 We need to order the role. Here. Present. Yes. Present. Here. Create a role that you've done for us. We ask your blessings upon this nation of ours, the city of ours. In every municipality, violence is everywhere. We sit around this table because we are able to make policies. We remember today those 10 families in Buffalo, that little boy who was killed violently in Orangeburg. My hearts break because of these senseless acts of violence. Lord, in the midst of our conversation today, in the midst of all of the torrent that is raging in our midst, we thank you for a city that continues to hold its own. In the midst of the gunfire, sensitize each one of us so that we might feel and sense your will as members of this city and members of every community. Touch them individually and collectively. We ask it, we claim it. In his name, we pray. Every heart said. Amen. Before we start, two housekeeping items. I'd like to introduce everybody to India. India, can you stand up? India is a graduate student and law student at the University of South Carolina who's interning with us this summer. I want everybody to give her a welcome. And then the second thing, I wanted all of us all to acknowledge and wish our city manager a happy birthday. Thank you. As she turns 29 again, I want to... No. Thank you. I'm just humbled to be here. What every girl wants on her birthday is to have not one but three city council meetings in one day. So I am pleased to be here with you all. And I see cake, so y'all have to help me eat it because I cannot eat all of those cupcakes. So what you're telling us, you were granted your three wishes. I was. I really was in one day, Bear. Only you would say that, Bear. Thank y'all so much. And, you know, to put the icing on the cake, we're talking budgets. So I can't... It's a beautiful cake. It is, it is. Well, we are going to make our way through. You all did a great job of hanging in there with us last week. We're going to keep on going this week until we get this budget done by the end of June, and we are going over general fund revenues today, the fund balance and starting off with general fund departments. Our first of probably maybe two sessions of general fund departments and we can make it work might have to be three. But today we have part one, which includes finance, information, technology, community development and planning and development services. But again, we will begin with our general fund revenues, Ms. Missy Kaufman, budget and program management and grants director. And we'll all be timing in. So bear with us as we get through it. Good morning or good afternoon, I should say. Good to be here with you all today. As Ms. Wilson mentioned, we will be going through a number of items with you. You received in your packet with the agenda, a memo that contained materials for today's conversation. Also available for you today at your seats was a copy of the PowerPoint slides for presentations from today. It does have a little bit more information from the departments, but also to we have made some additional revisions to our revenues and also updated one of the department's budget information from community development. So just want to point out those items that are in front of you today. The moving right on in as mentioned by Ms. Wilson, we will start with general fund revenues. We've already given you a presentation on revenue, so not really trying to rehash any information other than just updating where we are with revenue projections from today. The budget at this point, we still have a budget that represents a no property tax and a rate adjustment increase. Our revenue forecast, you're going to see our for for FY 2223 is above currently where we are in current year budget, but it's more in line in closer to prior your actual collections. We want to remind you and keep pointing out that that the current year that we're in now fiscal year 21-22, when we were doing the roads revenue projections, we were obviously still in the midst of covid still in midst of the pandemic and still in the midst of uncertainty with regards to revenue and and where we're going with our economy. So just pointing those things out and of course some of our revenue collections do vary by source and keeping those comments in front of you as well. So under general fund revenues and transfers in, the total total projected budget for revenues and transfers of the total general fund budget that's proposed is 164.8 million. That's an increase of 9.2 or 6% over the current year budget. Again, as mentioned, keeping in mind that your current year budget is was adjusted or reflected more of a pandemic type of information. As far as revenues go, the revenue portion of the total budget is 141.8 million. That also represents 8.4 million or 6.4% of the current budget and is about 5 million or a little less than 4% increase ever prior year actuals. Transfer is in total 22.9 million. That's an increase of a 711,000 or 3.5% over the current year. We do now reflect an allocation of 3 million in surplus as well as 2 million from American rescue plan funds. Jeff and I will be going through the general fund fund balance once we conclude the conversation with regards to revenue projections. Just pointing out a little bit more information about our revenues. Of course property taxes as well as licenses and permits make up the majority of our revenues. In the general fund, they account for more than 70% of our total revenue streams. You have questions? Absolutely. On the 3 million dollar fund balance. Tell me what that is again. So when we go through fund balance, just as we did in our prior year funds, we will demonstrate to you what is the general funds available fund balance and so that reflects use of our current year savings or not current year but just our fund collective fund balance available to the general fund. That's the projection. We've got 3 million dollars left over from this year. Well it's part of fund balance which is a collection from of actually a couple of years of fund balance but this year as well and we'll go through what the general fund balance is here in a moment. And then you'll see it in greater detail in just a few slides Mr. Taylor but typically we might start with a number like this 3 million to help balance the budget. That's essentially what it's doing right now but then you're going to see how much is actually there that's accrued over the years and then we're going to talk about some other needs requests y'all have talked about and so in previous years the council gives us a little bit of direction at that time on if we might perhaps use any more fund balance for certain things we don't we'll talk about it we don't like to use it all for sure we never want to do that the balancing act go ahead. Jeff will be joining us in a moment but go ahead and moving forward are there any other questions about our revenues so then moving on to general fund balance as we've mentioned before in last week's discussion as we go through our fund balance our beginning cash unassigned yes it's just projected fines uses of property miscellaneous is increased by 100% yeah I mean it went from 1.1 to 2.2 so and you're looking at the miscellaneous of fines fines use and property you got it on this slide you just have it all generally right next slide over it seems like a increase what what constitutes that increase so in terms of current year budget if you would look at the detailed revenues so part of what that makes up is rents and included in this year's rent that's not in that has not been reflected before are rents from 14.01 main so those are increases of that's a one point that reflect that's one point one of those are increases reflects the rent from 14.01 main from the tenants that remain there thank you for pointing that out that was one of the revenue changes from the projections we gave you in March all right then we can move on into discussion about fund balance so the city's general fund fund balance starting with our cash assigned and I'm sure Jeff will come up here and join us as well and go through these information the unassigned cash balance is 39 million we have a reserve the city has a general fund policy reserve of 15 percent that is what we've utilized for as long as I can remember 15 percent reserve on our fund balance leaving a net of 18 million that's a good question too so moving forward in terms of where we've ended where we're projecting to end with a fund adding to that fund balance of five point four million leaving us an available fund balance of five uh 23.4 million at the end of June of this year so if you move to the next slide so of the 23 million pending commitments you can see those things that are um pending commitments based on just conversations with council um other conversations in general we've also and then reflecting on here the use of that three million dollars as a part of the fund balance okay can I go back to the on the general fund balance so right now you're just Jeff you're projecting a surplus of five point four three three just thought might have been higher with the amount of vacant positions that we had so this does include taking a look at personnel um just based upon the budgeted amount it would appear to be higher however we have spent to date about 1.3 million higher just in what was budgeted for overtime so that eats into some of that now i'll also say these are estimates so as we finish the year out we'll true it up to whatever the actual number is do you think that the number would increase given councilman taylor's note about the vacancies the vacancies are what creates a big part of that number so i don't want to sit here and tell you it's going to be higher but we'll come back after we as we go through the audit and tell you what the actual number is will we be budgeting in overtime as a line item this this time as a line item or is it lumped into personnel no it's a long it's a separate line item so when you we see the year end it'll say we budgeted this much overtime we spent this much by department so just to be clear we haven't presented a report that shows all that but we can put that all together and break it out by department you just look at the end of the year audit it it does it is lumped in in general in personnel but we can break all that out we'll see that before the audit comes because the audit doesn't come until six months after the year in yeah we can we can bring all that back questions on this slide well i guess i just want clarity on joe you're look i'm sorry councilman tailer you're looking for the current year budgeted overtime or are you looking for what the plan is for next year i'll be looking for two things one is last this current fiscal year's budgeted overtime and actual overtime that we'll see in the year end statement and then how much we budgeted for overtime for fiscal year 23 got you and we want to see a comparison whether that kind of look compared to 22s budget the public that are they're looking at this slide do you mind just talking about from the cash the unassigned cash how how long that's accumulated the difference just because i know not everybody that just didn't happen yesterday that's a good point as well and jeff you want to talk about i think the that is obviously a accumulation we do reserve 15 percent every year so that 15 percent from that would have been reserved last year makes up part of that number as well i think the last time i think we talked through any kind of allocation or discussions of fund balances it's been a couple of fiscal years in part because of where we were again with covet so it is a it's a culmination of of several years so outside of the 15 percent reserve and i'll go back and verify but i recall the last time we had unassigned cash out there to the tune of about 661,000 maybe that was uh 2017 january or so so this amounts accumulated over the last five six years and yes and since that time there have been some allocations made out out of general fund for various items over the years usually of how long is what's the time it's not three million it's 39 million 39 million will that's why i'll be clear i live over nine what's the difference what's the time you mean from the $600,000 the last time city council made an allocation like that that was in 2017 through now there have been additional allocations actually from that time until the year after that city council made allocations from fund balance for different capital projects typically the city's general fund or general capital projects are allocated from use of fund balance it's already keep going back to this i'm still trying to understand the american rescue plan so we are putting that five million towards the 39 so no ma'am three the the the 39 million of fund balance less the reserve for total of the of the 15 million we're using three million of that in the general fund okay and then that's separate and then separate from that would be the american rescue plans we're using we're proposing to use an allocation of two million from american rescue plan in the general fund as well got it okay one last question all right the three million that you're using from the surplus in the general fund last year how much from the surplus did you use in the general fund we did not use any surplus in the current year budget for some from surplus or in the prior year for surplus right so you so we got a three million increase in general fund revenue just from last year's surplus correct so increase yes from that one for that one particular line overall transfers in as a net a net increase of seven hundred eleven thousand dollars it's just a year this year it would reflect allocation from surplus in the current year we did not use surplus so it still nets out seven hundred eleven that one line item is what's increased three million we have certainly used fund balance in the past all right any no other questions about fund balance we can move right on into department presentations we have four up for today we don't want to talk about i'm spending on us yes we could well the proposed or list of needs so using the twenty three million dollars available in fund balance we have pending commitments that are based on as mentioned some prior conversations showing these are pending city council approval of course and allocation so assembly street grade separation reflecting the an allocation for that of five million the use for fund balance of three million and then quiet zone phase one of four hundred thousand after that going into potential items needs and request as mentioned we certainly have utilized fund balance to fund the city's general capital projects when we refer to general capital projects that would include city facilities our parks our police stations our fire stations it would include some other one-time projects or activities this mentioned here like the police vehicles refers to the police vehicles that are over and above the replacement