 but I assume shortly, but it's good, let's get going. And it's to order on February 20th at 5.33 p.m. First item on the agenda is the agenda. We make a motion to adopt the agenda. We move that we amend the agenda to read the item. We have a second. Councilor Zhang, a discussion on the agenda. Seeing none, we're going to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. It goes in the motion carries. Okay, that brings us to the public forum. It's like they're my people. I'm going to go ahead and speak to the public forum. So, so may you come on up to the table and if you could try to, we're not going to strict about it as we are at the council, we have a, but if you try to keep it to about two minutes, seven, three. I communicated with the board of finance about my concern about part of the fiscal year 23 audit documents that just got posted this morning for this meeting and my concern that last last minute stuff is really not a good thing. But for those people that didn't see that letter and that communication, I just want to state one of the problems with the, one of the documents was the manager letter for the auditing for on our, on our books. And there's quite a few things that are mentioned in there that are problematic, but the real problem I noticed right off was the fact that last year, one of the items that was a letter of recommendation was called the. Please was a request. Number two was improved community economic development officer, CEDO capital project accounting. That was one of the recommendations and on the current letter manager letter for 20 FY 2023. There's no mention of that having ever been a recommendation that the city should have been working on. It's a glaring fatal, as far as I'm concerned omission. So not only is there no acknowledgement that that was one of the things that the city was supposed to be working on, but there obviously is no explanation of what we've been doing to address it. So that's one of my big concerns and I'm, that was a primary concern, but then there was quite a few other things in there. When I finally got to look at it, one of the things that you just look at with the auditing and audit letter does it pretty much just doesn't say it's actually saying, we don't agree. We don't express any opinion on the effectiveness of the city's financials internal controls over financial reporting. So I have a question for the board of finance. What are you really getting out of this audit report anyway? That's a second issue. Second thing is what's the name of the firm? That's always missing on their documents. There's a significant number of material journal entries from, you know, the same problems occur year after year after year after year. And that's the general lender, lender monitoring doing the last five minutes between five months and seven months later, they're correcting entries being done. And that was, that's been a problem for the last 10 years every report. We have that same problem again happened again. Then we also have the fact that, you know, supposedly we're able to now get these life to date capital project fund budget reports and actuals. Where are they? That's been a problem as well every year as well. When these things are problems are, you know, whenever they have the same response to these is, we are just going to hire a consultant to fix these problems. Or we're short of staff. Every year, every year we have an explanation of why we can't do things financially in a prudent way. It's, we need a new consultant. We need to hire more staff. We don't have enough staff. Staff is coming and going. The, the, the second item, it was about the, the, you need to wrap up. Okay. So you can look at that. They didn't implement the one that was recommended last year. I was on the. Pensions and there's serious problems with the it management of user access. No cybersecurity. Plain response plan. No business continuity disaster recovery plan. I worked in it. That is a huge problem for the city. So the fact that there is no mention of that second problem and it's not been addressed by the auditors is fatal to the acceptance of this. These documents in my opinion. Thank you. Thank you. So they, um, you normally, you know, public forms, not a time for back and forth, but you get this rate of communication. And do you want to, do you want to, there's an answer for your specific. Uh, yes, I think it's important. Um, just to clarify, um, a couple of these points and we can follow up after as well. I did receive your email. Um, on the point of not, um, listing one of the recommendations from last year, specifically related to capital accounting in CEDO. Um, you are more than happy to confirm this with our auditor, who will be speaking later, but recommendations are only listed a year after year. They continue to be problems. They continue to be problems. And the one regarding capital accounting and CEDO was corrected last year and was not found to be a problem. And it is not the practice of auditors to list things if they have been resolved. So it is not an omission. It was something that the city fixed. Um, and I think in our presentation tonight, we'll talk a little bit about what to expect from an audit, but, um, we have gotten what we expected from this audit, which is confirming that we spent the money where we said we were going to spend the money. Um, and that is the purpose of the audit. And we'll talk more about that when we get to that point. But