 Good morning everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Good to be back with you. So we're going to talk about other post employment benefits I hope have. Last time I was here. We walked through various leavers or options you can make to the plan. This time we've kind of packaged those into a few options for you and kind of quantify those. So with that being said, okay, so I'm going to skip page three. I've kind of talked about that while we've been here and page four just just to reiterate, you know, I'm not a lawyer. I may play one on TV when they're legal advice. I'm an actuary. Don't even want to play one on TV. I probably don't even want to play one on TV. That's right. So I'm an actuary and, you know, we'll model some numbers for you but you know the numbers we model have been based on our best estimate or best estimate and you know reality may be different than that. So let's talk about where you are currently. And I think this is very important that you put in a defined dollar benefit in 2012. And the time you put that in that save you roughly $110 million. So based on what I looked at you cut your open blob did almost in half and you put that in. And that defined dollar limit has caps of $1130 for 365 retirees $804 for the spouses. Okay, yeah, you put in a defined dollar benefit or a DDB in 2012 and you say roughly $110 million when you put that in the first bullet there. I'm sorry, I'm on page six. Everyone good. Okay. So I just wanted to kind of give you the history, you know, you put this in and the first time I met with you, I was saying, you know, you were far ahead of the curve because most entities have not kept their OPEP costs, like you had done. However, and I'm going to go down here to the second phase of the bullet. Last year, you have not been maintaining that defined dollar for the DDB. You've been playing the premiums and so you haven't been passing on additional costs, mainly your pre 65 retirees. And if the policy isn't changed, we will have to value what you're actually doing for OPEP liability purposes. And I'll go through these on the next few pages. But essentially your OPEP liability is probably about the double at least. So you're probably looking at going from at the bottom of a roughly $190 million OPEP liability to where if you don't maintain your policy almost $380 million. And going in the future, you'll see it gets into the billions with the B. So these next few pages just illustrate that. On page seven, we show you the actual cash flows by each group of what the benefit payments are going to be on the dark green or your current retirees and then the lighted green or your current actives. And as you can see, the future hires are way out there in the future because they've got to get to retire before they start receiving those benefits. This assumes you maintain the DDB. So look what's happening if you don't. If you don't, your curve looks like most government entities I consult with. Most people have this curve that's overly sloping because those benefits are increasing with medical inflation. And I'm assuming this is 4%, which is very generous. I mean, we know that medical inflation is going up higher than 4%, but I just wanted to illustrate for you just what even that 4% it does. But the 4% is a figure that's used over a 30 year period. Correct. Yes, sir. So it could be over 30 years with an average 4%. That's true. Yeah. Right. So look at it as a one year. That's true. Yeah. Right. So if you look at medical trend, you know what we call the ultimate medical trend rate, it's usually somewhere around at 45% rate. So long term, but you know, I've been doing this like 20 years. We've been saying the ultimate trend is going to be five for those 20 years. And I'd be doggone if it's not going up higher than most of those years. Yep. But the point is that if you don't maintain the DDB, you know, you're going to have this upward sloping benefit payments. So now let's look at the liability. You know, and again, I talked about when I'm on page nine here, when you made the change, you know, you put your liability in half. And you also kind of stabilize the liability where it essentially almost remains relatively flat. We look at kind of like the benefit payments. And you can see it's roughly 200 million. We'll call it today and expect it to maintain around that point. But if you look at page 10, this is what I was talking about getting into the billions that if the DDB is not maintained, then you're looking at in 30 years having a liability of, you know, 1.2 billion in a billion dollar range. So instead of having a liability of roughly 200 million 30 years from now, we're looking at having a liability is probably a billion more. So I know that I've gone through this before, but I just wanted to kind of set the stage of why we're here to talk about that. Okay. So now let's look at what kind of options do you have available. So we've labeled option option one, two and three, not because of that's your first option, second option, a third option. But what we've done is labeled option that has the most significant impact or the most significant impact on your current work group, all the way down to the ones that have the least impact. So just to highlight option one, so what this option does is it assumes that, okay, you've got $48 million sitting aside to quote fund OPEV. So what if you just took that $48 million and said, we'll fund OPEV until the money's gone? You know, again, that does will be the most significant thing you could do besides just totally turning it off. Then what happens to that? You know, of course, your liability is limited to that $48 million. But the issue is that that would only allow the plan to operate for five or six years. Would you put that $48.7 million into a trust or would you leave it in Jeff's bank account to use as cash for the city? I think Jeff won't suspend it, so we'll leave it in his bank account. I'm just kidding. Honestly, for this purposes of this option, it really wouldn't matter much because you're going to be taking out roughly $9 to $10 million a year. So you won't be able to invest the money really that long term anyway. And also given that the restriction that South Carolina has on investments, it just really wouldn't, for this option, it really wouldn't matter. Because literally what we're assuming here is you take the $48 million and you just drain it down essentially. And so Eric, you're saying after, your five to six year estimate is based on kind of the current trend of what we're playing. So five to six years after it's depleted, then we wouldn't have any more obligations than the retirees. And I guess, do we have an estimate on knowing where we are currently with our retirees about how many more would be in the system at that point? You've got roughly 700 now. I can tell you for the five years, after this meeting, I can go look up and tell you exactly how many. We have that number. I just don't have it at the top of my head. But literally, not only would your current retirees be impacted, then pretty much anyone who's active today probably unlikely to get a benefit. And again, this is the most significant option. I started with this one. I'm not saying this is the first one, but just to give you some perspective of, you know, so essentially that would just cap your OPEP liability at $48 million. The other thing I want to point out with this option too, and this gets into all these options, we're assuming that you establish what we call an HRA, a health reimbursement account. You know, I talked to you about your current policy, how you pay in the premiums, but the health reimbursement account, you would deposit that $1,100 or $840 to dependents into an account. And they would go out there and then purchase their own coverage. So that would essentially get you out of having to pay the difference in the premiums and all those. So all the options I'm going to show you, assume that you establish what we call an HRA. Eric, these options were put together, I understand, based on interviews that they've had with counsel as they will. One of the options that's not up there is eliminating spouse coverage altogether, not just for the ones that can offer coverage elsewhere, but eliminate it and spouse and defend it and only ensure our employees. Correct. So that would be significantly more savings for the city if we did that? So under option one, so looking at the other options if you did that, it would add a little bit more savings. I don't know if it would be what I would call it significantly more, but just because, if I remember correctly, I think your current dependence, you're paying someone in the million and a half million dollar range, I think. And so you just totally eliminate them and you would add that. Now going forward, it would add more savings, just as more retirees, as more current employees retire. Is there an equity issue here between the employees that are single and the employees that have spouse independence? That's a good question. Based on, well before you answer that, clarify the question because we're talking about retiree coverage, we're not talking about active. Well it's just as important on the retiree size as it is on the active size. But there's two differences because we had this discussion earlier. The discrepancy is so a single employee can cost us more than a whole family in any year based on their claims. So unless you have the claim data, you can't answer that question. Well, the liability is more if you have four people. Not necessarily. So a family of four makes no claim in a year, but an individual has two renal failures or something like that. It costs $300,000. How do you say that's not? That's what I'm saying. Unless it doesn't look at claims and actually it looks at what's possible based on a... Yeah, but we're making decisions on historical. We have historical data for creation. So to say, I think that's a loaded question. You've got to have the data to stand up to that. I'm actually going to read with both of you about that. You're right. No, sir, I am not absolutely not. I would say that you're correct. We would look at the claims of those dependents to see if they're paying their true cost. So that was going to affect. And I would say the way you're paying a setup now, you're paying $1100 for the retiree, $840 for the dependents. So I assume you put that in to try to balance that equity issue. Again, that was put in before I got here and we haven't looked at the claims, but that's why I assume you made that differential. But... Well, you know, and I think there's a big line of distinction between pre and post-65 as well as we know. I mean, our pre-65s are our biggest liability at this point in our biggest claims. Right. We're on page 13 there. So that was option one. I'll just keep going through the option and then we've got another page to kind of mix a little clear. On option B, one B, we'll assume that you eliminate post-65 coverage for that same group. And also you remove that restriction of having to limit the amount of the $48.7 million. The only option that limits the liability of $48.7 million is the first option. And then option one C assumes that we would now restrict it to only those current active employees who are eligible to retire before the end of the year. So the first option kind of affects everyone. Option one B, we start removing post-65 and then option one C, we only restrict it to those current active employees who will be eligible to retire end of the year. And I'll go on to option two. So on option two, we don't touch the current retirees. Here we look at the current active employees and your future hires. Again, we establish the HRA. We eliminate that spousal coverage for those who have credible coverage. And for purposes of our numbers, we've only assumed 25% have credible coverage. So essentially the numbers we've mod almost essentially they've been removed anyway. And then we extend eligibility and put an age requirement to get the benefit in option two. And then in option three, we look at only for future hires. What if you don't touch any current retirees or current active employees? What if you only do changes for future hires? Option three just takes it together all the way, right? Like what if we only offer the benefit, don't offer anything to the future hires pre or post-65? And then option three B only offers our pre-65 coverage. So on page 14, this is probably a little easier to see it. You've got to compare the options all together. And again, you know, I said that we arranged these by which has the most impact of the most change. You see the first option impacts everyone just because once the fund runs out, everyone will be impacted. Option one B only affects those future hires, current active employees and those pre-65s. We will remove post-65 for those current employees. And then we go on down the list. And you can see option two actually impacts your current active employees and your future hires. Then three is only future hires. So any questions kind of about what the mechanics of the options are? We can go on to look at some of the numbers. Let's see the numbers. So I'm going to skip page 15 that just talks about how we quantify the numbers. And again, I'll show you on the immediate impact, which is really like the impact on your budget next year. Then more intermediate and then longer term impact. So here are the numbers. So again, option one, as I said, you know, it's the most change. So it has, of course, the biggest impact. And so I just want to talk a little bit about this $19 million of savings that on option one, what we assume is that you wouldn't put any money in your budget. You wouldn't fund anything for retired medical. You would take that 48 million out of the trust and totally use that to drain out the fund. But that will open up two avenues for you. You wouldn't be funding the $9 million in benefit payments that you currently do. Or would you be funding anything in the budget? So that's why that number is so large. And if you did that, essentially, you would almost essentially begin out of the retired medical business. But you would just use that $48 million just to pay claims into us gone. So again, that has the biggest impact. Option one, be where you eliminate post 65 coverage. You see immediately make sure you're going to save about $9 million with that option. And all the way down in option three, option for future hires, they don't have any impact on the media budget because those employees aren't hired yet. So now I'll skip all the way to the far right and look at the impact over the 30 years. So if you look at, you know, option three, you know, you would trim your op-ed liability, you know, roughly, and these are in today's dollars. You would trim the op-ed liability roughly, you know, 28 to 30 million dollars would pay just the future hires. Now in option two, you would almost create about the same amount of savings if you touched current and active employees. So I'm going to pause there and kind of let this soak in and see if we got any questions on any of the options or any of the numbers we have here. On C, where you say fund up, do you have a projection on that? So on what option one C would do, you would just continue to fund the HRA essentially. Yeah, that's what we're saying here is that I just want to delineate that from option one where you aren't doing anything else. You know, the additional funding, option one B and the rest of the options, you just continue to fund HRA. So above and beyond the 48 million? Yes, yes. So in theory, any option besides one, the 48 million is still there to, you know, to pay for other benefits or whatever, you know, the city's pleasure is. If we don't have any impact on the numbers, I do want to talk