 up for the community hello everyone it's five o'clock I'm going to call our meeting to order I see everyone is here but Trey I expect he'll join us in just a few seconds if you are in the chambers if you would please recite the pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all very good thank you um Todd I saw you in the chambers can you just uh tell us who else is present yes I yes I will uh chair uh so I we have Vicki uh Eric um Eric from IT Chad Palachuk Lori Surkey from finance Kerry Arons Meredith and Scott at the at the helm and it looks like we are welcoming online Carol Worth and Mary Fadash has also joined us um so with all of that uh I would ask for a motion to approve the minutes of our January 25th meeting we can approve the minutes from the last meeting second there's been a motion and second is there any discussions hearing none all in favor stay die aye any opposed chair votes aye and Trey I note that you've joined us uh good to see well good to at least see your tm on the screen so um we have a full agenda today so let's get going um uh 3.1 is the recommendation that the city use or continues to use Corals and Brady as bond council Chuck is that yours yes and actually you can take 3.7 with it they go together okay and that's the resolution authorizing uh contracting with Wisconsin public finance professionals um so both of these kind of go together Corals and Brady is our bond council Wisconsin public finance professionals for our financial advisory services um with regard to corals and Brady we actually did go through a pre-process this time around we'll likely do that uh for um our financial advisory services at some point in the next couple of years um we didn't feel that it was necessary to do that this year uh with regard to bond council um a couple things to note uh we did have a number of interviews uh we interviewed I think seven different uh potential uh bond council and uh in the end in the end we just we are recommending that we continue with Corals and Brady uh they interviewed I think their interview uh it's fair to say was was the best of of the group um they their cost is uh reasonable uh and uh they work well uh with us and with our uh our financial advisor uh and so given that uh we're recommending approving both of these uh recommendations well uh Chuck I think I'll take them one at a time um so uh is there a motion to uh approve the contract with uh Corals and Brady for bond council is that just for one year Chuck yeah it's it's it's ongoing we'll we'll likely do another one you know four or five years down the line again it's okay is there such a motion uh so move boring second all right um I will note that we had Bert I'll get to just um I will note that we had a very extensive presentation on this by uh Thomas Cameron uh who went into uh substantial detail on the request uh for proposals I believe uh eight law firms responded Chuck I'm trying to remember yeah I mean it was a substantial number and each was interviewed and um because it's been my position all along that you know we need to put these out for bid every once in a while um so um this comes to us then as a result of that uh Bert I my question is um is is it written somewhere that every five years we must do that it's three to five years three years isn't a whole lot but four to five years or it's just done when people think it should be done yeah we don't have a particular policy on it uh this time around it probably went a little longer than it needed to although it was there were a couple issues that came up that caused us to sort of think through that my my feeling is and and thus far the committee has seemed to to sort of be an agreement that you know every five years or so seems to be appropriate but if there are significant changes and you know what the work kind of work we're doing or you know what's going on out in the the rest of the world um you know we we could look at that I don't know but you know more often or less often as as needed okay my position is that that we really do need to do due diligence periodically um and as long as it's periodic I I think that's important um and Todd um I would suggest that um on the city administrator's calendar five years out there should clearly be a ticker to just review um you know performance uh cost um other providers and that kind of thing if that's your wish um we could formalize it but that will be for another day so all right um check I am going to do this is two separate motions um if you don't mind so we have a motion before us to approve the corals in Brady bond council contract is there any further discussion or any other questions hearing none all in favor state aye hi hi any opposed chair votes aye and it passes um in the spirit however of talking about these things let's just shoot down to 3.7 which is a resolution authorizing a contract with Wisconsin public finance professionals to be our financial advisory services in 2021 check again I expect that's yours yeah and we reviewed that I had attorney Cameron uh walk through most of that and the the contract is acceptable as as it is uh and we're you know we we are recommending that that you uh do approve the resolution uh sort of similarly to how you know we every so often we kind of review these things our thought is to to perhaps uh review this one maybe a couple years down the road um we didn't feel we need to do that at this point again I would suggest to our city administrator that that gets on a tickler system somewhere so that uh it can be done on a on a uh someone on an as needed basis but not totally forgotten about if that makes sense all right can we have a motion oh first go ahead I have a question is is the is is the advisor attached to quarrels and grady or is the advisor independent of quarrels and grady no this this is independent although as we um interviewed our bond council uh we were interested in you know trying to determine how well they worked with our current advisor and in a few years we probably you know if if if there are multiple people applying for that position we ask the same thing as how do they work with our our bond council so they're tied but they're not automatically tied um either one could could work with any number okay great thank you all right um I think we need a motion correct yeah yes um if I could have a motion then to approve the 2021 contract who to approve and a second second any other questions concerns hearing that all in favor state aye hi hi hi okay any oppose thank you all right let's move on to 3.2 which is a resolution providing for the sale of approximately 5.14 million in general obligation promise story notes I see carol worth is with us and uh I think carol will just turn it over to you or does anybody want to say anything preliminarily okay take it away carol thank you very much and thank you very much for approving the contract okay I distributed a report regarding the 21 capital proven borrowing and this explains the process that we start with setting the sale date uh and this resolution is basically stating that we're intending to borrow five million one hundred and forty thousand dollars for capital improvement projects that will be for the city purposes as well as for two two districts are eligible for tax exempt financing so we can put them all together in one issue so the market preparations involve reviewing the list of projects determining that they are eligible under federal law for tax exempt financing also certain state statutes we are using promise story notes which means we are restricted to a 10-year amortization the promise or no statute also allows the city to commingle funds between the different projects based on their actual costs market preparations we also have the official statement which is they perspective on the city that's necessary for distributing into the marketplace to solicit bids from underwriters we also use that in the application for the bond rating process which we will be doing also in the month of March the city did go through the bond rating process multiple times in 2020 and as late as October at which time Moody's did confirm the double A2 rating and we do anticipate at this point in time any change to that 40 obviously the the majority of it 4 million 255 for the city cip project primarily supported by tax levy and we have two small portions 175 for kids 17 and and the one 710 thousand