I'll go ahead and call the committee and the principal committee to order on June 12th, 2026. He'll
be staff served District 3. I'll go ahead and call the committee and the principal committee to order
on June 12th, 2026. He'll be staff served District 3. I'll go ahead and call the committee and the principal
committee to order on June 12th, 2026. He'll be staff served District 3. I'll go ahead and call the
committee and the principal committee to order on June 12th, 2026. He'll be staff served District 3.
I'll go ahead and call the committee and the principal committee to order on June 12th, 2026. He'll
be staff served District 3. I'll go ahead and call the committee and the principal committee to order
on June 12th, 2026. He'll be staff served District 3. I'll go ahead and call the committee and the principal
committee to order on June 12th, 2026. He'll be staff served District 3. I'll go ahead and call the
committee and the principal committee to order
Joe, we're going to give you an overview of the report today. Great. Thank you. Thank you guys for being
here today. Special guests of the day. First of all, I want to make a note that the full packet only
got posted last night. I'm really sorry about that. There was some communication slides that's been
in the council office, but it is all up there now. The proposed agenda that I have, unless there's no
objection, is we're going to hear a short report from Jeff.
and then short report, we're going to be here now about our two dates, I think, mostly for the fall.
Then we're going to turn it over to sanitation and talk about sanitation, just the status of physical
assault, let's say right now, it's the Sanitation Department. Have a conversation about that, have a
couple of comments about that, some notes about schedule updates, and then we'll adjourn.
So unless anybody has any concerns or occupations, great. So, Jeff, you want to take it away. Thank
you very much. I have a couple of updates for you first on the local income tax or lit process.
You'll remember in March 13th meeting, we have presentation from we are municipal advisor and one of
the topics was the changes in local income tax structure created by one and the 1210.
This discussion happened immediately after the passage of HEA 1210, which featured three changes of
major importance to cities and towns. So first, it moved the implementation of the new LIT system from
2028 to 2029. Second, it made larger cities less eligible for the shared municipal services rate. Formerly,
that rate was meant only for small towns that were not eligible to adopt their own LIT rate.
And then third, it created at the last minute, a new process called MUST, Municipal Unit Strategic Task
Force, in which a representative from each city and town was to meet, along with the president of the
county council. And if they could come to unanimous agreement, send the agreement to the state by October.
At the time of our meeting, Weedy took a much more aggressive interpretation of that requirement, interpreted
as being binding with that MUST Task Force, came to a unanimous agreement.
And this was right after the law passed. So everybody's kind of struggling to figure out what it all
meant. And since then, the general consensus among municipal advisors, municipal law firms, and AIM,
our municipalities association, has evolved. And the must process is seen more clearly as just a report.
The General Assembly, some portion there, wants to see counties and their municipalities can come to
an agreement on income tax rates and the new system on their own.
or if more legislation is needed. At this point, it is seen as having no binding factor law. And that
would be a change from the way that it was described at the meeting in March. The other consensus that
has emerged is while the statute specifies that the task force consists of the fiscal officers,
of the cities and towns and president of county council. The process can and should be open to broader
state court groups, in particular city and town council members, the mayor and county councilors. And
ultimately, it's council members from counties and potentially cities, they'll have to vote to adopt
the new literates. So AIM, our municipal association is taking leadership on providing support and data
for the MUST process. And they're also volunteering for their analysts to participate in MUST discussions as well.
We received some data from AIM on suggestions for lit rates that would balance the need for lit revenue
replacement by cities and towns, with tax rates for county taxpayers. Reedy has provided us some estimates
as well. And in fact, I had a meeting with Reedy later today to walk through their analysis. One of
my jobs in the next couple of weeks would be to reconcile two sets of numbers so that we can have a
coherent strategy. And I would expect that when you come back from the break, we'll have more of an
argument for these task force discussions.
Um, another, uh, comment on lit tax rates. We had a meeting scheduled of the joint city council public
safety lit committee this Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, we did not have an in-person quorum, so
could not proceed with the meeting. Um, I know county, uh, council attorney, uh, city council attorney
Allen is working on rescheduling the meeting and I don't want to get too far ahead of the committee
meeting itself, but the materials provided in the packet do present an option to increase
The public safety answering point or peace app lit rate a bit to fully find a dispatch budget, which
the rate is not done. If that process goes forward, it will come back to the entire city council for
a public hearing. There are more materials available in the package for that meeting if you're interested
in your council attorney is, it's kind of managing that.
On the audit, I wanted to give you an update on the 2024 ACFR external audit process. Though it feels
like we just did this, we're now, as of a couple of weeks ago, in the full swing of the 2025 audit.
We, along with CBU, have received 100 requests for data and artifacts from our CRO auditors and provided
well over 50% of the requests so far. There will be undoubtedly a lot more, but we look forward to a
one-time completion.
On supplemental lit, sorry, last two are for short. Supplemental lit, every year the local units of
government receive a supplemental distribution of local income tax. When too much income tax is built
up in the state's trust fund from collections, we recently received the 2026 supplemental distribution,
which came out to be about $3.9 million in revenue. This is unbudgeted revenue, so it helps to make
up some of the budgetary deficit. That's, we consider that very good news.
and that lit is split between the general fund, the ED lit fund, and the public safety. And then finally,
I just wanted to let everybody know that our friends from Reedy will be back at our fiscal committee
meeting on July 24th, and we're gonna give an update on our financial plan, as well as talk again about
local income tax issues and issues, and you'll wanna listen. Great, thanks, Judy. Thank you, that was
very concise. Nice job, any questions, Council Member Pinoff? Yeah.
I'm sorry if I missed it, but there was a packet for PS lit. I didn't see the packet. Was that on the
city website or the county website or? No, it was sent out by the city. I don't know. It came out of
city council office. I don't know whether Mr. Allen sent it or Mr. Wagoner. Okay. I'll have to, I guess
I missed that in the emails. So you said there's a chance to,
increase the PSAP rate to cover the full expanse of central dispatch? Correct. OK. I would really love
a conversation with you and I. I think we texted about that. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm happy to brief you
in more detail. Like I said, I didn't want to get too far ahead of the meeting. This should have been
a detailed conversation at the committee meeting. OK, I'll get in touch. Thank you. Thanks, Sam.