program in order to move them to the as as you've heard from some of you have heard from chief hope work rather in terms of the one vehicle one officer program a command bus that has been in discussions the pay plan and then conversations regarding municipal court the judges as well as some renovations that would be needed in order to make those happen so these items again are for your consideration based off things that we've heard you mentioned as priorities things that we know a lot of times the vetting of capital needs projects is certainly based off of life safety issue first and foremost particularly in parks and recreation or any city facilities we use the metrics to determine what sort of rises to the top so we can drill into any of those topics there we have numbers assigned to some and and still getting information on a few others um i know some of you have even shared information on you know for example the gateways the signage the beautification effort we're still kind of drilling into the numbers there but um in general terms these would be the type items that if council wanted to give consideration to additional use of fund balance it would be for these type things discussions that we need to talk about too is the priorities and beautification and other because in the last several weeks we've been approached at the city by multiple organizations that want to fund different beautification projects so i think we need to collectively look at those first and then see where that can be filled by the private sector who wants to be involved um who have funding put towards gateways um medians and other other projects so and then i think it at the appropriate time i think going through these potential needs and stuff i think we're gonna have to build some dollar amounts on it so that we can look at it and say what's a what fits in the priority for this year that we can we can take down and what doesn't and a lot of it's going to unfortunately be based around dollars and where do we we stretch or what can we leverage the best howard i know you had a question i think mr. taylor after that but the five million dollars for the assembly great separation what's the timing of them that we have to commit to it now as part of of all the application process so you have to demonstrate would be asked from the county and the city five million or fifteen each total of fifteen and i and i think it's a good idea to sequester that five million you know we're just holding it reserve uh and and see what happens as it goes through the process and then if something very positive happens and and and let's just say the money were to come from the penny sales tax for the whole fifteen then we can pull it back in but i think setting it aside today is a very smart move and we didn't want to not have it at the time came do you have my one question i guess go ahead so i was going to add and i'm sorry i had to step out of the room for an issue but and i believe miss wilson said this so when we look at fund balance now this is me saying this of course and i feel obligated we don't have to spend it all today um and i say that because there was a time where um we are not holding the great giveaway jeff yes there was time it was misunderstood so but to the mayor's point when we're talking about the different projects things that are of importance that pop up if we're not talking about it today but it's still something even after the budget's past the fund balance is still out there so if we're sitting here in october and one of these worthy projects comes along we can do a budget amendment at that time to utilize the funds and if that was already said before i apologize no that was part i feel that's really helpful no that was good i would um sorry go ahead go ahead add to that same equation in terms of how this mechanism would work we could either include a dollar amount in the budget now that we're going to advertise or or hold off on to it as as mr palins mentioned come back and amend the budget later certainly city council has done that when making allocations from fund balance like this we've come back later with more information and be able to talk through like a capital improvement program or other special projects in one time but we aren't going to move forward with advertising the budget by friday because we have to by friday this friday that bottom line number so this would this this is what we would advertise this whole thing yes yes if we the oh the 164 on the going back to the slide uh that has all the you know that one right there under potential items needs and requests now looking at that what that implies to me is that no money's been budgeted for him that's correct so you're telling me that the columbia police department pay plan has not been budgeted no not the model that we talked about when we presented in committee we will that will get funded one way or the other we're suggesting that it could come from unbalance from a as of yesterday and a letter i got from the treasury suggests you can use these funds and they are encouraging cities to use it for personnel items related to public safety so again until we get we have we just got we just presented it to y'all last week we got the model back i think monday yesterday and it looks like it's about two million dollars to phase it in we're going to have to figure out how much to allocate to phase that in but realize that something will have to continue to absorb every year i understand that and that's why i was asking the question uh you know on a priority-based budget i think as we went through our whole deal you know public safety i think was at the top of almost everybody's list and and i would not personally for a for the for the pay plan i would say we might need to sharpen our pencil in other places in our operating budget to make sure that's funded on an ongoing basis versus using one-time monies you know for for something particularly like that the pencil's been sharpened and in order to institute it right now to get it started we're going to have to infuse some funds into the operating budget to get it started or we got to cut something else i mean there's always the option i mean you can give us a presentation saying look i got to cut x y and z you're gonna hear about that not as much in the department today because they already had come in where we cut things the ones next week as of 11 58 p.m last night when we got the budget imbalance we cut more well the thing is i mean i can only look at the stuff that i was given and the questions that i have in here that i i just don't understand yet and it's like it's like the the services column and almost every department doubled and i know gas has gone up but you know it's title of those things were when will we hear the the hear from the police department and services expenses next week service expenses almost doubled in every department right because again we're coming off of two years of budgets that were so far reduced due to the pandemic and now you are gonna this year see um increases in revenues and projections um that we're trying to make up from the past two years do you want to add anything to that jeff i was thinking about the ones that are before you today um i'm thinking about well no certainly be presenting themselves um it certainly has a hefty or service expense most of that would be related to software um renewals that are for city-wide type of software it costs you know microsoft licenses and things like that soft licenses or clouding solutions are certainly part of that equation um trying to think about some of the others that might be in there but as far as addressing the question why would seem to have doubled if that's no i don't mean to interrupt but i mean that was just an example right that i used and you know we did survive for two years i think we did and i mean and and and one of the purposes of requesting a zero-based budget and a priority-based budget was i just would hate to see us do what the state of south carolina did after the last recession after everything was cut back immediately raced back not necessarily and again i'm just i'm looking at the state now raced back not necessarily what was needed to do job but what was previously funded um you know again we heard some discussion in the last week still about about water and sewer for example do we really need and that was a question i think we all we left with do we really need to hire back the exact same amount of people we had way back when you know again i'm looking at that police deal and i'm saying to myself okay if we had this many open positions that were budgeted last year and we're not funding um the the full force we're funding what we believe that we can accomplish next year i would think there'd be a pretty good bit of money in there somehow to take care of a big chunk of that and the overtime deal is going to be is going to be the be the change i mean that's the other question is if we if we bring all these personnel back that are budgeted in here what does it do to our overtime budget for next year shouldn't knock it should bring it way back so in the big four departments and you heard with water and sewer last week to the point you just made we didn't fully budget personnel back again from a year or two no it was a it was a big a big big big higher though that we're budgeting we reduced 43 people 56 people we are down about 156 or we're at one point so that's the hiring of 100 people which leaves 100 unbudgeted is where i'm getting at and i think again with the priority based budgeting or zero-based budgeting the questions were asked what do you absolutely need to surviving at the work done so that that question has been asked and answered and the projections on personnel are based off that again even to late last night where we reduced and talk about general fund big four parts and recreation police fire public works and we went in and cut in those public works and parks and recreation areas to the very point of what do you really need this year to do the work from a physician's perspective so i think as we go through those budgets which they're not today hopefully it'll make a little bit more sense where we did sharpen the pencil and as to the police department they're up next also because for this very reason it's still been a work in progress but i was also trying to wait to get the model the numbers on the model to incorporate the paper I understand I just for me it's important that we don't move forward approving things with with significant holes in operating operational budgets that we will find out that we're going to fund with with one-time money and their continuing expenses i mean where we can take one-time money and use it for capital cost like police vehicles maybe or something along those and i would want that compared to our lease program but that's what that's what concerns me just a little bit and i mean and i hear you but i you know and i don't know whether they're in this or whether they're in the next one but i mean i i i'm not going to call them out yet but i mean i saw departments adding what you know adding personnel that um well a first blush of what we said to you has changed i'm talking about this is what i printed off that was emailed to us prior priority yeah well there's there's departments where we sent you all something i think last week that may have showed some you know it wasn't even what we initially had projected to get some things needed that you all it's specifically asked for and we've since dialed that back even as far as personnel projections okay so that let me go back and ask the question i asked when we got started the attachment that was emailed with the agenda for this yes is this the numbers we're working off of yes sir those numbers are the same these are you're talking about for that word email friday yes ma'am they're the same okay that's that's what i want to make sure that's what i was saying when i you know spent the time looking through this like i said i've seen you know pr staff added i've seen you know i've seen that was last week and if we're asking about pr they don't have any staff in absolutely but but originally we had okay all right thank you all right so with that we'll move on into our discussion with departments and starting off we brought the new person in to lead us off so welcome to the city our finance director all the way from Denver Colorado miss christine gathara our director hi yeah they're gonna let the new kid go first so bear with me but wanted to take some time to run through some accomplishments from 21 2022 and then some goals that we have set for 2022-23 so finance is made up of finance business license and payment center um so a little bit of a background on each one of them um and some accomplishments so the big one in finance is obviously our annual audit so achieved a clean opinion for June 30 2021 without findings and without findings in our single audit which is the the federal funding that we receive so those are both great wins for the city and the staff and finance um other things to note is our investment income so we received the award for the 98 plus day cash vest award from the company three plus one um and have been leveraging to make sure that we maximize the income that we bring in on the cash we have on hand so brought in approximately two point yes question about that 489 so i can provide the report so that's a report that's provided to us from three plus one their cash vest analysis report that we get quarterly and that was in their report here so i'm happy to to provide it so the one-year benchmark so from that time frame the one-year benchmark was 490,000 and the city earned in that last 12 month period 2.6 million and jeff knows more so i'll let him so uh one of the bigger things that adds it's not that we have different investments but it's more how closely you're looking at your cash flow so a lot of agencies a lot of cities a lot of they um may not be eyeballing cash on a daily basis how often are you getting invested even if it's just in something very short term and it's a small amount it adds up based upon the dollars that you have so that's a big part of what this company does working with us is making sure that if we have idle cash it's not just sitting at the big old bank account it's actually somewhere sitting in either the state pool or an allowable investment earning interest so that's a big part of what's occurred working with this company for about three and a half years now it's such a big difference from the bench more than the one in where you're only getting at it yeah well it's a good i'd rather be on that side of it than the other side so and we actually have um they come and meet with staff and the manager and i almost quarterly if we find time in the future they will be more than happy to come then we could just have a discussion on how they take a look at our investments and what