 We call the owner of the quarterfinance at 6.11 p.m. We have pretty significant agenda. We are hoping to get there tonight, although Chuck bit is on the consent agenda. So I would, you're basically watching home, we have some sort of routine quarterfinance business, and then we have a update on the F-224 budget with a presentation that is going to be led by Catherine and I, as you know, as we're getting close to the time of handing this over to you and hopefully moving towards passage of the budget for the year. But before we do that, we do have eight delivery items and a consent agenda. I welcome options to adopt the data. I would make that motion. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Second. Anyway, President Paul, thank you. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor adopting the motion, please say aye. Are there any opposed? The motion varies unanimously. We now have scheduled a public forum. Is there anyone in the room that would like to speak to the Board of Finance? I am not seeing any takers there. I do see that former City Councilor McMaster has joined us online. It has her hand up. So go ahead, Sharon. You should be able to address the Board of Finance. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Hold on. I have you on the phone because I couldn't get in. I wanted to speak about the budget process and then one comment specifically about the recommended action or proposed action. When you first laid out the agenda, there was going to be a work session for City Council and that was alternative, I realized that. But since I feel that adopting the budget is one of the most important things that elected officials do, I'm concerned because I zoom in on a regular basis and I don't think every Councilor has been able to do that. And so I just wanted to add that statement that I don't see that now possible and I think it's a missed opportunity for people representing the residents of Burlington to have some input or make comments about it. The second piece has to do with an authority that apparently you actually have in the charter to raise the dedicated tax for parks. And I'm not challenging that, but I am regretting the fact that a tax like this isn't, the voters don't really have a chance to weigh in on it. Now, there's an increase in water and wastewater. There's going to be an increase in Burlington Electric and now there will be this additional tax. And as I stated before, there is no, with the schools, there is a sliding scale. So to accommodate people that are in low or fixed incomes, but with the municipal taxes, there isn't that option or that relief. And so I'm really concerned about this. I understand that maybe parks needs more dedicated money, but I think that the voters should evaluate that. And I'm just weighing in on that. I urge you not to exercise that authority without getting input from the voters. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. I do not see any more members of the public for hands raised. So we are going to close the public forum and we move to items three, which is the consent agenda and board is ready. I've got a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions in the game. So thank you, Councilor Barlow. Second by Councilor McGee. Discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we will go to the vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. That brings us now to 1.01, which is the authorization to execute a contract with the Den Salad Waste District for 20 years, 2024 through 2028. We swore by the solids disposable contract. And the waters came here to citizens. Megan Moyer, division director and wastewater facility manager, Matt Dow. I alluded to this in our budget presentation that our costs for biosolids management are going up. Biosolids is the solid portion of the wastewater that gets separated out as part of our wastewater treatment process. And that has to be managed in some way, whether through the school or through Rio's REES programs. There was an option in the last contract to seek an extension or an amendment with the existing service provider. And so CSWD in Burlington looked at that option, looked at the pricing that Gisela could offer. And then when they compared it against two other vendors, basically the other vendors said lock that price in as soon as you can. And when we look at the rest of the region and we're seeing some of the amazing eye-popping cost increases, even though this is a significant cost increase, it's still much less than what we're seeing in main and other places. And so we are locking it in. It is an increase. It is part of the some of the expense drivers in our FY24 budget, but it is in the FY24 budget as proposed. I would more like to proceed. Are we ready for a motion? Questions? What's the problem? Thanks for the explanation. I'm in for your advocacy. I'll be having to make a motion. Thank you. Is there a second? Second by Councillor McGee. Discussion? Seeing no hands, we will go about all those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Bye-bye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. 4.02 is the well maybe let's see what the board wants to do. I would the board like to see on this obviously more recommendation questions or any questions? I think it would be helpful for the public just considering trade change. Great. Go ahead. Emily there. Great. Good evening. Darren Sprenger, I believe, Steppen's Wheelock here from Burlington Electric. I think we can pull up just to resummarize the slides that we presented during the budget presentation. We're seeking your approval to advance to the PUC a 5.5% rate increase for FY24. And we've done a number of things to try to hold our controllable costs down relative to some of the challenges that we're seeing in the power markets and with transmission, as well as just challenges that everyone's seeing in terms of labor cost increases, inflation, etc. This is significantly less than what we believe would be justified under PUC procedure, which would likely be a significant increase, something along the order of 14%. So we're continuing to try to run a leaner than what might be justified while trying to maintain the credit rating metrics that Moody's expects of us for an A rating, which is 90 days cash on hand in particular. This budget with this rate case gets us just to that 90 days, as well as the adjusted debt service coverage ratio, which we have improved over the last several years. We expect that will continue to improve or at least maintain stability through this rate case in this budget. And certainly our goal will be to adjust rates more regularly, but to do so at levels that are ideally at the low to mid single digits, not in the high single digits or double digits as we're seeing in other utility service territories. And then just to further summarize from the presentation, our residential rates will remain some of the lowest in Vermont and New England. And our overall rates will also remain very competitive, the lower the averages in New England. And then lastly, we will still have the best electric vehicle rate in the state of Vermont, and we will still have our pilot program for the energy assistance, which provides a 12.5% discount to income qualified customers will be looking to make that permanent during the course of fiscal year 24. Hopefully it's helpful. Obviously glad to answer questions. Great. Thank you, Zach. Derek. How are the board legs proceeding? That's me. I show a question. I don't know much. We can continue to look at rate increases in the one. Hopefully that can be a super regular thing, but I'm curious if you could provide any updates on the pilot or providing assistance for folks. What the uptake of that has been your interest capacity program? Absolutely. I'm always got the slide right here. We are I think we're closing in on about 150 customers signed up. We think that we can provide significantly more capacity there to sign up more customers. We've had some discussions recently with CBOEO about their help and getting the word out. Ita Mano, our new energy equity analyst has spent time different places in the community bringing not only information about the program, but actually the computers that we can send people up, you know, right as we're speaking with them. And we're working to see what else we can do potentially with our colleagues at water and elsewhere to have it. So if you sign up for one program, maybe you can get it both if the criteria are identical. So our goal, the pilot was initially an 18 month pilot as you'll recall the city supported that initial period with ARPA funds. Our goal is to build this into rates more permanently and to have PUC approval for a more permanent program which would come up during FY24. And ultimately we think we can reach the 800 to 1500 residential customer involvement. We're proactively looking to expand on the kind of slow and steady uptake that we're seeing now. So it'll be an important component. We do see kind of a continued adjustment to rates hopefully in that lower single digit level, but it may sometimes be in the mid single digits and having this as a percentage discount make sure that the benefit of the discount remains significant even if rates do move up. So thank you for that. We're very encouraging to hear that you're talking about in other city departments that rates are going up kind of across the board to make sure that we're taking care of folks and income sensitizing and everything that we can and I think it's important. So I appreciate that. Thank you. I'll be happy to make the motion. Thank you Guts and Wiki. Do we have a second? Thank you Councilor Barlow. Any further discussion of the motion or react? Yes, Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Guts or Jane. Yeah, thank you. Darren, thank you for the