I'll call this budget workshop meeting for Thursday May 16th to order and call on our finance manager director of finance for the city they believe. Good evening everybody. I will try to talk fast so that we can all get in out and enjoy this nice evening that we have here This is the time for the budget workshop where I get the opportunity To educate you guys on what we're looking at for the budget for the 24 25 year Department head submit budgets to us. I go through them. John, it helps me go through them. We talk back and forth. We go back and forth to the department heads and then we come up with a product that we think is a reasonable operating budget for us for the year. So this is the time to discuss it with you guys. Our budget is balanced little $44. Our ballot is balanced at $48,000, $148,644. And zero cents. And zero cents. And no cents. And no cents. Yes, I have no cents either. Starting with the revenues. Our major revenue comes from Property Tax Collections. The tax rate is at $71.00 per $100 valuation. We're budgeting $24.5 million for property tax. You can see the exact number on the screen and 1.4 for vehicle property tax 29,670 for tax penalties and interest I'm trying to learn to shorten continue to learn to shorten my numbers under the guidance of mr. Audburn It gives me a hard time for being exact As I said, we are not recommending any tax change As I said, we are not recommending any tax range change. Other taxes and licenses, we've got a solid waste disposal tax budgeted at $21,039. This comes from this state given to any local entity that is providing solid waste management programs. Of course, this nice tax that we get here certainly does not cover the cost of providing solid waste management programs. Of course, this nice tax that we get here certainly does not cover the cost of our solid waste management expense, unfortunately. Then we also get taxes for short-term rental vehicles on rental vehicle enterprises such as enterprise or hertz. enterprises such as enterprise or Hertz. Oops. I pushed too hard, I apologize. Our second largest source of revenue comes from sales tax. We're budgeting 10,812,000 for that. Utilities franchise tax is our third, which is $2.5 million. The utility franchise tax comes from the power companies. And the local option sales tax is levied at the state level. There are five different articles that go into that. Some are point of sale basis and some are population basis. We get the most revenue if we do from are point of sale basis and some are population basis. We get the most revenue if we do from the point of sale basis, which is why Mr. Arburn's always encouraging people to shop in town versus going out of town. You may, for the councils, for tonight's purposes too, a few years ago, North Carolina joined the Compact and so Amazon Best Buy.com that collects the sales tax and returns to North Carolina to 40 states were in the compact when online sales started brick and mortar structures in your hometown were really under pressure because there was no way to collect interstate sales tax. The US Supreme Court was very dubious of an individual state trying to collect it against the other 49 states. So when about the mass of 40 states got to the compact, the Supreme Court agreed. So that's why you do pay now on interstate sales when you give them your address. It's on that ratio, that same ratio right there. And I said this at Rotary yesterday, Charlie was there. Only government could you figure out a half cent. Because if you look in your wallet, there are no half pennies. Do you know how much we get from out of the state sales tax? I mean, approximately. We could big end to that. It's a growing number. It's a growing number just because of the, as Mr. Trogg and I were talking, he just got back from Europe, he used this in his credit card everywhere he went. It's just a growing number. It's not given to me at that level. We get the more summarized version. But if you can imagine during COVID, if it hadn't been active, because you know how much of the sales were done online, people discovered stores that didn't know existed. We receive revenue from the ABC Board. We are proposing $661,000. We collect $20,000 a month from them and the past couple years the ABC Board has had surplus and has given us a $300,000 year end bonus. I guess you could call it. And they have not given me any indication that this will not be ongoing. So we are budgeting accordingly. And that when that revenue came around, that was when our sales tax was really low and it kind of saved us in some situations because that place filled a hole, a gap that was left from low sales tax revenues when we had some challenges in the past. Go ahead. Mr. Trogden's, the ABC Board revenue is from the store. The ABC Board, the alcoholic beverage tax beer and wine is the state's set. We don't get to, you know, this board north of the county, if the county had sales, you don't get to set that rate. The state sets that rate. Collects it, distributes to us, which is one of the difficult things for the council when they're looking at the revenue side is the only thing you control or fees and property tax or everything else. In North Carolina, I recall the Dylan's rule state, Judge Dylan, Justice Dylan, how to put it in the law, you the city couldn't do it. The state chooses to do all that in North Carolina. You know, South Carolina or New York or Tennessee has a whole different set of rules. Is that comparable to other cities or size? That those two shared revenues? Well, the tax that you said they just take in terms of what you get back from that alcohol bear. Yeah, it's based on the sales and your jurisdiction. Okay. Yeah, so if you went to Lexington or Thomasville, those numbers are real close. Okay. Actually per capita. Yeah, and it may be, they're actually stronger, but cause there's nowhere else in Randolph County. We can go to our friends next door and Randerman and go to Ramseewer now, but their sales are very low. Okay. their sales are very low. We're 26 most profitable systems in North Carolina. Right. And out of whatever, 146 systems. There's some systems, you know. I think there's about 140 systems now. Well, first week we're out, and we're 35th largest. Yeah. So we're up to our. We're out of the 35th. Our ABC. Our local ABC board does a really good job of managing that ass in. And the top ten or counties. Oh yeah, that's the people. Ones low, Blake, Mecklenburg, right? You know, there's no out running tonight. Comberlin. We'll hurry up. I'll do my part. Comberland We get revenue that we call pal bill allocation that 747,000 that is Gas tax revenue to drive for money based on gas sales at the pump and Distributed for use on City Main Street. We are quickly going through our palble allocation. The allocations have been lower and our city street expenses have gotten higher. We used to have you can pile it up and use it for like over about a 10 year period and we no longer have any reserve when we report it at the end of the year. And a growing backlog of need. Pardon year. And a growing backlog of need. Pardon me? And a growing backlog of need. Yes. And the state used to reimburse it all in October. They decided that they needed to interest off of it. They represent half in October and now half in January. What's not been decided yet in an issue that the council have to deal with in the future is the electrification of vehicles. how are you going to tax that? Or how is the state in our case going to tax it and share it with us? Permits and fees. These are local revenues, building inspections and building permits and inspection fees, zoning fees and and hangar rents. The building permits and inspection fees are budgeted at 511,550. That does include an expected increase on some fees that Trevor is working on and he will have, he's given me an estimate of what the increase would be and it's incorporated in here and this specific detail a lot for me To present to you at the June Hearing so you'll be able to see exactly which fees change You once take an opportunity to make sure that the fees that are being suggested are communicated to the like the builders and Contractors in town and get some feedback from them before We actually adopted into ordinance. More is a heads up and a plan and we'll give you more information about that as more information it comes to me from him as he navigates through that. Hanger rent, we used to collect this and I'm so glad that we don't anymore because I used to be the one who had to call people and send out the bills. It's so nice to have an agent that collects it and turns it into us in one check each month or budgeting $60,000 for this in the budget. Now last month, Michael showed you the terminal, the hangar out there's finished right. So the mayor mentioned I think Clausner's jet when it was stationed there paid more than his entire Street did in property tax so we're gonna go right behind this with the we tend to with another hangar and where of course Michael's told you There aren't a hanger space anymore at Smith Reynolds, PTI or Burlington. So with all the activity going around us, Toyota, Northwest of here, North East of here, will speed do East of here and the new Lexington, you know, it's going to be a new Megasite in Lexington, 0.85 1600 acres that puts our airport right dead in the center of those three So that's just that's a that's a real advantage to take care of take advantage of real asset to take advantage of In the category of sales and services We have 2.8.8 million budgeted for refuge and recycle collection. This is dumpsters, commercial, residential, and concessions for arts and cultural services in recreation. We have 76,000 budgeted and program revenue for arts and cultural services and recreation golf and newly added to UCD Sports Plex, $630,767. And that does include anticipated increased revenue generated from the sports plex. We've tried to be root cautious, cautiously optimistic, but not just throwing it out and saying this is exactly like this is the best. So we may be a little bit under budgeted, but we didn't want to present a really high figure when this is what we're just now getting into. And this will be the first full year of operating. So we're basing it on what we think we can do and what will happen based on the draw that we've gotten over the last six months or so since it's been kind of open but not open and stuff But it will be exciting to see how that number will change in the future. Is that Debbie Cosses or Walter Cosses? That's Debbie Cosses. Debbie Cosses. Walker Cosses. I'd say $200,000 more. I believe that's an auction. That's certainly an auction more on. Does this include a payment from cones? That's going to be my next slide. All right. Or not my next slide, but it will be in this presentation. No, it does not. We are not budgeting the revenue from CUNN, it's number one. We don't bill it until January of 2025. Number two, it is going to be put in a capital improvements, maintenance fund, specifically for the maintenance of the fields at the CUNN hospital. I mean, at the facility. And we also, in our agreement, there's a, I don't know if the term is a clawback, but it is like if anything happens, they're giving us the $5 million upfront. Well, this is a 25,000, 25 year agreement. If anything happens and the agreement changes, we have to give money back to them. And so that's another reason why we have to restrict it to make sure that we don't have any help. Oh, front over 10 years. Pardon me? Yes. Thank you. Not up front, but up front over 10 years. Yes, but it's a 25 year release. But Nick, and you're talking about restricting the entire month. For me? You said you were proposing to restrict that money in the entire payment in January of 25? Is that what you're proposing? The full amount will be restricted. That is actually— Actually, we are proposing. Well, we do have to adopt a ordinance for a specific fund for that. But that is in conjunction with what Mary Jo told me she wanted and what we talked about as far as- I don't know why they had any restrictions on how we would- No, what we wanted was to make sure that we have a lot of resources to keep that facility, a stellar facility, and their name on it makes us want to make sure that them want to make sure that we have revenue set aside for that. What exactly that looks like? Yes, you are right Walker. I don't alone have the authority to restrict that. That is something that we have had conversation about restricting for the reasons that I noted. Well I think when we get more information of history that our proposed revenue and we'll also have a little more history about our cost and develop some depreciation types of grades before. Given where the money comes from, start with, I think we need to collectively discuss and investigate how much goes where. I hear what you're saying. But she specifically said she didn't want us to use it to replace our fund balance. I know she doesn't have that in her party. Did you see that in the contract? It's hot in the contract, but okay, we're going to move on. NCDOT gives us the money every year to mo along the highways and they're giving budgeting about 30,000 for this year. We actually mo the highways more than they tell us to. We mo because we like the highways, the lawn along the highways to look really nice and um, but we appreciate anything that they can give us. Two standards and a couple of them. Bill, we started doing that because they were on the moment twice a year and coming down the interstate, you