thank you. I, we appreciate your, your questions and bringing up these issues. Can I respond to that? No. Okay. Karen, go ahead if you'd like to speak. Yeah. And again, I'll be go for about three minutes. So my name is Karen Long, and I have not come to a lot of these meetings. Um, come to a couple of lately, but. I read that was something, um, about two, it was written for 220 and 226. And it said something about the TIF. And it said, you know, I don't know how to get more information about it, but it just seemed like in that same memo. It said that, like the first paragraph or so, it was like, we dispute this. And then later if you don't dispute it, it says we do owe it or we do acknowledge we owe it. I don't know. It just seems like I don't know how to follow this. And I don't know how I can get more information about it, but it just seemed like in that same memo. I don't know how to get more information about it. I don't know how to dispute it. And then you're grabbing money from three different places to pay the money. Um, I'm wondering why, how did we not know we owe this money? I'm not a fan of TIF because I'm from California and they outlawed that many years ago because it totally has destroyed education fund in that state. So I think it's bad. Um, and I hope that we pay every dollar we owe back because I don't know how to get more information about it. Um, but anyway, and then there was another thing in that paper about 40,000 that was paid to here, but really should have been paid to there. It just doesn't make sense that these like loose things are going on. So anyway, and I don't know how to find out more information about it. If there's like go online or whatever, but I'm just curious, um, especially regarding TIF. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. That item has actually been pulled for tonight because it was a long time ago. I'm not going to be talking about that tonight, but there will be. There is work going to resolve the outstanding issues with. Good. Um, is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak to the public forum? Not saying that. And. Don't think there. Is there anyone else? Nope. I'm looking like I'm on my seeking to be recognized for public form. So I'm going to close the public forum. And move to. Three point out. Place here. Uh, which is the. Consent agenda. Uh, three. Are we ready for a motion? We are. We're ready to move that we adopt the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated on civic clerk. I'll. Thank you. Thank you. President Paul for a second. Any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Motion carries unanimously. That brings us to the first of three delivered items, which is 4.1. The request for authorization, assigned janitorial services contract, the janitorial services LLC. The airport team member, my days in the airport commissioner. It's about the janitorial services. I feel like they sense things are smoother janitorial front than back in. So, yes. Thank you for having me. Jeff Bartley, I'm the director of innovation and marketing for the airport. I'm the executive assistant for our admin team. And director of aviation, I go on those here. Appreciate him allowing me to spread my wings for the first time. In front of you tonight with a relatively easy contract here. This is not a new service. It's an RP. We put back out in early December. We had a mandatory walk through on December 20th with four participants. We received two bids. And based on our scoring with a matrix. And they were also the lower bid. We selected a genetic tech who is our current provider at the airport. I say two bids. The contract did lapse on June 30th. We've been months since with the recent four only a couple of months. We just want to keep in line with the fiscal year. So that is what is before you. Thank you very much. Floor is open. I would like to see questions. We're ready for motion. Quick question. And he's specific to the airport has grown. I was just wondering if you have any questions. I think it's about $14,000 for what we paid last year to what the first year will be of this contract. And also, I think it was just wondering if they also paying their employees the city's predictable way. Do you know? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Do you know? We've said hardly. So far. I'm happy to make the motion. Thank you. Council. Is there a second for the motion? Second by council. Parlow discussion. Seeing none. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Post. Most. Any questions? All in favor of the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. 4.2. Parking management. Subly's agreement. Noted. Part two. Thank you. Chief. Thank you for being here to discuss this. I know this is a function. A function of work in. for being here to discuss this. I know this is a function of working hard to minimize impacts of the great constraints from our project on downtown. I appreciate you working hard to bring this to us. So happy to try it. Great, thank you. Chief and Spencer, Director of Public Works with me, Jackie Esperanty, Division Director of Parking and Traffic and Senior Public Works Engineer, Laura Wheelock remotely. So, yes, after a year of negotiation, I'm really pleased to report that we have come to an agreement of public-private partnership that would be a multi-year agreement that would open up current private parking that is publicly accessible but making it accessible at city rates for a