about what the impact on the employees will be and some of the retirees. Okay. So let's go through the health care delivery. I do want to just highlight a few things here about the differences in the market. You know, we talked about your pre-medicare, your pre-65 retiree versus the Medicare retirees. So let me first define what we call the individual market. Currently now you have a group plan. Employees go through the city to get their coverage in a group basis. With ACA, we created this whole individual market and there are kind of two exchanges. There's the public exchanges, what the state has, and there's also private exchanges. So I refer to that as the individual market. The individual market for pre-medicare retirees is not as stable as it is for Medicare retirees. You know, we can get into all the reasons, a lot of them we list here. But that population there, you know, again, that's your highest cost population. And I'll show you the claims and the premiums. But that population is not as stable as the post-medicare retirees. The Medicare retirees, you know, first of all, Medicare is the primary payer. There are several public and private exchanges for them. And their premiums aren't increasing as fast as these pre-medicare retirees. And we list a lot of the reasons kind of why here, but that is just the premiums I just want you to take away. As we get into the numbers, we start thinking about that. Do you think the pre-medicare market is going to stabilize and the restrengthen the future years? What I've been told is that that pre-medicare market is just still in such a state of flux. Because, you know, that is just our, for everyone, that is our highest cost people. And that market is just still hasn't stabilized. So, you know, when I show you the premiums, you'll be able to see it. They're going to have high premiums, you know, how about that trend rate of 4%. That group is probably having trend, you know, double of everyone else. Now that's not to say that at some point it could, but from what I've been told by all of our experts is that that market is just still in a state of flux. Any other questions on pre-medicare versus post-medicare? So, we did what we call a footprint to look at all your pre-medicare retirees. You got roughly 400. What do they live and what choices of plans are available to them? And so, you can see most of your employees live in Richland and Lexington. You've got a few sprinkled out, you know, throughout the country. But if you look at the choice of plans, the thing I want to point out is that look at the number of platinum plans offered. There's almost nonexistent for where most of your retirees live. Most of the plans for the pre-medicare retirees are these bronze or silver plans. South of Florida. You know, Sunshine State, right? Yeah, I think you can do that. You've got that one retiree who would have options everywhere, right? He's got 13 platinum plans, lots of silver plans. And the cost is lower. And the cost is lower. So, no state taxes, but you've only got one retiree there. But for most of your retirees, you know, they would be subject to either a silver or a gold plan. But look on the far right, the number of carriers available too. You know, you notice we've talked about this that, you know, in the state of South Carolina, there's only one carrier available. So, there's one game in town. You've got several different types of plans. But if, you know, you prefer something other than the blues, you've got to move to Volusia, right? Maybe that's why he moved. She moved. So, this just gives you a picture of where your retirees live and what the choices are available. On the next page. Let me ask a question. Yes, sir. 194, is that all? That's all you have in Richland County. You've got 136 in Lexington. Now, we're only talking about those pre-65ers. Right. Yeah, that's it. But, you know, if you look at that, that's roughly 230 out of, you know, that's over half of them live in those two counties, you know. And then, you know, they start scattering out. On page 20, I just kind of show you some of the details of the different plan designs. But the thing I want to point out here to you is, look at the far right columns where we show you extra premiums. So, these are the premiums that are currently, as of 2018, on the exchanges. So, if you look at, if your employee, your current plan is between a gold and a platinum plan. So, it's not exactly a gold, it's not exactly a platinum. It's right between those two. If you look at where current pre-65 retirees in Richland County, they'd be paying roughly $1,250 a month for premiums. And you can see the premiums fluctuate. Like, you know, that gentleman down in Valice, Pre-65. Correct. Pre-65. You know, that gentleman down there, Mrs. Down in Volusia County, you can see their premiums are a lot cheaper for that same gold plan. So, and I recognize that Florida has a very high retiree population, move Florida and that kind of stuff. But, I mean, what's the rationale for that? Is it they have more providers, so the competition is bringing the cost down? Or what is dictating that? Is there anything we can learn from them? They, well, you know, it is retirement state, preferable retirees. They do have more providers. We look at that other page in Florida, they had like five providers. So, I'll go back there. Does that probably competition? Yeah, you've got the competition. And if you've got a market where there's a ton of retirees, they've got more to pull it over and just more experience. I mean, that state is just, you know, most people retire from other places and move to Florida. Then you've got other places in Ohio, which also has a lot of carriers. You know, when you've got more competition, you tend to have those lower premiums. But it's also based on, also the last thing I'll add is based on the health of that general population. You know, you know, I live in Atlanta and here in the South and, you know, I even have it's probably not the best. So if you start looking at, if you mix Florida, maybe you've got retirees from all over. And maybe, you know, their habits are maybe different than ours who, you know, stay primary in the areas where we're born and raised. If they ask you a question, okay. Here we look at, I talked about the premiums. So if we go to page 21, I just want to show you what the impact will be on a particular employee. So your average pre-65 employees age 58. Here I've just shown you age 60 just for illustrative purposes. So if you look at the total premium, I talked about that 1,200, you know, roughly $50. I mean, the $1,242 for the gold plan, right? So your current defined dollar benefit will pay them roughly $1,130. So they would be net out of pocket $122. Now, you know, you may say, well, $122 doesn't sound like a lot, but compare it to the 16 they're paying now. You know, they're going to be paying roughly $100 plus dollars more. Now, again, this is for retirees age 60. You got some retirees that are younger who will pay less and you got some that are older who will pay more. At the very oldest end of the range, those age 64 retirees, they will be paying roughly $100 more than this. Now I'll call it roughly. We show those in the appendices. Yeah, they'll be paying roughly $250. So you're looking at, if you send them to the individual market for the pre-65, you're going to go from paying roughly $16 to, you know, like in a similar plan, you know, roughly $122. And, you know, it's just something to point out. So let's assume that you had maintained your defined dollar benefit last year, right? If you look at the premiums of your current plan, and these are equivalent premiums, it's not far off from the gold plan. The difference is that the city is picking up much more of the costs for your retirees. And so they're net out of pocket. You know, their premiums is a lot smaller. So it's just kind of highlights the fact that, you know, not maintaining that defined dollar benefit, the city is taking on much more of the costs, you know, and the retirees paying less. But if you were to send them to the exchange and implement the defined dollar benefit, then they would, you know, be paying more. But the premiums aren't that much different between your group paying the individual market a little bit lower. How do we collect that $16? How do we collect that $16 premium per month from an retiree now? Because they're getting state retirement. And, you know, the base plan, we'll call it, that plan, like I said, between the gold and the platinum plan. And a retiree could have the option of buying a lower tier plan and, you know, and essentially paying, you know, no out of pocket dollars. They bought a gold or a very little they bought a silver plan. But to buy what I'll call a quote, you know, almost equivalent plan, you're going to be paying $100 plus dollars more. Any questions on this example before we go on? So now let's look at your Medicare retirees. We go through the same analysis and, you know, not much different. You know, most of your Medicare retirees are still, you know, right around these two counties in Richland and Lexington, you know, almost the same as the pre-Medicare retirees. But if you look at the number of plans they have, there's a lot more options, you know, and I talked about that market being much more stable. So, you know, I think some of you in insurance, you know, insurance companies are in the business of risk management. And if they feel like they can take on a risk that they can manage, they'll offer you a lot of plans and offer you coverage. And that's why on the pre-65 you don't see as many, but on these post-65 you see much more plans. Just because with Medicare being the primary payer and all those, you know, insurance companies are in that game. So, again, they have much more options. So we'll go through the example if anybody had any questions around that. So in this case, and this is probably the silver lining for your Medicare retirees. So currently, they're paying roughly $216 for the current plan. And I'll skip through our stuff because the premium is roughly $516. The defined dollar benefit is $300, so that leaves them roughly $200 out of pocket, $216. They were to go to the individual market. And I've shown the plan that is kind of similar. You can see that they would actually be paying less, you know, significantly less. And that's probably a function of probably two or three things. One, you know, that market is much more stable. Two, you probably got some cross-subsidization where some of those retirees are subsidizing the pre-65ers. And doing this would break that. So those Medicare retirees, you know, within theory on the individual market, you know, probably do better and much better. So, you know, someone asked me if I had good news this morning. There's a good news. No, no. So I just took the average of your post-65ers. I'm sorry. I think they're around 76. I just want to show you what your average employee would be like. Right. I just want to make sure. I'm just, from my knowledge, I just want to know, would this likely be the scenario for someone that's 66, 67? Well, that should be better. So I need to point that out. So if you're younger than this, these numbers will get better. Right? Like, so your auto-potato costs will go down. Those who are older, right, will be paying a little bit more. So let's say, I don't know if you'd still be living to get to a criminal premium on the Medicare market. But if you're, say, 85, you'd be paying, let's just call it about $100 more than this. But still less than the current plan. You know, and there are some changes. I'm not going to get into the prescription drugs. Medicare has a five-tier system. You've got four. So there would be some changes. But overall, they could get an equivalent plan for probably two. So now that I've gone through all this, so what's next? So, you know, in my mind, you've kind of got two paths that I'll choose. Or I'll kind of say, you've got what I won't call it. I'll call it do nothing for sake of here. But, you know, no action. You've got two choices if you don't act and take one of the options today. Either one, you can increase those, you maintain the DDB and increase the premium. Or you don't maintain the DDB and your OPEP lobby that goes up effective June 30th, 2018. It's going to hit the balance sheet this year because of Gavzai 75. So it just, I hate to be cynical, but you know, if you don't maintain the DDB, then we will have to value what you're doing and the OPEP lobby is going to go up. Okay. The other option is we went through all these different options. Three and three and three B, you know, you can amend the plan and, you know, and that comes down to kind of, you know, what are your desired level of savings? And who do we really only impact? So that's kind of why I structured it like that to show you, you can impact everyone all the way down to the future hire. And, you know, unfortunately, I'm not running for office. So, you know, those are policy decisions that, you know, that you all have to make in conjunction with your staff about who's, who's really going to be impacted. We quantify the numbers for you. But you know, but what type of savings are you looking to get next year? And who do you want to impact? Once you decide which one of those paths to go down, you know, you've still got some communication to do. You know, if you're going to maintain the DDB and increase premiums, you need to be getting out ahead of that now. I talked to Pam and Missy and Jeff about, you know, making sure that you communicate that so it's not last minute to your retirees. And, or, you know, Jeff or Jan would need to be on the phone with your rating agencies if you don't maintain the DDB. Because, you know, they're going to wonder why is this OPEP liability, you know, two times as big as we thought it would be. Now, if you do amend the plan, you've got a few more decision points to make. I talked about pre-medicare and post-medicare market and how which one was more stable and we kind of showed that in premiums. For the pre-medicare, you probably want to decide whether or not you want to send them to the individual market or do you want to keep them in the group plan with the HRA. So what I mean by that is that you could continue to offer the plan through the city, fund the HRA, but let them buy the plan through the city but your cost is still limited to the HRA. That would give them a few more options and probably, and then in a way you can kind of blend in with active employees to lower their cost a little bit. Or you could just send them to the individual market and they pay those premiums I showed you before. And then with the POST 65ers, the biggest question is, do you go with the private exchange, which has more options or do you go with the state exchange, which has one carrier? So a lot of decision points. The first thing is, big path are you going to go down. Do you want to make some action to move on some of these options or you're looking to amend the plan from there? There's other things that you've got to consider. And the last thing I'll leave you with and I'll stop talking is that if you're going to go to the individual market, you really need to be getting out ahead of that right now. Because it takes a while to get the implemented, getting the cares and all that stuff and then communicate to retirees. So literally, that decision needs to be made sooner rather than later. In the ideal world, you would be getting into that in May, which is next week. So that's all I have for today. Legitimately, this is a really panned question. So you'll meet with an enrollment for us and they would help to retire me to try to plan or have with that. Probably not. Probably what we would do is we would find a navigator, somebody