hit Asperin, it's waist high and it just looked so bad that we started, we asked him if we could do that and they started out reimbursing us a reasonable amount but they've cut back on that and say, tell us how many times they would like trust in more than that and try to keep it nice because it is our gateway to Ashboro. And we don't know where the farm size tractor make one box. That's right. Too many trees and shrubs and barricades and pay to a car. On this side, we talk about the refuge and recycle collection revenues. The last couple of budget years, I've been kind of keeping up with where recycle and garbage collection revenues are in relation to our costs. In 2223, we had gotten to a level that the revenue that was coming in was covering our costs. Unfortunately, our costs go up. We have not made any rate changes. So right now the 2425 recommended budget is revenues of $2.8 million, which is covering 89% of the departmental budget. So we are getting more of a gap. We were at 98.3 for last year's budget. We're at 89% this year's budget. We are continuing to evaluate options. John and I have had conversation with regard to whether we want to continue operating exactly the way we are or outsourcing like Archdale does, Archdale, my colleague there, she tells me about how they have a company, garbage company actually comes in and is collecting the garbage and then they pay a fee. There's a fee based on that. So we may evaluate that as time goes on. We're just trying to keep it in line and have conversations. I think there have been some tertiary conversations already held to see if What's the name of the One of the garbage Republic for public is interested John has had made made some contact But we haven't gotten really into that yet There's at least two more to be interested, but they is a Service real taking the low bit of a job at this lecture. And this sort can cut a number of ways. And the other thing, the future counts as a contract, the same thing I just mentioned about the gas tax. When we got to convert our whole environmental services fleet to compress national natural gas or electric. That's going to be really hard to do if you outsource it to a multinational firm they have just a lot more resources. That's just something that'll have to that'll have to that'll have to. You are right. That'll have to have to have a capitalization for us. Yeah, that'll have to be a serious discussion. You need to be the one. Yeah. Because that, that, that, that. That can't run into no cheaper than we can. That's right. And, and, and, and I've always been surprised. I, it isn't real. What do I know? But I've always been surprised that the federal government didn't incent municipalities to go to electric first, because we don't drive across to country, we don't drive across to state. Our police cars don't leave our 17 square mile city limits. So when people talk about six or 800 mile range, we don't have to have that. To me, that would have been smarter than to try to convert the entire economy by 2030 or 2032 or whatever. Right. So those are still out there. But unless, as you may have seen that the, our friends at Toyota, Mr. Toyota himself said that he didn't think electrification was the right choice for the United States. It's too big a country. They think too big. It's not Japan. And he said the hybrid, since most trips are less than 100 miles, you only need an electric side of the motor that can go about 125 miles and charge it at home. You have gas, gas or diesel to drive when you drive from here to Indianapolis. So and if you noticed that hybrid vehicles are cheaper than all electric and have greatly surpassed all electric vehicles and sales. So it turns out that he may know what he's talking about. He partners more about car business and EPA. For the federal government, I would thank so. Well, point being, we tried to keep an eye on it because when I started this job, our taxpayer revenue covered police, fire, and a good portion of garbage. It has tax-pire revenue has been going more towards public safety, we've had to come up with a way to cover our garbage cost of operation. And so we are closely monitoring it to make sure that we're still competitive. And we're trying really hard to manage our cost in that department. I was in the city manager, Archdale. Dawn Hancock was our mayor, Mayor Troggden was the mayor of Ashburton, David Linder was the City Manager. We went and met with the Chairman Fry and Frank Willis who was the county manager at the time and said you're going from zero to $20 a ton. Can't you go to eight dollars a ton? Or do you can't we just keep putting $20 a ton. Can't you go to $8 a ton? Or can't we just keep putting it on the tax? And the answer was no. Because the county doesn't pick up solid waste. You bring it there. Everybody has to bring it there. Or hire a contractor. So the cost of the landfill, that is the primary driver of our unlike police where it wages in our side of the sanitation fleet, environmental services fleet is fuel because those trucks don't just a maintenance of the vehicle because there's a high two hydraulic systems, a drive train system, a brake system, an electric system, and there is the landfill cost. That's driving those costs, not so much our wages, we only have five drivers. So it's not really the issue. It's the sheer cost of disposal. And getting it actually to the landfill. And we do it cheaper than everybody else because we have the transfer station. We did drive driving our trucks directly to the landfill that lasted about six months. The same what we did to the old days. The our 260,000- dollar garbage truck gets stuck in the mud comes out with barbed wire wrapped around the axle and having to wait and you have to wait and wait and wait and I think I've told you this Mr. McCaskill Mr. Troggan may have not heard this but the manufacturer of the vehicle says you can do about 700 stops a day. And when they imagine that for like, that's on an ideal, you know, like Kansas or Oklahoma or something, we do about 830 to 850 a day on our terrain here. So our drivers are hustling. Oh, it's breaking. Yeah. Well, I'm in Brune, when they installed the electrodynamic brakes on those things to say about our brakes. They was, but brakes on things about our six weeks. But that made a big difference. Yep. But anyway, I will say this, though, having been in the waste management business, adding a profit motivated return to So this, though, haven't been in the waste management business. Adding a profit motivated return to stockholder owner to this number will be challenging you for you to save any money. That's why we haven't made that overnight jump yet, precisely.. They've got the same things you do, and they want to or slice, but it is a challenging business. It is. Everything about it is. And the terrain at the waste management lands is horrible on trucks. And that's them. That's not the truck. Right. We do plan on financing a lot of vehicles this year and not drawing on our fund balance to purchase them directly out. We're proposing $1.5 million for installment purchase. We're looking at vehicles and police, fire, building inspections operations, street vehicles were budgeted in the last year's budget. But it takes about a year and a half to get certain vehicles it seems these days. And so just like we had to do last year is we are going to be re-budgeting that in this year. Just because we can't get it faster than they don't make it. An environmental services. Sale of property assets. Mr. Ogburn has identified a part of a lot at Frazier Park that has got a building on it that we used to use for storage. We have not been using it for storage. We are not using it at all. He has thought about the possibility of puzzling that off and selling that and someone couldn't develop it for residential since we have such a low. We don't have a lot of residential. That was girl scout hut when I was growing up and then it was the first parts of the right office. That's great. And for Mr. Trogden who's new to this along with the half-scent in your business when you borrow money you don't count that as revenue. Not a bus do either. But in government that's actually the proceeds that we're going to borrow we have to show it as a revenue. It's just governmental accounting it's just the an oddball of our business, but that makes the balance sheet you have to balance on both sides, not just as profit and loss statement. So if we do any changes as far as what we're gonna be installment purchasing, it's just gonna reduce the expense and reduce the revenue or increase the expense in the revenue. And that's actually something that we do need to look at because today we started getting calls from departments saying that they were, that more of their equipment. Last week they thought their equipment was gonna be here. We haven't gotten all of our equipment this year and we started getting calls today about, we're not sure we're gonna get our equipment. So we might have to be reevaluating that to plan for the fact that it's not going to be here by June 30th. And I think I told the council our 2021 streak flusher got here about 90 days ago. Yeah, that was like a two year. That was wrong. We have SRO officers at the schools. We have two of the high schools and one at each of the middle schools. The school system reimburses us for their cost for the time that they're in the schools. So that's $274,722 interest on investment. We actually because of our grants, we do have more interest than $200,000, but we have to allocate all of the revenue that goes with all of our grants that we have back to the grant itself. It is not allowed to be general fund revenue. And so this is an estimate of the interest to be earned on the general fund unallocated resources that are not grant funds. U.S. Treasury funds, Bison Arcottox, the police department works behind the scenes on various cases with federal and state authorities and we sometimes get money back. We reserve that when the money comes and then there is criteria that is set forth for what we are allowed to use to purchase it and we'll go through what we're going to be purchasing it for this year. But Chief Brown has identified some things that some needs that are not more normal daily purchases. Now that money comes to us from the DEA task force that we have an officer assigned to and you remember probably the traffic cops come by here and you remember last week we heard about high intensity drug traffic area. So that spotlighted by the federal government. So federal resources are here. Remember we did the resolution to join that again in another year. So that's where those funds come from. If there's funds in North Carolina by the state constitution, that is go to the Board of Education. So you need go to the federal funds they're distributed as Congress sets forth. Randolph County agreed to give us $500,000 over a period of years to go towards McCurry of all part versus giving it all to us at one time and next year will be the last year that we'll receive their designated funds and so this will that money will go to finish up anything that needs to be finished up at McCurray. It is designated for McCurray so I can't use it for anything else. Missilaneous $130,510. Okay, when you look at our, you can see that our tax collections, which is in light blue, is a majority of our income, and then the intergovernmental revenue, which is where our sales tax is, our pal bill, is that is our second largest source of revenue. So we're very dependent on what happens in our economy and taxpayer revenue for operations. Culture and recreation services, unfortunately, probably puts forth the most work with one of the low to obtain that revenue with probably the lowest amount coming in. The work that they put forth is very admirable, but you can see how it breaks out. Now, before we leave revenue, remember when Debbie showed taxpayer penalties in interest, it's only like $28,000 or something. Remember a few months ago when the auditor said we collected 99%, so you have a very admirable collection rate. Well, that's why that tax penalty interest is so low. And I think Dave is projected 98 percent this year. So if we get 99 percent, 99.2 percent will have a little higher revenue. As we talked about earlier, we do have a million dollars coming from Cone Health for the naming of ZucyD Sportsplex. We'll build that in January. My recommendation would be to restrict this first payment in a capital reserve fund for turf field replacement and also to consider the fact that there is a clawback in the agreement and we need to investigate that to make sure that we always have that clawback money. In clawbacks, probably not the right legal term, but make sure that we always have that clawback money. And clawbacks probably not the right legal term, but make sure that we always have that money available in the event that something happens to the agreement over the 25 years. I still got to say to say $1 million side for a brand new field where our streets and our sidewalks just are in deplorable shape is questionable to me. There, I think when that time comes, that Jonathan and his team probably should give the council with the warranties for those fields and then what the expected life expectancy is, then they may be able to get to your question a little easier. It's hard to do tonight. The only job that's a subject matter expert. I'd like to see some more process. Well, we need to look at what the expense are and upkeep not just the fields. So we're