 This conference will now be recorded. Oh, that's okay. I call the order to speak. Good morning, all. If you want to stand first for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, the one nation of God, indivisible for liberty and justice for all. All right. Can we just go around the room and do a briefing of options? If you get a chair of the commission. Randy Meyer. I have to leave at nine o'clock. Well, we'll be done by that. If there was a city meeting, I know you. I'll try my best. John Scholke. Natasha Tory commission. And Keith. Yeah, Keith Jax from uptown social as a member. And I'm joining you from London, England right now. Oh, so I wasn't sure if you were in India yet. No, I couldn't get a good Wi-Fi there. Got it. And I'm Emily Rendell. Director of senior services. All right. First item on the agenda approval of the minutes. The agenda says January 19, 2022, but we're going to change that to. December 6 of 2023. Any discussions or. Anything about the agenda or the minutes from last time. If not, I will take a motion to approve. Motion to approve as amended. All right. And Emily, if you'll run us through review of the senior services. Financials. Sure. So you'll recall last month we had a big beefy meeting about how we're changing some of the operations versus what the friends were doing versus what the commission and the city is now having. So since the commission met last, there have been some changes that went, that made their way through council. A major budget amendment. So first I'm going to start. This is just last year's budget. I think later on the agenda, we'll talk about the changes. Yeah. The operations change review. But so just looking at last year, I have the 20, how we did for 2023 compared to 2022. As you can see over under on a few things, but nothing too, nothing too surprising anywhere. I do believe the city hasn't fully closed out 2023. So there are probably still some invoices hanging out that have yet to be processed. Any questions about any of these items? A lot of zeros on the top three or four. Why is that? So we've, because the staff that we have are all full time salaried, we don't have any overtime because we haven't had any. I mean, just doesn't show any of that stuff. Is that just because of the way it's set up? Well, they didn't have that expense. Yeah. So it's in there should it's in the chart of accounts. Should it just because I think it's one of those standard ones that all the departments get, but because we don't hire like, so temporary salaries, you know, for DPW is probably like their summer workers that, you know, but we don't have any of that. Retiree benefits. I'm not exactly sure what that is. And I'm guessing you probably, you know, maybe if the finance director was here, she'd know, but I'm guessing that might be more carryover from employees that were part of the union way back in the day. I could be wrong there, but no unemployment compensation. You'll see in 2022, we did have some unemployment. I'm sorry, that was vehicle and parking because when we were over at city hall, we had parking passes for the employees. Now that we're here, we park on the street. We're in the parking lot starting in 2024. This will be a much more interesting exercise that we do regularly for a long time. The city budget has mainly just been full time staff and some building stuff. All right. Any further questions or discussion? You don't need to do it. Moving on to our statistics for usage of the uptown social. Yeah. So you've seen these charts that I've done for a while. This is all of 2023. So you can see, I think we've kind of hit our maintenance level for what we can expect membership to hang out at. We've seen the last two months we've been hovering right around 1400. Sometimes it's higher. Sometimes it's lower. We expected attrition to start kicking in in November and now again in January because those were when we had big waves of new members last year. Unique visitors. I would expect that to start declining at some point, but it hasn't. So we've been pretty steady in like the 600 somethings. New attendees is going down, which makes sense. And that to me that tells us that we're doing our job of getting people out there and maybe we're reaching full saturation. We'll never reach full saturation, but we're getting closer. And then average daily attendance just kind of hovering between 150 and 200. So any questions about that? Yeah. I have a question. So when you're looking at these numbers and people are coming, are you. Are there more people coming in from the north side? Versus the south side? And would you get better at tennis if the people on the south side actually knew where you were as opposed to where you're in this neighborhood here? That's a good question. We haven't looked at attendance based. We haven't broken out attendance by different parts of Sheboygan. We have looked at participation in attendance comparing Sheboygan taxpayers with other communities. So for example, like we know town of Sheboygan participation is roughly 15%. 