 All the person born, all the person Donahue, all the person Feldy, all the person Ackley, all the person Phillips, all the person Decker, all the person Sorensen, all the person Savaglio, all the person Flicky Paneski, all the person Mitchell, all the person Phillips, there are nine present. Thank you very much. Next I'd ask you to all join stand to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, foundation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. City Clerk is there anyone for public forum? There's no one on public forum. Thank you. Then we'll move on to hearings. Item 2.1 is hearing number three of 2021 pursuant to chapter 65.90 of the laws of Wisconsin and notice and published in the for the annual budget hearing will be held this evening to give any taxpayer or resident of the governmental unit the opportunity to be heard on the proposed 2021 budget. Is there anyone wishing to be heard? Please step forward to the microphone and your name and address please. Dulcy Johnson, 1306 North 3rd Street, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Can I begin? Yeah, please. Okay. First I would like to thank the city administrator and fire chief for including the salary and benefits of assistant chief butler in the 280 ambulance budget for 2021. He was hired to manage the ambulance service but the department has never included any administrative costs in the expenses of the service until now. Secondly, I think the city is over tipped even though the equalized value of existing tiffs and tids is less than what is permitted for the city. When I got my tax bill last year I thought it might be the same or slightly less given all the construction in the city but alas it was higher. Last year's tax levy was an increase of 3.6%. This year's tax levy is set to increase by 3.9%. Yes, I know City Hall was remodeled. It was the right decision and is a credit to the city. Meanwhile, county taxes have been lowered for five consecutive years in spite of having built that huge warehouse for 20 to 25 million dollars and the county budget for 2021 is 8 million dollars less than last year. County taxes will be 26 since less per thousand evaluation. The city is projecting a 15% increase per thousand evaluation. I am concerned when an arm of the city, specifically the library presents an unbalanced budget of more than $90,000 after a cut of almost $200,000 to their budget and not being able to cover the cost of their employees health insurance. Additionally, the library staff was cut by one. I don't think any other department cut any employees including the senior center which is not even operational. I believe Chad said that new construction was 89 million in 2020 but the taxpayers will not receive the benefit of that out evaluation on their tax bills. The audit of the city's TIF districts for 2019 shows that expenditures exceeded revenues by almost $2 million. Since the taxes in a TIF or TID go to pay off the debt of that entity, instead of being put in the general fund, that means that the taxpayers are paying for the development of the Oscar complex, the new industrial park, the A Street project, et cetera, resulting in higher taxes for everyone. Granted, many of these developments would not happen without the incentive such as the old tannery project. But as Chad noted in his presentation to the council in June, TIDs may be used in areas where development would have occurred anyway. So why establish a TIF or a TID? Why not let the developer pay for the development and let the tax revenues flow into the general fund to lower property taxes? I recently met a new resident of our community who has relocated from Washington DC and was amazed at how much higher property taxes are in Sheboygan than DC. Obviously, the TIFs and TIDs are one reason. Many citizens are questioning the need for the many additional, for the many apartment complexes that are being built. I understand that two are at only 60% of capacity. I don't know about the others. And not being a developer, I don't know if that makes the development profitable. But citizens are questioning the need for all the housing developments, especially since the taxpayers are paying for that seeming over development. The city marina, which was built approximately 25 years ago, is still in debt by 2.4 million. According to the 2019 audit, the marina's expenditures exceeded revenues by $85,000. Some of you will remember the discussions when that facility was being proposed. City Development Director Bob Peterson was determined that building only 200 slips the first year would mean having to add another 200 slips immediately because of the demand. The reality is that the 200 original slips have never been full. The usual occupancy of the marina is 60%. The 2021 budget summary, which the council reviewed at their October 19th meeting, shows a deficit in the general fund of $1.5 million. The 2021 executive budget summary shows a deficit of 6.5 million. The document also shows that revenues for 2021 are projected to be $3 million less than in 2020, and expenditures are slated to increase by $10 million. The maximum life of a TID is 27 years. Some of these TIDs will not expire until 2035, 38, 42, and 47, which means the taxes from those developments will not be available to the general fund for another 15 to 27 years. I hope the council will put the breaks on any further TIFs or TIDs and give the taxpayers a break. Thank you. Thank you very much for those comments. Is there anyone else wishing to be heard? Is there anyone else wishing to be heard? Is there anyone else wishing to be heard? All the person sorenson. Thank you. May I move to close the hearing? Is there a second? Second. Thank you for that motion and support. All those in favor of closing the budget hearing, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next we'll go on to a presentation on the 2021 proposed budget by city administrator Todd Wolfe. Thank you council, mayor, and