call the order of the work session for 610. Go ahead. Yep. Good evening, mayor and council. Thank you for meeting early tonight. Um appreciate the time that we're always able to get. Typically the beginning of June is always our beginning of budget um season discussion. try to keep it pretty consistent year-over-year. And the idea is always to make it a shorter budget season, but we did um some information and math over since we talked last at the last council meeting to get some direction from council. And we need some more direction from council based on what we came up with. So, I'll go through just some background preliminary things just for residents and for also council members that may or may not know. We talked about this before, but the levy is the actual tax dollars that are given to the city in a year to operate. um whether that's for capital purchases, operations, um future planning, what what have you. This is set in December of each year and cannot be adjusted. So, we can't adjust it until the following December, no matter how much changes happen in the community. There's new homes, new businesses. They don't adjust the levy dollars that actually come into the city. They just adjust how much every person proportionately pays. Tax capacity is the value of all of the properties within the boundaries of the city. growth or change in those values adds to that tax capacity which then divvies up that tax levy um more equally and more growth does not always mean more dollars but it does mean that the tax revenue dollars are spread across which I had mentioned the tax rate is that resulting number of those two they are not one for one um there's a percentage points but it's very similar if you can say the tax rate or the tax went up x percentage if the levy goes up that same percentage typically it's pretty close where tax rate would stay the The tax rate is what actually calculates your taxes that you pay on your house based on the value. As an example, I do this every year just to show you what the differences are that there's a very very high level. If a tax levy in year um scenario one, um we start off with tax levy in year one is $4 million and a tax capacity in year one is $10 million. That means there's no levy increase. If we go to year two, we have more $4 million of change, but we double our tax capacity. The tax rate in year two is 20%. Average home bill would be $1,000 whereas in year one it would be $2,000. We have the same tax levy increase. So essentially we match the two. Um we would have $5 million in tax levy increase, $20 million in tax capacity or at 25% tax rate and a $1,250 average home bill. And then if we match the levy with the growth, um we have $8 million of tax levy increase, $20 million of capacity, and the tax rate stays the exact same. Again, that's not super simple because we have fiscal disparities in ours and tax um increment financing in the calculations. So, this is like a dumb down super dumb example, but it does work in total and proportion. A breakdown of this year's levy looking at this year in 25 looking forward to 26. 1% of levies $88,000. So, if we're going to change 88 grand, it removes 1% of the levy in 2026, it's roughly about.35% or.36% depend which way you round and look at it. And then it's about $18 for every average home. And that average home is roughly $525ish,000 is the average home in Dayton currently. Somewhere around there. So, this was the tax capacity change that we saw from 25 to 26. These were updated at the beginning of June. So, these are as up-to-date numbers as we can possibly get. Um, the county does update them every single month based on um anybody who is challenging their value or anybody who has any changes in their valuation um will up be updated. Typically, there's not a lot of change after June. There's some change from the beginning numbers that we get in March until June because of people arguing their values and saying, "Okay, I only get so much of my house done. I didn't do my basement like I thought. I pulled a permit on yada yada yada." They will argue their values. Typically it goes down from March to June. 8.1% is the number that we saw for 26 after we went through the prim um all the levy dollars. So this is essentially where we start at from staff's perspective is okay we have the general fund which is operations. This goes into every department head comes meets with myself typically would be the finance director as well but as I wear both hats it's just myself sit down and talk about what you're looking for for your um department next year. Each department head is obviously looking out for their own department as best as possible. Figure out what's best for their operations and their department from what they see to serve the residents. The other line items which are below the general fund are all for future capital purchases. Um we always start off with what we had planned on for CIP last year. So as we look at the budget every single year in CIP, we always look at two years essentially. Last year in 24 we looked at 25 and 26. This year for 26 we will look at 26 and 27. So that's why there's a $280,000 increase in capital equipment is because that was planned on ability to be able to continue to focus on paying for the ladder truck that was approved and being able to pay for that in cash over many years. It was a small increase every year to get to that number um which was in 27 or 28. I can remember when we top out at but essentially a small increase every year to be able to compound those dollars. So an increase doesn't mean that the previous dollars went away. It's an increase to the total number. So if last year was 100, we increased the 300 this year. We now have $400,000 that's going towards the ladder truck and this year 300 300 in addition 100 from last year plus the 100 from the previous year. So we'd have a total of $500,000 for the ladder truck if that were to go through. Park capital is the same way. We just incrementally increase because we are going to need to pay for new park equipment that can't be paid for by park dedication dollars. And capital facilities reduced to 20 grand. So, we had planned on doing a $100,000 increase, but last year during the budget process, we realized that we don't really need the capital facilities dollars. They're utilized there for signs, and we haven't bought a sign in I don't know how many years. Um, huh. Since Yeah, since it's at least two or three years. So, we have a few dollars in there already that we have not spent. And so, we need to either stop allocating dollars to that towards those or identify projects that are going to utilize those dollars so we don't continue to tax. just have a bank of not planned out dollars. Is that only signs or what? No, there's signs. There's anything related to capital facilities. So that could be used for an expansion of a building which we're looking at public works in a few years that is an expansion. Um it could be used for um new facilities overall in total like a new building. It could also be used for um any related improvements of a building. if it's a parking lot or something similar that has a capital facility of nature, whether that's a remodel too, that could become out that could come out of those dollars. Okay. Um we have roughly 1.6ish million dollars in that fund. And um I think it's always important and we talked about this last year in the budget process that we have an identified plan if we're going to continue to levy for something. It makes no sense for a city to continue to levy for something year-over-year and not have a plan to spend the dollars. So I reduced it by 20 grand because 200 grand gives us something to keep moving forward with the project. How much there right now? Uh it's about 1.6 just short maybe 1.575 but we'll call it 1.6 capital facilities money that's just sitting there. It is sitting there. Yep. It's there's been identified projects. So we had one point we had a remodel plan for that was a million two or million one for city hall. We didn't do that project. So that was where most of it was supposed to go. We ended up not doing that project. that was in 23 or 24 that was supposed to go. So, we didn't do that project. And then we've had a few sign projects. And then there was supposed to be a building for public works um for cold storage that was supposed to be about 100 grand essentially like a stick pole shed building that was 100 grand that um public works said we'd rather have and wait for the public works expansion to do something versus spend the money on a cold storage building and then we still need the expansion. So, or we should do it at one time to save the best amount of dollars. So, okay. um always trying to look at the best way to use dollars in total is always what city staff is trying to do and I think that's what the main purpose and goal of this conversation is is that we did our best and we need direction from council on what to what to look for next. So this kind of gets into the meat and bones. I'm going to talk about the graphs and give you some pretty pictures and stuff to show on and then I'm going to actually talk about individual line items which you've already seen but I want to talk about for the residents. This is a graph to show where our levy's at compared to our tax capacity. That black line is our tax capacity. The further away that black line is from our bar graph, essentially the levies that we're levy dollars that we're allocating, the less the tax rate is. So, as you can see, back in 2019, it was about $5 million for the levy and under $10 million. It's probably like 9 or $8 million for the tax capacity. Our tax rate was very high at that time in the 60%age range range. in 2025 which are solidified dollars and and going right now we're at 35%. So if you took you know roughly three of those bars you'd hit that black line whereas you'd hit you took in 2019 you take one of those bars and double it you'd be over the black line you'd be over 100%. And then we looked at this graph. This was something that was brought up by the mayor a few years ago of what are we actually doing capacity versus tax levy change. And I think it's important that those are broken down in different graphs. So the left graph shows the tax capacity versus the tax levy change. And the red line is the tax levy. The blue line is the tax capacity. Again, they're not exactly the same, but they're close. So, if you look at and say the red line's less than the blue line, we went down in tax cap tax rate. If the red line is above the blue line, we went up in tax rate is a general aspect of things. They're pretty close. 