when you look at the general fund budget uh roughly 70 over 70% of our budget is related to personnel and so with that general fund operation of 4.98% that does largely reflect staff adjustments in terms of compensation and then uh other benefits that are related to Personnel.

our fund balance is getting to a point where it's it's good it's at 40% that's right where we want it to be but we don't want it to go much we don't want it to go much lower than where it's at on that end of it so we'll be closely monitoring that as as the years go on but know that this directly impacts the CIP for future years as well.

I think running tight is exactly is the right thing so um I think the policy was put in place largely at the behest of council member Wagner um and people who agreed with him um that we created that policy where okay anything that went over our 40% um um Reserve amount um was going to be applied to the CIP which is really I think a very good policy but it's also like anything you become dependent on it and so you sit there and think well okay we're a little tight here but we know we're going to underspend and we're going to get that money shot at the CIP I think it's much more honest with our taxpayers because what if you take a cynical view you could say well we're really over levying to kind of pad pad the uh the CIP in future years and I'm I'm not comfortable with that I think being as tight as we can reasonably be understanding that there is some risk associated with that but by being tight I think we're we're you know what we're levying what we need for when we need it and I really feel good about that and this budget does that.

we looked at the percentage increase that the staff had received over that time on a compound compound basis and we applied that to the salaries that were in place at that time so basically was consistent with what staff had received on a percentage basis then there was conversation because one city I believe Lakeville paid uh council members for each non City meeting that council members attended... and we took the lump sum $2,000 added it to the um the you know what the calculation came for you know the um the salary increase and that became our new salary.

my thought process is I know we did just get a raised but I feel like if City staff can get raises I think the council should be getting raises too and I think it should be according to the cost of living... I don't make the income that a lot of folks here do and so for me personally I'm going to speak for myself um I think that we should consider that.

we also don't want to be recruiting candidates that are only in certain tax brackets and uh we want to make sure that we have sort of socioeconomic representation in our city and um this you know making sure that um we fall somewhere in the sort of at least the average ballpark of our our uh like cities um makes a lot of sense.

minetonka residents aren't going to feel that 7.18% increase um since we already collected those revenues from that contractor for that for those services and so when we do the calculations it turns out actually the increase for next year's sewer rate is going to be 3.75% which is what um we've always kind of historically done is 3.75% and I redid the math I'm like this can't be 3.75% and it was 3.75%.

it's rather counter counterintuitive but the fact of the matter is the big cost and so much of this stuff is the fixed infrastructure cost because that doesn't change regards it has a you pay for the capacity whether you use it or not... and there's a certain amount of implied upset or even a little bit of outrage at that and that's what we are that what we're talking about here.

everybody does currently pay the charge regardless um what we found is the charge currently is higher than the $310 we think we're at the 10% participation it would be exactly you know people would have an opportunity to sign up if we would get over that 10% an adjustment would be made but we think it should be certainly it's up to the companies but um everybody pays now it would switch to the $310 likely and then we'd look at participation as we move forward.

the grand summary total of that annual lease amount is $66,000 a year so equate that to a tax levy about a TA 1% of a tax levy is 500,000 so it really relates to about a 1% little over 1% Levy reduction if you will or equivalency to a 1% Levy reduction so it's an important uh Revenue stream for the city because again not every not every Revenue source of the city is property taxes.

the staff has submitted grants in the total of about $51 million in what's been requested since 2020 and then as Sissa pointed out what's been awarded is that 16.79% and have been awarded almost 16 million so we've really stretched our City's contribution towards maximizing our grant opportunities.

the thing I like is the I kind of look at applied for and granted yep and and you know our hit I'm going to call it our hit rate is you know over 30% and so you know that begs a couple of questions I mean you know what can we do to up our hit rate or should we focus on um upping our application rate but I mean if we felt that we were going to hit at 30 to 32% um for the effort then you can then you can quantify um how much time and effort we should do in terms of looking for new opportunities.

I think there were three primary reasons one had to do with Public Safety um understanding uh how many rental units you have in the city understanding how uh we interact with them as a city I would say also you had concerns about tenants and making sure they're taken care of and that they have a place to call when there are issues and problems and things they need handled and then thirdly I think um your intention was to be able to communicate with people in a much more um easy fashion and making sure you understood who owns these rental units in the city was uh of importance.

the only place that we see for improvement um is really getting the rest of our multif family buildings registered so that's been um the hardest so far so we're working right now which is surprising because we have their contact info we know that they are rental properties um but just getting those managers to register the property.

I would say they the folks that we've been meeting with um don't feel like it's a burden I don't ever feel like they don't want to talk to us so that's a good sign uh that we have um a good relationship and that they're using our information as a resource not necessarily as being punitive.