department heads, and of course Kerry for supporting me through this budget season. Many hours and meetings of review we have all all of us have worked very diligently together on this on this budget during these unprecedented times. Have faith in our community and nation and we will preserve persevere as we always do. So a couple of things I wanted to talk about next slide. So I wanted to talk about our our city's mission statement because this is what we define as what we are. The city of Sheboygan is dedicated to providing residents and business community and visitors with fiscally responsible municipal services in an effective and responsive manner to meet the needs of our diverse community. We have to remember that this is what we are. Next what we want to also remember is in our vision this is what we what we desire in our future. The city of Sheboygan will be a family oriented and prosperous community with a wide variety of housing, business, cultural, and recreational opportunities in a safe and attractive neighborhoods. I think we're doing a fantastic job on that. Next our city values. These are very important values. I'm very impressed that we have these to help us achieve our mission, vision, and strategic plan. We are focusing as a team more on these during our our daily processes in the city. As you can see we reconfigured them to with the acronym stairs. In our strategic plan it's fiscally responsible but we've adjusted that to stewardship because they're basically the same. So we focus on every day as service to our constituents, teamwork between our between our multiple teams throughout the city, our accountability making sure that we're all accountable for what we do day in and day out, our innovation, respecting each other, internal and external, and then obviously our stewardship that we take for granted. Next. So when you when you represent the state and city restraints a lot of people don't realize that some of the issues besides what you see on on the on the slide with our tax levy limits, expenditure restraint programs, our minimum fund balance, targeting of 25 percent. We've also had a loss of our alliance revenue and that will continue to decrease over the next few years. Our loss in room tax but not as not as bad if you review our 2020 amended numbers in our budget review. Our county has seen an increase in third quarter they're anticipating that things are going to look good in the fourth quarter. Not as bad as originally anticipated from our second quarter review. Unemployment is at 7.7 percent through the nation. Wisconsin's at 4.7 percent. Sheboygan County 3.7 pre-COVID. Post-COVID was 12.7 in May in June it was 8 percent. Are we out of the woods? No but we're getting there. 3.4 in January 3.2 in February of 2020 just as an example. Next. Expenditure restraint program and tax levy limits. This is truly a teeter-totter for me in learning this. Balancing Act to stay within the limitations relative to both both areas. Calculations were thoroughly vetted through Senior Municipal Advisor. Marty Halverson and myself we we did work with ALERS to make sure that we were balancing our levy and our expenditure restraint to its fullest to make sure that we didn't leave anything on the table. This limits the city from spending. If we don't use the levy we lose it that's something that we need to remember because in 2020 we gave up levy limits that hurts us as as a compound. This will and could cause future cuts next year with a loss in levy we don't have fat to cut and that's one thing we need to remember. We would have to cut present services as well as this could affect our moody rating and please remember our mission and vision. Next. Expenditure restraint program allows increase of the general fund expenditures by 60 of the percentage increase of the city's net new construction and allowable CPI. For 2021 the the city is estimating a 3.1 allowed increasing it in expenditures. This was recently approved and given to us this this past week. So if you look at that you take 2.88 net new construction we get 60 percent of that of the 2.88 that equals 1.73 plus we get 1.4 percent CPI that's how we equals the 3.1 allowed. Please understand that you can't even exceed by a tenth in that percentage. Our expenditure restraint and levy limits are that tight. Next. So tax levy limits so when we talk about this we look at the state law restricts the percentage increase of the city's tax levy based on previous year's tax levy remember in 2019 we actually lost a little bit that didn't get carried over into 2020. Net new construction we had a lot of net new construction from 2019 that was shifted into 2020 so we had a severe increase of 2020 which affected us in 2021. Net new construction again is we have a lot going on but I agree it's also it's affected by tids and tiffs. We did have tid closures of tid 11 which really did help us and then we have tid subtractions. So having tid 11 closed which was a help. The only changes in the in the actual budget are wages and benefits which are conservative. We have training and technology upgrades as we've talked as a council we really need to continue to improve our technologies and training. We have our CIP approved in in June which doesn't really affect the budget per se. We did have $800,000 in our budget for improvements. Half a million of it was Geely Avenue which is in Dyer Straits. I would not want to put that project on hold. We have a few police cars we have some lighting throughout the city as our constituents can continue to complain that they want more lighting for safer neighborhoods. We have a fire extractor equipment and I'm sure we really don't want to cut back on that for our fire department and and people in in safety. Next. Equalized tax rate at the CPI or lower. So obviously you've heard me talk about confirmed consumer price index CPI is 1.4. Department of DOR confirmed that on the 23rd. Again it takes a long time for us to get these numbers so we're working on a budget with a lot of gray areas in the beginning. So our 1.4 CPI estimate was used in our 2021 executive budget and it was confirmed. Next. As you can see here our 2021 budget facts and I'm sure you guys have reviewed those intensely. Next. Our assessed tax rate I wanted to give a little bit of history on this as we tend to forget where we were where we've been and where we're going. So in our 2021 budget we kind of adjusted this so it does say in the bottom it says tax tax rate per budget year just to help with some confusion. So in 2021 what we're proposing is basically a 1.49 percent or 15 cents per thousand. In 2020 it was a 13 cent per thousand. 