 Hello, hello. Call the order of the board of finance at 504 PM on December 18th. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. Excellent. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Actually, is there anyone who is seeking to address you or find this full version here. So we've gone online. Yes, we've gone online and I am allowing you to talk and just unmute yourself. Yes, it's Sharon busher I somehow or other my name isn't associated anymore with this I'm not quite sure but. Are you going by galaxy these days. Yes, I am. Yes. Thank you. I like that name. Yes. Anyways, Mr Mayor so I wanted to just let you know that two items on your consent agenda I actually reached out to director pine about they had to do with the two properties the food shelf and then there's another property. That had a, a loan that is retiring and I was concerned about those properties. The city not wanting to maintain them, but director pine was very helpful in letting me know about the covenants that are in place to ensure that whether they're used as their current activities or whether they get to be used in another way there are covenants that ensure that they're going to be used for the greater good of the public which I feel very good about and then I, I wasn't quite sure about when BC DC would vote on this and he told me that that action would be taken in January so my concerns are resolved but I always like to watch dog properties that the city owns and I always think twice before. Well I always weigh in as you know Mr Mayor but I always think twice about what I how I feel about the sale or the loss of those properties but this seems to be the right approach so thank you so much for allowing me to speak. Great. Thank you very much. Darren, not seeing any other online individuals looking to speak to the board of finance. I'm going to close the public forums and move to the consent agenda. Are we ready to make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions that it is? Thank you councillors. Thank you. Second by President Paul for the discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favour of adopting the consent agenda? Any opposed? We have adopted the consent agenda. Okay, this brings us to the new deliberative section of the agenda for approval and recognition of the city council with nine items we're hoping to get through with some time remaining for us to discuss the discussion. I feel awful about that. What do we need to add here? The upstairs at 6 and we have our budget presentation. Let's try and start that by about 535. All right, so that's the hope. Fellow board members, first item is a resolution for up to $345,000 step-to-loan, with the amount of drinking water, state revolving, for a final time, and for as far as improvements. Second, yes. Is there a reason why we can't discuss 0.1 and 0.2 at the same time? I have a second asset, too. And three. 0.1, we can try to go with all of the other separate items, but yes. Okay, that could make sense. At least 1.1 and 4.2. I mean, I will go quickly. So 4.1 is for the drinking water reservoir project. We were able to use ARPA funds to fund the first phase. We are now trying to move to final design. It's a very critical facility. It serves the water distribution system up to the elevated tanks, which is responsible for the water pressure on the hill and for the Vermont Medical Center. We need to move to final design so that we can get tight cost estimates to be able to bring to the voters for what this investment is going to cost in the future. Any questions on that? Okay, I can go to the next one. The other one is also for through to support the drinking water system. In part because of new regulations, but also because we need to update our existing system of maps. The water division had a cartographer or a mapper that was in place actual staff up through I think the 1980s 1990s and that was let go of it sometimes until we are in need of updating of the service line records. Fundamentally, this is to make sure that we do not have to be led through the signs of the city. We do not believe we do, but we need to make sure. And if we find anything will be replaced. So that is a separate loan for planning level dollars from the drinking water SRF. So those are both drinking water, the revolving fund would need to be repaid but are at 0% interest at this time. The last one is a wastewater one which I can certainly go over. Well, what do we do with the two water. Okay. Are we have questions. There's two items. And it's not maybe someone can make a motion that that's what we need. I'm happy to move both 4.1 and 0.2 and take the action. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Any further questions or discussion. Seeing them a little bit of other than a fair little place to add. Right. The opposed. She carries unanimously. And so yes, make it to the way number three. Hey, the last one is for our sewer pump stations. These are. These are the ones that are in the lower levels of the city. So South, South Cove, apple tree points. Any of the places where we can't get sewage to drain from people's homes by gravity to the wastewater treatment plant. So they drain by gravity to a smaller pump, which then pumps it up to a section of the gravity sewer. We have 25 of these and we've identified a number of them that are at high risk due to age and will approximate into the lake. So we have two of them, Flint and Fletcher, and we're picking off the ones that we can do in-house. But there are some remaining ones, three of which we'd like to advance for final design to get those better cost estimates so that they could be rolled into future asks for construction funding. So those are Preston Beach pump station, the Proctor Place pump