No Bookmarks Exist.
You don't actually call this mayor. You don't actually call this meeting to order because it's a work session. So this is a staff 00:00:02
meeting to bring you guys up to speed with what's going on. Chief, can you does it? Can you hear pretty well over the club? 00:00:08
All right. Well, it says I called to order. So we're going to call, we're going to call, we're going to call something to order 00:00:15
and then we're going to turn it over to you and Sharon 5:00. So it will take minutes. I guess that's why I said no, I get that 00:00:18
it's a different meeting, but we. 00:00:22
We're, if you don't mind, we're going to the agenda says call to order, So we're going to call it to order 5:00. 00:00:28
This is a work session, so we will. 00:00:36
You know, unless council determines otherwise, we don't anticipate public comment during this. We will have public comment during 00:00:39
the the hearing. 00:00:42
At the six 3630 meeting later on, but after with that Sharon, I'm going to turn it over to you in a minute, but I do think we've. 00:00:46
The budget is a. 00:00:56
This is a proposal. This is what Sharon and I have given to you guys, but it's a. 00:00:58
I'll say this, it's it's supposed to be an iterative process. 00:01:03
We want is it not working. 00:01:07
It is. It should be on. Guys, hang on. OK, so I'm seeing head shake. Can we see if this thing stream? I'm double checking. Give me 00:01:10
one SEC, OK? 00:01:13
Says it's. 00:01:19
It may be delayed a little bit, Julie. 00:01:21
OK. So it sounds like there's a little bit of, a little bit of a delay, but. 00:01:27
Yeah, it's like watching. It's like going back in time, Michael Prohaska just walked across the room on the screen. So anyway, I I 00:01:31
think the point of it is what's been given to you guys as outlined in our outline in our ordinances, in our charter is shared and 00:01:37
I have a responsibility to develop the budget. Council has a responsibility to review that budget and then we work through it 00:01:43
together and we land where we think is best to land for the city. So, Sharon? 00:01:49
Put in and her team put in hours and hours and hours of work. I also put in hours plural of work, but not nearly as many as they 00:01:56
did. 00:01:59
To generate this and that first one to start off by thanking you and your team for all the hard work that goes into. 00:02:03
Doing a budget and I want to thank you for your transparency and how you always handle this process and clearly outline. 00:02:09
What goes into it and producing all these documents and for continuing to take a zero based approach and how you tackle it. So 00:02:16
thank you Sharon for generating, generating a great proposal and with that I'm going to turn it over to you to walk us through the 00:02:21
budget and then council we will then have. 00:02:26
I think then we will then have discussion about it tonight after we. 00:02:32
After sharing reviews it. So I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Mayor. 00:02:37
So we always have budget goals. These are pretty self-explanatory. Obviously we want to provide efficient and effective services 00:02:42
to the public. We want to support our our employees that deliver those services. 00:02:48
Expand services as needed based on your strategic initiatives and find sustainable ways to support those services through 00:02:54
financial means. 00:02:59
The executive summary, what I tried to do is sort of hit the highlights of the memo that I gave you. I didn't figure everyone me 00:03:06
to reread all this, but these are sort of the highlights. 00:03:10
We'll talk about revenues first, then we'll talk about. 00:03:15
Expenses, we'll break those down into capital and operating expenses and then we'll finish it off. So has everyone read the memo? 00:03:18
Because I think that'll help. Sharon know how do you needs to go. So everybody's read the memo. I'm seeing heads not. OK, all 00:03:26
right, good. So I'm going to jump to the next slide because I want to sort of give you a visual, I'm a visual person myself. So 00:03:31
the top four generation ways that you generate revenues here in the city are local option sales tax, property taxes, building 00:03:36
permits and insurance premium tax. 00:03:41
And those are pretty occasionally fines will jump in front of, well, I guess it's not. 00:03:48
Do a lot more than some of our sister communities, but that's for y'all to to negotiate. But I did note, I don't believe this 00:04:26
actually changes until January of next year, so I'll double check that. I didn't have a chance to look it up. It just occurred to 00:04:32
me that that the agreement has to have happen by the end of the year. So 8.637 would continue I would assume from July until 00:04:39
December. So that may be something to talk about. 00:04:46
Yeah, make a note about that. 00:05:00
On building permits, so this year we estimated a little bit higher and of course little did we know that supply chain issues are 00:05:03
going to be a problem and that labor issues are going to be a problem. And as a result when we do the audit this year, you'll see 00:05:08
we're not, we haven't brought in as much money for that piece of it and but keep in mind that those, those revenues offset our 00:05:13
cost so. 00:05:18
I think this is a really good number. I think probably it'll be a little bit higher than that, but feel pretty confident and the 00:05:57
mayor looked at it as well. And I have my staff really. 00:06:01
Get down. Do a deeper dive on that to feel. 00:06:06
Feel more comfortable about that since we were a little bit over this year on what we we thought might happen. 00:06:09
Property taxes. So the digest increased about 20%. We are not recommending not rolling back the mileage rate. If you did, it would 00:06:15
be under two it would be 1.735. At this rate, for every $1000 of assessed value, someone pays $2.08. 00:06:23
And I gave you some information and we can talk about do a deeper dive on that later in the in the meeting if you want to talk 00:06:32
about what that might look like in different scenarios. But right now it without rolling it back we're looking at about $67,000 00:06:39
additional money coming in and you may recall last year we were going to see about 30 and we rolled it back so. 00:06:46
Insurance premium tax that continues to go up. That is the amount that insurance companies per you pay to your insurance company 00:06:53
and they passed on to us at like $40 per per insured person and that is amazing how many $40 checks we get on a regular basis, but 00:07:00
that's where that money comes from. We do expect it to go up because there's more to ensure and more people and and it has been 00:07:07
trending that way for the last three years. So I think we're pretty safe to assume it will go up. 00:07:14
Hotel, motel, short term vacation, rental tax. We will be talking about that some tonight during the main meeting. We are 00:07:22
estimating again conservatively because we don't really have a lot of information. What information we have is probably not. 00:07:29
Built out as I would like it to be. So we're assuming two that somebody has an Airbnb or rental will rent it twice a month every 00:07:41
month and it roughly works out to $6700 in in tax at at a 5% hotel motel tax. Again we'll talk about that some later and. 00:07:50
Because we are going to talk about a council meeting, I'll just mention that there is that the county currently collects that 00:08:00
because we have not laid claim to it. 00:08:04
And what we're recommending is we go ahead and lay claim to that money. 00:08:09
The mileage rate, this is what was and I did correct. There was an error, but we have to reprint this anyway. The only error was 00:08:13
that we didn't list the gross mileage and the and the rollback in the in the ad we did have the amount and that's technically what 00:08:20
we had to have. The 403,000 is where our net taxes would be in that $67,139 that would be generated. 00:08:27
So roughly a home market value of 200,000 would see about a $26 increase and a $500,000 commercial property with no homestead 00:08:36
would see about a 68. 00:08:42
Dollar increase. 00:08:48
If you did not roll. 00:08:49
Talk a little bit about expenses. 00:08:52
So one of the things I think is really important and. 00:08:55
We'll be talking about this some more with hopefully with the county after we get through the budget season is our service 00:09:00
delivery strategy and the services the city provides and services the county provides under contract with the city. 00:09:05
So you know for $2.08 for every $1000 assessed, I think your citizens are getting a pretty good deal weekly. Garbage leaf and 00:09:12
limb, police services, plan planning and zoning. 00:09:17
Obviously Municipal Court building. Sorry business, alcohol licensing, code enforcement, compliance and of course operation, the 00:09:22
parks and maintenance of the roads. 00:09:27
And signage, so under contract with the county through our service delivery strategy, additional services that are provided that 00:09:33
we cause to be delivered our animal control, elections, fire and emergency library, public health, tax collection and water and 00:09:39
sewer. 00:09:44
What's always interesting to me to note is over half of our budget, 1.4 million of it is just on 2 main services, police services 00:09:50
and public works. 00:09:55
And of course, Public Works includes roads and garbage and leaf and lemon. And those are, you know, you can imagine that's. 00:10:01
Heavy in people having equipment so it's expensive so. 00:10:06
Some highlights. I want to break down the capital expenses. 00:10:12
1st and then we'll talk a little bit about operating expenses. So capital improvement, most of most all of Y'all, maybe just two 00:10:16
or three of Y'all. Actually. Now I looked at the room 3 of y'all weren't here when we created the capital improvement fund and the 00:10:22
capital improvement program, which was set about to make sure that we planned for capital replacement of capital items, typically 00:10:28
anything with a value of $5000 or more. 00:10:34
So we did this, had some monies left. The council had money left from the streetscape program and moved that money over to help 00:10:41
start building out that capital replacement program. 00:10:46
What's happened is you know now we have roughly about $380,000 in that capital improvement fund and we don't next year we don't 00:10:51
have $382,000 worth of stuff we have to buy. But Lee and I worked on a scenario because obviously the way we fund the capital 00:10:58
improvement fund is through operating costs. So remember the wonderful yellow line line item budgets, y'all saw we would typically 00:11:04
have a line item in there for depreciation, you know that would then go be transferred as soon as the budget's approved into 00:11:11
capital. 00:11:17
That would just. 00:11:24
We have done that, did that for the last couple of years. But what that does, it increases your operating costs, right, because 00:11:26
you got to and then then it goes into capital. 00:11:30
So we looked at what we need over the. 00:11:35
20 years. I think it went out to 2037. 00:11:39
25 years and we determine when things were going to have to be replaced at the strike at the straight cost of what we expect it's 00:11:44
going to cost. Now that doesn't include if if Chief works is magic and get some, you know, replaces. 00:11:50
Police cars and and doesn't have to pay for, you know, $60,000 for a car and get one for 30, he sells another one, you know, 00:11:57
etcetera. It doesn't account for that. But what we try to do is determine when we are going to need that money and and the money 00:12:01
in the bank, how long that's going to last us. 00:12:06
To to fund that if needed so. 00:12:52
I saw all that just to give you sort of an understanding of that we are planning, we're just recommending this year not to fund 00:12:54
the capital improvement fund with operating money this year there are two one time capital requests things that we have sort of 00:13:01
been hanging around for a while. One in particular the City Hall doors you may notice when you open the doors they kind of jerk 00:13:07
it's it. We've had we've I don't know how many times the guys have screwed those doors into place and stuff but we. 00:13:14
We've probably gotten 15 different estimates in different ways of how we might fix it and the the one we think we all feel 00:13:21
comfortable with is is an $8000 estimate to replace the doors and fix the. 00:13:27
The frame so that they can attach, right. We feel pretty confident about that price that has been out there for a couple of 00:13:34
months, but we feel like that that's something that you know. 00:13:39
Would would stay the same. It also includes cutting window lights. What do you call them? Just wouldn't. 00:13:45
I guess Windows. 00:13:52
Windows into these, yeah and they were sure like what's on my door over here into each of these since the since the park is 00:13:54
getting beautified and and this space is used a lot it would add some light to the room and so that include that's part of that 00:14:00
estimate. So that's that's something that we're asking for a one time capital request. 00:14:06
Be funded and then the Police Department office space. 00:14:13
The challenge right now is that there's not any space for. 00:14:17
At least. 00:14:22
Privacy to. 00:14:23
Process anybody that they may pick up or if they have someone they need to sort of decompress and talk to or that there's really 00:14:25
not a room unless you take somebody's office up. 00:14:29
But the real need is really if we had a victim or someone that needed to have some space, there's really not anywhere for them to 00:15:08
be unless they're in someone's office, so. 00:15:12
So those are the two requests we are asking for. That's a total of 23,000. 00:15:16
On the operating side, a lot of these reflect things that the council has asked for. One in particular is the downtown development 00:15:22
director. 00:15:26
We did. We did some estimate and I'm not sure that's a great estimate, but we're hopeful that we could get someone in here for six 00:15:30
months and we could provide hopefully some space for them potentially down downtown is what we would hope for. But if need to need 00:15:37
be, we set them up here until we can get that figured out. You know computer, all the kind of things you need to get started for 00:15:44
about $57,000 that would be starting someone in January through June, so just quarters 3:00 and 4:00. 00:15:51
We are also at that time in order to stay. 00:16:00
To stay up to date with pay and classification, we are as of this month, I believe this month the pay studies now four years old 00:16:05
and so it needs to be refreshed and updated. Of course there's been lots of changes in the in the marketplace and we did get an 00:16:12
estimate, I got an estimate about 12-5 about 5-6 months ago from Condrey and Associates, the ones who did the original. 00:16:19
And I bumped it up a little bit because I figured it just it's going to be more by the time we get around to doing it. So 00:16:27
somewhere between 12, five and $15,000 to do this refresh to the pay and classification study. 00:16:32
We talked a little bit about the housing development. Again those are permit expenses. We assume that we'll have the 67% we have 00:16:39
to pay of the revenues that come in on the on the permit fees, want to pay those to Bureau Veritas and then we have legal 00:16:44
engineering expenses. And I've been trying to really be mindful Lee and all my staff members mindful about trying to do a full 00:16:50
cost accounting so that at any point if y'all ask, hey what does it actually cost to run housing, you know planning, I can tell 00:16:56
you. 00:17:02
Because I put all the way anything associated with that's legal, that deals with housing development. 00:17:07
You know, I can tell you that we're, you know, I'm putting Joe's time to that and put marks time to that, whatever so that we have 00:17:13
a clear accounting of that. So we have monies in there that pay for for Joe and for for our city attorney and our city engineer. 00:17:21
Cost of living adjustment. 00:17:29
So I have proposed that everyone get a $5000 cost of living across the board and part of the reason I talked to my staff, my 00:17:31