2019 was 17 cents. 2018 was 19 cents. 2017 was 19 cents. So please understand that we are what most would look at as a flat if not declining in 1920 and 2021 if you were to run the averages. In 18 and 19 that's when we did the City Hall and the South Point Enterprise which are both very good projects for the city. In 2020 we did leave money on the table when it came to our levy which we don't want to we're not planning to do that in 2021. Next. Equalized to assessed ratio. We put this together to help to help the council to better understand where we are when you look at our equalized to assessed ratio. I think this is hopefully beneficial for you. When you look at our annualized equalized to assessed ratio you can see that we've continued to drop over the years. Our percent gap of 100 compliance obviously the red at the top is increasing. So out of we are out of compliance since 2019. Our capital improvements for reassessment was proposed in 2017 to the to the committee. It was pushed off and this project of reassessment was to be done in 2021 and that has not been accepted. In 2021 the state chose to keep the trend on equalized values. Next. Property tax levy again you can see over the years we've tried we tend to be somewhat flat. We did provide the library with a three percent increase in the levy adjusting transit dollars using CARES Act funding. Unfortunately with CARES Act funding we have to remember that that's short lived so that means that we will have to make up that adjustment in levy that we provided to the to the library. Next. Fund balance. So as you can see the city city's goal is to maintain the fund balance at 25 percent for the next year's budgeted general fund expenditures. This is something that's given us a lot of benefit when it comes to the moody. We're looked at as a fiscally responsible safety net with our fund balance at the level that it's at. It's consistent with moody's credit services recommendation and in 2020 2021 our recommended budget fund balance is approximately 39 percent. Just to bring everybody up to speed in 2021 I do plan to review what what we can do to use our to use or control our fund balance better. Example for everybody is that we used five million of the city's fund balance for city hall if we all remember that we borrowed six we borrowed a portion and we've used a portion of our our fund balance. That was back in 2018 and 2019 we've already paid that back plus increased to 39 percent so we need to get our hands wrapped around that how can we adjust that and what options do we have as a council and as a as a city. Next so here the fund balance uncommitted you can see we're at 15 15 million 735 and that's our actual fund balance and our targeted is only at 10 million so you can see that we've got you know in excess of upwards of six million. Next 2021 2021 person personnel changes I just want to help everybody understand that the addition of a one FTE program coordinator senior services that was funded via contributions from the friends of the senior activity center that's net neutral that means it's not costing the city for that person that person's been working at the senior center for several years. Transfer of one FTE in public works streets and sanitation again that was just an adjustment within the departments and the transfer of one FTE in the fire department staff to the ambulance fund again that was basically administration so that was net neutral. All right next oh thank you. Our 2021 recommended budget changes RO 82 20 and 21 I'm just wondering if anybody has any questions that Director Halverson and myself can answer regarding the 2021 budget changes presented in October 19th to the committee at a whole otherwise I have nothing further. Any questions? I've got a couple questions Mr Chairman. Jim do you want to wait till we get into the next item then? That's fine. Very good thank you for that presentation Administrator Wolf. So next item is number four items for discussion and possible action we have four documents before us they include RC number 167 of 2021 by the committee of the whole Tumas referred RO number 82 of 2021 by the finance director submitting the 2021 budget adjustments related the resolution number 103 of 2021 by all the persons down here in Sorenson establishing the 2021 budget appropriations and the 2020 tax levy for use during the calendar year so those are on the agenda so that if any amendments are needed those can be made tonight and adjusted so that when we come to the final approval for the budget at the first meeting in November on November 2nd we hopefully will have all the adjustments made so with that with those items on the floor I'll turn it over to all the person born for his comments. Thank you Mayor. I guess Todd could could address these. A week or so ago I attended a number of Zoom conferences with the League of Municipalities annual meeting and one of those was budgeting for 2021 and I guess beyond with the pandemic and there were three municipalities that were involved in that one was Clintonville with about 4,500 people Madison and the other one escaped to me right now that had a population of about 9,000 people and all of those municipalities were either going to remain neutral on their on their