we do i think everybody is familiar with business license so a couple of highlights from this year we've completed the undergov upgrade in may just last week um they've also worked on updating the look and feel of the website to make it more user friendly i'm trying to approach how to help our external customers and citizens um and have a step by step guide out there to hope to minimize questions um they've also done great work in the last three months they have a new administrator as well and she's been able to fill three of those five vacancies um and we had great success with that department at the job fair so i'd like to thank hr for having that job fair because that helped us fill quite a few in that department and then the payment center responsible for posting all the payments their big win for the last year was relocating to the hardened street location every bit of feedback we've had is how happy our citizens are right the accessibility the the drive through the staff love working the drive through so if you ever get a chance to go stop by they love that building um they love the services they get to provide so and they are fully staffed so that is our win question that's good to hear yeah i don't want anyone to have to worm their way through one of our websites i might get that finances and everybody's forte so we'd like to we'd like to make it easy for people if we can so a few goals and budget priorities for the next fiscal year someone is to operate at a full staffing level um we also are working through some system upgrades so we have our ifis which is our accounting ap payroll hr it enterprise platform so we're doing that upgrade during the next fiscal year along with a banner upgrade and i'll save all of that glory for it and their presentation but those will be major projects that our team will be working on as always the 2022 audit with a clean audit opinion we expect nothing less than that so that will be our goal and treasury will continue to maximize investment income business license is going to complete the online city portal for the new applicants um and complete the work for the masc state portal renewals and then lastly um we're going to keep looking for those efficiencies to improve both for our internal customers so all of our departments that we help and then the external citizens as well questions i have a question for you one of the things that i wanted to make sure is is we were going through the finance department i know that we're we're doing some upgrades with ifis and banner my question really stems around it seems like we generate a lot of paperwork down there and we do a lot of things by hand and a lot and i hear it from vendors complaining about how long it takes to get checks and all that are we doing anything in this budget to get more in today's world of electronic and transfers and cutting down because that is a added personnel cost that is time money and everything that goes around it can you maybe let us know what you're doing to to change that because that is one of the biggest complaints that i get from the from businesses in the community is you know we just we're still archaic is they use that term very loosely yeah sure not so um so yes any ERP upgrade is a is a perfect opportunity to look at process and the functionality right so things that we could not do in our old system will there now be options um i also think it helps having someone new come in and poke and ask some questions about why why we're doing things and and i think covid also just gave us a natural ability to realize how paper heavy we were right and so i think staff already have a lot of ideas on how we can fix some of that um how we can get away from the file cabinets and live a more electronic life um internally as well as what we can accept from customers um so that will be a major focus it's going to take some time right we can't kind of turn that ship in a day but the upgrade will definitely lend a hand to make that happen is it fair to say that moving through this budget year and through this operating year that we're going to start to streamline and upgrade those systems across the board so that we can work more efficiently and effective than um because that seemed to be why we always we didn't have enough people because we had so much paperwork that we didn't have enough people to do all the paperwork we had yes you want to have an example of what we're discussing especially in payments and probably some of the discussion you've had is whether or not we can utilize uh through the banks and do an a ch payment directly to our big vendors on large checks that's very important because if they're an out-of-town vendor if we put the check in the mail there's that lag time that's going through and then they usually want that to clear before they'll pay all their subs and those are a lot of the people that we hear from so we are working towards um adding uh the capabilities of an a ch payment that will probably be soon that i that i can almost guarantee you've heard about so that is one of the items that we're working on right now along with just processing the invoice it seems like we have step after step that's kind of like when you look at some of the other processes we have we've just stayed what we've done for so long and want to make sure that as we're investing we're investing wisely to upgrade our our procedures and systems so we are and it is a long process because there's a lot it's not just finance finances the end product of creating the check there's a lot of hands that touch it before it gets there so we're working on that to make sure that stays in the forefront with the various departments yes we're not going to sacrifice accountability but everyone needs to be aware so but yes that is part of you know public accountability is a little different than well we're going to try to shorten that process but we'll still make sure it's accountability our auditors will ask those questions i'm going to bring jeff back up because he's closer to that than i i'm going to bring him back yes so i don't know if i can fully answer that question that's a thank you yes so but well we are for the actual business license renewal that's what we're working on so that we'll have a portal through the state that you can renew it online and also on our through our city website in addition to that we're working on the ability to do a new business license online what we did add in the last two weeks is the business license application is now downloadable off our website in an adobe fillable form so a new business can can go to the website do it and then they can actually email that to the business license department and then they'll start the process then in the past they would have to come in so two i don't remember that that change just occurred in the last two to three weeks have you had people utilize that yet i'll check i'm going to bet we have on the new ones most of the feedback i've gotten is more on our income verification and business personal property tax bill verification that has been a lot of positive feedback because we're we've changed the the standards not the standards but we've changed the verification process of that and it has made it a much more efficient process for people coming in i think the committee heard in detail jeff it may just be work for all the council recapping that a little bit more detail because we had no lines for the first time and i don't remember how long right well we had no lines out the building so that's a real plus there might have been a line but if it was it was very short i'm trying to see if griggs in here but um we had very short lines we did have commentary from people about how quickly it went so and a big part of that change is just the income verification so when people give us their gross income in the past we required it depended upon the company they may be bringing in a a truckload of documents and then it's not just the customer going through it but then our own staff have to go through it it can take five minutes just to do one quick renewal we've we've cut that down to no time at all and we did push that out before the renewal period got here through robo calls and others so a lot of people are aware of that as they came in jeff just just for my clarification there is a layer for new business applicants business license applicants where we as the city staff they can check the box to make sure that it is properly zoned for that area that they're wishing to operate in is that is that built in right now that is i'm i'll have to verify but i'm going to say it is through uh we have a computer system that whether it's through zoning fire marshal depending what the process is those boxes all have to be checked before we issue the final business license now we are having discussions of whether or not we keep the process that way or if the business license is just a part of the overall process right now we utilize business license as the last item that someone has to do before after they've done everything else so we're taking a look and there are other communities that utilize business license just as one of the factors but just because you get the business license you still have to see the fire marshal you still have to do whatever the other items are that are required perfect thank you great answer well no the renewal actually will get easier we're trying to work we're looking at changing the process for a brand new business license are you for each of these are you going through the just briefly personnel service i was actually ready to speak to that it's not the the memo that was provided to you on the agenda the budgets for those departments are included in that memo they're not in the slides today i did want to point out for instance in finance is a good example you see there there are a number of different budgets by this is their entire department in each of the divisions the general fund is really the focus of course for today in the budget that you have not yet received so finance for instance is funded from general fund they're funded out of water and sewer that budget was presented last week and parking fund that budget was presented last week so the general fund budget is the one that you have not yet received but this one that we have that we're speaking to we'll be speaking to more so as we go through the next few weeks so just wanted to make that distinction between these different when you see these uh the departments that have these different funding sources that's one way of seeing how their total budget is funded across multiple funds when we are speaking to revenues and stuff today specifically those are specific general fund revenues water and sewer parking was all prior yes sir one of the issues i got when comparing these things unfortunately last week's had the fte counts for every department on it but they're not included in this in this week's oh the chart that chart from the memo last week was referred was a snapshot that yes the chart from last week was a snapshot of where we have made some specific personnel changes we actually have not updated given you the updated personnel chart staffing other than the org charts do reference the position status of the number of positions in the org charts you have today there is a indication of the number of positions i do see we left off a one but all right so next up is it we will be at seven shortly um and then we'll be reposting a few positions as well so just wait one continue so you're looking to add back how many people net for this for this next budget so we're staying the same at 50 we have nine vacancies right now that's what i say so you got nine openings you're looking to fill so you're adding back a net nine people back from budget to budget it's budget to budget it's neutral body neutral yeah that's what i'm saying but we're gonna put nine more bodies in yes did you got this one yeah yeah for somebody how long are those positions been i mean we're you all are getting into the very exercise which is great because you're picking up on it real quick how this works um of what we consider turnover positions and something's posted and she's trying to hire it versus positions that we've gone through in the budget already when i said we've tried to sharpen the pencil and do the exercise positions that they feel so her nine positions that are vacant are not positions christine today would say she doesn't need i'm just curious about how many of those positions have been open if they haven't then that's that's an answer too i'm just curious yeah so several of those have been open uh going back to october november december so in the meantime we have been utilizing we have been utilizing outside uh accountants to fill the holes which has its pluses and its minuses but it's also not something we can sustain and so in this same example as of late yesterday with the big departments like parts and recreation and public works robert would have said well i'ma turn them over we pushed a little harder and dug a little deeper and eliminated some positions that had been out there for a while maybe longer he would have argued probably he would work to fill them but for this budget year so we can go through the exercise similar to what we did with utilities of what is it really necessary and i and i and i think that's a very hard place to make that call on but that's what we've done we we've tried to ask those questions you're asking right now particularly in those bigger departments um let's try it and see if not carrying that many positions is as necessary as you might feel that it is so but that was not a direction that we gave in finance for example with her noncurrent vacancies is it something we can go back and look at of course and you may want to just add you know explain this to me because i might be the only one that doesn't understand it you know sometime later this week but i mean that's what i'd rather explain it to the group that's the reason i'm asking if i look at what our vacant positions were um let's say the end of march and i take what's in last week's add-on or no it looks to me like we're budgeting i can't i don't know if these the numbers in here are all total that's one of the things it looks like you're adding you look you're budgeting to add back 459 budgeted you know people back in those spots this year in all general fund departments or 59 if you take the take the take the vacant positions report from march 30th and then if you take you take the chart from from last week where it shows the pluses and the minuses per department if you minus 63 plus six plus two yeah i'm not gonna sit here and try to write this out what y'all are talking about right now i can tell you what report you looked at march 30th that shows vacancies i need to look at a report today that shows what vacancies there are well that was that we can just from the discussion purposes we say as