August 23, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Hey, well, welcome everyone to our Friday session for August. Well, hello, Mr. Miller. How are you? All right. I think basically it's just budget talks and I'll let you guys take it away.

Great, so today I will present the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget for the city of Clayton. And I usually do this at the end, but I wanna start by thanking staff in particular, our finance department, Karen Dilber and Caleb Pakinowski, who I know is in the room as well, for all the work that goes into this. So each department, as we do every year, we go through line by line, every item in this budget to make sure that we're as lean as possible and as responsible as possible. So I appreciate everybody's attention to detail and the numerous meetings it takes to put this document together. So let's get into the presentation here. Okay, so we always start with this slide that just kind of shows the trend lines that we have here for revenue and expenditures in the general fund. And we're gonna start by talking about the general fund today, which is of course our operating budget. And so there are three lines that are shown on this chart. There's a dark blue line that indicates total revenue for the general fund. the blue dash line that you see below that that's the revenue that's collected through those typical general fund streams things like permits and fees uh various taxes uh those types of things uh however we subtract out of that total revenue the operational transfer that comes over from the capital fund and that's something we talked about during the cip and the ARPA funds. And the reason we still say ARPA funds is because, as you can see, 2021 is on this chart. So you can see kind of that pandemic effect that we had. But we did receive ARPA funds during the pandemic. That's what allowed us to really balance the budget. And that's really shown here with these lines where you can see they're crossed, where expenditures were definitely higher than the money we were taking in at the time. But then you add the $1.8 million it was, I believe, in ARPA funds that particular year. And you can see we ended up uh actually running a surplus in 2022 you can see that again we were really really lean on the expenditure side we actually had a lot of staff turnover too which led to expenditures being quite a bit down and then things started to rebound um as far as activity is concerned within the community we saw that continue in in 2023 and in 2024 we knew these lines were getting close to where they were going to cross and you can see with the 2024 estimate Had the decision not been made to turn waste collection over to residents, we probably would have been in a situation again where your green line crosses that dashed line and expenditures start to exceed those revenues without that transfer from the capital fund. In 2025, that's basically where we're at. So we are envisioning a surplus in this particular budget. It's about $225,000 or so. We'll get to that in a little bit. But I do want to point out again, without that transfer from the capital fund of $500,000, the money coming into the general fund is not enough at this particular point in time to support the expenditures that we have For operations and that's I think a big reason that the board has had discussions about potentially looking at something like a fire sales tax. Early next year is that would provide you know, an additional 900,000 or so of general fund operating revenue. It would allow you to basically cancel cancel that transfer if you wanted to from the capital fund keep more money over there, but also give you a little bit of a cushion. in the general fund to make sure that these lines aren't going to cross. So that's just kind of an overall snapshot of general fund activity over the past few years. Any questions about that before I move on to the actual budget? And this is something I think we've talked about multiple times, including our retreat. We'll get you a microphone.

Okay.

all right so some highlights for the general fund on the revenue side as always we calculate these revenue projections on the information that we have available today so it's always kind of a snapshot in time and we know throughout the fiscal year things can change and that number can change but as of right now we use the best information available and industry projections to try to figure out where things are headed on the revenue side On the expenditure side, the biggest increase that you'll see overall has to do with personnel, which is 7.8% above the fiscal year 24 estimate. It's about a little over 3% above the budgeted number we had for fiscal 24. The reason the estimated number is different, of course, is you have attrition and things throughout the year, maybe positions that aren't filled. So our estimated amount that we actually pay out in salaries is typically less than what we have budgeted. Because when we budget, we budget with the anticipation that every position will be filled throughout the year. So the biggest jump, though, year to year, when you're looking at this budget versus where we were last year is going to be in personnel. And again, that's going to be due to the scheduled increases that we have for salaries and then some benefit cost increases. And as you know, benefits, especially insurance, tend to go up every year. The breakdown below by category, you can see personnel is at 73%, contractual services at 22%, and commodities at 4% of the total general fund.

Hey, David? Yes? How much of that 7.8% is baked in because of contracts that we've already done with police and fire, and how much of that is flexible? Okay.

there's a, the majority of that is gonna be baked in through those contracts. And that jump is basically step increases and then the range increase is 3.3%, I believe. I don't have the number in front of me, but yes, the majority is gonna be your uniformed personnel. And I'll talk about how we do the non-uniformed personnel in just a little bit. Two and a half on the range, okay. And then the steps were closer to three. Okay, sources of revenue for the general fund in 2025. We always like to put this pie chart up so you can see how the money is actually spread out and you can see the diversification that we have. Property tax makes up 25%. The revenue we bring in utilities at 19%, sales tax 21, licenses, permits and fees at 11. Here's parking, that's both the charges to park on the street when you're paying the meters, but also the fines associated with parking are built into that number. Parks and Recreation revenue, 3%. That's revenue that's taken in from programming outside of the center of Clayton, which is contained within the CRSWC budget. We also have fines. So these are municipal court violations and traffic violations in the city, and then intergovernmental and grants. So these are reimbursements from other communities for things like the fire training for IT services and also grant revenue that we receive. Miscellaneous makes up another 3% there. The expenditure categories, and I showed this breakdown, but just a little bit of detail again so you remember what these things are. Personnel, which is 73%, that's your salaries over time, all those fringe benefits that go along with it, Social Security, Medicare, those types of things. Contractual services is 22%. It's utilities, software, lifeguards is a big chunk, the insurance that we pay, legal services, training, we have contracted mowing and other professional services. So there's not a lot of wiggle room with contractual services, as we've discussed in the past. A lot of these things are somewhat fixed based on the service levels that we provide. And then commodities, just 4% of the budget. And these are hard goods that are actually purchased for operating purposes. Things like uniforms, supplies, fuel, salt and construction material. So nails, lumber, all that good stuff, all the auto parts that we have in our mechanic space. So very small amount goes into commodities. Personnel highlights. So we do have one staffing addition that's included here, and we talked about this at CRSWC as well. Basically within administration, we added one full-time marketing and events specialist position that will be dedicated to CRSWC. So they're going to pay for basically one half of an additional body over what they're paying for right now that's going to implement their marketing plan and put together all of their materials. and take care of their social media everything else so one person just dedicated to parks and recreation communication and in particular crswc the current position which is split between the city and crswc is going to be charged 100 to the city so we're going to have one full-time crswc person charged to them um the Position, and that's an additional position. The position that exists right now because we have two people, communications manager, and then another person that does comms and events for us. that position that split 50, 50. Now we're going to take a hundred percent of that one. And then of course we have a hundred percent of communication. So again, that's one dedicated CRSWC and then two dedicated to the city is how the budget will work of the two dedicated to the one is a communications manager that will run communications overall and take care of those day-to-day things along with city views and social media. And then the other position is going to focus mostly on events, which takes up a lot of time to coordinate the events that we have there'll be some assistance on the comp side, but really somebody that's really dedicated to that particular function. So the net gain though, again, is half a position within the administration budget. Good

question. Yeah, when you're talking about the programs, so Parks and Rec is separate from CRSWC. So like the summer programs now are Parks and Rec, correct?

Yes.

So that is done by the same...

The same person will do it because it goes into the same publication. the back portion of like, for instance, city views that has

the parks and rec activities will be handled by the same staff.

Yes, there'll be portions of that that are, but the city's communications, the city sports programs that we put on is a very small amount of what that person will do. It's really mostly center communications.

What can you say about how we as a city monitor the utilization or allocation of these roles that are split? Part of what I'm wondering is, essentially, is it fair to say that... There will be three people working between here and maybe the center of Clayton as like their office spaces, but whose areas of expertise are marketing communications and events. We'll have three people like that.

No, these individuals will really be specialized towards whatever their function is. So when we go out to hire somebody to do the marketing for the Center of Clayton, we're going to try to find somebody with that type of background. For events, you know, we have somebody on staff that's really, really good at putting those on. And then the communications manager overall, then we're looking for kind of that broader experience. Okay. Along with the management capabilities.

Okay. I guess I was curious, what I'm wondering about is how like strictly we would delineate and say like, this person only does CRSWC stuff and this person only does city stuff that's outside of the CRSWC or will they sometimes work on some of the same things because that could make sense.

There will be some crossover. For instance, that CRSWC person that's doing marketing and things is housed over within recreation down the hall from Tony and everybody else. So I would imagine that there will be some programming type materials that person might send over to the communications manager to put in a Clayton connection. You know, those types of things. There's going to be some smaller crossover, but for the most part, there's going to be pretty hard lines between these people. They feel like distinct

enough roles for you to manage that

for us.

Okay, great. Thanks.

So that is the only additional position that you'll find in the budget this year. We'll talk about another one that I'll give the board an option on when we get to the end of the general fund, after you get a sense of where we're at overall. As far as compensation, this does include a step increase for all positions and a range adjustment. There it is, 2.5% effective October 1st, and this is for police and fire represented personnel. So anybody in the police or fire union, they're going to get a step increase, and then their ranges are going to go up 2.5%. for all of the non-represented employees that we have. If you're eligible for a step increase and your performance allows you to get it, then you will get a step increase. And then as we discussed last year when we put the new pay plan in place, the range adjustments will take place at the mid-year for non-uniformed, non-represented employees. So what we'll do is we'll make a decision first part of the year. We'll see where the January one cities go. We'll see how our financials look in January and we'll make a for April one, as far as what kind of range adjustment we're going to put in for everybody else. And that's to keep pace with the broader market. We've included 2% kind of as a placeholder, but that number could change. And we know it may change based upon what we see in the market. So that 2% range adjustment you see, that only hits half of the fiscal year. So while this 2.5% is effective October 1st, that 2% range assessment takes place on April 1st. So it's a half year of an increase there.

Whereas the uniformed is a full year?

That's the full year. That's

correct. And the uniform, as I asked earlier, is baked in contractually. So that's done. That's baked into the

collective bargaining agreement.

The other 2%, whether we zeroed it out, whether we gave them 5%, that's... decision that happens in the spring however we decide to do that that

is correct

and based on the the

market data

that we collect

so my question is around the timing of that have we historically done those increases in april

no this will be the first year that we do that so when we put the pay plan in place we said for fiscal year 24 we're going to hold everything the way the way it is throughout the entire fiscal year this will be fiscal year 25 will be the first here with the april 1 market adjustment Fiscal year 24 had the big market adjustment built in after the pay study that we.

Right. So I think I'm trying to understand whether you're thinking that you want to move to an April 1st like target for annual pay increases or you view this as a one off. And how are you thinking about it and what led to your decision? So for

pay increases, there are two different components to that for these employees. The first one is the step increase. And so they'll get that on October 1st. So if your performance evaluation is good, you'll move from... If you remember, we have the grades and then we've got 10 steps on each grade. So if I'm a step three on October 1st, if my evaluation was good, I'm going to move to a step four. So you're going to get a bump right there of about two to two and a half percent. So that's great. They'll see that increase right away. What we'll do is we're going to monitor, especially where those January one cities are at. A lot of cities are on a calendar year budget. see where the market overall has gone, and then we'll make a decision as to whether or not we need to adjust the ranges upwards to keep up with the market. So the step increases within a range. And then at the mid-year, we're going to look at the range overall to make sure that it's still competitive with the market and adjust as needed. So that market adjustment only hits our budget for half of the fiscal year.

