San Angelo City Council Budget Workshop 8-11-22

[0:00:00] 11th general fund budget workshop this meeting is officially called to order at 8 30 a.m on this morning we will open the meeting as usual with public comment issues or concerns not on the agenda may be raised by the public at this time citizens should speak from the podium address all comments to the dias begin by stating their name and address or single member district number and limit their remarks to less than three minutes do we have people in the audience today who would like to come forward if it's part of the agenda item you cannot make a comment during public comments i just need to know that other people will be able to make a comment during the agenda item as always all right they were not able to last time we broke for lunch so just wanted to ensure that you got it thank you other public comment shane i know i saw you earlier lucky you yeah sorry if you had to throw some of it away you have to admit that soon all right so there's still so much confusion on all of the signs downtown the detour signs do not tell you where to go or what to do they just say there's a detour and there's nothing to indicate what you might do and there's so many people so confused and i know you moved on concho and oaks yesterday the whatever you call them yes ma'am but we the contractor came in uh this weekend has started the

[0:02:04] the button up items on the project trying to get it cleaned up so they did they had their contractor come in yesterday put in the barricades of course they do it exactly like is on a piece of paper so we did go out yesterday straighten around a little bit my crews are back out there this morning uh going to be cleaning that up with signs i hope because there's just on chad burn and two-week there's just one sign that says detour you don't know where you're detouring to or what the director should be yes ma'am we're going to get all that cleaned up today so we'll i my crews are going to be down there working on that all day so or not all day but this morning so we'll we'll get that cleaned up okay thank you any other questions for shane while he's up here concerning public comment okay thank you very much all right we will now work move into our workshop itinerary discussion of matters regarding the fiscal year 2022 2023 budget preparation including but not limited to one consideration of funding for destination marketing organization two municipal pool revenue and expenditure plan three general fund revenue and expenditures and fourth other items needing council direction presentation at that point would be made by tina dierski so as we move into this workshop itinerary i'm going to have julie raymond come up first because i know you have a 9 30 appointment that you have to get to so if you will come forward and and tell us about art and uncommon places we would love to do that um i'm julie raymond artn and commonplaces we are a non-profit since 2006. and our mission right here is to create inspiring prominent long lasting works of art to the city the gift to to the city of san angelo for all to enjoy and

[0:04:06] utilize particularly the folk those who are underserved by displaying works in unique and uncommon places throughout the city and uh and this is dr gigi she is president of art non-communist places so um our director anyway uh we have gifted the city with over at this point 400 pieces of art and that is done through we strictly live off of grants and donations and we would love some support from the city all these pieces uh have are inviting and they're bringing people to the city uh in great numbers we have um real estate people coming to us to ask what the growth of the city is going to be and they're promoting all of these things we have created pop art paintbrush alley both of those are open air museum as long as as well as the river corridor that has our mosaic cars along that way and then the red aurora there's on there's 50 pieces of art there we have a mosaic fire truck that was community built where all the firemen come back and get there to be photographed and be a part of with each one of these open-air museums which we didn't know was going to be such a bonus during covid because you could go somewhere and be safe and still get to do be involved and these are all friendly things and environment things that encourage families to come here and beyond us this thing has grown we have a stack of magazines that we're represented into right here and these are each tab with all the artwork we will receive the title of the visual art capital of texas and we think that we were a big contributor to that because everything that in these advertisements are pictures of the artwork that we have placed within the city

[0:06:07] at this time we not only donated these but we're maintaining all of these pieces and that has made it paintbrush alley alone is having quarterly events which are paintbrush market days that is bringing 2 000 people per session that's 8 000 people to just that one of our sites and on top of that uh we've had funerals we've had weddings it's incredible the uh support and uh that we've had and we've graciously partnered with the city uh we've the chamber has been great we try to work with everybody that we can but we'd love to have some support in to grow further and our vision for this up and coming year is very exciting we think it'll bring even more tourism to town so i appreciate it willing to talk about that or you don't want to bring it out publicly yet no we have uh we have one event which i hope everybody will be a part of that we've partnered with san angelo forming arts center and it's a art show called artists for artists and it will be held in march and we i think it's going to be great for sapac to bring some interest to them and they're going to bring a crowd and then we'll bring a different crowd and that's going to be promoted all all over as well as all these things are beginning to hit we are on we are in more than one online magazine right now uh we did get filmed by atlas obscure that hasn't been published yet we have we're in the culture map so i we want to keep this going and uh and we literally work with volunteers and um our building is donated by for one dollar a year so you know it would anyway we'd love to have your support i think one of the things you said to me which is important because we do fund the san angelo cultural affairs group but you're you're not able to apply for any funds you said

[0:08:10] because no one draws a salary yes it aren't uncommon places so there's no salaries all of the money that you raise goes to all of these projects is that correct yes yes yes and uh we do if anybody want to look at look we have this is we've been in texas monthly more than one uh this is very exciting because this is very expensive to be in and we didn't pay so we're really jazzed we've been in texas highways texas living we were listed as in 2020 to do in the state of texas and it has our artwork and i think that's pretty exciting and i want to thank all the artists that most of them all volunteer their time we may pay for the materials some we have commissioned but that is the beauty of this whole thing that we do is there's like over 350 artists that have contributed their time to make us a destination and the visual art capital of texas do you have anything else do i have questions from council or more information requested from julie okay thank you very much thank you for your time i appreciate it thank you all right we're going to start the next conversation um teresa you want to talk about hot tax money and the information in terms of what hot tax money must be spent on yes ma'am hot tax money every time we look at an expenditure for hot tax money we do what is called in numerous places the texas two-step and it has to make the expenditure has to meet both of those prongs in order for it to be a valid expenditure the first of which it has to put heads in beds and that means whatever the expenditure is it has to be to something that attracts overnight tourists to cities hotels and motels if it gets past that hurdle then you can go into the second hurdle and there's nine categories some don't apply to us because we're not a big enough city but basically those categories that

[0:10:12] typically apply or we can fund convention and visitor centers convention registration advertising promotion of the arts historical restoration and preservation and then directional signage those are typically the uses that we look at if you only meet one of the prongs for instance you have an event that brings people into town but you're not listed in one of those nine categories we should not use hot funds and the same goes for the other way if you are in one of those nine categories but everybody you attract is local then that project would not qualify for those funds either thank you um i don't know that there's anyone here for the international water lily collection but i know we all received a letter uh from mr joslov you want to read that letter and then we'll talk about it the letter says dear san angelo city officials we have been advised the city may be considering use of local hotel tax revenue for the costs related to a water lily garden which is located within a san angelo city park we would note state law does not have a category for local hotel expenditures that would allow for the maintenance and operation of a city park in fact state law specifically prohibits the use of local hotel taxes for general city infrastructure or operations such as park facilities we would be glad to work with san angelo on other authorized uses of the local hotel tax that would be beneficial to the city of san angelo and that would directly promote tourism in the hotel and convention industry please let me know if there is any further information i can provide on this issue sincerely scott josslav senior general counsel texas hotel lodging association so one of the issues that came up during budget work budget meetings as we were going through everything was the international water lake collection which in fact every september has a big event here in san angelo it brings in people from japan from india all across the world actually and it's a major important quality of life as well as tourism destination the idea and the proposal was not to use it for operations it was

[0:12:16] in fact one of the things that you just talked about and that's signage i can't tell you how many times i hear from somebody where's the water lily how do we get there i i don't see any signs tell us about that and that is the issue is trying to find a way to use money to better sign and direct people to the waterlily collection there was no conversation about maintenance and operation of our parks just to be clear all right now let's move into destination marketing so the last budget workshop we had we had a discussion came up and at that point in time dianabl you came in with a million and twelve five on the budget um which was the 965 and the carryover and then the staff had had a number down there in the in the 800s i think it was eight now i don't remember what it was specifically but at that point in time in that discussion tommy hebert and i volunteered to come in and have a meeting and discuss that and go through it as best we could something i'd like to point out is with all other accounts that we have that go through the city everything comes through a blue book we get them itemized monthly we don't get that on the chamber cvb okay i'm sure we could if we ask but point of it is we have this to look over anything we want to monthly it's ours it's readily available on the city

[0:14:18] website but this is something we use as council to go through and look at what we have you met with you and walt tina kimberly me and tommy hebert met a couple days later and we discussed about it y'all brought in a proposal of 965 000 and 1 million 12. i brought in two right so we talked about the 965 and thought okay we're leaving this meeting with uh an agreement that we looked at 965. okay we went through some numbers and i went back and looked and there's categories on there that are significantly different in the budgets than what they were prior which public relations i'm just going to go through um goes from like 8 000 to 16 000. subscriptions is up 15 000 just things that we had questions about so i called and talked to you on monday morning i was in denver you and i talked on monday morning and i said there's some things here and we don't know percentage-wise what we what dmo has of some staff and some salaries and i think you told me some of those questions i had were confidential because you don't know some of those people's salaries at that point in time i said is 9.50 a workable number and i thought we had an agreement monday morning that 950 was workable and so i took that budget that i'd sent to you and you looked over and said i see your 950 number and i sent it in to staff as you know what i have spoken with diane here's a 950 number this is what we're going to go with and present with at that point i thought we had an agreement on 950 was a workable number i had that conversation with my boss then my boss and i had our conversation with our chairs because i have to go according to our bylaws we have to go through our board for a budget presentation to present to the city and then the city presents that budget presentation to the city council we did not have that opportunity to do that through our bylaws and according to the contract

[0:16:21] the dmo is not even supposed to get a budget to the city until september or or by september 15th that is how the contract written by theresa james reads so we hadn't even done that process yet this budget was presented to me through an email by tina on a thursday when i was on vacation i didn't see it and i got it on monday was the only time i had the opportunity to even look at it and so i actually prepared a statement to because i went back and watched the video so i could answer questions that were on the dice that i was not able to truly answer in the way i needed to but in our conversations with our chairs a resolution of support of a million 12 was written by my board and the chamber board in support of that budget and there are reasons for that and i would like to share those that's great i just need everybody to understand the timeline and why the 950 was put on paper and it was after a discussion you and hyde had on monday correct and i said but it still had i had to go back through my bylaws to see that i was doing the thing i was supposed to do and i needed to get that input from them understood i just needed everybody to understand why the 950 was on the paper the steps we had the questions we had you know now at this point we're going to open this up to several discussions i know there's a lot of people here that came from public comment our phones have been plenty busy the past few days so at this point i will open this up to anybody else that has questions anybody on council right now have a question or we'll wait until but i think the the overall what we have found as a council and it will be something reflective in a new contract is that we need different parameters if september is your deadline and our budget is not a september deadline then we need to make sure that the contract reflects the same time frame that in fact the city council is reviewing the numbers because it doesn't make sense that you present in september which is what you're only

[0:18:23] obligated to do and i respect that but we have to make decisions because this is the process we go through so that contract has to have significant changes made to it that contract has to have more explanation on a more regular basis about the expenditures and the challenges that we might have no one likes to put anyone on the spot and ask the questions but i know this anybody who hands somebody basically a million dollar check and that's what we basically are doing when we budget a million dollars we're saying we're giving you a million dollars if you went to the bank and borrowed a million dollars that banker would ask significant questions about the expenditures any changes in philosophy or any changes in emphasis in terms of what you're going to focus on and there would be a lot of questions about it we realized that the cvb which is what we funded initially and that stands for convention visitors bureau with a primary focus on hotel rooms heads in beds we also know that everyone who comes forward to us and ask for money the question always is how can you prove up heads in beds because we cannot increase your budget or maintain your budget unless you have something that says this is what we did these are the heads and beds we can tell you about and that is the number one thing on um the information that teresa just submitted reviewed with everyone here when you change the name of an organization and when you change a philosophy that says we are going to become economic developers now we were always economic developers tourism is economic development pure money coming in from visitors that has never been in this community before yes

