 Remotely, we have Jim Boran, Marcus Savaglio, and Trey Mitchell. Here in person, we have Todd Wolfe and me, Mary Lynn Donahue, the chair of the committee. So we do have a quorum. And with that, I'm going to ask for a motion to approve the minutes of our May 4th meeting. So move to move to. Is there a second? I think I heard a second. All right, very good. And if you're speaking, most of us know everybody else's voices, but you may just want to identify yourself as you start to speak. So we have a motion to approve the minutes. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Any nays? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. All right. We are going to head into item 3.1, a report of the committee, the finance director submitting the operational and organizational assessment report dated February 7th, 2020, with regard to the city of Sheboygan Finance and Human Resources Department, which was prepared by Clifton Larson Allen, which recommends referring to the, which did recommend to refer to the Finance and Personnel Committee of the 2021 Council. Now we have in person Vicki Schneider, head of Human Resources. We have Marty Halverson over there, director of our finance department. And we have members from CLA, if you folks, I don't know how you want to do it. We can just make those mics both of them live or however you, however you are comfortable. All right. Now we have to wait until I get this done. We don't have a red light on, do we? I just, oh, I pressed that one, okay. Very good. There we go. It's up there. We're trying to get the presentation. Oh, okay. Totally up to you. All right. Very good. Good. Sir, if you want to introduce yourself and get us started. Well, thank you for your time today. My name is Bill Judd. I lead the consulting division for CLA, for the State of Wisconsin. And I have with me Joan Scholes, who is the engagement director for this engagement. So I'd like to kind of kick it off and just first and foremost thank the city and Darryl and Marty for the opportunity to perform this assessment. We think that these assessments, which we do very often in government sector, are really great roadmaps to further improve processes and procedures and operations and organizational structures of entities like the city of Sheboygan. So we definitely appreciate the opportunity to do that. Without further ado, I'll turn it over to Joan. And she's going to go through the short slide deck that we have here. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon. I'm Joan Scholes, and I want to thank the council and thank Darryl and Marty for the time that you gave us and working with the people within your department. So Vicki, welcome. You weren't here when we were here, but I'm glad to see that you're in a member of the human resource department. If you want to go to the first page, what I'll be going over a little bit today is the overview of the assessment of what we did for the finance and HR department, the timeline, the objectives that were asked of us, our findings, our recommendations, and then closing out of the project for you. Next slide. When we do an overview of assessments, we did both, we're asked for both to do an operational and an organizational review for the two departments here, the finance and the human resources departments. And we review and assess the structure and the operational practices of the two departments, the efficiency of how they are operating. Everybody especially now wants to be operating efficiently, but how are things flowing now and how should they be flowing and what can we do to make it better? Process workflow and the flow of the information both within the departments and out to other areas of the city. And then how is that documented? You have the policies and procedures documented that are needed to have a good flowing system. We evaluate and identify the risks and controls. We do this via looking at various documentation and by interviews to key stakeholders of which we interviewed 16 different people from the finance, the department, the human resource department and other members of the city team here in the building. And then we, from doing that, we analyze all that and develop our recommendations. Next slide. We began in September, we conducted the interviews. We analyzed the data in the November timeframe drafted the report in December and delivered it in January. We were to present at the February meeting with the final draft, but because of staff, people in attendance that got changed, we're going to come to the next one and then the COVID-19 struck. And so we are here tonight in May to give the final presentation to the Common Council. Our objectives again, we're to review the organizational structure. Does it fit the needs of the city and are we operating efficiently for the city by a review of those practices? We assess the policies and procedures, identify the risks and develop our recommendations. Next slide. And our findings can kind of be broken down into two general categories. The overall key needs of the two departments that we looked at and then where various efficiencies can be implemented and gained by implementing some of the things that are best practices or standard practices for the city. Next. So the main key needs for the departments are most everybody we talk to in the departments commented on training or the need of training or the lack of a lot of training. They weren't always comfortable with the systems that are here to be used. So training on the different systems that are available, even down to the standard Microsoft Office suite of products. And some of that we gave within our recommendations areas that can ways that you can get additional training. After the individuals are trained, then we talk about cross-training of the employees to cover specifically to cover the various needs of the critical needs of the employees within the area in case somebody were to be out for an extended period of time unexpectedly that the daily critical operational needs could be continued. One of the other things we noted was that the policies and procedures while there are some in place, there weren't too many in place and some of the ones that were in place had recently been put in place by the new people that had been hired while they were going through and starting to learn what was going on. So to update the policies and procedures was critical for both areas. I think maybe a little more so on the finance side, but critical for both areas. Establishing segregation of duties is something that is not uncommon to see, especially in departments the size of the finance department here or the human resource department. We do see that a lot. You just don't have a lot of people to segregate all the things that need to be done within an organization to the way that would be ideal. There are ways you can go through and establish certain segregation of duties of critical functions and have different people do different pieces of it at least to help to mitigate issues of the main thing of being fraudulent activity going on. The increased use of some of the current technology out there, there's an immune system, there's parts of that that haven't been fully used or implemented. And again, some of the Microsoft Office suite stuff that could be used more so and then along with that, from a fraud prevention standpoint, banks now have a lot of different items that they provide as part of their services to help prevent all the, not all, a lot of the electronic fraud that can go on in today's culture. So more use of that could help prevent, you can't always prevent it, but could help prevent some fraud from happening. Not saying we saw any, but those are just standard things that can help. And establishing a month-end closing and financial statement process. Every year your audit is done, but when we asked about monthly closing procedures, there wasn't really a standard month-end package that was put in place so that the department heads, the finance department, Daryl is the city administrator, so they knew exactly where they were for that month. And then how are they to budget? That hasn't been being done. So we highly suggest the establishment of a ongoing process. And then in the end, it'll also make your year-end, hopefully, no surprise that year-end and hopefully make your year-end go a little smoother. So those were the needs, where the efficiencies can be implemented. One of the biggest things that we saw and we heard right away was that you're still, while you have the MUNA system in place, and it's been in place for 10 years, their AS-400 system is still being used for some things. Very inefficient, MUNA should be able to cover that. And from a standpoint of pretty soon, there's not going to be very many AS-400 programmers that are available to help you if something does go down in that. So you want it critical to look at sunsetting that and getting your MUNA system up and running to meet the needs of the city since it is purchased and is there, it should be more fully utilized. Also, you can utilize some of the stuff within MUNA for the internal controls. The analysis and the approvals that have to be done and sent through from AP standpoint, the workflows, some of those things have internal controls and some segregation of duties built within them. So if you're using them, it helps kill two birds with one stone and by fully, more fully using your MUNA system. There were various times when we heard from an accounts payable standpoint that there are vendors and various