 Okay, hello everyone. Welcome to the Board of Finance. On Monday, June 12th, I'm going to call the meeting of order at 5 or 6pm. And the first item on the agenda as always is the adoption of the new agenda. Do we need any amendments or? No. So, hoping someone will move it as presented. So, thank you Councilor Gay, do we have a second? Okay, second from Councilor Farlow. And any discussion of the agenda? Seeing no vote, all those unfavorable, so please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Looks and carries. Yes, Lee. You're hearing it's okay Councilor January. Yes, I agree. And there are just four of us tonight. Just so what's clear. I'm going to go ahead and say aye. So, the next item is the public forum. Is there any member of the public who is here speaks to the board of finance? Not seeing anyone in the room. However, we do have former city councilor Sharon Booker has her hand raised. So go ahead Sharon. She'd be able to talk. Yes, I'm your faithful follower. We appreciate it. So, what I'm going to speak to is first of all, I'm going to listen to Catherine's presentation. And I know that there was a lot of information already in the packet, but about the budget. What I'm going to say, I don't, don't own this, don't take it in a negative way, but it is a reality. I'm very concerned about, and it's a tight rope, let me just say, between compensating employees fairly, and what the citizens of Burlington can afford. We did, when we did a big overhaul of management positions. So I don't even know how many years ago, Mr. Mayor. We got a consultant who gave us a range. And then we had another process which applied what Burlingtonians what Burlington could afford. I think that the process that we've undergone right now is a variety of consultants who know their business and know the departments that they're, they're giving guidance to and to us. But what I don't feel has happened is the affordability overlay. I'm really concerned as employees get very good salaries and have very good benefit packages that there are a lot of people in Burlington who don't have good salaries, and some don't even have benefit packages. And I'm feeling that, that the process is encouraging people or forcing people to make choices to live elsewhere. And so I say this in earnest, it's not easy to say because I know a number of those employees, and they work hard and they're deserving of good salaries. But I do think there is an affordability factor that really needs to be looked at. And so, and I also want to say that I don't know how this all plays into the retirement system, where we all already know was underfunded we're doing much better because we changed a lot. I think to Bob Russen's leadership and that committee but I, I, I feel that's all interrelated. And I don't know how much of this that I'm speaking about really drives the budget, but human resources in every department is most of the time the most costly factor. So I know it does drive the budget. So thank you for listening. Great. Thank you Sharon. I don't believe there are any other members of the public. Speak to more finance so I am going to close the public forum. And we'll move to the consent agenda. You have several items on the consent agenda. So, I'm hoping there is kind of more likely procedures or a promotion on the consent agenda. I would move to a second. Thank you. Any discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing them will go vote all those in favor of motion please say aye. Any opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Senate agenda is adopted. So this brings us now to 4.1, which is the authorization. This is the section of the agenda for approval recommendations to the council. And 4.1 is the authorization to apply to downtown sales tax credit reallocation program regarding the power plan project 176. Welcome. And we really have not talked much about this project. I don't think so. Maybe get us oriented and general before we go to the. I'm going to let Kirsten talk to you about the project because she is here from champion housing trust and is deeply involved with the project. And I'm happy to talk about the agenda item, the sales tax reallocation. But if you want to just give an overview of the project, it would be great. Thank you. You're very excited. This is. 176 South Kwanoski Avenue. It's the site of the current VFW post. And we have. Option agreement with them to redevelop site. Into 38 units of housing and two commercial spaces. One of which will provide a new home for the VFW going forward. We have a new home for the VFW post. The city's community justice center. The city's community justice center. It's a brownfield with. Corrective action plan of over a million dollars. So we'll be cleaning up a brownfield in the downtown. As well as creating these new units. 11 of these units will be for homeless. Folks who are exiting homelessness. And also. We're very excited about this project and excited. I'm working with the city on these improvements of the. Right of way as relates. So we think it will connect nicely with the main street, great streets project. So. We're happy to answer any other questions. Thank you for that. Certainly. I'm. You know, My office has been engaged in this project for, for some time. We're excited about it. I think it's likely that we will be back. I don't, I don't think we've taken any action. I think trust fund investments or. Other. That's the ARPA investments. We do have some. We do have some. We do have some. ARPA money that we've kind of earmarked for housing, but that we've not committed yet. This is one of the projects that we're talking about doing that. But those are future conversations. Just, I guess, put that out there. It's like, it's something we're pretty. Engaged in and then looking to support and. Sales to actually application is something that's fairly easy for the city to be supportive of. So maybe, and we're trying to do, I see this. Two of these tonight. So maybe you can. It's not, I don't remember us doing this anytime recently. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. It's in the memo, but the downtown program sales tax reallocation program is comes through a CCD from the state and its money is available to. Development projects in designated downtown's. And basically it takes a portion of the anticipated sales tax from, from the development of that project and, and kind of gives it back to municipalities. And there's a formula that determines the, the full, how much each municipality can get. And it's kind of, if it doesn't go to Burlington, it'll go somewhere else. So it's money that's kind of sitting there. I'm ready for us to access. So the city applies in. In partnership with a developer who's doing the, the main project and the funds go to basically public improvements. So in this case, it will go to new sidewalks, new trees, new lighting, and it's going to extend those improvements in the public right of way, all the way up to connect with the main street, great streets program, which is really exciting. And allows the city to, to bring that resource to the public improvements, which benefits the city and the development of this layer. Just on the east side of the street. Yes. Just to be clear, just in front of the project. Yeah. Is that for the program for questions for most. That's a problem. Yeah. Just in terms of my education and how this program works. So there are certain properties that are identified as being eligible to receive the reallocation and we have to add this property. We're not adding the property. So any development in our designated downtown is eligible to apply for. So the approval from board of finance and city council next week is just for us to be able to apply for the sales tax reallocation. I'm not familiar enough to know if like you always get it or I can tell you a little bit more about it. So it's a program. The state has run for their downtown and it's based on the amount of sales tax, certain eligible construction materials will generate. And it's for when you have a private development project. It will pay those sales taxes. And then this is an asking the state to take their portion of the sales tax and reinvested into the project, public infrastructure and other infrastructure that supports the development of the project. So sidewalks curves. It could be its utility connections, stormwater, things like that are the intention. And so it's a joint application between the developer and the city. And it's a little tricky because a small project would probably not be up. The state. You have to take how much your sales tax is going to generate. So this is totally made up just easy numbers, right? So let's say you had $6 million of sales tax or eligible activity items. You have to take the first million off because we're the largest city in the state. And so you would have only be able to request the reallocation of sales tax on that $5 million. And that's 6% because it doesn't involve any local tax. That's helpful. And it is. It's a once a year application. So there's really a short period of time. And one of the great things about this year in the application is because of all of the tax credits for downtown throughout the state has been very well subscribed to. They've increased the upper limit. And so there's an opportunity here, not only for this project to apply, but also for city place project. So it's a great year. Hopefully we'll both be. Yeah. So the applications are due on the 30th. June 30. So 30th. We're on. I'm sorry. July. July 30. I did the line intern on that line was June 30th because I will not be submitting anything. I know. I know. Yes. So again, I think the memo that you have in front of you is for both these applications here since you're representing the CHT for the post departments application. It's the, you know, a very similar process for city place. Similar actually set up. I think that's a much larger project. The state wants to be sure that the municipality is on board with the application. So it's that formal action taken by the board of finance and city council that is one of the items required for the application. Great. So. Thank you both. Any further questions or a motion. I think I'm ready for a motion as indicated on for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Second. Second by council McGee further discussion. Seeing none go to vote and. Doing the motion was just for 4.1. So. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Right. Are there any post. Motion carries unanimously. And we. Are we ready for another motion on 4.2, which is essentially the same issue. Just with the. The city city place project on that one. That's the 75 Cherry Street. Sorry. It's just that that is this CHT building. No, Howard plant is a CHT building. So that's 4.1 4.2. This cherry tree. Right. 75 Cherry Street, which city place. Okay. Okay. Great. That's just their zoning. That's the address on your zoning permit application, which is what we need to use. So. I'd more like to proceed. Every. I don't see a recommended motion. So. It's a resolution. Yeah. It's a nurse. Yeah. There's two resolutions. One for each. Cheers. It's sufficient. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Second. Any discussion. Seeing none. I'm going to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Right. All right. Post. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you. All right. So. Next is 4.3. Which is. Fire leadership. Scale. Yes. Welcome to you. Chance. And. Give us a quick. Quick summary. Sure. The reason to bring this to you tonight. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. So. Next is 4.3. Which is. Fire leadership. And the reason to bring this to you tonight. We've been. Communicating this for working on this for about a year. The. Separation between the fire department. Leadership. And union leadership. A increases. There ends up being a compression factor. With. Between. Base pay. Empty incentives bonuses. It reduces the ability for me to. Promote out of the union because there's not enough. Separation between. The right they are at with their bonuses and things. And the right they're going to go to. So we. Based on. Mostly with the public plan with the police department. That's what we kind of modeled this after the FLPS. Yeah. So. So. For many years, we've had. This. Police unified pay scale. Which. Addressed this exact issue in the police department. Came out chief. I think it's about it. It's been. Yeah. Decade around a decade. And it was a response to exactly this issue in the police department of there being a challenge. Getting. Anyone to step into leadership roles. So we're now facing the same issue. And we're just trying to. Kind of. Solve this problem once and for all. Set. Percent differences between the captain rank. And the battalion chief rank and the battalion chief rank. And the deputy chief rank. And have. And have. Custom adjustments based on. The. Same as the fire butters so that as they go up, we go up. And it's a consistent raise. And you can. Understand. You don't get that compression factor. So. That's the history of it. Kind of started working on this about a year ago. And. We've been through a few. Different plans working together with the mayor's office and. The chief financial officer. And this is the. The. The. The. The plan we brought you. It does show for comparison. Ranked in the police department. So you can see. That they are. Comfortable to. I know the rank names are different, but they're comparable. And job function. So it shows that we're not out of line with. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. The other public safety. Thank you. And thank you chief for the presentation here. And I. I believe that, you know, this is a little bit too much. From my perspective. It's a lot. And it seems also it is proposing. That going back and paying like over nearly $15,000 from the FY 23. Budget. Right. And I don't also see all of these bonuses. I do not think that this is, this is something that the city can afford. At this point of time. So I'll be voting no. Which, which bonuses are you talking about? So basically finances. You say you stated very clearly that please note that we built the FY 24 fire department budget with a proposed increase included. In FY 23, it will cost $15,000. $310. To cover the proposed increase. For the retroactive. So basically that retroactivity. I could understand. As moving forward. In FY 20. 24. Why do we need to go back and pay the 15,000. 310. So. The reason for the retroactivity and. And we, we didn't only go back to January one was. This conversation started, like I said. With chief lock. April of 2022. And it, it's been. It's honestly been kind of promised to the command staff. It's been. Talked about in these folks are waiting for it. And it just with all of the changes in leadership, it just never got moved forward efficiently. If it had been moved forward efficiently, it would have been. Covered in the 2023 budget. As we are building this. For 2024, I did make, I did want to make sure that we included it. But I just felt it was fair to have it. Go back at least until January one of 23. To let these folks know that they're covered by this, that we know it's taken a long time. And we're going to try to make it right as right as we can. So I'm going to go back to the beginning of the fiscal year. Myself in the mayor's office and Catherine talked about that. And we decided that January one was a, was a fair compromise being that it's taken so long to get through it. But really it was FY. 22, when it should have been proposed. Never done anything with an FY 23. And now we're trying to talk about it in FY 24. So I feel like my folks have been very patient. And I feel like it's a, it's an excellent compromise. Working for both sides to have it be January one of 23 retroactive. So that's the, that's the thoughts behind that counseling. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I think it kind of makes sense. And thank you for going only from January 2023 and moving forward. But at the same time as part of the memo, and also just the comparison between fire and police from my perspective should not be on this table. Right. I think they are two distinct entities doing two different work. And they sometimes intersects, which is perfect. Right. And, and, and yeah, I do believe that this is a little bit too much for the city to afford knowing that the reality of our finances right now. So respectfully, I'll be voting no. Thank you. Just understanding your perspective, Councillor Jen, I see that HR director derpy is here. And I think it is. Important to I'm going to recognize you in a minute. Director derpy to it understand because this is an issue that has come up before at this body and understanding our policy and how retroactive pay, I think is important because I hear that there's two issues. There's the retroactive and then there's how police and fire may or may not be kind of related. So I know you can speak on the first and I don't know if you want to speak on the second Karen, but I invite you to do so. Well, I think, you know, I think this was a collective effort for the compression issue. I assume that's the agenda item that we're discussing today. And the retroactivity, you know, it, you know, there's, there is some, there definitely is some things that are left up to the department head. Sounds like the mayor, Catherine and everyone had a conversation. This has been on the agenda. This has been an issue that has been going on for the entire time I've been with the city and also before I got here. And I think the thing that I'd like to say about it from the perspective of the fire department and, you know, those folks who, you know, are, you know, heavily invested in this passing is that, you know, compression over time is, is a management issue. It doesn't have anything to do with their performance. And our duty as leadership is to fix that and create a pathway forward. I will say that Mike Lachance has chief Lachance, chief engineer Lachance has only been in charge for a very short time. And in that time, he has managed to fully staff the fire department. He has managed to stand up dispatch and he's managed to achieve a lot of things. And this won't be the, the only thing that this body sees in terms of just taking care of those low hanging fruit and some of these very difficult issues, you know, that the fire department needs to address. So, and I do, I did take a look at this. This went back and forth many times. He is within his budget. That's critical. As former counselor, Bush was saying, you know, these budgets are very difficult. It's a difficult budget year. But in terms of public safety, one of the things that we've really worked on with the fire department and we continue to work on his retention. And when there's a compression issue, then there's no one to move forward into these really critical leadership roles. The chief was promoted and then had to promote two deputy chiefs. One deputy chief, actually, Chief Libby is still here. So these are really critical for getting people to move out of the bargaining unit into these leadership positions. So that's why I support it. And I would, I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have counselor on and the chief will help me, of course, on what, you know, specifically the note is about because it, you know, it is the public safety budget is significant. You know, in years past, it certainly hasn't been, you know, this much, but with, you know, police and fire, you just, you know, distinguish their two separate entities. So if we're looking at fire alone, we need a fully staffed fire department with room to grow. So happy to take specific questions on this if you have them for me. Thank you. Thank you. How would the board like to proceed? More questions, right? For more tonight. I think this is something that has been unresolved for too long and a chief of chances to be committed for bringing it forward and for a resolution. I think we might not have worked hard on this as well. We're happy to make the motion. It's recommended to the clerk. Thank you. Second by Councillor Barlow. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to the vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries three to one with one. Thank you, chief. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is I believe 4.4, which is the calendar year 22 street reconstruction program contract. Contract amendment. Thank you. Thank you. So this hopefully final ask for additional funding. We'll close out. Hopefully. Our CY 22 paving projects. So the reason we're here. Preparing the initial estimate for birth with Parkway. We assumed we had three inches of base course. The contract got out there, started doing work. And we found we had one and a half inches of just base course. Top course was not installed at the last paving. So we had to scramble a little bit to get a change order and get things done for that. Along with the additional asphalt, we found that we needed to adjust some driveway improvements. We also needed to have some concrete on the south side of Birchwood Parkway to ensure proper drainage and the street operated correctly. And so that tapped into much of our funds that would be needed to do the resurfacing work on the Flint Avenue. So as a consequence of that, we're. Or finance requesting. $93,000 and some odd dollars to finalize the work. It's amazing getting held up to be honest with you. Yeah. At an inch and a half. Right. Yeah. So it's, it's going to last for a long time. We saw the streets. And you believe it was just somehow an oversight. Yeah. I think that's basically what it was. I'm assuming. Most staff that are working with. Yeah. I think that's basically what it was. I'm assuming. Most staff that are working with. Yeah. I think that's basically what it was. I'm assuming most staff that are here now, we're not around. So I'm assuming that. They paved the base and they assume that they were going to come back and pay the top. Never did. But we're catching up. Parkfuls. Right. I show your question. Sure. Noting that. Continuous funding is coming from the CY. 20. Paving contract. Kind of. Raise the question. In terms of like, do we have other. Contingency funding from previous years that's kicking around. That's a great question. Maybe a. So. Or we want. Hi. It's great capital fund, which is funding this. And it is a good point. It was in the first year of our new project accounting system. And so it's. It's in the right location to spend it and it's allocated towards paving. You just need to switch the project name that's on it to make it the audience. And we're working with the administration to have to do that in a more efficient. Grouping kind of way. So. Yeah. As a follow-up. So this doesn't impact any of the other paving projects. Is this contingency money? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this doesn't impact any of the other paving projects. Is this contingency money from a prior fiscal year? That's correct. That's correct. Great. I'm very happy to make the motion, but before I did not hear a response from a counselor, Maggie. Like what was, what was responded? Sorry. I did not hear it very well. I did not hear. It's question and what the response to that question was. No, the question was specific. Do we have all the contingencies? You know, around just waiting to be used somewhere else. Yes. There are a few projects that still have their contingency. They're not as sizable as this one. As the Queen city park road project didn't take nearly as much as what was estimated. They're much smaller amounts. And, you know, what, what, what are, what, how much are those contingency and how do they reflect on, are they being, would they be reflected on your FY 24 budget? They are not currently inside of the FY 24 budget specifically, although projects like crack ceiling and whatnot are already making use of those funds towards that work type. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point to be able to capture them in contracts this season. So some not all yet. I would like to make the motion as indicated on board. Thank you. Thank you. Second by council Barlow. For their discussion. Vote on those in favor of motion. They say aye. Aye. And they're opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. 4.5 C place public improvements construction crosses. You've taken this one. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Those other volunteers. But I'm here to bring forward the public improvements for city place project. Under the ARDA that we've heard a lot about recently. This brings forward the streetscape improvements. Fine state falls, cherry and portion of cherry and bank. Inside of that document, there are provisions about how city place partners. Are required to do the work. They've been required to do the work. So they've been required to do the work. They have declared. They have procured. SD Ireland to do these improvements on the street. The estimate for all of that work is the 11.6 million. Now a number that is inside of your request. It is broken out into a to a to D. And that's based on the rules inside of the document. I want to say the estimate of the different types of work. by Stantec Consulting to determine whether or not the unit prices inside of the bid were fair and if the quantities that were estimated were reflective of the work, they found that it was accurate, they found that it was very much on trend with the market values, which while still slightly increasing are not escalating too significantly, they recommended that we do accept the findings or the proposal to, this is an interesting one, we're not really approving the contract, we're kind of accepting the understanding that the proposal went front of us with the intent that once the ARTA by First Amendment triggers, eventually we will start reimbursing City Place Partners for this work, not in the short due questions. Yes, Reggie, is this roughly when we expected them to start making the public improvements? Yes, I mean I was hoping for like four years ago, but they are, so they also presented us a construction schedule, which we've been having to tell them to hold off until this opportunity comes to the City Council, but they are ready to go to start what is the public improvements, they are going to be mostly below ground utilities in the beginning, so it's not going to look like anything significant this season, but they are going to be removing a portion of the existing mall that still remains inside of St. Paul Street's right-of-way, and then they're going to start building the road sub bases up, so that they can eventually use them as platforms for staging for when they do their building construction, but they need to get the road up to a usable level this season is their goal. Okay, for more time and more questions, what would be a recommended action specifically? Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Seconded by Councillor McGee. Further discussion? The vote? All those who appear in the motion please say aye. Opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Great, thank you, Laura. This brings us to 4.6. Yes, vehicle, spacious recommendation, welcome Ray. Okay, thanks for having me. So the Department of Public Works is here looking for recommendation and approval from Board of Finance to recommend the City Council that they approve the F-124 vehicle purchase as well as the vehicle replacement list. We do need Council approval to sell these vehicles, which we will be selling at either auction or trading them in, or if neither of those processes work, tell them for scrap and market rate. We did present this to the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee at their main meeting. We did note that this list is significantly lower and has been in the past. That is because the general fund does not have any money or FY-24, 25 or 26 vehicle purchases. We are currently just covering what existing lease payments we have for FY-24, as well as meeting with the Fleet Committee to determine a strategy for not only meeting these future lease payments in the upcoming years, but as well as trying to find a strategy for funding future lease payments. There are any other questions on the financial aspect of it, or any more information that we can actually speak to that as well. So, these seven vehicles are FY-23, 24 deferred equipment lists? Yes. So those are the vehicles that need replacing? Correct. So, we started with FY-23 as a much shorter list than all the vehicles that we are not replacing in FY-24 added to that list. So that $3,100,000 raise error is what at current FY-24 replacement costs would be. What those deferred costs may be FY-25 are not short, and they didn't go up around 20%. I imagine we'll be adding some vehicles there. Correct. To give a comparison, last year we replaced 19 vehicles, 12 of which were general fund vehicles. The previous year we replaced 35 vehicles, 33 of which were general fund vehicles. So we're really ramping back and putting in threes all our purchasing until we figure out a funding strategy. We're still waiting for new agreement. Yeah, cloud trucks, recycling trucks, those are taking a year-plus to build depending on materials. Air trucks and ambulances are two years out. BD, which is separate from us, are waiting three years on a bucket truck. It is a fully electric bucket truck, but still those bills are out. And with the cost of steel inflation, it's hard for them to hold those quotes that I want to keep. We're in a little strange situation right now that we haven't been in. Councillor Chen. Yep, I just don't understand as to why we need to replace vehicles that are eight years, less than eight years old. Some of them are 2020, 2018, 2017. Why? And I know also that in order to transport a vehicle from the US to some countries in Africa, they have to be at least eight years. So these seem to be like relatively new vehicles. Why do we need to replace them? Initially, we had them