[0:20:27] so but we funded an organization called cvb and that means it's a very strong emphasis on convention visitors bureau people who come to town for conventions people who come to town for heads in beds and so when we start to ask questions what we really want to understand is what did the cvb which is the organization we funded not the dmo talk to us about those heads and beds because what we realize is that there's many organizations in this city who bring people into this city because of their organizations and they put heads in beds and yet we are in fact challenged by many organizations that say hey we deserve we need we want and again i repeat it's always about heads and beds so i'm going to start with that and i want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to ask questions and make comments but you're on okay thank you and i actually brought all of the presentations i've done annually for the past five years and all of them state everything you just asked for and i have presented that to this organization in the past i appreciate the opportunity to come before you once again regarding the budget of the destination marketing organization i'm sharing with you today information found on your own city council pages of the city of san angelo website the vision statement of the city of san angelo city council reads to be the texas standard for opportunity prosperity and quality of life the mission statement of the san angelo city council is to deliver excellence in services through best management practices a dedicated caring and productive workforce innovative solutions and a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility i took the liberty to pull the definitions of these words in these

[0:22:29] statements and share what the dmo has done to play our part in meeting this vision and mission for the city opportunity a time when a particular situation makes it possible to do or achieve something the dmo success over the past five years includes a strong recovery that is trending higher in all areas of performance prosperity the state of being successful especially in making money the direct travel spending and annual room revenues at hotels paid by visitors are back up at 2019 levels even with the covet pen dimming pandemic hitting in both 2020 and 2021 and facing a decrease in prime hotel room availability in late 2021 quality of life the standard of health comfort and happiness experienced by an individual or group the savings per household due to visitor spending in 2021 was higher than it has been over the past six years except for a nine percent drop in 2020 that number is 643 dollars by saving citizens tax dollars visitor spending improves the quality of life for the citizens of san angelo by freeing up monies that would otherwise be otherwise be used for paying taxes deliver excellence the quality of being extremely good the dmo work and the dmo staff have been acknowledged with multiple awards and recognitions at the state level by the texas association of convention and visitors bureaus and the texas travel alliance over the past four years best management practices a way of doing something that is seen as a very good example of how it should be done and be copied by other companies or organizations as a dmo that is working closely with economic development to tell the story

[0:24:31] of san angelo to attract potential visitors help influence possible business relocations and attract future workforce our example was recognized at the state economic development association summer conference through video interviews serving as an example of how organizations can work together to promote a community through tourism economic development and industrial economic development productive workforce doing or achieving a lot in a particular organization the dmo has been responsible for the efforts to achieve both the texas film-friendly city and the texas music-friendly city designations the dmo also researched created the presentation and testified on behalf of the city at the state capitol to seek and receive from the governor the 10-year designation of visual arts capital of texas the dmo created content and submitted the applications four years in a row to true west magazine to be considered a top 10 true western town in the u.s we have been recognized all four years number two in 2019 number one in 2020 number two in 2021 and number one in 2022. the dmo submitted the application for consideration to the texas travel awards and were named the destination of the year in 2021 in the inaugural awards those awards are not given unless someone submits an application fiscal responsibility a duty to take care of public monies connected with government especially tax dollars since the current leadership of the dmo came on board in 2017 the organization has taken the role of stewards of the public funds very seriously in 2017 and 2018 unspent hotel tax dollars in the dmo budget designated funds by law that have a very specific purpose were returned to the city in 2020 the dmo was

[0:26:36] proactive at the beginning of the covet pandemic and asked to present to the city council as at a proposal allowing the dmo to save two hundred thousand dollars of their approved 2020 budget by cutting areas including travel trade shows and training to applies those dedicated funds to the 2021 budget instead by achieving the results i've shared today which have also been presented at every annual city council presentation by the dmo over the past five years along with more detailed data the dmo continues to meet their own mission of improving the quality of life for the citizens of san angelo through destination marketing and promotion the funds are there 1.6 million dollars in the reserve the results are there the support is there the businesses benefit the citizens benefit the city of san angelo benefits the dmo meets and exceeds the city council's own vision and mission statement my question to each of you on the dice is why is there talk of cutting the budget of the sole destination marketing organization for the city that markets to visitors to come to our community and the organization that has shown a seven to one return on investment for this community its businesses and its citizens the first thing i will say and i'm sure other people have comments to make is part of the funding that when we increased the budget from what was eight something in 2020 or 2019 2019 there was lots of conversation about events that were coming to san angelo one being the uh air race one was cowboy jubilee those are two that are top of mind anyway and we know that in 2021 slash 2022 those events did not happen but there were funds assigned to those events

[0:28:37] that said these funds are going to be used marketing expense whatever to put those events on it is not because of the cbb that those expenses i mean that those events didn't come here there are all kinds of combinations of reasons but when you review and have a conversation about dollars and events and those events don't happen then one says so where did those dollars go where did those the money about the there was 40 000 that was going to be dedicated to the um air race that money is in a contract that is done by the city that is in a separate fund over and above the actual budget we have those dollars were already there they are there annually so they were we were going to dedicate them but we came to council because it was a large number so those funds were not technically dedicated over and above that million 12. and i will also add the budget for 2022 was 965 but this council because of our work that was presented to you that you have applauded for every time and i have was also given a 47 000 carryover by this council to use for this year to give us a million dollar million twelve budget and so i would say and there was no air race attached to that i would say the following as well then in this conversation and i think tom will validate this the issue was we believe the 950 is a good number and should another big event come up that is not something that was planned for or anyone knew about it that there would be consideration for funds for that so one is about a base amount and one is about to is there something else two months from today that you're not aware of that you need funding for

[0:30:40] you can come back and have a conversation with us so i think that was part of the conversation was it tom when me and diane talked on monday it was there's 9 50 much like if something like air race comes forward that comes back to council another question i have is tina and you can answer this for me on the 200 000 she didn't use did they give that back or was that carry over that was carried over along with a budget of 765 000 that year okay so those things are in there and in the map it's always a discussion so you are writing your statement and you took the 950 and went back to your group and then you've come back here today well and the areas that you talked about with public relations as we grow and show success we look at ways we can be even more successful and that was going to be including going to different television stations like some of our other partners do in the industry across the state of texas dallas fort worth houston's austin san antonio possibly el paso midland odessa all of those places to tell people that we have events coming other things that we are looking at are south by southwest a way to talk about our film friendly our music friendly and the quality of life in our community at a trade show where young people are who might want to consider moving to our community so yes that is advertising and economic development and trying to increase workforce in this community so we are looking at all ways of promoting our city i would also add i love the folks at art and uncommon places most of the magazines and most of the things that she talked about today were ads we placed with hotel tax dollars and i have a contract with texas monthly and texas highways and they always ask us for article ideas so one of the places that we have always commented on and atlas obscura that she was talking about that is another one that we talked with through the governor's office so all of those things have been done through the efforts of the dmo and so the higher that budget

[0:32:44] the more we can spend the more we can bring back a seven to one return on investment is a pretty good investment i don't know that there's any other investment in this city that you get from that you want to talk about that seven to one and how you come up with that statistic sorry so i kind of have a gray line here in the center when we talk about dmo or we talk about economic development because to me there's a no we we are in our industry we call ourselves economic we are pure tourism is the purest form of economic development that is what we say right if you let me finish i mean that's kind of a question of some things that have come along in this budget is that an economic development expense or is that a dmo expense okay and so when we're looking at heads and beds to me that's dmo i hear a lot of about economic development economic development and i get that but there are parts i don't know if those two are co-mingled or not and in our conversations everybody's had the past two weeks we tend to blend those together and to me i kind of look at your budget as a dmo heads and beds all right and if i misread that i apologize okay but long story short i do think we use economic development quite a bit when we're talking about heads and beds it all starts with a visit sir and so that is in our videos that is in our promotional items we want people to visit because if they don't visit they won't consider living here they won't consider moving a business here we have a video that has that particular phrase in it because it applies to everything we do economic development can use that video i can tell you that goodfellow uses that video a gentleman on the chamber board shared with me that he sends it all over the world monthly to try to get people to see why they should consider coming to san angelo and he thanked me about two weeks ago for putting that video out i've seen the video love the video i agree i'm just saying when you look at some of the things we're discussing here

[0:34:47] do you give me examples well so if we use the word economic development are we trying to bring a company here to town are we trying to bring individual events here to town so there's been questions here that go into i can give you an example of some of that um i have gone with michael and mike in our to our department when they have a site visit i have gone with them anna dine wool comes to mind i heard the story of anodine wool i pitched that story to texas country reporter texas country reporter came here and filmed their story that had really not much to do with tourism but it was a way to showcase san angelo and a business in this community that meant something to bob phillips and he is a beloved television personality in this state didn't cost me any money i just went on a meeting visit with them so i could understand what they had we also look at makers as a way to tell our story they are a maker so that is one example um air motor johnna who is my sales director and i had a meeting with air motor and mike berry with economic development because they wanted to bring a week-long meeting at that point to our community so it all started with a meeting it is now transferred into an actual certified certificate that howard college is offering to have a first-time certification of an air motor person who can fix those windmills they'd never had that before that started with a meeting that that we were going to do that was an economic development company who wanted to have that meeting we wanted to be able to help them and with the meeting planning and to do the blocks of the rooms they all go together as i see it but did we pay extra for that no it started with a meeting that has now worked with numerous partners in our city to help grow something in our city that was much needed so i'm i'm i

[0:36:51] do use the term economic development because that's who we are that is what we do it all starts with a visit i don't care why they come and spend the night if they spend the night we are doing our job answered my question thank you all right so the question i had is talk to us about the seven to one and the statistics in terms of how that's proven up we use the the same statistics everybody in this industry has always used we use the governor's office stats that come from dean runyon and associates they've used dean runyon and associates forever the governor's office of economic development and tourism they do work together they are all in the same building the return on investment we have a million dollar budget currently the local tax dollars brought in by visitors is 7.4 million dollars seven to one we have used that in all of our lobbying efforts at the state as you know i have worked for the texas travel industry association now texas travel alliance i'm their legislative co-chair we are there to watch the lot the legislation that goes in for our industry to ensure that things are done correctly and to protect the funding that is paid by visitors at the state so that we can market outside of the state that is the that is the way they determine their numbers and so we follow suit with what the state does i believe everyone in this city who has a business who has a company who has family who lives in this city are economic developers if you will so when we talk about a one to seven number and the statistics attached to that my assumption is almost everyone in this room who's sitting here today probably had some impact on that number i'm sure they did and so when you look at it every citizen every business every company has had some impact on that one to seven ratio it would be