efficiencies and expense reductions that can just be easily gained through some of the products that your vendors offer for a different program. So we'd highly suggest looking at that. I know you're already using a sharing, a purchasing person with county. So you're able to get some of that and just would suggest using where you can to continue to expand the use of the programs that are available through your vendors. And along with the vendors is to work with them to make your lives easier. Some of the things, there's a lot of manual processes that you get from your vendors. They've already, the finance department I heard, has already been able to get some very manual things streamlined. And you were at one point getting over 250 individual invoices from the utility, electric utility company, right? That's been consolidated down to a handful from the 257. So while they were working on that for a while, it wasn't just here, it was there. And so now we've worked together to get a process that has made that a lot less cumbersome than it was. But to continue to work on getting as automated your manual processes as possible. Next slide. From once your processes are in place, the improve your financial awareness by, again, the monthly statements for your budget managers that will really help them budget and be able to be more efficient and more effective with their money and their budgets if they're able to track what's going on in their specific budget and compared to their actuals on an ongoing monthly basis. We were also notified and heard that for efficiency purposes that not all of the taxes aren't. We aren't really doing anything where people don't necessarily pay their taxes or pay bills that are owed to us. So perhaps look at some either more internal collection calls to people or depending on the age and the type of collection to look into a third party processor to help bring in some delinquent payments that are due to the city. Or look at what you can also do from the within statutes to put on the county tax bills and or have withheld on a state level according to statutes. From a more of an HR standpoint, we did hear that we need to have some more timely approvals of certain things, one being to be on a really strict schedule for approval of payroll to get it in and process. Payroll is one thing where it's a domino effect. If one person is late on approving, it holds up the entire payroll, which makes everything just domino effect to be late, which causes a lot of stress. And can cause, not saying there's errors, but can cause errors or can cause the stress that there could be an error or maybe not looking at things quite as efficiently as they should have or carefully because they were stressed for time to get the payroll completed. That also affects a little bit on, we heard that from a budgeting standpoint, too, where the budget managers might not be turning in things by approval date. So if we can stress a little bit more the getting stuff in on approval dates, it'll just help everything run more smooth. And to properly review the changes to employee benefits, we had some comments made that employees submit comments about the benefits or when changes are made, are they already being offered? So just to fully vet out what you're going to do each year for the benefits and make sure that, especially on the union benefits, they're started early enough in the process to make sure everything's completed within the union contracts and timelines. And to get the, so that you aren't double paying for benefits that might be offered, make sure you're vetting out and asking that your current benefit providers what all they're providing. Excellent. So our recommendations, we did go through and get some specific finance and human resource department recommendations to the individual departments. And just for workflow reasons and structure within those specific departments. And from an operational standpoint, we took what happens and we kind of summarized it into five main categories. Those being information technology, accounts payable, cash in the bank accounts, the general accounting and tax billings, and employee employment. The information technology in the systems deals specifically with, as I talked before, Munis and the AS 400 and making sure the employees are comfortable with the training and comfortable on how to use the systems that they have, accounts payable. There has been some decentralization that has occurred, which is okay. And but to make sure you're looking at that, make sure you're looking at all the vendor stuff that properly vendors are being approved, proper approval of vendors when they're going in so that you don't have fraudulent vendors. And again, using the system and the Munis system for the workflows that can be established to both forward through the invoices when they come through, but to forward through making sure vendors get properly approved and to have the controls in place for the accounts payable processes. Cash in bank accounts, when we got here, we noticed that we were told that the reconciliations, and that kind of goes for both cash bank accounts and general accounting, the reconciliations were a little behind. So it is critical on an ongoing basis to try to keep up with your reconciliations. It's just a lot easier to find something and if you keep them as up to date as possible. The bank accounts also from the banking standpoint, they have again a lot of things that the bank supply now as a standard that to kind of make sure that you're using it can help again, some of those being positive pay, direct deposit to both employees and or vendors for ease of payment cuts out a lot of the processes of manual, the checks within the system, it still has to go through the process to be properly approved, but cuts out the expense of sending checks and processing checks. And also they have the positive pay to make sure that fraudulent checks aren't getting hit against your account and getting paid without your knowledge. And from an employee employment standpoint, we have recommendations such as the training for employees across training, proper succession planning for when retirement of employees, you have some employees that are very close to retirement and how are they going to be backfilled and onboarding and offboarding within the HR area for new employees, making sure that everybody knows that the budget managers and department managers that approve them know when somebody leaves and who they have to notify so that it flows through the whole payroll process and they get stopped appropriately for both their pay and their benefits. Has that has had some delayed notices sometimes which then again creates problems throughout the that process. And the just to the additional continue with the processes and the policies and procedures with both the finance and the human resource department. So the finance department overall, I mean, they've seen a lot of changes in the past few years when you have a 30 plus year employee leave who did a lot of the stuff. It's hard for the new guy coming in and taking over, but he's overcome some obstacles from the segregation of duties on lack of policies and procedures, training. Those are obstacles there, but they're things that he's already working through and they've been progressing forward with on ways to change it and starting to get more policies and procedures documented in in place and getting some training to the people that that need it. From the human resource department, their daily processes seem to flow fairly well as long as data was gotten to them on time and people weren't late. There's was more working consistently, working collaboratively within their own team and with the outside teams on getting the information, making sure that they were communicating properly to get the information timely. So overall, the findings that we had while there were findings, there weren't critical findings that would not be able to be overcome. They can, the findings that we had are all things that can be looked at and addressed and corrected through a systematic ongoing approach and dedication and the desire to improve and the whole fact that you had us in, you notice there were things and you wanted improvement, shows that there's a desire to improve. Prior even to the February when we had the final meeting in February with Daryl and Marty, I know two or three of the items that we brought up, they'd already been taken care of and tackled. So that's great. They're already moving forward on that. So again, it's things that can be addressed. It's for the good of the department and the city going forward and we hope that our report serves as a good road map to take those items and within the two departments to look at the items that are there, prioritize to what they, what we feel are critical and we can talk with them on critical, but sometimes it's just two or three things can be done if you do this one. So I'm looking at that and prioritizing it and I'm sure that they will do well on implementing and going forward and getting a lot of those recommendations in a very timely fashion. And if I think that's it for my turn, so if there's any questions, so I think what we're going to do procedure wise is we're going to ask Marty and Vicki and Eric is in the corner over there to respond. Then we'll take questions from committee members. I think the best and most efficient way to do that is one at a time and we'll just, I will just call on you and we'll just go in a circle until questions have been