at longer replacement life cycles. A few years ago, when EV vehicles started coming out, we shortened the life cycle. So if the technology came out a little sooner, we would have more value in the vehicle on a trade-in. If you go 10 years on some of these vehicles, the trade-in values aren't as much as they would be in that seven to eight-year range. I mean, I think I don't know what the committee is thinking. Basically, if you make an investment into a vehicle, you have to have the return of investment. So basically keeping the vehicle for at least a certain amount of year. But if they could be replaced just for two years or three years after, I don't know what the thought process behind it. Now, we have five-year, seven-year, 10-year, 12-year replacements. Five years are more geared toward the emergency vehicles and police, such like that because those vehicles are used so much. They're on a rotating shift and they do get a lot of abuse and require a lot of maintenance. And the maintenance on those vehicles starts to get expensive as you get toward its end of life. My maintenance line just in parts has increased 30%. We had to increase that budget line by $70,000, which we have already felt this year. I've had to do budget amendments to make up for that 30% inflation that you've seen so far. And that's just brakes, oils, regular maintenance issues in those parts. It's not big maintenance parts like fire trucks. Upon close on that, you're talking thousands and thousands of dollars. My last question is, as part of this list, are there really vehicles that we can keep another two or three more years? Some of these vehicles have been, and they need replacing. There's a couple of them that we're not sure are going to pass it. I just want to, sorry to cut you off a little bit, but there's a long list of deferred equipment that has, I'm wondering, the only vehicles that are being replaced are in the attachment D, right? Correct, which I just want to make sure there's no confusion of that. So attachment D has just, it should be four out of the seven. I believe there's three new additions. Six special revenues, correct. They're all special revenue except for recycling, which is funded by the solid waste generation tax. All right. So you're saying there's three more that are on this? Correct. So on this cost sheet, on the cost sheet attachment F, there's a list of the vehicles in the gem car, the Ford Maverick pickup for water, both for water distribution and water resources, Chevy Bolt, which is an admin vehicle, are three additions to the fleet. Okay. The other four are replacements. So I just want to, so it's a longer list at the beginning that it's just a, I'm not sure what that list is, it's a total roster of, so that the deferred mince list is, the deferment list is what's been deferred over the past two fiscal years. That we haven't done. That we haven't replaced, that was a C replay. So I just want to make sure that was clear to you, Castle Jinks. So the list that is actually being sold here is attachment D, which, what's on Civic Clerk, all the vehicles are 2013 to 2020, two for 2014 and one for 2017. You're saying there's an addition to that that's also posted? No, no. All right. So we're only talking about four vehicles that were actually getting rid of. I just want to make sure it's not a confusion with the earlier chart, which is how much is a different chart that's this stuff that we deferred. Like you want, Castle J, that longer earlier list is what we are, what we are making do with for another year. Okay. That's a, that's a great clarification and thank you. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Is there something else you were trying to say, Ash? No. Okay. Go ahead, Castle Barlow. I just want to say that I do support this. I know that this year it's a, it's a skinnier list than we had even last year. And like, as you mentioned, and I appreciate that the work that's been done to try to extend the life of the vehicles on the deferred list. And I also know that the Duke will be having a joint meeting with the committee and sometime in the next month or two to try to talk about strategies on how to, how to find funding to address this need. So I'm looking forward to that as well. Thank you. Great. We also, we should remember, I mean, it's great you guys meeting together. I do think we're going to, I think we need a comprehensive look at this. So we are, we do have money in the budget for this fleet management, you know, consultant plan that would be kind of a comprehensive strategy for how we get to where we need to with fleet that will include looking at funding strategies, but also optimizing replacements, strategies, look at the electrification question, look at significant funding available within electrification to make sure we're maximizing the thing in the placement action. So just want to make sure you're aware of that as in, you know, partnership with the committee work. Okay. Are we ready? Do you just make a motion on this? Yes, I'll make any new motion. We have a second by Councillor McKee. Further discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. You know, so like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. All right, we are now at 4.7, which is the 195 201 Flynn Avenue 2019 second memorandum of understanding extension. Welcome, Chief. No, this is the city board. My teams are fresh. Great. We've been working with you all and should install the waste district to solve two major issues. One is to develop a expanded drop-off center for the public. Right now, only organics are offered down at 339 Pine Street. And the second is to unite and improve the city's soil management. Operations currently happen in two different locations, either of which are well designed or resourced. And we had hoped to work with CSWD to bring to you a draft purchase and sale agreement for 195 201 Flynn by the end of this fiscal year. We were notified last week from the general manager of CSWD that their board had requested more time to do a appraisal of the site. And they proposed to us that we just let the MOU lapse with that. Our position in consultation with the administration is that we've given them $100,000 option payments. And they've in return promised that, you know, we have the right of first refusal. We didn't want to let you throw those away. And as imperfect as the MOU is, we wanted to keep those two protections in place. And so we're seeking to extend this three months. And then we'll work on a purchase and sale agreement that we bring back to you in that time. We're also seeking and it's important to mention that the strategy is that we're looking to fund this would be through a master lease coordinated with Treasures Office. The revenue would get contributed annually for debt service from water resources in their operational budget and using solid waste generation tax, which pays our recycling program. The recycling program tax and having it used in this way would likely need an ordinance change according to the city attorney. So we are interested in seeing if the city council would refer this solid waste generation tax issued to the ordinance committee. So that the ordinance committee can start working with us on that is that will be a key element of funding this and FY 24. So a little mouthful there, but hopefully that's all. So the actions here are really just to ask for a three month extension of the MOU. It's a solid waste district that understands the city's interest for that extension and is willing to get their board to support it this month as well. And likely bringing to the council meeting coming this direction to the ordinance committee to help us out on the solid waste generation tax conversation. Great. Thank you, each other. That's me. We have a second. Second by Councilor Barlow. Discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Final DPW item 4.8, traffic markings, contracts, sit down. Welcome back. So Jeff Hedges, looking for traffic. And tonight is the FY 24 pavement marking contract. So all of the white lines, the yellow lines, the green bike lanes, stencils, most, a lot of it's done by contractor, some is done by us. It's a substantial contract, about $150,000. We don't always spend all of it. We have two business this year. It came in right 151-154. L&D, we've used for years, came in 154. From our perspective, that's the same day. So we never know how much exactly we're going to spend. They're going to commit about the same price. So we're recommending to go with L&D. One of the things I would like to mention is again, we did, you've shifted this contract. It used to be a seasonal contract or a calendar year contract. What have happened is we did it in March and it's scrambled like crazy to get the paint machines out on the road. This year they closed, they shut down Clean Sweep on Friday and they're up painting on plug day. So we've tightened this up significantly. We've also recognized a lot of money and we've got to find new, more sustainable products. We can't be painting all of this every year. So Alan Dashard is our new traffic manager. He's actually actively exploring new technologies that we can do ourselves. So the payment marking will last two or three seasons, not just one. So it's a work in progress. Hopefully next year we'll be able to bid this in a different way. So we'll have somebody doing the long lines and then somebody doing more of the stenciling with something more permanent. We don't know how it's going to look, but we really want to get out of this big contract and spread the love a little to different technologies. To be clear, since this says FY24, we're doing this now so that we can be ready to spend money on July 1st. Is that correct? It's in the budget. Yes. We're not going to spend money ahead of July 1st. No, no, because they're under contract now. They're on the FY23 contract. They're in the DPW department right now with stencils. Is it to just ensure that they can seamlessly keep balance? We've already bid it. We just need to