 that you're planning for years that are far into the future. So I'm assuming that you have a plan or there is something else that's being retired or something that would, I don't know, Caphrat that would give you the research to lead that 250,000 in three years is not gonna be a heavy lift. So President Powell, if you see at the end of the memo that I miss something, I'm sorry. You have something about it is in there I think it's goes to your question, which is that I've asked Jeff and Jeff in to come back and we're in the next three or six months with a basically a plan to ensure that I'm going to ensure that they will be able to pay it off on the schedule. This is an area where to some degree we control the future revenues through policy decisions that we make. And it's been many, been quite a few years now since there have been really adjustments to policy or rates that could generate additional revenues which are reluctant to do that for, I think, good reason during the pandemic and media years after. We probably, and we think well need to make some decisions in the future such as something that has been out there for years that has to do with doing it, don't charge anything in the garage or something is that's a kind of policy that they need to be re-evaluated if the revenues don't recover kind of organically on their own. And there are other decisions like that that are within our control. So this gives us five years to figure this out and I've asked for a report that we would present to you and get approval on three, six months from now. Okay, so I actually read the payments and did a great deal, it was very great. So that was in there, I obviously remember that. I mean, you know, it's not the ideal situation. I mean, I think we should all be honest about that. This is not the ideal situation. But you know, and of course the other thing I wonder is, I mean, is it possible to rate three, seven, five just seems, I mean, I understand that that was the bond counseling for you. Now that was the recommendation that there aren't other, there isn't another solution to this. And I don't, I don't know what it is, but I don't hope that it's part of it for ourselves or there's some other way that we could do that. I don't know, but it does sound it's, it's not the ideal situation. I mean, I'll support it, but I don't sort of, I think it's unfortunate, but three to five months and three to six months will look forward with great anticipation to the ideas are there. Right, you shouldn't agree with us Bob. I can't wait, if they do. Thanks President Pai, I understand your perspective and largely, you know, I think it's worth, this is probably the area of the six finances that were hit most heavily and permanently by the pandemic. We just haven't seen where it's all the other revenue streams have largely recovered from parking. It's probably the flip side of the good news we were reporting last week that people are driving less and that emissions are down. Certainly the people are coming into work less. That's one of the major new drivers of the garage. So this is an area where we've really been dealing with both many, you know, a long list of the first maintenance to address as well as kind of these large, large economic forces. I agree with you that I think it's really important that we follow up and be good on what is said here, that there needs to be a plan that comes back early in this loan. So that we definitely have a way forward. I think it's a manageable, I'm confident this is a manageable number we can work our way through unless we like forget about it neglected of this. I'm glad we're having this conversation to make sure we're all on the same page. This needs to come back for some top decisions. We can have a few minutes to dramatize it, but we've got to make sure we don't take the can down the road here and ignore this. We may need to make some changes. Councilor Barlow, sorry, did you want to get back? Councilor Barlow. Yeah, I just had a question about some of the mechanics of the repayment. So there's no payment, not even interest payments in year one and two. There is interest payment. There are interest payments. There's interest payment on year one and two, and then there's interest payment on year two and 15 plus. Okay, got it. We'll have a set of scenarios. So they're looking at that. Okay. It's moving fast. Okay, I was just wondering if senators were getting put into the last three years. Okay. I understand. Sorry. Well, if I may say. Yeah, thank you. If we make a note and we should update the document. This documentation looks like there's no payments here. Yeah, no. There's interest payments. There's one and two, and then there's one that's just in three, four, five. Very good. And there was also, I got a last minute edit. That's the question that I submitted on the site on Valentine's Day. Okay. Yeah, that edit was symmetrical. Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Okay. Let's, so maybe if we take action on this, Charlie, can we work with Lori? Yeah, you gotta clear it up. Yeah, I'm supposed to update something. Yes. Great. Any further discussion or questions? Are we ready for our work on this? I will move the recommended action. So, yeah. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. You have a second? I'm happy to second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those of you who are most likely to say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries the noes. Thank you. If we can. We will in order to be in value with you to work through the pro forma and assumptions that we have to return these two funds to health. Great. The revised memo. Yes, we'll work with DTF. Just get that up immediately. Thank you. Great, thank you. Thanks. Okay. We have two more items on this special work financing. Item number two is annual appropriation and budget for fiscal year in July 1st, 2023 and June 30th, 24th and we will all talk about the kind of companion resolution which is cleaning tax assessments. How would the Board like to proceed? We do, we have a PowerPoint that Catherine is prepared for the full council discussion. It's I think entirely made up of information that's been shared in prior PowerPoint presentations with the Board. So we could, we could go through that or maybe more efficient to go straight to any comments or questions that the Board would like to make. We will be making a full presentation at the council since the body hasn't seen everything on once. So how, what is the Board like to proceed? Well, I mean, I personally am going to see the presentation and it's effectively unchanged from when I was on the 12th is that about right? At the 12th of June, the one that said that, I mean, I wasn't here for that Board of Finance meeting but I did look back at that. It is a combination of that one and one from the 1st of June to kind of get everyone up to speed. The idea is that the three of you and Councillor Jang have been along for this journey and the other counselors maybe not. So to provide like a full overview of kind of where we've been up to now. But it is all, I just took slides from everything you've already seen. I just put them into one new slide deck but I did not create new content. That's the case. I mean, personally, I don't, I mean, I don't hate to see it again. Unless I could be flexible too. I wasn't planning to pour it in. But I certainly can. Just, just, just, just. Okay. Then so that's my hope. Although I think maybe, maybe get quite a memory. That's the 12th budget that I've been responsible for. I great majority others, the Board of Finance has taken action making a recommendation on the budget while we're out there before the council voted. I think, I think there have been one or two times one for whatever reason. The Board says not to do that. So it's not an absolute requirement. But the idea that we, as we discussed on the 12th was that we would attempt to do that and to be in this meeting at a time, which it would certainly, I think, yeah, that's the purpose of us really gathering. And I would welcome, you know, if I were to look into the fact that I'm on the floor or, yeah, it's one thing that we could do now or we can have further discussion if you've got a board member from the chair. Well, I have, I don't, to make a motion, I could certainly make a comment if that would be helpful. Great. I, you know, so I have, as probably everyone knows and certainly anyone on Facebook knows, I did have a period of time where I was not as, so I typically engaged in the, in the process as I usually do to circumstances beyond my control, good circumstances, but nevertheless, a little bit more challenging. And certainly tried to keep tabs on what was going on. I did not see, and there haven't been notes, there haven't been minutes that I've seen posted for the July and the June 12th Board of Finance meeting. I basically went off the conversations I had with people about that meeting and then also the PowerPoint, which was pretty much unchanged. I mean, maybe there were a few missing, but I mean, I think it was mostly the same. I guess the, the only thing that I will say is that I don't think I've ever, all the years that I've served on the city council, I don't think I've ever interacted with a city councilor who wants to vote no on a budget because it's a, it's a huge document. It's the most important thing that we do all year and it sets the priorities for the coming year. And I never give up hope that there is an opportunity to find a middle ground, collaboration, compromise. I'm not saying that I laid no fault with any one person, any two people. I take responsibility for it myself. I think that there still are opportunities just within the normal fluidity of an entity the size that there is $290,000 that over the course of this year would present itself in such a way that effectively no public, no public safety, no non-union, no current non-union positions are affected all of the principles that I believe you would put out in the narrative could still be honored and still have a way to have a meeting of the mind. So the streets, the streets get done in the way that we want them to get done and people feel that taxes have not, that we have done the absolute, even further best we can do. We've already done the best we can do. Now we're talking about the best best. And I think because it's, because they're, they're line items in a budget, it's hard to really go line by line. And I feel like doing that in a public setting probably isn't fair because some of them are either vacant positions, positions that soon become vacant that really are not appropriate to talk about publicly. So I don't really want to go into all the nuances. I'll give you one example. And then maybe that would lead to some sort of a discussion. So Catherine, you know, I asked you about line 7850. 7850 for those who are not as well versed in line 7850. And I want anyone to raise their hand if they know what line 7850 is. Okay, all right, do you know what line 7850 is? All right, well, now we're all going to know. So line 7850 is contingency and line 7850 in FY20 and FY19 was around $3,000 that was spent. Last year it was budgeted for $100,000 this year, this year, right now as we live and breathe 20 FY23, according to Catherine, 22,000 of that has been spent. So 100,000, 22,000. Now of course the word contingency means contingency. That means if we already know that it's going to happen, it's somewhere else. If we don't know what's going to happen, well we don't know what's going to happen. So we certainly have to plan for that. This year's line item contingency is 175,000, which begs the question, if it was 100,000 last year and we've gone through an entire year, we've gone through three years of incredibly difficult and challenging pandemic uncertainties, is it possible that the 175 could at least be level funded for this year? I haven't asked you that question, I apologize, I don't mean to put you on the spot and I'm not saying that 175 is realistic, but let's