exhausted or we've been exhausted. How does that sound? All right, Marty? Bear with me just a minute while I get everything set up. All right. So thank you, chair. Thank you, council members, committee members and city administrator, Darryl Hoffland. Certainly when I started in my role as finance director, I came across some early observations and after a period of time it was identified that there were some areas of need in the finance department. And one of the things that we put together was a action plan that was presented to the finance and personnel committee. Shortly thereafter, we identified probably pulling in a third party to do a operational assessment made made made a lot of sense. And I certainly appreciated Bill and Joan and the rest of the team from CLA to be able to come in and give some of that expertise and vision that maybe we were overlooking certain aspects and certain items. I think within the overall assessment that was presented, they covered a lot of items and areas. What I and the rest of the team in finance pulled together and then Vicki, her predecessor and the HR team and then Eric Bushman from IT. We pulled together a summary and that was attached to the board docs. It kind of looks like a spreadsheet per se and that document we created to be able to use as a working document off of this CLA assessment report. The goal there was to truly pull together all of the highlighted areas that were identified within the assessment and to be able to use going forward. What I'm going to do today or this afternoon and evening here is kind of give a little bit of restating what Joan had already covered in their assessment, but also I'm going to pull in some of the areas that I think were important to just the finance department area. One of the things I certainly wanted to make sure that it was identified what the real goal of the study was. And I think they certainly reached that goal of performing an assessment, both an operational assessment of finance and the HR department. The objective of the study, I also believe they accomplished because it really did kind of take a look at the departments, both from a structural and well, more than just two areas structural, the effectiveness and the efficiency. And I think the effectiveness and efficiency are two of the areas that are certainly going to be a longer term project. We certainly can always look at a table of organization and identify could we add here? Could we take away there? But it's hard to fully understand, I guess, efficiencies and effectiveness until you really start to get in. And so how did I believe from a finance perspective, could we really start to hone in on where we identified shortcomings both prior to CLA coming, but also then as a result of this? And I pulled in the term foundational and it maybe isn't the most technical term or the correct term, but I felt it really fit how we're trying to build the house. I mean, we built a brand new city hall and it's built on a firm foundation. And we need to consider that within our finance department as well. And so those areas that I looked at, I started out with policies. If you don't have policies, it's really hard to not only have areas to follow within your own department, but it's hard for other departments to understand where finance is coming from. Those policies that currently exist within finance are certainly not where I would like them to be. And in order to get them where we want them to be, we want them to be accurate and thorough. They definitely need to identify all the areas that are critical to the city to fulfill the finance department's mission. There are plenty of policies that are out there, but I'm not sure that departments outside of finance and even within finance are aware of them. So we need to make sure that we not only make people aware of them, but we need to make sure that then they're adhered to. And in order to do that, you sometimes have to update them. These policies that I did locate are years, several, if not many years old, and there has to be a process to be able to update these. And it needs to be something that's structured and regularly looked at and reviewed. So that is something that myself, my deputy director, Tara Dewey, and another staff member from the city, we went to a CIVMIC training earlier in 2020, and it was focused on policy and procedure development. There was a lot of good feedback there, and we've already started to, as I presented at the last council meeting, a new template that we can start to use, at least within finance, to start to track when these policies are updated and kind of put a uniformity to them. I think it'll be a whole lot easier to keep them organized, as I've got the last item on there. Procedures, it's hard to know what to do if you really don't have it documented. And as Joan pointed out in earlier in her presentation, you have to have trained individuals and then be able to cross-train people for the instances where someone is absent or going to be out for a period of time. Or, as we're all living right now in a pandemic, you generally have to cover for other people. It's just a function of kind of getting by till the next day at times. And it is very difficult to hand off a process to someone if you don't have anything documented. And we don't. Finance does not have procedures documented. We're working on them now. So by this point, and when I say we don't, it's prior to this assessment, we have been putting them in place. It's a goal of all of the staff within the finance department for 2020. And our goal by the end of this month is that we would have had them the main primary procedures all documented. We want them written. We don't want this to be an oral handoff because too much is lost, that we found that was how a lot of procedures were handled. They have to be concise, but encompassing. We cannot leave out aspects with today's technology. Screenshots can show a whole lot to an individual on how to access a file or to transfer the documentation. And then those also need to be regularly updated. Things change and we're certainly aware of that. So we need to have these to be flexible so that they can be updated as changes take place in the organization. They also need to be organized. If the procedures are not organized and people can't find them, it's hard to ask somebody to go use a process to take care of a task if they can't find it. I know Joan touched on internal controls. Certainly I think that's an area where it's absolutely critical to have a third party look at it. You don't want to create your own internal controls and say, we're perfect here. You definitely want somebody to come in and say, here's some areas that need to be looked at. So our internal controls definitely are being worked on collaboratively, both with CLA on the assessment, but also within our auditors to make sure that we are keeping good quality internal controls. We want them to be supportive of the procedures. You don't want your internal controls to be so cumbersome that it's inefficient or ineffective to have them in place as well. Certainly they're important, but they can't be the death of an organization because they're just obstructive. They have to be reliable. As Joan pointed out, you want your internal controls whenever possible to be inherent in your software so that it's relied upon without having to double check every single item that's being taken care of. And then it also needs to be in place to reduce really the reason it's there to reduce and the risk and prevent the fraud. So ultimately abiding by some of our missions and visions within fate in the finance department to safeguard the resources of the city of Sheboygan. Another area that's foundational that I find in finance department that I don't want to say it's broken or that it can't be utilized, but I would say it's definitely aged and out of date would be our general ledger and accounting entries. Certainly you need to be creating everything with an adherence to GAP, generally accepted accounting principles, but you want your structure to be logical and intuitive. And what we're finding at this point is if it was created 10 years ago and it was intuitive and logical, then it's running into some challenges today. And so we need to refresh that we need to look at how we do things today and how it can be processed more effective and efficiently. And again, they also need to be adaptable. What we create today 10 years from now will not be exactly correct or prudent for the organization either. So we're certainly looking at that, but that's a foundational change that is certainly. You know, I always try to look at it and say, you know, I redid the siding on my house last summer and people drove by and said, hey, Marty, that really looks nice. And I'll look at them and go, how come you didn't say that when I replaced my water heater? You just don't see certain things that are foundational, but yet they're very important. Nobody wants to take a cold shower when we wake up to 40 degree weather in the middle of May. So certainly, we're trying to look at those areas as important, but yet not recognized always with what's being done on the back end. Next, I would look at staff and I kind of tie this into the training aspect that Joan talked about earlier. The staff has got to be knowledgeable and education adequate to carry out the responsibilities. I think many times you can look at it on paper and say you definitely have the education needed or you should have the knowledge needed, but there