25 is actually stagnant from 24. So, even though those two lines are not the same, it actually is the exact same because of fiscal disparities. So, that was the change there. The right graph shows the tax rate as the last few years. As you can see, there was a significant drop in 23, which corresponds to the graph on the left. Big difference between the tax capacity tax levy, and we've been pretty stagnant since then. Based on the current levy that's preliminarily looked at for 2026, this is the impact for a home. So if you look at 25 tax value of your value of home and your 2026 preliminary levy dollars and this is just the city portion, not county, not state, not um school district. On an average home of 534, it's about $195 increase annually or about 1625 per month. Um based on the what I mentioned before, which is like 18.97%. I'm going to go back just a couple of slides just to show you what that number was. That's based on an 18.97% tax levy increase. So, what I would say is this kind of our top number and we'll obviously go down from there. But this is where we're at as a starting point. Comparing to other communities is always important just to know what our our you know neighbors are doing. Not saying that we have to compare to all of our neighbors, but it's good to know where they're at. Um I did pull new numbers for 25 for each of the communities around us. We are the lowest one of all the communities around us except for Maple Grove. I don't include Maple Grove because they are an anomaly with the amount of growth that they see every year in commercial dollars. They can spend pretty much whatever they want and their tax rate changes zero dollars. So, um, which I'd love to see here, but that's not the case where we're at today. Um, so, but our our tax rate is the lowest of all the communities around us. I've had preliminary conversation with Rogers so far and it sounds like they will have another tax rate increase based on what they are seeing today. I don't know what that is. I don't know what the number is. Obviously, they have to have conversations with their councils. June is very, very early. I will typically know what most of those are in August, end of August, beginning of September. And I'm happy to share those with the council once I know what those are planned to be. um comparing the top graph is the uh breakdown of tax capacity and where it comes from. So the main big ones are the green lines which is residential and then the blue line is commercial industrial. So as you can see Dayton has more than Champlain and Corkran in commercial industrial but we lack in residential compared to Champlain. Rogers has both beat us in both categories for those two. Um the red one is apartment buildings as well and they have significantly more apartments in Rogers than we do here in Dayton. I do put Maple Grove on the map for this bottom graph. And it's just to show the difference, not because we want to compare to them, but just to show the capacity numbers and the market value that they have in Maple Grove. Um 2025's final tax rate for them is just under 30%. But their market value is over 10 billion. So, um we are just over two billion just as a relative comparison. Don't compare to them often. Again, they're kind of an anomaly in this area. I don't know if I want to go through each individual line item, but I most certainly can. I'm going to hit on each one of the departments. If you have a question on a department, let me know and I can stop and go through the details of underneath. I will go through the details in a few slides to go through what the breakdown is in total for the general fund. This is specifically focused on the general fund alone and another funds. City clerk is a increase of 75 grand. So that is related to a hiring and HR manager position. Elections an increase of $44,000. That is because we have elections next year in 26. Finance is $30,000 increase that is based on salary and benefit changes and some professional services. Engineering, legal, and recycling and $100,000 increase. Main one of those is recycling. Inspection department, that's about an increase of 140 grand roughly. Half of that is for a new associate planner. The portion is related to professional services and then current salaries and benefits for employees and planning department is an increase of 140 and that's the rest of the planner associate planner position. It's also a large amount of dollars for professional services and that is related to comp plan work that city staff wants to get underway. We will need assistance from consultants to do that work. We are not sure of the costs because we're not sure what studies we're going to need, but that's where the rough number of 94,000 comes from. Any questions on specific departments? Otherwise, I'm going to go to the next slide. We can hit all of these again. I can always go back. The associate planner. Yes. Uh that looks like about what? 98. Um. Yep. Roughly. That's with benefits. So, if you subtract off about $22,000 is roughly benefits per another person over John and Hayden. Hayden. That is correct. Yep. Why is that under inspection department? Um they do some work on reviewing setbacks for decks. They do review setbacks for fences. Um and it's incorporated in our cost related to inspections for those items when we are charging a permit fee. Currently we are charging out Hayden's time as an assoc a planner two for that same cost. And uh they go out on on every plan. Nope, they don't do every one. They do a lot of review back in the office here. So they'll do a lot of like review plan sets. Um they're looking at gradings as well. They'll look at new building permits overall for setbacks and um anything related to a new construction home. I use the fences and decks as an example as well, but um we see a lot of their work being done with inspections because they are the kind of the first line it's uh um plans submitted to the city um city staff and we will review that right away before it goes to Metro West to make sure that they are in compliance with our code before it goes to Metro West and they review it for building. So I mean it sounds like a little bit of an increase to scope but have they so they typically So last year how did our permits do the year before? What do you mean? So number um last year our number was 23 something 234. Mhm. um for 2024. Um this year we are on track for about 151 maybe 148 something like that for 2025. Adding another planner allows uh Hayden and myself to shift to other types of work. It also allows I know that's how we say I just want to know that we're not adding inspections or we are not adding additional inspections but realized inspections. Um, in other words, is this person going to do is is the inspection department going to do more than they typically have? No. No. The idea is that we're able to allocate some of the work that a planner 2 is doing, which could be done by somebody who could be at a much lesser salary rate. We can utilize that person's services for something that they could actually be growing in. Um, also allowing us to complete the comp plan stuff. Part of this associate planner position is to allow for more stuff to be done internally for comp plan items. Okay. So that's an additional scope. Um that's a scope which will be done by John and Hayden. Yeah. And part of that is because we looked back at what it cost us to do the comp plan last time and it was just over $225,000 to do the comp plan by having all consultants do it. That was a increased cost. And I'm I'm confused about the new HR manager position. I I sure I I thought we just added service an outside firm to do this. We will look at that tonight. That's included in that 73, right? Yes. So, there is a reduction in professional services of 125 um to be able to offset for some of that HR manager position, but we have some dollars in professional services this year to be able to help with some HR work that we needed to be done that we figured would happen. Um it's actually more than 125. Um but that it's an offset for the HR manager position. The reason why we're looking at a full-time person is because we've never had an HR person internally here ever. And so I don't know what work's going to need to be done or not done based on the consultant coming on board. We have so many hours that we can use with them and they're charges at an additional rate per hour. But that's 73. That's plus ABDO. No, we would remove ABDO at that point. Yeah. So So that's where the reduction of 125 comes. 36. How much are they? 60. If you do the the 5100 model, we would not we're not looking at doing the 5100. That was only Well, it's on the graph. It's on the It's on the graph. Yep. It's in But that's not what city staff's looking for. We're looking just for the lowest base model just to get us going, which is about 42. No, it's 30 30 something. Yeah. 3500 a month. Yes. So, it's roughly for this 42,000 a year. Yep. And so, we're only looking at the hope is to do it only for six months here for this year, which is half of that. So, about 20 grand for this year in 2025. and then look at hiring an HR manager for next year in 2026. We would not have both services is your is your qu that's your question. No, that wasn't my question, but I understand what you're doing. Yep. Uh all the uh salary increases are at 8% also, correct? No, not for everybody. Nope. No. Nope. Only staff that are not on the top step. So if they're not at the top step, they would have an 8% which is your 4% cola which is negotiated by the union contracts and then they'd have a one through seven if they're on a grade step scale system. They would have a 4% step next year as well. Yes. But if they're at top step, they do not get a another 4%. They only get the one. How many are at top? We have over half of our employees are at top step. So most get 8% or 4%. Yeah, most get four. Yeah. If we had to say percentage- wise over 50% only get the 4% union contract negotiated one that helps the other half are no it helps but then if you look at it from top pay I'd rather pay somebody at step one than I would at step seven not because you know because the dollars are way less I mean it's a an officer it's like 30 grand a year if