department heads about it and we all felt that that was a more fair way to do it than a percentage because we've got a fair number 00:17:39
of people below the $40,000 mark or so who wouldn't see as much of an increase. It's it's also copying what the university did and 00:17:47
you know and I was trying to get a sense of I think Clark County was doing 6 or 7% across the board, which was not, you know. 00:17:55
They're not doing a flat rate, they're just doing a percentage which benefits people on the higher end of the salary range than on 00:18:03
the lower. 00:18:06
We have had only non merit salary increases. We had what we had a cost of living increase. 00:18:10
2019, I guess, and then 2020? 00:18:19
To last year 20/20/21, sorry. 00:18:22
In July of last year there was a two, I think it was a 2%. 00:18:26
I think it was a 2% last year. 00:18:29
To divvy out that so and I'm working right now on phase two of that effort and I did send some information to council Members 00:19:04
Massey and Garrett since they're on the personnel and Finance Committee. 00:19:10
And hope that after I get back from vacation, we can sit down talk about that some too. So I keep them up to speed with how that's 00:19:15
going. 00:19:19
Medical and dental insurance costs did go up. That works out to about $9700 in additional expenses this year based on the. 00:19:24
Based on how much the council covers for staff. 00:19:33
So police. So this is a big one. So police. 00:19:37
We did see an increase but it's it's it is skewed and that's why I want to I want to talk about this a little bit Chief. If you 00:19:41
have something you want to say let me know. We'll you know I want to make sure you I cover this right. So the budget, the budgets 00:19:48
increase 221,000 but technically it hasn't the general fund budget has increased 221,000 because you. 00:19:55
Supplemented the budget last year with 100 and 3032 thousand from the American Rescue Plan. 00:20:02
Now, we have not actually moved any of that money out of American rescue plan yet. Lee's working on an estimate with Chief trying 00:20:07
to figure out how much we actually need because obviously he had some vacancies and he didn't need any. He hasn't needed the money 00:20:11
yet. 00:20:15
You know, a $51,000 difference between, you know, bringing in the full time person. The extra position that we only funded for six 00:20:51
months is now being funded at will be funded at 12 months. 00:20:56
Gasoline, we're estimating that's going to go up 35% and somebody told me that it's more like 40. 00:21:03
You know, we're, you know, we're going to try to do our best not. 00:21:08
Not to use more gas than we need to use, but but we're just trying to go with the information we have right now and roughly we're 00:21:12
looking at about 35% increase in fuel contract labor. So this is something that I think is really important. 00:21:19
Figure out how much we really need somebody. I mean I don't think it makes sense to go hire a full time person until we figure 00:21:57
out, you know, how much you know, capacity we need and and it could be that that person could pick up on some other aspects of the 00:22:02
of the Police Department you know? 00:22:07
As well as the attack with this funding. So why don't you explain a little bit and use your mic, Yeah, to let everybody know. 00:22:13
About the tack, please. So Terminal Terminal Aging Coordinator handles everything GC I see. 00:22:20
Georgia Crime Information Computer. 00:22:31
So we have the court has the need to enter information from court dates they've got time frame that they have to meet. 00:22:34
There are validations that have to occur from the warrants and information that we have put in the system if we have items of 00:22:45
information that are in the system as stolen or people that are wanted. 00:22:50
There's validations that have to occur on a routine. 00:22:56
So currently those are being, you know, managed and handled by. 00:23:01
Lee Black and as you can just heard she carries a lot of weight and and and hats around the agency. So having an additional person 00:23:06
to pick up some of the burden from her for the court services and pick up the tasking of being an assistant tack would be 00:23:14
beneficial and necessary because again that was one of the that was one of the Dings we got in our inspection is that I, she the 00:23:22
the, the inspector said she's overloaded she can't be doing that all by herself. 00:23:30
We need to put somebody else, we need to find somebody else to fill some billets, so that that's essential, but I assure you 00:23:38
between the work that she has currently and the work that I have pending and ongoing. 00:23:45
We got way more than 40 hours of work for a person, so this part time position is going to. 00:23:53
They need to come in and run it. That's all I got to say. 00:24:00
Any questions? 00:24:03
OK. 00:24:06
The the other highlights of the expenses and operating expenses are OCAF, they are requesting $7500 this year. You guys are 00:24:10
generous and inviting them to come talk to you about what their needs are that are over and above what they can do on their own. 00:24:16
And so they're asking for 7500 and I believe they're going to leave it up to you as to whether or not it's a mural, A sculpture or 00:24:23
both, depending on what they can work out if that funding is provided, the library funding. 00:24:30
Includes the $30,000 that the council had agreed to in the Library Services Agreement. Technically, we're not. 00:24:37
I don't think we've we haven't actually hit the 30,000. We're only a couple $100 shy of it. I pulled the information this 00:24:45
afternoon on what we were told, Allen. 00:24:50
Allen Skinner at the tax assessor's office told us they were assessing that property at as of January 1 of this year. Because 00:24:56
remember, that's how we're looking at things. Whatever was assessed in January 1 will come in and fiscal year 23, sorry, January 1 00:25:01
of 2022 will come in in fiscal year 23, so. 00:25:06
But we're close enough. So we put $30,000 in there and that is an increase of almost $15,000 over what you've given before. And 00:25:13
that was, you know, intentional. 00:25:17
And then the fire department, again very generous and asking, allowing them to come forward and ask for for funding. And they have 00:25:22
asked for the same amount of funding they asked for last year, which was $14,000. 00:25:27
Again, just a visual of by percentage by money where where your money goes. So 34% police and public works were sort of identified 00:25:35
that. 00:25:40
And then general government, obviously it takes, you know, there's lots of stuff going on trying to keep and that includes the 00:25:47
building and everything else too. So it's not just people actually the cost of maintaining the. 00:25:53
And then bet on the people side, I think it's important. So you know governments don't work with just computers. They hadn't any 00:25:59
people, you know to use them. They don't work with lawn mowers and not people on them. So over half of the budget is personnel. If 00:26:06
you add in the fact that we also contract for labor outside of that, including our city attorney, Bill Veritas and our city 00:26:13
engineer, you're looking at basically 72% of what we do as people. So I think that's important to to note. 00:26:19
As you look at this. 00:26:27
So balancing the budget, a 5% increase and I think I probably could have been a little bit, a little bit less conservative on 00:26:29
that. But I always worry about saying you're going to get money you don't get. So I'm a little bit more conservative about it, But 00:26:36
about $113,000 increase over fiscal year 22. On your general fund operating expenses, there's a 14% increase over what was 00:26:43
approved in FY22. Including the capital, you're looking at a revenue shortfall just a little bit more than $200,000. 00:26:50
To put it in perspective a little bit, you do have and this was. 00:27:00
Intentional and I think. 00:27:06
Decision on your part was to go ahead and restrict the fund balance. Set aside a half $1,000,000 which is about 3 months worth of 00:27:09
funding in case everything. 00:27:13
To heck in a handbasket, you've got three months to operate operating funds. 00:27:17
You also have an unreserved fund balance of 1.2 million that does not include the 210,000 that we anticipate will potentially be 00:27:22
needed if there's an overage on the sewer line. 00:27:28
Fall of next year? 00:28:08
So you run behind the curve here a little bit. So I just keep that in mind and whatever decisions you make, just know that we're 00:28:09
trying to do a little bit of a catch up. 00:28:14
It is very common. Lots of governments do it. Lots of big governments do it. Lots of little governments do it to use your fund 00:28:20
balance to, you know, to balance your budget. 00:28:23
Your funding reserves to balance your budget. When I was in Clark County that I think every year I was there as a commissioner 00:28:29
they did it every year and you know and then there's years when you don't you don't and you put the money in the bank you know so. 00:28:34
The. 00:28:42
The one thing I do want to point out, I don't know if I I know I didn't put it in. 00:28:43
I think it's important to note, I mentioned this today at the after our meeting. I think it's important to note that the American 00:28:48
rescue plan y'all may remember I drilled into your head over and over how you could use the American Rescue Plan money. You could 00:28:55
use it four ways, right. You could use it to mitigate COVID, use it for water, sewer, broadband you could use it for. 00:29:02
And now I'm trying to think the revenue loss and then there's a fourth one that all of a sudden escapes because I'm sitting here 00:29:10
trying to think of it. But the revenue loss when they initially, when the US Treasury initially offered that as an option, they 00:29:16
created a formula and they had us go back and calculate from 2017 through 2020 what our revenues would have been, right. 00:29:23
And had we stuck with that and the US Treasury hadn't offered, offered the city and other communities the opportunity to just take 00:29:29
that, you know, and use it however you want, up to a certain amount of money, we would have had $230,000 because that's how much 00:29:35
they said we lost. 00:29:40
In revenues in one year as a result of COVID. 00:29:46
So when you look at, when you look at the the number here that we're talking about coming up out of out of fund balance, I mean 00:29:49
basically. 00:29:53
We probably would have had that, have we not had COVID, we probably would have seen a lot of that. We might actually be in a 00:29:57
positive situation at this point, so. 00:30:01
Could have, should have. You know, who knows, right? But but I think, I think realistically this is a this is a good number. I 00:30:07
don't think that you know you're talking. 00:30:11
Moving your fund balance down to $1,000,000 roughly. 00:30:16
And. 00:30:20
That's still a significant amount of money. You guys don't have any debt. 00:30:22
That's a big deal. So something to think about. That's really my presentation. I don't know if there's any specific questions. 00:30:25
About, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of questions, but if there's anything specific about what I just said about the ARP, I'm 00:30:34
happy to answer that too. Yeah, I'll meet. You know I'm just going to put a finer point on a couple things Sharon said, but I 00:30:40
think thank you Sharon that was a great presentation. A couple things that do drive this. You know Sharon mentioned you know the 00:30:46
assessments lag and you know so you got to remember for project is is valuable as Wire Park or Wisteria Ridge, you know we're the 00:30:51
revenues we get this year. 00:30:57
Based on what Commissioner Skinner and his team assess that as as of January 1st this year. 00:31:04
But you got to remember we're going to be, you know those are going to be fully loaded and impacting the city this fall and we're 00:31:10
going to have to serve and take care of those projects. So that's across the board. Those assessments lag a little bit. So that's 00:31:16
pretty significant. Sharon did outline, we have the ongoing loss conversation going on with the county that you could impact these 00:31:21
numbers somewhat and I think the other thing is we have a history of. 00:31:27
Careful budgeting in Watkinsville and Sharon alluded to it, but I think it's really important to remember it because I've been 18 00:31:33
years of this. I've seen it happen time and time again. 00:31:36
We fully load the expense. 00:31:40
And we're conservative, but we're careful on the revenue side. So I've seen us say several times that they were probably gonna 00:31:43
have to hit the fund balance. We get to the end of the year, nobody really comes back and circles back and says, oh look, we put 00:31:47
$30,000 in the bank. 00:31:52
Julie can probably remember 5 or 10 times off the top of her head when we've done that because we have to, but we have to balance 00:31:56
it to 0 or we'll use the revenue, we'll use the. 00:32:00
The surplus, you know to get to 0 and then by the end of the year you look at the numbers and because of the way we budget, it 00:32:05
usually turns out not to be the impact that we thought. In fact, if you look at this year's budget, I don't think I'm speaking out 00:32:11
of turn to say it's trending the same way. You know, we used ARP funds in the budgeting process to offset some of those expenses. 00:32:16
If you go look at it right now, I don't think we. 00:32:21
Dumped ARP funds into the budget and it's pretty much. 00:32:26
It's. 00:32:30
Yeah. So it's but it's trending, it's trending right at 0 so. So we have a, we have a history there and then you know just big 00:32:32
picture, the reality is we all understand this. The city's in an interesting point and it's evolution, right. There's there's a 00:32:37
lot of unique things that are happening and to some degree. 00:32:42
We're going to have to wait for if we want to serve those projects and serve our citizens, we're going to have to wait for some of 00:32:48
that, some of the benefits of that to catch up to us. So that was kind of my thinking is we took a hard look at this and. 00:32:56
You know, but I'm going to stop talking and leave plenty of time for you guys to ask your questions and have a discussion about 00:33:04
this. 00:33:07
Make sure you use your mic if you speak please. 00:33:15
Well, I'm just going to kind of echo what Brian said when we started this and just think is that Sharon, you and Julie primarily 00:33:17
that ran all the numbers. 00:33:22
And and Lee me. 00:33:27
Thank you guys the the amount of detail that you put into this. 00:33:29
I mean down to how much we are paying monthly per computer for our security and maintenance. I mean there I don't think anyone can 00:33:36
say that there is not full transparency going on here. So that was a tremendous amount of work and you have gone above and beyond 00:33:42
and I really, really appreciate that. Thank you. 00:33:48
Just curious the. 00:34:04
General government administration expense for $15,000. Is that something? Because every city does every four years. 00:34:07
What's so funny that you should ask? So former Councilwoman Marcy Campbell. 00:34:16
Did the original, did the original compensation pay study, actually part of me coming on, I came on right after it was adopted or 00:34:23
right around the time it was adopted and it is recommended because there are so many changes and obviously now it's like. 00:34:31
Absolutely necessary. So many changes in the marketplace that that it be updated and part of that is you know. 00:34:39
Push it five years and try to get it into the next budget. 00:35:53
Making sure every. 00:35:58
A. 00:36:00
Somebody who's overseeing people who are doing the work, so, so that's part of it. 00:36:32
And I'm not questioning it, I'm just, I'm trying to learn exactly what it is. Thank you absolutely. 00:36:38
So. 00:36:47
Forgive me if I missed this in the vast quantities of data we were presented with, but the the contracts we have for garbage and 00:36:50
for leaf and limb. 00:36:55
When do those go through and how are they going to be affected? 00:37:01
