 All right, we'll call the meeting to order. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. To flag the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next, we'll have the roll call, please. Carlson. Here. Decker, excused. Hammond. Here. Hammond. Here. Heidemann. Here. Cobb. Here. Kittleson. Here. Maddachak. Here. Riesler. Here. Samson. Present. Ben Akron. Here. Vanderwele. Not here. Not here. Versi. Here. 12th present. Thank you. We have a form. Next would be the approval of the minutes from the November 2nd Committee of the Whole Meeting. Salute. Motion. Second. Second. Under discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Carries. Next, the public form on agenda items. What we'll do is if anybody would like to be heard, three minutes, please raise your hand. I think we'll just start with Dulcey and just kind of come down the bench there. Please. Just for those microphones are live and also where I believe we're on TV. So you need my name and address? Yes. Address, 1306 North 3rd Street, Sheboygan. Wait a minute. Yeah. I had sent an email to the members of the Public Works Committee. But for those of you who aren't on that committee, I would just like to share my thoughts with you. I don't know the status of privatizing the garbage service and adding a fee to the water bill. But I do support privatizing the service. I do not support adding a fee to the water bill. I'm familiar with a community in Florida that does not provide garbage service. But they contract with private contractors. And the cost of those contracts become part of the budget. So those costs are part of the property bill. It's not a separate fee that is assessed to the homeowners. And I'm just thinking that if that's the direction you're going to go, it's privatizing that that might be a better option than adding a fee. And I think with all of the retirements at this time from the department, this would be a good time to do that, because you wouldn't have to lay off people if you would do it at another time. And also, I understand that you need to replace the garbage trucks. So that would also alleviate the need to do that. I do not think government should do what the private sector can do. And so I do support privatizing the garbage pickup. Thank you. Thank you, Dulcy. Next? Dixushia 15, North Point Drive. This may not be the public hearing to address the 2012 budget. But the Sheboygan Taxpayer Alliance, which I am representing this evening, feels that there is still time to make major adjustments in the budget. Not to maintain last year's taxes, but to reduce the 2012 taxes below last year. We have scrutinized the 2012 budget and have some suggestions, some questions, and some support for your efforts. Now, there are 33 suggestions and questions that I will not go into tonight because of the time limit. You all have copies of that. Hopefully, you will be addressing that. So all of these items, if addressed, will affect the 2012 budget in a positive way. Now is the time to make some bold moves. Take the time during the Committee of the Whole to make these changes for the sake of the city taxpayer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sushia. Next? Maeve Quinn, M-A-E-V-E-Q-U-I-N-N, 310 St. Clair Avenue. Thank you, Alderman and citizens, for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. As I already introduced myself as Maeve Quinn, I'm a city resident here. I'm also the president of the Board of Trustees of Mead Public Library. The mission of Mead Public Library is to be a community information and cultural center. And four words clearly summarize the mission of our wonderful library. Inform, educate, enlighten, and inspire. I'm pleased to share with you tonight that thanks to thousands of our citizens, our library is fulfilling its mission every day. A quick review of the past year. There were 356,491 visits to Mead Public Library. There were 897,537 items checked out. And this year, there's actually been a 10% increase in citizens requiring staff interaction. And additionally, there are more than 35,000 city residents holding Mead Public Library cards. The proposed city budget requires a 4% cut to Mead Public Library, the amount of $99,435. The proposed 2012 funding is 7.8% below what the state has calculated as minimum support of the library. Over the years, we've had to reduce our expenditures on materials and we were spending less than what is recommended for good library practices. The library employees have greatly contributed to our goal of maintaining excellent library services. Over the years, we've reduced the number of employees. Pre-1989, we had 67.5 FTEs. Our current level of FTE is 43.2. In 2011, the library employees will not receive the general salary increase of 3%. City employees of the local 1564 and Schedule A have received a 3% increase in 2011. They will also lose hours in pay due to five furloughs. This is a 1.9% salary reduction. And for many years, they were the only city employees to contribute 15% of health insurance premium. Even with these extraordinary contributions of the wonderful library employees to help maintain a good level of library services, additional cuts will result in reducing the number of employees, which will then result in reducing library hours. Mead Public Library is one of the true gems of Chevrogan and is heavily utilized by its citizens. The proposed cuts to Mead Public Library will severely jeopardize its mission to meet the needs of all citizens. It is quite evident during these challenging economic times, citizens need Mead Public Library services more than ever. I'll just conclude with four words of the Mead's mission. Inform, educate, enlighten, inspire. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Quinn. Next. My name is Carol DeSalt. I live at 2736 North 30th Street. I'm here to speak against the cuts to Mead Public Library. I'm a retired teacher from the Chevrogan Public Schools, and I'm here to tell you that many of my students, most of them, use the library a lot and very effectively. Many did not have computer access in their homes and came there to do homework, read, research, and get the help from the wonderful library staff. The library became a place for them to see other adults who valued learning and sought information effectively. It was a very effective support system for these and all students. As I use the library now, I'm constantly struck by the fact that people from all walks of life and all income levels use this wonderful resource. Unemployed people came there to use the computers. Parents bring their children for books and story hours, and schools bring their students to do research that their own smaller libraries can't support. If you cut the funding for the library any more, this vital service that we have come to use and depend upon, such as reference librarians, will be gone. In our democracy, we have to realize that our library is about education, continuing education for all, and that to continue to make cuts in this educational service is maybe a short-term fix, but it harms us in the way that it will cause cuts and lack of information in the future. Confucius had a saying that's relevant to this situation. If you plan for one year, plant rice. If you plan for 10 years, plant trees. If you plan for 100 years, educate children. Please keep this vital educational service with all the other cuts to state and local governments that we've had to make. Please don't cut the library now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Salt. Anybody else like? Henry Nelson, 1926 Settlement Trail. I got tough act to follow, and now I have two young ladies that did just a great job, pretty much taking all my material, but we'll go along anyway. Members of the Common Council, my name's Henry Nelson. I'm the Chairman of the Finance Committee at Mead Public Library. My Empathies. You have difficult decisions to make tonight or in the near future. Decisions that will affect the city for years to come because next year's budget doesn't just affect one year, but it continues to resonate throughout the foreseeable future. It's important that these decisions aren't short-term political decisions, but long-term solutions because they impact all the citizens, but you know that. The tax-review portion of our budget continues to be cut. Since 2008, the budget has been cut over $275,000, which is approximately a 10% cut over that time. Last year, over $159,000, or 6% of our budget was cut. We absorbed that loss by elimination of general salary increases, five FOMO days. On the FOMO days, the library is closed, and those closures equal about a 2% cut in the wages of our employees. We had retirements without replacements, which required reallocation of employees' schedules and what they do in the library. And also that five FOMO days, we also did that in 2009 and 2010. And in addition to that, we've had some very difficult prioritizations. So how would we respond to additional cuts this year? Well, our options are limited. Do we do less scheduled hours each day? Do we do more FOMO days? In the meantime, our services, our service needs increase. There's more demand for children's programs, and there's the young lady ahead of me, eluded education of children. I mean, how you start the child office, you know, how the child is gonna grow up and finish. More demand for our teen center. You know, we have quite, if you haven't been to our library lately, we have a very exciting and viable teen center. And teens that are at the library doing constructive things are not teens outside doing destructive things. More demand by our at risk, we'd unemployed citizens needing to use our technology. Not everyone has a computer at home, not everyone in these times can afford a computer, and it is basically necessary for job searching. Also an additional expense we've been incurring lately is security issues. Henry, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Anybody else that would like to be heard? Going once, going twice. All right, thank you very much for your input. Number six on the agenda is Council President's Comments. Fair enough, moving on. Number seven, discussion and possible action on the city of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 2012 budget. I think we'll just take seven, eight, nine together. Council document 1547, ordering the 2012 budget appropriations for the city of Sheboygan funds and 1548, ordering the 2012 budget appropriations and the 2011 tax levy for use during the calendar year of 2012. So, for discussion and possible action. Where do we start? I guess at this point I would entertain where we want to start on this. Let's start with discussion and possible action on the city of Sheboygan budget number seven. I guess I'll refrain from my comments for a moment and open it to the floor for discussion and thoughts. I'm gonna screw this up at least one or two times, so forgive me. Alderman Versi. Thank you. If we could probably call up Jim Muriel right away, because there'll be numerous questions coming towards him if we can bring him up right away. Fair enough, Chief, Mr. Muriel. I think maybe the first step would just maybe be to give us a lay of the updated landscape, if you will. Sure, all right. With some of the changes that have come through. Alderman Hammond, if you want, you can erase my light because that's what I was getting ready to ask too if you can still flash it. Thank you. I'm sorry? No, I was just, my light was still flashing, I just wanted to say what you said. As I talked about the other night, roughly where we stand today on the 2012 budget is roughly about a $660,000 shortfall. We started out with a $950,000 gap. We have tentative agreements with police that I believe will save the city in 2012, roughly $300,000. We've got some cleaning services that we're looking to outsource, as well as not replacing a director in public works that would save us roughly $150,000. We've got elections to deal with that I believe could be one or two and estimates of that are between $20,000 and $40,000, depending on if there's one or two. And we also have roughly $100,000 that we need to spend probably on the dredging project for the airport rehab between us and the county for the waste that will come out of the river. So that's roughly $650,000 for this year. Currently we have roughly 30 employees in the city that have handed in their retirement papers, 20 of which reside in the general fund, 10 are outside the general fund. And we have another 21 that have requested information on retirement. And we're holding retirement meeting, not retirement meetings, but benefit meetings between today and tomorrow. And I would believe that these other 20 people would probably make their mind up one way or another after these meetings are over with. And looking at where we are in 2011, best case right now is a break-even scenario without any further retirements. We have some overspending in labor this year to be offset by other non-labor costs that we can save between now and the end of the year. The real pivotal point is, is if we have an additional 15 to 20 retirees that we haven't budgeted for. Currently the 30 we have had this year will be covered by several different areas. And the budget one is this past year we've budgeted roughly 350,000 for retirement benefits. Currently the 30 that retired are approximately 500,000, as well as the potential 20 could be upwards to another $480,000 of additional expense between payouts for sick leave, as well as unused