do the contract and then keep paying them. Questions? Thank you for the presentation. Are cross-box not included with these? Cross-box are not included in this typically. They don't have the manpower to do that because they're doing all these big long things and they're doing a lot of stenciling. Cross-box take a lot of effort because you have to paint half of it and you literally have to wait for the paint to dry and then do the other one. So we've traditionally done that with summer help and there's traditionally been somewhere between nine and 11 basically college kids that come and watch paint try for the summer, but they get it all done. Well, the past couple summers we've had, I think we have three, two summers ago, we have four last summer. I mean, we just had no manpower, so we got very behind on cross-box. So one of the things that Allen's also looking at is cross-box technology that we can install so that we're not having to paint them every summer. And he's also thrown up with a more strategic plan based on the safety school program plan and he's actually starting at the schools and working regularly. So we're much more strategic about painting now. I don't mean to be righteous about it, it's just it's a fact of money and staff. So we have to be in no choice to keep the streets safe. And Howard, looking in terms of providing the staff, summer help through cross-box this year, I think we might be at five now. I just passed over the past week, I've heard groups and drabs of oh somebody's coming in, somebody's coming in, so I'm not sure who's stuck, but we don't have nine. We don't have our normal nine or 10. Nine is three crews of three kids. We get a lot of work done. So yeah, it's almost every day. I'm trying to figure out how. We have a couple other creative ideas too, but that's about it. Thank you, budget. Yes, I got it right. Thank you. So I notice that some sidewalks now are being painted black and white instead of white and red. So one of the issues we've had over the years is we have these college kids going out to do this and they'll paint a crosswalk right on top of another crosswalk. So you get a white box that's faded and then you get another white box on top of that's faded and then you get another white box on top and all of a sudden you've got this like mind dizzying, you know, there's like almost like a visual trick on your eye that's like busy. So they're just painting on blacking them out. Okay. And then they're putting in fresh ones. Fresh things. Yes, there's the level of quality control that we're posing on painting right now is what's the same new and specific. We've made a lot of changes in the quality control area. Wonderful. Yeah, so I pay attention. Just be careful what you do. You have my email. Yes. Another question is it seems one of your stuff is already looking into a new technology basically so that this can last forever. I mean longer, right? Right. And if we're doing it, why are we then voting for the FY24, you know, painting sidewalk already? Because we don't, well, we can pivot within this contract. I mean, the same. So it's a little complicated because it's technology, right? So there's different options. So when they build a new road, they actually roll in tape. If you look outside looking at crosswalks, newer roads, they have a very thin tape that's down. It looks like it's just stuck on top, but it wasn't. It was laid on top and then rolled into the hot pavement. We can't do that because they already exist, right? So we have to do some sort of melted on top approach. And in order to do melted on top, you actually have to grind it down because if you melt it on top, then your snow cloud is going to rip it off. And there's a variety of vendors for this type of product. And we just have to find the one that has the workflow that works for our staff is at the right scale for us. So the town started in January, February, and he's all over this. So this is, we're just not ready to dive into it, but we're at swimming pool blind enough to dive to extend to that floor. Thank you. I am really happy to make the motion as if we don't have a motion yet. We need that good. Yeah. Yeah. And also wanted to just comment that I really appreciate the thinking of city staff to try to do this as we move forward in the future by themselves, instead of contracting with somebody else. I like that point of thinking. Thank you. Thanks. And the motion on the floor. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor James. Do we have a second? Second by Councillor McGee. Discussion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Yes, we look forward to hearing these multi-year technologies sounds interesting. All right, great. That concludes the deliberative agenda, I guess we'll call it. We now have a presentation on a grant summary in preparation for the FY24 budget that's labeled. Hopefully the board remembers we have created a couple of new positions over the last year ago. And we're fortunate that Olosh stepped up to fill one of them and lead this effort. The idea with this was that we needed to staff were going to be successful in securing the suddenly very large amount of federal funding that is out there. We needed to staff that and they thought this would be a good opportunity. They're about to ask you to approve the budget or an update on how that effort is going. And it's so exciting news in a lot of ways. So with that, Catherine, I just need to run. I'll let you get started. I've seen you too. I won't be right back. Yeah, I don't think there's much else to say. That was a great intro from the mayor. Nicole and Elizabeth have been at this for about a year and early on in our marvelous nights of May. A lot of questions came up about how many grants we had applied for and asking for some more communication from our grants team. Our grants team has a lot of communication tools out there. And we're going to start plugging you into some of those regular updates that our staff gets. But to make sure that we're not leaving anybody behind, we thought we'd do kind of a big overview and then start sending you things monthly in case you have a question. So with that, Nicole, take it away. Thank you. I will try to share my screen here so everybody can see. There was a presentation included in your packet, but I will just quickly run through this for everybody in there. All right. A couple little things in here. Okay, thank you. So as the mayor said, one of our initial high level focus areas for the grants team is to try to bring in some of the big federal money that's now available for municipalities. And locally, what we're really trying to focus on is reducing the burden on the general fund. So that tends to be the departments that we work with the most are those that are otherwise trying to find money in the general fund. So oftentimes it's infrastructure, public health facilities are some of the big ones that we've been working with over the past year. And this could be new projects or trying to support some projects that are underfunded or even programs and events. I did want to mention that, you know, the Staff and the Treasures Office are just one of many people around to the city doing grant procurement. So I've tried to quickly summarize the general areas that our office is focusing on, but there's a lot of overlap where we're always checking in with each other to make sure no one's duplicating work. We're not competing against each other, but collectively we're able to do quite a bit to help our taxpayers relieve some of what would otherwise be a burden on them by leveraging all these other funds. So just a quick recap of what we worked on over the last fiscal year. Just in the Treasures Office, we submitted applications that totaled more than 67 million for federal grants. The majority of those are still transportation related. So bridges, shared use paths, street and sidewalk improvements, traffic signal upgrades, that sort of thing. 1.5 million has been awarded, some in state grants, some in federal. We have a lot still pending 26 million in pending announcements, many of them, which should be announced this month. Included a quick list of the types of things that we're still waiting to hear back on. And a quick summary of the collective work beyond the CT office. Outside of the federally funded projects, we've been able to leverage just over 212,000 in local funds that brings us more than $2 million worth of work. And that's again, not federally funded work. And then just the federal programs in last year, we acquired more than 107 million in federal awards. So this is a really good opportunity to just do a lot more with investment using our local dollars. I did also want to flag, you know, congressionally directed spending is still pretty new. Again, you know, it was in place a number of years ago, but it's only been over the last couple of years. It's kind of back as another funding opportunity. So we're, I'd say we're still kind of getting our feet under us to figure out the best system for pursuing some of those. But just this last round, we did request more than 34 million in congressionally directed spending. And about 1 million of that is pending through that appropriations process at the federal level. We won't know for sure about those requests until probably October. Anticipated opportunities that are coming up and that our office will likely focus on. Again, transportation is a big area of need. So we have more bridges that still need funding. Queen City Park Road is kind of the top of our list. Railroad Enterprise Project is wrapping up its design work and we'll be ready for construction. And that seems to be a really good fit with some of the federal funding programs. Transportation safety is really big at the federal level. So trying to pursue opportunities for construction projects that are specifically focused on safety. Traffic signals are often included in those types of projects. So it's a really good opportunity for some partnerships. And there's a lot of talk