for kids 20 the anticipation that they will be able to be supported by by increment and not tax levy under IRS rules right now under current market conditions we have structured the issue with the true interest rate coming in at about a zero point nine two percent and we did take this morning on a very comfortable rated those rates are good so I could tell you that as early as 11 o'clock this morning so we have a pricing schedule that again the focus on a pricing schedule that determines market is the yield time the first year 2022 is a point two zero and the highest yield in the last year 2030 is a point eight five percent so that's the market so as those numbers go up or down we'll affect our results so the um hook oning is just a factor of how their price anything over at 100 is premium premium can only be used by the underwriter to pay expenses if it comes back to the city it must go into debt service okay so that's a pretty good representation of how the bonds would be priced based on this morning you'll see all of the coupons are one percent and then of course I just said that the true interest rate is zero point nine two well what brings that down is the fact that there is some additional premium that would be coming back to the city under this scenario and that premium is what brings that rate down to the zero point nine two uh market has even improved from last year at this time when we were doing the cip borrowing that rate was at a 1.57 so you can see how much lower rates are at this time uh some of that is also driven by the lack of supply in the market right now so there's a lot of interest in municipal there's a bigger demand than there is supply and that's what drives those even from last year at this time so the next page is just the individual amortization we sell the issue as one issue and then we track them individually by amortization by purpose so page number three shows the purposes jump ahead of myself there talking a little bit about that idea of even over the last two years the last page of my report is a tracking of the yield that just really goes back about two years and it tracks both the 10 year and the 20 year and these are AAA rated municipalities which the issue is just the hair underneath that so you can see the 20 year line or the orange line is a 20 year yield which is the 1.22 so you know just looking at that you'll see those spikes that occurred in 2020 we were talking about that when we were issuing the 2020 CIP and that's when the markets go off so you can see what a what a panic we went into at that time interest rates jumped like 2% within a couple of weeks so a lack of buyers we had more supply than buyers and now we have the reverse situation we have lack of supply and buyers just waiting for us to come into the market so the contain the results of the and that's expected to occur on March 15 quickly but specific questions questions for Carol I have one madam chair Carol just out of curiosity how many bidders did you have on that one this morning thank you so Carol it would seem to me that at this rate refinancing would be unlikely in the future on this particular issue refinancing will be unlikely in future now this issue will have a call feature on it the last two principal amounts will be callable the year before so that will be in 2028 call features are used for generating interest savings as well as giving you another look at your debt service structure and you may say well you know we've been using notes which is a very quick amortization and the more that the city keeps issuing in terms of debt and the more difficult it gets to be to maintain that tenure amortization so you may be taking a look at it and saying well maybe we want to at that point in time maybe it would be beneficial based on all the other debt you have outstanding to maybe take it out for another one or two years there's something that better structures according to your plans at that time in the future so so it would have that's what you use your call features for is to address those second opportunities when you know what's happening eight years from now all right other questions the one thing i is speaking on that uh subject of refinancing we've had i've had some communications with the city uh this this morning that uh we have been looking at since 2019 uh how the city's total general obligation debt service as supported by tax levy uh how high it might go as we consider future capital improvement programs and uh so back in 2019 we developed a plan of possibly refinancing some of your outstanding issues taken out in 1516 and 17 to kind of flatten out that uh those some of those high points that we might reach at a time when interest rates would be extremely attractive the original plan in 2019 was to wait until those call dates and kind of blend those in here cip borrowing and uh further discussions about this cip we just ran some some numbers and uh because these aren't really historical whole race as you as you can see and uh it may be beneficial to proceed with uh doing some of those refinancing they would be called advanced refunding which is a little bit more complicated but it's still a type of refinancing that the government provides for and uh it may be coming back to you at your next meeting about some of that information all right so i think what we are looking for is a motion excuse me yeah bless bless you sorry about that a motion to uh authorize the sale of approximately five million one hundred forty thousand dollar general obligation promissory notes uh so move boring second all right any other discussion yeah all right questions hearing none all in favor state i hi hi all right any opposed share both i thank you carol okay thank you all very much all right uh three point three is uh summons and complaint in the matter of uh mr miss short uh versus the schwoigen police department chucks yeah so this uh came to you uh because it came in as a small claim summons and complaint and we always send these to you just so you know what's happening uh however this was quickly dismissed we filed a motion to dismiss and or has dismissed it so you're both receiving notice that it happened and receiving notice that it's in the same time and the matter may be filed all right um if there are no questions uh a motion to file would be in order i'll move second and there's a second um check can i ask it was just dismissed not timely filed so notice of claim or it ended up because we had multiple in our motion to dismiss the the court chose one which was failure to state a claim upon which really may be granted but there could have been any number of reasons all right very good so we have a motion second is there any other discussions hearing none all in favor state i hi hi any opposed share both i very good let's go on to three point four which is summons and complaints uh boss b the city plan commission check so this one is here just so that you're aware of it this is a lawsuit against the city through its plan commission related to the granting of a conditional use permit will be um our office is handling the matter for now uh staff has determined that after responsive pleadings are complete we'll take a look at that again whether we need to go to outside but at this point the issues are pretty narrow in the initial um the initial complaint and uh we're hoping that the matter will also not be long for the court so well it's an interesting cause of actions i think there may be some standing issues but nonetheless um uh and my question is if we go to outside council will the caller company under our development agreement reimburse us for cost not under the development agreement but they have uh entered into a separate agreement uh that actually it was just with the mayor um and uh and we will if we choose to go outside we will memorialize that with a more formalized uh agreement but yes they have indicated there they will be standing by the agreement they made uh with the mayor by an email okay i think that might be appropriate to share with the committee yes if we get to that point we will do that all right so is this motion just pending or i don't think it's suitable for filing or is it it's it's just a matter to hold but uh because it's ongoing uh litigation i wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to talk about it if you wanted okay does anyone have any questions or