- I'll go ahead and call this meeting on the special finance committee that was announced with the order
- this morning. I'm going to motion 27. I'm going to move this to ask for district three. That's already
- at large. Sophia McDowell, clerk's office. David Ronald, district four. Jeff McKim, city control. Gretchen
- Hap, deputy mayor. Thank you. And we have a member of the public here this morning, which is exciting.
- We're going to look at the agenda first.
- First, we need to approve the agenda. Short update, Controller McKim following up on a couple of comments
- from the public or requests from the public and audit reports, which hopefully won't take a few minutes.
- I wanted to, as part of this committee, is kind of look at that that we looked at as a full council
- on Wednesday. Just to, there's a couple of changes that I made though. Let's unpack it is the one from
- Wednesday. So that's when we raised that string share just to go over those and make sure that there's
- nothing else that anybody in this committee at least identifies. And.
- Also talk if there's any other kind of budget presentation formatting stuff. So I feel like we talked
- about that a little bit more than maybe how it was described in the, in the letter, but like, maybe
- it covers it, but I just wanted to get feedback on that. Um, and then I figured that because there weren't
- as many things on the agenda for this particular meeting that it might be at the time to talk about
- the official salary stuff for the first time, because what I don't want to do is get to, you know, uh,
- July or August and all of a sudden.
- have to do that kind of for action. So I want to be able to kind of deliberately have a plan about that.
- So just kind of talking about what it is that we want to do, making any changes to the budget calendar,
- especially with regard to goal setting around election official salaries. And then we're done. So does
- that look good, folks? Does anybody want to officially move for approval? Will it be Brittany and Jenna?
- Sure. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?
- Fantastic. So let's go ahead for the update. Great. Thank you very much. Jeff McKim. I wanted to give
- you an update on several of our audit and reporting requirements. I know I provided some background
- information in the past, but there are a couple of new pieces of information and several of you asked
- me about these requirements recently. I thought I'd provide an update at the meeting. First, there is
- the annual financial report or AFR.
- The AFR is an unaudited financial filing that all local units of government are required to make each
- year by March 1st for the preceding year. Accordingly, we submitted our AFR information on February
- 27th. The AFR data is submitted via the state's Gateway local government portal, and the actual AFR
- report is simply an output of that portal. There's no narrative or customization or even notes. It's
- simply a data report that is generated by and available to the public on the Gateway System.
- The AFR can be amended at any time, and it is frequently in the early days after submission, particularly
- if additional information can be added or errors are discovered or adjustments related to an audit are
- made. We've amended ours a couple of times and made well again, especially if there are any audit results
- that would require adjustment or if we discover other errors.
- In the past, we've exported a version of the AFR and PDF form from Gateway and posted it on the city's
- website. Unfortunately, these exported PDF reports do not pass accessibility checkers, and so I'm honestly
- still mulling over the best way to handle this. But regardless of whether it's available on our website,
- it is available to you and the public in the state's Gateway world.
- The AFR data is presented on what's called a cash or regulatory basis, which is the way that we like
- every unit of government in Indiana conducts our business. And that means that the ending fund balances,
- expenditures, revenues, et cetera, are the same numbers that are shown in our financial system and are
- the same numbers that you see while reviewing budgets and considering appropriations. I think for that
- reason, this report is of particular interest to you and other folks interested in city government budgeting.
- The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, or ACFR, is the audited financial statement that is required
- of all units of government that issue debt. The ACFR is presented according to government generally
- accepted accounting principles or GAAP standards, which among other things, presents financial information
- on a modified accrual basis.
- This provides a much broader view of the unit's overall fiscal health, but is also more challenging
- to interpret sometimes because it doesn't match the numbers that we all use and see in budgeting and
- operations. Those are those cash basis numbers.
- The ACFR is due by the end of September for the previous year's business. As I think you're well aware,
- the city has been behind on these required filings for a number of years. I gave City Council a presentation
- on this issue back on March 14th, as you remember. The update, though, is that the auditors have actually
- scheduled the exit conference with us for Thursday, April 2nd, which means that this very long process
- is nearly coming to an end for the 2024 report.
- and the audit. A city council member is required for this exit conference and council member Piedmont
- Smith will be attending to fulfill this requirement. However, any of you are allowed to attend if you
- would like. The exit conference is not a public meeting. And in fact, the information presented is embargoed
- until the state board of accounts approves the audit, which is usually a few weeks after the exit conference.
- At that point, the ACFR, which the audit is incorporated into becomes public.
- for the 2025 Olympics, we are intending to be completely back on track.
- We have already provided an extensive amount of required information for 2025 to our gap compiler. This
- is the CPA firm that converts our regulatory basis financials to gap financials and have already completed
- and turned over some of the most time-consuming inputs, including the actuarial analysis of our pension
- and other post-employment benefits liabilities. We hope to beat the statutory deadline of September
- 30th by a wide margin, but in any case, are confident that we will be fully back in track.
- So that's my update. Thank you. Any questions for the controlling? So are there any penalties for lateness
- or not having one? We have not been threatened. We have not been threatened. I mean, it's not good to
- be late. We have not been threatened with any penalties yet. And like I said, we intend to be fully
- back on track for 2025 audit.