I think I'm trying to understand whether you feel like we're really ahead of the market. And so that's why you're looking to delay it. Or do you think this is a better approach to continue annually?

Two reasons for that. One, there's savings by doing it at the mid-year because you don't have to pay the full year of that additional 2% or whatever that number may be. But secondly, again, it's really important, I think, to monitor where those January 1 cities are at and then make your adjustment for the next year. Because like we found at this point, we went and did the pay study and then everybody else jumped us. So we're in October one budget. The January one cities took a look at our budget and said, hey, Clayton has gone to this point. And then we found that we slipped to some extent. So we're going to put ourselves behind that particular decision that's made on January 1st in most places.

So I'm guessing that when we do this market study, if it shows in this may be a rare event, but if it would to show that the market is actually move lower, we're not going to move lower. We're only going to move up probably, right?

We could move lower. I mean, we're going to make it clear that we put this in as a placeholder, but the number we really want to try to peg this number to wherever the market's actually going.

So my concern is more about how this could go and we lose control, that it becomes self-fulfilling, that each city increases and then we increase. And then before you know it, we've got a spiraling budget. I know we have at least I'm hopeful that we're going to have the opportunity to discuss this and approve this or not approve this. Or is this baked in and we have no control over this?

The board will approve the final amount and then we'll put that into the budget amendment at that point in time. and adjust the budget accordingly with the fixed number but we need to put some sort of amount in there as a placeholder so we can see how it affects finances overall yeah i recognize that okay

i i mean i'm just thinking uh what i'm trying to figure out is so my I would have thought that our staff is used to getting their pay increases in October and expecting that. And so this is a change that may feel not great I mean, I've made decisions like this before. But they

are making, they are getting the partial raises. They

are getting it.

I understand. So

yeah, they're going to get a decent step increase on October 1st. I think it's probably viewed as the range adjustment is extra down the road, just trying to keep up with the market. I mean, they're basically, everybody is, if your performance is good and you're on that step plan, you are guaranteed an increase every year.

But what is the amount of the, like, what is the variance from one step to the next? Is it 2%, 5%? 5%. Okay. Yeah.

So everybody's getting a decent increase right away on October 1st.

Okay. And I think I'm still a little confused about whether we actually have like information that suggests that we're on the high end of comparable populations. or whether we're just trying to get on the other side of people so that we're following them instead of leaving.

We're going to present all of that information to the board once we have that January 1st information for cities, but I can tell you over this last fiscal year, again, we approved this in October of 2020, 23, this budget went into effect. The January 1 cities, we had several that jumped past us. And then July 1st, which is another popular fiscal year, October 1st is actually the most rare to align with the federal calendar like we do. We were jumped by some more cities. So I think we're going to see that we were leapfrogged by a few. I know that there are two studies that are going on right now, pay studies that are in some comparable cities here. And I'll just tell you on the uniform side, so that this is on your radar, things are really accelerating, especially with the fire side. And then cities, because the fire side is accelerating, are tending to bump the police pay up higher to have closer to parity between their two uniform services. But fire salaries are really driving a lot of things upwards and a lot of communities right now. So when we're out of our... cba uh when we get towards the end of that and it's time to negotiate for the next one you know i just want to be very clear that the numbers out there are very high so that's going to be uh you know a conversation we're going to have to have and it's it's going to be potentially difficult

is it districts that are driving that or just are all communities

so uh you're starting to see some municipalities pay at a district rate

one but yeah

We're about to know of two, it looks like, potentially, that are on our comparable list. And now that that's crept into the market, districts have always historically paid much better than the municipal fire departments. And we're getting to the point where we've got municipalities that are starting to pay at a district level. So pushing the comps up across the board.

So going back to our conversation you said at the beginning about revenue and expenses crossing and this idea of fire tax that we've talked about, Would it be too far of a stretch to say that potentially all that new tax, if we got it approved, would all be eaten up by the next CBA anyway? And then we'd wind up kind of in the same spot we are now?

Potential that a large portion of it will. Okay. I don't know about all, but I would think with the numbers, we're seeing potentially a large portion. So it won't necessarily – potentially it wouldn't solve our revenue problem that we've talked about before. It's going to buy you some time, but it's not a long-term fix. Okay.

And the other thing, just so I can understand. So basically the step increases are when people do a good job and a range increases when we're adjusting for the market. That's correct. Okay.

And so again, this is the first year where we've done the mid-year step adjustment. And if we have issues with it or difficulties, or we feel like that's actually a vehicle that's pushing the market, then let's talk about adjusting that. This would be the first time we did it though.

Yeah. I mean, my thing is, I don't know. I don't know how many people do a range adjustment every year, at least on the private side. I know some do, some don't. So I'm trying to kind of get a better sense of is this an annual thing that we do?

An annual discussion we have. But just based on the numbers that we've seen, it looks like an adjustment is probably going to need to be made. Or at least

we

considered. Yes,

we

don't need to make it. We don't need to. But I don't want to slip too far behind. And then the next time we do a study, we'll be in a situation where last time where it's a massive increase. Okay.

Just to give you a frame of reference, there isn't history on this. We just discussed this and implemented it last year. So we're all learning as we're going.

At the risk of wordsmithing, would it be better if we talked about a possible 2% range adjustment as opposed to proposed? Because if I understood Rick's question, it could theoretically be 1.75. And the proposed seems to suggest there's an expectation that we've committed to 2%.

proposed means david's proposing it to us in his in his budget i'm proposing it i'm proposing it in the

budget if you look at we

can adjust and there's a thing in here that we want

and there's a note uh basically on page 132 which is on the salary schedule within the budget itself uh that's more or less a disclaimer that talks about pay grades will uh be thinking about a disclaimer and if there's one then it's fine yeah it's built into the actual document but proposed is the word i'm using on here because it's contained within the proposed budget so that that mid-year 2% is contained in the numbers you see. And if we decide not to do it, there will be some savings there and we'll report the data and we'll work through it first part of the year. Okay, so let's look at the general fund in a little more detail here. And this is as granular as we're going to get in the presentation. When we get through this page here, I'm going to open it up for questions since you have individual questions about some of these departments, but I will highlight individual changes as we go, especially on the expense side. Does this

correspond to a page in our packet? It

does not. It's just kind of a broader look. But if you want to reference any pages in there or we need to dive into some of these, then I'll let you know in the budget what page you should be looking at. So on property taxes, we do have a 5% increase from 25 compared to the 24 budget. Part of that is some of these construction projects that have opened and have started to been fully assessed on taxes, new construction that starts to hit in 25. So we've always got that lag. So some of those newer projects that we saw a few years ago, We're going to start collecting for those in 25, along with just an overall increase in what we think we're going to take in. If you remember last year, we kind of had the weird decrease, or at least we missed our estimates there. And Karen had talked about that during our last budget amendment. We think that's going to swing back the other way. So we have a 5% year over year there, about 9% over the estimated amount. So 7.7 million is the estimate for property taxes there. Sales and use tax continue to be an area of strength for us, 7% higher than what you see in the fiscal 24 budget and 2% higher than the estimated amount. So we thought we were somewhat conservative last year, but it came in quite a bit higher than what we thought. So you can see about $300,000 higher than we had anticipated. And then we anticipate 2% growth over that number for the coming year. On the utility side, these have kind of bounced around. You can see that we had a drop here. We were at 6.1 million in 23, estimate 5.7 in 24. Buildings continue to become more efficient. And if you remember, the other thing that happened was when the Wayfair tax went into place, which is the online sales tax, the state rolled back our ability to collect cable franchise fees. So as that gets rolled back, you're going to see that utility number increase continue to decrease. So 5.8 million is what we have proposed there, which is a 2% increase. Intergovernmental Again, this is money that's collected primarily through those multi-jurisdictional functions that we have. So IT services we provide for Brentwood and Richmond Heights, the fire training chief that we have for multiple cities. That income is $2.1 million. Grants and donations, $229,000 there. So just 1% increases in those particular categories that tend to be somewhat steady. Licenses and fees. percent increase over the estimated amount and the estimated amount for 24 is of course um after we we amended the budget lower than what we'd anticipated and that's because we had some large projects here in the city stall out so when you look budget year to budget year it's a 15 percent decrease and a pretty big budget line for us so unfortunately with these larger projects stalled um you know, we're gonna see a decrease there and there's not a lot in the pipeline. So I wouldn't expect that number to jump too much from what you see proposed for the fiscal year. Parks and Recreation, these are programs that we have We've got a 2% increase over the estimated amount there, 1% over the budgeted amount, fairly constant. Fines and forfeitures overall, a 2% increase in that line. And it's actually court fines are trending up. And then we've got some parking related fines that we're seeing some decreases in. parking revenue overall, $2 million there, relatively flat. Interest income, we anticipate this drop. We know that there are going to be some rate cuts. We think we're going to get less on our CDs than we are right now. So we've got $804,000 proposed. $946,000 is what we received in fiscal year 24. Miscellaneous, a very small number for us, a little bit of a decrease in that particular line. Transfers from the special business district. This is the money that's collected downtown. It's a special property tax. This is what the EDAC advises us on at least the expenditures. We transfer that revenue to the general fund and then we pay for events and some staff. You can see that number of $562,000. And then there's the $500,000 operational transfer that we received for the general fund. So in the past, that number has been higher, closer to 700,000 or so. And we fixed that amount at 500,000, which is a 27% decrease. So we're becoming a little more independent with that transfer rolling back. Any questions about any of the revenue lines before we move on to expenditures?

David, I just had under the utilities, like in the budget on page 15, it just says that the utilities, unlike this line, are $5,619,000. So I just wanted to bring your attention to that.

Okay.

So I don't know which number is correct, but... I mean, you know, 2% isn't that much different, but I'm just kind of, it just seems like, you know, things are going to stay pretty stagnant. And I know it's a little bit of a guess. I mean, gas and water, I suppose, are going to kind of depend on, or gas, especially on the weather. But yeah, I mean, I just, I would just bring your attention.

Sounds like the budget amount, correct? Okay.

Budget on KH2. almost looks like a typo like one has a six and one an eight but the numbers are the same oh

you're

good 15 15. the bottom of it yeah just the bottom of 15.

it's green

Oh, yeah. 39 matches the number you see here. Page 39 matches that. Page 15, I think, has the typo.

Or

maybe

not. The page that you're referring to is specifically utilities. And this line item is utilities and franchise fees. So if you were to add this together with the franchise fees page, you would come up with that number.

Perfect.

