WEBVTT 00:00:00.290 --> 00:00:06.964 - Well, let's call this meeting the Public Safety Local Income Tax Committee for the Barrow County Local 00:00:06.964 --> 00:00:13.639 - Income Tax Council to order. It's Friday, August 21st, 8 a.m. First order of business is roll call and 00:00:13.639 --> 00:00:19.536 - introductions. Do we want to do roll call first? Members, starting with my right, I guess. 00:00:19.536 --> 00:00:26.016 - That was one, sorry. That was me. All right, eight votes is here, and then the county council. It's 00:00:26.016 --> 00:00:28.478 - got all the votes, full town council. 00:00:29.346 --> 00:00:41.185 - It's about me my Smith City Council and online members Richard Carter town of Steinsville Andy rough 00:00:41.185 --> 00:00:53.259 - City Council I think that's all of our members staff. I'm Larry Allen. I'm counsel attorney Jeff McKim 00:00:53.259 --> 00:00:55.134 - City Controller 00:00:57.762 --> 00:01:04.003 - I'm Margie Rice, corporation council. Pauline Williamson, deputy clerk. Cool. And we just had a new 00:01:04.003 --> 00:01:10.430 - member or earlier staff person coming in. Chief Deaco, thank you for joining us. I don't know if there 00:01:10.430 --> 00:01:16.733 - are any introductions that need to be met. Is there anyone that people don't recognize from previous 00:01:16.733 --> 00:01:23.223 - dealings? I don't think so. First order of business here, because this is the first time we've met this 00:01:23.223 --> 00:01:26.718 - year, Councilmember Pimach-Smith is our outgoing chair. 00:01:27.106 --> 00:01:39.997 - Election of chair, do we have any nominations for chair? I would like to nominate Isabel Smith, which 00:01:39.997 --> 00:01:53.267 - is such a good job. Second. Okay, we have a first and a second. Roll call. Do you assess the roll? Sure. 00:01:53.267 --> 00:01:54.910 - Roll motion. 00:01:59.714 --> 00:02:25.790 - Yes. All right. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Thank you for being posted into the job of chair. 00:02:25.986 --> 00:02:32.054 - be happy to turn the meeting over to you if you'd like to run it or if you'd like to go through the 00:02:32.054 --> 00:02:38.182 - agenda, I'm happy to do that. Oh, I can go ahead. So we have City Controller Jeff McKim here to give 00:02:38.182 --> 00:02:44.250 - us an overview of local infant tax rates, revenues, and distributions. And thank you in advance for 00:02:44.250 --> 00:02:50.318 - what you've provided in our template already. OK. And there will be, I'll describe what the changes 00:02:50.318 --> 00:02:53.534 - are from there if we're asking for more information. 00:02:54.146 --> 00:03:01.869 - Let me just go ahead and share my screen. And I'm not gonna spend a huge amount of time on this part 00:03:01.869 --> 00:03:09.669 - because this is just basic introduction just to make sure that since I'm not sure how many times some 00:03:09.669 --> 00:03:17.469 - of the members here have done this and just to kind of understand how the funding for dispatch works. 00:03:17.469 --> 00:03:20.222 - So first of all, we have an overall 00:03:20.450 --> 00:03:29.299 - local income tax rate, 2.14%. And this infographic shows it broken up by the different percentages that 00:03:29.299 --> 00:03:37.892 - make up the different components of that income tax. But what we really care about is the box to the 00:03:37.892 --> 00:03:47.166 - left that talks about the public safety total. So 0.25% local income tax rate is dedicated to public safety. 00:03:47.938 --> 00:03:56.978 - That actually is split into two pieces. The public safety answering point or PSAB, which is the component 00:03:56.978 --> 00:04:06.103 - of the rate that goes to dispatch, actually comes out to 0.0631 percent income tax rate. That's percentage 00:04:06.103 --> 00:04:12.158 - of your adjusted gross income, taxable income, and then 0.1869 percent 00:04:12.578 --> 00:04:21.628 - is for public safety overall, and that is what gets distributed to the County of Monroe County, City 00:04:21.628 --> 00:04:30.858 - of Wilmington, Town of Elmsville, and Town of Steinsville for any of their public safety uses. So that 00:04:30.858 --> 00:04:40.446 - PSAP dispatch, that 0.60631 comes off at the top and goes into dispatch. Now, where does it go? The actual 00:04:40.770 --> 00:04:48.755 - PSAP lit rate that 0.0631% actually goes into a PSAP lit fund at the county. So the money does not, 00:04:48.755 --> 00:04:56.820 - that tax does not go directly to the city. It goes directly to the county. There's another source of 00:04:56.820 --> 00:05:04.965 - funding for dispatch, which is the Union 11 funds. Those are the funds that come from basically a tax 00:05:04.965 --> 00:05:08.798 - that's on everybody's landline and cell phones. 00:05:09.218 --> 00:05:17.613 - Those go to the county as well, the expenses are used or that those funds are used for equipment, not 00:05:17.613 --> 00:05:26.008 - for personnel and those are maintained at the city's account rather so the county action budgets. Out 00:05:26.008 --> 00:05:30.782 - of the one one. And so we never actually see those funds. 00:05:31.362 --> 00:05:38.170 - For the PSAP-lit funds, though, we do actually, through an inter-local agreement between the city and 00:05:38.170 --> 00:05:44.911 - the county, we receive a transfer from the PSAP-lit funds from the county to the city, which we then 00:05:44.911 --> 00:05:51.652 - put in our PSAP-lit fund, and we use that to actually fund the dispatch center and only the dispatch 00:05:51.652 --> 00:05:58.526 - center. Just a kind of note, this might have come up in the past. Past years, the city has co-annulled 00:05:58.946 --> 00:06:06.831 - PSAP lit funds with PS lit funds in the same fund. That's not the way that it's supposed to have been 00:06:06.831 --> 00:06:14.870 - done and not the way it is supposed to be done. So a lot of time has been spent last year and this year 00:06:14.870 --> 00:06:22.600 - making it do it, accounting for all the PSAP money, separating out the expenses and revenues into a 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:27.934 - separate PSAP lit fund. So that is that conversion has been complete 00:06:28.130 --> 00:06:34.915 - Those funds are no longer, uh, are no longer commutable, but that has been an issue in the past. So 00:06:34.915 --> 00:06:41.836 - now all we have to deal with is the, the PSAP Lit Fund, uh, in the city, which receives PSAP Lit from 00:06:41.836 --> 00:06:49.096 - the county. There are two kind of, there are two problems here. Um, and I have them as one and two really, 00:06:49.096 --> 00:06:56.153 - they really should be reversed. Um, so I'll start with number two. The current budgets have, have still 00:06:56.153 --> 00:06:57.374 - been underfunded. 00:06:57.698 --> 00:07:04.580 - So this is a problem even with the existing system. The current budgets have been underfunded, which 00:07:04.580 --> 00:07:11.463 - has become more of a problem now that the costs of the city's PSAP or the city's dispatch budget has 00:07:11.463 --> 00:07:18.549 - increased mainly because of the implementation of the salaries debt in the city. And then Chief Decoff, 00:07:18.549 --> 00:07:25.568 - I think there's an opportunity to talk about the budget later. So you all may have questions about the 00:07:25.568 --> 00:07:26.590 - budget itself, 00:07:26.946 --> 00:07:37.501 - achieve. Yes. Okay, so with PSAP in particular, weren't we aware of this issue and doing this sort of 00:07:37.501 --> 00:07:48.159 - intentionally to stand down or am I completely misnomer? Yes, there were significant, well, there were 00:07:48.159 --> 00:07:54.782 - significant reserves on both the city side and the county side. 00:07:55.330 --> 00:08:01.645 - there are no longer significant reserves on the city side. There are still on the county side. And I'll 00:08:01.645 --> 00:08:08.080 - show you actually what, I'm gonna use our 4B to show you what that looks like in just a minute. So that's 00:08:08.080 --> 00:08:14.577 - our kind of short-term problem is that we still do have a funding gap. The bigger, the longer-term problem 00:08:14.577 --> 00:08:20.831 - is that I think as everybody knows with current legislation, the current lit rate system is going away 00:08:20.831 --> 00:08:23.806 - for budget year 2029. There could be additional, 00:08:23.906 --> 00:08:32.875 - But based on what we know now, there will be no more PS lit or PSAT lit. So that money is gone. The 00:08:32.875 --> 00:08:41.844 - county will have significant levers that they can pull to raise additional income tax. But the city 00:08:41.844 --> 00:08:51.710 - does not. And regardless of what the county does, it will not be statutorily dedicated to PS lit or PSAT lit. 00:08:51.874 --> 00:08:58.386 - That's something that we'll talk about. Can I jump in here too? Our interlocal agreement that we've 00:08:58.386 --> 00:09:05.224 - had for decades was last revised in 2018. And it's in need of revision. And so I think when, as we think 00:09:05.224 --> 00:09:11.867 - about the future and how we're going to fund dispatch, assuming we're going to keep a joint dispatch, 00:09:11.867 --> 00:09:18.574 - which is pretty efficient, the county and the city is going to have to get together and figure out how 00:09:18.574 --> 00:09:19.486 - to, you know, 00:09:19.618 --> 00:09:26.811 - what are the right rates to set to fund that dispatch and the