Meeting on Friday, December 20th, 2024 at 2.59 p.m. at Millersville City Hall. If you will
please stand for the invocation and the pledge.
An
honor and privilege. Once again, be here, Heavenly Father, as we come seeking your wisdom
and your understanding to lead God and direct us as the commissioners of this city. In the
Lord that you will be done, we ask for your help and guidance. In the Lord as we walk
for your sight and leaning up on your understanding and God bless our city, our nation, and keep
Israel in peace. We love you and we bless your name and praise your name. In Christ's
name, amen. Amen.
Mayor, I would like to make an, oh I am so sorry I'm out of order.
And to the republic, one nation under God, indivisible.
Mayor, I would like to make an amendment to the agenda to add an item right now
to accept the resignation of Bryant Crowell and I make the motion that we accept the resignation of Bryant Crowell as the city attorney.
I said okay.
But we
will build on it.
Okay.
I have a motion to amend the agenda inserting or replacing item number four with accepting the resignation of the city attorney.
Brian Kroll. I
have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion?
I rescinded that. I tendered my resignation. It's for the city manager to accept.
He didn't accept it. I rescinded it.
I would like to go ahead and say that the city attorney is considered a department head,
and according to the ordinance, it establishes the Millersville personnel policy.
It is up to the city commission to discharge department heads by vote.
I don't understand the
committee.
I'll vote.
Go ahead.
There's
no further discussion.
I will call for a vote.
Commissioner Powell.
Aye.
Vice Mayor Darnell.
Aye.
Commissioner Gregory.
I vote no.
Motion passes.
Okay.
New item number five.
Discussion of resolution 24-R-03 a resolution to amend ordinance 24-805.
The annual budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2024 and ending June 30th, 2025.
Vice Mayor Darnall, I know you put a lot of work into this and have some thoughts.
Yes, so after our meeting Tuesday, so Wednesday morning, I reached out to Steve Osborn to let him know the situation.
And then we spoke on the phone and he followed up with an email and I'll just read it.
But he said he's free today. He'll try to call during those times.
TCA section 9-21-108 allows for the budget to be amended by resolution when directed by the Comptroller, as with the previous budget letter.
It's okay to take another meeting to amend the budget.
We will continue to work closely with the city to control spending.
If you don't mind, we would like the chance to look over the amendment you are considering.
And I did send that to him so he has what we're going to discuss.
And then he put a screenshot of the budget manual page eight, and this is administrative law.
But if you recall, our budget was conditionally approved by the controller's office.
So this is that section of the budget manual.
So it says conditionally approved as defined as,
conditional approval results when there is some required action by your governing body
that must be fulfilled before the budget can be approved.
An example, conditional approval includes when our office requires a budget amendment
to legally appropriate principal and interest payments
that were inadvertently omitted from the budget ordinance or resolution.
Your local government will have 45 days after our letter is issued to meet the condition
if the condition for approval is met within that timeframe the budget will not be approved.
And then it goes on to say four cities pursuant to TCA 9-21-108, amendments required by the
controller's office as a condition for budget approval may be passed by a resolution
instead of an ordinance.
That is the authority to do what was proposed on Tuesday and what's again going to be proposed today.
And just while I have the floor, I sent you guys an email that I feel is appropriate to read into the record to assist in this discussion.
But I sent it December 18th, 2024 at 841 a.m.
And I said all, and this went to all the commissioners and city manager, city recorder and finance director.
It says to comply with open meetings requirement. I intend to read this email into the record at the special meeting
Additional information was shared with me from the controller's office that we need to discuss in public
Mr. Kroll submitted an invoice. I believe for September work for around 30,000 last week $30,000 last week
Based on this, I want to add an agenda item to discuss payments to Mr. Kroll and what is yet to be paid
This discussion needs to happen prior to the budget amendment because this means we likely cannot
unappropriate as much money from the legal services line item. We need a good
understanding of what we have paid this fiscal year and what we still have to pay.
Brian Morris that is please seek additional places where we can cut
appropriations from the budget. I think if we end up paying Mr. Crowell $100,000
this fiscal year we cannot cut $55,000 I proposed last night. In addition to
the other $50,000 cut you mentioned we can't make to contractual services.
We need to find $105,000 additional dollars to cut to meet the
the controller's demands before the special meeting.
And I believe that gets us into compliance to get going.
I sent out the budget resolution amendment
and I incorporated all of the changes
that I proposed at the Tuesday meeting.
And in addition to it, line 268,
which is minor equipment for the fire department.
I had that reduced from 20,000 to zero.
It was a typo.