who is an expert in helping the retirees. So we probably wouldn't be doing the enrollment like we do our normal enrollment for our active employees. We'd probably be consulting with a navigator. Those people have the expertise to help people pick a plan because you got to understand it's really going to be an individual decision. So they'll have to look at what kind of medications the person is taking, what kind of health issues they have, and then help them shop for a plan that's going to fit their particular, how much money they want to spend with the DDB that we're giving them. And they would do that on an individual basis. So we'd probably hire a navigator. And there are lots of them out there that do that. But that's what we'd be looking at doing. It wouldn't be a normal enrollment process. How long does this type change over? One year, two years? Well, we will be doing it for January of next year of 2019. That will be the plan to make that change effective with the new plan. Well, I was kind of looking at the education process for the employees. Yeah, and that's what he was talking about. The earlier you start, the better. So we would start like in next month identifying a navigator that we're going to use and start having meetings, sending out letters, all type of mechanisms to communicate that this change is happening for the retirees. Is it in this plan or something else I read over the weekend where we changed the plan to have 55 retirees, age 55 retirees? That's one of your options. Yes, it is. So option two and options for your future hires, all those options, we add additional requirements. You make them at the work two more years to get the coverage and we put an age 55 minimum age on it. I'm on page 14. So two and three be both have those. And conceivably, you know, we could make that an option even if you with any of these that could be an option. That could be something that we require people to do for eligibility. Yeah, I guess it's a little closer to the whole rule of 90 and the retirement eligibility is the same right now. We often have to explain to people how they're eligible for retiree insurance, but they're not eligible to retire or vice versa. Because right now you either have to have 20 years of service if you were here prior to 2009. And then after that you have to have either 25 years or 28 years of service in order to be eligible for retiree insurance. So our our employees who've been here a long time, they may have 20 years of service, but they may not be old enough or have enough years of service in order to retire. Or they have enough years of they have enough years of service and age to retire through the retirement system. They haven't worked for us long enough to be eligible for our retiree insurance. We get that quite often where they say, well, I'm eligible to retire. And we go, yeah, but you don't get insurance because you haven't worked with the city long enough. That's that's something we deal with right now. First and most important question we have. Yeah, that's the driving force. Are we going to put a billion dollars worth of liability on the city in a few years? Or are we going to stick to it? Right, because we haven't, you know, when it like Eric said when it was created, the whole concept was that anything that exceeded that, the increases, the retirees would pick up that cost. And it was it's been a big increase. I mean, we had three million dollars in one year increase when you divide that by 400 people. That's a pretty significant increase. So so we have not really maintained it and haven't increased it either. We haven't increased the DDB either. So our hope is that with this information that will be closer to making some decisions about which option you all are going to choose. Of course, you know, the sooner, the better with that. And then we'll have to go through the process of either doing something formal to solidify the decision that you all made and then make the make the steps that you made. Just to move forward with either education or whatever the next things that we have to do. So it is a unfortunately it is a decision that needs to be made sooner than later. Page 16. Because I have some dialogue with the retirees. I recognize the time sensitivity. Yeah, I was just asking if there was a decision that we made. I mean, you got a quorum. We do. But once you in the world, once you have a quorum, it's only three forms, only three now. We lose a quorum. Every time somebody goes to the bathroom. You have a quorum. Because you're not voting. Back to the timing issue dialogue with retirees and others. Well, I think we need to decide on an approach and then sit down. And discuss that approach. Why and what the impact. I don't think you can go in there with a. Hopefully of option. I would get anywhere. I agree. I would do that. I just want to do that. Well, I'm green and I just want my son. If there's a disability. Turn 26. We had to. See if we can keep him on my. It was. We got two letters. One was very. They. And being a freaked out because they said no. Disenrollment. Big old question. What are we going to do? What can we find out there to match what we already have? So. Just so happened. A standard letter came. Well, they actually. History. Medically. But they, they, they. Allow us to maintain. So I could imagine. What. Some folks are. You. Depending on what we do. Impact. That's why I'm asking about the time frame. All this stuff done. I think we got time. I think we just got to make some decisions. Post 65 folks have more options than anybody else. They'd be better off. Having their own. Spending account. Because they can save money. By switching plans. And that's been proven. Right. That population. Part of it's the population growth. Retirees in. Florida. Outpopulate the state of South Carolina. So I mean, obviously there's a reason why this. Right. Right. And it always. In that way. And the problem. Exactly. And it, you know, and every year we've increased our premiums to that. Population and. Honestly, they come back and they say. I could get a cheaper. Plan. On my own. And I say, yes, you can. You probably should. But they don't want to. Because it's the experience of the pop, of our small population, their health, their, you know, all their factors. If we, if we end up having a facilitator help them place and create that, they'd be much better off now. They certainly would. And we're talking about the, you know, the 400. Our biggest challenge is, is, is how do we handle the pre 65. Right. Population. Right. You know, are you making spousal changes and things like that? And, you know, are we enforcing that if you have an option to another job, you know, you have to take that insurance first and foremost, because that's where you're an active employee, you know, at the cost, you know, is a discussion, you know, some of the retirees, the pre 65 have said, well, I mean, we should, we should maintain. Our current premium. Well, the current premium. We can. It's not sustainable. So, you know, looking at these options, I think we've got, you know, we've got solid options that started the pre 65 post 65. And then we move all the way down. But I think we're going to have to narrow it down to two that we can come together with and then move forward. And it may be a combination of both. Yeah. But I do think we need to. To dive into this and make, make some directional decisions. We also need to make the changes in our retirement plan. So we'll get to the rule of 90. If that's an option that, that we want to do, again, that changes, you know, the eligibility change has to be made for. It keeps them on the regular plan until they get to at least 55. So when we have a 10 year window there. That's correct. You do have that. That doesn't make a difference. We'll certainly. So obviously, you know, we need everybody here to have that discussion. So, you know, do we want to. To push it forward. The next work session, because I don't know if Reverend McDowell is going to make it. He's going to make a plan. So I mean, we talked about having some non Tuesday things as well. Yeah. A lot of. And get everybody's schedules. But I think for us to get through to make these decisions have a place in plan by January. We need to make a decision in the next 30 days. Right. Well, I mean, there's a whole lot of factors, but decisions that y'all make on this will affect every single budget, especially the general fund that we'll be later today. Along with the one we've already seen on modern sewer stormwater parking. So does it next week? Do we meet next week? We do don't. May 1st. We are May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 2nd. May 1st. May 2nd. May 1st. We can do that. May 2nd. We will meet next week. I believe that correct Erica? I'm not going to be here. And you are either. We can break the record. So that next that next meeting. The A can't do that. Now, this Wilson will be back next week. So can't be breaking records. We have it on. I got to hold my record. I got to hold my record. to schedule something early on the 8th? That's a Tuesday, isn't it? It's because of that hand. Oh, it's because of that hand. What about afternoon at the 3rd? I mean, excuse me, at the 2nd, is that possible? Wednesday to 7th? I'm not here. I'm out all the way till Thursday. But I mean, I could get on the phone if I needed to. I can Friday the 4th. Can everybody count it? Take a look at everybody. Can you kind of work on that? Unless it's people, flexible, and everybody is here. I think we could set aside two hours just to work on this. On the 15th. Yeah. We may want to be fired to that, but I'll be initially. I'm very flexible with the 15th. It's the number of parties you want. Press on. Come to the short rows now. All right, the brains are here, so that's fine. Let's go. The next step, Eric is going to work on. We need to look at the meeting. Any more questions for Eric? We are good. You do a good job of explaining the very difficult subject. Eric, question. You are from Atlanta solely for this. You're not in town anywhere where I could maybe grab you in a corner somewhere. I'll be here through this afternoon. Not today. If y'all have a time that you want me to come down, I will do that. I think anybody else may be OK, but I'm still trying to absorb the full impact of this. Make sure I really understand your models. We can meet with you as well, staff. You do it might be good to also have a meeting. Or at least we can have him on speaker. If he can't travel, we can figure out something like that. And we could also include Councilman Dow. Certainly. Today and I spoke with Ms. Wilson this morning. We can include a conversation. OK, that'd be good. Yeah, I'm here for a pleasure. OK, since you've got two other people, why don't you check with them and see what they're scared to do when they're not trying to work? We may not need to hook you, but maybe staff. Yeah, and he can certainly be on a conference call if we need to, because that might have more flexibility with dates. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Our next item will be hospitality tax funding proposal. Yeah, I'm going to talk to all of you. OK, so let's look at the double date. Maybe work around there. Whichever one. I don't care. Just give me some. Do you need another copy of the memo? Which memo? The one that was attached. I don't see it this morning. It was in the agenda. No, I didn't see this. I hear you. Everybody's mad with us. We're mad at you, Sam, not me. That's a converse with Michael Mungo and that. Mungo? They just put an application in it like everybody else. Yeah, they would see a problem in it. They didn't want to get organized. They didn't want to do all that. They were happy with what Miriam was doing. They want to use it to fix up the place like everybody else's, which comes to a question of, you know, we need to decide in this hospitality what this tax is going to be used for. And what are our leeways in taking the time to look into some of it and what we've been reimbursable? I think we got an A number one audit on reimbursable. Number two, we need to make a decision on how this money is spent along with using the guidelines but then our own guidelines. Because right now it's the wild wild west. If you go take a look at what we've been paying and how it's gotten through the system, I don't know. Well, that's one of the keys to the proposal that I want to talk about this morning. Well, we need to look at that because I think we've got two channels. We've got some newbies also want to get them. Then we've got the groups that I'm sensitive to that have been coming to the table and leaving basically. Well, we're finding the same groups over and over Let's go with the same numbers. Smaller groups need to have a discussion. All right, well, the first section we really wanted to do to help you get started and warmed up on this conversation is talk a little bit about what the city's existing grant program is. So there are three methods right now for funding hospitality tax payments. Regardless of any allocation made, whether it's for city purposes or external or agency's use, those funds must meet state law and public use. So we're trying to make sure we cover those bases as well. The first section is referred to as council-funded line items. Line items are those agencies that they still submit an application. However, they are not reviewed by the Hospitality Tax Committee. And they are still also reviewed by, at this point now, DD reviews them out of the grant's office. Allocations typically are flat from one year to the next. There have been some fluctuations over the past several years, whether it's for a specific project or something. But typically, those line items stay the same for multiple years. The biggest thing about line item agencies and the reason why there were line item agencies from the beginning is that these groups had a specific tie to the city, whether it is through the fact that they are in a city-owned building, such as with Adventure and Community Museum of Art. They have a contract or upkeep of the building, such as Historic Columbia, who operates. The city owns the historic homes. They own the interiors. And also, the city has a contractual agreement for operation and maintenance of those facilities. There's a statutory relationship, such as the Columbia Music Festival Association. And then there's a city-sponsored outreach or community arrangement, such as Famously Hot. There have been some groups added that, I think, one or two groups that have been added that aren't necessarily tied to one of those things. But that's been in some recent years that that's occurred. The next group is actually the Hospitality Tax Committee and how they make their recommendations. I'm not going to go into that too much. Didi's going to come up and talk about the Hospitality Tax application process and the committee process in a little more detail. The newest section is council allocations. In recent years, especially in light of having some significant unbalance and available savings, City Council has made direct allocations for specific use. Typically, those have not come through any kind of application process or review process. The question we made in council is considered that allocation. Of course, as surplus, as you are aware of, has dried up pretty significantly with regards to having an excess surplus. We do typically end the year with some surplus because revenues have come in a little more aggressive than what we projected. Although our projections, we have gotten more aggressive in our budget projections. And then also, too, there are some agencies that either don't submit the required request to carry forward. City Council, many years ago, allowed for that if a group doesn't spend their money in the