of march 30th if we were looking at it as of march 30th we're looks to me based on just the math that we're looking to add back fill 459 positions net okay some are some are new positions some old positions went away but we were looking to put for lack of it we're budgeting 459 bodies back in the city on you're back in working in the city more than we had march 30th that's that's that's what i was asking earlier i don't know that it would be more than we had i mean we were we're in some departments we're staying steady we're not they're budgeting like christine had 50 last year she's budgeted for 50 again this year an apartment i know i understand that's what i was like we're that's what we're saying we're budgeting for 450 budgeting to add back 459 bodies okay that's what i'm saying well you know when we went back to march 30th christine didn't have 50 she only had say if too quick recently you might not have had but 39 okay you know what i'm saying i just i'm just trying to get it in my head from a budget perspective between carry forward from last year and this year where the spread is because i mean if we can you know and again just so i understand i'm not saying anything's right or anything's wrong but 459 new you know rehires new hires that's a ton of people i'm not saying that we don't need it or anything like that i'm just saying hiring 459 people it's i don't know that it is because i don't know that we're saying exactly the same thing that's what that's why i said you may want to go i mean and maybe what we need to do because this is our first stab at going through each general fund department in this way and i know that for finance and maybe we just need to keep a running total so council is totally clear messy on every department which what are the budgeted fte's what and there's different numbers we're talking about here too you can talk about what was authorized previously and what was budgeted for previously we can get into right now what i've tried to get away from is even dealing with what was authorized with the zero base budget we're going into what is budgeted this year and what vacancies are still they're still going to carry out of what's budgeted because they actually think they're going to need to fill those vacancies and i think that's what y'all are trying to drill down into and it may be that we need to start showing for each one what those two numbers are another separate way to look at it too is just to add into it is all right so if we started with 2060 that's what we had here to operate with at the end of this budget what's the number that we were budgeting to fill and then that so that because right now it's just a bunch of different numbers floating just trying to understand where we're where we're trying to create our base level and understanding that's what it takes for us to operate and not knowing that is just because it's there's a lot of numbers a lot of moving parts totally understand it's it's complicated well i think the bigger thing too is we're not talking apples and apples and so i think what councilman taylor is trying to get to is distinguishing between turnover positions which people come and quit versus whether or not it's a position that really needs to be filled is do you see that because there's a difference to me in those some of the positions we have people come and work eight months they quit we still need that position and we rehire and so at any given time we may have a vacancy but it's always one that we need to keep in the budget totally different than a position that we haven't filled in a year and a half because if it hasn't been filled in a year and a half we may not need to be factoring that into the budget so i think it would help if we were talking apples and apples right now i think we're talking apples and oranges if you want to do a comparative analysis because you got to be comparing the same thing and and to the point of those authorized type positions that may have been in the budget over time those are the type positions we've gone in whether they were authorized and some were budgeted some were authorized in years past and were never budgeted but they still were carrying the number on the books of their strength so to speak and so we tried to go in and really not look at it from that vantage point anymore and just really dealt into if we're going to budget Christine since we were just talking about finance 50 positions for her and you are carrying nine or maybe soon to be seven that are vacant are you you really feel like you need them because some of those accounts are turning over and you're trying to get back to fully staff if you we've done that if you're saying go do it again and dig a little harder and and cut them anyway cut some anyway then that's do what we can do that we did a little bit of that last night no i'm not what i'm saying to you is i can't say that yet because i don't have what's what you you know what we what we've done is we've looked at global pictures of money and now we're looking at specific pictures of money but we've yet to look at a global picture of fte's and then the specific of the fte's and all i'm saying to you is is for me with the number of budgeted again we're not i'm you know i'm not telling whether they're needed or not needed i'm just talking about budgeted fte's um we're adding back based on the reports that i've been given some 400 and almost 460 fte people back on the back into the payroll in this next budget that we don't didn't have on the payroll that's a net number as of march 30th i just you know again a nice supplement deal that would just show here's what our budgeted fte's were for f22 here's where i and if you want to do staffing position as of today you know or the you know the most recent quarter was march 30th that's where i picked it here's what we're recommending budgeted fte's in in these departments this year and so this is this is what we're gaining in those folks because i i do think before we finish the budget it may be in some places that we we we need to ask the question okay do we really need two more people in this department or do we really need 30 more people in this department and and i would submit to you that i've asked that question and i'm i'm fairly satisfied with the answers i've gotten but if it's just something about the number that you're saying we need to look at them absolutely and if you come back and say that's you've added too many positions then i think it's also going to come a little bit down to that because i i'm not you know i just have to be clear that the exercises are have been gone through on that and mrs wilson i am not questioning the exercise i understand what what rises to the question for me is the number 460 and and that's my point that's what we're we we might be off on what that number means that's why i prefaced the whole discussion by saying you may very want to just talk to me at some point later this week no sir i think it's a discussion for the group for sure but um all right we're going to keep going miss silvia without a good afternoon mayor and council um today i'll be presenting the information technology update for our budget um first um identify some accomplishments we completed in the previous year um as you know the information technology um provides communication networks for the city of columbia we are responsible for safeguarding data and information creating and administering databases helping employees troubleshoot desktops and mobile devices and a whole other range of um technology support um we support approximately 1200 plus devices um 200 plus applications the 2300 users is a combination of uh city employees vendors um service accounts um we have about 200 servers the majority of those are virtual and we have about a hundred network locations some of um major accomplishments we've completed um last year as we implemented an online citizen property check request for cpd and this is a this allows citizens to go online submit a request to um request increased patrol um to properties businesses or citizen residents uh we transition to teller online which provides businesses with the ability pay for their city of columbia invoices electronically via e-check or a credit card um that went online december 2021 um we're in the process of implementing we're about 75 percent um complete of implementing outward facing plan submittal software which is intergov so this gives engineering the ability to have um architects engineers um submit their plans for review um staff can do mark-ups on those plan reviews and um they can communicate electronically with those architects and engineers and um construction companies uh budget priorities number one is the oh i'm sorry just quick question just because you put a note in here and i just want to make sure when you say anticipated rollout in the near future do you have a time frame or that is that an end of 2022 project is that a fall of 22 no i'm hoping in the next couple of months that piece will be completed it's about 75 percent um complete we had to put it on hold for the integral integral upgrade which we completed last week so um hopefully in the next couple of weeks so we're re-engaging the end users to complete the configuration and as part of that have we also anticipated what kind of rollout we're going to do to let people know that this is online because you know the key the key word for us really in a lot of the things that that are discussed is you know there's still a lot of people who don't know that they can go online for the citizen check you know and and some of the other things so what i want to do is make sure that when you're ready to roll it out not only does you know we're sending out the city but every one of us around the table has a separate social media outlets and this that we need to make sure people understand that we're trying to make things easier for them now how important that is yeah i have to check with the department to see what their plan is but typically they use public relations to get the word out you know regarding any new functionality or capability but to me that this is something that we ought to have a press conference on that you know we need to draw attention to it that to me is a a big deal of becoming more business friendly yeah that's huge but i'll i'll get with dana and christis group and and discuss with them what they're planning to do for a PR campaign the mobile app okay yes that's the area of improvement that that we need to address we've been discussing it internally with the PMO office but yes sir we do need a new mobile app yes sir a replacement for it yeah we'll work on a replacement of course before we get rid of it but yeah and one thing to add to councilman mcdowell's request i think that one of the things that i've also noticed and heard is that there are multiple apps for the city whether it's for water whether it's my columbia and this day and age when app development has become pretty seamless i think it's important for us to consider working together to have one kind of one stop shop for the city of columbia that people are able to access all of the different services because i think it also gets confusing which app they need to download for what service so as that you know gets added to the list of priorities or wishlist i would really encourage that we revisit and have departments work together to develop one app for services that the city provides hey um our priorities the number one priority for us right now is the ifas upgrade so that upgrade is in progress it has started we're in the middle of business process reviews so the various departments has has been um in workshops with the vendor going over their current business processes and looking at the new functionality of the new system so hopefully you know the vendors making recommendation on how we can improve our business processes um that will be a hosted solution it's moving to the cloud um we currently have access to the environment next we have the banner utility billing upgrade that's underway we're planning we're trying to nail down a go live date but june july right now is the estimate of when we'll go live on that system that's also cloud-based council yeah i have lots of bank accounts fine country of the united states of america council we haven't had that to happen we had we were not hacked not the city of columbia the some council members miss wilson's information um was stolen but we were not directly hacked and we bought in sled as well to come in and verify we provided them laws just to verify and confirm that it wasn't a result of us being hacked no no attack just for clarity um it was a targeted attack to you guys as elected officials and um the bad actors actually um took advantage of your personal information but the city of columbia network systems accounts were not hacked you guys were targeted because you're so important so yeah it wasn't a it wasn't a city hack we actually brought in sled for months to do an investigation and um we have that report but somebody clicked on an email never met one of those and they go looking for it too so silvery just to you feel with the upgrades we're doing everything we're we're pretty solid ground on being protected as a system because you know we do carry a lot of information very public information as well and then i guess the next question the the one question in it i don't know if it falls to you silvia or to the city manager one of the things we've talked about is really upgrading looking at this end of gov and how we can communicate to internally externally and be able to really be more effective and efficient with our time and efforts with communicating as part of an overall commitment is that something you see that fits into silvia's budget today or is that something you think we need to discuss as a capital project well because you all deemed it as such a priority we've already incorporated into the budget but into the clerk's budget because it's going to follow under constituent services but obviously silvia and those have been very involved with evaluating the technology for it you don't have any concerns about it typically for solutions like that will we provide a questionnaire around security to ensure they're following you know industry standard for those type of systems because it is a hosted solution so and of course i would stand here i have three general questions yes deal with this and other things it's like when i look at this sheet that you you sent us like it has capital outlay most of them have zero like we was talking about the capital for intergov or something is it just intentionally not left off of these sheets or is it dislocated somewhere else or well i wouldn't have i don't consider intergov a capital out like a software upgrade new software we were buying or anything that or new computers that we're buying i'm just right i mean some might be services some might you