presentation. And I was just asking about over the past three years, what's the percentage total of the rates that have been increased? Yes. So we had a seven and a half percent back coming out of the pandemic was our first increase and then we had a 3.95 percent last year and then we're proposing a five and a half percent this year. So we actually have a slide we can pull it up that shows the trajectory of rates and compares it to inflation over that period which amazingly and challenging but even with those increases we're actually still below the trajectory for inflation over that multi-year period. We'll have that right here on the screen. So you can see the green line there is the VED rate change over that period of time that we just talked about and the red line is inflation as we've all experienced it. So even though it's a significant amount, certainly relative to a period where we had no rate changes, it's still helpful to compare with the inflation rate. Yes. No, I completely understand and my point being before the past three years almost no rate increases. That's correct. And maybe decades no rate increases but at this level I think it is increasing in a way that's a little bit becoming sustainable. So for example let's think about not increase again bring all the increases right now. So I'm talking just specifically about the feature a little bit. Let's put this in mind into perspective as we move forward as well. But thank you. I appreciate that. We will absolutely always do everything we can to avoid coming to you with a rate change. It's the least option that we look at after everything else is exhausted. We do have some ideas for helping to mitigate future needs including increasing our credit line and doing some other things relative to financing. So we'll be bringing you those during the course of the next fiscal year as well. All right. I think if there's no further questions we're ready to vote. All those in favor most simply say aye. Aye. All right. Post. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you Darren. I see we got another BDA item next up an organizational chart update. We do. And I see Tim Clancy from HR is on with us. We're also joined by Mike Cannery, Paul Alexander and Vanir Kasti. This item in particular Emily and Vanir's areas are both impacted by and if it's helpful I'd be happy to summarize briefly the position updates that we're looking to make. We could share. Yeah. We want to share screen. We could do that. Just maybe I'll prep us just by saying and I know that the board knows this. This has been one of the most challenging times I've experienced in terms of being able to recruit and retain qualified individuals for positions. We're experiencing that. We've had significant vacancies continuing throughout the last year plus. We've been carrying probably between 10 and 13 vacancies which is much higher than typical for us. So the set of changes here is partly to address some of the needs that we have and partly to address situations where we've been unable to recruit qualified incumbent to bring into the position. So we start at the top with the engineering. We've had a position that we've tried I believe three times to hire for unsuccessfully which is a bit of a combined position where the previous person in the position had a unique skill set. It's really a two position position. It's a SCADA engineer and it's also a director for the grid services which is essentially the dispatch. And after unsuccessfully trying three times we are going to try to split this position and bring it to people as opposed to one person. So that's what the first updates one through three there are related to. We also have had some change in generation. Dave McDonnell who was our director of generation for a number of years retired previously and the set of changes here is partly to essentially codify the current structure that we've created after Dave had left. We did not hire for his position. So part of the changes here number seven in particular is to convert his position to a senior generation engineer position. We don't necessarily anticipate hiring for that in the immediate future but we anticipate having that need. We also are planning to have two directors. So two of these updates are related to having a director for plant maintenance and a director for operations. Those are position conversions. So we have two well qualified individuals in current supervisory positions who we're looking to establish as direct reports to Manir. Manir would be essentially in charge of the generation area as is the case at the moment. So some of these are reporting changes and then we are looking to add a shift supervisor position. We are anticipating retirements throughout the organization. One of the proudest things for me is that BED is an organization where when we have employee appreciation we celebrate 25, 30, 35, 40 and sometimes 45 year anniversaries as we did just this past week. On the other hand that means that we will have some retirements coming and we're trying to get ahead of that in certain respects with a few of these changes to bring in folks now who can start learning from some of our experienced BEDers in the generation area. Again the idea is not necessarily to sustain that capacity for the long run but to have it in the near term. And then lastly in the finance and IT area we had a couple of updates. One of which is to create another accounting administrator position. This is one of those things where this is a product of success in a way. When I started at BED we weren't processing very many rebates for electrification. I don't think we even had the programs yet. Now we're processing dozens sometimes you know hundreds in a month and we have a number of other challenges for redundancy in the finance area where we have folks who are working a significant number of hours. We have overtime very hard for somebody to take any vacation time. This position will provide us with an important redundancy in that area. Also a success story. We have implemented the first of three major system changes that we have under our IT forward project. That being the meter data management system that's been operated. We went live and knock at wood. We are doing well. Our next major IT project is the CIS customer information service or customer information system. And we're looking to have a business analyst to work on that. And these are in some cases we're kind of bringing in house services that we were consulting for previously. And we believe we have a better situation if we can have somebody in house for that position. So that's what 12, 13 and 14 are related to. And hopefully that was a useful summary. I know it was a somewhat late memo in packet, but those are the changes that we're seeking. Thank you, Gary. Questions? We're on a motion. Councilor Brown. I just had a question about your ability to attract and hire HIPAAB people for these positions. Are you finding that it's just that they're qualified candidates? Or is it like where's the salary scales that you know? I think our salaries are competitive. In some cases we've reached kind of a final point with a candidate for a position and they prefer a position with more remote work. That's happened once or twice. In some cases we used to get five or 10 qualified applicants and now we might get one or two. So the pool of potential qualified applicants has been more limited. And then in some cases we're unable to attract someone for a position. We've lost in engineering a couple of really long-tenured and well-called by engineers to outside consulting firms, where they have potentially higher salary and less in-person work requirements. So there's a mix of things and it's the labor market more broadly. So really I think we're operating under the assumption that we're going to have some vacancies. It's built into our budget now. It's built into our operational model, but there are some positions where having vacancies for too long a period are going to cause challenges. So I think we're adding potentially some DEEs, but I don't think we're actually adding to our overall count. In fact, I expect it's going to stay down for a period of time, but hopefully with some of these changes we'll attract new applicants for positions. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Darren. Any further questions? We're ready for a motion. Councilor Jay. Yep, if the motion is not made, I would like to the motion as indicated on board. Thank you, Councilor Blaine. Do we have a second for the motion? Councilor Barla, thank you. Further discussion? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay, we're now at 4.04, which is a request to execute a contract with Michael and Nottenberg Associates for a phase two conceptual design and scoping and grant training that we have Smith have done to work on this to pick the subject. Great. Hi, everybody. I've been in front of City Council a few times over the past month or two talking about Moran frame, so hopefully everyone is up to date on where things are at. I think the takeaway from the last couple of meetings was there's remaining money available from phase one A and then new money allocated for capital from the ARPA infrastructure dollars. And so this design contract would do the planning for the next phase of design focus at the Moran frame, but really about integrating the Moran frame and the whole northern waterfront into a cohesive place. So I'm happy to answer any questions. People need it. Great. Thank you, Smith. Thanks for your work in this project. Mr. Mayor. Councilor Jane. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to follow also the mayor a little bit, Samantha, and say that it's been maybe just a couple of years you joined the city, and I just wanted to say that I recognize the hard work you put into this. Because if it's not board of finance, you're in City Council and also all the committees, just wanted to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, good work. It's only been 18 months. Yeah, that's better. I'll just say I think this design firm is very exciting design firms at the team here. They have already a little bit of conceptual work and already they've been involved in some of the most significant public parks projects in the country in recent years. Got along. So like my perspective, we made real progress with Moran where it is now, but I think to really realize the hopes and ambitions of this becoming an important gathering spot on the waterfront for future generations, it's going to need an inspired side to really accomplish that. This will give us, and I think with this contract, I'm quite optimistic about our ability to leverage other funds for second place from philanthropic donors and potentially from other governments as well. So this is what we really need to do, right? We have this about a million dollars carved out for a second phase right now that won't get us too far. We need to inspire others to be part of a second base and this this contract we want to get back. That's what we get. I'm happy to make the motion that's right in the book question. Thank you. Second, saying bye for the Paul or get further in the schedule. Seeing none, we'll go to the vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right. Aye. Thank you. Opposed? Motion carries it down. Thank you. Next, do you have a personal record? I don't secure your waterfront overnight security contract. Welcome, Aaron. Hello. Everybody give us a quick review of this. Sure. We're looking to convert what was a seasonal position at both the marina and the campground overnight waterfront security. You can imagine in the job market that it has been a tough position, a seasonal basis to recruit. So we are seeking the ability to contract with pre amount of concert services to provide overnight waterfront security. We're going to take the dollars that had been budgeted for seasonal staff to pay this contract and we're not seeking any additional dollars. Sickly. So right, thank you. And we need any questions for Aaron or are you ready for motion? That's what we need quickly. Well, can you describe with the hours that the security will be on site? Yeah. 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. Okay. Thanks. Thank you for that. Thank you for the overview. I'm happy to make the motion as recommended. Thanks. Thank you. Is there a second? Thank you. Right. Councilor Barlow. Discussion? Who will vote? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much, Aaron. Good luck with the voting season which says We're about to get started. Yeah. Great. Fourth, over six. This is a Great Street to Main Street residential engineering outreach console authorization to award and sign contract number seven. And we have Bill and Laura here. It's an exciting sign that we're getting close to construction. So. So you're interested in us but kick it off. Yes, we are. We're also joined by Maddie Sender who is also helping us on this project. So yeah, as the mayor indicated we are approaching the point in time where we're about to let out Main Street for contractor bid. Tonight we're asking for authorization to bring on inspection services, more of a full-time construction outreach role that's underneath that. It's important to bring this group on before we actually put out the contract a bit because they are going to help us with some of the quality control assurance of reviewing the plans and answering and addressing any constructability questions that a contractor has. So similar to how it was done with the Champlain Parkway, how it was done with the Shelbourne Street Roundabout, this project of the same size and scale feels important to bring this group on at this point in time. As described in the communication, we are looking to award this to VIV Technical Services. They really stood out in the scoring as it relates to their experience. They were the inspectors on St. Paul Street and the inspectors on numerous waterfront projects. Their outreach understanding of what Burlington is looking for as a level and quality assurance really stood out relative to the other proposers. Their number of hours that they were looking for as projects was very reasonable and responsive, whereas we felt some of the other firms that responded either had too little or too little. So that is one of the emotions and actions that we're looking for tonight. The other is an amendment with our existing design consultant. As we do look towards construction, one of the things we would have known when we started and asked them to propose on the project is the length of time that Main Street could take to construct. And so we're looking to add scope so that they can cover the amount of submittals, questions, be responsive to design changes, attend to construction meetings. So that brings forward an amendment to their contract. As a quick update on that, we are looking to bring the construction contract or selection of the contractor to the City Council, likely early meeting in September with attempt to start construction for November 1st, it's dissipated at this point, likely a three-year construction, looking to working just daytime, it's not weekends, and maybe finishing sooner. So that is that. That's my item first. Awesome. And then people are, here I work on this a bit of big left front. It's exciting to solve the question. Questions from the board? I'm happy to see it moving forward and will not doubt the recommendation, but just say that I will move the recommendation. Thank you President Powell. We have a second by Councilor McGee. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll come to the vote. All those appear on the motion, please say aye. All right. Any opposed? Motion carries. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, 4.07, rubber removal for runway infantry. Actually, he brought an international airport. Welcome, guys. Rubber removal. Now it's just something that I don't cover for this. So I'm here with Dave Carmen, Deputy Director of Aviation Operations, and this is a pretty straightforward contract. This one happens to be for multiple years. So this will hit this fiscal year as budgeted, next fiscal year as we proposed. It'll actually hit the following fiscal year and next year summer months. All budgeted and with some contingencies in there just for unexpected events. And I'll let Dave describe the technical. Sure. One of these is that every year, because we have some new takeoff landings, when they land, they may deposit a certain amount of rubber on this unit that has to be removed. Otherwise, it obscures the center line of the markings on the runway, as well as decreases the breaking action of the aircraft. So we have to mitigate that, and this rubber removal takes care of that. We have to do it roughly two times a year. So we put it in here as necessary. So we do have the option of not doing it in one or two, but we wanted to make sure that it was in the contract. Let them learn. All right, it doesn't make sense. Questions for the airport team or already for Washington? I'm happy to make the motion as recommended by the board. So thank you, Councilor Barlow. Second. Second by Councilor Yang. Any further discussion? Councilor, can you go ahead? Just quickly to both the presentation. I wonder, between this item and the next one, this is something that the FAA helps cover, because it's... They do not. Any routine maintenance at the FAA, when I fund any big capital projects, then yes, those are eligible. I mean, they don't fund directly, but I mean, we do get revenues, FAA approved revenues and sub-centers. PFC charges don't go towards those. No, those are not eligible towards this either. It's really, we got to sell the garage spaces. That's right. That's right. Get rid of them. That's right. Yeah, any of the other revenue sources, concessions, garage, et cetera, would go towards this. Happy to make the motion as recommended function. Great. Thank you, Councilor Yee. Do we have a second? Do we already have a second? Gone to your question. Sorry about that. My call. Any other questions? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Vote. Sorry. I think that's a jing. That's an aye. I think that's a jing. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And that pre-exists for our last deliberative item, right? Yes. Which is the authorization to execute a contract for the supply and installation of airfield. Haven marking. The airport. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. Again, very similar to the last one. Very straightforward contract with highlight. I don't know. Highlight airfield services. This is again, budgeted for this fiscal year. We do this every single year. The majority of our paint work is internal with our own team and our own equipment. But some of the very technical, very detailed pieces. When we're talking details, we're talking, we have managers tapes out there looking at every single line out there. And that's what this contract would consist of for that maximum amount of $116,000 for this fiscal year only, expected to be done prior to June 30th. Yeah. We do have our FAA inspection middle of July that has, this has to be done by that inspection. I think we have it in there as July 14th. That's be done. Great. Any discussion? Any questions? Thank you so much. I just had one question. It just, the rubble removal, I understand that's sort of an idiom. Is this also a game? Yes. That's continuous. Because our window of painting is sort of short, window straight into the lamp a few months. And we have the FAA inspection. We have to get ready for that. And it's also a compliance issue as well. It's a little different than street painting. There's very, there's class speeds in it. There's a very specific specifications. So once a year there, a couple of times a year for the rubble removal, like Dave said, if we need it. Councillor Jay, any other question? Yes. Very quick one. And I noticed in both memos, both of these contracts are currently actually happening right now, right? You have a contract with them. Not a signed contract yet? Yes. Yeah. So basically, I'm like, we are almost at the end of this fiscal year. And it's now that we voting on this contract. It's like kind of what I'm asking and why is that, right? Yep. The timing is essential. So we can't do this too early in the season. We also have to program or schedule this with these contractors to be very particular based on weather, temperature, eating, etc. We were planning on doing as much painting as we possibly can. This painting in the rubber removal is something that we can't do in house. But this painting is really outside of the realm and the timing of what our team can accomplish prior to that FAA inspection. We don't necessarily know when the FAA inspection is every year. Generally, it's in the summer months. So this is why we want to get this done in the month of June. Just prior to our peak season, which we're headed into right now, peak season meaning in number of operations, getting out on the runway overnight. So it's a little bit warmer temperatures overnight, but not as busy operationally to impact any operations. It's all about that timing to get this contract. To add to that too, we can't paint if it's under 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So at night, even it's tough to get out there and do that painting. Thank you. Okay. Are we ready for our motion on the set? I would like to move the motion as indicated on the board. Excellent. Thank you, Councilor January 2nd. Second by President Paul. Any further discussion? We'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right. The motion is unanimously. And we have completed the delivery agenda. Can we still have a major item? So we have two more items to deal with tonight. One is a summary and update on the budget. And then we will have a quick discussion. And Brian, if you weren't planning on replaying the same little budget, anyways, I would be happy to, here's what I would propose, if the board is mentalless. So we have Brian coming to give this informational update about BCDC, which will be very quick. And then I think we should take a short recess, we've been going for a couple of hours, and then we'll come back into the budget presentation. Well, I think we should make a debate. I burned it. I'm sorry, let's see this. It's been a long time since we've talked about BCDC. So why don't you give us all, and you guys, believe it or not, you are, I believe, all elected duly like officers are your ex officio and voting members of the board of the Burma City Committees. Can you give a little summary of what that is? Sure. It really has been years since we've talked about it. Yeah, a summary of what's coming. So I mentioned recently that CEDO is just celebrating 40 years this month, but BCDC actually was created a year before CEDO in 1982, believe it or not. Sorry, I don't know who came up with the idea. I think it was Bernie's way of working around the fact that City Council's Board of Aldermen was not going to create a CEDO at first. They said, no, we don't want to do that. So they somehow created BCDC. They got the council to do it and persuaded them that it was the right thing to do, ultimately because it was a way for the city to make strategic investments to promote community and economic development. It was a way for the city to move nimbly and quickly to buy property, be able to sell property in order to advance the city's goals. And so it was not an unheard of way for municipality to really play a more activist role in building and sustaining a strong local economy. So BCDC was created. The bylaws are pretty straightforward, but they do say the Board of Finance is the Board of Appropriation. And it is customary for the legal services to be provided by an outside council, not by any member of the city's legal team. We've had various attorneys over the years serving that role. We were just informed by the most recent attorney for BCDC, Kathy Bow, that she's kind of winding down and doesn't want to take it on, but she had some suggestions for names. That's one of the things that you all will need to do. And we will do the late work. Typically, CEDO staff, usually the director and one other staff member, work with the Treasures Office on BCDC Matters. We have a, you know, I think during COVID, the Board did not meet and so did not meet and did not satisfy the requirements of the Secretary of State, but they've been very forgiving about that during the COVID period. And now that we're on the other side of that, it's a good time to kind of revitalize, rejuvenate the BCDC. As I'd like to just tell you quickly, what we'll be looking to do at the annual meeting, which I think your agenda says, shoot Amy for something like June 12th, if you're looking for. And that's fine. I will be on the other side. I'll be here about a family trip. So I won't be here, but Samantha will, and she's prepared to walk you through. She's very connected to what BCDC owns for property and what those assets are and what some of the development needs, that those assets present. The, oh, I should have mentioned that the mayor, I think by the bylaws, is the president of the BCDC. So that's one of the things that you can all work with. And you'll lack officers at your annual meeting, special meetings occur sort of on an as needed basis. That is usually when there's business that the city feels needs to be brought before the board. We'll do that. Just as a quick overview, properties that are owned by the BCDC. I wish Niquongo was here so we could hear this. We're hoping that the ash building is a transaction that occurs because we, the BCDC, borrowed the funds and hired the development company to develop this building which heritage aviation needed at the airport because the airport just didn't have the bandwidth. They didn't have, they weren't in great place to do it at the time. So it was BCDC that owns that building. So we lease it from the airport. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for BCDC to continue owning it. So we're looking at a transaction where the airport would buy it. BCDC for the fair market value. The other one is 68 Sears Lane. Some people may remember there was a project down there called the multi-modal transit center in the South Bend, multi-modal transit center. Project never came to fruition. It's a property that Santa can explain in more detail, but we still have money on that property. So that one is one that will also be discussed as a potential sale and in this case, it would be as part of the redevelopment of the adjacent parking lot that the company called Ride Your Bike, which is a villa of affiliate homes. And this would be thinking is this would allow for us to ensure that CHT is able to build some affordable housing there. Their goal being perhaps one initial goal being for home ownership is something we're really focused on since there's still a little of that. Lastly, we own a garage, believe it or not, at Westlake, which is a really very creative way to get a garage built. In a project that was very challenged at the time, the condominium portion, Miracle was built around the time of the Marriott Courtyard, but just after the courier. And basically they couldn't borrow. They borrowed all they could to build the condos. They couldn't borrow any more to build a garage, but they needed a garage. So they came to a city and BCDC borrowed the funds to build that garage. So a little loan. But now we're coming out on the date where it would be. Yes. It's a little further off than we thought. We thought it was in 2025. We did a little research and it looks like it's 2027. So it may be worth talking about. Some slightly discounted price on that if you want to do the transaction sooner. But basically they're obligated to buy it for a fixed price that's spelled out in the agreement. So they will either buy it for that price in 2027 or the city wants to entice them to buy it sooner. Please lower the price a little bit. So, okay, great. We'll be going back. Smith will carry the torch that night. Chancellor Barley. Hi, so this is here tonight because I've been looking at old board of finance meeting agenda. As I see this piece of BCDC, I was wondering what it says. That added on my list to ask. Thank you. I still would be very interested to see the bylaws and the actual properties and understanding mechanics of how it works. City market wouldn't be here if it weren't for BCDC. BCDC owned that property because the police department left. The city was not interested holding on to a property that it thought might have some environmental liability. So BCDC took it on instead, held on to it and just carried it off for years until the city kept it. This is available to the new projects. No, I mean, there's a documentation out there. Yes, it's all available. Is it so old, the bylaws? Like some of that was hard to find. I'm going to send it to you now. You're going to be like, is this the real document because it looks so old and it's typewritten? Yes, it is. But then Samantha and I, I don't have the complete list of properties, but I'm sure she does. So we'll send you the bylaws now and then before the 12th, we'll get you the rest of the items. Because yes, I don't think no one's trying to be okay, but because of the transitions of staff and not meeting, it's taken a while to assemble all this together. And now we want to be very transparent and have all of us on the same page. So it's a