 Good evening, everyone. Thank you all, you Aldermen and our guests for showing up tonight. I'm glad you're here. I know it's summer and there's a lot of things going on and thank you for being here tonight. President Hanna, will you please call the roll? Yes, I will. Born. Here. Bow. Excused. Serda. Excused. Gisha. Excused. Hanna, here. Heidemann. Here. Kittleson. Here. Clionis. Here. Manny. Meyer. Here. Montemure. Here. Rinfleisch. Here. Ryan. Here. Vanderweil. Excused. Verhassel. Excused. Longerman. Here. Levin, present. We have a quorum. Thank you. Moving on to our next item on the agenda. It's our RC number 80708 by City County Shared Services from June 18th, 2007. Council agenda number 661. Your committee to whom was referred the task of studying possible shared services with the county submits the findings of a study of combined joint dispatch. The City County Shared Services Committee unanimously supports combined dispatch and requests consideration from the council. Mr. Maples, would you please come up and give your presentation? Do we need to dim the lights? And. What mic will you be using? Okay, I'd like to thank you all for partaking in the presentation this evening. My name is Gary Maples. I'm a participant in the Shared County City County Shared Services Committee. And as part of the City County Shared Services Committee I became chairperson of a subcommittee to look at the implementation of combined dispatch. So with that, let's continue with the first slide. This'll take approximately 30 to 35 minutes. First of all, I need to explain what the subcommittee did, which is what I'm going to report on this evening. The subcommittee did not review whether this was a good idea or not being combined dispatch, whether there was a good idea or not, or reasons why or why not. That issue was already dealt with by the Shared Services Committee itself. And you can see on November 9th, 2006 the Shared Services Committee as a whole approved the concept of looking into combined dispatch. So the subcommittee was really appointed for the purposes of reviewing how could combined dispatch be put into effect? So just to understand what the purpose of the committee was. One of the things that Shared Services saw if you look at the third bullet point here is that it came to the realization that perhaps there wasn't a tremendous amount of cost savings. Nevertheless, there were good reasons for going forward to look at combined dispatch. So this is just a continuation of the resolution that was passed by the City County Shared Services Committee and appointment of the subcommittee, as I mentioned. Got ahead of myself here. Here's a list of the members who participated in the subcommittee. There were three citizen members listed on the top. Ken Conger, supervisor. Renee Sousha at the beginning of the committee and then Dan Verhastel at the end of the committee representing the City Council. And then you'll see as you go down the list pretty much a representative from every emergency service area within the county. And so we had a lot of good input. It was process started in December of 2006 and wound up in early May of 2007. This is a very open process. These were all open committee meetings and for the most part these people attended on a very consistent basis. Towards the end we were meeting on about an every other week basis. We also had some additional support particularly from Russ Schreiner who was City Communications Technician. Answered a lot of our technical issues for us. I do wanna go back for one second. I need to point out two individuals in particular, Jen Reinfeld who's here this evening and director of operations in the Sheriff's Department, Bill Bruckbauer. They wound up doing most of the legwork for the committee because many questions were asked of them and it was get us an answer for this, get us information on that. So those two people and I wanted to particularly single them out were particularly important to the committee's work. And I thank both of them for their efforts. All right, well the subcommittee really did not have as a purpose the reasons to look at combined dispatch. I did wanna spend a minute or two talking about what were some of the reasons behind the idea of looking at combined dispatch and why it might be a good idea even though there might not be tremendous cost savings. Well I've got our list on this slide and the next slide of reasons to look at combined dispatch is those again as I said the purpose of the subcommittee was not really to review these. These had already been accepted by shared services committee. The first is a cellular answering point is centralized. You may or may not know that if you call 911 on a cell phone any place in the county that call is going to be answered by a county dispatcher at the law enforcement center. You could be standing in this room right here and if you dial 911 on your cell phone it will not be answered on the first floor in the police department dispatch. It'll be answered by a county dispatcher. If it is determined that the call is coming from a city of Sheboygan location that call is then transferred to city dispatch. So there's always a transfer if you're talking about a 911 call if it is in fact coming from within the city boundaries. Obviously there's some issues and anytime you transfer something there's a potential for a problem. So that is one existing issue is the transfer of 911 calls. The other thing the committee learned as the shared services committee learned is that the percentage of 911 cellular calls has gone in most counties from 40 to 50 or more percent. So more and more calls are coming in to 911 from cell phones not on landlines. The second thing is a common dispatch point we looked at shared services committee looked at about six different counties that had combined dispatch. And one of the reasons they had combined dispatch for the entire county is so that you have interoperability and you don't have split authorities and split communications to some degree. Natural disasters like tornadoes or something like a chemical spill on an I-43 does not necessarily represent boundary lines like city county boundary lines. They can be going across boundary lines. So it makes a certain amount of sense to have dispatch one common dispatch for all emergency operations within the county rather than to have it split. In the long run there are some operational efficiencies and improved services to the public. I won't get into a long list but things like training, things like planning things like having depth of personnel, long-term cost containment and efficiency. The idea being that you're planning for one emergency operations center or I shouldn't say one combined dispatch center and not two or more. So standardized training I already mentioned that. And then there's the potential for something called emergency medical dispatch. And let me take a minute just to explain what that is. Emergency medical dispatch has to do with the training that dispatchers have in an emergency situation. City dispatchers are trained. City Subway and dispatchers are trained to give over the telephone emergency direction and assistance. They will try to walk you through what the emergency is and try to give you some assistance over the phone until the emergency responders arrive at your location. County dispatchers are not trained. County dispatchers can give you some elemental medical assistance but they are not trained in emergency medical dispatch. So again you have some disparity between what county dispatchers can do and what city dispatchers can do. And it would be nice to take care of that difference. We have the advantage in Sheboygan County where really we only have two dispatch centers. Some of the counties we looked at combined, eventually combined five, 10, 15 or 20 or more different dispatch centers into one. Well, we're kind of ahead on the curve already because we only have two to talk about. All right, another thing that we have going for us in Sheboygan County is the city and the county thanks to some wisdom a number of years ago have a common radio system. They also have common dispatch councils, we'll talk about dispatch council a little bit later, and dispatch software. And we saw the review of the other six other counties that we looked at, they indicated they're very satisfactory conversion to combined dispatch. They were pleased with it and they were glad they made the decision. Through combined dispatch, it was determined that everybody gets the same level of service and the idea is to spread the cost over as broad a base as possible. So again, while the subcommittee was not charged to look at these reasons, I thought it might be helpful to share the reasons for it with you that shared services came up with. Again, it doesn't necessarily save any money and the six counties we talked to said that. They said don't expect a lot of operational savings because you probably won't get it. However, there are very good other reasons to do so. All right, what did the subcommittee do? Well, there were three issues that needed to be addressed. First of all, was the decision to consider combined dispatch. That decision was already made by the shared services committee. The next point was creation of a general work plan which is what we're gonna look at this evening and that was the purpose of the subcommittee. The subcommittee was to put together a framework for how could this be done? And then the last was if everybody is in agreement and it moves forward, the last step was implementation and our estimate is a 12 to 18 month implementation time period. All right, what did the subcommittee do? Well, we started out by gathering pertinent information as I indicated this was done over approximately a four month period under an open meeting basis. We're all information was shared. We formulated a potential plan, including some options. And then in the end, we reviewed the plan for some possible missions and also for comparisons to other counties. What did we look at? What was in our work plan? Well, what we had to address as far as this work plan for putting together combined dispatch was facilities, equipment, backup, workforce, emergency medical dispatch, governments and