 All right, at 505 I am going to call our special board of finance to order the first item on the agenda is the agenda is there a motion. Thank you, is there a second point. Great, all those in favor please say aye. Any opposed please say me, and the motion is unanimously adopted. Is there anyone here to speak to public forum. There must be two that are joining us attendance. They are and they are both staff members. So, seeing no one, I am going to close the public forum and welcome the mayor. We are ready for item 3.1 mayor so Jeff and shape it if you want to come up and talk to us a little bit about authorization of parking revenue financing. Hi, Jeff pageant director of traffic, and we're here tonight seeking for finance council approval to enter into a $750,000 bond to pay for repairs into downtown garage and the marketplace garage. These were critical repairs, replace the stair home massively significantly repaired a sterile downtown garage that was actually closed and repairs made to the marketplace garage are intended to give us five years of planning time so start to think about what might be next to the vision of what might be and to go out to the patient because the facility is 50% This very similar memo and actually the request went to the Works Commission last week, and we got their approval to enter into this bond instrument. So, I'm going to go to the next house, see if I see any questions about specific terms and points, so five year bond. Thank you I just have a question you had said that the market place, market place that is five years, you mean three to five years that would be key. What did you just say. Market place garage is embedded in the useful way, and we don't have a plan yet to do something else in other patients be time to buy ourselves. We don't have a plan at the time, so that is a useful way back around years. These repair bias. All right, and then that's the market place what about downtown, the downtown garage the stairs were rustling out. They were falling down and you have to close. And so it doesn't have the same structural concerns that the marketplace and the other college street has received recently as much more comprehensive repair so the future of that garage both have so that I think are more secure than I guess the only concern that I have is that usually, you know, on the life of what you need. And, you know, by years you're not going to start this year three. So that's a, and I wonder is the reason why you're doing that because you don't have the funds for year one and two are still recovering both. So, I mean, I think that's, you know, your main issue is to, you know, obviously you're planning for years that are far into the future or so, assuming that you have a plan, or there is something else that's being retired or something that would, I don't know, Catherine that would give you the research to leave the 250,000 in three years is not going to be I have been left. So President Paul, if you see at the end of the memo that I miss something I'm sorry something about it is in there and I think it's goes to your question which is that I've asked Jeff and Jeff and to come back and the next three or six months with a basically a plan to ensure that they would then that this is a plan to ensure that they will be able to pay it off on the schedule. This is an area where to some degree we control the future revenues through policy decisions that we make and it's been many been quite a few years now since there have been really adjustments to policy or rates that could generate additional revenues. So we're left with to do that for I think, you know, good reason during the during the pandemic and media years after. And we think well, need to make some decisions in the future, such as, you know, something that has been on for years that has to do it, don't charge anything in the garage or something is that's kind of possible that they need to be evaluated if the revenues don't recover kind of organically on their own. And there are other other decisions like that that are within our control so this gives us five years to figure this out and I've asked for a report that we would present to you and get approval on three six months from then. Okay, so I actually read the payments and didn't read the spare groups. That was in there I obviously that I mean you know it's not a, it's not the it's not the ideal situation. I mean I think we should all be honest about that this is not the ideal situation. But, you know, and of course the other thing I wonder is, I mean, is it possible on, you know, the rate 375 just seems I mean I understand that. It's a bond counseling. You know that was the, the recommendation. There aren't. There aren't other. There isn't another solution to this and I don't, I don't know what it is. But I don't know if it's for ourselves or there's some other way to do that. Yes, I don't know, but it does some. It's not the ideal situation I mean I'll support it but I sort of, I think it's unfortunate, but three to five months and three to six months will look forward with great anticipation to the ideas are that you should agree with us. I can't wait. Thanks President I understand your perspective and largely, you know, I think it's worth. I think it's probably the area of the six finances or hit most heavily and permanently by by the pandemic we just haven't seen all the other referees dreams have largely recovered parking. It's probably the flip side of the good news we were reporting last week that people are driving less and that emissions are down. Certainly, the people are coming into work less. That's one of the major drivers of the garage so this is an area where you know we've really been dealing with both many, you know, a long list of deferred maintenance to address as well as large economic forces. I agree with you. That I think it's really important that we follow up and we go to what is said here that this there needs to be a plan that comes back early in this in this loan. So that we definitely have a way forward I think it's a it's a man I'm confident this is a manageable number we can work on it. And I think it's really important to make sure that we don't get lost we like forget about it neglected this. I'm glad we're having this conversation to make sure we're all the same page this needs to come back or