good question. It's awesome. That was really the extent of my bid. Too creative a time for the meeting or 12th? It will be part of the board of finance meeting. By the beginning. That's my understanding. And if we need to move that, because you can't be here for this long. That still is fine. Principal. Thanks. I will not be at the meeting on the 12th of June. But do want to also mention that I think, you know, in fairness to over the years that I've been on the council, I don't think that the CDC is really ever caught. You know, people don't know. And most of the meetings, I have to, I have to tell you, I mean, anyone I was sent on the board finance years ago, I mean, most of these meetings were done like a sort of an afterthought. People were racing to get up the stairs, you know, for council meeting. And it just never really got a lot of attention. And yet, as you point out, city market is, you know, our beloved city market. It's the CDC. So maybe it would make sense that, and again, I will be here on the 12th, but maybe it would make sense to spend a little bit of time going over what it really is. So people really do understand. And I forgot about the fact that we haven't had a meeting in a couple of years, which also doesn't help in terms of disability. But we'll do that. We'll do better. So I just think it might be good for everyone to know, not just the board finance, even though we are the CDC board, I think it would be great for others as well. And it's not obligatory to hold your meeting in June. It's just sort of traditionally it was like May, June. It was like the annual meeting time, but you could move it into July if you wanted to. If everyone would be here, I'd be here. You'll be here in July? Yeah. So, okay. So I was like, can you get me a word? So we'll push on to the next, early July one. Shall I order to have it? Yes. So the meeting in July is the 24th of June 17th, so probably we'll have to count the new word. Is that speeding? Many days of that. Yes, it is July 17th for board finance. Unless others can't be. Yeah. Is that your round of roll? Yes. So I guess. Okay. So I answered up on that. There's a preview. Catherine will send out some information. We have some decisions coming up. Interesting positive decisions that I think BCDC, as we talked about a little bit in the CEDO budget presentation, we were looking for ways, particularly to try to kind of give me works part of CEDO to be income generating, self-sufficient, BCDC finances offer some opportunity for that. So to be continued into either, it looks like probably the July meeting. Okay. I am going to use the program to chair say, let's take a five minute break and we'll go back in seven, ten and restart for the budget restitution. I think we are ready to restart. Screw five minute recess. And Councillor Jang, if you're hearing us, we are trying to complete this in about 20 minutes. So I like you to take off, Catherine. I'll interject. That sounds about right. So this is an update to our conversation on May 8th, which doesn't seem that long ago. In May in the city, that's like three years because as you know, we've had many marvelous nights of May since then, and everyone's been working hard on a balanced budget. Just a little bit of context here. I referenced in early May, I presented to this group that our budget still had a $5 million budget gap. That was for three main reasons, increased public safety personnel costs, a million dollars of fleet costs. And then the rest of that money is due to COLA increases for the other staff, non-public safety staff, and then all of the general inflationary pressures that come in environment when inflation is over 8%. We have had our five marvelous nights. You all have provided detailed feedback on many parts of the budget. And based on that, I have worked with department heads to make sure we have answered your questions, given you information, and integrated that feedback into the budget, all while working to address the $5 million gap, utilizing the budget principles we discussed on the 8th. So where does that leave us? It leaves us here. The proposed budget is just over. This is general fund. Everything I'm going to talk about tonight is we're focused on the general fund. And it has landed just over $100 million. And as you can see, that is just about a 3% increase over the FY23 amended budget. This is a slide that we shared with you on May 8th. So I'm not going to go over it, but I am using it here because we framed the challenge. And then we'll go through how we're proposing the solutions for each of these. But as we talked about, we have vehicle costs, increased BPD, and fire costs. And then we have, of course, costs for the rest of the staff. We also talked about these sort of major elements of the solution and these still stand. We are using one-time funds to address the fleet challenge. The one thing that has changed on this slide is just a slight adjustment to these numbers. It's $400,000 from the unassigned fund balance and $600,000 from other one-time sources. The use of the Council Charter Authority, raising an additional $1.1 million, repurposing both ARPA as well as other reserves to the tune of $1.75 million to help with the public safety costs, using the BPD Rebuilding Reserve that City Council created last year. That was taking unused BPD salary costs from FY22. We saved them. We thought we would need them this year. We managed to kind of skate by without them, but we project needed that money for next year. And on top of all that, we made a bunch of additional cuts and adjustments. Then, unfortunately, we did my office found some errors at the very end of last week in health and liability insurance budgets. This was an unfortunate surprise and given that it happened at this late date, the proposed solution is to use $500,000 from the assigned fund balance that is specifically for insurance and then to cover the rest, $400,000 from the unassigned fund balance. Can I just ask you something? Of course. So the error identified is $900,000? Yes. What we found is that the health insurance had not been, frankly, the staff in my office and the CT office had not adequately updated the health insurance for the employer portion of that budget since FY22. And so there was actually a larger than a $900,000 increase. Some of that we were able to figure out a way to absorb. I have already put into place like how that won't happen again. I realized that with some previous staff in the CT office that there was not the detailed level of budgeting that I would expect from professional staff. And so I've gone through with the staff I'm working with this year and reviewed every single salary increase health insurance at a very detailed minute level. So what was the total amount of the employer? The health insurance increased from $13.3 million to $14.9 million. It was a $1.6 million increase. It was not previously anticipated. Correct. And so over the course of last week, we did everything we could to figure out how could we, frankly, not come back to you and say, first we said the whole was this, then the whole was this, then the whole was that, to absorb into what we already had as a whole as much of that as possible. This is what was not possible without meeting two significant staff, excuse me, for services. Okay, I mean, I don't want to interrupt your presentation. I mean, this is to me deeply, deeply concerning and makes me wonder what else there may very well be out there. At this point, we're talking about just a couple of weeks before the budget is due. So I just have to, I just have to answer that. So this brings the gap that we're trying to fill for five to six million? That is, that is correct. Going back to the challenge that we knew about, I'm happy to go back and because I'm just going to keep us moving at this point. The $1 million for vehicle fleet costs. We have looked at something like this before. You can see we are asking for 400,000 from the unassigned fund balance. And there's about 600,000 from other sources, including the sales from fleet that is, you know, that we're done using, as well as the end of a fleet reserve and some impact fees. Over the next year, the fleet committee will also be working with a consultant on a comprehensive fleet management plan. And part of that plan will include how we stabilize that funding. As we talked about fleet needs a million dollars this year, next year, and $2 million moving forward. Is there anything we can do to streamline that, reduce our costs? And how do we ensure that we have a source for that money? For our increased police costs, I mentioned that we have $750,000 that was set aside for a police rebuilding fund. We are proposing using 500,000 of that towards these salaries. 