- Well, let's call this meeting the Public Safety Local Income Tax Committee for the Barrow County Local
- Income Tax Council to order. It's Friday, August 21st, 8 a.m. First order of business is roll call and
- introductions. Do we want to do roll call first? Members, starting with my right, I guess.
- That was one, sorry. That was me. All right, eight votes is here, and then the county council. It's
- got all the votes, full town council.
- It's about me my Smith City Council and online members Richard Carter town of Steinsville Andy rough
- City Council I think that's all of our members staff. I'm Larry Allen. I'm counsel attorney Jeff McKim
- City Controller
- I'm Margie Rice, corporation council. Pauline Williamson, deputy clerk. Cool. And we just had a new
- member or earlier staff person coming in. Chief Deaco, thank you for joining us. I don't know if there
- are any introductions that need to be met. Is there anyone that people don't recognize from previous
- dealings? I don't think so. First order of business here, because this is the first time we've met this
- year, Councilmember Pimach-Smith is our outgoing chair.
- Election of chair, do we have any nominations for chair? I would like to nominate Isabel Smith, which
- is such a good job. Second. Okay, we have a first and a second. Roll call. Do you assess the roll? Sure.
- Roll motion.
- Yes. All right. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Thank you for being posted into the job of chair.
- 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
- agenda, I'm happy to do that. Oh, I can go ahead. So we have City Controller Jeff McKim here to give
- us an overview of local infant tax rates, revenues, and distributions. And thank you in advance for
- what you've provided in our template already. OK. And there will be, I'll describe what the changes
- are from there if we're asking for more information.
- Let me just go ahead and share my screen. And I'm not gonna spend a huge amount of time on this part
- because this is just basic introduction just to make sure that since I'm not sure how many times some
- of the members here have done this and just to kind of understand how the funding for dispatch works.
- So first of all, we have an overall
- local income tax rate, 2.14%. And this infographic shows it broken up by the different percentages that
- make up the different components of that income tax. But what we really care about is the box to the
- left that talks about the public safety total. So 0.25% local income tax rate is dedicated to public safety.
- That actually is split into two pieces. The public safety answering point or PSAB, which is the component
- of the rate that goes to dispatch, actually comes out to 0.0631 percent income tax rate. That's percentage
- of your adjusted gross income, taxable income, and then 0.1869 percent
- is for public safety overall, and that is what gets distributed to the County of Monroe County, City
- of Wilmington, Town of Elmsville, and Town of Steinsville for any of their public safety uses. So that
- PSAP dispatch, that 0.60631 comes off at the top and goes into dispatch. Now, where does it go? The actual
- PSAP lit rate that 0.0631% actually goes into a PSAP lit fund at the county. So the money does not,
- that tax does not go directly to the city. It goes directly to the county. There's another source of
- funding for dispatch, which is the Union 11 funds. Those are the funds that come from basically a tax
- that's on everybody's landline and cell phones.
- Those go to the county as well, the expenses are used or that those funds are used for equipment, not
- for personnel and those are maintained at the city's account rather so the county action budgets. Out
- of the one one. And so we never actually see those funds.
- For the PSAP-lit funds, though, we do actually, through an inter-local agreement between the city and
- the county, we receive a transfer from the PSAP-lit funds from the county to the city, which we then
- put in our PSAP-lit fund, and we use that to actually fund the dispatch center and only the dispatch
- center. Just a kind of note, this might have come up in the past. Past years, the city has co-annulled
- PSAP lit funds with PS lit funds in the same fund. That's not the way that it's supposed to have been
- done and not the way it is supposed to be done. So a lot of time has been spent last year and this year
- making it do it, accounting for all the PSAP money, separating out the expenses and revenues into a
- separate PSAP lit fund. So that is that conversion has been complete
- Those funds are no longer, uh, are no longer commutable, but that has been an issue in the past. So
- now all we have to deal with is the, the PSAP Lit Fund, uh, in the city, which receives PSAP Lit from
- the county. There are two kind of, there are two problems here. Um, and I have them as one and two really,
- they really should be reversed. Um, so I'll start with number two. The current budgets have, have still
- been underfunded.
- So this is a problem even with the existing system. The current budgets have been underfunded, which
- has become more of a problem now that the costs of the city's PSAP or the city's dispatch budget has
- increased mainly because of the implementation of the salaries debt in the city. And then Chief Decoff,
- I think there's an opportunity to talk about the budget later. So you all may have questions about the
- budget itself,
- achieve. Yes. Okay, so with PSAP in particular, weren't we aware of this issue and doing this sort of
- intentionally to stand down or am I completely misnomer? Yes, there were significant, well, there were
- significant reserves on both the city side and the county side.
- there are no longer significant reserves on the city side. There are still on the county side. And I'll
- show you actually what, I'm gonna use our 4B to show you what that looks like in just a minute. So that's
- our kind of short-term problem is that we still do have a funding gap. The bigger, the longer-term problem
- is that I think as everybody knows with current legislation, the current lit rate system is going away
- for budget year 2029. There could be additional,
- But based on what we know now, there will be no more PS lit or PSAT lit. So that money is gone. The
- county will have significant levers that they can pull to raise additional income tax. But the city
- does not. And regardless of what the county does, it will not be statutorily dedicated to PS lit or PSAT lit.