vacation. So I see maybe the worst case being close to $500,000 problem in 2011, best case being close to neutral. But then that would come out of general fund reserves that we hadn't planned for in 2011. I'm looking forward to 2013. We have roughly a $35 million general fund budget. We saw that the CPI from the state this year was 2.01%. Again, in difficult times. Currently the state through, I believe it's September has a 3.3% CPI increase. And nationally I believe it's 3.7%. So 2.01% is pretty low considering where the state is right now, excuse me. I believe next year with the economy, the way it is today, we're probably closer to 3%, and roughly 3% on $35 million of expenses is about a roughly another million dollars. So by looking at the problem we have currently in 12 of 650, not counting potentially what could happen in 11 with the vast number of retirements and looking forward to 13 of close to a million dollars, we face a million and a half to a $2 million problem between 2011 and 2013, if that answers your question. All right, thank you Mr. Amodio. Open it to the floor for questions. The idea or part of this is to start to build some consensus on which directions we wanna go to fill this, in this case this year 650, but also keeping an eye towards what's going to be coming down the pipe in 2013. So I'll open it to the floor. I'll save you the button. Thank you. I guess we'll get right down to it, the garbage. We looked at some bids for the garbage I'm assuming. Yes, we didn't go out for formal RFP. We got two informal RFPs. And that would be saving us, how much? Well, currently in the budget, our garbage budget's $1.6 million in 2012. And we have in the capital budget for motor vehicle, $1.6 million for new trucks for garbage and roughly $400,000 of other capital equipment in motor vehicle fund. And if we did privatize the garbage, would we be able to move any of that 1.6 into the general fund to help absorb some of those hits that we took or would we leave it there? From the motor vehicle fund? Yeah. I believe we would leave it there because the intent of the motor vehicle fund was to charge the people that used equipment, not only for the cost of that equipment, but the replacement value, kind of like two plus X when you take maintenance in. With the amount of usage our equipment has been getting, we've seen the allocation of costs from motor vehicle fund significantly reduced. And in the past several years, they've had to actually use their fund balance to fund the operations of the motor vehicle fund. Currently we have roughly $3 million in the fund and reserves. It says if we bought trucks for garbage and other trucks that we believe we need, we'd spend two of that $3 million. If we raise the allocation of cost, not based on usage, but just to keep the motor vehicle fund alive, 90% of the costs that get allocated from the motor vehicle fund hit the general fund, so it'd be like a double-edged sword. So I see that if we do this with garbage and spend the money, and we look forward to replacing vehicles from a fund rather than from expense, specifically in police because we've recommended that we don't buy squads this year, roughly four to five, that they would have to come out of the motor vehicle fund. And if that did happen, then we'd have to probably look in the next several years of actually borrowing debt to fund vehicle purchases, whether they be for public works or for police. Jim, just a clarification. The estimated cost for the garbage would be 1.6, and then an additional 1.6 for equipment? Correct. Okay, so you're talking 3.2 between cost avoidance and? Yes. Okay. And then what would you estimate the cost to the average household for private garbage collection be? Well, the estimates we have right now, and again, they're not formal, but are around nine to $10 a month. Please. And do we have a bid yet? And what, to privatize the garbage, what that entire dollar amount would be? From a third party's charge? Yes. Again, it depends on the number of households we have, just looking at the water utility bills to residences, four units and less, it's between 17,000 and 17,500. So it'd be roughly 1.8, 1.9 million. It'd be a little more expensive than the service we're charging. The cost incurred by the city. So 1.9 to privatize, 1.6. Correct. Aldermen Kittleson. Thank you, Chairman Conn. Just so I can straighten this out in my mind, it's contracting out for the garbage service and then there's a fee for that service, correct? Are we looking at kind of two different things? No, well, what we've looked at is privatizing the service and going to a third party. A third party would charge X dollars a month to each household for the service of picking up the garbage. In the city would not be responsible for that any longer. We wouldn't have to buy the equipment and we probably at a nominal cost could at least from a startup standpoint whoever was chosen could use our equipment until such time as they could get new vehicles to replace them. The struggle is then the fee that we're charging. I mean, that's the fee that we're gonna be charging to each household. The fee where the city would be neutral to save the 1.6 million dollars in expenses would be roughly between nine and 10 dollars a month. For household. For household. Yes. For how long? Do we know, is that all to be that salt? Well, you know, the contract we'd look at would be between three and five years. We'd like to get five to lock it in. Most have proposed three. But again, all I can say is that, you know, in the survey we looked at at least from the Whitewater study, which was 2001 data is that 71% of the state in 2001 was privatized for sanitation already, as well as recycling. We're not proposing recycling because the way we're handling this we still would benefit from the recycling grant from the state. Earlier this year in the Walker bill, that was proposed to be eliminated completely, but it's gonna live for the next several years at around a $180,000 benefit to the city. Can I just continue? Please. Thank you. But then I just, I guess I, you know, you go back to this Whitewater study and the struggle is that, you know, citizens are not, you know, happy about paying. Any, you know, fees are not a- And normal. And normal times if you outsource something, you would believe that the levy would be reduced in order to support that and there would be a benefit. In these times there's not. As you know, we can't raise the levy in 2012 and we've got budget constraints that say our revenue is depressed, our assessed values are down, our budget continues to grow and only from the standpoint of 70 to 80% of it is people related costs. We've done a fine job in the past three or four years of cutting non-people costs out and we're to the point where we really can't cut much more of that out or else we won't be able to provide services because we won't have the goods or services to do that. So it says, what services do we not provide in order to meet a budget gap? And that's what we have to look at. And my recommendation in all of this is to not to look down in 12, but to look up to 13 and look back at 11 to see what we need to do as a city so that we're in a position when we can generate some more revenue that there's things that we can do and not limit our borrowing power. If that answers your question. Any other questions? Yeah, I'm. Good. Thank you. Jim, of those 20 people in the general fund that are looking to retire, how many of those come from which departments? Last time I looked, there was probably 12 to 15 from public works. And the rest from? We had one police, several in fire. There was a couple admin. With some of the changes due to the Walker bill. With DPW, is there any opportunity for, and maybe this is a Dave Bebel question. Is he here? You know, is there any opportunity for cost savings that then changes, whether it's contracting or not rehiring some of those positions? I know we don't know for sure how many people are actually gonna retire until was it December 7th when they actually have to finally make that decision. But is there any potential there? If you maybe come up, please. We can share this. You can share the podium. There's enough room back there. Definitely. Jim and I were talking about that today. It's like a moving target right now. People are submitting the resignations. We're looking at our TO, how we do business, with the impact of the Walker bill and the state budget moving forward. It gives us, I guess, a new way of operating business from a public work standpoint in the city. So I can't quantify that, but I do think there'll be some significant savings within the public works organization as we move forward. As a legislation body here, I don't see that if 20 people retire in public works, then I'm gonna get approval to hire all 20 of those positions back. So I'm sure through attrition and reallocating our budget throughout 2012, we're gonna realize the savings in the department. Alderman Versey. Again, right to you, Dave. With all the retirements and potentially more retirements coming up from a strategic standpoint, how many do you need to hire back? That you see right now. We have about five managers in our department leaving. At this point, I'm looking potentially to combine some of those management positions and maybe only needing to hire two out of the five, but that's still a work in progress and trying to shuffle some of those responsibilities and allocate those workloads between those managers. The garbage collection is still an issue. We need to look at that down road. If it does get contracted, shifting that personnel into other areas will affect how we reallocate some of that labor as well in the department. The reason why I ask is because I personally I kind of done with the DPW being the whipping boy of everything that we come up with for slashing our budgets. That's why I ask how many do we need to keep our services when people are expecting to be done with 20, possibly 30 potential retirees? Honestly, how many we need to keep going the way we are? Well, the budget that we submitted for this year is pretty much the exact same in terms of personnel. So the amount of personnel that we have currently in 2011 is what we budgeted for 2012. However, being that we have some opportunities now with the addition of added hours for temporary and summer seasonal employees, the ability to do contractual work within the community, I think we'll be able to maximize that as well. But we will need a core solid group of full-time employees to answer those day-to-day needs. And that's what we're really trying to establish right now. We're gonna have a tremendous drain on our knowledge base within the department. And fortunately, we do still have some long-term employees that are gonna stay through this. And we're gonna maximize that talent and reallocate them in the proper areas. Thank you. I think one of the things that we have as a, I'm gonna say a luxury, that's a bad way of putting it, but is the ability to contract various different services and the expansion of the Schedule X to 1,200 hours. So it sounds like you're gonna try to take full advantage of that. Any idea when you think you might have a cost estimate of that? I know it's putting it on the spot, Dave. I apologize, but obviously. Monday? I might answer that. Oh, we're, like I said, it's kind of a moving target. We have an idea of, I do have some resignations already in hand and I can actually start the process of planning accordingly. Others are unknown. Yeah, there's talk. They've checked some numbers, but until we actually get a formal letter that this is the date they're leaving, it's a little hard to anticipate. But I've thrown some numbers out there and looking. I mean, just for instance, if we consolidate those two management positions, that's two higher level positions, that's over $100,000 savings in that area right there that we could potentially realize right away. Please. Thank you, Dave, real quick. I don't want to sound argumentative or anything. I'll kind of, I do. Can you move your microphone up, please? Zip up your zipper. They'll bring your microphone up too. There you go, thank you. We have a matter of, I don't know, two and a half, three weeks before we have to finalize our budget as a council. We have no real numbers as far from your perspective of what that core number of people that you need to work, how are we supposed to then make decisions if we don't know what we're making decisions on? If you could give us a little bit, I mean, dollar wise, maybe it's a little trickier, but people wise, you've been around DPW for a number of years, so you have an idea of what's working, what you need, what's going to be more effective for you on a staff perspective. So how are we supposed to be able to give any guidance if you don't have an idea of how many people that core, that you need? If we say, well, we're going to allocate X number of dollars to your department and you say, well, that may or may not work, we have two or three weeks to make some heavy decisions here and we don't know what we're making decisions on if you can't provide it. It's dependent upon where those employees are located. For instance, if they're at the wastewater treatment plant, I need those people. That's a technical operation. We're going to fill those positions. If it's, for instance, in the labor pool or in the parks, maybe we could do without those positions and maybe you utilize some temporary contractual work. So