 Mr. Palin, how are you? Good. Madam Clerk, would you please read the roll? Here. Yes. Present. Here. Here. Here. Brad, would you? Grace us with a word? I shall. O Lord, in the midst of all that is taking place in this world of ours, in the midst of all of the shootings that are taking place, you thank you, Lord, for this city of ours who have been very, very due diligent by banning weapons of war. But we simply ask that you might be with the families and those children who were shot. We ask that you might sensitize each one of us what it means to be a part of your redemptive kingdom. Such as now so that we are able to listen and discern with sensitive yet discerning ears what you're calling us to do and to be. We ask it in your name. Amen. Jeff. First item on the agenda today is the financial report. Ms. Jan Alonso, Finance Director, will not be present to answer questions regarding the January 2018 financial report. She is actually in training. So I am here to answer any of the questions that y'all may have. I do want to point out that in your packet, these are through January. So we're back on track for the proper reporting or the financials through the first seven months. All the funds look strong. There are, they show surplus balances today, except for the general fund. I want to just point that out. I think we talk about this each year so that y'all will see that and anyone listening will be reminded of it. But the general fund, it's time of the year. We do have our expenses throughout the year. The majority of a large chunk of our revenues come in in May and in June, which would be our business license fees, franchise fees, insurance, telecommunication fees. So just something. You are $5 million ahead in revenue year over year. We are. I think that's a positive time to be $5 million ahead. That is a positive sign. Don't get any ideas. Well, we had budgeted, though, for growth in property tax. So that is important that that growth is showing now, unless anyone has had any other questions right now. Thank you. Do you know where we are? We just had a conversation just about health care and things. Do you know where we are? And claim, what part of this year is it half the years over, we've had any big things that we were not expecting. We bumped up how much we budgeted in this current year's budget. So right now, we're within budget on health care costs. Anything else? We'll move to item number two, comment service proposal. This is Ann August, executive director of the comment. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good to be a mayor and to the council. First of all, it's a privilege and an honor to be here. I want to kind of give you a little history as to how we got to where we are today in reference to service reductions in modifications. Back in October, November of this year, or last year, I should say, the board, looking at our finances, went to the finance committee and says, look, we have about $17.8 million coming in every year. The way the money is coming in now, we're going to have to look at how much money are we going to have at the end of the 22 years? What happened was we did the statistical analysis and realized that the money is only going to last for another 13 years, which would have given us actually 18 years, not 22. It's coming too fast. It's coming too fast. Money is coming in quicker than they had anticipated. So they charged the staff to go back, not only to look at all of the routes that had either zero ridership at certain hours of the day or night, up to maybe about six or seven ridership in the evenings or early in the mornings. So we looked at all of the routes that we currently have, did an analysis and say, OK, these are the routes that have zero ridership. These are the routes that have one per hour, and we're looking at per hour. In addition to that, they also tasked the finance committee. This was the service standards committee in reference to the routes. They also tasked the finance committee and the staff to look at not only how much money is coming in, but how much we could put aside. They voted for three months of reserve that we need to be able to put aside every single year for the next 13 years in order to bridge that gap between the 18 and 22 years of service that money is supposed to be there, because there's a cap on it. It's $300,991. So those are the things that we're looking at. Once we went back and look at all the routes, they told us to come back to them to the service standards committee, present the different options to them, and they decided that currently we have 192,000 hours of service that we're providing on the street annually. They voted to bring that down to 187,650 hours, which equals a 2% decrease in the number of hours that we're putting on the street. So what we had to do, not only are we looking at the routes that we're putting on the street, but also the number of hours that we're operating and the number of people that are riding per hour in the morning, midday, and evening hours. So the easiest way to try to reduce that 2% is to look at those routes that actually had zero riders first in the evenings after a certain hour. So we looked at 10 to 12 at night. How many people are riding? Then we started bringing that down even more, between the hours of 7 and 9 at night. How many people are riding? Once we did all of that, the analysis of all of that, then we went back and said, OK, this is what we have. Presented it to the Service Standards Committee. They voted for us to take it out to public meetings. And basically, that's what we're doing now. We're taking all of the routes that we that you have. And we're taking it out to public meetings saying, this is proposed. This is what we're looking at doing. Give us your feedback. Let us know exactly what you think, because that's all we can do is try to get it down to those hours. If we can't get it down to those hours, and we continue to spend the maximum, we will not have that three months of reserve that they're asking us to put aside. But they voted for us. This proposed changes have not been finalized or approved by your board yet. No. Do you recommend that? I'm sorry. Please. The proposed route. We're looking at 187 currently, as opposed to 192. We currently have 192 hours operating annually. Those proposed changes in the route, is that you're going to show any of that today? We have. All right, I just need you to hand me the idea. And I'll let Sam, he's our director of planning and development. From the planning department, he kind of goes through line by line. Maybe I have a question for you before you move on. I've kind of looked at the proposed routes and how you kind of work those. Couple of routes sort of shut down around, you know, the ones, say, like 10 o'clock, 10.30. What does that do to riders from second shifts, such as people coming from some of the plants and from hospitals, you know, that they tend to get off at about 11? The routes that we looked at were routes that we did not have, because riders should run it already, where they had a minimum of less than seven. One goes around for hours. So in essence, if we looked at a route that's ending at 12 o'clock at night, then we said between 10 and 12, there's nobody riding that route at all. There's no ridership. Because us operating out there with the operator on, it stops at us over $70 an hour, and there's nobody riding that route. It's not cost effective for the agency. And of course, we get those questions, though, and lots of us renew them. I've heard that. I know that they did the rerouting, I believe, last year for the purpose of making sure that people were able to ride the bus along those routes. But I was just trying to figure out why what has happened in that one year where we're now pulling the routes out. The operating and the fact that we do not have service in other areas of the city. If the bus that we were supposed to press time after time, then they knew the additional cost of renewing the city. So we're trying to, within that 187,000 hours, try to expand services up in the Northeast area, as well as going out for the harvest and then we can get to work. But we didn't have routes until all the way out. So we're expanding in two different directions while we're looking at cutting back when some of those routes do not have to be riding those routes. It's like the chicken on the egg. You can't have both. I know. We're able to do something. But I would be concerned about inner city routes. Some of the corridors I know where people are riding, and some of them work at these hospitals and places like that. Outline, North Main, and so forth, the narrow road. And I've been getting calls from folks that were