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.