just try to see if maybe 175 could be 100. Well, you get a little bit closer and a little bit closer. There are, again, I can't really go into all the little nuances. I started calculating it myself and even based on one month, I think there are opportunities to at least go half of that of the 290, but that's me as someone who doesn't know all of the intricacies of every little line item, of every little department, of every big department, I can't pinpoint all of that. What I can say is that in the past, there have been times where we have done budgets, where we have either put placeholders in, knowing that over the course of a year, there will be other opportunities in an $80 million budget to find those little smaller amounts, or when there are things that we've really wanted to do, we have said we will revisit this in six months and we will find some of those efficiencies, vacancies, attrition, whatever they may be. So I guess what I'm saying is that I think that it is tremendously powerful and it sets a wonderful tone for the coming year. If we as a body are able to find a way to honor all of the priorities that are important for the administration and all the priorities that are important for those who must vote on the budget. And that's where I will leave it. I, you know, we don't usually legislate in this way. Probably if I had been here on the 12th of June, I probably would be saying this now, but I'm not saying this then and not now. As I say, I know there's only a couple of hours here, but I still feel that we should at least have that opportunity. And I would just ask you, if you think, if you think that there is that opportunity in a way that we could find a meeting of the minds. So that's, those are my comments. I won't be saying anything at the board at the council meeting, I'm saying no. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Great. Thank you, President Paul. I certainly understand. Sorry, I'm doing crazy. I'm just wondering if you want to respond to that. Why don't you go ahead and you can comment first and then I'll respond to this. Sure. I always appreciate that you're trying to find a way for us to come to a compromise and be able to vote yes. And sometimes we're just not going to get there. And I have a hard time seeing us getting there in the two hours we have and we're likely to vote on the budget finding a solution that we couldn't find in the last eight weeks of these conversations. And I would have a hard time trusting in the order we found to try to come up with that additional money without raising taxes. I would have a hard time making a decision without knowing the full impacts deciding where we're going to put them from. And so I appreciate that effort. I think at least from my perspective is the councillor planning to vote no tonight and that also having that conversation between now and 5.45 or 6.30 whenever we're discussing the budget of the full council and I feel comfortable making that decision changing my vote until now. So I was going to save my longer comments for the full council and I think I still will. So I guess I will just leave it there for now. Okay, councillor McKee and President Powell, thank you for those comments. I appreciate where you're both coming from with those comments. Something I will repeat when we're upstairs. I in many ways think this of the 12 budgets that we're responsible for was the most difficult. We have been grappling with some, just a host of difficult forces and issues, many of which are sort of beyond our direct control. We for a second year in a row are facing historic inflation. We have continued volatility and some, we've just been discussing some shortfalls related to disruptions of the pandemic. We made some big changes to our programs and our efforts to address equity issues in prior budgets and we took on the challenge of phasing that out over three years and we're in the third year of that phase out of the last year that there was some federal support for those, we have kept those equity commitments high and the federal support for them is going away as we knew it would. That had to be sort of digested in this budget. And we're also trying to be sensitive to our constituents who face rising costs in pretty much all aspects of their life and we don't want to undo, make city government an additional burden. So with all those constraints, this has been a very tough budget to complete. I think we can, I think there's a lot to present Paul your point. I think there is a lot to be proud of and excited about in this budget, despite all that, this continues to advance the city, advance the community in numerous important ways. It continues our efforts to rebuild and really retool the police department and prove and change the way we deliver public safety. It continues our major commitment to improving our infrastructure. It continues our commitment to those equity commitments. I was just talking about including fully funded and reorganized our IB department. It for the first time has nearly $200,000 in it for opioid related interventions to, it's the first time we're able to, here's where we're able to use new revenues that are coming to us from the opioid settlements and deliver progress in more. So to get to deliver all that while also overcoming these challenges, we have had to push very hard in areas and really push up to the edge of what I am comfortable budgeting for. We are one of the complicated projections we do every year is around attrition and around to your point, President Paul, what's gonna happen in the normal course of business that's going to end up saving us money because positions are not refilled as quickly because vacancies come up and we haven't really pushed those assumptions, for example, to double our attrition numbers in many departments from what we have in the past. That in the face of that and frankly, knowing how challenging has been to control personnel costs since the pandemic because of our challenges competing in the workforce because of