- That's something that we'll talk about. Can I jump in here too? Our interlocal agreement that we've
- had for decades was last revised in 2018. And it's in need of revision. And so I think when, as we think
- about the future and how we're going to fund dispatch, assuming we're going to keep a joint dispatch,
- which is pretty efficient, the county and the city is going to have to get together and figure out how
- to, you know,
- what are the right rates to set to fund that dispatch and the revisions to the current dispatch in a
- roll call, which sets forth the location, the number of dispatchers, all of those things, and it's a
- really good update. Hey Jeff, I got a question. So you said the differential gap is because
- of the implementation of the salary study. It looks like a significant amount. Has it been
- has it been underfunded in the past? Yes. I would not say that the gap was because of that. I think
- that is partially because of that. But in the past, and Kate alluded to this, in order to maintain because
- the PSAP rate and public safety rate are all under that 0.25 cap, there has been an attempt to keep
- to use reserves and use the, keep the PSAP rate as low as possible in order to make sure that the city
- and county and Ellis town, Vauxhall and Steinsville has as much public safety money as possible. So,
- because if you keep that cap of 0.25 and raise the PSAP rate, then you get, everybody else gets less
- for all the other public safety functions. So that's, there's definitely been an interest in keeping
- the funding of the PSAP budget as low as possible. The reason why that's worked generally is because
- of the high number of vacancies at the discretion. Is the 0.25 percent the maximum? No, it used to be.
- It was when the whole public safety lit system was set up, but it is no longer the maximum. You're going
- to talk about that. Are you going to talk about that a little bit? I'll talk about it, yeah. Let me
- just show you the
- the cashflow issue that we're dealing with. Okay, so, try to zoom in here. Okay, so I'm gonna look in
- particular first at the current situation, which is in yellow. And I wanna explain the format that I'm
- using. I think the county people will probably be pretty familiar with this.
- This is essentially the same format as the statement 4B, which is the official budgeting and cash flow
- statement that the state uses for budget. And so the idea behind the 4B format is that you start with
- your June 26th, your June 30th balance. So that's how you start actual cash. So this is the amount of
- actual cash money in the PSAP blood account as of June 30th.
- then you play it forward all the way to the end of this year and then the end of next year. So you play
- it forward by adding your remaining revenue that you expect. And this number is, a lot of times we're
- just kind of guessing or projecting. In this case, it's pretty exact because we have the only revenue
- this fund receives is the inter-level agreement. And we know exactly how much lit is the county still
- owes us and transfers on a monthly basis. So we know that we'll have exactly
- $1.469034 coming in from July or July 1st through December 31st of this year. Then we subtract out the
- unspent appropriations. So this is the way that the state has us in the gateway system, which is how
- we have to manage this budget, has us handle
- Now, this is a little bit of a problem. Basically, the assumption is that if you've got it appropriated,
- you're going to spend it, which is not really true if you've got vacancies. The dispatch centers clearly
- have vacancies through June 30th, and we might get Chief to talk about that a little bit later. But
- the fact is that we know we're not going to spend all the unspent appropriations. It's just not realistic.
- And in fact, we did a little bit of analysis from payroll side and found that we probably, we could
- have as much as $700,000 of unspent appropriations in payroll if we have the same level of, and we did
- this yesterday. So that's as of yesterday, if we had the same level of vacancies that we had yesterday
- through the end of the year. But this is- That's the way we can hire someone.
- I certainly hope so too. This is the way the state makes us budget in the gateway system. This is the
- budget that I would have to submit as we go forward. Then you have a projected balance, which is just
- that June 30th cash plus revenue minus unspent appropriations. We wind up with $245,000, which is not
- very much in reserves.
- In reality, because we know that won't always be spent, it's a little bit artificially low, but this
- is the way that I have to look for it. Okay, then we move forward from the end of 26 through the end
- of 27. And we have right now, we expect $3,096,137 in revenue if you all within the local income tax
- council does not.
- So that's kind of the do nothing, just let the system continue on. And this is gonna be a little bit
- more than you've seen in the packet because at the time, because we have new information and that is
- that from the state, from the state budget agency, that we expect all county lit to increase by 5.38%.
- So that's basically the growth in the gross income, taxable income of Monroe County residents.
- as a whole. So that's factored into the three million. Yes. Yeah. So I've already adjusted for that.
- So that's, you do nothing, we get a little over three million, $3.1 million in. Then we have the budget,
- which hopefully we will be talking about today. The budget is 4.8 million. So you see, if you essentially
- play it forward, you start with your December 31 projected balance, add your revenue, subtract your budget,
- you wind up with a deficit or a negative reserves of about 1.5 million dollars. Now I can't even submit
- that budget. So that's, we have to do something. Even though it's a little artificial because we don't
- expect to actually spend all the budget, the system will not even let me submit this. So what can we,
- yeah. When you speak about reserves, and then we also talk about maintaining and operating balance,
- Those are the same thing. Yes. Okay. So this is a negative operator investment. Right. We cannot do
- that. And is there a recommendation for this account or an operating, or keeping a reserve or operating
- balance on a certain amount? Generally, if any, any fund that has salaries, we probably want 20%.
- I mean, that's kind of the way that- 20% accounting. Yeah. You want 20% of the budget. Yeah. You want
- your reserves to be 21%.
- You definitely don't want them to be negative. But I mean, you have to be able to make that first,
- you know, you get income tax once a month. And so you have to be able to make possibly at the free payrolls
- before you would actually receive your first income tax payment. So that's our status quo is a operating
- balance of about minus 1.5 million. Now, what can be done about that?
- I'm going to just talk about three options. They're not mutually exclusive. They can all be done, they
- can all be combined in various combinations. The first one is entirely on the city side, and that is
- just to de-appropriate some of the unspent salaries. If we have the city council de-appropriate, say,
- $700,000 in unspent balance, then we could reduce that number in our 4B statement,
- And then we wind up, but that doesn't get us all the way. That only gets us to about negative 800, 766,000.
- And then you don't have the opportunity to get fully funded if you deaffirm it. So, start.