Got it. I apologize for

the confusion. Thank you. No problem. That's great. Thank

you.

So this is the most detail we're going to flash up here. I just wanted to, I asked this in my email. I know you're waiting here, but just to say if you noticed that court fines went up by over 70%. And so I do want to see, and whenever you get the info, doesn't have to be today, what's causing that? Oh, you do. Okay. Do

you want me to ask? Yeah, I need to pull it up.

Oh, okay. Well, I mean...

So we did hear from our court administrator. Shift this so I can make sure I'm giving you the right information. He said that the increase in fines collected is a result of more citations being issued and disposed of, so they're being paid as opposed to going to warrant status. And so it's just more revenue coming in. So we're getting it, we're disposing it, and it's done instead of we're getting it and holding it and holding it. And then the revenue possibly comes in later after warrants are issued.

They're saying there's not more citations. It's a better collection resolution of the citation. Correct.

But I think there are- I

think it's a combination.

Yeah, a combination of both. He did not give the information on specific, like how many more citations are being issued. I mean, he gave them to me, but it's not like a percentage. He said there's an increase of citations, but they're also being disposed of more rapidly. So like if someone gets a parking ticket, they come in and they pay it as opposed to they get the parking ticket, it sits there and sits there and sits here and then they have to issue a warrant and then we see that revenue later. That makes sense.

Are we making it easier for people to pay online or something? Or, I mean, is there a different way to pay? I'm just curious. Yeah. Who knows?

He didn't say. Do you happen to know? He just said that it's different in how the judge handles cases.

But it sounds like I'm curious to understand that a little bit better. I appreciate the attempt to answer it, but I don't. Send out some

detailed information for you.

Yeah. I think it's just, it's something we, you know, would want to keep an eye on. It's not like it's an incredible sum. It's just was such a jump that it just was a little worrisome. Yeah.

I have a question. Yes. And it's about the amount of the transfer. So the operational transfer from the Capital Improvement Fund. I can't remember if we actually... already said we wanted that to be set at 500, or how you settled on that number. And I'm thinking, particularly where we're going to have a surplus, like, how do we decide to do that? Like, can you talk about how you how you arrive at that proposed so we

got to that number by working through the the capital plan and so when we discussed the capital plan and the board set that number when you passed a resolution adopting that that five-year cip our concern was the capital fund was feeling a lot of pressure and so we were looking for ways to keep some of that money in the capital fund the 500 000 is more or less I don't want to say it's totally arbitrary. I mean, it's a nice round number, but it did two things that allowed us to keep almost $200,000 a year and the capital fund and use that money for capital expenditures. But it also is providing enough support to the operating fund to make sure that the operating fund can, can operate. Yeah. I mean, that's what can be balanced in the end.

If anything, my inclination is to go ahead and make it lower because we still are projecting a surplus of

And we didn't know what that potential surplus or deficit number might have been when we were talking about the capital fund months and months ago because we do capital fund before we get into the operating discussion. So if you wanted to back that number down and smooth out your surplus, that's something we could do.

I don't know what the other benefits are.

If I could build on that a little bit. Looking at that, also, I do have some hesitation when we're relying on And when our budget is relying on utilities, especially with benchmarking and everything else, over time will continue to go down. And I don't want to be a city that lives off fines. But with the capital transfer, as we go through the budget, I think we have to look at where we're going to have the resources to follow through on our comprehensive plan and on our livable communities plan. And this transfer is an example. So we're taking money out of the capital fund to put into the general fund. And is that going to tie our hands when it comes to doing something that the community's asked of us that we spent all this time developing. So I don't know what the answer is, but I think we should keep that in mind as we go forward and look at these different allocations of resources.

Right, and I think it's a good question. I could make an argument that we would just use that transfer to make up the difference so that we stay even. In other words, whatever the surplus is, we would just use the capital transfer for any extra that's needed. So leave as much as we can in the capital fund because we have 80% reserves. in our operating fund. And so I can't, what I hate to see is this be pulled over and then really everything's fungible. It really is supporting our reserves in a way.

And that's why when we had the discussion about how do we carry out some of these capital projects that are kind of come along after the comprehensive plan, livable community plan, those reserves, even though it's going into the general fund reserves, you can utilize that money for capital expenditures. So if all of a sudden the parks plan has been adopted and you're at 80-something percent reserves and you want to peel some of that off to get a project done, you can do that. You can use... general fund money for any purpose whatsoever, but capital fund money can only be used for capital.

Right.

But you don't have any restrictions on the-

I do wonder, when it's put into the general fund, it's a little bit different perception when it's used. If you have a capital fund, it's more transparent, I think. Understood. And you reduce the amount going over. We're moving in the right direction. But if we have that available, and also it's more transparent when we will need Go out and ask for additional

if the board would like to roll that number back so that the operating side is balanced, we can we can do that. We can subtract the I mean, I remember it from the transfer

everyone else think

when we talked about this, it was we wanted to. We wanted to scale it back and eventually get to nothing, but we didn't feel comfortable getting to nothing in year one and. I mean, if you took it out, if you took half of that out and you had a balanced budget, that's one way. Another way that I think you can do it is since we do budget amendments anyway, is that we could wait and see what half the year is. And if things are coming in as they expect, then we can basically send the money back. So basically use it now and send it back. We don't need it as opposed to not needing it now and having to go get it midway in the year to balance a budget. Unless we want to eat through the surplus, which is obviously the other point. But I think that's a larger question of how high do we want that to be, which I think we've all kind of decided or you all decided before me, and how low we want that to go, right? Whether we're talking about spending it for park improvements or whatever else, like there's going to be some number that while 80 seems high, my guess is nobody's going to want it to be at 50 or at 40. Yeah.

You know, it's a discussion, but 80 is fairly outrageous. Yeah. Okay. Rick, you seem like you want to say something.

So to me, this is kind of a... It's an accounting question. It's not a substantive question about how are we managing our expenses and our revenues. And so it's a little bit of form over substance, in my opinion. I think... we've stated a goal to see this reduce. That's what we're doing, whether, and it's, you know, it's 2% of our budget. It's a relatively small number. So whether that number is 100,000 or 500,000, I don't have a strong opinion about it. It's a, like I said, it's an accounting convention in this particular year. So I don't feel strongly about it.

Thanks. Well, you know, I think, I would be happy with whatever you guys would recommend as the most sensible way to do it. Yeah,

and I think my point really was to just stay aware. As we're looking to fund things, remember this is an accounting step that we're doing. But look at the reserves and everything else. I think everyone here understands what's happening with it. And as long as we stay on that as we go forward and different requests come before us or different priorities, and mission values come out that there is this out there that we can look at too.

So there's also just a, I know it's not that much of the budget, but when you say you have a surplus and then you ask for a fire tax, you know, there's some kind of a position, you know, some kind of a perception thing there that it's a surplus. People don't always follow the numbers. And so just, you know, it's just something to think about as to whether we want to be showing we're showing the big reserves so we want to be showing our surplus when in fact what you know to to get it we're we're dry we're pulling from our capital improvements fund so it might i mean after all this processing out loud it might be cleaner to just try to just make up the difference by adjusting the amount of the transfer ongoing i don't know I would

just offer another observation and then correct me if my observation is off base, but the money that we're putting in this fund is money that is eligible to be taken from the Capital Improvement Fund. And so we are being... I'd argue we're being creative in order to manage our budget as efficiently as we can. And so we're using resources that we have before we are going to the taxpayers in order to figure out how to make this work. So I would just say that one argument is this is a prudent way to go about it, other than if you are trying to achieve a particular purpose like we want to show the dilemma that we're in and we want to justify a tax increase. Clearly we can put a different number in here. So I guess all I'm saying is, is another way to say the same thing is, but we're also figuring out how to use resources that we do have. They're relatively modest in order to make the budget work.

The only other thing I would add is, um, if we're going to move it, I would still prefer it to be some set number as opposed to just say whatever the gap is. So whether it's 500,000 or 250 or 300 or a hundred, whatever that is, I would prefer it to at least be some set number so that this year we can, we can put it in there. And then for next year as well, like David and team can actually like know what that number is. And it's not just as floating target that kind of goes from year to year. But as to the amount I kind of agree with Rick at some point, it's a, It's an accounting question, but I think to Susan's point, it's an accounting question now, but it's not an accounting question down the line. And we talked about that when we're talking about bond issues versus using capital projects, responding out. There's all those questions that come out of how we're going to fund capital projects going forward, which David has pretty much told us there is no money to fund new projects. So whether that's we fund it out of the general fund by running a deficit or we finance it in the capital projects fund a different way, like the money is going to have to come from somewhere to do what we want to do. And I think that's the larger, that to me is kind of the larger takeaway of the conversation than whether it's 500 or 200 or 300. Right.

So it's both accounting how we want to do that and communication to our taxpayers, you know, and what's the best way to do those two things. And I'm not falling on my sword in this either. I'm just pointing out that this is something that we should be aware of. Especially, Michelle, you make a very good point, especially as we look at tax April election yeah

yeah um I mean there are some people in the community that are very vocal that follow follow our budget and um you know may criticize us for trying to do something like that and when we have a surplus side you know it's something to think about probably um you know I'm kind of on the glide here towards April So it might not, nothing's going to happen while I'm here, but something to consider that if you were showing a surplus, it'll just be that much harder to ask for more.

And I would just say probably for a different day, but I think to your point, Mayor, that is to me a larger question that goes into how many reserves we want to have and how we want to carry that, right? If we only

want to carry 40%, then just

like

you know, burn a bunch of it down. Sorry to use a bunch of it over time to get to where we want to be. Like, this is only really a question when we're like, we want to stay at 80 and what does 80 mean? As opposed to 60, as opposed to 40. Sorry,

Becky. Well, I just wanted to bring it up because I am concerned about the balance of our capital improvement fund and the nature of project work that we might have ahead of ourselves that the community, I believe, will want to see done. I wanted to validate that it's going down and that our general intention is for it to continue to um and i don't i don't know that david i'm asking you to change your proposed budget to us um before we vote on it in this aspect um but just to I definitely wouldn't want to either like manipulate it to make it look like we have a deficit when we do have really good reserves. Like that's, like that's playing games and we'll be very transparent to our voters. So yeah. And I know that's not what you were saying. Just to clarify, I

don't think there's anything here that's not transparent because we're speaking from a fund to make the operating fund look healthier. You know, it's not like we're making, yeah.

I mean, that's a good point because really what you have here is you have a $272,000 operating deficit. And the way you're combating that is by making this transfer from the capital fund. So how you want to show that, there are a number of different ways to do it. If you want to take a look at where we're at at the end of the first quarter or second quarter in the budget accordingly, we can always do that. There are a number of ways to go about it. The proposed budget just reflects the decision that was made when the CIP was approved. So if you all want to adjust that, I'll leave that up to you.