Thank you. Just briefly, you mentioned that we're going to reconcile numbers. Were you referring to
the AEM recommendations around revenue replacement strategy? Any questions? Are the AEM numbers public
or does it mean they're working directly with the state? Yeah, I don't think that's public yet. Any
other questions?
Thank you. Congrats. Hey, so as usual, you know, the board. No, are you going to talk about the dates
first? I'll share those on the screen if you are. Yeah, we can do that. So I wanted to talk a little
bit about our budget process because we will be the numbers part of building the budget has already
been long ago and the part where we actually make
memos and write things that go together to make that accessible is sort of the end phase, but that also
happens largely, starts happening while you all are out. So I thought it would be good to talk about
some ideas about process here. These draft budget dates, which I think lots and lots of our surveys
are also in the packet. A lot of these are internal that are more for me reminders when we get things to
council offices, our presentation nights, and then every year we do attempts to set a deadline for a
cutoff date or a time for council questions, and that just helps our staff dig in. I'm happy that Mr.
Allen is back on staff. Maybe he can revert us back to the questions that we used in 2024, which I think
was really effective, and last year we had lots of center sheets, and I think that was a little frustrating
for everybody, so excited about that.
So in terms of, I want to talk a little bit about the order of presentations and the philosophy I used
for that, and take any questions, comments, feedback, nothing set in stone here. And then talk about
priorities from your memo and the numbers that control the amount of evidence that we take within the
data. So now we're in the dates. We are in the dates.
scroll back up there, yes, we're going to look at these nights here on Wednesday, so be subscribed to
the top of our links. So, you know, thinking about what order do people present, and here are some of
the considerations I put into it. One is to cluster like things as much as possible. Another is to put
the easiest material at the end, because we're all tired at the end, and so I think it behooves us to
put the least controversial items on our last night.
And then third, to try to distribute the time evenly or fairly evenly so that we don't have America
all night in a really short time. And there's always, we're the world of how you can move things around
in here, but here's where my opening stab at this. We usually have a little front matter and
front introductions. That's the office of the mayor introduction, the controller introduction. I don't
know why my computer is being so like manic today.
Fire, police, and city party often present on the same night together, and I think that's worked out
in the past. I think since housing is the top priority for everyone, that would be great to put that
on night one as well. And if we don't, it will make some of the other nights much longer, since that's
a longer presentation. And then flustered on the Wednesday of week one are a lot of the kind
of infrastructure related
um divisions and I always want to apologize to public works you have so many divisions you end up getting
spread out over multiple months I tried to contain the damage so you only have to be there twice but
still uh I think street and parking uh probably would make sense to talk about in the context of engineering
uh some of the other kind of concerns we have we too parks ESD the parks always has a big budget and
then all of the rest of uh public works and then saving our um
internal offices and a CID for the last night. Now, one change I'm suggesting here, last year, so in
our first year, I understand it's been tradition for the Housing Authority and Living in Transit to
present during our budget season, and I really think that creates confusion for the public because when
you vote, you are not actually voting to approve their budgets. Their budgets, they're separate entities,
their budgets are already approved.
It's just awkward. And it's not that those organizations would love to come and do a whole report to
you and take questions about what they're doing. But I don't know that it belongs in the city budget.
Last year, we left in Bloomington Transit because they do have received $3.8 million in money from ESD.
But another framework for looking at this is what are the numbers that we actually vote on that we actually
have to upload?
to the state and BT's numbers, their own internal logic is not part of that. And ESD of course does
have the last year of that BT matter is in for our 2027 budget. So if everyone is agreeable to that,
John Collin will be at Wilmington Transit would be delighted to have him do a presentation for you at
another time. And that might be more satisfying in fact, to get a little bit more into other things
than just the numbers that have already been approved by another entity.
So if we want to talk about that, that order, and if anyone has any thoughts, ideas, concerns,
we can do that, or we can talk about priorities and then come back and talk about it all. What are your
concerns? Do we have any comments on each order? All looks fine to me, and I have no problems hearing
from Transit and VHA at another time. I'm just trying to believe in a manual report process after it
The money piece is helpful, like maybe on the day for their going through their practices. Yeah. Is
about any comments on order. So, all right. Thank you. That will help everybody plan their PTO to know
what next day are presenting.
Great. I'll go ahead and stop the screen share since I think that there's nothing else in the packet
about what you're talking about, Max, is that correct? There's just that list that was at the bottom
of the schedule. Sorry. Oh, that's okay. So what Controller McKim and I did was look through, we did
it separately in our notes, look through the list of the
budget priorities memo that council sent on April 1st, and look for the items that number one are actually
reflected in the annual budget. And two, then to look at what areas are possible knowing limits of our
county system that we're looking downgrade to present numbers. So,
Uh, for example, maintenance and enhancement of city assets, which is one of our top concerns as well
as councils and I believe also the public. So really excited to see that on that. There's lots of numbers
on that. Sometimes they are hard in our current format to understand. Uh, and just as one example,
you know, if you're working on a road, asphalt is a cost, but there's also labor and other costs. And
those things are, uh, hard to separate out from our budget into the program. So we're going to.
do our best to present some numbers on all of those things that relate to maintenance and enhancement
of city assets, which on the other side is called assets. Homelessness, that was your number two request,
and that's also, of course, everyone's concern. And it's important to understand that we have kind of
two different kinds of spending over ways that funds the inside of the city, and there's some overlap over
housing and homelessness programs that are difficult to track. So is eviction prevention, it's homelessness,
but there are also other housing issues, things we do for housing to try to prevent people from losing
their homes in the first place. So there's a little gray area between preventative housing type actions,
funds to other organizations that do the hands-on work or often
very often non-budgetary work, such as the mayor's work with other organizations to write grants that
then secure extra case manager grants. That money doesn't come to us, but the city is very involved
in making that happen. So that's not a budget issue, but it's still something we might like to understand.