going to be on the way and tear out there with the amount of people that are going in out here. So I mean, not all of us going to be feel related. And we'll have a better idea as we go forward. Absolutely. We'll get to that point. Yeah, when we put together a capital plan for it, you know, we'll have some more information about what the demands are going to be. I know that I was budgeting probably saving about $600,000 a year just for the field replacement over a 13 to 15 year period to make sure that we would have the money to cover the fields. Now we don't have, because we haven't really used them, we don't really have a strong field for will those, it is a 13 year period, will they last for 15 years? And of course we put put in all our field fields at one time and we know that they're not all not going to wear away at the same time. But we also know from Macquarie Ballpark that we have to do a lot of maintenance and repair to field turf, because we've spent a lot of money out at Macquarie replacing and preparing. So we're going to have to be educated and until we can make a good educated decision we just need to be thoughtful. The good thing about having new fields at Macrary and the sportsplex is just a new technology. So they have the sun resistant like umbrella. You know that fabric, there's sun resistant, there's the grass is cut a certain height, the carpet, the rubber and the sand and that they put in there, they use one now that doesn't float, doesn't move. And then, quite frankly, to the efforts of Jonathan, his team, all the teams that now come to McCree Park, even though we've warned them and warned them not to wear spikes, Jonathan turned around a couple of them and they, and so we don't have anybody with the metal spikes anymore. Like when Joey and I played, that was when you were a grownup, you got to wear metal spikes. Right. Right. Let him fly. Yeah. that was when you were grown up you got to wear metal spikes right right now they wear turf shoes on the expense side when we look at financial reports and stuff which I just want to line this up with our financial reports just so that those the everything kind of correlates and when you're looking at the audit report you're kind of looking at it in the same format that we're explaining it to you which makes it more meaningful to you. The mayor in governing body is budgeted at 144,604 city manager 385 701 finance 742 some change you guys can see the numbers. Legal and city clerk, information technology, planning and community development, municipal building, fleet maintenance and human resources. All of those are considered general government because they kind of are all internal. They're all for behind the scenes, running the government, supporting all over, not a specific function that they look at. So we're looking at $6.4 million for the government. Now, one of the things that Council can be really proud of is planning and community development is 1.4 million to the 6.4 million. So if you take that out and you say that in the private sector world, five million is your overhead of your 48 million total, that's a real small percentage number. Because if we were, this was the way we account for this. And that's the way the auditor does it. Remember he talked about that? That's grouped by the way the auditor groups it. If you were starting it all over today, planning and community development is more important than it was in 1950 when there was residential, business, and industrial. That was the three zones. So it's much more important today. But it's still considered a general government. But it's in reality it's more of a function of government, not just overhead. Next category is public safety. You've got police at $13 million fire at 7.8 building inspections and fire inspections for a total of $21.6 million. This is our highest expense category. Last year we presented that public safety was $20,818,000, which was 91.26% of our real property tax revenue. That because of our revow, our current year cost, even though they are higher, which is 3.9% over prior year's cost, is only using 88.77% of our property tax revenue, which allows us to use some of the rest of that revenue to cover some of our other operations. Last year's budget, we had some grant money that we were going after that we didn't get. We had appropriated fund balance last year. We're not appropriating fund balance this year. So while it was a difficult decision to make, it does put us in a little better position and move forward over the next couple years. Transportation is operations 1.2 million street maintenance, 4.5 million engineering and airport authority. So the total for that function is $6.5 million. Environmental services that what you've talked about, which is our garbage collection and recycle collection, $3.1 million. That also includes leaf collection in the fall, brush and limb, white goods, junk. And most of our city's, sister cities, put your leaves out on February 14th, because we're not coming back next year to February 14th. We run it all the time. Obviously we live in a forest here. We don't have one day where you put junk out. We don't have one day when you got to bring it somewhere where you got to keep it to next year. So that's an expensive part, but what we do with that keeps our town clean and neat too. We charge your fee for that. I was confused about our conditions of junk. If they're real large, but generally if somebody's like grandmother dies in the house, we drop a trailer over there and if they'll put it we call it off. White goods we charge $10 because the county charges us that. And we charge, if they have a lot of brush, except if it's a storm situation, which we're getting ready to go into hurricane season, because we charge after two scoops, but if you're really shrewd about that, right? Or, you know, if we don't clown it that close, if it's two and a half scoops we know where a customer base is you know we yeah yeah I thought we did by never seen that on my water bills yeah I thought we did but I didn't see you have to take all the brush off all your neighbor's life to get more and two scoops. And we don't require the brush to be cut no more than four inches round no more than four feet and it's got to be bundles and if you try to get clear garbage bags and put leaves and clear garbage bags, it's not like garbage. They don't compact. It's that's a burden. We don't require it to do that way either. Hey, Greensboro, I don't see how they're going to do that. Is a crazy thing. They pick up once a year off the curb and everything else after that has to be bagged. That's what I think Green is for you. I don't know what back you at all. No recycling cans. Bill, we like to put, if somebody dies and the family is cleaning out the house, we like to put the roll off the white refuse trailer in the driveway and let them fill that because Otherwise, they're going dump it into street and our guys are gonna be out there picking it up again And they may live in household Yeah, and the heirs may live in Richmond or Atlanta. It may be real difficult for them to manage it I tell people if you saw that happen and they can Yeah, right, yep if you saw that happen and they could call us, we would do that. Right. Yep. And on availability. And we have a couple of them. And if there's one available, we'll park it out there and let them fill that. Yeah. I don't see how to pick it up to leaf bags. I mean, those leaf grinder trucks, it's probably 100 or more to one of volume reduction that the grind them and put them into truck. And they have a they have a dust down feature. So if you ever ride behind one and it's all blowing up the dust down it's another one of mechanical systems on it. Older truck mine works pony and Yossler's good. Our oldest leaf truck is worn out in the seal around the vacuum and the hopper is worn out. We can't really get a new one to replace it. And every time it goes through one of our neighborhoods, neighborhoods, they call me and want to know why we're blowing leaves up in the air on that truck. Now the new trucks are contained very well and they'll be that. But there's one old truck when we get pushed and we put that old truck out on the street. We always get complaints. So we run one year round. You won't see that in our sister's cities either. Just to keep our streets cleaned and it keeps the, on your curb and gutter and your ditch streets it keeps stuff out of your cross drains or your ditch tiles. It also, and then when we go to, you know, storm season or right we'll go to two trucks and then three trucks, then we'll go to four trucks and then we run 10 hours a day, six days a week. That's how we stay called up. That's always been a very good thing. It's taken for granted but it's been that way for a long to get dragged about anything out of the street. You used to end up in the city of Hall of the Off. And you remember when we were kids, they wrecked them up, the pool behind. When we were kids, they raked them up. The pool behind. That was, that was, it'd be really hard to find. We can hardly find people to be police officers. Now we've got five people to rake up leaves behind the pool behind. Economic development and community support. We're going to have some more slides later on that go into detail on this, but just briefly economic development. Those are that is what we'll have a special secret hearing for or DAI Randolph County EDC and Chamber of Commerce. Economic incentives. Those relate to contracts that we have executed with Randall County and EDC has been assistance in it, which have like performance-based criteria. And when your industry is expanding and they meet their mark, then they get a little bit of money and they continue to expand, add more jobs, they get a little bit more money. These are the anticipated payments that we think that we'll be making this year based on the progress that Kevin at Randolph County EDC says that the businesses are in as far as where they are in their plans. So we anticipate giving out those incentives this year. And then community support will go on with that I've a slide on that too, but that is local agencies that we give some money to And we've got actually it's 325 but $10,000 of it is actually Budgeted in the recreation department because it relates to sports Arts and cultural and recreational arts and cultural services that's our Sunset Theatre operation but it also is more than just what happens at the Sunset Theatre it also includes concerts a lot of different things that will go into detail. 914,000 recreation services, 2.6 million, Zoo City sports plugs, 1.2 million, golf course, 328, library, 644, and facilities maintenance, 3.2 million dollars, for a total of $9 million for cultural and recreational functionality. So when you look at each of the different functions that we do of services that we do, we're at 48,186,44,000. You kind of look at it by as a visual, public safety. You can see it takes almost 50%. It's 44.9% specifically of our total operating budget. Okay, going into actually the detail in the weed stuff that I refer to, we are proposing doing a 2.5% coal effective January 1st for all city of Ashboro employees. This is also in the Water Superfund. And that itself, the cost for the coal is 320,000 of base wage. And that's only six months. And then of course you take the 320 and then you've got all the payroll cost and anything that relates to that that goes in that. So that's a decent giving in its raise to our employees, which is definitely warranted, is not pennies. We've got 20, but when you look at our total salary base, you've got $20.7 million is our salary, $445,000, a special separation allowance. That is what the police officers who retire get until they're 62 years old. It is based on their salary at the time that they leave. And that's an ongoing period, semi-monthly payment that our police officers will get. So obviously, since it's based on their salary, our higher wage police officers get a higher special separation allowance payment until they're 62. $2.85 million is our budget for health insurance. $2.7 million is our budget for health insurance, $2.7 million is our budget for retirement, and $300,000 is our budget for the city portion of 401K for our police officers. So our personnel expenses are $28 million, and that's 58.2% of our budget. Now, we are very heavy work people business. Now, only the police officers get the special separation allowance in the 401K. It was the intention of the state when they established those two policies to quite frankly they didn't want 61-year-old people out there on the beat trying to run down the bad guy. It helped that the 100 sheriffs are the highest elected official in the county and they circled the legislature with their 100 sheriff's cars on the last day of the legislative cycle after the league and the county commissioners have been down there the entire session. Again, don't break out police because we're all the same. Now, why weren't firefighters done? That's an important question. That's in front of the council, too, because every year the firefighters are down there asking for it. But the way firefighters operate in North Carolina only about 28 or 30 percent are professional. The rest are of the hundred percent are volunteers. So will that get to a tip and point someday? I don't I don't know but it but it's routinely on the floor of this house and senate down there for that to happen. We'll have to cross that bridge when it happens. This budget includes new positions, assistant