some top decisions can't fly. We've got to make sure we don't take the can down the road here and ignore this we may need to make some changes. Okay, get back to them. Yeah, I just had a question about some of the mechanics of the repayment. So there's no payment not even interest payments in year one and two. There is interest there are interest. There's interest payment on your point too. There. Okay, fast. Okay, so just wondering. So you're sort of getting put into the last three years. Okay, I understand. Sorry. Well, if we have data. You make a note and we should update the document. It looks like there's no payments. There's interest payments. There's one interest in 315. And there's also there was also I got a last minute edit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that was some medical. Yeah, it's correct. Okay. So maybe if we take action on this, surely. Yeah. Okay. Great. Any further discussion questions? Are we ready for. I will be recommended action. Because Barlow. Yeah. I'm happy to say. A further discussion. Seeing. Let's go to vote all those. If you're the most, please say hi. And then you post motion carries the notes. Thank you. If you can. I'm glad to be able to work through the pro forma and assumptions that we have to return these two funds to health. Great. The revised memo. Yes. Or DT. I'll just get that up immediately. Thank you. Great. Thanks. Okay. We have two more items on this special work financing. I remember two is. Annual appropriation and budget for fiscal year in July 1st, 23 and I moved to 30.4. And then we will all talk about the kind of companion resolution, which is cleaning tax assessments. How the board like to proceed. We do. We have a PowerPoint. That. Catherine is prepared for. Full council discussion. It's, it's, it's. I think entirely made up of the information that's been shared. Prior person PowerPoint presentations with the board. So we could. We could go through that or maybe be more efficient to go straight to any comments or questions that the board would like to make. We will be making a full presentation at the. At the council. Body hasn't. I haven't seen everything on once. So how. What is. More like. That's to proceed. I mean, I personally am going to see the, I'm going to see the presentation and it's effectively unchanged from when I was on the 12th, is that about right? It is. I mean, I wasn't here for that board of finance meeting, but I did look back at the. It is a combination of that one and one from the 1st of June to kind of get everyone up to speed. The idea is that. I think we've got three of you. And it's okay. I think that the three of you and counselor, Jen have been along for this journey and the other counselors. Maybe not so to provide like a full overview of kind of where we've been up to now. But it is all. I just took slides from everything you've already seen. I just put them into one new slide deck, but I did not create new content. That's a case. I mean, I don't. again. It wasn't planning. But I certainly can. Okay, then so let's add my hope. Although I think maybe maybe get quite a memory. That's the 12th budget that I've been responsible for. I great majority others the board of finance has taken action making a recommendation on the budget. Well, we're out there before the council voted. I think I think there have been one or two times one for whatever reason, the board shows not to do that. So it's not an absolute requirement. But the idea that we, as we discussed on the 12th was that we intend to do that and to be in this meeting at a time, which it would certainly I think, yeah, that's the purpose of us really gathering. And I was welcome to look into that fact that I'm on the floor. Yeah, that's one thing that we could do now or we can have further discussion. Well, I have, I, I don't make a motion, I just really make a comment. I, you know, so I have, as probably everyone knows, and certainly anyone with Facebook knows, I did have a period of time where I was not as typically engaged in the, in the process as I usually do to circumstances beyond my control goods circumstances, but nevertheless, a little bit more challenging, and certainly tried to keep tabs on what was going on. I did not see, and there haven't been notes, there haven't been minutes that I've seen posted for the July and the June 12th Board of Finance meeting. I basically went off the conversations I had with people about that meeting, and then also the PowerPoint, which was pretty much unchanged. I mean, maybe there were a few missing, but I mean, I think it was mostly the same. I guess the, the only thing that I will say is that I don't think I've ever, all the years that I've served on the scene, so I don't think I've ever interacted with a city councilor who wants to vote no on a budget, because it's a, it's a huge document. It's the most important thing that we do all year. And since that's the priorities for the coming year. And I, you know, I never give up hope that there is an opportunity to find a middle ground, you know, collaboration, compromise. I'm not saying that I laid no fault with any one person, any two people, I take responsibility for it myself. I think that there still are opportunities just within the normal fluidity of an entity the size that there is $290,000 that over the course of this year would present itself in such a way that effectively no public, no public safety, no non, no non-union, no current non-union positions are affected. All of the principles that I believe you put out in the narrative could still be honored and still have a way to have a meeting of the mind. So streets, the streets get done in the way that we want them to get done and people feel that, you know, taxes have not, that we have done the absolute even further best we can do. We've already done the best we can do. Now we're talking about the best best. And I think, you know, I, because it's, because they're, you know, they're line items in a budget, it's hard to really go line by line. And I feel like doing that in a, in a public setting probably isn't fair because some of them are either vacant positions, positions that soon become vacant that really are not appropriate to talk about publicly. So I don't really want to go into all the nuances. I'll give you one example. And then maybe that would lead to some sort of a discussion. So Catherine, you know, I asked you about line 7850. 