want to address it missy and silvia with with it specifically i mean my questions just i'll make it let me get simple if it's a capital if it's if it says capital outlay and it's just got a dash that means you've not attributed any capital investment to that particular to that particular budget that's correct we're not going to see a capital budget somewhere else that's correct that's the question number one number two um as we go through these and i don't think it affects this great department if there this is just the general fund budget so as we go through each department doesn't have to be print or anything it's just let us know if there are other fund monies that are going in to fund that department as well right and that's indicated on the like for instance the sheet that you have before you for it so the top parts is general fund information technology you'll see a gray line that says water and sewer that indicates to them which which is funded from water and sewer and specifically that's the jet for what for it it's the gis or okay then going forward would you total the two so we see what the budget is for the department um and then last but not least just i'll look at the three cobs actual of 2021 budget and and then the proposed budget um is there i get we don't have the you know is there anything of any significance that you would point out in those three terms i mean one's fully coveted is that what you know what i'm saying that and then one was open and then this is full go is the proposed in other words like for example when i look at at our information technology we went from 21 000 and operating expenses to a budget of 62 but we don't know what the actual is correct and then we see what proposed is so i mean the i guess the question i have is why does it jump so significantly this is what i was talking about earlier between the actuals in 2021 and the budget numbers for 22 is it because we were working from home and everybody was buying their own paper or no paper no paper yeah i mean i just i mean this is just just good just what i'm trying to get us is understanding why things jumped it went bam and then up and then and then it doesn't you know but again we don't know um you know again we'll make we i'm not going to ask for it this year but next year jeff when we do this i would like for us to you to have the the budget for fiscal 2021 and the ytd actual i got you i mean that's what i'm saying i'm gonna ask anybody to change it for this year but i think next year when we look at the budgets you've got to give us your projected year in or i would rather just have your date through three quarters take the truth i mean because you just it just helps so like i say just because when i was talking about earlier it was just kind of puzzling to see how the actuals are so low and then it got budgeted to three times more and we really don't know if it needed to use it it needed to increase that much it gives you a nice hedge so that's a good example i think jeff kind of breezed over that just now but i mean you're exactly right councilman and the positions i think that some haven't been funded and with a new person coming in who's done this a lot somewhere else those are some of the things she's trying to build a position to be doing that all the time i mean we to be honest i mean we've been playing a lot of catch up and we've been you know understaffed to a certain degree those are exactly the things that we should be able to just pull and show you and i appreciate that yeah i would just point out what i thought i heard you say was one of the former positions we had we're going to convert into a new position yeah but let's see yeah i mean that's just the truth of the matter and i don't have let me tell you i have no issue just so you know in investing in the personnel for better finance reporting for a more automated type type situation that the mayor mentioned i think this is wonderful just want to have an understanding of it you know of what we're going after here and by the way we use banner software is that what we use for a utility bill just for utility bill don't use it in you know like the accounting software that banner does they keep selling it off so it's it's with it one time and one time it's not really okay i've had experience with it walford is a pretty good program i thought they do have a education component software to our segment is in iFIS which is okay it also has an education and it all talks to one another right that perfect these two thank you ma'am but i think speaking to your point councilman taylor exactly to that to that part of the conversation for instance it is one of those examples so it is houses those things that are that are universal across the city some of the things that you may be thinking of that you at one point in time a lot of computer purchases were capital they are not anymore so a lot of the things that are supplies actually for her budget are probably things that are more our non-capital technology type equipment and devices copies but things specific to that well and let me tell you the reason one reason why i would ask i asked the question which is a different than why i ask other questions is if that includes computer upgrades and additional software that helps us all to automate my question would be why is it so low right yes yeah and so the two opera the two programs that are already underway are not reflected in these budgets are because they are already underway and they're actually not housed within it's budget they are funded other places but also to um it's budget is just it's operations for instance as indigo this miss wilson mentioned that's going to be reflected in this clerks budget because they technically own that application okay no that's a good answer and then for for software software nowadays is completely a service that's right as we move to cloud so you're going to see the police department's budget as a prime example police technology as it moves to cloud that increases their service expenses whereas before it would have been at purchase or okay and so and jeff i would just ask again and i apologize for asking so many questions please ask we appreciate it when you when you do that is it just showing us services for some simple simple flying flying the line item budget is that or if you looked at a detailed budget the things you're talking about we show is say subscriptions versus we have cloud yeah we're starting we're starting to capture those more as that as cloud solutions so we can get a handle on we're still not moving not everything is moved to that point but we do have maintenance and services and things like that so i guess so my my question simply then is we're looking at a a summarized you are okay it's it's it's rolled up i got you but yes sir you're exactly right the individual items when they submit their budgets it's all lined out and so we would have if we if some if one member of council wanted to see a detailed budget you could just pop it up would you like us to i'll ask what i i'll just yeah i don't for this process this is fine it's just understanding how how we code things and classify things you know explains a whole lot of questions why things may appear to be high maybe may appear to be low that's fair no technology is definitely one of those things that is a commodity i mean you know howard probably knows all this but you know and and i'll tell you in accounting you know what you do at your house and how you account for your personal financials is one set of rules then you get to government it's a whole another set of rules and then you get to academics and it's another set of rules you're right our finance director is shaking her head over there yeah it's you know so my point is it's it's part of these things that for me and i apologize for taking so much of everybody's time is if you're used to looking at these things in business terms what you see when you're looking at government or schools or you know i bet you the church has a different set it's a different ball game than what you absolutely i'll i'll add to that final just to sort of wrap that piece up that's a good another good point the city is even in that point the general fund is is governmental accounting and financing the water and sewer fund parking fund stormwater funds that you saw last week those are enterprise funds they are books more like a of a private company so their financials look different their reports look different that's my question my question is i forgot to ask when we started when i read that what a capital expense is it's five thousand dollars i thought we'd had a discussion several years back about raising that five thousand dollars to a higher level no i don't think that's that's for purchasing purposes not for accounting for purchasing what was the expense guitar just got here but i think maybe did you have some conversations maybe with alonzo that might be a portion of what procurement i think the state has a cap of 10 000 for purchasing but when you're capitalizing items for accounting what we've said here basically is capital expenditure is under five thousand we're going to code as an operational expense isn't that right just correct i don't think you can i think you i think you're you are probably thinking we've had lots of discussion about the the purchasing authorization levels from myself down to department head level and so on and i think what five thousand for a from a purchasing standpoint for a department i mean that's not that doesn't even go up to the assistant city manager so so an item purchased this under that's five thousand or above a vehicle or a printer printers don't cost five thousand dollars anymore they're completely consumables but five thousand dollars is the limit of of of an asset what would come an asset or an out like capital projects are also a little bit different any other questions for sylvia thank you thank you oh and i'm sorry let's go over your conditions it currently has 28 ftes two vacancies um our gis division is funded out of the water and sewer fund it is funded out of the general fund and gis is the only division under it but i broke out our chart to identify the functional areas within the it department which of course the help desk the network group in application school sylvia hi glorious i eat our community development director good afternoon planning and development mayor rickam in and members of council i think they're just planning was next in ours uh it was it was different order it's all right it doesn't matter i will point out you were given an updated the budget information for community development was updated and provided to you the numbers themselves was not updated for the general for their general fund portion it's just showing you their other their grant funds from hud cdbg dr all right so we're gonna go ahead and get started um we'll begin with the community developments 21 22 accomplishments um and here we're showing um for the community development block grant cdbg the allocation of one million one oh one five 24 and with that funding some of the accomplishments are we funded two affordable housing loans three maintenance assistance projects two park improvement projects that's with ts martin and hyatt park um there was booker washington heights resurfacing project there were five commercial revolving uh loans for small business assistance through obo and um there is assistance to nonprofits uh such as homeless no more fast forward comet to the market mercy and united way and so with those cdbg funds they cover um those projects that are public and nonpublic um for our home investment partnership we received an allocation of 609 008 um for the 21 22 fiscal year and during that year we did fund uh homes of hope which is a multifamily development um in the attestal court area off of rosewood and uh in addition to that we received one million five ninety three three thirteen for hapwa that's for housing opportunities for persons with aids um with that funding we were able to assist 281 individuals with housing subsidies that's tenant base retail assistance and short-term rental mortgage utility assistance also it helped with uh permanent housing placement in 974 individuals were helped with supportive services just the homes for hope we did the gap filling how many units are they building i can't remember the number yes yes sir there was a total of 29 units and the city funded uh eight of those units that's across from the old church and the um the lumber yard the old lumber yard so i didn't understand why we couldn't the airport went so full deep into pushing that project away but 50 yards away they allowed 29 units to be built but that's an argument for another day so um in addition there was uh during the COVID 20 um we received some additional funds that being part of the cdbg cd funding of one million five eighty eight one eighty nine um in that we do have a housing relief relief program that's being administered through the cooperative ministries um so far they have assisted 65 individuals and have awarded $155,000 out of a $250,000 award we also awarded uh obo small business stabilization assistance program $163,179 that is still underway and of course we are administering the cdbg dr grant um some of the funding projects that have been funded to date um are two multifamily projects that have been completed and um are in operations they're 100 occupied um they those two units included a total 145 new apartments affordable housing units we also assisted four small businesses three elevation projects 22 hmgp grants five small rental assistance uh rental projects i'm sorry and uh 25 uh home repairs have been completed to date in addition the city received in cdbg mid funding 18 million five hundred and eighty five thousand dollars um that project uh grant is still in in process and out of those dollars the city has chosen to do three infrastructure infrastructure projects they include the columbia canal head gates olympia fire station and then they're uh two generators that we consider as one project but they're the generators that will be replaced at the cpd headquarters and also fleet services how much was put towards the fire station i believe it's seven million dollars that's been allocated toward the fire station so the city has um engaged an occupant they've gone through we're saved to um deal with houses because of the flood correct yes and so obviously even at our town hall we had several constituents come that were gravely concerned with how delayed we've been in fixing those houses i'm i mean and also seeing some of the coverage around that what's the plan to make sure that we complete the houses that we have promised would be um fixed since i think to 2017 yes so 2015 so just to give you a little background um the uh the flood the storm did occur in october 2015 everyone knows that um we had to go through a process uh to where there had