about, you know, all the work we're trying to do on Bankcherry, Ice St. Hall. We are still trying to find federal funding opportunities to offset some of the local garden to get that project done. So every time there's an opportunity for that project, we're clearly pursuing that. And we're also focusing on connections to and within parks. That's been a big theme in a lot of our conversations with that department. For equity, we are currently working on a proposal to develop a neighborhood equity index, which effectively is a very intense data collection effort that will just provide a tremendous amount of information to support pretty much everything the city does. We're really limited in targeted data because our community is so small. So this is a very interesting opportunity and I'm kind of excited to see this one come together. Workforce development is another area that's pretty new, I think, for a targeted focus area, but all kinds of interests there. Right now, we are working on some proposals for industrial sewing, energy efficiency, trades, and personal care assistance. So we will be submitting that patient this week to try to get funding for those programs. And facilities is another area of big need. So Larger is focusing on energy efficiencies. And there is some planning work underway to help us kind of get ready for more of those opportunities coming up, which kind of segues into what we've come across in some of our challenges and opportunities over this last year. On the left are some of the challenges that seem to be recurring themes just across the board with all departments. We're still struggling to find the local match sources, even though these are great opportunities to leverage our local match, our budgets are very tight. And so it's still a challenge at times to even find some local match. Staff capacity is sometimes a constraint even to get an application submitted. Our thing doesn't have the technical knowledge that the project managers and the program managers have. And so sometimes they just don't have the time. And there are, we know we have a lot of needs in the general fund, but unfortunately, they're just sometimes our specific opportunities that align with those needs. And fleet is a good example. There are very few opportunities that are relevant for us to help in that area. And then Railroad Enterprise is a good example of a project where sort of like work is still underway. We can't be quite ready to apply, but anticipate in the life of most of the federal programs are going to be five-year programs. And so in this five-year time, the work should wrap up and we'll be ready to submit those applications. In terms of some opportunities to try to mitigate some of the challenges we've run into for fleet, we do think there's probably some opportunities at the state level, just for a little more advocacy and conversations around changing some of their definitions and kind of the narrow framework that they use to replace their fund fleet replacements. For facilities, we just don't really have enough data to competitively compete for some of the applications. And so we're in the midst of a big project to really collect data and quantify what we could improve, which should help our applications going forward. Infrastructure, we've already talked on. We just need to complete some of the active planning work that's happening. The workforce, we are I think fully staffed now for our workforce team, which is great. And then just more cooperation. This has definitely been and trying to find ways to connect projects that may, on the face of it, you wouldn't think like an equity index would be a transportation project, but at the federal level, they're making these connections. And so we're really trying to take that time to bring in departments that may not otherwise without working together. So next steps, kind of what's on our plate, but we're very curious to hear at your level as well, what you think we should look at for the next year. We do need to prepare a little bit more for our congressional indirect spending requests. They tend to have a very fast turnaround. So we just want to be, you know, as well positioned as we can be when those come up next year. More communication between all of our departments so we can holistically present these kinds of grant updates. We just don't have a good system yet since this is all pretty new for all of us. So we'll continue to work on that. We are trying to work on a public basing grant award database so that this is just easier for everyone to see how we're leveraging all of this grant funding and trying to save our taxpayers money to still get a lot done. We're going to try to improve extremely our announcements of funding opportunities. This is always, you know, it's hard to track all the opportunities while we're also writing the grants at times. So we're still trying to find a good solution to streamline some of this. And then continuing to work on our non-cash match strategies so that we can still compete for some of these grant applications that do require a local match. We are struggling for cash. So that is my overview of what we've been doing for the last year. Happy to take any questions or jump back into any thoughts. Great. Thank you, Claude. Because we, I think you fixed the goal from what you're doing today. So much additional money. My question is about the local match challenges that we're having it. You know, if we do, our word France that have a local match, how long does that funding, is it available for us to say? It's a good question. And our strategy for that has actually been that if we can't sort of secure our local match before we apply, we are not applying because we don't want to, we stuck in a situation where we're having to make that decision or potentially, you know, decline an award if we can't pull together the local match. Yeah. That's a problem. Thank you for this work. I think this is super important in terms of offsetting taxpayer obligation to pay for a lot of things. So as much as we can do of this, obviously, I'm super supportive. One of the questions I get, I had a question about local match as well. And it's like, do we have money in our budget that's like tax specifically for a local match as they, as they, we opportunistically As a matter of fact, we do. It's in the capital budget. Ashley, how much money is in there? Or Nicole probably knows because she's like, I need every money. We have four million dollars in the March 22. So we've been using that to go towards a lot of our matches. We have been trying to be very drill with that because there are so many opportunities. And so we're working with teams to possibly even find within their own existing budgets places where we can maybe have also like additional local match option. So we can make sure that we're really utilizing as many dollars as we can and stretching that available for a million as far as we can. I also wanted to know it seems like there's been a lot of work this past year with the school district trying to procure money to pay for different activities at the high school. And it seems like there's a lot of need to work closely with legislative delegation at the state level as well to sort of make sure that they're on the same page as the city or as much as we can have them there. And, and like you said, like to tweak, you know, any of the statues to try to make sure that we fit into more buckets when these grants are available. So can you talk a little bit more about the work or your your idea about how how your your you work with the local delegation? Yeah, it's a good question. And honestly, I think at least at the level of our grants team, we don't do much direct work with our state delegates. We do since we always have a staff point of contact, you know, contact contact for the grants that we're writing, we often talk with the departments about the importance of those connections. And so we really I think rely on department heads to have those good relationships or to be able to advocate political for some of those changes that we need. The school district as an example, we try to just share as much information as we can in terms of, you know, if an opportunity pops up, that we think could be a good fit for the school department, you're passing that along, making sure that because they are very busy, we don't want them to miss opportunities either. And lots of times after we submitted some of our grant applications, like at the federal level, it is important at that stage to have our delegates aware of our applications there, they do have the potential to influence the trajectory of some of those applications. So at the federal level and we're applying there, that's, I'd say, that's been more my experience and more my focus area than even at a state level. But you have more to add? I would just say that Nicole is very modest and one of the things I think we've done really well is take a team approach to this. And it didn't list up here, but was a success collectively was $12 million the way he allocated for Cherry Street grade streets. So while this was a real partnership with DPW, I think, you know, having the coordination and having multiple people have relationships with the congressional delegation is a good thing. So it's not just the grant team. And I think we're coordinated well, and hopefully we'll get some of the larger grants that are still pending, so that we can really minimize that impact. So I just want to say, you know, granted, Nicole used to work for DPW, she knows our industry well, and is really kind of looking out for the whole city. But I feel like on the transportation side, we're very well represented. Sorry. The last question was just what kind of facility data are you missing in your survey approach? I actually might be able to speak a little in more detail to the. So it is our facility stand and taking a lead on it. And they're really doing an in depth inventory of kind of the existing conditions of each facility, what the options