- Okay. By a fairly wide margin. And the explanation prior was that we had, that we hadn't done it, previous
- administration had not completed it. And this was, as you said, on a perl basis. And so you're meaning
- by that, that there's balanced funds and things like that. And that prevented the actual, I mean- No,
- there were just the re-incapable of doing it today, I guess.
- Well, I mean, I can really only answer what, you know, I've only been here since mid January, so I can't
- really, for sure, provide much information from before that, other than the city was several years in
- arrears and it just took a long time to dig them sand out. And then with the change in controllers also
- some kind of momentum at the end of December, during December and early January was lost as well. And just,
- It took me a few weeks to get revved up and, you know, get us back on track. Sure. Okay. That's all.
- Thank you for the update. Do you anticipate reporting anything from the annual comprehensive answer
- report? And then you mentioned that based on its core basis, it'll be tarred for like non-fact as opposed
- to interpret.
- additional takeaways or things we'll learn or have confidence in from that that we would not from the
- AFR that we should synthesize in some way or report out on? What are your thoughts about that? Well,
- I don't know that the numbers themselves may or may not be useful to you. I think what you get out of
- the ACFR is that it has been audited by an independent auditor who can then
- tell you essentially the degree of confidence that you should have in the numbers that are represented
- by the city, and to the degree to which they accurately represent the actual state of financial affairs.
- Got it. You mentioned the financial assessment of pension funds and other things, and you mentioned
- the debt. This is not the issue for any debt-issuing city. Are there assessments of risk in debt-packing
- and things like that, or not at all?
- Well, only a direct report. I mean, there certainly is a listing of all of our outstanding debts and
- the comparison to the constitutional debt limit, which I think we talked about at our last meeting when
- the Reedy folks came in. Any other questions?
- Great, great. Go ahead and go to public comment then on this topic. Is there any members of the public
- who wish to comment on these updates from the controller? Please raise your hand online or I don't know
- if the member in the room is interested. There's a chat and we want to hand raise. Okay. I can't quite.
- Whichever one you want first, I can do.
- Let's go ahead and read the chat message first. I want to control what I'm saying that the AF report
- published on the state website does not meet section 508 standards in the same format of AFR file we
- published on the city's website. Oh, kind of copy of really long range report reference that the last
- fiscal committee needed to be published after the meeting today. Okay. Go ahead and think about those
- and go ahead and let Mr. Keough
- make his comment. I'm going to go ahead and set a three-minute timer on my watch, and I'll try to give
- you a little bit of notice before that. I'll go ahead and re-read Easter Kehoe. All right. Kevin Kehoe.
- Yeah, I was hoping there'd be some discussion about the table 12 from the 2023 ACFR and the 2022. There
- seems to be some, I think, some obvious errors, especially in light of the really
- the consultation you had at your last meeting. I was hoping to hear some more about that. And I wanted
- to confirm that the best practice for the ACFR is to have it completed by June 30th. I just want to
- make that... That's my research shows, and I know there's some recognized
- associations that would back that up. So it's kind of like, sometimes I feel like I'm being gaslighted,
- forgive me. But I would think that would be the best practice. And also it would add value that it would
- be available to the council so they can review that before they enter into their budget discussions.
- And it's just, again, with that table 12, the same thing is going on with the ACFR.
- there's changes being made. And I would think that there, and there's a due date of March 1st, but there's
- changes being made. And I would think that there would be an audit trail and there would be a process
- to document those changes.
- I mean, I come from an audit background, so I'm very aware of these type of processes and these required
- standards. So again, sometimes I feel like I'm being gaslighted. And I'm doing this, hopefully, in the
- goal of transparency. That's the goal, and to add value, because I truly think that there may be some
- things that need to be looked at.
- to be helped. I'm adding value to actually to help with the system so it can provide this information
- that's accurate and timely. So I'm getting quite frustrated and I can't apologize for that. But anyway,
- I'm sorry for it. This is off the cuff. I hate to do these off the cuff remarks too, especially within
- three minutes because it's incredibly difficult to get these complex ideas out there and to express
- them in a way in such a short time.
- So hopefully you take these to heart and that's, and I'm sincere about this. I'm not complaining and
- I want to make sure if I, I would be so disappointed if it's ever thought that I'm here this morning
- just to complain or to some for political type of purpose. This is in the best interest of the city
- and all the citizens. So anyway, I'll stop now because I'll probably, my time is probably awful close.
- Technically I'm on the 13th. Thank you.
- Thank you for that comment. Is there another hand raised? It looks like there is. Eric, go ahead. Good
- morning, everyone. Just in follow up to my question about the annual report, PDFs can be put into Section
- 508 standard format, WCAG 2.1, level AA. And I would request that
- Not only controller McKim but the entire city exam and the possibility of continuing to publish reports
- in PDF format for a variety of reasons But my other question pertains to and I also asked about the
- Reedy Long-range report it would be very helpful if that could be that could be published but the
- Reports for 2021 and 2022 had, it looks like they're material misstatements of the long range debt.
- And I'm just wondering if that could be verified and any necessary action taken to correct that. It
- looks like they are misstated by not using the correct formula. So they're basically, at least that's
- what it appears.
- Those are my requests and comments this morning, at least on this matter. Thank you. Thank you.