they're at step one versus step five right so yeah top top pay is really great to have an officer that has a lot of experience I use that as an example example, but from dollar's perspective, step one person's going to be the best value for us. Again, they don't have the value of the experience. So, over half of them are at top step. And that recycling services, that's 70k. What What is it now? Oh, what is it now? So, this was this is this is the one we adopted two years ago. It was a 5-year contract that we had with Republic that we negotiated. And I think now it's like I'm going to say it's 512. I don't know that off the top of my head. I think it's pretty close to that per recycling per recycling container. And then next year it's like 540 something, but you multiply that by 4,000 homes in Dayton. And some people have two so they can get two if they want to. Um it adds up really quickly. So that 70 grand renegotiating that when this contract is up. Um yep we can we did last time too and yep it was difficult. It was very difficult. Yeah. Um so that $70,000 and we'll get to it in a second is almost a required one because I we did the math and said okay we paid this much this year. This is how much it is per month. Just take that same number and put the new contract numbers in and it's 70 grand more. Um we pay about 250,000 in 26. It'll be about $250,000 a year for recycling. Which again, you pay for it on your tax dollars, so you don't pay for it out of your pocket, but some people don't want recycling. Some people do want recycling. Did you say much for about $250,000 for the whole year and 9% of it actually gets recycled? I know that's the problem. It's actually recycling. We go to the next slide, too. I don't there'll probably be more questions if, like I said, we can always come back and I'm happy to go back and forth. Police is is our biggest one. I know I like to put Paul on the spot, but he's going to get the spotlight tonight because increase of $534,000. As you can see, most of that stuff we can't touch because it's already been negotiated in union contracts unless we'd like to reopen the union contract up. What do they do? Um, so this is the last year. 26 is the last year of the union contract and then 27 is another So 26 will be a negotiation year for us again. 427. 427 and 28. Yes, we can request to open the contract up, but part of the deal is you got to then you open up the whole contract again. So, we can do it. Um, but I would say, you know, most of that is So, if you take 534 and you subtract off $130,000, which is the new officer that the chief is asking for, you got $400,000 that's um all baked in to salaries and benefits based on current contracts. And and that's over and above the two and a half you got now the two that I got. Yeah. Two that he got this year that you just approved to the last council meeting. Yeah. But it's new money because we hired him half year. You got it. And that's the $152,000. You got it. So it's new money for tax levy, but it's not hiring any new people because we just hired them at the last council meeting. I'm just Yeah, but when we did that, we kind of locked us in for You got it. That's exactly it. So, really, of the 534, we had about $130,000 to play with of that dollars. Now, like I said, it's the largest number out there, but it's all pre-negotiated on union contracts. And part of the union contract, I just want to make sure the council's aware of part of it is because the union switched in um October or November of 2024. So, they had we had only had this many dollars to work with for 25's negotiation, and they said, "You can only use this much. That's it. They said, "Well, that's fine." But then we wanted to have a split percentage going over both years. So, we ended up backloading that contract for negotiations because they said we wanted I'll use an example here. I don't know what the exact numbers are. It was 8% per year for market rate adjustment or whatever, right? Well, then instead of using 8%, we used 3% one year and then pushed 13% on to 2026. So that's why you're seeing such a large increase that you may not have seen last year in 25 is because the union contract just negotiated and said yeah that's fine we'll we'll we'll forgo one year and then we'll just backload it heavy on the next year. Which union contracts do we negotiate and which ones are negotiated by the state like all of them are negotiated by us. Oh okay. So we are in talks with two of them currently and we only we have three new contracts in the city of Dayton. ASME LS now they were teamsters before and then we have the teamsters who does the supervisors union which ones are in negotiation now supervisors union and teamsters and ask me which is like public works and any office employees there's only like three of us that are non-un city so they haven't I mean there hasn't been much negotiation then I take it there has been some negotiation done but nothing that is gigantic no I So that so there's no Ben there's no Ben real back and forth with okay the unit contracts when do we become part of that um once we have an agreed upon I would call it a tenative agreement that's what they call it a TA is what they utilize in their terms of steady staff works back and forth with them and then say okay we're at an agreement okay let's bring it to council and council will then be able to say yep that's not going to work this yep this will work that won't work and then we go back to them and renegotiate if that's the Okay. Seems kind of late. Um, our goal is try to get this to you guys in like July or August. That's our goal. Okay. I mean, if you've already done a bunch back and forth and then we come in and say, "No, you can do that. You kind of toasted a lot of work." That's okay. Happens a lot. I'm I'm okay with toasting a lot of work if the council's not okay with the contract. That works. Okay. We try to do our best to get what we feel is right for both the employee and council and budget dollars, and that's kind of my goal. doesn't mean I'm perfect at my job and always open for more criticism. Works out well. Um that's police. Fire is the next one. Increase of 167,000. Um that's switching back to uh paid on call model based on conversations we've had so far with the council. The reason for that is because that's the worst case scenario in the budget. Um, I've put in dollars based on $30 an hour for firefighter employees and no full-time staff. So, as you can see, it's roughly an offset between full-time staff and the um paid on call staff. Um, which is, you know, about a $13,000 difference there. Is there only two full-time staff? That's it. Yep. Why is the change in salaries $143,000? It's about 70 grandish or so. um based on um FICA, Medicare, state tax dollars, and health insurance. Not and that's in parenthesis. I guess I'm confusing. It's a negative. Sorry, it's a negative. That's a reduction of full-time staff. Okay. $142,000 reduction in full-time staff. And what was that reduction due to? Taking them out of the budget. Oh, the full-time. Yes. Okay. So, sorry. I I'll I'll re say that. I put in the budget this year. I'm gonna call my worst case scenario financially, not worst case scenario as in operations or worst case scenario that the council can decide. I put in the budget for worst case scenario financially would be if we went and paid our paid on call staff $30 an hour and did not have full-time staff. It's a total increase in that budget of 167 grand. Yep. Because I'm taking away the full-time staff, which is $143,000. I'm adding 156 grand for paid on call staff that paid them $30 an hour. But then we have the main thing is that we have to increase the state aid dollars that are given because we can't take those in here and use them for health insurance or sorry PAR for future retirement for our firefighters. We have to pay that to the relief and that's then just a pass through. Did you check on PAR? I did not I've not heard back from PAR yet but I will most certainly follow up with them. So I have another question. So the change in the salary and benefits for the paid on call that's on top of what we already have budgeted for the paid on call. That's an increase correct or that's the total dollars for that. Um that is an increase based on currently in our budget for 25. So, this is kind of little backstory that may that Stephanie and Sarah wouldn't know is that for 25, we put in the budget to have two full-time staff members and then the reduced number of paid on call staff all paid at $30 an hour. And that was as of June July 1st, right? Yep. July 1st was the planned date because we figured it would take 6 months for that relief association to dissolve. So, as of July 1st, we put in there and said, "Okay, you're going to make 17 an hour." Again, this is general for general firefighter. 17 an hour from January 1 to June 30, July 1 through the end of the year, you'll make 30 bucks an hour. So that change increase is because we're taking next year and saying all the whole year you get to pay 30 bucks an hour for your paid on call staff, but we're not going to pay full-time staff. We won't we will not hire the full-time staff. Um which is then a reduction of $143,000. And the state aid is explain that again. So the state aid dollars have to if you have a fire relief, you have to put the dollars from the state aid which are coming from insurance costs, insurance premiums that are paid on people's homes. Those have to go towards retirement of the firefighters. So we cut the whole check. We get the whole check in and we cut it right out. In 2025, we said, "Okay, we'll use those dollars to pay out some of the relief because it'll be six months of the relief work that they had. Then July one to the end of the year we'll use utilize those dollars to pay their parah which um council member Henderson has mentioned that paying their parah essentially putting that towards retirement but we don't have to pay it out to the relief dollars we get to utilize that towards um our employer portion of their parate parate retirement similar to would be like with the chief himself working your full-time he's not part of the relief but we pay him we pay the employer pays 17.7% of his salary similar to the um chief enga to have him as an employee here. We pay 17.7% of their salary to the state for their retirement. So that was the goal to do it for the fire department paid on call staff. So that's why there's an increase