[0:38:54] wrong to assume that that one to seven ratio is totally that the dmo the cvb is totally responsible for that but your marketing that is not to challenge the marketing but i don't believe all of those dollars are simply attached to this effort i think it's much broader than that even if it was a three to one in return on investment just from ours i believe that is a very big benefit for this community and this city we would agree but again i think everyone who lives here every company that we have everyone who is invested in this city is an economic developer that is what it is the number of people who come into town because of families and friends or the christmas at old fort concho on player air the ceramic show the livestock show many organizations contribute to that net effect outside of this community to people so they will come here to visit in fact the question you had last time when you called my staff up who are not city staff you asked what kind of events were in this community academy for teachers of young children american board goat association concho valley council of governments hale family reunion junior american board goat association order the eastern star texas water utilities association the fourth cavalry regiment texas association of counties wild west fest air motor windmill school catholic women's conference daughters of the republic texas conference couple of weddings a couple of reunions a couple of the elks clubs district meeting all of those folks reached out to us or we helped and went after that business those are just the past or the next two months one was last month and the other i couldn't tell those named on the spot so i printed the report so you could

[0:40:56] have it do you believe that the dmo or the cvb is correctly placed in the in the chamber offices or have you wanted to re have that reconsidered and have your office and you be a part of the economic development group in the business resource center i would rather remain at the chamber but there has been requests i have not made any public requests to people here okay thank you any other questions or comments right now oh i just wanted to make a comment please if we if we were to go with the 950 and then have uh diane come up and ask us whenever other monies was were needed and we also would have the uh accountability like like the blue book some kind of monthly uh accounting of what is being spent that would be my recommendation for this instead of the one million point zero one two five hundred that's that's what i'm thinking right now as far as listening to you because you already answered one of my questions and that was about the events that you have that have been held up to date so you brought you answered that question for me so that's that's my statement mary i know that uh i've got a little personal uh because i've i've seen these numbers consistently over the last four or five years being the liaison between the city and the cvb dmo i'd like to see this budget go back to the 965 personally fifteen thousand dollars in a multi-million dollar budget is is is just chump change i'd like to see it go to 9.65 let them continue to do what

[0:42:59] they've been doing and if we've got a major event have them come back as everybody said i appreciate what tom and tommy has done i i think that's that was appropriate to get where we are today but i'd like to see it get back to this 965 and and this is let's move forward we're we're spending so much time on 15 000 that the citizens are going to say wow i mean if you talk about this multi-million dollar budget and we're spending it's been in 45 minutes on fifteen thousand dollars i don't know i'm i'm ready to go back to the 965. well i think the issue is not 965 it was a 950 as tom said so it's not just the 15 000 but that being said other questions or comments and i know there are a lot of people here who want to add public comment so let's start with go ahead so when we had our meeting the other day dan you know we talked about four benchmarks to look at um total direct travel spending local tax receipts dmo bookings and savings per household so we discussed it a way to possibly track those as we move throughout the year all right those are things that are measurable tangible and we can see from both sides right how would you if you were going to structure a plan to look at this and judge those from a calendar year give me an idea here i i couldn't i'd have to look at what those percentages are now um because if you look at from 2017 through 2021 as i shared we were on a trajectory with no new hotel rooms at the time even with our budget as it was increasing we were on a trajectory to be much more successful but apparently our 7.4 million that is local tax spending that may not be something the mayor wants us to use since we are not credited for that so we may have to look at other opportunities as far as

[0:45:03] bookings i can work with my staff on how many bookings per year we can get that that is the one number that we can choose the rest would be up to the council to determine what that percentage needs to be going back to the point we looked at four tangible correct benchmarks that we could look at and move forward with those is something we can discuss whether those up or down can also regulate the amount of spending we do whether we're up or down okay and to your point harry it's not about time the citizens would ask us to ask what a million dollars is being spent on it's not about 45 minutes of 15 000 it's talking about a million dollars or a million 12 or 950 or 965. so we're not wasting time we are evaluating a million dollars so just to be clear it's not 15 000 so with all due respect i have shared that every year with my annual reports i'm happy to hand those to you so you can review them again i'm just addressing harry's comment not yours okay with that again i think perhaps i should read this resolution as it was sent to all of our council members and that is uh resolutions resolutions an angel destination marketing organization supporting the full funding of a million 12 for the destination marketing organization for fiscal year 2023 whereas despite challenges to the travel industry imposed by the coven 19 pandemic the san angelo destination marketing organization has through its marketing and promotional efforts delivered a strong rebound of the local travel and tourism industry resulting in economic benefit to our community resulting in tax savings per household due to visitor spending of 643 dollars the highest it has been over the past six years whereas through the efforts of the san angelo destination marketing organization local tax receipts paid by

[0:47:06] visitors in 2022 have recovered to pre-covered pandemic levels of 7.5 sorry 7.4 million whereas through the efforts of the san angelo destination marketing organization following a 12 decline in direct travel spending in 2020 said spending recovered to 97 of 2019 pre-pandemic levels in 2021 exceeding the texas state recovery levels by 5 whereas due to the successful efforts of the san angelo destination marketing organization in 2021 annual hotel room revenues reclaimed 98 of 2019 revenues after a 15 decline in 2020 whereas due to the outstanding efforts of the san angelo destination marketing organization the 2022 quarter one annual room revenues of 12.2 million surpassed first quarter revenue rates of all five previous years and whereas the sustained investment in the san angelo destination marketing organization will based on current trends and future potential further drive continued growth and success in the critical travel and tourism industry it is now resolved the san angelo destination marketing organization advisory committee fully and strongly supports the complete funding of the senate san angelo destination marketing organization in the amount of 1 million and 12 for the fiscal year 2023 and i believe this was sent by griff griffin the chair of the san angelo destination marketing organization advisory committee and i believe it also was forwarded by janet karcher to all of the city council members so with that griff you want to come up and talk mr valenzuela city council members i appreciate the opportunity to be here i'm griff griffin uh and live in the uh

[0:49:09] san jose country club uh community mr hebert's our our councilman uh but i'm here on behalf of the as chairman of the san angelo destination marketing organization uh our advisory committee is made up of hoteliers it's made up of restaurant tours it's made up of local attraction folks from the fort the museum visual arts performing arts state park city and parks recreation department retailers many other organizations make up our board mr thomas as he said is our our board liaison we appreciate his support over the years um obviously diane and i did not coordinate our presentation or our talk because she said about everything i needed to say um the one thing i want to point out the really bit of of good news for for hot money is the first quarter of 2022 hotel revenues are higher than they've been in the last six years i think that's really good news that's that means there is more hot money available and so really our question as the advisory board is is why as as diane said why would we cut the budget when everything that's going on everything from the dmo is going in the right direction everything is positive i don't see a good reason or a good rationale to cut it to cut the budget and so we ask you to to look favorably on it and approve the 1.12 million dollars thank you very much if those who want to speak today want to come up and just sort of come to the front so be quicker um so anybody else who would like to speak please come forward good morning i appreciate the opportunity my name is janet karcher and as the mayor said i am um the 2022 board chair for the san angelo chamber of commerce um and on behalf of the board we are as the mayor read the resolution and that was sent to city council yesterday there

[0:51:12] were some differences between what the resolution that the advisory committee adopted versus the chamber board adopted most of ours the changes were um about the local community and you know the mayor and i've had a conversation in the past about success build success and you know we have to have each other in strong partnerships in order to have a healthy community for all and having a million uh 12 budget allows the destination marketing um to further you know promote san angelo in the wonderful community that we all get to call home you know i think we have seen over the pandemic the past few years the resiliency our community has had and what it takes to be a strong healthy community and when we come together i think we can have an even healthier and more prosperous community for those who get to call home and then also for visitors who are coming to see what san angelo has to offer and whether it's for a visit for a business opportunity for you know a night stay just to see all of the wonderful things as julie mentioned earlier we have a lot to offer in san angelo and i think the destination marketing has done a phenomenal job and with the statistics that were shared in that resolution that was adopted by the board of directors i think it warrants the the million 12 budget so thank you thank you very much michelle you look ready to go good morning i'm michelle babish with old central firehouse um i own two businesses in town and one of them is a bed and breakfast so beds and heads um i have to say there's not a week that goes by when i talk to guests that don't say at least one that they saw us and found out about us from an article that is the whole reason that article came about is because the dmo um diana and her team

[0:53:15] have done a fabulous job in really putting san angelo on the map for all i mean san angelo has a lot to offer three years ago who knew you know and now people every day make comments to me but like i said not a week goes by that somebody doesn't say i read about san angelo in texas monthly true west i saw you here there um we opened our restaurant the worst time possible in april of 20. and um and it has been solely through just the support of our community and things that the dmo does to get people to come to san angelo and that's why we're still in business now two years you know coming off of two years of the worst two years that you know a business could possibly have and so um i credit a ton of that i don't have the time or resources to do statistics but i will say that a huge amount of people come to our restaurant that are visiting because they heard it again through the resources of the dmo and what they've done but for our bed and breakfast absolutely i can credit a lot of the success to the things that the dmo has done for our community and it just you know it's a trickle-down effect so i um a huge thing is too after after covid i um i've been in marketing for many many many years and so um you know the worst thing you can do is stop marketing or slow down your marketing and i have not had to spend as much money as a business owner because the dmo is spending that money and their time and their resources to get people to san angelo i couldn't afford to do that myself and i do have a small marketing budget and we are so blessed that we get to spend that money on other things like donating to local nonprofits because the dmo is out there doing all of this for us and and again they're doing it for all of us all of our the businesses but i happen to have two that are directly you know i i can say a huge success of our businesses is because of the dmo

[0:55:18] and all their efforts great comments thank you my name is joe hyde and i'm the vice chair of the dmo a couple things we haven't discussed that i want you to take into account is that there's two big things that the dmo has done over the last three years one is it's unified the branding of san angelo texas discover san angelo the website if you remember 10 years ago the chamber website was 400 000 years old it was the dmo creating discovers angela.com that spurred into action the economic development website the new chamber website it's because of the unified branding that this organization brought the second thing is under our support as the board diane and her staff have been able to build systems around what they're doing if diane left tomorrow those systems remain and the systems mean for example madden media handles the social media aspect of it okay they have a system about how they reach out to targeted prospects who would come into san angelo and hold conventions and they have a system about how they allocate them to to hotels they have a system about how let's say you know thomas hoffman from wild west fest wants to put on wild west fest they have a system to evaluate that and figure out how can the dmo you know amplify what this entrepreneur is trying to do and i'll tell you i mean i've covered live music it's it's part of my heart this is a music friendly city thanks to the mayor we are doing a really good job i think of coming out of covid and becoming the center of live music again and i guarantee you a lot of i mean a week-long music festival in a town of 110 000 people i mean that was an incredible accomplishment and a lot of that was done because of the guidance that diane

[0:57:20] and her staff gave thomas hoffman and also the financing you have a river stage and things like that out there that have like for in 2019 at the river stage had 19 events there's 52 weeks in a year right there's a lot of things that they're doing to work with other organizations that can enhance the uh the value of what they're doing for the rest of the city i mean it's great to give money from hot tax to uh civic events i support it because they're they're improving you guys are improving the the facilities and things like that but with the coordination that we're doing with other organizations i don't care who it is we can amplify what they're doing with more money i don't want 1.12 many i want 1.5 million but i'm just joking but i i don't think we need to cut this budget this is uh i don't know if you're a civil war buff you remember when uh lincoln appointed grant the commander of the army people were very in a lot of then joe but yeah but they were very critical of lincoln for appointed grant and he says i like grant he fights this is one organization that you can invest in that will fight for you and that's what we're doing thank you joe if you'll just wait a minute yeah oh i'm under interrogation now yes you are okay so you might not remember this but i truly do remember this there was um the the story that diane repeated about colorado the state cutting their budgets i think every organization who's in tourism has used the colorado story i wrote an article to at the standard times when they printed it on a regular basis sorry yeah and justified tourism and the reason tourism needed to be supported and you ripped me apart okay because you said it's ridiculous because you're talking about minimum wage jobs and you went on and on about it