- What's that, Eric? Oh, Eric Hoes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I can't always remember by voice. Thank
- you so much. Well, that's realistic. Any other members of the public?
- I would like to weigh in on this. Okay, seeing none. I think, you know, in committee meetings, it's
- a little bit of a CQC about whether or not we respond, but I do like to respond sometimes to members
- of the public in this committee because the finance issues, as Mr. Keoh said, are
- really complicated. So, Jeff, would you like to be in it all? Yeah, no, I did want to address the issue
- that actually both members of the public mentioned having to do with the constitutional debt limits.
- It is true that apparently, not apparently, it is true that there was an error in the statement of the
- formula used to compute the constitutional debt limit in the 2022 ACFR report.
- It was corrected in 2023 report, although there was still a phrase in there that I think was probably
- ambiguous and confusing. But at no point has the city ever exceeded or even come close to the actual
- constitutional debt limit. But it is true that in a 2022 report, the table that was used to calculate
- the constitutional debt limit,
- omitted dividing the assessed value by three, because the way that the constitutional debt limit is
- calculated is the net assessed value, 2% of the net assessed value divided by three, and that divided
- by three was not included in the 2022 report. Okay. But that was included in the 2023, or that it was
- corrected in the 2023 report.
- Because the table is correct in the 2020. Right. So basically, so it's not that we ever exceeded that.
- It's that the table was wrong. And so if our maximum was really here for one year, we thought it was
- here, and then it went back down to here again. Yes. OK. Exactly. That's good to know. Yeah.
- Too many people. One is that, so would it be correct to interpret that the third party auditor missed that?
- in the reporting? You know, I honestly don't know if that, the ACFR consists of audited and unaudited
- parts. So there are narratives, there's discussion that is unaudited, and then there are financials
- that are audited. And I honestly don't know if that is an audited, an audited portion or an unaudited
- portion. I can find out. Okay. Yeah. So I don't know whether that was something, you know,
- the city missed, the gap compiler missed, or the auditor missed, or the report. Got it. Okay, thank you.
- And then maybe related, and I think Mr. Kehoe asked a question kind of related to this, like when corrections
- do need to be made to the ACFR, like is there any type of like error log or like corrections log or
- could that be a thing just for additional? Well, I think you were talking about the AFR in that case.
- Yeah, either one. Because we do make changes there. Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. Okay, in
- that case, it's not errors, per se, but yeah. I mean, yeah.
- I think that's a good idea. It's the sort of thing that if you've been involved in coding, you use GitHub.
- You know, for any change, you check the change in and put in a comment. That totally makes sense to
- me. This is the gateway system. We don't have any control over it. And like I mentioned in my update,
- there's not even a narrative that we can put in there, notes or anything. It's just the output of the
- system. I think it would certainly make sense. There's a gateway email address to suggest
- features can be added to the system. Yeah, I mean, it seems like we could even just, it sounds like
- we're working through accessibility questions about publishing AFR outputs on our own website, but even
- if we had a hub that just explained to folks how to access it, and we could track with an update log
- there also, so we could just take it in our initiative. We wanted to, yeah, thank you. That's a good
- suggestion. Great. Any other follow-ups from the public?
- I think there was a request for the reading report. Oh yeah. Cause like everything that really showed
- was already in that packet. But is there another like, cause they like reference some stuff. We do not
- have the final long range report because they are still updating it from the December 31st financials.
- Once the books were closed out, once we receive it, we'll have to remediate it and make it PDF accessible.
- And we will certainly make it available.
- Great, thank you. Okay, moving on then to the budget priorities and the refinements. So let me make
- sure that I can screen share the right thing. And.
- Wonderful. So this was the letter that the kind of draft memo that I wrote based on our last deliberation
- session and based on the rankings that we did. So I realized that when I edited this, I didn't.
- and I didn't put it involved and didn't factor it in, so I'm just going to have to go down and remember
- all things from Wednesday that when I got feedback on Wednesday and I asked for feedback about certain
- things, they changed. Councilmember Sarney mentioned guiding principles stuff and wanting to make sure
- that the plans were referenced as guiding principles, and so I added in this sentence here about the
- long-range plans
- or the city plans serving as guiding principles to our discussions and our original list of outcomes
- that came directly from these plans. And I think that that's the only thing that I changed in that paragraph.
- I put in an extra note about how that is a ranked list based on the council member voting and that link
- goes to the
- Uh.
- actual compiled spreadsheet of everybody's ranking of those. It's like that source documentation as
- much as we have of it because that was shared for the sake of the public. I don't think I mentioned
- how that was actually shared. I couldn't figure out quite how to do a Google Form so that everybody
- could take their 100 points and assign them to places. I made an individual Excel spreadsheet for every
- council member and shared it just with the single council member. Then I took all of those and I put them into
- A compiled spreadsheet. So then everybody's results were on the same thing. And so that that was shared
- as part of the packet of them to say Wednesday that have that source in it. So that is what that is
- linked to. We referenced. I think all of that is the same.
- And people seemed okay with number six being changed to inclusive and strong local economy. I changed
- number seven to expansion of options other than uniformed police officers for non-violent offenses.
- Council Member Peebe Smith wanted a little bit of word smithing on that to acknowledge that there are
- some of those programs that already exist. And council members like agreed with that.