to be an implementation plan and an action plan put together which was approved by HUD in 2017 there as i've shown here under cdbg dr there are some projects that have been completed um in 2020 the city did decide to go uh through a transition and bring on a new program manager and sub recipient um and since that transition has taken place a lot of assessments have been done and the program has been rebooted um and we currently have um several projects that are currently under construction i've told them about um i think about 20 right now and then we're also in the process of what our sub recipient is in the process of putting out a bid for rebids um our goal and our timeline is established um to show or meet uh to complete the construction and rehabs by the end of the year so that that is the goal so there are okay so just to make sure i'm understanding so there were around 71 homes and we've had 25 completed so that leaves about 46 of them given some of the money that was lost to the original contractor that didn't deliver what they were supposed to or whatever happened since this proceeds my time what's the plan to make sure that we still are able to complete these houses that were promised despite losing some of those dollars so we're going to assist as many people as we can we've gone through the assessments to where we set up individuals who who will receive assistance based on priorities um and their four sets of priorities so those who have the most are the ones that we will assist first so we have around one around two and around three we have the ones in round one and round two have already been assisted or in assistance currently and we would be able to know in the next couple of weeks how many we will be able to assist in round three and those on the wait list but i have to be very honest with you that everyone who applied and that maybe some of the complaints you're hearing everyone who applied for assistance we will not be able to assist assist all of them because we received 454 applications yeah no the complaints that we heard at our town hall was actually someone who is approved there are some folks that were approved and then looking at some of the information that was sent to us i believe that it was 71 homes that we had approved is that correct or was there more than that well there were 71 homes when we did the evaluate every evaluation initially okay that we had hoped to assist but everyone received the letters stating that you know either we were going to assist them or that they were on the wait list okay appropriation in the budget this year or maybe a million dollars or a million and a half or maybe a million and a half to go into this program how will that be handled well we or i discussed with representative Howard when he was seeking to look for additional funding for some of the not just applicants in our program from originally but any of the folks who may have suffered losses after the flood in some of the critical neighborhoods or corridors in his district and so we you we worked with him to try to drill down on information as far as who we had been able to assist who's in our program who's not in our program that was the kind of information he was looking for and whatever dollar amount the state could allocate towards assisting those particular corridors that he was that are that he was working on um that would be a separate a program separate and apart from our program but we certainly could yeah we certainly um are looking forward to knowing if that those funds are available and we will work with whomever to try to help get them the information they need but we wouldn't be infusing the funds necessarily into this program because this is a you know federally administered program but we would be handling the funds for him in a much less expensive way than the federal program i'm not i can't say that for sure is my understanding is those funds went to the state resilience office it was the last i heard Mr. DeVall but again i know a lot of that's fluid right now so we're just sort of in on standby if if the funds come to the city we'll figure out how to utilize them to assist more people and i guess i want to make sure to to dr bustle's question and just to try to make certain things maybe more clear but everyone who got letters because that's been the issue that i've been getting there were several letters sent out for eligibility i believe but eligibility is different from receiving an award awards and so the eligibility letter has created an expectation of services or work and so i don't think even the three million dollars would be a drop in the bucket on that vast that number of folks who got eligibility letters if that answers your question but i think that are we on budget to hit the 70 or so that have been most recently approved we're not we're not and i can explain the reason why what three million dollars are you speaking of well we don't consider i think the three million is well could we start with because i'm new to this would we could we start with councilman her question about if we're on schedule and then move to the three million yeah and i think you have to talk about gloria what's on schedule as far as the well i don't even know if the number 71 anymore i mean the new the the previous program manager sent out letters originally that i think maybe is a result of the confusion about eligibility okay so when we rebooted the program with the new program manager but in this now what is so different about the program is that there's also a construction manager separate and apart from the program manager they're a sub recipient to the program manager so things are moving as they should but what they had to do when they came in was take the time to go back clean up files figure out you know who really needed to be a could be assisted based off the program that we had submitted to HUD that has certain requirements of prioritization of people individuals who could be served so as gloria mentioned if you met all four of the priority areas then you were absolutely put into the program and so by the time that whole process occurred we've now come down to a number of those who were actually have been made awards right and so i don't have those numbers in front of me i don't know that she does of how many have actually been awarded and where we are from the construction management side of the house of the number and missy gentry i don't know if you have it available the number of homes that we are we have forecasted to either be rebuilt or rehabbed by the end of this calendar year that i think that's the information you're looking for sure and we did we did do this presentation but i'm not all of council of course was in the community economic development and economic community development committee meeting last time sure um so we we have completed and closed out several programs so what i'm going to talk about today is specifically our chat and our mrp programs because those are the only two activities that are remaining that we are working to complete and assist individuals so um under the chat program there were a total of 64 applications taken um and currently and i'm going to update this currently we've completed uh 26 um because we actually finished one we got a word last friday that one additional home had had been completed um and so based on that we have an additional 33 that we are trying to do by the end of the year okay and that's for chap um and for for mrp there were 97 applications taken um 47 i'm sorry 14 has been completed to date um we are projecting to complete uh 23 by by the end of the year mr mrp which stands for a minor repair program and and what's the average cost on that okay so um you're asking some very good questions and the reason i say it because the dashboard looking back a year ago the city of columbia's cost for the rehabilitation program and other programs were significantly higher than the costs from sister cities getting the same allotment that's why i'm curious to see where we are because that's one of the things obviously we want to stretch our dollars as maximize as we can affect as many people as we can absolutely so uh one year ago when we initially gave uh an update on the on the program we had some estimates at that point of what it will cost for rehabbing and what it will cost for new construction but i can tell you because of the supply demands uh the um the fact that we have a shortage with construction labor because there's so much going on right now with other construction projects around um costs have gone up and so that's one of the reasons why we're not going to be able to serve as many people as we thought so right now on the average for new construction it's about two we're averaging about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars total but that does include quite a few different things that not only does it include include construction um or demolition it also includes remediation for lead-based paint or asbestos and it can also include temporarily relocation so that's why you know when i say two two hundred and fifty thousand on average for a new house for a rebuild you're looking at a higher number um because of the state of the economy currently uh with increase in materials um supply and demand and things of that nature what happens to the property taxes and insurance for those folks when they went from say owning a house that might have been assessed at a hundred thousand dollars and now all of a sudden they're having to buy a property insurance for replacement cost of of two hundred or two two and five and the taxes i mean how do these people i'm just curious how haven't you hate that the taxable value wouldn't be the total glory is talking about she's talking about the total cost to the program for that house it the house itself might be no i understand it but it i doubt if we got a hundred thousand dollar house we would say that house might have been assessed as to the value in that market guess what the insurance is now two hundred thousand i'm just that's another subject for yeah i don't i don't i can't speak a whole lot on insurance that's not my forte i was gonna say i think we do have a tax rule that keeps it from increasing over a certain percentage for the first five years or were we talking about that years ago back i know there might be some tax that you can get some type of abatement dependent on your age like if you're you know 62 years of age or older you can apply for some you know reduction in your taxes your property taxes yeah and most of the people in the program are elderly there was when we were doing another development years ago there was some program but we had one of the city folks that came out and said that there was a cap at how much your taxes would increase um over five years but it's yes something and it's over what the next five years or something over a five-year reassessment you can only go up 15 okay so at least with that five years unless you do we have on unless you rehab it or sell it yeah that goes to point of sale then it's all based on either the permitting ad cost or the point of sale well we need to change that if it's based on a disaster this should be an exception for a disaster state government let me write the state government the letter thanks since i just want to put a bow on this discussion since the combination of some of the past history in addition to construction costs ultimately means we're let we're serving less people that may have been eligible i would just like for us to have that transparent communication for us to know so that when we have constituents come to us in tears about their houses not being built and they're still struggling to make ends meet since 2015 that i want to be able to give them an honest answer and so i appreciate that we're having this discussion i still have some concerns but i hope that we can take care of as many homes as we're promised absolutely and we'll we'll work out something this wilson's where we can provide any updates and reports necessary just let me know i'll be happy to do that and just to put but we did talk about this in our committee meeting and just acknowledging that a lot of folks just don't understand a lot of the letters so we just have to find a way that's a little more personal to explain it to so um some additional grant funding received based on covid the cares act is the hop hopla cv 220 838 out of that 40 people were served for short-term rental assistance and 40 people served for supportive services um and at the bottom that says hop will a rp but that should say home a rp so i do apologize for that let me ask you something real quick before you move on from the hopla is that 220 000 number what was spent in the city i know you're with that we're the manager for a larger region for those funds is that 220 for what was spent in in the city of columbia not necessarily that was still potentially we have been spent regionally that's just the total amount that was spent and then for the home a rp um and you all are aware of that particular process because you were very involved in that the city received uh two million five hundred thousand eight twenty um and the allocation plan for that um has been submitted and we are still waiting to hear back from hud and that will cover um those who are homeless um in supportive services for non-congregate housing would you just remind us what hopla stands for yes ma'am housing opportunities for persons with aids i mean we serve i think close to 300 people annually yes and we never have you know we we do have uh some great sponsors that work to administer those dollars for us and they don't have a problem spending the money they could use more yes sir so um budget priorities for the coming year of course we want to continue to serve the most vulnerable and low to moderate income populations um one of the things that we briefly spoke about earlier um is you know the fact that you know we we do know that there are a lot of people who have homes who are who that are in disrepair so you that the cd staff has looked at ways to improve um the type of programs we provide we're looking at the calls that we get in and the needs of those individuals so we are trying to um put together programs that we'll we've provided a draft but would be happy to talk to you all at appropriate time about how those programs can help people so if they just did a heating and air conditioning unit or new roof you know we can quickly do that you know and streamline that process as opposed to you know somebody who needs a whole new house built or extensive rehab done because those type projects take much longer and so we're all trying to look at ways where we can help people faster based on their specific needs we also want to continue to be that conduit to support affordable and attainable housing we are in the process of putting together a home NOFA at this time that's a Notice