station, and then there's a pump station that is on penny length, which serves a water plant as well as BEV building and anything that would have the network in, and then I guess Coast Guard station. So those are the ones that have been identified and we'll just need money to get it to final design. Okay. Those are for questions. For a motion. That's right. I'm happy to take the recommended action. Yeah, second back gets further and spend two loans and step one. Step one is they're usually reserved for planning or preliminary engineering, and those are at zero interest, zero percent interest. design phase, that next design phase to get you to bid documents, and then the step three. And the thing to remember with these loans is oftentimes the step one and step two, if they are headed towards construction, they don't go into repayment on their own. It waits until you go to construction, and then those previous costs get rolled into the construction cost, and that all moves forward with as a 2% added cost. To be helpful today, but the 30 million of the voters summarized, you know, they come in with complication in this room. Yes, so the reservoir project, the drinking water reservoir, and the lead service line that is not leveraging the 30 million, or even her previous water bond that is truly in an interim stage where when we go to build the reservoir project, we will have to include those costs in her ask to the voters. The pump station, the wastewater pump station one, we're a little bit on the fence. It may be able to use some of the money from the voters, or it may have to go on a future ask. Right now, we're in a stage where we're kind of reserving the remaining amount of our 30 million dollar bond or voter authorization to make sure we have money for the first phase of upgrades at the plants. Once we see what those costs are, we may be able to then take the remaining money and pick off one or two of these pump stations. But otherwise, those would go on a future ask. Basically, that's expected to come over, probably to be the best. We are actively preparing for what that looks like, yes. And are hoping for November 2024, so the time line just for quite a bit, just email. How much? Depends on what we bring forward, whether it will include the full weight of the wastewater plant upgrades, along with these pump stations. There will be an interest in both the water and the wastewater request. We're working with the two on some of those early conversations to kind of guide what those asks will be. Any further questions? I have a motion to send it to the floor, so if there's no further questions, we will go to a vote. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Honestly, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And great, that brings us to the airport item. The airport has been purchased for this for the $100,000 system. For all crowds to master. My 10D brother. Yeah. Take your way, Nick. Welcome, it's been a while, thanks for the while. It's been a little while. Pretty well, I should say a relatively simple request. We have an almost 17-year-old lawnmower, it's not your typical lawnmower. This goes out on our airfield that does hundreds of acres. We're required to keep that to a certain length, and this is a 16-foot wide, very large mower that is pretty much used every single day to keep those minimums. Today's request is to replace our 17-year-old lawnmower with a new one, better emissions, better engines, newer equipment, and then kind of your employees. Questions? Great, a motion. I will move to take the item, that's where I'm going to take the app, to take the app, and just pick it up, so I can put it on the lawnmower. Okay, we have a separate meeting by Councillor Jenning, discussion. I was just wondering what you're doing with the old one. Right now we're probably going to keep it in our inventory just to make sure there is a long lead time. Almost a year at the time of this month, so we're not going to make it this season with this lawnmower. We're going to keep it in our inventory just in case, and then we'll probably sell it. So in other words, you're saying you won't have this for the summer? We will not. This will be the summer? That will start using it, yeah, because we'll probably get delivery in November, December, next year. Wow, okay, thanks. That's a quick turn around, so I'm going to take a quick look. You can go up there, yes. Second, yes. First, so we've just got to move it out. All those in favour of motion, please say aye. Aye aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Second airport item, which is a request to execute a 2023 of a water fund and a sport grant agreement. I don't think there's. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. First purchase period board. This is exciting. Three electric vehicles. Just like the neutral amendment. You can forward. 150 light. Yeah, so very exciting. I have Dave Carmen, deputy director on the line as well as Marion Larry. This is the first time that we're purchasing electric vehicles for the airport. Three of them to lightings and Maki. All four. These are replacing older, very older units, fuel powered units. This is also going to be one of the first operational electric vehicles on an airport in New England. One of these vehicles will be one of the vehicles that are going to be used by Dave's department, which is our operations team, inspecting our runways on a daily basis using no fuel, which is, which is absolutely amazing. I'm also, we also have some internal policies that any off airport. Runs or missions to go on that they'll all be with electric power vehicles. So we will be using any gas power vehicles to to leave. We do budget annually for these types of sustainability missions. This