- Well, we couldn't get right. Exactly. You have to figure out what the right number is. The other problem
- is just we'd have to do that by the first week of September. And I don't even think that the city council
- schedule is even allowed. And I just want to make clear, I don't think that the appropriating salaries
- is anything that police want to do, is that correct? Well, and I'm just kind of explaining. Yeah, I
- just want to make sure. We've got a problem and we've got a couple of different ways to solve it.
- Okay. So this is unspent salaries. Yes. And you don't want to create that money because because you
- go back to explain explain more. Well, no, I mean, I, some of it will never be spent if I mean, especially
- up to yesterday, you know, that the
- I would, the most you would want to do is just assume that they get fully staffed tomorrow and are fully
- staffed throughout the rest of the year. That's kind of the worst case scenario as far as spend down.
- But the savings in, there's, there's one little problem though, is that also when you're not fully staffed,
- you rack up more overtime. And so you have to kind of
- account for that as well. So it's not quite as neat as just, let's look at our unspent salaries and
- the appropriate. Okay. So, so the expectation is that we'll be required soon. And that, that was right.
- I'm going to defer that to the chief, but we certainly. So hiring, hiring for dispatches is complicated
- because there's a long training period. Well, you have so many trainers and so much space. So we've
- been only hire.
- so many at a time. We've got, what did we say, 10, did I say 10 openings? And when I did my presentation,
- we could not hire 10 people today to train them all. We just don't have it really. Do you want to come
- up to the table so that the microphone can answer better? Yeah. Thank you. Mike's in the back there.
- So with the 10 opening, we couldn't hire all 10 today.
- because we just don't have people to train and we don't have the space. And so, and it's a very lengthy
- process. And evidently what happens is somebody starts going through the training and then they realize
- this is for me so that they would. So we're constantly in this hiring. And so it's, would we spend it
- all this year? No, we will not spend that unspent salary. But I also don't want to give it up because
- I don't know what impact
- the way whole state funding stuff is. And then the number of dispatchers, if you remember, was set a
- few years ago when we had an outside consultant look at our dispatch center and look at how it operated,
- staffing levels, and it was set by, it was the Novak report, I don't remember that, but that's the report
- that evaluated dispatch center. Yeah, I remember it well.
- So, just so whatever is on the Spanish general fund. No, it will stay in peace. It will stay. Yeah.
- Yeah. So, so
- Yeah, no, it will stay in PSAP until it goes away. At that point, it will be a source. We would transfer
- everything to the agenda. Yeah, after that, all these things. So that's the option one. And that's kind
- of the option one is kind of a numbers game a little bit. And it sounds like it's not even feasible
- because of the time.
- But I wanted to use it as the opportunity just to tell you that not all of the appropriations will be
- spent. We know that. So option number two is to have the county provide additional funds from their
- PSAP reserves. So you remember that, like I mentioned before, there's actually a PSAP that is statutorily
- earmarked for dispatch, can't be used for anything else, goes into the county fund first, and then the county
- by inter-lobal agreement pays a certain amount to the city. Well, the county fund that receives a PSAP
- lift has built up a cash balance that is much larger than has actually been transferred to the city.
- I'm showing that the county has about $3.2 million in terms. Again, it can only be used for this. One
- reason is that as
- Kate mentioned earlier that there was kind of a conscious strategy to not overfund the budget, to be
- providing a lot of extra money into the city. And then there was also, there are these supplemental
- lit distributions that occur each year, which is extra money in the lit trust fund that gets distributed.
- And in the case of PSAP lit, it all just goes to him. It just sits there in that PSAP lit
- So the county's got a reserve fund, PSAP lit. It's not usable for anything else. It's the only use of
- it. And I strongly suggest, I'm trying to be neutral. Sorry. Let me ask you a question. If that stays
- there, if it's not spent, that doesn't ever go away. It can continue to be used for dispatch after we
- have that change in 2019. I mean, I don't think that it makes the statutory earmarking to be useful.
- the fact that there's no new money coming. I don't think that means it can be used for anything. So
- in other words, so let me just go over those numbers. Okay, so then option two, again, in this case,
- I picked $1.5 million
- in addition to all of the new LIT. So in other words, all of the 2027 PSAP LIT at the same rate we've
- already talked about, plus another 1.5 million county reserves get transferred as part of the interlocal
- agreement to the city. And that brings a total of about $4.6 million in revenue. And that gives us an
- operating balance of about $33,000. So that's what just,
- Now, in reality, because we're not going to spend all those appropriations, that's actually probably
- okay. I mean, that would be an acceptable level of reserves. At the very least, it's greater than zero,
- so I can actually submit in Gateway, which I couldn't for the status quo. But you were saying that you
- would recommend reserves of 20%, which would be 20% of
- The 4.6 million is $925,000. Well, remember those appropriations there, that $2.6 million, that's not
- all gonna, we know that's not gonna be spent. Unfortunately, unless you de-appropriate it, the state
- assumes it's going to. Yeah, so don't de-appropriate it, and you have seven months' worth of the unfunded
- dispatch. So the cash will still be there. That makes sense. Just like the county and the city always
- wind up in a better financial position, then your budgets show that you're gonna show.
- Because nobody ever spent all their okay you have about 10 positions that have been vacant since from
- January to now. So that those 10 positions have been funded but not spent so that's actually Okay, so
- that's that's the option to that's just moving money from the county from the existing reserves, the
- The disadvantage about options one and two is that they don't really do anything to buffer us against
- the changes in 29. So the option three is that we increase the PSAP lit rates to actually fund the budget.
- So in other words, don't leave the budget underfunded, but instead actually have the current revenues
- from the PSAP lit funds the budget.