city manager, planning and zoning technician, a public information officer. Alisa has already started, she's working part time, but we are projecting her to go full time in the new year. We've got a DAI economic development position. I don't know exactly what this is going to be called, so I'm aided off. But this it will be, we're hoping to have our liaison, have an internal position as our liaison. That will be at headquarters coming from DAI on to our payroll instead of us moving money to them. So the net impact is zero but she'll be in our system. Now we did that for a very strategic reason. Atty had been with the Cumberland County Planning Department. She was in the retirement system in the health care system and we realized right quick how lucky we worked to have her when we hired her and Trevor and I and Debbie and Doug and Lisa of our NHR and the Council for the Interactive Interactive realized real quick that there is a shortage of people that want to be in city government, just like there is of nurses and police officers, and she would have been recruited very easy to go to one of our sister cities. So when you have a person of that talent in this labor market, you really can't miss the opportunity. Just as the same as any other skilled person. And she's really been a fantastic asset over there. It wasn't that Rebecca wasn't, but Adi's skills set and her professional training are just much higher. Yes, she's top line. She probably could be sitting behind whatever it says. Whatever it says out there one of these days. We are budgeting for new building inspector. We have found all the growth and development in our area that our building inspection department is working double time and compared to what it used to be. So, will that bring the number two to three? Yes. Yes. Now, Eddie Garner right now is on leave in Eddie in 62. So, how much longer here work? I don't know. Our backup, our halftime is Jimmy Kagle, who's also on leave. So Nathan Laudflin downstairs is doing yeoman's work to keep up. And as you've said, and Mr. Muppet said many times, we have a regulatory role that have no doubt, but we try to go out there and solve it before there's a regulatory issue. I see that, really recently, that either legislature is going to pass or has passed a bill requiring streamlining of building permits. Is that going to affect? Is that what we need another, too? I think we've already done that. We're already computerized and I think our longest weight is for somebody that review the plans that's the good thing about having one stop shopping here. Again, Mr. Trogden or Tia or Mr. Moffitt or Tia, if you go to some larger jurisdictions, it may take three months. Yeah, and we can generally turn it around and... We can work in a place like Poundhurst, Southern Ponds, and it's on the coast where they've got... There are no hurry to get... We've got new responders to try to run you on. Well, they do stuff sequentially too. They don't just tell you everything you need. Right. Right. And then they send you high-, didn't they? Yeah, so we, we, we, we, we pride ourselves on Mr. Troggden said last time when Mr. Garner was here that we pride ourselves on getting it out quick. And we go out there to help it. And you come here, you get your zoning. They're very responsible too. And they'll call you back. And you go to your city. Right. It's your problem. It's not there. It's right. They're doing your favor. And we get to. A lot of the compliments on our building. Yes, we do. And you get the zoning, the fire inspection, and the building permit all right here. And to add to that, if it's a restaurant or hotel, and they want to have ABC permit, you get that right here too. So you don't have to run around five different locations to get it either, which makes it a big difference. Right forward with a mental one on my computer document, you can't get to a building, zone in permit, and 30 minutes, you need a new connection. Yeah, but you can come up, yeah. Yeah, but you can, well, that's the thing you're not getting. You just call them up and bring them up into that show. Absolutely. And I think Trevor has told you that. Cantalai is leaving us about another week or 10 days or something. And Jamie Wilkins is our news. So, by and say hello to Jamie if you've not met her. And she's doing a real good job. She's had some experience experience but she's really learning on a quick curve and really working hard and can't delay is a good teacher and so we've been really fortunate to pick Jamie up too. And then we're also proposing four maintenance positions specifically for ZUS-City Sports Plugs and a program coordinator. We are continuing to learn new things about what is needed at the sportsplex. Mr. Oggerman called me one weekend. He called my work phone so I never got the message until Monday. But he was saying, I'm down here and we don't have enough maintenance people and we don't have enough of this and we don't have enough maintenance people and we don't have enough of this and we don't have enough of that. So we've, this is what we're going for but it is a work in progress. And look at 24, 100 kids down there playing soccer and they're praying down there watching and throwing stops up or starts to overflow or something like that. We can't wait for Jenny's guys to be on call and ride down there. We need somebody down there during those tournaments. I think. And so the success of that place down there is going to depend on how we pick up into the trash when the trash cans get full and how we clean those bathrooms before or during and after the games are completed and it's probably going to, Jonathan correct me here, but it's probably going to take two or three guys all week to move that place during the moment season. No one will get a finish and we'll start over. Yep. We're actually Jimmy. I talked to Jimmy yesterday and he's hoping that he'll be back next week. So we're going to try to have a meeting. John is going to be a city manager. A couple other key people and try to kind of figure out what this plan looks like and make sure it's a good smooth implementation just because I stuck in Ford maintenance guys based on conversation. Well, I really need to talk to the expert who wasn't available at the time so we're going to kind of refine that plan. Again, trash can fills up during the middle of the day. We need somebody with a little cart. Go cart, what I mean? Right through him and put bags in and do that or we're going to end up out there picking up trash every Sunday evening or Monday morning. Here you go, get people to come back too. I'm sorry. You're going to miss some people to come back if it's passed in the bathroom. Yeah. Just a question about. So the Assistant City Manager position, you've got that many budgeted starting like the whole year. Or I think I'm starting in October. So yeah. OK. We talked about so hoping if you've not completed your survey, you have to tomorrow. Right. I was going to say we So yeah. Okay, are you talking about? So, so hoping if you've not completed your survey, you have to tomorrow. Right, I was gonna say we got the surveys. And then we'll begin the search. Well, Matt will come back and he'll meet with the key department heads and some of the rank and file staff and give them the results. Then that same day he'll come and brief the council in a special workshop probably that night you'll have a choice of who's who then Matt and I will after see you can't hurt anybody now. First of all if they got a family they can't move secondly you're up to your elbows in a budget process and remember most cities aren't as large as us. So the manager is also doing the bookkeeping and all those other tasks. So we will and we need to find somebody. Unfortunately, there's no more Johns in Archdale and there's no more Zebs either. I think we got to be to the punch. Which is good for us though. But so we'll need to find somebody with experience though too. They don't have to have an experience as big as Ashburwe is, but the issues that we face, the water and sewer issues, the wage issues, somebody needs to be familiar with that to come in and really take a run and leak because we just can't. We've been going hammer in tongue for 25 years. And we're very, as I told you at the beginning, that includes these new positions. So that's very, I mean, it's pretty easy to call rolling the city managers off this Joanne, John. Everybody's here. You know, Tammy. We also have this bill set of who we're going to get what what that salary requirements going to be so there's an estimate in there based on the feedback that we've gotten but we may have to refine that once we get farther along in the process. Attention is that it's trans eventually. Yes correct. That's what we have to be better than them. So having the counseling Bob, even though it's not required by the general statutes or the personnel post-rating, it gives the council a chance to have a little bite at the apple too. I mean, having forbid something happened to me, but when I went to Montana and thought I was 60, teen, and I turned that I was 60, something did happen to me. I will say this, I guess that's how I got marked, because I was in the Army, but somehow she managed to know who the assistant fire chief was, who the paramedic was from yes West Yellowstone and the one police officer on duty. They're going to say they're all the same person. And they're not worth the same person. So she managed to get all their phone numbers, all of that says about me other than she wasn't going to say in the hotel room while I was bumped. I hope she's not watching this. I'm not. I'm on best. She's not. No, I know she's not. All right. She's watching. Just one other quick comment. So I really think that the public information officer in the DAI position are going to be a fantastic dynamic and they're going to bring a lot. They'll be. There'll be a force multipliers, the best way to put it. And Alisa, you gotta give her credit. She's just rolled up her sleeve and Trevor. And she's like I said, she's going hammer in tongue too. She's like I said, she's going hammer in tongue too. We'll send out a memo tomorrow and she'll start on her department tours. She may do some ride-alongs, so she gets really what we do. Most of what we do, people don't see all the wastewater and water treatment, which you know last two weeks ago, the cost of that's just unbelievable and nobody sees any effort at all. Unless there's a water break and we're out there digging it up. So... And if you think about the skill set it falls to do those two. And you would think about if you're interested in... Go to the high school when I do periodically, Michael, where's Michael? He's been doing it lately. You want to be an engineer, you want to work for the city. Want to be a chemist, you can work for the city. Want to be a biologist, you can work for the city. Because those are all the items we have in the water side of the house. Want to be a mechanic, you can work for the city. Want to be a police officer? You can work for the city. Want to operate big equipment? You can work for the city. That's kind of the story we tell. Because for a lot of people, that's not what they're thinking of with these young. And we need to be got some really talented people. We need to capture them. Additional highlights. We are budgeting about $846,000 for workers' compensation and property insurance. We've got $1.1 million budgeted for existing debt service. This does not include the debt service on the new debt that we are proposing. What our cycle is is that we make a plan with regard to what vehicles we are purchasing and which ones we're financing during the budget process. The beginning of the year, you guys, Jeff prepares a resolution of intent that we will reimburse ourselves. And then at this time of year, I go out for debt service so that you guys can see that debt product, the agreement in June, and we start making the payments in July. So that's why you won't have any debt service. Just this is just existing. $2.5 million in capital outlay. Of course, some of that is going to be financed and we'll get to that. $720,000 for utilities and a large portion, huge chunk of this is at ZU City Sportsplex. And if you recall, we have an agreement. The reason why it's so big is that, you know, when we brought electricity into the ZU City Sportsplex instead of paying it all all at one time, we agreed to have it paid over a period of time to make it more budgetarily manageable. Now from from Mr. Troggden, that is a Duke power region. manageable. Now from from Mr. Trogden that is a Duke Power region. No, no, no, I'm sorry. I got it backwards. Duke Power is our franchise. So they had first choice at it, but we got them. They wanted everything up front. We want if you pay us today, we'll show up when we're ready. Yeah, so we got them to pass on it. And our friends at REMC really worked with us on that. And that's not, that's a discounted price. Because we got a good deal on our sports lighting. That's our sports lighting and our electricity to run the equipment and parking lot lighting, is way. 20,000 a month to that lighting service. I think that number. Yep. $1.8 million in fuel. $102,000 for various software subscriptions. $40,000 in the planning and zoning department for website, social media, archiving. Since we have not had a marketing person or a PIO, public information officer, Trevor has been wonderfully handling all of the communication using his other expertise and doing that. And so all of that is in