it's a little dependent upon the position in the person and where they're located and that's the difficulty that I'm struggling with. The budget that we submitted is the budget that I feel strongly about keeping everybody that we have currently and getting them filled. Given the budget situation where we're at, that we have a shortfall, that's probably not going to be a reality. So I'm going to try to get as many employees to get the work done. We have more demand in terms of work in this city than we have employees or budget. So then it becomes a prioritization exercise and that's what we're doing right now. I think they'll be at the end of this and I'm hoping we've had some benefit meetings today. We're going to have some tomorrow. We'll get some answers from employees fairly soon and that's why we're trying to give you an update and it's difficult, I understand, but where we're at, I do anticipate, as I mentioned, at least some savings within the reorganization, some of those management positions maybe being consolidated as well as if I get some of the others in the labor pool that actually give me some official notice we'll maybe be able to take those funds and use it in a summer season or a contractual type of work. Dave, in your defense, you can't tell us what you need until we tell you we're having garbage or not. Correct? That's a big variable right there. That's a piece of it. That's eight people's work. I think, you know, part of the other issue is of the 22 people we have that potentially could leave 15 are in public works in the general fund. So it says until we know if those people are really going to leave or not, we're not sure what skill set number one is left. It might be easy or to determine what we think we need in the skill set, but again, what we haven't explored in this opportunity is maybe that outsourcing a skill set rather than hiring people in the long run might be more cost effective. And that's something that we just need time to explore. For sure there'll be a little consolidation in the management ranks, I believe. Dave talked about one or two people. I also believe there'll be a timing effect and if we had a higher 20 or 30 people to bring them in, so you'd see some benefit from that, again, depending on the skill set that we were after. So I believe there will be some savings there. Very difficult for me to put a number on. I'm certainly not as close to it as Dave is and Dave is a little apprehensive because he's not sure really what he's gonna be left with at the end of December in people. Alderman Heidemann. Thank you Chairman. In the past we've looked at privatizing garbage and I sit on the DPW committee and it's my impression that the city does a very good job of collecting garbage. And with the relaxed rules that we're gonna have to be able to utilize more people down in public works, we probably would be able to do, would you say garbage in the future for less than we're paying for now? Yes, there's that potential. Okay, okay, but no, instead to plug a hole we would decide to charge our citizens more by privatizing it just to plug a hole and they don't see any savings by not by losing the garbage pickup. Because if we outsource this and we have to pay 1.3 million and we could have actually got the job done for maybe a million, wouldn't we be better off saving the taxpayer some money by keeping it in-house? Especially being able to experience in the upcoming years because we've got to relax rules and be able to manage this department a little bit better? Are you asking me? No, I'm not. You're looking at me. Yes, I'm just directing my comments towards you. Thank you, I appreciate that. I mentioned it to Dave because like I said, that's the thought that I get from being on that committee. And I think that's important for our committee members to be able to say, you know what, that's our department. And as Alderman Verzi said, that DPW has taken a lot of hits and we really haven't seen the true results that we could get from the change in the labor law, the bargaining stuff that came out through the Walker bill. And I'd like to be able to see that before we go and privatize something to actually charge our citizens more money to have the job done that we could do better ourselves. Anything on that? Okay. Alderman Verzi. Thank you. It's two things. The first thing is staying with the garbage. If just theoretically say, we stay in the business and Alderman Heidemann was going wise, we stay in the business. Is there a year attached to that? And when we could potentially seek as you're going down to different trucks to putting one guys on, potentially going from eight to four man crew. I mean, the savings in the garbage alone, that's where he was going. I mean, when would you see it? And if it wasn't there, how many years would we still be in the business? Well, we've been in the garbage business forever. That's one of our core functions of the department. We're, that's one of the areas that I have to say that we maximize the efficiency out of that operation. It's one of the things that we have to do every day. We know that we have to pick it up. We know those routes. We've streamlined that operation. The struggle here is that we are gonna need equipment. So we are looking at new equipment. Yes, there'll be one person trucks. There might be a combination of some two man crews that for some of our interior areas through the alley pickup in some of the inner city where it's tight for maneuverability. But nevertheless, I mean, there is potential. We may have the opportunity to use summer seasonal now on garbage where in the past, we weren't. Years ago, we did. Back in the early 80s and late 80s, we had summer seasonal at a much lower rate and they just stayed on the back of the truck and that's all they did is throw the garbage all day. There are these opportunities. It's difficult to hit that right now. As I mentioned, we did put in the budget to purchase new equipment. There's a long lead time. It's not gonna be if we get this budget approved, we're gonna have this custom equipment. It's not sitting on a lot somewhere where you can just drive up and say, that's the one I want. So it's probably about six to nine month lead time and it's expensive. The second part outside of garbage is with the people you know that are retiring now, 100% for sure. Super conservatively speaking, you could already be saving $100,000. Yes. That's being, what's going on right now, that's $100,000 savings from your budget right now. That's, yeah, that would be a conservative estimate, yes. Alderman Kittleson. Thanks, thanks, Terri. And Dave, can I just ask how then, how long would we have that equipment? You're saying there's a lead time to get that equipment built. How long would we have that garbage? We typically have a life cycle of about eight years on our garbage equipment. The current trucks we have are six, six years. The issue isn't the actual truck itself, it's the packer unit. That takes the biggest wear and tear. And unfortunately, the issue that we have with this, the current packer equipment is the company's no longer in business. I think for obvious reasons, we're having difficulty with it. So you said eight years. Eight years is our typical life cycle for that type of equipment. And they're in the budget, you have them in the budget. Alderman Carlson. Thank you. So we're talking potential savings here over the next year or two, or what have you, based on just maybe a little bit more efficiency cuts. But our, sorry, I should have thought about this a little bit more. But as over the next two years, we're looking at one and a half to $2 million, correct? That's what we need to look forward. Obviously we can just try to plug a hole for 2012, but that's not the best way to do this. So if we're talking just low six-figure savings, that's not gonna help us get to $1.5, $2 million. So I mean, you don't even, do you have? I mean, he says $100,000 just through attrition. But Joe Heidemann was talking about just savings through the garbage service. Could you put a number behind that? Well, our current budget is right around 1.6 million to do the complete garbage for the city of Shibuya. Of that, labor, labor, just one second please. Our full-time labor for garbage collection for 2012 is budgeted at 419,000. So of that, I would say potentially you could maybe save anywhere from 15 to 20% with any temporary or summer seasonal to help offset some of the full-time labor on that collection. Then I guess I'm just gonna throw this out there just because I have to. Are we willing to bet that these relaxed labor laws are gonna still be in place in a year or two? Obviously we have a round of recalls coming through. Who knows what can happen, so do we really wanna take that chance and just make assumptions now that it may not be there anymore? I'm just throwing that out there. Alderman Reisler, did you have a question? I just a clarification. When you say it's 1.6, and then we have the 1.6 for the trucks, if you divide that over eight years, is that already included in there like the extra 200,000 a year, or are we kind of actually gonna be cost-neutral once we look at taking that money for the trucks? That there is built into that 1.6. Either money to pay back the... Right, it may have to be adjusted, depending on the cost on those trucks and your life cycle, but that figure is within that fund. Alderman Samson. Thank you. Okay, I'll stick on garbage right now. So far from what I'm understanding here tonight, there's really no savings. If you're gonna, to the taxpayer right now, for removing garbage as a business for the city and privatizing it, so to speak, if you're looking at two potential proposals at $9 to $10 a month to the taxpayer, we're not decreasing taxes in any stretch by privatizing garbage. So you're just actually increasing a bill. You're sending a bill to every household for a service that we're already getting, in addition to what we're already paying in taxes. So we're not saving anything, because from what I see, that's 1.9 million if we privatize, roughly, and we're putting out 1.6. We're saving money already if we just stayed in the model that we're in compared to privatizing. If we're going 1.6 is next year's budget without anybody retiring without anybody, but if you've budgeted at 1.6, and if we privatized, we're at 1.8, 1.9, with no decreasing taxes whatsoever. So you're not saving money anywhere for anybody. We're just shifting who's doing the garbage pickup from the city to some other company. We're paying more. But the general fund saves the 1.6 million because the 1.9 million would be paid directly by the citizens. We wouldn't be in the garbage business, and there wouldn't be 1.6 million of cost in the general fund. So our general fund would be reduced. We'd just be passing the cost on to the citizens of Shboy. Instead of taxing them for $120, a higher tax. Oh, I'm sorry. Instead of taxing them $120, we're basically ending at $120 on the water bill throughout the whole year. Correct. Good. Lemon and vernacrine. Thank you. Again, just to kind of go off of some of that. As he said, currently garbage costs us 1.6 million. That would be the savings that the city would see. However, by privatizing that cost of garbage collection would actually go up to 1.9, and it's proposed that we would just pass that along to a per household fee at approximately $9 to $10 a month or $110 to $120 a year. Is that a fair statement on it? I guess I have a lot of concerns about privatizing garbage. One of it being the cost. We're actually doing it more cost effective currently than we would be by privatizing it. My other concerns is at the end of that three to five year contract, who's to say where that cost goes. And now we no longer have trucks. We no longer have guys. We really have no longer the ability to get back into picking up garbage at that time because I don't foresee the city looking at the huge startup cost to get back into that. So I have some concerns at the end of that contract with the limited amount of providers. We could really see a huge increase to the per household fee for garbage collection that we do at a very cost effective right now. So I'm very concerned about privatizing garbage for those factors. Again, we're actually doing it cheaper than what the private industry is talking about providing. But I do understand the fiscal reality of all of this. We are $600,000 short. We're talking about being 1.5 to $2 million short next year. So there certainly is some changes that we all need to decide. I mean, we either need to make some cuts to services or we need to increase some fees or we need to generate revenue. I mean, it really comes down to that. I understand. I don't think anyone likes the situation we're in, but something needs to happen and things need to change over the next few years or we're really gonna be in some hard places and not able to provide many services to our citizens any longer. Alderman Medacheck. Just had a question about the recycling. That's still gonna remain in-house pretty much. And right now, do they share any resources, the recycling and the trash removal? Can you use the microphone? I was just talking about the garbage. Recyclables and garbage are picked up at the same time. They would be contracted with garbage. However, worse the city is considered the responsible unit for recycling. That's why under the contract, we would still be in control of that. We would get the revenue from the state. We would still