At the huge amount of growth that we have coming down the Pike, right. OK. So first question is the contract we have right now, I. 00:37:06
Technically expires the end of next fiscal year, so fiscal year 23 in June of next year. 00:37:16
And. 00:37:24
That there is AI believe it's a one year Julie, remind me is it one or two. I think we have two one year extensions I think is how 00:37:26
it works. They can, they can obviously ask for it to extend if you want to extend they can also say let's say fuels up 20% they 00:37:32
can ask for and you would have to you know negotiate that under that term. 00:37:38
Right now the city pays $19.82 per household. I think we have 13141 houses I think or some so. So when we add Trove or any of them 00:37:46
we will, we will have to add them and we will have to update our number with them. So we haven't done that yet because I mean I 00:37:53
think we're looking at maybe 15 houses in the next year maybe technically I mean and I'm not really 100% sure if you know because 00:38:00
all 56 are going to get built from what I understand maybe they will, but I always. 00:38:07
Assume the worst case. So we know at least 15 are going to get built here, probably maybe even triggered by 1st of July or so, but 00:38:15
Trove and then you know we've got a splatter in a few other houses here and there. We're not impacted by what will happen with 00:38:22
Waters Walk or Wisteria Ridge or even Water Park until we get to the single family homes on water park and that's out. 00:38:29
A little bit. So the way it would work is, you know, on it. We we're very honest. We let them know, hey, but we need them picked 00:38:37
up. So we're like, hey, we've got 15 more houses on, you know, Colin Ferry, please go pick them up and they add it to our bill and 00:38:42
then that'll change them. 00:38:47
So it'll come back this time next year. In fact, it'll be part of the budget. We'll have to address that. But that also answers to 00:38:52
the condominiums and townhomes in Wire Park. 00:38:56
I didn't think the apartment, I think they have like a dog trying to go back and look at the plan. I think they have like an open 00:39:01
like a dumpster or something. But no, it's not a, it's not a single family home type. And that then I mean I know that's a very 00:39:07
tiny detail for talking about 15 homes at $19.00 or whatever. I mean that's not huge in our budget, but it does. It's another 00:39:12
thing that goes to what Brian was talking about that we're going to start paying for things. 00:39:17
Before we're not going. 00:39:23
Property taxes really from those properties for probably a year and a half. So we're talking about you know that amount of money 00:39:25
that we are paying every month for these homes that we're not seeing so. 00:39:31
To me, that is another reason. 00:39:37
Budgeting some fund balance makes a little bit of sense. Just fiscally this is an unusual time that we're in. Well, just remember, 00:39:41
you know, the property taxes, the round numbers of a 1982 * * 12, I think it's 240, Sharon said. The, you know, the. 00:39:49
You know the, I mean you're getting, you know that that's going to eat up most of the property taxes that we get right out of the 00:39:58
gate. You know, you throw in whatever leaf and limb costs on top of that, so. 00:40:03
That's all OK, that's in 1982 included. But anyway, basically trash and leaf and limb are going to pick up depending on the price 00:40:09
of the house. 00:40:13
You know all to half of the cost of every home in Watkinsville and that's why these other and I like the fact that we have a 00:40:17
diverse revenue stream. I think that's really important. But it also you know begs the question of you know we've I'm thankful 00:40:23
that we've been able to reduce the mileage rate over the years, but we're probably at a point where we're going to have to. 00:40:30
We need to press pause on that, so we. 00:40:36
You know what growing grow into that. So there may be others who want to discuss that, but context is important. When we're 00:40:39
talking about these property taxes, people see a tax increase, they think 16% of their total bill. It's not 16% of their total 00:40:45
bill, it's 16% compared to the Watkinsville portion of the bill, which is sharing said for someone with a $200,000 house, that's a 00:40:50
$26 increase per year. 00:40:56
So again, I want to echo Christine, I think you all do a phenomenal job. I mean, I spent, I don't know, two or three days. 00:41:04
Staring at Excel spreadsheets and went cross eyed multiple times. 00:41:12
But you know, so my question. 00:41:19
You know, and I know we're in weird times right now, you know, I'm staying at 137,308. 00:41:22
Dollar deficit? 00:41:28
Is how? 00:41:31
Without going into the fund balance, how can we, how do we make that up? I mean, me personally, I'd rather use the fund balance. 00:41:32
Paris Hills Park. 00:41:41
I know, I know. We got people's money, my money, your money, all of our money sitting in a in a savings account right now. 00:41:44
How do we? 00:41:52
Better use that money other than not balancing our budget. 00:41:54
Using it for that. 00:41:59
Just, I mean that's essentially we're not able to balance our budget. So we're going to steal from. 00:42:00
From our savings account, Well, I would say that. 00:42:06
Personally, as a householder, I want to have a balanced budget, as I'm sure all of us do. 00:42:13
Umm, but I would say a big difference is for most of us, well, I'm actually a little bit of an exception. I really have no idea 00:42:21
what my what I'm going to make every year, but most of us have a salary and you know what you're going to make and you're able to 00:42:26
budget accordingly and I would say. 00:42:31
We, I mean they do a great job of protecting and looking at trends and looking at, but things happen and so I guess I am not, even 00:42:36
though I'm super conservative when it comes to spending other people's money or my own money. 00:42:43
Because we have trended so much to actually underestimating our revenue. 00:42:51
I am not as worried about this between that and the fact that we are at this really unusual time of growth where we're not going 00:42:58
to really see the benefits. 00:43:04
Of those taxes, and for at least another fiscal year, maybe even halfway through. 00:43:11
To me where I would get concerned and and I mean we've we've been talking about this like what are what are revenue stream 00:43:20
options. I I think if we actually do pull annually a couple $100,000 from our fund balance year after year, that's a problem. And 00:43:28
that I mean something's got to give either spending categories have to go and it would have to be categories it's not. 00:43:36
I am so impressed at how frugal this government is run. I love Chief and his deals like it just brings me joy to my little Scotch 00:43:44
Irish heart. But I. 00:43:50
But the reality is if it is, I mean think about, you know your kids going to college, you might incur a little bit of debt because 00:43:57
you're looking at a long term thing. If we're doing something like that, we're not even talking about debt. We have the money 00:44:03
sitting there on the savings account. Sometimes you have to spend a little bit in order to get where you want to go. But if if 00:44:09
this became a trend or we lost major revenue sources or they weren't what they needed to be, then we're going to have to look, we 00:44:15
would have to look hard I think at. 00:44:21
Trimming services because what else can you do? But I don't. I I'm not so worried about this year, not trying to kick the can down 00:44:27
the road, but I have yet to really see this huge draw from our fund balance. So that's just my perspective and. 00:44:35
I mean. 00:44:42
Not saying there is a trend, but we're going to pull 200,000 or so this year from it. 00:44:43
And I mean then we're protecting 137,000 next year. 00:44:50
37 years I'm about next year projected that's the that was the over budget so you got the the from last year was. 00:44:57
And say what are you looking at? I just did something I thought that was the number you said was 137,000 something somewhere 00:45:07
around that number over budget. 00:45:11
I could be completely off base, I just did some. 00:45:16
No. OK. Well, scratch all of that then. 00:45:20
Because I think it changes your point. Yeah. So your point's a fair one. It's, you know, is it wiser to use? 00:45:24
Fund balance, I mean it's like running a business, right. We have to absolutely is now the moment to say we've been frugal, we've 00:45:30
saved, is it wise to use a little bit of those funds as it do we need to push revenue right, which we have really one level we can 00:45:34
push? 00:45:38
At this moment, you know, we all know what that is, you know? 00:45:43
Or do we go back and you know trim expenses further, that's what this conversation absolutely. 00:45:48
Should be about, you know, is you know, and how does that affect the services that our citizens are? 00:45:54
That they want or that they're looking for. And I wish the number you said there was a number that we're projecting over budget. I 00:45:59
couldn't find it. And so I did some math and apparently my math is wrong. 00:46:05
The the 210,456 is projected for the 2023 fiscal year. What is it actually what was projected last year? Well did we project it 00:46:11
was not in the fund bounces was was in the a, a. 00:46:20
The ARPA is what you use. 00:46:29
Oh, maybe that. Well, so you balance the budget last year using ARPA money, OK, which makes sense from what you were saying that 00:46:34
we. 00:46:38
And technically, y'all, could you could do that again? I mean, look, y'all I mean look, is it in the ARP bucket is in the fund 00:46:44
balance bucket. They're both buckets of money. And you know, I hate to talk about buckets of money, but they're both buckets of 00:46:48
money and both of them have, are unrestricted, OK. 00:46:53
My, my general thought would be, based on how the US Treasury presented ARPA, was it supposed to be transformative? You should use 00:46:59
that money for transformative projects. You used it for Harden Hill to fit, you know, finish out that project, you know, do what 00:47:03
it's supposed to be doing, and it's doing it. 00:47:08
They want you to use it. You can use it however you want. There's no restrictions, but obviously they would love to see you use it 00:48:13
in a transformative way. Maybe that's to help finish some of the the the playground, you know, the the hair shells park project, 00:48:19
Maybe it's to, you know, work on maybe some other projects that are nearby. So, but yeah, So what A couple things I do want to 00:48:24
bring up since you mentioned it. 00:48:30
Or you were talking about some of the extent. So we all being very conservative. First of all, we are not including any revenues 00:48:37
that we anticipate will come from Costco once they're open. I did talk to Courtney Bernardi, she indicated that she thought it 00:48:43
might be September, October, if there are any supply chain issues when it would be open. I haven't been over there to look, but I 00:48:49
I believe didn't somebody say they paved, they'd already paved the area which was something they were waiting on so. 00:48:55
But at 8% if that's where we land and. 00:49:02
30 days. 00:49:41
A month 3 restaurants that currently serve. I think we figured for but on three restaurants that serve distilled. 00:49:42
Spirits. That's $13150 a month for those 3 * 12 months is $16,000. 00:49:48
So there's a way, you know, that's a syntax. You all know how those works. But so that's one way you could do it. You know, that's 00:49:54
that's money that we haven't figured in either. Now, you know, if you want to get into cutting, you got a downtown development 00:50:00
director. We don't, you know, you don't really have a downtown program yet. Maybe, maybe you're getting, maybe that's too soon. 00:50:05
Maybe you push it to July. I mean that's $57,000 right there. 00:50:11
The I would not cut. I mean personally, because I know my staff. I wouldn't. I'm begging, please, not to change the pay 00:50:18
classification study or the cost of living adjustments. 00:50:22
Umm. 00:50:27
I don't think I underestimated fuel and I know I went by today and it was $4.00 a gallon, but I think we budgeted at four. Was it 00:51:03
440 or 430? I can't remember. I have to look at this line item. So we're still under that, but fuel may go up or down. Who knows, 00:51:10
you know, the state, if they decide to do, you know, relieve us of of, you know, relieve that price, that may help too, but. 00:51:17
You know you've got OCAF in the library. Of course library is a different animal but OCAF and then you've got the $23,000 to do 00:51:26
some work in the in the building. So you know you do. There are some options. Some I don't like it all others, you know I think 00:51:31
you could you know could move the needle on so. 00:51:37
I will just say that when it comes to. 00:51:43
I mean, you have the pulse on the staff and we know that we are in an era where. 00:51:47
That it is hard to get and keep good employees and we also know. 00:51:54
I mean, I know personally just from having a business that hiring someone and training someone is expensive and so retaining staff 00:52:00
is. 00:52:05
Even if you have to pay a little more money to retain the staff that. 00:52:10
I agree with you, basically. I don't think we should cut that. I think we need to make sure our people are taken care of. 00:52:15
I think the other thing to think about on that is, you know, in an area like the Police Department for example, when you are short 00:52:23
on people, all of a sudden that can kick you into overtime, kicks you into tricky areas where all of a sudden not only are you 00:52:27
having to pay people more, it's less likely you're going to keep people when we're already asking a lot of our officers and then 00:52:32
all of a sudden. 00:52:36
Take care of our Take care of talented people if we want to keep them. Otherwise we're dealing with what you're talking about, 00:53:45
which is we're dealing with turnover that affects the services that are provided. 00:53:49
You know, to our, to our residents and frankly, the impression our community makes when people visit. 00:53:53
I'm also going to make the. 00:54:03
The argument that we should keep the Downtown Development Authority on there I. 00:54:06
Just going to the cities we've gone to and speaking with them. 00:54:15
They have made such a difference to their their communities and they do things and I mean by definition, roles that. 00:54:21
The city of Watkinsville can't do that, the staff can't do that and they even if you have time, which you don't by any means. 00:54:27
We are at such a pivotal time in our community and I think we need to. 00:54:34
Wire Park is phenomenal and is a great thing for our community. But I also, it's really important to me that we Foster and 00:54:41
encourage our downtown corridor and whatever that includes and. 00:54:48
So that's why I think right now it really is essential to have this position to help walk beside our downtown business owners, 00:54:56
building owners, show them that we are here to support them and to continue to transform the city into what we know. 00:55:04
It can be so. I 100% agree with you. I just happened to meet Miss Curtis. Our tourism. 00:55:14
Lady up at in the Welcome Center the other day at Rotary Club. 00:55:23
I think you know this is just a really random thought, but is is there a way that we could maybe work with her to be? 00:55:27
You know, hire her to be our downtown development authority. Is that possible? 00:55:39
Gonna steal it from your job. 00:55:45
Like, I'm not. I'm not trying to take. I'm not trying to take her away from that job at all. But. 00:55:48
But but like let her work. I mean she already is doing the job. She's already working with the business owner. She's already 00:55:54
working with the. So I will, I will say she has been on the committee that we have been on as we've been doing this and. 00:56:00
Her plate as is Courtney's play that the chamber is already very full and so I think she will be a good resource for that person 00:56:07
but and she has lots of great ideas but unfortunately I may not speak for her but I'm speaking for her I I. 00:56:15
Think that's very unlikely. I think there's also a certain background in that position in in real estate and community development 00:56:24