first year, they are allowed to carry it forward for one year. They have to make that request in writing by May 30th if they don't, those funds are forfeited. So occasionally, there are some funds that are forfeited either because they didn't request it or because they've extended their, they've gone there past their full two years of the allocation. And that's true for any of our grant programs but also, like, there are funds for community promotion as well. The other important item to add is that these funds are not typically treated as re-recurring like it is with some of the line item agencies. Those are reoccurring allocations. These groups is a one-time hit, although I think there has been some confusion in the past over those allocations in the sense that they are reoccurring or that they somehow will be renewed again from the next year at the same amounts. It is completely dependent upon there being surplus funds or as we've discussed in the city in the budget preparations, as we give to you the amounts available for hospitality tax, we divvy it up the three pots based on what has been done in the past. Of course, before we pass the budget or before you pass the budget, city council wants to change how those, how they process what we're talking about today and it's subject to those changes as well. So that's what that process is for the three main groups. Of course, there is a transfer to the general fund that's not listed here and then there's also debt service payments which of course are obligated so those have to be made as well. The transfer to the general fund is based upon there being expenses that the general fund performs that are equivalent or that are eligible for hospitality tax. Mostly police. Pardon? Mostly police. Actually mostly public works and parks and recreation. Police. Supporting them. Supportingly. On that same note, we'll talk a little bit about what state law is with regards to state, with hospitality tax. I'm sure you all are very familiar with hospitality tax state code. Of course, it's related to tourism related buildings including but not limited to civic centers, coliseums and aquarium. Tourism related cultural, recreational or historic facilities. Beach access and renourishment. Don't want to have any of those unless we count the shores of Lake Murray. Highways, roads, streets and bridges providing access to tourist destination which is where public works comes into play. Advertisement and promotions related to tourism development or water and sewer infrastructure to serve tourism related demand. We have not utilized that function although certainly there are opportunities for that as well. The next section refers to how we can also utilize funds for police, fire, emergency medical and emergency preparedness that are directly in attendance to those tourism related facilities. So that's an additional allocation. So the eligible expenses, so if you look at the state code, I mean obviously is there more detail to it? So. That's the bulk of it. I mean it's pretty verbatim for a state code. So I guess the question, this is the actual code here. So the question to me is as we get into this discussion is what's qualified as reimbursable expense? Sure. State code does not say anything about reimbursable expense. That's an internal accounting function that our all workers have to sign off on. Well there has to be eligible expenses. Correct? It has to be eligible according to the things that they spend on. So what's eligible? What's the, I guess it's a gray area and we need to define that. Is that where I think we are? Because to me where I struggle is is doing an audit and looking at several groups, paperwork, the reimbursables I mean we're paying for Mountain Dew and water and cups and things, toilet paper for their employees which I don't think is reimbursable. I don't think that was the intent of the money. I don't think gift cards are intent. I don't think flower bed liners may or may not be intent, I don't know. I mean these are questions we need to define. I mean what are we paying for? And I think each group and especially when we're talking about the hospitality areas have different, you know. The bid on Main Street was created to run block by block. Well now we're paying 100% of that block by block. And in looking at those expenses in there, I question them. I'm very concerned why staff how they got signed off on. Making late payments and others. And these are all things that are in our records that are right there in front of us. And so as we're going for a change, I think one, we need to audit. Two, I think we need to have some strict and specific guidelines. And if we're looking to fund a group as a line item, I think it's gotta be very specific on what that money can be used for because right now to me it looks like it's a little of the Wild Wild West out there. That we are not, I don't know if it's on both ends or the relationships have just gotten so well that we just sign off on everything. I don't know the answer. But when you look at something and you see a receipt for $1,400 for gift cards from Publix, you gotta go, whoa, time out. What is that for? The state law gives you the uses of the local hospitality taxes. And what I would like to do is get off of the thing of looking at the receipts. If we say that an event is eligible and it is an event that is bringing tourists into the city to spend more age tax and it's gonna cost $100,000, then we sign a contract with the recipient of that money and say we're gonna give you $100,000 and I would like to give it quarterly and not get into the business of looking whether they bought mountain dews or liners for things. We sign every council meeting. We go through a consent agenda that spends millions of dollars on contracts and we don't make these contractors bring in receipts for gas and liners. That's because it- That's a do. Yeah, we do. Have you gone, go in that office right there and go look at what we've made, not Bo Autry, what's his name? He used to go through. I went through those receipts. It is very specific. He's spending it getting reimbursed and it is a line item. I mean detailed and some of those bills things aren't eligible. We aren't doing that. We need to know where that money goes and what's the, if we do this, what is the requirement or what's the penalty if they misspend the money? Well, we claw it back and we don't fund them again. We are where we are now because I think along the way we tried to make a decision to not have to get into the weeds on certain items. So we got flexible. But if we're gonna do that Daniel then I think we need to agree on or staff, what is an acceptable expenditure and what is not? Well that's what I think we, if we're gonna overhaul the system I think we need to be specific because we're getting to a point now where we're gonna spend all the hospitality money on clean and safety and that was not its original intent. I think it part of it, I think it makes sense for areas but at the same time, and I'm gonna pick on city center partnership today because we created a bid to create a block by block system, but now we're funded $300,000 a year hospitality towards that. I don't think that was the intent. That hospitality money should be for marketing and their collection, the people are paying a tax and a tax to cover that cleaning and that's not what's being used and I don't think some of the money's being spent correctly. I don't think it's, and then I think we need to look at what these agencies have in their portfolio. If somebody's got $700,000, $800,000, $900,000 why are we giving them additional funding? Well, I agree with you. I mean I think we need to know what they pay their employees. I mean because I think that all depends on the cost. I mean we're supposed to be helping multiple hospitality monies not just for five groups. It's supposed to help grow our arts in return and there's some groups that have a huge economic impact. I just don't think we've given people a clear line of how that money should be spent and I'm all for looking at doing a different system but I want specific guidelines. I wanna know what the return is. I just don't think you can just write a check to somebody and say oh we're gonna give you $100,000 and let's hope you do everything okay. I just don't think that's the way you do it but doesn't mean you can't do it but if a group doesn't wanna accept the guidelines then they don't need our money. Well what the guidelines would be you perform what you say you're gonna perform. If you're gonna put on Art Savista or any event then we think that this is worth $200,000 from the city of Columbia, you do that. We don't need to go behind them and say well you can buy light bulbs but you can't buy the electric bill or you can put a. Hospitality money is not supposed to pay for that kind of stuff anyway, right? Operation and maintenance of all these things that are funded by that. So you're okay with us buying drinks and paying late payments and gift cards and all that kind of stuff? I'm okay with us funding a particular project at a certain amount and letting them do it. Well let me ask this, I think as in other businesses we do, we do determine what is an acceptable expenditure and what is not. Well how are you gonna make a list of everything that's accepted? I think you can have a guideline. But I mean if I'm sitting here and so is it okay for hospitality group so if I'm ex-ballet it's okay for me to buy and add from another ballet thing and just shift in money back and forth. I don't think that was the intent. And I don't think they should be able to do it. Right, but I don't think it's just like, I mean you think it's okay that we're, we buy gift cards with hospitality money? I don't know what gift cards were used for. What was the event that we were funding? Oh, operations. There was no event in it. That's the thing, that's what I'm saying is we're not, we're funding with an open, with no guideline in it. That to me is what makes me nervous. And then we've got groups, you know, look, I happen to get reimbursed for any travel expense or anything. I have to fill out forms. I mean that's standard operating procedure for every business in America. Why should we just blank check it? Didn't we, hospitality was audited 22 years ago and we periodically, our external auditor also pulls things out. So it's his call as to when he does it and where he will go, is that right? Or do we point to him in certain directions? We do have a new internal auditor that could. So our and documentation that we had on our website and expenses that were within that, he's only gonna audit to what we say is our policy. He's not gonna make it. Right. So what's up here was to talk about in addition to state policy, state code, the other guidelines in terms of what that's exactly what we wanted to talk about. So to do what you wanna do, how do we do the two things that need to happen? One is establish guidelines. You know, an event is an event and then there's operations and that's where I think the line is not being clear. What would you go and audit? We would have the right to audit any of these events. Well, yeah, but I'm not saying do it just because we have the right to do it. I'm saying there should be certain triggers that we... But if we don't give people guidelines, how do you know? Keep us honest. How are you gonna say it? The city guidelines are that you have a financial statement, you have a current 990. Which I don't think but one out of the six that I pulled are current and we still write checks to them. And we do, we need to tighten that up. But if you have a financial, if you have a 990, if you have a clear plan of what they're gonna perform for the money that they're gonna get out of the eight stacks, I don't think we need to get into the weeds to look at whether they buying plant liners or Coca-cola's or what. They're using the money to put on an event or something that's gonna bring tourists and we find tourists as people from outside of the city limits inside the city limits. And we don't need to make these organizations and genuinely save every dollar's worth of gas that they buy. But Howard, if you owned your own business and your employees came to you and just said, just give me an allowance and I'll just spend it however you want, your account is not gonna go for that. Well, I'm not saying that, I'm saying that. But that's what you just said. I am saying that we would have a contract that would say for X amount of dollars you're gonna perform this. And that's where we would stipulate what event or operation they would do with the hospitality tax money. Okay, I think we could, and probably should, kind of come to some kind of an agreement on what is audible, what is not, or what we could decide. I think we have to decide what is an eligible expense and what's not, and then they need to craft their budget on the event around that. I think we can do that, but my overall concern over the years, even this morning, has been how do we spread more of those dollars around? And that's what I was proposing a group three that would be the innovative groups, that the new groups that would get a certain percentage of the tax. I don't have a problem with that. But then we go back to the question of what is an acceptable expense and what is not. Because that makes a difference in funding and what's available. And that charge, are you talking about that charge being to the committee, like the committee would have to preserve about 10, 20, 30% of their allocation to these specific groups? Well, I wouldn't say 10, 20, or 30%, but some percentage, we would establish a pot of money that would be used for the third group, which would be the small groups that are innovative and they would receive funding because of their new status. Yeah, and then I don't know that we've been consistent with, again, what is allowable and what is not. The question, for example, of administrative expenses. You can use it for operation and maintenance of any of the things that are listed. Not about salaries or a portion of an exact salary. For salaries, certainly use it for police and fire and operation if we funded normal. And they've had a contract to provide a festival and promotion and a website. I think that we could give them hospitality tax and a portion can go towards salaries. And I think that's some of those are the questions that fall not just under the state hospitality tax but also public use. That was one of the issues that we ran into with one of the other agencies that's now split their allocation. What? What was the issue? Public funds have to be used for public use, so you have to be careful. Funding of salaries and then also to funding of organizations that this is their sole source of funding. Well, and I think that's one of the things that's not in my proposal book. When you talked to Ms. Reese who's a consultant from Texas that's helping the culture plan, she says that we should not fund more than 50% of the cost of any event. So how do you do that with a contract? You'd find out how much of the event was, I don't have that in my proposal book. You would find out how much their budget was by their 9.90 and then you would say we can't go over X dollars. At least for existing groups or existing festivals. I would think that with a number of them we've exceeded that. Yeah, I'm sure that's not in my proposal but that's something the Margie question about. Something for discussion. I don't have a problem with that. I think we're funding some of the groups too much. Well, if we were to discuss that and agree to adopt that approach, we'd spread the dollars a little further. It also probably gets to sustainability through the organization and the event. Yeah, I think the theory was that they would be matching