I would support the 500 number. I think it was a step in the right direction and talked a lot. We brought the number down. You go out for a sales tax or any kind of increase, there will always be criticism no matter what you do. So I think we want to manage it as well as we can, but I think we can manage it with the number that's been proposed.

And I think we could easily point out if we had those conversations that if not for this transfer from the capital fund that's putting pressure on the capital fund, that would be a red number.

So I just want to, I feel like I'm in the twilight zone here for a minute. In your note, you say that it's the general operating fund that will have a surplus of $228,000 for fiscal 25. Right. But I feel like you just said there'll be where I have an operating deficit.

If not for that transfer, you would. And that's what my point was. If you didn't have the $500,000 transfer from the capital fund, your bottom line number here, instead of being 228 to the good would be 272 the other way.

Okay. So we're transferring 270 or whatever more than we need.

Right. Okay. 228,000 more than it's actually needed to balance this particular budget.

Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Are we at a, do you have more presentation? Are you at a point where you want open questions about

anything with the revenue side. So if there are questions about the revenue, let's let's go ahead and handle those now for general funds, and then we'll get into expenditures next and then we'll, we'll talk about that and that's good. Any more questions about revenue before we move to the expenditure side of the general fund. We'll jump into that then. The first one is legislative, so that's essentially the Mayor and Board of Aldermen. There is an increase here that's shown. It's about $20,000 over last year's. We put $10,000 in for strategic planning. That could also be used for um any kind of preparation or consulting fees that may be needed for a fire sales tax issue so that that money's put in there as far as strategic planning is concerned the last time we had official strategic planning was to see the future effort gfoa which is the basically our finance standards that we have to comply with we go for that certificate every year uh strategic planning has been a become a really large part of their analysis and when they perform audits and do those things to make sure that the money in your budget is actually helping you achieve the goals that are set out in your strategic plan. Ours is a little stale at this point. So while $10,000 wouldn't get you a full-blown you know, a lot of community involvement type strategic plan, it would be enough to bring in a facilitator like at our retreat to have some broader conversations where the way we've run it the past couple years is kind of like a really intense two-day work session on a number of topics. So that money has been placed in here and we'll have some more conversations about, you know, how we might actually spend that. But if we want any kind of help from consultants as we go out for the tax issue, which was something we talked about after the property tax issue had failed. This money could be used for that as well. So I just wanted to point out that increase. That's a large portion of it. There is the GARRE conference in St. Louis next year or next fiscal year. It's actually this fall, I believe. That's the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, Racial Equity. We are a member through the Equity Commission. We put money in there for multiple members of the board to attend if you would like. So we'll send out more information on that. And then Mayor, we have the money in there for the Landscape Task Force markers as well. So that's the jump that you see from one year to the next in legislative. In the administration budget, you'll see an increase here, 7% above last year's overall budget, 14% above the estimated cost. The first one is that half a position. That's the first part of that jump. So that communications position that we have or that increase there, that's where that's reflected. It is a citizen survey year, so the money to pay for that is close to 15,000 most years. That's in the budget. The Day of the Dead event was a new event that we had added. So that's an additional $20,000 that shows up in the administration line. We have some budgeting software. One big shift in the way we did budgeting this year was taking all of the basic phone type costs that we have throughout the city that were split And each department was paying for their own cell phone bills and their own landline bills. We've consolidated all of that under IT, which for budgeting purposes falls under administration. So it looks like a big jump in IT expenses, but it's actually a deduction in all of the other departments. It just simplifies our accounting to pay it out of one place. So that adjustment was made. We need to upgrade our benefit management software. And so that's included in here for HR. That's about $30,000. Another important thing is a network testing tool that IT is going to purchase. We'll actually get some reimbursement from Brentwood and Richmond Heights for this tool. But basically you can, it runs diagnostics on your server and can report and let you know anytime there's any kind of issue. So you can catch those things well in advance. So that's something that we've added to the budget. And I talked about the communications person as well. So That's why that number went up and administration and planning and development services, it looks like we've got a big decrease here and we do that's because we played paid for the comprehensive plan out of planning and development so year over year we're showing a decrease since that effort has been completed. In police, we have no major additions really to report this year. The increase that you're seeing is an increase that's going to be due to personnel, more or less. The 7% increase over the estimated is because we had some vacancies a few times throughout the year and realized some savings there. And the fire department, really the same thing. So 4% over the estimated that we have in 24, 3% up overall. I do want to point out one purchase that we have in there, which is the phased replacement of our turnout gear within the fire department. So turnout gear is actually forever chemicals. There've been a lot of stuff on this. We were actually in the gear and phasing it in that do not have those forever chemicals. So cancer is a major concern within the fire service. It's, of course, a concern to all of us here. So we're starting to switch out that turnout gear and going with the newer, better materials that aren't causing long-term problems. And public works, again, relatively flat. Your increases are mostly salaries and benefits. And then I did want to point out that one of the increased expenses here is actually for boring expenses within our street lighting budget. So we have areas in the city where street lights have been out If you were in those WashU meetings that we had with Tuscany, they were talking about a street light that had been out for some time. We put in a temporary solar light. That fix where we actually have to bore new electric is part of that as well. So we've got examples like that throughout the city. So we've gotta go in and do some patchwork on our street lighting system. So that's something that we're gonna probably talk about year after year until we go in and do those major street lighting upgrades. It's just continuing to put those Band-Aids on our system. Parks and Recreation increase overall there, 5% over last year's budget, 6% over where we think we're going to end up at year-end. Our lifeguard contract is going up, pool chemicals are going up, and then we have a lot of small capital replacement items that don't make it into the IRF or the capital fund. So things like pool vacs, there's a grease trap at the Shaw Park Aquatic Center. Things like buying nets and other equipment that's needed for sports programs, those all fall into that increase. And another thing that's really hitting us is our sewer bills are going up 44% this year. The reason it hits parks really hard is because when you run water into the pool, you actually get charged for the sewer on the back end of that as well. So we're seeing the sewer line in particular jump up in aquatics. So 44% increase coming from MSD. So not happy to see that, but not much we can do about it. And then finally, insurance, a 9% increase over the previous year's budget, 14% over the estimated amount. Our property premium went up $40,000. Liability insurance went up $20,000. And the one we're really not excited about, our vehicle deductibles are actually $15,000 per occurrence now. Um, which is just absolutely not. So if you crash a vehicle, anything under 15,000, we're paying out of pocket. Um, and so along with the increased premiums, the deductible has, has gone way up. Um, and that's something that happened through to every community within, uh, within slate and our neighbors are all seeing that as well. So negotiate that number down from 25.

Where would that $15,000 come out of? Would it come out of the insurance number or would that come out of whatever the appropriate expenditure line item?

We ended up budgeting more in deductibles in case we have cars that hit that amount. But the cars that are up to that $15, that'll be charged back to individual departments depending on where the vehicle's at.

And the insurance line, sorry, go ahead. The insurance line is not health insurance. That would, I would assume that's layered into the different expenditure lines.

That's correct. If

you

look at the operating budget we have in our personnel expenses, all of those kind of lined out. So salaries, Medicare, social security, and so on. Yeah. Health, health insurance. Specific questions about expenditures. We can, we can jump into that now if you'd like, if you want to reference pages, we can look at it together.

I've got a question. Yes, sir. I also have a comment, I guess. So when I look at the overall expenditures, I look at what are the ones that the public probably values the least. And that's probably administration. So I look at it. And when I look at our administrative expenses, obviously they're going up. You've identified why. And then when I look at the page 47, where I'm looking at in this particular example, and this is an approach in terms of, is there something we can do about this? Looking at like the technology line, and I know you identified the increased telephone costs, but You know, when we had expenses in 22 of 1.4 million and 2 million won in 2025, that rate of increase is just astronomical compared to any other department, and it's a big number. And so then I look at the intergovernmental number where we're seeking reimbursement for some of these shared resources, and it's only up 1%. So I know as an example in technology that we have agreements with these other communities. I'm wondering... I guess either can we look at charging more to the other communities when those agreements allow us to renegotiate those? Can we look at trying to find more communities so that we can try to spread that cost? Or is it possible that we would be better off looking at outsourcing rather than being the creation of this if the rate of increase for these kinds of services are going to continue to go up at this rate?

Yes. So the technology services you see here is not just the personnel and the tools that we need to go and service ourselves in the other cities. The majority, the vast majority of all of the software that we buy for each one of the departments gets charged technology services. So what's really driving that increase more than the services we provide is through our help desk or through our network engineers or that sort of thing is increases that we've seen in software costs for the things that we utilize. So these are things like our accounting software that we have, all of our record software within the police department or EMS billing software that we have within the fire department. Those expenditures all show up here under technology And that's what's driven the increase more than anything else is a lot of these cloud-based services continue to get more expensive. And that's driving this along with those personnel costs, although those personnel costs, again, are reimbursed from those other cities. The way the contract is structured with Brentwood and Richmond Heights, they're really paying their actual costs. And that's how we've structured that agreement. So I'm not sure how we could charge them more unless... you know, we started to turn that more into a profit center and we would have to justify that with those communities. But to answer your question about where that increase is coming from, it's increases in salaries because IT was one of our most significant increases in the last pay plan. If you remember, I think we had one position that was north of 25% or so where we were behind the market. We hadn't lost an IT person in three or four years until a couple of years ago. And now we've probably lost 70% of the department that's turned over. Five out of nine. So I just say that because that's where the big jump took place in compensation, so you're seeing a lot of that.

And that's really my point is that that's my recollection of what you talked about before as well. And so my concern is that we're engaged in an industry that's seeing rapidly rising costs technology. And so... But we're employing these people. And so is there going to be a point in time where we need to outsource some of this in order to control our costs? I don't know that that's the right answer. I'm just concerned that this rate of increase is not sustainable.

That's something we can take a look at. We've not taken a look at outsourcing any of it. You know, I feel like we're right size, but that's a conversation we can have.

Can I just ask, in the same department, I kind of thought too that when we had the discussion about the budget for the CRSWC, there's a big capital expense I thought related to servers, you know, and the center's paying, I think like $90,000 for maybe server technology updates. So I kind of thought it was related to that, but it's not. It's primarily related to personnel.

Personnel expenses have gone up, but the other software costs and server costs and the replacements, computer replacements are all contained citywide in that particular line. That's what's driving CRSWC.

Okay. Because, I mean, my understanding, I thought, was that was kind of not a one-time thing, but it was something that was not going to happen every year.

The number that will fluctuate based upon those purchases to some extent, correct? Larry, if you could come up to the mic and explain the CRCBC part.

That was when I saw this number, I thought, oh, it must be like server upgrades because, I mean, the center is paying like... ninety thousand dollars this year so i just figured it was somehow related to some of that but

right

It's

actually your work. Right, OK. One time.

but it's part of the increase. So that increased that 17, you know, the increase that the center is paying next year for the server is that, I mean, that must also be reflected here as well then. Oh, sorry, the increase in technology services that Rick was talking about.