And then finally, there are a lot of expenses at the city for mitigating just the impacts of homelessness
on the community, whether those are
our plumbliness grants to businesses that are experiencing some waste issues, or the Port-au-Lat, which
is also part of that effort, other things like that, that are not root cause, not standing on root objects,
that need to help our community, regarding this national crisis. So next on our list, transportation.
uh, and implementation of state safe streets for all. Uh, one of the things we're going to expand this
year, last year on the transportation memo, we had sort of created a little grid showing, uh, the stages
of transportation projects from study, design, build, and maintain. And those span different,
uh, departments. You have planning, doing study, engineering, doing design, engineering, supervising,
build, and then of course public works.
does main mixes, so we're going to try to flesh that out more this year and tie it to, as we can, how
are the lists of projects that are in those phases determined? Which plans are they committed to so
that there's a source you can see a base to save streets for all, you know, item one from the table.
And there will be, I think the main piece of it is the fuzziest part. There are lots of different qualities
for that, lots of different ways of approaching that. And I think some of that is very close to time,
of course, to assets maintenance and enhancement. So as we get through that, it's going to be a mess.
So bear with us as we sort that out. Housing, economic development.
And so let's see. So going back to your priorities list, your number three item was zero traffic fatalities
or serious injuries. That's where we get identification as an item on here. And snowball removal,
particularly the outsource snowball removal that we piloted this year, those types of expenses with
Elmer housing issue number four item.
address and reduce systemic inequities. So this is a broad category, but we do have, last year we gave
you some data on the money that the city gives out for grant programs and for organizational support
and sponsorships. And we find that a little bit this year to include some more of the scholarships,
assistance, other kinds of programs.
that we do to make sure that folks have equal access to services and what they need. So there's some
good numbers we've already collected on that. Economic, strong inclusivity on local economy, which are
number six priority. Those are, of course, very long term projects. It's hard to put numbers on those,
but we do have those numbers from ESC and what we'd be spending there.
Food safety, security networks, we do have a couple items there that we do have programs that some of
our departments on, folks, see if they're getting the CMA physical experience, so we'll pull those out
for you. Air quality is maintained at a high level. That's not a budgetary thing we track, but we did
add climate as a note there because last year, controlling the flow and separating DSC's target in a
nice way. And I think just as a side note, a really useful
exercise for the administration that would be very helpful would be, I mean, perhaps we'd see it later
in the day. So look at the detail of the climate budget because it's a very large budget and it has
a lot of programs. And as I look through them, they're very different kinds of programs. And some of
them are going to be highlighted and said, it doesn't work so well, we're going to stop that. Others,
Shania has really found great ways to implement those in their own straw. But I would really love to
get some feedback, especially from the council members who are
who have cited this as an important answer on which of those programs do you value the most? Should
we be thinking about, especially if all of those programs are funded by ULIT, when that money goes away,
it will be really important to understand what is the most crucial piece, pieces of this mix of programming.
green and vibrant third places, neighborhood hubs. Obviously we've just had our urban legislations passed,
so we've got a lot of number crunching to do on that, and we'll see how far we can get and talk about
that. And then waste reduction, of course, we've got sanitation right here, but that is likely not to
be a separate pulled out, other than the sanitation data that we talked about today in our thesis. That
was your last response. So that's how we boiled, kind of went through your list and said, what can we track?
what has budgetary numbers that are in there. Again, these are not things that are tagged separately
in our accounting system. So it's not like a controller thing. You can just press a button and it spits
out, oh, here's what we're setting on all of this. It is a manual process and it will be manual and
involve also our department heads and division leaders having to go back and pull out some
of the spreadsheets that used to manage programs and help us find what we can find. So we're gonna do
our share of the best. So that's the final.
Great. Questions from cast members about that? Yeah, so one of our priorities was creating vibrant third
spaces. I wonder if we could get a rundown of how much was spent and how much is planned to be spent
on activating Kirkwood. I think you already have that in the original packet that ESD submitted
earlier this year about Kirkwood. I think there's quite a lot of data in there about what has been spent
in the past. If you, we can certainly dig that up and add to it, but of course things will have to change.
So, and we'll need to find, you know, you know, as we, as we look, we all know last year we, which said,
you know, no new requests unless we say where we're going to cut it. And it will certainly be true this
year as our controller has passed us to keep the budget as flat as possible in line with what's coming.
So anything we add at this point, it is cutting for something else. So those are some of the other things
we'll need to discuss is when there are things we want to do that are new or increase funding, where's
the best place to cut that from? And so we'll have to present some options on that. That's what I was
saying. Okay, yeah, I mean, I guess I was hoping to see how much was spent this year and in other years
when Kirkwood was closed.
so that we get a sense of the minimum that would need to be spent next year. Well, as I said, I think
you can look in the packet that was provided to council once when the legislation originally came, not
this current legislation, but the previous one, and ESD had provided a lot of numbers about that, and
I'm sure they have more. But again, there is not in the accounting system a button that says what expenses
that we can just press to set that out. So we've got a lot of work to do before we get to that part
of the presentation at budget season.
to look at next year. So we'll bring as much data as we can. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I have a few
questions. We don't need to dwell here too long. I know this, but you say, I agree to what are probably
requests or increases of what else is coming down. Does that also apply to the administration in our
role we see?
where you all have added new things or increased things, if that's the case, will we understand or see
what you all have cut? We can work on that. Every, when we submit, when each department and of course
council also submits budgets, so you can look at that process, but when you submit your budget, when
there's an increase in the line or a decrease, you do have to explain why. And I think for a lot of
us, it comes down to some of the decreases we make are what's in a trend in spending and trying to cut back to,
actual trend instead of what you hope you might send. And that counts for not just things like office
supplies, but also grants. If you have a grant program and you just don't get enough applications for
it historically, then maybe you don't really put as much money in it because it's not getting the traction
it needs. Or maybe it's a really not equal program that you need to advertise for. So there is a list
by that, but it is quite granular. Sometimes it's easy to see when it's, for example,
make up. Let's say we had a program called Gretchen's Fashion Grants and we wanted to cut it $500,000.
That's easy to track because it's probably one line, but for something like building maintenance, those
costs are spread out over many store lines and it's a little harder to see. But yes, short answer, yes.
Finish with the best burger.