250,000 of that has been earmarked for a recruiting firm that Chief Murad has been in here talking about before. And then to make up the difference, we've spoken about using $1 million of the $2 million that was set aside for FY23s, our Revenue Replacement Reserve. We only anticipate meeting 1 million of that. So 800,000 would go to police personnel costs. But we know this is also an ongoing issue. It's a multi-year challenge. And as you can see here, the FY24 personnel costs are up by $1.2 million. But FY26, when we're projecting a stabilized police department, that is going up another $1.6 million. So we need to have a plan and conversation about how we will pay for all of that. We intend to do that before the end of the calendar year. And I ask you why FY25 this goes to me? Because we, I don't know the level at which it will, what will happen in FY25 and what will happen at FY26. What I was doing was going from where we are in FY24 to a stabilized budget. And we don't expect that in FY25. Thank you. Thanks. We also have almost $1 million of increased personnel costs and fire. So we have the other $200,000 of the ARPA Revenue Replacement allocated here, as well as money from the assigned fund balance that was set aside for potential initiatives that is no longer needed. We have already agreed during the bargaining process with the fire union to hire a consultant to understand what staffing resources we need in our fire department and the option to cover those costs. The RFPs out. The committee is reviewing those responses now and you should be hearing more about that effort shortly. There are other, these other bullet increases that I mentioned. And this is where we're targeting the adjustment to the parks appropriation. And there are several other costs and adjustments. I haven't listed them all, but this is a selection of them. Thanks to our friends at DPW, Jaypen still here, for both willingness to discuss moving some salaries to capital and increase in parking meter revenue and one of the items we've discussed previously due to an administrative error, our water resources department overpaid their pilot in FY22. And we owe them a credit. Megan has talked about this, that credit is part of what is helping her to afford some of her new staff. But she has gracefully agreed to let us have that, to push that credit so that half of it, the remaining half will be this year and then half in FY25. We also in discussion is with Kara are suggesting a $100,000 reduced appropriation to ELI. The ELI staff is actually not able to spend their money every year. And that was before the projected large increase in state funding. And then we also have two other cuts here. I've worked with Cindy and the parks team on a series of small cuts in several areas, all leading to $100,000. And then a $50,000 cut to the consulting line for planning. Megan does not need it in FY24, but wants to make sure it's available for future years in FY25. So we would want to keep that in mind. There are some remaining issues. We are still reviewing some personnel cost assumptions. We are making sure we've talked about some proposed revenue studies here. And I'll talk about a couple of more and want to make sure there's a funding source for all of them. And we spent a lot of time on the general fund budget. So making sure our capital and all of our non-general fund budgets are getting ready too. An important slide for everyone, the proposed municipal tax rate. You will see it's just over a 5% increase. That includes two important items I want to draw your attention to. In the rates capped by voter section, smack in the middle is the tax called street capital and green belt. In FY23, it was 5 cents. And it was our intention in FY23 that everything had been restored to the maximum under those rates capped by voters. Street capital and green belt is the most complicated of those taxes. And it has come to our attention that there is more room for that tax. The cap is actually 6.17 cents. And so after feedback we've heard from this council about how important paving work is, it is our recommendation that we add a half a cent to the five cents. And so you'll see the recommendation there is 5.5 cents. That does allow about $500,000 or $500,000 of additional money that goes directly to street capital that would allow for additional patching. Before I speak to that, Tiffan? Sure. We've been working with the administration looking at what that additional work would be about an additional half mile of paving or very substantial patching. We'd like to pave because it's a more durable fix than a patch, which is not as durable. Based on our pavement prioritization right now, we have a draft that shows the next street on the list would be Stanaford Road from North Avenue to Oakland. And that is our initial thought, but we're going to need a little bit of time. But it's about a half mile of additional paving in addition to the 1.3 miles that's under contract for this year. Great. So this is, we're interested in the words. I think on this, this came, Heather mentioned it, but both discussion we had about paving concerns in the prior budget discussion as well as there has been MPA discussion surging for here. So do you have the capacity here with our authority to do it? It does take us from what just under 5% of an increase we talked about last time to just under 6%. So that's the change. Nothing else about the tax. Taxing has changed since the last time we talked about that. The only other thing to note here is that we are in the midst of a planned phase out our business personal property tax. But that hasn't happened yet. This budget does include raising the exemption for that tax from $45,000 to $75,000 to get us closer. That rate has not been raised to keep up with inflation. And this starts us on that path. Just to say a little bit more about the history there. This actually went to the voters back in while it was in St. Paul 2019. And voters approved the phase out of this tax, which is brought to this fairly unique in the state at this point, just about the only community would be charging this tax. And there's also, we can get into some of the details of this between the two places. There's a big push around the state to remove this tax. And we made that decision. And the voters approved that decision in 2019. The phase out was supposed to happen. We increased the exemption to $45,000. That's the first step in that. Or it wasn't that we increased the exemption, but we made the exemption apply to, it had been sort of applied in a funky way previously. So we made it universally applied to all tax payers. Then there was another sort of step towards the phase out that was contemplated in the charter change when we did the reappraisal in that it was expected that that would result in less of the revenues. It basically was anticipated that there would be a sub reduction of the tax with the reappraisal. I'm going to come back to that point in a moment. And the third point of the phase out is at the, and I get confused on exactly the date, but I believe it's the end of calendar year 25, the tax goes way per the charter change. We, the charter change gave the city council the authority to take further steps towards facing it out. If prior to that deadline, if we have the authority to do that, we're not compelled to do it until the end of 25. Then what further happened is there's been a very substantial increase in investment that gets taxed by the business personal variety of tax. So we have secured, we have gotten significantly additional revenues that were not anticipated in this phase out plan. And there has been a point of communication to me and several other counselors of desire to, you know, a concern that at least there'd be some adjustment and this essentially does adjust this exemption for inflation. That's how we sort of got to this. And there had been a desire to have the exception go even further, but lighted the challenges. I don't see a way to do that. I do think an adjustment for inflation given that this item is appropriate for us to consider. So that revenue impact of that capital is about 100,000. That's the full tax exception. As I mentioned, the FY24 budget proposes 800,000 from the unassigned fund balance. So I wanted to be very upfront about how we are doing with that, what our balance is today, which is just over the 10%. And what our new balance would be if we committed that 800,000. And also to let you know that that balance does not include what would still be left even if we used some of the money we are proposing in the reserves for insurances. We still have 500,000 left for health insurance. Also 500,000 for liability. And it's not $250 for snow reserve. Lucky for Chapin, it's $210,000 for snow reserve. I just went off the K. That sounds more accurate. Our next steps to pass the budget, you won't spend much time here because everyone here in this room, I think knows these dates. Well, one thing we should talk about is just before we bring up today, let's talk a little about the dates, but just whether we should be counting on between 0.6 to air. But let's maybe help them make sure that maybe let's open up for discussion, questions, and other presentations. All right, last slide, then we'll open it up. We don't expect these budget challenges to go away magically at the end of this year. And this year, this budget's reliance on cuts in one time funding is not sustainable. We've talked in this meeting and others about a lot of these revenue and operational studies that are happening. We've listed them here, their fleet management, the urban three revenue and equity analysis, the fire staffing and the impact fee study. We also are working closely with the capital committee and fleet committee to meet the city's needs in those areas before a new bonding capacity becomes available. We are looking at non property tax sources of revenue and how we may increase or expand franchise fees and pilot. And we've talked certainly about the need to develop a multi year plan to pay for expanded public safety. And then lastly, with a budget this tight, we are having a lot of discussions internally about how we will continue to monitor personnel expenses to ensure a balanced budget and reporting out to this body. And with that, we are done. Anything you'd like to add, Mayor, before we open it up? I just, we should add to the budget that I'll accept, but there's also another study that we've already committed to creating plans for, I forgot to remind you earlier that the CEDO is doing a management analysis really focused on their financial stability, particularly the community works part of CEDO. So, okay, with that, questions, discussion. That's what we need. I just, I'm the, you know, street capital taxing for the city. That first plan is not supportive of that and the need is there. And I'm considering asking when they do a very large tax and other