concerns about the matter Bert i have a question what kind of timeline are we looking at weeks days months well it depends on what happens um so we'll be doing our responsive pleading uh later this week it's it's due later this week uh and then it somewhat depends on who the judge is uh it did get assigned to judge per se who has now withdrawn uh from the matter uh recused herself from the matter it was then sent over to judge borowski and today the plaintiff filed a motion substituting judge borowski so we'll see where it goes all right so uh we need a motion to hold i believe so i'll move second all right any other questions i would uh for members of the committee if you haven't had a chance to take a look at the complaint it's quite interesting so i would recommend it to you i assume you've all read it but i just thought i'd toss that in um if uh there is nothing further uh all in favor of the motion state i hi hi any opposed chair votes i the matter is held let's move on then to 3.5 which is submitting for information the fine tentative uh collective bargaining agreement between the city and firefighters local 483 um it's uh and chuck it says the contract will be submitted uh for approval by the common council will it come back here to us first it likely would yes um so what your the purpose of this is so that you're aware of what's in this so that if you choose then to kind of quickly deal with it once you have the final contract uh you can't so the the the tenant agreement has all of uh the changes that will be made to the contract but it's technically the contract itself that will need to be signed by the mayor and and attested by the clerk that is the official document so it's here for your discussion and then you can choose whether you want to bring into committee or just to spend the rules and pass uh when the actual contract comes um so i was i think i followed most of it but i really got lost in the weeds in terms of the changes to overtime uh vicki or or chuck can you just kind of um just tell us what it used to be and what it is now i was there were terms i didn't understand and so why bryan you think so mary lin um i have uh the fire chief is also here to clarify any any points the contract itself is the ta looks lengthy but most of that was because of language cleanup uh we wanted to just make sure that it was clear uh there was significant changes to the overtime procedure to just make it clarify more to follow current procedures and era can speak to that the other significant points are that it is a three-year contract that the increases are two and a half two and two and a half over the next three years it did implement the lieutenant acting up which was city point number 25 and there was an increase in the good attendance from 65 to 90 so um eric has the microphone to speak to the overtime procedure yes thank you so it really was just uh to follow the current practices of how we operate today uh when the contract was uh first agreed upon um and this has been a couple of contracts uh it just was never cleaned up and uh it's just combining uh lists that we hire our overtime uh when we need that position filled we have a certain structure like the feo's or an officer or a firefighter paramedic uh and we also had a separate firefighter one on their own so we kind of combined it to to make it more convenient and how we do our uh current hiring procedures right now when we call back for overtime so truly it was there's like six or seven different sections that deal with overtime and it was to clean up that language to match our current practices does that answer your question um yeah how much is this is related but not exactly the same how much money do we typically or how many hours of overtime are we typically looking at in the fire department so typically i budget anywhere between 55,070,000 uh for overtime uh because of covid it was really really really uh a unique year obviously last year so we were a little over budget on that as well because of covid but typically uh we kind of hopefully anticipate uh that we don't have any injuries but uh we have to maintain our shift level so when there's an injury it's uh it averages about a thousand dollars for a 24-hour give or take depending on seniority depending on if it was an officer rank or or what rank it might be about a thousand dollars a day for overtime to fill a 24-hour position so it does add up when you're short uh individuals uh due to injuries or long-term illnesses uh and obviously with covid it did have an impact on our department um are there other questions for the chief for vicki i have one or do you have one go ahead marcus marcus you i think we're first uh i appreciate that on city 0.5 under staffing shortage i don't understand what would be the fourth paragraph to me it sounds like when we hire someone new and move them into a job they have to be paid the overtime equal to the highest paid person for getting overtime that doesn't make a lot of sense to me and i'd love that to be explained like i'm an idiot no no no you're not an idiot good question uh the uh no it's not the pay it is the hours so when uh you start the year off and and as the uh individuals work overtime those hours that we keep on the list are are continuing to tally and add up so really that's all it means it it's not the pay the pay is set uh based on their uh you know time on and per the contract language the the pay is already set so uh marcus if you work uh five shifts of overtime those 24 hours you know those add up so the next time we need to overtime you go by the lowest hours on that list and that's why you keep accumulating those hours so so marcus doesn't keep getting called we we are fair and it goes through each position so they have an opportunity to work overtime so that's that's how it is it's not so if i was a brand new uh firefighter getting hired and the lowest or the highest excuse me the highest overtime hours were a thousand well i automatically get that a thousand hours so i don't always get the phone calls because i'm the lowest i don't always get the phone call so now i'm getting all the overtime and and that's how it's to equal out thank you very much that makes a lot more sense so it's just like a running tally and they get the highest number so that they're not called first they're called an equal rotation correct thank you very much good question i think jim is next thank you madam chair uh eric this is your first look at this uh contract you know after being here uh almost a year uh what were management's goals going into this negotiation of this new contract and do you think you were successful from a management standpoint and then after you're done with that i have another specific question so all they're born yeah quite honestly we were satisfied with the contract agreement uh we we were going in say with my first year and first uh negotiation to really just clean up some of the language which is primarily most of the changes uh you know in in the future we may work on other specific items there were a couple that we didn't uh we didn't get just because of the time frame and and we didn't want to delay too much and and and causes to go further but those are things administrator wolf and uh director schneider and i and working together we'll we'll address in the future um hopefully uh but we were very pleased i think i don't want to speak for for director schneider however we were very pleased that we were able to come to an agreement and not cause a huge delay with this contract and and the union board was uh open to listening and at least discussing them so we were happy with that okay and then my my specific question on the contract i did read the entire contract yesterday proposed contract and the issue there with residency uh for for example if somebody was hired and they lived outside of the uh outside of the allotted mileage and they're allowed a certain amount of time to move in move into the allotted mileage from from the city uh it also said that at your discretion or at the uh hr director's discretion that that could be extended but it didn't have specific language on whether it could be extended once or could this be an ongoing thing that drags out for a couple of years is it understood that it would be a one-time extension or do we need more specific language in there so so no you don't want more specific