that's that's that's really interesting and Christine made a great point you know we're about to have. 00:56:29
Significant moment when Wire Park opens that we're going to have a level of visitors to Watkinsville that I tell people all the 00:56:35
time. I'm like, I think it's going to be the biggest thing for the community's brand since Southwire opened. You know, just 00:56:41
because it's it's going to have a similar level of visitation and impact, but. 00:56:46
You know we we want it. We still want a barbell effect, right? We want wire part to be strong. We need downtown to be strong. Then 00:56:52
we've got to build that bar, right. You barbell doesn't work if you have a 10 LB. Bar connecting. 00:56:58
Even though we visited Wire Park when we turned that corner by Town Center and it was lunchtime and he's like, there's people out 00:58:03
there eating, there's multiple restaurants, there's people walking and people see that, you know, you they realize they're in a 00:58:08
special community because it's not either or it's yes and you know when they come to Watkinsville and but I think we're going to 00:58:12
have to, you know. 00:58:17
The community branding is a part of that. Our infrastructure and signage and then supporting the florists, the small business 00:58:23
owners, the others who have been here for decades, frankly we got to do, we got to continue to do that. 00:58:29
Are there are there any changes I? 00:58:41
At this point anyway, and obviously don't feel like you know you guys remember we're going to have more meetings on this. So if 00:58:45
you want to propose a change or if you want to say could you look at X or Y? This is probably a good time to do that so we don't 00:58:49
have to hard code a change right now. But if you want to say, I'd love to see what would happen if. 00:58:54
You know, this is a good time because we're going to have another budget hearing. We can we can do that, right? Well, so. 00:59:00
We have one if needed next Thursday that I will be out of town. So we may have to move that if y'all want to have another one 00:59:06
until the 1st of June. But but you do have the final budget here in his June 15th. I mean if you want to wait that long, if you 00:59:11
want to have something in between, we can certainly you know we can share you know if there's something you you're just interested 00:59:16
in seeing. I think you'd mentioned something. I've already actually run some numbers on some of the other stuff you mentioned 00:59:20
earlier, so we can. 00:59:25
You know, we can run it and but y'all look at it. So if somebody or so if you want to say look at this or if you want to say, hey, 00:59:30
here's a specific proposal I'd like to make, then go ahead and let's, let's. Yeah, on the table because the last thing we need to 00:59:35
do is be suggesting stuff on June 1st, right. Absolutely. You know, so you know and and just. 00:59:40
Because we don't know what's going to happen with LOST not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but we don't know what's going 00:59:46
to happen with Lost. And don't throw the mayor under the bus doing the best you can here. So you know, I know we're talking about 00:59:53
not rolling back the military. I'd like to at least see what it looks like. 01:00:00
Add to the modes rate just slightly. Just just run some numbers, see what that looks like. 01:00:07
You know, I don't. I don't know if. 01:00:13
A slight increase is even beneficial. 01:00:16
I don't, I don't know what that looks like so I did. So I will share. I don't have it on the screen to show you, but I can share 01:00:19
that Iran some some numbers. Right now the mileage rate that's being recommended is 2.08162 dollars and eight cents for every 01:00:25
$1000 of assessed property value, which would increase. 01:00:31
Someone that has a home value of 200,000 would increase to 20 their taxes, property tax by 2627 dollars 2699, so 27 dollars. 01:00:38
If you were to go to a 2.2 mileage rate. 01:00:47
The same home would actually see an increase of $36.27. 01:00:51
And if you went to 2.5, the same home would see an increase of $60.00, basically $59.67. 01:01:00
Obviously, what's the downstream? So what's the downstream sharing of that number in terms of? 01:01:11
So right now at 2.081 you're generating $403,849. At 2.2 you generate 426,000, which is 426, nine 42. 01:01:18
Which is an increase of 90,000 over last year. At 2.5 it would generate 485,000, which is 148,000 over last year. 01:01:30
So rather than you begin to see how that would then take away from the amount of fund balance that you anticipate. 01:01:41
Using so you know that gives you a feel for what you're talking about there. 01:01:48
Now, not to not to put everybody into the water, but we do have to advertise a week prior to at least seven days prior, which 01:01:52
means I have to have an ad to the paper by June 2nd. 01:01:57
If the mileage rate is going to be anything different than what you've got right now. 01:02:03
Yeah, and I'm out of town next week, so I have two days this week, and. 01:02:06
Yeah. No, obviously I'm not for raising taxes. You know, I don't want my taxes to go up any either, but you know. 01:02:11
I don't know. We got to figure a way to balance the budget and you know, I I know that. 01:02:23
We're we're pulling from our fund balance. 01:02:30
I don't know, it's just something to think about. 01:02:34
Well, I mean, if we look at the fact. 01:02:36
The property taxes on a lot of homes don't even cover the cost of. 01:02:40
Garbage and leaf and. 01:02:46
I mean that. 01:02:48
Is significant. So I see where you're coming from. I mean, you kind of think, you know, that the people who are getting those 01:02:50
services should pay for those services in a sense. My concern though is my just my caveat with this is we do have some residents 01:02:56
who've been in the community for a long time. 01:03:01
That are already looking at tax hikes that are on fixed incomes and. 01:03:08
The cost of living increase from their Social Security check is. 01:03:14
Even going to touch what inflation is doing, I mean when I go to the grocery store and something that was $3 is now $4.00 and I'm 01:03:18
buying 100 things a week, that adds up to a lot of money and fortunately I don't have a fixed income. And so it's it's OK, I can 01:03:25
feed my family, but I just don't want us to in any way be a part of and and I don't know how to balance that because we are in a 01:03:31
pretty affluent. 01:03:37
Community where, OK, let's, you know, let's have people pay for it. So I don't know if there's some way. I know some communities 01:03:44
do it by age. 01:03:49
But I hope a lot of people move here to be near their children who are no longer who are older and they are very fine financially. 01:03:53
So I also I don't know if we should do it that way as we are getting a lot of people coming into our community who are older, who 01:03:59
are fine financially so. 01:04:05
I don't. I don't know if it's worth the headache for the $20 difference to even come up with some kind of formula for people to 01:04:12
have a hardship case or anyway. So I just threw out a lot of ideas that are a little complicated but that I see both sides too. 01:04:20
I know you're throwing out a good round Number of 200,000, but there are very few of those, probably in Watkinsville. 01:04:28
Very few $200,000 house, but I will tell you, God bless the tax assessor because we are all doing just fine by the valuations he's 01:04:36
given to our homes when I have clients who are like. 01:04:41
Buyers who are like put the tax assessor says it's worth blah blah blah and I just laugh because. 01:04:48
You know homes are selling for way more than where they're even even if two as the tax assessments go up. So I bet on our our 01:04:54
rolls, what is it called our digest that we have a lot of homes that probably are assessed at 200,000. I mean I think there is 01:04:59
actually a fair number of those homes. 01:05:05
Well, I'm not. I think if we're interested in exploring increasing the mileage rate any further, I do think now we need at least 01:05:15
three people to indicate they're interested in that otherwise. 01:05:20
I've heard what Councilman Thomas has said, but we've got to give direction to the staff on that. So I would suggest if if there's 01:05:25
three of you who are in favor of that, speak now because we need to go ahead and indicate that to them. 01:05:30
If not, then I think it's. 01:05:37
The the staff isn't military. It's just harder to manage, right. They can tweak other elements of the budget before before the 01:05:40
next meeting and say, OK, here's some other levers we can do. We can explore the excise tax, we can do some of these other things. 01:05:44
But. 01:05:47
Much remember that numbers. 01:05:52
The increase isn't gigantic, you know, so we're talking about it moving from anywhere from $23,000 to $82,000 based on what she 01:05:54
said. There's other places that that amount of money could come from if we're interested in offset. So if there's three of you who 01:05:59
are interested in pushing it any further. 01:06:05
You'll need to speak up other than Brett. If not, then I think we need to give them some direction to say OK. 01:06:11
We'd love to see us get the fund balance hit down to X because it sounds like that's where you're going Brad as you just maybe 01:06:18
don't don't want any of it, but probably would want to reduce it. And then we can let them do some homework and come back to OK, 01:06:24
this is what it looks like if if we're going to chase getting the fund balance down to 150 or something like that, right that this 01:06:30
is this is our suggestion for how we do that. I think that's the kind of guidance we need to give them or. 01:06:36
Because the mileage is just that's messier to get into. OK, so if there's anybody else who wants to do that, I'd ask you to speak 01:06:43
up now. 01:06:46
If not, we need to, you know, we need to volunteer any other comments that we have and then we're going to need to wrap up because 01:06:49
we're going to need to get set before our next meeting, so. 01:06:54
So please speak up if you're interested in pushing mileage. If you're not, then we can talk about, you know, option B, which is 01:07:00
let's see some other ways to skinny that up and then we'll we'll make a decision on that, OK. 01:07:05
Yeah, I mean, I like the keeping it where it is, especially with so many new projects coming online, you know, in a year's time 01:07:12
housing whatnot will have. 01:07:17
Taxes on the books, if you will, And then and then look. 01:07:22
You know, a year from now is my thought. Even keeping it where it is brings in. 01:07:26
Should increase. 01:07:32
What? 01:07:35
16% or $67,000 brings in to the city over a year. So my thoughts are keeping at the same mileage rate. Look at it again next year 01:07:36
and see if these new properties coming. 01:07:42
Because the city's rapidly changing from. 01:07:49
The number of citizens. 01:07:53
So. 01:07:56
I would. My inclination is to leave it where it is. You know, maybe we're lucky in a year, 2 years from now we could lower it 01:07:56
because of the tax base. 01:08:00
Has come up so much with the new housing and other developments. 01:08:05
I haven't said a thing down there. Do you have anything you care to add, Chuck or Connie? 01:08:14
Make it look a little bit rosier than it does right now. I'm just very, very fiscally conservative on that. The other is the 01:09:37
excise liquor by the drink. Is there an interest in US? 01:09:41
Look, going after that because if so that's a line on that we could also. 01:09:46
Add and address and that would have to come for council next month. That's something that doesn't have as far as I know. That 01:09:51
would start immediately. You know when after you if you approved it. We maybe start July 1st or something, but where's the hotel 01:09:57
motel You actually have to start like the month after you approve it? 01:10:02
Anyway, there's a rule about that. So that would be July 1, but. 01:10:09
I I mean, I'm for definitely exploring it. 01:10:13
Especially as we're about to have, I'm assuming the many of the establishments at Wire Park are going to be serving. 01:10:16
Spirits. And so it makes sense to have that already in. 01:10:22
Before they get started. 01:10:27
A tender agree. 01:10:32
OK. OK. So we'll make some adjustments on the revenue side also on. 01:10:34
The expense I will have my staff go back through and just sort of. 01:10:39
Walk back through all this wonderful line items and see if there's anything we can do. 01:10:44
I never apologize for asking, asking folks to sharpen their pencils, right. I mean, you know, that's the same in my business is it 01:10:49
ought to be in government. Sharon and her team do that. They run it tight. But then that, you know, it never hurts to say go back 01:10:54
and take a look at that, double check it, see what we can do and you never know where you're going to find some savings. So that's 01:11:00
that's part of what we need to do as stewards of the taxpayer dollar. So which I know we will. 01:11:05
OK. Anything further? Anybody have any other comments? Sharon, do you need anything else from us at this point? I don't believe. 01:11:11
Well, I do need clarification if you if you intend to have another budget work session, we'll have to reschedule. It was scheduled 01:11:16
for next Thursday. 01:11:20
I won't be here and I kind of think I need to be here for that. So if you don't think you need another one, you know we will. 01:11:26
We'll refresh and we'll resend out an update the information and send you a short memo on what we did so that you'll know, but we 01:11:31
won't go through the whole, you know, this whole thing again. We'll just try to give you an update in the in the bottom line 01:11:36
numbers. 01:11:41
And we can get that to you. When I get back the first week of June, we'll do that. So you'll have it a Week 2, two weeks before 01:11:46
you have to make a decision. So your final hearing will be on June 15th, unless you decide you need to have something before that. 01:11:52
So if we I lean towards not having another work session. Personally, this was very, very thorough. 01:11:59
If. 01:12:07
If we get that information beginning of June and. 01:12:10
We're like, yes, I mean, I guess. 01:12:14
I guess I'm wondering practically, so we just would say, I mean what if you do do that and then would we just be replying by 01:12:18
e-mail those of us who like it or don't or is it so just amend it in the vote on and on the. 01:12:24
Yeah. I mean what we would do and we did this last year, it can, it can get kind of messy, but it's OK. The year before we did 01:12:30
this too, if you you may recall, we had Exhibit A that was a challenge. 01:12:35
But we we could, we could make the adjustments, you know, in real time. 01:12:41
We can look at that. I mean, I don't think there's anything on there that if we needed to push it out in order to give you guys 01:13:22
more, more time during a meeting, we could push to July, so. 01:13:25
Well, we have to have the mileage rate and the budget hearing, you know, June 15th, we have to have that finished, so. 01:13:30
All right. So I'm seeing no desire for another work session. We'll plan on seeing that documentation from you, Sharon. 01:13:37
Early June, if something changes or we need to shoot up some players, we can always call a meeting if we have to, but that's we 01:13:43
prefer to just have a nice streamline budget process, everybody can plan ahead, so. 01:13:48
OK. Then your next steps are outlined on the agenda in terms of what we we've got coming, We've all talked about, we've all talked 01:13:55
about that as well tonight. 01:14:00
Again, let me offer our thanks Sharon to you and your team for a very detailed budget process. Also want to thank you even though 01:14:06
it's not. 01:14:09
The easiest way to do it? Budgeting. Not so rosy. Budgeting very conservative and showing us a budget to a worst case scenario, 01:14:12
knowing that it's unlikely to be there. But planning that way I think is the right way to do it. So thank you to your team. 01:14:18
Unless there's anything else, we're going to wrap up and we are adjourned. Thank you. 01:14:25