broad section of the day from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. and using city payment platforms that the public is used to. And the goal really here is to provide additional off-street public parking while the Great Streets Main Street Project continues its work and needs to displace some off-street parking as has currently been done at the main and Winooski lot and soon will begin impacting some on-street parking on Main Street. There are a number of mitigation efforts that I'm pleased that our department and other departments have brought forward that are summarized in the memo. I'll just hit the wave tops of us doing soil pre-characterization beforehand, us agreeing to replace proactively the water services and sewer laterals of properties along the corridor, including communications responsibilities within the resident engineering contract. And thanks to business and workforce development, securing a grant to promote the businesses along this corridor during construction. I'm pleased with how the work is already underway. The big dig in Burlington is happening if you haven't had the chance to see 25 feet down. We have a couple of stunning pictures that Laura has to share. We're here to answer any questions. We know this is not a cheap proposition. We are proposing to have the traffic fund under Jackie's leadership help unlock these spaces at city rates. These private parking spaces have been offered around $5 an hour. We'd be offering you to $1.50 an hour, which is the city's rates and city's enforcement and payment mechanisms as well. So I'm confident that we will have a successful operation and if the utilization exceeds our conservative estimates, the cost to the parking and traffic division, instead of being around $75,000 a year could be $40,000 a year or less. Happy to answer any questions. Great, thanks for that summary, Chairman Jackie, do you want to add anything to that? No. Thank you for being here. I think it's the first time you've appeared here in front of the Board of Finance. We're here to show your service, but that's a new role. And the floor is open. How are the board like to see the questions? Or Councilor Barlow, do you want to add? Thank you. So are all the parking spaces that are being leased? The one location is in the garage at the corner. So there were four permits that were used. We scaled down as much as we could. We didn't renew because we knew what was going away. Only one person chose to keep the permit and they're in the marketplace garage for the time being. Okay. The other people just decided not to. They plan to come back when the Main Street law comes back. And if the utilization isn't what is anticipated, it's your way to scale this list. That's a great question. So it was part of the negotiations. And I do want to thank Unified Parking Partners and Jeff Davis, owner of Courthouse Plaza for being good partners here. I think they understand the value of helping their adjacent local businesses. We included in the sub lease agreement language after one year, us being able to reduce the number of spaces if the utilization isn't there. And that raises some operational questions of how we have multiple uses in that tray of parking. But I think our intent and their intent is to have this be successful. We need to ratchet down. We will and we'll figure it out. So first year we're committed to the full 85 spaces in that third tray of parking. But after that first year, we can ratchet down as needed. And we did include an eight month extension. So it could go a full two years and eight months if that is needed to complete fully the construction on Main Street. Just want to add for Board of Finance members, if you haven't sort of fallen into details of what's gone on there, the DPW team really is working hard to make good notion that we were going to keep pedestrian access open to businesses throughout and that there would be good supportive signage. I've actually had people on the street kind of walk up and say thank you for like the open banners that have been in front of Periwinkle's since the construction began. And there's a lot of signage about how to get to Periwinkle's right now. And as construction moves to other parts of Main Street the intent is to continue to provide that level of service and actions to mitigate impacts like construction. I'm not seeing any other Board of Finance members with hands so I will go to Councillor Grant. Thank you, I just want to have an understanding. So we have a city rate and then those with private lots charge a different rate in order to get access to those private lots we will essentially be covering the difference. Am I understanding that correctly? There were a couple of ways that we looked at it in the end settled on basically the city leasing all 85 spaces at a rate of $4.60 a day with us then being able to charge people directly and then the city recouping that revenue. There were some models, Councillor Grant that we explored where the private operator would give us how many people parked and for how long each month and then we'd give them a subsidy check but there were many operational challenges to that including us telling people it was a public lot but then if they didn't pay and the enforcement was from a private entity it just got confusing and messy. So we went with this more simple model. Okay, thank you. That's me. Thank you and shape and I appreciate you speaking to the enforcement piece. I know