15, 16%. But that's an interesting question. I could look at breaking it out. Yeah. We, not that this is still a new facility, but upgraded soul, which, you know, for years we should have had something like this. And I just believe that there's a, there might be a disconnect with the people on the south side of Sheboygan because we don't have a facility down there. And whether or not there was ways of getting people transported from the south side up to the north side, that might help your attendance. I really don't know. There's just something I would add to my mind. Yeah. I can try and do some research for our next meeting. All right. Any additional questions or discussion reviewing the statistics? Then we'll move on. I'd asked Emily to give us a brief recap of what was discussed at the December 6th meeting in regards to the changes that needed to occur. That was brought to our attention by city officials and then also what has occurred since then? Jill was a member of the city council. Feel free to chime in as well. Yeah. So a lot has changed, but actually it's been going pretty smoothly. So what we talked about at the December 6th meeting was a need to transition all of the earned revenue activities from the friends of Uptown Social into the city. So the friends will meet next week and their budget will look very different. Basically all of our activities with the exception of strict fundraising are now channeling through the city. So I included the resolution that passed council a little over two weeks ago amending the 2024 budget because of course they had council had already approved a 2024 budget that looked a lot like the budget you just saw from 2023. So and the other big change is that the city created a special revenue fund for us. So because our revenues are much more fluid than a lot of other departments. And you know, judge Tory, you might have some perspective from your time as municipal judge, but I had asked like, well, you know, how do other departments that take fees kind of handle this? And mainly they said for the most part, there wasn't a lot of fluctuations. So we are unique in that regard, which is why the city decided to create a special revenue fund. So let's say we have a really great 2024. Lots and lots of people sign up. We get lots of new memberships or whatnot and end up exceeding our budget in terms of revenue and coming under budget and expenses. Those that excess will build in our general revenue fund. So let's say next year or the year after, we can say, all right, we need to add trying to think of something ridiculous that we never actually do. A helipad on the roof, you know, we can save up for that. Yeah. All right. Just so people know that I was trying to think of the most, maybe a racket launcher could be a little bit less likely to happen. So mainly in our typical budget pre this change, like I said, our city budget for a long time has been staffing and some building stuff and everything else through the friends. So one major change is the part time salary position, which is Vicki, our cafe coordinator who was previously a contractor of the friends. She's now a part time employee. So technically eligible for overtime, but highly unlikely that it'll come to that because she's averaged 25 hours a week. So we didn't budget for any overtime because I can't really envision a scenario in which she would need to work more than 40 hours a week. But so all of these numbers change to go along with having additional staff, one additional part time staff member with the city financial services fees. That would be credit card processing, mainly advertising and marketing. So now I'm getting into the things that these were things that typically would have been on the friends board on the friends budget because not only is all of the revenue coming over to the city, but also all of the things that the friends use that revenue to pay for. So it's not like the city is just getting a windfall of getting all the revenue and none of the expenses to along with it. So a $5,000 marketing budget. IT service fund charges. That's basically what our department pays to the IT department for them to keep up with us. Software maintenance and subscriptions. That's our customer relations management software, our schedules plus. So every time people check in at the front door when they sign up for things, that's our software which in the world of software is incredibly reasonable and it's amazing that that's all that it costs. Employee development, that's things like conferences, vehicle and parking expenses. That's mileage, office supplies, pretty self explanatory, program supplies, pretty self explanatory. Volunteer expenses. This would be like typically in a year we will have like a volunteer appreciation branch. One of the most common ways that we recognize our volunteers is we really like to give out complimentary tickets for the cafe. They seem to really like that. And it's something that there's a cost with it, but it's not like we're going out and buying gift cards that they're spending somewhere else. So how we track those is when they turn them in, essentially we charge volunteer expenses and credit the cafe even though there's no real actual money exchanging hands. But that's how we track that. Cafe supplies. That's all the food, all the stuff there. Pretty basic stuff here. Can you explain that tax levy charge? Yeah. So that is, even though we are now taking the revenues that previously were with the friends, this is not a self sustaining operation. So the tax levy is that was money that was already attributed to via the tax base to fund this department. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah. Basically, in this resolution it just kind of wiped out our whole old budget and replaced it with this new one. So that's why that's in there. Membership fees, that would be what we estimate membership fees to be program service fees. That's when someone, you know, has to be fine with the fees. That's where we get benefits in a painting class that has a fee or a fitness class that has a fee, cafe revenue, pretty self explanatory. Trip profits. How we do this. And I think later on in the agenda, we're going to talk about our 2024 trips, how we track it with that. We did it the same way with the friends. We're going to do it the same way with the city is large check to the bus company for example. And so when the trip is over and done with and all of the receipts have been entered and all of the invoices have been paid, then we figure out what that exact net revenue for that trip specifically was and we transfer over the profit. I'm closing out the friends books for 2023 and it's looking like trips finished at about 52,000 for 2023. So it's a big number but it's not unreasonable. And then advertising on the revenue side that is organizations and individuals that choose to give us money to advertise in our newsletter. So then on the decrease side, you might recall or maybe you don't. I think it started in 2020. This was it started before I was hired that there was an agreement between the city and the friends to offset the expense of having the program coordinator as a city employee in a step down fashion. So in 2021, the friends paid 100% or I think it was in 2020, the friends paid 100% of that role in 2021 80% 2022 and so on and so forth. Now, so the friends were still on the hook to pay for some of that in 2024. Now with the big change that agreement has been dissolved. So that's where this decrease friends contribution is coming from because the friends would have paid for that with their earned revenue from fees and whatnot. All staffing stuff. Yeah, basically, these decreases are wiping out the things that were on the old budget that are no longer valid. Emily question from Keith. Yes. Now, why does property tax levy show up in both an increase and a decrease in same amount? That is a great question. I want to say so they added the property tax levy of 347 and took away the property tax levy of 347. So it's the exact same amount. I'm not exactly sure why I basically I think how director Krueger did it was where it says increase. That's the new budget and where it says decrease. That's just wiping away what was the old budget and replacing it with new. So instead of saying these are the 12 line items that need to change, it was just we're changing all the line items and replacing them with this new budget. So the tax. So the amount that this department is getting from taxpayers hasn't changed versus what the original budget was supposed to be. Okay. Anything else? Any other questions or need for discussion? All right. So as city employees, we do have to we have to approve your travel, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I recently learned and John can confirm this as a former county employee that when our when city employees are leaving the state for work, we have to have approval. So I wanted to walk you through the 2024 travel plans. These are things that are already in the works. So hopefully you approve them or we'll have to get creative. And then my plan is that the next commission meeting I should have a plan for 2025 so we can get very ahead of it. But for now, I'm just gonna walk through. Again, these are things that in the past, all of the the trip stuff ran through the friends. So I'm gonna be a little basic level just because I know that this is new to this group. But ask questions if you want to. So the next one, the first one in 2024 coming up. We have two main companies that we partner with diamond tours. They do our bus trips. Those are where we absolutely have to send at least one staff person. Typically what we do is we have a staff person and then that person if they want to chooses a partner because the company gives us two comps. So they like I have brought my mom before to be like my assistant. But so for this first trip to this is to Savannah in March, Jane, our engagement coordinator is gonna host that one. We have a full bus with a waitlist and I estimate our net profit on that will be about $9,000. The other company that we work with is Mayflower Cruises and tours. That is one where we don't have to fill a bus. We don't have to hit a minimum. We could sign up as few as one person. Where where we change is when there are 15 or more people going is when we get a comp person. And so we've said when we get a comp person, that's when we'll send a staff member to help crowd the group, help maintain