- I think those are all of the changes in there. And then I added this last paragraph here. Thank you
- for considering these priorities. And I was trying to remember when I was doing this yesterday,
- I was like, are there, did we really just discuss this at four meetings?
- in terms of the administration reviewing the full meetings and materials to go to more source data.
- I wanted feedback on that too. There was the December deliberation session, the March deliberation session,
- and then we discussed it a couple of times in here in February in preparation for that deliberation
- session. What was that? All of the in-person discussions, because then there were also, there were all
- those people forms and folks and all of
- that data from those Google Forums is shared in one or more of those meetings listed. But am I forgetting?
- Like, I felt like I was forgetting something, maybe because? I think that was it on the concept of version
- sessions. It was just tattooed. OK. Yeah. And that's it. So any feedback from you guys? Any other things
- that you've been noodling over? Any concerns? I don't recall.
- Your last question. Meetings, but I just want it's just a small thing. I wondered if we could just hyperlink
- the plans that are referenced. Oh, okay. Okay. Safe streets for all planning and financial plan. Perfect.
- A note here to myself to hyperlink. I had a meeting with the comprehensive plan. I know you asked that
- kind of Wednesday. I mean, some of these
- This is the set of, we've talked about the inconsistency with respect to how outcomes are written, whether
- they're smart or not in various plans, but those comprehensive plan, I think goals did make it into
- our list for review. And so some of this is sourced from that. Okay, with the comprehensive plan. And
- then it looks like the,
- List is is a ranked order. So like this. Yes, which I think. Maybe that's clear to those. Should I put
- the point values for the council member voting on or just even I wonder just like an additional clause
- to clarify like. The level list is in order of priority based on this exercise. Yeah, I.
- I know it says identified and ranked. Yeah, it says ranked a couple of times. So maybe I need to use
- a synonym for ranked or describe this process a little bit more. Like you could say that priority outcomes
- were identified and ranked with the highest priority items. OK. Or you know, something like that. I'll
- keep working on this to find this slang process.
- OK. And first step, you're not taking control of the camera in the room right now. So hopefully, you'll
- realize that it is. It's clearly noted. Yeah. But it is. I guess then it's clear. I'm looking at the
- version with the idea. OK. Yeah. Just something different. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's worth trying
- to figure out a second word to use besides granting. Right. Or a description process or something.
- and maybe just putting the points from the council member voting in there. If I describe the process
- of how that happened, because you guys were kind of involved to some degree, at least in the planning
- of that, or one or more of the meetings around when we discussed the process of how we were going to
- do this, that does not mean that you're going to remember all of those details. And that's helpful to
- throw them in here. So all right. Good. Any other comments, concerns?
- Want any of those? OK, great. That is super helpful. So then, hopefully, the goal is to have this memo
- approved by the full council next week at the Wednesday meeting. And that can be the official given
- to you guys. And then in terms of, I guess that's the other big thing, in terms of budget presentations,
- So what I said in here, interested in hearing how certain programs and expenses are supporting these
- priorities and splitting those expenses out to the greatest extent possible, including considering direct
- expenses, staff time, and if the expense falls into more than one priority area. So that was something
- where I was trying to incorporate things that we've talked about in terms of y'all's goals in terms
- of the shift to outcome-based budgeting with the reality that
- You can't necessarily separate everything right now, but like starting with some things. So is, and
- that we wanted to see as part of budget presentations, those details for how that was going, at least
- with this list, even if you can't do it with everything else. So that was like the goal. And when I
- was thinking with that sentence, is that clear? Whoever wants to answer that, that's a member is for
- Jeff reflection.
- I mean, it is clear. I will say that there, that is still a relatively large number of, uh, of priorities.
- And, you know, pretty much any association specific budget items and costs is going to require some
- kind of manual action on the part of both department heads and us. So, um, Yeah, there's, there's that
- and, um, I think.
- You know, I look at number four, which is a goal. I think we all have increasing housing diversity,
- but the neighborhoods predictability decreasing. Those are not necessarily budgetary items. Those are
- process items. So when I was looking at this, I was thinking that, you know, we're always trying to
- balance the numbers part takes a lot of time and separating out the numbers that we're all interested
- in seeing as time consuming.
- So how can we use the narrative space wisely so that we're not creating 800 pages and people are only
- reading the, you know, 100 pages that they're interested in? So it may be that what we could try to
- do is create a memo for the budget book about each of these and address some of these issues that maybe
- are not budgetary issues, but just say, you know, what are we doing on these? If it's not a, if there's
- not a dollar amount attached to it,
- What are we doing? And it may not be a formal named initiative, but what's the plan? For example, decreasing
- permitting wait times is really important for every one thing. Probably doesn't have a lot of dollars
- attached to it. Yeah, and I think on the piece here, if we can talk about dedicated staff time, that
- makes it easy for some programs where, for example,
- The City Homelessness Response Coordinator, we know everything he does is homelessness. It's easy to
- allocate his entire salary to something. For folks who work on multiple projects, it's much harder to
- separate out, you know, 20% of their staff time is spent on this, that, or the other thing.