7850 for those who are not as well-versed in line 7850. And I, I want anyone to raise their hand if they know what line 7850 is. Okay. All right. Do you know what line 7850 is? All right. Well, now we're all going to know. So line 7850 is contingency. And line 7850 in FY 20 and FY 19 was around $3,000 that was spent. Last year, it was budgeted for $100,000 this year, this year, right now as we live and breathe FY 23 according to Catherine, $22,000 has been spent. So $100,000, $22,000. Now, of course the word contingency means contingency. That means if we already know that it's going to happen, it's somewhere else. If we don't know it's going to happen, well, we don't know what's going to happen. So we certainly have to plan for that. This year's line item contingency is $175,000, which begs the question, if it was $100,000 last year and we've gone through an entire year, we've gone through three years of incredibly difficult and challenging pandemic uncertainties, is it possible that $175,000 could at least be level funded for this year? I haven't asked you that question. I apologize, I don't mean to put you on the spot. And I'm not saying that $175,000 is unrealistic. But let's just try to see if maybe $175,000 could be $100,000. Well, you get a little bit closer and a little bit closer. Again, I can't really go into all the little nuances. I started calculating it myself. And even based on one month, I think there are opportunities to at least go half of that of the $290,000. But that's me as someone who doesn't know all of the intricacies of every little line item, of every little department, of every big department. I can't pinpoint all of that. What I can say is that in the past, there have been times where we have done budgets, where we have either put placeholders in knowing that over the course of a year, there will be other opportunities in an $80 million budget to find those little smaller amounts. Or when there are things that we've really wanted to do, we have said we will revisit this in six months and we will find some of those efficiencies, vacancies, attrition, whatever they may be. So I guess what I'm saying is that I think that it is tremendously powerful and sets a wonderful tone for the coming year. If we as a body are able to find a way to honor all of the priorities that are important for the administration and all the priorities that are important for those who must vote on the budget. And that's where I will leave it. We don't usually legislate in this way. Probably if I had been here on the 12th of June, I probably would be saying this now and saying this then and not now. As I say, I know there's only a couple of hours here, but I still feel that we should at least have that opportunity. And I would just ask you if you think that there is that opportunity in a way that we could find a meaning of the minds. So that's those are my comments. I won't be saying anything at the board at the council meeting. I'm saying no. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Great. Thank you, President Paul. I certainly understand. Sorry, I'm doing grazing. And if you want to respond to that, I just want you to go ahead and you can comment first. Sure. I always appreciate the opportunity to find a way for us to come to a compromise and be able to vote yes. And sometimes we're just not going to get there. And I have a hard time seeing us getting there in the two hours we have. And we're likely to vote on the budget finding a solution that we couldn't find in the last eight weeks of these conversations. And I would have a hard time trusting that whatever we found to try to come up with that additional money without raising taxes. I would have a hard time making that decision without knowing the full impacts of deciding where we'd like them to come from. And so I appreciate that effort. I think at least from my perspective as the councillor planning to vote no tonight, that also having that conversation between now and 545 or 630 whenever we're discussing the budget of the full council. And I feel comfortable making that decision, changing my vote. So I was going to save my longer comments for the full council. And I think I still will. So I guess I will just leave it there for now. Thank you for those comments. I appreciate where you're both coming from with those comments. Something I will repeat when we're upstairs. I in many ways think this of the 12 budgets that we're responsible for was the most difficult. We have been grappling with some, just a host of difficult forces and issues, many of which are beyond our direct control. We, for a second year in a row, are facing historic inflation. We have continued volatility and some, we've just been discussing some shortfalls related to disruptions of the pandemic. We made some big changes to our programs and our efforts to allow address equity issues in prior budgets. And we took on the challenge of phasing that out over three years. And we're in the third year of that phase out of the last year that there was some federal support for those. We have kept those equity commitments high and the federal support for them is going away as we knew it would. That had to be digested in this budget. And we're also trying to be sensitive to our constituents who face rising costs and pretty much all aspects of their life. We don't want to undo, make city government an additional burden. So with all those constraints, this has been a very tough budget to complete. I think we can, I think there's a lot to present at your point. I think there is a lot to be proud of and excited about in this budget, despite all that. This continues to advance the city, advance the community in numerous important ways. It continues our efforts to rebuild and really retool the police department and prove and change the way we deliver public safety. It continues our major commitment to improving our infrastructure. It continues our commitment to those equity commitments I was just talking about including fully funded and reorganized RDIB department. It for the first time has nearly $200,000 in it for opioid related interventions. It's the first time we're able to hear something. So we're able to use new revenues that are coming to us from the opioid settlements and