Well, like page 55 is the more detailed technology services page. So where, I don't know what account line you'd have the project you're talking about under. Yeah.

Yeah, that would be an IRF expense. I was

wondering about that.

Okay.

So that would come out of the IRF. So that's not in

this general fund. So the technology projects, so if you look at, let's look at page 55, for instance. You know, the big increase again is that utility amount. That's where they're taking over those phone expenses for the rest of the city. So you got an $80,000 increase in that particular line. And then about 100% increase in technology projects over what was proposed the year before. And these are all going to be Clayton specific expenses. And let me pull up that particular page. So getting charged to IT, for instance, and again, this is things that are utilized by the departments. Planning and Public Works, their plotter needs to be replaced. This is the large copier they use to print plans and other things. You know, it's $15,000 for a plotter. So that gets charged to IT. Rack power distribution units have to be replaced in City Hall. There are six of those. That's $11,000. Some of our badge access system has to be replaced within parks. That's $10,000. That troubleshooting tool that I talked about, that's $19,000. And then virtual desktop client upgrades. So basically the PCs on everybody's desk, we use a virtual desktop environment. Half of those have to be replaced. That's 56 of those units. We did half of them last year. We're doing the second half this year. That's another $29,000 expense. So a lot of those big jumps that you're seeing within technology are really attributed to things that are being used you know, citywide, not just necessarily for

pure IT expenses. David used to be in the IRF and when we changed it from 5,000 to 20,000, a lot of those fell out from the IRF. I still track it. They still need to be replaced, but they got moved over to their own fund when that happened.

Thanks for explaining. Thank you. Yeah.

Other expenditure questions? Go

ahead. On planning and development, I don't know that I'm looking at a specific number, but I guess my concern is as much time as we spent on strategic planning this year, that was, I think, still the heavy load is in front of us because there were an awful lot of big projects, major rehauling, revisions to our zoning code, the PUD ordinance. So I just have some concerns. We have very capable planning development staff, but do we have enough staff and do we have enough money devoted to our budget to really take on what I think are going to be some massive projects in the next couple of years and do that at the same time that we sort of address our normal planning and zoning functions? So... That's one concern I have if we're underestimating it. And somewhat relatedly is just generally, do we have enough in the budget to sort of address being really proactive in terms of downtown development, general economic development? I think those are all... sort of key things. And I see in these various pages, there's money and salaries devoted to that. But I am concerned whether if we're going to step up our efforts, which I think changing circumstances suggest we may need to, is there enough there to get that done? So

we're going to monitor those. We're going to monitor staffing and pressure on staff as we get into that process. As you said, it's going to be a lot. You've got the day-to-day operations within the department. We're going Fortunately, from a timing standpoint, with the larger projects really not happening right now, that has freed up some capacity within that department to work on these types of things. The other thing that we did put into this budget, while we didn't put in any new personnel, was $10,000 for code rewrite in case we need outside assistance for that or bring in some sort of specialist. That's

what that professional service is like. We felt like

that. Yes. And you can see it dropped from $155, which was what was left in the comp plan down to $10,000. That's for code rewrite help if we need some additional assistance with that. So we figured that was a good place to start rather than adding another position. If it turned out we didn't need the position, then we can make that adjustment later. If it looks like we're in trouble, we're going to let the board know and we can talk about adding a body. But for now, we think with the staff level we have and with this money budgeted for professional services, we can maintain it for the next year at least.

I have a couple of expenditure questions. First, just generally, when we're looking at cooperative agreements with our neighbors, do we take into account not just the cost of personnel, but the usage by each of the municipalities and the equipment that everybody's provided and all that?

All of it. Okay. So like for instance, any kind of tool that would be utilized in those other cities, then we're going to charge that to the other cities as well.

Okay. And then my other question is, this more of a line item issue. The question is with overtime and some of the overtime, especially police and fire, probably because of the nature of the work has consistently, I mean, fire overtime is, you know, $568,000. Are we comfortable that staffing is appropriate? And streets and things like that have much smaller amounts, but are we appropriately staffed everywhere to keep the overtime going? under control and where it should be. Those are big numbers.

Yeah, so I think our staffing level is good. Let me do this real quick. The one thing you'll see a lot of times with these overtime numbers and you look at salaries full-time, you'll see savings on the actual salary line where positions weren't filled or we had vacancies or whatever it is. And when you see that savings happen there, overtime is actually going to be a higher number. A lot of times those things are going to come close to balancing out. Because when we have minimum staffing in our fire department and then police, we need a certain number of officers on the street at all times. So if we're down personnel, then our overtime numbers are going to go up because we still have to have somebody working that particular position. So I think our staffing levels are right size for both departments, but you're going to see overtime fluctuate along with salaries and kind of run counter to one another. And that's what we've seen over the past few years within police and

fire. Don't we pay at a higher rate for overtime than we would for regular, right? And so it just sometimes these overtime things become institutionalized where people like that because they can make more money and from an employee point of view. And so if it's periodic, that's one thing. But, you know, in the budget, it looks like it's been institutionalized, like it's always

there. There's some that's built into the CBA. There's some overtime that's included, but a lot of this is going to be filling those seats that are vacant. The one thing that tends to happen though is when you have somebody leave, they're typically further along in that step system. Then say you have somebody that leaves that's in a step six that's getting paid a good amount of money. You'll have somebody new come in at a step one, and then you're going to see savings on the salary side right there. So while overtime does cost more, if the person that's filling that overtime is at the beginning of the grade and the person they're filling in for was at the top of the grade, typically that's going to wash out. And a lot of times the folks that are seeking a lot of those overtime hours are going to be those newer employees that tend to have more kind of put into that. So, I mean, it's hard to say, but every year it's going to fluctuate and that's the trade-off that we typically see. But

My only point is, can we achieve any savings by managing this better? And if you're saying we're managing it well and this is the nature of the beast, I'll accept that. I just would want to make sure that we're doing what we can to manage this as efficiently. I feel like

we're managing it as efficiently as possible. And police and fire in particular, they're just two departments where if you have vacancies or you have people out, you're going to have to backfill that spot. Unfortunately, we have to pay overtime for it. And the way our CPAs are structured, especially with fire, we have a minimum staffing model. We have to have four firefighters on each apparatus along with two in the ambulance. that's you know a solid number we have to have every single time so if we've got two people that are out on that are out sick and you've got one person that's on vacation you got three people you're paying overtime to to fill those seats are we fully staffed in both those departments now fire we're down we down one right now in fire or okay and then police we're down one right

So to kind of build on Rick's, would the assumption be that overtime costs would be lower this year now that we're fully staffed?

It will be as long as you're fully staffed and your staff is there every day. So again, you're going to have situations, especially when people are sick or maybe somebody's injured. And of course, those are two departments where you tend to have injuries more than others. Then you're filling that seat on a regular basis with overtime. So it's not going to completely go away. But if you're fully staff, that number will diminish.

I don't see a lot of correlation between the salaries and overtime, but that's fine. And also, what I assumed it really was is that when there's an event, it's hard to predict the nature of the day. But yeah, it's just a big number. So as long as it's being watched well, that's great.

Injuries and turnover will inflate that number quicker than

anything. Oh, go

ahead.

Staying on overtime, far less number. But I noticed that our overtime for our events budget basically doubled over the last three years to almost 80 grand. Is that why? I guess one, why? And then two, is that going to be reduced with the hire of the new person?

no, the overtime is being paid to the departments that support the events. So that's public works staff. It's police fire

personnel.

Those

folks that are coming in and working extra. That's what that line is. That's not paying for the event person. That's On top of the overtime that Rick and Susan were talking about. Yeah, that's extra overtime. That's

overtime for all the people that come and help out. And the reason it's gone up is we've added events over the past few years and salaries themselves have gotten more. So when you're paying time and a half on a salary that's higher than it was a few years ago, that number's running out. And our events

have grown. The events we have have grown. They have. Requiring more attention. I just wanted to bring out one little point about the fire overtime, which is... When we approved the additional fire staff, I don't remember what year that was, but 2019. So we don't have the history all the way back to that. But one of the main selling points, I'll put it this way, was that we wouldn't incur as much overtime because we were using a lot of overtime to fill in. And so I don't know how that actually how that played out. But I do see here that we've had in 23 a real decrease in overtime, and now we're showing another decrease from last year. So I feel like that extra staff, you can look at it two ways. You can look at it, well, because we have to have the minimum staffing, then if somebody's not there, we have to add the person to the fire truck. But on the other hand, if we don't have those people then we end up with overtime sometimes just to make it a safe endeavor. So just a little background. So has it gone down since 2019? That I cannot tell

you. It's gone up since 2019 because you have more... we increased minimum staffing at that time. So you just, you have more seats you're going to fill. So your number, yeah, I think your number has gone up, but you can see that since that increase, when we added the minimum staffing, you can see year to year, that number has fluctuated. So if you look at, if you're on page 63, taking a look at fire overtime, for instance, you can see in 22, it was 567. Then it was 524. Then this past year, 568. Now we're budgeting 548. That number hasn't changed a whole lot um and it's just going to fluctuate based on how many people are injured how many people are out and how often you're backfilling seats and over that same period the salaries as you can see have gone up quite a bit

David, can you remind me if we have a specific line item or at least part of a line item for lobbying? Is that part of legislative or do we... I'm asking because I attended a kind of municipal league yesterday meeting on legislation and there are issues like the likely effort once again to eliminate the grocery sales tax, which apparently has some bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. So it's a higher risk than it even was this year. And that would, of course... have a very crippling effect on all the cities, including ours. So I'm just wondering is that And I know that the county Municipal League has a lobbyist, and I guess to some extent represents all of us. But to the extent we are impacted on that, I'm just wondering, is that an expense we take into account?

So we do not have anything budgeted this year for lobbying. We've got the regular payments that we make to the Metro Mini League and Missouri Municipal League. Both of those organizations lobby on a regular basis. And substantially for us, that comes out of legislative action. just through the dues that you pay to those organizations. The additional lobbying amount we paid this last year was either 2,500 or 3,000. It was a relatively modest amount. We don't have money in here for it budgeted, but if it did come up again, that's a conversation we could have and it's not enough where it's gonna skew the budget much.

I just think, I know you take a close look at that, but I think we need to be aware that's a really high risk item for us and maybe the people we have who are lobbying for broader organizations. Maybe that's sufficient, but maybe this is important enough that we need to have a little of our own consulting time on that. Would you like to see that added? I would like to see that.

I think that before we do that, we should get some input from the Equity Commission or something on the or a little more information on that effort to not tax groceries.

I'm just a

little more informed as a board before we proceed on that.

I'm just, the update I got yesterday was that it was close last time and it's going to be closer this time simply because of some of the people who have moved on in Jeff City to higher positions. Just everything that's happening in Jeff City suggests this is a very high risk issue for all of us. So that's why I'd like to make sure we're prepared to take it on.