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You don't actually call this mayor. You don't actually call this meeting to order because it's a work session. So this is a staff 00:00:02
meeting to bring you guys up to speed with what's going on. Chief, can you does it? Can you hear pretty well over the club? 00:00:08
All right. Well, it says I called to order. So we're going to call, we're going to call, we're going to call something to order 00:00:15
and then we're going to turn it over to you and Sharon 5:00. So it will take minutes. I guess that's why I said no, I get that 00:00:18
it's a different meeting, but we. 00:00:22
We're, if you don't mind, we're going to the agenda says call to order, So we're going to call it to order 5:00. 00:00:28
This is a work session, so we will. 00:00:36
You know, unless council determines otherwise, we don't anticipate public comment during this. We will have public comment during 00:00:39
the the hearing. 00:00:42
At the six 3630 meeting later on, but after with that Sharon, I'm going to turn it over to you in a minute, but I do think we've. 00:00:46
The budget is a. 00:00:56
This is a proposal. This is what Sharon and I have given to you guys, but it's a. 00:00:58
I'll say this, it's it's supposed to be an iterative process. 00:01:03
We want is it not working. 00:01:07
It is. It should be on. Guys, hang on. OK, so I'm seeing head shake. Can we see if this thing stream? I'm double checking. Give me 00:01:10
one SEC, OK? 00:01:13
Says it's. 00:01:19
It may be delayed a little bit, Julie. 00:01:21
OK. So it sounds like there's a little bit of, a little bit of a delay, but. 00:01:27
Yeah, it's like watching. It's like going back in time, Michael Prohaska just walked across the room on the screen. So anyway, I I 00:01:31
think the point of it is what's been given to you guys as outlined in our outline in our ordinances, in our charter is shared and 00:01:37
I have a responsibility to develop the budget. Council has a responsibility to review that budget and then we work through it 00:01:43
together and we land where we think is best to land for the city. So, Sharon? 00:01:49
Put in and her team put in hours and hours and hours of work. I also put in hours plural of work, but not nearly as many as they 00:01:56
did. 00:01:59
To generate this and that first one to start off by thanking you and your team for all the hard work that goes into. 00:02:03
Doing a budget and I want to thank you for your transparency and how you always handle this process and clearly outline. 00:02:09
What goes into it and producing all these documents and for continuing to take a zero based approach and how you tackle it. So 00:02:16
thank you Sharon for generating, generating a great proposal and with that I'm going to turn it over to you to walk us through the 00:02:21
budget and then council we will then have. 00:02:26
I think then we will then have discussion about it tonight after we. 00:02:32
After sharing reviews it. So I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Mayor. 00:02:37
So we always have budget goals. These are pretty self-explanatory. Obviously we want to provide efficient and effective services 00:02:42
to the public. We want to support our our employees that deliver those services. 00:02:48
Expand services as needed based on your strategic initiatives and find sustainable ways to support those services through 00:02:54
financial means. 00:02:59
The executive summary, what I tried to do is sort of hit the highlights of the memo that I gave you. I didn't figure everyone me 00:03:06
to reread all this, but these are sort of the highlights. 00:03:10
We'll talk about revenues first, then we'll talk about. 00:03:15
Expenses, we'll break those down into capital and operating expenses and then we'll finish it off. So has everyone read the memo? 00:03:18
Because I think that'll help. Sharon know how do you needs to go. So everybody's read the memo. I'm seeing heads not. OK, all 00:03:26
right, good. So I'm going to jump to the next slide because I want to sort of give you a visual, I'm a visual person myself. So 00:03:31
the top four generation ways that you generate revenues here in the city are local option sales tax, property taxes, building 00:03:36
permits and insurance premium tax. 00:03:41
And those are pretty occasionally fines will jump in front of, well, I guess it's not. 00:03:48
Do a lot more than some of our sister communities, but that's for y'all to to negotiate. But I did note, I don't believe this 00:04:26
actually changes until January of next year, so I'll double check that. I didn't have a chance to look it up. It just occurred to 00:04:32
me that that the agreement has to have happen by the end of the year. So 8.637 would continue I would assume from July until 00:04:39
December. So that may be something to talk about. 00:04:46
Yeah, make a note about that. 00:05:00
On building permits, so this year we estimated a little bit higher and of course little did we know that supply chain issues are 00:05:03
going to be a problem and that labor issues are going to be a problem. And as a result when we do the audit this year, you'll see 00:05:08
we're not, we haven't brought in as much money for that piece of it and but keep in mind that those, those revenues offset our 00:05:13
cost so. 00:05:18
I think this is a really good number. I think probably it'll be a little bit higher than that, but feel pretty confident and the 00:05:57
mayor looked at it as well. And I have my staff really. 00:06:01
Get down. Do a deeper dive on that to feel. 00:06:06
Feel more comfortable about that since we were a little bit over this year on what we we thought might happen. 00:06:09
Property taxes. So the digest increased about 20%. We are not recommending not rolling back the mileage rate. If you did, it would 00:06:15
be under two it would be 1.735. At this rate, for every $1000 of assessed value, someone pays $2.08. 00:06:23
And I gave you some information and we can talk about do a deeper dive on that later in the in the meeting if you want to talk 00:06:32
about what that might look like in different scenarios. But right now it without rolling it back we're looking at about $67,000 00:06:39
additional money coming in and you may recall last year we were going to see about 30 and we rolled it back so. 00:06:46
Insurance premium tax that continues to go up. That is the amount that insurance companies per you pay to your insurance company 00:06:53
and they passed on to us at like $40 per per insured person and that is amazing how many $40 checks we get on a regular basis, but 00:07:00
that's where that money comes from. We do expect it to go up because there's more to ensure and more people and and it has been 00:07:07
trending that way for the last three years. So I think we're pretty safe to assume it will go up. 00:07:14
Hotel, motel, short term vacation, rental tax. We will be talking about that some tonight during the main meeting. We are 00:07:22
estimating again conservatively because we don't really have a lot of information. What information we have is probably not. 00:07:29
Built out as I would like it to be. So we're assuming two that somebody has an Airbnb or rental will rent it twice a month every 00:07:41
month and it roughly works out to $6700 in in tax at at a 5% hotel motel tax. Again we'll talk about that some later and. 00:07:50
Because we are going to talk about a council meeting, I'll just mention that there is that the county currently collects that 00:08:00
because we have not laid claim to it. 00:08:04
And what we're recommending is we go ahead and lay claim to that money. 00:08:09
The mileage rate, this is what was and I did correct. There was an error, but we have to reprint this anyway. The only error was 00:08:13
that we didn't list the gross mileage and the and the rollback in the in the ad we did have the amount and that's technically what 00:08:20
we had to have. The 403,000 is where our net taxes would be in that $67,139 that would be generated. 00:08:27
So roughly a home market value of 200,000 would see about a $26 increase and a $500,000 commercial property with no homestead 00:08:36
would see about a 68. 00:08:42
Dollar increase. 00:08:48
If you did not roll. 00:08:49
Talk a little bit about expenses. 00:08:52
So one of the things I think is really important and. 00:08:55
We'll be talking about this some more with hopefully with the county after we get through the budget season is our service 00:09:00
delivery strategy and the services the city provides and services the county provides under contract with the city. 00:09:05
So you know for $2.08 for every $1000 assessed, I think your citizens are getting a pretty good deal weekly. Garbage leaf and 00:09:12
limb, police services, plan planning and zoning. 00:09:17
Obviously Municipal Court building. Sorry business, alcohol licensing, code enforcement, compliance and of course operation, the 00:09:22
parks and maintenance of the roads. 00:09:27
And signage, so under contract with the county through our service delivery strategy, additional services that are provided that 00:09:33
we cause to be delivered our animal control, elections, fire and emergency library, public health, tax collection and water and 00:09:39
sewer. 00:09:44
What's always interesting to me to note is over half of our budget, 1.4 million of it is just on 2 main services, police services 00:09:50
and public works. 00:09:55
And of course, Public Works includes roads and garbage and leaf and lemon. And those are, you know, you can imagine that's. 00:10:01
Heavy in people having equipment so it's expensive so. 00:10:06
Some highlights. I want to break down the capital expenses. 00:10:12
1st and then we'll talk a little bit about operating expenses. So capital improvement, most of most all of Y'all, maybe just two 00:10:16
or three of Y'all. Actually. Now I looked at the room 3 of y'all weren't here when we created the capital improvement fund and the 00:10:22
capital improvement program, which was set about to make sure that we planned for capital replacement of capital items, typically 00:10:28
anything with a value of $5000 or more. 00:10:34
So we did this, had some monies left. The council had money left from the streetscape program and moved that money over to help 00:10:41
start building out that capital replacement program. 00:10:46
What's happened is you know now we have roughly about $380,000 in that capital improvement fund and we don't next year we don't 00:10:51
have $382,000 worth of stuff we have to buy. But Lee and I worked on a scenario because obviously the way we fund the capital 00:10:58
improvement fund is through operating costs. So remember the wonderful yellow line line item budgets, y'all saw we would typically 00:11:04
have a line item in there for depreciation, you know that would then go be transferred as soon as the budget's approved into 00:11:11
capital. 00:11:17
That would just. 00:11:24
We have done that, did that for the last couple of years. But what that does, it increases your operating costs, right, because 00:11:26
you got to and then then it goes into capital. 00:11:30
So we looked at what we need over the. 00:11:35
20 years. I think it went out to 2037. 00:11:39
25 years and we determine when things were going to have to be replaced at the strike at the straight cost of what we expect it's 00:11:44
going to cost. Now that doesn't include if if Chief works is magic and get some, you know, replaces. 00:11:50
Police cars and and doesn't have to pay for, you know, $60,000 for a car and get one for 30, he sells another one, you know, 00:11:57
etcetera. It doesn't account for that. But what we try to do is determine when we are going to need that money and and the money 00:12:01
in the bank, how long that's going to last us. 00:12:06
To to fund that if needed so. 00:12:52
I saw all that just to give you sort of an understanding of that we are planning, we're just recommending this year not to fund 00:12:54
the capital improvement fund with operating money this year there are two one time capital requests things that we have sort of 00:13:01
been hanging around for a while. One in particular the City Hall doors you may notice when you open the doors they kind of jerk 00:13:07
it's it. We've had we've I don't know how many times the guys have screwed those doors into place and stuff but we. 00:13:14
We've probably gotten 15 different estimates in different ways of how we might fix it and the the one we think we all feel 00:13:21
comfortable with is is an $8000 estimate to replace the doors and fix the. 00:13:27
The frame so that they can attach, right. We feel pretty confident about that price that has been out there for a couple of 00:13:34
months, but we feel like that that's something that you know. 00:13:39
Would would stay the same. It also includes cutting window lights. What do you call them? Just wouldn't. 00:13:45
I guess Windows. 00:13:52
Windows into these, yeah and they were sure like what's on my door over here into each of these since the since the park is 00:13:54
getting beautified and and this space is used a lot it would add some light to the room and so that include that's part of that 00:14:00
estimate. So that's that's something that we're asking for a one time capital request. 00:14:06
Be funded and then the Police Department office space. 00:14:13
The challenge right now is that there's not any space for. 00:14:17
At least. 00:14:22
Privacy to. 00:14:23
Process anybody that they may pick up or if they have someone they need to sort of decompress and talk to or that there's really 00:14:25
not a room unless you take somebody's office up. 00:14:29
But the real need is really if we had a victim or someone that needed to have some space, there's really not anywhere for them to 00:15:08
be unless they're in someone's office, so. 00:15:12
So those are the two requests we are asking for. That's a total of 23,000. 00:15:16
On the operating side, a lot of these reflect things that the council has asked for. One in particular is the downtown development 00:15:22
director. 00:15:26
We did. We did some estimate and I'm not sure that's a great estimate, but we're hopeful that we could get someone in here for six 00:15:30
months and we could provide hopefully some space for them potentially down downtown is what we would hope for. But if need to need 00:15:37
be, we set them up here until we can get that figured out. You know computer, all the kind of things you need to get started for 00:15:44
about $57,000 that would be starting someone in January through June, so just quarters 3:00 and 4:00. 00:15:51
We are also at that time in order to stay. 00:16:00
To stay up to date with pay and classification, we are as of this month, I believe this month the pay studies now four years old 00:16:05
and so it needs to be refreshed and updated. Of course there's been lots of changes in the in the marketplace and we did get an 00:16:12
estimate, I got an estimate about 12-5 about 5-6 months ago from Condrey and Associates, the ones who did the original. 00:16:19
And I bumped it up a little bit because I figured it just it's going to be more by the time we get around to doing it. So 00:16:27
somewhere between 12, five and $15,000 to do this refresh to the pay and classification study. 00:16:32
We talked a little bit about the housing development. Again those are permit expenses. We assume that we'll have the 67% we have 00:16:39
to pay of the revenues that come in on the on the permit fees, want to pay those to Bureau Veritas and then we have legal 00:16:44
engineering expenses. And I've been trying to really be mindful Lee and all my staff members mindful about trying to do a full 00:16:50
cost accounting so that at any point if y'all ask, hey what does it actually cost to run housing, you know planning, I can tell 00:16:56
you. 00:17:02
Because I put all the way anything associated with that's legal, that deals with housing development. 00:17:07
You know, I can tell you that we're, you know, I'm putting Joe's time to that and put marks time to that, whatever so that we have 00:17:13
a clear accounting of that. So we have monies in there that pay for for Joe and for for our city attorney and our city engineer. 00:17:21
Cost of living adjustment. 00:17:29
So I have proposed that everyone get a $5000 cost of living across the board and part of the reason I talked to my staff, my 00:17:31