So I now have changed that 20,000 to 10,000 and that is the starting point for this discussion.
Today the new fire chief reached out to me with concerns about the proposed cut to the
fire department salaries and he has proposed an increase from where we are now at $145,000
for salaries to 168 to accommodate current staffing and then turnout gear from 10,000
to 20,000. He explained turnout gear is around $5,000 per person so that would accommodate
the four expected firefighters. I believe both of those are appropriate and that loses us
another 33,000. So I believe we need to find $138,000 to cut to get ourselves into compliance
with where the controller's office wants us to be so that they will let us not be
defined as the worst financial city in the entire state end quote and
I said a
lot I'm willing to open up the floor I haven't heard anything from you guys I
can keep going or you guys can jump in but we've got a lot of work to do today
under economic development and developmental services the 10 440
1100
salaries yep we don't have that position anymore do you have any plan
for filling that thank you interim city manager Morris the other one if you go
down the 10 440 22 14 that's 8,000 we don't need it can you sorry I'm just now
catching up what was the other line item 10 440 22 14 okay that's the
PIERRE contract line? Correct. Yeah and let's thank you Jesse we probably need to
do a great job. This is extremely complex there's a lot of numbers a lot of lines
for people that want to follow along just do a good site so they can keep up. We
won't need that one. The 10, 440, 2212 it's at 90 but I don't think we're
going to spend all of that. That is what we pay out to Neil Shaffer for engineering. Okay,
so it's probably going to be more around 75,000. Okay. Do you think we're 75s where we'll
actually pay and we need to put it at 80 flex a little bit? That would be fine.
The health
insurance line that's in there as well, the 10, 440, 1300 can go away. And I assume
retirement and Social Security Medicare in
our way.
If you go up above that and
look at building in codes, you'll see the building inspection from Fieri. 60,000, you
can take it out. Completely. Yep.
Has anybody been tallying as we've been
going. I think we're well over 120,000 so far. Maybe 130. We're at 133.
$35,000 for forensic audit, which we never did. We
did. We actually budgeted 60 for that. And I think they have dropped it down to 25. Correct.
Yeah, from
Tuesday to date till today that change was made. Okay, good.
How much are we missing?
We're still missing 5k to make the 138,000 delta for it 133,000.
But it will.
We do
have the new, what is her position? The new billing specialist has submitted a
two-week notice so she's she's gonna leave if we don't fill that position it's
a new newer position I mean she's only been here for what a month so that's
going to save you probably 40 grand is that in admin for the rest of the year
it'll probably save you 20 yeah is that out of the admin salaries yeah general
Okay.
What's the second order effect of not back billing that it puts a lot of work on Kelsey, the office manager down there to do all the sewer billing.
That's what that position was supposed to alleviate was they come in on spreadsheets.
So they have to manually be put in the system by hand in different zones, different days, different times.
it's it's a lot for one person.
Do you think we need that? I think we do. The
last thing we want to do is overwork someone and now we have another opening
that we have to fill. I think and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong but I
I think we do need that spot.
It was very strategically, carefully thought out,
and planned.
Chief Bryant has spreadsheets and gave us
our documented evidence of the need for a billing specialist.
Since he wants to end the year, it's gone much more
swiftly up there, plus we had an extra person
to fill in with some months absent.
So my recommendation is we do need it.
Yeah, let's keep that on hold for now.
know, I think there might be some additional things we can do. And after the meeting, Brian,
you and I talked, I'm sorry, I don't have a perfect recollection, but I think you mentioned
there were some police positions that have not been filled the entirety of the fiscal
year so far.
Well, there's one that has not been, there are two that have been gone for quite some
time that we haven't replaced yet. So our budget is going to be the way I figured it
up today. Even if we had those three people here, we're still going to come in under the
million dollars. Okay. $980,000 is where we're probably going to be. And that's if we had
full staff. So we were missing 20 from the other and that's like 27 that you just
mentioned without having an impact on staffing, just claiming back money that's not already
been paid so what
Again, things happen. I don't want to drop it to where we're having to reappropriate in the last few days of the year.
What do you think will be appropriate to not have to do that line item again?
For the salaries?
Yeah.
I would say 975 would be safe.
Okay. I believe that gets it. And then some.
We're aiming 150.
Yeah, and we're at, if my math is right, 157, 263.
That was easy.
We got a lot of work on the next agenda item because we got to do the amendments and vote on them.
I did have several more line items. Sorry, I'm working off two files here, one with a lot of edits.
I think I am happy with this for now, but I will follow up with email, but there are a lot of line items.
Sometimes I just need to better understand if we're using it what we're using it for.