- So there may be, if we can think about, and maybe this is just a communication issue between us and
- council, we can clarify in the packet that when we do put numbers together,
- We're talking about 100% dedicated or something that's pretty easy to split 50-50, not 10%, 5%, 2%,
- that kind of slicing and dicing. I don't think it's very helpful or easy to do. And the other thing
- that I think I would like to acknowledge here, and we'll just have to keep, I think, educating ourselves
- and the public on this over and over again, is that in particular, infrastructure projects have so many
- different funding sources.
- And the opportunities, it's a real juggling game of what are the funding sources? What can we afford?
- What are the needs? And so it's very hard to say ahead of time, oh, we're going to do this particular
- neighborhood project and it will cost exactly this amount. And because there are so many, you know,
- if we make another repair at the same time, it saves costs on both, but you can't really split it out.
- So there may be some stuff like that, but I think we can get to the top-level numbers on some of those
- and start setting a baseline for folks in comparison, which is I think part of what we're interested
- in seeing is year over year. To address some of what you just said to make sure that council members
- are good with how it's phrased and that you're good with how it is in this letter, that you see it.
- First of all, with the staff time,
- intentionally out of the work dedicated before staff time. And so maybe that meets your requirement
- and for council members, does that still kind of meet a grade that we are interested in, like a for
- now kind of? Sure. Yeah. I expressed at our December, uh, deliberation session on this, um, skepticism
- about the utility of labeling things based on these prioritize
- Priorities and the, and the particularly that the effort required to do that. Uh, I know we did kind
- of something like it in priority areas last year in the budget and I appreciate the effort on that,
- but I, I just, just being honest, I didn't, didn't find it very useful. And, um, I mentioned, I'm not
- saying this is the right system, but I mentioned it at the previous administration at the department's
- head. Uh, I think.
- I had to look at it to know the exact details. I always felt like we had a little bit better clarity.
- They kind of listed by funds and category what was going on and kind of tried to tell you what the major
- expenses were in those areas, which I found helpful. Another thing they did that I found helpful was
- they had goals, departmental goals for the year, and they would report on the previous year's goals
- and set some for the coming year, ideally,
- those would be, you know, aligned with city planning and policy documents. And there was usually
- a cross-cutting theme, too, of like a few buckets of like meta-priorities, say like climate action and
- resilience, and then like, you know, departments could have particular goals on those fronts. And I
- think that also addresses some of the questions around like, you know, the increased housing diversity
- within neighborhoods, right? A lot of that, there's going to be costs entailed. There might be people
- at the workshops, other things, but a lot, and you know, consultants costs, whatever, but a lot of that's
- going to be
- process, code change, you know, et cetera, and not easy to quantify in budgetary terms, but nevertheless,
- a priority that I think is worthy of discussion in the budget context. It's like, cause staff can do
- myriad things and we could be in a totally reactive posture or we can say, we're going to get these
- things done. Or the number one priority for planning and transportation staff this year is to accomplish like,
- this set of processing code changes and like that's their number one target and that's going to dictate
- where the time's going and you know what I mean? So yeah. So to reflect that in terms of this letter,
- what I just put in was a note for me, right, to add to the budget presentation something about department
- goal setting and then... I'm not saying it's necessarily needed, I'm just I'm workshopping I think what
- Yeah, but similarly and supporting these priority outcomes and so adding something into that idea to
- leave that space for, you know, we're working toward this in this like multi-year kind of fashion or
- would that meet some of the needs on both ends? I mean, personally, I feel like the letter, our discussion
- about the letter is as helpful as the letter itself. So I mean, you know, the public may benefit from
- seeing every single detail of our conversation work back into this letter.
- But I feel like the purpose of this committee is to work on details. And so if we keep going back to
- trying to make it appear everywhere, it sort of defeats the purpose of having a committee.
- So I get the point. And I do think that listing out what are the specific programs that meet some of
- these goals, because that may even be hidden from some of us, even if we can't break out the number
- of what's attached to it because of how the program works. What's the program? What are the goals?
- if we can keep that simple. So just, you know, for the benefit of the public and maybe Brian or council
- members, you know, the, the kind of goal planning that was done in the past was extraordinarily intricate
- and included down to the level of how many proclamations should be issued in a year, how many press
- releases should be sent a year. Those were all considered goals. So I would like to focus our work on
- meaningful goals instead of set a goal for every single thing that you do.
- even if it's something that you fill by demand, that you do until the money runs out. There are a lot
- of programs like that. X amount of funds, you use them to the best of your ability. Do you have something
- more on this? Which is just thinking about getting toward what we would collectively find both feasible
- and useful.
- Would it make sense to use feature meeting kind of like workshop, something more like a template or
- a proto, you know, design or, or, you know, the presentation. What I would love to do is to work with
- our teams and create models that we think we can do and that we think address rooms and then bring that
- to you rather than have this group go back and bring it to you. Yeah. I think that would be helpful.
- Yeah. And through iteration, I think we can get to that. Yeah. Right.
- We give a lot of information and you come up with something and we hope it's a lot of grades. And I
- know you probably want me to tell you what is what you will bring that. I don't know. I am writing a note.