are to improve the systems and the equipment that's in there now and how much energy savings could be gained with those different options that decent summary. Yeah, I think it's really specific to some of the opportunities that are popping up, like, it gets us a foot in the door. In addition to that, so we're talking about these energy efficiency opportunities. There's a new group that we're working with, what the facility team is working with, to also help us create a roadmap for all the different ways we could improve our buildings. Energy says that we're also looking to maintain them. So we're kind of taking it, you know, taking two approaches to get to the same place. But yeah, it's going to give us better information to apply for these grants and help with the basic Builds on that. Didn't the city do a facilities inventory several years ago? Yeah, it afterwards and it builds on that work. It does because I mean, 2018 was goodness a bit, you know, a while ago now. So it's a little bit outdated. Most of the costs have, well, honestly, a lot of the costs have like tripled at this point. And some of the needs have changed because as the years have gone on, we still have issues that need correcting. And so the work just keeps adding on. So at this point, it's a good time to take a look at where our buildings are now, how it's changed in those little reports, and then also add that a little bit of energy efficiency to it. So we can also make sure that we're taking advantage of a mid-air building sustainable. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And this is such a great, wonderful work. And I'm really appreciative. And Nicola, I already perceived you as an engineer. And now you're talking about grants. This is good. This is, this is, that's how the good staff do. They can go anywhere and do the work. Perfect. I'm glad. And I just wonder also if you need more capacity as well, because this is a new, or are there a request for that? Yeah, great question. It's definitely something that has come up. I'll say in our office, there's one area that we acknowledge we are not staffed to probably take advantage of as many opportunities to be out there. And that is the world of philanthropy and the non-federal or state grants. We really, yeah, we don't have the capacity to delve into that world. So, you know, that is one potential area where additional staff capacity could bring in some additional dollars. The other thing that we've heard from other departments, so this is less of an impact for probably the CT of us and staff, but, you know, administering federal grants takes quite a bit of time. And so, although I talked about staff capacity constraints initially in terms of the application development process, it's also a big factor for departments to consider even if they want to apply because they don't know if they have the time to manage the grants. And so, sometimes there are, yeah, there have been requests and just questions of, you know, how is the city thinking about any potential capacity expansion to take the burden off of the project managers and the financial staff to, you know, do the administrative side of the grants. Amazing. And, you know, I completely agree because I remember two, three years ago when we were having this discussion, people were not psyched about it to say that, oh, municipalities run on taxpayers' money, right? And also, some of these grants have so much, you know, hurdle attached to it. So, basically, you put so much work to get a grant and then the reporting is just a nightmare. People choose to just leave it alone and continue with the taxes. But I'm glad that, you know, this year, the city is changing. Or last year, the city started to change its mindset to bring these dollars. Now, what is your relationship or the department, it's not on department yet, but with the enterprise fund departments? Do you support their work or they do it separately or what is the dynamic? Yeah, I'd say the biggest connection and support is really just, like, initial communication. I see Megan on here. So I'll use her as an example with the water resources team. There are some funding opportunities that are specific to, you know, water and storm water. Oftentimes, we will just share those opportunities with their department. Usually, they take the lead on water specific grant requests. But we also kind of leave it open that if they're interested and are just short-staffed at that moment, then we can help still support the grant application. We have sort of a little, like, one pager that asks a few questions. Sometimes we'll use this as a tool to help us figure out when we should step in to help or when capacity is so constrained. We really, like, it's not going to do any of us any good to try to force that in. So, yeah, conversations are still happening. Traffic is another example where we often talk about the grant opportunities that are out there. Traffic isn't as stacked for grant writing. So that's an example of one where we do step in more to help with the actual grant writing. Amazing. This is good. Thank you so much. This is amazing. And CFO Chab, this is more a question for you now. You know, the city operating budget, you know, most of it as from the general fund. But we also do have a lot of other money coming into the city, such as the pilot firm, some federal grants. And I was just wondering what the percentage of that in the city's operation and no rush right now. I think in the future I would want to understand how the city is operating also without the taxpayers, without the funds from the taxpayers. But this is good. Congrats, Mr. Mayor, for making it happen. Thank you, Councilor Jay. And I share your enthusiasm. That other Councilors have noted tonight that this is a really positive initial capacity that we've created. And so I appreciate this chance to take stock of it and talk about where it's headed here. So I think in the interest time, if there, I do want to make sure, I guess apparently we're getting kicked out of this room at seven. So we have about a half hour left and we have an important discussion about the budget to go. So there's no further questions for Nicole. We will let her go and say thank you and we're looking forward to the news on some of these awards. And with that, thank you. We'll move now to the, really, what is our final opportunity for a budget discussion before this milestone of administration submitting the budget to you and finishing our work and hanging it off to you. The budget, Catherine posted the full budget on Friday. And you know, there's, she has, there's been some minor changes since our past discussions. So I'll go to her in a moment. She has a few things to present. I, you know, just overarchingly, you know, we've been talking for months about this budget. It's certainly been, I think in many ways, this is perhaps the most challenging of the 12 budgets I've been responsible for. I do think we're coming to the end of the process here with continued investment in public safety and a transformed public safety in many ways. We're the, another major theme in this budget. We are continuing largely through the Toronto Electric Department, but our commitment to move towards a net zero future vision that the city has and is certainly a budget where we have worked hard to be both maintain services, I think for all its value and to at the same time recognize the these are volatile and challenging times for many, many of our constituents and that we need to be very careful about new costs that we're imposing on them. And I do think this budget, which keeps given the inflationary times that we're experienced in the last couple years, and that's another theme of this budget. So with that, I'll hand over to Catherine to speak about a few details and then open them up for any questions or discussions that you guys are ready for. I do have a very brief PowerPoint that was not put up before this to just guide us through. I'm hoping that you all spent the very lovely weekend just looking at all of the detailed budgets. But if you didn't, there's still time and I will guide you through. I will not be able to hear again. This is really just a reminder for those of you who've been at every meeting, you're just probably sick of me saying it, but for those of you who are new, this is a very challenging year. We have increased public safety costs, we have the fleet costs, and we have a lot of general inflation and COLA increases for non-public safety staff. And we have been talking about this for several months. We did have our five marvelous nights of May. And we will talk about some of the feedback that was incorporated. I have also sent out lots of detailed information as requested out to various city counselors. This is where we have landed. It is, as you can see, about a three to four percent increase over last year's budget. And it is just over a hundred and one million dollars. This is the general fund. This is the proposed municipal tax rate. Our proposal is that it go from 70.82 cents to 75.23 cents. It is just over a six percent increase. These last two budgets, bullets are the same as what you saw on May 30th. We are still including the additional half a cent for street capital and raising the exemption for the business personal property tax from 45 to 75,000. One of the questions I got on May 30th that I wanted to be sure was clear to everyone is the impact. And I appreciated Sharon's comment about needing to make sure we have a way to ensure an affordability overlay. And as you can see here after the reappraisal, you will remember that the median price of a home in Burlington is at $370,000 and pulled that number out of a hat. That's what that record stands for. That's why that's there. And you can see the effect of some of these proposed tax increases. The two cents for the increased parks appropriation is just over $6 a month. The additional money, the additional half cent for street tax is just over $1.50. And the total municipal tax increase, including