language this is a case by case which allows uh myself and and director schneider to communicate and evaluate each uh individual that is requesting not not that we have a lot of individuals requesting in the extension so for example that really addresses uh if a new new individual was hired and they lived outside the radius and they understand they have to move into that radius but they they might not be able to just to sell the house or maybe they have immediate family needs that might prolong that a couple months or you know it's not to extend it permanently it's just to to allow them to get that opportunity to make the ends meet if you will to to sell that house or to address the family concerns so i don't know if director schneider wants to add anything on that all i can say uh alder borne is that we have not had that experience since i've been part of the city in this community um and we would address it on a case by case basis as fire chief has said it has not been a problem area that i believe or has been in the past chair chair um and i would note i i would assume markets could confirm this if we look at our um uh planning and development annual report about the very limited number of single family homes that are constructed in a typical year and the difficulty of finding not only affordable housing but really any housing is really quite quite striking so um todd did i step over you yes that's okay i just uh i just wanted to make a couple of quick comments if if i may thank you um i just wanted to compliment all parties um obviously the union side and then also eric and and vicky on the negotiations that uh that had transpired as we know eric is newer to the city of shabuagan and vicky is newer to the um as the human resource director for shabuagan um so entering into the union contract negotiations um i think that all parties did a really good job uh they did a great job cleaning up the contract with uh with the fire department and their team uh that'll help us moving forward uh we also you know we had a little bit of a different strategy moving into this contract so uh the the union side of the fire department had to kind of get used to our side and we had to get used to their side so i just wanted to say compliments to everybody that was in in the negotiations because in the years that i've dealt with union contracts it can get a little tight at times especially when you're learning about each each other but uh the end result i think was a very positive and it it transpired into a three-year agreement so thank you thank you questions regarding the substance of the contract um so chuck it looks to me like uh and i don't know uh and vicky may have this answer or or eric but um what is the timeline um i know that we have at least one alder and probably more who are concerned about suspension of rules on a on a regular basis um is there a time time crunch here where um it's not noticed for act is notice for actions the effective date so what you've got in front of you yeah so the knowing those concerns it's submitting for information so you so the ro here is just you simply accept and file um that said part of the purpose for bringing the ta here is so that you have this discussion that you've had today um which would otherwise if we didn't send the ta to you you would normally have by sending the contract itself to committee so it's designed to sort of uh be the equivalent of sending the contract to committee that doesn't mean you you know when it comes before you i think a lot of the timing and vicky i think may be able to answer you a little bit i don't know what's happening with the timing but it's all we we like acting on it fairly quickly once we get it from the union so that they're not waiting around for it which is why we did it this way why we got this information to you now through the ta but you always have the opportunity to send it to the committee even if it comes to the council with the recommendation to suspend the rules you never have to suspend the rules so the contract the contract may alder donahue the contract is ready to to go as far as it we were prepared as if this ta was going to go forward so the language is there um and i believe the union has already done their portion uh of of their side of the contract so we are ready to go and and send this into the council as a full contract however you would like that to be i mean i know i know it's not specifically noticed this way check but couldn't we just have a motion to approve the agreement as as presented uh because it's not noticed that way and it's only the RO i think what you can do is you can only act on the RO but what you could do is on the RO indicate something along the lines of we accept and file the RO and indicate that the terms of the ta are approved by the committee and then you'll have that language in the minutes then when on next Monday when the contract actually comes up and if there's any questions about why is the matter being set for suspension of their rule so do i have a motion to that effect madam chair so moved uh and i'd like to add to that that if any firefighter needs help finding a house i can get it done shameful i tell you opportunity uh is there a second second foreign berth did you have a question or comment i thought i saw your hand i'm so this will go from this committee and barring any substantive changes this will go to full council and it will go and ask for suspension of the rules to adopt the contract that the entire council will see right so the recommendation to accept and file the RO will be on the council agenda as will adoption of the contract likely with the request for suspension and we do not anticipate any changes between this RO and the contract no we do not anticipate any go ahead i'm sorry that will be so noted when we get to council i can certainly note it for you thank you and just so you all know um at least from what i'm reading what we have in front of us is the summary it is not the agreement right so um um all right i just wanted to make one comment madam chair you know sometimes uh when we get these contracts it's good to kind of get a side by side or the old contract with stuff lined out so we know it's being lined out what's being added i mean i read this whole thing yesterday but i didn't have anything really to compare it to so that's helpful we've done that in the past with some contracts and maybe the line by line is a little extreme because as you remember these contracts do go on for some number of pages but maybe a summary of the changes year over year or contract or contract would be helpful so that what i read yesterday yeah what i read yesterday was plenty long already but again it's nice to have something to compare it to you know they're saying they're deleting certain areas well what are they deleting i mean i had no idea yeah and and jim all i can say to that is i certainly hear what you're saying on the other hand it is not from my perspective it is not our job to go line by line through these contracts and interfere with the contractual relationships um that's why the line by line comparison is uh to my mind uh an overreach on the other hand i do take your point well that we need to know what the differences are and so i think the ta gave us kind of a um a summary of that but vicki what i would suggest for the council meeting is that you have maybe in advance um a summary of the changes from contract to contract can you do that or eric sir we can do that okay i would appreciate that so thank you okay contracts go on for 75 pages that's why i'm getting that's why i got the raise last year to go over these things so i do no i understand that and it's always a fine balance between um setting policy and well so uh there you go all right so we have a motion before us to um file the uh the temporary agreement not the temporary agreement what is it the the tentative agreement thank you um and to uh submit the final contract for approval to the common council is there such a motion i think we already had them did we do that i'm sorry i always lose track um if there's aren't any other comments or questions all those in favor state aye aye aye any opposed chair votes aye and just to note for the record just only some people got a raise some of us did not in fact i think we ought to unionize you know i would you know i'd like to i'd like to get to the bargaining