his department, although they are not specifically planning and zoning he is doing it for the whole city. Now, the workers compensation, you know, every year, we work really hard on workers compensation every year. And have a really safe workforce. If you look at the 10 top most dangerous jobs in the country, we have two of them. Police and firefighter. Change off. That's the forestry. That's elected officials. And then if you look at the others, we have the same task they do. Long distance truck driver, we have truck drivers. Equipment operators, like we have that. We don't have the most dangerous job is like Deepsea Fisherman, you know, like on a TV. But if you think about what we do, we don't do it at sea, but we work with rigging we work with pumps and electricity and we work with fuel So it's and and we do it in all the places that's unsafe right in the street underground and up high Confined space right We're budgeting $200,000 for exterior sealant for City Hall. Michael is proposing that we hit certain sides of it. I know West and Southside walls and then we'll go and go around and hit the east side wall and the different going around. But we have noticed that the outside sealant is gone away, and so we're having a lot of moisture issues. Tom has water coming down in his office every time it rains. My office is get moldy and we have to take the sheet rock off every once in a while and fix it and then put it back just because moisture is permeating. And so he is gonna be focusing on that next year, next budget year. And that's the two. If you came in the back door, you saw the two, look like paint samples, that's what that is. Yeah, he took them down yesterday. Yeah. $80,000 in the police department for general maintenance and they're gonna be remodeling a few bathrooms. $350,000 that the police department for general maintenance and they're going to be remodeling a few bathrooms $350,000 that Barry gave me the budget for an asphalt to re-pay stone straight street and Greensboro streets We do have a little bit more in there and asphalt to hopefully do some more but those are his prior priorities To try to do those So we're restarting the paid in program Well, it's a start. It's a start. Yes sir. It's terrible. I mean, a standard notion. Main ends at human resources and fire department. We are re-budgeting $500,000 for the library HVAC. Just like it seems that with equipment, it takes a little while to get your HVAC stuff, you have to go out for bid and evaluate it. And we did not be able to complete that task in the last year in the time span, so we're re-budgeting it, but we are on the process. I think we've got our draft of big documents if possibly are with Jeff right now for review or have gone through the review process. I've gone through review. Right, so. In the library, HV was put in when the original, all these, the extension was built, 95, I think. So we kept it going as long as we can. That's a, that's supposedly a balanced system in there. So it runs heat overnight to keep the books from being moist and it cools in the daytime. It was the best technology available in 19, I mean they didn't cut any corners that was just, it's, this, the new technology now is it really operates as a, almost a living unit where it measures the air quality and all that and all, that's why it's expensive. Well, Tom was, they don't build this typically to keep him in stock. No, it's not. They'll build that unit when they're... Right, it's not good. You've got that lead panel. Yeah, and just like you said, it's not on a shelf at Reem up there. Right. Yeah, there you go. So... Now we do have $200,000 in grant proceeds. Some of that money has been used for the preparation of the bid documents and things like that. documents and things like that but that money is already budgeted in a project fund and will be utilized when the time comes. Can I or we need to we need to reserve a street in North Ashwood. I got one I can't thank the name of street. It's a street directly south of Pindview. I was in that road it while back it is the roughest street I have ever seen. Okay. What's the only thing that is south of Pindview I can't thank the name of the street. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean it is like it's got a little flood area down at the bottom. Oh yeah. And it is terrible. It goes up side of that old chopper center. Yeah. I keep thinking the name is street. It goes up side of the chopper center. It's only good. And then Michael has advised that we need to spend some money on the airport terminal. Now before we leave the you saw that I'd received you saw the email I sent to back to the General Assembly on what I they asked so might as well ask you notice that the airport match was one of the things I asked for if we if we can't pull that off, we may be able to use our relationship with the Randolph Electric. They have community development funds, economic development funds in their service zone. And I've talked with Mr. Lambert before about that for the airport and they would support us on that. So that may be a way, we'd have to borrow it and pay it back, but it's an extremely low rate, it's a non-taxable rate. That may be the way to get the airport terminal pieces put together. We talked last time about how we're going to fund the gap. Well, that's what we're working on. Although while we have expertise in a lot of areas, we do need to contract out for certain services. IT, we contract with the county for the T1 line and we also pay for wireless service for all of downtown. The police department has $532,000 budgeted for contracted services and 2732,000 budgeted for contract services and $279,000 of that is for the 911 system. The fire department has contracts that come before you guys. You guys are familiar with these when we can't service an area. Then we get a contract with like east side or west side or something. And those are 31,. Streetlights, 600,000. We've been given a figure. We've been advised that we need to upgrade three traffic light intersections and the cost to do that is 277,500. That is in the budget, but we are going to investigate that further just to make sure that we want to upgrade them or come up with another alternative. Always done. I was telling you that's what we're going to look at. That's the ability of some more of the staff. And you know, they're really, really expensive. Yeah, and they, they installed operate. Yeah. David says that the streets that we're talking about, David Hutchins, so I'm referring to our low traffic intersections, and he's gonna try to give us some proposals of some options available. We don't own many more than three do we? We own four, we own the Plashing Yellow Light at Kibbet in Maine, too. So what's that three and a half? That's all hours. All the rest of them are on the state system. Are there? The ones don't work, is that? Yeah, I agree. Yes, that's two of them. And then, and worth it, Maine, worth it, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then or outside is. That may be old but they slow. Yeah, they don't have any... They owe... They don't have any thinking capability like the modern ones. In fact, the only person that could pair them was Thomas Electric and he didn't come out anymore either. So the modern ones, you know, they got the magnet right over and they tripped and they start and it's like a drive up, you know, and all that. Those are very expensive. So and we'll do some traffic analysis too. It may not, and Mr. Muppet's right, worth and main, it matters no which way you come to. It is never green the way you're going. And I get the ones like people, they don't trip on those, they just, right there just times. So we got them all set at 30 seconds, 30 seconds right Michael? 30 seconds each way, but if you're sitting there, it seems forever. Let me continue dollars if you lost, Clark, just going home for lunch. Yeah. I just run. I just run. I know it's a little early. I'm pretty much four weeks down. All right, let's go to the room. $30,000 in the airport, my quote could explain to you more specifically what that's for, but I just mean that that's for the fuel farm Repaint Get to do it and rough and then $12,000. I think Jonathan has asked us to clean and fire retardant the theater curtains for multiple years and we are doing it this year Thanks good Obviously the building code requires you have fire return curtains and you obviously you want to in up 85 year old building We're doing a lot of computer replacements across the way some servers And just a bunch of workstations because they're outside of warranty Todd has us on We're not all the whole city is not all on the same schedule. He's got some schedule at different times just to try to spread out the cost. But these are the ones that Todd says are on this year's list. The ones that need to be done. If you've noticed that hospitals, universities, and local government have been hit with ransomware, you know, it's really easy, you know, banks spend untold millions, right? So it's real easy. We make it not easy. So a lot of that's maintaining our firewalls and our two identification password now. So we do it because if you got into our system you could lock up payroll or get people's identification. When that, you won't hear a solution. You call, you report it. The FBI comes. We've been tested. The National Guard has a cyber strike force. You wouldn't think that's an, you know, but they come out of Raleigh. They come in testus. And so we're up to date and we're fully aware of the threat to south there. And our particularly police and fire and a sanitation or environmental services because they have mobile laptop sent them which they track and model model buying all that. And that's, you know, you could, maybe get into the measure then you could a hard line when you're like for a city hall, for example. Okay, this is a detail of all the different vehicles in the departments that we're gonna be financing. Again, I just said it was $1.5 million that are going to be financed for financing vehicles in the police department. As you heard from Chief Brown, we have had difficulty in getting our police vehicles. They got canceled. They end up being the replacement ones and being more expensive. So we went ahead and typically I would not fund 12 police cars, but we have not been able to get what they've needed for the past couple of years because of all the difficulties with cancelization. So we went ahead and are funding the police department and hopefully that will make some of our young new officers. Maybe they'll get a new police car to ride in and that might be something really nice. Please track. Fire Department, a command vehicle, building inspection department vehicle for our new inspector, operations department, fleet department, two flat bed trucks for the street department. As I said earlier, we had some vehicles that were re-budgeting. That's the flat bed trucks in the street department. Garbage truck, a small garbage truck for ZU City sportsplex is in here. We in discussion with Mary and David, when you have a whole bunch of people at the sports flex during the middle of a day or on any given day with big events and stuff. Our large garbage trucks are very cumbersome to get around and so they are proposing they were asking for a garbage truck for they'll make it easier for them to get in and out safely. And then service truck for facilities and facilities asking for a trailer towing truck and I believe and I need to clarify this with Jimmy when he comes back but I believe that so that he can pull some of his equipment from his operation to the sportsplex until we get all of our equipment that we need that will be housed at the sportsplex. And again that's going to be part of the conversation that we're all going to have to have on the timing of everything as how we're going to maintain the sports flex. Now, Mr. Trogett, who's all this new to this, we purchased police vehicles to a state contract price. So we'll let them know in October how many we need. So the state of North Carolina may want 4,500 with Asperger warning 12. The state of North Carolina may get 2,500. Now yes. So it's automobile manufacturers are shrewd. A police car, whether it be a Dodge or Chevrolet or a Ford, they really don't make a lot of money on it. By the time they pay a state contract price. Notice that Ford Chevrolet quit making them five or six years ago, Ford quit a couple years ago, and Dodge is quitting this year. The SUVs and trucks, they make much more per unit profit. That's good if you're a shareholder, that's bad if you're a purchaser. And so we'll see how many they get. The Dodge is get better fuel mileage, fuel economy than the pickups and the Doraan goes do two, but that's gonna be the two on stake contract. And it looks really funny when you see a stake patroman out there in a pickup truck after all these years of looking for a forder,erun Dodge or a Chevy. That's just a future. And then the other ones will buy either through another, they may have a building inspection department to the state or we also belong to Sheriff's Purchasing Association and we belong to some others or we'll go and get three bids. And you'll know if we don't if you don't if the council doesn't have to award the bid it was on a state contract he does have to award the purchase if it's not on a state contract you'll have to award the bid Professional services planning and zoning there's a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in that department Goals for planning