increases that probably to break the chain we're facing. I mean, this year, I don't feel comfortable supporting that right now. And yeah, unless we can find other funds to shift the tax increase, but that's my initial take on the new information. So, I'll just get back to that. Elsewhere? I had some questions from earlier in the presentation. The BPD Rebuilding Fund, is that the retention and hiring bonus fund or is that? It is separate. Yes. And we still have money in the retention and hiring fund. We had established them at the same time, but as separate funds. This is essentially, Casablanca, the half million that we put into the budget in anticipation of the contract increase that we did. You know, if you recall, we were doing this sort of dance of like not knowing exactly where the contract was going to land. Try to be a little bit strategic about how we showed it in the budget, given that it was still in our negotiation. And so we had sort of a lump sum in the rebuilding plan, because we're considering the contract to be an important part of the rebuilding plus that they can't get the time. And then we did, in fact, as you all know, support a substantial increase, but basically the way the budget is coming in for the year, even though that was sort of put in there to pay for the coal increase, we're not needing to use all of it. So it's still there, undivided. And so in this multi-year plan to base into these increased public safety costs, we're relying as we talk multiple times, relying heavily on one-time costs. For this year's portion of it, this is a one-time cost of funds that were set aside for police. We're just kind of taking it from all part of the police budget. And it would be repurposing it for this sort of one-time purpose. Okay. Thank you. That clarifications help. And then I had a sort of a question, I think maybe this has been asked. But the parks tax, which I also share, former Councilor Bush was concerned about this, I also recognize that we're in very challenging times right now. But I'm sort of trying to quantify it a little bit more precisely. I'm wondering, like, how much of a tax increase, just the increased unknown parks specific portion? It's about, it's about a half of, except from, I don't give you the exact figure, but it's basically, although almost 5% of it's just two cents of the dollar, about half of, two and a half percent of five percent. So, I got a median price, how much? I see. As we, as we can give you that, yes, that'll take a little bit longer, but yes. And I'm not asking for now, but people are going to be wondering how it's going to go. And my other question was around increased extreme capital, which I am extremely supportive of, I think, if it's any, we do anything as a city that's a lot of basic sort of expectations, so at least my constituency that I hear about on a regular basis is streets. And I understand the argument around it's more durable to pay a half mile, but how much, how much patching could we do for the same half million dollars? It depends on the dimension of the patches. There are a number of other streets that are high on the West, the north end of Walnut Street, Linden Terrace, and these are places that we could expand to if we did less work on Stanford. So this is all new that we've kind of talked just through, so we're trying to bring you as much information as possible given the late date here, but our final additional work is not dialed in yet. We'd have to negotiate change order with contractor, but our intent is to, you know, this if approved would add to the base funding year over a year. The next couple of years will be exceptionally tight given that the $23.8 million bond for sustainable capital funding fully utilized next this coming year 25, sorry, 25 will be the last year, which means that ultimately for 26, 27 we're going to be exceptionally tight. So having a larger base funding will be helpful for us to continue some level of capital reinvestment. And then just a couple of general sort of ideas, I guess, are for these beyond fiscal 24, you know, I'm wondering if we're thinking about ways to like study efficiencies within the sort of, you know, people structures we have in the city to try to squish out a little bit of expense. I don't mean to imply any kind of oppositions, but is there a way to get some efficiencies in their operational or other. And then I'm wondering in terms of our ability, our constraints, especially around street capital and some other things, as we better understand what the state contribution is going to be and other contributions for the Burlington High School project, how that frees up additional capital debt capacity for the city to use for some of the most important projects that we have on the slide. Yes, you guys discussed a little bit before, I think that that's hugely important and, you know, the 16 million that we just kind of vetoed, but it's over two days and the budget that ultimately passes. That's, you know, that if the project stays on the budget and that 16 million comes in and we get essentially significantly more, we're going to be going for next year for technical education funding, that we should be able to reduce that $165 million funding. I do think that the way our MOU works with the school district and the way it kind of, the way we sort of start thinking on this, that that will, instead of us, if that were to happen, instead of having to wait all the way to FY 30 to do for there to be untapped capacity, it could move it up maybe, you know, a couple of years, maybe three years. There's still, I think, going to be a significant period here, unless something dramatically changes with that, which is unlikely, where we are, you know, or where we're going to have, like, Jpo's referencing before, it's some real challenge, sustaining the level of capital investments that we've seen in the years, even as our aging infrastructure gets worse. So that's why, I think we're talking about that a lot in the coming year, unfortunately, we still have some of that bonding capacity left for FY 25, so not another decent year after this before we kind of hit that cliff. But I do think we have to think seriously, you know, we have to be as creative as we can about the years to follow. I do think there's some interesting conversations to have, not that far. I mean, we're in the spine about our borrowing until we get to a better place. I do think once we get, whether it's 28 or 29 or 30, once we get there, we are going to be retiring substantial amounts of debt on an annual basis. And I think there's some interesting solutions to look at, you know, getting new authority that we don't currently have in the charter about reinvesting, but that kind of, you know, when we pay out of debt and being able to take on, make new investments without having to mobilize around these big votes to do that, that might be a real change and lost to more systematic about how we make investments in the future and so these big episodic investments. But kind of getting like this, I think this is not a conversation we're going to fully have in the next few weeks on this budget, but it is my attention that we have a lot of that discussion now that our challenge is sort of clear with what's happening with high school over the last year. With this budget, I think we are going to have a lot of kind of off-budget senior work to do to get, you know, we're clearly straining to get through this one and acceptable levels in terms of taxation and use of reserves. We can't do this again next year. So we have, the portfolio has had a big job ahead to kind of sort through all this in the area. Thanks. I do appreciate it. Yeah. I do think, from my perspective, I've always, the fact that this budget, whether we are at the 4.8 percent or 5.8 percent, it's still basically consistent with inflation, which you know, I think we should consider everything else in our lives is going out to keep people value the services local government provides. We are really challenged. Our revenues do not increase with inflation as we've talked about many times, some of them do, but most of them big, our biggest revenues do not go up with inflation unless we take a step like this. So this is, now that we're in this high inflationary environment, I think we're really feeling the effects of that. We're also feeling the effects of, you know, not succeeding with the proposed increase last year. That would be a pretty different place for you to be and have that tax increase gone through. So I, do you think it's important that we consider using that authority if we're in the parks budget, but we will provide the authority that's here for the question. And do you have to ask a question that I'm not sure got answered about was there money or plans to study efficiencies? And this is something that Shippen and I are very passionate about slash nerding out about. There is money that was appropriated in FY last year, 23 under the CT budget calls something like new efficiencies and something like that. And we're keeping the only thing to come out of that is the urban three study. And part of the reason the, as we were trying to free up a lot from assigned fund balance, the mayor and I spoke and we thought like that's the money we want to keep because that's what we want to keep spending it on is looking at those efficiencies. And Shippen and I have discussed how we could roll that out. There are some departments that are very eager for it. And I think we could use some discussion with council about how we might do that. But the very short answer is, yes, that's on our minds. And the longer answer is, we're figuring out how that might look if you have ideas. I'd love to talk to offline. Sorry. You couldn't see, because it's a brown. Okay. Yeah, thank you. If I hear it very correctly is it seems on