And just to add on to that, we will be, one thing that we definitely are seeing throughout the budgets
is an increase in utilities of all kinds, including preparing for CMU increases as the similar rate
cases pass, and then also liability insurance. So there is sort of a base of a new system that don't
represent a change in priorities that just kind of reflect the cost of doing business.
And in the climate and the structures that we have to get in the department heads, some departments
are more impacted by that than others. And when we ask them to keep a flat budget, but for example,
asphalt is a petroleum product, and so when gas goes up, so it's asphalt, it makes it into a challenge
for them to keep a flat budget. One other thing, which is, we haven't wheeled around as much recently,
but the notion of outcome-based budgeting, which
we have committed to, but not yet achieved. And I know there's some various barriers to that. And I'll
say from my perspective, measuring what we spend on things is largely measuring the front end of a logic
model of inputs or the resources. And then it's what we, you know, so inputs are the resources,
the funding, staff time, what we do with those things, the activities, the outputs, the things we produce,
and then the outcomes, what we actually achieved. And, you know, that's where,
where it gets to our plans and things like reduced deaths and serious injuries on our streets or reduced
emissions and pollution and things like that. Lots of other outcomes too. And we've talked about how
we have plans for some of these things with goals, but they are kind of all over the board and how they're
structured. Some of them are smart goals, some of them aren't, et cetera. Other areas where we just
don't have at least shared legislative, administrative plans and goals.
And I'm just curious for you all, you're all, like, I'm less interested in how much we're spending on
a priority area versus what the impact we're achieving is, what the outcomes we're achieving are relative
to our expectations and goals. And I know that's not an easy fix, and that would be a bit of work to
do still to think about what that could look like, but how are you all thinking about that beyond just,
again, kind of measuring the reporting on inputs
or resources around priority areas can actually be cut out of them in that necklace. Well,
I think characterization is a great area to kind of look at an example of that. So my feeling is for
us to understand the outcomes, in order to understand the outcomes, you first have to currently have
what we want, the gap between what we think we want versus what we have. We have to understand our current
state. And so the first step would be understanding how much are we actually spending on sidewalk repair,
for example.
And how much does that get us versus what is the need that we have? And so when we talk about tracking
some of these numbers from priorities, tying it to our plans, I think the hidden step in there is where
we have things that oftentimes divisions are already tracking, the effectiveness of those programs to
share that information and make that transparent. So we understand that if we were to, for example,
add $100,000 to sidewalk repair, what does that get us? And would that be transformative or is that
sitting in the ocean
and not work together to make something else. So I think we're on the same page. I just think that we
have a lot more education at the starting point that included life. And so I think it's premature to,
we have finance, we have the numbers, we all don't have quite enough transparency on those numbers to
really understand what is our money currently getting us. And I think once we understand that, we'll
have a better sense of if we added more money,
what would that do? And of course, because our public works team is sitting here, I feel obligated to
say, there are things like weather and temperature and resource availability and staff time, even if
you contracted out that, put limitations on things. So for example, we wanted to say, if we had enough
money, we would take every single one of these in this year, money is not going to solve that problem, so.
And the problem would be bigger than the rotating. So there are constraints as well. But I think that
would be a good starting point for if this is what we're currently achieving with what we've spent all
these part of the areas, where do we feel like we need to make more progress faster? Is that possible?
How can we do it? Is money a solution? That's my perspective. I think that's fair. I mean, we are...
You know, just speaking from the financial system perspective, we are definitely limited in what, how
easy it is to pull out the kinds of data that I think, in particular, the outcomes that you're interested
in. And so there really isn't pretty much a kind of manual exercise that involves getting outcomes and
outputs from our departments and matching that up with the end-to-end summary of the retrieve. Yeah.
Do you all think that,
a, sorry, last question here. Like a uniform framework for outcomes and outputs, I guess, would be helpful,
but across, I mentioned our plans are quite disparate, some areas they don't exist. Would it be useful
to have a future date that we're trying to achieve maybe? Like, yeah, a uniform approach across the
city and across departments for like how we think about outcomes and how we track the report and then
be city to touch it.
Yes, but it would take an incredible amount of work to get there. And then, you know, you have to wrangle
the timeframes of various outcomes. Right, well, that's the department. Yeah, yeah. I would just say,
you know, we've been trying to use standardization for a lot of things. And NPHR would be a great example
of standardized OHR practices across three Hickley and several city, 15 different departments. And as
you try to do that, there are, there's a tremendous need to make things
more streamlined, more aligned, more consistent, and as you do it every time, you find something that
is just so unique that it can't fit into that box. So I think that's a worthwhile effort though, and
kind of goes to a better place too. Yeah, thanks. That's great. I would really like to try and get to
sanitation. I see Udall's hand up. I'm waiting to see if we have any questions at all. Isabelle, is
yours quick? Yes.
So I just wanna make sure we're all clear in order to have a budget that is not increased, we're gonna
have to cut things because of inflation and everything costing more and hopefully we can keep up with
our salaries and such. So do you expect every department is going to have to make cuts?
I will say that our instructions were to keep the supplies and services categories flat to the degree
we could. We understand that there may be personnel costs just as people advanced in the steps. And
if we decide that we're able to give a cost of living adjustments. So, I mean, at this point, we're
not asking for that kind of cut. I will say just from the way I think of things, because I am concerned
about the future,
I kind of feel like this is a trial run to see if we can sort of hold the line of increases so that
in the future we don't have to make more drastic cuts. But yeah, we're not asking departments at this
point. We are looking at the efficacy of individual expenditures. I mean, the deputy mayor and I went
through yesterday and she's gone through extensively on each budget line and we are looking at it.
areas that might represent opportunities for savings. But no, we're not asking departments to cut personnel
to make up for inflation for example. Great, thanks. I have a couple of questions. I might email them
for suggestions, I guess, because part of this conversation is about how budget presentations are going
to go in the fall. But I do need to say out loud that one of the tasks of this committee is
to be responsible for supporting council staff with the 2026 council budget. And our council staff is
temporary right now. So as a committee, and I kind of realized that in the middle of last week, I went,
oh, wait a second. And so I will try to, as committee chair, making sure there's some assistance to
our council staff around that.
Definitely have deadlines and I know that Lisa was pretty good at meeting them. I wonder if that has
completely fallen off the radar. It hasn't. It hasn't. It's been great. So I'll talk to you about it.
