So tonight um we are going to establish a shared understanding of the city manager review process. It's our third conversation around this topic and hopefully we're reaching really close to the finish line. Um we'll confirm competencies and performance areas to be assessed and align on rating definitions and expectations which came out of the city council retreat um back in July.

I think this is a better more focused on the job at hand approach and I do also only because I think it does make a difference seeing the explanations within the ratings will be really helpful I think as we try to give consistent feedback across the seven of us. That's really my my hope is that this lends to more concrete feedback rather than this wide chasm of responses.

And I I also think though that that the that our dealing with staff reflects on um the city manager's job to organize, you know, I mean, and so and how um so we do have a we like you were saying, we do have a certain perspective, you know, where we sit, but it's but also where we sit, we have um sort of a like a holistic view that that that we can we can understand.

So, I'll pause there at that 4.7% and because I think that's worth noting in that this is pretty much business as usual. It's taking into account again staffing in terms of compensation, benefits, our own inflationary costs here at the city, um the paid family medical leave, and then one new position. So it's really as we'd say if the city was doing nothing different other than adding that position we would be really around that 4 and a.5% levy increase.

And the point that I mean it's really important that we've done the work that we've done because one there is no free lunch. I mean you do have to catch up at some point and when you have to do a big jump in a year you wonder why you get a big levy increase. Well, it's when you when you you haven't been I don't want to say you've been asleep at the switch, but you've you haven't stayed you haven't kept pace and you're going to have to catch up at some point and that's expensive.

Um, for enterprise funds, we really like to try to focus and make it simple is looking at the cash balance of an enterprise fund because enterprise funds have depreciation. Depreciation is a non-cash item, but yet you expend money every year for capital outlay. Well, that capital outlay is a cash going out the door, but in reality, it's an asset. So, you you expense it and then you move it over to as an asset, but there's there's no cash associated with that. So try to make it kind of the easiest possible comparison between governmental funds using that available cash balances kind of helps with making that um connection on those there.