department heads about it and we all felt that that was a more fair way to do it than a percentage because we've got a fair number 00:17:39
of people below the $40,000 mark or so who wouldn't see as much of an increase. It's it's also copying what the university did and 00:17:47
you know and I was trying to get a sense of I think Clark County was doing 6 or 7% across the board, which was not, you know. 00:17:55
They're not doing a flat rate, they're just doing a percentage which benefits people on the higher end of the salary range than on 00:18:03
the lower. 00:18:06
We have had only non merit salary increases. We had what we had a cost of living increase. 00:18:10
2019, I guess, and then 2020? 00:18:19
To last year 20/20/21, sorry. 00:18:22
In July of last year there was a two, I think it was a 2%. 00:18:26
I think it was a 2% last year. 00:18:29
To divvy out that so and I'm working right now on phase two of that effort and I did send some information to council Members 00:19:04
Massey and Garrett since they're on the personnel and Finance Committee. 00:19:10
And hope that after I get back from vacation, we can sit down talk about that some too. So I keep them up to speed with how that's 00:19:15
going. 00:19:19
Medical and dental insurance costs did go up. That works out to about $9700 in additional expenses this year based on the. 00:19:24
Based on how much the council covers for staff. 00:19:33
So police. So this is a big one. So police. 00:19:37
We did see an increase but it's it's it is skewed and that's why I want to I want to talk about this a little bit Chief. If you 00:19:41
have something you want to say let me know. We'll you know I want to make sure you I cover this right. So the budget, the budgets 00:19:48
increase 221,000 but technically it hasn't the general fund budget has increased 221,000 because you. 00:19:55
Supplemented the budget last year with 100 and 3032 thousand from the American Rescue Plan. 00:20:02
Now, we have not actually moved any of that money out of American rescue plan yet. Lee's working on an estimate with Chief trying 00:20:07
to figure out how much we actually need because obviously he had some vacancies and he didn't need any. He hasn't needed the money 00:20:11
yet. 00:20:15
You know, a $51,000 difference between, you know, bringing in the full time person. The extra position that we only funded for six 00:20:51
months is now being funded at will be funded at 12 months. 00:20:56
Gasoline, we're estimating that's going to go up 35% and somebody told me that it's more like 40. 00:21:03
You know, we're, you know, we're going to try to do our best not. 00:21:08
Not to use more gas than we need to use, but but we're just trying to go with the information we have right now and roughly we're 00:21:12
looking at about 35% increase in fuel contract labor. So this is something that I think is really important. 00:21:19
Figure out how much we really need somebody. I mean I don't think it makes sense to go hire a full time person until we figure 00:21:57
out, you know, how much you know, capacity we need and and it could be that that person could pick up on some other aspects of the 00:22:02
of the Police Department you know? 00:22:07
As well as the attack with this funding. So why don't you explain a little bit and use your mic, Yeah, to let everybody know. 00:22:13
About the tack, please. So Terminal Terminal Aging Coordinator handles everything GC I see. 00:22:20
Georgia Crime Information Computer. 00:22:31
So we have the court has the need to enter information from court dates they've got time frame that they have to meet. 00:22:34
There are validations that have to occur from the warrants and information that we have put in the system if we have items of 00:22:45
information that are in the system as stolen or people that are wanted. 00:22:50
There's validations that have to occur on a routine. 00:22:56
So currently those are being, you know, managed and handled by. 00:23:01
Lee Black and as you can just heard she carries a lot of weight and and and hats around the agency. So having an additional person 00:23:06
to pick up some of the burden from her for the court services and pick up the tasking of being an assistant tack would be 00:23:14
beneficial and necessary because again that was one of the that was one of the Dings we got in our inspection is that I, she the 00:23:22
the, the inspector said she's overloaded she can't be doing that all by herself. 00:23:30
We need to put somebody else, we need to find somebody else to fill some billets, so that that's essential, but I assure you 00:23:38
between the work that she has currently and the work that I have pending and ongoing. 00:23:45
We got way more than 40 hours of work for a person, so this part time position is going to. 00:23:53
They need to come in and run it. That's all I got to say. 00:24:00
Any questions? 00:24:03
OK. 00:24:06
The the other highlights of the expenses and operating expenses are OCAF, they are requesting $7500 this year. You guys are 00:24:10
generous and inviting them to come talk to you about what their needs are that are over and above what they can do on their own. 00:24:16
And so they're asking for 7500 and I believe they're going to leave it up to you as to whether or not it's a mural, A sculpture or 00:24:23
both, depending on what they can work out if that funding is provided, the library funding. 00:24:30
Includes the $30,000 that the council had agreed to in the Library Services Agreement. Technically, we're not. 00:24:37
I don't think we've we haven't actually hit the 30,000. We're only a couple $100 shy of it. I pulled the information this 00:24:45
afternoon on what we were told, Allen. 00:24:50
Allen Skinner at the tax assessor's office told us they were assessing that property at as of January 1 of this year. Because 00:24:56
remember, that's how we're looking at things. Whatever was assessed in January 1 will come in and fiscal year 23, sorry, January 1 00:25:01
of 2022 will come in in fiscal year 23, so. 00:25:06
But we're close enough. So we put $30,000 in there and that is an increase of almost $15,000 over what you've given before. And 00:25:13
that was, you know, intentional. 00:25:17
And then the fire department, again very generous and asking, allowing them to come forward and ask for for funding. And they have 00:25:22
asked for the same amount of funding they asked for last year, which was $14,000. 00:25:27
Again, just a visual of by percentage by money where where your money goes. So 34% police and public works were sort of identified 00:25:35
that. 00:25:40
And then general government, obviously it takes, you know, there's lots of stuff going on trying to keep and that includes the 00:25:47
building and everything else too. So it's not just people actually the cost of maintaining the. 00:25:53
And then bet on the people side, I think it's important. So you know governments don't work with just computers. They hadn't any 00:25:59
people, you know to use them. They don't work with lawn mowers and not people on them. So over half of the budget is personnel. If 00:26:06
you add in the fact that we also contract for labor outside of that, including our city attorney, Bill Veritas and our city 00:26:13
engineer, you're looking at basically 72% of what we do as people. So I think that's important to to note. 00:26:19
As you look at this. 00:26:27
So balancing the budget, a 5% increase and I think I probably could have been a little bit, a little bit less conservative on 00:26:29
that. But I always worry about saying you're going to get money you don't get. So I'm a little bit more conservative about it, But 00:26:36
about $113,000 increase over fiscal year 22. On your general fund operating expenses, there's a 14% increase over what was 00:26:43
approved in FY22. Including the capital, you're looking at a revenue shortfall just a little bit more than $200,000. 00:26:50
To put it in perspective a little bit, you do have and this was. 00:27:00
Intentional and I think. 00:27:06
Decision on your part was to go ahead and restrict the fund balance. Set aside a half $1,000,000 which is about 3 months worth of 00:27:09
funding in case everything. 00:27:13
To heck in a handbasket, you've got three months to operate operating funds. 00:27:17
You also have an unreserved fund balance of 1.2 million that does not include the 210,000 that we anticipate will potentially be 00:27:22
needed if there's an overage on the sewer line. 00:27:28
Fall of next year? 00:28:08
So you run behind the curve here a little bit. So I just keep that in mind and whatever decisions you make, just know that we're 00:28:09
trying to do a little bit of a catch up. 00:28:14
It is very common. Lots of governments do it. Lots of big governments do it. Lots of little governments do it to use your fund 00:28:20
balance to, you know, to balance your budget. 00:28:23
Your funding reserves to balance your budget. When I was in Clark County that I think every year I was there as a commissioner 00:28:29
they did it every year and you know and then there's years when you don't you don't and you put the money in the bank you know so. 00:28:34
The. 00:28:42
The one thing I do want to point out, I don't know if I I know I didn't put it in. 00:28:43
I think it's important to note, I mentioned this today at the after our meeting. I think it's important to note that the American 00:28:48
rescue plan y'all may remember I drilled into your head over and over how you could use the American Rescue Plan money. You could 00:28:55
use it four ways, right. You could use it to mitigate COVID, use it for water, sewer, broadband you could use it for. 00:29:02
And now I'm trying to think the revenue loss and then there's a fourth one that all of a sudden escapes because I'm sitting here 00:29:10
trying to think of it. But the revenue loss when they initially, when the US Treasury initially offered that as an option, they 00:29:16
created a formula and they had us go back and calculate from 2017 through 2020 what our revenues would have been, right. 00:29:23
And had we stuck with that and the US Treasury hadn't offered, offered the city and other communities the opportunity to just take 00:29:29
that, you know, and use it however you want, up to a certain amount of money, we would have had $230,000 because that's how much 00:29:35
they said we lost. 00:29:40
In revenues in one year as a result of COVID. 00:29:46
So when you look at, when you look at the the number here that we're talking about coming up out of out of fund balance, I mean 00:29:49
basically. 00:29:53
We probably would have had that, have we not had COVID, we probably would have seen a lot of that. We might actually be in a 00:29:57
positive situation at this point, so. 00:30:01
Could have, should have. You know, who knows, right? But but I think, I think realistically this is a this is a good number. I 00:30:07
don't think that you know you're talking. 00:30:11
Moving your fund balance down to $1,000,000 roughly. 00:30:16
And. 00:30:20
That's still a significant amount of money. You guys don't have any debt. 00:30:22
That's a big deal. So something to think about. That's really my presentation. I don't know if there's any specific questions. 00:30:25
About, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of questions, but if there's anything specific about what I just said about the ARP, I'm 00:30:34
happy to answer that too. Yeah, I'll meet. You know I'm just going to put a finer point on a couple things Sharon said, but I 00:30:40
think thank you Sharon that was a great presentation. A couple things that do drive this. You know Sharon mentioned you know the 00:30:46
assessments lag and you know so you got to remember for project is is valuable as Wire Park or Wisteria Ridge, you know we're the 00:30:51
revenues we get this year. 00:30:57
Based on what Commissioner Skinner and his team assess that as as of January 1st this year. 00:31:04
But you got to remember we're going to be, you know those are going to be fully loaded and impacting the city this fall and we're 00:31:10
going to have to serve and take care of those projects. So that's across the board. Those assessments lag a little bit. So that's 00:31:16
pretty significant. Sharon did outline, we have the ongoing loss conversation going on with the county that you could impact these 00:31:21
numbers somewhat and I think the other thing is we have a history of. 00:31:27
Careful budgeting in Watkinsville and Sharon alluded to it, but I think it's really important to remember it because I've been 18 00:31:33
years of this. I've seen it happen time and time again. 00:31:36
We fully load the expense. 00:31:40
And we're conservative, but we're careful on the revenue side. So I've seen us say several times that they were probably gonna 00:31:43
have to hit the fund balance. We get to the end of the year, nobody really comes back and circles back and says, oh look, we put 00:31:47
$30,000 in the bank. 00:31:52
Julie can probably remember 5 or 10 times off the top of her head when we've done that because we have to, but we have to balance 00:31:56
it to 0 or we'll use the revenue, we'll use the. 00:32:00
The surplus, you know to get to 0 and then by the end of the year you look at the numbers and because of the way we budget, it 00:32:05
usually turns out not to be the impact that we thought. In fact, if you look at this year's budget, I don't think I'm speaking out 00:32:11
of turn to say it's trending the same way. You know, we used ARP funds in the budgeting process to offset some of those expenses. 00:32:16
If you go look at it right now, I don't think we. 00:32:21
Dumped ARP funds into the budget and it's pretty much. 00:32:26
It's. 00:32:30
Yeah. So it's but it's trending, it's trending right at 0 so. So we have a, we have a history there and then you know just big 00:32:32
picture, the reality is we all understand this. The city's in an interesting point and it's evolution, right. There's there's a 00:32:37
lot of unique things that are happening and to some degree. 00:32:42
We're going to have to wait for if we want to serve those projects and serve our citizens, we're going to have to wait for some of 00:32:48
that, some of the benefits of that to catch up to us. So that was kind of my thinking is we took a hard look at this and. 00:32:56
You know, but I'm going to stop talking and leave plenty of time for you guys to ask your questions and have a discussion about 00:33:04
this. 00:33:07
Make sure you use your mic if you speak please. 00:33:15
Well, I'm just going to kind of echo what Brian said when we started this and just think is that Sharon, you and Julie primarily 00:33:17
that ran all the numbers. 00:33:22
And and Lee me. 00:33:27
Thank you guys the the amount of detail that you put into this. 00:33:29
I mean down to how much we are paying monthly per computer for our security and maintenance. I mean there I don't think anyone can 00:33:36
say that there is not full transparency going on here. So that was a tremendous amount of work and you have gone above and beyond 00:33:42
and I really, really appreciate that. Thank you. 00:33:48
Just curious the. 00:34:04
General government administration expense for $15,000. Is that something? Because every city does every four years. 00:34:07
What's so funny that you should ask? So former Councilwoman Marcy Campbell. 00:34:16
Did the original, did the original compensation pay study, actually part of me coming on, I came on right after it was adopted or 00:34:23
right around the time it was adopted and it is recommended because there are so many changes and obviously now it's like. 00:34:31
Absolutely necessary. So many changes in the marketplace that that it be updated and part of that is you know. 00:34:39
Push it five years and try to get it into the next budget. 00:35:53
Making sure every. 00:35:58
A. 00:36:00
Somebody who's overseeing people who are doing the work, so, so that's part of it. 00:36:32
And I'm not questioning it, I'm just, I'm trying to learn exactly what it is. Thank you absolutely. 00:36:38
So. 00:36:47
Forgive me if I missed this in the vast quantities of data we were presented with, but the the contracts we have for garbage and 00:36:50
for leaf and limb. 00:36:55
When do those go through and how are they going to be affected? 00:37:01