revisions to the current dispatch in a 00:09:26.811 --> 00:09:34.005 - roll call, which sets forth the location, the number of dispatchers, all of those things, and it's a 00:09:34.005 --> 00:09:40.557 - really good update. Hey Jeff, I got a question. So you said the differential gap is because 00:09:40.557 --> 00:09:47.038 - of the implementation of the salary study. It looks like a significant amount. Has it been 00:09:47.426 --> 00:09:56.931 - has it been underfunded in the past? Yes. I would not say that the gap was because of that. I think 00:09:56.931 --> 00:10:07.101 - that is partially because of that. But in the past, and Kate alluded to this, in order to maintain because 00:10:07.101 --> 00:10:16.606 - the PSAP rate and public safety rate are all under that 0.25 cap, there has been an attempt to keep 00:10:17.250 --> 00:10:24.166 - to use reserves and use the, keep the PSAP rate as low as possible in order to make sure that the city 00:10:24.166 --> 00:10:30.947 - and county and Ellis town, Vauxhall and Steinsville has as much public safety money as possible. So, 00:10:30.947 --> 00:10:37.729 - because if you keep that cap of 0.25 and raise the PSAP rate, then you get, everybody else gets less 00:10:37.729 --> 00:10:44.510 - for all the other public safety functions. So that's, there's definitely been an interest in keeping 00:10:44.706 --> 00:10:51.479 - the funding of the PSAP budget as low as possible. The reason why that's worked generally is because 00:10:51.479 --> 00:10:58.387 - of the high number of vacancies at the discretion. Is the 0.25 percent the maximum? No, it used to be. 00:10:58.387 --> 00:11:05.429 - It was when the whole public safety lit system was set up, but it is no longer the maximum. You're going 00:11:05.429 --> 00:11:12.135 - to talk about that. Are you going to talk about that a little bit? I'll talk about it, yeah. Let me 00:11:12.135 --> 00:11:13.342 - just show you the 00:11:14.722 --> 00:11:25.288 - the cashflow issue that we're dealing with. Okay, so, try to zoom in here. Okay, so I'm gonna look in 00:11:25.288 --> 00:11:35.958 - particular first at the current situation, which is in yellow. And I wanna explain the format that I'm 00:11:35.958 --> 00:11:43.934 - using. I think the county people will probably be pretty familiar with this. 00:11:44.290 --> 00:11:51.812 - This is essentially the same format as the statement 4B, which is the official budgeting and cash flow 00:11:51.812 --> 00:11:59.262 - statement that the state uses for budget. And so the idea behind the 4B format is that you start with 00:11:59.262 --> 00:12:06.711 - your June 26th, your June 30th balance. So that's how you start actual cash. So this is the amount of 00:12:06.711 --> 00:12:11.166 - actual cash money in the PSAP blood account as of June 30th. 00:12:11.714 --> 00:12:18.000 - then you play it forward all the way to the end of this year and then the end of next year. So you play 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:24.165 - it forward by adding your remaining revenue that you expect. And this number is, a lot of times we're 00:12:24.165 --> 00:12:30.331 - just kind of guessing or projecting. In this case, it's pretty exact because we have the only revenue 00:12:30.331 --> 00:12:36.496 - this fund receives is the inter-level agreement. And we know exactly how much lit is the county still 00:12:36.496 --> 00:12:41.150 - owes us and transfers on a monthly basis. So we know that we'll have exactly 00:12:41.378 --> 00:12:50.920 - $1.469034 coming in from July or July 1st through December 31st of this year. Then we subtract out the 00:12:50.920 --> 00:13:00.277 - unspent appropriations. So this is the way that the state has us in the gateway system, which is how 00:13:00.277 --> 00:13:04.446 - we have to manage this budget, has us handle 00:13:04.546 --> 00:13:11.660 - Now, this is a little bit of a problem. Basically, the assumption is that if you've got it appropriated, 00:13:11.660 --> 00:13:18.774 - you're going to spend it, which is not really true if you've got vacancies. The dispatch centers clearly 00:13:18.774 --> 00:13:25.549 - have vacancies through June 30th, and we might get Chief to talk about that a little bit later. But 00:13:25.549 --> 00:13:32.798 - the fact is that we know we're not going to spend all the unspent appropriations. It's just not realistic. 00:13:33.122 --> 00:13:39.979 - And in fact, we did a little bit of analysis from payroll side and found that we probably, we could 00:13:39.979 --> 00:13:47.042 - have as much as $700,000 of unspent appropriations in payroll if we have the same level of, and we did 00:13:47.042 --> 00:13:54.105 - this yesterday. So that's as of yesterday, if we had the same level of vacancies that we had yesterday 00:13:54.105 --> 00:13:59.454 - through the end of the year. But this is- That's the way we can hire someone. 00:13:59.778 --> 00:14:08.081 - I certainly hope so too. This is the way the state makes us budget in the gateway system. This is the 00:14:08.081 --> 00:14:16.383 - budget that I would have to submit as we go forward. Then you have a projected balance, which is just 00:14:16.383 --> 00:14:24.686 - that June 30th cash plus revenue minus unspent appropriations. We wind up with $245,000, which is not 00:14:24.686 --> 00:14:26.558 - very much in reserves. 00:14:26.914 --> 00:14:35.521 - In reality, because we know that won't always be spent, it's a little bit artificially low, but this 00:14:35.521 --> 00:14:44.129 - is the way that I have to look for it. Okay, then we move forward from the end of 26 through the end 00:14:44.129 --> 00:14:52.736 - of 27. And we have right now, we expect $3,096,137 in revenue if you all within the local income tax 00:14:52.736 --> 00:14:54.270 - council does not. 00:14:54.850 --> 00:15:02.283 - So that's kind of the do nothing, just let the system continue on. And this is gonna be a little bit 00:15:02.283 --> 00:15:09.715 - more than you've seen in the packet because at the time, because we have new information and that is 00:15:09.715 --> 00:15:17.295 - that from the state, from the state budget agency, that we expect all county lit to increase by 5.38%. 00:15:17.295 --> 00:15:24.286 - So that's basically the growth in the gross income, taxable income of Monroe County residents. 00:15:24.418 --> 00:15:30.950 - as a whole. So that's factored into the three million. Yes. Yeah. So I've already adjusted for that. 00:15:30.950 --> 00:15:37.741 - So that's, you do nothing, we get a little over three million, $3.1 million in. Then we have the budget, 00:15:37.741 --> 00:15:44.597 - which hopefully we will be talking about today. The budget is 4.8 million. So you see, if you essentially 00:15:44.597 --> 00:15:51.582 - play it forward, you start with your December 31 projected balance, add your revenue, subtract your budget, 00:15:52.162 --> 00:15:59.338 - you wind up with a deficit or a negative reserves of about 1.5 million dollars. Now I can't even submit 00:15:59.338 --> 00:16:06.444 - that budget. So that's, we have to do something. Even though it's a little artificial because we don't 00:16:06.444 --> 00:16:13.482 - expect to actually spend all the budget, the system will not even let me submit this. So what can we, 00:16:13.482 --> 00:16:20.382 - yeah. When you speak about reserves, and then we also talk about maintaining and operating balance, 00:16:20.578 --> 00:16:27.410 - Those are the same thing. Yes. Okay. So this is a negative operator investment. Right. We cannot do 00:16:27.410 --> 00:16:34.515 - that. And is there a recommendation for this account or an operating, or keeping a reserve or operating 00:16:34.515 --> 00:16:41.210 - balance on a certain amount? Generally, if any, any fund that has salaries, we probably want 20%. 00:16:41.210 --> 00:16:48.178 - I mean, that's kind of the way that- 20% accounting. Yeah. You want 20% of the budget. Yeah. You want 00:16:48.178 --> 00:16:49.886 - your reserves to be 21%. 00:16:50.594 --> 00:16:58.131 - You definitely don't want them to be negative. But I mean, you have to be able to make that first, 00:16:58.131 --> 00:17:06.354 - you know, you get income tax once a month. And so you have to be able to make possibly at the free payrolls 00:17:06.354 --> 00:17:14.348 - before you would actually receive your first income tax payment. So that's our status quo is a operating 00:17:14.348 --> 00:17:19.678 - balance of about minus 1.5 million. Now, what can be done about that? 00:17:19.874 --> 00:17:27.643 - I'm going to just talk about three options. They're not mutually exclusive. They can all be done, they 00:17:27.643 --> 00:17:35.261 - can all be combined in various combinations. The first one is entirely on the city side, and that is 00:17:35.261 --> 00:17:42.954 - just to de-appropriate some of the unspent salaries. If we have the city council de-appropriate, say, 00:17:42.954 --> 00:17:49.214 - $700,000 in unspent balance, then we could reduce that number in our 4B statement, 00:17:49.954 --> 00:17:57.246 - And then we wind up, but that doesn't get us all the way. That only gets us to about negative 800, 766,000. 00:17:57.246 --> 00:18:03.390 - And then you don't have the opportunity to get fully funded if you deaffirm it. So, start. 