there this year because it was not included in the budget in 25. I feel dumb but not dumb. Is I thought the state So the state aid dollar Yes. You said it has been paid by insurance and it's it's a pass through. It is a pass through. So then why is it affecting our budget? If we just get it and pass it, why does it affect our budget? So in 25 we budgeted taking the dollars in as a revenue source, but we did not budget spending them out directly because we were going to utilize those dollars towards their retirement. Okay? And by their retirement, their retirement doesn't cover 100% of that. I'll use 125 as an example. Okay? It might cover 50 grand of that. The other 75,000 goes towards Chief Fire Chief Hendrickson and Assistant Chief Ostram to pay for their repairs as well because it doesn't specifically say it has to be for only paid on call staff. Has to be for firefighters retirement. That's what it says. Okay. Um and so historically we've always had just paid it right to the fire relief because that covers their what do you call it? Their retirement their 3,250 per year pension benefit that they received by working at the city. Um, but by having everyone in the same bucket of money with PAR, we can then offset some of the chief's costs and the assistant chief's costs full-time staff. Instead of paying it to the relief, we are able to offset their costs. So, I guess I'm still kind of I'm I'm still muddy. I'm still muddy on that. Yeah. If we That's showing as a plus. Yep. Where's the expense? Where's the Where's the increase in in the in the minus increase in the minus? I mean, if if if there's an increase in state dollars, $125k, it's not going into the budget. Um the revenue comes in still and then it's just an expense on the line item budget versus this year in 25 it is not on the line item budget. So you are you saying that because we didn't budget for paying into their retirement for this last half of the year that we're making that back up. I guess that's where I'm stuck. So cuz we thought they would be or the movement seemed like they would be in parah. Yep. But because they weren't, we now have to replace. Is that what you're saying? I'm that that's kind of where I'm stuck. Is that what you're saying? Yes. But if in the budget, if I'm following you properly, I think the answer is yes. So it's all the same bucket of money though, right? So like the two full-time didn't move forward. So that money should still be there, right, in the fire department's budget. So why is that money not? So now that's being shifted. So now instead of So to your point, I'm trying to figure out what was in 2025 if we're not going to move forward with the full-time people, those dollars are then going to be reallocated out of the full-time dollars of salaries into paying for that relief dollars. So the chief doesn't get an extra we used 115 for this year's guess because we don't know what the number is going to be. The chief doesn't get an extra $115,000 to spend in his expenditures number. that gets taken out of his full-time staff and put into the line item for state aid dollars to be cut to the relief. Okay. So then I have another backup question to that. The I'm fine like I'm not beating up the $30. I'm fine with that. I don't really get a not good voting on that. Mhm. Um but the change in salaries and benefits for the paid on call staff, that's a number that's based on amount of firefighters going to how many calls? Yep. Is that something that we get to see broken farther? Is it just like here's the item and that's it or do we get to see like is how many see if you'd like to. Yeah. Thought that was they said that was based on the call model or the uncall model. Yep. So that's the So it's like calls we look at number number of calls, how many firefighters go to the call, training times, uh public education time, um uh maintenance maintenance night. We look at all the nights that they're here. They get paid and say, "Okay, this many firefighters show up for this, this many firefighters." Oh, I think it was five. I think we used or six number six and a half. Six and a half firefighters per call. And there's x number of calls. That's that's times by 30 bucks an hour gets you this number plus training nights is going to be everybody's here times by 30 bucks an hour times by number of training nights and public education. I mean I could we could share how we got the number. No and I I hear you but I'm just wondering and okay I guess I got confused that's not based on the the being inhouse on call. Yes. What is well then why do the calls matter? Because the number of calls are going to dictate how many dollars we have towards the So if I say 600 calls versus 800 calls, I got to figure out how many dollars are going to have available. So we said next year's projected number 730. 730 calls times by 6 and a half firefighters times by 30 bucks an hour. So no, that's not may or may not have six and a half firefighters. You might not have six fireers. If you get to a scheduled deal where you don't have six or 10 showing up or two or whatever the number is. So we're not talking about scheduled on call. No, we're talking about the model we have. Yeah, the model we have come from. We just see data though right now. Yeah, we have. No, it said 5 to 10, right? That might change. That was the number on the building. Correct. But I guess Okay, I'm poking at the elephant. Which elephant? The elephant of the paid on call, not paid on call. Okay. Someone being here during the day multiple days. If we're able to pay for that, I'm guessing why do we need that increase? And why are we not just asking for a part-time position is my question? I I don't know. I guess I'm not just to clarify. So maybe this will help Stephanie. I don't know. Hopefully. So I gave Zach three different or excuse me, four different scenarios. So we gave it um $17 an hour today. So like we operate today. um that times the 730 calls and all the other stuff. Mhm. Then we went to $30 an hour. Again, no change in staff, just the $30 an hour. And then we went to a duty crew model with no full-time staff. Okay. At $30 an hour. And then the last one was two full-time, basically the model that we had presented. Okay. Um, and so the most expensive one, and correct me if I'm wrong, y is the way we operate today at $30 an hour. Hence the increase. Yes. So that's what this and that's what this is. And the reason why I put that in there is because I want to show you worst case again worst case now financially because if you say this is a change we want to do this way, let's say Scott's point is you want to say dut crew all the way. That way we don't have six people showing up. That's a reduction and it's about rough number. It's about 50 grand and it might be even more than that depending on um I took out and figured out that we could I'm guessing that PAR will allow us if we have a duty crew model we could utilize the state aid dollars. So I took out $54,000 of that and we'd be able to reduce the line items budgets differently. But again I put in worst case scenario in the budget because I don't know what the direction of council is going to be. Are we able to see those four plans? Yep. Happy to see because I would like to see the breakdown if possible. Yeah, I have it in front of me here. I send it off. That would be great. I just feel like this has been a very like we've talked about it and we're kind of all got all these different It was just nice to see the numbers. Sure. That 156 is based on $5,200 for the year and 527 to be exact. If you go to a duty crew schedule type thing like what I uh have talked about a little bit. Um yeah. So if we have no duty crew with no full-time is 4,420 hours a year. But you can and I I don't get me wrong, this can change certainly if you go to having two guys on just about 24/7. The only thing I don't know is how you fix this Saturday and Sunday. That's that's crapshoot. I have no that's,274 hours a year. So, you can shave off 3,000 hours off of that. Now, plus any real big calls, you're going to have more people coming. So, that number is not going to be accurate. You may have five, six people coming on certain occasions to where maybe all of a sudden you got another $400 or $500 in there. Can I ask you a question? You're talking staffing like you have like a shift you sign up for or you're just telling them you're going to be here because I will let you know that at $30 an hour that's not putting bread on my table and so like it's going to be really hard for you just to tell I don't well some have are retired or have time during the day but it's really hard for you to say hey Travis sorry you're this is your shift you're working one day a week that's what I that's what I thought that's what I figured Is he going to take PTO from his full-time job? I I I don't know. I'm not trying to push back on you, but I don't know that you need five people here. Two. You got two. No. Um he's not here at 6:00 at night, though, right? I mean, what are your I thought you meant during the day. I'm confused. No, this was my this was my thought. What you're trying to do is you already have two people here during the day till 5:00. Now, he might be gone 3:30 one day and then all of a sudden maybe you don't have five or two. I was looking at covering from 5 to midnight and then midnight to 7:00. Now, I've been told that midnight to 7:00 there's not much going on all the time. Uh, so somehow or another to me, you just you got to cover those 14 and 1/2 hours somewhere. I don't know how you do it. And I would say Pete, Tom, Dick, and Ary, you guys pick which day of the which one 7 and 1/4 hour shift out of the week can you handle? So you go to 26 guys and you you you figure out how do I get 20 shifts out of them? 26 guys, two guy, four guys for each for each day. You're going overnight hours. Don't you have to have sleeping quarters then? Like how does that change your midnight or 5 to 7? 