and zoning is a parking study a small land use study transportation plan Couple of past years. I think we've tried to work on a mobile app for public to interact with us But that's still something that's work in progress Administrative support for grants. we've got the PTRC is helping us with that and some design services for Joe Gardner, the exact breakdown of all of that. I would not be able to tell you at this exact moment, but Trevor has been trying to educate me on that and has that made me an email, but I just ambrain it with me, sorry. $48,000 in the City Manager's department for federal legislative and grant writing assistance. This is how we've got our fire department grant. This group that he, sheenin, Daniel Sheenin, is been an asset to Mr. Augward in trying to get us some of the funds that we have and he's currently working with them trying to get some rules changed on some low interest loans that we don't qualify for that he's trying to get some rules changed so that we will qualify for it we could maybe use that for borrowing for the part apartment if we can't. Yeah, and I communicated that to the council on my last trip. It's about dang there impossible if you're not there in Washington every day and you don't know the staff people. It's called your elected officials are going to be real polite, but they're polite to everybody, right? The staff people do the grinding of day to day government, just like here, and they're working behind the scenes to help us line up the things. And it takes a while, I mean they just don't go do it. A lot of knocking on doors and visiting. And no one and no one went to ask and how to ask and what's available. We're on a really tight schedule here with our budgeting and auditing process, right? Really tight. The feds just do what they want to do when they want to do it. Airport 40,000. I made a assumption that this worked with CWP3XN who does a really good job helping us navigate through all the funds that we can get from the federal Does work with CWP Dixon? Who does a really good job helping us navigate through all the funds that we can get from the federal government for our airport? Fire Department, as I said, that we've got contracts for that. Finance Department for Auditor, Police Department, Developmental Associates, they do our assessments for promotions. We outsource that for a variety of reasons, but most of the talk reason is for fairness, any description. I mean, to protect us from any description, situations, lawsuits, things like that, when you use an outside agency that is specialized in this area, they protect you from a lot of things that you would normally think about as being a concern. And the police are contemplating about doing like a recruitment video to try to help, you know, they're looking at being very creative and looking at different ways to try to get complete police officers. And I've actually seen and heard on the radio with different recruitment videos, recruitment audios and videos or I think Carmer'sville is doing it just the other day. I heard one on the radio so it's very interesting. We've got $50,000 for building reuse grant matches, $175,000 in the community development planning community development department for development and redevelopment, $20,000 for code enforcement. This is usually what where Chuck goes to take down a building that's been dilapidated, demolition and hauling this stuff away. $40,000 for sidewalk construction for NCDOT highway projects. $164,000 for police equipment that is not financed. It's replacement and equipment that will go into the new cars and then 107,000 for small equipment for the fire department As small equipment for me means a computer from the fire department. It means something very different I Wouldn't even be able to tell you what their acronyms are It makes like a fifteen thousand dollar Jones for life We've got two hundred forty thousand dollars for a trolley bus if you go to downtown events you've seen that40,000 for a trolley bus. If you go to downtown events, you've seen that we've been using a trolley bus. We have been renting that every year. We used to have three agencies that we could go to and two out of three have gone out of business and so we're at the mercy of the rates of the one remaining one and you never necessarily know that we're going to get one because they're the only place and they only have so many trolley buses and you depend on how many people and who will pay the most for them. So we are proposing to purchase one. 91,700 for the restroom trailer. We have or you have one restroom trailer it has been great for us but as we expand on our events and we do more things, we have been renting a second restroom trailer for a lot of our events and that does get expensive. So we're going to buy another buy one that we know will be clean and a good shape versus take a lot of it not quite being as good. Now in the rest room trailer grew out of the demand for restrooms at a bison tenio park. But we, some of you may remember a long time ago we had restrooms downtown and we wind up keeping them locked all the time. Remember that. That's where the art skill is today. That was a walkthrough. So we learned from that experience that we don't necessarily want to build a brick and mortar building Down there again, and that one so we've had great success with that one it's the When we did it it was the talk of the city management profession lots of people called and ask about it how to do it and It's very well clean. It's very nice as air conditioned and If you have little kids in there, the mom and dad is real convenient instead of going into a brick and mortar building. We've got multiple places we can put them, depending on the event. Yeah, but at least by Centennial Park from the railroad and part of their caveat was that anything we built on that property of a permanent nature was subject to be removed at any time that they request. 23,500 of 500,000 maintenance from a parent and a parent that is specifically going to be earmarked for the parable park. 23,500 from playground improvements, $80,000 for a netting system at the golf course. We've already gotten, we had to put up a netting system on part of the golf course operation because golf balls were flying over and damaging cars and causing trouble. And we need to put one on the other side to protect the rest of the vehicles. Golf lessons could help with that time. It could. The heading this down there is that can be replaced too? That's a new setting. That's already. Because there's some tears in that netting that are down there. That's a new one that just went off. Oh, okay. I haven't been at her like. Yeah, they have every place in the last couple of months. Okay, okay. I mean, I just remember I saw it. This one's to go along number seven because people are hooking their balls into all those restaurants and market markets. I did that here. I didn't know you did it. I wouldn't mind, man. 30,000 dollars in chemicals that we use at the golf course to keep it looking good. 60,000 dollars for a bunker rake at the golf course. You'd never think a rake would cost $60,000. I was talking about that. I thought that was a problem. Maybe one, there's a pull behind your authority to ride it. I don't know about that one, because that's the main thing. Yeah, if you ride it or you're a pull behind it, I don't ride it. But it's, oh, I know. It's a ride on. you can keep it. I believe it's a ride on. I mean, I think I've seen it before. I believe it's a ride on. It's definitely a ride on. Sure. You know, it's not the small one that people have in our Russia. It's like there's a cold place. I don't know what to do. It's like the massive hammer that's ever was bigger. So we got to start on. We have to think that you got to get early in the morning. He goes out there and he cleans out all the bunkers and makes them all look really pretty for every day's thing. And he has only a short period of time before people start going. $40,000 for a tractor with a loader and a bush hog for Zuse City Sportsplex. $82,000 for a truck for the ZU-City Sportsplex. The idea is that we can haul behind it, mulch things like that, and get a crew out there to be, you know, keeping care of the landscape. Two vehicles, utility vehicles for ZU-City Sportsplex staff to get around and a golf cart for them to go around. We're trying to see how the combination of the golf cart and the utility vehicles will work. A turf vehicle, I don't know exactly what this looks like, but I know you need special equipment to take care of our field turf. It'll be interesting. You get the pull behind equipment when you buy them by the gave us such a gift when we bought the turf, the pull behind equipment that redussed the grass. The xenobony of artificial grass. Exactly. Exactly. The pull rate. And then attract mower for the banks at two sourceplex. If you recall, there are a lot of uneven surfaces there, and we don't want to be weed eating all of that. That would take forever. That's a mower with a huge deck on it, and you stand on level ground and piloted with like a... Well, you know, I went already, right? I saw that. We got can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can do that. I'm not sure if you can things. But obviously that's put in a man on a tractor that's not the way to do that. We need it. You want accident and you'll pay for four of those things. That's the way we used to do it. We don't do that anymore. Yes, he did. $140,000 that Michael's put in there to transfer to the airport improvements fund at the last meeting or the meeting before that. He talked about some possibility of some things down the line to do and of course there's always a part that is a match for the city. We normally budget $16,900, about $17,000 for a standard $150,000, but he is going after some other funds. And so we need to put aside a little more for our matches. And it makes it. There's a lot of deferred money in the sector. $100,000 for the concert series that we work in conjunction with DAI. $48,000 for a peer at Lake Greece and $120,000 for the library, for their books, periodicals and supplies. And Mr. Arburn has educated me in the past that a lot of different cities do it different ways. We pay for books, periodicals and supplies instead of personnel. But when you have shared building, it's part county and part city. You have to have some type of arrangement of some sort, but ours just doesn't deal with personnel, which is probably good. Because the cost probably would be even higher with personnel for us. How many concerts are we getting from? There's a question. I don't know what the schedule is. How do you handle this? I mean, is this the Sunday end of the Friday? Yes. Yeah, there's five or six Sunday and four Friday. They look at 10 or so. Yeah, but first 10. And we get sponsor revenue on the other side that I'll sit there. Yeah, they've told the board that they have sponsor money, individual sponsor money to cover the cost of the series this year. I, we have not received $100,000 worth of sponsor money for this year yet, but it could be, there's still chasing after it. Well, and it'll come when the series gets started. So that naturally line up with our fiscal year. get started. So that's naturally line up with our fiscal year. First Sunday night show is this weekend. Is Sunday night yesterday? And then the 31st is the first Friday night show and that's the Eagles. Eagles tribute being. Yeah, so we're going to get there. Yeah. We're moving down there. Don't park on a railroad. Earlier in the budget I told you about we had $183,439 budgeted with US Justice DAE A funds. And here is a list of everything that Chief Brown wants. He wants four narcotics canines. And those are going to be very valuable considering all the drug traffic activity that we have and will continue to have. And then of course when you get a dog you have to take care of them and there's a lot of stuff that goes along with it, the kennels, platform system to put on the vehicles, hot and pop pro. I looked this up because all they put on their budget request was hot and pop pro. And I'm like, what in the world is this? And it's a specialized monitoring system that measures your temperature and it sends an alarm to your phone in the event that where your dog is being held at that time if the environment is too hot then you get an alert at your phone so you can go home and take care of it or go to where it is that your dog is. You can use this at night when you've got your dog at home sleeping in the garage or something like that and just to make sure looking after the protection of the dog. And I'm not sure, but I'm thinking this also may also work inside the car, the vehicle itself, but it's transportable. We had it. We had it. We had it too. We had it. I'd say they passed. Now, these dogs are, we've had dual purpose dogs. So these dogs are probably've had dual purpose dogs so these dogs are probably police dogs and narcotics dogs narcotics dogs are really important and Mr. Bell and Mr. Sugg can back me up on this but if you make an arrest and you suspect there's drugs, narcotics, and there's, but you can't see them if they don't give you a consent search, you have to get a search warrant. Right, right Jeff. So the dog gives you probable calls when he hits. And then he always finds them because they're hitting anyway. In the case of bombs or bomb tricks, we get our dogs from Greensboro. Yeah, so we had a post. We spoke several years ago. We'll write post 9-11. They were really pushing