00:18:03.490 --> 00:18:09.231 - Well, we couldn't get right. Exactly. You have to figure out what the right number is. The other problem 00:18:09.231 --> 00:18:15.027 - is just we'd have to do that by the first week of September. And I don't even think that the city council 00:18:15.027 --> 00:18:20.659 - schedule is even allowed. And I just want to make clear, I don't think that the appropriating salaries 00:18:20.659 --> 00:18:26.127 - is anything that police want to do, is that correct? Well, and I'm just kind of explaining. Yeah, I 00:18:26.127 --> 00:18:31.486 - just want to make sure. We've got a problem and we've got a couple of different ways to solve it. 00:18:31.714 --> 00:18:40.219 - Okay. So this is unspent salaries. Yes. And you don't want to create that money because because you 00:18:40.219 --> 00:18:49.320 - go back to explain explain more. Well, no, I mean, I, some of it will never be spent if I mean, especially 00:18:49.320 --> 00:18:52.382 - up to yesterday, you know, that the 00:18:53.314 --> 00:18:59.295 - I would, the most you would want to do is just assume that they get fully staffed tomorrow and are fully 00:18:59.295 --> 00:19:05.106 - staffed throughout the rest of the year. That's kind of the worst case scenario as far as spend down. 00:19:05.106 --> 00:19:11.258 - But the savings in, there's, there's one little problem though, is that also when you're not fully staffed, 00:19:11.258 --> 00:19:14.334 - you rack up more overtime. And so you have to kind of 00:19:14.754 --> 00:19:21.176 - account for that as well. So it's not quite as neat as just, let's look at our unspent salaries and 00:19:21.176 --> 00:19:27.854 - the appropriate. Okay. So, so the expectation is that we'll be required soon. And that, that was right. 00:19:27.854 --> 00:19:34.533 - I'm going to defer that to the chief, but we certainly. So hiring, hiring for dispatches is complicated 00:19:34.533 --> 00:19:40.955 - because there's a long training period. Well, you have so many trainers and so much space. So we've 00:19:40.955 --> 00:19:41.982 - been only hire. 00:19:42.274 --> 00:19:50.116 - so many at a time. We've got, what did we say, 10, did I say 10 openings? And when I did my presentation, 00:19:50.116 --> 00:19:57.737 - we could not hire 10 people today to train them all. We just don't have it really. Do you want to come 00:19:57.737 --> 00:20:05.209 - up to the table so that the microphone can answer better? Yeah. Thank you. Mike's in the back there. 00:20:05.209 --> 00:20:09.278 - So with the 10 opening, we couldn't hire all 10 today. 00:20:09.730 --> 00:20:16.743 - because we just don't have people to train and we don't have the space. And so, and it's a very lengthy 00:20:16.743 --> 00:20:23.756 - process. And evidently what happens is somebody starts going through the training and then they realize 00:20:23.756 --> 00:20:30.634 - this is for me so that they would. So we're constantly in this hiring. And so it's, would we spend it 00:20:30.634 --> 00:20:37.512 - all this year? No, we will not spend that unspent salary. But I also don't want to give it up because 00:20:37.512 --> 00:20:39.198 - I don't know what impact 00:20:39.490 --> 00:20:47.158 - the way whole state funding stuff is. And then the number of dispatchers, if you remember, was set a 00:20:47.158 --> 00:20:55.130 - few years ago when we had an outside consultant look at our dispatch center and look at how it operated, 00:20:55.130 --> 00:21:03.178 - staffing levels, and it was set by, it was the Novak report, I don't remember that, but that's the report 00:21:03.178 --> 00:21:07.582 - that evaluated dispatch center. Yeah, I remember it well. 00:21:07.746 --> 00:21:24.620 - So, just so whatever is on the Spanish general fund. No, it will stay in peace. It will stay. Yeah. 00:21:24.620 --> 00:21:26.814 - Yeah. So, so 00:21:27.074 --> 00:21:35.931 - Yeah, no, it will stay in PSAP until it goes away. At that point, it will be a source. We would transfer 00:21:35.931 --> 00:21:44.703 - everything to the agenda. Yeah, after that, all these things. So that's the option one. And that's kind 00:21:44.703 --> 00:21:53.139 - of the option one is kind of a numbers game a little bit. And it sounds like it's not even feasible 00:21:53.139 --> 00:21:54.910 - because of the time. 00:21:55.618 --> 00:22:02.707 - But I wanted to use it as the opportunity just to tell you that not all of the appropriations will be 00:22:02.707 --> 00:22:09.657 - spent. We know that. So option number two is to have the county provide additional funds from their 00:22:09.657 --> 00:22:17.025 - PSAP reserves. So you remember that, like I mentioned before, there's actually a PSAP that is statutorily 00:22:17.025 --> 00:22:24.670 - earmarked for dispatch, can't be used for anything else, goes into the county fund first, and then the county 00:22:24.962 --> 00:22:33.241 - by inter-lobal agreement pays a certain amount to the city. Well, the county fund that receives a PSAP 00:22:33.241 --> 00:22:41.360 - lift has built up a cash balance that is much larger than has actually been transferred to the city. 00:22:41.360 --> 00:22:49.559 - I'm showing that the county has about $3.2 million in terms. Again, it can only be used for this. One 00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:51.006 - reason is that as 00:22:51.330 --> 00:22:58.290 - Kate mentioned earlier that there was kind of a conscious strategy to not overfund the budget, to be 00:22:58.290 --> 00:23:05.180 - providing a lot of extra money into the city. And then there was also, there are these supplemental 00:23:05.180 --> 00:23:12.484 - lit distributions that occur each year, which is extra money in the lit trust fund that gets distributed. 00:23:12.484 --> 00:23:18.686 - And in the case of PSAP lit, it all just goes to him. It just sits there in that PSAP lit 00:23:19.554 --> 00:23:26.899 - So the county's got a reserve fund, PSAP lit. It's not usable for anything else. It's the only use of 00:23:26.899 --> 00:23:34.244 - it. And I strongly suggest, I'm trying to be neutral. Sorry. Let me ask you a question. If that stays 00:23:34.244 --> 00:23:41.589 - there, if it's not spent, that doesn't ever go away. It can continue to be used for dispatch after we 00:23:41.589 --> 00:23:48.862 - have that change in 2019. I mean, I don't think that it makes the statutory earmarking to be useful. 00:23:49.282 --> 00:24:01.879 - the fact that there's no new money coming. I don't think that means it can be used for anything. So 00:24:01.879 --> 00:24:14.603 - in other words, so let me just go over those numbers. Okay, so then option two, again, in this case, 00:24:14.603 --> 00:24:17.374 - I picked $1.5 million 00:24:18.626 --> 00:24:26.428 - in addition to all of the new LIT. So in other words, all of the 2027 PSAP LIT at the same rate we've 00:24:26.428 --> 00:24:34.460 - already talked about, plus another 1.5 million county reserves get transferred as part of the interlocal 00:24:34.460 --> 00:24:42.262 - agreement to the city. And that brings a total of about $4.6 million in revenue. And that gives us an 00:24:42.262 --> 00:24:46.622 - operating balance of about $33,000. So that's what just, 00:24:47.010 --> 00:24:54.185 - Now, in reality, because we're not going to spend all those appropriations, that's actually probably 00:24:54.185 --> 00:25:01.573 - okay. I mean, that would be an acceptable level of reserves. At the very least, it's greater than zero, 00:25:01.573 --> 00:25:08.891 - so I can actually submit in Gateway, which I couldn't for the status quo. But you were saying that you 00:25:08.891 --> 00:25:12.798 - would recommend reserves of 20%, which would be 20% of 00:25:12.962 --> 00:25:18.958 - The 4.6 million is $925,000. Well, remember those appropriations there, that $2.6 million, that's not 00:25:18.958 --> 00:25:24.896 - all gonna, we know that's not gonna be spent. Unfortunately, unless you de-appropriate it, the state 00:25:24.896 --> 00:25:31.127 - assumes it's going to. Yeah, so don't de-appropriate it, and you have seven months' worth of the unfunded 00:25:31.127 --> 00:25:37.124 - dispatch. So the cash will still be there. That makes sense. Just like the county and the city always 00:25:37.124 --> 00:25:42.238 - wind up in a better financial position, then your budgets show that you're gonna show. 00:25:42.434 --> 00:25:50.437 - Because nobody ever spent all their okay you have about 10 positions that have been vacant since from 00:25:50.437 --> 00:25:58.441 - January to now. So that those 10 positions have been funded but not spent so that's actually Okay, so 00:25:58.441 --> 00:26:06.366 - that's that's the option to that's just moving money from the county from the existing reserves, the 00:26:06.786 --> 00:26:15.467 - The disadvantage about options one and two is that they don't really do anything to buffer us against 00:26:15.467 --> 00:26:24.573 - the changes in 29. So the option three is that we increase the PSAP lit rates to actually fund the budget. 00:26:24.573 --> 00:26:33.254 - So in other words, don't leave the budget underfunded, but instead actually have the current revenues 00:26:33.254 --> 00:26:36.318 - from the PSAP lit funds the budget. 