- I did the numbers here in the scenario that you would increase the PSAP rate to the maximum, the statutory
- maximum of 0.1%. And then raise the overall PS by the same amount so that you wouldn't be losing money
- for all your other public safety things. You would just be increasing the PSAP rate a little bit. So
- in other words, the total public safety rate would be 0.2869 rather than
- And so that would actually fully fund the budget, bring enough revenue in. And because the budget probably
- wouldn't be fully spent, it would allow the city to build up a little bit of the dispatch center, to
- build up a little bit of reserves so that in advance of the restructuring of LIT. And it's like before
- you retire, you start squirreling money away to make sure you have enough
- to kind of bridge the gap until all your retirement payments are starting. To be fair, we're not anticipating
- that funding is going to disappear in 29. It's going to be configured differently. Yes, but from our
- perspective and the city's perspective, we have zero control.
- So we have to assume I'm well. Yeah, I think we all agree we want a dispatch center that actually answers
- the phone and dispatches everything. But that's true. Okay, so let me just and then go on to the final
- piece. So those are the three options. Again, they are not mutually exclusive in any way. And then the final,
- This is a screen you all have seen before. There's a version of it in your packet. This, I have changed
- it just because, like I mentioned before, we now know that the lit has gone, the overall lit has gone up by 5.38%.
- So I made that, that's one of the only change from what you see in your packet. And that this just shows,
- if you essentially did nothing, again, this is these three columns here.
- If you did nothing, this is how much comes out to that $12 million, $12.3 million comes out for public
- safety. That $3.1 million goes to dispatch, and then all the rest gets divvied up among Monroe County,
- Bloomington, Ellisville, and Steinsville. And then these last three columns are just, I call it the
- fund the budget scenario. And that's where we raise the PSAP rate to the maximum.
- come up with that $4.9 million. As you can see, we still wind up with the same amount for public safety,
- for all the other public safety functions that gets divvied out to the county and the city. So that's
- what I've got. Happy to answer any other questions, or we can move on. Yes. So this question is something
- that I should probably know the answer to, and I have
- So the county's budget is, I guess what I want to know is if we're taking an amount out of county reserves,
- does that leave that 20% to cover any county budgeting?
- so we don't have there's no expenses coming out of that county one payment that goes over to the city
- as part of the other and that's separate from ps lit and we're managing that okay totally separate yes
- does your option three back a slide does your option three use the reserves or does your option three
- keep the reserves they were i i did them all independently but you can overlap them to whatever degree
- they'd like
- But I guess your option three raises the rate and has no need to dip into those reserves. I chose not
- to. Right. Okay. You can always transfer reserves. I mean, that's what happens once the money is there.
- But this is a safe approach. Option three is the safest. Option three is actually raising the rate.
- Yeah. I mean, safe in the sense that you raise the rate and get more revenue and repeat your results.
- Yes. So the county is not using, does not appropriate any
- PFAT funds for use by the county. It goes to the district. First, we consider. Because of our interval.
- Yeah. We don't have any separate things, and that's what I was- There's literally in the budget that
- the county council appropriates, there's one line in that fund, which is the interval within the transport.
- Yeah. Years ago- So we can consider that our reserve. Exactly. Yeah.
- 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
- visibility into that, but I think when we prepped for the earlier meeting, for the June meeting, Angie
- and Jeff Kupferl and I got together and thought of it. And the county can't spend that on anything other
- than dispatch. So, I mean,
- As long as we have a joint dispatch center, that would have to be spent on the joint dispatch center.
- In some imaginary world, the county and the city stood up its own dispatch center so they could use
- that 3.2 for their dispatch. Which I don't think has been happening, but. All right. Are there questions
- for Dr. McCann?
- regarding his presentation and the three options. I think we're going to come back and ask questions
- once you, you know, if you have anything else after you've seen the budget or I don't know if Leonard
- is going to talk about any processes, but is there a time period where that's optimal for implementation?
- So, you know, the drop dead line for, I think the one thing the new rate is essentially the first one,
- the legislative body set their rates
- for the year, but you have to back up from that at least almost a month. So these would have to be proposed
- really no later than October 1st, essentially. And just on the timeline currently that the city council
- and the county council are on those who need to be at least proposed before September 13th, which is
- 10 days before the introduction of the legislation that sets the annual rates
- because there's a 10-day notice period for all of those for appropriation ordinance and setting the
- taxing rates, then you have to wait a minimum of 10 days after that initial hearing to be able to public
- hearing at that time until you can pass the rate. So you have to give yourself plenty of runway. So
- just realistically, if there's going to be a recommendation for an increased rate from this body to the
- local income taxing bodies, it needs to happen probably at this meeting and then get it on their calendars
- as soon as possible so they can consider it for September and October best. Okay, so essentially,
- so Jeff, what is the, what's the difference for the average? Maybe we can start with what's the, so
- we would raise the total rate
- from 0.25 to 0.2869. So what is that? Raising it 0.1369. Yeah, so it's about four cents, yeah. Something
- like that. Four cents on what we're talking about. So if we've got,
- $70,000, $5,000 salary. So that's percent. So that will be about $27. So that sounds like $475,000.
- Over the course of the year.
- So shall we move ahead to look at the budget for federal dispatch or PSAP? That's good, thank you. To
- make sure we don't have any questions about that. That was a $27 increase over what's current or is
- that? Increase.
- So those, I think it's page nine in the packet. Those are the sheets for 26. Let's see, 27 budget proposals.
- Yeah, if we look at just money coming from PSAP, it's page 18 in the packet is what's proposed.
- For next year and the comparison table on this sheet is the actual expense of the last four
- year expenditures. Is this correct? This is what was pulled. This particular version is what was pulled
- from the Dispatch Policy Board.