is of course a capital program. So we also need a small budget amendment to make sure that these three are operational. We were looking at a 12 months lead time for them, but however, this bitter. And I forgot the name of the bitter, but Mojavelli for the Mojavelli has them on the site in stock and they're literally ready to be delivered tomorrow. I don't know what to do with it. That's an idea of city council. Thank you so I'm happy to have you make the motion. It's recommended on civic. I can't break that. I do have one, I do have one question. For a second. Okay. Thanks. So, when you put out an RFP. You've got three responses. There are, there are more than three dealers that sell these cars. So did they just, they just didn't respond. They didn't respond. We also proactively try to reach out to as many dealers as possible. A big part of it, just like the disqualifying bag was the time for delivery. We had a less than 12 months period of time to deliver these. Obviously sooner, the sooner, the better. We also try to use state bid funding for these as well, which would imagine much better pricing, but nobody's accepting state bids right now because the retail prices, the demand for retail is much better. Well, I mean, just given the fact that there's that. To just have to wonder. I don't know, but that would be the only thing that I would want to respond at all well down to what they're really going to. That's right. So. And I mean, the good part is this is going to be one of many work to come as we transition our whole fleet to electric here as much as we can. Any further discussion questions. Yeah, yeah. So it seems now the airport logo has changed the colors. Little bit. Little bit. Yeah. And would you be customizing the new vehicles? We are. Yep. So if you'll start seeing that and the current fleet, we've already transitioned probably war vehicles or so. These three are already designed our new logos. The mocking is mostly going to be used on the public side of the fence. So it's going to have a little bit more of an extravagant design on the side of the vehicle. But yes, these will have it. Okay. So all those in favor, I'm trying to please say aye. Aye. Because she carries unanimously. Now to jump in before item number six, which is the request to execute a cold country. I'm going to hand it over to Larry and thank you for lending engineering system. The nice story about this is we all hired a summer intern and we did for three or four challenges and what she started this summer. Getting all those tasks and also not as a half a million dollars on top of that or the states are consultants and a little guidance from us. So she she got this stuff. So we really were hoping she got you back. Anyway, so this is our pot was federal and state funds, which we also have the magic point to prove our system. We have over 600 structures on the airport. Any of them to our annual inspections need works. That'll be part of it. Another part of it is we're looking to move to a recycling or quite a lot of the just being disposed of. So this will take us the first step to study that to evaluate where we can do it what we can do and minimize the footprint of the area to minimize the intake of water and then making the stronger quite out to recycle. So those are the big things. And just for reference client calls would spread out to the aircraft. Probably. Right. Motion. You're seconded by Councilor McKee for discussions. Go to both. All in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries now. So I thank you, Larry. Thank you all. Have a good evening. I'll be back. We'll be there in a minute. We'll be there in a minute as well. Great. Thanks a lot, to me. Sure. So you all may or may not recall as part of the FY24 budget we had brought forward a number of positions that were based on the recommendation of our consultant, Raph Telus, for some gaps that needed to be filled within our organization. These are two of them. There are still two more remaining. The one is a new position for us, the water resources utility inspector slash coordinator. This is sort of the best corollary is the excavation inspector that works within the other parts of DPW. This position really has two main things, which is when people are building things in around next to our infrastructure, that person making sure that they know what the infrastructure is and that it's being protected appropriately. Time and time again, we go to fix the water main break and there's a gas line on top of it or a electric conduit or something that makes our job which is already hard much harder. And we think these things could be avoided in the future. The other piece is really that mapping piece. We lost that function within our organization a long time ago and trying to bring back a person who together with the GIS specialist can, when things don't match with the maps in the field, somebody who runs that to ground figures it out and then updates the darn maps once and for all. A great example today was a project that hit board through the top of our ravine sewer. Unfortunately, it's not as bad as I was initially envisioning, but it would have been great that a position like this would have known that those borings were going in around various kinds of infrastructure and could have been there to protect and make sure we had run everything to ground as far as every possible mapping. So the project had tried to do its due diligence, but the stuff is 26 feet down, you don't always know where it is and we just need to be as careful as possible. So that's the main function of that role. One other piece, and this kind of pertains to both of them, with the desire in the state, within the city for additional housing and growth, there are