the dollars that the city provides. If you were gonna have a $100,000 event the city ought not give more than $50,000 and they would have to raise the other $50,000 to make them sustainable. I don't know if you wanna go over it but we do have what the guidelines are that the city has as well as that's our guidelines. Did you prepare to discuss that piece? And then also the committee process and then also the reimbursement process. If you wanna discuss that. I think we're kind of spinning our wheels of discussing three people here. At least two of them at odds. I don't think we're at odds. I don't think we're at odds. What I think we is, is that to establish your proposal we need to have stronger guidelines. The power point we gave you does summarize the process. I don't know if you wanna ask D.D. any questions about the process or go over the process. It is. Send her power point then. Starting on slide six, yeah. Oh, okay. Basically I would have three groups. The larger groups, not only would they get, have contracts but they would get a two year commitment and we would true that up every year. The way to do multiple year budgets. End of the first year they would be getting some but you would true up the amount going into the second year. So you'd always have two years going on a contract. So groups like the Nickelodeon that have to make commitments into the next year won't have to wait until June or July to find out how much money they're gonna have for the next year. They would know that they would have some funding. The other thing that I think would be good is the group four which would be capital project through. We've got about four to $500,000 that's rotating around out there now and I think we gotta be able to keep that money and plug in different groups to use that money for capital expenses. I know there are two or three groups out there now that are asking us for capital funds and we need a system to evaluate and put them in line to use that $4,500,000 as it rolls back into our available, useful availability. Right now all of our capital contributions to the boost that receive hospitality dollars, ah, hospitality dollars. They're hospitality dollars and so we could keep that pot of hospitality dollars and set up a line of groups that we will approve that as these monies have become available then they get in line to use it for another capital fund. We got town theater coming in, we've got Trustus Theater that's looking for funds. I'm sure there are others out there. The Historic Columbia is looking for some funds for a pair of some of the cottages that we need. All of that could come out of that $500,000. Actually that money could come from liquor rebate because it's historic. You would have to go to hospitality. I think some of our challenges on that is that it actually has to also be capital and their contract covers it. They would take it carefully. Well, that, I don't have a problem with that. The liquor rebate dollars, it comes and goes. It's a small part. It's a small part. They're not making enough money. That's because somebody wants to close it. Here we go. Ding, ding, ding, ding. All right, but that is something I think we ought to collectively always take a look at because I didn't know it was there for a while and it had built up. And we were able to use some of that to do two things, to move that Monty's school to the other side of the street and help shore it up. I'll see you, mate. John got some. Yeah. And we owe him another. That, I think, is a perfect example of how you can use those funds from time to time. Of course, folks would have to get in line for that one. That's right. We would plan that out multiple years so that people would know that we're gonna have available in the next year to a thousand. Well, I mean, technically, you know, I get the two year, but I don't think any group that's in that category has seen a significant decline in their funding over the last 10 years. And then two now. One of them. But they don't know that it's gonna be there until July one. You know, I guess the other question is, is how many groups are you talking about that receive $50,000 or more? Well, if we can get an agreement that this is something that we wanna consider, then I think Jim here and I and the arts committee can work on coming up with that list. I didn't wanna show y'all a list today of proposals because. Well, how many people are we talking about? How many groups? Yeah. Probably 20 or 30. 50,000 range. Yeah. Legal will say it's not necessary. Uh-oh. That's not a legal decision. This is a finance decision. How many? We may have a few more than that. I'm trying to run through and count. That number I put in there was 15,000. That's what we're trying to get in that. Is it what now? We're out. It'll be 20 or 30. Yeah. So, and that is out of how many groups that receive hospitality money? Between 80 and 90. So, 30%. 30% of $50,000. And I wanna ask them to still go to the committee to make sure that they've still got eligible projects. Still doing things that are acceptable under the state law. So, just to understand the theory behind it, if you use Marjorie's thing, then so if you're currently giving somebody $300,000 for a certain project, you're telling me I'm only giving them 150,000. Well, that's not part of my proposal, no. I thought that's what you just said. I said that's what she says. I haven't gotten done that for you. So that would be a big step. She says that the norm for these type funds is to not fund more than half of the cost of the event that will be a sponsor service. It's Marjorie. Because it's like they're matching our contribution, the hospitality tax contribution. But I haven't gone there because that's gonna be a major change. That's Marjorie's recommendation. When she and I have had several conversations, that's part of our conversation, but it's not part of my proposal I'm putting on the table because I think that's a big step and that's gonna have more time getting the contracts. The goods and services that comply with H-Tax guidelines. Usually it's for, for most of the groups, it's for advertising and marketing, the H-Tax, everything listed security, portion of the salary, if it's for the media and advertising, things like that. There's only the small percentage that fell into, and it's for things like finance aid, where you have to decide how does that fall into the state guidelines of fitting, bringing the course in. And clean and safe. So that means the labor and the service. Does that mean all the ancillary costs around it too? We would need to be more specific on those. It's how we determine, or how council has determined them in the past or staff has determined them in the past to fit that. So it's how you determine it for the operations for clean and safe that are bringing the tourist in. Are things you were talking about, the flower beds, things like that, is that included as operations or is it not? We need to have more clear guidelines on what would be acceptable and not acceptable. My point is we don't need to get into those, we could have written in the flower bed. But Howard, Howard, Howard, let's be honest. So, penny sales tax, great example. The public, this is public money. This isn't some private money, this is public money. Bought drinks and stuff for their administration. That's not an acceptable reimbursement, but it was being paid. Now the county's having to pay it back. We've got organizations that are charging us for their employees, snacks and stuff. That is not an eligible expense. Gift cards are not an eligible expense. You remember last time we had a gift card guy, we had to get rid of him because he was cashing him in and using him himself. That's my concern is having a clear. It's, and to say it's a burden, you're getting funding. You are getting funding and the mission has changed. We've allowed it to change. It's council's needs to get back and re-establish how the funding's used. I don't think a change in the way we do it's a problem. I think we need to be very specific about it, though. And that's my concern is that I'm sitting here going, I started to audit to look into it and understanding where people are spending their money. The organization's missions have changed. I didn't vote for the extra 50,000 for clean and safety because Cindy Center Partnership doesn't need it. But when they started the bid, the bid was to do this block by block. Now it's only shifted all to hospitality money. And now we're gonna have, and all of this is gonna change is harvest and puts in their request because that's what they want. So we're gonna have everything clean and safety which does have a role in tourism. There's no doubt about that. I agree with that. But at the same time, what are we gonna be left with? If every group has clean and safety funded out of here in the service, we're not having any money to grow the arts program. And that's part of the tourism. We're getting away from marketing and using money clearly a lot more for services which some of it, I don't know what happened to the sense of pride but everybody expects everybody else to clean up after them today. I do think that's an issue. Amen. Let me go back here. Now the shrieking or amenning? Well, I mean, I just, Mr. Mayor, I just did a self audit and I was just very shocked at what we've reimbursed and it worries me on the long term of the hospitality and that if we're gonna make a change which I think is probably warranted where we are, I agree with that. I just think we need to be more specific but I don't believe that it should be left wide open without, you know. Well, a couple of core thoughts. One is I think that every few years you gotta go back and look at the way you're doing things and re-evaluate them. I think that's just smart, things change, priorities change, practices shift. You gotta come back and kind of gotta re-arrest the process and make sure that things are going consistent with whatever the policy of the city is consistent with what state and laws and our local ordinances. Secondly, I've always been very clear about my belief that the funding priorities and the responsibility attached to them are that of this council. We're blessed to have a great group of citizens who do a whole lot of blocking and taping. Otherwise, I'm not sure we'd be able to do anything else. To be honest with you, maybe it's been an entire year going through HSEC applications. We don't have to do that because they have some good great folks and we tend to tinker around the edges here and there and make some adjustments. But the vast majority of work is being done by a group of citizen servants and I think that's a great thing we need to keep that having. The full recognition of the fact that the, not only the authority and responsibility to make those decisions rests with this council and with no one else. I like the idea of streamlining some degree as long as it's consistent with a status set of some clarity and some accountability and some auditing. I do love the idea of making sure that new and fledgling groups of different parties that you have an opportunity to participate in this process. That's gotta be built in here in some way. And I'm excited about participating and amplifying the incredible experience that Marjorie is bringing to our region through one Columbia. So, I mean, I'd love to digest this a little more. Sure. Howard, but you're right, we've gotta continue to police the process in the land which we're making sure that we're, one's following the same rules that we're extracting value and that we're taking a close look at everybody's 990 and seeing exactly how strong they are, how strong the balance sheets are. And if we have to reallocate resources accordingly, we can do so. So no specifics on this today other than we're gonna come back in and further discuss it. I think we ought to develop some guidelines to go with it. I think we need to know, you know, I do think the 50 years, 50,000, I mean, you're talking about 25 to 30 groups. In that range, 50,000 is magic. I don't wanna go up or down. I'd rather go up. The original proposal actually came from Andy Smith and he said it should be 100,000, but I brought it down to be able to get smaller groups in. That's the only way we can spread it around. That's right. But that's why I brought it down to 50. I think we should do that. The number is fluid there. You know, I met with, let me, go ahead. Let me say this before we shut this down. As part of the forums we've been having with one Columbia and the artists around the city, I sat in on about three of those groups and the one thing that has been constant in the conversations with the artists, I'm not talking about organizations, artists, individual artists, is that they don't seem to feel that they can ever get a seat at the table. Well, they need to start paying their business license first. Then they get a seat at the table. I understand that. Fine. I'm just saying, there are some people out there who I think- Director, if that's Mr. Rick, it's a- Yeah. They share the same feelings I have and the question is, how do they get, remember, artists are the poorest folks in the professional field. They've got to find a hook that will let them- Right, but I'm just saying, I'm hoping that as we go through all of this, we figure out a way that an individual artist who may be participating in some of these festivals or whatever and get some assistance to help them. That ought to come through. It's accessible, it's there. The ability- Maybe, maybe not. No, Sam, I think you're right. I think you're exactly right. The ability to do highly structured microgrants that don't come with a whole lot of administrative processes, but with some significant accountability, I think is a pretty good idea. Obviously, it has to be tied into what the resources are supposed to be going to, but you'd be amazed at $500 or $1,000. He's got $500 or what else? Yeah, but it could be significant to some of these upset artists. I do think- I got my start in artist blacksmithing with a $2,400 brand from the Arts Commission 20 years. That's how I got my start. The best way to make one of those microgrants work is that you make it a pool and they pay back in it over a period of time. And you look at, when I was in Egypt, that was one of the greatest things to see is this USA grants that needed all those microgrants for females to be able to start their own business in very small amounts. They paid it back, but they had the ability to go back so they could expand their business. The impact it had was great. And that makes sense in specific areas that are targeted for redevelopment also. Small, the small business of the mom and, not really, mom and pops in the old sense. Things could be used also when you've got big development coming, but what about some of the smaller businesses that want to kind of pop up in some of these corridors or side streets? Does it make sense for this to go to the committee to come up with a set of guidelines to bring back to council? Because I think we, if we're at a moment of change then we need to be looking at status of the organizations that are receiving money, financially, how stable they are. Because you remember when this all came about, it was supposed to be at a certain point that people came off of the hospitality because we built them up and their stature was grown. We seem to just continue to keep funding them more. And I think every year we hear from certain groups, well, we're gonna shut our doors if y'all don't fund us, well, maybe their time has come and gone if that's the case. But I know two events that have happened this year that swore to us if they didn't get additional funding and they probably had their best year they've ever had. So, at a certain point, how do we continue to