- Let's make sure that I have that on my radar in her major agenda setting so that then I can check back
- in with it at some point. I have another meeting that I have to- That's fine. I do just want to get
- to the last couple of things that you mentioned in terms of the slayer. First off, I did make sure to
- say to the greatest extent possible understanding that
- you know, to the greatest extent possible to give you a little bit of space, but also the paragraph
- above that, um, that we realized the priorities require different levels of investment approaches, including
- that policy updates for community partners, programs, and legislative change, which I think that's one
- of the other things that you were talking about in terms of that narrative, that it's not all like budget
- numbers and hard numbers that are meeting some of these different things. Um, and I think there was
- one more thing too that I,
- You know, maybe I qualify and there would just be timelines of action. So, for example, increasing housing
- deficit, well, I would not say we will come to that in one year. That is 80 years long. We won't know
- necessarily the impact of some of the changes that you guys will make to legislation or that we'll propose,
- plus process changes. We won't see that impact for a little bit longer. We'll see it in the front, at
- least the leading educators, but not after.
- Right. Okay. And I think that that was the last thing. Yeah. I think the challenge to the leader that
- caters becomes the target, you know, like that's what we were trying to address. Yeah. Okay. Any other
- comments on this or ways that you think that I should or could or need to make it better before next
- Wednesday?
- I would just say I appreciate hearing anything that would make the budget presentations more useful
- and interesting to all of you. There's department heads put, and the administration puts a lot of effort
- into those. And if it's not useful or boring or whatever, then we want to instead present information
- that is useful. Could we spend a future meeting like maybe comparing a single department's
- budget presentation over the course of a little bit of a past series and then just talking about what
- because council members find useful or not, and you need to put some thought to that at a time. I would
- love to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. One other thing I mentioned previously, Jeff, is getting better clarity
- on the inputs, the revenue sources for each fund, including inter-fund transfers where that occurs,
- because I just, I don't know, maybe it's the way my brain works, I find a fund
- approach to budgeting just a little counterintuitive where it's like, here's the money. Uh, but like
- when you want to think about like issues at the level, I think that we're supposed to be thinking of
- is like, you know, kind of physical policy and like, what are we doing with the money we have? Where
- can we make shifts and can we make changes that affect the amount of money we have and all that, right?
- Like having a better control of revenue is really helpful. And I feel like we had, I never got to a
- point where I was satisfied with, with, um, uh, controller, um,
- Thank you for throwing wood like put together on that front. And that's something I'd love to like workshop
- in advance to go just
- Yeah, I'm always happy to give any kind of presentation on revenue that you'd like to see. And you're
- right that the transfers between funds do just make things more difficult. I mean, you know, the money
- is transferred from the general fund to Sophia Travis to the alternative transportation for sidewalks.
- There are various transfers back and forth that kind of cloud rather than
- Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, maybe he just went into this county for some reason. Yeah. Yeah. I was
- thinking of the form of a table or something like that. I mean, that's already complex. I don't know.
- But anyway, that's great. I actually already started making this sort of a box diagram that shows the
- transfers between homes and stuff.
- I haven't had time to finish it yet, but it's the sort of thing that might be actually useful to my
- budget now. Not that I should ask, but could I just ask a question about funds transfers? Because there
- was a housing fund that was utilized by the Hamilton administration that they were approved from developers
- and then used it for that affordability purposes. They would subsidize other developers in
- the quest for affordable housing, especially permanent. And is that still operational? Yeah, it is definitely
- still in existence. I'm not aware of. The fund balance would be helpful to know as we go forward talking
- about that. At some point. And HAND is using some of that money this year for some of their programs.
- I figure it's still existed. I just need some references to it. I think under the current HAND leadership
- and administration,
- they're leaning more into payouts in lieu and I think it's over in project affordability. So it's actually
- probably directing more money into that ostensibly, but yeah, knowing a little bit more on how we're
- using that in the impact. That would be helpful. And specifically we had a decision about payment in
- lieu of surrendering their commitment to the affordability of running auto.
- Does that money, I think a million dollars, did that land in a fund? I can generate a report on that.
- I think it did. It might also, like to those questions, it might be more useful to have, like Anna,
- probably as a guest in this meeting, to give a little bit more details about how some of those programs
- are working. And that, I think, you know, it veers into this other
- And if they know we've already been talking about like how can we best use this meeting time like what
- is this committee for like what can we do and I think one of the answers is there so many things to
- do that sometimes it feels overwhelming about what to do. But one of one of our topics could be like
- having specific department heads come in to give us a more specific sort of
- report on a particular fund or how they're utilizing a specific sort of thing or I mean, bond projects
- maybe and because Controller McKim can tell us about what the numbers look like, but can't necessarily
- tell us about some of the like soft impacts related to how those numbers are being spent. And those
- are also, I mean, I think that's also a topic that's relevant for us as a committee. So I wrote that
- down as a note to you about, you know,
- getting Anna in here. And that's something that I asked some would like through the budget session last
- year about how some of those programs are going. Because I think that it was, because we put money into
- that from the Housing Development Fund for budget year 2025 for her to start some more kind of programs.
- And at budget time last year, they were still kind of in the early stages. And I'm pretty sure that
- money got budgeted for that in 2006 as well.