that there are some disparities between the way the city handles enforcement and the way private parking entities handle enforcement as well so I'm encouraged to hear that the city will be handling it for the spaces that we're renting. That was really the only concern I had when I saw the contract come up and I appreciated Mark's question as well. That was another question that I had in terms of us adjusting the number of spaces should we not be utilizing them frequently. So happy to support this tonight and thank you all for the work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Yeah, go ahead, get me in there. I just wanna say how I appreciate you, because you could have just say this is a city project and you don't have parking, but you work to, you don't have to find out about that. It speaks for you, especially also when this is done, how beautiful it is going to be. I think this is for you. And I really appreciate the extra, my other side. Thank you. There will be impacts and I think we're all aware of how hard it is to renovate the principal arterial road through your downtown. And thanks to everybody going the extra mile of partnership with city attorney to draft the agreement, CT to coordinate the finances, we're good hands. Thanks, Councillor Jayne, I appreciate you doing that and I do. Like I said, we're cheap and hard to do this. So make it good and what was promised that we're hope to mitigate the impacts of this disruption. We still need a motion and a second before we can act on this, I think we should make the motion as indicated, city. Thank you, Councillor Jayne. Seconded by Councillor Geary, great. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right, any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Excellent. Thank you for the support on this. I was unclear, did Laura have pictures she wanted to show tonight or was this? We'll send it around to you, but some really spectacular footage. Thanks, Laura and Olivia. We'll send it to the council packet, but no, it's not in the memo tonight. It is a impressive amount of work that's gone on and just what it's been two weeks. So I walk by it every day, couple times a day. Highlight of the day. Okay, thanks everybody. We have one remaining item, which is 4.3, which is the presentation and potentially action on the FY23 City Audit. And we do have our partners from Markham Accountants here. And I'll head over to you. Yes, it is that time of year again. Thank you. Where we in CT and on the board of finance find ourselves living in three fiscal years, we're looking backwards at the results of the FY23 audit. Next month, we will review at our next meeting, March 11th, the FY24 year to date results. And of course we are planning for the FY25 budget. So there is a lot going on, but we are pleased to present the results of last year's audit. And Alina and I will do a bit of this presentation together. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Alina Horsig, our auditor from Markham. Thank you, Catherine. As she said, I'm from Markham, the partner that's in charge of this financial statement audit. And maybe right off the bat, I just want to clarify financial statement audit is the audit of your books and records. It's not an internal control examination. So we do have an ACPA, which is the American Institute of CPAs requirement, to put that this is not the amount expressed in the controls, but the amount expressed in the amounts and disclosures that you put on your financial statements. So with that, I'll go into our agenda. And Catherine will help you understand why there is an annual audit that is done. We will go through the management letter that is in draft form. So we currently don't have a name or logo signature on it because the audit has not yet been finalized. And then we'll go to some results of our general fund, the general fund, as a result of the audit and how the operations have ended in the general fund. I'll take the first slide. And as Alina mentioned, there are of course different kinds of audits. And the reason why we do this one is not just the second bullet that it is required by Vermont law to actually offer these monies and to perform and audit once a year, although that is an important reason to do that. It is also because Berlingtonians put their trust in us as elected public officials and municipal employees. They are putting us in charge of their tax dollars. And so as Alina mentioned, a big point of this audit is to make sure that the books are accurately reflecting what we said they were going to. That encourages public accountability and maintaining trust. And so really these, this audit and this review of our books ensures that what we have said we have done has happened. And as Alina mentioned, it is not an internal controls audit. It is more about ensuring that as you can imagine the city has put things in the right place. I don't know a million, it feels like sort of different accounts where things go. And we want to make sure that although we are confident we've put things in the right place, someone external needs to come and look at that. So that everyone can make sure we are on the same page. So what were the results of that audit? And Alina will talk about the comments. And then at the end, I'll talk a little bit about the city response. Thank you, Catherine. We have issued a management letter again for the year and then June 30, 2023. It is a plan though, going forward to put any