I mean, I guess the bigger question is, do we think we need to budget something for lobbying, period? Doesn't matter what the subject is. Do we feel that we need to have some line item to cover a lobbyist for anything that may come up in January, whether or not it's to grow, regardless of what the Equity Commission may say about the grocery tax or maybe other issues that we may want to deal with? which I'm fine with if we want to add it in.

It's a question because we don't often need it. We support really good lobbyists through the Muni League. Also, ICMA, don't they have lobbyists? They

do some advocacy, but theirs would be broader in Washington, D.C.

So we did it this past year, but we had it. It hasn't been something that we've done consistently. So my inclination would again be to kind of like wait and see whether it's really something that we want to be independently or individually. Because I just

wonder how effective one person from Clayton that's not paid that much or it's like a part-time lobbyist or something. And that's a question I can't answer, but is that person really going to be partnered with other munis? We

partnered with five other cities on

that.

And I would recommend anytime you're going to lobby, we're too small to do it on our own and be effective that we partner with others.

Again, my only comment is there are 84 cities in St. Louis County. with some very divergent needs and some very divergent issues. And I think I'm impressed with who the County Municipal League uses for lobbying, but still there's a lot of different issues and a lot of different perspectives. And I know Clayton alone can't necessarily pursue it, but I think we are more closely aligned on some issues with some of the municipalities and not others. And we have maybe enough of a unique story to tell that it would be helpful, but-

Do you think the amount that would be is enough that it wouldn't have to be a line item in the budget now that we could add it at the time if something comes up?

Yes. I think you're going to have savings within the budget that's been prepared. There are certain expenses that would go to an organization for different things that may not end up needing to be paid next year. That's all I'll say about that for now, but I think there are going to be some savings from what we have in the budget.

So it'd be interesting to know what our sort of nearby cities are doing. Are they, do they have a fund for lobbying? I think Brentwood does. I don't know.

I know that Richmond Heights put something in there at the same amount as what they had last year, anticipating the grocery sales tax to come

back. It'd just be interesting to know if we're the only ones that aren't doing that or whatever.

How much revenue do we get from grocery sales tax? My impression is it's incredibly tiny given. are compared to Richmond

Heights. If it

were Brentwood or Richmond Heights, Manchester, Ellisville.

The other thing we got to remember is things like the public safety tax that are collected on a countywide basis. Those we would see some significant decreases in because if you look at the composition countywide that grocery actually takes up, it's a pretty large percentage. So if that were to go away, you're going to see a significant decrease in your public safety dollars that come in. Groceries could be 25% or more of overall sales taxes collected within St. Louis County. So we would be subject to decreases in countywide taxes if that were to pass.

So specific sales tax. So every tax applied to groceries would be eliminated under the proposals that have been up to date.

That's correct.

And that would, okay. So that's the bigger

impact more than what we would directly lose here within the city.

Yeah.

What was the direct number?

So the stores that report as grocery slash pharmacy store sales, we would lose about 4.15% on average, but that doesn't include the rest of the sales taxes that are impacted on. But that's of our total revenue or of our sales? This is just of the stores that report to the Department of Revenue as being a grocery store or a pharmacy store that sells food. So within our municipality, not within St. Louis County.

It doesn't break out the food sales of those. Yeah, I'm

trying to understand though, it's 4.1% of what? Right, they don't provide... exactly what food sales is, that gets too specific and we're not allowed to have that

information. They

won't tell us. I would conclude from that is that our overall sales tax revenue is represented by a very small amount that comes from that. Whether it's 4% or some other number, it's a pretty small amount. So I think your first conclusion is the right observation. Thanks. So just to weigh in on that, it strikes me that changing that form of tax collection certainly has huge statewide effects, municipalities across the board. The consequence of whether or not there'll be a new tax allowed to offset that, these are all huge issues that I don't know that we can budget for. I think we're gonna have to deal with them. We need to stay on top of them. But I don't know that we can put something in the budget at this time for something like that.

The only thing you plug in is a number for potential lobbying, but impacts, who knows what that would end up looking like. But on the lobbying side, again, I don't even know that you need to make an adjustment because I think from what's in front of you, some things have happened here recently that look like we'll have savings in those particular, in the legislative budget anyway. Okay.

I think it's fine to not budget for it. I think we can just see if we're needed. Just by the way, there's a lot of things those lobbyists do that aren't related to that particular sales tax issue. They're up there lobbying for stuff to prevent stuff from coming to the floor that would be harmful. A lot of it's just about local control. And that's what really the sales tax issue on a bigger level is about that. So we would just lose control of our ability to do that and that is part of what the municipal league is fighting just in general so slippery slopes they don't like

yeah

okay

other expense questions

i have a revenue question that i missed my

opportunity go for it

kind of a small one but um since uh i was looking at the grants and donations and i want to make sure that we're fully um taking advantage of opportunities out there. And I know with Alex, with CCF working for the city as well, there seems to be, it does seem to be an increase in what we're receiving and just wondering, are we fully, do we have the capacity to fully pursue any appropriate um grants and similar fundings that are out there

we do we apply for several every year um unfortunately we only get a small percentage of us that we apply for

but but we have the ability to actually something comes up

and we absolutely apply for things

thank you so i think it's a kind of a good question i was i'll just ask a follow-up one you know if grant writing, brand application writing is very specific of a specific skill. It takes a lot of time and I know that we, we do it. So I don't know who in each department gets the job of trying to get those in and watching for, uh, particular grants. I know Alex does some of this for us, but I mean, I'm not advocating this, but, um, Are we missing opportunities because we don't have time to really have somebody really watching all the grant opportunities from the infrastructure bill and from all these complicated things that are out there? and then doing the work of writing

it. We get notices when those come up. The issue that we've had with most of the infrastructure bills that have come out is they're really set aside for areas that are considered to be underserved, and it's an argument that we can't make here in Clayton, unfortunately. So we really can't access a lot of those funds. The grants that we write as staff on a regular basis or at least apply for are the forms that we use, they're typically governmental type grants. You're coming from the federal government or those types of agencies and so their forms are really actually pretty simple to put together um the more challenging grants are the the kind of grants that you might get from foundations uh that are out there and if something fell into that category we would utilize the time that we have set aside from alex at ccf so we get 25 percent of his time if you remember when we put the last agreement together if there was a more qualitative type application that was out there then we would utilize his time for that

and just related again is um And I know that I talked to Alex about this as well. In fact, the issue came to me is if we, especially with something like sustainability, there are lots of different moving parts. And is it something where we could look with working with another, with a neighboring municipality and pursuing those things, which also may make our area qualify for some things and I don't know that that opportunity has come yet, but I know it's something that's been talked about and thrown around. And again, it's the partnership with our neighbors as well, which we need to continue to leverage. So yeah, as Michelle, I agree that the more that we were sure we're taking advantage of those opportunities to get support and be part of something else that we should be taking in.

David, I'm curious too, like we talked a little bit about what You know, and I know we're still kind of waiting on a finalized livable communities plan. But I guess in the next year, maybe we're waiting for a finalized plan, you know, just in terms of thinking what is going to go on the ice rink site. You know, thinking about a grander project. I mean, it doesn't have to be obviously an ice rink or, you know, a new municipal facility, obviously. But thinking about something to put at that site, are we budgeting in here for a plan to do that or anything, or can we start the process of doing i mean i'm just kind of curious so we didn't

put any specific money in for that what we do have coming from the consultants that was kind of an add-on to the livable community plan itself was to have them develop a number of concepts for that site so around the same time i believe that the plan is going to be delivered we should receive these conceptual layouts and we're going to use those as the basis for our conversation with parks and recreation commission and the broader community about what potentially we put there any type of design beyond that we will end up probably charging to the capital fund where that expenditure would come out of for the the building ultimately but i think the concept level plans are going to be enough for us to have a conversation with the community about what direction we head with it uh and then we'll talk about where we might need professional help to come up with cost estimation or other things but there's not anything programmed into the budget for that um beyond the concept plans that were already that have already been paid for

okay that's been a priority to get something there whether it be you know whatever should that should there be something set aside in the budget at this point do you think that

hard to

figure

out what you

need yeah

i guess i don't know what um

I mean, I feel like we saw, I don't know, we saw some basic concepts at the retreat about how to use that space. And I don't know. It seems like after all the community engagement we've done, we should have by the time we get to approving that plan and whatever the consultants are bringing with it, enough community engagement around what we can do. I mean, what are the options are? I don't know what more community engagement we can possibly, we can talk about it when we see the plan, but what more can we possibly do in community engagement-wide? I mean, it seems like we ought to be able to then take that and as a group, you know, make some decisions about how to go forward. I

hope

that's true. While we're doing that, do we need some amount of the budget? That's, I don't know whether...

And I would, not to beat my drum again, if you will, but from what I understand from the retreat, there is no money in the capital budget to do anything other than what we've already put. So we're either, unless I remember that wrong, we basically spent all the capital improvement money. So we either have to find new revenue, spend on reserves in order to do pretty much any of the projects that are currently in the livables plan.

A substantial project is most likely going to require reserves. That's correct. There's very little leftover for a large project within the capital fund.

Which is why we also had the conversation earlier about the transfers.

About trying to keep as much money as you can in that fund.

Along with the expenses for potentially fire and the fire tax and kind of how all that comes together.

But having, again, an 80%, I mean, we have very healthy reserves right now. So I think thinking about using some of that money to fund a project that I think our community would like to see, I think is again, I know it's more conversations, but I agree with you, Mayor. I'm not sure how much more short. I know we have to take it to like Parks and Rec and, you know, develop it. But, you know, I'm hoping that we

actually get like a design consultant to start taking it to the next phase. Like, I don't think it's like A rehashing of the livable communities master plan it's saying, like, if we're, we're, if we're going to prioritize a project this year whether it's the ice rink or we determine something else like you're going to help us through that David you and your team, the team here. And then like, if we do that in the next three to five months, we'll need money to engage with people who actually do conceptual design and planning and stuff to take it to the next step.

Or a particular thing that we decide we're going to move forward based on Parks and Rec. I

feel the community engagement as part of those further processes, but it's not a back to the beginning. Yeah. So it

just sounded like we might need to use more community engagement to narrow, to, you know, get even further down the line on this, which I think.

I don't think

that. Well, and I guess that my, what I wondered was whether we had money set aside potentially for a consultant to start or design team to start developing, you know, a plan for that site. And it doesn't sound like we're there yet.

We do not. We're going to start with the, our thought was let's start with the conceptual plans that we get and let's see if we can get some sort of idea of what we might put there. Because in the end, if you go with something that's just an area that can accommodate food trucks or you just want some pickleball courts or whatever, that's going to be on the low expense side. If you want some sort of actual facility there, then that's going to be a much more substantial undertaking. I think we look at the conceptual drawings, have those conversations, and we get a feel for what might go there. We'll have a better idea of how much professional help would actually go into that. It's just hard to guess right now because we don't know the scale or the nature of a project in that area.