going to be a lot of pressure put on organizations like ours to keep up with and to review and to make sure that people are connecting to our system in a way that has been reviewed fully and completely and technically and both of these roles will help, hopefully add some capacity to our organization to be able to do that. And it is still my dream that we would be able to assess parts of state statute which allow for delegated authority. So instead of developers or property owners having to go to the state, as well as to us for review, just come to us, pay us the fees. Let us do the very comprehensive review that we're already doing in some cases. Still a little ways off, but trying to build a different mousetrap so that we could be prepared to do that, but we do need people in-house. So that was the utility inspector and then the other one is the stormwater field specialist. So right now we have one stormwater program manager, James Sherard. We have a very large stormwater system trying to keep up with all of it. Trying to keep up with all of the requests from the public is very hard job and we're trying to add capacity to that program, both for project review, for compliance inspections and we're going to ask people to build things. We need to have somebody who's following up and making sure that those things are being built appropriately. And so this is another position that we're bringing forward to kind of fill some gaps in our regulatory programs. Both of these positions were included as part of the FY24 budget, so this is not additional money that you have not already approved. So I have questions, discussion. I'm happy to make the motion to recognize that this is excellent. Second, second by Councillor Barlow. Discussion? That's okay. I will have some concerns. This was not a counterpriced fund, but I didn't put that question out this way. So it's time to get out. Useful piece of position and lots of issues. So I think that's what I'm supposed to do. Thank you. Perfect discussion. Seeing none, a little bit of a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Princess item number eight. Thank you, HR. Thank you. Classification of one foot treasure. Yes, this one is mine. I'm going to tell the councillor, Jane mentioned, as I have mentioned before, and we'll get in a minute talking about FY25. We are doing everything we can in the general fund to reduce the number of re-classifications, as well as new positions that we're bringing to this board because of budgetary pressures. I am bringing this re-classification because of kind of an internal equity issue. Everyone here knows that we have gone through some times of transition in this clerk-treasurer's office. As a result of that, we've been in flux with some of our positions, and we had two senior accountant positions, both reporting to our controller. And one was focused on grants and one was focused on capital. We also had another position that had very similar duties that was reporting up to our assistant director of finance. And that employee asked HR to look at their job description because in fact, they're doing the exact same work as the senior accountant, but they had a different grade. And so when HR looked at the job descriptions, they realized that all three senior accountants should be at the same grade, and we had two at one grade and a third at a lower grade. And so this keeps the two senior accountants at a grade 18 and brings the third up to that same grade. And I am happy to answer any questions. Questions, discussion? Let's have a motion on the board. I'll make the motion as relevant as possible. Thank you. Second by Councilor McGee. Seeing no more questions, we'll close my step. What discussion? Yeah. Will this be a do-it-yourself debate? No. I think it's going to make sense. Well, thank you. We'll move on. You all have. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries the notice, like, excellent. Final, final deliberative. Violated for abstinence and approvals of re-classification to BCA positions. Welcome, Doreen. Thank you. Thank you. I got a question about the press. Sure. So we have spent probably the last year thinking about doing a complete re-work within the department, quoting us about the pressures that our team faces where there's tremendous compression. And we need to, as an organization, we have grown significantly over the years. And we were going to wait until a year later. And when I began dealing with the HR department, as well as clerk treasures, we realized that these positions really were inequitable across the city, as people would be asked to do a re-work that's significant when you do pay. And of course, increasing and re-classification when you increase anything in our budget, 90% of the time means that we have to raise more money. We're very cautious about that in this environment. And so we're slow to act, and yet it's an equity issue. So I think the description here, I don't want to repeat it for you when you have questions about these two positions. I think you know both of the positions quite well and their responsibilities and significant increase in work over the years through COVID. And we're going to take our time, but we will do that full re-work over the next year and probably put together a schedule because we won't be able to create, we won't be able to resolve all of the inequity in one meter. We understand that. Yeah. Thank you. The floor is open for discussion questions. I'm happy to make the motion. I would just simply add that it's necessary to, I try to play, so it's $94 to that goes back to the, yeah. I think, you know, sometimes it's important to understand the school work and the position and their title, that's similar. Yeah. And I think also the rhetoric