funding. And I will address all of those individually. All right, well, what we soon discovered was that there was no simple solution. We thought at the beginning that perhaps we would be able to focus on and come up with one single set of parameters or criteria for combined dispatch. We found it wasn't quite that easy. We did notice that there are different options and these different options have different strengths and weaknesses. And the different options also have different costs. All of the options have trade-offs and if you choose one, you give up something over another option. We attempted to recognize all reasonable options. We came down to about five. All right, the first thing you had to decide on was what would be the location? If you had combined dispatch, where would you put it? Well, the County Law Enforcement Center next to the courthouse on Sixth Street does not have sufficient space inside. It has a dispatch operation for the county now within the law enforcement center, but there's not a lot of additional space available inside. The city hall on the first floor here in this building is extremely tight for space. So that presented some problems if you tried to combine dispatch in either of the existing locations and we'll talk about a minute how that was addressed. So we reviewed some options for location. Well, once you decide the location, you start driving the equipment needs. Once you decide where combined dispatch could be, you start focusing on what kind of equipment do we need. And once you've arrived at the location equipment, then you can also deal with the backup dispatch and we'll talk about that in a second. All right, equipment requirements. Once we've dealt with location, then the next thing we had to look at was equipment requirements. Dispatch operations require dispatch councils and they're really our, it's a collection of electronic equipment, computers, printers, electronic support packages and furniture that the dispatchers use. And as I said, fortunately, through some foresight, both the city and the county use exactly the same dispatch councils and exactly the same software. So there are some benefits on combined dispatch of you don't have to abandon some equipment. Currently the county law enforcement center has about three and a half dispatch councils and the city has about two and a half dispatch councils. The ideal number for combined dispatch would be five to six. So you'd need five to six councils and obviously the equipment, support equipment that goes with it to create a combined dispatch. So in either case, some additional dispatch councils and support equipment would have to be required. I have to be added. Also on the bottom, additional councils required for backup. Well, let's talk about this backup issue and it's probably something that we hadn't really thought about a lot when we entered in the process of looking at how could we put together a framework for combined dispatch. But right now, the city and the county act as backup for each other. If something would happen to the law enforcement center on North 6th Street, the county could shift dispatch operations to the dispatch, the city dispatch in this building. And on the other hand, if something happened to this building, the city could shift dispatch to the county law enforcement center on North 6th Street. The problem is there's not really enough physical room and there's not a full set of councils. Again, remembering that the county's operating with about three councils and the city's operating with about slightly more than two, about two and a half councils. So the problem is if you move to the all operations to the law enforcement center or you move all operations to city hall, you don't have enough councils. The backup as it exists now is really temporary in nature. It's something that you could operate for several hours. For example, if all power were lost in the law enforcement center for four, five, six, seven, eight hours, maybe even a day, you could squeeze everybody in the dispatch here at city hall and it would work. However, neither one of the sites really provide any long-term backup simply because they're not physically big enough and neither one of them has enough councils to support the city and the county at the same time. Now, creating a combined, the other issue is that they are relatively close to each other. The law enforcement center and city hall are not physically very far apart. A tornado or some other sort of a chemical spill or something could easily take out both of them. So that's an issue that is also there as far as backup. Creating a combined dispatch center eliminates any backup. Backup as we know it now. Even though present backup is not adequate, at least there is some form of backup. After looking at the backup situation, the subcommittee did reach the conclusion that backup is critical and it simply cannot be ignored. All right, so that's what some of the things we need to look at. Now let's get a little bit more specific. We looked at five physical locations. Physical location, facility option A was to remodel and expand the existing law enforcement center dispatch operation on North 6th Street in the county law enforcement center. There's a room to do a slight amount of expansion. However, you would never get more than four councils in by expanding the existing county law enforcement center dispatch. There simply would not be much room for more than four councils and ideally there should be five or six. Facility option B would be to add an extension to the law enforcement center, 1600 square feet on the north side of the law enforcement center. Option C would be to add 1800 square feet and you'll see when you look at the numbers going from 1660 to 1860 feet is not a significant cost increase and 1800 square feet added to the north side of the law enforcement center would in fact provide some room for expansion in the future. A fourth option which we had not really thought of when we started out but we came to a realization that there could be facility option D could be location of combined dispatch at the new city police department. The new city police department is planned to have approximately 700 square feet for dispatch. So if you expanded the new police department by additional 1000 square feet, you would have 1750 square feet or so for combined dispatch in the new police department. And we'll talk about that in a minute. The last option which is probably not too attractive but we needed to put it in to show what the potential cost is at least would be to build a brand new which some of these counties that we talked to they created a brand new combined dispatch building completely separate facility. All right, plan one. Plan one consists of locating combined dispatch at the county law enforcement center on North 6th Street and that would be facility option A, B or C. Expand the existing facility, internal facility slightly or add expansion B or C. You'd have to add two to three additional councils and support equipment. And the backup location then could be at city hall here, four councils at city hall here, four councils at the new city police department or we even looked into would it be possible to locate four councils out at Lakeshore Technical College because they have a emergency operations center out there which is not the same as combined dispatch but we wanted to take a look at that facility as a possibility. So there's sort of three choices if you go to the law enforcement center. All right, plan two was as indicated add additional space in the new Sheboygan police department. That would require adding six new councils and a support equipment at the Sheboygan PD, new PD and again backup operations would be at city hall, LTC or the backup could be at the existing law enforcement center. Plan three, this was a construction of a brand new 8,000 square foot building, new councils and support equipment. And now we would have four potential backup sites for backup operations city hall, law enforcement center, Sheboygan, new Sheboygan PD or the LTC. All right, then we looked at, so those are their locations and we'll further elaborate as far as costs in a few minutes. Dispatchers staffing, the county currently has 12 full-time dispatchers. The city has six full-time and six part-time dispatchers. Staffing was determined to be 24 full-time dispatchers. So if you had combined dispatch to cover 24 seven plus vacations plus training plus other other time necessary to cover, you would need 24 full dispatchers. It doesn't quite seem to work out but looking at the hours and overtime, et cetera, et cetera and not paying overtime and covering the scheduling right, it comes out to 24 full-time dispatchers. All right, this is the new addition that it does not exist. Currently, neither the city or the county dispatch centers have dedicated supervision. The city dispatchers and the county dispatchers report to wherever the watch supervisor or watch commander whoever is in charge of the city and or county emergency operations, police operations at that time. So you can see the county currently have dedicated supervisors. When we looked at the other counties who went into combined dispatch, we discovered that they had anywhere besides a full-time communications manager, they had anywhere from three to nine full-time shift supervisors. It takes nine shift supervisors to bride 24-hour seven-day-a-week supervision. After much discussion on this topic because you're sort of going from no supervisors to as many as nine supervisors, I can assure you there was a lot of discussion about the why's and wherefores. In the end, the subcommittee was convinced in fact that there should be some level of dedicated supervision. This is the only area that would inquire increased costs. And we'll talk about the costs in a minute, but since you're going from no supervisors to some level of supervisors, this is the area that would inquire some increased costs. Now, one might argue, why do you need to go from zero supervisors to three or six or nine or whatever the magic number is? Well, one thing you need to recognize is that dispatch has changed a lot in the last 25 or 30 years. I think some people still think of dispatch, you've