recommendation in the guns letter because that's another letter we provide to you. So just to consolidate that too, we have a good goal of not having a separate management letter, but it was a separate one for June 30, 2023. We have two comments that we left from the prior year that still expired. Before you go, can you speak to that? I didn't realize that. I've always found it very helpful to have a clear management letter that is the audits thinking on, and I'm a little, and also you are opining on, I noticed you're making limitations on the representations there and isn't there, there are limitations to what you're evaluating, but certainly one of the services we're contracting is to review our internal controls and give, and give us your perspective on them. We've found that very helpful and important over the years. So can you just clarify, you're doing that with the caveat that you made before? Thank you so much. Especially since there's big questions about that. This is an excellent insight. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. So management letter has stopped being very quiet because of the governance letter that went in effect. Multiple years ago now, but if this seems to be something that's important for you, we absolutely can still issue a separate management separate from the governance letter. The governance letter is another report, not the financial statements, but when we finalize the financial statements, you'll see that will provide you the opinion on your app. So a large document, the app with the opinion, and then separately there will be a small document called the governance letter. But absolutely if that's what's important to you, we can continue doing a separate management letter instead of consolidating it too. Okay. We can talk more offline and I have found it helpful, but we can talk about more, maybe before the finance members might, but it's just, it's been a guiding document for us for. That's right. We can continue to separate things. And either way, just to clarify, whether we have a separate management letter or these contents are integrated, these, this kind of substance will absolutely continue, whether it becomes a section of the governance letter or stays as standalone. We will continue to receive this kind of feedback next year. Yes, of course. Thank you for that clarification. The first comment we had last year that we left in this year was the improvement over journal interest recommendation and adhering to a formal closing schedule. We did note the last two years that the worst significant interest still being made for about half a year after the year and has ended. So we continued to recommend that there is a more formal closing schedule and we recommended that there will be some reports that will be prioritized on a monthly basis. For example, on some kind of interim regular basis monthly, quarterly month is not possible, but we recommended that the budget versus actual and the capital project, the capital project from the last day of the statement be looked at. And the idea is that anything unexpected would be identified sooner and unexpected budget versus actual variance or anything unexpected deficit, for example, in a capital project fund. So that was our recommendation to prioritize some reports and look at them more regularly. So any expected could be identified sooner and be researched so that results sooner. And then a second comment had to do with the language in the collective parking agreements and how it relates to the city ordinance on pension. There were some inconsistencies in the language. So we just left this comment in. So until the legal department has the capacity to address them and in reference into a city ordinance pension is not an option of collective parking agreements that we just want to make sure that they repeat the language to make sure that it is consistent. And the new comment this year is to consider improvements to information technology policies. We just want to look at the city, especially with the recent cybersecurity being seen. And the way that that has been an issue for a lot of organizations lately that the city formalized their policies more basically meaning what down in writing, what your policies are. For example, when you're provisioning when you use our rights, make sure there's an audit trail of the approval process of that. So taking any policies that relates to provisioning terminations, cybersecurity, business continuation plan, and just formalizing them and then following the policies. Excellent. I'll just offer a brief response to those comments and say, yes, the city, we are aware on especially the first comment that it has been a recommendation for the past couple of years. This board will remember that when we received this recommendation last year, we came back with a plan to increase hiring to hire a director of finance and a budget director who would be responsible for issuing these key monthly reports and performing this review. Despite those very well crafted plans, we were unfortunately unable to complete a successful recruit. So we did not make as much headway on this as possible. Since we still have not hired someone into that position, we have already engaged a consultant who we are working with who can help us in the interim. We've begun issuing these key monthly reports. We started last month as sort of a practice run. Our department heads ask that we have one month of sort of a practice