spread? And maybe this is, is there's maybe a little weaning in it? I don't know, but I do think that we need to start taking more accountability because when organizations started, when you get to a certain level where you're financially sound, then maybe we ought to be weaning back. What was your original intent to? Have you changed your mission from the way we first funded you? I mean, I think this is a perfect time to put that, but I think just blanketing, writing a check to somebody without some guidelines, I just, I think we're creating a mess. We're gonna definitely be back from the committee as to how we do this. And I think it all comes, particularly how we're just group one, not only going to green to allow us to perform an audit, I think we need to get him planned for and budget for some random audits as well. I think for them in the regular period of time. Currently the committee, you were talking about the sustainability. That is one of the questions in the application. So that is one of the things that they consider. So they do consider many of the things you're talking about already when they go through and consider these groups. Keeping in mind to be diverse and get the money in the neighborhoods and things like that as well. But, and the guidelines themselves, like I said, most of them are security, advertising, marketing, things that are definitely eligible. And those are audited internally as far as just through what we process, making sure that those are eligible and then accounting does that as well. But there are those two that comes under operations where we need some definitely. We need some more guidelines. So maybe, would it make sense to have some folks from the hospitality committee, the age tax committee, and the arts council committee come together and try to put something together? I mean, I think that would make a lot of sense. Who's on the arts committee for the council? Do you know who the council members are? Mr. McDowell. No, it's for our preservation. I'll see you. The city council arts. It was Jay by Mr. Fedora. Much like who stood in for Mr. Fedora. Y'all been meeting a lot. I know that it's been a while. Well, I would suggest that, you know, Howard's brought a proposal that he sit in on the committee so that you've got three members representing council. That's a good balance. I grab a couple of those folks. I would suggest we do that sooner than later. And use your proposal as the basis to then get into the review day. John, this is part of John's proposal, too, but he sent this proposal to the mayor so we'll get back to the center. All right, we'll put that together and work at it again. Just for logistical purposes, is part of the changes expected to be made for this upcoming funding cycle starting July 1? Because I think the committee meets new applications. Well, I mean, I think that shouldn't change what the committee does. What it's going to do is when it comes to, it's going to tighten up what the expenses are and the guidelines around it. I mean, that shouldn't change requests or anything else, I don't think. It just may be what they don't get reimbursed. And I guess the other part, too, I'm not clear on whether or not some of these, if it works out that there's additional allocations made for these certain categories, is that the committee that is making those fundings for those categories? Because obviously, city council can establish direction. Continue to do the work and let this be advisory for them. Let's prepare for the next budget cycle. I mean, let them. If we can find something that has got the right guidelines that we must recommend, if we could get it in starting in line. Look, y'all could vote around me. I'm just telling you that I think there needs to be specific guidelines. And I think, unfortunately, by just spending a little time going through the reimbursables, it really opened my eyes that we are, we have not, you know, did do anything. Well, let that be an advisory and the reimbursing. I mean, first, let's, I think you can bifurcate this discussion. If we're going to change the overall process, let that be perspective, let the process go through as is. I just think we got more than enough to say grace over and not enough time. That's just my, that's my opinion. Oh, maybe we could tweak. I bought us to kind of really come to some kind of agreement on that one question, question of whether or not the dollars can be spent on administrative costs such as participating in the executive director salary. Now, it's happening out there, but there's an understood rule that can't be done. It can be done. Well, I'll. If our rules prevented it can't be done, but I think it can be done. Okay, I, for example, I think it can be done, but if people have the assets from other resources, then they shouldn't be using our money for that. I understand that. I'm talking about it here again and the organization is trying to get to where they should be after so many years. Well, if you go with reimbursement. They've always been denied, I think, salary for the executive director, NCBA. I don't think, I think they've been able to do that as a portion. You can't do 100% of it proportionally for the work you do. So if you run all the advertising, then you can bill or portion of that. That's something I'm going to encourage them to do this year because they have a, you know, their last in line when it comes to that. It is a legitimate expense, but it's been some of the procedures whether or not it's allowable. If we continue on reimbursable, then you're automatically or eliminating some of the smaller groups that don't have the wherewithal to front the money. Right. I understand. Okay. Yeah, but I don't know if I agree with that statement, Howard, because if you're planning for an event, unless it's happening before your money, I mean, you can float that money. I mean, we've been, I don't know, any event that has not been held because of us on money, can anybody name one? Well, you might have ones that could have done an event, but they don't have the resources to get the event done to ask the city for reimbursement. Well, then maybe they shouldn't be doing the event. Right. Mr. Sam's thing of the new elevating groups that might be out there that could help us. But at the same time, just if you just take what Marjorie's talking about, you wouldn't fall in that category. And Prud, it says you don't build an event if you don't have any money to get the event going. I mean, that, I mean, that's... That would be an organization that's basically living so young what we give them. Right. And if they're living solely on what we're giving them, that wasn't the attentive hospitality either. Never was. Never has been. So who's calling the meeting? So the committee is actually Mr. Badura and Mr. DuVall and Mr. McDowell. So, Mr. Badura's actions, do you mind serving? I'll sit in. Okay. Sit in. When Dowell and Davis and DuVall. So same committee. Different. We got there differently. Who's calling it? Erica. Erica. Okay. Do we need to take a health break before we delve into the next topic? So you can't do it. So you can't do it, but you can't contract for services that you can't already contract with the city. I can't get out. We don't run this. So, in this proposal, you can't do it, is it contract sponsored? What? These things, unless it's something that the minister provides, so it's given him a promise to help him do something. But what I think we should do is do the proper thing. Some of the places might provide his permission, but all of them don't. So we can't do the whole contract thing. That's for a migration. You probably decide. Yeah. You need to go back and get a contract. Correct me. Five years later, we got to come back again. It's going to be a violent process. Probably. I do don't want to make you have a balance sheet or understand where we're spreading the resources a lot more like failing. I need to write it down. That's it. I'm saying you can only see the support of others. We're going to look at it. Do you want the services? It's creative. The collective taxes, the paper, the paper. But now we will have some time. I should have never done it. I should have never done it. That's why that could be done. But I just pulled one of the things. I took like the first reimbursement order and I spent a year at the hospital. I just pulled one of the things. I should have never done it. I would have never done it. I would have never done it. I would have never done it. I would have never done it. So what's going on? So have we created this? Well, I had lunch yesterday in New York with, uh, folks from Carlisle, and Jennifer Gold is talking about me. Jennifer Gold, she works, she's one of the partners in Carlisle. Carlisle? Yeah, yeah. I was asking for $10 million in the museum. It's the metal bottom museum. Good morning. They're gonna help us get it. We went up to meet all the hedge funds in two days. So she said something to me. She goes, well, you're the mayor from Columbia. I said, well, you know, I serve. Well, you should come up to this. Yeah, well, the players that are hearing. Every two or three minutes. Good strong business one. You know, I mean, you know, that you can get somebody done. Well, that's what they were talking about. We, the metal bottom museum, we just hired Joe Daniels, who was the president of 9 11 museum. Mayor Bloomberg, the point he was working there and made him the president, whatever he's coming. He's moving to Charleston going to take, take it down. He's a young guy that you'd like him a lot. I mean, he said the same. So we were up there Sunday and Monday and everybody was obsessed. It is crazy. I mean, they really are. We've elbowed into the conversation. I think that's, that's, that's the reason for it to be here. Well, they're, they're, they're, you know, so like, I didn't realize Carl had office in Charleston. Because when I explained to her the distance between Charlotte and Columbia and the mountain, she was like, yeah. That's right. They had Riverside here. Much better. HBC, the solar, hour, hour walk in an hour walk principle as a house it's sold in. And his wife graduated from South Carolina. How many do you know? And now he's become this big game-caught band. It's interesting. When do we know when to make them stand back? Really when you are missing. Okay. As you sit there and gaze at us. Yes, I was, I was taking your cue. Make sure we. Okay, so our last item for today is discussion of the general fund. We have not yet brought you the general fund other than revenues. Revenues have not, we have not made really any changes to our revenue projections. We last brought them to you. Of course, we still have business license tax coming in to evaluate as one of the items. But otherwise revenues right now are still still the same level we had produced you earlier, which is 144 million. The budget that's proposed right now or that this is actually reflected as what's been requested. That means this is not the city manager's proposed budget. And of course the budget is an imbalance. But this is what the budget is before request at this point. We didn't show you this graph last time with regards to revenues. I did want to just demonstrate to you these are the primary sources of revenue for the general fund. You can see our property taxes. We're seeing some growth there both in collections and of course what we've budgeted over some recent years. Probably not the kind of growth we would anticipate or like to see but we'll evaluate that of course further before we bring you back another iteration of the budget. Business licenses and permits. We've seen some steps there as well in terms of growth. Also our from other agencies which represents a big chunk of that is going to be state shared revenues which as we all know is not funded at the full formula but at least at this point is steadied off. Where we're seeing probably the meekest area is going to be our fines and forfeitures which is actually I skipped over current service charges. Those reflect pretty flat. That's an area where we think we have some opportunities in the sense of services. Those are basically user fees and there's obviously a number of funds and number of activities in the general fund that are user based. But of course those are set are pretty minimal in terms of comparison of the entire budget. I'm sorry go ahead. There are areas that we have not taken advantage of. Some they're small but the revenues that they generate are small as well for instance parks and recreation fees. Some solid waste fees some small you know some some some of those type of things are user fee type of activities. We can give you more description as we need to but there are some opportunities there. They're just not going to be big generators. Now cost recovery and getting this more cost recovery is some areas that we may want to talk about at some point too. Then like I said find the fines and forfeitures. We're seeing a steady sort of it's flat to almost minimal and actually reductions. I imagine there's a number of different reasons I can tell you specifically some of which some of which is the ability to pay perhaps. Some of this is the ability to try of the actual fines being administered to do the cases in terms of charging for the offense. Are we able to track exactly whether or not we're actually assessing fine. We can find that out. Well no it's one thing. It's collections issues. If we're not assessing. I think when appropriate. Yeah I think I think one of the struggles we've always had is you remember we looked at third party collection and so forth and we've never been able to get that. I mean I think there's like two and a half million dollars worth of outstanding fines out there. And then you know I know L. That's just the number I was told. That would be parking. And L would be parking. Yeah well in the reason I brought up parking is just an example as I had an outstanding ticket. They had my driver's license plate but no I never got a letter never got anything because they didn't have our address we are not integrated to track people down. So when we set up a collection agency years ago we did we were told that we couldn't do parking tickets at that time because they were a citation so we were not allowed to use the collection agency for that. We have talked with legal about it. I think we're still waiting on an opinion because we just set out in our fee for a new collection agency. We do cut off debt for water sewer bills but some things for code enforcement but that's about it. You can do it for fans of both of yours also. We have never used it for this report. That's why I was surprised that you're talking about citations. That's one thing you're talking about fines for this report. Bines and because we had looked at a service several years ago and judge told with the Lowa even though she got the bulk of it which made no sense to me whatsoever. I think we need to revisit that because you know that that was that for all the monitoring all that stuff that we did. There's a lot of money sitting there. I'll check. I'll send a thing. You should. Our court costs aren't going down and our jail costs are going down. I'm going to send something to ask about the position and the Chief Justice's position. Yes. What fines are these? I'll go back and review it. The requirements of delaying the trial of the college and the lawyer. The defendant requests the lawyer and not to reschedule it and then you've got to give them another couple of sentences. It also makes sense to set off debt. I don't know that we use it for water and sewer but I don't know that it's being used for anything else. We also need to realize that this might be going back to our people that we put on our municipal court. If we put people on our municipal