[0:59:25] so i'm glad to see you've changed your mind [Laughter] that your story's a different story and if i write that article again you might be supportive of it and not critical of it in my defense that was in 2010 and i was working for the rick perry campaign and in your article you happen to be a little critical of my buddy rick perry but anyway no i was not it was a well it was because he was cut he was cut he was cutting historical tourism that's what he was doing anyway and so i thank you i remembered your cutting response well don't cut this because it's working thank you joe ma'am i have a question yes please oh joe wait wait wait you're not off the podium yet larry you're on lucy surfaced this idea we start with the 950 and then as events develop new things coming in that you all come to the city council and make a reasonable presentation on it to receive that money we haven't asked you all what your thoughts are about that i think lucy's on a good good uh good trajectory a good vector but i will tell you this one of the values that i see the dmo is under diane's leadership and her staff is building the systems you can't build systems without a consistent flow of revenue and so when you say to me all right we'll give you let's say i don't know 765 but if you want more money you need to come to us and say you need another forty thousand dollars to do this or that the other thing that's not going to build systems that's going to keep the staff small that's going to force them to cut things like madden media it's going to force them to cut things that are getting earned media you know like the best best uh the most western town in texas you know all these all these destinations we're getting in the united states and the united states i'm sorry be clear but we're we're we're going to lose getting those kinds of things if we don't have a consistent budget over the year because you know they have to figure out how many how many slots how many people we

[1:01:28] can hire and then you have to develop those employees that's a system and then those employees that you have to build systems for what those employees do so it's i mean this is i mean it is a hard decision if you're an entrepreneur you know that when you add a new person on payroll or something like that you're making a big commitment and i'm not saying they're going to grow the payroll but i'm saying they have to have something that they can count on um but at the same time let's say you know live nation comes to san angelo texas and says we want to bring you know kid rock you know but we need fifty thousand dollars from this you know at that point we're probably gonna come to the city and say hey uh can we release some hot money for that that particular project does that make sense so build the systems keep it consistent if there's something extraordinary uh an extraordinary opportunity you know hot money is hot money right it doesn't matter whose budget comes from is hot money's hot money so you brought up a couple points budgeting so one of the big issues that exists and we're going to correct it in the in the contract going forward is that you're the dmo's budget uh convention visions bureau budget is january 1 to december 31st the cities is like september 1 to um i mean october 1 through september 30th so there means there's five months left or there was five months left in the year when we started this conversation so that's a lot of time second of all we're not even into january 1 which is the next year back in 2014 when the world of oil and gas blew apart what did you have to do as a city 2014 was a tough year and we all know um city management and staff we know that we're having to reduce about two million dollars that's a big ask uh for our budget and um of course we did what we do to make sure we stay in the black and we trimmed and that's what you're asking me i mean we trimmed our budget and we made it through the year thankfully things did rebound

[1:03:31] but with that said i do understand what you're talking about joe get you well i'll also say this and this is where i look at my own business that in down times in recession i've been in business for man now 20 years now and down times and recessions where you can make some resets and you can take some opportunities while austin and lubbock are sleeping if we're working on it we can we can we can get up to the next level i know they use the colorado example and stuff like that but i'm going to use the texas example while these other cities are sleeping they're worried about their budgets and stuff i mean this is this is hot money and we're hot money is not going down it's not going down if we invest more into what we're doing this unified branding building systems about how we're doing this we can get a leg up on our competition and our competition or other cities and primarily other cities of our type like abilene or wichita falls or tyler get a leg up one last thing i'll say is you all had this discussion about economic development versus dmo i think that shows that our our systems here are working across boundaries we're working across boundaries to make things happen because we know i mean diane always says the economic development starts with the first visit visit i kind of think that's that's probably true and if there's a lot of cool things happening in san angelo texas right then they're going to say well there's more happening there than there is in tyler or there is in wichita falls let's go there let's go see what it's like and then when they get here maybe they'll move their company here you know that kind of thing so i just think there's an opportunity here to put the accelerator down a little bit more and get ahead of our competition thank you thank you i'm glad you brought up abilene so um you when we start taking a look at sales tax revenue and looking at the performance of our city versus the other five cities that we compare which is certainly midland odessa wichita falls abilene and san angelo texas and right now our sales tax revenues are significantly we're performing

[1:05:35] significantly less than those cities abilene is kicking our rear end and they're 90 miles away so if you take a look at the sales tax increase dollars that we've had in this fiscal year that we follow um i think it's less than a million dollars if you take a look at the sales tax revenue of abilene for example i think it's approaching 5 million dollars and so we need to understand what is happening in those in fact wichita falls is performing better than we are as a city right now we need to understand what is going on in those cities that would produce those kinds of increases that were not seen in our performance and it's multi-tiered it's many issues it's a complicated thing but we do look at these cities and we compare ourselves and say what are they doing we're not why are they having those kinds of sales increases and we're not so those things will always come up as questions and challenges and opportunities for us and we need to be able to look at them and say okay what can we do better what are they doing that we're not doing what are the issues we want to be the leader we want to be the best of the cities that we compare to and you can say okay midland odessa the oil and gas industry is driving those increases yeah they are wichita falls is a great example they're a military community they're about the same size as we are and even they are producing better results than we are in sales tax collections so we evaluate that on an ongoing basis and want to know what we need to do better do you believe more funding for dmo would get it done i don't know what's the answer what are the challenges what are the issues and how can we do better as a community because i don't want the city we don't

[1:07:38] want the city to be the city that has the lowest tax increases when we look at comparisons we don't want to be that city we want to be a leading city and revenue producing sales tax dollars so who else is here to speak please come forward hello mayor and city council thank you for allowing me to speak thank you diane the dmo and your staff for all the hard work um i sell real estate and the most important thing is showing how beautiful our city is give your name please i'm mimi clark i'm part of the dmo advisory board and i cannot say how incredible it is to show off such a great product as our city than what the dmo has done it you've all seen images of something very low quality we're all very image driven you're going to scroll right past something that's a very low quality image and what they produce is such high quality high quality of life and it shows off just how exciting our town is and when you talk about what we're not doing compared to abilene and how we can fix that cutting the budget is not the solution to that a million dollar check a million twelve thousand dollar check um i fully support and in return it's going to bring in tourism to support our local businesses ultimately providing jobs increasing the quality of life for our residents and keeping our household taxes down i really don't believe that cutting that is the solution and we need to keep moving forward with this budget of 1 million 12 000 in full support to allow them to fully do their job and to keep enhancing and elevating the city's reputation thank you thank you minnie next good morning mayor council

[1:09:46] city manager my name is shirley spears i'm a single member district five resident i am a board member of the san angelo chamber of commerce i'm also a board member of the fort concho and i am president of the san angelo naacp so i'm here today to speak on a couple of different issues uh in one of my past lives in another city i did some work with the convention and visitors bureau and i heard this morning the discussion and or almost a debate about the difference between convention and business bureau and dmo or destination marketing i hope that what diane has shared with us this morning that we're all very clear on basically it's the same thing but i don't want us to think that all that the convention and visitors bureau slash dmo does is events because you kind of make them into just super hyped event planners and that's not what they do we talked about the economic development impact that dmo has had on this city i think that i've been here now seven years and i have seen the difference between what economic development issues make it and don't make it based on the partnership between the two organizations within the chamber of commerce which is destination marketing now and our economic development when you're trying to get a business to come to the city you're looking at other factors too education so they may have children employees that are coming to the area age age range in terms of who these employees are what it is they'd like to enjoy so it's not just looking at the business that's coming it's looking at the lives that will also be followed by these businesses coming to the area i heard some discussion too about why we're trailing some of these other cities that we compare ourselves to i'd like to point out that in 2017 and in 2019 we tried to have a small event

[1:11:50] here i'll say small compared to some other cities the issue that we experienced is that we don't have the hotel accommodations for large conventions and our conference center space and i know that some of those other cities that you mentioned have just recently including midland have just recently added new hotels that have that kind of space so that may have an impact on what it is that that we're doing in terms of trailing but i want to say also that you have to look at all of the other designations i don't believe in the history in recent times where these awards have been given that san angelo has received the designations it has received those types of designations along allow people to want to come to your city to visit you have retirees who want to come and visit and they decide they may want to return to live so i hope that we will look at the value i don't know any type of investment you can make and get a seven to seven to one i just don't know where that exists in today's marketplace especially having come through covet and i think that a million twelve is reasonable we listen to what diane and her organization and what michael and his organization does on a monthly basis through their reporting we know they do a good job of managing the funds but i think we're just not looking at some of these other organizations they market what they do destination marketing markets the city and it gets people from the region across the country and across the world diane has mentioned all the marketing dollars that are spent for purpose things that are purposeful and so i don't want us to think that some of these other organizations whom some of them sit on her advisory board and are on the chamber board are totally responsible for what they bring in a lot of it again is back to partnership and that is what the destination marketing organization does thank you thank you shirley

[1:13:54] let me just correct my statistics as i just calculated them so abilene sells tax revenue through and we don't have the most current one that was not sent to us yesterday so have it mayor that's all right but but so abilene has picked up 500 i mean 5 million hundred and three at the same time frame that the city of san angelos picked up eight hundred and twenty four thousand two hundred thirty five and muchital falls has picked up three million forty three dollars seven hundred ninety nine so those are numbers to correct what i just said and we don't have the most current ones i have the the memo um kimberly worked on it last night we received numbers yesterday while we were in budget uh meetings um what number would you like me to read off of it we don't need to i mean it's fine i just wanted to calculate those numbers because i brought up numbers and i should be very specific about those numbers when i quote numbers all right let's continue who else would like to speak today okay that concludes this conversation on the destination marketing organization we are not oh mayor let me yeah go ahead give him some comments uh i have perfect sorry i didn't see you right now no i've purposefully uh stayed quiet throughout all of this um tom mentioned um i was able to sit in with diane and walt and a couple of our staff as we met i want to offer my thoughts and make a suggestion which doesn't go along with anything we've heard up here so far and it's one of those suggestions that nobody's going to like um so maybe that might have some merit if nobody agrees with it i don't know um it was my understanding when we left our meeting with walt and diane that 965 was

[1:16:00] good tom stated that and then it all started changing i was not a part of some of those conversations direct conversations after hearing this morning some of the evidence um and support that we have heard i want to i want to toss to the council that what we do it follows along with what lucy said but rather than the 965 let's allocate 975 000 to the dmo and if there are large events that would be totally outside of that budget that they would need help with to follow what lucy said that then they come back to us so again i would propose that we fund them at 9.75 which again we hadn't talked about nobody likes that um i'm sure but that that is what i'm going to reckon i say recommend suggest to the council that we we we let me just lucy said 9 50. she didn't say 9.75 she did no no i'm not saying she's that's the reason i said nobody's gonna nobody said it nobody's gonna like it but that's that's my thought that's a new number and from what i we don't vote on this today right this is just open conversation so we will need direction to bring the budget back to you in september okay we will give you thank you all very much for being here for being a part of the conversation and for all the support that you're giving diane and the dmo we can take a break it is 9 47 we'll come back at 10 a.m this meeting is called back to order 10 16 16 minutes late thank you for being patient with us and we're going to move on tom go ahead you're on so to provide direction on the topic we've just had quite a bit of discussion over mayor council i'd like to propose the following that we stick with the 950 000 budget