Okay.

If the board wants to put money in, we can do it.

I mean, I think that's fine. You know, I think for the short duration, it's a good plan to have. We just didn't know what to do with it. I'll be curious to see what comes out of the plan. And then we can build from there.

I just think the important point that you just made that for me is that depending on where we fall out on the prioritization based on the first steps of our next steps, that would have a significant impact on what that next phase would be, whether we pick a small, medium, or large. And so if we can't know that, then it doesn't necessarily make sense to put it in the budget. And we know we can amend the budget when we have a better idea of what we want to do.

right any other questions on general fund revenue or expenditures okay if there's anything that you want to ask later that you didn't think of today feel free to send that along to us we got time before the public hearing um but let's go through the the rest of this so that's the detail on the general fund uh fund balance want to give you a snapshot of our picture what that looks like um here's our reserve policy again um Actually, this is the older one that looks like it came over from. Actually, this is not. So what we do now is we've got a floor 30%, 40% is our action threshold and 50% is where we try to be from a budgeted standpoint. We have an unassigned fund balance and that's what we're talking about here. That's the remaining amount in the single fund at the end of the year. without commitments and restrictions. So a lot of times what looks like it's in the fund balance, it might be available to use for other things. It's already tied up into other liabilities. So we have to make sure that when we talk about fund balance or actual reserves here, We're talking about the unassigned fund balance. And then how are reserves used? We can balance the budget with it as we've done in the past. You could use it for capital expenditures or anything that you'd like to. Those are unrestricted funds. They allow for cash flow during seasonality of revenue and expenses, and they allow time to evaluate and plan substantial changes. So basically it's your savings account that allows you to do things or allows you to safely operate, especially in the face of adversity like we saw during the pandemic. And if we knocked out those ARPA funds, we would have really depleted our resource at that point in time. So you have an idea of where we're at on assigned fund balance. So this takes away those restricted items and commitments. It's at 74% anticipated at the end of fiscal year 25, 73% is where we think we're going to end up at the end of If you look at that unassigned fund balance over time, again, you can see on the blue line here that your unassigned fund balanced and orange is your total expenditures. So when we talk about that percentage, that's the fund balance amount versus the total expenditures. So 74% means that we've got enough to pay for 74% of all of our operating expenses for that particular fiscal year. So you can see how those have tracked, but really, really strong and well above that 50% target that the city has for unassigned fund balance. If you look at just the peer fund balance, there tends to be about a 10% difference between the two. Up in the 80s, high 80s or mid 80s here. 2024, we estimate 84% there. And then an ending fund balance in 25 of 80% of expenditures. So really, really healthy amount there. I

like that fund balance number. Oh, you got an extra

comma. I didn't notice. That's all right. That would, yeah, that would be nuts. But yeah, about $25 million is anticipated at the end of 2025 so really really healthy fund balance again not as healthy as that shows quarter of a billion would be. No, that would be amazing. All right.

Just, just for clarity sake on that last chart though is that even if we run a surplus every year. that percentage is going to change if our expenses keep growing. That's correct. So you almost have to have a surplus every year at some expense to just counterbalance the increase in expenses to keep the percentage the same. That's correct

All right, so the option I wanted to give the Board of Aldermen and the General Fund before we move on to the next thing. One of the biggest concerns that we've received over the past year, and I'm sure you've probably heard some of this as individuals with complaints and other things coming in. We want to give the board the option to add a municipal service technician one position within the Public Works Department to just focus on beautification, cleanliness, code enforcement, those types of things within our business districts. So this person would go around and make sure that the trash cans aren't overflowing, which has been a regular issue. Even when we've addressed it with Republic, they seem to fill back up at certain locations. You know, litter that we find around removing weeds that are within the right-of-way or public areas. If we have problems on private property, you know, somebody that's going around and alerting code enforcement to those, or even perhaps giving this person authority to perform code enforcement activities or duties themselves. maintain clear paths at outdoor seating locations. If you walk down a lot of these streets where we have outdoor dining, they're not maintaining that clear path for ADA accessibility on a regular basis. So staying on top of those and then also assisting public works when needed with snow plowing events and those other things. But this is really a person that would go around in those particular business districts every day, all day, making sure that the place is kept up. And within our current staffing, we can't take somebody off a crew every day to go and do those things and keep up with it. So I've heard this concern a lot, not just from the board, but from residents. If we wanted to have a dedicated person that just went after this all the time, you can see the costs on here. $63,000 is the estimate with benefits. That's step one on that particular grade. We would try to find an existing vehicle that that individual could use. But if for some reason we needed a new one or needed to replace the vehicle, you're looking at about $45,000 for, you know, a full-size pickup truck at this point in time. So those would be the expenses associated with position. This is something that we talked about, you know, internally after the budget was put together. it wasn't something we were directed to add, but I did want to put this out there where if the board felt strongly about adding a person to do this, you know, there's the cost. And so if you'd like to look at adding that into this budget, we could, if you wanted to add this person in the mid year. So we, we add that person, you know, when it warms up and the weeds start to grow again and more people are outside and there's presumably more litter. It seems that this really pops up in the warm months, you know, we can save the money this winter and add that person, you know, in April, that would save you some money, at least for the first year on this. So just wanted to open that for discussion and

seem like a fairly seasonal work, the majority of the things That you talk. I mean, I know I've asked you about things that are on this list and heard from residents about things that are On this list. And so my what I'm guessing is that as you all evaluate your ability to support these like concerns or requests. You just don't have the existing staff to do it. That's

correct.

And so that's why you're proposing and I appreciate that. But like outdoor seating, outdoor litter, weeds are all...

These are... These are items that this would allow us to be proactive with these things. I mean, we are extremely reactive with it. I mean, this is a cruise driving by and happens to notice there's an issue or we get a complaint and we deal with it. This would allow us to proactive. And we could look at doing this on a seasonal basis as well. Seasonal is a little bit harder to get. We don't pay a ton. And there's a lot of ways to go out and make the wage that we would likely pay for that position. So those historically have been a little bit tougher to fill than a full-time position, but that is something we could talk about. We could try it and see if it works.

I mean, I don't know. It's something that I hear constantly. I mean, So I would certainly be supportive of this. I mean, we have a lot more people walking around our downtown. I know people still haven't fully come back, but people are constantly walking outside at lunchtime. And I just, I think to have an extra person, you know, rather than a resident having to email me saying Chipotle's, I think Chipotle's really turned itself around. So I will applaud them for that. But it was a disaster for about a year. So I think to have somebody who can be more proactive. So, and I don't mind forwarding the email onto staff saying, you know, this area looks like crap. Can we have somebody have a code enforcement? I think having somebody proactive on staff who also can help just pick up trash, you know, I just think it's, I think it would be very helpful. I think for, I think it would alleviate certainly the burden on probably our code enforcement staff and, you know, which, you know, as I think we've already mentioned, we wonder how they can do it all. So again, I would certainly be supportive of somebody to do this full-time rather than just seasonal. I think it's only going to improve people's enjoyment of downtown. And I would certainly be supportive of DeMunn and Wydown and Hanley just are throughout our business districts. If we find that the area along Clayton road is starting to look questionable, that's, you know, that we have a lot of business districts throughout the city and, you know, there might be an area that looks not very good. So that person can go to that area on a particular day. So I just, I think it's a great idea.

I would strongly second that. I mean, I understand we do have business districts outside of Ward 3, but my personal experience tends to be more walking around downtown. And as Bridget says, we hear a lot from our Ward 3 folks about it. And to me, it is particularly from the general appearance trash. It's not a seasonal issue. It's 12 months out of the year. And, you know, we're going to have... We've got lots of new apartment folks coming on board. We have... We have the Forsythia. I think some of our major sites that are stalled right now that we want to have developed. I think our general planning effort is on getting more residential people enjoying downtown in the evening. So I think it's really compelling if we're trying to really achieve this inviting place where people live and they walk around and it's always a a positive experience. We've got to do a lot better, I think, in what downtown looks like. And so I would be very supportive of doing this on a full-time basis. I think we'll get the bang for the buck for this. I

would support it as well. Again, in a more residential, the code enforcement on private property, I think is something that these are all consistent issues that we've heard that are not going away. So it makes a lot of sense. yeah

i would just want to make sure that it's very clear that there's an expectation it's citywide and not just downtown because it certainly is an issue in demand and i'm sure in the other areas so yeah

we're where that that's why we put business districts on here it's it's anywhere we have we have we hear it in all of our business districts

they also cut down on overtime

So my concern in looking at this, these are important services that should be addressed. But hiring somebody that has the skill set to inspect trash cans and pick up litter is different than somebody that's doing code enforcement issues. So I'm just wondering if this is the right solution to address these issues, whether or not, as an example, If we have a problem with trash and litter and things in the Central Business District, we have a Central Business District fund. And maybe we look at solving it either through Republic or we solve it in some other way for those kinds of issues. And then when it comes to code enforcement, that's a whole different way that we need to solve it. This feels... It'd be great if we found a person that has the ability to do all these things. It just seems to me that this may not be the most effective way.

Would it free up time of the people with the skills for the code enforcement?

Doing code enforcement. Can you clarify what that

is? Primarily, they would alert code enforcement to issues that are out there. We can talk about whether or not we add some ability if it's tall grass and weeds, which is a really easy violation to write, or something like that, that this person could do that without having to tie up an inspector who's got an inspection schedule and has to fit you know, going and measuring and taking a picture of some weeds that are over eight inches. That's a really easy thing to take a picture of and write up. So maybe some minor violations like that that this person could address. Anything larger, you would want to use an actual building inspector to take care of that. But this could alleviate some of that pressure on your inspection staff and get it done just, you know, more quickly. And that's really not that hard of a task. But I think what's going to take most of the time, if you walk around downtown and, you know, our other districts after a really nice night in Daman around, you know, some of our businesses there, it's

cream season. I

mean, it is a mess. If you want to have

cream at night, you got to go into the trash cans the next day on Daman.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of that. Maybe they

need an extra

trash can. Contractually,

what we have with Republic right now, they come by once a day and that's it. So we could look at amending that to maybe add more pickups, but that's probably going to be difficult for them to try to service or can't imagine what that expense would be but this way if it if it did start to get out of hand and it's midday we don't have to wait until the next day when when republicans show up we can just go ahead and take care of it so that it's not an issue but overflowing at least downtown overflowing trash cans we get that call a lot

perhaps you could join other cities and actually have recycling options out there with the trash cans too

and we would put them out if if folks would do it the contamination that we've had in public recycling has just been a mess

I understand, Rick, your point. So I like the idea. And I think that what Clayton's going to encounter over the next 10 years is people are going to have more choices of where they want to go. And if part of what we're trying to do is build this vitality downtown and in Des Moines, or Des Moines kind of has it, but like downtown and other business districts. anything, any reason that we give people to not want to come, whether that be dirty, whether it be trash looks like it's going to drive some folks to not go. So I like the idea of having somebody who can proactively look at it. I think my if you want to call it a concern is sort of what Becky raised, which is I want to make sure that this position stays focused on the business districts and doesn't get assumed in whether it's a public works job or whether it's a planning and enforcement job. I don't want it all of a sudden to be like, well, this person should be doing this, but we really need them to do this. And then all of a sudden we were paying for this person who's not actually doing what we want them to do. So that would be, I mean, not that I would, not that you would knowingly do that or team, obviously, I just want to kind of make sure that like, I like the idea if it's really somebody who's out there every day, basically has a route that hits all the business districts and it's making sure that they're looking at stuff and that just becomes the job and they don't get pulled into anything else.