inflationary pressures. And I think we did explain this somewhere that we did feel that it was proven to bump back up the contingency number from 100,000 to 175,000. In contrast, we have had some years that it's been as much as 500,000. It's been a while since we've done that, but it's not, it's really not a historically large contingency number. I think it represents on a $100 million budget it is quite a small contingency. So I appreciate the sentiment that it is. So a lot of the budgets of the last 12 years have been unanimous budgets and we have worked hard for that. And I did have some communications over the past week exploring whether there was a way to come to a meeting in line. We haven't gotten there yet. I'm hearing, and I respect your sense that it's been talked to bridge that gap now. So that's my kind of reaction to the last two comments I guess, and I guess I would hope that with Councilor Inge's point that maybe it would be possible. Are we in a position to make a recommendation on this budget of this budget point of support? Well, given we sort of know where everybody's at at this point, I would be happy to recommend the action is make it out so that we can recommend the budget resolution on this to me this morning. Thank you, Councilor Barron. Second. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Would anyone like to make any further comment? That's really, I'll just very briefly go forward. No, for the first time. You know, I recognize that we're in a challenging budget here and I recognize that future budget years should be even more challenging. We have local matches on a number of shorter projects that we still don't have a funding source for. We have vehicles that need replacing the deferred list that's going to grow even longer in the coming years with a perfect moratorium and that the cost of living increases that we negotiated part of the union contract will also add additional pressure to future budget years. And with all of those things, with those being the predictable things that we see coming at us in the future, I see a need to increase taxes potentially next year, year after that. This year, we were able to find a way to reach the deficit that you all brought us at the beginning of the budget conversation to have a budget that met the needs that we had without cutting staff or services. And I appreciate that very much. But for us to ask for an additional amount beyond what was planned for this year in terms of paving and patching, we all know the streets that are in dire need of not unaware of that. But to ask people for more this year, we'll know that we're gonna need years in the future. We're gonna maybe even have to ask for a larger tax increase. I just, I can't support that this year. And I think this is now is the most important time for us to be talking about more sustainable ways for us to fund city services going forward because it's clear that with the reappraisal, the property tax is not going to be a sustainable method for us to fund so many of the infrastructure improvements that we need to maintain in the Sanctuary City services that people have come to expect. We need to find a better way to do this. I hope that we can do that over the next year, over the next two years. But the legislature to do that, they have to go to Montpelier to get a approval on these things, changing the way the state is funded, education and services for decades is not gonna be an easy task, but I think it's imperative that we make those efforts. So with that, I will not be supporting this. Thank you for being so transparent, Councilor Geedy on your thinking. I do wanna make sure we have a number of counselors here, got the public watching. I wanna make sure that it's my understanding, I think you just started to get this, but you've lost your vote on this over the half a cent increase to the street stacks that is in the budget that is before you. This is true, it's not, it's accurate that when we began at the beginning of May, our draft budget that increase was not in the initial discussions. I think this is an example of how that process is not intended to be just a kind of pro forma process. The idea is to engage you in the board and publish and full counsel in our thinking when still in draft form, and in this case, after doing the street work that was going to get done in the coming year, and understanding that we are below the voter approved caps for the street tax by a couple of cents, I believe, we started discussing in really a response to counselor feedback, whether that there might be some, and really understanding that because of our constraints, the street patching budget was gonna be very limited this year. That's when this discussion of additional absent, which what is the, for the average taxpayer, the just, again, it's clear what we're talking about here. It is just over a dollar a month, hang on, it's in this other power point. Okay, if Catherine gets that figure, I'll just finish the point. So this. A dollar 54 a month. So that's, and it's not gonna be the same for everybody. That's on a $370,000 home because that's the median or the average home. Median. The median home for the most recent assessment. And what's, here's the difference that half a cent is gonna make is it's going to, the city engineer, nor Baldwin is here. He is projected with the initial budget. We were talking about there being a approximately $450,000 deficit in our patching need citywide for the upcoming year. And with this change, we'll still have a deficit. I've reduced that deficit by more than 50 years. So it'll be an under $200,000 deficit and that will allow us to get more patching done. Citywide, it will be on first arterials and then neighborhood streets is the kind of way that the patching is prioritized to basically get that rate. Artillery streets, collective streets. I missed one, that's right. So the biggest bank of the book is the arterial streets. Obviously there's a secondary review that relates to how bad of a condition