being impacted by some of the proposed changes. Well, I want to go through the proposed changes first, and then maybe I'll work on it. Let's get Daniel's question first. Yeah, mine is not about the changes that were to concern about the Supreme Court and the penny sales tax and what that effect may have on the system now. Is somebody looking into how that? As far as I know, and much of the information that I was getting in reference to that, it will not affect the public's transit system part of it. It's only affecting what the county has to do with that. I can't address any more than that. Well, if you hear anything, will you just make sure that we're notified? Because that is a concern, a real concern of mine of what will happen. Because the time frame, as you've already stated, has changed because the money's coming in quicker. It's not going to be 22 years, but now there's a fundamental change in it because of the hearing how that affects us could be dramatic. Yes, ma'am. So what we're trying to do is mitigate as we launch on the front end by putting it on the other side as the board has tested, so that way we won't have what happened back in 2011, 12-times time, but it had to cut service down completely. So we're trying to do as much as we can on this end, but that way we don't want it to cut off. Because otherwise, we will have to cut off. We have 40 years without any service, because we don't want to be running out of time. As we talk about, I think you're going to be talking about the changes and how they affect the first time. I want to make sure we include in that conversation how the solar tip, solar top, solar cap, Pepsi-Cola, and I already work in the car. Solar cap, I want to make sure, I want to know where we are with that. And if that's included in the reduced 180,000 hours, is that included? And if not, do you compensate somewhere else? That's included in the total hours. Total hours with a system. All right. And we're hoping to get a sponsor, but I think we'll have to do that. Please. I'll set up a PDF. OK, I see. So just jumping ahead, this chart. This is what was mailed out a couple of days ago. By the way, my name is Sam Scheib. I'm the director of planning and development for the Comet. I'm delighted to be here for any of you today to talk. These charts kind of tell the story for you. Where you see at the top, there's a green box. It's telling you something that's being added. So we talked about people getting to work. The more refining is more and more, shifts are going to 12-hour shifts, whether it's at hospitals or whether it's at fulfillment centers, a lot of the industrial things around Columbia. So we've had requests many times that we need earlier service. So for example, we're starting an express route. The express route's currently running, but we're adding an earlier trip that goes up toward the Blythewood Industrial Park. It's not what it's really called. That's just what we're calling it. The convenience sake, Luluru is up there, Husqvarna, Belk, Amcor Plastics. There's a surprisingly large amount of manufacturing going on up there in distribution. So we want to be able to get people up to that, but in order to do that, we have to get people to the transit center earlier to make connections with this express route going north in the morning, with the hope that then we fill the bus coming south with people coming from Blythewood who want to go into Columbia to work. Call the reverse commute and fill the bus both directions instead of only one. So we're starting many of our routes a little bit earlier. The 101, for example, starting at 5.04 in the morning. You can see on the chart here, the line going down the middle in red is the efficiency. That's the number of boardings per hour. That bus is only running 30 minutes. So there's 14 boardings per hour on only 30 minutes of service. Meaning if it ran for a full hour, presumably, it'd be significantly higher than that. Let's see if we can go down a little bit. It gets you on the more favorite one with you, apparently. So the orange box. And you'll see a lot of orange boxes in this. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. That's a little touchpad. Oh, that's what I want. OK, so let's see. The orange box is where we have two vehicles in service. Just one of the vehicles is coming out of service. So your span is staying mostly the same. So instead of running 30 minute service until 11 o'clock PM, we're going to run hourly service after about 7 o'clock on this route. And you'll see that repeatedly through here. So the people who have those later shifts and still get home, they just can't get home with 30 minute service. It's hourly service. And of course, the chart shows you that the number of boardings happening at those times is significantly lower than in the midday. And this surprised me when I started looking at these charts. We really have a workforce ridership. I mean, most of these charts you see a peak in the morning and a peak in the afternoon. And after 7 o'clock, it really drops off. The same kinds of shifts most of us work. And then lastly, where you see a red box, that's where that trip is being proposed to be deleted. So with only two boardings per hour, and that bus runs until 11 40 PM. So it's the majority of an hour to only generate two boardings per hour. Whereas like I pointed out earlier, the early morning trip only runs for 26 minutes and has 14 boardings per hour. Don't think of the boardings as being an abstract concept. That's how people vote for when they need service by riding the bus when they need service. We don't have a lot of joy riders. People ride when they need it. So if you see places where people aren't riding, they're not riding. That's a question for clarity. So between the 7 and 11, how is it now there's a bus like at 7, 730, 8, 8, 30? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so now it'll be a bus at 7, 8, 9. Then we get to Saturday, similar story. Delete the first trip of the day. Otherwise it remains the same. And then we move on to route 11, which is changing a bit. And I don't know if you want to go through all of these one by one. I'm happy to do that, but I want to be sensitive to your time. There's a lot of charts. There's a lot of charts. But the methodology I just went through on route 101 is how the thing was done for the entire system. Is this what you emailed over? And did we email this over? Okay. All right. And so I guess so we can probably jump in. Some of the questions or concerns we've heard. One of the biggest ones I've heard is routes. We've explained to us what are the proposed changes that are. Yeah, we're delighted to tell you that we are adding service to a new hospital. In the Parkway. Yes, ma'am. So we're gonna start going to the Baptist Parkway hospital starting on May 7th. That part's already been approved by the Board of Directors. That's an express route. And I guess let me ask you this. Someone who's been to Parkway. Why is that? Are y'all getting requests for that? Because I'm not sure that most of the people who ride the bus, I mean, I know there's workers, but it's really a smaller hospital compared to the others. So what made you feel like there needed to be a route to go to Harbison? It's actually a matter of convenience for the riders. It's an easier exit to get off the interstate than the Harbison exit. The main goal really is Harbison. But if we can get up to the hospital, by the way, we have a pass program with Palmetto Health Richland. They pay a substantial amount of money every year to allow all of their passengers to board. They didn't ask for this, but they're certainly delighted that it's coming. Come off the interstate, go down by Frankie's Fun Park, which we want to serve, we want to serve Lowe's. Come across Harbison, hit the mall, hit Bower Parkway, all that shopping, all those jobs that are concentrated in what's probably the densest piece of retail employment in the Midlands. And then go back up the same way it comes in to the same Park Ridge exit and then express back down to downtown. So no stops along the way. A trip that now takes one hour one way will take 25 minutes one way. That's a tremendous benefit to our passengers. It should be good for the hospital as well. So we're very delighted to be able to tell you about that today. We're also adding one trip a day on route 26 to Lexington Medical Center. And of course our transit center will continue to be right next to the downtown hospital. We're still operating 30 minute service up until about seven o'clock on route 301, serving Palmetto Health Richland. And also route 11 is gonna be rerouted to get closer to Palmetto Health Richland. So we are going to serve every hospital. We're currently serving plus Baptist Park Ridge on the map. And all routes together, they're the only one. Yes sir. So that's route 22. We had great hopes for route 22 when we started that in 20. The red is the elimination and the blue is either a route or a schedule, right? Yes sir. I'm happy to understand why it was. People didn't vote for it with the trips. Problem with route 22, we call it the in town, but it's effectively a cross town. So the route crosses 11 routes. 