you have to make is we should, and from my perspective, we should freeze starting today. And these items, now so would request. So for example, as we move forward, the department is tied to a specific city council committee. So that we, we have that as well. Check this. This is the point. I think that would be a pretty big change. That's a general to our. This is for financial. Our system. As far as I could evolve. That's been, you know, this would be something that would be dealt with. Or it's not by. That is very, a lot of pressure on our departments. Our administrators to. Manage. You know, we can have a separate discussion about the, that'd be pretty big process change. So I guess I just, I don't think we'd have to talk this through and have. Would be one idea. The left. Maybe that's it. Some sort of. So I just don't want to make you think it. I ignore that. I just think it's a major change with that. Ever to get to a group of their. Any further discussion of the business before us. I'll just, I'll just comment on. This, I know this is, this is a. Something we do sort of normal. I can have that. And so I'll be supporting us tonight, but I also sort of. Have some issues with the retroactive. Hey, we don't see, not only in these two reclassifications, but we've seen them and others that have come before us. And given where we are. Financially, and we're going to hear about momentarily. I think this is something that going forward. We really should. You should start being. Like doing less of the retroactive. Okay. So I'll just, I'll just say that. So I have that discomfort as well, but I'm going to be supporting this. That's right. I'll leave a bear motion. They say. All right. Thank you. So that includes. Section four of the attend us cells. This now brings us to. Section five and now we did almost meter go away at 20 minutes. Or. There's Catherine's in the south here. Bring things up. I know the board is well engaged in this issue. That's a whole lot of framing, but I think quite a bit. You have to buy 24 budget. The budget that we're in was exceedingly the challenging budget to get it free. And even as we concluded, we knew that by 25 budget would be even more difficult. We committed, we were aware of that and made commitments during the last budget process to do proactive work at a level that I think it's anything that I could evolve over the past to try to develop all concepts to be good before directing that challenge. In addition to tax increases, we have felt that we've been pretty clear we have not had a general fund tax increase since a full-improvement increase since FY 20. Our costs go up every year. Not many times in the past, inflation is very challenging for the city budget to address without some kind of rate increase, very high inflation, since that last FY 20 increase. So I think it's unrealistic to think we can get through this inflationary period without some kind of property tax adjustment, but we want to minimize that as much as possible. So we're going to see in the presentation tonight, it is really follow-up on the course of different fronts that we committed to looking into and an assessment of the projection of sort of where we are and where it's not done, our decision to make some estimates about where we are or what we're going to develop, and what that means for the implications of that are going to be a year of possible tax increase decisions for approaching that time of year. It gets coming upon us quickly when we have to make a decision whether or not to have a tax increase on the time of meeting day ballot. Really have to the end of January to make that decision. So this important update tonight will be followed up with, when we come back from holiday break, this will be a focus for further discussions on the agenda. Anything else you want to make that people are in the neighborhood? Take a second. Okay. Great. I'll just open by saying this presentation was originally twice as long because it had a part two, and that was an update on all of the non-property tax related initiatives that we started working on. That is now item 3.3, and it's just a separate presentation that's under the consent agenda, because we don't have time to go through it tonight. So I encourage you to take a look at that as well, and feel free to reach out to me with any questions. Tonight on the budget, just a little bit of context. Since the last time we talked about this was in September. As the mayor mentioned, we had a budget of about $1,000,000. This current year's budget used $4.5 million for one-time money. And we know that we do not want to replace all of that with property tax revenue, because that would increase taxes by more than 8 cents, or over 10%. We also, in September, had estimated our budget pool at about $7 million or $101 million general fund budget. That was a bit of a ballpark. A little bit more detail on the use of that one-time money. You can see how we used it in those bullets. And the bottom line is 4 million of that 4.5 million of one-time revenue does need to be replaced to ensure that the city can continue to provide essential services. 