out explosive dogs. But we found that in our region, Greensboro has them and supports the entire region. They have a lot more of that than we do in our, like in the school last year when the bomb threat, the bomb dog, they come right down here. And we have a procedure for all that that we practice and train on. And you've seen pictures in the paper when we periodically trained the SWAT team at the high school or the middle school that's what we're doing that's part of all that training. And as I said earlier we've got 520,800 set aside for economic development based on the requests we will be having a public hearing talking about what the requests are for that at a later time. And then we've got 547,654 economic incentives for industries that we are already committed to and this is what we've been told we're going to be paying this year. So that at the, we'll give you all that list so you know about it ahead of time. You know, that's fiber text and energizer and all the projects we worked. And then community agency support, the Finance Committee, Finance and Public Safety Committee of the City Council met earlier. We reviewed the applications that had been submitted. We also had, and we came up with $325,000 of allocations that they were going to be recommending to you guys. For approval, it includes funding for boys and girls clubs, Habitat for Humanity, Randolph Arts Guild, Senior Adults, Family Crisis, habitat for humanity, Randolph Arts Guild, senior adults, family crisis, our daily bread, George Washington Carver, Lidia's Place, Rhino Leigh, and Blue Comics use the football. All of these agencies were agencies that we did give some funding to last year. We also at this meeting, we developed some criteria that we would hold for, you know, pay attention to when it comes to community agency support. We discussed a cap because obviously people are going to ask and ask and ask and we have to have a point where we can say no, we're not going to, we can't fund anything above this because we don't want to take away from our operations. We also discussed a tiered approach to what would be required based on the size of the request as far as financial information. For example, if you're getting $25,000 or more, we want to have an audit. We want to know where those funds are going and then we've got a tiered down step based on what the $1 amount of the request is. We learned last year that we spent the last year trying to educate people on financial information, what it means and with the goals of always trying to make sure that we are considered of the taxpayer dollar in the decisions that we're making, making sure that these are agencies that are viable, that are doing what you want. We're not putting money in someone's pocket. It is going for the programs that they're asking for the money for. But it has been a learning experience, both for us on teaching them and for the person on the side of asking, oh, I don't know how to do that. And where do you find that and all this other stuff? Because like we have to statutorily, you're supposed to have a solicitation license if you're going to go ask people for money. So we need to have that in order to meet state statutes. Well, a lot of people don't have that. We also ask for, like if you don't have an audit, we ask for documentation that, you know, budget, things like that, that give us an idea of where you're spending the money so that we can make sure that it's again that the people are being accountable. But it is a process and so we're going to continue to work with these agencies and meet with them when they're after the budget's passed and bring them in, sit them down, go through the process with them, what we need, what we don't have, what you have, how we're going to do it. There's some agencies that have no documentation and so the Finance Committee put forth saying we'll give you this much and then he brings back the rest of it and we'll give you the rest to try to incentivize them to go into compliance. Because if you ask and you ask and you ask and they never produce anything viable that shows that they're what they're using the money for, if you don't have an incentive behind saying, hey, you're not gonna get any more money till you give us some documentation. So we, the committee, we met for a very productive meeting, just talking over through all of those things to try to get some parameters in place. And, Demby, that's one thing I was going to ask about, what kind of reporting or requiring people to do, because, you know, typically when you give a nonprofit money, I think there should be an expectation that they, they hope, will affect us. This is what we ended up doing with it. This is what ended up happening. We met our outcomes, et cetera. Well, we've been focusing on the application side and community, verbal communication with them. Okay. We've, we've, some of the agencies that are getting money from United Way and are going out for grants. They're very well versed on everything. You can call them up and say what they do. Now, one up our application says, if you got money last year, tell us what you spent it on. We also have a lot of agencies that we were giving them reimbursement based. So we're not paying for it upfront. They're submitting the applications when, I mean, the receipts and then we're turning around and giving a money for it because when they don't have financial Information that way we can make sure it's going through programs. So by doing that We know that it's going for the purpose but some of the larger Vis on larger places like Grand Art skill senior adults family crisis and boys and girls clubs we if verbal confirmation talking to them and boys and girls clubs. We have verbal confirmation talking to them. You can glean through their audit report and figure out what they're spending money on, things like that. So we are, it's probably, it's a work in progress and it's different for different agencies based on what they can do. We're doing a whole lot of hand holding for smaller businesses right now. Which that's just part of the process. Potential adjustments. I already said earlier that we may need to make some adjustments to get more information about the vehicles that are budgeted in 2223. Excuse me, 2324 that may need to be re-budgeted in 24, 25 because we're not going to have them by June 30th. And then, Zoo City Sportsplex, as I said earlier, we are hoping to have a meeting when Jimmy gets back to evaluate the operating maintenance plan on how we're going to do that. And it's really difficult to just have me, or Jonathan knows one side of the operation, he knows what the need is, but he doesn't do maintenance and repair all the time. So we're going to try to get everybody together who has knowledge and come up with a good plan. Now, obviously, it's going to be one that we're going to be revisiting multiple times as we continue to learn and develop schedules, work around events, things like that. Fechanges. We are going to be proposing some fee changes in the inspection department and some fee changes in planning and zoning. Those fee changes will be available to you at the June 6 meeting. I do not. They're still working on that. In recreation, Jonathan says that he has, he did some fee changes in the past and he feels like he's already incorporated Zucy-D Sports Plex in their manual so we're not going to be looking at any new fee changes this year for recreation department. Okay, there's a lot that's not in the budget. Firefighters, the Fire Department asks for six firefighters. That's $371,000, just the base wage. And then you have to add on all the other things that go along with, but your payroll taxes, your retirement, your insurance, your workers, comp, things like that. Mr. Ogern has spent a lot of time with the fire chiefs and proposes to wait till 26, 27 budget implement hiring these additional firefighters when we're closer to having the new fire station open. Police in Fire Department asked for ATVs who was used to these ports flex. We had him, we funded the recreation ATVs because we felt that those were the most important ones. Those people are going to be used every single day. Both police and fire already have some type of vehicle that can be transported there, but they eventually, our goal is to have something that lives there, per se, so that they don't have to transport up. But you've seen them at different events that they've been transported out there. Zoo City Loop funding, 400,000 Gerald Garden construction. If we get the grant, Trevor has a plan for different things with Gerald Garden right now. We are budgeting for the design phase and he has applied for some loans but there may be some matches associated with that. We don't really know exactly what that looks like. So we have not included it in the budget yet but we wanted you to be aware that there's been some talk and consideration of this down the line. Earlier this week, I found out that we had some damage at the library. We've already repaired one section of the roof that was leaking and we've got several other sections that are leaking. And Michael Leonard has been talking to roof people in the figure of 750,000. You have to remember that the library is a special tarot kind of slate. Slate. Slate, huh? And Mr. Auburn tells me that it is on the National Register of Historic Properties. And so we don't know exactly what if we can use an alternative roofing material or not. We will be looking into that exploring options because $750,000 is a lot of money. I hope it's. Pardon me? Yes, sir. So it was, it was, you heard, if you've not seen, you should look at AlbusOGeorge.com. It's a pretty amazing, but that was the first National Award winner designed in Ashboro. So that was the state AIA champion and the national AIA champion. So it was Randolph Bank at the time now P and C. So in typical city fashion, Michael and I would probably put an A frame on it, put metal on it. It doesn't affect the books on the inside, but you defeat the purpose of the form and function of the building. It's like a Donald Ross golf course. It looks like a Donald Ross golf course. Right. Especially if you got a nine hole one. So the council left to decide about that. Now you see why we had that whole afternoon of capital improvements discussion, because we asked the Gerald Garden to be not this is not, but you can only do one thing that we've tried. You can only do one thing at a time. You put it down here, but if the federal grant comes through, we'll move it up to the top. We don't have any way to fund it right now, so you directed us to manage it. Same with the loop, even though we intend to fund the loop. There may be more federal funds available. That's another thing that Mr. Shegans in the whole transportation department, that's all. That whole fund is, that whole federal agency is always changing. We'll just have to see what's out there at the time that is out there. We intend to fund it over time just how we get there. Also, it may be a way that we can work with the county on that. I think I've reported that neither wolf speed nor Toyota intend to have all 5,000 people parked there at one time. So they intend, it's expected that there would be workforce transportation, public transportation, to get to those two locations. So that may be a way that we partner some way. Again, we just don't know how that's in front of us. Other things. Fire training facility, the Fire Department asked for $150,000 for to build a new fire training facility. We have, Mr. Auger, has research options around that and he has learned that RCC wants to expand an existing training center And so we're going to look at a potential partnership the city of Ashboro for by water and sewer and then RCC fund the equipment and build the facilities and our fire department would be able to go there for They're more intensive firefighter training requirements. They're by saving us the cost of doing that on our own. And of course, you know that we've got the fire station number three that we've been talking about and looking at. We've just got it at $9 million figure at this time. Staff is meeting with legislators as you've gotten correspondence from Mr. Augburn about his efforts and I learned that both the chiefs, Deputy Chief Cochman, and Chief Summers were lobbying for us earlier this week. So we're putting our working hard trying to find sources of funding for that. Also as I said earlier, we're using our professional service contacts to try to change the USDA rule development loan guidelines to allow the city of Ashboro to qualify for low interest loan. That is a process we're working on that. And then we've got, you know, fire trucks cost a lot. We had $1.4 million in the budget last year for a fire truck with the hope that we could get a grant to cover it. We were not successful in getting a grant for that. So it is not re-put in the budget at this time because we've got a lot that's going on and we're really okay where we are at this moment at the fire department we are going to need this one we do depending on how fire station number three and everything looks. So these are kind of on the radar requests that were put in there in the department heads. Put things in the budget not just so that I could cut them out, but also for an opportunity to educate me and share with Mr. Ogburn and us share with you about some things that may be coming down the line so that we can kind of keep them on our radar. Now part of the answer to the question is yes, don't we have a firefighting training facility right here? Yes but obviously We don't fight Now this is not either right wrong or different. We don't fight barn or chicken house fires and the rural agencies don't fight five-story Hospital Emergencies either so the time just different our standards or performance what we protect different so that's why and we should take advantage of this opportunity. I think the counties funded it for the RCC now to that will be the premier training facility for the center of the state. 