11 other routes serve the same place as route 22 does. So if you want to go to the Benedict Allen courts, you can get there on route 17 or route 12. You want to go to Benedict or Allen University College. You can get on 15 or rather seven to one now or route 16, which both of those run every 30 minutes. If you want to go to the hospital, you can get on the 301 every 30 minutes. If you want to go to the five points, you can get on the 201 every 30 minutes or the 401 every 30 minutes. Basically the problem is, is there's so much service to all the same destinations that it siphons off the ridership that might have otherwise gone to route 22. It's essentially a redundant service. So is a soda cap being a redundant service? No, it's a very different type of service. All right, what's the ridership? On the soda cap? Yeah. It's pretty low, but it's a new route. We're still in the pilot period. It's not even in the point where it's considered an official route in our system. How does that compare to the elimination of the hardened? This has been running for three years. Then the soda cap touches in that general area? It does. So it might also be attracting some of those riders too. What's the ridership in the hardened street in that prior to the elimination? On route 22? Yeah, 22. Yeah, I'm sure it's after 201, the next one. So again, remember, your red line is your efficiency measure. And at no point in the day does it ever even come halfway toward our ridership standard. And by the way, the 15 boardings per hour is the floor. That's not considered success. That's considered the bare minimum of what a route should do in a day. And similar on the weekend, only lower. It's just very unproductive. I mean, that's the long and short of it. It does cross 11 other routes. So there's another way to get to every part of it. Does that eliminate in terms of a physical building in Palmetto Richland? No, it does not. We have 30-minute service to Palmetto Health of Richland on route 301 plus route 11, which is going to get closer. It goes fairly near it now. But with this service change, it's going to go on Medical Park Boulevard, which is the west side of the campus. We're rerouting it there. And the other side. And we also have an express route that goes to Palmetto Health of Richland. Our hospitals are very well-served with transit. And we'll continue to be. So the ridership is going 5 and 6. It's low point 2. And the average number is 15. 15 is considered the minimum acceptable standard. And at any given time? For the whole day. For the whole day. Yeah. So we're just showing you what it looks like per day. So if you look, when we're at 101, there's parts of the day where it's at 30 boardings per hour. It's very, very efficient. And then, of course, it's less so at night. So of course, we're going to maintain service on 101, serving North Main, but only hourly after 7 o'clock. So it's system-wide. It's a modest reduction. This is the one area where, not area, but the one route that's being proposed for complete reduction. Because it's redundant. And it has very low ridership. It's just those two things combined. And it costs $275,000 a year to operate. So it's a lot of money for very little return. Mr. Davis, is there anything? I was looking at the numbers to route. And that is a small number of riders. A couple of years ago, we were very heavy with the marketing of the buses and the routing and some of the new technology. Have y'all kind of looked at or tried to figure out why the ridership is not what we thought it might be? Particularly for ridership. Well, I think overall, I'm going to look at it holistically. Yeah, you're riding on all routes, it's hard to explain, because 15 or 20 is industry standard. You may not be able to understand the situation. It's about 30, 90 years. And usually, by the time you start seeing numbers like this, the route is already gone. Most systems wouldn't even have it. And for us now, we're between the rock and the hard place, where we're going to have to determine the spam routes. Because if we want to try to initiate the penny again, and we have not even put routes up in the water before some of the other areas, then we can't do it. It's not going to go anywhere. The person they're going to say is, well, we can get anything from the first penny. You better hit your wagon to something else than the county on the next penny. I'll tell you that. So I'm going to stop holding onto the routes that are not used to them. What you're doing? A couple things. Number one, just in for clarity. So basically, what you guys are telling us that, although there are proposed elimination of some kind, effectively, people will still be servicing those areas either by different routes or on solidation. And I know James is amazing with her job, so I'm sure this is a great answer. But how are you communicating with the communities about, you know, we can see it on the news. Yeah, there's a public hearing. We all know people won't really come. So how are we communicating with people on the bus? What this means? Although we're starting to hear concerns now, you're really going to hear concerns once they go into effect. So we want to make sure that those people who are going to be really affected are coming out to the public hearings and understanding what this means and that they understand that this might mean the route that I currently use is no longer going to be there. But this is the alternative way that I'm going to get to work or shopping or whatever. One of the things that we do, even before we even get to the board voting on a public meeting, is the fact that we have a Midlands Transit Writership Association tonight, and we've met. I have gotten really good at that. So a lot of times what we do is we vet change something even before it even went to the board based on information that we received from the writers. So once the board saw it, and they said, OK, we want to vote for you to go to public hearings and also have public meetings. And that's the phase that we're in now. So all the different meetings that we're having, we have the public meetings. We're going to the housing authority tomorrow at 1. We're meeting with the hospital. We're going to where the people are. Some of them have high-rise buildings. They have their meetings, housing authority. I mean, there's just a lot of different places that we're trying to get to. Plus the meetings that we already had scheduled. These are meetings in addition to what we're having. So we're going to the public library in the relocation. For location, the public library as well. At different times, we can try to catch as many people as we can. We had one last night at the transit center. We had a lot of people come out for the year. And then we have the other ones. But we're trying to make sure we know when the meetings are and we can get out through our public information. We're writing the buses as well. We're passing out information from the buses and the ridership association. We're also doing the same thing. So have y'all heard, you know, are we the only ones that are hearing this? I mean, because y'all are talking to people that this is touching. And I don't necessarily know where our concerns are coming from at the people who ride or who just have heard and may not know everything. So are you guys hearing from the people who actually ride that these changes are going to be met with some difficulty on them getting to work or getting to their doctor's appointment? Or y'all, you guys, are you hearing them? The biggest concern that we heard last night is, I'm gonna have to change the distance, right? We're riding 34 feet. Now I'm gonna have to ride 801. So it's getting familiarized between bus and number. That's gonna change in some cases. And in other cases, it's, oh, now I can get my bus and go all the way up. It's gonna be an express now. I don't have to wait like I did before. So you have a lot of people that are pleased with it. And you have a couple people that at least were here last night who said, well, now I'm gonna have to catch two buses. So depending on where they're coming from or whether. We haven't gotten a lot of calls in our community with negativity. Most of it is, oh, you're