got somebody sitting with a telephone, a piece of paper, and a microphone for the radio. And that when they get a call, they write it down on a piece of paper and somebody figures out where the nearest unit is and then they dispatch it. Well, it's far more sophisticated than that. There's a lot of software, there's a lot of technical stuff. The dispatchers really need to be highly trained. It's not like it used to be many years ago. It is a sophisticated operation. And really, even though there are shift commanders or watch commanders, those people simply no longer have the training or the skills to step in and help. So there are some good reasons and the counties that they said that we looked at that went to combine dispatch did in fact add some level of supervision. All right, supervision and operations. We saw one county had as few as three ship supervisors. A lot of them had something in the middle and a couple of them had nine shift supervisors. Nine shift supervisors that I indicated would cover things 24 hours, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The other thing we looked at, emergency medical dispatch, I already mentioned this. This was another issue that came up. And well, we looked at city does have emergency medical dispatch to assist you if you have a medical problem when you call in. County does not have a formal training program. They can give you limited assistance but not a formal extended protocol. And the question was if there would be combined dispatch, should it or should it not have emergency dispatch? There is some cost to train and certify everybody in emergency dispatch. And there was also a question, do you wanna go through the combined dispatch process and emergency medical dispatch training at the same time? It might be a little bit too much. All right, one of the last things we looked at is governance, combined dispatch operations require a decision regarding who's gonna be in charge. Some of the counties we looked at as I indicated created an entirely new department. So it was a county department as an example, but it was not under the sheriff's department nor was it under the police department but it was a separate brand new county department to handle combined dispatch. Looking at some of these counties as I indicated combined five, 10, 15, 20 or more different dispatch centers. And I think for various political reasons and operational reasons they thought it would be best to start with a clean slate and a new department and not try to meld it into something existing. The committee's, I think committee's consensus was we really don't have that issue here. We're not trying to combine 20 existing dispatch centers, only two. So perhaps the necessity to create a new dispatch center, totally separate department of something is not necessary. Now, option B is it could report to the sheriff's department or it could be report to the police department. We didn't feel that combined dispatch had necessarily to be under the county supervision as part of the sheriff's department. As an example, the city of Eau Claire police department provides dispatch for the entire county. So there's no reason it can't be part of city operations. Either option, the last thing we looked at however is that either option should sort of had some sort of user input. Right now the outlying areas, the outlying areas in the county, Plymouth, Elkhart Lake, et cetera, et cetera, Sheboygan Falls, all the volunteer fire departments are users of dispatch, particularly county dispatch, but there's not a formal committee to provide user input. And we thought that there's, as a combined, as our subcommittee, there should be some form of advisory committee of the users, regardless of how this, where it's combined dispatch might wind up. All right, let's get down to the hard numbers now with sort of the background on an explanation of the overview. There's two sets of costs, the hard costs. What would it do to add a new expanded facility to acquire the additional equipment? Those are the hard, hard one-time costs. And then the operational costs, the ongoing day-to-day, year-to-year costs. So let's start taking a look at those. Before I look at that, we did take a look at funding sources. We didn't get too far into that because the subcommittee kind of came to a rapid conclusion that this was not really our area of responsibility. We could make some very, very general suggestions, but it was really up to the two legislative bodies, the county board and the city council to decide. But we gave some general recommendations. And they are, one, is that a hard cost of adding equipment and adding facilities regardless of where the facility might be should be shared on some proportional basis between the city and the county. And we didn't give any indication what that proportionality should be. Secondly is the operational costs. We recommend that the operational costs be spread over as broad a tax base as possible. So if there's a combined dispatch operation, it should be spread over the entire tax base in the county. So those were our two recommendations and we stopped at that point. All right, before we talk about the costs, I wanna give you a brief background. All costs are based on estimates. We had researched these estimates and they were, as I said, they were all discussed in open meeting, but we did not go out and bid anything because obviously we didn't have the authority to go out and bid any projects. The subcommittee and I as the chair of the subcommittee, I have all the detailed information to support the numbers that you're going to see. If anybody wants to see them, I will certainly be happy to provide them to you. In providing cost estimates, wherever possible we reused existing equipment. So we didn't have just abandoned because currently the city and county equipment are relatively new. There's no urgency to replace either of them in the near future and they can be adapted. So like the council, software, et cetera, et cetera. Costs are driven first by location, then by equipment and then finally by backup. Not all possible combinations are shown because some of them simply didn't make sense. So let's get down to the four of so alternatives. Here they are. Again, option one is County Law Enforcement Center and that is to remodeling the existing dispatch room inside the law enforcement center, expand it slightly and add two councils. But you'll notice there are some notes on the bottom of each one of these that are germane. I'm not going to go through the notes. Backup choices, this would be the cost to create the backup. What you're going to see in all of these is we found that LTC as a potential backup site was going to be very, very expensive. So we put it in here because we wanted you to be aware that we looked at it as an option but without getting into the details we found that it was going to be quite an expensive endeavor. All right, location two. County Law Enforcement Center on North 6th Street expand North 1660 square feet on the existing building. You will see that a fairly hefty cost, one of the reasons being that regardless of where you create a new facility or an expanded facility, this is what's called hardened construction. Typically our cost that we saw for average construction of a municipal facility is about $180 a square foot. But when you get into hardened construction ceilings, roofs, walls, sub floors, et cetera, et cetera, you're talking about $270 a square foot because the last thing you don't want is the tornado peeling the roof off. We also discovered that the present emergency power system at the Law Enforcement Center is just about at capacity and it would have to be increased significantly in order to handle a new dispatch operation. So the costs are fairly high and that's a fairly high, but there's a reason. There's two reasons why they're fairly high. Backup choices, City Hall, New PD and LTC. All right, third choice, add 1800 square feet to the Law Enforcement Center on the North side and you will see that again, the cost isn't a lot more than adding 1660 square feet plus two additional councils and a third council. And then backup choices again are City Hall, New PD or Lakeshore Technical College. All right, here's the Cheboygan PD location. As I indicated, right now there's planned into the New City Police Department 700 to 750 square feet for dispatch. Adding 1,000 square feet and there's 1,000 square feet, $270 a square foot, $270,000 plus some other things that you would have to add. Additional facility costs, minor costs, 60,000, total 330, five councils, $919,000. The backup site, if you use the present County Law Enforcement Center as a backup site, the cost is relatively low because it's there, it has emergency power and it already has more than four councils or close to four councils. So the County Law Enforcement Center would be an ideal backup site. This, if you look at pure cost, this option is the cheapest. Now, we thought it would only be fair to compare if you or another did what some of the other counties and some of the other counties, because they did some other things, they spent up to $8 million for a entirely separate, brand new combined dispatch standalone facility and grounds, et cetera. We didn't go quite that far, but we looked at construction costs of $4,161,000 construction plus equipment. That's if you were to create a brand new separate facility. So you can see the cost of this is quite extensive. We are actually, as a county and a city, are in a pretty good position to add combined dispatch without anywhere near as much to the cost of the other counties. All right, now let's take a, so that's the hard costs. And again, there was a four choices or so, the going into the city PD would be the cheapest. We determined that if you took the existing dispatchers from the city, plus the existing dispatchers from the county, put them together, they total approximately $1,328,000 a year. That's salaries and benefits, wages and benefits. That's approximately the same cost as being paid now. So by combining dispatch operations, you would not increase the cost for dispatchers. Pretty much a wash. Now, here's the supervisory cost option. This is the one operational cost that goes