00:26:36.514 --> 00:26:44.484 - I did the numbers here in the scenario that you would increase the PSAP rate to the maximum, the statutory 00:26:44.484 --> 00:26:52.157 - maximum of 0.1%. And then raise the overall PS by the same amount so that you wouldn't be losing money 00:26:52.157 --> 00:26:59.680 - for all your other public safety things. You would just be increasing the PSAP rate a little bit. So 00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:05.118 - in other words, the total public safety rate would be 0.2869 rather than 00:27:05.410 --> 00:27:13.626 - And so that would actually fully fund the budget, bring enough revenue in. And because the budget probably 00:27:13.626 --> 00:27:21.382 - wouldn't be fully spent, it would allow the city to build up a little bit of the dispatch center, to 00:27:21.382 --> 00:27:29.292 - build up a little bit of reserves so that in advance of the restructuring of LIT. And it's like before 00:27:29.292 --> 00:27:34.974 - you retire, you start squirreling money away to make sure you have enough 00:27:35.138 --> 00:27:43.891 - to kind of bridge the gap until all your retirement payments are starting. To be fair, we're not anticipating 00:27:43.891 --> 00:27:51.928 - that funding is going to disappear in 29. It's going to be configured differently. Yes, but from our 00:27:51.928 --> 00:27:56.862 - perspective and the city's perspective, we have zero control. 00:27:57.346 --> 00:28:06.362 - So we have to assume I'm well. Yeah, I think we all agree we want a dispatch center that actually answers 00:28:06.362 --> 00:28:15.122 - the phone and dispatches everything. But that's true. Okay, so let me just and then go on to the final 00:28:15.122 --> 00:28:24.478 - piece. So those are the three options. Again, they are not mutually exclusive in any way. And then the final, 00:28:25.282 --> 00:28:32.899 - This is a screen you all have seen before. There's a version of it in your packet. This, I have changed 00:28:32.899 --> 00:28:41.321 - it just because, like I mentioned before, we now know that the lit has gone, the overall lit has gone up by 5.38%. 00:28:41.321 --> 00:28:49.084 - So I made that, that's one of the only change from what you see in your packet. And that this just shows, 00:28:49.084 --> 00:28:54.430 - if you essentially did nothing, again, this is these three columns here. 00:28:54.786 --> 00:29:02.643 - If you did nothing, this is how much comes out to that $12 million, $12.3 million comes out for public 00:29:02.643 --> 00:29:10.499 - safety. That $3.1 million goes to dispatch, and then all the rest gets divvied up among Monroe County, 00:29:10.499 --> 00:29:18.127 - Bloomington, Ellisville, and Steinsville. And then these last three columns are just, I call it the 00:29:18.127 --> 00:29:24.382 - fund the budget scenario. And that's where we raise the PSAP rate to the maximum. 00:29:24.642 --> 00:29:32.652 - come up with that $4.9 million. As you can see, we still wind up with the same amount for public safety, 00:29:32.652 --> 00:29:40.433 - for all the other public safety functions that gets divvied out to the county and the city. So that's 00:29:40.433 --> 00:29:48.519 - what I've got. Happy to answer any other questions, or we can move on. Yes. So this question is something 00:29:48.519 --> 00:29:52.638 - that I should probably know the answer to, and I have 00:29:53.762 --> 00:30:09.058 - So the county's budget is, I guess what I want to know is if we're taking an amount out of county reserves, 00:30:09.058 --> 00:30:16.990 - does that leave that 20% to cover any county budgeting? 00:30:17.154 --> 00:30:23.403 - so we don't have there's no expenses coming out of that county one payment that goes over to the city 00:30:23.403 --> 00:30:29.712 - as part of the other and that's separate from ps lit and we're managing that okay totally separate yes 00:30:29.712 --> 00:30:35.961 - does your option three back a slide does your option three use the reserves or does your option three 00:30:35.961 --> 00:30:42.271 - keep the reserves they were i i did them all independently but you can overlap them to whatever degree 00:30:42.271 --> 00:30:43.006 - they'd like 00:30:43.266 --> 00:30:49.758 - But I guess your option three raises the rate and has no need to dip into those reserves. I chose not 00:30:49.758 --> 00:30:56.378 - to. Right. Okay. You can always transfer reserves. I mean, that's what happens once the money is there. 00:30:56.378 --> 00:31:02.742 - But this is a safe approach. Option three is the safest. Option three is actually raising the rate. 00:31:02.742 --> 00:31:09.234 - Yeah. I mean, safe in the sense that you raise the rate and get more revenue and repeat your results. 00:31:09.234 --> 00:31:12.926 - Yes. So the county is not using, does not appropriate any 00:31:13.122 --> 00:31:20.317 - PFAT funds for use by the county. It goes to the district. First, we consider. Because of our interval. 00:31:20.317 --> 00:31:27.305 - Yeah. We don't have any separate things, and that's what I was- There's literally in the budget that 00:31:27.305 --> 00:31:34.776 - the county council appropriates, there's one line in that fund, which is the interval within the transport. 00:31:34.776 --> 00:31:39.550 - Yeah. Years ago- So we can consider that our reserve. Exactly. Yeah. 00:31:39.714 --> 00:31:47.641 - It is meant to be the, you know, all jointly. How much is in there? It's over 3.2. I don't have direct 00:31:47.641 --> 00:31:55.567 - visibility into that, but I think when we prepped for the earlier meeting, for the June meeting, Angie 00:31:55.567 --> 00:32:03.648 - and Jeff Kupferl and I got together and thought of it. And the county can't spend that on anything other 00:32:03.648 --> 00:32:05.726 - than dispatch. So, I mean, 00:32:05.826 --> 00:32:13.737 - As long as we have a joint dispatch center, that would have to be spent on the joint dispatch center. 00:32:13.737 --> 00:32:21.493 - In some imaginary world, the county and the city stood up its own dispatch center so they could use 00:32:21.493 --> 00:32:29.637 - that 3.2 for their dispatch. Which I don't think has been happening, but. All right. Are there questions 00:32:29.637 --> 00:32:30.878 - for Dr. McCann? 00:32:31.682 --> 00:32:38.361 - regarding his presentation and the three options. I think we're going to come back and ask questions 00:32:38.361 --> 00:32:45.106 - once you, you know, if you have anything else after you've seen the budget or I don't know if Leonard 00:32:45.106 --> 00:32:52.116 - is going to talk about any processes, but is there a time period where that's optimal for implementation? 00:32:52.116 --> 00:32:58.927 - So, you know, the drop dead line for, I think the one thing the new rate is essentially the first one, 00:32:58.927 --> 00:33:01.374 - the legislative body set their rates 00:33:01.506 --> 00:33:09.690 - for the year, but you have to back up from that at least almost a month. So these would have to be proposed 00:33:09.690 --> 00:33:17.570 - really no later than October 1st, essentially. And just on the timeline currently that the city council 00:33:17.570 --> 00:33:25.224 - and the county council are on those who need to be at least proposed before September 13th, which is 00:33:25.224 --> 00:33:31.134 - 10 days before the introduction of the legislation that sets the annual rates 00:33:31.490 --> 00:33:37.615 - because there's a 10-day notice period for all of those for appropriation ordinance and setting the 00:33:37.615 --> 00:33:44.047 - taxing rates, then you have to wait a minimum of 10 days after that initial hearing to be able to public 00:33:44.047 --> 00:33:50.172 - hearing at that time until you can pass the rate. So you have to give yourself plenty of runway. So 00:33:50.172 --> 00:33:56.542 - just realistically, if there's going to be a recommendation for an increased rate from this body to the 00:33:56.994 --> 00:34:06.324 - local income taxing bodies, it needs to happen probably at this meeting and then get it on their calendars 00:34:06.324 --> 00:34:14.870 - as soon as possible so they can consider it for September and October best. Okay, so essentially, 00:34:14.870 --> 00:34:23.590 - so Jeff, what is the, what's the difference for the average? Maybe we can start with what's the, so 00:34:23.590 --> 00:34:26.206 - we would raise the total rate 00:34:26.722 --> 00:34:42.840 - from 0.25 to 0.2869. So what is that? Raising it 0.1369. Yeah, so it's about four cents, yeah. Something 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:53.278 - like that. Four cents on what we're talking about. So if we've got, 00:34:56.290 --> 00:35:11.989 - $70,000, $5,000 salary. So that's percent. So that will be about $27. So that sounds like $475,000. 00:35:11.989 --> 00:35:16.542 - Over the course of the year. 00:35:24.130 --> 00:35:35.837 - So shall we move ahead to look at the budget for federal dispatch or PSAP? That's good, thank you. To 00:35:35.837 --> 00:35:47.314 - make sure we don't have any questions about that. That was a $27 increase over what's current or is 00:35:47.314 --> 00:35:49.150 - that? Increase. 00:35:55.074 --> 00:36:10.130 - So those, I think it's page nine in the packet. Those are the sheets for 26. Let's see, 27 budget proposals. 00:36:10.130 --> 00:36:23.390 - Yeah, if we look at just money coming from PSAP, it's page 18 in the packet is what's proposed. 00:36:23.778 --> 00:36:34.016 - For next year and the comparison table on this sheet is the actual expense of the last four 00:36:34.016 --> 00:36:45.589 - year expenditures. Is this correct? This is what was pulled. This particular version is what was pulled 00:36:45.589 --> 00:36:49.150 - from the Dispatch Policy Board. 