budget increase for 2021 or maybe a couple cents higher Madison was actually going to reduce their their tax levy by 28 cents a thousand and I remember I realized there's many differences between a city the size of Madison and Sheboygan with as far as their their their annual growth because of being a high tech city and many other things but on the other hand Madison decided in order to lower that tax levy by 28 cents that they were going to take a number of measures number one they weren't giving their city employees any raise for 2021 they were reopening fire fire and police contracts to hopefully have those unions make some additional contributions so I and and then I read in the paper and Miss Johnson referred to it over the county's budget that was referenced in the in the paper over the weekend where the county is is cutting their tax levy substantially for next year I believe 26 cents a thousand and the amount that they're actually going to level levy for next year is on a $54 million a $51 million budget is $788,000 that's their increased levy for next year on a $51.4 million budget I guess my question is and I asked you this last week Todd you told me that you and Marty were working on a number of scenarios to keep our budget from having an increase in levy for next year or maybe a two a two cent raise or a five cent raise can you tell the council specifically uh when you were going over those scenarios with Marty what were you considering if we were going to have a zero levy increase what specifically were you talking about either cutting or not funding in 2021 thank you uh thank you Jim um as you and I have discussed at length there's a couple of things I want to point out uh to the council in in discussion of the of the points that you brought up first I would be cautious to the council when you're going to reference a a community of 4500 or 9000 um constituents because there's there's quite a difference between a community of that size and a city of Sheboygan of 50,000 we do have a a little bit larger budget than that so when we also we've looked into multiple communities to see what kind of non-represented salary increases have been done so the city of Sheboygan my goal was two percent which is still low when you look at the cost of living Manitowoc is at 2.07 Port Washington's at 3 percent Appleton's flat Beloit 2 percent Fond du Lac is 1.75 La Crosse 5.5 percent Wausau flat and Madison flat but also since you brought up Madison I do want to point out that they are looking at two to four days of furlough for all their non-reps so no work and uh and basically a furlough means that you're not contactable you can't communicate you you basically have to take two to four days off where you're not working at all or checking emails or answering the phone for for the city so when we talk about that and then we I'll reference the the models that I referenced um Mr. Halverson and myself ran several models of how we would look at the levy and um the actual um um sorry expenditure restraint thank you the expenditures restraint the the whole goal with the model was to make sure that we didn't leave any of our levy on the table like we did in 2020 because the problem that if you leave um money on the table as I call it with with uh the levy you don't get it back so if we were to keep everything flat and not do a the 15 cent per thousand we would literally have to and we can do it we can cut into our fund balance we can do that but then what happens is in 2022 which I personally think is going to be a tougher year for everybody 2021 as we can see is not uh um turning out to be that bad of a year we're getting through it and in 2022 it's not we're not going to have the ability to make the changes or adjustments as discussed with you that we may need to do in 2022 so my recommendation is that we accept the budget as stated for the benefit and the and of the city because if we if we actually were to cut we would actually have to make major cuts plus we would lose our our moody's rating which we all know we don't want that because that'll be a cost that that affects us in future future growth and future borrowing but we would not be able to make the changes in 22 respectfully because of the fact that we would have because of the because of the the levy limits so that would mean cuts to service we would have to you know look at um what departments would have to be cut and what services that the constituents um would be willing to lose because of the 15 cents i hope that answers your question jim well you know every time every time we give a two percent raise to the city employees and believe me i want them to be well compensated i want to have and keep good people but every time we're raising the uh giving employees the uh a two percent raise that's adding over five hundred and fifty thousand dollars to our budget and you know rather than do that maybe some year we should just put another five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in uh in program and and getting back to the shabuagan shabuagan county adam peen stated in the paper over the weekend that uh if he doesn't get as much cares cares act reimbursement uh and and other reimbursements they have a very a very generous uh reserves to cover those losses so in other words adam peen is willing to use fund balance uh for unanticipated expenses and you know we have to realize that uh this is not easy for our constituents i have a fiduciary responsibility to all of my constituents and since this covid thing started back in march there's another eight million people that are living in poverty that compared to before before this started uh people in my age group uh we're we're getting less than a one percent increase in uh in our social security next year which probably isn't going to affect me personally but i'm sure there's a lot of senior citizens that it is going to affect uh so uh and i have i have friends that have children that