have to manage to make sure that we're meeting our recycling guidelines, but it would still be picked up under our contract if we went to a contract. Okay. Good. Alderman Reisler. I guess I'll go back to the Whitewater study with the 2001 and 71% of municipalities have privatized garbage roughly. In the state of Wisconsin. In the state of Wisconsin. I think that of those 71% under the budget constraints we're at, they'd be happy right now to be able to to go to a privatized garbage and save some money because I think we're fortunate to have that ability to do it as opposed to looking at this as something that's terrible where we don't have the ability to raise any tax for anything to save any services that we feel are important. This is one of the ways that we can fill the gap to save that. Editorial. Alderman Verzi. Thank you. Going into the full budget, just general questions for you, Jim. Workers Comp, were we super underfunded the last couple of years on Workers Comp? Is that why it all more than tripled in most of the areas? Yes. Okay. Next one is? Well, let me, if you want the short story. Sure. All we did was charge out premiums to departments in the general fund. We had a Workers Comp fund where we had a funding balance that we paid the claims out of. In 2008 and nine, we had severe years in Workers Comp claims. The fund in 2010 ended up going negative by $200,000. So we made a conscious decision this year to not charge the $80,000 in premium only to departments, but to charge the actual claim costs for the prior years to the departments that created the cost. So that's why you see that. And the intent is to bring that fund neutral over the next two years. Okay. And then the second part, well, it's over and over in a lot of departments, contractual services. One right off the bat, $100,000 in the mayor's office for contracted services. What are these contracts? That's S-C-E-D-C contribution. Okay. And these other departments. Hold on, let me find them. Let's see. HR department, $38,000 in contracted services. I know Chad was. We consolidated there all of the advertising for open positions. Okay. Purchasing, contracted services. I mean, there's a lot of these things. That's 50% of Bernie or Ramier. We share Bernie with the county. Okay. Here's a computer maintenance. This one's in the PD. It's going to 112,000 for computer maintenance. Is that part of the CAD RMS system? Yeah. The reason why it went up? That's correct. Okay. Here, mobile telephones. There's a severe increase in all departments with mobile telephones. Which departments? Almost all of them. No, they're not in all of them. We've had an increase in mobile phones again for the PD. Yep. In support of that. Right. Okay. Fire department, same reason. That's correct. The big ones. Well, you're looking that up Alderman Versey. Go ahead. Alderman Van Akron. Thank you. Jim, can you go over in your executive budget submission that was submitted? There were some, I don't know if you wanna call them recommendation proposals, ideas that were listed as to how we could bridge some of the gap that was there. And obviously some of that has come down. Can you go over those again and just discuss what potential opportunities or revenues could be increased or I guess just go over some of those options that were submitted with your summary. Yeah, I mean from a revenue generation standpoint, if you look at in the past, the city charged the wheel tax to its citizens. I think it was $2 to $2.50 a wheel. So it would be eight to $10 a vehicle when you registered your plates. The intent of that was to repair roads. I think that generated roughly $250,000 a year. That goes a long way to filling potholes that could be offset in the general fund currently, but it couldn't pave streets. We had a storm water fee that was done away with probably three years ago plus. It used to generate roughly $1.5 million in revenue, probably had about $600,000 or $700,000 of expenses. And the balance of that was set aside to do needed infrastructure repair for storm water drains. Again, the upside was with an aging infrastructure, it helped defray the cost rather than borrowing money. The downside was is that 80% of that revenue was generated from commercial slash manufacturing. And I think that might be the last thing we'd like to do in this state of the economy is to go back and now impose a large tax on the manufacturing sector in our city to potentially lose some jobs. The other thing we looked at was reducing the fire station. Potentially, we have some retirements that we could do that, albeit the benefit wouldn't be as significant as we thought because what Chief Herman did to save some money was to delay hiring of a replacing of those people. So that could be worth several hundred thousand dollars if we chose to do that, but that would be closing one of the five stations next year. And we also looked at if Mead Library would contribute anymore. We did get contributions from transit. It was over and above the benefit they received from WRS and the medical plan. What we received to keep budget neutral, the library was a hundred thousand dollars roughly that they received as contributions or credit to costs for WRS contributions. Alderman Kittleson. Thank you. I'm looking at these recommendations Jim and the first one was a reduction of employees needed to close the gap. You said average salary with benefits, $70,000 plus unemployment compensation that would take 21 employees. Right, now we're probably at what are... Do the simple math. About 10. We're at, how much? Yeah, 10 to 11. Thanks. Ready now Alderman Versi? For another one, sure. Building exterior maintenance. Every year, I went back actually a couple years to oh nine. Every year was almost a same dollar amount. Give or take a couple thousand dollars but every building, I mean between 19,000, 18,000, I mean 20,000, every year these buildings are having that kind of maintenance done. They're pretty old buildings. Would you like to go through the bills and see what they're for? I'd be happy to do that. I don't have a clue, I can't set up and tell you why. I mean just some of them from last year went from 9,000 to 19,000, I mean I guess. And again that's... It's nitpicking but I guess... It is but that's based on estimates that we got from public works to maintain the current buildings we have. Alderman Carlson, thank you. Could you also go over the importance of looking out a couple years and building back up our reserve fund when it comes to bonding? Sure. Currently we have $5.6 million in general fund undesignated reserves. And that's up from about 3.8 million in 2009. One of the things that the city gets looked at from third parties such as Moody's or Standard and Poor's is they set the bond rating for the city. And that gives us the ability based on that rating to go out in the open market and raise debt to support funds that we need in the city whether it's for capital improvement programs, road programs or whatever. Naturally the higher the rating, the lower the cost of borrowing money for the city. The city has an ordinance in place that says currently that 18% of next year's budget should be set aside for general fund reserves. And probably going back over the last five or six years we've never met that number. And most years it's been probably under 13%. In 2010 when we ended up at $5.6 million we were at 16.3%. Closest we've come in a long time. The objective there is to at least main 18. When rating agencies look at the city or any city for that matter across the United States they like to see roughly a 20% spread in general fund reserves to next year's budget. So the example would be next year if our budget's $35 million they'd like to see a general fund reserve balance of roughly seven million. Our ordinance says it should be about 6.6 based on 18%. So we should strive to do that in order to keep our bond rating so that the city can go out and borrow money as cheaply as it can. Right now we have a double A rating by one and a double A two rating by the other Standard and Poor's and Moody's. In both of their standards those ratings are relatively the same which says the city's stable. The fortunate part about the city debt is the majority of it is in TIF districts and they look at TIF districts they being the rating agencies as self generating revenue to pay down debt. So they really don't hold that against a municipality. Actually the more debt you have in TIF and the less you have in general obligation debt the better off you are. Currently the way they look at it. So even though we haven't meant the 20% standard the majority of our debt roughly 60% of our debt is in TIF debt so they kind of offset each other. So we've been able even through these hard times to maintain that double A rating for the city. If in fact we drop down below that and let's say we take the 5.6 million and we need a million and a half to two million and it goes down to three and a half to four million that would have an adverse effect on the cost of us borrowing money going forward and it's very difficult especially with the economic environment where our population is down slightly. We're basically a resort area and the average income is less than a lot of places that they benchmark in the state. Would take a long time for us to get that rating back up. My personal opinion. You good over there, Carlson? Yes, thank you. I just wanted everyone to hear that if they haven't heard it already just because we can sit here and pick all we want but I think we need to go for the biggest pieces of the pie here so we can actually start them putting some money back into that fund so we're not in trouble a year or two from now. All in adversity. On that note, bringing back up the fire department. Talking about big pieces. I mean to me everything money is money everywhere we can save it and we went through this in strategic. The station idea that's been thrown around by several people where to move them and the cost savings there is still a pretty large cost savings. Why we're deciding to stay where it is is beyond me but four stations or three stations with not even going down to some of the scenarios that the chief had on here but even going down to the 72 firefighters or three fire stations and we already have some of the areas looked at that already owned by city so it's not two and a half million dollars to build a new station. Why isn't this something that we need to look at to add some of these cost savings of half a million dollars right there and keeping our firefighters where they are without replacing all of the retirements keeping the 72 and a half full timers. I mean that's a $500,000 savings that could be added to on top of garbage and everything else. We have to do more than one thing to patch a hole and this is something that needs to be talked about. What's the 500,000? Well, if you went down to three stations I'm going by his numbers on here. His four stations and 72 firefighters that's 340,000. You dump another station without replacing the six retirees you're on the 71 so his three stations but that's 55 firefighters that's $1.8 million. I don't want to go down that far but the third station which is either DPW which he has written down on here we have a current south side station and a current north side station so we don't need to rebuild. The savings affair is something that we should not keep passing down the road. I think we have to make or the council has to make a conscious decision to say where they'd like to see the fire department go. I think on a three station scenario we've got to build another one and we've got to look at options there. Next year we have four to five people leaving potentially. It says that if we chose to we could pick a station to close. I think the savings next year would be less only because of the way we budgeted the replacements but we could save $200,000 by doing that next year. If we're going to go any further than that or deeper than that then we've got to look at how we want to restructure the whole fire department. And again, I think the chief is willing to do it. We're all willing to look at it but we need clearer direction on that from the council. I mean that's just like from a citizen standpoint my personal opinion again whether you privatize garbage or you take two fire stations out. As long as the fire stations aren't in my neighborhood that's a good thing. But if they are I got an issue. We've gone through that in 2010 as I recall, or 11. So it's easy to say but it's very difficult. Well in our strategic meeting the chief even said response times if we close the downtown station and if we moved something done and had the adequate number of firefighters per station which we don't have right now that's doing two things. You're not really doing a service to the citizens. You're endangering the firefighters because only two guys are on wave cell side station and three guys are down on town. So you're not doing a service because they have to wait around. They get to the call, they wait for the next guys to show up so they can do something. So you have the adequate number of firefighters per station, they can do more faster and it's better for the guys and it's better for the citizens even if you're increasing 54 seconds to your response times that we talked about in strategic fiscal planning. I'm gonna bring Chief Herman up. Bring in the action. Mr. Amodio Jim to be an expert in the fire department. First of all, the three station scenario that