5 to 7 midnight. I don't know how you do the midnight to 7. That's something that can get worked out. I don't know how you do it. Scott, just to clarify, are you saying that staff would be here from midnight to 7? Well, when you and I talked, I don't know if that you need that guy from here to from midnight to 7. Granted, you get a faster response time and I get that. I understand that. However, if you don't necessarily need that guy, and we're just talking mainly for medicals, u maybe maybe the 12 12 midnight to 7:00, maybe the guy doesn't have to be here, but he's got to be available. So, you're talking response teams. We used to do those, right? They were 10:00 p.m., but 5 to 7, your 5 to midnight guy, and this was Gary's point, you don't just necessarily pay that guy to be available. Maybe in order to help with maintenance, you have him here for three three hours out of that or two hours out of that day. So then you're getting some of your maintenance value out of him. And in my opinion, you pay that guy two or three hours to be available that day. I would have no problem paying. I don't want to go down too far down the road. We will hammer this in detail, but right now this is worst case. This is worst case scenario. Yes, this is worst case financial again. I say worst case and I'm going to say financial scenario not because most expensive the most expensive option. Yes, I want to talk about fire department but I want to make sure we get to other things too. So I we will have more conversations on the fire department overall. Go ahead. So I know you have a question but well I don't want I just don't want to derail us too far in the fire department stuff because it's spend an hour and a half on this. You I get it. Yeah, I I'm well aware we we will have to hammer this quite a bit, but we Yes, but I guess just say your question. I I am and I'm not trying to start World War II, but I'm struggling with the change in the paid on call staff because right now out of those dollars, we essentially have a part-time position that we're paying out of those dollars that isn't actually on the books as a part-time position. Yeah. And that's an admin position is from what I understand. And so I guess my question is is why add it to the part-time and not just why are we not just adding yeah adding an admin position whatever that would be like a part-time position because right now baked in there tucked up tight is a position that we're currently paying out of the paid on call dollars. And so I'm just like I would like it to be out in the open and like to have a job description and be a hired position if we're going to do that instead of correct baking it in there doing admin things when there's no way to measure the success of the position in order to measure like how much more do you need? Does it need to then transition to a full like like that kind of stuff? You can't have those metrics if you don't know that it's actually happening. Sure. Because we know it's happening but we just it's the elephant we don't talk about. We didn't always know it was happening. I didn't know we had that person. Well, it's been a few years ago. Yeah. So, that's what I'm saying. It's not public though, right? It's not public in his room. The paid on co position that we've had. So, we've had a we had Jason Alaski, now we have Payton Barthell, and she's they're both they were both like I would say they were helping out and assisting with other duties of inspection such um Payton's role isn't, you know, she's inspections too, but she's doing more health stuff and EMT thing type things council's contact. We're a medical unit now. Yes. Um little different of d direction goals, but I mean in it would be nice to have a job description and have that be a paid position where it is a hired position. It's not a appointed appointed. And there's a way to measure success and growth. And then as jobs and things change and it gets to be more time inensive, that could grow into an actual full-time. Yeah. I don't think it was necessarily meant out to be a pointed position. I think it was meant to be start off starting off with is we needed more people to respond to calls. And so that's why we use the six and a half measure of okay, that's how many calls we're going to have on most time. But if we don't have six and a half people show up, we have these shortfalls. And that's I think that's how the position kind of started. um with inspection times and just duties that were assigned to the chief and the assistant chief at the time was how do we how do we help with those times? Okay. He was presented to council as a inspector position. Yes. So he was doing basically uh Greg's uh Greg's role. Greg's role. Greg Cruz at the time and did that. So they still continue to do that. Um but then the other thing is from the records. So, what Jason was working on was the um our uh records management system or transition to that. So, that's a lot of that work uh has gone into making sure that we have all of our inventory and then all of um the truck checks and everything else got put into that. So, that was um a project that is pretty much getting wrapped up now with getting everything set up with different trucks and whatnot. Um but that position has been out there um amongst council from an inspection perspective when those are needed as well as to work with the um RMS stuff. Had Jason not left then it would have been Jason continued in that in that role. Um, and then the idea was that this past January, we would have wrote put that into they were going to fall into uh potentially one of these full-time positions that we've been working towards role in that capacity. No, and that makes sense like that feels like that would be the progression. It would just be nice to have a job description and have it actually be a position. Sure. Because if not, it feels backdoorish. And I don't mean like I'm not trying to like be rude about it, but it feels like if we know we're paying a part-time person, we should have a part-time position. It should be a laidout slot. This is what it is. Otherwise, it feels a lot like and the optics of it maybe is more what I'm looking at where nobody really knows what that person's doing. Nobody knows how to measure the success. And so like that's the big thing is knowing here's your job description. This is how you measure success. message of the things that you're working on and then it can evolve from there because wrapping it into the paid on call makes the paid on call model look in my opinion more expensive when really tucked in there is a part-time position on top of the paid on call positions. Well, we're utilizing dollars because to Scott's point is I don't know exactly how many people are going to show up. So, if we have a call where it's the stub toe call that Zach and I like to use, I really only need probably two people on that call. but we end up having 10 people on that call. So, we have to overexaggerate a lot of that. So, that's where those dollars come from is those, you know, whatif scenarios, if you will. No, I hear you. But I I think I get your point is though. Yeah. You just like it to be explained out to be transparent. That's it. Just out in the front and and we can note that and I don't see it anywhere in here. So unless we don't hit 730 or 6 and a half people per call, um it's not in our salary budget numbers we have for 26. So I don't know what that means or looks like, but again just looking at but if it's if it's an increase of 156,000, it's already baked in there. Um that's taking this year's numbers for or that's taking next year's projected call volume of 730. Now if we don't think 730 is the right number to use for projected call volume, we can lower it and then that would come down for 16 156. Yeah. Then I guess my question is moving into the next year, are we anticipating not needing that admin work then? Because if it's not in here, so the change for next year, excuse me, or what Zach and I have talked about is getting a um part-time inspector um that has the ability to and this is going to be a stipen position. So stipen position be $500 a month. Um those dollars would come from cost savings and actually probably significant cost savings depending upon the person that we hired um to do the job where we would be able to take back um the costs that we incur or the city incurs from inspections of fire alarm inspection and that. So then those dollar would stay with the city versus paying Metro West $80 an hour and then that person then would still get their regular paid on call pay or whatever the model you have and then they get that makes a lot of sense in the $500. So that's what we're moving towards, but I've been waiting to kind of see where we end up with. That position would be done by council. So yeah, no, I it would just be nice to see like that makes a lot of sense. So that's where it's in now. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. And again, I'm not trying to beat anybody up or come hard at any. Just trying to understand and just want to see when we do that. It would be nice to know what Metro S hooks uses for on that stuff, too. Yeah. 80 or 85 bucks an hour. 85 bucks an hour. Yeah, that would be a really great metrics to have that cost savings to do that like to be able to look at and that's what the chief and I talked about this last year. Yeah. No, and that would be great. It just if we don't talk about it, we don't know. And so like agree. Thank you. So be open and transparent about as much. So the decrease is not in here cuz I'm not sure what it's going to be. So it could be there could be another reduction. Again, when we put together the scenario, I always say what's the max and we can always come down from there. So yeah, and again it's just hard to see with like the very blanketed like this is what I'm like well what does that mean? So I'm glad we have this discussion. I feel better. So thank you for clarifying. Yeah. Yeah. The idea is not to keep the council out of out of the weeds, but at the same point I want council to focus on steering the train because if you're dealing with all the details behind, you're never going to be able to steer the train the right way. you're going to be worried about what's how much coal's going into the thing and this is that and that's my job. So I try to use an analogy. It's might be a horrible one but worried about what train cars on there and generally speaking you have to be on the tracks of that one. So okay so public works with public works. So um increase of $80,000 some of that is related to or mostly related to salaries and benefits. Um and then the other part is that we're moving looking to move a part two parttime positions into one full-time employee. How how is that only an increase of 13? So the other part is in parks. So it's about Yep. So that's one. Yeah, that's one employee, but we took two part-time employees and moved them into one full-time employee. So it's a slight bump in wage, but the biggest thing is health insurance. That's $22,000 of that. Oh, so it's split between that. Yes, it's split between public works and parks and that's based on what they're working on. So I think this position is 75% parks, 25% public works based on that. Okay. So it's But the other ones are operating supply, street maintenance. Um parks is the same thing. Increase of 37. Most of it's related to current salaries. Some of that again is related to that full-time taking two part-time positions making it in one full-time employee administration. The last one is based on changes of health insurance or change of health insurance salaries and benefits and then the other part of the HR manager position. So those two together it's about 110,000 295 and 73 isund 5,000 a year somewhere in there give or take. So okay sorry you want to go back? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, the 73 73 in city clerk. That's one more slide back. Sorry. 73 HR. Yep. Yeah. That's only part of an HR position. Correct. Yes. So, we're not looking for a generalist position. We want more experience in that at least from city staff's perspective is that we have nobody with HR experience in this in this city. Yep. Um, so we're looking Amy and I are kind of self assigned Amy to doing HR duties, but she is not an HR professional. I know that's neither am I firm, but so really you're talking about 100 105,000 you got. You're adding the 40 and Yeah. Okay. Yep. You got it. Okay, last one. These are just very very small ones. But again, revenue is looking to increase about 30 grand next year just based on historical trends in revenue. So that's actually an offset to the levy. So that's a reduction. Increase for activity center is based on um $8,000 in operating supplies. Trying to do a few more concerts maybe next year and some other things that we can possibly do with um programs as we continue to move forward. council an increase in subscriptions to memberships central services contingency emergency management and of control and IT's reduction of $4500 bucks we ended up not needing as many dollars I thought we were good so based on trends I'm not continuing to increase it or even keep it the same so but on that roughly about $10,000 each one of those departments total so I'll break it down the levying dollars in a different light just cuz It's good to look at. We have require requirements based on union contracts and contracts that are already been adopted. Says salary increases. That's $459,100. That's based on health insurance, which matches a union contract. State paid leave. So that's everybody in this room is going to have to paid state paid leave next year. Not sure if you're aware of it or not, but it's going to be 0.44% of your salary that you have to put into a bucket and pay for people who will need to take paid leave off. That's going to be run by the state. We are doing the minimum which is this employer pays half and the employee pays half. So that is our portion. I think it's 044%. I think that's the number. So 0.0044. So that's got to be added this year. Midyear hires which we mentioned um in police and then required union contracts which are already done by LS. That 459 is all your new hires HR. Nope. That no salary increases that are required. This is if we only kept the same employees we have this year to next year, we have to pay $459,000 more dollars. That's based on union contracts for police and alsar hires we just hired at the last council meeting. State paid leave that's required by by law and health insurance increases increases which is paid for or um negotiated by union contracts. Recycling services, that's based on the contract that we had, that's a $70,000 increase. the two planned items, which is the ladder truck, that's about 300 grand. Park capital was 15. So for capital, that's new capital money. Yep. That's new capital money. Last year we had a big jump in capital, too. That's carried forward, right? Um you had $100,000 increase for the ladder truck last year that you went for. So the $300,000 would be on top of the 100. But there was also the front loader, the front end loader, the those dollars are looking at different CIP items, and we'll talk about those in July. It was Yep. But it was still capital spending. Yes. So this is an increase that we had planned on for the So every year I we looked at and said okay can we keep the same number of dollars and this was done two or three years ago. I think I tried to say okay we want to capital equipment can change about who's purchasing it. Doesn't matter who's purchasing it as in in overall city but we want to keep our capital equipment dollars every year the exact same so that it's a million dollars for example. It's a million dollars this year a million dollar next year a million dollars the following year after that. It's always a million dollars. Doesn't matter if Marty buys a front end loader and two plow trucks or if the chief buys a fire truck. Doesn't matter. It's a million dollars every single year. Last year, we said we want to take we want to add $100,000 to that to pay for the ladder truck. So, that was in 25 26. That $100,000 still exists today. So, it's going to be $200,000 for ladder truck at the end of the year. If we keep the same levy number, we're looking at increasing that by 300 grand. We'd have $400,000 for the ladder truck this year. That was the plan. Continue to increase by 300 grand every year to be able to roll and snowball the money similar to like a paying up a credit card to be able to pay cash for that ladder truck when it came in in 27 28 28 to pay cash for it. It's about 300 grand every year just rolling it forward. So if we did this plan which you had adopted or at least looked at from the capital perspective, we'd have 100 from last year. We obviously have 100 right away at the beginning of the year this year for 26 by this year and last year. I get everyone really confused. And then 300 grand additional. So we'd have $500,000 total saved up for the ladder truck if we were to do this plan. No, I guess at the end of 26. What I'm getting at though is last year we had a bump in capital. I don't remember that. But I look at it I think there was almost 300 for the front end loader. It was more than that. Yeah. And there was another 150 fort more. 370,000. Yeah. And then the mower added 150. The more was 146. So yep. So in 24 we went from 7, sorry, 750. Yep. To a million dollar. That's what we went to last year in capital. So that was a 200. So $250,000 increase. Yep. So assuming that that's our baseline. Yep. There's another 250 in there that's unspent. Um, nope. Because we moved and said we're going to instead of buying a front end loader this year, we're going to finish paying off our engine tender that we bought with the $475,000 of replacement of tanker 11 that we had budgeted for this year. Oh, I think he lost me. Okay. So, the goal from my perspective was to keep the dollars the exact same in the capital every single year. Except we so last year we jacked it up and that the reason why we jacked it up is to keep it similar every single year. The same it's a million dollars. It was 750 before. So we jacked it up last year so that it would stay the same this year. Yep. Stay the same, but then there's additional part which is the ladder truck that we have every single year. Looking at paying for that with cash. They add more to the ladder truck. It's the same ladder truck. Well, no, it's the same ladder. It's more money. Add 200. Just saying it's it's more than that though because it's the 250 that we increased it by last year. Yeah. So we went up by 250 last year. Yep. Yep. Which means if we changed did nothing, we would have an extra 250 in there. But that 250 is now paying for the tanker, your engine tender that we bought. That was part of the funding source. When we came to council two or three years ago with the chief, we broke down here's how we're going to pay for the engine tender. When the tanker shot the bed, we said we have to get a new tanker, but our engine's also bad. So, we're going to sell off an engine to pay for that, which we got 400 grand for. Oh, boy. My wrong sheet here. That was 4 and a4 something like that. Yep. So, we got 427 for the engine. We sold off utility 21 to pay for it. That was 120 grand. We said we're going to budget for the tanker replacement still in 26 for $475,000. And then we're gonna have onetimed our essentially $100,000 over two years to pay for it in funding sources to pay cash for that thing when it came in. So the 475 So the 330 for the front end loader just got moved into the replacement of the tanker. It's really hard to follow without me without you guys looking at a sheet. It's impossible for me to explain this to you guys. It's just not going to happen. But your your baseline, Dennis, is saying 750 is the number. That's your baseline. Yep. and my baseline is saying it's a million dollars is the is the the number. So that's where the the difference comes into play and we can talk about that in capital planning but that's the that was what the breakdown of levy dollars from last year's perspective was is saying that that 30% increase or or what was it 25% increase whatever it was is baked in here not in these numbers but this sits on top of that 25% increase. Yep. You got it. Yep. So yes, if I'm following you correctly, we had a 24% increase last year in capital. Yes. Then that same baseline is used this year and now we're adding 300,000 to that number. So in two years we went from 7 and a quarter 750 to 1.3 is what I'm saying. So it's just something to keep in mind. Yep. And it's kept in mind understand. I mean we have things that cost money and we order we order things and we got to pay for them somehow. So we can either pull our bond or we can pay cash for them. And the plan for the council was let's pay cash for them because we'll utilize the tax capacity over time to utilize them to pay for it with cash versus taking out a bond for 10 years on a on a piece of equipment which we can do that too. Then park capital 15 and then elections is 44,000. So of the we have to do things and again you could take the 300 grand out of there if you'd like mayor that other the numbers we're at.88. You take away the 300 you're at 588. Um, but that mean that $300,000 has to come from later on. We just kick the can down the road essentially with the letter truck and requested