run before we started sharing it with this board. And so next month we will start issuing those reports to you. And so you'll see exactly how we're doing with that budget to actual and also the life to date capital project statement. So we'll be reviewing those on a monthly basis and making those key corrections and you'll be able to ask questions as well. So I'm pleased to report that as well underway. And these other two recommendations are also important. We'll be working with the city attorney's office on the ordinance language and Scott Barker is well underway with responding on improving the information technology policies and has already begun drafting some policies. And I know is looking to make some staffing improvements in terms of bolstering cybersecurity resources as well. So stay tuned on all three of those. You should see movement within the next few weeks. Thank you. And thank you also, but I was just wondering in cities this point it can be a little bit more specific. I don't know if you can see as begin if you can keep out the reports, but would you say when city has began to do it? Yes. We, we are just started in January issuing the December reports. And so we have now just department heads have until this Thursday to finish the January reports. So then we will be issuing those later this week. And that's when you'll see them at our very next quarter finance meeting. And also since when do you have the consultant? We, we've literally hired them the last week. So this is very new news. And I think maybe all the responses to, for example, the ordinance language has recommended by, for example, give people time to write. So we know that this is time. And so you will have to make recommendations including decisions by exactly when. So I think those are important. We will be close to that. Thanks. I appreciate. Appreciate this. The focus on the first one, especially it's critical. And then the plan that was laid out and expected and then attempted to be implemented. Posted and efforts made it hiring. It's really, it's cannot continue. So I think we can continue to see those changes for another year. And so I think being specific and. It's a good suggestion. And. I do think more finance, you know, even. I've tried no longer chairing this chairing this board. I think this is. You're going to, this is going to be an active. We're getting the system going again. So I think it's a good suggestion. I think it was around when we really had these reports being issued on a regular basis before the pandemic. Or it's going to see us getting back to this in the weeks ahead. And it's important that we continue this. So. Appreciate it. And also lastly, I replied to the email from. Someone. Yeah. I really also appreciate the follow-up. Yeah. And also to consider. Thank you. And now we'll go into the general fund. Budget versus actual results. I just want to know that this is the operating funds. So it doesn't include your designated fund. The designated fund you have is where you spend money out of your, your server sign. So we're starting. So strictly focusing on the operating fund. You see that the revenues came in. 6.1 million dollar short of the budget. The original budget was 79.2 million. It was increased to 86.8 million. Due to budget amendments to get to 80.7 million. Now on the expenditure side, you had an original budget. And it was a budget of 78.2 million, which was increased to 86.4 million. And the actual came in under spent by 5.1 million dollars. Now that actual of 81.3 million expenditures. Against the 80.7 million dollar revenue generated. A loss of under million dollars point. 6 billion. That was about a million dollars. Now, if you are looking at the Excel packet. That was in your materials. The budget versus actual was on that third tab. And the reason you see an income statement. What went by million dollars on the second tab. Because he. That's the total general fund. So if you look at tap three, just. The numbers that are shown here is at the top, you'll see 6.1 million dollar short for revenue. And on spend appropriations of about 5.1 million. At the top of your Excel. Third tab, and you can see a designated fund is at the bottom. And at the very bottom, you'll see how it all matches. So it doesn't match everything you have. We are strictly focusing here on the operating fund. And here we are going to go through some. And then we're going to talk about the cost classifications and how they compare to last year. So non spendable was 1.4 million last year. And that cut down to half. 0.7 million dollars. The restricted was 2.3 million. And went down to 1.8 million. Most of the restricted has to do with young. So that's. Then have a small committed on balance that went from 0.8 million to 0.7 million. And then the biggest category here is your assigned fund balance. That went from 8.9 million to 7.8 million. A decrease of 1.1 million. They can see overall. This is everything except for on a side. So overall, it went from 13.5 million. To 11.5 million. And the next slide. And that difference is 2.5 million. Now what that does, if you want to do a quick summary in your head on how to arrive at the new on the sign, you could start with unassigned fund balance and July 1st. Of 2022, the beginning of the fiscal year 23. Of 8.6 million. If other fund balance categories decrease, that means unassigned increases. So you add that 2.5 million in here. From the last two slides. And then to get