33 counties will be able to go and use that facility. So that, again, that puts revenue back and they're not all rural agencies. That includes high point and you know, our sister cities all around. So Lexington, Thomasville. Now Greensboro, of course, has, if you go up Elm Street, they still have the old tower there where I don't know that they use that anymore, but it's still there. They do. They do. All of them because I wrote by the way. And it was burning. Yeah. Future vegetarian concerns, economic development pressure on resources, expecting high quality municipal services. We've got all this economic development activity happening right around us, and we're going to have to try to meet the needs and expectations and get water where it needs to go and clean up trash where it needs to be. Public safety concerns, as you know, and been educated on, and get water where it needs to go and clean up trash where it needs to be. Public safety concerns, as you know, and been educated on, you know, we've got drugs in our community, which is really something that not a lot of people know, but we do. Human trafficking is an issue here, homelessness, which we've had a lot of conversation about. Those are all going to be things that we're going to continue to navigate through fuel and electric power costs continual environmental demands such Like one of the things that mr. Auger and I were talking about earlier You know, it's this storm season coming around. I don't budget for storms that I don't know we're gonna happen We kind of manage those that when it happens like the snowstorms that we've had in the past. And we get FEMA money for it eventually. We go out and we fight whatever it is that's ahead of us. And then we usually FEMA comes back and we get reimbursed from FEMA for a lot of that expense. Those kind of things are things that we can't really plan for in a budget, but we always have to be aware of as a potential of something that's gonna happen and then we'll adjust accordingly. So we never hope that happens. We have to prepare that to happen. The Atlanta Couracane forecast is for a difficult season this year. I think the Gulf of Mexico has already abnormally warm. It was a very mild winter. So we'll just see what happens. We're moving right now. As you've seen this past week, I think it rained two and a half inches in Ashboro yesterday. We had trees come down just because it was so wet. The foliage is full now. So we'll just see what happens. We'll react to what we prepare for it. We do the best we can to manage it, but we don't mitigate it obviously. Always, we are continued to navigate through labor market pressures on our salaries. And of course, you know, when your salary increases, then that impacts a whole bunch of costs in your budget which I've talked on a little earlier and we do have a 3.3 very low unemployment rate here which makes it very hard to find good quality people. And then pension issues at the state level is impacting our local government retirement system costs. Just from this year we've got 12.9% is what I had to pay for general employees. I'm going to have to pay 13.65 next year and LEO which is law officers. I pay 1404 this year and the percentage is 1504 next year. And the local retirement system has some predictions going out, going up to 2027 of increases every single year, up to maybe 17% of our salary base. Now, whether that happens or not, we don't know. But I can tell you the last three years, we've been going up every single year, and it's a decent amount that we've been going up. More unprecedented than what we've had seen in the past. Just like our labor market challenges with salaries and stuff is unprecedented from last three years versus the 10 years before that. Now, once again for the council, Elgers is local government employees retirement system that's the city of the county and PTI airport authority, those, you know, the local orange, water and sewer authority, Piedmont Tribe Regional Council. The state employees is the state teachers and employees association system. There's this different. You know, the General Assembly controls how much they put in and all that. Hires has a board of directors and our board is very conservative and the state treasurer manages our funds. State treasurer is very conservative. So we don't know that that's, that'll be the number this year, but it may not go to 17%. It just also depends on how your investments are. But our, our local government employee system is one of the, if not the finest, one of the finest in the country. It's 99% of money's owed or in there. You could pay it all. And you don't pay it all at one time. But it's in there. People live longer. Wages are higher. That's driving up to. We have mentioned in years past, from the City Management Association, that perhaps the cap oughta be moved. For example, if you're graduate college at 22, and you're 52, and you to top of your game as a teacher Do we really want to lose people at the top of our get their game? Maybe it's something to consider in the long run So you don't you're not you're not penalized by Leaving early you should you know you out of state. You want to stay but The pension has certain rules you know when past, teachers were allowed to what they call double-dip, stay out six months and come back. That's never been on our system. That'll never be on our system. There are more than 100,000 teachers employed by the state. There's only 3,000 state patrolman and Charlotte Mecklenburg PD has like 6,000. So I think there's 3,600. So law enforcement expense is not that big an issue for the state and they also get the court costs to cover a lot of it. So big expense is the local level because we do the heavy lifting in Totten for law enforcement. It's just the way the states shoot 200 years ago when we divided it all up. That's the way it was divided up. And that explains why some of Cliff Road and some of Glenwood right in the middle of, by, uh, Middle Park School, right in the middle of Greystone's, a state maintained street because all public schools must be on a state maintained street. Freshly paved, freshly paved. But there's a reason why, if you look at the the what we call the pal bill map, which is the official street map of the city There's just you would think that neighborhood streets where the cities and the thoroughfares would be it is but it's not always that way Future economic development concerns these are the high level these are future economic development concerns. These are the high level. These are the things that Mr. Augerin worries about and tries to work on behind the scenes hotel shortage. That's something that is of concern to them. It may not be an economic pressure on the city of Ashbro directly as a budgetary issue that I would deal with, but it may be something that he and you guys will be dealing with. And then of course, we're always talking about how there's a lack of industrial and manufacturing sites around and you guys here and deal with that and are continuing looking for ways to try to bring businesses here and where we can put them. So these are more economic development concerns for you guys and for Mr. Augburn versus an immediate budgetary concern right now. Of course they also could have some budgetary impact down the line. And I'm almost finished talking. June 8th is our public hearing at 7 o'clock. As a Saturday. Oh, well then it's not going to be June 8th is our public hearing at seven o'clock. That's a Saturday. Oh, well then it's not going to be June 8th. I will fix that for the next time. I'll go. We have two years ago, but I don't know. It is June 6th. Oh, yeah, you know, that happens when you take a template and you are tired. Don't look at the last slide. And you asked me to check it and I did it and I didn't check the last slide either. My fault. I actually had two people go through and check this. Both Steve and John went through it. So we're all tired obviously. I will. Hey, you're Steve's not here. You're going to want my car. We will have a copy of the proposed budget for public inspection when we do the budget hearing on June 8th. I know that's, or whatever the correct date is. I don't have a calendar in front of me. Six. It didn't involve money, so you couldn't get on this? That's right. I think June 27th might be correct, but it is correct. It is 24. Yes, the year isn't right, but my apologies. It's been a lot of information thrown at you. Thank you for listening to me and thank you for this augur for filling in all the history and the gaps of his years and years of knowledge to try to help give you guys some good information. Thank you very much. Thank you for all the questions. Thank you very much. It's been a lot of information thrown at you. Thank you for listening to me to the next week, the 23rd. You'll get your hard copy. It'll be on the website and a copy will be in the clerks office as required by the general statutes. So June 6th back here for a hearing and then on June 27th possible adoption. So in years past, actually several years ago we got burned, adopted it real early. And he would think June 7th will, June 30 30th the last day because the state did something in the middle of the night like the 5%. For police officers, we now hold the public hearing at our usual schedule. Time we allow it to allow two weeks open for people to come, make comments come to their aware you know that and that'll be the end will we'll finish up the uh financing and we'll have any last to the year budget amendments and then we'll close the fiscal year the new budget will be in and um in. Well I'll take a breath in July and August school goes back in and probably the Wednesday after Labor Day the auditor will show back up and the cycle starts all over again. Something additional just to share with you is that we are going to be working on a capital improvement budget for your consideration. Departments have been sending in the information about what their knees are over the next five-year term. And so that will be coming down the line. I don't have a timeline for that. I wanted to get the budget behind us first. And then we'd have a starting place to do that But that is on our agenda as we try to plan quite forward obviously It's also a fluid document. It's kind of hard to plan for everything exactly over a five-year period But I think it will be helpful as we navigate through the next years You'll be seeing a lot in the outcoming time. You see it now. It's about every night on television. If you watch business news or CNN or MSNBC or Fox, a lot of talk about AI, artificial intelligence, will there be real people that take your water payment or will it be screen people that take your water payment or it would be screen talking to you. That's you'll hear a lot of that that'll all be invented in the private sector before everybody gets over to the public sector. It's just too expensive. My generation, the song and my generation, as Elisa's demonstrated, the short time she's been here, the whole world lives on social media. That's the future. But you have to, but there's all, we live in a very, could be decisive era, so how we manage social media, how we stay ahead of the power curve Which a lot of times we haven't that's all going to be part of the future too and Then you know there could be the continued pressures from the feds the It's not very collegial up there now. It's difficult. We'll have to remain collegial here as I tell everybody when they've come out to each of you. And you came from new council orientation except for Mayor Smith who was here before I got here. The council speaks as one voice. Now that doesn't mean you agree on everything, but when we, when this decided, it's decided. We can go back and change it, but mainly in that training collegiality is down the way that'll be important. Howard Cove will use to say, so I won't take his credit, he used to say, there's too many show horses in Washington and not enough work horses. Here at the local level we wind up all being work courses. Again, I'll tell you all the time, the hardest thing is to tax and govern and spend your friends and neighbors and your family members. I mean, you know, we got nowhere to hide. We don't travel 500 miles to go to a meeting. So that's just a difficult job. We appreciate what you do. We appreciate the support you give, the employees. We think we give you really good value. And this is the last meeting in May unless something happens. So we hope you've gotten a lot out of these. We've been a lot of meetings lately, but we've broken it up on purpose, especially for Mr. McCaskin, Mr. Trogden. It's hard to swallow it all. You know, we've been trying to force you to drink with the fire hose anyway. And you'll see now that it's we end one period. As I mentioned before, it's hard to believe, but the strategic plan is about the end of its life cycle We'll start and we'll tackle those things we begin to talk about tonight Thank you John. Thank you, baby. Any questions? Thank you for all the work Thank you work John