amount from council for an 8% increase was 777,000. So to keep our tax rate the same, we need 777. We're at 8.88. Take over the 300 588 with no changes in anything last year. That doesn't mean operating supplies. That means no prescript subscription memberships. There's no professional development. That's no new employees. That's just status quo as we sit today. So staff went through and said, "What else could we do? What could we save? What could we adjust to help this off?" Overall, um the ones on the left are required based on just the general fund alone. So I only did the general fund. I didn't touch capital equipment at this time. 573 is required. And we came up with we could do about $325,000 worth of cuts based on hiring people at midyear, reducing professional services for comp plan, but that means comp plan works getting kicked down the road. We could reduce our part-time police budget a couple dollars by hiring that full-time officer. Um, we can reduce our engineering estimate and hiring the full-time fire staff. two major hires that would cut about $325,000. $491 is left. What is that? Oh, sorry. If we hire the full-time fire staff, our general fund dollars go down by 111 grand. Oh, all right. So, it's a reduction of dollars because we're able to reutilize those fire state aid dollars. That's the main difference. We obviously have to add in health insurance. So that's the difference in increase in difference between 125 and 111. There's some changes in when so um certain employees don't pay Medicare. So if you're a fire full-time employee, you don't pay Medicare costs of 6.2%. That's only paid on every other employee. So that's why there's a it's not quite one for one for the 22 grand and the 125 should be 103, but you add back some because you don't pay Medicare on full-time staff that are fire or police. So that's the $8,000 difference there. And the 491 is broken down mostly as you see. I mean, that's 90% of it. police officer, professional services, supplies, professional development, repair and maintenance, HR manager position, public works employee, associate planner. So those are based on half your hires for the HR manager and associate planner position, full year for the police officer, full year for the public works employee. What are the new tax dollars coming in from this year compared to last year? Uh in percent tax capacity number. No, just the property taxes that people are paying. How much more are we getting this year? We don't get anything. Well, well, sure you do. You get It's Yeah, we'll get 35% times the capacity. We'll get We don't get any more dollars, though. Like we we If you have $7 million this year in the levy Yep. and you and we say, "How many more dollars are coming in next year?" The answer is $7 million. whatever we set it to. Yeah. Whatever you set it to. So if you say we don't get any additional dollars, I think that's what the biggest misconception about government is is that 500 homes go in, we're going to get so many more dollars from those homes. No. The answer is that your $7 million of levy just gets split across those people. So everyone pays less tax. If the tax levy goes up, then we get more dollars. So your to your question is if you approve a million dollar levy increase, now we get a million more dollars to operate with, which means everyone's taxes might go up. for this year for 2026. Oh, it's what we set it to for our budget. That's what we spend. That's additional increase you're talking for a levy increase. Yep. And there's more people paying taxes in 26 than there was in 25. Yes. But it'll be distributed. But it gets distributed evenly. Evenly. It bottom line is whatever we set the levy is what it that's how much dollars we get in. Yeah, that's what it is. You could put a,000 homes in here, 15,000 homes in here or two homes in here. The same dollars come into us. Whether it's whatever you guys set the levy is, that's how many dollars we get. Doesn't matter how many homes go in, how many businesses go in here. If you set it at $7 million, it's $7 million. And that's who we have to work with. Whether that goes to capital, operations, future planning, whatever it may be, we don't get any we don't get a nickel more and unless the council approves an increase in the levy, which is what we're looking for or here tonight to discuss is what does that levy number look like. And so based on these required numbers, and again, I use required because that's what the plan was is the $300,000 for the ladder truck. Now, you can say we don't want to do the ladder truck. We'll kick it down the road. That's fine. But then we're at 5.88. So, we have to increase the levy, $58,000 just to keep the status quo. If you don't want to do that, we have to fire people because that's 90% of that increase is 459,000 bucks. So, we got to get rid of people, which I'll tell you right now, I don't think any one of the department heads, including myself, would say, "Yep, cut somebody." Because we have we we have lots of extra time on our hands. Well, that's but it's true. Nobody does. Exa Exactly. And as we get more residents that come in here, and I will tell you that Marty's probably the number one guy who gets the complaints, maybe Paul and Gary as well, but we have residents that come in here that came from different cities that have more services, and they go, "Why is my street plow in 5 minutes? Why do you don't you have a two-minute response time? Why don't we have three officers on at a time?" And we go, "We don't have that ability. We can't do it." If we have two officers at a domestic violence call, we have zero officers patrolling the street and we get constant complaints about traffic levels and speeding and incidents and whatever else, but we have to have two officers at a domestic violence call. When we were looking at the budget or the those are just examples of Yeah. No. Um just at the last was the last meeting the meeting before when we had the audit. Yep. Um, and it was brought up that there was there in there was the plan to get more fines from like speeding tickets basically and that didn't happen because the officer Yes. Um, so I guess my question is we have a a new officer on here. Is that is the new officer that's currently budgeted for going to be for traffic stops or is it for the just more I don't want to say general purpose but general purpose? I guess my goal is as of right now is general purpose cuz I want to get to two car minimums. Right now we're at one car minimums. Okay. Um so you're guaranteed to have one cop on in the city at all times. Yeah. Um with next year's higher, I'd be able to do two cops minimum per shift. Okay. Um, as of now, we'll have a traffic car for half a year because and well, depending on how fast we get officers off of field training, um, we might have a traffic cop for a little bit in the transition period. Um, is my goal. My goal is we're up we have tripled the amount of citations. We have not seen the money because we can't guarantee every traffic or citation is going to be $50. um depending on court, judges, everything like that, they can reduce the fine amount um whenever they want. So, we're not always guaranteed um the full amount, but I'm I'm hoping that I can get one officer more time to do traffic with the two car minimum approved. Well, and my goal is not I don't want to balance our budget on speed tickets. Like, that's not my goal. I was just curious cuz there was that conversation and I wanted to see if this new officer was a continuation of that or if that was a goal we had to be able to do that cuz we heard her chaplain does that essentially they again you know whenever bugs zone budget but essentially they pay for a full officer with the number of tickets that they write and then um you know it's like okay well could we get another traffic car to be able to help with that that helps with our officers on duty but it also would then offset some of the dollars that it cost because those officers are expensive they're not cheap. Oh yeah. Um, but it never came to fruition because a most of the fines got written off and b they never actually got out and did traffic because we were doing other things with calls. I know calls were service are way up this year too and lost coming off. We're we've been running short. So field training um for the brand new officer that we're putting on will be about six months. I was like said I just was curious about how that plan had changed and if that was part of this but um yeah I mean when and then when the chief says minimum of one that means that if people are on vacation or sick it's a minimum of one. Yeah. Most of the time we have two cars on at all times. I mean like 90% of the time we have two cars on at all at at all times. Sometimes we have three depending on when the sergeants move in because they're midshift um 3 3 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Yeah. 3 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. And we have a 6:00 to 6 shift right now for most of our police. So, um, but yeah, I said, so most time we have two, possibly three on at a time, which is the most we've ever had, but when somebody calls out sick or somebody's on vacation, then we have a one car minimum for a few hours at a time. So, um, I have other questions about obviously we can't change it at this point, but um, the union negotiations, do you negotiate on a two-year at a time or We have done two and threeear contracts. Typically, we do two. Okay. Um, we did do two three-year contracts last time, and the reason for that was to get them off of election years, okay? Because it's easier to talk about a contract when you have a group of people that's going to be here versus a group that's going to be possibly leaving or not leaving. It makes it a little more difficult for conversations. I was just so cuz I'm Yep. my full-time job. I am in a union. We're negotiate. So, I I understand we negotiate with um the system office, but then it has to go to legisle to vote up or down. So, like I that makes sense. This is the exact same process here except for Yeah. You are the you're the legislative office, but that's a two-year. It's a two-year contract because the state operates in a two-year budget. So, I think it's a little that's what I think is a little tricky is we're negotiating two-year contracts, but we only do a one-year budget. Yes. So that makes it that adds a layer of complication. I just wanted to to