to the ending unassigned fund balance, you've got to take in the net change in the total. Fund balance. So then that was an article for 6 million. So you got it subtracted. So last that change. That's how you get to the new unassigned fund balance. And that's how you get to the end of the fiscal year 23. Of 6.5 million. Then on the next slide. This is the same as you saw two slides ago. But it adds the unassigned fund balance. So in your Excel packet, if you're looking at that, the very first step is your, your balance sheet. And at the bottom left, you'll see the total fund balance general fund. The total fund balance is 17.5 million up to taking in your unassigned fund balance. And the next slide. You have a history of your unassigned fund balance. So you can go back 10 years. And you can see how you was steadily growing your unassigned fund balance, which is great news. It didn't a little slip a little bit. But on the following slide. This is your general fund. Unassigned fund balance as a percentage of total expenditures. And this is that you could go back 10 years for the unassigned fund balance. And this is, you could go back 10 years for that as well. And it, it, this year it went to 8.1 from 11.7% last year. But your fund balance establishes the policy that you have establishes a target of 5%. So you did exceed that your goal and that target by about 3%. So that's it. Say a little bit more. Let's go back to that. Let's go back one more slide. People board members will probably remember getting. You may remember take some, some effort to go back and went back and confirmed this with the documents at the time. We made a decision at the beginning of this fiscal year this year, 23 to spend down the unassigned fund balance, which was above the target levels to buy $2.5 million. And so, you know, most of that drop that you're seeing there. It was just playing was the plan. It was what we committed to doing at the beginning. It was intentional. It was intentional. And, you know, we put it towards specific things, everything from capital projects to toters, making good on the recycling project. There's a whole number of things we could go over. It is a little bit more than always anticipated because. As Alina went through, there was a, you know, an anticipated budgetary, you know, non-trivial loss there to the 0.6 million. So is the final outcome is a little bit lower here, but I want to just remind people most of that drop was was planned. Thank you, Mr. Mayor for the clarification because there is one more tab of your Excel packet and that's the last tab is a hop. You can see how your categories has changed. So we use the sign panels and we use restricted models. You can see how the detail behind all those models was the last tab of the Excel packet. So maybe that's a question for the mayor. We know that the city's financial now would be better in the next couple of years because of labs that have been built, you know, a lot of, we can see right now. What will it take for us to increase our unassigned fund balance cap from where it is right now? Is it policy? So the unassigned fund balance is a really important metric. I think a really great North Star for us to focus on in terms of tell how we're doing financially. And it is one that the credit rating agencies certainly have been focused on and a major, a major reason that we have gone from the fund status, having our double A credit rating back has been first of all, these audits coming in with much better than they used to, you know, we have three recommendations here tonight in years past. And we had dozens, literally dozens of much more serious findings and material weaknesses that had a different classification of concern from the auditors and the fact that we worked those away and improved them was important. You know, I do want to say the fact that this journal that you won is important. It shouldn't be, you know, it's really important that this not appear on another year. But in general, we have, if you go back and look at the 2012 management letter, it is an entirely different document than we're talking about. So that's been a big part of the increase. The underside fund balance, however, has been big. That's very important to the credit rating agencies because they want to know that the city has the ability to make its bond payments or something unexpected happens. And so having meeting what we lay out in the policy of a between a fund balance between 5% and 15% is really critical with. So I do think it would be reasonable for us to want to get a little bit higher than 8%. We have had years where that we've settled on them and a budget year we just focused on and targeted a little bit higher than 8% even though we spent the worst trying to spend down a little bit of money on a fund balance. But I do think is the FY 25 budget is passed as you are managing, you know, as we're going through their meeting months of FY 24, looking at where we're coming in on the budget to actuals. I think if it would certainly, I feel comfortable as long as we're above 5%, but if we want to try to get it back to the 10%, that would be the way to do it. Looking at the budgeting, it's a budget to actuals month to month and then looking at that FY 25 budget that gets passed into. Basically this policy came from the city council. Yeah, so to be clear, like it's relatively new that we have an assigned fund balance policy. I can't remember when we set that exactly. I