We'll talk about it, yeah. Okay. We've been working on it. I know that, you know, just like the other
departments, you know, we'll have to draft a memo and things like that. Yeah. It'll be helpful for you
all. Okay. Yeah, the committee is tasked technically with helping you with that. Great. So that's perfect.
Okay, yeah. For the people online, after the meeting started, Council Attorney Allen walked into the
room. So, welcome. Feel free to send them the big tickles. So yeah, thank you Gretchen for that update.
There's a lot more that we can say about that clearly, but I do want to move on over to sanitation in
the department, because they said I started as a guy.
They're here for a reason. And so the origin of this ask kind of started because Jeff presented the
funds transfers and it was kind of like brought to light once again that this year the fund transfer
for the sanitation department. I mean, it's just been ever in recent. And I remember there was some
conversations last year about the potential need or thoughts of using sanitation fees
But then we hadn't really heard much about that. And one of the things that we've been exploring as
a committee is the concept that, you know, as the Facebook committee, this can be a place where there
are discussions of fee increases and things that people have to approve for different increases and
having those things kind of heard here in kind of exploratory cases.
We start with sanitation. So at this point in the packet, there is a memo from Gretchen about sanitation
prices, which is on the screen right now. And kind of asking some main questions like, is it acceptable
and would it have desirable outcomes to charge for recycling? At what pace should we increase pricing?
By how much each time?
Given residents are seen and will continue to see increases in many other fees taxes and cost of living
should be set a goal of diminishing or completely eliminating or diminishing rather completely eliminating
the subsidy or set a longer timeline for implementation or some other option. And other factors for
general fund support.
saying one thing just for any members of the public that have to be watching and looking at these numbers,
these are alarming numbers. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to bring them to this committee
to discuss so that there's transparency on why this problem is so hard to solve. It has a deep impact
on our residents. This is a core city service. And so if you are, if you're a resident and you've looked
at the packet and you're alarmed by these numbers, so are we, nothing, this is not a plea.
This is an exploration and a reality check. And so part of why we're here talking with our colleagues
on council is to find out what path should we pursue that we will have agreement on to make progress
on the problem of the deepened gap of sanitation, while also providing a direct service to our residents.
Thank you. Thank you for that clarification because it should be really clear.
This is the deliberation. There's no plan here that's detailed. It's just kind of, I mean, I think that
probably if you scroll to the last page of the packet, our controller put in there the transfers from
sanitation over the last several years. And so the one this year is, you know, I mean, it's almost twice
as much as 2025. It's not quite information for what the context is.
Do we know roughly what percentage of households in the city receive this service? Is that the other
big factor here in informing the idea of a general? Because some people get the service, a whole bunch
of other people do not get the service. So no, there's never been a calculation done on the number of
apartment units. I've never myself as public works director gone to the level of
trying to do a detailed analysis of the number of apartment units or businesses or commercial properties,
industrial, like across the whole community. No, I really haven't taken the unprecedented. But it's
fair to understand, isn't it part of the rules of ordinances that if you live in a city limits,
you must. Yeah, so it's a trap. So what we. Yeah, so it's the way the city code reads is that we service all
units that are four or less. So single-family units of four or less. So if you have a smaller apartment
unit of four units, we'll service that. If you have one that is five, six, or a hundred or a thousand,
we don't service. I'll talk with Anna about that a little bit more to kind of compare on the apartment
numbers that they have and such.
And then there is that kind of commercial and industrial component too that we don't really take into
consideration. So, yeah, so just as a point of clarification, no, that doesn't exist currently. And,
you know, so I guess as we kind of came into the room this morning, Hopi, Council Member Stossberg had
said, well, you're going to lead this, right Adam? And I said, oh, okay, yeah, sure. So instead I'm
going to turn it over to Lazarus. No, I'm totally kidding. Yeah.
Well, so just general background here. We sent a spreadsheet with a lot of information and numbers in
it. And it was it was mentioned earlier that, you know, we talked about this as part of the 2026 budget
process and we haven't heard a lot since then. Last fall, we started doing a lot of work here to try
to understand what some of the numbers would look like. So
I want to, when it says staff proposed monthly rate, that is just the calculation we're doing. It's
not that we're actually proposing this right now as any formal legislation. It's more of this is what
it would need to be to start eliminating the general fund support of the sanitation division.
So we did this. We kept the 2026 information in here as a point of reference because
even as we've updated these numbers here in the last few months, we're still seeing volatility of sanitation,
fuel prices, tonnages, capital purchasing prices, et cetera. And so what these numbers kind of show
is over time, what would it look like with ever increasing costs to actually eliminate the subsidy or
support to the sanitation budget overall?
currently for 2026. Let me pull up some numbers here. We are at 43% on expenditures year to date based
on what we looked at this week on our current operational year. That is
a good indication of that we're on track, but I'm also still very concerned with fuel prices, and that
goes across the board for all city services right now. Just can I say, please jump in whenever. On track,
you're referring to budgeted expenditures, which include the fact that there was a transfer, a cash
transfer from right there. Yes. Yes. Yes. One other consideration that
Adam and I talked about that's not in here that we should think about is what is the cost of private
service? So keeping in mind, are we charging people more or less than private service? Because obviously,
if it can be done cheaper privately, that's a different, that tells us a little bit different. So, and
that is not the case for me, by the way. What's outstanding is that whatever we do, that many of these
proposals here, even though they look steep, are still cheaper than private service. So any answer to
what our attacks are?
dollar finance, cheaper service in the private sector? That's the answer. So just, yeah, so these, and
want to just kind of reiterate what Deputy Mayor Knapp said, it was, these numbers are pretty alarming.
So as we were starting to look at them in 2026, it became very clear that, you know, it is, it's a pretty
steep increase, even though it is still less than the private sector costs that a lot of residents or,
you know, county residents or others would pay.
What else? So in the end, the numbers kind of are what they are in terms of these calculations, their
projections. We also did look at our large item, our appliance, our yard waste charges as well. And
you'll see some figures in there on what some projected revenues and things could be to help, again,
increase revenues overall to lessen that general fund support. A couple other things to consider right now.