finally gonna put a bus up in the Northeast. That would be my biggest call that I've got. If you took all this time, you'd get a bus in New York. You're covering the Harborson area and you're covering Springdale area where there's a matter-of-fact complaint. The other just got a big request coming to me. The majority of the calls that we get on a regular basis is, where are you going to the facility where I work? Mm-hmm. That's the majority of it. How can I get to where I'm working? It's called Spatial Mismatch. Right. Where people live and where the jobs are. The job situation has gotten so bad there's a lot of people that self-cultivate and work for us and they've been meeting with us for the last four or five months. In the last meeting we had, they brought the actual company from Glyceby to the meeting that we met at the EMB because train has 400 jobs now at the facility they have. They're in the process of building another facility that's going to have 600 for them. They're concerned with the industry. We have to turn over now that we can get people to work. What's going to happen when we build this plant and have 600 people that we need to work with? Belks are there, we've got folks who do the array, all these other different companies saying, can you run another route? We're just trying to get people to work. We're just trying to get the bill as much as possible. Let me go back just, what's the right issue of pulling the soda cap, the soda cap? Y'all need to change the name of the soda cap. I know it's free, y'all need to do that. And I think what is happening, numbers will need to get that to you, but what's happening because the soda cap is free, people are shifting that might have ruined the bus. People are shifting that might have ruined the bus on our industry is shifting over and why the soda cap needs to be free because it comes right down. Although just to note, this is six months of data, right? This is not a single month, it's last, it's from July through December. Well, at some point, I'm sure others would like, it would certainly give an accurate picture of how that route overtapped. I'm sorry. I think a bottle cap. Let me just say that it's over free. It would certainly be good to have those numbers in front of us at some point in time. I'm sure there's gonna be some conversation in the public sector about how that configures itself because we are eliminating the hardest treatment and how that's going to move around the program. So it would certainly be valuable for me to see it in there because there are some who have said that buses are running and there's nobody on there. I don't know whether or not that's accurate or not, and that's probably why I'm asking you. In the night, come on. So we're still gonna provide eight hours of service, but it's gonna be spread out. So instead of being 10 to six, it's gonna be 11 to three and then. I don't know specifically what ecosystems are, which in one hand concerns, I think it's gonna be the rodeo workers and others making sure that they do what they need to. About the rivers, they're supposed to come, but who knows what that holds up. So if you look past them to help them and maybe make sure that they understand the changes so they can communicate to their workforce as well. I was hoping that you would. Yeah, we're trying hard to get a hold of him. Really? They call like 1140, I mean 145 at what time of your meeting after two o'clock. They wanna do the same program that we have with Ritchie too. Ritchie too. Right. So, this ain't one that's a good thing. But, and then the second thing is, hopefully there won't be regular changes and stuff, but just for us, you know, this council was the biggest advocate for passing the penny, not even before the penny. You know, we actually did the franchise fee to keep the buses going, so you have great support here. So we need to be aware of these before it starts getting in the public domain because in that way we can maybe, you know, head off some of these concerns and things that get out there. So we always have an open invitation to come to talk to us. So, you know, if you see once you make these changes in a year or you gotta make some more, you know, just get on the phone and say, can we come make a presentation to you guys? That will help us, you know, carry the right message. Yeah, well, we'll handle that. She act like she didn't know. We'll handle that. Yeah, I think we're steadily approaching it. It looks like Joyriders are not there yet. Do you get that, Julie? We're trying to get them to that point on that attack we had a meeting earlier today to talk about not only the Joyriders, but riders that might want to go to the game. Yeah. The Wall Street, they want to be included in the fill the cap. Going up a little bit further. Possibly, then, to kind of bring more people into the fold. But we have to get past our, what I call, our mainstay. Our mainstay is our general ridership, trying to expand that in other areas, get more people on board. Get more folks to lead the Power Song. Yes. But it's building confidence. People have to build confidence in the transit system. And I think over time, that is coming. But it took a while for me to get to that point. It's worth noting we had 1.3 million boardings in 2013. And we're on track to hit 2.6 million in another month. So that's doubling your ridership in a couple of short years. Transit agencies don't normally have a million passenger increases. So it's pretty significant. And as a matter of fact, we've got the Federal Transit Administration grant approved. And we're in the process of doing an RFP for automatic passenger counters, which actually counts every passenger that boards that board. And we want to get to the point where every month, we will be able to provide you that, based on your districts. How many people are getting right at that? If I could add, that's on a stop specific. We are currently counting all of the passengers to get on the bus. But we will tell you at which stop they're getting on. Shelters. Have y'all come up with the proposed locations yet? How can we find out where you are? There are some requests for shelters. I've got one now. There's one. And there is usage. It does not help a young mother with a child with a toddler come rain or shine. There's no store there where they can kind of seek shelter until the bus comes and that sort of thing. So with rain, that's one of those locations I think we'd like to see. Is it the city? It's in the city. I've got a call about it. Is it right away or is it on a statewide? Well, that's the issue. There's nothing there in terms of the city private right away. But the city easement is there. It wouldn't be difficult to face the shelter there. That's one of those locations. City, that means you can put the name on it and it says be the bus stop. Yeah, I'll speak on behalf of it, of course. That would be good. But I guess I'm asking also, are you at that point now? Our problem with shelter, we have a goal of 165 shelters. That's what we want to put on the ground, 165. In four years, we've done 13, 14. It's very hard to get a place to put them. So the DOT is actually fine. They're OK. If we go to them with a location and there's enough right-of-way available and it doesn't have a sight distance problem, no problem. There just aren't that many locations like that that exist. It's almost always on private property. And then you have to get an easement and that's the try. They still insist in only one shelter per. They bailed on that. They did. Yeah, we have a 30-foot shelter on the property. Right now, it's going to be installed there. So we're going to pull up that 16-footer and put the 30-foot down. And then we think we're going to go back later and add the 16-footer. But they're OK with that now. They did say that. But since we had the 30-footer, you get more seating in a 30-footer because it doesn't have that stanchion in the way as two 16s would. So in two 16-footers, you get two benches. With a 30-footer, you get four benches. We're going to drop a 30-footer down there. We're going to get a call from them. Just so you know, we have them now. And he's very helpful in that one. OK, I'd like to look at it and maybe give you, just indicate to you where requests are coming to me. We're also putting a 30-foot shelter at Little Road. That's the Walmart on Forest Drive. You can build a nice pad there. Dropping a 30-foot shelter there as well. A lot of publicity on that. So I can get a list from you soon. And thank you so much for your leadership over there. You thought about issuing Lawrence so you could not leave? It's not off the table just yet. So what you guys have done a fantastic job. You're troubleshooting, is