table about this chop silly rules jeezly peter okay very good on that happy note let's go to um 3.6 which is a stipulation uh to dismiss uh in the matter of busting uh verse and on and on versus the uh city uh police department chuck okay that can also be yeah this can be taken with 3.10 which is the rc submitting the complaint and summons uh in that matter and what we're uh looking for you to do they're both of these are just uh our rows it would be to accept and file both of them uh just uh you may recall that this arose out of a situation where a number of years ago uh there was i think what can be fairly described as a suicide bike cop situation that occurred at a tavern on the south side and the plaintiffs in this case sued the city claiming some damages out of how the situation went down the matter has now been completely dismissed after years of litigation in federal court the plaintiff's attorney recognized that they had no case and simply moved to dismiss the case and and the court has accepted that you may be interested in knowing that while this is a good result uh the city did expend 101 702 and 45 cents in legal fees through november 30th we expect there will be one more bill uh coming through um unfortunately there's not a way to recover that uh in this that's kind of what happens that there was a uh there was a retirement of the original uh plaintiff's lawyer who who filed the case and uh i think it's fair to say that perhaps the uh the new lawyer who took on the case uh took a little more clear-headed look at the case as moves to dismiss all right marcus thank you um chuck if you wouldn't mind kind of putting that number that was spent in comparison to what they were trying to get from us so we can at least know that we didn't walk out the door you know like we spent money to protect ourselves how much did we potentially save yeah um you know honestly the the max of of i think we would have been um yeah i can't i can't remember what it is in federal court but um but there was there is potential of triple damages beyond that i don't remember what it was that they were asking for it was significant dollars but realistically you know the fact that we're paying zero on that is a good thing because you know even if if this were the kind of case where it went to court and we lost not only would would you have uh the the attorney's fees that we paid but you would we would also be paying um you know the whatever the amount of the judgment uh which could include attorney's fees for the other side as well so um you know we see it's hard to say we save ourselves a lot of money when we knew all along that this was a case that you know we were going to win but yeah i'll have to go through the motion to do it all right so we are looking for a motion to file um and this is with regard to 3.6 and 3.10 is that the way you wanted to handle it chocolate did i look that that is correct all right so motion to file on 3.6 and 310 so moved is there a second second any further discussions hearing none all in favor state aye aye aye any any opposed chair votes aye very good all right uh 3.8 is the resolution um repealing uh resolution 1961920 regarding an early retirement incentive program offered to qualifying city appoint employees rather and that also loops in i believe with uh 4.5 so um vicki do you want to kind of tell us what's up sure so uh one of my 2021 goals is to review policies and procedures for the human resources department and i came across a policy which is numbered the hr 600 and it's the retirement sovereign's policy when i looked back also at the resolution that accompanied this the resolution had given an end date of June 30th of 2020 and so that basically said that this policy was no longer valid or effective and so when i talked to attorney adams and i also talked with uh administrator wolf about what the proper procedure would be to have this uh this policy be be removed uh the decision was that it should come back to uh council to be repealed as an outfit just to make it formal and then vicki is is 4.5 then the substitutions i'm sorry the new policy or 4.5 4.5 is the is the attachment of the example of the policy that is being repealed right okay so what you have is you had the the ifc and then you had an example of the policy and 4.5 is the attachment of that i had the same issue i wasn't sure how that worked i had a question madam chair sure uh vicki on the the severance policy i see the the document is a severance policy for human resources and i believe finance uh is there going to be a different severance policy worked out for all the various departments or how is that going to work so what we're working on right now alder boron is a revision an update of our handbook a complete rewrite of our city handbook and that will also accompany city policies as far as looking at all kinds and all types of employee benefits which would include any separation or severance agreements looking for with 3.8 is a motion to repeal the current policy do i have such a motion so move boron second all right um chuck it seems to me nothing has to happen with 4.5 i mean that's just almost a supporting document well i i assumed that you were going to discuss what was in 4.5 but i would i would have assumed that yeah look it's not the actual policy it's a it's a different policy so i but i'm not sure i i'm not sure what vicki has in mind for that but that's not a document it's just a item for discussion so there's that you will have anything to file there the the okay all right if i can say that the document should have all been placed under this point on the agenda oh that's no big deal so i think that is that that is the policy we're repealing any other questions or comments hearing none all in favor state i i i any any opposed chair votes i okay so i note um check oh never mind uh let's go to 3.9 which is authorizing the purchase of a new pierce manufacturing rescue engine and other necessary equipment the chief are you going to take that one yeah madame chair thank you and committee members so we placed in the 2021 cip a replacement for our quint ladder five which is a 1998 aerial 100-foot aerial truck and just to give you a background typically in the fire service you have a vehicle in the front line status for about 10 to 15 years and then depending on wear and tear some are usually 10 and then another five years in reserve status before they need to be replaced so this engine this ladder truck is over 22 years old and so currently it didn't pass its aerial inspection so in order to fix that we felt that obviously the wear and tear on it already the age of the unit it just wouldn't be cost effective to try to repair the aerial the structural damage on the superstructure um it would far exceed the trucks cost or excuse me the uh trucks value so we put it into a reserve engine status we were unable to use the aerial device so a few months after putting it into reserve engine status uh it lost its hydraulic capabilities so it was leaking hydraulic fluid we couldn't even use it at all so unfortunately um we couldn't use it as a reserve engine either which we were trying to sell it if it were to sell as an engine uh for approximately $20,000 but unfortunately I don't believe we'll be able to get that due to the amount of damage and mechanical failure so we're requesting a replacement engine instead of an aerial truck which would save the city quite a bit of money uh at this time we just have the 100-foot aerial platform that we purchased a couple years ago so um we felt in order to replace and save the city money we would get an engine instead and that's what we're asking for approval for uh it's about 685,105 dollars uh that if we purchase it ahead of time all at once now we would be saving over 25,000 dollars uh with pierce manufacturing if we were not to purchase it now obviously that money would go up and we would also annually they they increased their um the their cost of their equipment by three percent so that would add another three percent and we would be over the 715,000 that we were budgeted for in the cip questions for the chief they are looking for a uh motion to approve the resolution we'll approve second any discussions all right hearing none all in favor state aye aye any opposed chair votes aye thank you um let us go on then to uh and i see check here we had a couple of walmart um walmart