The big increase that we're seeing for this year's general fund support transfer includes all of our
capital. So if we were to purchase trucks this year, that is in that 1.6 million. So that was one of
the big things why that number went up so high.
To just put it simply, we cobbled together funds year after year to try to purchase the trucks that
are needed for replacement. We used the vehicle replacement fund. We used some of the capital lines
in our public works admin budget. And the cost of trucks are ever increasing. When we did sanitation
modernization, we were buying trucks for around $340,000 in 2017. Most trucks at this point in time
are $440,000 to $500,000 plus.
The other side of this is they are the most complex maintenance, it's the most complex sleep maintenance
division we have outside of probably street and utilities where these are, they're used every day, 4.30 a.m.
to 2 p.m. They get a lot of miles, they get a lot of wear and tear, so that also has a large impact
with our fleet set rates that sanitation pays into the fleet fund.
We also are required to keep minimum cash balances for the sanitation fund on a statewide level, just
to have adequate reserves. And then just a few other notes. We've been really diligent with our contracting
for waste disposal at the landfills and with our recycling processing. We locked into some rates.
in 2023 that I think a lot of communities would really, really like to have right now. We did a contract
then that can be renewed out through 2029 with increases simply based on CPI. So I believe we're at
this year, maybe like $12 a ton on recycling processing fees. We've got communities in the state, they're
paying $40 and $50 a ton. So we have really, we've made a really smart decision
couple of years ago to build in that renewal language. And we're really glad that that exists as well.
There's so much here. I'm almost- Why don't you call us and just let our council colleagues tell us
a little bit about, you know, things like, and it's both about her and that she's already been asked
questions and talked about some of these core questions of recycling and toxic, freeze and shower.
And sorry, the last thing I would also just really want
Part of what we've been looking at here also is taking into account all of the other economic factors
across the community, across the state, across the nation. So that's also probably why we haven't been
talking about it as much. No one expected fuel prices to start spiking in February like they have. So
when we look at these numbers, I always keep that in the back of my mind. Great. Is it all right if
we can go first? What was your question? And is it still helpful for me to share the screen there?
Go ahead, Isabelle. I'll just leave this for you. I'm surprised to hear Adam say that in 2023, you got
a great deal for the recycling rates, especially the recycling rates, because in December 2024, the
Waste Reduction District
got proposals from Rumpke where they actually pay for some of the recyclable materials. And that's the
contract the waste reduction district currently has. And we are still not getting paid for any recyclable
materials as far as I know. So I'm skeptical that we're actually getting the best contract we can as
far as the cost of recycling.
Rumpke put in at the bit at that time, we can revisit, but on the overall recycling commodities market
based on what you're paying for processing, is it a net positive at the district? Or is it that you're
just getting it for a certain material? This is for commingle. It's just for certain materials. Yeah,
ours is that the big difference is we're commingle.
it has to be processed, whereas the waste reduction district has self-sorted. So your most valuable
material there, probably your metals, your steel or cardboard are completely separated. And it's just
a completely different scenario with having separated versus co-mingled. The cost to us isn't actually
processing it to be put on the market for reuse. I see.
OK, well, it's something to keep in mind maybe for the future. Our policy of co-mingling. Because what
you did used to separate locally, at least to a greater degree. And we do now. Thank you. I would step
away in a minute or two. This is very helpful. And if you're here yourselves, I'd put away briefly a
few of the questions. I think in my mind,
Drawing on general fund or additional non-user fees for recycling as kind of a public good is okay up
to a point. I think there's some balance there and I think that's a good conversation to have.
More broadly, I still generally support the idea of user fees covering all costs, including
cattle replacement costs. We haven't talked much about what is essentially another form of cross-subsidies
that are drawing on admin funds or people replacement funds. And again, the reason for all that,
quick AI research, a little more than 50% of buildings and houses maybe get this service. And the other
47% don't because they live in multi-family, including myself and many others, including owner, architect,
and director. And just from a fairness perspective, both of the multi-family are often disproportionately
lower income, more income constraints. We know that in our affordable housing context. And so it's hidden,
but the idea that
folks are paying taxes that are going to a service that is not something I generally support. There
are some things that are really well suited to user fees. This is one of them. But I think not so much.
I think the most important benchmark for me is trying to avoid major price shocks. So yes, getting things
is probably a good idea. And second... Oh, I think the...
Looking to what private service costs and what our other, you know, city residents and, you know, neighbors
in the county are paying is a relevant figure to be looking at. So not just like relative to what the
status quo is or what we're doing now, but actually relative to what it costs. So those are my two cents.
Sorry again, I have to follow up. We do have data points on some of the private haulers from at least
I think in January or February, so we can update those.
So I need to look up right now when I pay for this. So I really take that point to heart. It does feel
awkward when we ask people to pay a fee for something that they don't use. But I would just say that
in taxes, that is how it works. You know, if you don't have children, you're still paying for a PCS.
You don't need the library, but you're still paying with that. Those things are very, very different
than a parking garage or a... They are. In my mind, sanitation
having a clean city is a very high priority for most residents. And so they would consider like,
if we said, and to think about, you know, our sanitation team goes out, for example, cleans up the parkway
after it's closed. And when it's closed, they do that when they know. And so those are costs that our
sanitation costs that everyone pays into and everyone benefits from. So it's not just picking up the
trash and residents, our sanitation crews are picking up the trash and cleaning
We do all the parks, we do all the pedestrians. There's some other things. Yeah, yeah. Thanks Matt.
So on that point as a follow-up, thanks Matt, see ya. Ken, is there a way to kind of separate the sanitation
budget into like the cost for the curbside pickup versus the cost for those other communities? We have
some general, I mean, we could do some general numbers on there because
you know we can we can we can parse out some of that but they're um where we're not going to be able
to do we we would track the barrel truck differently than the other trucks in terms of the way we pull
tickets for the landfill so i was worried about that we wouldn't be able to actually pull out the tonnages
exactly on how much we're picking a lot of the
and sanitation is the disposal cost of the tonnages you're actually picking up. We use a separate truck
for that, but we also do sometimes use it for additional pickups or other things that would bleed in.