- Is this the one that special policy board adopted? And so when? I think there were some adjustments
- based upon that. If there are adjustments, we didn't receive the adjustments. I think there's
- some adjustments based on COLA and the new salaries that are maybe not included in the state. Yeah,
- I think the version we want to include is the version that was actually included in the city council's
- budget proposal. Yeah, and that's the main change was that COLA, when the budget was originally formulated,
- they assumed 2% of it.
- Uh, opposed to two and six, it's less than. So can we pull that up? Does anybody have a hard stop at
- nine o'clock? I have to maybe nine, but I'm not sorry. You guys can keep up.
- Andy? Yeah, I can go. I can go a little longer. Okay. Richard? I can go as long as we need to.
- Thank you. I mean, I don't think it'll be much later than nine, but it might be.
- pull it up myself. Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm actually just going into the financial system. I'm just
- pulling up in the packet. Of course, that doesn't help if I haven't. But there were no other changes
- much other than that goal. Other than like the COLA increase, the change from 2 to 2.7. Let me just,
- I'm gonna go ahead and show.
- I'm sure 4,470,569. Wait a minute. That's less than what's on the screen. OK. Does this look right, guys?
- Because this is what's actually in. 4.8 yeah. So why in our budget packet do we have something that
- says 4.4. On the actual budget book if you look at page 53 of the budget book that's where you'll see.
- Oh, yeah. And the numbers that I did in my round on the best dollars. Yeah. Or 4.8. And that's the number
- that I used in my presentation. Looks like most of it is the salary, which makes sense. But there's
- some increase in other services and charges. Some? Yeah. Yeah. So this would be the correct. This is
- the version that's actually in front of the city council. And I see it now.
- your rejection on option and relatively for the total funding of dispatch by rating the rate was on
- 4.8. I think you're correct. Yeah, it wound up being a little bit more because that's 5.8% but yeah.
- Okay, so just to be clear because I don't know if everybody heard what Council Member Oldham said. So
- the scenarios you gave us
- Uh, control and McCann are based on this 4.8 million. Yeah, that number was what appeared in the, in
- exactly the number that appeared in my spreadsheet. Okay. So this was approved by the dispatch policy
- board, which has membership from.
- membership as dictated by the interlocal group. The budget for 2% was improved. The change to going
- to 2.7 was made after they approved it because in the interlocal it has to be approved early, like by
- May and June. So they're going to go back and re-apply 2.7. The other increase was in Category 3, looks
- like it's insurance and health
- left through. So that was already for the category 3 changes. Yeah, we have those groups. Okay, so it's
- going to spread. Why would that have changed the repairs through a little bit? I mean, maybe. Refreshing.
- I get why it would increase just generally, but then from
- what was submitted to what was approved, didn't it? Oh, 26, but it's on the left. Now we're talking
- about 27, but it's on the right. So that's where you're seeing the separation. No, the only changes
- that were from when it was submitted, but there are two changes that happened after it was approved
- by the dispatch. One was nine percent, the insurance, health insurance increase from nine percent. And
- then the other one is the COLO, the cost of living was proposed to 2.7 percent of the students. So the
- category three didn't change.
- Not between those two. Not between the two budget goals. Not at best. Between years, they did.
- That's true. All right. Any questions or concerns from committee members? Kim, Larry, can we get this
- sheet back retroactively appended to the meeting? We'll put it up for grabs under it and I'll send it
- to you. Okay.
- Thank you. Okay, so we go back to our agenda. We already talked about cash reserves. Distributions of
- qualified providers, we didn't have any applications, so that's an easy one.
- So let's get down to the rates and the different scenarios that the controller presented. Thoughts from
- committee members? Jeff, would you go back to that slide and give us the different versions? Yes. And
- I apologize for seeing a little bit dis-compopulated. I'm going to say this. But being blunt, we have
- spent three years, four years now
- with the state saying, oh, it's gonna go in effect here, it's gonna go in effect here, it's gonna go
- in effect here, and that keeps getting bumped because they've yet been able to cure what they're gonna
- 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
- it becomes, and I hate to raise taxes, but if we don't come into that with a very, very healthy reserve,
- and with being at our maximum levy or close to it,
- state and the ambulance go you know what you're right you don't need that much because we but what they
- won't see is we've been undercutting it by jumping into reserves every year plus simply the fact of
- it everything goes up and that includes personnel that includes materials that includes electricity
- 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
- reserves in the county that still leaves you no wiggle room there's no room for emergencies there's
- no room for
- Oh, the take your pick or whatever, very expensive piece of machinery just died. So if we start looking
- at pushing that rate out, and again, I'm pretty against raising taxes, but in this case, the state of
- Indiana is backing us into a corner where we really don't have any choices, because we have no idea
- what they're going to do. And that keeps getting bumped every year because they can't figure it out.
- So to me, the only real option for us is option three, where we
- the rate up. Again, it is $27. And I understand it's $27 based on a $70,000 salary. So that's going
- to go up for folks. But that healthy reserve plus actually funding this budget out of what we're getting
- in this year gives us that lifespan in the long term should the state decide to do something we're not
- anticipating. What is, is there a new maximum of PSLIP?
- It was originally 0.25%. No, there's an overall maximum to the expenditure rate, which is the PS lit
- plus economic development plus certified shares. And I used to know all that in my sleep and it's been
- a little while, but there's definitely had room to increase it by that. But yeah, there's no longer
- a PS lit cap.
- There's a cap, too. There's a cap. A total. A total. Yeah. So a piece of the pie impacts the
- other expenditure. No, that's why you raise the whole PS lit as well as PSAP lit, just to make sure
- that nothing else will come back. It basically holds harmless all the other public safety
- So the city has typically used it for capital expenses. That's not in the statute.
- It is reserved for public safety. The city, the county has tended to use it for sheriff's deputies,
- for jail, while the city has tended to use it for police and fire capital. But that's not required by
- law. I guess how much is like discretionary in terms of like, yeah, you need new equipment or something.