and these were holdovers from last year right or the last council year right so 3.11 12 and 14 can all be taken together uh and they are all on just simply to be filed these are just sort of left over uh they they have been brought over and we didn't take care of it when we settled the case so uh these cases have all been settled and the uh matter may be filed there is still one open with walmart that was recently filed but these three are completed and questions for chuck no wonder walmart can sell things cheap huh um so these are excuse me madam chair these then as it says on the notation here all of these are going to the finance and personnel committee of 2021 chuck they they they did you are the finance and personnel committee of 2021 there was probably a lot of information on this agenda that didn't need to be on there that might be right but in essence this was sent to you at the end of the last finance and personnel committee year all right now you're filing it so it goes away for good all right so kind of cleaning the house before the new year starts so i am looking for a motion to file for uh 3.11 3.12 and 3.14 second all right any other discussions hearing none all in favor state aye aye any opposed chair votes aye all right and then um 3.13 is a summons and complaint uh accurate repair versus the city um is this the essentially the same chuck yes this is also a case that has now uh been settled and uh we've uh paid out the the judgment in this case and uh uh we are just looking for filing um i i think probably this was presented to you before but if you have questions about it i can do i have a motion to file to file second any discussions hearing none all in favor state aye all right hi all right any opposed chair votes aye okie dokie let's go to our items for discussion only um we have uh the city clerk's annual report and meredith are you in the chair i'm right here yep i'm here yep all right all right thank you i won't take up much of your time i attached the annual report in board docs and it's just really an overview of our office we did the last five years for some comparison of numbers and i just i guess i just wanted to say a few things and then open it up for questions um 2020 was a very challenging year as it was for many offices but ours in particular with the elections and i think the report was hard to convey um all the hard work and dedication that went in from the team members in our office to the city support to the community support that we had and i just wanted to acknowledge that here today um the also the other thing that i just wanted to point out some of our numbers if you look at our numbers for especially the licensing there's only a few that really took a hit this last year and that was in our temporary class bs which are linked to events um in our our tenders and our taxi drivers um that being said i think the budget was pretty consistent um with our help from the wec and the cares act the budget kind of worked itself out with our numbers so that was pretty impressive with the high numbers that we had for elections and the money that went for absentees and things like that so any questions for me chair if i may make a make a few comments thank you i i also want to just kind of um compliment everybody in the in maritas department and meredith herself they they've done a fantastic job um especially working with the volunteers the closures of locations the the literally the the scramble to find volunteers and locations to actually have voting and then the absenteeism voting capabilities during a pandemic i think they did a a fantastic job and i i can't compliment them enough on the long hours hard work and the abilities that they they give the the constituents during during the voting time so thank you go ahead bird uh i would just like to thank meredith for the five-year trend line um just having one number pre-standing doesn't mean a whole lot but when you put it in a trend it means something so thank you very much for doing that that was going to be my comments as well um the your charts and graphs regarding um methods of voting and such were extremely interesting meredith um i know that the february primary is always a very low turnout but are you seeing a continuation of absentee balloting requests or is it kind of reverting to uh the way it used to be well um a little bit of a mix i think right now we have almost 3 000 ballots that have went out which is probably triple a normal february that we would have sent out already so they are sent out um that being said we have about a thousand back so it's all going to depend in the next week on how many we have returned i guess would be the question very good if i could just echo um i mean your staff was you and your staff were just absolutely superlative um i mean what a year i yeah yeah yeah yeah and um you did it with such grace and kindness um and uh understanding with the public um the compliments that i received on people's treatments from the clerk's office was was great the um absentee ballot box was wonderful i mean just up and down the line so again thank you so very much any other comments or questions for meredith just a quick one for meredith uh meredith my wife and i were in the vote last week at the clerk's office how is the in person going so far for the spring primary how about how many have been in not very many i had 10 15 a day but that's about it for the in person more the absentee mailing thank you you're welcome questions comments grace and pressure she's grace under pressure is thank you thank you thank you um all right so let's move on to city development thank you madam chair this is chat pelishek so i just wanted to review our annual report and i will say that the department of city development is made up of two divisions the planning and development division which reports to the finance committee and the building inspection division that reports to the licensing hearings and public safety committee so my intent today is just to go through the planning committee planning and development section but i'm happy to answer questions for those of you that are not on uh lhps because that'll be presented on wednesday so in our report it outlines what we've had and accomplished in the 2020 time frame and i think the moral of the report is we changed our processes to allocate covid resources through the cares act primarily the cdbg program so we implemented the small business emergency assistance program to date that has spent about 250 000 of the 420 000 and i know there's comments in the public about that program and why it's not completely exhausted yet at this point and i think some of it has to do with the lack of communication and understanding of how to spend the dollars that we receive from hud we received these funds back in may of 2020 and it was almost the end of august before we got directions from hud on how to successfully use these funds so that provided some challenges we recently did another mailing of 100 of 1500 postcards and we're working on roughly 14 of 15 applications so i i think we're we're still in that we have six years to spend these funds we also allocated funds to a number of public service agencies early on in the pandemic including the habitat for humanity meals on wheels and the shabuagan county food bank and then family service association as it related to the issues that they've felt with vulnerable residents throughout the early stages of the pandemic um there's a number of sections on in this report on economic development i think two big accomplishments is in 2020 is the completion of the city's first subdivision in a long time so the stonebrook crossing subdivision that you are all aware of with the warner homes group and then we started the affordable housing market study and will be providing updates and responses to that coming up here in the next month month and a half so that is wrapping up and there'll be information coming forward soon it also talks about the continued focus on housing and the different developments and the value of those projects looks at the investments in the opportunity zone which was another funding mechanism as part of the tax cuts and jobs act of 2017 and then the other piece of this is the TIF district so you guys were all part of the implementation of tid 20 for the oscar development the termination of tid 11 and then the finalizing