- And so she might have, you know, especially in a couple of months after the, the well stuff quiet down
- a little bit and she's able to give, or maybe one of her other staff members may also be able to give
- a good report. Well, I was thinking, you know, Matt's reference to broad buckets, like Plum in Action
- Resilience, but we have a couple of departments here in ESD or women over here who focus on specifics
- just to, you know,
- Yeah. And just answer that the housing fund is about $5 million. But I can't answer how it's being spent.
- Sure. All right, great. Anything else about the letter? I really appreciate you drafting it. It's something
- I very well think it's wonderful. The pinky little thing for accessibility is the Roboto font.
- Oh, okay. Is the best. Okay. Thank you. Sure. What is the best? Robotom. Like the song. Yeah. Okay.
- Thank you. That's helpful. Why is that? Do you know? It's just like magic. There are recommendations,
- but also screen readers. It's the best ones. Robots. Things can change. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
- Okay, let's go to members of public. If anybody has any comments about the priorities letter, the process
- by which we've done about this. We have a member of public coming to the table right now. Go ahead,
- Mr. Engy. Well, who can do first names here on this committee? Thank you, Hope. Of course, Mr. Engy,
- great to be in the Chamber of Commerce.
- the physical solvency of the city is one of the main topics, both the county and the city that we talk
- about in our advocacy meetings monthly. So I want to just say how important this body is and the physical
- health of the city or future economic growth of it. I mean, just a couple of things. I don't want to
- get into the minutiae too much of the letter, but you're pretty far into it on those 2027 priorities.
- But I'm just, when we look at
- Last year, I remember around April, we talked about outcome-based budgeting, and I worried it was just
- too all-encompassing to move forward with. And we still need to sort of look in that lens. I think the
- administration and the council agreed on that. And what lends itself to that is specifically the John
- Hopkins funds and that hand housing fund we talked about. Here is the money we spent on
- these housing programs, this is what we got for it. And so I think that is where it's going to be really
- helpful. You can start on those two entities and also explain to the public what we're getting from
- that. I think you read about these payments and we don't know what's going into it. I think, you know,
- the chamber has been in support of that means to sort of help on the edges with down payment assistance
- in order to things can really have some impact other than sort of laborious compliance issues
- with out-of-state developers. And then the other thing on the 2000 priorities is I always wanna make
- sure we're not doing too many platitudes on that that can't really be, that aren't really doable.
- I mean, no fatalities or homelessness. Some of that is just very broad. And I think having this body
- or even the larger council look into, we have a homeless coordinator.
- And we already have heading home, but we have a specific person within the mayor's office that should
- be our expert on this coming in and going, well, where can budgetarily, we can kind of fill in some
- cracks. Food security is the same way. This is not really an operation of the city. It's a bigger, larger
- issue. So looking at on that lens a little bit where the city can kind of come in and
- have specific funding measures to help those cracks and then have outcomes that they can show to what
- that goes into that. I mean, I have a lot of notes about some other long-term fiscal issues that we
- discussed. Was that last week or the week before that I missed? But I'll say that for another time that
- I do appreciate this body and the work that they are doing. Thanks. Thank you. Is there anybody online
- who wants to comment about the budget earnings slide?
- I was going to ask how you wanted to handle the chats. They've been kind of continuously coming in.
- Yeah, I would say maybe copy paste them and send them. Maybe if maybe I'll do that, actually, because
- I'm technically in here and then I then you don't have to take that as a responsibility right now.
- but if I can copy and paste them and get them into a Google Doc and then maybe publish them as a Nintendo.
- We can get that also from the Zoom in stuff and I can show you later. Okay, yeah. I don't have access
- to Perch Zoom, so. If you're a goal post, it automatically does to you. Nice, okay. It should, okay.
- So you can share your focus. Yes, so I'll make sure that all of those chats get out because it's also
- important that the whole public sees those chats, especially since there are several of them today.
- So yeah, I will help me remember to do that before I leave, because we're supposed to adjourn in six
- minutes. All right. Thank you guys so much for that. I'm going to stop my screen share, because I'm
- going to move on to the next agenda item, which is talking about the elected official salary. And we
- only have a couple of minutes to do this. So in the packet, there was,
- Oh, dear. I'm not going to bother trying to do this right now. In the packet, there was the elected
- salary framework that was developed a couple of years ago. And it had to get like our staff just did
- a quick change to put it into a Google Doc as opposed to that.
- a nicely laid out PDF that it was in. And I did email that to folks last night to remind you of how
- that looked. And then I was going to try to do the screen share on it. Let me try again and see if now
- it will. There it is. And the basic question that I wanted to answer today, I think, in terms of how
- much time do we have,
- Is kind of that overarching how do we want to handle elected official salaries this year, especially
- because next year is a city election year. And 1 of the things that we talked about in the past was
- this idea of trying to make these positions accessible enough, especially the council position, because
- that's the 1 that really doesn't have. Like enough salary attached or.