I've been doing this job for three days now, got a lot of learning to do, but I do think
we need to get back to the legal services line item that's in admin about the email
that I sent.
Do we have any idea how much we have paid or invoiced and not yet paid plus what we're
expected to be invoiced for the city attorney thus far in the fiscal year?
I'm trying to find that line.
I'm sorry.
That is line 107, but on the printout it's 10-410-4014, listed as legal services.
If
work has happened, we owe that money.
And we need to make sure we don't unappropriate too much money here.
Do you have any idea how much we've got?
Yes.
It
was on the phone today with the Comptroller's office.
We thought
it was permission to go ahead and pay the 17,000.
The invoice for September.
We do not owe for August.
it was only 17,000.
He came out to get the check today. And he said he has a couple of smaller
invoices. I don't know how much those are. He hasn't submitted those yet. Okay. So looking
at the bank statements, I'm seeing four checks that cleared this fiscal year. It's unclear
to me if those apply to this fiscal year or not but they were they cleared our
bank account this fiscal year I'm seeing 50,694 including the 17,000 just
mentioned. Talking with Steve that invoice was for September and we don't
know for sure what October November and December look like but if the trend
continues, he recommended, well he didn't recommend, but around $10,000 per month, so
that's two and a half more months, which would put us around $75,000. Do you believe that
reflects reality?
Yes, September was big because there was the TBI raid and there was a lot of things
going on, so I got, I'll have to tally these up. I didn't submit the other ones
because I didn't know what was going to happen with the Comptroller or whatever,
But it's I'll get you the exact numbers. I'll tally it up
It's under 10 I think
Whatever whatever
Thoughts for mothers on changing that from a hundred that well it was at a hundred thousand
It's now at 45 moving it back up to 75,000
Oh and
we need to get back. I think we solved my second amendment on Tuesday was
on line 91 and that's 10 4 10 2300 that's not the right line 22 10 yeah
line about cross-eyed contractual service agreements it was at 200,000 I
moved it down to $150,000. Brian made a comment about SCECC, Sumner County Emergency Communications.
I believe we agreed those are separate line items, aren't they?
They are.
Is there, okay, so now we still need to look at that contractual service. Is that dropping
of $50,000 still appropriate?
it.
It's I think so I know in the past we had had OHM advisors in there as a
contractual service but they're no longer with us and that at one time that
was anywhere from 48,000 to 172,000 just for that one contract so I think we'll
be fine. I know there's a remodeling in addition that we had in there the
year before for 30,000s not there anymore. There's some things that we can tell we should
be fine. Okay.
I think that's the end of all of my comments. But I threw a lot of amendments
in between last our changes between the last meeting and this one. If anybody wants to
discuss any of those, I'm happy to go over the thoughts behind them.
While we are discussing,
we have a number of amendments that need to be made. Is it your preference to go
one at a time vote to approve the amendment or read them all off
and group and approve. Group and approve then we'll have to go back if it fails. Yeah.
So have there been anything that you guys have seen in the proposals that
doesn't seem like it will work for the city?
Commissioner Darnell's
proposals? Yes. I haven't. When I looked over them, I thought they were reasonable, honestly,
for the most part, except for my training and education budget. But that's well, fight
about that. No, no. This is the time to fight about that. I'm just teasing. No, no. So
the background to what I was trying to do, I'm trying my best to not touch people's
employment or pay. So I looked at what doesn't affect that. If there is training that you
need, if it's reasonable, I think we have some flex here if we need to put some more
back in there. Do y'all agree with that?
So the thing is, the reason it was so large, it did go up from that first year, is because
so many of us needed training. With Tyler, everything is online. There are some courses
that Judy and I need to take in general ledger and accounts payable and there
roughly about 725 of course each. So some of them are 425. See the 425 or 725
there might be a couple that are 250 and then I wanted to get Kelsey some
additional training too in utilities. There's just so much that I didn't get
any training nothing. Yeah so that yeah that was it 15 and went to five do
you have a proposal on?
So because if we do five, I'm probably
going to go over a little bit if I start training.
Right now, Judy and I are also getting our training
for I'm doing CMFO and city recorder,
and she's doing city recorder.
That's two conferences a year.
CMFO is every month.
That's one 10 a month.
The conferences are travel.
So it's hotel stay.
It's all those kind of things, too, for us.
And that was coming out of that administrative training budget.
So we might be able to do $10,000.
I'm going to go over $5,000.
So you guys are going to be frowning, yeah?
Well, what I want to avoid is a squabble over $5,000,
where we have to come back.
And I mean, I don't want to go.