00:36:49.410 --> 00:36:55.064 - Is this the one that special policy board adopted? And so when? I think there were some adjustments 00:36:55.064 --> 00:37:00.378 - based upon that. If there are adjustments, we didn't receive the adjustments. I think there's 00:37:00.378 --> 00:37:06.032 - some adjustments based on COLA and the new salaries that are maybe not included in the state. Yeah, 00:37:06.032 --> 00:37:11.856 - I think the version we want to include is the version that was actually included in the city council's 00:37:11.856 --> 00:37:17.962 - budget proposal. Yeah, and that's the main change was that COLA, when the budget was originally formulated, 00:37:17.962 --> 00:37:19.262 - they assumed 2% of it. 00:37:19.682 --> 00:37:34.315 - Uh, opposed to two and six, it's less than. So can we pull that up? Does anybody have a hard stop at 00:37:34.315 --> 00:37:45.470 - nine o'clock? I have to maybe nine, but I'm not sorry. You guys can keep up. 00:37:49.410 --> 00:37:59.841 - Andy? Yeah, I can go. I can go a little longer. Okay. Richard? I can go as long as we need to. 00:37:59.841 --> 00:38:08.734 - Thank you. I mean, I don't think it'll be much later than nine, but it might be. 00:38:17.250 --> 00:38:26.286 - pull it up myself. Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm actually just going into the financial system. I'm just 00:38:26.286 --> 00:38:35.233 - pulling up in the packet. Of course, that doesn't help if I haven't. But there were no other changes 00:38:35.233 --> 00:38:44.181 - much other than that goal. Other than like the COLA increase, the change from 2 to 2.7. Let me just, 00:38:44.181 --> 00:38:46.750 - I'm gonna go ahead and show. 00:38:49.826 --> 00:39:19.262 - I'm sure 4,470,569. Wait a minute. That's less than what's on the screen. OK. Does this look right, guys? 00:39:19.394 --> 00:39:32.665 - Because this is what's actually in. 4.8 yeah. So why in our budget packet do we have something that 00:39:32.665 --> 00:39:46.334 - says 4.4. On the actual budget book if you look at page 53 of the budget book that's where you'll see. 00:39:46.946 --> 00:39:55.040 - Oh, yeah. And the numbers that I did in my round on the best dollars. Yeah. Or 4.8. And that's the number 00:39:55.040 --> 00:40:02.675 - that I used in my presentation. Looks like most of it is the salary, which makes sense. But there's 00:40:02.675 --> 00:40:10.387 - some increase in other services and charges. Some? Yeah. Yeah. So this would be the correct. This is 00:40:10.387 --> 00:40:16.190 - the version that's actually in front of the city council. And I see it now. 00:40:17.922 --> 00:40:26.966 - your rejection on option and relatively for the total funding of dispatch by rating the rate was on 00:40:26.966 --> 00:40:36.101 - 4.8. I think you're correct. Yeah, it wound up being a little bit more because that's 5.8% but yeah. 00:40:36.101 --> 00:40:45.326 - Okay, so just to be clear because I don't know if everybody heard what Council Member Oldham said. So 00:40:45.326 --> 00:40:47.678 - the scenarios you gave us 00:40:48.866 --> 00:41:00.224 - Uh, control and McCann are based on this 4.8 million. Yeah, that number was what appeared in the, in 00:41:00.224 --> 00:41:11.695 - exactly the number that appeared in my spreadsheet. Okay. So this was approved by the dispatch policy 00:41:11.695 --> 00:41:15.518 - board, which has membership from. 00:41:15.778 --> 00:41:24.522 - membership as dictated by the interlocal group. The budget for 2% was improved. The change to going 00:41:24.522 --> 00:41:33.441 - to 2.7 was made after they approved it because in the interlocal it has to be approved early, like by 00:41:33.441 --> 00:41:42.535 - May and June. So they're going to go back and re-apply 2.7. The other increase was in Category 3, looks 00:41:42.535 --> 00:41:45.246 - like it's insurance and health 00:41:45.378 --> 00:41:55.261 - left through. So that was already for the category 3 changes. Yeah, we have those groups. Okay, so it's 00:41:55.261 --> 00:42:05.334 - going to spread. Why would that have changed the repairs through a little bit? I mean, maybe. Refreshing. 00:42:05.334 --> 00:42:10.846 - I get why it would increase just generally, but then from 00:42:12.322 --> 00:42:17.778 - what was submitted to what was approved, didn't it? Oh, 26, but it's on the left. Now we're talking 00:42:17.778 --> 00:42:23.234 - about 27, but it's on the right. So that's where you're seeing the separation. No, the only changes 00:42:23.234 --> 00:42:28.690 - that were from when it was submitted, but there are two changes that happened after it was approved 00:42:28.690 --> 00:42:34.310 - by the dispatch. One was nine percent, the insurance, health insurance increase from nine percent. And 00:42:34.310 --> 00:42:39.929 - then the other one is the COLO, the cost of living was proposed to 2.7 percent of the students. So the 00:42:39.929 --> 00:42:41.566 - category three didn't change. 00:42:42.146 --> 00:42:50.595 - Not between those two. Not between the two budget goals. Not at best. Between years, they did. 00:42:50.595 --> 00:42:59.666 - That's true. All right. Any questions or concerns from committee members? Kim, Larry, can we get this 00:42:59.666 --> 00:43:08.737 - sheet back retroactively appended to the meeting? We'll put it up for grabs under it and I'll send it 00:43:08.737 --> 00:43:09.982 - to you. Okay. 00:43:11.650 --> 00:43:26.564 - Thank you. Okay, so we go back to our agenda. We already talked about cash reserves. Distributions of 00:43:26.564 --> 00:43:37.822 - qualified providers, we didn't have any applications, so that's an easy one. 00:43:39.458 --> 00:43:47.903 - So let's get down to the rates and the different scenarios that the controller presented. Thoughts from 00:43:47.903 --> 00:43:56.186 - committee members? Jeff, would you go back to that slide and give us the different versions? Yes. And 00:43:56.186 --> 00:44:04.469 - I apologize for seeing a little bit dis-compopulated. I'm going to say this. But being blunt, we have 00:44:04.469 --> 00:44:07.230 - spent three years, four years now 00:44:07.522 --> 00:44:13.545 - with the state saying, oh, it's gonna go in effect here, it's gonna go in effect here, it's gonna go 00:44:13.545 --> 00:44:19.688 - in effect here, and that keeps getting bumped because they've yet been able to cure what they're gonna 00:44:19.688 --> 00:44:25.831 - wanna do in the end with what we're doing now. So my fear is if we do not go into 29, 30, 31, whatever 00:44:25.831 --> 00:44:32.093 - it becomes, and I hate to raise taxes, but if we don't come into that with a very, very healthy reserve, 00:44:32.093 --> 00:44:35.134 - and with being at our maximum levy or close to it, 00:44:35.714 --> 00:44:41.228 - state and the ambulance go you know what you're right you don't need that much because we but what they 00:44:41.228 --> 00:44:46.530 - won't see is we've been undercutting it by jumping into reserves every year plus simply the fact of 00:44:46.530 --> 00:44:51.832 - it everything goes up and that includes personnel that includes materials that includes electricity 00:44:51.832 --> 00:44:57.452 - i i really don't want to get us to the point where we've got a 33 000 operating value even though there's 00:44:57.452 --> 00:45:02.754 - reserves in the county that still leaves you no wiggle room there's no room for emergencies there's 00:45:02.754 --> 00:45:03.390 - no room for 00:45:03.810 --> 00:45:10.246 - Oh, the take your pick or whatever, very expensive piece of machinery just died. So if we start looking 00:45:10.246 --> 00:45:16.558 - at pushing that rate out, and again, I'm pretty against raising taxes, but in this case, the state of 00:45:16.558 --> 00:45:22.747 - Indiana is backing us into a corner where we really don't have any choices, because we have no idea 00:45:22.747 --> 00:45:28.997 - what they're going to do. And that keeps getting bumped every year because they can't figure it out. 00:45:28.997 --> 00:45:32.958 - So to me, the only real option for us is option three, where we 00:45:33.122 --> 00:45:41.121 - the rate up. Again, it is $27. And I understand it's $27 based on a $70,000 salary. So that's going 00:45:41.121 --> 00:45:49.520 - to go up for folks. But that healthy reserve plus actually funding this budget out of what we're getting 00:45:49.520 --> 00:45:57.759 - in this year gives us that lifespan in the long term should the state decide to do something we're not 00:45:57.759 --> 00:46:02.238 - anticipating. What is, is there a new maximum of PSLIP? 00:46:03.714 --> 00:46:12.809 - It was originally 0.25%. No, there's an overall maximum to the expenditure rate, which is the PS lit 00:46:12.809 --> 00:46:22.084 - plus economic development plus certified shares. And I used to know all that in my sleep and it's been 00:46:22.084 --> 00:46:31.089 - a little while, but there's definitely had room to increase it by that. But yeah, there's no longer 00:46:31.089 --> 00:46:32.350 - a PS lit cap. 00:46:33.794 --> 00:46:43.362 - There's a cap, too. There's a cap. A total. A total. Yeah. So a piece of the pie impacts the 00:46:43.362 --> 00:46:53.650 - other expenditure. No, that's why you raise the whole PS lit as well as PSAP lit, just to make sure 00:46:53.650 --> 00:47:02.910 - that nothing else will come back. It basically holds harmless all the other public safety 00:47:03.042 --> 00:47:28.638 - So the city has typically used it for capital expenses. That's not in the statute. 