up. As I indicated to you before, there are no dedicated supervisors for either the city dispatch or the county dispatch. The cost of adding one comm-centered manager in any case, and then shift supervisors, you can see three, six or nine. And this would be the one difference in operational costs. And I knew it was gonna do that. It always freezes up right around here. We'll take care of that. Okay, here's what we left off. Supervisor operation costs, depending upon whether you add three, six or nine supervisors. Recurring operational costs. We looked at things like, you see the note on the bottom, repairs, phone lines, fees, contract supplies, overtime electricity, et cetera, et cetera. Current city dispatch is about 73,000 a year. Current county dispatch is about 181. We estimated that combined, it would be about 196 or $15,000 more for updated day operational costs. However, we took a very conservative position. We aired on the side of the most, what we thought would be the high side of costs. So in fact, it might be break even, but it certainly wouldn't be more than $15,000 more. All right, emergency medical dispatch, as I mentioned, when we looked at the cost, the cost to create emergency medical dispatch for all the dispatchers was not exorbitant. It was more of an issue of trying to get combined dispatch and emergency medical dispatch training done at the same time. And that may be a little bit too much at one time. All right, here's the summary. Combined dispatch works and has been accomplished successfully in similar-sized counties. One-time hard costs are moderate, given existing common components. When I say moderate, yes, we're talking about a million dollars in hard costs, but when we compare it to some of the other counties where they combine five, 10, 15, or 20 or more dispatch operations, the cost is moderate. Dispatch your wages cost and operational costs would increase modestly, if at all, and the largest ongoing cost increase would be for supervision component of combined dispatch. That is the end of the presentation. When they're here, I always give them a chance. Jan or Bill, again, they were instrumental in providing us with the information and assistance, and either one of you have anything you'd like to add or, okay, so that completes the presentation, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Maples. Let me step aside here. President Hanna. Well, thank you very much. I just wanted to publicly thank Gary Maples for doing such a thorough and complete job. I've had the privilege of seeing this presentation twice, and I'm impressed with the amount of work and the man hours that they put into it. I think they gave us some good choices to look at tonight, and I appreciate all the personal time that Gary's put into this. Well, I thank you, but I particularly thank the committee because I was at every committee meeting, but all the rest of them were there, too, so I couldn't have done it without the input of everybody. President Hanna. That being said, I thought I would start the discussion by making a motion this evening. I would move to file the document with a recommendation to Mayor Perez to prepare a resolution for passage during the next Common Council meeting, requesting the county combine its dispatch facility with the city of Sheboygan's and that the new police station be the location for the combined dispatch with the existing facility of the sheriff being the backup, which I think was your, was that option four or five? Yeah, that would be that would be my motion. There's a second. We have a motion and a second on the floor under discussion. Alderman, brain flush. Thank you, this is president, not chair. No, Chairwoman, thank you. I've been a fan of joint dispatch for some time now without having seen any numbers in theory. I mean, it seems to have made some sense to me. I do have some concerns looking at the information that has been given to us first and foremost. The summary says it does work in communities, county is very similar to Sheboygan, but I guess I'm looking for the city taxpayer, where is the hard line benefit of that right now? We go from the city paying for six part time and six full time to paying for 24 in total. Now the theory of course is that we're spreading that across the operational cost amongst the entire county population versus just the city population. That to me is a bonus and I would be very supportive of that thing I'm concerned about is we're talking about hard costs being shared between some proportional basis between city and county without having some number here even within the recommendation that Alderman Hanna is putting forward. Whatever proportion is settled as the city is 50-50, is it 60-40 to some degree of that. The city taxpayer is responsible 100% of the city and somewhere between 40 to 30% of the county's portion. So once again, we're looking at that the city taxpayer is still paying more than their fair share. In addition, the recommendation is the most inexpensive one would be at the city police station which is currently under construction, which of course the city taxpayer is paying for. That's the reason why we don't have to pay $8 million or $4 million because we're already building one locally that the county will now move into. So we're not really sharing the cost of the city police station amongst the entire county. That's why it is the least because we're already paying the front costs up front. In addition, the county required the city to buy the land the police station is going on. And again, it's a proportional amount of the cost which means that the city taxpayer paid already owned the land had to buy it for themselves to some proportion again because being a county taxpayer having to buy it from the county. So I see now three ways that the city taxpayer may not necessarily benefit. How is the best way that I can explain to them that there is a benefit to the city taxpayer throughout? I guess using all those numbers out there my concerns is what does the county see in terms of the city taxpayer whom I represent? How can I explain to them that this is a good deal? Mr. Maples, would you be able to answer this? You could use the mic over there. Well, the succinct answer is I can't answer it because I have my own personal thoughts but the subcommittee really did not address those issues. They just said share the cost on some basis and that's something that would have to be negotiated between the city and the county. The one issue I can't answer for you because it's fact it's not opinion is that city taxpayers are paying 35 or 40% of county dispatch and 100% of city dispatch. Exactly. So if the cost of dispatch, the operational costs, et cetera, day-to-day year-to-year basis is spread out among the entire county then that immediate cost burden on the city budget would go down. So that's as far as I can go because I understand your questions but I can't answer for you on behalf of the subcommittee because we didn't address them and anything I would say would be personal and that's really not fair to the committee. Yes. I guess a follow-up statement on that. I would be interested in supporting this. The operational costs, the funding sources being spread throughout the county taxpayer so we're paying taxpayer for taxpayer equally but I would also support this only if the hard costs were also negotiated with to be a county wide and versus a proportional basis that each homeowner pays their assessed value portion of that. That I would support that but I would not support it otherwise. Let's make it. Okay, thank you. Alderman Ryan. Thank you, Madam Chair. First I'd like to thank Mr. Maples and his committee. It's a good report. I'm looking at this and the supervisory costs are the big negative of the entire operation. Presently in the city we have shift captains basically that oversee dispatch along with having a communications manager and if this indeed is going to be in the new police department I think it would probably be a big cost savings to have that same arrangement where you have your shift supervisor also oversee dispatch at that time. That would according to this save somewhere in the neighborhood of wherever my numbers are here. We're talking 500 and about a half million dollars a year and then this would make sense. If we do put it in the new police department we're already spending money to construct the building anyway. We've already paid for the land. If we can operate it sharing the cost with the county for less money than we are now makes a lot of sense. So I would support this provided that we come to an agreement with the county on sharing the cost of it. Thank you. Thank you. Aldermen Calliunas. Thank you, Chair President. I thought the report was very interesting. My argument, the only argument for the new facility, 8,000 square feet all by itself would be that this whole negotiation of cost would be separate, you know, the state and then the city and the county would be built separately on a proportional basis. Everything would be, you know, clearly stated as a cost for dispatch. It wouldn't be something that the city had to pay for twice or the county was getting a better deal on or something. That's my only argument for it. I also think you, Mr. Maples, thinks, I think that there isn't much political difference between the city and the county. Sometimes people think there is a lot and, you know, whether one department would take over the management of or another, I'm not sure. I think it's something to be considered, but that would be my argument for a new facility, be, you know, clear, clear costs, clear costs, assessment. Thank you. Are there any further questions? Alderman Vaughn. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had the opportunity to sit in on quite a few of the meetings and I just want to reiterate something that Mr. Maples said is that the city of Chewboygan and the county of Chewboygan getting this done has a lot less obstacles than I saw in other presentations what other communities had to go through. Again, the foresight, the councils, the software, the radios. So many other counties had so many things that were much more insurmountable than what we have. Also, I did a little research today. I believe right now the city dispatch right now is costing the city of Chewboygan taxpayers a line item in the police budget of close to a million dollars. I believe I'm correct on that. And in talking with Mr. Gebber today, the city of Chewboygan has 16,836 real property taxpayers. So that million dollar, oh wait a minute. The million dollar line item in the police department budget right now for city taxpayers is being paid by those 16,836 people that pay property taxes in the city. The total number of taxpayers in Chewboygan County, according to the county treasurer, is 52,211 taxpayers. So if indeed the city and the county can get together on this, and again, the city is now paying for that million dollars in our own dispatch plus about 40% of the county dispatch, whatever the numbers come for the hard costs and the salaries and wages will then be divided amongst 52,211 taxpayers. So I think it makes a lot of sense for us to take a real hard look at this if for no other reason to broaden this cost. And in the future we are gonna have to buy a new equipment. If the city remains on its own, we're gonna have to buy new councils eventually and the county's gonna have to do the same thing. So I think it makes a lot of sense that as we go forward, if we can come together on this to face these costs together and divided amongst that total county taxpayer base. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Oh, oh, oh, hold them in mani. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I listen, these are the things I note and I simply offer these as a reflection. Benefits for the county would include certainly increased training for emergency medical dispatch so they would be better serviced by a more fully trained personnel. Benefits for the city perhaps cost savings but the proof is in the pudding when an agreement is made with percentages until that point in time we don't know if that's a benefit or not. Benefits for both would include greater supervision and better backup with greater margin for air and protection. Those are the benefits that I see and I'd be happy for others to uplift another benefit or two that I don't note. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Rinflesh. Thank you Alderman Mani for the benefit analysis. In general, like I said, it's something I support. The biggest benefit I see is over time spreading of the cost to every taxpayer within the county versus just the city of some of those that I represent. So I do see a large benefit over time and I will support the recommendation coming out of this committee to go to Common Council. However, if within negotiations, whatever it does come back to the council if I feel that the negotiation didn't lead to an equitable distribution of the fixed costs as well as the operational costs then I would probably vote against it with a heavy heart because of the overall goal that I have in mind is to spread that burden throughout to lessen the burden on the individual taxpayer. So I'll keep my eyes open clearly on that to see what kind of negotiations are taking place on that but I will support it as this point in time. Okay, thank you. Alderman Kittleson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess to be really sure in my mind I'd like to ask Lieutenant Reinfeld about the efficiency of it all. I mean, how do they feel? Can this be a more efficient way to operate if we do combine the dispatch? Lieutenant, would you please come up to the mic? Thank you. Okay, efficiency is over time could probably happen. You have to remember that this is going to be a long time in the implementation and it's not going to be easy. You're taking two totally different groups of people from two totally different departments and putting them together. And they have to learn, they have to learn the policies and procedures of both departments. That's going to take time. You're going to lose some people during this process. You're going to have to rehire, you're going to have to train. There's going to be a lot of steps that have to be completed before you get to a truly operational center. And a lot of the people that we listened to that came in and gave their presentations to us said it was 10 to 12 years before they had a truly operational center that was up and running and saving money and being efficient. So yes, it will happen, but it's not going to happen immediately. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Just a minute. Oldman Manny, do you have a question for the time? Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do. Would you comment on the supervisory aspect? I think your comments would be helpful for us to hear this evening. Right now the situation is that there's one manager in each department. That would be myself in our department and I believe as a captain in Captain Nash and in the Sheriff's Department who manages their dispatch center. When we are not here, the dispatchers are managed and supervised by the on-duty supervisors. Now what you need to know there is that these are the police supervisors who are doing this and it is like second duty to them. Their primary duty is taking care of everything that's going on out on the road with the officers. And when you combine now two departments and you have six, there will be about six dispatchers on duty at any one time. They are not going to be able to oversee what's going on on the road and still maintain successfully what's going on in-house. And now they have to do this for two departments. So you really do need full supervision. Any further questions? Thank you. You're welcome. Seeing none, I would ask that the motion be re-read. Certainly. The motion reads, first there's a motion to file with a recommendation to Mayor Perez to prepare a resolution for passage during the next common council meeting requesting that the county combine its dispatch facility with the city of Sheboygan's and that the new police station be the location for the combined dispatch center with the backup being located at the sheriff's department as presented by the city county shared services subcommittee. Thank you. All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Moving on to item number four. Auto number 335-535-0607 by director of planning and development. And this is from February 19th, 2007. Council agenda number 2241. Submitting your information, a memo regarding tax incremental districts to the finance committee, a composite of the tax incremental law and an analysis of all tax, city tax incremental districts that have been created and their status. Ms. Enders, would you please come and share with us your information? I wonder if I can. Do you mind if I? Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members. This report that's in front of you tonight was actually based on a request from Alderperson Boran who had read an article, and I'm gonna have to put my glasses on for this, entitled city should be more deliberate about financing tool. The article I asked Wisconsin cities and villages to use the following four principles to promote high development in their home communities, understand the local real estate market, don't become beholding to one development, consider the full range of costs and benefits and take steps to improve the quality of TIF requests. So what the finance director Rich Gebhardt and I did was we combined some information together into this report and we gave this to the finance committee. It was then referred on to the common council and then on to this committee. So what I did was I attached some background to address some of the issues that were mentioned in the article. And I think that the article did address some very good, solid questions, so I attempted to answer those along with giving you some additional background information on TIF. What I'll do is I'll cover basically TIF 101 and then have the finance director get into specifics on the city and then we can address any questions that you have. Okay, as many of you know, the city of Sheboygan has a long history of TIF district creation. To date, the districts have not caused a financial burden on the taxpayers. They have revitalized blighted areas, created jobs and increased the city's tax base. To better understand what an important financial tool TIF is to cities and it actually is one of the few tools that we have for economic development. I summarized an introduction to tax incremental finance provided by the Department of Revenue. The legislature found municipalities were postponing or canceling public improvements that would allow new development because their taxpayers paid the price while everyone that shared the expanded tax base profited. Establishing a tax incremental system relieved this inequity. Plus it benefited Wisconsin's people by improving and otherwise promoting their health, safety, welfare and prosperity. TIF is aimed at eliminating blight, rehabilitating declining property values and promoting industry and mixed use development. There were already laws that were in place for these purposes, but lack of incentives and financial resources had stymied efforts to use them effectively. TIF works because it provides its own financing resource. It is basically a financing tools that cities and villages can use to promote tax base expansion. The towns also have this ability, but it's very limited. When a TIF district is created, the aggregate equalized value of taxable and certain city-owned property is established by the Department of Revenue. This is called the tax incremental base, so you have your baseline. The city then installs public improvements and property values grow. Taxes paid on the increased value are used to pay for projects undertaken by the city. This is the tax increment. So many times when we talk about the base and the increment that's developed and the increment pays for the improvements, we throw out a lot of terminology, but it is very simple. There's a base, the increment grows and you use that increment to pay off your debt. And when your debt is paid down, then you can close out the district. And of late, Rich will talk about that, we have closed out some of the districts. The underlying assumption of the TIF law is that no new development would have taken place if the city had not