Yeah. And we really don't want to pull that person into anything else because this, this is, if we keep that person in the business districts, it's alleviating what, what is currently a problem for us, which is it's in peak leaf collection season and our entire public works industry department is out working that particular function. And then we get a bunch of complaints about different things in the business areas. And now they've got to leave collection, which is on a tight schedule to go and take care of whatever that issue is. It's trying to free up that personnel so they don't have to worry about those other tasks or we don't have to build that into their day on a regular basis. But those calls are frequent at this point.

Yeah. I mean, I get a lot of those same emails, obviously from all wards. I get all, um, I, I, I think it's, I think it is going to be really important to maintain a clean, clean and cleanliness and safetiness kind of look together, go together, um, And I think we're going to have more quote entertainment businesses opening, we know of two hopefully there'll be more, we are going to have a lot more people living in downtown clayton pretty soon and. people you know create trash and um those uh nighttime restaurants especially if there's entertainment there's going to be alcohol consumed there's going to trash and so um there's nothing worse i mean than coming out of your house to walk in the morning and walking down the street and seeing seeing and smelling some unsavory stuff so I would like to try it. I guess I feel a little bit differently about this restriction in that I want them to really focus on this, but if they've got nothing to do in January, I don't, I want them to be able to go out and do something else. I don't know. They can drive through the neighborhoods and see if anybody's got trash in their driveway or whatever. That they'll be able to find something. I mean, I know, but I don't want to make it so tight that no, you know, Matt's afraid to have them look at anything else. So

That's fair.

And that's why we would rather pay for it out of the general fund than use special business district dollars for it. If we put special business district dollars towards this position, that has to be spent within that district. Doing it through the general fund just allows that person to roam. Okay. Again, that wasn't in the budget, so that's something we'll need to add. Just quickly looking at other funds. I know we're at five o'clock here and just to give you an update on these things again sewer lateral fund. We talked about this every year. Revenue has been exceeding expenditures were building up a balance here, which is good. We were in a situation where we were about to run deficits within this fund. At that point in time, the decision was made to lower the maximum reimbursement from 3000 to $2,000 And you can see keeping it at $2,000 has allowed us to build that back up. So revenue is exceeding expenditures. I think we're probably a year or two away from having a conversation about that number again. And this is common to see that particular program kind of fluctuate as to what the reimbursements are because you don't really want to have a balance that you're running up because people are being assessed $28 a year. It's on your property tax bill. and you know if you have this happen in your in your yard it's quite expensive so you want that reimbursement to be as much as possible and without the city or the program you know holding money back so i think we probably need to talk about what that number is like in fiscal year 26 or 27 but again we're in a situation where we've been able to to kind of build a balance again which is a good thing because we were in danger when that decision was was made so that's what the sewer lateral fund looks like at the moment. We have the special business district fund, which we talked about, which is the property tax in the downtown area. We use that money for marketing events and improvements. The revenue collected is transferred over to the general fund, and then it supports those activities. You can see that revenue and other financing uses, which is that transfer, tend to balance out every year. that there's a little bit of a surplus or a little bit of, of a deficit. You know, that's, that's kind of absorbed within the budget there. Equipment replacement fund, we've talked about the IRF a little today, and I know we talked about it during the capital planning. So this is our replacement fund that we use for vehicles, equipment, and facility components. To be included in the IRF, something has to be more than $20,000 and have a life expectancy greater than two years. And then the funding criteria, the item is over $20,000, I believe $20,000 And its lifespan is between two and five years. We pay for that out of the general fund. So things like the pool vacs and some of the other things I mentioned for parks fall into that category. The capital fund, these are items that are over $25,000 at five years of benefit. It's funded through the capital improvement fund. The replacement fund is going to fluctuate greatly from year to year based on the items that come due for purchase. 25 is going to be about as big a year as you're ever going to see there. That's because we're going to receive our fire trucks, our tiller truck, and then also our pumper that we ordered two and a half years ago. We'll actually take receipt of those, which is great. The apparatus right now is in bad shape. One of the increases within the fire budget I didn't really point out is our repair expenses, which are just astronomical. When something goes wrong on a ladder truck, it's very, very expensive to fix it. So we're looking forward to having new equipment. And then you can see in 26 and 27, those numbers kind of get back to normal here. And then I've got the numbers for those various purchases that are made for each of those years. The fund itself, you can see again that that number is going to fluctuate your expenses year to year. The revenue that's coming in, again, from the general fund partly, but mostly from the capital fund. And you can see the fund balance sizable, but this is all money that we've saved up or just will be making. When we did the analysis two years ago, we ended up putting an extra, I think it's $150,000 a year. hundred thousand a year from the capital fund as kind of a catch up. Because, you know, when you're trying to plan what something's going to cost 10 years out, we've seen with inflation that the amount we were saving was not enough. So we've had to kind of step up or increase the amount going into the earth to make sure that it's whole. But for right now, we're doing great and we're on schedule with all of our major replacement projects. The capital improvement fund we approved the CIP just a few months ago by resolution that's all contained within this particular document, and so you can see. You know the funded expenditures year over year here at least through the five years of the plan. When we were talking about capital planning and will continue to do this moving forward, we kind of used a 10 year outlook and that's going to get really, really important here because we have big projects that are within that 10 year horizon. And we'll have some financing that we'll talk about in a minute that's actually going to go off the books and free up some capital dollars, so we need to do some some really intensive long term planning and we'll continue that that effort. If you look at the five year CIP This is how the money is being spent a lot in street resurfacing so we've got the next phase of the central business district resurfacing project coming up parks and recreation expenses. Microsurfacing that those are going to roll back around we haven't had microsurfacing or at least we don't I believe in this budget. But that's coming back facility improvements curb and sidewalks and alleys so that's capital fund again isn't really going towards neat new items here in the city, this is really based on on maintaining what we have in good order. The projects that are coming up, the big one is that Central Business District resurfacing project, $1.7 million, although we do have federal grant money that's coming in to offset a large portion of it. sidewalks, we spend $120,000 a year. That lighting system upgrade for a couple areas here in town, $420,000. We'll look at council chamber security. We reduced that amount by removing that conference room, if you remember, so there's some savings there, $100,000. Shaw Park fields, Oak Knoll lighting upgrades, and then some work at the police building. As far as concrete repairs, Shell Park Aquatic Center flooring, we've heard about this a lot from patrons, especially this year. Those lockers, all that's going to be replaced this next year. The fire training facility, and that's going to being reimbursed by some of our partner cities uh at least three quarters of oh that's just us okay uh 229 uh subdivision monuments another discussion we've had uh we've got some replacements there uh some work that needs to be done to keep some of these from failing and then uh Hanley House we've got quite a bit of work that needs to at that particular property 225,000 so again just over 4.1 million within the capital fund

and yes remind us where we left the conversations on Hanley House we're going to look at the ongoing expenses and the operations.

Right. So that's, we don't have any of that built into the budget, but that's on the list of things we need to talk about is how we're going to utilize that, that property going forward. These are kind of immediate repairs that we need on the house just to keep it in good order. It's there. There's some things that are looking rough over there. Debt service. So we have three outstanding debt issues. We'll talk about timing for the fourth one, which will be municipal garage. But we have the 2019 issue. This was the Center of Clayton Renovations that was refinanced, and so we got a really good rate there. 2021 issue, that's the police headquarters renovation, and then some parks and street improvements, and then the general obligation bond that was originally approved in 2014, and then we refunded that or refinanced it. That's the street and alley resurfacing and street lighting. We actually depleted those funds this fiscal year. I finally spent it all down. So here's what's left over to pay back on the 2019 special obligation, 8.5 million left outstanding 2032. It matures the 2021 debt. We've got 4.1 remaining, and then that matures in 2032. And then the 2014 bonds that were refinanced in 2022, just about 8.9 million there. 2034, those come off the books. So again, as I said, the 10-year outlook is a really important thing to look at because you're going to have some money freed up in the capital fund when this financing is complete. As far as the debt repayment by source, here's the total debt amount that we're paying each year. And you can see how it breaks down. We've got property tax. So these are your general obligations, $1.9 million in 2025. Here's what comes from sales tax. It's $494,000 and then capital improvement. is 590,000. A great portion of that's coming out of the parks and stormwater sales tax for those parks expenditures. Debt repayment by bond issue type. These are the individual payments that are being made. So you can see the way that these break down. 2019 is broken in half because a portion of that is being paid by parks and stormwater sale tax. And that's the smaller number that you see there. So total again, $2.9 million. this is your general obligation amount for the streets, which is about $950,000 a year. So that's it. Just wanted to give you an update on debt service and the more detailed information is contained within the actual budget document. And then as far as our schedule this year, on September 10th, we will have the public hearing and first reading on the tax levy. And then the budget itself will also approve the CRSWC budget that night. And so at the next board meeting, we'll set these meeting dates, which is a first action we need to do. It'll be on the consent agenda, but September 10th, is the public hearing for it and then second and final will be on September 24th Andrea and I will be remote I'll zoom in uh for that particular meeting but the presentation that I give is is really on September 10th uh and so hopefully you know on the 24th we don't I hope we don't have any surprises because that's uh six days before the fiscal year uh ends and we need to be ready with the new budget so uh October 1st is the go live date for everything you have here so That's it for items I have today. Are there any other questions about any of this?

I haven't had a chance to review it all in detail, so I will likely be following up with you with some individual questions, but I don't have any major questions.

Okay. And just so everyone knows if

you're open to that.

Yeah. And if we, and if we've received questions, we were going to send that question along with the response to everybody on the board. That way, when we get to the public hearing on the 10th, if there are any adjustments that the board wants to see, if you could let us know that night, we'll make sure that the budget that's, and we can even first read it with that, that change that we're ready to go on the 21st or the 24th to actually adopt this and get it locked and loaded for October one.

Thanks. Just to comment. Great job. And I think I emailed you this, but you know, I've been doing these budgets for a while and there used to be a lot more transfers and it used to be very complicated and confusing. And I would just say, you know, this is process improvement on steroids. You guys have done a great job and the way you present it and also the way you explain it. So, you know, it's a lot, it's hours and hours of work and appreciate, really appreciate everybody's hard work. Thank you.

Thank you.