[1:18:02] we take the four key benchmarks of total direct travel spending local tax receipts dmo bookings and savings per household we look at those quarterly if they achieve those quarterly they get an extra fifteen thousand that if they hit all four of those throughout the year is the sixty two thousand dollar difference between the million twelve and the nine fifty they have a way to performancely get that back okay everybody get that do we make a motion second direction just direction so and i'm going to give direction that we need to include art in common places for funding as well as a water lily collection with specific focus on wayfinding for the lilly collection but the art and commonplaces if we had not had their fundraising efforts all that they have done to put art out in this community it would have dynamically changed this community and they do it with no salaries they raise all the money and they've had a big impact on this city so i believe they need to be considered what amount would you like 25. okay kids in beds with our art non-common places she's she is she does yes hearing she does they do they do i made sure in conversation earlier okay to make sure but i think they've added tremendous and i'm so proud of what we have all right with that go ahead we can stipulate in the contract that they qualify as long as they're using it for eligible expenses right it has to be yeah they have to okay and on um the lily garden are you wanting an exact amount or do you want us to work with carl and bring that back on an amount for that oh i think you just need to budget for 25 000 right now and then um because it's going to take a while to pull all that together so i think if you just budget for 25 right now and um and it might be something that we say we need way finding to better direct customers it's

[1:20:04] been a big topic of conversation for a long time right so yes um let me just finish this comment and then i'll let you so to me and whether you say and we could do this instead of saying the international water league collection what we say is 25 thousand dollars for gateway signage for many of the possibly marketing that we have because that is way finding is part of the hot tax money now tommy um wayfinding is if if staff i i have a little information on the way finding that is really old information that the development corporation did a way finding study and it's probably been 10 15 years and not 15 but with that it's been years it's been anyway i can give you a little more information away from this conversation thank you yeah but honestly way finding in the whole downtown area is is needed that whole process thank you harry because i think that's correct because when you have a business in downtown the questions are always where's this how do i get there where do i find that there's no way finding to tell people about these things that we're promoting and marketing we need to do a much better job okay with that ma'am oh yes please wonder if there's one other step we need to take in synchronizing the two budgets is there anything we need to do from our end no with that direction we'll bring back the entire budget and through an ordinance and two meetings in september for first and second reading yeah so we'll this won't be the end it might make the budget i would say a little wonky looking if if they have or not that wouldn't do it wouldn't affect our budget would you no because their budget starts january 1. so it's their budget totally separate than ours so there's no did i misunderstand your question larry

[1:22:07] yeah i just wanted to know if the city needed to do anything or what emphasis do we need to put on dmo to make that happen well that's what he's talking about we changed the due date of their budget to city council to september 15th a while back because they're they're you know halfway through a year and they're already trying to create a budget for next year so with their timing of their fiscal years the reason that we did that but there's no reason we can't push it back to june we have to because we can't be talking about a fiscal year that's different than ours and funding etc it doesn't match up no problem we'll make that part of our agreement okay i don't even know where i'm at right now where am i at i should have known i see carl sitting there so carl brent you're on whoever's on come forward and this is on the municipal pull presentation good morning mayor daniel city council so yes we're going to talk about the pool um so what we're going to cover is recent improvements to the pool which you guys approved of what we have added since opening this year a strategic plan for increasing revenue and possible options for long-term improvements at the location of the pool a little bit of the history on the past couple years we have new plaster uh slides have been refurbished which you guys approved in 2021 and the new filtration system for 2022. so i wanted to make sure that thank you for that because it the whole pool looks beautiful it's working very well compared to the way it used to and um we've been making sure that we take care of the filtration system and everything on top as well so keep it looking that way for as long as possible seems like you've booked a lot of parties since you've opened back up man we were once we did open it back up and we released the dates for the parties that we had available we filled up in an hour and a half there was literally a

[1:24:09] line we went out our door to the street of chadburn so people love that pool they showed that thank you so the pool currently is a beach entry pool we have two slides water features in the pool on the beach entry and water volleyball net and a water basketball go which we've added in the past couple years uh steps that we put in progress because we did had to open late and everything like that and we do not have the number of lifeguards that we need to maintain the pool open to the way it was in 2019 and prior that's a national issue getting lifeguards and anyone else to work it seems like but um we opened up for private rentals which we were able to do with the number of guards that we have so in the mornings we allowed camps to come in and reserve that for private rentals so it brought in a little more revenue instead of just keeping the pool idle every morning and we were able to do that with a number of light guards like i said um adding after season water volleyball league is what we're looking at so the pool officially closed to the public on september 5th of this year so we will actually add an adult league after that for water volleyball since it's going to be still warm so we're looking at doing that try to get a little bit more revenue in there for the pull uh savings and maintenance cost due to upgraded filtration system which you guys approved last year interactive games during the day so we've been doing that this year trying to get how much savings did we get um none yet but we will so okay so i just thought with the upgraded filtration system we had a projection on what that might save us for next year so you want it for next year well no i just because it's part of the slide just it says savings so i just thought you might have a number okay so it was for the maintenance cost it was like 38 000 and what we're projected next year i think is 15 000. so the interactive games that we've been doing our staff has been going over and doing different things with the kids that are in there hula hoop competitions hawaii themed events and we're given just a little pass so they can come in with their parents the next day next time they want

[1:26:11] to come back to the pool so it's been a pretty good hit but our main goal is to just get parents to take pictures of their kids doing these events and put them out there for free advertising for us steps in progress private rentals of the on the weekend mornings and oh i'm sorry go ahead to the next one we already did that so what we want to get back to for future is swim lessons which is our number one priority in terms of service or it should be and we have not been able to do swim lessons for the past couple years due to not having enough staff available to do it so we want to get enough staff on board to do that obviously we want to find someone willing to purchase the naming rights because we have not had that for the past few years add a semi-private package to include food games and prizes for everybody so when they come and rent the canopies that we currently rent out we want to put it together so that they have okay you get this pizza or this many burgers or whatever and increase that fee we want to do water exercise classes such as aerobics or something like that in the morning so people are in the water because we used to do lap swimming when we had the guards to do it and it was not utilized as much as it should have been some people who said they used to do lap swimming there said that when we remodeled the pool that it created a situation where lap swimming was not really you couldn't really do that when we remodeled the pool from back in 2012 yes so but there is there are still four lanes there so it's not meant for a huge number of people but it's not gonna turn around a lot more yes ma'am i want to try to do the water volleyball leagues which i mentioned and these are all planned for 2023 season so so talk about the water volleyball leagues what for revenue what would you project on that it depends on how many teams we get to sign up but we're hoping to get 10 and it's 190 per team which is what's on the uh the fee schedule so we would go with that and then they only play for 45 minutes some

[1:28:13] of the games could be over in 30 minutes so we could just keep him going and get him in and get him out but it would not be open to the public for that it would just be the people that paid to enter the league so it'd be two nights a week so it wouldn't be a huge amount of revenue but it'd be something else that we could use the pool for and bring in just a little bit so but that would all depend on the number of teams that we can get have you done those before not in the water at the pool we've we've put the net up that we have and used it and had tournaments and things like that but we've not done a league in the in the water long-term goals uh possible possibilities uh ad tables um like the umbrella is right there so some picnic tables because our pool doesn't really have enough room for cabanas or anything like that and we could rent those out like on a three hour basis and charge a fee for 12 to three and then another fee from three to six after our staff go over and clean it real real quick is that tennis court the tennis court that's next to the pool is that utilized uh no ma'am it is not you oh how do we make that a part of the pool area and find a way to use that as an income producing piece of land since it does nothing for us now and i looked at basketball volleyball soccer multiple multiple purpose courts play equipment extras expanding the pool grounds moving that over increasing the size of the gate and adding it for an optional rental fee so the people that rent the fee for the party want that as well then it would be a little bit more of an increase which we'll bring back to you the last one about adding the water sides and larger park to really draw in more people you really need they're going to have to offer more elements for different age groups and so you're going to have a capital expense to do that but really the two slides are geared more toward younger children so you know if you're going to draw on a crowd you need bigger slides and you'd have to expand over there well it's dead property right now it's just fenced off and no one's using it and what is on that now the bocce ball the pickleball pickleball did you go ahead and convert it to pickleball yes that

[1:30:15] was the last request we had so that's what it's used for but ideally it was always intended for use of expansion of the pool it's been a hot summer that pool's been really important and i see it as an asset that needs to have a much broader perspective to it to add more back to the quality of life here we don't have a water park i'm constantly hearing from people we need a water park we need a water park why don't we have a water park so we need to figure out how we can use what we have broaden it and make it more in a smaller way obviously a water park facility for our citizens and i it's important lucy i just want to make a comment you've been hearing about the water park i've been hearing about a splash pad oh right now right now that will be talked about yeah uh next week so that'll be talked about next week but meanwhile know if you saw the article on the splash pad in kansas how many people died how many were infected because of a bad filtration system that went bad seven people died i don't know how many were infected so it's okay continue so the pool opened in 2013 it was profitable for 2013 14 and 15 since then it has not been profitable making money um so especially the last couple years so 20 fiscally or 20 when uh coveted hit obviously just like so many other areas uh was majorly affected 21 we did not get yeah i think we're all tired of talking about coven and the impact we got it okay 21 we did not get the number of lifeguards that we needed that's why the revenue was so low down there we couldn't offer all the activities and then this year obviously we opened late but uh we were we are doing what we can and open the hours that we can to and the parties that we can with the number of lifeguards that we have which currently i have eleven and next week i go down to eight so that's not near

[1:32:18] enough in a normal year you would have how many lifeguards 28. well i noticed on the human resource uh cat i had brian print send me the areas of where we have the biggest vacancies and there were two that were really eye-opening one was civic events which was down 28 people and lifeguards which was down 17 people and i'm not sure brian what that date of those statistics were that you gave me but those two were almost all the other categories and openings were one person maybe two people but mostly it was a one-person opening those two areas stuck out like a sore thumb that was big um so for 23 uh we are looking to bring in revenue of 140 000 which has been about our average uh since 16 17 18 19 that we looked at and then personnel the cost of lifeguards and our one full-time person that has paid out of that account is 104.99 9.99 and o m is 55 so we will be requesting a subsidy of about 30 000 but we do have a plan to bring that down a little bit and that will be us coming back to increase uh the rental fees which is probably overdue yes ma'am no i'm just shifted so the current fees are 250 for uh two hours for up to 100 people in the pool um the cost of service was 332 for the two hours and then the proposed fee that we would be looking to requesting to go to would be 325 for two hours up to 100 people and then of course if you add more people it would go up the reason that that goes up the 150 is because basically whether you have 20 people in the pool or you have 100 people in the pool you have to have the four lifeguards there they have an action plan the emergency action plan that they do if they do three quick blasts of that whistle everyone comes to figure out