are helping out their children with mortgage payments and their children are helping out their children so you know i i realized that our unemployment rate in shabuagan county is much better than uh than it is in other parts of the country if you saw the article in the in the shabuagan press the other night regarding our local salvation army last year they helped a thousand kids around christmas they're estimating a hundred percent increase and what they're going to have to do this christ during the christmas season they're estimating they're half going to have to help a couple a couple thousand more kids our food banks are stretched more and more people are depending on that so i'm very concerned with my fiduciary responsibility to my constituents that we're just continuing to increase the tax levy and it's going to be very very difficult for some of some of our constituents to get by in 2021 as a point of information all the person born i'd like to also remind you that a few years back shabuagan county passed a sales tax and that goal on the sales tax was to uh pave more of our roads and they gave some of the money to the different municipalities as well but the other thing they did is they're using some of that money for property tax relief and they're following through in that promise but they had a new source of revenue to do that with not just property tax is there any other using that for we're using that for roads correct pardon me we're using the sales tax that we're getting that extra that extra sales tax we're getting from the county that's going strictly for roads for the city is that correct that's correct it'll pay a little bit more than half of the cost of repaving geely avenue this year is there any other other person donahue thank you mayor um tag can you just translate the increase in the tax levy on that that is being proposed for a house that is worth a hundred thousand dollars on a hundred thousand dollars just one second i do it myself but it's really not my skill set yeah it's like fifteen dollars oops sorry one second fat fingers fifteen dollars on a hundred thousand 15 it's 15 cents per thousand okay so just a couple of thoughts one i know it is very interesting to look at what other communities are doing and to try to analyze their thoughts um elder born i think that you showed very powerfully that it is all over the board now why is that in my opinion it's because individual communities pay people to analyze what services and how people are compensated and what the financial picture of the entity is and we and they do that in you know in some detail the other thing that happens is different cities have different factual issues some maybe old cities that need to redo a lot of their property uh or their infrastructure there may be cities like madison that really are blossoming because of particular tech industries and so forth um the interesting part about shawain county uh other than the fact that as the mayor has pointed out they are using although we as a recipient of four hundred thousand dollars plus or minus from the county for sales tax are required to use it for transportation the county is apparently also using it for property tax relief so for them the press um but i will note that their levy has increased a fair amount uh not their tax rate but their levy in other words they're bringing more money in so i would just caution us to not take any really hard lessons overall from what pink and bill is doing or washaw or madison or even nanotalk um i you know i've looked at this in some detail and i think that the budget is reasonable under the circumstances uh all they're born i think you have articulated very powerfully how perps people in this community are going to be affected by the pandemic even more than people who are not low income we have a lot of low and low income people and working families that truly it's truly are going to be struggling but if we start cutting back if we follow people if we um if we commit to a non-growth philosophy like we're not going to do we're not going to encourage development through tax incremental financing we're you know we're just not going to help out that way we're not going to do this we're not going to do that i think we can do that and we can save our constituents fifteen dollars a year or you know twenty seven and a half dollars a year whatever but we aren't getting at the heart of the overall economic health and energy and prosperity of the community so at this point i've looked at this in some detail uh i know we all have and i think that the the proposal is modest but bright and forward thinking and will encourage growth rather than um that kind of shrinking that happens to communities when there's not enough property tax to repair the roads and businesses don't want to locate here and then the schools shrink and on and on so i know i've talked to one but i i i just feel so strongly that um a budget is a way of thinking about the future and it has to have a broad picture as well as the specifics and i think this one does and that's why i'm going to support it as is thank you for those comments is there any other discussion or philly has come my barb had a question barb please go ahead yes um i had a conversation with with jim and i've talked to Todd and i've talked to Ryan um only because each person has a different perspective and Todd thank you for your time um i appreciate you walking me through a lot of it um number one what i want to say is um as somebody that survived a home fire when i was in elementary school i will always always support the police and fire department and i think a two percent increase is a minor amount that the city of shiboy and will pay for protection so number one that isn't what i'm looking at um i do agree with jim though that you know we need to start cutting somewhere and um more than a year ago i asked about you know how is covid going to affect all of our budget and the