00:47:28.898 --> 00:47:35.531 - It is reserved for public safety. The city, the county has tended to use it for sheriff's deputies, 00:47:35.531 --> 00:47:42.297 - for jail, while the city has tended to use it for police and fire capital. But that's not required by 00:47:42.297 --> 00:47:49.263 - law. I guess how much is like discretionary in terms of like, yeah, you need new equipment or something. 00:47:49.263 --> 00:47:55.962 - I don't want to defer me into the boss or something like that, but it's massive. But I mean, could a 00:47:55.962 --> 00:47:57.886 - greater share of these staff 00:47:58.050 --> 00:48:07.329 - budget. Well, right now, the PS lit budget that's in front of you is over $2 million in deficit, if 00:48:07.329 --> 00:48:16.793 - it's all actually expected. The chief may want to talk about the importance of staying on maintenance 00:48:16.793 --> 00:48:23.102 - schedule. I know that's been a huge issue with the fire department. 00:48:23.298 --> 00:48:34.003 - That was my first, I was like, take you guys right on this track for a few years. So my other question 00:48:34.003 --> 00:48:45.019 - is, I mean, obviously, central dispatch is very important. You've got one, I mean, a position of overtime 00:48:45.019 --> 00:48:52.606 - is expensive, plus, you know, there's a boss in terms of people's mental 00:48:53.058 --> 00:49:01.270 - health and things like that. You have many more field positions. You know, I mean, I wouldn't say this 00:49:01.270 --> 00:49:09.243 - is a crisis situation, but I would say it's a very, it's alarmed, right? You have the police staff, 00:49:09.243 --> 00:49:17.216 - central dispatch, and you're having a problem with the staff. And certainly the salary increases as 00:49:17.216 --> 00:49:22.398 - a whole, relative to other communities, with annual fare, sadly. 00:49:23.074 --> 00:49:30.262 - Yes, it does. And we've actually been able to hire dispatchers from other communities. But I mean, it's 00:49:30.262 --> 00:49:37.312 - a very stressful job. We looked at the schedule this year earlier, and we switched it. They wanted to 00:49:37.312 --> 00:49:44.362 - go to 12-hour shifts, which allowed them more time off, because there's always mandatory overtime for 00:49:44.362 --> 00:49:51.550 - the district staff. And that was just to keep a minimum number of people in there to keep it operating. 00:49:53.282 --> 00:50:01.517 - My understanding is that you've also changed the shift structure to try to... Yeah, we went to the pitman. 00:50:01.517 --> 00:50:09.368 - So you may want to tell everybody. Excuse me, can you unshare so that the people online can see us as 00:50:09.368 --> 00:50:17.219 - we're talking? Thank you. So some of the employees wanted to do 12-hour shifts, some wanted to do the 00:50:17.219 --> 00:50:20.990 - eight-hour shifts. So what we ended up doing was 00:50:21.858 --> 00:50:28.420 - we looked at that scheduling and ended up switching it to 12-hour because it gave them more time off, 00:50:28.420 --> 00:50:35.175 - which is what they wanted. With the mandatory overtime, they were having, especially if they were having 00:50:35.175 --> 00:50:41.802 - overtime, being able to take time. And so constantly working in there, it's a very, it's not like they 00:50:41.802 --> 00:50:48.236 - can get up and go outside because they can't get the phones and the radio. So it's a very stressful 00:50:48.236 --> 00:50:51.774 - job. And so what we did to try to help was we switched 00:50:52.002 --> 00:51:00.078 - working hours and went to this pitman schedule. That seemed to make them really happy. They liked that. 00:51:00.078 --> 00:51:07.921 - They didn't give them more time off. But again, the ultimate goal is to get full of staff so that we 00:51:07.921 --> 00:51:15.764 - don't have to rely on overtime. It's just, it's a very lengthy process to hire a trained dispatcher. 00:51:15.764 --> 00:51:21.278 - Do we have any sense of how our PSLIP rate compares to other counties? 00:51:25.346 --> 00:51:33.623 - I'm not offhand, but that information would be on the state budget agency website. I mean, I'm also 00:51:33.623 --> 00:51:42.396 - leaning towards increasing the overall PS1 rate, but I don't want us to be like, we're the only community 00:51:42.396 --> 00:51:50.756 - in Indiana that's above 0.25. Well, if I can, the problem is with the Olympics around the county, we 00:51:50.756 --> 00:51:54.398 - are exponential awards of magnitude busier. 00:51:54.882 --> 00:52:19.870 - Let me just share the quick. This is a chart. There's a lot of numbers on there. 00:52:20.034 --> 00:52:28.336 - This is a state budget agency website. Actually, I showed this in the fiscal committee as well. This 00:52:28.336 --> 00:52:36.803 - is the report that shows the 2027 first estimate at lit distributions. It shows all those lit numbers, 00:52:36.803 --> 00:52:45.022 - but then it also shows the rates. You can actually- Can I make it a little bigger? Yeah. Thank you. 00:52:45.022 --> 00:52:49.790 - Public safety. Public safety is that second column there. 00:52:50.018 --> 00:53:01.654 - It's pretty close. There's a pretty wide variety of public selfie reads. And 0.25 is not, by any stretch 00:53:01.654 --> 00:53:12.958 - of the imagination, the highest or the lowest. OK, that's for sure. So I'd like to revisit the option 00:53:12.958 --> 00:53:17.502 - two as maybe the compromise, maybe we do 00:53:17.634 --> 00:53:28.997 - a little bit less of an increase, but also, I mean, if the reserves are like, if the revenue can maintain 00:53:28.997 --> 00:53:39.931 - a reserve at 20% and we're including the county reserves, because it's almost as though we're double, 00:53:39.931 --> 00:53:47.006 - we're serving double. I was like, there's gotta be a better word. 00:53:47.394 --> 00:53:54.984 - But, you know, if you're trying to get the city's spreadsheet to say that we've got an operating balance 00:53:54.984 --> 00:54:02.286 - of XML, but you're ignoring the counties, that's more than we need. So. Sorry. The problem with that 00:54:02.286 --> 00:54:09.587 - is that works for one year, but it doesn't work for a year, two, three, four, five. If we don't cure 00:54:09.587 --> 00:54:16.382 - our own problem in-house right now, it isn't relevant how many reserves people spend on that. 00:54:16.994 --> 00:54:22.813 - So if we don't fund this budget off of this tax, irrelevant what the reserve is, eventually some place 00:54:22.813 --> 00:54:28.576 - comes down the line where we are in a deficit, we can't get our way back out, because we have no idea 00:54:28.576 --> 00:54:34.339 - what the state's gonna do to us. So if we can go into, and again, this is my personal thoughts, if we 00:54:34.339 --> 00:54:40.272 - can go into 29 tentatively now with this healthy reserves rookie, and I don't care if it's 75% reserves, 00:54:40.272 --> 00:54:46.430 - that gives us that room to weather whatever the state did and figure out a way out of the whole of the state 00:54:47.042 --> 00:54:53.838 - If we spend down those reserves now, we'll never catch up. And then we get hit with the depths of blue 00:54:53.838 --> 00:55:00.503 - state, we're way in the water. And then things, other things will suffer. Whether it be no more fire 00:55:00.503 --> 00:55:07.299 - trucks, no more police cars, no more sheriff's units, no more jail, no more take your pick or whatever 00:55:07.299 --> 00:55:13.502 - else, eventually we're going to have to pay that. Jeff, at the point at which PSLA goes away, 00:55:13.890 --> 00:55:19.593 - Any remaining funds there will still be segregated from general funds. As far as I know, yeah. That's 00:55:19.593 --> 00:55:25.185 - just like, yeah, what we're saying, yeah. If it's statutorily restricted, then they'd still have to 00:55:25.185 --> 00:55:30.832 - be spent in that way. So we would still separate them in some way. Even if it's not a separate fund, 00:55:30.832 --> 00:55:36.479 - it would be? It would probably be a separate fund. I know I said earlier, I made a blanket statement 00:55:36.479 --> 00:55:42.462 - that it would all be selected into the general fund. That is not true in case it's statutorily restricted. 00:55:43.554 --> 00:55:50.541 - Yeah. But at this point, it would just be a county, just to be clear, county reserves, not a city, because 00:55:50.541 --> 00:55:57.332 - we don't have a city reserve, right? We don't have, I mean, at this point right now, do we have a bunch 00:55:57.332 --> 00:56:04.318 - of reserves at the city? Well, that's where I was showing you that if, you know, if all the appropriations 00:56:04.318 --> 00:56:07.518 - were spent, no, it would be substantially whole. 