always has to be a growing period and a constant monitoring and mentoring and updating period. And that is certainly understanding the changes that take place in the industry in relationship to gap or any other industry changes. And that takes time, effort, energy, planning and dedication to a thought through training plan. So that's something that I think probably has not been adhered to over the years. And it's something that we have to get back to to be able to get a department operational to where it needs to be for the city of Sheboygan. And then my last item that I have on foundational areas are tools which obviously Joan talked about the software aspect of it. Your tools are extremely critical in just about everything that I talked about. It's certainly reliability for the internal controls that they're in place within the software that you can rely on when you set it up to cross check and give proper access to people, but it also has to be operationally efficient and accurate, not only from a day to day perspective, but also then from a reporting perspective. Frequently, I've been asked questions that I would say, you know, I feel embarrassed I can't answer because we just don't have the tools available to provide the information timely and quickly. Point being with even our budget last year, we created a budget tool that hopefully allows us the ability to adapt quicker and be able to provide information and make educated decisions on the information that's been collected throughout the year. You don't want to have to recalculate everything every time you're asked to change a number or two. We're looking at all of our opportunities. A big one, as Joan pointed out, the AS400, I know Eric certainly is going to touch base on that within the IT area. He's covering that within his team that he has put together, but it's a collaborative effort and certainly I think we've got a lot of road to cover, but I think we're capable of getting there. So certainly I will hand it off to Vicki to go through her slides, but again, utilize the spreadsheet that was attached to be able to have quick reference to the items that I talked about. Everything that's identified in the CLA assessment that I covered as foundational does have a city recommendation as foundational. Thank you, Marty. I've been, my name is Vicki Schneider. I've been in the role since March 11th, so two months exactly today. I didn't think about that till just right now. The Human Resources Department, as mentioned in the report, is more like a human resources function, that everyone is doing their functions and they do them very well within their jobs, but they don't work as a team. And that is one of the things that's very clear is I've been in the role for this short period of time and even prior to that. We have very talented individuals who appear to have been in a survival kind of mode. The strategic goals are very much similar to what your report showed. We have the department, we would like the department to perform as a team of high functioning and trusted professionals. I think we can get there. And again, that trust needs to go both ways, not only with me as the new director, but within the team itself. And then another goal, the second goal is to become a strategic and operational partner supporting all city of Sheboygan departments. Right now we are dispersed in the sense that those things are external to us, that we didn't take necessarily a lot of ownership on some things that belonged to us as an HR department. So it goes to the people lack of collaboration in the department, but then also that we should be a partner to others. So my vision would be, after reading this, that we would become an employer of choice for the city and for the county. Why wouldn't people want to work for the city of Sheboygan? It's an awesome place. I love working here. So that's my pitch. We should be able to provide that good customer service for employees who are coming on board so that they want to stay and they want to work with us. And I think we set that tone as the HR department to be able to do that. We are that organization or the customer service for hospitality for others and bringing them on board. So the objectives that we have, there are many things to do. Similar to what Marty shared, we have policies that are very few or they're very hard to find or they're outdated. They may be inconsistent. So what my goal is to have them be organized, to have them be accessible and to be consistent across the board so that people know what the expectations are. So employees know what the expectations are. And again, procedures, we have a lack of procedures as far as how do we do anything. It's a mystery to me sometimes, but we are working on that. Clearly our onboarding and offboarding processes need to work and we are working through a process for that, working with some of my staff. How do we do it? How do we do it now? And how will we do it in the future so that filling in the gaps? And this is going to take some time and working with other departments as well that we want to have a comprehensive onboarding so that we don't hear that I never knew something or no one ever told me that or I didn't even know that we did this and people have been here employed for a number of years. So we want to be able to be proud of again the organization and share all that information because we do a lot of really good things. It's just that we kind of keep it hidden sometimes. And again, a formal orientation process would help us be consistent so that we're sharing the same information over and over and sharing that with other department heads. A program I would love to be able to enhance also is our recognition and engagement so that employees do feel a part of the community and will hold each other accountable through that because if you feel responsible for your own work and your own job that you will also want to hold someone else that accountable as well and it builds team. We would like to establish a learning culture of lifelong learning. You've mentioned in your report that there's a lack of training. I would agree that that's something that we don't necessarily do well and we don't really have a process or people to do that. So we could do something with training and skill development within our own teams that people we can look for those subject matter experts so that we know there's people within our own organization that know things that could teach others to develop a leadership track so that we know that there's people who if we bring someone in at a lower level that they would want to be able to grow within the community so that they can develop their own leadership skills and then cross training is important because we in our small department we have people who are who do payroll or they do benefits but we don't really have people who know how to do one or the other so if someone is sick or out that is a risk for us. And then the other piece that encompasses a lot of the goals that the CLA report demonstrated was performance management and this is very again foundational to looking at job descriptions making sure people understand what they're supposed to do, what are the expectations that they have and then managers have a way of evaluating the work and then if we can have it be value based we have great values for the city of Sheboygan and if those are integrated into the job descriptions and the performance evaluations then we'll be able to change the culture and then that also leads to performance improvement plans. If somebody is not meeting their goals what can we do to coach them to help them do that. So that's the end of my information. Eric did you have it something to add? I don't have a lot to add other than one of the things I heard when I first started here was that we were migrating off the AS-400 or the IBMI. We use those interchangeably. And I've soon discovered that we had no plan to migrate off from that system. So for the past nine months we have been capturing, we installed tools on the IBMI. We've been capturing the usage of the applications. So we have a fairly high level plan established at this point with requests for software over the next five years to replace software that we're currently running on the IBMI. So that's it. All right. I think what we'll do at this point is start with questions from committee members. We're just going to do one at a time just to make sure that we kind of get around Robin going here. And I am going to start with Todd. One question, please, if you have any. Thank you, Chair. I want to thank everybody for all the hard work that they've done. I guess I know that, you know, being in this committee for a long time that we've talked about it, the challenges, the changes, where we're moving into the future. Daryl, is there anything that you want to point out that is kind of like a top of the list that we're working on that you think you're going to have the biggest bang for the buck kind of for us within regard to, you know, financing in that area? I think we heard it from several of the management team members. It's really, you know, buying into all that Munus or Tyler Tech has to offer and taking advantage. There's some efficiencies that currently exist. As it was alluded to, we made investment over a dozen or 10 years ago. When I arrived roughly four years ago, there was some question whether we made a good decision. Some people had not fully accepted that this was our ERP in our system. And no doubt we've doubled down and we've made some progress. But as you heard tonight, there's some additional level of commitment, especially training that needs to occur. But again, I think with the managers that you've heard earlier tonight, I think all those managers are really key to further implementation and ultimately managing some of the change that was part of the CLA report. Great. We'll move to the screen. Jim Bourne, do you want to ask one question? Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes. This question would be for Marty. Marty, have you had a chance to sit down with all of the employees in your department and I guess after observation of what you've seen, the strengths and weaknesses of the particular employees, as far as training is concerned, is some of this training going to be able to be done online? Are some of the staff going to have to go out to LTC? And then do you have enough budgeted this year? And what do you anticipate for next year, as far as a budget to see that the employees get the proper training? Thank you. Yeah, Jim, that's an excellent question. So I think really where we have to start first is to identify which modules make the most sense and to, you know, Todd's question to Daryl, where's the biggest bang for the buck? I mean, once we identify certain modules within Unis to be able to be taken care of our daily tasks or certain functions within Unis that no longer need to be, in a sense, double entered into the AS 400, then we can hone in on some of the training. Unis actually just did offer some online training that several of the staff, including myself, my deputy, Tara, we all did participate in. It's hard to put it into practice until you actually get that identified as the priority of which one you want to move forward with. So do we have the budget? You know, I think we did definitely increase the budget for training in my department for 2020. You know, the pandemic certainly affects that because certain training is not taking place the way it was intended. I was supposed to go down to the Unis conference. That was canceled. It's going to be online. Tara, my deputy is supposed to be going to a GFOA conference in June, which I believe that at this point is being canceled. So there is definite trainings that are to be done. The question is how effective and or will they be done exactly the same time as what they were originally scheduled for. So I think as Eric pointed out, he is putting together that high level plan in regards to the IBM IS 400 into the Unis. As we identify specific modules, we'll definitely be able to answer that better. But we certainly are doing more training today than we did last year or the year before that or the year before that. Thank you. Alder Svalio. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. My question is also for Marty, at least my first one anyway. How do you feel we are doing on making sure that there is a clear separation of duties to prevent fraud in your department? Certainly, Alder Svalio, the word fraud is something that is definitely front and center. We need to not only make efficient and effective, we have to protect the resources. Do I believe we have everything in place to guarantee that we don't have fraud? No, that's part of what this assessment and our work ahead of us is to do. Creating policies and procedures are two of the foundational pieces to prevent fraud. The internal controls are also a component of that. But then as we implement new modules and new procedures, we can have the security and measures in place that are more effective. Right now, a lot of our prevention of fraud is very manual and tedious in nature. I think that's the area where we get bogged down into some of that work, where we're not letting the technology, the software, and the process and structure to do its work and letting our auditors then at the end of the year come in and test all of those aspects. So we certainly have a lot of work to do on that. Do I believe we have fraud in our department or within the city? No. But at this point, we have work to do to create a better structure and a better internal controls. Thank you very much. And just for clarity, I was not just suggesting that I was. Well, good. Alder Mitchell, Trey, do you have a question? Thank you. Yes, I do. I'll leave this one fairly open ended for all of the department has present. But what can we as the common council do to really support you guys and help expedite and make sure everything is done well and addressing the items that are listed in the report and the ongoing efforts that you guys have already started? Thank you, Alder Mitchell. I think we'll all maybe add a component to that. Certainly, I think I certainly thank all of you right away just for supporting this assessment. I think there's departments or sometimes operationally you can go, why do I want an assessment? It's going to point out all the things that are wrong. I started my career as an auditor. I'm not afraid of auditors that you shouldn't be afraid of auditors. You shouldn't be afraid of finding the areas that you're weak in. They're actually to help and get through it. So I think thanks to the council for supporting going through this assessment because that is the biggest support we can have to bring out the transparency of the areas that are needed. It's difficult in a pandemic to justify added resources to fix some of the shortcomings that we have. But I think the support is working collaboratively on creating a plan that's a long term vision to address the shortcomings and to create a teamwork that to Vicki's point, we're an employer of choice. And I think to get there we have to create that environment that's positive in nature and in the end all the reports and awards and things like that will truly justify it. So that would be how I would, I guess, approach that. I would just echo what Marty said that the support from the council to be able to do this evaluation and assessment was critical to being able to move forward with certain actions. Asking for what we need it would be, I think, understanding that this is going to take time to accomplish all the goals that we need to need to accomplish. And the resources would be, again, being able to have a sufficient staff in the right roles and then also to be able to provide that funding for training because training is foundational to everything that we really, what we really need. There's, as you said, from Excel training or from Microsoft Suite training to all the way up to MUNIS training, there's just a lack of information and that creates inefficiencies. And I would add funding for the new software. A lot of this is going to cost some money to both purchase additional software and then installation services to get it installed. And then an understanding of the time frame. This is to migrate off the AS 400 is probably a three to five year project. And it's not so much of a resource constraint as it is number one, funding number two. The effort that the city's employees are going to need to put forth are quite often in addition to the jobs they're currently doing. So we need to balance, you know, the amount of resources that we have with the time frame. Eric, why don't you stay where you are? My question to you. My mom used to say, why in the name of all that is holy? Is it what is this AS 400? Is this like software that takes us to Mars or why in the name of all that is holy? Will it cost us a hundred thousand dollars plus and take four years to and we've already been trying to work off of it? I mean, is it just some key to some kingdom that we just can't find? Or as a truly is a person who doesn't understand these things? So you can answer in that context. Sure. Help us. I mean, can't we just start with something new? Well, the AS 400 is a hardware platform. And actually, the S 400 has been replaced by a few different levels of hardware, which is actually why we call it the IBM I now. That's currently the hardware that we're running on the software that's running on that hardware. And just backing up, we did replace that hardware last year. The software that's running on that platform or on the AS 400 is our legacy applications. So it's applications that munis may not have had an immediate replacement for or in the overall scheme of things when we were installing munis, we decided not to bring certain pieces off the AS 400 into the munis world. A couple other examples is it's more than just finance. The police departments still have a crime system, which they use daily to look up criminal records off that system that only to be migrated. There's a electronic document management system that runs on that that will need to be migrated, plus all the financial systems, the inventory systems that DPW uses to inventory their supplies is on that IBM I. We have a replacement in munis, but we'll need to bring that in and get that installed. When we analyze the system, we have about 1200 applications or programs that are still running on the IBM I. So there's a lot of just these little niche legacy applications that we need to peel the onion back and get transitioned over. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. I think. All right. It is getting on to six o'clock and we still have quite a substantial agenda. If anyone has a burning question that you really want to ask, let me know and we'll take that burning question. I did have one more, Mary Lynn, as long as we've got staff there. Go ahead. Thank you, Mary Lynn. This is also will be for Marty. When I was reading over the report, Marty, I think they said that the correct staffing for your department would be six people, but I was a little vague on that. Did that six people include you? And then another part of the question is as you get the department, the way you want it, let's say within the next two years, do you foresee that one individual may be able to do half the job description of another person on staff? Where do you see as you get this department operating the way you want it to be of what possibly efficiencies or possibly even less employees than you have now? Or is it way too early to talk about that yet? Thank you, Alderman. Good question. I think some of it is certainly something I can answer, but I think it's going to definitely be something that Vicki and I address together. So when it identifies six individuals, I would take that as it does include the finance director. Do I think that's the right fit? Do I think we're going to be more efficient? I mean, as we integrate new software, new training, definitely goals that I would like to accomplish is cross training. So sometimes I think where we run into problems is we get backlogged when somebody is ill or out of the office. I had in my first 12 months, I had multiple situations that I've never encountered in my career as a leader. And for just, you know, I'm not going to state what those were, but the individuals were out of the office for weeks. And when you have people out of the office for weeks with limited policies, no written procedures and minimal, if any, cross training and a new finance director, it's virtually impossible to stay on top of stuff and or adjust to the needs of the city. So I think what we're going to be looking at is creating a org chart and job descriptions, Vicki and I together and collaboratively is how do we set this up so that we can meet the needs when someone is out of the office? Certainly the working from telecommuting within the city right now has challenged us a bit. But, you know, it's broader than that. And it's got to be longer term than that. We certainly want to create a long term vision of how to get everything done as efficient. Will we gain any staff out of it, you know, cost savings? That's definitely way too early to tell. But I think our first thing is in a sense, clean it up and get it to where it needs to be first and then start to even look at efficiencies for maybe not necessarily reducing staff, but where can we assist other departments to make them more efficient? In a sense, snowball the efficiencies out throughout the city. Thank you. All right. And our thanks, of course, to CLA and to our department heads. This is a big topic and lots and lots of things to talk about and think about. And we obviously didn't cover everything tonight. But it's a good start to move forward. With that in mind, I'd be looking for a motion to accept the report. Good morning. All right. It's been moved in second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Thank you very much to all. Much appreciated. Let's move on then to item 3.2. Of course, my screen doesn't want to move. Really? Hang on just a sec. Thanks for coming. Todd, do me a favor and read 3.2 out loud. Would you? Sure. Direct referral, RO 6 2021, May 11th, 2020 submitting for your information, the 2021 budget schedule. There I'll do. And there you are. Very good. Thank you, Madam Chair. Included in this RO is the schedule for the 2021 budget, the development of the budget. One thing that's unique this year is that with COVID-19 we rely as you're aware on significant revenues from the state. And at this point, again, it's early in their fiscal year. And we expect that there will be potential material, if not significant changes as far as some of the intergovernmental revenues we receive. So the schedule that's before you does delay by a couple weeks. The submittal deadline and ultimately the publication of the draft budget. And again, I think even two weeks does allow for more information, whether it be year to date expenditures, but also, as I mentioned, the critical information, which is the revenues that we receive from the state, whether it's state-shared revenues, whether it's finalizing our equalized tax base for potential levy calculation, street transportation aids. So I think the schedule that's been outlined gives, again, affords staff and receipt of state information regarding intergovernmental revenues, something that's taken on additional importance to the city is a room tax, as it's not only funds are being transferred to the general fund, but also the debt service fund, which are two major expenditures in our operating budget. And so again, the more information we have for the first and second quarter room tax, that will be helpful prior to submitting for you comprehensive draft budget for consideration. Still have the approval deadline or our goal of November 2nd, again, the first typical council meeting in the month of November, our target is still to have that be the date. There is the opportunity should again, depending on what's happening at the state level, part of the concern is prior to the November election, that potentially will have a significant impact in white that both the House, the assembly as well as the Senate in our state legislature may be unwilling to make tough decisions prior to that November election date. So it's going to be interesting this year for the city and other communities to find out how there the states buying in budget is going to be impacted by COVID-19 and ultimately what our share of revenues will be. Any questions for Daryl? Hearing none, we have a motion to recommend the acceptance of this report. So moved. And a second. Second, borne. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. None are opposed. Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Let's go on to 3.3, which is a communication from Harbor Center Business Improvement District requesting that we release their funds allocated to them for fiscal year 2020. Chad, go ahead. So thank you, Chair. In your packet, there was an IFC and this is a yearly request from the Business Improvement District to release their funds. I've asked Paul Rudnick if he would be an and or somebody from their executive committee. I believe Paul's on the line. If he'd be willing to share the current status of the bid prior to you guys making a recommendation, they've been working on implementing a few different projects in the downtown. But, you know, other than that, I guess we would look forward to hearing what Mr. Rudnick has to say as the president of the bid. Paul, go ahead. Thank you for having me up until the COVID-19 crisis, the bid had been in a state of restructuring wherein we had eliminated the position of executive director. We felt the money could be better used being put into the community, beautification, things like that. Now that the now that we are in a whole different world from where we were last fall, we basically decided to take the majority of our budget, anything that hasn't already been spoken for and basically granted back to our member businesses. That and that will be rolled out this week. All right. Sorry, there's a glare on me. Yeah. Any any questions for Paul? Paul, my question is how much are we are how much are we sending back to you? A question to me. Yeah, Paul or to Chad. The bid had budgeted around 140,000. I think it's somewhere in that realm of 146,000 to maybe 156,000. So it's right around 150,000. All right, very good. May we have a motion then to release the funds as requested? So move motion to release the funds as requested. All right. And a second. Second. Any further discussion questions? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And share votes aye. That's a nice thing about everybody going one by one. Let's move on then to 3.4, which is a resolution authorizing the IT director to purchase additional network storage. To support the city's growing digital storage needs. Eric. Thank you, Chair. Yes, this request is to purchase two additional sands and a tape backup system to support the city's ever growing digital evidence storage needs. We estimate that this would take us through 2022 from a storage perspective and then we would reevaluate where we're at at that time. All right. Does anyone have questions for Eric? If not, if we move to approve. Very good. We have a motion to approve in a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So I heard four eyes. The chair votes aye. Motion passes. 