- I don't want to defer me into the boss or something like that, but it's massive. But I mean, could a
- greater share of these staff
- budget. Well, right now, the PS lit budget that's in front of you is over $2 million in deficit, if
- it's all actually expected. The chief may want to talk about the importance of staying on maintenance
- schedule. I know that's been a huge issue with the fire department.
- That was my first, I was like, take you guys right on this track for a few years. So my other question
- is, I mean, obviously, central dispatch is very important. You've got one, I mean, a position of overtime
- is expensive, plus, you know, there's a boss in terms of people's mental
- health and things like that. You have many more field positions. You know, I mean, I wouldn't say this
- is a crisis situation, but I would say it's a very, it's alarmed, right? You have the police staff,
- central dispatch, and you're having a problem with the staff. And certainly the salary increases as
- a whole, relative to other communities, with annual fare, sadly.
- Yes, it does. And we've actually been able to hire dispatchers from other communities. But I mean, it's
- a very stressful job. We looked at the schedule this year earlier, and we switched it. They wanted to
- go to 12-hour shifts, which allowed them more time off, because there's always mandatory overtime for
- the district staff. And that was just to keep a minimum number of people in there to keep it operating.
- My understanding is that you've also changed the shift structure to try to... Yeah, we went to the pitman.
- So you may want to tell everybody. Excuse me, can you unshare so that the people online can see us as
- we're talking? Thank you. So some of the employees wanted to do 12-hour shifts, some wanted to do the
- eight-hour shifts. So what we ended up doing was
- we looked at that scheduling and ended up switching it to 12-hour because it gave them more time off,
- which is what they wanted. With the mandatory overtime, they were having, especially if they were having
- overtime, being able to take time. And so constantly working in there, it's a very, it's not like they
- can get up and go outside because they can't get the phones and the radio. So it's a very stressful
- job. And so what we did to try to help was we switched
- working hours and went to this pitman schedule. That seemed to make them really happy. They liked that.
- They didn't give them more time off. But again, the ultimate goal is to get full of staff so that we
- don't have to rely on overtime. It's just, it's a very lengthy process to hire a trained dispatcher.
- Do we have any sense of how our PSLIP rate compares to other counties?
- I'm not offhand, but that information would be on the state budget agency website. I mean, I'm also
- leaning towards increasing the overall PS1 rate, but I don't want us to be like, we're the only community
- in Indiana that's above 0.25. Well, if I can, the problem is with the Olympics around the county, we
- are exponential awards of magnitude busier.
- Let me just share the quick. This is a chart. There's a lot of numbers on there.
- This is a state budget agency website. Actually, I showed this in the fiscal committee as well. This
- is the report that shows the 2027 first estimate at lit distributions. It shows all those lit numbers,
- but then it also shows the rates. You can actually- Can I make it a little bigger? Yeah. Thank you.
- Public safety. Public safety is that second column there.
- It's pretty close. There's a pretty wide variety of public selfie reads. And 0.25 is not, by any stretch
- of the imagination, the highest or the lowest. OK, that's for sure. So I'd like to revisit the option
- two as maybe the compromise, maybe we do
- a little bit less of an increase, but also, I mean, if the reserves are like, if the revenue can maintain
- a reserve at 20% and we're including the county reserves, because it's almost as though we're double,
- we're serving double. I was like, there's gotta be a better word.
- But, you know, if you're trying to get the city's spreadsheet to say that we've got an operating balance
- of XML, but you're ignoring the counties, that's more than we need. So. Sorry. The problem with that
- is that works for one year, but it doesn't work for a year, two, three, four, five. If we don't cure
- our own problem in-house right now, it isn't relevant how many reserves people spend on that.
- So if we don't fund this budget off of this tax, irrelevant what the reserve is, eventually some place
- comes down the line where we are in a deficit, we can't get our way back out, because we have no idea
- what the state's gonna do to us. So if we can go into, and again, this is my personal thoughts, if we
- can go into 29 tentatively now with this healthy reserves rookie, and I don't care if it's 75% reserves,
- that gives us that room to weather whatever the state did and figure out a way out of the whole of the state
- If we spend down those reserves now, we'll never catch up. And then we get hit with the depths of blue
- state, we're way in the water. And then things, other things will suffer. Whether it be no more fire
- trucks, no more police cars, no more sheriff's units, no more jail, no more take your pick or whatever
- else, eventually we're going to have to pay that. Jeff, at the point at which PSLA goes away,
- Any remaining funds there will still be segregated from general funds. As far as I know, yeah. That's
- just like, yeah, what we're saying, yeah. If it's statutorily restricted, then they'd still have to
- be spent in that way. So we would still separate them in some way. Even if it's not a separate fund,
- it would be? It would probably be a separate fund. I know I said earlier, I made a blanket statement
- that it would all be selected into the general fund. That is not true in case it's statutorily restricted.
- Yeah. But at this point, it would just be a county, just to be clear, county reserves, not a city, because
- we don't have a city reserve, right? We don't have, I mean, at this point right now, do we have a bunch
- of reserves at the city? Well, that's where I was showing you that if, you know, if all the appropriations
- were spent, no, it would be substantially whole.
- But there's no way in our current interlocal agreement that we can ask the county to give us money to
- put in our reserves. Sure you can. Yeah. It's just an appropriation. Under the current agreement? It's
- necessary, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's just been a conversation, I think, over the years with the county
- and the city. And I don't think, it might be different now, but I don't think the county was inclined
- to do that.