- slow survival on this, like it's not a full-time job kind of thing, and how we want to do that with
- kind of a new crowd of folks who might be stepping up to hope. Okay. So we don't have time to go over
- details, but I think the basic question is, do we want to do something like this as a committee this
- year, maybe basing it off of
- how this happened, you know, acknowledging that Matt and I were both part of this before, so we at least
- kind of know like our sequence and like how we talked through some of that stuff. Yeah, how the program
- was involved and what their guidance was and everything. Right. And then kind of bring us through kind
- of a similar thing to, you know, think about guiding principles and basis of salary setting. And I know
- Councilor Morello or Dave, going back and forth between formal and
- Casual say, uh, you really advocated for more of a basis of salary setting being on comparisons with
- pure cities. And so, like, going back and doing more of that research again, because, I mean, we kind
- of did that research a couple of years ago, um, and like, updates management since then, in terms of
- what, what other pure cities around and done. And so, like, do we want to, as a committee kind of do
- this thing. Or do we want to do something else? So, um,
- Yeah, we kind of discussed this over the last couple of years. Obviously, we have kind of a wide range
- of opinions on it on the council. I wanted to know on our salary ordinance last year because to me,
- to support it, I feel like it needs to have some basis other than this is what it was last year. And
- I'm not saying that
- what it was last year and what pure cities make can't be a factor in the amount we set. But if those
- are the sole factors to me, that's not a sound enough policy basis. I recognize that nobody shares that
- view, but that's just my view. I do think this process we went through in 2024 with the consultants
- from Pro was following a logical framework in terms of
- Uh, the same principles and trying to align to the maximum extent feasible for elected positions, which
- are unique in some ways to the, um, the compensation framework of how, you know, um, like level
- of responsibility, uh, you know, level of expertise required things like that from, from the overall,
- you know, city salary compensation framework updates, uh, which I think is worthwhile. So I still feel
- like the, the.
- The core of this, the framework, the principles is sound. I think where we then ran into trouble is
- that that led to a recommendation that had a sticker shop dimension of like, this is a lot different
- than what it is now. And plus the dimension that all legislatures face everywhere, which is that it's
- impossible to avoid the appearance of self-healing when you have, when you have a statute already required
- to set your own salary.
- Um, and, uh, you know, people gravel that in different ways. So, so that's, that all makes this difficult
- for a number of reasons. I think I would find it worthwhile to try and, or I'm sorry, we're trying to
- wrap up. I think I would find it worthwhile to engage in this and see if we could get closer to, um,
- consensus or majority buy in for a basis of salary setting.
- that maybe looked at a multi-factor approach, moving beyond what's in this PDF to like, okay, this is
- a factor and like this framework is a factor, but so too is current sale, so too is a peer analysis
- and like balancing those in some way. But yeah, I don't know, I'll leave it there. Okay, so basically
- like the short answer is yes, you support us doing something like this.
- I slowed down because the annual process that we discussed at the time was in April, we validate, we
- update the framework, we figure it out, we gather information, and then we actually do the organs in
- August. I'm actually on time for figuring out how to do this right now. Dave, do you agree that the
- concept of having a framework, having something that you want to pursue in terms of this work?
- I think it's, yes, I think it would be helpful. And as Matt alluded to, the timing was, I think, a real
- problem. And for both the previous proposal, my amendment, which ended up being adopted, was kind of
- reactionary to the timing and to the us being an outlier relative to other communities. I thought the
- report was excellent in terms of reviewing
- duties and everything that we did, but what was lacking was any reference to peer cities. So that to
- me has to be included as well. But yeah, so I think it's a good idea to continue discussing this this
- year with the effective date of the pay raise after the election.
- I don't think that we can do that in the actual legislation. If we have a framework for that, we can
- figure out a way maybe to. If we adopt the year of the, so the effective date would be the following year.
- Yeah, part of the idea was that if people are making decisions about whether or be able to run for office
- at all, they actually need that information this year, right? So, like, at the end of this year, we're
- going to adopt for next year, which is a year, another year of our return. And that's the only thing
- that we can for sure adopt. We could put a recommendation in for the next year, but there's no guarantee
- that we would actually do it. But either way, I will write that up a little bit because it's 930 right now.
- we can move forward on that. I think that it's really helpful actually on this committee this year to
- have both of you on it, just because you represent opposite ends of some of this. I think that that's
- a great way to figure out where there's a meeting point that people can live with and respect and feel
- is useful. Great. Public comment then around
- This framework, this process, really it's not necessarily about this framework. It's about the idea
- of this body going forth and doing that task as part of our work. Any members of the public? There's
- one person with their hand up. There's a meeting in this room. Yeah, Kevin Keough. Again, I had to.
- Go ahead, Evan, kind of quickly because we're going to be chased out of this room in a minute. Okay.
- I just wanted to add in the chat a comment about, you know, I hope the council views their elected positions
- as more of a, not as a job, but as fiduciaries. And I make that point there that, you know,
- I know there was comments last time, and it really concerned me. This is the key meeting, that December
- meeting 2024, I believe, where you discussed this, and it really caught my attention. So yeah, this
- has been the key thing that got me involved. So anyway, I just want to add that comment that I feel
- strongly about that.
- And I would hope you don't try to measure it. I've tried this task too in the past, using the median
- income for the city as kind of a base and the due percentage of that. But that went by the wayside.
- But anyway, I feel strongly about this. So thank you very much. Thank you. Any other public comments
- around this, Papa? All right.
- Thank you so much. The note, the last agenda item about the calendar. I will update the calendar with
- some goals related to the elected salary stuff for the next meeting. And unless there's anything else
- about the calendar or for the good of the order. Thank you. We are adjourned. Two weeks from now is
- our next meeting. Thank you.