deliver progress in more. So to get to deliver all that while also overcoming these challenges, we have had to push very hard in areas and really push up to the edge of what I am comfortable budgeting for. We are one of the complicated projections we do every year is around attrition and around to your point President Paul, what's going to happen in the normal course of business that's going to end up saving us money because positions are not refilled as quickly because vacancies come up and we have really pushed those assumptions for example to double our attrition numbers in many departments from what we have in the past. In the face of that and frankly knowing how challenging it has been to control personnel costs since the pandemic because of our challenges competing in the workforce because of inflationary pressures. I think we did explain this somewhere. We did feel that it was prudent to bump back up the contingency number from $100,000 to $175,000. In contrast, we have had some years that it's been as much as $500,000. It's been a while since we've done that but it's not it's really not a historically large contingency number. It represents on a hundred million dollar budget. It is quite a small contingency. So I appreciate the sentiment that a lot of the budgets over the last 12 years have been unanimous budgets and we have worked hard for that and I did have some communications over the past week exploring whether there was a way to come to a meeting in line. We haven't gotten there yet. I'm hearing and I respect your sense that we talked to to bridge that gap now. So I that's my kind of reaction to the last two comments. I guess I would hope that with councillor Nguyen's point that maybe it would be possible. Are we in a position to make a recommendation on this on this budget? Given we sort of know where everybody's at at this point, I would be happy to recommend the action to make it out so to recommend the budget resolution on this. Thank you. Would anyone like to make any further comment? That's for you. I'll just say briefly before I go for the first time. Thanks. I recognize that we're in a challenging budget here and I recognize that future budget years should be even more challenging. We have local matches on a number of shorter projects that we still don't have a funding source for and we have vehicles that need replacing the deferred list that's going to grow even longer and come in years with a perfect moratorium and that the cost of living increases that we negotiated as part of the union contract will also add additional pressure to future budget years. And with all of those things, with those being the predictable things that we see coming at us in the future, I see a need to increase taxes potentially next year, year after that. Thank you. This year, we were able to find a way to bridge the deficit that you all brought us at the beginning of the budget conversation to have a budget that met the needs that we had without cutting staff or services. And I appreciate that very much for us to ask for an additional amount beyond what was planned for this year in terms of paving and patching. We all know the streets that are in dire need of improvement. I'm not aware of that. But to ask people for more this year, we'll know that we're going to need years in the future, we're going to maybe even have to ask for a larger tax increase. I just, I can't support that this year. And I think this is now is the most important time for us to be talking about more sustainable ways for us to fund city services going forward, because it's clear that with the reappraisal, the property tax is not going to be a sustainable method for us to find so many of the infrastructure improvements that we need to maintain in the sanctuary city services that people have come to expect. In fact, we need to find a better way to do this. And I hope that we can do that over the next year, over the next two years. And with the legislature to do that, they have to go to Montpellier to get a move on these things, changing the way the state is funded education and services for decades is not going to be an easy ask. But I think it's imperative that we make the examples. So with that, I will not be supporting this. So thank you for being so transparent, Councilor Geary, on your thinking. I do want to make sure, you know, we have a number of counselors here, we've got the public watching. I want to make sure that it's my understanding, I think you just started getting this, but you've lost your vote on this over the half a cent increase to the street stacks that is in the budget that is before you. This is true, it was not, you know, it's accurate that when we began at the beginning of May, our kind of draft budget, that increase was not in the initial discussions. I think this is an example of how that process is not intended to be just a kind of pro forma process. The idea is to engage you in the board and public council in our thinking when still in draft form, and in this case, after doing the street work that was going to get done in the coming year and understanding that we are below the voter approved caps for the street tax by a couple cents, I believe, we started discussing in really a response to council feedback, whether there might be some, and really understanding that because of our constraints, the street patching budget was going to be very limited this year. That's one of this discussion of an additional half cent, which what is the for the average taxpayer, just to begin, it's clear what we're talking about here. It is just over a dollar a month, hang on, it's in this other power point. Okay, Catherine gets, I figure I'll just finish the point. So this a dollar fifty-four a month. So that's, you know, it's not going to be the same for everybody, that's on a three hundred seventy thousand dollar home because that's the median or the average home. The median home, pretty most recent assessment. And, you know, what's, here's the difference that half a cent is going to make is it's going to see engineer, Norm Baldwin is here. He is projected with the initial budget we were talking about there being a approximately $450,000 deficit in our patching need citywide for the upcoming year. And with this change, we'll still have a deficit. I've reduced that deficit by more than 50 years. That