court that are all prosecutors or former prosecutors, they're not going to be as heavy on some of our cases as if we had people that were not biased towards the defendant. That that figure that we have is very low compared to other cities that I'm aware of. Yeah, that's fine. And I think it goes back to our position. Was that a long way of sending out a bunch of defense attorneys? Well, I was saying that diplomatic. But I think you're biased towards the, against the police and for the defendant. I'm married to a former prosecutor. It was a fantastic case for judge for many years. Yeah, but I still have two. Let's get the, let's call it. It'll be worth while seeing what's been assessed previously. And then also, at least, let's take a look at. Jaws didn't know if Jaws just to get an idea. We're doing some of that. What the numbers are like. The projection right now is one of the things on that. I know that there's some municipal municipalities that when they judge has gotten his four year. I think that law says either a two year or four year commitment. But if let's say it's a four year commitment that you instead of reappointing them, let them serve as counsel because they serve until their successor is qualified. And then you have a little bit more ability to talk to those judges about we need to be unbiased. That's the same thing the Senate does do with magistrates. There's a whole bunch of magistrates that are not reappointed, but they continue to serve. And then there's under the thumb of the Senate. Hmm, that's interesting. I understand that process is there. All right. We'll look up, look at more information for you on that. Okay, so the general fund requested budget this point is mentioned is not in balance. Departments are always instructed to prepare their budgets maintaining current service levels. What we currently do not necessarily always adding to or decreasing depending upon their current service levels. Of course there are sometimes where there are reasons where there are some increases in service levels. But of course also to trying to meet the goals of the Envision Columbia plan. The total requested budget at this point is $159 million, which is a $17 million or 12% increase over the current year budget. And this reflects no changes in health care, correct? It does reflect changes in health care. Departments had a $2,000 over that $17 million over $2 million of it is increases in health care. Right, but that's what I'm saying is this doesn't work. So whatever changes we make, we'll have a direct effect on that. This is based on assuming kind of claims at the current level as well as our cost for the current level. Yes, if we make changes based on earlier discussions today and other things that can have an effect on this budget. Oh, it has a big effect. Well, if the forecast this morning for the open part was $19 million, it could do with option one. And that's not all general funds, that'll be amongst all the funds. But general fund is over half, right? So you're talking about $10 million, maybe. Somewhere in there, yeah. So y'all are talking about option one. A million here and a million there. So $17 million, an increase you said? $17 million increase. That's just what's requested, of course, by the time we balance the budget, it's going to look a lot different. Also part of that equation is increase in state retirement, which is about a million and a half of this increase. That's increased in here as well. So departments request, just departments, request is $135 million. That's $12 million increase over the current year budget or 10%. As mentioned, all departments, everybody with an employee, reflects an increase both in health care and state retirement. The non-departmental, the other portion of the budget is $6.4 million. $1.1 million of that increase, or 22%. And that's pretty much all related to our capital lease program. Our goal is to fund $8 million every year on a capital lease, which is not a lease to say it's a capital lease purchase program. And in the current fiscal year, we only were able to do $4 million, which means we're behind some of the capital we need to replace. So we're trying to maintain that, getting it back at least to the $8 million that's needed every year. And of course that adds to, there's equal revenue of $8 million and equal expense of $8 million, but the debt service is where there's going to be the reflecting what's making up this increase. So then transfers out. The transfers out totals $3.3 million. I mean, I'm $17.8 million, which is a $3.3 million increase, or 0.3%. And again, that's the increase on capital replacement going from $4 million to $8 million. There's also an offsetting revenue for that. So if we don't fund all $8 million in the capital replacement, the equal revenue will also come down off of that. The bottom portion just sort of shows you how our costs are broken out by major categories, with personnel service being at $100 million of the $159 million. Of course, the general fund is the largest employer of our funds in terms of the number of positions. Of course, we are a service industry, so the majority of the cost is and will always be personnel cost with regards to the general fund. And that makes up both salaries and friends and benefits. Operating expenses are at $8.9 million. Those are consumable items, gasoline, office products, materials, non-capital pools or equipment. Colors for the stand. Yeah, probably. City Council. One and a half minutes. What's that? What's that? That's probably our power bill. That's the next category. The next category is service. It's the only building in the city of Columbia that's set at 75 degrees year-round. The next category is service expenses, and that's like 2.5. My house would never be this way. Electricity. Get a server. Contracts for services. I read you mentioned, you know, I think it's a request of like 23 new personnel positions. Have we evaluated our current personnel in order to justify the needs and what those services are for? And here, is there a breakdown of 23 with departments and? I didn't break it down in the memo, but this fell down in the memo. 20 of those positions, 23 of those positions are 9-1-1. Yeah, you did say that. That's a fairly... 20 of those positions are 9-1-1. 10 call takers and 10 telecommunications. Actually, that's total between city and county, so we actually split that, so it's not total. So 10 would be the city and we only fund half of it. How many people do we have now? 78 or 80. Where are we with that? And that budget is split 50-50 with the city and... That's because it's 24-7. Not all of them are call takers and telecommunicators. Some of them also are the administrative staff. It's also... We'll spend some efficiency and effectiveness measures in 9-1-1 already. I mean, trying to improve our service there and also looking at this new cooperative agreement with the county. So we are... If we're doing that, then how do we justify paying for 20 more positions? Well, this isn't the final, so that may be one of the items that we'll have discussion today. We'll have discussion taking off. I had just received correspondence from the county interim administrators this morning. They're asking for us to just renew the 9-1-1 contract for another year as we continue discussion with the collaboration and everything together. And that would... For the halt to adding 20 new positions? I guess if we're talking about running more efficient operations more responsive, how do we justify paying for 20 new positions before we've done that? We're going through all the various items right now. This is what makes up this amount. By the time we come back to you all in May... We're looking at what we're down to. The questions you're asking are the good input that we need to put all this together. I should say they've asked for these positions for a couple of years because the last increase in positions they received was 2012, I believe. And, of course, their call volume has also gone up. The processing of a million calls to statute 500. And then they get another big chunk of their work as F&Y requests on a daily basis. On their side, I was that. Across the board, that's the entire operation. As long as we need to be equally invested to see whatever both parties do for the health, but I think you also... If we do make this joint changes, we need to understand what the effect that has on these people that are being hired as well. Because, I mean, it could be devastating, number one to them. And then the second part is, is last October, we asked for all the information on the jail because we constantly are... I mean, the number is quite large now for our portion. And we have yet to ever receive the first financial document. It's got to be a bill, that's what it is. Yeah, that's what they do. They send it to us. And if we did the same thing to the county, they would... I mean, it's $600,000 now. And actually, their amount has increased every year, but the number of inmates has not... The number of inmates in the number of days actually in has not increased. So that's the only reason why we're able to sustain at $600,000. The struggle I have and I've always had with it is, this is true, we pay for the jail and our property tax. The city residents pay for the jail to be built through the bonding that it's done. And we get that we pay extra. And to me, that's not acceptable. And if we can't get an accounting, we're not paying it. They have to take our prisoners because it's an agreement. And that agreement is when we built it. And so, Jeff, as you speak to intern, we need to get those numbers and we need to understand these costs. And we want to know what everybody else is paying. And if there is increased costs, is the county paying its equal share of those increased costs? Because I don't think we're... How many prisons do you think we are percentage-wise? Well, we have the house called already. Right. But Mrs. said our arrest... We had over 6,000 arrests last year. I haven't actually looked at our monthly... I didn't bring it yet. It's remained pretty flat over the last few years. Yeah, so we get it. Our invoice is detailed in the sense of the inmates that are coming in and the ones that are being charged too. I mean, it's pretty detailed. It doesn't tell us about the entire operations of the jail. All that is an invoice... Well, that's what they're justifying. The costs increase. But I mean, if you look at what we paid 10 years ago, what we're paying today... Well, the rate started at 25, and it's going up to 45. And after that, it will increase on percentage of operate, percentage of just average cost. Well, I agree with Daniel. Let's get that information. We'll get that. What's the capital request? Let's talk about that a little bit. What does that look like? What are we talking about? So some of the... A large portion of that, most of our capital is replacement capital bought through our capital lease replacement program. Typically, these would reflect capital, not part of that replacement, because they are new items adding to the inventory, or they are above and beyond what needs to be sort of is on the replacement schedule. So a large chunk of this 1.7, actually about 1.2 of it is for emergency operations, a mobile command unit, and some other facilities there. Can we get a briefing on that? I mean, that just seems to me that... I mean, is that something that we need to invest in today? And then some aerial and ballards that would be actually installed versus mobile, I think that's still to be determined. Portable, I should say. That's for all emergency situations, not just storms, but whatever. Crowd controls. Obviously, the biggest chunk, over 750,000 of that is a mobile command unit. I mean, an increase of 1.2 million for... I mean, that's... That's one of the one-time purchases? That's one of the one-time purchases. And of course, there are other ways to sort of look at funding for those type of items. That can't be funded through CDBG DR, I mean, respectively. Not the current action plan, but it's something we can consider as part we can look through for the action plan. There's a number of grant mechanisms that have been in place. Some of those have dried up, but we can certainly explore other grant opportunities and look at the DR, especially since this latest allocation that's yet to be coming is intended for mitigation type of purposes. So how it sort of fits into there. It's been incredibly helpful. And helpful last time. Yeah, we are. And certainly these would be more crowd control activities versus the inclement weather in terms of mobile activities and the aerial types of things. And again, these are... We don't... Usually the budget, especially by the time we bring you the proposed budget, these requests have been scaled back significantly. Obviously some of these requests warrant additional consideration and review. Of course, we have to balance that between existing and maintaining operations and programs. I'm sorry. Got a bunch of memories. I have it, Eric. So, I mean, basically everybody's got increases, which I mean, I can see, because we're growing, but you know... You have to cut to this. You just be frank, y'all pretty deep. I mean, we just tried to whack with these many new requests against the revenue we see coming in. We're just not going to be able to do it. I know obviously you guys chose everything. We appreciate that. But hopefully when you come back, you've taken a deeper look. And that's how our process usually is. Obviously, we want to be able to share with you what we have. Of course, you know, a few things to point out. The budget at this point, the 15 million deficit is made of both the revenues and expenses. The revenue side, we're not yet reflecting the $3 million use of fund balance. We have to look to make sure that $3 million is going to be available for the next year. Of course, our goal is to eventually wean ourselves from that, so that we're not budgeting at the deficit, but we're not at that point. The other item, like we said, we've got a few other tweaks we need to make to revenues. On the expense side, there are... We do not yet reflect the credit that we'll get from the state for the state retirement system. I can't expect that. That'll be about $600,000 to $700,000 benefit to the general fund. So that will help. Of course, Mr. Rigman, as you mentioned, all departments reflect an increase. On average, just the health and retirement increases six to seven percent. Right. So any of those that you see that are outside of that six to seven percent, or they're in that range, that's the only requested increase that they have is for the... Park Rangers for Bull Street. Is that really necessary at this point? The parks have not even been complete. It'll be open September. It's not just Bull Street. There's some other greenway use and some other ranges, but it's opening in September for that green space. So there'll be more than just that. But that's the... And then looking at the component units, at some point, we continue to fund these groups, what we're down to is, you know, we probably ought to get briefed on what the return is in these units and what the activity is. And I noticed in two in the OBO office is asking for a significant amount of money as well. It comes into leadership. You know that? It comes into leadership. Yeah, but no, I think, you know, what's interesting, though, is our programs, you know, what, you know, additional facade grant, you know, a lot of requests for that. We've been trying to rotate that. The micro loan program, you know, but, you know, we're going to do another updated disparity study to assist developing the updated goals, you know, in the SMBE. And I guess my question, you know, there is we've done these programs, we're doing