We have that chance right now to do this one and done
resolution.
And then next year we can work on it sooner.
And I would hate to have to come back and do
the two readings of an ordinance if we could just.
Absolutely.
Can we have 10?
No problem with it.
We accounted.
We had a little bit extra that we cut out and that would be enough.
That's 10 reasons.
I'll try not to use it all, but I'm pretty sure that we will.
We have two conferences coming up this spring.
Did you want to have a discussion about contractual services?
Yeah, so it was going to be discussion if we needed additional money to cut.
But I think we've got that covered, but just for the benefit of the new commission in terms
of educating us on these budgetary line items, there are a lot of line items listed in this
budget that are contractual service agreements that are broken down by the various departments.
Help us understand what kind of contracts we have broken down amongst these departments
and how much money has actually been committed or appropriated amongst these contracts that are listed here.
So for most of them, if you get into like the police department for contractual service agreements,
that would be like our storage for our body cameras.
It would be the body cameras themselves.
Anything that we have on a contract, a yearly paper year basis is going to be figured into that.
for the front office people it's gonna be a lot of that's probably gonna be
software like Tyler is a contractual service the phone system pretty much
anything that we have you know like at your household if you have electric
bill cable bill stuff like that same same thing applies here if you look at
just in the general account these are the contractual services that we have
through that that one department. Which is exterminating the security service for
the building. The Canon copier that we have to pay every year. Champion data
systems. Civic Plus which does our codification. County record service we
have to pay for. E-government. Inetco which is our internet security people.
night horse, the shredding service that we use,
Corson that does our fire extinguisher certifications,
the cleaning, OHM, which has gone away now,
but it's a lot of, and that's just the one,
just this one. Yeah, that's just the one admin.
Correct, but if you look at every department, anytime you see that,
that's what it's going to be, and most of the time that we have put those in there,
It's stuff that we're going to have to pay every year.
Yeah.
So I guess what I would ask is, in terms of when
we see monthly financial reports, if we could see the breakdown
of these contracts and how these are actually broken down
so we could better understand what these line items are
made up of and what services the city is being charged for.
because this is going to help us when we come around to actually setting the
budget for next year if we can find some efficiencies elsewhere maybe there are
services we don't need and we can better help fund come up with
recommendations on what we can cut or maybe there's some redundancies here
things like that things that are covering multiple things at the same
at the same time that we can only pay one of those versus pay three of them.
And maybe there's one department here that's paying for one contracted service
that's exactly the same as what another department's paying for,
that may be covered under the same contract.
And it may just be that people don't know that that's what those contracts are doing.
So it would help us if we understood what contracts we're actually paying for
within these line items, and then how these contracts are
So, I mean, we've got a lot of round numbers here and I understand that because this is just
the budget, but when it comes to the financial statements monthly, but understanding, are we
paying like annually one bulk payment? We're making monthly payments. We're paying every
six months on certain ones of these contracts. How much are we paying? And in understanding
what those payment plans are, so that gives us a better expectation when it comes to when
see these monthly financial reports so we're not worried about if I see a zero
there I'm not gonna be freaking out because I understand that I'm paying
we're paying as a city on a six month contract so I'm not gonna be paying
until six months from now on this one contract and so that way we better
understand what that payment plan is yeah I think too we need to anything
that we can we need to rebit again I think technically by our ordinance
we're supposed to do that every year anyway if I'm not mistaken so every
everything we have in those contractual service agreements should
technically be rebid every year and I don't think that's been done in quite
sometimes so that's probably something we should look at too I don't I don't
know that that's going to save us any money because everything's going up but
we need to do it. So while y'all are talking I ran the
calculations. Our target appropriation was $4,410,063. We are now at $4,278,800. So we
have beaten the goal by $131,000. That brings our ending fund balances a percent of total
appropriations to 26.9 up from around 6 to 7 percent. So next fiscal year will be
a little difficult, but I think by the end of it, we can make the
controller's office happy.
It is. All
right. Is there any more
discussion resolution 24-R-03?
Sir? All of these ordinances and
resolutions need to be approved by the city attorney, so we need to
approve a C-H-O-I on those.
Whether or not they can
move an
attorney, we could probably reach out to the city judge and
have
them do that.
What's the Charter Citation?
Mr. Crow will
you be billing your time while you're here today?
Does anybody have problems with adding a signature line for Mr. Kroll to sign since we will probably
be paying him for his time here.
I don't consider him really accepted as a resignation during his meetings and I don't.
Do you want me to add that to a list of amendments?
The language from the charter is approved as to form, so I will add a line that says
approved as to form with below it a signature line and
below that what do
y'all suggest I put?