of the self-point enterprise campus in tid 18 for the new business park there's it talks about commercial developments and then we also in 2020 rolled out two new programs a facade and landscaping program to target dollars to corridors specific corridors within the city that are high traffic areas or revitalization areas as well as an upper floor residential rehab program to assist owners in commercial mixed use properties to redo their upstairs residential lots uh residential units into affordable housing um under the innovation district update we partnered with the shavuagan county economic development corporation foundation on a grant to fund the innovation building that's still ongoing in the indiana avenue corridor there's been a number of other projects that the edc has spear headed um and then we've made did did some major updates to the infrastructure around badger state lofts as well as the uh near completing uh badger state tannery um for the 118 affordable housing units um under the planning and development and uh the cdbg program and in the end of december the rda awarded a $200,000 note to johnsonville um to purchase the former wigwam property and to convert that into a new production facility for their uh wonderful products and then um last but not least we continue to focus on neighborhood revitalization and although we were in a pandemic we still uh leverage our neighborhood associations through different means to get them to continue to meet and deal with challenges within their respective neighborhoods so that was a success and continues to be a success the last part i just want to review is there's a number of interagency cooperation um everything from cooper working with big brothers big sisters the census the art center green tier legacy communities the nonprofit network um so we continue to work with these groups and uh share information and receive information from them uh as we do our different planning pieces so that's it for the planning and development the building inspection uh section of the report gets in specifics about the permitting and and where we ended the year in comparison to the previous years and then has some residential housing trends listed so i'd be happy to answer any questions the committee might have i had one madam chair uh chad uh regarding uh our self-point development over here are we uh happy as we go forward with the company that we hired to market it market uh self-point and then what kind of contact do you generally have with them on a weekly monthly or do they call you when they might have a prospect how is that going i would say if we were to do this again we probably wouldn't hire outside uh help we would probably continue to market it ourselves i think we've had more luck with leads that we've received internally than having an outside broker um so we've looked at what it would take to get out of that contract for the outside broker and unfortunately we're kind of tied in for a few years with it um but we still we they're they're in milwaukee and we thought that there was going to be a little bit more um helped by being in the milwaukee market to make referrals up here but it's not the case so i i think we're we're better off doing it ourselves and we will continue to do it ourselves on our end and and um you know and work through the different leads that are coming through in the local or the regional area chair go ahead thank you uh just to to reiterate what mr palachek is is um referencing when i became city administrator chad and i sat down went through the contract and we also contacted them and and had some meetings with them and they were pretty much put on notice in my opinion that they needed to uh start expanding our opportunities unfortunately they um played the old covet card and said nobody's buying nobody's looking just to again reiterate what chad had mentioned i would not recommend going with a group in the future we have more activity within our own city development department and we do have a lot of opportunities and we're just waiting to see how things uh transpire moving forward there's some really good opportunities that hopefully we'll be able to bring to you in the future near future thank you other questions or comments thank you chad so next up we have w s p s tv tv and and also these are uh fourth quarter metrics for the tv uh p and it um why don't we take those together eric okay thank you madam chair i am here so we'll start with uh w s c s so the number of programs produced um we had uh 638 in 2020 with a goal of 500 uh public service announcements we produced eight had a goal of nine um number of televised common council and committee of the whole meetings um we successfully televised 33 we had one meeting where we had some sound quality issues we believe um looking back at 2019 where we had nine meetings where we had issues with the move into the new city hall and the new equipment um we only see that improving in the future uh additionally just to to elaborate on that um since covet covetous hit we have a broadcast over 300 meetings in addition to those 34 or 33 uh common council and committee of the whole meeting so my hats off to scott and his team for stepping up and providing that coverage for us um on uh demand viewing um and on demand unique visitors those two we fell a little bit short but on the flip side of that when we look at our youtube views in 2019 we had 4,800 youtube views in uh 2020 we had over 20,000 so i think we're seeing uh the youtube becoming a much more popular channel for people to access w scs any questions on the w scs report any questions i do have a question eric uh uh after we're done with this covet thing and we can get back to our regular meeting room 106 downstairs where we have finance and personnel i believe with the remodeled city hall we do we have the capability if we want to continue uh broadcasting these meetings that we would be able to do it from for example room 106 or the public works meetings that they get back to their conference room up there is there that capability we um definitely have capability to record those and rebroadcast those whether we'll be able to livestream those or not we we can investigate that technology it is available if it's that something we decide that is is uh valuable to us we we definitely could livestream those as well any other questions all right eric want to go on with the it okay for it the average close time of critical and high it tickets uh ended at 3.6 uh with a go of five um i guess additionally when i started here one of the things we changed is per to my coming on board here every i guess issue that popped up was required a ticket to be entered and we definitely uh relaxed that we uh probably see now about 50 percent of uh uh requests coming in just via a phone call um so it's it's i think provides a better level of service to uh our end users the percent closed within a time frame we had a go of 90 and we found just a little bit short at 89 percent we are maintaining our core servers and network uh at the current uh version of firmware and then some of them are one level back typically we're not looking to install the firmware versions when they come out immediately we we'd like to have some other people test them for us before we implement those um workload percentage of computers installed with uh endpoint protection the four gate client is 100 percent uh we continue to maintain that um number of legacy applications we tired and we tired in 2020 was two we have uh in 2021 we have a much more aggressive goal um so we continue to to aggressively pursue uh getting off the the s 400 or the ibmi and we did have a security audit performed late last year and we are uh currently in the process of reviewing that audit and uh making recommendations and and patching areas where we feel we have some vulnerabilities any questions uh if we could talk a little bit about the average close time of critical high it help tickets in days um if i'm pretty sure you have mentioned that uh you're now not creating tickets for half of them because you're just taking phone calls is that the case or how are you tracking the phone calls that are coming in so that you can accurately report this metric we uh most of phone calls that we aren't we don't track the phone calls most of phone calls that come in are going to be for password resets or uh log um