But we can get a close estimate would be possible. OK. And then kind of similarly in terms of just separating
costs out. And I'm sure I feel like this one at least should be easier to be like,
How much is the static cost of like staff for running the curbside routes? Because that is a number
that I'm interested in. And just kind of the question that I had attached to that is what would the
impact be if we shifted something with routing? So for example, right now we pick up recycling every
week. What if we only pick up recycling every other week?
what kind of impact would that have on the sanitation? Other than the heart palpitations I just had.
That's the kind of thing that I'm like, you know, shouldn't because I mean, now disposal cost is one
thing, but salaries and manpower cost is another thing. Absolutely. In terms of that. And so like, are
there ways to do something with the routes?
how do we recycle this gap? I find that when we get into these discussions, what often happens is we
leap over to philosophical questions of how much should we charge? Should it be completely subsidized?
Should we charge the result and go straight to, couldn't we do things better to prevent these problems
from ever arising? And I think those are great questions to explore, but they're very detailed. And,
you know, with somebody having negotiated the Aspen contract earlier this year, and some of those folks,
it's really important to understand that when you talk about staffing, like, yes, we can count up, these
are the hours spent on this system, that is the cost, but what you're not counting is, because we did
that, this other work that had to be done that takes however long it takes, now there's OT being approved.
And where does that OT live? Does the overtime live with the other stuff, or does it live, because the
overtime happens because of the totality of the work you're doing, not a particular job, per se.
So I just caution us to maybe we can find solutions by, you know, like, well, we'll just cut down on
staff time in this one area because it can have these unforeseen ripple effects. So the more we can
focus our conversation on, you know, if yes, we think it's okay to charge people for everything, solve
that problem how you will, or no, we don't think it's okay. I think the suggestion of subsidized recycling,
for example, is a really great, that's a really great point for a thoughtful tool to use in our number question.
personally have to actually have number crunching attached to philosophical stuff. And so especially
with that question of, you know, should we charge for recycling? Like what would the budgetary impact
be if we charge for recycling versus crop recycling services in some way, right? And then like, what
does that look like? Because, I mean,
I think philosophically, it would be great to pay for everything all the time. But that's not actually
practical, which means that for any of my philosophical answers, I have to have some mathematical stuff
to live with it. So that inquiry was related to that philosophical question, because part of it is like,
well, how much does the recycling piece of that take? Because it's not like you just send one truck
around that picks up the trash in the recycling. You have two trucks running that route. And the point
is, these guys
have looked at routing software. Routing is something they work on all the time. It's their area specialty.
So when we ask them, can you do routing better? I think that's maybe not the most productive line of
conversation. I'm not asking if they can be routing better though. I'm asking if there's something different.
And I'm kind of assuming that they already explored this because I feel like I remember a conversation
last year where you've already looked at some of those possibilities of different kind of scheduled pickups.
and what kind of impact that would be. And that was something that, I mean, I remember having
that conversation with somebody last year in terms of like, is there something that we can do differently?
And so that's, I guess. I don't recall ever being asked to analyze reducing the weeks of recycling to
go to a bi-weekly instead of a weekly. I don't know that we've ever really run those numbers. They shouldn't
be too hard to run, but again,
The hard palpitations I get with the idea of reducing recycling by 50% over the year is it won't meet
our customers' needs. We have a very heavy recycling community. Their carts are full.
the impact it would have on a customer base as much as anything that I think it's just such a heavily
used service that- People would put it in the trash. The cycle is in the trash as well. Yeah. So yeah,
that's kind of just generally how I think of it. But we can also explore. I can't remember that. I don't
think it was with you. It may have been with that, actually.
We'll be preparing one of our meetings last year. But it was just that exploration. I don't mean to
give you part computations, but that has to be, you know, a conversation in terms of like reducing it
also. Isabel? Yes, I wanted to go back to the spreadsheet because there's a part of it that I don't
understand. So at the bottom where you have the red headings,
um, expenses 2026 and 27. Um, and then you have the difference in revenue and expense. So, like, if
we look at 2027, um, you know, if with the theoretical rate increases, um, you would have, uh,
expenses of 6.2 million, um, revenues of 6.
seven million, so you'd actually be making half a million dollars or I guess. Also to keep maintaining
the cash fund that we need to for this. Help me understand. I'll say the wrong type of fund that it
is. Well, yeah. In particular, because the sanitation fund is a fund that has salaries, you need to
be able to maintain enough
operating balance so that January 1st, you can still pay the employees. If all you were buying was stuff,
you could hold off on purchases. Any fund that has salaries, any non-reverting fund that has salaries
is going to have to have a sufficient cash balance. Another big thing to note about these figures and
these numbers, and I alluded to it earlier about the capital expenditures,
These numbers fully fund our capital needs based on best management practices. The life cycle for a
sanitation truck should be seven years. We average 10 to 12. Sometimes our sanitation trucks have made
it 15 or 18 years. It's not ideal the longer you wait to replace capital, the more you're spending on
maintenance. This model does continue to try to fully fund the capital needs.
which is a huge part of what this budget needs as well. Okay. Is there a percentage that needs to be
maintained as cash balance or is it customized for this is what you have with your employees? I think
it's based on those salary figures that Jeff was referring to, but we can double check. 25 to 30 percent
is standard.
Okay, thank you. I have questions. No, I just say that, you know, I'm old enough to, you know, remember
and regret that we ever closed our wind field because we've always been old, you know, callers. I mean,
that's obviously related to, you know, field costs and things like that.
I think that probably, unless it's changed dramatically, we still have 40% of the weight occupied by
organic material. We haven't done enough. I don't think that's a solid waste mixture to some more recent
study than what we did back in 2017. So if we could reduce that use around, if we could have a composting
program where people could, that might reduce some of the weighting volume
There are other hazards of that, of course, rodents among them, if people don't do it correctly. But
I know other communities do it. They're trying to reduce the volume in there for the rodent. I saw the
stats that Indiana has produces more waste per capita than any other state in Michigan. We have the
best stats in Indiana. Now, it probably doesn't apply to Bloomington. It's probably gonna change in any case.