revenue we have coming in and i didn't really didn't get an answer at the time um and i think i probably wouldn't get a clear answer now because there is no way to know how it's going to affect us because we're not done with it yet um i am concerned because as we do the surveys every every year since i was elected um survey says roads are the most important things to our constituents yet we never seem to have enough money to put into them to catch up and i'm afraid if we cut the budget um we're just going to see more of what we've already seen we'll get so far behind and prices will go up and then we'll never catch up again so um i hear where jim is coming from with his comments and i appreciate um mary lin's comments but um i'm still like balanced in the middle here um we can't we can't cut our employees they've been cut for the last 12 plus plus years with act 10 and less revenue to the cities and you know we've cut as thin as we can and we have the least amount of staff um doing the most amount of work and i think they deserve that two percent increase um and if we're going to cut i think we need to put our heads together and find some place else to do it but not not taking away from our employees thanks thank you for those comments mike all the person sorenson thank you um not a lot of notes i appreciate the conversation that we're having from everybody as well um and i definitely agree with with all the person fell these comments when it comes just in terms of prioritizing repairing our roads um is one of the biggest issues when we do the community surveys i mean previous councils before that most of us were on here kept kicking the can down the road when it came to road repairs infrastructure projects and a lot of other different much needed repairs that our community needed and we all know when you kick the can down the road on major infrastructure projects like that the cost just skyrocket immensely and it and it's much much much more difficult to catch up and you just keep spiraling down and i and i don't want us to be in that position again because previous councils have made that decision i feel like we're finally slowly getting back in a good routine where we can get on ahead of our road repairs obviously we have a long way to go as well um i do have a few questions for administrator wolf and i am just kind of wondering if you could address some of the comments um um mrs uh dulcy johnson have brought have brought up just in terms of just the the about the ten million dollar difference between the total expenditures with the adopted 2020 budget as well as the proposed executive budget as well um if you could just mention those issues that would be great thank you not a problem um and i'm sure marty can jump in if i misspeak or anything like that as since i'm new with this but um when we look at the the balance we have to remember that denan um is actually what's throwing our numbers off tremendously the nan is not calculated in their geo debt so when you look at the geo debt and that's where moody's likes debt to go because it's easy to see it's it's right in front of you the nan although it was on our debt it was in a different area so when it didn't show up and by borrowing the money in 2020 which we are to uh at a at a better interest rate and we're locking it in from a nan to a geo you're seeing us pay it out in in 2021 so you're you're seeing a lot a large shift and we had that shift back in when we did the city hall and the um south point enterprise we saw the big big shift of dollars of revenue and expenses and really we're not a negative 6.9 million or or or so it's it's actually we're shifting um i believe the ten and a half million dollars through there so there's actually not a negative but more of a positive so if if people would review the budget and brief and look at the expenses and and that we also the team also updated where we are in 2020 to see how we're going to how we're going to basically fair so as uh alder feldi had questioned how how is um covid going to affect us please understand that 2020 although second quarter was not good um third quarter fourth quarter are looking much much better and obviously that's going to really help us and you know from my professional opinion and from what i've heard you know going on with within the uh the communities in that everybody is more concerned about getting through 2021 because 2022 is really where we're going to see um you know assuming that everything hopefully gets taken care of in 2021 2022 would be a bigger concern to worry about does that help you yeah i'm sorry is there any other discussion i could just make one more comment mayor please go ahead all the person born you want me to go ahead mayor yes please go ahead thank you uh back to answer the question you know we've we've been neglecting roads and that type of thing over the years i believe when i came on the council back in about 2006 the portion of our the portion of our budget that was going to towards wages and benefits was under 80 probably about 70 78 somewhere in there and gradually over the years and this may answer the question for some older persons that are not aware of this but i believe now our our our budget is probably 81 percent up in that area 81 percent salary and benefits so when you only got 20 and 19 or 20 percent of your budget to uh you know for roads and all the other things we're supposed to do that's that's part of the problem and uh you know i think uh i think a priority next year for all the department heads should be to find new efficiencies and ways of ways of doing things you know for example a good example of that would be the department of public work my god the staff that public works had 10 years ago compared to now i think it's probably half but they have better equipment they're working smarter and of course they're getting very good direction from their from their from their department head and i and i'm not saying