of Funding Availability which is specifically for housing projects so that we can either work to serve um uh uh Chodos uh which is um um what does Chodos stands for um it stands for community thank you how do I forget the word community has community housing development organizations um because I know we use a lot of acronyms sometimes I can remember the acronym and not what it stands for um but that that home NOFA would assist um any you know developers who might have projects with gaps um any nonprofits um and again any Chodos who may have any projects that they may have gaps for so that we can continue to you know focus on um the affordable housing and attainable housing needs for the area we're also going to continue to build on capacity internally and externally uh to meet leadership expectations and demands I will say um and we'll look at our um our org chart shortly um but I will say that half of community development staff is pretty much new so um we know that you know with that being the case that we are very much focused on you know training um and making sure that uh everyone is brought up to speed as quickly as possible and trained so that we can continue to deliver those services that are needed um uh so that we can do so compliantly and um do so quickly um we also want to finalize the Chodos system grant timekeeping component um and just to share with you a little bit on the the majority of the staff in community development we do have to track our time spent on grants um and right now that's being done manually um which is quite burdensome but we do it because it's necessary um but we are um working with um IT and um the budget office um to uh look at uh implementing uh Kronos a Kronos component where that can all be done electronically so that should improve with time and efficiencies as it relates to um tracking all of the time that's spent um in providing uh grant uh administration um in addition um we also are looking um to analyze mortgage software systems to improve our service delivery and efficiency and productivity as it relates to our mortgage loans right now we do have a system where we uh can input that information um into a calyx system and we can print up all of our you know disclosures and our applications and things of that nature but what we would like to do is um look at bringing a system on where individuals can actually apply for the mortgage electronically um that will help us serve them much faster and and quite frankly that's just how things are done right now in the industry most people apply for loans and things of that nature online um we also want to maintain a list of qualified consultants sub recipients and program managers to assist as needed with grant administration training and service delivery of funding activities um as you see you know we have a great deal of grants that we're currently administering and that the city will continue to get so I think in order for us to be able to get the money out um you know as needed and administered oftentimes that means we have to get we need help because um you know our capacity internally uh just won't fulfill those needs um so we do want to make sure that we keep a list of folks that we know we can rely on and that that will be available um at the time of need uh we also at the end of the day um work to maintain uh program compliance and timely grant expenditures for all our grants because they all have timelines um that we must meet um to make sure we can keep the city um in good standing with our our funders and so this is our organizational chart we have a total of 16 people in the community development department and uh that's the end of my presentation oh yes thank you miss lilson we do as of last week um we now have two vacancies um I had one person that went back to engineering and very happy for her and then about a month ago we had um someone who um left the department so we currently we currently have two vacancies how many of the uh full-time employees are paid out of how are the grants um so they're 16 15 are so most of the 16 are paid out yes they all they all pretty much touch touch the grants at some level and it varies depending on what they do I'm saying they're full they're full salaries everything's paid for through I'm sorry not the full but a certain percentage I apologize so we did the calculations and based on where we are what we projected for the year about 62 percent of the salaries um for the staff is paid with grant funds yes sir any other questions of rounding it out miss christa hampton planning and development services director good afternoon and we can go right into zoning public hearing if we like afterwards planning and development services as you know building inspections plan review planning zoning land development as well excuse me major accomplishments of 21 22 um you've heard it a lot the new unified development ordinance adopted and we are in the process of implementation we've been bringing some of those changes that we've seen necessary to you you'll see more coming implementation of online building inspection requests so the conversation before about the e-review which I will discuss um so we have um been conducting online building permit um processes since the pandemic that was how we were able to get through the pandemic and and we got a little bit of a kick in the pants with it and um it was it was a it was a great thing for everybody including our customers so we were able to get to that pretty quickly but now what we're doing is instead of our inspectors having to come in and listen to voice mails and return calls for inspections um our building official Todd Byers is trying to get us more efficient get that online permitting requests instead get our contractors um acclimated to that a lot more effective and efficient just to when somebody makes an online request for an inspection is there a confirmation receipt sent back to the requester I don't have the specific technical details on that I believe it is but I can find out for you um so we had a significant increase in residential development so we had the plat and plane review permitting and inspection of that significant increase in residential development our Columbia Compass our 10-year comprehensive plan that you all remember um was adopted and we had our first annual report um a lot of good progress on that and we had some public space programming as well um Parklets and Parking Day so I'm going quickly because I know we don't have a lot of time but please stop me if you have any questions is the increase in the building permits does that include renovations or is that all new houses so it's that's that's just new houses but we also have a significant increase in renovations as well but um the new houses um it's remarkable um fortunately we do have some of those that would it's based on the construction costs we don't know what they sell for but some of those would be in the more workforce housing as well but between Wood Creek Farms Clemson Road Garner's Ferry we have a lot of new residential single family being built and being inspected so 2022-23 you've heard this from IT you've probably heard it from so this is further implementation of the online development review and permitting capabilities in conjunction with IT and engineering um so what this does while we allow the plans that come in right now the e-review will allow that collaborative um review with our architects and engineers and it will be far more efficient because instead of getting one set of plans to the sewer folks that they review and another set of plans to a building plan review we're all looking at the same thing so if one person pushes here we can all make sure that we're working off the same set of plans and there aren't any conflicts um improved data reporting um we've got a new report coming out that will begin with the fiscal year that will be a dashboard on our website it's a lot of the good information that you saw in the CUPUS report with a lot of those metrics out there staff training and development emphasis on service efficiencies um development clinics and this would be one of the ways to get the information out as well to our design professionals about the information of online educate customers allow that conversation we had these a number of years ago um just allow general question and answer time as well and get those relationships going um as you know the city actually we are the manager of the bike share program it's time for it to expand according to the bike share study and so we'll be working with the cog to actually conduct that bike share study potentially looking at our neighboring jurisdictions and seeing how we can expand there well it's it's a it's a great yes it's just starting so we'll have the the cog will um procure a consultant to to study where it should go how it should go it's a it's a terrific program it's a great system um we just hope to get more people on it all right we've got um 43 positions here we have uh seven vacancies currently um within those positions as well first questions about personnel yes sir you heard what i'm gonna say you've heard me say before and i see you having an add-on for another planner i mean i mean we got way more planners than we have reviewers and inspectors that i i'm not i'm not so sure we need to add any more planners i mean we can we cross train folks or whatever else i mean when i look at this you got 33 percent of so a lot of what you see as planner is just a title so i would say all but maybe two of what you see as planners are actually involved in some way in development review for instance the associate planner in zoning actually processes the board of zoning appeals works and issues permits the associate plan for the land development that's currently vacant that helps get our subdivisions reviewed get our subdivision flats out the door can't some of those be combined i mean if we can if one you know if we look at our number of inspectors we're able to inspect what's out there and review what's out of that number of folks we shouldn't have to have that in words it can't take this many people to review when it only takes this little member to inspect so in four of those planners are for our historic districts which encompass you know thousands of parcels and is a i would say take a bit more time to review than actually going out and do the inspection absolutely and we we do have one vacancy in our residential inspector and we need that position sure but i i just don't know if i can support in the budget the additional i want additional planner in that in that group i just i have some real concerns and i would say you know at some point time i don't know which committee would address it it may be the economic whether it's the economic development committee or not as i do think we need to take a look at removing residential from qualifying for the baili bill and if we do just residential and um because they don't we have the lowest residential property taxes in america as is so you know west columbia and other places don't qualify and and the question i would have is if we do if we were to do that i mean that would certainly reduce the number of of of staff it takes to process those things that it is time consuming just like any of the history right i just again i just want to be candidly out front i just i don't know if i can support uh adding another planner and that that position is that transportation curb management which would really be kind of a combination with parking and it could go in either way because right now the curb is a valuable asset that we don't necessarily identify as a valuable asset it shouldn't be a place just for parking any longer you've got to look at ev charging um ride share loading zones valet parking and we are not we are not currently you know using that asset to the best degree so that's what that position would be want to look at changing out of one of those other planning positions to add that maybe i can look at it i just don't see us i'm not so sure that we're not over planning things to the point that it's inhibiting our commercial development in certain areas understood i'd actually almost somewhat one of the issues that i've um talked about with code enforcement folks is evidently do they do both code enforcement and zoning enforcement they do some uh limited so they'll do like front yard parking to some degree for zoning um and some of which they did when they worked with us as well so when they went to cpd they they took that on as well um some of those things that are a little bit easier but we do have two zoning inspectors as well okay so that is a more is that more or less a capacity issue for you all that they help with some of that enforcement yes and they're out there they they have a great more number of inspectors that are riding around these areas and so it just makes more sense from an operational standpoint that generally speaking if you have overgrown grass you might also have someone parking in the front yard thatch and it's easier for that one person to go ahead and do both of those violations than to call and have another ride out looking at the planners and and it's something that you don't really realize to you sit and look at the order chart and understand how do we reduce that in cross train because it is i mean we just spent a great deal of time coming up with a new comprehensive you have established historic districts and historic i mean i'm having a hard time when i look at 33 of one department is focused on an area that is just to one piece of plan so that's not accurate um the planners are not just doing planning that again that that's a title and i've got a planner who an associate planner who works with the board of zoning appeals for development i've got a planner who is reviewing subdivision plots for development an associate planner we've got the four preservation planners who are reviewing historic preservation development so it's not 33 percent well according to your chart it is well but that's the title i could that's those are the titles i'm given to put on the org chart so we could we could rename them and it would be more accurate as to what they're doing we have 13 historic districts i've got some numbers for you in the parcels but not all of them some of them are community character they're not the big difference between community character and in historic it is no so for historic no we've got over 13 we've got nearly 5 000 parcels in historic districts i think it's maybe around 40 so and that that was at the request of those neighborhoods and and doing that review is not just a a simple review so it does take time to accurately review the plans to work with our constituents because some of them need a lot more hand-holding than others and we want to provide that customer service we miss hampton again i'll pick up on the mayor says i mean we got one tower crane in downtown columbia