So I appreciate the data and I'm just mulling over. You're obviously caught in. It's a tough one to
unpack. One of my questions also is, you mentioned the system modernization and the chance of being
more expensive. Has that saved on health costs and injury costs and all that kind of stuff? And have
you looked at that like balance each other out? So I remember that being like part of the
debate at the time or the reasoning at the time. Yeah. Absolutely. Part of the reason we want to invest
in those sidearm trucks is because it reduces the physical labor that goes into actually dumping cans
and such. It's not an injury-free work zone by any means. It's still one of the most dangerous in the
city. But at the same time, yes, we've had less serious injuries. We can pull numbers on the workers'
comp comparisons over time, which do show that it's helping and working.
Again, we still do have a level of, I don't know that the expectation was ever that the increased cost
of the more efficient trucks would cover all of the costs that we would see for the workers' comp insurance
or claims or things like that, but it's been a significant help, yes. Do you also see an impact in employee
satisfaction or retention or anything like that because it's
Uh, not as like strenuous or like, I don't know that we have anything but anecdotal information there,
but, um, yeah. Uh, I mean, Bobby and Mikey have been there 36 years. Um, we've got, we've got staff
that we've got a lot of long time staff that are at sanitation that have been there for many, many years.
Um, we tend to retain employees, uh, really well there. Uh, we don't have excessive turnover. Um,
I think if you ask some of the team that were there before we went to this newer system, the strain
on their bodies is much less and that has to lead to better job satisfaction. Lazarus does a great job
leading the team and from a morale perspective, it's strong, so yeah. So we've got lots of revenue numbers but not
Well, there are some offenses. We have a breakdown of expenses. If not, we can get them to and they're
all in the data portal and. Another one of those things that can be easily pulled out. I'll talk to
my friend, the controller, and we can. I mean, they're going to be in the form of budget line. Yeah,
that item is not, you know, for example, the expenses of taking, you know, 35 pound toters versus.
in the standard budget. We can do some kind of expense categorization. What are our disposal costs?
What are our recycling costs? What are our fuel costs? What are we going to blame? I'm going to ask
you. I don't know. OK. Oh, I agree. All right. Let's look at the questions on desirable outcomes to
charge for recycling. Do any of us here
weren't really charged for recycling right now in terms of as well or favor. It's probably good then
we should subsidize. I would not like to. My preference is not to. I mean, maybe a small fee, but yeah,
I don't. I think we should continue to subsidize it. I would agree with that.
I would also agree with what Matt said about bathing could be important. And should we have, do the
folks here want to have the goal of completely eliminating the subsidy for sanitation in general versus
just diminishing the subsidy? Do we have a thought on that right now?
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, definitely, it would have to be a phase in of the higher rates. I don't
know if we want to go as far as totally eliminating the subsidy. I mean, I think I would need more time
and data to think about that. Great. I think either way, no.
brief phase and something is raised to help cut into that, that is a starting point no matter what happens
at the end. So, okay, let's go ahead and go to public comment then. So I'm gonna stop the screen share
so that, actually maybe I will keep it simply because sometimes those numbers are helpful to see for
everybody. So if there's a member of the public who is
online and interested, we still don't have public in the room. Though our council is currently certainly
welcome to comment here in public. Virginia, the member of the public would like to speak to sanitation
fees. If you could raise your hands. I'm not seeing any hands raised right now.
Any other last words from members. Oh, no, I'm late for it. Okay, very grateful for your time. Oh, my,
my comment would be sanitation, you know, we've got a lot of really hard working teams and public works
sanitation work is
It's some of the hardest work we do. It's in, you know, 100 degree heat indexes the other day and then
negative 10 in the winter and 4.30 in the morning out in traffic doing really good hard work. So just
want to just send all the praise to the team that does that work. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. And I'll echo
that. And I appreciate the conversation. I think that any, any time that we have that kind of subsidy,
I think it's important to talk about it.
Um, and in the same way that like, you know, parks, the variable master planning and, and then a whole
lot of budget stuff where they kind of looked at how much they're subsidizing different pieces of the
program and then like evaluating, you know, what should be subsidized in their programming. So I just
think it's a really important conversation. They'll always have to go like, what are we subsidizing?
How much are we subsidizing and making a conscious choice to as government subsidize things that do
so. Thank you all.
Anyway, thank you guys. They're not quite adjourned yet, so they don't quite leave yet. I will not stop
the screen share because I will just throw up the schedule on the screen right now to note the things
about the future. So our next meeting is after break on July 24th. That is the day that Refinancial
is going to come back, and we're going to talk more about that stuff.
August 7th, we're going to do council business. We're going to go back to those elect official salaries
and that study. And then those are the other meeting dates that are planned. For Crosley, if you could
take note of canceling the August 21st meeting, I think that that did not get done yet.
We have this every other week schedule, but I looked at that one. You'll see there's a couple of gaps
in there. One is around Thanksgiving, and one, of course, is around Christmas and the winter break.
But the 21st date is right in the middle of our project presentation, so I was like, maybe not. Maybe
you have a meeting that day. We'll have plenty of time to talk about fiscal matters and full council meetings.
I figured that so I'm not having any data for 21st was good. Isabel, Dave, does this look all right
to you, Ruth? Okay. Oh, and I also want to note that I added these 2027 dates up here to start discussing
finalizing 2028 budget priorities, and then make sure that we have an official meeting where we have
administrative response to those 2028 budget priorities because we kind of missed that this year.
Anything else for the bit of the order right now, I feel like this was a really packed meeting. It was.
Yeah, it really was. And I suspect the one on the 24th with Lee here is going to be similarly packed.
Yeah, so I don't know if there's a way that we can schedule that one for an hour and a half, just because
it will kind of be packed. I was going to suggest that, yeah. Okay.
First of all, I do think that you could make that adjustment as well in terms of the room reservation
and the meeting time. And what do you want me to do? Have the meeting on July 24th be an hour and a
half instead of just an hour. We're going to keep that an hour because of people's regular jobs. But
I think that that would be good. OK. So July 24th. July 24th is going to be an hour and a half.
Thank you. No, I don't think that we can start earlier. Larry, I'll be there at seven. Y'all can be
there whenever you want to be there. I'll be here before you're ready. All right, we're adjourned. Thank
you all very much.