500,000 of it was for COVID-related services, and we won't need to replace it at this time. In addition to the $4 million, we do have increased personnel costs for this coming year. You can see in the red arrow, the current estimate is $3.4 million for those. That estimate is based on this year's current staffing level. You can see it includes a pretty high level of attrition that every general fund department was handed by me to ensure that the budget balanced. It does include all of the COLA's that we have negotiated. And our best guess on projected increase for benefits. The two benefits that cost us the most as a city are retirement and health insurance. And of course, we're only about halfway through this fiscal year. So I know that we expect to have updated information in April, but we're using the best information we have at this point. So in addition to those two items, I have one more slide worth of additional costs. And I forgot to add the word public, but these are additional FY 25 public safety requests. They total $1.6 million. And you can see there's a request for both fire and police. And they are a mix of staffing and operational support. It includes for the fire reducing attrition to realistic levels and for the police increasing staffing according to our rebuilding plan and restoring overtime. All of those get us to this chart, which is our current poll, the 4 million of one-time money, the tentative increase in general fund salaries and benefits, the public safety costs. And please note this note at the bottom, that we do expect these numbers to change. We have not done all of our consultation with department pens. But again, we feel like it's important to have this discussion with you and to give you all of the information as we have it and to just be clear about what we know and what we don't know. So facing a $9 million poll, what are our plans to fill that hole? This is probably our most important slide. As you can see in rows A and B, A is an increase in property tax revenue. And it says via the grand list growth. This means this is what I like to call kind of organic growth. This is growth that happens regardless of what we do with the tax rate. And it's an increase in tax revenue that we see because of all the new development happening around town. And row B is an increase in gross receipts, local option tax and franchise fees. And I have estimated this based on the past 10 to 15 years of historical performance. And so that gets us to about $900,000 of our whole. Row C is, you may recall one of the revenue sources important revenue sources for the general fund is about $13 million of what we call a user fees. And those are fees that people pay to use certain services, like to use the marina, the campground to take a class at BCAA or through the parks department. And so we have just received proposals from several different firms to conduct the user fee analysis for us to make sure that we are charging enough to cover our costs. And so we anticipate that we will be able to raise about $1.3 million at the end of that study. Row D is another initiative that we're working on. And that is the operational efficiency analysis. And this body approved a contract with a consultant at its level meeting. And we are starting to work with the consultant and are expecting to decrease our general fund expenses by at least 2% saving at least $2 million. Those C and D are really important because that is how the city itself is going to kind of contribute in terms of filling this hole. As you can see, there's a lot of different ways we're going to need to kind of all chip in to reach this $9 million. And we understand it's critical that doesn't all happen on the facts of taxpayers. So that said, row E, we are proposing an increase of five cents to the public safety tax. And I'll come back to that. That would raise $2.8 million. Row F, we are considering some other kinds of increases to taxes that could raise up to $1 million. And then there's row G, the still to find million dollars. Following up on the public safety tax and how we arrived at our recommendation of five cents. The FY 24 public safety budget, which I am defining as the police budget plus the fire budget is about $34 million, $19 million from police and $15 million from fire. The public safety tax only raises $4.4 million. Our general city tax, which should cover a multitude, that should pay for many different items, brings in about $11 million. But let's pretend that that if we could put all of that to the public safety, then combining the public safety tax and the general city tax, you're still with those two sources only able to fund 45% of our public safety budget. So there's 55% that's coming from non property tax revenue sources. And that is the pressure that we're feeling and why we've had to use one time sources for public safety. And I'm sure we have a lot to discuss and we have eight minutes to do it. So I am happy to take your questions. Engaging discussion. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for all the other lies. So yes. Let's. Four is open for questions, comments at this point. It's not a conversation for anything tonight as again, but it is. We're approaching key milestones in January. So. So. Yes, no. Yeah, I think it was the one means for the five. What happened to being able to find that. Directives to departments to find. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So, I mean, is. I forget. It's just your how many years have been on my board finance. My third budget. So, I mean, as you know, there's a fair amount of variability. And municipal budgets up until. Until June and. Especially I would say in the pandemic post pandemic years, there's been a fair amount of thought. A variety of ways. And so. It certainly not be unusual at this point in the budget process to still be. Sorting refining, starting to. Reduction, sorting through details. About. You know, things can break against us from here to the end, but things often do can often do great for us. And this is so we don't know exactly where that has come from. Certainly there has. The department heads are well aware of the challenge we face. In the last year's process in this year's process, we get frequent updates to the department team, which means twice a month. That happens given a couple of recent budget updates. And so are