3.5 is a resolution authorizing a grant application to the stewardship fund for a recreational trail along the Sheboygan River. Chad. Thank you, Chair. So this document is to submit a grant to the Sheboygan County Stewardship Program. This is a county funded grant program that provides funding around the county for recreational projects. The grant has actually been submitted as of a deadline of May 1st, but in order to accept the funds the council needs to take action on it. This is going to be a match to CDBG dollars that have been dedicated and the first wave of improvements as it relates to the Kiwanis Park Master Plan. So it'll be a recreational trail basically stopping where the sidewalk does on the north side off along Kiwanis Drive, Kiwanis Park Drive all the way out along the river to New Jersey Avenue. So we budgeted 155,000 of block grant. We're asking for 30,000 from the county because we think it's a good project that fits their priorities and asking them to share in the funding of this project. Any questions for Chad? Can we have a motion then to authorize the grant application? So move. I had one question, Mary Lynn. Sorry, I had my microphone off. That's OK. Go ahead, Jim. Thank you. This question is for Chad. Chad, I noticed a document that Public Works is going to be covering Tamronite regarding ADA with all of the various parks and everything that I would presume that this that this path down by Kiwanis Park in the area described, that's going to be ADA compliant? Yes, it it definitely will. I will it actually will take care of a problem where the sidewalk abruptly ends and it pushes people across the road to walk. So yes, that everything that's going to be designed as part of this will meet the ADA requirements. Thank you very much. All right, we have a motion and second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And share votes. Aye. Motion passes three point six is a resolution authorizing the city to enter into a contract with M pick for building and property insurance coverage. Marty, go ahead. Thank you, chair. What you would have found in your board docs packets is the entire contract proposal for the renewal of our insurance on property. And this is a municipal ordinance that we need to to have the policy runs from June 1st through May 31st. So we are entering into the start of our new policy at the beginning of next month. I did find that there was a fairly large increase on the premium. And as a result, what I did was put together a comparative summary that you would have also found in board docs. Looking at the two the previous year and what's being quoted to us. And when I kind of put the comparisons together on a percentage basis, I reached back to M pick to find a kind of some feedback as to why the large increase. And they said that the rate increase was driven by rising in re insurance costs in the commercial market. On average, there was a re insurance increase between 20 to 25 percent for property related business. I have dealt with insurance on a organization that I'm a part of there to also saw significant increases. So I don't believe this to be completely outside the norm. We also did at the end of last year in the fall. M pick provided for all of their customers, clients. We are a member organization. Organization. There was a appraisal done of all the property. So we've larger valued properties, so contractor equipment, 20,000 and a valuation on the property side of I believe it was 250 and greater, 250,000 and greater. So they certainly updated their values within the policy, probably causing part of part of the increase as well. It's definitely a area where there's still a few tweaks that are probably necessary, hence why the resolution is written for a not to exceed of 160,000 with a current $155,000 premium quoted. At this point, there has been feedback or a question back from our policy agent at M pick if we wanted to explore different deductibles, which the deductibles are listed on that first page of the policy. We certainly can explore some of that, but at this point, I'm not sure that we're looking to put added risk in place. And what I've found at times is you can you can minor alterations to your deductible are not going to you're not going to see significant savings on a premium. If you make major changes, then you will. But at this point, again, I don't believe we're at a stage where we have reserves to accommodate that kind of risk. And Chuck, I'm not sure if there's any ordinance. If Chuck is on the line, I'm not sure if there's an ordinance that has certain restrictions on that as well. We don't have a specific ordinance that specifically delineates how much insurance we have to have or how much deductible we have to have. That would be a matter of policy. Okay. All right. Any other questions for Marty? Hearing none. Can we have a motion to authorize the the execution of that contract? So I'll move. And a second. Someone. Marcus did. Marcus did. I'm sorry. I didn't hear my apologies. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. 3.7 is a resolution authorizing city officials to execute a first amendment of the redevelopment agreement between Aurora and the city of Sheboygan. Thank you, chair. So this document is related to the development redevelopment agreement that the city has between Aurora and advocate Aurora in the city for the hospital once they vacate it on North Avenue. In that original agreement, they were to hold public hearings and start the process for repurposing the property by the end of April. COVID came along and put that all on hold. So they've obtained a retained a contractor, Grafe, to help them with that process. We've had numerous discussions with Grafe and the way we understand it is going. They're asking for an extension through the end of September, which appears to be reasonable and using some online engagement platform similar to some of the models we've been talking about to engage the public and the neighborhood surrounding that. So they're looking for an extension from the end of April to the end of September, which is still on track for developing a plan moving forward for that property in the future. Top. Thank you, chair. First, I'd like to make a motion to recommend. But second, I wanted to also point out that as the older of that of that district, I've been working with the Aurora group with a lot of neighborhood association meetings. So they they were doing their due diligence prior to covid. So I think this is worth, you know, the extension. Thank you. All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? I would second that. All right. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes. Aye. The motion passes 3.8 is a resolution authorizing in advance from the Capital Project Fund to the TID 16 Capital Fund. Marty. Thank you, chair. This is an advance, which just to clarify again is different than a transfer. So the Armory Project is to the stage of having the demolition work completed. And the contractor has honored the price. And since there was uncertainty as to the timing, this was not within the budget. So an advance allows a TID to transfer or we're transferring the dollars from the Capital Projects Fund to a TID within a half mile radius, which would be the the TID 16. We're advancing it so that as the TID becomes financially solvent and has cash flow in it, it is able to pay the the Capital Projects Fund back. Therefore, this expense will get captured within TID 16 as a result of that half mile radius. So could we have a motion to authorize motion to motion to authorize? Second. Any questions, concerns? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. The resolution passes. We are moving on to items for discussion only. Marty, why don't you come on back to the truth table here? Finance? Actually, Madam Chair, if it's okay with you, I'd like to let our city clerk and city development director go before us. We'll go last and they can be perfect, not stuck here. Meredith, help yourself. Thank you for waiting. Thank you. Well, the IFC for the clerk's department is attached to board docs. And so I would entertain any questions. I will take note that the 2020 year to date under the elections looks a little bit off because of the cost per boat and that's because a lot of the expenses are in there but not the votes from the April election. Right now, currently as it stands, we're about $23,000 over our budget for elections and that's not including the cleaning stations that we used in our April election. So that kind of gives you a little breakdown of where we stand. So questions for our clerk? I have one, Madam Chair. Go ahead. Thank you. Meredith, I don't have the document right in front of me, but when I reviewed it yesterday, I noticed there was a big chunk in there over $20,000. I would imagine that was a lot of that was postage and what you had to do to get out the absentee ballot. Correct. Just postage alone, I think, cost us nearly and I have it here. Our postage with postcards that we sent out to change polling locations and the absentee ballots equaled out to about $8,400 over what we had anticipated. Thank you. You're welcome. Good news is that there in fact may be some federal money available for absentee ballot or just election costs that I think we'll be pursuing. So fingers crossed in that respect regard. Anything else for the clerk? Thank you so much. Thank you. Who wants to be next? Let's put it that way. Chad. Thank you, Marty. And thank you, Chair. So attaching your packet is the planning and development planning division benchmarks for the first quarter. And our primary focus has been is centered around neighborhood revitalization and economic development focus series of the strategic plan. We're, you know, on track to meet those benchmarks. We've been really focusing on community development block grant allocations, typically in the first quarter of the year with our ward of the round of million dollars and then the additional COVID dollars that we've received. So that's where a good portion of our workload has been going and then rolling out additional programs that we'll report in the next quarter. So that's pretty much it in a nutshell. If there's any questions on the benchmarks, I'd be happy to answer them. The other thing I just want to mention is in my IFC is also three capital well, two capital improvement requests that have been considered as part of the capital improvements commission and both of those are geared towards the redevelopment of the former May line property with the construction of a river board, Westside boardwalk for design and construction if the city is to be responsible for that or