think it was, I mean, it was fairly early in my administration. Maybe it was, I can't remember. Maybe for us, it was years ago now. I think it's a pretty good policy. I think it gives, you want, you don't want it to be overly rigid. I think if it's saying one between five and 10, sorry, five and 15 gives the mayor and the city council the ability to kind of annually figure out how they want to come in between that. I don't, so I don't know if a policy change is needed. I do think it's, it's collectively more to get back up to 10% that we've got doing it through the budget process and through the cash management process and through the expense management processes, the way to do it. Thank you, Alina. So floor is open for any questions for counselors. We can go, if there are more questions we can go on tonight. It is, it is our, I think it is important that we find a way to have the council act on this next next Monday possible. We have a responsibility to complete the audit process before town meeting day. And so this is our, our, our window to do it. I understand you've only had since last night with the materials and then something that it's regretted by the whole team. It was a lot of work to get it out earlier. And it's, it, it, it, that included work over the holiday weekend. And so I understand you've only had it for 24 hours. I'm not sure if the board is ready to make a recommendation tonight. It is an opportunity to ask further questions tonight. And if we need to work on some kind of concurrent thing next week, that's something that we can do as well. I think we're going to have a lot of time in the past year. So. How did the board like to proceed? Go ahead. I'll be the first to say that we just need to receive the last thing. I have not had a chance to do a deep dive. I would like to work on before I voted on a resolution. Great. But I do appreciate all our work that went into this. I think we're going to have a great time. I don't know if we can get this map. Trying to get that material to us. I did have a question about the improvements to the information technology policies. Yeah. And the process that will be used to. Improve that will be, will be looking for consultants to advise on best practices or. Just. Well, we'll, we'll just be. Updating our own policies. I mean, I mean. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Or is this maybe a question to. To take and maybe come back to the, to the board. And we're the console. But I mean, what's the process for improving. These promises. I think that is a question. I will. Come back and I will further consult with Scott on. I know that he is planning on. Consulting with. I know that he has different processes and I think. Because. As far as I know, he doesn't have a order commission that he reports to. He has a slightly different process. So let me get a few more details for him and happy to. Respond to an email. I was like. For private industry, there's sort of, I was actually looking to see if there's certifications. Right. Testing that can happen from third parties to. I'm not sure that things are as secure as we think they are. And so I'm, I'm curious about how that might play into this process. That's all right. Thank you. So to your first point. I think. Yeah, totally reasonable. Appropriate that. Not ready to vote. Make a recommendation for council to make. So. What I would say is a work with the president of Paul. And. A range for there to be some kind of concurrent or the finance meeting. Scheduled for next Monday. If there are. Questions that or members are going to want. Yes. For that recommendation. Catherine. I think it's great to be helpful as a response as we can. By email. This. We'd like to. That's my thought of the way to handle this. We have a concurrent. Four meeting. The other option would be. You know, if council is really feel like. Calling a. Earlier. I think that's all right. So. Order finance meeting. Together. I think we could consider, but. I'd like to find it. It is important that we be in position to make recommendations. So. Let me know if it doesn't have to be tonight. But. I'm going to leave today. If there's no. I'm going to. Stay into the contrary. I'm going to plan on. Working with President Paula scheduled for. Special meeting. And then just a little more finance meeting for next Monday. If you want something sooner, please be in touch. After. Tonight as soon as possible. All right. Go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to say quickly, I agree with Mark and. I. Would just ask that the materials be emailed to the full council. Before the agenda is posted on Thursday. Just. So folks have it in their inbox. I think that would be helpful. And I think. A concurring meeting next Monday. Fine. Thank you. I guess it's just. All right. I'm not seeing any further hands. So. I'm not seeing any further hands. So. I'm going to conclude this item. And. If there's no objection, then we, that has as a completion. Of our. Plans. This is for the. So. Point of order real quick. Do we need to make an official motion to postpone this or. I. I don't. I don't know. I don't know. I. I don't. I don't know that we have to. No, if you don't take any action on it, you don't need to take it. Make any official motion, but you can. It doesn't preclude you from adding it to a future agenda. Okay. Thank you. Our five questions. And. With that, if there's no objection, I will adjourn the board of finances. Thank you all.