will be an under $200,000 deficit. And that will allow us to get more patching done citywide. It will be on first arterials and then neighborhood streets is the kind of way that the patching is prioritized to basically get that rate. Artillery streets, collective streets. I missed one, that's right. So the biggest bank of the book is the arterial streets. Obviously, there's a secondary review that relates to how bad a condition the road is in terms of volume of patches needed. So it's our best way of kind of spreading those funds to the specific targeted need so that we have serviceable roads come springtime through the winter. I think that's our biggest concern. Obviously, our preferred choice would be to really fully repair and redevelop streets. But if we were to fix one street and leave all those other streets kind of in a severe state of disrepair through the winter season, spring, so it makes sense to at least set a triage basis, deal with the patching that fix these kind of problem areas. But even with the half cent, we're not achieving problem with something all patching. But it is where we are. That's what we're going to work to make the best of what is not a great situation, but is reality we're living with. And I guess just to finish the point, I mean, from my perspective, while it is accurate that there is some additional cost in this budget, if it's passed with that additional half cent in there, the nature of the patching, the patching slows the deterioration of roads and it is an attempt to is a preventive maintenance attempt that has some benefit in sustaining the assets that we have and to reducing future costs. And so I think it's at least debatable whether this eliminate this half cent increase would actually reduce whether that's really a true savings or whether it's going to sort of be result in future costs, although we don't think it's stopped it totally project that sitting here right now, but that's what the patching is intended for. That's the way we will spend it. So, in fact, there's no further comment. I think we're ready for a vote on the motion. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Opposed? Nope. Motion carries three to one. Well, we didn't mind these. There is one more on the agenda, which is the tax resolution. Of course that it was a little lucky that we did these separate actions of that. I'm quite sure. No, it would happen if we passed one and not the other. Certainly, they are companion bills, if you will. So, I'm not sure that we need further discussion. Maybe we can have a motion on that as well. Sure. I'll move the motion. Thank you, President Paul. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Very important post. Okay, well, former quarter finance member comes to a high top. Can you count that? That's just a three to one vote with budgets. That completes our Warren agenda. Mayor, any second questions? Yes, go ahead. It's more common question about where we're at. Over a year ago, Council would be in a work with Council would be put a resolution in asking the city effectively in analysis of taxation, particularly property taxation and how, among other things, how the homestead or sensitivity related to city of Georgia. You realize that the time of that resolution is complicated to get the information because we're in the middle of being facing. And so who knows the mouse is complicated. We're now this year at a point where that sort of settled. We know that 70% of citizens get some sort of equalization, but we don't really have it drilled down. And I really think it would move us to understand that. I mean, the cutoff is actually up to $140,000 a year. The more major cutoff is up to 90,000. People below 90,000 get a pretty significant homestead credit. And we need to understand how that matches up with the people around you. Because it's faith on people's income, there's a lot of issues with the tax department on how to get that analyzed. And I think that resolution asks the city to employ a consultant to do it. But I just strongly encourage it, particularly going into the session next year, going into city budget, you know, we're going to have increases because of high school. We need to understand how good or not good that credit is. And I think it's better than we expect, but we don't know that. You know, we just don't know that. And I really encourage us to follow through on that analysis. Okay, thank you, Councillor Carpenter. And actually it reminds me in my response to Councillor McGee, I meant to mention another thing that I think we should feel good about this budget is that it recognizes that we do have major challenges coming in future years, both because of the trends that we talked about previously and additional trends like the cost of the new high school and the impact that has on our bonding capacity and other pressures. And so in this budget, we are funding a number of studies that will that will look at operating efficiencies that will look at our fleet that will look at how alternative ways of funding, some of the activities with CEDO and a HUD funded effort and more, this combines with some ongoing studies that are underway. So something, you know, anyone who's just tuning in now, something we've talked about repeatedly at this board is that over the first year, we're going to push for the bring those studies back as quickly as possible. So over the first six months of the year, we are really looking to the future challenges and being in a strong position or for those future budgets. And certainly we can make sure Councillor Carpenter that we have the best data we have about who gets those home state exceptions as part of that. Because I think the math of that program was like black box, but but probably value caps and income caps and, you know, those things that could be fixed, we know that. Great. And we do, you know, have this one of those studies with reference in the field I think is adjacent to what you're saying is this property tax equity study that is going to have a lot of really interesting information along these lines as well. So thank you all for your patience with that sort of extra curricular discussion here. Now seeing no objection, the business being done, I will adjourn the board of finance at six. That's all right. What time? 5.52. Thank you. We'll see you in a minute.