share in those costs. But those were those are tiff eligible expenses and those were both included in the capital improvements decisions that they made last week. So if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Questions for Chad. Eric, why don't you come up because you have quite a few of these. It looks like IT and WSCS and their capital improvement budget. OK, thank you, Chair. So in your packet, you have the information technology benchmarks for the first quarter. Just one quick note is on the average close time of high or critical high IT health tickets. We've made significant progress there, taking it down to point two, three days. Our target is five. Additionally, in the twenty twenty internal services survey, IT went from a two point nine two rating to a three point six seven rating on a scale of one to four. So I think we've made significant progress in addressing the urgency and responsiveness of the request of the city employees and IT needs. Any questions? Madam chair, just go on. Oh, go ahead, Todd. Thank you, Eric. I just wanted to say I know over the years I've been watching the IT and the progress and how things have gone. And obviously, you know, we've had our struggles and we're we're working on it. But I do want to say you guys are doing a fabulous job, especially with these trial times of COVID-19. I mean, if you think about it, we went from one extreme to the next. So it's not just keeping up with what we have. It's actually educating and communicating and getting people to use, you know, computers and programs from home. So great job to you and your team. Thank you. Do you want to do WSCS? Pardon? Do you want to do the cable TV? Sure. Report as well. Also in your packet, you'll have the IFC for the cable television. I guess the one point that I would point out there is we had a very good first quarter as far as live broadcasts of council meetings. We had struggled early on with the new technology that came into that came into the new city hall as well as the aging technology that we had over at the county courthouse. But I think we've got the new technology dialed in. And I think the broadcast signal is a superior quality from what it had been. And do you want to do capital improvements as well? Sure. So we'll start with cable TV. There's a request in 2022 for twenty five thousand dollars to replace the studio tricaster that basically falls suit with our five year replacement strategy on PCs. Moving on to IT in twenty twenty one. We will be looking at upgrading our Microsoft Exchange email server. It will be ten years old. Additionally, towards the end of this year, Microsoft will stop supporting the versions we're on. Next one is a sync redundant internet connection. The sync network is managed and owned by the county, the Sheboygan area school district and the city. And we share in expenses and maintaining that one of the weaknesses that that ring currently has is we only have one ladder or one connection to the internet. And if for some reason that were to be cut or damaged, we would be down. So this would just provide us a secondary connection. We are also looking to see if we can leverage some other partners say such as St. Nicholas as expressed an interest in potentially sharing in the cost to build that internet connection out so they could leverage that through the county's fiber, as well as we're talking with the nuclear credit union because the path we would run would be right by them. So don't know if that's going to happen next year or not, but I want to be ready in case we pull together. The wastewater treatment plant is our disaster recovery or secondary data center and we need to once again to improve the resiliency of the network. We need to put two firewalls and some internet connectivity into that building. And then one of the things we talked about with the CLA assessment is the IBM I retirement software acquisition requesting thirty five dollars to purchase additional software modules and installation support. Moving on to twenty twenty two. We will be looking at upgrading our Microsoft office at that point. Our office suite will be 12 years old and towards the end of this year, that product will stop being supported by Microsoft. Moving on to the sink city hall redundant solution that is once again redundancy, resiliency of the sync network. If we were to have a fiber cut between the city and the sink. The city hall library of fire station one in the also secure building and the housing authority would lose their connectivity. So this will provide a redundant path for that. And again in twenty twenty two for IBM retirement software acquisitions requesting thirty five thousand dollars. In twenty twenty three. Once again, I don't think we have to do all the columns. Any questions? Yeah, I do. Unless anyone has any questions. Todd, thank you, Madam Chair. Just one real quick question. The IBM I retirement in your earlier conversation, you had said that to get off the A.S. four hundred, it would take what four to five years. Is that in your plan right here? What I'm looking at these retirement categories, is that going to get us off the A.S. four four hundred? Yes, that is correct. OK, thank you. Anything else for Eric? I had something to Madam Chair. Go ahead. This goes back to what you're talking about before about the our council meetings on televisionary. First of all, I'm glad we spent the money to update the system. I've been I've been getting any complaints at all on the quality of the program. Once in a while, it frees up or something like that. And also, I just want to say, you know, through everything we've been going through the couple months, last couple of months, it's been a pleasure to work with you and also had some interactions with your team member, Micah Adams. And Micah has helped me with some issues and was able to teach an old dog me some new tricks. Thank you. We appreciate the feedback. Anything else? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Darryl, do you want to update us on your office? Relatively short report. So I'll just open it up to any questions. Or comments that you may have. Any questions for Darryl? All right, that was. Thank you. And finance. Marty, you can bring up the band here. Thank you, Madam Chair. I will keep it brief. You did get a supplementary attachment to the IFC with lots of the benchmarks. I'm going to point out just the four that I identified on the IFC for just the high points, the vendor checks, certainly are ahead of pace. But as I noted in the IFC, you know, in today's day and age, I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Should we be paying necessarily everything by check or should we be looking for electronic payments and therefore not having true vendor checks? So I think these are benchmarks that again, as we grow, we'll learn from them and maybe they're not necessarily the benchmarks we want to keep going forward. Receipts being processed, I think we're certainly ahead of pace. But again, second and third quarter probably will challenge us with the pandemic, whether the fourth quarter continues that I'm not sure, but certainly we're going to see some challenges on receipt processing reports. Those as identified in the assessment, you know, there's information being shared. I wouldn't qualify them as quality reports. They we definitely have room to grow and lots of opportunity to work on within finance to make sure that all of our department heads are well informed via reports, as well as our finance and personnel committee members and full council. And then lastly, the taxes collected, the 35 percent goal of taxes collected at the financial institutions was not met, as they only collected 33.6 percent. One of my thoughts on that, and I've shared it with the bank and because during the tax collection season, they did say that they were collecting less, I said it could truly be a result of the tax law changes for individuals where there might not be quite as the incentive to pay by December 31st. And as you know, once we get passed the February settlement, then the county collects. So there could be more being paid to the county than being collected by the banks. Certainly I'll entertain any other questions on any of the benchmarks. Questions from Marty. Marty, I was just going to mention that I personally enjoy the convenience of going over to Wisconsin Bank and trust and pay my taxes and I know a lot of my neighbors who are retired. Whoops, Jim, we've lost your connection. He's froze. Very fell asleep. But Jim, I can answer whether you're hearing it or not, but certainly that is one of the primary reasons why Wisconsin Bank and Trust does work well for the city. It is because of that partnership during tax collection time. Collecting 35% of our taxes or their abouts is a lot of transactions that would need to take place within our own building if they were not participating. So certainly it's appreciated that they do that. Very good. We have communicated with respect to our next regular meeting and I believe we have arrived at Wednesday, May 27th at 5pm and just I want to confirm with all of us that that works. Yes. People on the line, is that good with you? Jim, Marcus. Works for me. Trey. Works for me as well. And I just bet you it's going to work for Marcus. So with that, could we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. And a second. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye, aye, aye. Okay, very good. This was a we covered a lot of territory here today. So thanks everybody. We are adjourned.