was in the long range plan was the one that was requested by you I think was one of the scenarios that you wanted to see. And this was talked about in strategic fiscal planning. If we would go down to a four station model with the 72 firefighters, we're really only adding one firefighter to one of those four stations because there's only two at one of them right now. So we're adequately staffed in the stations. What you're gonna see if you go to a four station model and this is, I hate to say we're rushing this decision but it needs to be made at some time. For instance, that station five, that land was purchased 27 years before that station was built. So when you're planning fire stations you need to be looking out 20 years. That's kind of hard to look ahead a year and try to fix this problem. But in the four station model, if we were to close the downtown station and the 25th Street station and build a new one somewhere in the middle, let's say the DPW, what you're gonna see the end result of that will be, in the simplest of terms, the difference in response time is going to be the amount of time that that station takes to get to where station one is which is probably gonna be roughly two minutes. So you'll see an increase in response times about two minutes to the east side of, from here east and you'll see about a two to three minute increase in response times to the far west side. So that's really gonna be the ramifications of going to a four station model with that station central. That and the cost to build that station. Please. I guess if you talk about the DPW station to revamp that isn't gonna be a two and a half million dollar project and the building's already there and increased response times we talked about that in strategic. If you actually have this proper number of firefighters you're actually doing a better service. Even if you increase it by a minute to your response time, having the adequate number of firefighters on the scene in that response time is actually better than a two minute response time with two guys. But that is not gonna change at all. How many people arrive on scene in that amount of time is that's probably gonna be worse in a four station model than a five because of the four stations that are gonna be waiting longer for that second truck to come. And it's not like those firefighters are standing there doing nothing waiting for that second fire truck. They're laying hose lines out. They're walking the perimeter of the structure that's on fire. They're planning on what the plan of attack is and they do have the ability to make that conscious decision to go in if they want to. NFPA standards say that's in their realm or responsibility to decide if they go in safely. But what it does say that they should wait for five people to be on scene before they actually do that. The scenario that we talked about at strategic fiscal planning was not occupying a part of Department of Public Works. I have not had that discussion with Mr. Bebel. That was constructing a new station on that site. Hold on a minute, Van Akron. Thank you, sir. Just to touch on some of that and to get some clarification, I think it's misleading to say that it would serve us better to go down to fewer stations. Would it cost less? Yes, as far as a service would it be better to the citizens? I don't believe so. Because as you said, those firefighters get there and they're starting the base work of what they need to do. And that needs to be done whether it's four guys arriving on a truck or two guys arriving on a truck. That work still needs to be done. Hose needs to be laid out. A plan needs to be laid out. The assessment needs to be made as to how you're going to attack what you're going to, correct? I mean, all of that still needs to be done whether it takes two minutes longer and you've got four guys or two minutes less and now your first two guys are there and you're waiting for other people to get there. Is that correct? As a whole, if we go down to the four station model, 72 firefighters, we're actually reducing from the number 16 that we normally have on a scene when we call everybody there down to 15. So it's less people there taking just a little bit longer time to actually get there. I think the other impact that needs to be understood when you go down to four stations is and using 2010 numbers, there were about 26 times when we had all our resources out. And then if another call came in, we either scrambled the free upper rig to send it. We call, we're in the process of calling people in to man another rig or we use mutual aid a handful of times. If we go down to the four station model, that's going to happen probably 80 times or so based on 2010 numbers and there'll probably be that 25 times that we're scrambling, those are going to be delayed responses. And that's a decision that the council needs to make and as a fire department, what do we do in those 25 instances? Do we start calling people back? Do we change to a partial paid on call system? Or do we contract services with our surrounding communities? But every one of those scenarios, you're looking at about a 15 minute response to that call. Please follow up. To continue on with that, under the four station model that's been suggested and considered, I mean, we're doing that specifically for cost saving measures. And you had stated that you'd see a two to three minute increase in response times to the downtown area and east. Again, on average, the average call, if I believe was correct and strategic was about 50 seconds increase on average. Well, a lot of the city is going to get the same response time that they had been getting. But the downtown area, you're going to see a two to three minute response time. And if I'm quoting you correctly from strategic fiscal planning, fires double in size every minute. So you're talking about fighting fires that are well progressed as to what used to have been the case if you would close the downtown station. And again, just to clarify, I believe the downtown station has the most calls and is often the first one on scene to the majority of the calls that the fire department gets, am I correct? The majority of our calls are in this area. I think it's roughly 37%, mid 30% of our calls are in this area. So the large majority, 37% of your calls, we'll see an increase in response times. And we'd be doing that specifically to solve our budget hole for this year. And I don't even think the cost savings in that would solve that problem. That, yeah, I can't tell you that we're going to provide a better service from four stations because we won't. Alderman Carlson, did you have something? Yes, thank you. Based on the level of service we have right now in the city, what do we spend per capita for fire service compared to other cities of similar size? I can't give you the exact number, but according to a number of studies, we're in the bottom 25% in the state and we're below the normal charge. So I think we really have the best of both worlds. We have one more station than what would be considered normal for a city our size, yet we're doing it for cheaper than what other cities are doing it for. Thank you, Chief. Feel free to sit down here. All right, other discussion. Again, sorry, please. Thank you, Chairman. In reference to having that, when you privatize garbage, putting it on the water bill, why can't that be on the tax bill? It could be. First tax bill's going out in four weeks. So if we could have a decision by then, we could certainly get it on there. Okay, and that wheel tax and that other tax? It wouldn't be a deduction they could take for taxes, but we could get it as a special assessment on the tax bill. Okay, and the wheel tax or the stormwater fee, could that go on the tax bill also? The wheel tax would have to be set up through the state, through motor vehicle. In stormwater, we would have to do but that would actually go on the water bill as it had in the past. Alderman Van Akron. Thank you, sir. I guess I'm gonna throw out some ideas and I'd like some feedback from the group and try to see where we wanna get here. We're approximately $660,000 short, approximately. Okay. I guess I'd like your opinion on if we would keep the garbage service with the city and start a small fee rather than nine to $10 a month and lose complete control of the service and lose the ability to control the cost of the service after that contract as well as seeing an increase from 1.6 million in operating costs going to 1.9 million in operating costs. If we kept the garbage service with the city the way it's operating at 1.6 million and we established say a $3 a month fee based on the public works estimate that I had given or had been given of 17,500 households at $3 a month, you would see a revenue of approximately $648,000, correct? Yeah, offset it by about $40,000 for billing that we would do through the water utility. Okay. And if we had the ability to do that on the tax fee you would not have that? Correct. $40,000? Correct. So depending on the billing, you could see a fluctuation of approximately $40,000. Correct. So we could see an increase of revenue from anywhere from $600,000 to $648,000 somewhere in that range. Sure. Also on one of your suggestions were the wheel tax for road repair. That too would bring in approximately another $250,000. So now we're talking somewhere in the range of $900,000. Correct? I understand that that certainly doesn't get us through the problem of 2013, but it certainly solves our issue currently. And again, my issue with privatizing garbage is to use complete control of where that cost goes in the future. And I have real concerns about that, being the limited number of providers, as well as the fact is that the way we are operating now is cheaper than what the private industry is quoting or would be able to offer it. And it's not as if it is getting any cheaper for the person who's paying that bill, it's just the city's not paying that bill. We're passing that along as a user fee to the citizens of our city. Their service is possibly, they don't know what they'll be getting, they know what they get from us. They're gonna be charged more rather than 1.6, it's gonna go to 1.9. It's just that the city no longer is gonna pay for it, we're just gonna pass that along to them. I guess I would rather see us, rather than pass along a fee of a higher cost to our citizens, I'd rather see us establish a small fee due to our fiscal situation and keep the service ourselves. At least they know what they're getting, they can count on the dependable service that we are getting and we provide it for less and we control where that cost goes. In three years, we don't have to be worried about the fact that this could cost 2.5 million or $3 million or double or triple. I guess I wanna pose some of these ideas and see what your thoughts are because do I like the idea of charging $3 a month for a garbage pickup? Absolutely not. And if in the future, our economic situation changes, can we pull that fee off? Absolutely. Three years from now, I don't see it to be feasible to get back into the garbage business three years from now if the private contractors say, well, costs have gone up, you no longer have trucks, you no longer have guys, so we're gonna charge double. I don't think we have the ability to do that. I guess, do I like the scenario? No, but I certainly like it better than passing along a $10 a month fee per household and losing all control of where this service goes and the quality of service people are getting. So I guess I posed some of these questions to you. It would raise about $900,000 and it would do things that one of it being the road repair side of it, citizens have said in this survey, that's one of the things that they wanna see done. At the same time, we have to realize the financial situation we're in, we have to find a way to either raise some fees and raise some revenue or cut back in areas and services that we provide. We've gone over and over different services that all of us feel strongly about. I haven't heard anyone say where we're gonna come up with the $700,000 in cuts that seems to be something that we can all live with. So like I said, I don't like the idea of charging $3 a month for garbage, but it certainly does get us to where we need to be currently. Does it solve our 2013 problem? Absolutely not and I understand that. And I think as a long-term model, we as a group have to look at what services we no longer are gonna be involved in providing and really we'll have to take a big bite in that. But as far as getting us through tonight in today's budget problem, and again, you'd see about a $250,000 surplus for next year's problem, I think it's a start. So I guess I pose that to everyone. You good? Don. Just here. Thank you. Just to say that, you were talking about keeping the garbage, keep garbage in-house but just charge a $3 fee for garbage pickup. If we kept the garbage in-house and I believe the household numbers were 17,000 to 17,500, if you charged a $3 fee per month, that would come out to $36 a year that would come out to approximately at 17,500 houses, it would be $630,000 in revenue. Again, and based on- Jean, you good? Yes, thank you. Thank you. Alderman Sampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Jim, just from last year, with the slight raise in the taxes, what was it, six cents per thousand? We kept the tax rate the same but the levy actually went up 200,000. On average, what was that increase per house? Is there a