in addition to the 1.1 million four parks, right, that we considering there is also an addition of five point eight person property tax request. No, no, that's not quite right. We have, we are sticking with our recommendation that's been consistent throughout this last couple months here. Since being made at least that we, we are projecting, I think the budget that I submit in a couple weeks is going to likely include at least the 4.8%. I think it was 4.8, 4.9%. That is that that is the 1.1 million dollars. It's about about half of that is related to the 1.1 million dollars in parks. The other half of that is the taxation levels that are a result of past decisions by the voters, by the council that we really don't have discretion over on an annual basis. The debt service tax that we went to the voters in different votes and showed them how things are going to rise over time and those projections are consistent with what we're doing and then the retirement tax, which is okay, so we're at 4.8%, about half of that for the parks, which is discretionary. Discretionary the sense that it's a, you know, we could choose not to do it, but we have to come up with another million dollars of cuts to do that. What we talked about tonight would be an additional 1%, essentially additional half a million for additional paving, which we do have the authority to do. And honestly, I'm a little bit on the fence about whether my budget will include that or not. I was looking forward to tonight's discussion and understanding where we're counselors are going to fall on this, but now we've you were missed not to talk about it given the, you know, I agree with Councilor Marlowe that there's a lot of desire for a strong paving. Stanford Road is a terrible shape right now. It's embarrassing. There are other other streets that are really in rough shape and so we could invest more, we have to at least consider it, but I encourage Councilor McGee voice some concern about it. So I am curious what you think of that, Councilor Jagan. Yeah. Yes. And I think throughout the discussion about the budget, I have been consistently saying let's identify ways where we can find the, you know, the park budget. Let's call it that. Let's just identify it. And I see as part of this presentation today that some efforts were made, but still it's not significant. Right. And my biggest concern now about this project is the unassigned fund balance is no longer healthy. We have used this budget decision. We have tapped a lot into it, you know, without putting any, but we're decreasing it. Yes. And I think also with these rate increases, it's an issue too across the board from both water and electricity. And also we need to think about as much at the city as an entity is touched by the inflation inflation. I mean, I believe that it is touching the people at a greater rate, like more impactful on them. And we have also made significant amount of investment around this high school coming up. And I think former consular Bushell said it right. Anything we said it's an addition. And I am concerned just like Maggie about about any tax increases this year from the city. Right. That's exactly where I am. And I know that if you put some emphasis into it, there will be able, you'll be able to identify more ways to provide the basic services and still not tax people in this 2024 budget. Now, my other question is specific to Director Spencer. And, you know, just what are you considering as well? And just to try to understand the work contract currently happening in the city. Is it on both the roads and sidewalk? Is it from the FY22 budget paying for it? Have we actually used the FY22 budget yet for construction currently taking place right now? Just before you answer that question, Shorham. I do just want to not, I think it's important to respond to the notion that the unassigned fund balance would not be healthy with the passage of the budget as we're talking about here. The, what, I want to make sure our slide was clear here that we would still have a greater than 9% explicit unassigned fund balance. And in addition to that, we would have these major reserves for another million dollars or than another million dollars, which would, you know, we have not formally count, we don't formally count that and it is not part of our undersigned fund balance percentage. It is an additional reserve that for really three of the expenses that have the kind of most variability from year to year. And so that combination of the 9% unassigned fund balance plus another million dollars of reserves, I just want to be clear, is vastly greater reserves than the city ever had until we developed the reserve policy in 2018. And so, you know, to have still over 7 million dollars in reserves or something, you know, really unexpected comes up is a quite healthy position to be in relative to where we have been in the past and would we expect still be seeing this quite healthy by Moody's in the in the credit rate evaluation. So I just, I don't disagree that I don't, you know, we have, we've had this informal, the policy said between 5% and 15% is, is where we have to be. We've had this informal target of trying to keep it around 10%. And I'm satisfied that we're still essentially at that target with what we're talking about here, given these other reserves, I, you know, I, which is not, which, which is, and I agree with you, Councilor Jang, that you know, this is the overlooking ahead, we are not, we need to find future budgets. This is that have less use of one time funds. So I think it could become unhealthy if we don't do something about in future years, but I don't want anything's important to recognize that's still a very healthy level of reserves going into the upcoming year. Okay, thank you. Over to you. Yes, Councilor Jang, quickly calendar year 22 sidewalk budget or contract is wrapping up. There is one street, I think remaining Prospect Hill. There is one street on calendar year 22, paving Birchcliff Parkway that is still under construction. Our contracts for calendar year 23 have been signed and work is underway or about to get underway with paving and sidewalks. So all of the work is under contract and is progressing. Some of the work in calendar year 22 did lead over to spring of 2023. Thank you. Happy to talk one more detail offline. One more issue to give feedback and you know, it's getting really want to let people go. I do just want to go back to the calendar issue and get a sense for what the board is thinking at this point. I believe we have serviced almost all the major issues that are in this budget. We will be and you've seen departmental budgets that things are not going to change dramatically from what we've discussed from here. We will be bundling this all up in and when we meet on the 12th of June, we'll have a fall all one-time budget assembled for that meeting. We'll have a moment, we'll have a night for any final input. You'll be getting a major memo from me that week as well. We have had years where on that, you know, that kind of timeline because of all the work we do together ahead of time that very quickly within days, you know, we will submit the budget formally on the 15th, but it will have a lot of the information that's very consistent with what you've had up until now. Some years the council has been and I'm really not putting my thumb on the scale either way on this. I just want to kind of have a clear discussion about some years we've had the council been comfortable taking the budget formally and then just a few days later voting to act on it. Some years the council has wanted to take more time and we do have that option available to us too. So the act on it immediately would be voting working on it on the night of the 19th. You know, final board finance meeting on the 12th, final input, formal submission on the 15th, vote on it on the 19th. The back of the day or the other day, the other option available is to have a third June city council meeting on the 26th and that you would have an additional week to review it before action. And I just thought it might be helpful for everyone's schedules if we had some sense if you guys had any feedback on what you think you would like to do this year. That's why it sort of said it has needed on that slide. I just, I wonder when do we have to make that decision? I mean, you don't really have to make the decision until the, you know, until the 19th you can decide we've had years where we haven't on the agenda and then it's just made a way to week. You know, if I think there's some other thoughts of, there was some talk of like a council retreat or something else on the 26th that we weren't going to have the budget vote. So that, so for planning purposes, if there was a earlier indication, it might be helpful, but I can understand why it might not be possible to give an earlier indication. Yeah, I think given some of the things that are still in the air, I'm probably going to wait until the June 12th we're financing meeting before. That makes less exciting definitively whether we need an extra week. That resonates with me, especially, you know, giving some conversations about the fact that things have continued to move. So great. So we will, that'll be less than two weeks from now, we'll have that meeting. And I am thinking unless there's anything else anyone's really, I just want to reiterate again, this is not the end of the discussion. If people have questions that we haven't had a chance to answer here, please reach out to us now. We will try to have an ethic of sharing the answers to any councilor questions from both council as they come in and we very much welcome them. Thank you. All right. With that, if there's no objection, the Board of Finances adjourned at 8.05 p.m. Thank you everyone for another panel session today. Thank you. Thank you.