created the district. The article that was submitted also called for a local TIF policy. And what I did was I did research a couple of other communities, Madison being one. And Madison was actually in the process of undertaking their own research to find out what other communities had TIF policies. After the finance committee meeting, I did get back a report on TIF policies throughout the state. We're, I would say, probably quite similar to other communities in how we undertake TIF and what we use as a basis for creating a TIF district. And what a lot of the communities found out is that the ones that did have a policy in place, it actually then stymied development in a way because each project is very different. You know, and as Rich will go through the different districts that we have, you can see they're created for different purposes, whether it's mixed use, manufacturing, some sort of blight where there's a housing component to it, so having a TIF policy in place, I think is, you know, maybe not a bad idea, but you just have to be careful about how it's created. Based on the TIF statutes, you know, and one thing that we have in place as our own check is the state statute. So based on the statute, projects are reviewed by the city of Sheboygan staff, submitted to the appropriate committees, which is the joint review board, plan commission, the finance committee, and ultimately the common council. So there are many layers of government approvals that we do have to go through. Something that I'll quickly go through is I submitted, as part of the packet, top 10 TIF questions, and I think this is a good summary and kind of a down and dirty on TIF as far as the questions that come up. What is TIF, I explained that. Do property owners in a TID pay lower or higher taxes than other residents? And I have heard that one. Owners of a property in a TID pay the same rate of taxes that owners outside the TID pay. Neither is a, TIF is neither a tax freeze nor a tax increase, but a special allocation method for taxes collected on property value increases within the district. Who may create TID and how? Cities and villages can create TIDs. And then as I mentioned before, towns have some authority, but on a very limited scale. What are some of the eligible project costs? Examples for TID include capital development, financing, real property assembly, consulting and legal services, organizational activities, relocation, contributions and payments necessitated by the project plan, utility construction directly associated with the TID or the removal of containment or containment of lead contamination. And at this point, I'll talk to slightly about, what this is is more of a straight TIF. We also have two environmental TIFs that are fairly new, one was Northgate, the other is Aptenburg. And Aptenburg was the pay as you go TIF. So as environmental costs are incurred that have been approved by the Department of Revenue, then the developers reimburse for those eligible costs and they're environmental only. What is the maximum life of a TIF? For TIDs created under 66.1105. Existing TIDs created before October 1st of 95 have a life of 27 years, but you can obviously close those out before that. Blight or rehab TIDs created after September 30th of 95 have a 27 year life. Industrial TIDs created after 10-1 of 95 and before 10-1 of 04 have a 23 year life. Industrial or mixed use TIDs created after 10-1 of 04 have 20 years. And then with Joint Review Board approval, the life of the TID may be extended for three or four years. Are there limits on the use of TIF? The equalized value of property in the district plus the value increment of all existing districts cannot exceed 12% of the total equalized value of taxable property within the municipality. I think Rich is going to touch on where we are with that. And then we have, there were some other issues that other questions, but they relate more directly to the filing of paperwork. Who certifies a value increment annually? It's the Department of Revenue. What accounting reports are required to maintain a TID? Each year municipalities within a TID are required to distribute an annual report to all overlying taxing jurisdictions, summarizing the status of the TIDs they administer. What that means is when we talk about a TID, the taxing entities, all of those taxes stay within that district in order to pay down the debt. So whether it's Lakeshore Technical College, the county, the school district, the city, they all stay within that district until the debt is paid down and then you close it out. And then the benefit to all of those entities is that they then have that improved tax base to work off of. How are incremental taxes generated? And it's just as I mentioned, property taxes, property tax rates for the school, county, technical college, and municipality are based on the taxable value of the TID at the time it is created. These rates are then applied to the TID value increment which results in additional revenues collected for the district's fund. And development costs are paid from these revenues before the added tax base is shared. And then in your packets you also see that I did put in a comparison of the regular TIDs versus the environmental TIDs. And they're quite similar but one is the straight TID is directly through the Department of Revenue and the environmental TIDs. You also work with the Department of Natural Resources. So if I could turn it over to Rich now. Thank you. What I try to do is do a one page summary of my multi-page report that was included in your packet. It was entitled Analysis of Tax and Criminal Financing Districts was dated December 31st of 06. What I like to do I guess is go through some of the main points. The first tax incremental district was formed in 1984 in the downtown area. Currently the city has 11 tax incremental districts including two environmental TIF districts. The city has the capacity to form new TIF districts with base values up to 114 million. And if you do have that report handy I refer to the analysis. On the second page there is a listing of our current TIF districts by number. Looks something like this. And it has a description. As you can see on there some of them are industrial oriented and with manufacturing with either business park or certain industries. And others are ones you're familiar with like the South Pier, Washington Square areas, the commercial Northgate. So you can see there's kind of a blend of purposes for those. And also has the incremental values alongside of that and then the tax increments that are generated in the third column. The private development has created incremental increases and property values of 244 million. The city has closed out three districts with incremental values of 40 million. Therefore the incremental value of the current districts is 204 million which is 7.7% of the city's equalized values. The total 2007 debt service requirements for all the districts is 4.2 million. The 204 million of incremental value generates 5.2 million of incremental taxes. Two districts currently have debt service requirements greater than their tax increments. Their district tanned along Water Street with a shortfall of 93,000. And environmental district number one which is a Northgate shopping center with a shortfall of 16,000. Their shortfalls are being addressed with transfers from other funds. The debt that has been issued in all the districts since 1984 totals 50 million. Currently the outstanding debt for the TIFT districts is 33 million which is 57% of the city's total general obligation debt of 58 million. The city is paying approximately $4 million of the TIFT debt per year. In September the city will call an additional $3 million of the TIFT debt for districts six, 10, and 11. Also like to add that there also are advances between funds, they're about $4 million of advances within the TIFT districts that are already to other TIFT districts or to the general fund or to the non-borrow capital project fund. The city has dissolved three tax incremental districts. The first was district two in 1994 that was for the Rockline expansion which had an incremental value of 1.6 million. In 2005 district one was dissolved with an incremental value of 36 and a half million. District one constructed improvements to 8th street and the parking lots along 7th street. District nine which was for Wattree industry on the south side was dissolved in 2006 with a value of one and a half million. It is anticipated that district eight which includes the Taylor and Washington Avenue area will be dissolved in 2008. District eight's value on 11.06 was 21 million. It will be higher as the full value of the new Walmart is included. Therefore $40 million of incremental value or 16% of the total incremental values has been closed from the districts. With the $21 million from district eight anticipated to close next year, the percentage of the incremental values that has been closed and placed on the property values will increase to approximately 25%. So perhaps we can open it to questions of the senators or myself. Are there any questions? Alderman Clayhunis. Thank you, Chair, Madam Chair. Just to comment more, the TIF financing, the city takes it on, but the county and the, you know, the county, again, reaps the benefits of it. They don't take on any of the debt. We take on all the responsibility of the debt, but that brings in revenue to the county, brings in, you know, people moving in, jobs, whatever it is that can affect the county. And also, the TIF money does echo the school district too. Well, the increased value of everything goes to school districts and county tax base, right? On the new value, the taxes on the new value stay within the district until the debt is paid off. So it's the county, the schools, the LTC and ours. And yes, when it's dissolved, it does help. Like we dissolve district one downtown of the 36 million that helped to lower the tax rates within the city for all those jurisdictions. So the county rate within the city would be lower because of the higher base or really, yes, I guess it's county-wide because it's a part of their base. So it's to the benefit, the city is taking on this risk that eventually benefits school district and the county, once the debt is paid, it seems as if, again, the city is sticking its neck out for the sake of a bigger picture and the return is not as recognizable. I mean, we do get increased taxes too, but it still is something, does the county take on anything like this? Do they do any kind of financing like this? Not this directly, no, not for direct economic development. Right now it is within municipalities, within cities. Thank you. Thank you. Oldman Rindflesh. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess clarification for those who work with numbers all day and every day, kind of dumb it down for the rest of us if you would. In general though, that when the TIF is established, the taxes that are collected for school, for county, for city, for LTC, we use the term stay within the district, that actually is used to pay down the debt, correct? So the properties within that district are still paying the normal tax rate, normal taxes. It's just that the school district and the county and the city don't actually get those taxes at this point in time. That is instead used for the debt, is that correct? That's correct. It is allocated for those debt purposes, but you are also correct that they all pay the same tax rate, whether it's a new development or anyone that's part of the base of the district. Okay, so in fact then, well, we have a TIF district, the district itself benefits from being able to collect those taxes that would go elsewhere, pay down the debt over time that have increased value in property taxes, but the county and the school district and LTC, and actually the city too, doesn't actually get those taxes until it's paid off, is that correct? That is correct. And in some cases, I guess, we see that within our operational cost as we may be expanding some of our costs, such as south pier maintenance, that there's no increase in tax-based offset those operational costs. So in, I guess, summary, it benefits the city to be able to have a district where development is not occurring naturally, if you will, and having a way of jumpstarting that without putting at risk. We're not bonding for the whole city. We're using those taxes that are already collected for a specific reason within that. In the meantime, we asked that the school district, the county, LTC go without those taxes, and then in exchange, when the district is closed, they'll have a higher rate that they can tax off of then over time. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. Oldman Ryan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I think the easy way to explain it is without the TIF districts and without the city funding to develop these properties, they would not exist, basically a lot of them. Without leveraging the city in order to make these happen, there would not be the long-term benefit once the TIF is paid off of that tax base. So I mean, as long as these TIFs cash flow themselves, this is a lot of money that in the long run, more than repays the cost of the TIF. So I think it's basically, I think, a positive thing rather than a negative cost. Yes, Paula. Thank you. If I can make one comment also. Rich had mentioned there were a couple districts that aren't cash flowing at the moment. You find ways that you can, okay, so without being a taxpayer burden where you used other funds to pay down the debt, one of them is the Water Street neighborhood and we have a piece of property that we've been working to develop and it's been a little bit slow, but what we've done is we modified that district or actually another district so that we could take that positive increment to assist that district until it gets back up on its feet and you can do that through the state statutes but what you wanna do is ultimately, you wanna get these districts paid down as soon as you can. Thank you. Alderman Rindflesch. Thank you. Follow up to, well, the benefits, obviously, is there that we get the development that naturally had not been occurred. The downside is then, while we have, I believe Alderman Warren had given number of 16,000 taxpayers in the city approximately there, a portion of that then is removed and the burden increases actually then on the remainder. Is that, would that be a fair statement then? I think it's also stated that without these districts, a lot of that new increment probably would not have existed such as a new industrial park in those type areas. So basically that is held until the infrastructure is paid for and then it is added on to the general tax base and is a benefit at that point to all the taxpayers. And just to follow up on that then. So in exchange then for perhaps a bit higher right now for those that's not within the district, or I guess everybody really would be because you have to balance that out amongst everybody. But without it, the final number is $244 million of incremental increases of property values. Is that what the TIF districts have done for Sheboygan? Yes, as of January 1st of 2006, that was the total incremental value from the new development. And that would not have happened without TIF districts, that's correct. Yes. Thank you. Alderman Heidemann. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sheboygan's not the only community that uses TIFs, okay? So is there a set limit throughout the entire county that would have to be, is there a certain balance that we would take up all the TIF money and none of the other communities would be able to use TIF money or is it just per community? The regulations are from the state statute and what the restriction is that we, the total amount of incremental values, which we're referring to the $244 million, that total amount cannot exceed 12% if we wish to form a new TIF district. And right now we're at 7.7%. Within our own community. Within our own community right here, yes. But it really does not relate out to the other communities. It really is our circumstances in reference to the state statute. Okay, so then when the county looks at the amount of TIF money or the TIF districts we have, they don't formulate that into their tax percentage and say we're not getting money from these areas of Sheboygan. We're gonna raise our taxes so we get additional money from outside those TIF districts. All the entities, including the city, look at setting our tax rate without the TIF value. You first make that calculation. Then after that, after you set your tax rates for all the entities, then based on that same rate that you're gonna collect from the new development, you calculate what tax increments you're gonna get from the new development. So basically you're setting the rate as if that value didn't exist. Thank you. Alderman Born. Thank you, Madam Chair. In the article that I submitted here, something piqued my interest in here. Understand the local real estate market and I understand it's probably difficult to have a crystal ball, but one of the things it states in the article here is that TIF is an efficient development incentive only when it is used to spur development that the market would not otherwise provide. And it goes on to say that cities should consider what is likely to happen to the site over the full life of the proposed TIF district if no assurance is provided. If no assistance is provided, I'm sorry. And again, I realize it's hard to have a crystal ball, but is that kind of a policy that you try to use a crystal ball to look into the full life of what the TIF is to assure that this can't be privately developed? I mean, I can tell you from a staff perspective that when the developer comes into my office and talks about TIF, I look at this very carefully and make sure that it's absolutely needed because it does, for all the reasons that we listed, it's one of our few economic development tools, but there's also a lot of ramifications to it and there's a lot of serious negotiations going on and we do take these very seriously and make sure just what was stated in that article that it is absolutely needed and kind of the but for, if it wasn't for this, would the development occur? Okay, thank you. If I could just follow up, this seems to be a very timely topic right now. In yesterday's Sunday Milwaukee Journal, there was an article in the business section that says, let's put an end to TIF, T-I-F, in caps, TIFs, T-I-F-F-S. And so it's a very hot topic around the state right now with TIF districts and one thing I just wanted to follow up with Paulette. You said you had looked at Madison and a couple of other ones. Do you think it's, as we go forward, that it's gonna be good to have a specific TIF policy for the city of Sheboygan? To maybe, I guess, improve maybe, try to improve locally on some of this, you know, what the state is telling us to do? I hate to say it this way, but yes and no. I think if we do have a policy, we need to look at it very carefully so that we don't end up stymying development and say it's ABC and nothing else. You need to take a look at maybe all of the information that I compiled from the other communities because that's a little bit of the feedback that I received was the ones that do have policies are really considering do they want a policy or should they just be following state statute and the running through the proper committees and ultimately letting their county council decide. Thank you. Thank you. President Hanna. Well, thank you very much. And I appreciate the quantifying the net new value to taxpayers as TIFs mature. Is there any way you can estimate the number of jobs that have been created through the efforts of these TIFs over the last decade? I would hazard a guess. It's been a success story in terms of job creation. And I just, from my experience in the city for the past a little over five years, I know that just in certain districts alone, let's say for example, TIF district number six, which would include South Pier, it's been literally hundreds of jobs, but that's a number that I could pull together, but it would take a little bit of time, but I could do it. I'm more interested in that I, the TIFs are not a perfect tool and there's some shortcomings in the distribution of the benefits are not necessarily as fair as we'd want, but I don't want us to lose sight that in addition to the fact that we've improved a blighted area or promoted a project that wouldn't necessarily been promoted without our help, we've also created jobs. And those folks, a percentage of them have become homeowners and taxpayers, students in our school districts attending LTC. So there's lots of positives that come out of this. I know, you know, we can be critical that it's not as fair as it could be, but it is what it is. And I do believe there's been a real net positive to our city over the last 10 years. Okay, thank you. Vice President Ford. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on something that Alderman Hanna was saying, is there anything in the state statutes that says what kind of jobs are to be created are these families supporting jobs that the state wants us to have or have we seen mostly service jobs? Nothing that not that does anything wrong with service jobs, but are there any guidelines from the state as to what kind of jobs we should be encouraging with these TIF districts? And I was just, I guess like two part answer to that. As far as Alderperson Hanna, probably two of the biggest job generators in the city have been our two industrial parks, the older and then the new business center. Good, solid manufacturing jobs, local businesses that we're able to expand in our community. If not for those parks, they may have left. But as far as TIF statute, the law, they don't, it's one of the goals, but they don't specifically address what type of jobs. Typically the state will do that through their grant and loan programs where they'll say we want, they'll be looking at that hourly rate in the type of job. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Alderman Cleyhunis, that's okay. Thank you very much. Alderman Wangerman. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Just to add another ingredient to the mix. Recently I was doing some research on the internet on TIF districts and I happened to come across the report from the University of Illinois Economics Department which is renowned nationwide for their expertise in economic manners. And they were required or requested by numerous cities, large and small throughout Illinois, from the smallest all the way up to the largest being Chicago, to study TIF districts, and they did a three-year study. And it's a very interesting report and I wish now I had provided copies to the council but I'll be glad to supply copies to the finance committee because I'd like them to take a look at this. Their conclusion was that in many, many cases while TIF districts expanded commerce and productivity or whatever value within the TIF district, outside the TIF district, they tended to have the opposite effect and that when they balanced one against the other that they actually came up with a negative component and they weren't saying cities should not go into TIF districts but they said they should do them with a great deal of caution because sometimes the cure can be worse than a disease and they found actually that in areas in some cities that the cities actually went downhill after they used TIF districts and part of that study was they compared cities that had no TIF districts against cities that had TIF districts over like a 10-year period and they found that at the end of that period almost in every case the cities that did not have the TIF districts did better. So it's a very interesting report and I make no recommendations one way or another as to the validity of this report but I would assume that it's a very valid report and I'll be glad in the very near future to provide that to the finance committee and I apologize for not having it bringing it along tonight because I think it would have been very germane to what we're talking about here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Ryan. I appreciate Alderman Wangeman's view about the article but it seems to me that if a city had no TIF districts and still did well it could possibly be because they did not need TIF districts and they were in a geographical setting that was to their benefit or something of the sort. Whereas if you as a city say okay well they did well without TIF districts we just won't do it. There's a good possibility you might just miss the boat. To put it very simply Sheboygan's come a long way since our TIF districts. We wouldn't have the marina, we wouldn't have the South Pier. This entire A Street was a ghost town a few years back and I think it's been good for the city. I think it's something we do need to be careful with but it's definitely not anything that I think we want to look at as a negative. Thank you. Thank you. Aluminum Clangunas. Thank you. Now the discussion is warming up here. Just a comment, we also have some areas of town which are becoming blighted. The wall area, the Taylor Heights area which kind of reflects something. If we shift things one place is there enough business to pick up where those people left and moved on or is it just going, is there no one else? Does everybody just want the new, the big and the beautiful and the old and tired and maybe traditional fades away into, you know, crack black top and weeds all over the place. I don't know. I think it's an interesting comment. I think it really does give some people in Sheboygan concern that, you know, we're expanding one some places and other places are dying as well. So. If I could comment on that, it's all about striking a balance and we will be looking at, we're looking at consultants right now to assist us in master planning that area and some of the recommendations that we're going to request for them as sources of funding. And, you know, is it grants? Is it loans? Is it TIF? Is it, you know, what sources of funding are out there in order to assistance for that development? But it is, it's all about striking a balance. Okay, thank you. Any further questions or comments? Seeing none, well, thank you. Very informative. Okay, moving on to number five. Here's just a presentation. RO number 206, 0708 by City Clerk, July 2nd, 2007, Council agenda number 733, submitting a communication from the Sheboygan County Text Peers Alliance, submitting their annual proposal for action. Alderbein Montemayor. Thank you, Chairman Meyer. I think the Sheboygan County Tax Peer Alliance for their information, and I think it's been available to us in a few committees and we have read it. So, and I thank them again, so I make a motion to file. We have a motion to file. Is there a second? There's a second. Under discussion. Yes, Vice President Bourne. Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the items that the Sheboygan County Tax Peers Alliance had in their proposal for action was for the council to consider a residency requirement. And I brought forward a resolution in looking over this plan of action. I did bring forward a resolution at the last council meeting for a residency requirement for all new hires. All people that are all new hires to the city of Sheboygan both represented it and non-represented employees. And that's been referred to the Salary and Grievances Committee. I agreed with the Sheboygan County Tax Peers Alliance on that issue that I think it's time for the city to take a hard look at requiring new employees to live in the city and share in the tax burden of the rest of us, the rest of the city taxpayers. And in light of last week's announcement or a week ago that we've lost 2,000 people in population in the city of Sheboygan, there certainly is gonna be plenty of room for those people to find real estate in Sheboygan if they don't already live in Sheboygan. So I'll leave it to the Salary and Grievances Committee to work out the details, but I thought that was a good point of the Tax Peers Alliance and that's why I brought forward the resolution. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Rindflash. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Alderman Warren for stealing my thunder. That's the one that really popped out when I looked at this as well. Obviously, in most of the issues that we are already currently taking a look within various committees, I look forward to seeing next year's summary as well and hopefully there's progress made in that there as well. But the big one that I'm a big supporter of would be that Executive Summary number 10, residence requirement of all city employees. Understand that it's not gonna be as easy as saying it's done now because we do have union contracts that we have to look at. And of course there's a negotiation that has to be done in certain ways for that as well. But I would certainly support that as well and look forward to that passing shortly. My first term on council, we did make an exception for the board of water commissioners, I understand, the president of that board. I mean, keep in mind that it needs to be addressed as well. The exception's already been made by the council, we need to go back in. If we're looking at all employees, I definitely make a strong push for that one as well. Thank you. Alderman Wangerman. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's an item that I hear about a lot too. People, they really question why if a city worker makes his living here, why he shouldn't be paying his taxes here, why he moves outside the county and then comes in and uses the city amenities such as parks and the library and that sort of thing. It's really a part of the situation that people are very much upset about. And I think it's something that was a long time in coming and I compliment Alderman Bourne for bringing this forward because it's something we need to act on. Thank you. Thank you. Any further comments, questions? Seeing none, we have a motion on the floor to file the communication from the Sheboygan County Text Peers Alliance. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Alderman Renflesh. Before we adjourn, my concern on number four, the RO from Director of Planning and Development. My understanding is that we do need to take some action on that or the RO sits out there indefinitely. So I make a motion to file. Second. Motion and a second to file. Item number four. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And thank you very much for pointing that out. Second. Motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Thank you for coming.