rough, a very rough idea with that what's per household? I know average is a different- Six cents per thousand or something like that? It was six cents per thousand, I think it was last year. Would, I guess when I'm trying to rationalize here, if you add $3 a month to the households for their taxes, it's essentially the same thing as a tax, period. So what's the difference between, was it less per household per month from last year's levy increase compared to just adding $3 on? Because if it is, then I would say just raise our taxes. And tax roll. Well, we can't raise the taxes. Right, don't understand. I mean, it's, call it what you want to, a fee or a service or whatever it's- Well, let's put it this way. Let's say we keep garbage and find something else to save money on. Effectively, I was asked this question earlier, where do we think the tax rate's gonna be for next year? It's difficult only because we're missing two key pieces. One is the manufacturing assessments from the state, which we anticipate at least from what we hear, it'd be at least a week later than normal, normally we get a mid-November. And then there's an assessment ratio that we also get from the state that kind of takes the assessed values they get from all of the municipalities and then looks at all of the sales of homes throughout the state by area and puts a percentage on that. And then you do the math and you take your assessed value times this assessed ratio, which is supposed to give you fair market value. Then you take that fair market value and divide it into your levy and you get a rate. So with the levy staying the same, not increasing or decreasing, and we know assessed values for residential are already down. I've got the feeling that manufacturing will be down. So it says even with the levy staying the same, the rate will increase and our citizens will have to pay more tax. There'll also be a quiz on that formula. Correct. But the short story is the rate's gonna go up. How much? I can't tell you until I get the two pieces from the state to do the actual math, but it will go up. You saw that in the county. They actually reduced their levy, but the rate went up. That's because the assessed values went down farther than their levy dropped. So we have to wait and see. And again, that was an estimate by the county because they really don't have all of the numbers they need from the state as well. But it's their best estimate. Alderman Van Akron. Just to again reiterate, it's not that I wanna see a fee increase. Again, call it what you want. Is it an increase of money that homes are having to pay to the city for their services? Absolutely. It's not that I wanna see that, but the reality is we're here and we can't continue to supply services when the money that we're bringing in no longer covers our cost. So we need to find ways to adjust that or to do business differently. And I guess that's what I'm looking for is some ideas as to where we get there. Privatizing garbage gets you there, but you're just adding again, call it what you want. That fees actually triple the $3 fee that I just discussed. It's still homes that are paying it. It's just that the city's not paying it anymore. And we can say, well, that works for us, but the homeowner and the person whose garbage is getting collected, it probably doesn't work well for them. Again, it's not what I want, but I'm trying to reduce that and minimize the effect to the homeowner and to the people and to our citizens as small as we can. And I think it's easier to retract that fee later down the road when we can rather than try to start up garbage service or to do something else. I just think this is one way to go. Thank you. Alderman Haman. We're sitting here talking through all this stuff and I'm listening to everything here and I read what former Mayor Sousha handed me here. And the one question I keep coming back to is what do we do next year? The year after that, the year after that and the year after that. We're just, we're in a really bad spot. I think for far too long, we've kept kicking the can down the road. We're all trying to look at a light at the end of the tunnel. That's not two months away. It's five years, it's 10 years, it's 15, it's 20. What's gonna get us there and what's the way we're gonna start getting there? We're listening to the financial numbers that are coming from Chief Administrator Amodio over here and our bond rating, we're nowhere near where our own ordinance says we're supposed to be. We're gonna have to come up with money to provide these services that everybody says that they want that nobody wants to pay more for. Where do we keep, you know, where do we stop the bleeding? Where do we figure out where to make the cuts? Where do they come from? Where are they going to be? Do we keep banging on Department of Public Works? Do we bang on the Mead Library of Mar? Do we attack the fire department some more? There's a lot of stuff we've been handed over a long period of time and a lot of it that we've discussed here tonight that we do need to move forward on and I think we're all in agreement on that. Whereas we're making these discussions, what can we do that's not gonna fix the problem tomorrow but it's gonna fix it a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, two years from now, five years, 10 years. When are we gonna actually find that? I don't wanna pay anymore for anything that I absolutely have to. God knows that. But I would think nothing about going over to Walmart and picking up a Blu-ray player for 200 bucks but I'm gonna squawk about paying 120 bucks for my garbage. I'll go to Walmart and I'll pick up a gallon of milk that two years ago cost me $2.50 and this is now costing me $3.50. I'll think nothing of it but I don't wanna pay more to have fire protection. I'll go get a pound of hamburger and this one strikes really close to home because we raise beef cattle and paying the prices that I am there but I don't wanna fund the Mead Public Library. These are the decisions that we're gonna have to make and something that we're gonna have to do. We've got a couple options here. Nobody wants to raise the fees and the prices on it and the first one that we were given and regardless of how we wanna look at it is going to be privatizing garbage. That's a huge chunk of change. That's not only gonna fix this budget but it's gonna start fixing some roads. It's gonna give us a big chunk of what's going on next year. We're gonna have to look at more. We've got a lot of things on the table. It's just the direction that we're gonna go and that's what we're sitting here. We're gonna have to figure out. We've got some options back and forth but we can beat them all all all day long. We've all seen the finances. It's what direction we're gonna go with it. I'm in Vercy. Thanks. Good point. We have two. Multiple things, multiple facets of everything. What was the wheel tax number that you had? 250. Just with four things. What Alderman Benachron suggested for that $630,000. Four station fire department model is 72.5 firefighters. $340,000. The very conservative number that Dave Bebel just gave us of $150,000. Another $250,000 for a wheel tax. That's 1.32 million right there with those four things. That's moving forward every year. That's not even doing getting out of the garbage but that's real numbers right there and that's a conservative number from DPW. They seem to be a whipping boy for everything so we can squeeze some more out of that. So I mean that's a conservative number and then what else is there? We have to start doing things. We're kicking it around all the time but nobody wants to commit to anything. Oh, let's do this but now I'm not gonna do that. Well, let's do this, now I'm not gonna do that. We're not getting anywhere. We're sitting here talking about everything and we're not getting anywhere. These are the four things that we've heard tonight that are hard numbers. Besides getting out, that's 1.6 and then you still have to add more things to look at the future. Not just this year, not just next year. 2014, 16, 18, 22. Where are we going? Every year we're gonna be sitting in this exact same meeting to saying, okay, what else can we cut here? What are we doing? Unless we look forward with continual things and those four, that's a good start for continual things I think, but we have to do them. No one's gonna like it, no one likes fees, no one likes paying more for things. Yeah, great analogies going to Walmart. Same thing, it's necessities. Is that Blu-ray player a necessity? No, it's not. But unfortunately, these are prices we're gonna have to live with. So I think these four things on a wheel tax, the garbage fee, I like that idea. The fire department and whatever else we can get out of DPW. I mean, that's $1.3 million. That's our 650 whole and money for next year and keep digging. Good for thought. Second. This is getting very difficult, this chair to keep quiet, but please. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure all of you have seen or heard, read in the papers about other municipalities in the state. Compared to what fire and police have contributed to this cause for next year is probably gonna be one of the leaders in the state as far as contributions from PPNS. And I really commend both of them on doing that. So it's really reduced our budget gap to something that's close to manageable. But again, manageable looking down, not out. Across the state, there are fee for service charges being raised in all municipalities because they have no other way to solve their budget deficit. Budget deficits, incomparable cities to us are two, two and a half million dollars this year. Not, we started out at a million three and whittled it down to 650 right now for this year. So there's no recourse throughout the state other than to raising fees to cover expenses for services. And we've also seen cuts across the board, especially in Milwaukee with police and fire. So it says there's really nothing that's sacred anymore. And what we have to really do is look at longterm solutions to these problems that, as Joel said, will continue to be there year after year after year. I call it creeping inflation. It's gonna be two to 3% a year on whatever the number is. So all I can suggest is that that's a start, but we still have to look out to say, how do we really fix the problem? Good. All right. Alderman Kittleson. Thank you. I guess, and I know we do have to look ahead, but sometimes I think we have to take one year at a time. I like what Alderman Van Akron is talking about. I too, I don't like passing along a fee to our tax paying citizens because I think they pay enough as it is. However, I don't want to let go of the garbage because once we do let go of it, we're not gonna get that back. Fixing the budget for this year, to me, it would be a good thing. Well, we have to do that, but we also have a report here that we spent some money for and it's strategic fiscal planning. I guess I'd like to take this, we take it apart and look at everything and come forward next year. We've got a year then to come forward with some kind of a plan and we don't know what's gonna happen down the road, but I'd like to take a little further look at this and come forward with something for next year based on what we've heard from the citizens. So that's my thought. Thank you. Alderman Van Akron. I know it has to be killing you. I guess I'm looking for your ideas and your thoughts on any of this. With your fiscal background, I certainly would love to hear your input. Well, I'm just gonna kind of play devil's advocate. Right now we pay $7.61 if we use the $17,500. So increasing it by three takes it to $10.61. If the privatizing is 9.50, we're actually saving the taxpayers' dollars. Just gonna throw that out there from a math. Now again, control all those types of things. And again, I'm just playing devil's advocate. Control is obviously a factor. The ability to bring those in, get rid of the fees as the economic times get better certainly as a factor. But again, by adding that $3 fee, if we look at 1.6 divided by 17.5, it's $7.61 a head or a household. Add a $3 fee or at 10.61. Not saying it's the right or wrong way to go, but it's adding that fee now makes you neutral with essentially privatizing. And I'm probably gonna take some serious heat rounds for this one, but one of the areas we haven't looked at was the library. They make up a very substantial proportion of our, again, playing devil's advocate, a very substantial proportion of our levy. 2.4-ish million. That's a big number. I understand that in the past, the maintenance of effort, we don't have that issue anymore. So again, is there opportunity there? Again, with Mr. Bebel's comments earlier, we know there's gonna be some retirements. Do we just say, look, we're cutting 300,000? Figure it out and make it happen. Those are some of the tough decisions we're gonna have to make. So kind of the reason I'm, if you see the red face is more because we haven't, I don't think looked at this deep enough and I've had this conversation with multiple people. We haven't looked at the fundamental structure of government in this city. And I'm not trying to pontificate or anything like that, but we've continued to operate a 1950s model in year 2011. Do we need to be combining departments? Do we need to be combining administration? Do we need to be combining a lot of those things? And we let a whole year pass without even looking at any of that. Obviously we've had some