those two items, is $13.60 a month. What's driving the rest of that increase is items that over which we don't have the GMT tax went up slightly this year. There have not been that many changes to the budget since June 1st. There's a whole slide of things on May 30th that I made changes to. Not going to revisit that, but you can go to my old slide. These are things that have been changed since. We increased legislative representation by $25,000. There were a couple of things in the regional programs line and those were corrected. What had previously been called the Kahootz model, which we're now calling CARES. That budget increased a little bit. It is also that's a cost share with the state, but our piece of it is $365,000. Because this is such a tricky budget, I would and I always like to look at what has happened in the past and especially before I got here. The contingency line item used to be $500,000. We've trimmed it as we go. People may remember that to spend even one cent of contingency, we need to come get city council approval. I want to be very clear. This is not like a morrow and Catherine fund to use for whatever we want. It's very tightly controlled, but because there's a lot of unknowns in this budget, we did bump that up just a little bit in case it is needed. I did also want to clarify a little bit here. There's one slight change. I came back to you on May 30th and I said it's not a $5 million hole. Actually it's $5,900,000 and that was very unfortunate. I'm going to explain a little bit more about how we got there, but I did the most important thing is the last bullet. That $900, we've gotten down to about $700,000 and there's no more surprises like not coming back for any more money. We were able to reduce some of those expenses. Also, I was not very clear in the last meeting about what had caused that, and so the two middle bullets, I'm really trying to be very upfront with everyone about what happened in previous budgets. We had this placeholder for $500,000. We called it Carry Forward Savings Initiatives. It was a Bob Rustin special. That sounds great, but we didn't have documentation about it. It had just been carried forward for several years. We hadn't chewed up if we had the $500,000 and so that essentially caused a $500,000 hole in our health insurance budget. We also had unforeseen retirement expenses on the employer side, and that is because in the BFFA contract, employees can only contribute 14% of their income to retirement. The true cost is up to 15.5%. We can't slough that off onto all the other employees that would be unfair, and so that is a cost that is being borne by the city. As I mentioned, we were able to tighten some things up, so that's not a $900,000, but $700,000, and you'll see that in the budget. One of the things that some counselors asked for was just a breakdown of, I think they're more interested in expenses, but I've done it on revenues, and now I'll do another slice for Councillor Jay, understanding kind of what he wants, but this is kind of an overview of where our revenues have come from. You can see, non-departmental, huge. That includes property taxes, franchise fees, local option tax, gross receipts, and so I can break all of that out for the future, but you can also see where some of the larger revenue-earning departments are here, and I put a large over here, and that's because these are all $200,000 or less, taking that $3 million. It wasn't very meaningful data. Then on this next slide, you can see the expenses. City Council coming in at a strong 0%, you guys don't cost very much, but everyone else, you can see non-departmental, again, covers a large variety of things, and we can talk more about that, but fire and police there make up 34% of the budget on public safety, and then if you look at DPW and parks, that's another 19%. We are getting to the end of this process. The charter states that by Thursday, this will no longer be my budget. It will be the Mayor's budget, and in addition to the detailed budgets you see on the website, we will get the formal resolution finished and posted, as well as what we call the Mayor's Trans-Middle. Sounds very formal, but it is the Mayor's memo that always accompanies the budget, talks about the principles, any large changes, or things that are noteworthy in the budget. Then we will meet next Tuesday as a City Council, and we do have a second City Council meeting on Monday, the 26th. Need to pass a budget by then, because we got to do it by the 30th, and I don't think we want a third meeting. Hopefully, it doesn't take that long. This is a redo slide from the 30th, and I won't read it all again here, but I thought it was important enough to put in again because we know that there is a heavy reliance on cuts and one-time funds in this budget. We have a lot of work to do, starting July 1st, or maybe starting June 27th, if we pass it on June 26th, and it is detailed here, and some of that work is in fact already starting, but I think it is important for us to all be on the same page, because sometimes we put the budget away and forget about it for a few months, and this will be a 365-day year budget, and we will revisit it and talk about it probably in every meeting. That's all like that. Thank you, Katherine. So, with our remaining time tonight, it's really another chance to have some discussion that folks would like to have, anything you'd like us to be thinking about as we finalize the budget or any questions you have. How's it going? Could you put this presentation on pseudo-clarifers, because I want to digest a unit, so I don't want to make absolutely. And then the other question I had was, on a $370,000 median priced home, the municipal portion of this year's tax crisis, this budget is $163, but do we know what the school portion would be? We know that I just was just looking, but as you were finishing your presentation, I can't seem to find it, and I know some of that gets finalized late in the year after town meeting day budgets are approved, but it'd be good to sort of know, because the public looks at their tax bill and they don't make the distinction of which part is municipal and which part is school, and we know that school is about 70%, right, or they're about, so it's a much bigger portion of the property tax bill. Nevertheless, it helps to understand that in the context, that greater context of this $163 increase that we'd be asking, right? Yes. The latest information that I have from Nathan at the school shows an impact on a $370,000 home that qualifies for a home of 10 is $207. Okay, great. If there's no further questions, yes, the only, we did have a quick discussion last week, we said we'd talk about it again now for people's planning purposes again, doesn't really have to be decided tonight, but there's this question out there, whether we're going to try to, the council's going to try to review this to take action at the council meeting next 20th, whether 26th, which would be the final, which is another potential name for the council meeting, but which is not entirely scheduled yet. So any thoughts on that at this point, I'm not sure, I think I want to speak for others. I'm a lot of time with the budget, certainly, but others are in terms of how quickly we're going to go from here. So it makes sense. Okay, so we'll email to figure out. Okay, so we will, sorry, what was I hope talk to you for a second there, what was your knowledge, probably good to email around it super okay. Very good. Is there's no further questions or comments? Yes, I would like to make a comment, Mr. Mayor. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I think it will be good to please consider getting back to me on my email of May 10th that I sent to you and Chad and members of this as well. I think I would really appreciate that. And initially, my perspective is $370 a year from a median home taxpayer is already too much not to consider water rates going up, electricity going up, inflation for the people. I think the city needs to do more investigating into reducing this budget this year, at least from the perspective of a taxpayer. That's where I am, but I really would love you to please consider getting back to my initial email when we started to discuss this budget season this year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. I'll just quickly add on to that. It might be helpful with other communications around the budget if we're able to give people a full picture of those increases across the board, because I know the recycling tax is going up as well. So recycling water and electricity just making sure that everybody has complete information, because I know all of those things are within this budget, but are necessarily talking about what we're talking about the impacts on families. I think with that. So Catherine, here's a good point. The way we've kind of hailed in the past is we're not looking for any kind of action from the board. I think we have to present the final budget, but we generally do convene a board finance meeting. It's helpful for the full council to have a recommendation on part of this order action. So I don't know if we guess that somewhat goes to the question of what the council is likely to. So I guess we'll leave it a little bit of an open question now, but we will be convening a board finance meeting through our budget, the night of the budget, seeking a recommendation. And I guess maybe at the minimum we'll do a board finance meeting on the 20th, so that we can try to see if we're tempted to get a recognition from the board on that idea. So why don't people play on that? We will have a board finance meeting probably focused primarily on that on the budget, maybe no other items, and where the goal will be to see if the board will make a recognition. So I hope that we can get there. So with that, stay tuned. I'm looking forward to finish up this process with you over the next week or two. And we will, at 6.52, if there's no objection, adjourn the board of finance. Thank you very much. Thank you.