that right? Tanner, I'm sorry. Lawrence has said she can't leave the county alone. She can't take it. Next item on the agenda is the Mealshare program update. Mr. Randy Davis, director of Parks and Recreation. Ms. Jennifer Moore, senior director of financial stability council for the United Way of the Midlands. Good afternoon, everyone. Today I come before you to discuss what we've been working on in the past year regarding improved coordination of supply distribution, in a way so today Jennifer Moore and Marina Henry are with me today to share with you what we've been working on in collaboration with the Midlands Food Share Group. It's been a coordinated effort to recommend improvements in terms of coordination of supply distribution. So we're going to share with you a snapshot of those items, three tactics that we propose going forward with the permitting process as it relates to supply distribution at Finlay Park in particular. They will also give you additional updates on various locations in Colombia that involve the Midlands Food Share. All right, so United Way, we partnered with the city in 2015 to provide regional coordination of supply distribution. And Mealshare was the first thing that we started working on as part of that body of work. So our Midlands Mealshare collaborative right now has 51 partners and this is a pretty diverse mixture of folks. So we have neighborhood leaders involved. We have our Mealshare providers. We have great involvement from city staff, whether that be Parks and Rec or also getting input from our CPD folks. We have a steering committee, which is a core leadership group that has a diversity of folks represented. So we have providers that provide meals in Finlay Park. We also have providers that do meals in public spaces. And then we have a homeless individual who is a consumer of those meals who is on the steering committee as well. And we convene the actual collaborative of all the providers quarterly so that we can share information, we can network, and then talk through some of the issues that we'll review today. And then we also have visits to the different Mealshare providers. And that's something that Karina, who is our fabulous homeless services provider at United Way, does. And she rotates through all the different meals on a periodic basis to touch base and makes sure that they're engaged in the process. How many of the providers are churches? I don't know churches. There's 29 individual Mealshare providers. 11 of those feeds specifically provide meals at Finlay Park. Karina, do you have a support between those two? I mean, would you guess and not participate in the collaborative? Do the own thing? I mean groups in general. Oh, in general. So yeah, we're going to show you the covenants here in a second. So is that OK? We'll get there. So this is the Mealshares overall. So let me kind of walk you through the coding a little bit. The ones that are in blue, these are outdoor locations. So that could be meals that are in Finlay Park. And Finlay Park is currently the only space that the city permits to do meals in a public space. So they could be in Finlay Park, but some of these are also private locations. So some of these are church locations. The ones in red are indoor locations. So these are folks like Transitions or Oliver Gospel Mission that provide a fixed, regular meal, primarily to their clients or folks who are coming there for their services. The ones that are in gold, these are folks that we call those kind of a rotating or a unique day providers. So these are folks that are providing meals maybe like the third Sunday or the fourth Saturday, but not every single Saturday. So if you look, for example, on Saturday, it looks like you could get 10 different meals. However, all of those unique ones, those rotate. So it's the first Saturday or the second Saturday, the fourth Saturday, that kind of thing. Oh, that's right. If it's a unique day, it still could be outside or those indoor? It's both. It's both. Yeah, it's both. So for example, First Baptist Church does a meal in their parking lot on their space on Sumter Street. And that's possible. And so they can be one of our unique providers. We have some of these folks that do have public meals at Finlay Park that are in the gold as well. So it's the next. We're actually going to update this calendar and we're going to split it for you. We're going to do just Finlay on one side and then we're going to do the non-Finlay Park meals on the second side. We think it visually might be easier to look at and we'll get that to the same. That's fairly widely distributed. Does merchants have that list? Yeah, we're working. It's a careful balance. We don't, we use it as an education tool because, and I'll talk about our orientations that we do in a minute, because we want folks to know that there is ample opportunities to get meals. So we have shared this with some of the downtown merchants, especially folks that we've heard are giving out food from restaurants on Main Street. We think it's important for them to understand that there is opportunities for food, even though that is a very generous, compassionate thing to do. And then we also get them out through our service providers as well and then use it for our orientation. All right, so let me talk about the snapshot of our progress. So when we started this process, we started with listening sessions. So we talked to neighborhood leaders. We talked to people experiencing homelessness that were using, eating the food to understand what their needs were. And then we also talked with the meal share providers to really kind of understand everyone's perspective. So that was our first step. The second thing is we worked with our meal share providers to develop a meal share covenant. And the covenant is voluntary standards that are widely agreed upon with our meal share folks. So things like sanitation, using hand sanitizer, using ticketing systems or different systems that people line up for meals versus kind of all coming at the same time. And really, and then standards of cleanliness as well. So cleaning up after your meals and things like that. So on the meal share covenant, again, we have 29 unique agencies. We have 19 have currently signed the meal share covenant. And what we found is the folks who have not signed typically tend to be those unique day providers. So it's the folks who are not providing meals like every single Saturday, they're doing it kind of once a month, that kind of thing. We think we definitely have opportunities for deeper engagement with those folks, but are established folks that have those regular meals. We have covenants with all of those folks. What we started about a year ago is orientation for newly permitted meal share providers. So if a meal share provider comes to Parks and Rec, seeking a permanent Finley, and they're a brand new provider, the first step instead of permitting them is actually to connect them with Karina at United Way. And she'll go through a meal share orientation. And that involves looking at the calendar to see where they're other meals, to see if you can partner and join someone else. And we've actually had five new groups who wanted to do new meals that decided to go partner someone else instead. We thought that was amazing. They also do sign the meal share covenant and they are required to sign that covenant and agreed to those voluntary standards before Pearl at Parks and Rec will issue a permit to them. And we think that's great. The other thing that we've been doing is combining meals. So again, where there's opportunities to have folks join resources, to join a time together. One of our largest meals, restoration, actually moved from Finley about a year and a half ago to join Resurrections, which is the Saturday meal at the Sundance and Cali parking lot. And we've actually had six additional groups join that and we call it Lunch on the Log. It's a really great experience and it's really great. The other thing that we've done is synchronized times. And so last August, Washington Street United Methodist, which is a soup seller and has been operating for 40 years, they actually moved their time. They were feeding at 10.45 and they moved to 11.30. And then Chrysential in North Maine moved from 12.30 to noon. So now all of our lunchtime meals at the indoor locations at Transitions, Washington Street and at Chrysential are now basically at the same time. So before there was like a two and a half hour window where you did have the opportunity to possibly visit, you know, one or more meals. And then we've kind of shrunk that window a lot. And so we're very happy with that. Do they have the memo with the three boxes? Nope, okay. It's