[1:34:20] what's going on and then they disperse and they they take care of their duties one of them calling one of them if someone has a head injury there's two people automatically in the water after they get the backboard there and they're taking care of that individual so whether it is the 20 or the 100 that we need the for minimum it just would seem that if if that's the only expense that the overhead and the amount of staff for 49 people would be sig different i understand the lifeguard versus a hundred people i can't understand why you think it would seem that way but it actually isn't because they need that four people just in case there's an emergency there so sometimes we go down to three if there's like 20 but we still have the manager there so that he who is a certified lifeguard as well so we're still staying at the four so if something were to happen god forbid then yes we would have the people there to cover it that have the expertise and the training to cover it so that's why we do that if you go back to the revenue side i mean the one more slide back there i would love to see the total revenue go up to 160 000 and i don't mean to say put that in your budget i want to go you at 160 000 and i want you to figure out if you could again this is going to be the budget that we discuss but i really want us to reach higher go for more because i think it's a major asset and something that is of great need and adds a lot of quality of life to our citizens and and that might mean that you have to come back and say to us we have some capital needs if you want me to get to 160 000 what are the capital needs that you might have to get there i think that was well stated we can do that i do not believe they can get to that goal unless there are some major capital investments put into that pool meaning additional slides and pools to where you can draw in other people but

[1:36:24] we'd love to come up with that concept and bring some just thoughts back to you and then if you all like those thoughts then those are things we can go out and actually get design plans on and figure out ways that we might go about funding those i just think it's a huge asset and i'd like to see us do that we might not be able to address all those needs but we can prioritize them and see where it takes us if we have another hot summer like this year oh my gosh tommy rick something was said that triggered a question in my mind how many municipalities that do have swimming pools do not have to subsidize from their general fund their their their pools yeah and i don't want to mislead anyone i mean you can look at any of the major ones including the the uh water park style ones in abilene and big springs and both of those are heavily subsidized so they're gonna get the exact numbers i looked at big spring in particular and it was a couple hundred thousand dollars it's a big water park it's not a swimming pool right but it should draw in more and more people because of the fact that i don't think the city operates that totally it's there was a private company that they brought in to develop it i thought i think it's a city park and the lifeguards are provided by the ymca okay so that they do have a partnership all i'm saying is i think your goal is admirable we need to look at other things that we can bring in and but not to mislead anyone don't think that city pools are most likely going to be subsidized at some level but trying to buy that down as the mayor said would be our goal as an asset and if we have to spend money to to get to 160 it's an asset and it is a quality of life issue for so many people here in the city so if these um fees are are if we're directed to include these fees in the budget ordinance that will get them six thousand seven hundred fifty dollars closer i think we should incorporate those so start with that and again we're not putting that as your budget number

[1:38:28] for revenue so but we do ask i think with a lot of support let's make that thing if it costs us some money it probably will it'll be a better asset yes ma'am i understand it also just want to make sure that i pointed out that that 140 projected for next year is if we go back to a larger staff for lifeguards if we have to limit it obviously we're not going to that's all those those things will happen um hopefully you know there was announcement yesterday and another announcement today that inflation has started to go down so um i think we'll see some changes but we get it if you don't have staff you can't even do the 140. so is it but yes lucy right just for my own knowing when do you close the pool september 5th so we will close it during the week on september i'm sorry august the 16th will be the last day that's open during the weekdays we were still we're getting ready to offer and open up to parties from 6 30 to 8 30 because we'll obviously have some guards uh we do go down to eight seven or eight next week but this school people going back yeah so as soon as they go back to school then we close it during the week but we're open on the weekends through september 5th which is that monday thank you for the questions for brent okay thank you okay now we move into the general fund and you're on thank you mayor tina dierski director of finance we're going to go through our general fund workshop we'll talk about revenues expenditures and other considerations that have been given to us from

[1:40:29] departments i first want to remind mainly for the public sake that there are three taxing entities in the city the school district i need to talk louder i'm sorry my voice is a little hoarse um the city the county and the school direct district all have a property tax rate and of course the appraisal district sets valuations in conjunction with those rights 14 of our property tax base is commercial and 71 percent is residential the remaining 15 is personal property and how does that compare to some of our other cities we don't have that information available it was dramatic i did i did look at uh this is a couple of years back i did take a look at that those numbers are closer to 60 40 split 60 residential 40 commercials so as you can tell we're way off of what we should be yeah yeah and we need our commercial base to grow because that does take us some of the burden off of our residential taxpayers so it is helpful valuations came in certified this year at 6.9 billion dollars which is a 23.5 increase from the previous year a new property added to the tax rolls this year was almost 74 million dollars and the value of one penny this year is 667 thousand dollars how's that compared to last year it do you have that number kimberly i think i can't really look that up 540 000. so property tax rate because of uh

[1:42:34] senate bill 2 we have been capped out at the three and a half percent increase this year and we will be lowering the tax rate 3.8 cents i thought there was a three year average on that you could go back in and yeah so yes what you're presenting is a one year number it's the it's the one year number plus the incremental that we can go back and collect as well again so when you look at property tax increases and you look at that 3.5 percent are we giving back on a three-year average or are we using the one-year number to calculate that 3.5 percent we're using the numbers that are given to us by the appraisal district they do the tax worksheet for us and we are using the three and a half percent increase for the current year as well as the i think it was the unused increment from the last two years okay so it is the rolling average if you wish ma'am that's correct so sales tax eight and a quarter percent that folks pay on their sales tax is um of course split out between the state the city the development corporation in tom greene county the city collecting one percent of that uh sales tax rate sales tax in august was up seven percent compared to the same month in the last year of course you know that's sales that were made in the month of june um year-to-date collections are over the prior year by three and a half percent and we are over our revenue budget by 1.8 million dollars here today what is it over last year and is that inclusive of the sales tax information that you got yesterday yes ma'am we did update we don't have that information late yesterday afternoon yes ma'am we were in meetings all day and it didn't post until about 10 30 a.m so i have it on my phone now we worked on it last night i didn't see it on my phone today and what was that tv no we haven't sent it out yet

[1:44:37] 7.03 increase what was that your question oh the revenue budget that you said you had over budget for revenue by 1.8 million 1.8 sales tax over year over year is what 694 000 which kind of goes back to what i was saying comparing ourselves to wichita falls and abilene in terms of increases now we're a much better quality city okay yes we are okay and so this chart um depicts what we're uh what our trend line is over the last several years uh we're projecting fiscal year 22 year end on this slide um at just over 22 million dollars we are proposing a budget for fy23 of 5 less than what we expect to collect in the current year and the year to date is repeat that number 3.1 percent up yes 3.51 i believe we'll move on to general fund revenues so we're projecting property tax up 5.7 million dollars sales tax up 725 thousand dollars alcohol and bingo tax is staying pretty steady so we're not making much change there um franchise tax is down seventy three thousand dollars and that's mostly due to television franchise fees as people move away from cable tv to more streaming services charges for services is down almost three hundred thousand dollars sixty seven thousand of that is related to fines and fees for municipal court and 165 000 dollars of that is due to decreased ambulance run through the fire department and then other sources go back to charges for services it's down 257 000

[1:46:41] from the previous year budget or actual charge budget actual budgets their budgeting what's that actual i can give you a year to date that's just one thing we're 90 you know or 80 through the budget so we need an actual year today for just for the ambulance runs for the fire department their revenue is at 65 percent of the budget or 83 through the year but they're um they run their payments through a billing service and so it does lag a month or two behind sometimes every year right you're still year-to-year but by year end we'll collect we'll know what our total collections are and then go through the municipal court numbers again uh they are they're projecting 67 000 decrease to their revenue budget much better performance than last year's actual municipal court they are currently 50 let me see municipal court 63 percent collected at 83 percent of the year and last year we'll pull up the year end and look at that real quick 2.462 million was what they collected and their budget 2 171 000 was actuals last year and that warrant

[1:48:44] warrant roundup was the first one we've done and it's been it's been a while actually the the one that did this recently uh actually brought in an additional hundred thousand dollars in what was projected so this is something that we're going to be doing on a quarterly basis rather than on a once a year sometimes not even in a year so uh municipal court is aware that uh they will be doing that on a quarterly basis so i think those those numbers really may be going up as well so you still think that's a good number i but um as far as projections and what we've done as far as the initial work uh this information came in a little bit later we can definitely do a little bit of projection to maybe add to that to that revenue but i just wouldn't venture to guess as far as what if if the future uh warrant roundups how much more they'd bring in i'd have to kind of talk to a municipal court and see how we can how we can structure that i'm just glad they're doing the warranty okay continue were you on there apparently if tom thompson said i was it must be surprised he didn't turn me in for a reward okay and then other sources and that's up uh 200 000 due to our projections for interest income that was down last year yes drastically yes okay so moving on to general fund expenditures for public safety we're seeing a 700 000 increase that is mostly due to the police department steps and loyalty pay uh increased it by two hundred thousand dollars and um moving the fire department's safer grant into the general fund uh since the grant has now gone away was about 400 000 of that the 697 yeah yes ma'am public works increased by almost 190 000

[1:50:49] most of that is in engineering i think they implemented some changes for certification pay for the for the professional engineers and so a lot of it is from that look at the next one here where is the category equipment replacement it will be on the next slide transfers out so public works also increased due to traffic certification pay of about thirty five thousand dollars and an increase for street and bridge um for the move to to eliminate grade eleven that cost forty two thousand dollars to that group public services um there was an increase in part explain that grade 11 because yes so people understand yes ma'am we talked about a little bit at the last workshop i believe um working with daniel and brian kendrick our hr director to eliminate grade 11 which was a pay of ten dollars and eight ten about ten dollars and eighty cents um so that now our lowest paid uh pay level is twelve dollars and two cents so the cost to do that and to make move those folks up to twelve dollars and two cents um impacted some of our funds how did you come up with the two cents no brian no brian that was rhetoric okay twelve dollars and two cents i've never known someone to go interview for a job and the quote be you're going to be paid 12 and 2 cents not 12 so just wondered where the we just want our numbers to be exact and not vague that's that's where the grade started so anyway okay um public services there was an increase mostly due to the sixty five thousand dollars for a reorg that introduced uh steps in the parks department like creating a crew a crew leader supervisors that kind of a thing so that there's room for growth and promotion within the department slower on that sure because

[1:52:52] we've not talked about this before okay say it again okay um sixty five thousand dollars um to uh implement i guess it was a crew and a crew leader and supervisors um to create growth and promotion within that department so there's room for people to move up parks so okay well i mean i'm just yeah i'm fine i'm just it's i just wonder if when we start talking about employees there's many things in here that are component parts of the total and we kind of miss those because they're in separate little areas of conversation so one is eliminating um the um what do you call the level 11 11 grade 11. so that's in this piece of it and now we're talking about um services of which again we're addressing the needs for increased wages and staffing which just seems like that all ought to be in one package of an overview of human resources all of these things have already been approved during the current fiscal year and so they they're already in the budget the things that we're talking about right now um so they're already yes and no i mean daniel has the right to manage things such as elimination of 11. 11. but that wasn't budgeted was it necessary yes was it needed yes but was it budgeted no it was budgeted