you are correct. Okay. So which out complicated with this contract because they came in after the budget already been approved and I said you have this many dollars to work with. That's it. So I don't know what else to tell you but that's what you got. Yeah. Okay. And so their negotiation was well that's fine. We'll take that but then we want more in the back end. Yeah. Which is what we're dealing with now which is what we're dealing with now of of that. So maybe let's not do that again. a $300,000 increase in one year for a contract is the most I've ever seen and so it wasn't ideal. Yeah. So, let's ideally not do that if we can avoid that. We also have really good officers and I will stand behind a lot of our officers that sit here and it's not like I mean we have a good good group of Oh, yeah. It's just hard for a from a budget standpoint. From a budget perspective, it's not great. And also again, a two-year contract when you only have a one-year budget is just is super challenging um for everybody involved. So, so we just need more direction. Again, I don't think the direction conversation tonight. I think it's been really good conversation overall. Um I know you guys got this PowerPoint last night and I apologize about it being so late, but I met with all the department heads yesterday and said, "Here's where we're at. I need some help because I start making cuts and things and I we are a team here and we need to make sure we operate as a team." So, We're all team players here and we got to figure it out. Um, but we're here for any questions. If you have any, I know I only got like five minutes, but we will have more discussions on the budget. This is obviously just the preliminary one. If you have comments, questions, concerns, you most certainly can always email. Otherwise, we can we will have another meeting likely. Um, depending on what's on the next meeting, we can always have a budget work session discussion again at the next council meeting if that's what the council would like to do. Um I am not here on July 8th which is the first council meeting. Appreciate council van responding back to say that they want you guys still want to do the CIP stuff which is the 300,000 or 250 or numbers that we talked about with the yourself mayor. Um and we can do that conversation as well at that meeting. I just will not be here and present and that's fine. I can rewatch the meeting and get notes from my department heads. But we can talk about you then. You can talk about me now if you'd like to. As Scott says, as soon as I walk out the room, we just start over. Start over again. It's not personal. It's business. Yep. 100%. Do you have any specific questions or things that you want department heads to look into specifically while we're all sitting here? I say you guys got to look into cutting 10%. Come up with something. We just came up with nothing. come up with something. So, so cutting 10% and bringing it down to nine cuz he wants you want down to 8% levy increase. We're at 19. Yeah, we're at 19. And if you want to keep Yeah, there's based on this. If you keep the plan you have in place for for the CS for the ladder truck to pay for that with cash, we can't physically do it. I don't know who you're We're firing somebody. It's not my concern. I know that's fine, but like I said, just want to make sure it's clear. Well, and it to me it doesn't look like it's an all or nothing for the ladder truck. I guess the question would be is could we just dial that like what would what would the impact be if we dialed it down a little bit? Sure. um maybe 150 instead of 300, which is not completely kicking it kicking the can down the road, so to speak, but um what would that look like? Because that's just my my gut reaction is well, yep, we do that then. Yeah. So then any of these So essentially, if that was the case, I'll use an example. We would Yeah. So all of these things would go back to zero. Wasn't that letter 2.8? Wasn't that the number? 2.4. 2.4. Yeah. Like I said, these just go back to zero. So, we get no officer next year. And the tender that goes with it. How are we paying for that? Is that the So, the engine tender was a separate purchase. Um, we had said, "Okay, we're going to pay for a new tanker in 2026. Let's reutilize those dollars in 2026 and put that towards an engine tender and pay cash for it." Yeah. We prepaid the cash for it back in 24 23 because we had enough dollars available and said we will future levy and collect those in the future levy dollars. And we got a $225,000 reduction. Yes. Decrease based on paying cash up front. So we decided, okay, why don't we take a reduction because we could pay cash and then we can get that back over time. those $475,000 which should be done in 2026. There's not a lot of big p in 2026. There's not a lot of big purchases on here. There's uh again this is the last year's plan. So I'm just repeating I don't know if there any changes from the department ads because we haven't met on that yet. But a brine box, a new truck, a shop floor scrubber, which I think will be down. That's $25,000. The the tanker which is $475, a utility tractor with a Vplow, and the replacement of a utility trailer. That's it. So there's not a lot of things to cut in CIP to get your 250 back that you mentioned mayor. And then the following year we have a new couple more things. And then that's the big things next year are we need a new road crater. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. I'm not sure. And then a one ton hydraulic sander. One ton with some things that can move around. So and those might move around. So then if that moves around at all then those obviously then we can look at saying hey can we reduce and still pay for the ladder truck and reduce capital. So we again this is a big puzzle of all putting it all together. So it's not like it's a simple cut and dry thing. If you have specific questions please let me know. And I probably should have paid more attention. um doing so Henipin County has been concerned because of what some of the the things on the chopping block from the state budget. Yep. Which are legally required things. So they're not actually saving any taxes. They're just shifting the tax burden. Yep. Um what I didn't I haven't Nothing for us. Okay. We're not doing anything here. Okay. It's all county burden. Yeah. But I'm just saying has that has that all Do we know what that's going to have we heard how that played out? I have not heard specifically, but I do know that they got a budget passed last year. That's what I mean. I just And I I have not heard all the details of that said budget. Um only thing I've heard for sure that they did pass a bonding bill. Okay. But it included zero individual projects. So our projects got nixed. Okay. But that's what I was cuz I'm also thinking from a homeowner's perspective when you get your tax bill, it's sometimes hard to see. And if the county is going to be jacking their rates, I'm not saying that we but like that makes me even more hesitant to like add on to ours if the county is going to be like coming like so what the county does is now affecting our operations. I'm not saying it should. I just want to make sure I understand. I'm just saying like I'm putting myself in my own like when I get my tax bill. Yeah. What my reaction is going to be, right? Like and and I just I was if we have I'm not saying it should abs like dictate what we do or don't do. I do think we have to be cognizant of it. It's a thing and it matters and and I don't want us to look as a city as we have to be the fluctuation for somebody else's problem. I get that. And I think that's what we end up always looking at is we always try to figure out cuz the taxpayer sees us first and we are the first line of people that they see. It's what can we do to fix things for the taxpayer. Um and I don't know if that's the best not that that's not the way to look at things cuz I'm a resident too and I have a tax state and I saw a gigantic increase last year for just like everybody else did. Um, but I didn't blame the city because the county raised their taxes, nor but at the same point, I understand my tax bill probably better than most. Yeah. And it's difficult to say we have to change our operations around or not do something because the county got shifted a burden that came from the state, which then just pushed the burden down to the county. I just I think we should be cognizant. I don't disagree. we should be cognizant but and perhaps start already with communication to our residents so that if we do wind up having to increase and the county increases and they're going to see a huge increase I think we need to start communicating that as quickly and like they will increase even if we keep the tax rate flat. Yes. But I'm just saying like I think we need to be cognizant of how how nasty that could wind up being and then how much communication on our end because as you said we're that first line. we're the first people come, you know, and most people don't understand it as as well as you do. So, um I just think I'm not saying it will make decisions for us, but I would really like to know what that number is so that I can get my arguments prepared, my PowerPoint prepared for when people come pounding at my door being like, "Why are my taxes high?" So, we don't have direction yet. Okay. I have no idea what that looks like. Um but but my followup was is there a chance that the county might then pass some of those requirements on to us. Okay. Okay. Because a lot of it is health and human services and that's going to be all at the county level. Okay. We don't so we don't have to worry about we've gotten all of our burden already taken from the county. We had to take on investigations and we had to take on all kinds of other stuff and that's been done over time. Okay. But that's I guess that was my other part is they've already shifted all their burden on us that they possibly so there's not more coming our way because of what the state is doing to the county. the county is not going to turn around and push more tax. They did take the appraisal cost which I still want to why they did that assessment. They did that. They didn't do that out of the goodness of their so they could raise their taxes. I I think it's so that they could guarantee who was appraising. Okay. Any more questions? Well, no. We will be. Thank you. We're here. All right. I don't have any prick marks. That's good.