very much aware that. You know, it's going to be. Well, first of all, they need to engage this operational analysis. Counting on them to be fully engaged in that process and supportive collaborative. Also. That. You know, we're not an environment where. You. General fund positions can really be entertained short of some really pressing urgent urgent issue. Also that after, you know, this period where I think we needed to be leaning into reclassifications given the inflationary environment. Or challenges that we're facing. Since pandemic that period is, it's. Over segregated, you know, as you guys said. So I think we need to, you know, I think we need to, you know, kind of wait in tonight and certainly ways that we are secure to avoid that as much as possible. What else? Do you want to add anything? In terms of permanent direction. No, I think you bring up a key point. House or Barlow and I think in some years, we have given multiple direction to department heads, like give us a little funded budget plus a cut budget. So we can have some different options to play that. That's right. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It was to us early, so that. Self from the public. What's. What's possible or kind of. Say a worst case scenario, but. Give people high. And significant changes to the budget. And does this assumes that. Outside public safety departments that follow the department. Yes. I was glad to see me. All services listed under. The expenses for fire department. The fire department. So it's essential that we're providing. Mental health services that are tailored to her responders. Both fire and police. And so it's my second part of that question. Part of the mental health services, something that already exists for. The police department. And that's not a question that can be. The police have had mental health services. And so it's a. Yeah. And years. Years. So it started. That was why. That's good. I'll start with a comment by saying that. Thank you. Personally, you make this world a special. I appreciate that. And to terms of coming. I don't know. People are aware of what we discussed. Yes. I think that. Nine million dollars. But you are all. It's so significant. And I just don't want us to minimize it. Because this is scary. Check. Yes. Normally we should have. Because I call. Increase of. You know. For employees all of it. I understand. But I don't understand. Whether or not. tied to the bargaining behind it, or the elements of it are only the tiles. So I have included everything that was bargained in there and the kind of extra requests are 1.6 million. The 1.6 million in some cases goes beyond because they're not always things that were bargained, things like how much we spend on equipment or how much the supplies for the fire marshal debt, is it necessarily covered by contract? So I think in many cases I would say it is necessary for public safety, but beyond the scope of the contract. So basically we could reject that. I can just say because it seems to point flag request to the taxpayers or funds. Yes. Yeah, I have addition to that for my question. But I don't know also, since it's on the CDL, what about the motion to please hire him from now on? I don't have the exact answer to that because we're doing, but I'm happy to look into it. Back to you. We have been, I guess we haven't quite said it tonight, but it should have been in the answer of like what kind of direction we've given. It's kind of almost said it before, but there we've been operating really for several months now and there's sort of a soft hiring rates already and that's been getting into departments. So a draconian one, not an absolutely firm one, but certainly disinterpreting all over the country. I certainly, I don't agree with you, Councilor Jen, we should not anyway minimize the challenge of getting through solving a $9 million problem. I do think it's important to keep it in perspective. It's a 10%. You've been kind of fully defined that way is less than 10% of the overall budget challenge. I would say every year probably going to part of the process looking at something approaching half of that. This is bigger than that. It is going to require some pain, but I think I don't minimize it. It's not going to be easy and I don't think it is crisis. I think this is something that can work our way through. And it is certainly available to us. There are some choices available to us and we just are going to need to. Hopefully starting this discussion now allows us to, as a board, which the Council is looking to for leadership on these issues, hopefully come to some consensus over the next six weeks or so and be able to communicate that consensus to our colleagues on the phone council and hopefully that's our need. Also want to note several of us won't be here by the time this budget is actually voted on. So to the extent that we are here in your council and make it take on each channel. Yes, absolutely. That is an added complication to this year, which I think we're doing the right thing. I tried to tee this up as much as possible for our successors, of course, to just enable, that's my intent, but this at least, but it does add an artificial dynamic. To be complicated, I recall a similar situation that 12 years ago is that, you know, to be politically complicated. So I think our best way through this is good communication and hopefully this is a start-up and I teach it. Thank you to Catherine for the advance work. Thank you to our finance members for putting in time outside of this session to start to understand us. Stay in touch over the next couple months. With that, I think we're doing upstairs. So if there's no little connection, I'm going to adjourn the board invited us at 6.04 p.m. Thank you.