At the huge amount of growth that we have coming down the Pike, right. OK. So first question is the contract we have right now, I. 00:37:06
Technically expires the end of next fiscal year, so fiscal year 23 in June of next year. 00:37:16
And. 00:37:24
That there is AI believe it's a one year Julie, remind me is it one or two. I think we have two one year extensions I think is how 00:37:26
it works. They can, they can obviously ask for it to extend if you want to extend they can also say let's say fuels up 20% they 00:37:32
can ask for and you would have to you know negotiate that under that term. 00:37:38
Right now the city pays $19.82 per household. I think we have 13141 houses I think or some so. So when we add Trove or any of them 00:37:46
we will, we will have to add them and we will have to update our number with them. So we haven't done that yet because I mean I 00:37:53
think we're looking at maybe 15 houses in the next year maybe technically I mean and I'm not really 100% sure if you know because 00:38:00
all 56 are going to get built from what I understand maybe they will, but I always. 00:38:07
Assume the worst case. So we know at least 15 are going to get built here, probably maybe even triggered by 1st of July or so, but 00:38:15
Trove and then you know we've got a splatter in a few other houses here and there. We're not impacted by what will happen with 00:38:22
Waters Walk or Wisteria Ridge or even Water Park until we get to the single family homes on water park and that's out. 00:38:29
A little bit. So the way it would work is, you know, on it. We we're very honest. We let them know, hey, but we need them picked 00:38:37
up. So we're like, hey, we've got 15 more houses on, you know, Colin Ferry, please go pick them up and they add it to our bill and 00:38:42
then that'll change them. 00:38:47
So it'll come back this time next year. In fact, it'll be part of the budget. We'll have to address that. But that also answers to 00:38:52
the condominiums and townhomes in Wire Park. 00:38:56
I didn't think the apartment, I think they have like a dog trying to go back and look at the plan. I think they have like an open 00:39:01
like a dumpster or something. But no, it's not a, it's not a single family home type. And that then I mean I know that's a very 00:39:07
tiny detail for talking about 15 homes at $19.00 or whatever. I mean that's not huge in our budget, but it does. It's another 00:39:12
thing that goes to what Brian was talking about that we're going to start paying for things. 00:39:17
Before we're not going. 00:39:23
Property taxes really from those properties for probably a year and a half. So we're talking about you know that amount of money 00:39:25
that we are paying every month for these homes that we're not seeing so. 00:39:31
To me, that is another reason. 00:39:37
Budgeting some fund balance makes a little bit of sense. Just fiscally this is an unusual time that we're in. Well, just remember, 00:39:41
you know, the property taxes, the round numbers of a 1982 * * 12, I think it's 240, Sharon said. The, you know, the. 00:39:49
You know the, I mean you're getting, you know that that's going to eat up most of the property taxes that we get right out of the 00:39:58
gate. You know, you throw in whatever leaf and limb costs on top of that, so. 00:40:03
That's all OK, that's in 1982 included. But anyway, basically trash and leaf and limb are going to pick up depending on the price 00:40:09
of the house. 00:40:13
You know all to half of the cost of every home in Watkinsville and that's why these other and I like the fact that we have a 00:40:17
diverse revenue stream. I think that's really important. But it also you know begs the question of you know we've I'm thankful 00:40:23
that we've been able to reduce the mileage rate over the years, but we're probably at a point where we're going to have to. 00:40:30
We need to press pause on that, so we. 00:40:36
You know what growing grow into that. So there may be others who want to discuss that, but context is important. When we're 00:40:39
talking about these property taxes, people see a tax increase, they think 16% of their total bill. It's not 16% of their total 00:40:45
bill, it's 16% compared to the Watkinsville portion of the bill, which is sharing said for someone with a $200,000 house, that's a 00:40:50
$26 increase per year. 00:40:56
So again, I want to echo Christine, I think you all do a phenomenal job. I mean, I spent, I don't know, two or three days. 00:41:04
Staring at Excel spreadsheets and went cross eyed multiple times. 00:41:12
But you know, so my question. 00:41:19
You know, and I know we're in weird times right now, you know, I'm staying at 137,308. 00:41:22
Dollar deficit? 00:41:28
Is how? 00:41:31
Without going into the fund balance, how can we, how do we make that up? I mean, me personally, I'd rather use the fund balance. 00:41:32
Paris Hills Park. 00:41:41
I know, I know. We got people's money, my money, your money, all of our money sitting in a in a savings account right now. 00:41:44
How do we? 00:41:52
Better use that money other than not balancing our budget. 00:41:54
Using it for that. 00:41:59
Just, I mean that's essentially we're not able to balance our budget. So we're going to steal from. 00:42:00
From our savings account, Well, I would say that. 00:42:06
Personally, as a householder, I want to have a balanced budget, as I'm sure all of us do. 00:42:13
Umm, but I would say a big difference is for most of us, well, I'm actually a little bit of an exception. I really have no idea 00:42:21
what my what I'm going to make every year, but most of us have a salary and you know what you're going to make and you're able to 00:42:26
budget accordingly and I would say. 00:42:31
We, I mean they do a great job of protecting and looking at trends and looking at, but things happen and so I guess I am not, even 00:42:36
though I'm super conservative when it comes to spending other people's money or my own money. 00:42:43
Because we have trended so much to actually underestimating our revenue. 00:42:51
I am not as worried about this between that and the fact that we are at this really unusual time of growth where we're not going 00:42:58
to really see the benefits. 00:43:04
Of those taxes, and for at least another fiscal year, maybe even halfway through. 00:43:11
To me where I would get concerned and and I mean we've we've been talking about this like what are what are revenue stream 00:43:20
options. I I think if we actually do pull annually a couple $100,000 from our fund balance year after year, that's a problem. And 00:43:28
that I mean something's got to give either spending categories have to go and it would have to be categories it's not. 00:43:36
I am so impressed at how frugal this government is run. I love Chief and his deals like it just brings me joy to my little Scotch 00:43:44
Irish heart. But I. 00:43:50
But the reality is if it is, I mean think about, you know your kids going to college, you might incur a little bit of debt because 00:43:57
you're looking at a long term thing. If we're doing something like that, we're not even talking about debt. We have the money 00:44:03
sitting there on the savings account. Sometimes you have to spend a little bit in order to get where you want to go. But if if 00:44:09
this became a trend or we lost major revenue sources or they weren't what they needed to be, then we're going to have to look, we 00:44:15
would have to look hard I think at. 00:44:21
Trimming services because what else can you do? But I don't. I I'm not so worried about this year, not trying to kick the can down 00:44:27
the road, but I have yet to really see this huge draw from our fund balance. So that's just my perspective and. 00:44:35
I mean. 00:44:42
Not saying there is a trend, but we're going to pull 200,000 or so this year from it. 00:44:43
And I mean then we're protecting 137,000 next year. 00:44:50
37 years I'm about next year projected that's the that was the over budget so you got the the from last year was. 00:44:57
And say what are you looking at? I just did something I thought that was the number you said was 137,000 something somewhere 00:45:07
around that number over budget. 00:45:11
I could be completely off base, I just did some. 00:45:16
No. OK. Well, scratch all of that then. 00:45:20
Because I think it changes your point. Yeah. So your point's a fair one. It's, you know, is it wiser to use? 00:45:24
Fund balance, I mean it's like running a business, right. We have to absolutely is now the moment to say we've been frugal, we've 00:45:30
saved, is it wise to use a little bit of those funds as it do we need to push revenue right, which we have really one level we can 00:45:34
push? 00:45:38
At this moment, you know, we all know what that is, you know? 00:45:43
Or do we go back and you know trim expenses further, that's what this conversation absolutely. 00:45:48
Should be about, you know, is you know, and how does that affect the services that our citizens are? 00:45:54
That they want or that they're looking for. And I wish the number you said there was a number that we're projecting over budget. I 00:45:59
couldn't find it. And so I did some math and apparently my math is wrong. 00:46:05
The the 210,456 is projected for the 2023 fiscal year. What is it actually what was projected last year? Well did we project it 00:46:11
was not in the fund bounces was was in the a, a. 00:46:20
The ARPA is what you use. 00:46:29
Oh, maybe that. Well, so you balance the budget last year using ARPA money, OK, which makes sense from what you were saying that 00:46:34
we. 00:46:38
And technically, y'all, could you could do that again? I mean, look, y'all I mean look, is it in the ARP bucket is in the fund 00:46:44
balance bucket. They're both buckets of money. And you know, I hate to talk about buckets of money, but they're both buckets of 00:46:48
money and both of them have, are unrestricted, OK. 00:46:53
My, my general thought would be, based on how the US Treasury presented ARPA, was it supposed to be transformative? You should use 00:46:59
that money for transformative projects. You used it for Harden Hill to fit, you know, finish out that project, you know, do what 00:47:03
it's supposed to be doing, and it's doing it. 00:47:08
They want you to use it. You can use it however you want. There's no restrictions, but obviously they would love to see you use it 00:48:13
in a transformative way. Maybe that's to help finish some of the the the playground, you know, the the hair shells park project, 00:48:19
Maybe it's to, you know, work on maybe some other projects that are nearby. So, but yeah, So what A couple things I do want to 00:48:24
bring up since you mentioned it. 00:48:30
Or you were talking about some of the extent. So we all being very conservative. First of all, we are not including any revenues 00:48:37
that we anticipate will come from Costco once they're open. I did talk to Courtney Bernardi, she indicated that she thought it 00:48:43
might be September, October, if there are any supply chain issues when it would be open. I haven't been over there to look, but I 00:48:49
I believe didn't somebody say they paved, they'd already paved the area which was something they were waiting on so. 00:48:55
But at 8% if that's where we land and. 00:49:02
30 days. 00:49:41
A month 3 restaurants that currently serve. I think we figured for but on three restaurants that serve distilled. 00:49:42
Spirits. That's $13150 a month for those 3 * 12 months is $16,000. 00:49:48
So there's a way, you know, that's a syntax. You all know how those works. But so that's one way you could do it. You know, that's 00:49:54
that's money that we haven't figured in either. Now, you know, if you want to get into cutting, you got a downtown development 00:50:00
director. We don't, you know, you don't really have a downtown program yet. Maybe, maybe you're getting, maybe that's too soon. 00:50:05
Maybe you push it to July. I mean that's $57,000 right there. 00:50:11
The I would not cut. I mean personally, because I know my staff. I wouldn't. I'm begging, please, not to change the pay 00:50:18
classification study or the cost of living adjustments. 00:50:22
Umm. 00:50:27
I don't think I underestimated fuel and I know I went by today and it was $4.00 a gallon, but I think we budgeted at four. Was it 00:51:03
440 or 430? I can't remember. I have to look at this line item. So we're still under that, but fuel may go up or down. Who knows, 00:51:10
you know, the state, if they decide to do, you know, relieve us of of, you know, relieve that price, that may help too, but. 00:51:17
You know you've got OCAF in the library. Of course library is a different animal but OCAF and then you've got the $23,000 to do 00:51:26
some work in the in the building. So you know you do. There are some options. Some I don't like it all others, you know I think 00:51:31
you could you know could move the needle on so. 00:51:37
I will just say that when it comes to. 00:51:43
I mean, you have the pulse on the staff and we know that we are in an era where. 00:51:47
That it is hard to get and keep good employees and we also know. 00:51:54
I mean, I know personally just from having a business that hiring someone and training someone is expensive and so retaining staff 00:52:00
is. 00:52:05
Even if you have to pay a little more money to retain the staff that. 00:52:10
I agree with you, basically. I don't think we should cut that. I think we need to make sure our people are taken care of. 00:52:15
I think the other thing to think about on that is, you know, in an area like the Police Department for example, when you are short 00:52:23
on people, all of a sudden that can kick you into overtime, kicks you into tricky areas where all of a sudden not only are you 00:52:27
having to pay people more, it's less likely you're going to keep people when we're already asking a lot of our officers and then 00:52:32
all of a sudden. 00:52:36
Take care of our Take care of talented people if we want to keep them. Otherwise we're dealing with what you're talking about, 00:53:45
which is we're dealing with turnover that affects the services that are provided. 00:53:49
You know, to our, to our residents and frankly, the impression our community makes when people visit. 00:53:53
I'm also going to make the. 00:54:03
The argument that we should keep the Downtown Development Authority on there I. 00:54:06
Just going to the cities we've gone to and speaking with them. 00:54:15
They have made such a difference to their their communities and they do things and I mean by definition, roles that. 00:54:21
The city of Watkinsville can't do that, the staff can't do that and they even if you have time, which you don't by any means. 00:54:27
We are at such a pivotal time in our community and I think we need to. 00:54:34
Wire Park is phenomenal and is a great thing for our community. But I also, it's really important to me that we Foster and 00:54:41
encourage our downtown corridor and whatever that includes and. 00:54:48
So that's why I think right now it really is essential to have this position to help walk beside our downtown business owners, 00:54:56
building owners, show them that we are here to support them and to continue to transform the city into what we know. 00:55:04
It can be so. I 100% agree with you. I just happened to meet Miss Curtis. Our tourism. 00:55:14
Lady up at in the Welcome Center the other day at Rotary Club. 00:55:23
I think you know this is just a really random thought, but is is there a way that we could maybe work with her to be? 00:55:27
You know, hire her to be our downtown development authority. Is that possible? 00:55:39
Gonna steal it from your job. 00:55:45
Like, I'm not. I'm not trying to take. I'm not trying to take her away from that job at all. But. 00:55:48
But but like let her work. I mean she already is doing the job. She's already working with the business owner. She's already 00:55:54
working with the. So I will, I will say she has been on the committee that we have been on as we've been doing this and. 00:56:00
Her plate as is Courtney's play that the chamber is already very full and so I think she will be a good resource for that person 00:56:07
but and she has lots of great ideas but unfortunately I may not speak for her but I'm speaking for her I I. 00:56:15
Think that's very unlikely. I think there's also a certain background in that position in in real estate and community development 00:56:24