this, but yet we're not seeing the return or the growth of a lot of these businesses. And so how do we leverage what we already existing have to make sure that we're getting there? You know, we've done this mentoring program in the wastewater and everywhere, but we're not seeing people get over to that next level. I think we do a tremendous job of making sure that we're inclusion in everything. I think we are by far great, but I guess, you know, we start looking at this is have we measured actually the results of what we have first before we embark in a new quarter million dollar study? And that's one of the items that we would consider one time and possibly breaking out if it were desired to go there, breaking out maybe over two fiscal years if needed. But again, it's still coming up with the differences. There's not that big lot going on and as we move forward and adding positions and new roles and stuff, we need to understand how that affects all the other team members in here because you know, we got a lot of infrastructure to take care of. We probably don't need that $215,000 next year. I'm not going to be babbling. Move that. No, she probably won't, but it looks like I've got some she's just given us over to you. Yeah, to make it. Okay. Slide 15. Slide 15. It's probably seven. You've got two. Well, you still have maintaining the million dollars in for hospital services as well. I don't have that listed here. And then we have not yet reflected any funding for our general capital projects. Of course, that's what's used to update our parks, update city facilities, anything that's going to be general fund related. Our fire stations, resubstations. We don't have those requests here for you, but there are. We do have obviously capital requests as well. Historically, council has often funded. We try to fund those in cash in the budget, but then also to funding them from any fund balance if and when it's available. It's also used for our roads, trying to maintain a level of often requested is 500,000 to be able to annually appropriate towards road resurfacing and rebuilds and then sidewalks. Be remiss if we didn't at least mention that in here. Well, in addition to mentioning it though, can we make sure that we have what that list is before we start making any allocations to outside groups? Absolutely. We're not reflecting anything at this point with regards to outside groups other than in terms of like community promotions. The only outside groups that are in here are those things that are like contracted for like the detention center and solicitor and animal services and things like that. Most of them we haven't brought, but there's also funding for those. I can tell the people that have been getting community promotion money not having. We didn't have any this year. We told people that it depends on whether or not it makes a cut. I understand that, but is my request for the wealth gap study? Not that I'm aware of. Everything was before I got here. What programs are you referring to? Like CDC and all of our programs that we know. Like what I shared with everybody last year, like Boston did a wealth inequality study and they found that the wealth gap was so big it would take generations to actually bring people to the same level, but it helps you target some of your, like for example, what we talked about yesterday, but it helps you figure out the problem. It's more than they'll be in a better footing to make better financial decisions. Some of the programs that we're about to do with our employees you know how that's helping them build wealth versus the kind of thing. I support that. I mean, I support helping fund that. We could probably also define some from Boston when they help us. There's a whole lot of focus on equity and inclusion and we're talking about several million dollars of investment based on that data. I think it's smart. It's a challenging time. We're watching the economy that's growing and blooming in some regards, but we're also watching the wealth gap grow and the benefits from that growth go more to capital than to labor. So you can work harder as hard as you possibly can but you can't keep up and catch up. That data's helpful. I've got a couple ideas maybe some places we could also use a portion of that money. Maybe if we put some of the money out, maybe some of it just won't work. In that instance in your comment one of the challenges that we've had with labor in Columbia and in our programs is to is helping educate people that if you can't pass a drug test you can get higher. That has been a challenge with every city program we put together and training in a lot of the business community are saying the same thing. It's not a lack of labor. It's a lack of mid-skilled jobs that pay good living and a good wage and has a p-test. I think it would be good for us to help if we're leaning into those programs to make sure that we tackle all aspects of it. That really concludes the highlight or overview other than talking about next steps. When do we get the line by line items in the fluorescent pens? We gave them to you last year. We can give it to you. Red ink, fluorescent pens. You want us to play with and continue some thoughts? Well, I think we've heard some thoughts from you today. Of course when we bring you back a budget will reflect those things that you all have expressed an interest in or want to see going forward. In some things, you guys take a really serious swipe at these. We're not buying another vehicle of a relationship. We've got cars sitting in a garage over on a regular basis. Let's figure out how we can use them a lot more. Let's dig deep and figure out how we can do that. Of course, the health care is another component. We have additional swipes at revenue. I think we're going to have to tackle that one very quickly. Help me understand how the Council's budget goes down because it's a non-election. There was 150,000 for the election. Say what? Say that then. I found it good. That is what it says, but I'm thinking I occasionally see that. I think our biggest thing at this point is just discussions of the schedules and bringing things back. What I'm hearing is an interest in starting earlier on the 15th. Then we could bring back. We can meet before then to tackle the grade. We can meet like some of these specific projects or some of the specific health care. I think we're going to talk to missing everyone else. Let's make sure the requests we have from the quiet zone committee as well. Obviously, there's some federal funding that we think might be available too. Let's take a look at that and make sure that there's some of the other requests. For example, the first we did was funded by CDBG. There's actually 100,000 in their budget now. This 100,000 that's mentioned here is to increase it to 200. There's already 100 in their budget. With the some of it was CDBG. With the significant and unanticipated increase that we're getting CDBG and other funds because of the omnibus bill is that some place we might be able to find those funds as opposed to funding for the general fund. I'll put some other notes down but if we were able to benefit from some of the federal resources and be news appropriately let's get the general fund some... I'm never going to get a new red line version that's going to make us all very proud. We missed a note. This is what happens when Mr. Know is no longer Mr. Know for a few weeks. He's going to shift right back into Mr. Know. On that, there will be other things that will be following up as well on Revenue Statehouse that will have an effect on our franchise fee as well. So we're going to have to think about those going forward. Say that again. They decreased. Our franchise fee if the state forces electric fees to go down our franchise fee will go down as well. So that can have a significant effect as well. We can raise taxes to get it back. No you can't. Well you can raise taxes within the constraints of Act 3 and 8. So that's just a few mills. How many mills do we have left? That's a good question. I don't know if we've updated that. In terms of what we have in the bank. We have a question. Where are we with the light? We'll start off with a streetlight fund that we started calling the city fund to pay for new services. I've got a looking at that. Figure out a way to collect. We would like to, but we haven't been focused on just trying to get current general fund on what we're doing. By then we will either have brought you a balanced budget or a budget that can be balanced with some options for city council to consider on how it's balanced. It'll be significant. What was that? The question was what were we doing on the 15th. So when we come back on the 15th. What time I mean? I'm sorry I thought you about what we'd actually be bringing back to you. That's probably the better. Does this also include another revenue generating issue that Robert from the table a few weeks? We just talked about that. I'm Danie and I were. How much was that? The streetlight fee. The question is whether it's to cover just new or if it's to cover existing. That seems to be what was just being discussed. Lighting? What was the potential revenue? It's like a five dollar two million. Then of course it's a matter of how we collect. Was it really revenue? Two million would be if we affected it would be July one. But I don't know if it would be July one. It's a break even in terms of the cost. We're not earning anything on lighting that we installed. No, we pay SCNG at least. Jeff, where are we on the 4,000 parcels of non-tax paying entities? How we're going to address that? Within the legislature. We're kind of struggling how to address that. The state took a look at certain not all 4,000 parcels but they were taking a look at universities and hospitals. It kind of looks like it's dead. What's preventing us from charging a fee that is more comparable to what our homeowners are having in fact? The 4,000 parcels. What would prevent us as a city from assessing a fee to those properties that equal what our homeowners pay? That's 4%. That is something we can go back to. In our discussions on that things that we have learned it can't be a flat fee. It can't be a case on some sort of value. That was ought to be my question also. But does the state have a say so if we do that given what they're trying to do? Well, they would not We're not sure. It was a Midlands representative that proposed it. Yeah, so. There was another number but let's just look back at the envelope numbers maybe just a different formula that obviously passed legal muster if we were to look at that. And I think also we're looking at the Dominion buyout if that were to come to pass every day as a different story at State Capital. What that also might mean in terms of revenue to the city as a rate payer. You're talking about if they make the payment up front? Yeah. Do we get an estimate? I think we did get an estimate. There's one time. Obviously it's one time but I think this budget also includes a number of one time expenses. Yeah. Anything that's capital or anything? We need we need somehow to benefit from that. Plus getting more requests and complaints about dark spots in the city. So we've got to invest somehow in that cost to put up more lighting. People leaving the night honestly feel that more lighting gives them some sense of safety. Really do. So I think that's one of the best investments we can make. So on the 15th we'll bring you back to the proposed budget. It will either be in balance or it will be balanced with options for city council to consider. So on the first meeting probably should be Tomeka is going to have an evening meeting and we're going to take care of the consent agenda and some property. You get my text on that? Well, he's not going to be in it. I know. We're having an evening meeting. I'll preside. And just take care of the light stuff. Because Daniel won't be here. There's no budget discussions planned for May 1. We just need to verify that it'll be here so we have a forum. We were just talking about the first. I had asked that that Lauren had asked that Ms. Columbia be on the agenda for May 1 to introduce herself in the platform. But I'd rather grant with press to do all of that aggressively advance to one of our major nonprofits to support ShotSpotter and just some really smart precision policing using data to help us respond more effectively to gun crimes in the city to keep it a great press conference to share a plot today as well on generally the same topic. If in fact the grant opportunity doesn't work out we should. Partners should step up and make it happen. We do need to seriously look at some of the precipitous drops in gunfire that other cities are seeing speak to the value of this and it's something we ought to be investing in either way. Let's make it a part of our discussions and then we have to look at other parts of the city. Hopefully, our nonprofit partners will step up and make it a reality. But we need to do it either way. It needs to be done. I mean, guys always they're getting texts from me at night. And I'll go ahead and say this to people. This is a great ShotSpotter right now. He calls you every day. He calls you every day. Yeah. It's real out there. The data is very real. The number of calls we get increasing calls in the round is that the vast majority of calls are never, shots are never reported. He tells you that we have a lot of issues out there. I know I sent some of you who I probably harassed a little more than others. Misty and Jeff, right? More than anybody else. Ask for some data around schools, particularly I'm not sure if I told you the entire story. I was curious about data around gunfire and some of the zones that the proposal that Chief Howard presented in some of our neighborhoods. If there's some ability we had using the Nunn Free State Schools Act, federal law to potentially erect some of these shots by the censors in and around some of these schools. Just thinking again, progressively whatever we do, I wouldn't be surprised if we even got some pushback from legislators even though something as smart as this as we deal with this incredibly logical pro-gun perver at the state capitol. They seek to preempt us at every corner, every term. But I'll send some follow-up emails on that maybe to the whole council. But we got some respite in that federal law that gives us some room for some policy making that the state legislature can't preempt on the supremacy and I want to talk about that a little bit. We're looking at the real-time video. It catches the shots. We can put some this in my song Chicago where they have it. So it's coordinated. It put it on the Pope. And then guys can do it in the car. Right. Right. I remember watching that and saw a drug pass on the street corner. It's got a good daylight. We can get this thing done in the next month so we can have it up and operationally assemble and you'll have more shots fired than any other thing. They are ready to do it. So over there behind the brush farm you're always getting shots fired called back up in there. I'm talking shooting range. You're dead. A lot of morning. No. Rutledge behind Rutledge. But I don't think we're supposed to do it. We're sportsmen or really. Yeah. Urban sportsmen. Urban, yeah. I mean it was sacking it man. We would get calls, like shots every night and nobody could figure out what was happening and what was going on. Thanks to the great work our officers did and making friends with folks down there going and looking and up the palm tree. So we're done now. We're done. I do want to see. I'm not going anywhere. I got a 12 30 upstairs. I got a 3 30. Get your meter. I'm still there at 3 30. I hope somebody's there. Three hour meeting. We just move right along. While you look. We done. We're ready. You are.