distractions, but we've let the whole year pass without looking at that stuff. I think we need to look at it that way. So to some extent I agree, if we can get through this year, we can look at that, but the other side is I also don't want to incur new fees in those types of things as a temporary bandaid. Because we all know, long after we're gone, if there's a fee there, it's very difficult to get rid of it. Ask anybody that was on the council when they got rid of the stormwater and the wheel tax, those are not easy fees to get rid of. The fire department obviously closing the station, create some issues, but there's some savings there. None of these are gonna be easy decisions, but again, 300,000 from DPW, 200,000 from the library, close the fire station, we're right where you were talking about before. I'm not saying those are the right answers, but there's a lot of alternatives to that without raising a fee, whether it's the wheel tax or the garbage fee. So I just throw that out. Please. If I can just, I guess, get some clarification. You said it was approximately $7.5 per household now for garbage collection. I was just doing rough math on $1.6 million at $17.5 households, $17,500 households. But this is what I post to you. It's not like we're giving that $7.5 back. That's in tax levy. So we're actually talking about increasing it from what it is now at $7.5 to $17.5. My increase would take it from seven to 10 to because of where we're at financially. I mean, am I wrong or did I miss it? No, you're absolutely right. So I mean- But the cost for the service would be neutral. Correct, yeah, as far as, but again, the cost to the home would go up by that $10 mark because it's not like their taxes are gonna go down by $7.5. So really the cost per home, to us, it works for the city to balance the budget. Yeah, but the cost per home, again, it's still a fee that we're incurring and I'm trying to minimize the damage as much as possible until we all come together and decide where the city is going to either reduce services or through expansion and development and hopefully the increased economy coming shortly. How we're gonna continue to operate. I think this is one way to get there. Again, it's just one way. I'm certainly open to what anyone has to say, but I don't think we're seeming to get an answer. And I guess if we're not gonna increase revenues, I'd like to hear someone's answers as to how we do this then. Any other comments? Please. The 17,500 households, that's also the four families, the two families. So the water bill would be four times on a four family. So it's not all being passed on. The tax payer, it's also being taxed on tenant. I'm sorry. Oh yeah, correct. Correct. Yes. Did you hear that? Is that what you were asking? Right, it'd be per address, not just per landowner or anything like that. Per water meter. If we use the water route, if we went to a tax on your tax bill, it'd be different, I'm sure. All right, please. So what are we doing? What direction are we giving ourselves? Are you looking for a motion of some kind that? We certainly can. If we wanna make a recommendation to the council, that's up to this body, certainly can. You know, yeah, I'll leave it at that. This is tough. Alderman Van Akron. I'll jump in the fire then. I will make a motion to establish a road repair fee at $10 a vehicle. And to establish a garbage collection fee at $3 a month per household pickup, however you'd like to. I'll give you the wheelchair. That would be the road repair fee at $8. I'm sorry? $8. Okay, at $8 a vehicle. Five wheels. Five wheels. Five wheels. Two bucks a tire. Five wheels. Between that. All right, one at a time. Please re-clarify your motion here. Road repair fee at $2 a tire. Which the estimate would be $250,000. A garbage collection fee at $3 a month, which would give us approximately $630,000. And then with savings through DPW, you know, we're talking over a million to hopefully cover our thing. But that's my motion is to establish those two fees. I'll second. Okay, we've got a motion and a second to put together a $2 per tire road maintenance. Perfect. Just clarifying. I'd like that. Road maintenance. And $3 per household per month for a garbage collection fee. For a garbage collection fee. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Now officially under discussion. Please. With your motion though, you're also looking at not privatizing the garbage. Correct, I'd be keeping garbage as is, but establishing a $3 a month fee. Flip the coin. Go ahead. Would that $3 a month fee, would that be per residential address or per living unit? It would be, and I guess I'd have to add. Where's Mr. Bebel? That's per every unit, correct? Per pickup, per unit that we pick up. And just to clarify, apartment buildings that are more than four units are on their own anyways. So it'd be four plexes or less per address that currently gets garbage collection. That's the number, that's where the 17-5 comes from. At least that's where I was given it from. Are you good? Is that number is correct? That was from Department of Public Works. The 17-5 is per living unit. Per living unit. Per living unit. So it's a four-unit complex that comes four. And it's a two-unit complex that comes two-unit. So you can see the family in one. I think his question is, is the 17,500, is that an accurate number of pickup? Okay. It's sort of from what we pick up in the field. Yeah, thanks. Alderman Madczyk, did you have something? You had that? Yeah, same question. Alderman Versi, did you have a question? No, I thought I saw your hand go up. All right, it's still under discussion on the motion. That's gonna let you talk. That's gonna let you talk. Under further discussion on the motion. One more last time. Hearing none, roll call, please. Feld? Aye. Carlson? No. Hammond? No. Hammond? No. Eidemann? No. Poth? No. Hiddleston? Aye. Madczyk? Aye. Reisler? No. Samson? No. Vanakren? Aye. And Versi? Aye. Five ayes and a noes. All right, motion fails. Okay, where are we gonna come up with the money? Other discussion. Can I just, how many noes? Alderman Kittleson? How many noes? Seven. Thank you. You're welcome. We gotta come up with this money someplace. So where are we gonna come up with the money? Alderman Reisler. I'll make a motion that we privatize the garbage in second. Here's the motion in second to privatize garbage. There's a motion in a second. Did you get the second? Did you second it? Carlson did. Under discussion. I guess, okay. Alderman Vanakren? I guess just to recap, we voted against doing a garbage fee at $3, but we're going to increase the per home cost to approximately $10 or so dollars. I guess I don't understand the reasoning for that and we are gonna lose control of where those costs go. In three years from now those costs could be $25, $30 and at that point, what are our options? Are we really gonna go out and buy garbage trucks at that point and hire a bunch of people to then restart our service? I don't think so. I don't think that's gonna happen. I mean, nobody wants to pass along these fees. I get it, but now we're talking about approximately $10 per household fee that we are passing along and it's not as if people are saving on their taxes. They're not getting anything back. You're talking about $8 for the car and $3 for your assessment. You had $11, the person's paying more a year as opposed to a hundred and up to $120. You know, it also gives us some extra money for looking at the future as well. Alderman Carlson. I'm gonna go back to the fact that 70% of the state uses privatized garbage service. It must work because if it didn't, well, maybe not in these times, maybe they don't have the money, they would go back to their own garbage service. I fully support this because for one, I mean, it's a $1.6 million price tag. This could help put us on the path to become financially well off that in three years, if they do try to screw us over on our monthly rate, we could buy new garbage trucks. Right now, we can't even do that. Getting there, just relax. Don't need a motion. Mayor, then Joe, then Gene. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, when it comes to privatizing garbage, there are only a couple of companies in the garbage business right now that are going to bid. And that's where we came up with that about $10 fee somewhere in that range. To three years from now to think that that fee would be $25, if there's one company involved in that fee is $25, I guarantee you there's going to be companies coming out of the woodwork to bid on that. That's the way the private sector works. It's supply and demand. So for the city to have to control something such as garbage pickup that can be done by the private sector, thinking that we're going to control the costs of that industry is not true. If that company, if there's no such thing as one garbage company in the state, if we had only one provider for this area, and that provider was going to bid something outrageously high, I guarantee you there would be another several providers coming in trying to bid on that. I've already gotten calls to my office. I've gotten one call from somebody that is not even in the garbage business right now that was interested in bidding on city garbage and getting into the garbage business if we privatize garbage. So to say that we have to control, have to stay in the garbage business to control the fee, I do not believe in it at all. And that's all I'll say. Thank you. Alderman Heidemann. Okay, thank you, Chairman. You're welcome. When you bring out that 71% of the overall cities that have privatized garbage, how are they paying for it? Are they paying it on their tax bill? Or are they paying it as a fee? That's what has to be determined here. Because if we were going to privatize our garbage and our taxes weren't going to go up and that money wasn't going to go slid in another area, I'd be behind it right away. It wouldn't make any sense to me. We're basically just saying, well, we'll privatize it and the citizens will pay for it some other way. That doesn't make any sense to me. I want it on the tax roll. If we're going to privatize garbage, I want it paid by my tax dollar and then I can write that off. That's what I've been hearing from my constituents. I want to be able to deduct it if I'm going to have to pay for it by a private organization. And I don't know what that percentage is of the 71% that are on the tax roll versus a fee. So. Okay. Thank you. Alderman Kittleson. Thank you, Chairman. And I wanted to ask about that 70%. And is it cities the size of Sheboygan that privatize their garbage? Can I, is Dave Bebel, would he have that answer? Do cities? And then also going back to the study, the Whitewater study, it's like 87% of our citizens, say our garbage collection is excellent and they want it to continue as is. Dave, she asked as 70%, is cities our size? What are they at? If you look at, I guess, if you would go against our peer communities, similar size of Sheboygan, the majority are gonna have municipal collection. However, though, I mean, that doesn't mean that privatization does not work. It works. I mean, most, I mean, everybody in the county, besides the city of Sheboygan, has privatized collection. The issue then, you mentioned, is it on your taxes or is it a fee? Out of our peer communities, Jamesville did a study back in 2008. Out of, I believe, the 11 communities, three of them had a direct fee. The others were on municipal taxes. Hang tight there in case there's further questions. Alderman Samson. Thank you. Going on the issue of having the ability to write it off on your taxes, right? Is that the, you're looking at $120 max per year. Is it that big? Any tax advisors in here is $120 really going to make or break a household if they can't write it. And if we're not lowering property taxes, you're still getting the same benefit next year, as you did the year prior, if our tax bill is roughly the same. So I don't know if it's really that significant that you cannot write it off on your taxes, $120, I don't know. If you file a schedule A, I think you might think differently. Alderman Carlson. You good? Thank you. Please. All right, we have a motion and a second to authorize the privatizing of garbage. Any further discussion? Alderman Cotts. Thank you, Chairman. On voting on privatization, that doesn't automatically, charging up from monthly fee. I mean, is that still up for negotiation or? I guess so. Jim, put one closer and repeat the question. Are you asking more on the process? Well, I'm just wondering, is it just a given that ever? I'm going to advertise the garbage and add the fee on to the sewer or water bill. That clears it up for you. No, is it just a given that by saying yes to the motion that we would just automatically charge a $10 fee? I mean, that's still room for negotiation, right? I'm sure I'll amend the motion if you'll amend your second. I think we need to, by privatizing garbage, we'd have to take it out to a bid and go through that process and determine what that final cost would be. So what we'd be authorizing, if I understand your motion right, Alderman Reisler, is we'd be authorizing them to bid out for privatizing of garbage. Yeah, so it's just not a given that we're charging $120 a year for, you know, on a water bill at this time. That would be enough. It's just for privatization of garbage. And then just kind of clarification. If we privatize, can that fee go on the tax bill? Only as a special charge and it's not deductible. Right, I understand