relationships, that sort of thing. And so our first Mayflower trip in 2024 is to Peru, which I think many of you know is where my husband is originally from. So I that was part of the draw was that like, Oh, you can go to Peru and Emily go with you and tell you what to eat and help you with your Spanish and whatnot. So we have 27 travelers going on that one. I estimate that we will profit about $11,000 on that. In May, another diamond tour, John tells me it'll probably be very cold, but I'm going to cross my fingers and think that it'll be okay. We can have up to 50 travelers right now. We have 43 registered. That's certainly enough to make it go. We we need like 30 minimum. But so I think we had we just had more people signing up last week. So I think we'll fill the bus in time. But I'm planning on going on that one. I'll just back up and say typically how we now that we're out of the pandemic ish, we're back to normal, we're settled in our new building, how we approach it as a team. And how will we approach 2024 and how we will approach 2025 is I try to select three bus trips with diamond tours. Those are always a lower price point. And then three trips with Mayflower, I usually try to do like one domestic, one or two, one international and then one that's your domestic or international with the idea that each of our full time staff members will do one of the bus trips, and potentially one of the Mayflower trips, if it garners enough interest. So next one after that is Columbia and Snake Rivers with Mayflower. That so that's the Pacific Northwest 31 travelers going on that one. So Josh is going to go along. And then in August, we have a Portugal river cruise. I put this on there just so you know, it's part of the plan. There are only four people signed up. So that means we would not send someone. I highly doubt that we'll have 11 or more people sign up in the next few months. So that's one where we'll still meet with the travelers before they go. They'll get picked up in Sheboygan. They just won't have one of us with them. But then we look to Mayflower. There's only four of them. So Mayflower can handle them. And then September, bus trip to New York City. Josh is going to do that one. The bus is full with a waiting list. October, we added this one late. It hasn't taken off. Only one person signed up to go to Italy. And then also I am signed up to go to a conference in November that's in Raleigh, North Carolina. So that's the International Council on Active Aging. I haven't been to this conference before, but it's come recommended to me by other senior center professionals. So I'm going to check it out. Any questions or discussions? When you're talking about waiting lists to get on, people can't make that. Is that word diamond or something with add another So we Wendy, the director two before me was very kind when I started and we met so she could impart her travel wisdom to me. She did a two bus trip once to Branson and she said it was terrible and she would never ever do it again because she brought her husband along. And so he had one bus and she had another bus. And she said it was just impossible to find places where they could like stop that could handle that many people. I would say since the pandemic, I think we all know like the restaurant and hospitality industry has been hit really hard. So even with a bus full at 52, it's one of the biggest challenges is finding places to feed everybody. So what I would say we have talked about it like last year, our curkey trip was really full and I had folks requesting if we could add a second bus, I talked to the company that did it and they said at that time, they wouldn't be able to find hotels for more. So basically, like, we always keep a running list of what people are interested in going in. And so this last fall, Josh led a group out to the northeast during fall foliage time that had a huge wait list and we know it was really popular. So that's for 2025. We're hoping to do Vermont just because we know it's a popular destination that we think people will sign up for. So if you're on the waiting list, you're hoping somebody doesn't want to go or snack off. Yeah, which almost always happens. So really, yeah, because people get sick or they find out they have to have their knee replaced or, you know, or their doctor says, Hey, you really shouldn't be sitting on a bus. So it. Yeah, we typically move through. It's good for us to have a waiting list, because we'll typically move through it. Honestly, I think our Savannah wait list, we exhausted the wait list. And then we said, Hey, we've had spaces open up. And so now we filled the spaces and have a small wait list again. But I think we've kind of reached our equilibrium of offering the right number that we can reasonably fill. So we're not having half empty buses, but we're also not not filling the need. So anyone else? I'll take a motion to approve the travel for our city employees of Uptown Social. All right, our next meeting will be March 20, 2024, ADM. Same great place. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn in a second. All right. All favor. Sorry. Thanks, Keith. Okay, thank you. So that looks like a fun year.