account resets so typically someone's calls isn't said you know i've i've forgot my password can you change it for me or i've tried my password five times and now i'm locked out um phone calls the easiest simplest way to handle that and we do not track those you know they typically take us 30 seconds to resolve those issues and if someone's locked out of their computer they have to go find a computer or someone that they can get on to enter a ticket so we can respond to it it doesn't make a lot of sense in my mind thank you i've got a follow-up question to that and then i i should be okay um does that if most of your calls are um password resets does that fall to the level of critical slash high help tickets or is that like a low level thing well i i guess most people would consider that pretty high because if you can't get on your computer to access your email or do your job you know that's why typically they consider it a high level one of the other things we're implementing is we are rolling out a i guess a self-service password reset process in which a user can set up a a series of four to six security questions and if they lock themselves out they can go back in and answer those questions to get themselves unlocked so we are we are trying to get away from it always having to have involvement into that so that our users can self serve those types of requests chair oh sorry oh the retiring the legacy you anticipated five and you got two so you had a 40 grade there um would COVID impact your ability to retire some of those legacy issues because you were busy with other issues no i'm not going to say uh COVID had much of an impact on that that's that's um i think if you were to ask around at the city we've been hearing that we're going to get off the legacy applications that the ibmi for probably over 10 years now and when we came in we started to actually start to track some real numbers on the use of that as well as the number of applications we're using so we could actually know where we needed to start and what we were still using on that system so we identified that beginning of 2020 and then we laid out a plan and this plan basically is looking at spending some monies if you will because a lot of the legacy applications we have will need to be replaced with new software so as we go through this process you know we have monies in the 2021 22 23 and 24 capital improvement budgets to address purchasing additional software packages to assist us in retiring these legacy applications as briefly as you can about your your current plan of action and accomplishments in terms of moving us off of assay and and to a more robust use of munis yes i can uh thank you so much chair um first i wanted to complement both the it department and the wsc s uh group because they have done a phenomenal job um if you think about where we were a year ago or where we were before we moved into the city hall um you know prior to the remodel we would not be able to do what we're doing right now if we wouldn't have had the foresight to number one remodel number two to include the upgrades in technology because um as a past alder our technology was very very poor um and i'm sure you guys remember those conversations um in the in the time that i've been in this position as city administrator i've been working with eric and his team in pushing them in a positive way uh to getting technology implemented in a very quick manner so they've done a phenomenal job again kudos to rolling out 2019 in all the office suites in all of the uh computer systems but not only that we are right in the middle of a munis upgrade to 2019 which is a huge undertaking um because it affects every department within the city we're also implementing and and looking into additional upgrades uh that you've heard me mention as far as uh we we did purchase neighborly which will take care of our loans programs um for our constituents we're also looking at eam which is going to uh be a huge new opportunity to get a lot of things off the as 400 and we're going to be able to have strategic planning for not just our roads but equipment and fleets and all of that so there's there there's a plethora of modules and upgrades that are going to be going in and we're going to start utilizing our tyler munis to a much much higher um factor than what we have in the past years i hope that helps you and i sense that um the report just seems a little misleading because as Todd said i think that there is a fairly intense um effort underway uh at least in several departments to uh to start fully utilizing units and to look at it in a creative way that helps us perform better and be more chair respond to our constituents and uh so i think uh so i think that's all good and i appreciate that Todd and Eric chair i think i think the biggest the biggest point right now is we're looking at fourth quarter um we're looking at 2020 and a lot of a lot of the implementation actually started i would say in fourth quarter as far as the the main push for the for the munis upgrade um because we're planning on going live the end of february March first yeah in March first but end of February March first yeah we're going to be going live and then we'll be upgrading our our modules further from there but the the big the big thing is that i think you'll hear more about future development and getting off AS 400 the other part of it just to help the committee understand we're really digging into the AS 400 to find out do we really need to migrate it off or do we just start anew um if you think of the AS 400 as a filing cabinet there's a lot of files in there that if you don't go back and look at them over five plus years do you really need them sometimes it's uh time to move on thank you comments or questions encourage even if it's hash marks on tablets that are collated at the end of the week if the majority of your requests for help come in by phone you you probably should capture how many requests you get via phone and how much help you actually do day by day every day that that fills up your time so um i would encourage you to somebody use the word robust make your report a little bit more robust okay anything else for Eric uh Eric uh i just wanted to uh thank you again i had a situation back a couple of months ago where i was having a great deal of difficulty with my with my home wi-fi and attending meetings and and uh losing signal and that type of thing and we die Eric with Eric help and uh Micah Adams from his staff diagnosed the problem that i needed a cable and adapter to plug in directly to my uh to my modem here at home and that was right before a two and a half hour uh uh plan commission meeting we were going to have in the golf course and uh Micah Adams made a house call and came over and he up and running about 10 minutes before that meeting and everything has been excellent since then and i just want to again say publicly thank Eric and Micah Adams for going above and beyond the call of duty to get me up and running for that meeting so i could attend the thing without uh going you know going on and off for that entire meeting and i will say though that my wife Marilyn had a dozen uh chocolate chip cookies for Micah on the way out the door which i believe he shared with the uh with the department so but anyway thank you very much again Eric for getting me up and running and everything has been very smooth since that in attending my various meetings thank you Jim and yes the cookies were shared by the staff and they were delicious so that's what you know what you did why didn't you get a raise very well it only applied to half the half the others oh yeah only people who were re-elected last year i'm taking maryland to top-notch restaurants now instead of mcdonnell since we got since i got that raise when we can go out during this pandemic well there you go you're a gent okay let's go to the thing i like about marcus is he laughs at all my jokes so bless your heart so do i um so 4.5 i think we should care of right i think we're all squared away on that and our next meeting is february 22nd hopefully our agenda won't be quite so full but we got a lot done today if there's nothing else for the good of the order i would ask for a motion to adjourn so move second all right all in favor hi hi any opposed chair vote side we are adjourned thank you all for your help take care bye have a good night