recreational purposes
according to our land swap deal we cannot develop it
we can't do anything other than recreation
so
the question then is if we do not want a dog park there if we don't feel like we
want to invest 200 000 at some point then that means we don't
need this access easement
which means we don't have to own those roads
so that's kind of that's kind of the decision we need to make and they're
okay with either one they of course would love to have
public roads but that's the trade-off here is
do we want access to that because if we don't get this access easement
that property is probably deadlocked forever it probably
i mean it's possible something in the future can happen by the food lion
it's possible we can work out something with duke but those are long shots
right um but then the these are going to be private roads
and then we'll never have to own and maintain them which is a good thing
um so those those are kind of the the two the main two decisions is do we
want to take the 10 grand and that is just going to require a
resolution of counsel to change that that original ordinance
um and then the other can just be a staff decision
because we have not accepted the plaid or anything like that is
do do we want to say we don't want the access easement we
want these to continue to be private roads like we was initially
done or do we want to keep this axis easement and have it be public roads and
that's kind of that's kind of a question for you guys
tonight doesn't necessarily have to be a vote but we kind of need some feedback
here well i kind of get his point
i wouldn't want cars coming through my street uh that's
people that don't you know we still get some cut through but
i don't know how much traffic that would actually get but
i don't particularly care for the fact that we'd on
may not
you could still use this for recreational purposes we lack passive
parks in the city really where you can just
meander around we've got pretty much one side of the trail it's
about probably about it so there's a i think a good use
at some point for that but i think and maybe
maybe you know they were against having a road
access here but maybe pedestrian access to it at some point they would be open
to but i would agree with you that russell and
i kind of feel the same way that maybe
we're kind of sticking a square peg in a round hole here
they were kind of forcing a dog park where we all like the idea of dog park
but maybe this is not the appropriate parcel for us we would
essentially be committing to it and we got a lot of other needs in the
other parks so i mean i know that the intention was
that we would be able to do this at some point with the original developers it
was okay to kind of park it a little bit yeah but i think given the new developer
and they're moving on quick they're we're actually to hold up
at the moment they don't want to move everything if they still
they well they still need to try to clear and grade
yeah that's all right okay give you some feedback i think so
i guess it would be i'd rather have the money too so
for the resolution right that's what we'd have to do that's actually the vote
you guys you would have to change the order so we would instead of clearing it
gray and we would say it's five thousand parties that's
correct all right naomi's back to you
uh sean was approached by a company and we often are approached by companies
that want to come in and do revenue recovery um we
partnered with new strat at analytics a couple of years ago
where we asked the company to come in and identify businesses who
are operating in our city limits without a business license
a couple years have passed we have grown and we feel
we do not have sufficient staff currently to take on that undertaking
strat was able to um be able to get to earn 80 000 from that partnership um
and that was after the cost that we paid to new strat
at 30 percent data max is another company just just
like new strat um we would have went back to new strat
but they were not operating at the same
level that they did in the past when they helped us before
uh data max's terms are a little bit different than new stress they request
50 of the revenue that they find um for a
certain term but we feel that we would not see
the revenue anyway so i would like for you all to
read through the agreement um and on thursday consider it for
approval um so that we can go ahead and engage their services
and then start seeing that revenue if we sign the contract within
the next few days they can they guarantee
funds to come in by july by june
so a lot of cities in south carolina are are using them
and kind of what they they have a magic formula kind of like new strat did
and what they'll do is they'll provide our city staff
with about 20 to 30 businesses every month that they've identified and
they let us know first who those businesses are and we can tell
no no they're not actually operating in the
city or you know let's not let's not tackle that
one um and then then we circle the ones that we
say yep no they are operating in the city they don't have a business
license and then they they almost act as a
as a collection agent and there's a 60 day out on this if we're not satisfied
and it's just for the 12 months or not right correct
see what we can get
and these are not typically your mom and top
mom and pop type of businesses the you know
we know those those are the ones that we find anyway the ones that
have a brick and mortar here but a lot of times people don't realize that
the business license tax is on for it's for anybody that's doing
commerce in your community and so the business
license actually applies to a lot more than what
people realize so what they're finding are vending
machines and people that are doing deliveries and
things a lot of big corporations that are doing
businesses doing business in municipalities all over the state and so
they've got a good list of who those those corporations are
that are doing business in other cities that don't have a business license
and so they'll check and see if well are they doing business and found in
yep and so then they can get are they all familiar with them
other cities are using them successfully we found a lot of revenue with them in
lake city
thank you
very nice very helpful is there a motion to adjourn absolutely thank you mr
clemente thank you
no