- previously. Right. There was some in the past, at least partially because I think the PSAP, my name
- was coming, I think there was some distrust as to whether or not the city had this kind of secret youth
- reserves. I think there was some of that. I think the former controller and city council spent a lot of time
- separating that out and City Council passed a resolution where all that money was counted for and transferred
- over and it didn't take a lot of effort to extract the two. Okay, so the current county reserve is not
- being utilized. It's just hanging out there and you know, it's been three minutes. So now I need to
- ask you is what percent is that of
- than the budget proposed for 2027 for PSAP? Well, I think the county reserves is about $3.2 million.
- Yeah. I believe. And it doesn't change, because the current year, all the money that's coming in is
- going out. So they're not building up any new reserves except what came in and supplemented it. Is that
- in addition to the 999 fund? Yeah, that's totally independent of the 999. So there's also funding, extra
- funding sitting in county in the 999.
- But that can't be used for salaries. Right. And it's fully budgeted in too. There are some reserves
- there also, but I mean, that's the sort of thing that was used for like buying new radio equipment.
- Equipment all seemed shiny new when we did this for the first time. My understanding is it's kind of
- near the end of its use. I don't remember. It was the fire department, remember? Yeah, exactly.
- eight or 10 years ago, we'd have this whole discussion about. Yes, we always. So just explore
- this possibility. So if we were to propose a split rate increase that we would need for full funding
- to spend on reserves. In other words, when we do a stepwise increase in rates, is there anything statutory
- that will prevent us from, say, deploying that, you know,
- half the rate increase one year and then. Well, you only have two years before bail does away.
- But yeah, I mean, yes, the short answer is you could do it all again, right? I mean, Larry, they could
- do the procedure twice. Unless something gets changed. I don't know how Larry feels about this, but
- as a lawyer, I like to rely upon the law that you have at the time because you just don't know what
- the state's going to do. So if you have the opportunity to, as Jeff said, save for retirement,
- while before the state changes it on us. I'm going to ask something. It sounds like I've already asked
- it again, but I want to be very specific. I'm looking at margin because it's about the current agreement,
- inter-local agreement. Under the current inter-local agreement,
- Could the city ask the county for money to put in the city's reserves? Yes, he said. Yes. And I think
- the process for that would be, you know, the sheriff and the police chief would go to the Dispatch Policy
- Board and say, we need this. And then I think that that policy board would say, hey, please do this.
- And then, you know, we'd talk. And the county folks are on the Dispatch Policy Boards. But I think that
- that's the way to go. And then practically speaking, Jeff would talk to Auntie Bert.
- So their request would have to originate with this passion policy board. I guess I wasn't thinking that
- we would just be moving money to build up the city reserves. I guess I was thinking more along the lines
- of using it, spending it, if we have more
- 20% overall between the two. I mean, I think that's the goal. I mean, we're not budgeting to... Well,
- the way it was phrased, it's like, we'll take this reserve and put it over here in these reserves. And
- that's not really... There's no real point in doing that, but... I'm just exploring options. I don't
- know if there's any benefit to that. I'll say historically, I think they can't even frown if I'm
- taking their reserves and getting them to us to put in our own reserves, I think they'd be more inclined
- to spend it, but I don't think they'd be inclined to give us their extra money goal for them. And there's
- no reason to do so as long as we have a reasonable interlocal agreement that allows us to tap those
- county reserves if an emergency happens
- Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, and there may be future needs to kind of hit on it, but there may be future
- needs for. Given, you know, that the consuls and all the equipment was.
- purchased by the city and the county together when we built that new dispatch center. It's been a while.
- My guess is that there's going to be a huge need for expenditures in that regard, like new equipment.
- Do they not have that in a replacement schedule and the budgeting? I believe they do. And as Mark said,
- It's probably several million dollars worth of hardware. Well, and potentially a move. Potentially something
- as easy as a lightning strike. You know what I mean? No, no, I mean potentially the dispatch center
- lightning movement. I get it right, but even if that's all right for now, a lightning hit, then you
- need it today. You don't need it in a year and a half. Hopefully our insurance policy will cover it.
- Hopefully that's what we expect. Like I said, you need it today, not six months from now when the insurance
- company decides to give you money.
- Well, let me go back to the percentages. So let me put a motion on the table, if I may, even though
- I'm the chair, I can still do a motion. I will move that we increase the PSLET tax rate for 2027, or we
- make a recommendation to the relevant city, county, Ellisville, Steinsville bodies to raise the PSLIP
- rate from 0.25% to 0.2869%.
- Well, we could have more. Yeah. And just clarify. So it is to be the recommendation is to be local income
- tax canceled. I believe that's what it's called. I know it's kind of those obscure, obscure things.
- They don't have to be together. I think.
- Andy, Richard, do you have any comments? We haven't heard anything. Courtney's here too. Oh, Courtney's
- here too. Okay. Andy's shaking his head. Yeah, no comments. Okay. Richard shaking his head. Courtney,
- hello. Hi. Sorry, I have laryngitis. No comments. Do you have any comments?
- Do you want to croak at us? Okay. Sorry about that. Well, as chair of this committee, we will report
- this to the council for the next meeting. Councilor Wilks, you had an idea, kind of a different idea, so.
- What do you think? Well, I am struggling a bit with the idea of increasing the lift just in general,
- but it does seem to be proven
- you know, to have a self-sustaining approach to budgeting. So, I mean, I guess. I mean, it seems like
- a good idea. We have reserves. Relative strikes and such.
- Yeah, I agree with Council Member Oldham that we don't know what the state's gonna do and they're
- unpredictable and they often act in ways that are not beneficial to local government. So I say, as long
- as we can, for something as essential as essential dispatch, let's score away some money.
- I agree. I don't think we can say that measures at this point. It's unfortunate we're having to do it.
- The problem is we all have competing priorities with our own PSLIT funds. We all are in the same boat.