part of the PowerPoint. It's part of the PowerPoint, okay. So synchronizing the times as well, we worked with the meal share providers to kind of again better understand what their needs were. And what we really heard from them is that having designated times where they were providing those meals really worked best for them. So they knew who was gonna be providing those times. The other thing that we heard from them very clearly is the uncommitted folks that were showing up in the park is problematic today. So people who are coming, you know, frankly probably just the generous nature that they wanna share food with someone. But it is problematic because it is in places of the park that you're not supposed to be providing meals. And then oftentimes those folks maybe aren't quite as attentive to cleaning up after themselves. So what we heard from the meal share providers very clearly is having designated times and then trying to rein in some of the non-permitted meals really was something that they encouraged us to help do. So we worked with the meal share. It appears to say to that, I mean that with permitted food providers there's an extra level of accountability there too. You know who you're dealing with, they know that they're responsible for what they feed people. Food is healthy. I mean, I mean, I'm nourishing, maybe not always healthy, but this can have random people showing up passing out mass amounts of food to vulnerable populations. Right, and that's exactly what we heard. So we heard when someone stops at the top of the circle at Finley and is pulling food out of the back of their car, they don't know how long that food has been heated. If it's been heated at the proper temperatures, they don't know if they're gonna clean up after themselves, that kind of thing. And then again, the meal share providers generally use some type of ticketing system or orderly way that people line up and it's just disrupting frankly. So we're working with Parks and Rec to kind of work on some strategies with that as well. So around the synchronization of times, we specifically have retracted that we worked with our meal share providers and then also with Parks and Rec to come up with. And so this that we'll be implementing at the end of April is designating specific blocks of time. So there'll be a block for breakfast, a block for lunch, and a block for dinner and those will be very specific times that we will have one provider that has the lead permit. And then you can have up to three organizations that can partner with them but that lead permitted organization has the responsibility to make sure that things are orderly, things are cleaned up after and things like that. And we think this is gonna be an amazing improvement. And again, this is something that we met with the meal share providers and we rolled out really back in August and having very intense conversations with them because we know that some of our folks are gonna have to move times up, or maybe a little bit later to correspond with these but overall it was very welcome with our meal share providers. Let's see here. Also talking about synchronization. Oh, we're good there, sorry. Improved distribution of supplies. So one thing that we've been attentive to as well is people who distribute personal hygiene items, blankets, things like that in the park. We've tried to communicate with those providers as well and we have been very successful in linking them to existing meal share providers. So the message with us is we love the generosity of really wanting to give someone the warmth of a blanket but please let's do it with an established provider so that we have a little bit of more monitoring and accountability of those services. Engagement of non-permitted meal share providers. So we do what's called, we officially call the pop-up report and the pop-up report are the non-permitted meal share providers that pop up at Finley Park and they're providing a meal that's uncommitted. And we have started doing a monthly report that we track and we actually have the help of not only our meal share providers to help us track this information but we have a volunteer who's part of our steering committee who's currently experiencing homelessness and he tracks these meals for us too. And so we've identified 11 in the last year. We've been successful in getting three to partner with another organization. We've had one that got their own independent permit. The other ones have not been responsive so that can get as good for thought as we move forward to very, be attentive. One in ten. To see if this is still happening because it could turn into an enforcement issue. And we have the chief standing right there. Okay. Let's see here. And then just collaborating and we already talked about this about revising the permitting process. So just next steps, our next full meeting will be mid-April and so we will start again reinforcing the new permitting guidelines that will go out and then spread the word on the work. So again, we're looking to update the meal share calendar and then get that out a little bit more to the central business district folks to kind of understand what meals are out there. Again, we think it's a very generous thing if restaurants do want to give out food but we think that there are some side costs to that and we want to make sure that people understand there are opportunities for food. And then also review the meals and then look to see if there is a need to diversify the geographic locations. What we've been doing is trying to encourage people to identify private locations or if you're really subtle and friendly to really partner with an existing organization not to start a new meal. But we also want to start looking outside the core of the city to see if there's needs there and then we can work with our meal share providers to try to fill those gaps. I want to see what questions you have but just a couple quick thank yous. Parking rest staff has been wonderful so Randy, Kenyan, Pearl, amazing to work with. Just a lot, I can't tell you how many emails go back and forth between Karina and the Parking Rec Department. And Karina does an amazing job. So Karina Henry is our homeless services coordinator and she is just so dedicated to making partnerships work and really hearing everyone's perspective in this because everyone has a little different perspective but all of this perspective are very important. And then also just a thank you to our meal share providers. This is an amazing, passionate group of people that want to share food with others and it's really been an honor to get to know them. What questions do you have? Questions? We saw her presentation at the college in the neighborhood. It's truly a great job of presenting that also. I just want to say that this has changed so much in the two years that I've been listening to the presentation. Karina has done a great job of awarding the food services for the homeless that are for everybody to come to the public in the neighborhood. Amen. Amen. Have a great breakfast from the current day too. That down of course with Dean from the United Way yesterday and I appreciate all the work that we've done. I just want to say we want to work with those groups that pop up from time to time that didn't have to go through the system. We're going to track that information and make sure that it's just back to the United Way so that we don't have to incur any, especially if they don't. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you, Randy. Item four on the agenda is our fiscal year 2018-19, Revenue Projections, Ms. Melissa Kaufman, Budget and Program Management Director. Good afternoon. Karina is passing out a hard copy of the presentation if you are interested in having a hard copy this afternoon. So we're just continuing our budget conversations with you all as we continue through the FY'18-19 budget process. We had committed that this time we would bring to you our revenue projections and we're focusing today on general fund and special revenues, which would be general fund, hospitality tax and accommodations tax. In your memo, we pointed out a few things with regards to general fund. So in our budget process, just demonstrating again all of the different parts of what make up or go into our budget. We have Envision Columbia, we have City Council priorities, priority-based budgeting, which is coming, that'll be forthcoming. Our department and capital requests and then of course our mandated and required costs. And that little tiny square on the bottom is the available resources and that's what we're talking about today. So again, general fund, hospitality and accommodations tax. In your packet, we gave you a forecast for the 18-19 revenue. This is something we do every year with regards to where our revenue projections in terms of what revenue streams we are working with as we prepare the budget and get ready to bring to you the city manager's proposed budget. I gave you an updated handout that was attached to the memo. It really didn't change the revenues, it was a change on the expenditure side but I did want to make sure we gave you the correct amount. So looking at what we provided, overall general fund revenues and transfers in our forecast right now at 144 million. That's a net increase of $1.4 million. If we break that out into revenues, about 450,000, 447,000 of that is increased in actual revenues coming in. That's less than half of a percent. Of course, predicate all of our conversations with everything as we go through this. These are very preliminary. We still have a number of items still we are reviewing and coming and a number of items coming through. We'll talk about those in a moment. Where we see the change the most right now at this point is under the transfers and other financing sources. And the only big differences there would be where we're reflecting eight million in use of proceeds from capital lease. Current year budget we only used four and that was reduced from our normal $8 million mostly as a matter of affordability plus we had some savings from priors that we were able to use to make up the difference. We would not be able to do eight million or four million again this year unless we defer some capital which is primarily our rolling stock and some of our technology. The other piece that's missing that makes up that the difference of the net is there's right now no use of fund balance. So we're not reflecting the use of fund balance in this point. It's still preliminary and as we go through the budget we'll look at that. I didn't really want to focus on the expenditure side because this is just the very, that's very raw numbers with regard to the budget. It's not the city manager's proposed budget. There's still some pieces of information. However, that is reflective right now of what we are seeing with both our healthcare increases, increases in retirement system. We've also reflected the net, an equal eight million in revenue or use of proceeds from the lease. There's also an equal expenditure of eight billion in capital. So some of those things are adding up those numbers but again, we really weren't focusing today on expenditures since we will be getting to those as we get forward. You are correct. About double available revenue growth if we will fund the property budget. You're jumping ahead of my slides. No, I will be. I didn't put it in the memo but yes, that is, I was gonna bring it up as part of our conversation. So, right, so this slide here is just basically a lot of what I was just reflecting with regards to what's making up the net increases. We have both a minimal amount of increase in just base revenues and then we have some increase and decrease in transfers to make up a net one million dollar. So again, just to reiterate, revenues for general fund are preliminary. We have a number of things that are coming through that you all sort of touched on already at the beginning of the meeting we were talking about the revenue reports. So business licenses are due April 17th this year which is a Tuesday so we will have a better analysis which is that that's a council, that's the next council meeting. So it won't be until after that till we see how revenues are coming in from business licenses. We also have to continue evaluation of our property tax collections and seeing what we are with those but right now those seem to be holding budgets so that's a good sign. And then of course as Mr. DeValls already referenced local government fund, based on the information we have so far the state has not increased any allocations and is definitely not making it up to the formula in terms of what the local government funding should be and we are short on that arena. And yes, that would be about a one point four million dollar makeup. They are still proposing to make the credit if you will on the retirement side of the equation however that's still not a significant amount in terms of it doesn't cover the amount of the increase in the retirement system rates. And of course we still have conversations around the use of fund balance and if there is available fund balance even to use and how much we would use. And then as we've talked to you we have brought, we have talked a little bit about some of the new revenue streams or possibilities of reviews of revenue streams. We'll also bring those to you at future meetings. Any questions? Oh well, just kind of looking through real quick on some of the final assess on some of our assessed value property assessments. You can see in fiscal year 16 at the bottom tax year 15 we had a nice bump in assessed values. Not quite so much in the next year but of course we are still benefiting from that growth from the prior year. That's what we learned why everybody's property tax went up and they thought that we had this huge increase at the city but it was a local option that changed from the year before and so they had a 13, would we figure out 12, 13% increase and whatnot? Maybe it was 14%. And our local option, our credit stayed pretty. No, it was because of the change. Because we had had a lot of growth the prior year so that growth was that rolled that one year you're gonna pick up a benefit to all of our citizens but then you didn't have any more of that to roll in so it had an effect this past year. So graphically you can also see kind of the spikes we've had in our assessed values over the years. We don't see the kind of growth that we were seeing you know, 10, 15 years ago but at least we are seeing a moderate, moderate growth it's just that it doesn't keep, it does not keep with the rate of our growing expenses. Anything on general fund before we move on to the next one? Moving on to hospitality tax. Hospitality tax revenues are still showing are still coming in fairly strong. We are projecting those at $12 million for 17, 18. That's about a $677,000 or 6% increase over the current year budget. That's about 5% of our prior year actuals and that's staying in line with what our actuals have been in recent years. So we feel pretty confident with that number at this point. In addition to that, revenue collections are coming in with budget. We have about, so far what we're seeing too is we have about a 20% increase in the number of actual restaurants that have gotten business licenses over this past year. So that helps attribute to the growth as well. It's always good to see. And of course we'll continue to monitor this collect. On the expenditure side of the budget that's in your package, we as staff make no recommendations or no assumptions with regards to the allocations. What allocations are there are based on assuming everyone stays flat and then reflects anything that's already unfriably committed. Of course, as we go through the budget, those things could change based on your input, especially as it relates to the three categories of funding which would be the amount that goes to the Hospitality Tax Committee. They will be meeting here soon to be able to make their recommendations and typically like to have an amount that they know they're gonna be working with. And then of course there are the line-on emergencies and then as far as those allocations that come straight from council, those have varied and typically are made during the year, the amounts that are reflected of those things that are already have already been committed to or are reflected of prior year commitments. Any questions on Hospitality Tax? We only have one. I have a general discussion about these minimum changes in our hospital. Why don't you want to have it in April? Well, I think it would be jammed up in April because we're skipping them. Yeah, so we'll make up for it. What was the request? I just asked that we talk about moving in the Hospitality discussion through April and talk about some minimum changes. I'd like you to pose and I ask that they be moved to the first meeting in May because we're gonna be jammed up in April because we're skipping them. I think the committee also meets in May. The existing Hospitality Tax Committee meets in May. It makes on this schedule a lot, you know. I mean, if we could squeeze it on the 17th it'd make more sense because we're gonna be talking about operating budgets on the first of May. I think if there are any changes you're gonna want them before that out of the scene. And not to jump too far ahead but we put in the memo if council is