All right everybody okay with that? So there would be another
amendment on the resolution tab at the very bottom that will say approved as
to form and have a blank for a signature line.
I think I am ready to go to the
next one when you guys are okay
we will move to item number six approval of
resolution 24-R-03 a resolution to amend ordinance 24-805 annual budget for the
fiscal year beginning July 1st 2024 and ending June 30th 2025 I so move I
have a
motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Yes. Thank you. I will make a
lengthy amendment. On the resolution tab, I will amend to add at the very bottom
approved as to form colon and below it a signature line. On the GF tab, this is
Line 68 under administration, 10, 410, 1100 salaries, changing the value from 300,000 to 310,000.
On Line 79, which is 10, 410, 2002 education and training, change the value from 5,000 to 10,000.
on line 107 that is 10 4 10 4 0 1 4 legal services change that line item from 45
thousand to 75 thousand line 137 it is 10 4 11 2 2 1 4 contractual building
Instruction, PIERRE, changing from 60,000 to zero.
On line 150 it is 10,440,1100, Salaries Economic Development, changing that from 52,000 and
$3 to zero.
Line 153 it is 10,440,1200, Social Security and Medicare, changing that from 3,000
Line 154, it is 10-440-1300 health insurance, changing that value from 10,000 to 0.
On line 155, it is 10-440-1400 retirement, changing that value from 3,500 to 0.
Line 167, it is 10, 440, 2212, contractual, commercial, planning, review, OHM, changing that value from 90,000 to 0.
Line 168, it is 10, 440, 2214, contractual PNZ-Pierre, changing that line, that value from 8,000 to 0.
This is in the police section. Line 206, it is 10, 421, 1105, Salaries Police, changing that from 1 million,
7,760 to 975,000. In the fire section, line 243, it is 10, 422, 1100 for salaries, changing
Changing that line item from 145,000 to 168,000, line 269, it is 10-422-2314 or turnout gear.
Changing that line item from 10,000 or that value from 10,000 to 20,000 and that is it.
I recommend we group and approve all of those amendments.
I
have a motion to group those and approve as one unit.
Do I have a second?
Second.
All right.
I have a motion and a second.
Is there any discussion?
I do have one quick question.
Yes.
Ten, four, four, zero, twenty, two, twelve.
That was ninety K.
He said it went down to zero.
Tell me that side again.
10, 440, 2212, that was economic development as contractual commercial plan review, 0810.
I thought that was needed to go to in
discussion.
212.
10.
Because we are still getting engineering review.
212.
Did I say 90,000 to 80,000?
No, you said zero.
Zero.
You said zero.
So an amendment to the amendment will be to change line 167, which is 104402212 contractual commercial plan review OHM from 90,000 to 80,000.
What did I say for the line below it?
Zero.
That's correct.
Okay.
Okay. I have a motion to amend the amendment to change line 10, 440, 2212 to 80,000. Do I have a second?
Okay. I have a motion and a second. Are there any comments?
Thank you for finding the correction.
Okay. Then we'll just vote all those in favor say aye.
I was opposed that motion passes back to the original amendment which included all
of this that we're voting on in one are there any additional comments
if not all
I'll call for a vote.
All of those, oh, sorry.
I think you guys need to be doing these by ordinance.
I'm looking at the citation here
from the DCA Section 9-21-108.
This is about notes and bonds and stuff like that.
I don't know, Mr. Jacobs has a opinion on this,
but I'm pretty sure it has to be by ordinance.
So I would follow this up,
this resolution up for the full ordinance procedure
would be my recommendation.
Thank you.
I believe we should continue on and then ordinance later.
Are there any other comments?
If not, I'll call for a vote.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Those opposed?
Motion passes.
Now we need to vote on the resolution itself, right?
This is, I have a motion from Vice Mayor Darnell.
for resolution to pass 24-R-03.
Do I have a second?
Second.
Is there any discussion?
There's no discussion.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Those opposed?
Resolution passes.
All right, item number seven.
And please correct me if I can't do this.
I forgot the city comments or citizen comments,
which was at number three. So I'd like to ask for any citizen comments at this point.
Alright, entering the city manager's comments.
Alright, commissioner's comments.
Commissioner Gregor, I don't have any either.
Vice Mayor Darnell.
It was a pleasure working with you all today.
We can do hard things. Well done, guys.
Thank you.
Commissioner Powell.
No, I'm just happy we were able to get this done.
I concur.
Number nine, adjournment.
motion to adjourn.
Second.
We are adjourned.
All right.
I'm going to make all these changes.