other departments uh aren't aren't looking for new efficiencies but i think if we're going to have enough budget of our budget to dedicate the program i think next year and i and i know you're going to do this mod because you're going to have more time with with the next year's budget but i think we have to redouble our efforts to find new efficiencies and better ways of doing something that perhaps and in finding better ways of doing something maybe reduce our overall census of city employees and that's done every day in the private sector and i think that's where we have to redouble our efforts next year to try to get that percentage of our budget that goes to salary and benefits uh under 80 percent again thank you thank you for those comments one last call for any discussion there's anyone else maryland there's some more all the person down here in burton and in burton all the person down here reberdo would you like to go first i think other flicky panasky should probably go first because i've already chatted all the person flicky panasky thank you very much um a couple of things i i do agree with jim that we should look at personnel because it is a large portion of our budget what i am aware of is that there is a personnel study ongoing out of finance and personnel committee so we're we're on our way to look at what kind of positions there are what descriptions there are and how those descriptions work and as to working more efficiently i also am understanding that this year there will be a concerted effort to upgrade our internal computer systems so that they are everybody is all on one system and um it it will lead to one better efficiencies and two also better data um the other thing that i had observed earlier is um having come out of of finance background it is really one of my deals is we really should not jeopardize our bond rating that that is a significant um advantage to our city it gives us lower interest rates it makes us a good bet for anyone who wants to buy our debt so some of our reserves i looked at the reserves and thought maybe we don't need so many reserves um this year i said yeah we probably need those reserves because i too agree that we're going to we're going to feel more fiscal impact in the year 2022 than we probably are in 2021 and again we we need some of those fund balances and and we need to protect our bond rating thank you thank you for those comments older person donahue uh just very briefly um i think uh Todd if you and marty do some um projections for 2022 and uh just set out in writing what you think some of the bigger challenges are going to be uh for the elders i think that will be helpful and then second i couldn't agree with older born more that we need to continue to look for efficiencies um and better ways of doing business and i just want my hats off to all of our department heads who do that all the time so i've been on the council for eight years and the really quite remarkable restructuring of most of the departments save money and to make services more efficient has been very heartwarming um the library alone has nearly cut its staff in half and of course there are service reductions and so forth but nonetheless you know that kind of innovation and interest in doing more with less i think has been a key fact that there are a key piece of of what our department heads and our employees do so jim i think um i think your point is well taken but thankfully we're in very good shape that way and it's not as if this is something that would just start we'll continue to do that and that will all be good so um but i i am interested in in just thoughts on on 2022 not for tonight but you know as we go on thank you for those comments administrator wolf thank you mayor um council i just want to kind of reiterate a couple of things we tonight we've uh talked about the budget we've talked about you know potential cuts things like that wages please understand that my predecessor had accelerator rates of three percent and four percent for employees in addition to the cost of living so respectfully if you had a two percent cost of living then that person could qualify for an additional three percent or additional four percent please also understand that we struggle as a city hiring new recruits hiring new people for our community and that's difficult so as you've heard me say in the past and i've only been i've only been in this position since you know July 7th my background is process improvement my my my background is change management please have faith in the fact that we are turning over every stone within the city and the departments and that the department heads are doing a fantastic job helping to lift those heavy rocks to find any ways to improve things that is why i came to the council and told you guys that we need to update our technology we're also updating our our training so there's things that i'm bringing to you guys for the betterment of the future and if we want to cut that and do what we've done in the past and not take care of the things that i've talked about countlessly we haven't taken care of our roads we haven't taken care of our infrastructure we haven't taken care of our fleet and number one we haven't taken care of our people if that's the road we want to go then let me know but right now this is a conservative budget that's going to help us to continue to work on our internals and bear the the needs for 2022 that may may need for additional changes and in the meantime we will be working on what we can improve to make things more efficient in the future thank you thank you for those comments any other discussion very good then items 4.1 through 4.4 will lie over till our meeting on the 2nd of november all the person sorenson thank you mayor i move to adjourn second thank you for that motion and support all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye opposed opposed we stand adjourned thank you for your time tonight