interested. You don't have to decide today but if there's an interest in having a budget workshop on April 24th or some other date between the 17th and May the 1st if there's any interest in having another discussion. I'm game for that. So we'll add, we'll put together the list of the different topics and is the desire then to keep the Hospitality discussion on the 17th or to look at it on the 24th. Any other questions with regards to the Hospitality Tax? Allocations? They're looking good. Restaurants in one part of town? We did not ask for geographic locations. Next we have accommodations tax, a lot more aggression right there in terms of our projections, especially for us or room rates. All the new rooms? Yeah, room rates. Yeah, so we are typically known for being fairly conservative on our projections. However, on accommodations tax we're projecting those at 2.5 almost 2.6 million which is an increase of 469,000 or 17% over current year budget. That is less than $100,000 or 4% over current prior year actuals. So even though it's aggressive with regards to the increase over the budget, it's in line with prior year actuals from both prior year and years before that. Of course on allocations we have not made any predictions in terms of where those funds would go other than how state law dictates which is the first 25,000 off the top comes to the city of Columbia or comes to the general fund and then the remaining 95% combination of 95% is used for the tourism functions, promotion and marketing and then 5% is used for general purposes, feel like general fund. Two things that we have funded out of that so far, two things that we have historically been able to find out of that is the other half of one Columbia's budget and then the other is the together we can read and that leaves some small dollars remaining for other purposes. Separate from the state accommodations? Yeah, I do want to add this, this is the state accommodations tax. So what we didn't show is the local accommodations tax which is what that is the money that we send that is separate from the state accommodations tax. However, discussion is for the convention center expansion that helps me smile because if we do something like that, that will help us obtain that goal. The 469,000 increase is just from the state. It's two different sources of revenue, one's local option, one's state. Yeah, the 469,000 is just the state. This is just the state, this is not the other local option. So if you could say that the local ATAC is going to increase that 17% also. Yes, sir. So that might be, would it be doubling that money? We could bring it to the top. Now the difference is those funds, even though that grows within the IGA that was signed back in 2003, convention center has certain pots of money that are filled in addition to debt service. Those pots of money, they have certain growth factors like there's one that's just a set million a year but then they have growth like I can't remember exactly. I don't remember what it was called. They have different accounts over there that grow so for them to meet their needs and their budget, they need that growth. Now that doesn't mean we can't talk with them to say, okay, realistically, what is your budget? Can you make it fit in this budget and let's start taking a look at this growth that's coming in to issue new bonds for an expansion? It has been a part of the discussion that I have brought this up now for about two years. As Devon mentioned, I know that they meet with various governmental bodies just more so explaining kind of what the goal is to expand the exhibit space by 75,000 square feet. I think the overall fundamentals, overall financial fundamentals are healthy as is. But certainly what we decide to do going forward and what the partners are still at the table after the expansion is a separate question. Obviously, Devon, our public finance team, we're already meeting, we're gonna meet soon just to help kind of look at all the landscaping of financing options of the expansion. I think probably sooner rather than later, we need to come together and get some type of report from you all to kind of what the landscape looks like. If everybody's still at the table, if everybody's not at the table, if there's additional increment, they might be able to be captured down there, just kind of all the different things we've been talking about as much as can be talked about right now. It could be worth us having that discussion for the next couple of years. And we do have a meeting in the next week, is it missing? The financing team, just kind of, if you had to figure out all the potential possibilities. Yeah, we haven't had any. And it will include Mastrella as well. Okay, good. As part of it would be on him to figure his own budget. Because it's an unlimited dollar amount that's just, all the growth can't just keep going. I should add local option sales tax actually is higher collection than this source. And that the majority of this million, the 2.4 million from this projected for this year and then the two million from last year. The majority of that already goes to the experience, Columbia. I threw that out there. It's because I don't necessarily want to take what they're getting to grow because that's how they're marketing and everything else. But if there's money that we're projecting as a growth that isn't already good for them, that would be good to start thinking about setting that aside. When we make that decision. And these funds of course, this is the one that has the FERC committee requirements. So there's requirements from, this is the one that in state law has requirements for the committee. I would also say too, this one does not accumulate a fund balance. Anything in fund balance goes back to the two agencies that received these funds already. Then the final, unless there's any of the questions about accommodations tax or any of the other materials that we've talked about. The remaining discussion is just to sort of point out what our budget schedule looks like. There is actually probably more topics to be discussed than what's really reflected here, but just wanted to bring back to keep on everyone's radar, healthcare and water and sewer. Right now we're projected for April 17th. We may shuffle some of those things around. I think healthcare is pretty set based on the availability of our presenters. We'll add the April 24th based on conversations just now. So no, we'll include hospitality review discussions. Also we'll be bringing of course, proposed operating budgets for general fund, water and sewer, stormwater, parking, hospitality and accommodations tax will look fairly same as they do now and then capital budgets. Do point and point out that May 15th is the last meeting you had before we advertised the budget. Of course that's presuming that you want to do as we did last year and maybe the year before keeping the public hearing and the first reading on the same day. If you want to separate public hearing and first reading then we need to back up the schedule. Serving barbecue or something. Then there's no reason to separate. We will have our famous budget open house downstairs, I'm certain. Fun to be had by all. The nine of us will have something to eat. Showing off our city wares. So if that's the case in public hearing and first reading will be June the fifth and then second reading will be June 19th. Of course we do have some other topics we'll be bringing along those lines. And anything else that council has an interest in discussing as it relates to the budget. When are you gonna let us know about the 24th? We can find out this week. Thank you. Thank you everyone. We got a huge motion to go to the next session. We're going to the executive session for discussion on the negotiations in the proposed confactual arrangement of 278-2 on the poor rich and sewer agreement. The Carolina Water Service. This must be a lot of money down here. Hey, this is lightning paced around here, man. We talk about issues for six, eight, nine, 10, 12 months. Obviously, so Bain Street will recover proper property at the position. Receiving legal advice to let him end the threat and a potential claim of 78-2. Cumberland versus the city of Columbia. Ownership and maintenance of strong water infrastructure. Abden, Siree, Yates versus city of Columbia at all. Receive legal advice which relates to matters covered by attorney client tributes 78-2, the price of information requests, potential clerical judgment act. Second. Second. I want to add a contractual issue on the rear. Legal advice. Mr. Degg is seconded. Client's good. Video. Recognize. Policies. You just convinced the client. You heard that, Eric? Policies. On policy.