[1:54:55] before it was implemented we used savings from other departments to be able to do that because we weren't able to hire people correct yeah okay yes ma'am development services they just had a few increases here and there some for loyalty pay and some for credit card increases in planning and development services neighborhood and family services most of that increase is due to we've included an fte for the animal shelter for an admin assistant out there so that's most of that increase for them health and government those increases are strictly due to loyalty pay administration uh there's an increase in of 200 government line yes health and government we're both loyal to pay yes ma'am um administration uh most of that is due to an increase of 250 000 that will be transferring out to the property casualty fund uh council will recall that a couple months back we brought a budget amendment of 400 thousand dollars that we transferred from the workers comp fund as a one-time fix to get us through this year and so now we're going to plan for those additional and higher claims within the budget process okay the total that we're increasing uh to go to that fund is 491 thousand city-wide but 250 of it's in general fund and then 90 and then 250 in the general fund that's all general fund i'm sorry we increased it okay sorry good thing i have kimberly um and the contract with the appraisal district is the other part of that increase it increased by 66 000 this year that's by contract yes ma'am and then the last change is for storm water and we have broken out transfers out i mean for storm water i saw storm water there this total transfers out we broke out into more detail so you could see where

[1:56:57] we transfer out from the general fund to support other funds so there's a slight decrease for a fair amount cemetery is that there he increased his revenue budget so not as much support as needed from the general fund um the same the same is true for fort concho yeah next page please pardon we're not seeing a transfer page yeah our thing says ours says transfer's out i'm reading it i'm sorry you're right you're right yeah technical glitch yeah we got it we're good now she's slow okay okay so nutrition increased just slightly of almost five thousand dollars equipment replacement we're increasing by 40 000 um to help support ambulance purchases capital improvement we transfer out 250 000 every year to fund 502 which is our capital fund and that is built up over two or three years so that they can purchase fire trucks will we talk re-discuss some of those things as we go through the police and the fire we will we will have a slide for police and for fire we can talk about it whenever you'd like okay um texas bank sports complex we transfer out almost 740 000 to support that fund how do we get more revenue there that would be a question for carl or brent but i don't know if they're still here a lot of money i know it's a well-used facility that is not the question we know it's an important facility but when you're looking at funding it by 739 thousand dollars one would like to look at the opportunity for um either revenue increases or decrease in expenses bulk of that is is maintenance with water and those kind of things so yes tournaments those kind of things marketing whether the cvb markets that helps bring those in brenton them do some i think in the last year y'all gave him some some marketing

[1:59:00] leeway and i think you've seen a turnaround in the number of tournaments that were canceling versus what he's had brought on this past year so hopefully he and john henry are both now attending in the what's the group they partner with taft to try and bring those state tournaments here he's brought some pretty impressive ones just for the moment so this next year hopefully we'll continue to see that to grow well it looks like in the blue book which is really good it says total revenues are at yeah oh sorry i'm in 2021. let me get a different blue book so go ahead so let's so tell me where we're at this year on revenue uh we as of the end of july we're 83 through the year and their revenue has been realized at 79 percent so will we make that budget we'll pick back up in the fall with some of our own programs so yes i'm confident what opportunities do you see carl for the texas bank sports complex can you hear me what opportunities do you see for the sports complex for bringing in more revenue a few more tournaments perhaps coming forward i'm just looking at a 739 thousand dollar general fund for operation of that facility so the question mark is what are the opportunities and how do we start to decrease the amount of money required from the general fund to take care of the texas bank sports complex if you had started i might also add when we built the complex one of the main points which we don't ever have when we have this discussion is when he brings those tournaments the amount of people that puts heads in beds

[2:01:02] in this city and the amount of sales tax we bring in from them eating out and all those kind of things so his never gets the comparison of showing i had this many tournaments and yes we're subsidizing but by this but here's what it brought in in the big picture that's the one thing we don't talk about real often so go ahead brandt if there's other stuff yes definitely more tournaments so this year we were able to get um national championship sports to come to san angelo unfortunately they canceled twice on us so far so i don't have confidence that they're coming back this fall and we were why did they cancel they went to other surrounding areas in west texas and didn't come here so we also were able to get a tournament called son of gods they actually come back next this month here in about a week next weekend i believe and they have a huge following so they still buy you still play by you triple sa rules but um it's good because that guy he's actually from the dallas area and this will be the second time he's here this year we're trying to get him to agree to come back again in the fall as well which we're almost to the fall but he has a huge amount of teams that follow him so last time he was here we had about 78 this time we're projecting have hopefully around 100 so for that's out-of-town teams so we're working on it trying to get more people trying to get more leagues unfortunately this year the number of teams that traveled to go dropped significantly and that wasn't just us that was across the united states so the fuel costs and other things like that i know council gave you some funding to assist with marketing some of that are you still okay with that or is that something you need to come visit with them about yes sir we were supposed to come bring in at least five 000 and think we brought in like 28 so far back to that account is that in a special event sign yes it said we brought in 25 251 as of july yes and then last year was 37 i think yes i don't have last year with me right you're doing okay there

[2:03:03] we can pull it up though let's keep working on it that's a big hole so the difference between that the 5 000 big hole we need to sort of start diminishing that transfer and just let us know what we can do to help your efforts myself and my staff are always working on trying to get more out there so tom did you have a question or comment call me making a smart alec call man okay you're online i don't want to lose it it was like we could shuttle them to the pool we could we could we could find the life card yes i didn't laugh mayor thanks for catching me on that that's why we have microphones okay keep going thanks brent thank you the transfer for debt service is related to a debt issue where ambulance revenue helps support the debt issue for the prior training center fort concho i mentioned intergovernmental is where we track all of our federal and state grants that is going our general hey wait back up i think bob's here right or did he leave already getting exhausted from us come on up here bob whatever makes you comfortable you're so tall i'm not sure if you stand you can talk into that microphone good morning mayor and council what can i do for you talk to us about fort concho what would you like to hear well can you tell us thank you i'm not sure we have that much time if we're talking budget the fort is in good solid financial shape per the city requirements i do believe we have the 90 day reserve fund we should make budget on revenue we will be under for this fiscal year in expenses

[2:05:05] thanks the mayor and council and insurance money we are in the tail end of several major renovation projects the last one on 145 columns that we didn't get on the first contract they are they have started and as you know if you've driven by the site uh barracks and mess halls three and four all privately funded are underway um of course the big challenge is the place is old and historic right yes so that would be old and like the director it's old and it needs constant feeding and care tom and harry would you like to add i said we have a new but i think it's easier to keep something in top shape once you get there and i'll be honest the previous 10 to 15 years were not good but we are at a point where we now have a jewel in jewel condition and it'll be up to us to keep it that way we face the same challenges as the ever city departments and divisions and staffing although i have every hope that within the next 30 to 60 days we will be fully staffed for the first time in three years and it's just the marketplace it's not something we individually have any control over but hr has done some good service on elevating entry level salaries and i think that will help and i think the future is bright you ready for christmas no i need every day and i'll see you on friday 3 p.m local time december 2. perfect questions for bob from anyone keep it going it's a jewel we thank you for your support i'm glad you waited all day long for for that now you may go to intergovernmental okay so uh general fund support for the intergovernmental fund is increasing this year because we lost the grant that we were receiving from

[2:07:08] the state for emergency management that was about sixty thousand dollars um and we do split the cost of emergency management with the county so it wasn't quite as impactful as it could have been but um and then storm water the hundred and thirty five thousand we train what's totally what's in is that totally 399 is what funds the ems oh no ma'am okay so discuss that a little better let's see i think most of us don't know what intergovernmental totally means it's all of the different grants that we receive from state and federal government and i can read you out a few of them to give you an idea of what we're talking about just read the number one one of the biggest ones so we know uh cops grant safer grant the american rescue plan act rapid re-housing chadburn street grant the airport ramp grant so we received some grant money for riverbank stabilization which where are we on riverbank stabilization so the hot spots that we had talked about before they have done on the other their work alice putting out for a design on the for the whole perimeter from johnson dam all the way to the bell street because there's issues all along there will have to be addressed the reason we have to go up and have it designed is because you have to have a lomar and a clomar and whether you change the elevation and whether you cut the bank there's all these rules so that he has been working with shane kelton and their group and the problem was finding someone who was willing to do it and so they finally identified someone with freezing nickels that they're working with and you're going to be seeing that and so it's going to come back to you and uh i'll tell you in the long run you're going to need to look at funding for some things there my concern is where they have it for all kinds of reasons but that we identify them and then by the time we get to them they've

[2:09:10] continued to deteriorate to the point that total collapse or is required i just how do we get ahead of it so we don't have a total collapse you do this full design and you fund a a bank stabilization for that distance all the way from johnson dam to bell which is going to be basically what we did on the rest of the river when we did all of that in this case you won't be doing as many fancy areas so a lot of it will be more of the rip-rap but because of the way the laws are written the lomar clomar has to do with whether you change the level of the river or not whether it's up or whether it's down and we're required to do that so it becomes quite complicated but the way to get ahead of it is to do it all now we can do it in chunks you know phase one that we've told them on the design is the first part from johnson dam basically to back behind the funeral home that first chunk and then take the next chunk and the next but that's why we're having we're asking for the design at this point to be done for the full distance where you can just keep going versus having to stop and then go back and do all that over again because the design won't change not good news but the truth well i mean we just can't afford to let them totally collapse like they have i mean that when we hit those hot spots and they've there's ones where there's a channel going in that they're going to reconstruct those channels but um you're right it continues to deteriorate it will not stop until we do the entire distance and you'll just continue to have one after another river is one of our big assets any other questions from intergovernmental from anyone okay let's move on to storm water or there might not be that is the money we transfer out to the storm water fund to cover the cost of mowing the rights of waste so let's talk through the included the i.t cyber security position animal services which you talked about right

[2:11:14] and the property casual so the only one we didn't talk about earlier was the i.t cyber security but i talked to that because we know it's important michael you want to talk it is important it is important mayor bucky's on his way good good morning council my name is bucky hasty i'm the it director for the city of san angelo you all know that the need to focus on cyber security has been increasing exponentially over the last few years you all got an email from me yesterday probably about an incident that occurred that we had to react fast to and right now the dudes are really being shared between uh myself and my network engineer and another systems analyst that i have but um just to give you a couple stats there are up to 30 targeted attacks per day on our firewalk from an outside source and that doesn't sound like a lot but that's 30 times somebody is singling the city of san angelo's hardware out that's over there in city hall and they're trying to trying to compromise our network our email security appliance it processes six to seven thousand emails per day a thousand of those i think are tommy spammel that you get every day bucky's keeping all the spam off my but all of our users are always targeted for fishing and social engineering schemes i.t needs a position whose sole focus is to monitor and evaluate these threats so they can be anticipated and prevented how many again per day emails are the hitting the firewall a firewall 30 attacks directed at our firewall okay and so that position is funded in this budget right so you've got the staff to do that okay

[2:13:20] so uh this is a summary of the general fund we i asked earlier about uh the issue about equipment and so it's coming up on a slide well why aren't we doing it before we do the total revenue expenditure yeah this is just a summary and then we'll go on to marginal revenue later after we talk about the slides this is just showing you that you have 4.3 million dollars in marginal revenue no that's my issue i want to know what our needs are in terms of equipment that's that's the next slide okay not the next slide sorry the next slide is a chart but it will be right after these slides um this is just showing the fy 23 budget um showing the amounts uh property taxes at 50 percent of our revenue budget now and with sales tax at 25 uh public safety is 53 of the expenditure budget with public works the next heist at 12 that does include the marginal revenue and a separate function so when marginal revenue is directed it will move of course into these other percentages as we budget for it and the way that we're directed to budget well here's my concern tell me whichever slide it is but in there our conversations that we had on the budget the one number you threw out at me was that there was 500 there were there was a 500 000 dollar need or request for equipment replacement i don't know if it had to come from somewhere i don't know if that was an exact amount um but that would be 4.99 it's still patrick could probably give us a better idea of what the needs are there and we do have a slide for that too so these are the requests from the public works department the additional equipment replacement of course and then a grant administrator position for grant writing well okay so is this part of that