that's that's that's really interesting and Christine made a great point you know we're about to have. 00:56:29
Significant moment when Wire Park opens that we're going to have a level of visitors to Watkinsville that I tell people all the 00:56:35
time. I'm like, I think it's going to be the biggest thing for the community's brand since Southwire opened. You know, just 00:56:41
because it's it's going to have a similar level of visitation and impact, but. 00:56:46
You know we we want it. We still want a barbell effect, right? We want wire part to be strong. We need downtown to be strong. Then 00:56:52
we've got to build that bar, right. You barbell doesn't work if you have a 10 LB. Bar connecting. 00:56:58
Even though we visited Wire Park when we turned that corner by Town Center and it was lunchtime and he's like, there's people out 00:58:03
there eating, there's multiple restaurants, there's people walking and people see that, you know, you they realize they're in a 00:58:08
special community because it's not either or it's yes and you know when they come to Watkinsville and but I think we're going to 00:58:12
have to, you know. 00:58:17
The community branding is a part of that. Our infrastructure and signage and then supporting the florists, the small business 00:58:23
owners, the others who have been here for decades, frankly we got to do, we got to continue to do that. 00:58:29
Are there are there any changes I? 00:58:41
At this point anyway, and obviously don't feel like you know you guys remember we're going to have more meetings on this. So if 00:58:45
you want to propose a change or if you want to say could you look at X or Y? This is probably a good time to do that so we don't 00:58:49
have to hard code a change right now. But if you want to say, I'd love to see what would happen if. 00:58:54
You know, this is a good time because we're going to have another budget hearing. We can we can do that, right? Well, so. 00:59:00
We have one if needed next Thursday that I will be out of town. So we may have to move that if y'all want to have another one 00:59:06
until the 1st of June. But but you do have the final budget here in his June 15th. I mean if you want to wait that long, if you 00:59:11
want to have something in between, we can certainly you know we can share you know if there's something you you're just interested 00:59:16
in seeing. I think you'd mentioned something. I've already actually run some numbers on some of the other stuff you mentioned 00:59:20
earlier, so we can. 00:59:25
You know, we can run it and but y'all look at it. So if somebody or so if you want to say look at this or if you want to say, hey, 00:59:30
here's a specific proposal I'd like to make, then go ahead and let's, let's. Yeah, on the table because the last thing we need to 00:59:35
do is be suggesting stuff on June 1st, right. Absolutely. You know, so you know and and just. 00:59:40
Because we don't know what's going to happen with LOST not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but we don't know what's going 00:59:46
to happen with Lost. And don't throw the mayor under the bus doing the best you can here. So you know, I know we're talking about 00:59:53
not rolling back the military. I'd like to at least see what it looks like. 01:00:00
Add to the modes rate just slightly. Just just run some numbers, see what that looks like. 01:00:07
You know, I don't. I don't know if. 01:00:13
A slight increase is even beneficial. 01:00:16
I don't, I don't know what that looks like so I did. So I will share. I don't have it on the screen to show you, but I can share 01:00:19
that Iran some some numbers. Right now the mileage rate that's being recommended is 2.08162 dollars and eight cents for every 01:00:25
$1000 of assessed property value, which would increase. 01:00:31
Someone that has a home value of 200,000 would increase to 20 their taxes, property tax by 2627 dollars 2699, so 27 dollars. 01:00:38
If you were to go to a 2.2 mileage rate. 01:00:47
The same home would actually see an increase of $36.27. 01:00:51
And if you went to 2.5, the same home would see an increase of $60.00, basically $59.67. 01:01:00
Obviously, what's the downstream? So what's the downstream sharing of that number in terms of? 01:01:11
So right now at 2.081 you're generating $403,849. At 2.2 you generate 426,000, which is 426, nine 42. 01:01:18
Which is an increase of 90,000 over last year. At 2.5 it would generate 485,000, which is 148,000 over last year. 01:01:30
So rather than you begin to see how that would then take away from the amount of fund balance that you anticipate. 01:01:41
Using so you know that gives you a feel for what you're talking about there. 01:01:48
Now, not to not to put everybody into the water, but we do have to advertise a week prior to at least seven days prior, which 01:01:52
means I have to have an ad to the paper by June 2nd. 01:01:57
If the mileage rate is going to be anything different than what you've got right now. 01:02:03
Yeah, and I'm out of town next week, so I have two days this week, and. 01:02:06
Yeah. No, obviously I'm not for raising taxes. You know, I don't want my taxes to go up any either, but you know. 01:02:11
I don't know. We got to figure a way to balance the budget and you know, I I know that. 01:02:23
We're we're pulling from our fund balance. 01:02:30
I don't know, it's just something to think about. 01:02:34
Well, I mean, if we look at the fact. 01:02:36
The property taxes on a lot of homes don't even cover the cost of. 01:02:40
Garbage and leaf and. 01:02:46
I mean that. 01:02:48
Is significant. So I see where you're coming from. I mean, you kind of think, you know, that the people who are getting those 01:02:50
services should pay for those services in a sense. My concern though is my just my caveat with this is we do have some residents 01:02:56
who've been in the community for a long time. 01:03:01
That are already looking at tax hikes that are on fixed incomes and. 01:03:08
The cost of living increase from their Social Security check is. 01:03:14
Even going to touch what inflation is doing, I mean when I go to the grocery store and something that was $3 is now $4.00 and I'm 01:03:18
buying 100 things a week, that adds up to a lot of money and fortunately I don't have a fixed income. And so it's it's OK, I can 01:03:25
feed my family, but I just don't want us to in any way be a part of and and I don't know how to balance that because we are in a 01:03:31
pretty affluent. 01:03:37
Community where, OK, let's, you know, let's have people pay for it. So I don't know if there's some way. I know some communities 01:03:44
do it by age. 01:03:49
But I hope a lot of people move here to be near their children who are no longer who are older and they are very fine financially. 01:03:53
So I also I don't know if we should do it that way as we are getting a lot of people coming into our community who are older, who 01:03:59
are fine financially so. 01:04:05
I don't. I don't know if it's worth the headache for the $20 difference to even come up with some kind of formula for people to 01:04:12
have a hardship case or anyway. So I just threw out a lot of ideas that are a little complicated but that I see both sides too. 01:04:20
I know you're throwing out a good round Number of 200,000, but there are very few of those, probably in Watkinsville. 01:04:28
Very few $200,000 house, but I will tell you, God bless the tax assessor because we are all doing just fine by the valuations he's 01:04:36
given to our homes when I have clients who are like. 01:04:41
Buyers who are like put the tax assessor says it's worth blah blah blah and I just laugh because. 01:04:48
You know homes are selling for way more than where they're even even if two as the tax assessments go up. So I bet on our our 01:04:54
rolls, what is it called our digest that we have a lot of homes that probably are assessed at 200,000. I mean I think there is 01:04:59
actually a fair number of those homes. 01:05:05
Well, I'm not. I think if we're interested in exploring increasing the mileage rate any further, I do think now we need at least 01:05:15
three people to indicate they're interested in that otherwise. 01:05:20
I've heard what Councilman Thomas has said, but we've got to give direction to the staff on that. So I would suggest if if there's 01:05:25
three of you who are in favor of that, speak now because we need to go ahead and indicate that to them. 01:05:30
If not, then I think it's. 01:05:37
The the staff isn't military. It's just harder to manage, right. They can tweak other elements of the budget before before the 01:05:40
next meeting and say, OK, here's some other levers we can do. We can explore the excise tax, we can do some of these other things. 01:05:44
But. 01:05:47
Much remember that numbers. 01:05:52
The increase isn't gigantic, you know, so we're talking about it moving from anywhere from $23,000 to $82,000 based on what she 01:05:54
said. There's other places that that amount of money could come from if we're interested in offset. So if there's three of you who 01:05:59
are interested in pushing it any further. 01:06:05
You'll need to speak up other than Brett. If not, then I think we need to give them some direction to say OK. 01:06:11
We'd love to see us get the fund balance hit down to X because it sounds like that's where you're going Brad as you just maybe 01:06:18
don't don't want any of it, but probably would want to reduce it. And then we can let them do some homework and come back to OK, 01:06:24
this is what it looks like if if we're going to chase getting the fund balance down to 150 or something like that, right that this 01:06:30
is this is our suggestion for how we do that. I think that's the kind of guidance we need to give them or. 01:06:36
Because the mileage is just that's messier to get into. OK, so if there's anybody else who wants to do that, I'd ask you to speak 01:06:43
up now. 01:06:46
If not, we need to, you know, we need to volunteer any other comments that we have and then we're going to need to wrap up because 01:06:49
we're going to need to get set before our next meeting, so. 01:06:54
So please speak up if you're interested in pushing mileage. If you're not, then we can talk about, you know, option B, which is 01:07:00
let's see some other ways to skinny that up and then we'll we'll make a decision on that, OK. 01:07:05
Yeah, I mean, I like the keeping it where it is, especially with so many new projects coming online, you know, in a year's time 01:07:12
housing whatnot will have. 01:07:17
Taxes on the books, if you will, And then and then look. 01:07:22
You know, a year from now is my thought. Even keeping it where it is brings in. 01:07:26
Should increase. 01:07:32
What? 01:07:35
16% or $67,000 brings in to the city over a year. So my thoughts are keeping at the same mileage rate. Look at it again next year 01:07:36
and see if these new properties coming. 01:07:42
Because the city's rapidly changing from. 01:07:49
The number of citizens. 01:07:53
So. 01:07:56
I would. My inclination is to leave it where it is. You know, maybe we're lucky in a year, 2 years from now we could lower it 01:07:56
because of the tax base. 01:08:00
Has come up so much with the new housing and other developments. 01:08:05
I haven't said a thing down there. Do you have anything you care to add, Chuck or Connie? 01:08:14
Make it look a little bit rosier than it does right now. I'm just very, very fiscally conservative on that. The other is the 01:09:37
excise liquor by the drink. Is there an interest in US? 01:09:41
Look, going after that because if so that's a line on that we could also. 01:09:46
Add and address and that would have to come for council next month. That's something that doesn't have as far as I know. That 01:09:51
would start immediately. You know when after you if you approved it. We maybe start July 1st or something, but where's the hotel 01:09:57
motel You actually have to start like the month after you approve it? 01:10:02
Anyway, there's a rule about that. So that would be July 1, but. 01:10:09
I I mean, I'm for definitely exploring it. 01:10:13
Especially as we're about to have, I'm assuming the many of the establishments at Wire Park are going to be serving. 01:10:16
Spirits. And so it makes sense to have that already in. 01:10:22
Before they get started. 01:10:27
A tender agree. 01:10:32
OK. OK. So we'll make some adjustments on the revenue side also on. 01:10:34
The expense I will have my staff go back through and just sort of. 01:10:39
Walk back through all this wonderful line items and see if there's anything we can do. 01:10:44
I never apologize for asking, asking folks to sharpen their pencils, right. I mean, you know, that's the same in my business is it 01:10:49
ought to be in government. Sharon and her team do that. They run it tight. But then that, you know, it never hurts to say go back 01:10:54
and take a look at that, double check it, see what we can do and you never know where you're going to find some savings. So that's 01:11:00
that's part of what we need to do as stewards of the taxpayer dollar. So which I know we will. 01:11:05
OK. Anything further? Anybody have any other comments? Sharon, do you need anything else from us at this point? I don't believe. 01:11:11
Well, I do need clarification if you if you intend to have another budget work session, we'll have to reschedule. It was scheduled 01:11:16
for next Thursday. 01:11:20
I won't be here and I kind of think I need to be here for that. So if you don't think you need another one, you know we will. 01:11:26
We'll refresh and we'll resend out an update the information and send you a short memo on what we did so that you'll know, but we 01:11:31
won't go through the whole, you know, this whole thing again. We'll just try to give you an update in the in the bottom line 01:11:36
numbers. 01:11:41
And we can get that to you. When I get back the first week of June, we'll do that. So you'll have it a Week 2, two weeks before 01:11:46
you have to make a decision. So your final hearing will be on June 15th, unless you decide you need to have something before that. 01:11:52
So if we I lean towards not having another work session. Personally, this was very, very thorough. 01:11:59
If. 01:12:07
If we get that information beginning of June and. 01:12:10
We're like, yes, I mean, I guess. 01:12:14
I guess I'm wondering practically, so we just would say, I mean what if you do do that and then would we just be replying by 01:12:18
e-mail those of us who like it or don't or is it so just amend it in the vote on and on the. 01:12:24
Yeah. I mean what we would do and we did this last year, it can, it can get kind of messy, but it's OK. The year before we did 01:12:30
this too, if you you may recall, we had Exhibit A that was a challenge. 01:12:35
But we we could, we could make the adjustments, you know, in real time. 01:12:41
We can look at that. I mean, I don't think there's anything on there that if we needed to push it out in order to give you guys 01:13:22
more, more time during a meeting, we could push to July, so. 01:13:25
Well, we have to have the mileage rate and the budget hearing, you know, June 15th, we have to have that finished, so. 01:13:30
All right. So I'm seeing no desire for another work session. We'll plan on seeing that documentation from you, Sharon. 01:13:37
Early June, if something changes or we need to shoot up some players, we can always call a meeting if we have to, but that's we 01:13:43
prefer to just have a nice streamline budget process, everybody can plan ahead, so. 01:13:48
OK. Then your next steps are outlined on the agenda in terms of what we we've got coming, We've all talked about, we've all talked 01:13:55
about that as well tonight. 01:14:00
Again, let me offer our thanks Sharon to you and your team for a very detailed budget process. Also want to thank you even though 01:14:06
it's not. 01:14:09
The easiest way to do it? Budgeting. Not so rosy. Budgeting very conservative and showing us a budget to a worst case scenario, 01:14:12
knowing that it's unlikely to be there. But planning that way I think is the right way to do it. So thank you to your team. 01:14:18
Unless there's anything else, we're going to wrap up and we are adjourned. Thank you. 01:14:25
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