00:56:08.738 --> 00:56:15.466 - But there's no way in our current interlocal agreement that we can ask the county to give us money to 00:56:15.466 --> 00:56:22.259 - put in our reserves. Sure you can. Yeah. It's just an appropriation. Under the current agreement? It's 00:56:22.259 --> 00:56:29.119 - necessary, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's just been a conversation, I think, over the years with the county 00:56:29.119 --> 00:56:35.847 - and the city. And I don't think, it might be different now, but I don't think the county was inclined 00:56:35.847 --> 00:56:36.638 - to do that. 00:56:37.090 --> 00:56:45.707 - previously. Right. There was some in the past, at least partially because I think the PSAP, my name 00:56:45.707 --> 00:56:54.669 - was coming, I think there was some distrust as to whether or not the city had this kind of secret youth 00:56:54.669 --> 00:57:04.062 - reserves. I think there was some of that. I think the former controller and city council spent a lot of time 00:57:04.418 --> 00:57:13.682 - separating that out and City Council passed a resolution where all that money was counted for and transferred 00:57:13.682 --> 00:57:22.357 - over and it didn't take a lot of effort to extract the two. Okay, so the current county reserve is not 00:57:22.357 --> 00:57:30.778 - being utilized. It's just hanging out there and you know, it's been three minutes. So now I need to 00:57:30.778 --> 00:57:33.726 - ask you is what percent is that of 00:57:34.050 --> 00:57:40.679 - than the budget proposed for 2027 for PSAP? Well, I think the county reserves is about $3.2 million. 00:57:40.679 --> 00:57:47.242 - Yeah. I believe. And it doesn't change, because the current year, all the money that's coming in is 00:57:47.242 --> 00:57:54.068 - going out. So they're not building up any new reserves except what came in and supplemented it. Is that 00:57:54.068 --> 00:58:00.960 - in addition to the 999 fund? Yeah, that's totally independent of the 999. So there's also funding, extra 00:58:00.960 --> 00:58:03.454 - funding sitting in county in the 999. 00:58:03.586 --> 00:58:10.428 - But that can't be used for salaries. Right. And it's fully budgeted in too. There are some reserves 00:58:10.428 --> 00:58:17.271 - there also, but I mean, that's the sort of thing that was used for like buying new radio equipment. 00:58:17.271 --> 00:58:24.181 - Equipment all seemed shiny new when we did this for the first time. My understanding is it's kind of 00:58:24.181 --> 00:58:30.750 - near the end of its use. I don't remember. It was the fire department, remember? Yeah, exactly. 00:58:31.106 --> 00:58:38.667 - eight or 10 years ago, we'd have this whole discussion about. Yes, we always. So just explore 00:58:38.667 --> 00:58:46.791 - this possibility. So if we were to propose a split rate increase that we would need for full funding 00:58:46.791 --> 00:58:55.397 - to spend on reserves. In other words, when we do a stepwise increase in rates, is there anything statutory 00:58:55.397 --> 00:59:00.062 - that will prevent us from, say, deploying that, you know, 00:59:00.194 --> 00:59:08.734 - half the rate increase one year and then. Well, you only have two years before bail does away. 00:59:08.898 --> 00:59:16.151 - But yeah, I mean, yes, the short answer is you could do it all again, right? I mean, Larry, they could 00:59:16.151 --> 00:59:23.194 - do the procedure twice. Unless something gets changed. I don't know how Larry feels about this, but 00:59:23.194 --> 00:59:30.236 - as a lawyer, I like to rely upon the law that you have at the time because you just don't know what 00:59:30.236 --> 00:59:36.926 - the state's going to do. So if you have the opportunity to, as Jeff said, save for retirement, 00:59:37.506 --> 00:59:46.559 - while before the state changes it on us. I'm going to ask something. It sounds like I've already asked 00:59:46.559 --> 00:59:55.877 - it again, but I want to be very specific. I'm looking at margin because it's about the current agreement, 00:59:55.877 --> 01:00:01.502 - inter-local agreement. Under the current inter-local agreement, 01:00:03.490 --> 01:00:09.480 - Could the city ask the county for money to put in the city's reserves? Yes, he said. Yes. And I think 01:00:09.480 --> 01:00:15.704 - the process for that would be, you know, the sheriff and the police chief would go to the Dispatch Policy 01:00:15.704 --> 01:00:21.635 - Board and say, we need this. And then I think that that policy board would say, hey, please do this. 01:00:21.635 --> 01:00:27.743 - And then, you know, we'd talk. And the county folks are on the Dispatch Policy Boards. But I think that 01:00:27.743 --> 01:00:32.734 - that's the way to go. And then practically speaking, Jeff would talk to Auntie Bert. 01:00:33.794 --> 01:00:44.970 - So their request would have to originate with this passion policy board. I guess I wasn't thinking that 01:00:44.970 --> 01:00:56.253 - we would just be moving money to build up the city reserves. I guess I was thinking more along the lines 01:00:56.253 --> 01:01:00.766 - of using it, spending it, if we have more 01:01:01.570 --> 01:01:07.911 - 20% overall between the two. I mean, I think that's the goal. I mean, we're not budgeting to... Well, 01:01:07.911 --> 01:01:14.314 - the way it was phrased, it's like, we'll take this reserve and put it over here in these reserves. And 01:01:14.314 --> 01:01:20.592 - that's not really... There's no real point in doing that, but... I'm just exploring options. I don't 01:01:20.592 --> 01:01:26.622 - know if there's any benefit to that. I'll say historically, I think they can't even frown if I'm 01:01:27.042 --> 01:01:35.541 - taking their reserves and getting them to us to put in our own reserves, I think they'd be more inclined 01:01:35.541 --> 01:01:44.122 - to spend it, but I don't think they'd be inclined to give us their extra money goal for them. And there's 01:01:44.122 --> 01:01:52.216 - no reason to do so as long as we have a reasonable interlocal agreement that allows us to tap those 01:01:52.216 --> 01:01:55.454 - county reserves if an emergency happens 01:01:57.282 --> 01:02:14.856 - Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, and there may be future needs to kind of hit on it, but there may be future 01:02:14.856 --> 01:02:27.262 - needs for. Given, you know, that the consuls and all the equipment was. 01:02:27.522 --> 01:02:36.898 - purchased by the city and the county together when we built that new dispatch center. It's been a while. 01:02:36.898 --> 01:02:46.007 - My guess is that there's going to be a huge need for expenditures in that regard, like new equipment. 01:02:46.007 --> 01:02:55.294 - Do they not have that in a replacement schedule and the budgeting? I believe they do. And as Mark said, 01:02:55.842 --> 01:03:01.518 - It's probably several million dollars worth of hardware. Well, and potentially a move. Potentially something 01:03:01.518 --> 01:03:06.725 - as easy as a lightning strike. You know what I mean? No, no, I mean potentially the dispatch center 01:03:06.725 --> 01:03:11.932 - lightning movement. I get it right, but even if that's all right for now, a lightning hit, then you 01:03:11.932 --> 01:03:17.192 - need it today. You don't need it in a year and a half. Hopefully our insurance policy will cover it. 01:03:17.192 --> 01:03:22.815 - Hopefully that's what we expect. Like I said, you need it today, not six months from now when the insurance 01:03:22.815 --> 01:03:24.638 - company decides to give you money. 01:03:27.362 --> 01:03:41.838 - Well, let me go back to the percentages. So let me put a motion on the table, if I may, even though 01:03:41.838 --> 01:03:56.894 - I'm the chair, I can still do a motion. I will move that we increase the PSLET tax rate for 2027, or we 01:03:57.378 --> 01:04:20.223 - make a recommendation to the relevant city, county, Ellisville, Steinsville bodies to raise the PSLIP 01:04:20.223 --> 01:04:26.494 - rate from 0.25% to 0.2869%. 01:04:27.298 --> 01:04:38.104 - Well, we could have more. Yeah. And just clarify. So it is to be the recommendation is to be local income 01:04:38.104 --> 01:04:48.298 - tax canceled. I believe that's what it's called. I know it's kind of those obscure, obscure things. 01:04:48.298 --> 01:04:52.478 - They don't have to be together. I think. 01:04:58.786 --> 01:05:09.807 - Andy, Richard, do you have any comments? We haven't heard anything. Courtney's here too. Oh, Courtney's 01:05:09.807 --> 01:05:20.616 - here too. Okay. Andy's shaking his head. Yeah, no comments. Okay. Richard shaking his head. Courtney, 01:05:20.616 --> 01:05:28.670 - hello. Hi. Sorry, I have laryngitis. No comments. Do you have any comments? 01:05:30.338 --> 01:05:44.388 - Do you want to croak at us? Okay. Sorry about that. Well, as chair of this committee, we will report 01:05:44.388 --> 01:05:59.134 - this to the council for the next meeting. Councilor Wilks, you had an idea, kind of a different idea, so. 01:06:01.058 --> 01:06:23.679 - What do you think? Well, I am struggling a bit with the idea of increasing the lift just in general, 01:06:23.679 --> 01:06:30.398 - but it does seem to be proven 01:06:31.202 --> 01:06:48.376 - you know, to have a self-sustaining approach to budgeting. So, I mean, I guess. I mean, it seems like 01:06:48.376 --> 01:06:58.142 - a good idea. We have reserves. Relative strikes and such. 01:06:59.586 --> 01:07:08.713 - Yeah, I agree with Council Member Oldham that we don't know what the state's gonna do and they're 01:07:08.713 --> 01:07:18.400 - unpredictable and they often act in ways that are not beneficial to local government. So I say, as long 01:07:18.400 --> 01:07:26.782 - as we can, for something as essential as essential dispatch, let's score away some money. 