i mean i mean we we just don't i just don't see the activity here i mean are we planning ourselves out of business or what are we doing i mean you tell me we got one person that spends the whole year on subdivisions but how many inspectors do we have you know our plans reviewers that can look at the house in this i'm telling you it's out of whack and when you look at what we the activity that we're getting here it just it doesn't it just doesn't seem to be working somehow and and again i'm one of the and we talked about cross train the other day where we are going to cross train our inspectors correct commercial yes and our residential currently they do the whole they are you are but they do again i i i think i mean if there's if there was a place for reduction i think in the number of planners that we have is a place that we can certainly look at i mean it just that causes me has caused me for a long time a lot of concern because we just you know when i go to other cities i just do not see the development here that i've seen in other places and and i mean y'all know my position on on certain things that we comment on and things like that and and it may be the best way we can address it is is over time reduce that that that number of folks as i'm just telling you if they don't have enough to do we over plan things and run the cost up on things which uh which drives investment that could land here and jobs that could land here to other places i would say that my concern is as we're getting more interest from folks investing here all is this plan and some of it is simply are some of these folks better off being cross trained and utilized in another section to to manage the growth we have a growth spurt right now what happened i mean let's just be honest we start getting a lot of commercial we start seeing these parking lots in downtown disappear we start getting towers we start seeing north main grow with three-story buildings and commercial and all of this can you handle the volume that would come with that set up this way are we built for success to do that and it's hard when you look we got one commercial plan exam right yes and i have asked our building official at least now and he's probably listening a dozen times do we need another one no we do not there is adequate capacity in that position then our which has happened and during covid so our senior commercial inspectors do plan review they can all do plan review our building official does plan review he used to be the plan reviewer you know we'll just pick back up on that's where where the activity is inverted if we have one commercial plans and reviewer that can can review everything that we do why does it take this many planners i mean it doesn't it just it doesn't jeal it just does i mean are we holding up anything is the department organized so that they're not getting the work out the answer to that is yes sir i believe in the work i would disagree i think we're getting our plans out our commercial plans examiner gets plans out in under 15 days generally maybe around 10 our inspectors get out as well how long did it take to get the building permit for the standard on assembly street the actual review how long did it take to get the building permit i can't tell you exactly without looking at the years correct that's not no sir because they resubmitted three times why did they resubmit because of parking and because of comments by planners and this that and the other they went from a multifamily development to a student housing development totally different product how long did it take how long has it taken mr a developer for a hotel down on hugie street he's not submitted his building plans for review yet want me to tell you which hotel i was talking about you said hugie street the residence in yes sir and he's not severely he's got through the deep through all the planning process they took it over it took him over a year here's the deal it either is taken too long or there's a perception that it's taking too long neither of which is good for us understood and and we agree and what oftentimes happens is that it's in the hands of someone else and we're trying to figure out how that we can document that for you all because we can't currently to be able to show that there's a lot of times it's not in our hands my last building permit i personally pulled took six weeks to you know i mean or almost $25,000 worth of improvements non-structural went way no me you know a 27 people in your department touched that permit by either in hand or by email and so that wasn't just my department we also evolve greece trap engineering all sorts of public works people who would have been on that not the 27 in my department and my point is we have to look all the way around at how we can speed this process up and make it more predictable we have the same goal in that sir i absolutely agree and i think christ has been very involved and i appreciate her for that just doing a great job working with the council and myself miss gentry all the acms mr. shealy's been involved of course jeff and those three in particular but i do think that this i think as we're referring to it as pro city attitude acknowledgement of some business pro business items that we went through in depth yet again this morning in the committee because i think we're now getting really close to rolling some things out that um councilman taylor and all the committee members have worked really hard with us on i would be interested with all of this and all of our related departments to see with the emphasis being placed on those items and hopefully getting some of those items that have to go through um a process of council moving them forward because their ordinance changes or or whatever it might be and the items that are just more administrative continuing that focus and notwithstanding whatever discussions about staffing but that right there to me is the crux of the of the philosophy about being pro city pro business and moving things forward and changing that perception if it's more perception than reality you know i'm not saying there's not some reality there but i do think we've got to get those things in place and do it as with some urgency along with me management all the way down pushing that pro business attitude um and allow that to infuse its way through the fabric of what we're doing in every department that touches the process and it isn't just chris's department um but we've got to ensure i have to ensure on my level with the staff that we're doing that whether or not it's about how many planners she has or not i mean we can continue to have that discussion but i think the overall philosophy is a different one than what um previous councils have taken with us down to doing away with certain things quite frankly that would then also probably impact how she operates because if we don't have overlays or we don't have a lot of things that are being discussed yeah i mean that's definitely gonna change some things so i mean we're getting some different messages being sent that i think we need to get some clear direction on what we're doing and do it if that's what y'all are asking us to do for sure and then also deal with the staffing if if that's impacted by those changes i appreciate that uh very much and but i would say most of the changes that we're talking about have come about not because we were brilliant and sat there and said you know if we just did this it would make things better it's because of issues that we've experienced with various various other projects that we ran i mean and i appreciate this council taking the impetus to you know and that's what we're saying we we you know we got to eliminate i think some bureaucracy in our planning side not add add more to it and and and again i appreciate everybody and you know my position has been and i think you were quoting me we you know we don't need to be pro neighborhood or pro development we need to be pro columbia and and and and we just i just think that uh i think you're correct and i appreciate you saying it we got to get our attitude and change from telling people what they can't do to telling people what they can do and and i and i do have some concerns i would be remiss if i wasn't honest with this council having experienced it personally and being an economic development committee if i sat here and said gee whiz this is great all's right with the world there no i you know i appreciate the honesty i think that's what we're looking for i you know i'm also you know i just i like to to act on things and if it is just about staff so be it i think it's a combination of things i do and i and i agree that we have to address each part of the combination and let me for clarification purposes you know we are in some discussions that look at things on overlays and things that may make it simpler or may not nobody is advocating that just yet it's just it's going through the committee process like it should and it's being handled the proper i think they're very much the proper way absolutely this discussion though about planning holding up things are columbia not being pro business has been going on for a number of years and the previous council has taken it to heart and we hired an expediter that has i think done real good work so i i think you need to give us give the city the city staff some credit that we are trying to move into direction that you want to move in Howard i'm going to let you finish i apologize and i i think that we've done a good job and i think christa and her department has done a good job of expediting plans of using the x what's the name of that fellow Greg williams the business liaison business liaison he is hired to do things like that and aren't we talking about moving him into a different position that even more business friendly i think we're moving in the right direction i appreciate that i would tell you it has been shared with me by by by senior city folks that the previous council had had basically led a direction that when given the opportunity to lessen to protecting neighborhood use the codes to protect the neighborhood i mean pretty much the knowledge that it was we were not friendly to to development stuff i will i won't take the blame for protecting neighborhoods because this is the city of neighborhoods and we are going to protect the neighborhood i didn't say anything to you finished and i apologize why didn't interrupt but let me just say this that's not what they were talking about was destroying neighborhood that was we have not been development friendly and and frankly we're suffering for it as a city i mean nothing offense our economic development manager mentioned it the other day it has it has not it's it's one of those simple things that has bothered me now for a week when he tells me that greenville and charleson have nine thousand people living in the city center and we only have three thousand here i mean that's how you get a vibrant downtown the thing i've heard one of you and again so what we got to do is start asking ourselves why is it that we don't have that many people living in our city center and it's a blended group it's not just students where's the workforce housing that we have and things like that and howard you can't deliver those products for folks today unless you create some density stuff you just can't do it you know and and so i mean that's my concern is how do we make our vibrant downtown that includes everyone and all for a vibrant downtown that includes everyone but i'm also making sure that our neighborhoods that are in the edge of these commercial areas are not ruined by development well i would hope sir i would hope that someone who bought a house next to main street would not be so pessimistic to not believe something big would ever be built on main street we are getting close to the bewitching hour we just we were just gonna wrap up trans tax um mr mayor if you have just a few minutes we'll go really quickly because we do need to get a handle on that committee allocation i want to say thank you christa and we're gonna move on into that thank you very much miss wilson and i won't belabor the time conversation and review the hospitality tax presentation from last week other than where we sort of left that was whether or not city council was willing to make or is ready to make a decision in terms of how much you may want to make available for the h tax committee that doesn't mean making recommendation for the entire h tax fund but if we have an idea of of the amount that the committee would want to move forward with i'd recommend three million explain where you got that from last year was roughly what two point five something somewhere in there we we have extra funding at this point we've had the increase i think the committee is where the majority of it should be driven because that gets dispersed to all the different agencies and you know normally we give them somewhere between two point five and two point eight so i think three million would be a reasonable okay it's miss wilson yes sir if we do the three million does that leave any room for us to look at working out the zoos millage over the course of a year remember you and i said not to dick it out in a year but if it's a one two or three does it leave us enough room to address that if it leaves us enough room to begin to address replacing that billage with each tax i second your motion we can't vote though right that's right yeah we're not but we're just giving our support our moral support to three million for the committee would be very generous and that would leave you three point five million available for other allocations that sounds good and i think that that's a good amount i think we're seeing a big push for people to get more involved and i think you're going to see these events do really well and we're going to see people are really pushing to get out so that's perfect great and then the final just to bring to your attention as we like to finish off our budget conversations today is your budget workshop number three we will be sending the publication to the newspaper this week for notice on may the third we'll advertise the 100 164 million dollar proposed budget based on the revenue projections we've provided today in the balance budget and then of course we look forward to our budget workshop with you next Tuesday when you advertise yes sir is this what the ad will read yes sir that's what is state law state law records there is a little bit of the bottom part of it cut off that i don't know here's my only question is i mean can you can you put into that that there's no no tax increase this year i mean so the millage it does reference the millage was 93.8 in the current year and next year the millage is 93.8 again i know i wouldn't mind telling them instead of letting it figure it out we can certainly talk about or find out if there's another way to thank you very much for your time thank you