it's not taxed, but instead of paying the 40 grand to our friends at the water utility. If we acted quick enough, we could get it on this year's bill. If we didn't, we'd have to wait another year and we'd be a year in the arrears in collecting taxes. So it says that there would be no benefit next year if it went on the tax bill. It would be in the tax bill of December 12th. Okay, and then the timeline? Four. If we privatized, you know, obviously it's not gonna happen tomorrow. We'd have to go out for RFPs. The one we talked to said that they could react quickly. If they could use our equipment, they would buy it for a nominal fee until they could replace it with theirs. And they would run the same routes on the same days. Are you comfortable with that for your motion? Alderman Van Ackren. Thank you. Is there a cap that you're setting to the monthly fee or we're just saying privatizing garbage and what they come back with is what we're gonna go with? I guess that's my question is. We'd have to go out for RFPs and get hard quotes. Right now we have soft ones. Right. Again, I guess I just, I can't support privatizing this, losing control of the service, the quality of service that we're providing to our citizens and at the same time, not being sure of what that actual fee is going to be and to disagree with the mayor, we are increasing the cost of collection. The collection now costs 1.6 million. The estimates alone are increasing to 1.9 and we have no control as to where those go in the future. It is up to private industry to decide those, but we have no idea is what those will be and I don't think the city will be in a position to compete with those in the future. As we go forward, we're gonna be looking at getting out of services. I think the last thing we're gonna be doing is looking at getting back into one. The only thing I would say to that is that if after a contract was renewed and it jumped 10, 15, 20, 30% we would know about that. We would read about it. And if we've got certain sections of the city already for multiple units greater than four are privatized and I don't think we've seen those increases either. So I mean again, I know crystal ball in the future, but if it were an issue, I believe that we would have read about it by now. And just to follow up, sorry. And to go with what Alderman Hyderman had to say, I'd be in support of it if we could afford it and it was gonna be on our tax rules and but that's just not the reality of it is if we privatize this, there will be a fee that we are passing along per household of another $10 and it's not as if they're saving the $7 it costs them now. So theoretically garbage collection is now costing them somewhere in the range of $16 to $17 per household per month. I can't support that going forward with all the questions that we have. Alderman Versi. If I could put a friendly amendment on that that when they're going out for your RFP privatizing that you're looking for a five-year contract if you would put that on that. Just make it a five-year. So you have that a little bit more control. Say one. You're good. Ed. Friendly amendment two. Five-year contract. Make a five-year contract. Five-year contract. You good with the friendly amendment second? Not if it's binding. I think we need to find, you said three to five, we don't know what they're gonna offer but if we gotta take three, I'd settle for three. Anything that's a different second? You can ask. I mean I guess, I'm no problem if they ask for looking at five but if we're only able to get three, we're gonna have to get three yet. Okay. We have a motion and a second to authorize the privatizing of garbage for the city of Sheboygan. Any further discussion? Yes. Alderman Kittleson. Thank you. And I guess I just, I have to go along with what Alderman Van Akker is saying. I don't wanna do this either because we're just gonna be passing along a fee to our tax payers and we don't have control over it as he says and once we're out of the business we'll never get it back and we'll lose that control and I don't think that's a good thing. Thank you. Welcome. There's certainly no doubt that this is a cost shift. No doubt at all. I think my biggest hang up with it is that we just don't have firm numbers. So it's very difficult to say yes, let's go ahead and privatize number or privatize garbage without even knowing what it actually looks like, what the contract would look like, you know, all those types of things. So that's just my two cents worth. But I saw Alderman Samson. Thank you. Is there, well, two things. Now you just came up with another question for that. Is there a way to set a standard or some sort of a, to appease your issue with that if you are for or against privatizing garbage but if you're for privatizing garbage but there's the ability to create some sort of a cap or a number that we're looking for. If it's not met, then we don't do it. Is there a way to do that or are we just gonna go forward with just the idea of privatizing garbage? Well, I mean, there's really two ways you can approach it, I think. Yes, you can set a cap and say, you know, if it exceeds $10, whatever the number we pick, we're not gonna do it. Or, of course, if I was the private garbage vendor, what number do you think I'm gonna come in at? But secondly, we could also authorize them to go out for bid and bring those bids back to us and we'd be able to make a decision based versus the two, before, preferably before the 21st. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to remind everybody this is just a recommendation to the council which will give us some time in between and we probably collect up some harder numbers. So to answer your question, we could set that limit on it, but I would probably suggest that we just authorize them to go out for an RFP, a quick RFP to determine what those numbers would be. Because I think it's very difficult to make these decisions without having those numbers in front of us. I mean, it might be the right way to go. I don't know. I can't remember if it's a recommendation. It's not. I understand. Is that what we're going to be voting on here for a second? It's the recommendation to go to the council. We're recommending the council. At that time we could have some of the- The privatizing of authorizing the privatization of garbage. And I would go to the council on 21st. Yes, 21st. Good. And then if I may, then my original thought was this is not the end here. Everybody's figuring that, well, okay, we're going to stop here privatizing garbage. We have a bunch of other issues on the table here that can tip us over far over into the savings area. Privatizing garbage is not where we're stopping here. If we were going to stop here, then yeah, I would have an issue, because then we're going to be basically just charging a fee. But we have other areas that we still haven't even addressed at this point. So, again, we're just making recommendations to council. Call a question. So, we certainly do that. Alderman Venakren. I guess I'd like to hear what those other things are because at this point that's all we are doing is establishing a fee. We're establishing a fee for private garbage, which is going to cost more than what the city does. And we're going to pass that along to the households that get collected. For getting there. So, I'd like to hear the ideas as to where this other money's going to come from and what the other ideas are. I mean, if the ideas are to cut and to eliminate other services and privatize garbage to solve our problem, I'd love to hear all of that as a package. Because right now we're establishing a fee. It's going to cost more than what the city does. And again, our taxes aren't going down. So, we're just passing this along to our citizens. And there's a lot of people that have spoken up on how they don't want to do that. Well, then explain to me how this is going to work, because it seems fairly simple to me that that's exactly what we're doing. Alderman Carlson. Just wanted to once again, this is just a recommendation of the council. We're not done. I know I'm not done, but I would like to call the question. Fair enough. All right. There's a motion and a second to make a recommendation to council to authorize the privatizing of garbage. Alderman Cotter, would you take the roll please? Belf? No. Carlson? Aye. Hammond? Aye. Sorry, you. Aye. Hammond? Aye. Heidemann? Nope. Poff? Aye. Kittleson? No. Maddachek? No. Reisler? Aye. Samson? Aye. Van Akron? No. Bursi? Aye. Seven aye. And five no's. Motion carries. Again, any other discussion or motions for recommendation to the council for budget related items? Do you have your hand up or you just point it to here? Hand up, yes. Adding to that, just doing the rough numbers with what we have, say we go through with privatizing. That's $950,000 surplus for next year, but we have all the retirements coming. If you add that with the fire and the savings in DPW, we're at 1.44. So I still think, like Alderman Samson said, we have to continue. One thing isn't going to do it. We need more things and it's all going to add up. So I guess, Are you making any motion? I'm going to. I'm getting there. Okay. Come on. I'll make the motion to take the chief's recommendation for a four station scenario and 72.5 firefighters and for next year. Second. Okay. There's a motion and a second to recommend to the council. We go down to four stations and 72.5 firefighters. Am I repeating that correctly? Yep. Thank you. There's a motion and a second under discussion. Alderman Venekran. I'm busy guy today. You are. I certainly can't support this either. We've now solved or we're suggesting to solve our budget problems with just passing along the fee to the households that get collected. Now we're going to solve further budget problems by decreasing the public safety that we provide to our citizens. I certainly can't support that. That's exactly what this will do. It will increase response times. It will supply a less effective service for monetary gain and I can't support that. I don't think our citizens support that. I don't think they want that. They are happy with the service they are getting. I think in the priority of the services we provide public protection and safety is at the top of that list and I don't see that we can now cut the fire department and go down to four stations increasing the risk to our citizens to help our budget problems. I don't think that's the answer. Thank you. Did you just hit your button again? I did, sorry. You don't get two in a row. I can try. Under discussion. Under discussion. Alderman Kittleson. Thank you Chairman. I received some reports here today on what our fire department spends per capita here and we are right in line with what we need to be with what we spend for our department and for the service that we give. And I too, I think having our fire stations in place as they are, public protection and safety is number one to our citizens and the model that we have is working and we cannot, I could not support going down to four fire stations. Thank you. You're welcome. Further discussion? Hearing none, the motion is to go down to four stations and 72 and a half firefighters. Call the roll please. Bell. Hi. Carlson. No. Hammond. Hi. Hammond. No. Heidemann. No. Pah. No. Kittleson. No. Maddachek. No. Reisler. No. Samson. Aye. Ben Akron. No. Bursey. Aye. Four yeses, eight noes. Motion fails. Again, keep in mind these are just recommendations to the council. Only can be brought back up on the 21st. Other thoughts, recommendations or discussion on the 2012 budget? Where are we getting some money from? Where's the future of this city? That's what we're gonna look at. Other discussion on the 2012 budget and related items or any additional recommendations to the council? Alderman Versey. I'll make the recommendation to bring the, what did Alderman Ben Akron call it, the road repair at $2 per tire. What did he call that? Road maintenance fee. No, it's not a bill tax. Road maintenance fee of $2 per tire. All right, there's a motion to bring back the $2 per tire road maintenance fee. Is there a second? Second time, is there a second? Hearing none, motion fails for lack of a second. Other discussion? We've got a band-aid. Hearing none, we've got, we'll move on to the next meeting date, which would be, we have council document 1547 and 1548. 1547 ordering the 2012 budget appropriations for the city of Sheboygan funds. I guess, I don't see Nancy here, but are we looking, I think we're looking for a recommendation to the council on that. So I would entertain a motion to recommend, Alderman, go ahead, Jean. What do these documents tell, I mean, tell us. I was just about to call Jim. Everybody clear on that? Feel free to ask questions now. I'm sorry, I didn't really hear that. Sue? Madam Clerk? Fair enough. Looking for a motion on these two documents. Move to send to council. Second. With a favorable recommendation. A favorable recommendation. Motion to send to council with a favorable recommendation and a second. That's just these documents. These two documents, correct. We're not adding any. Under discussion. Hearing none, roll call please. Aye. Carlson. Aye. Aye. Hammond. Aye. Heidemann. Aye. Koff, aye. Kittleson. Aye. Medichak. Aye. Ben Akron. Aye. And Versey. Aye. Motion carries. Next committee of the whole meeting would be November 16th at 6.30 p.m. Which was next Wednesday. And I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion second. Thank you very much. Please drive safely.