01:07:28.418 --> 01:07:36.403 - I agree. I don't think we can say that measures at this point. It's unfortunate we're having to do it. 01:07:36.403 --> 01:07:44.388 - The problem is we all have competing priorities with our own PSLIT funds. We all are in the same boat. 01:07:44.388 --> 01:07:52.295 - If we don't fund it correctly, we're going to have problems. And going forward, I think the fire rate 01:07:52.295 --> 01:07:54.078 - that is allowed is not 01:07:54.338 --> 01:08:02.613 - for police or dispatch. So that, you know, you might talk about that. There is an extra right thinking 01:08:02.613 --> 01:08:10.405 - from the place by the county for a fiery mess, but it doesn't work for police or dispatch. Yeah. 01:08:10.405 --> 01:08:18.921 - It's odd. It is odd. And might change. And might change. All right. Are we ready? Oh, is there any public 01:08:18.921 --> 01:08:24.062 - comment? Yes. There is somebody with their hand raised on Zoom. 01:08:28.098 --> 01:08:34.786 - Yes, Kevin Keough. Quickly, you know, I've been listening to this last hour. The first discussion seemed 01:08:34.786 --> 01:08:41.284 - to be a budgetary basis. He has his own set of books. My concern, it didn't include a real discussion 01:08:41.284 --> 01:08:42.494 - of actual results. 01:08:42.690 --> 01:08:48.105 - That seems to be another set of books. But I think this would come into play, especially when you start 01:08:48.105 --> 01:08:53.311 - talking about unspent and you talk about reserves. Again, importance of the beginning fund balance. 01:08:53.311 --> 01:08:58.518 - Also, doesn't seem to talk about five years out. I think any time you start talking about this, you 01:08:58.518 --> 01:09:03.829 - need to look five years out and how the heck you're going to, because it seems you got a problem with 01:09:03.829 --> 01:09:09.087 - the funding. So it seems like it's going to be around for a while. So you want to go out five years. 01:09:09.087 --> 01:09:11.326 - Then you had the discussion of the budget. 01:09:11.650 --> 01:09:19.688 - And again, the importance of the basis of accounting and communicating to the public and the need for 01:09:19.688 --> 01:09:27.883 - high quality data. I would always hope that we would actually have the audited financials for 2025 now. 01:09:27.883 --> 01:09:35.842 - So you can start there to say, what was actually spent in 2025? And what was the actual fund balance 01:09:35.842 --> 01:09:39.230 - or the reserves for this account? And then 01:09:39.330 --> 01:09:47.048 - you would have the actual date for 2026 anywhere in August. And then you'd have a really good estimate 01:09:47.048 --> 01:09:54.990 - for 2026. And then you get into this, the budgetary basis, which is focused on setting the appropriations 01:09:54.990 --> 01:10:02.858 - and putting that into stone. And so I think that makes it easier for the public. And then also including 01:10:02.858 --> 01:10:08.478 - that five-year plan out to really focus on, okay, we have a problem today. 01:10:09.026 --> 01:10:15.923 - This is how we're going to attend to it. But then looking after the future to make sure that we don't 01:10:15.923 --> 01:10:23.023 - forget about what our plans and how we've set this. Because this sounds to me, this is pretty much fixed 01:10:23.023 --> 01:10:30.191 - cost. And it's important to the city. It's one of your highest priorities. So anyway, that's my comments. 01:10:30.191 --> 01:10:36.953 - Thanks so much. Thank you, Mr. Q. Any other public comments? All right, seeing none, I think we are 01:10:36.953 --> 01:10:38.846 - ready for a roll call vote. 01:10:41.250 --> 01:10:50.407 - Can I ask the controller to respond to the public comment? The other one? I mean, if it's on the spot, 01:10:50.407 --> 01:10:59.474 - you might have something wrong. Yeah. I mean, the numbers that I showed you earlier in that 4B format 01:10:59.474 --> 01:11:08.542 - did start with actual cash that's in that funnel. And I think we did talk about actuals a little bit. 01:11:08.930 --> 01:11:16.376 - we didn't actually look at the actuals for the category two, three, and four. But I think I did mention 01:11:16.376 --> 01:11:23.751 - that the actuals, when we talk fairly extensively about the actuals of the personnel, we know that the 01:11:23.751 --> 01:11:31.197 - actuals are less than the budgeted amount because of vacancies. I guess that's all I have to say there. 01:11:31.197 --> 01:11:36.638 - On five-year, yeah, it would be nice to be able to do a five-year, I think. 01:11:36.994 --> 01:11:46.567 - right now because there's such a big mystery about what the county and city are going to do with respect 01:11:46.567 --> 01:11:55.957 - to the 2020 rates that there are so many assumptions that a five-year plan would be, I just think it's 01:11:55.957 --> 01:12:04.254 - premature to do it. I think it's an important thing to suggest and I'm glad that Mr. Healy 01:12:04.514 --> 01:12:12.557 - made the comments that we don't have enough. Anything definite to be able to do. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. 01:12:12.557 --> 01:12:20.760 - Can I make one comment about that, Jeff? The must council if it meets when it meets this fall, is this 01:12:20.760 --> 01:12:28.803 - something that you could discuss? Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. There is a kind of a structured 01:12:28.803 --> 01:12:29.918 - framework for 01:12:30.210 --> 01:12:38.227 - county and city and the town to have this discussion about lit-raise. It's called MUST, municipal municipal 01:12:38.227 --> 01:12:46.169 - strategic task force and it's the county would need to call it but that the PSAP lit-raise will definitely 01:12:46.169 --> 01:12:53.741 - very much be a component of that discussion. Yeah and I don't know Kate if that's something that's on 01:12:53.741 --> 01:12:59.902 - your guys's radar so yeah. Yeah you talked about it last week. And we met since to 01:13:00.418 --> 01:13:09.586 - discuss how we might do that in a way that is inclusive because we're only required to invite this many, 01:13:09.586 --> 01:13:18.405 - but there are a lot of people affected. And so we'd like to be more inclusive, but we'd also like to 01:13:18.405 --> 01:13:27.486 - have it productive. So that requires some facilitation. So we're looking at the basically ROI on having 01:13:27.810 --> 01:13:36.560 - and a consultant help us through our funding advisor. There we go. More information than I can answer. 01:13:36.560 --> 01:13:45.395 - There you go. Well, thank you for those responses. Are there any final comments before we vote on them? 01:13:45.395 --> 01:13:53.891 - So again, to refresh our memories, the motion is to recommend to the Meijer County Local Tax Income 01:13:53.891 --> 01:13:57.374 - Tax Council an increase in the PSAP rate 01:13:58.978 --> 01:14:06.729 - from 0.25% to 0.2869%. That's PS. That's the PS limit rate. The PS limit rate. Yeah. You said PSAP. 01:14:06.729 --> 01:14:14.945 - Oh, I'm sorry. But you might want to add in the PSAP, raise the PSAP rate to 0.5%. Because you're raising 01:14:14.945 --> 01:14:22.928 - the overall cap, but you also want to raise that, if you're going to do it, you also want to raise the 01:14:22.928 --> 01:14:24.478 - PSAP limit portion. 01:14:26.562 --> 01:14:34.612 - Is that in one, is that one motion? Because is that, could that be one in one motion? Yeah. So the way 01:14:34.612 --> 01:14:42.741 - I understand it is you're moving to raise the PSL rate for the purposes of being able to raise the PSAP 01:14:42.741 --> 01:14:50.870 - rate. So those are connected items. So you can make that whole motion just to make it clear that that's 01:14:50.870 --> 01:14:53.918 - what we're here. Okay. So to increase. 01:14:54.306 --> 01:15:03.640 - the PSLIP rate to 0.2869%. And within that, to increase the PSAP rate to 0.1%. Is that right? That sounds 01:15:03.640 --> 01:15:12.710 - right. And just to be clear, that's not double raising. It's just raising one. Within the first. Yeah. 01:15:12.710 --> 01:15:21.869 - It's just the same. We're excited. Just another second. Maybe. All right. I think we can call the roll. 01:15:21.869 --> 01:15:23.806 - Call to member works. 01:15:24.546 --> 01:15:44.442 - Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Would you like to voice your approval for 01:15:44.442 --> 01:15:52.830 - this? Although you're a non voting member. 01:15:53.826 --> 01:16:08.006 - Yeah, I approve it. Thank you. All right. Very good. I think as far as schedule, there's no reason for 01:16:08.006 --> 01:16:22.462 - this group to meet again. I want to thank Larry Allen from the city council office for organizing us and 01:16:22.818 --> 01:16:31.071 - Can you work with county colleagues to make sure they get this recommendation and get the wheels in 01:16:31.071 --> 01:16:39.571 - progress for their parts? Any other business? I think we need a motion to allow you to approve minutes 01:16:39.571 --> 01:16:47.989 - and send them back. What we're doing here is passed. Oh, okay. That way we want to certainly get them 01:16:47.989 --> 01:16:52.446 - back for approval. All right. I wish that we do that. 01:16:52.770 --> 01:17:02.420 - The motion on the table is to approve minutes. Authorize Chair Piedmont-Smith to approve the minutes. 01:17:02.420 --> 01:17:12.069 - Any discussion? Public comment? Councilmember Wilkes? Yeah. Councilmember Oldham? Yeah. Councilmember 01:17:12.069 --> 01:17:21.246 - Rallo? Yes. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Councilmember Daly? Yes. Councilmember Rowe? Yes. 01:17:22.434 --> 01:17:31.818 - Thank you very much. All right. Is there any other business? Is there any other public comment? 01:17:31.818 --> 01:17:36.510 - All right. We are adjourned. Thank you so much.