the road is in terms of the volume of patches needed. So it's our best way of kind of spreading those funds to the specific targeted need so that we have serviceable roads come springtime through the winter. I think that's our biggest concern. Obviously our preferred choice would be to really fully repair and redevelop streets. But if we were to fix one street and then leave all those other streets kind of in a severe state of disrepair during the winter season, spring. So it makes sense to at least set a triage basis, deal with the patching, it fix these kind of problem areas. But even with the half cent, we're not achieving almost something all patching. But it is where we are. That's what we're gonna work through to make the best of what is not a great situation but is reality we're living with. And I guess just to finish the play, I mean, from my perspective, well, it is accurate that there is some additional cost in this budget if it's passed with that additional half cent in there. The nature of the patching, the patching slows the deterioration of roads and it is an attempt to, is a preventive maintenance attempt that has some benefit in sustaining the assets that we have and to reducing future costs. And so I think it's at least debatable whether this, a limited this half cent increase would actually reduce whether that's really a true savings or whether it's gonna sort of be resolved in future costs. Although we don't, we don't think it's something to totally project that sitting here right now. But that's what the patching is intended for. That's the way we will spend it. So, in fact, there's no further comment. I think we're ready for a vote on the motion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Any opposed? No. Motion carries three to one. Well, we didn't mind each other's one more on the agenda, which is the tax resolution. Of course that it was a little lucky that we had these separate actions of that. I don't quite know what would happen if we passed one or not the other. Certainly they are companion bills, if you will. So I'm not sure that we need further discussion. Maybe we can have a motion on that as well. Cheryl. Thank you, President Paul, thank you for the discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right, one more to post. No. No. No. No. No. No, you stand. Okay, well, former Board of Finance, another comes from Hightown, can you count that in here? I don't think it's a one, that's just a three to one, a three one vote, with budgets. That completes our Warren agenda. Mayor, is that the question? Yes, go ahead. It's more common question about where we're at. Over a year ago, Council would be, and I work with Council would be, put a resolution in, asking the city effectively an analysis of taxation, particularly property taxation and how, among other things, how the homestead of human sensitivity related the city of Royston. You realize that the time of that resolution is complicated to get the information because we're in the middle of the phase. And so who knows the mouse is complicated. We're now this year at a point, so that's sort of settled. We know that 70% of citizens get some sort of utilization, but we don't really have it drilled down. And I really think it would be a good plus to understand that. I mean, the cutoff is actually up to $140,000 a year. The more major cutoff is up to 90,000, people below 90,000, get a pretty significant homestead credit. And we need to understand how that matches up with the people of Royston. Because it's based on people's income, there's a lot of issues with the tax department on how to get that analyzed. And I think that resolution asks the city to employ a consultant to do it. But I just strongly encourage it, particularly going into the session next year and going into a city budget you will know we're gonna have increases coming from high school. We need to understand how that is, how good or not to have that credit is. And I think it's better than we expect, but we don't know that. We just don't know that. And I really encourage us to follow through on that analysis. Okay, thank you, Councilor Carpenter. And it actually reminds me what in my response to Councilor McGee, I meant to mention another thing that I think we should feel good about this budget is that it recognizes that we do have major challenges coming in future years, both because of the trends that we talked about previously and additional trends like the cost of the new high school and the impact that has on our bonding capacity and other pressures. And so in this budget, we are funding a number of studies that will that will look at operating efficiencies that will look at our fleet that will look at how alternative ways of funding some of the activities with CEDO and HUD funded effort and more, this combines with some ongoing studies that are underway. So something, anyone who's just tuning in now, something we've talked about repeatedly at this board is that over the first, we are gonna push for the bring those studies back as quickly as possible. So that over the first six months of the coming year, we are really looking to the future challenges and being in a strong position for those future budgets. And certainly we can make sure, Councilor Carpenter, that we have the best data we have about who gets those homestead exceptions as part of that. So I think the math of that program was like black box, but property value caps and income caps and those things that could be fixed. I mean, you know that. Great, and we do have this, one of those studies is referencing this in the field that I think is adjacent to what you're saying is this property tax equity study that is gonna have a lot of really interesting information along these lines as well. So thank you all for your patience with that sort of extra curricular discussion here. Now seeing no objection, the business being done, I will adjourn the board of finance at six, sorry, five, what time? It's five, 52. Thank you, we'll see you very up to it.