- If we don't fund it correctly, we're going to have problems. And going forward, I think the fire rate
- that is allowed is not
- for police or dispatch. So that, you know, you might talk about that. There is an extra right thinking
- from the place by the county for a fiery mess, but it doesn't work for police or dispatch. Yeah.
- It's odd. It is odd. And might change. And might change. All right. Are we ready? Oh, is there any public
- comment? Yes. There is somebody with their hand raised on Zoom.
- Yes, Kevin Keough. Quickly, you know, I've been listening to this last hour. The first discussion seemed
- to be a budgetary basis. He has his own set of books. My concern, it didn't include a real discussion
- of actual results.
- That seems to be another set of books. But I think this would come into play, especially when you start
- talking about unspent and you talk about reserves. Again, importance of the beginning fund balance.
- Also, doesn't seem to talk about five years out. I think any time you start talking about this, you
- need to look five years out and how the heck you're going to, because it seems you got a problem with
- the funding. So it seems like it's going to be around for a while. So you want to go out five years.
- Then you had the discussion of the budget.
- And again, the importance of the basis of accounting and communicating to the public and the need for
- high quality data. I would always hope that we would actually have the audited financials for 2025 now.
- So you can start there to say, what was actually spent in 2025? And what was the actual fund balance
- or the reserves for this account? And then
- you would have the actual date for 2026 anywhere in August. And then you'd have a really good estimate
- for 2026. And then you get into this, the budgetary basis, which is focused on setting the appropriations
- and putting that into stone. And so I think that makes it easier for the public. And then also including
- that five-year plan out to really focus on, okay, we have a problem today.
- This is how we're going to attend to it. But then looking after the future to make sure that we don't
- forget about what our plans and how we've set this. Because this sounds to me, this is pretty much fixed
- cost. And it's important to the city. It's one of your highest priorities. So anyway, that's my comments.
- Thanks so much. Thank you, Mr. Q. Any other public comments? All right, seeing none, I think we are
- ready for a roll call vote.
- Can I ask the controller to respond to the public comment? The other one? I mean, if it's on the spot,
- you might have something wrong. Yeah. I mean, the numbers that I showed you earlier in that 4B format
- did start with actual cash that's in that funnel. And I think we did talk about actuals a little bit.
- we didn't actually look at the actuals for the category two, three, and four. But I think I did mention
- that the actuals, when we talk fairly extensively about the actuals of the personnel, we know that the
- actuals are less than the budgeted amount because of vacancies. I guess that's all I have to say there.
- On five-year, yeah, it would be nice to be able to do a five-year, I think.
- right now because there's such a big mystery about what the county and city are going to do with respect
- to the 2020 rates that there are so many assumptions that a five-year plan would be, I just think it's
- premature to do it. I think it's an important thing to suggest and I'm glad that Mr. Healy
- made the comments that we don't have enough. Anything definite to be able to do. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
- Can I make one comment about that, Jeff? The must council if it meets when it meets this fall, is this
- something that you could discuss? Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. There is a kind of a structured
- framework for
- county and city and the town to have this discussion about lit-raise. It's called MUST, municipal municipal
- strategic task force and it's the county would need to call it but that the PSAP lit-raise will definitely
- very much be a component of that discussion. Yeah and I don't know Kate if that's something that's on
- your guys's radar so yeah. Yeah you talked about it last week. And we met since to
- discuss how we might do that in a way that is inclusive because we're only required to invite this many,
- but there are a lot of people affected. And so we'd like to be more inclusive, but we'd also like to
- have it productive. So that requires some facilitation. So we're looking at the basically ROI on having
- and a consultant help us through our funding advisor. There we go. More information than I can answer.
- There you go. Well, thank you for those responses. Are there any final comments before we vote on them?
- So again, to refresh our memories, the motion is to recommend to the Meijer County Local Tax Income
- Tax Council an increase in the PSAP rate
- from 0.25% to 0.2869%. That's PS. That's the PS limit rate. The PS limit rate. Yeah. You said PSAP.
- Oh, I'm sorry. But you might want to add in the PSAP, raise the PSAP rate to 0.5%. Because you're raising
- the overall cap, but you also want to raise that, if you're going to do it, you also want to raise the
- PSAP limit portion.
- Is that in one, is that one motion? Because is that, could that be one in one motion? Yeah. So the way
- I understand it is you're moving to raise the PSL rate for the purposes of being able to raise the PSAP
- rate. So those are connected items. So you can make that whole motion just to make it clear that that's
- what we're here. Okay. So to increase.
- the PSLIP rate to 0.2869%. And within that, to increase the PSAP rate to 0.1%. Is that right? That sounds
- right. And just to be clear, that's not double raising. It's just raising one. Within the first. Yeah.
- It's just the same. We're excited. Just another second. Maybe. All right. I think we can call the roll.
- Call to member works.
- Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Would you like to voice your approval for
- this? Although you're a non voting member.
- Yeah, I approve it. Thank you. All right. Very good. I think as far as schedule, there's no reason for
- this group to meet again. I want to thank Larry Allen from the city council office for organizing us and
- Can you work with county colleagues to make sure they get this recommendation and get the wheels in
- progress for their parts? Any other business? I think we need a motion to allow you to approve minutes
- and send them back. What we're doing here is passed. Oh, okay. That way we want to certainly get them
- back for approval. All right. I wish that we do that.
- The motion on the table is to approve minutes. Authorize Chair Piedmont-Smith to approve the minutes.
- Any discussion? Public comment? Councilmember Wilkes? Yeah. Councilmember Oldham? Yeah. Councilmember
- Rallo? Yes. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Councilmember Daly? Yes. Councilmember Rowe? Yes.
- Thank you very much. All right. Is there any other business? Is there any other public comment?
- All right. We are adjourned. Thank you so much.