[2:15:24] additional 500 000 that you brought up that was needed to be financed and it's not included in the budget where is that i would have to ask shane and patrick what amount they requested because i don't specifically know that it's exactly 500 000. it isn't exactly it's just the number you threw out in the meeting so i'm just using your number okay because we do have an equipment replacement budget that's been integrated in the budget itself so this is an additional amount the mayor's talking about so i want to make sure that we're clear on that yes we're already transferring uh 1.54 million to equipment replacement in the current budget so anything else would be above and beyond that well i know mr kramer does a spreadsheet on all the equipment we have the expected lifetime on it and the approximate year that that equipment would need to be replaced does our current budget take into consideration all the needs based off of his projections in terms of equipment because again i would have never even said anything except you guys threw out to me there was 500 000 that was not included in this budget that would not would need to be addressed in terms of additional needs so that's the reason i'm asking the question because i don't want to know in november all of a sudden you guys come and say well we're going to need 500 000 worth of more equipment that we didn't get in our budget i just want to make sure because you have two things you have people we need and equipment we need and we do have some amount available in our projections that we'll share with you later on in the discussion that could be available for equipment replacement but i'll let shane talk to what the needs are yes ma'am when we look at when we look at the needs across the organization as a whole and when we and we look at across uh and this is general fund because we actually you know water fund supports waterfront stormwater funds for stormwater funds so but as we look at this i mean we're talking a lot of uh not necessarily fire trucks but general fire admin we're looking at all the all the

[2:17:26] for pd we're looking at public works uh in all of those areas and so um if if we look at where we are on our equipment replacement schedule uh over all of those um we're way past what our ideal would be on replacement of a lot of those and so but we work the reason i'm asking the question and so um on our ideal schedule and so but we work very diligently every year year after year going through that and of course you know we we do the equipment leasing things like that when when the markets are favorable for us to do those type things we enter into those type of agreements and that's helped us carry us a lot uh moving forward but as we look at this and especially the past you know the past two years have just been uh crazy with the percent increases on uh prices of equipment availability of equipment those type things but as we're looking at it moving forward we we did ask just for basically a 30 increase again just to help which is about 458 000 kind of where we are existing now uh but again just to help us keep up with inflation was basically in our budget numbers that we're looking at today no no shane is that all in the general fund yes okay there is not that amount is not in the current budget see that's why we have to talk about it if he's saying because we have again two things we have needs for people and we have needs for equipment you can hire people but if we don't have the equipment that they need to get the job done then that's a problem we've got to have both we've got to have the people and the equipment and if you have needs for 458 000 worth of equipment that has already kind of expired in terms of its useful life how do we do the job yes ma'am again we we have been looking at other

[2:19:28] creative ways to again manage that and manage the budget with when with what we have and we also look at at the equipment and as we take stuff as we remove equipment from our from our fleet you know we look at reassigning equipment if we have equipment that is in better shape out of the water fund that can be transferred back over into something into the general fund because it's still um it's it has more it's in better shape than what we're what we have in this fund then then we will move it bad and the others worse yes ma'am in general terms but but we work through that and and so we we manage those as well uh again we've seen some very significant increases in the cost of of of all vehicles whether that's police fire ambulance all those we've seen some significant increases and of course as we as we get those increases and we see those of course it diminishes our buying power with what we have existing and so again our request going into this year was just asking for an increase in that line item so we can keep up with the inflationary costs that we're seeing across the industry the reason i ask and the reason it's a big thing for me to do right now today is we have marginal increase in dollar we have marginal dollars at four million seven is that right or three i think or three so if we have marginal dollars available for four million three but we have a 458 thousand dollar need for equipment that is not in this budget we need to get it in this budget mayor i have a couple of suggestions and we do have almost 200 thousand dollars left that hasn't been allocated in our projections so we could add that into the budget we could also use a one-time funding source to shore up the difference such as a regular budget arpa funds or one budget that's where it belongs so we'll get to that after we go through the rest of our considerations i just want to make sure we understand we have a 458 thousand dollar need for equipment yes that is past its life

[2:21:30] expanded expectancy and you can't do the job we need you to do or your staff to do if we don't get you appropriate equipment i was going to say i do understand that too man and we'll get to the considerations but we can't do the job without the employees either so that's my point i said employees i want to emphasize the employees especially because that's a big topic that we'll talk about here in just a little bit and we will but i want to make sure everybody's aware we've got a 458 thousand dollar need for equipment replacement we understand okay mayor um we'll go back to where we were in the presentation i guess the street infrastructure fund we are projecting an increase to that revenue budget of almost 78 thousand dollars for fiscal year 23. and this is where we start all of our considerate considerations and we just wanted to remind you that you did fund the cops grant we are still in a process of fully putting that on the general fund but there will be some increase that's been included for that here in this current budget um do you this is where we can talk about any other police department um discussion that you wanted that you asked about earlier mayor okay so on the well the police all right so on the police department cops grant this is the five additional employees that have been funded over a series of five years yes ma'am okay is that also inclusive of the um vests no ma'am but that's somewhere we've bought them that's in fund 501 in our equipment replacement fund okay so that's just the grant that we're just looking at yes ma'am yes ma'am we're just reminding you that that you did fund this and that we're not finished moving into the general fund as it moves into general fund it'll increase a little bit each year it was the first year i mean it was a grant

[2:23:33] it was a step down grant basically we got a full amount and then it brought drew down to 75 50 25 and then the city takes over the full cost of it so similar to the fire department grant that we received the safer grant that's now fully in the general fund it's just a reminder to you that that cost will increase until we have the full amount in the general fund was that four years or five years i think it was a five-year grant pretty sure what it looks like i'm sorry okay so continue okay fire fire department requests include continuation of the peak hours ambulance we usually recommend using their charity care reimbursement for medicaid and uninsured patients for that bunker gear replacement they have a need it's approximately half a million dollars we would also recommend a one-time funding source for that because they do not need it in their annual budget they they need it probably every i think it's every five years i would ask chief brody about that but um and then the annual fire truck is head shaking i'm not sure what you're shaking it about but chief brody would you like to come good morning council good morning mayor chief brody fire department uh your question was the replacement timeline on bunker gear yes okay that is regulated by the nfpa and adopted by texas fire protection tcfp and it's every 10 years replacement you would not need it in your annual budget then we already have bunker gear replacement funds available in our annual budget and that's enough to fund approximately 50 sets of gear and that's to replace the gear that is expiring every year because we have kind of got it titrated out where it's uh about 50 sets of gear have to be replaced a year well we have enough funding to purchase about 60 sets well texas fire commission or actually rephrase that the national fire protection agency nfpa has made a recommendation at this point to replace

[2:25:36] to have two sets of bunker gear for every firefighter on the department currently we have about 50 percent of our personnel that have two sets of gear but we can only purchase in our current budget an additional 10 sets of gear it's going to take us 10 years to get that other 90 people outfitted with gear and by then the first 90 are expired so we're never going to catch up without a little bit of supplement or stipend and at some point the texas fire commission is going to adopt that nfpa and it'll turn into a recommendation to an unfunded mandate and we're going to have to do it eventually chief dunn kind of saw the writing on the wall a couple years ago and started this program and of course we need to continue on with it before we are stuck with a 600 000 or 700 000 we got to have this funding right now this year when we may not have the funds we have it funded in this year's budget for he has the 60 that he's able to replace every year but he needs an influx of about half a million dollars to get everybody to two full sets of gear and then moving forward he'll be he'll have it in his annual budget to be able to replace those on a schedule and i do have a little bit better figure than half a million i know that half a million just kind of it's kind of sticker shock it's closer to 400 000 i know it's not that much less 100 000 is a big thousand dollars is a lot of money yeah so uh that 500 000 and that was just because i am unsure of what a couple of the costs would be so i forecasted a little bit high initially during the target increase and i have a more realistic number around 400 000 to completely fund two sets of gear for every every member on the department so if we didn't have that in this year's budget if but if what we ended up doing was instead of having you i'm just throwing this out i'm not telling you this is what i'm recommending it's just a suggestion so if all you can do is buy 10 more this year does the 10 this year need to go to 20

[2:27:38] and then you start decreasing the amount instead of 10 years in a five-year window so one thing that i am concerned about because we do have some of this american rescue plan act money available now i don't know what texas fire commission's decision is going to be and what their timeline looks like for making this a mandate and we do have funds available now but what's going to happen in three years when tcfp says you shall instead of you should and and then where are a 500 000 or 300 000 i mean capital purchase that we earn we don't have a choice but to make um if we wait three years then we're going to have 30 extra sets of two two sets for each person but then we're also going to drop off on the other end on the expiration side and uh it's it's kind of a balancing act between the first set of gear and the second set of gear which gear is expiring at the certain time and of course ideally you're doing a five year separation that is a very tough moving target to hit and we've done a fairly decent job and like i said we're hitting about 50 percent of our personnel now with two sets next year our safety officer and r have already looked at projections for next year on how much gear to purchase and we're having about 50 sets expire and i told them take a look at 60 sets and we may not even be able to fund that until i get numbers in because october 1st bunker gear is going up 25 in cost so i need to i'm trying to get something figured out before october 1st so we if we order that's the 400 000. yes ma'am so after october 1st that number probably will be closer to the 500. for clarification uh chief that 400 000 gets you the full set of uh redundant bunk bunker gear that you need at this point that's correct okay that's a full set for two full sets for every member

[2:29:40] on the department and that's what we're recommending as well we want to make sure we do it now and with our current budget we're able to maintain that year after year after year and we just gotta get once we make the initial purchase you can manage the expense and cost on an ongoing basis but we just need to take just a one-time expense get me get me over that little bit of hump get me over that hump and then we can maintain as needed questions for chief brody yep please chief brody does this account i mean if you're getting yourself here it's for x number of people correct you're assuming your fire department's going to grow over time i mean yes sir it will grow over time and of course the cost of this gear is going to grow over time am i going to say that i will not come back in a couple years and ask for an increase in our bunker gear replacement that's not what i'm saying because we are going to have a 25 increase in october we've already looked at forecasting we can handle that for the next year and if we have an increase in staff of course we're going to have increase in bunker gear numbers as well and it may be at a later date having to come back and say well i need inc but it won't be a large dollar amount it's not going to be a hundred thousand dollars because i can't outfit 10 more people so thank you other questions okay thank you chief brody did you want me to go ahead and cover the uh fire truck sure allocation while i'm here you're here please so approximately 15 years ago chief dunn kind of i'm just giving you a little bit of background on this chief done set up a cash flow system to cash flow our fire trucks and the dollar amount of 250 000 was allocated well 15 years ago a fire truck cost about 250 000 well now it's 700 000. so the replacement program and i'm going to start quoting nfpa and tcfp again so the national fire protection agency recommends a 10-year replacement on a fire truck and a 15-year replacement on a ladder because of our decreased run volume and our maintenance

[2:31:42] program we have pushed that as far as we think we can which is a 15-year replacement on a engine and a 20-year replacement on a ladder well with this current allocation of 250 000 and the cost of a truck being 700 000 it takes me three years to buy one truck and with a fleet of 10 that's 30 year replacement i don't know anybody that wants a 30 year old fire truck showing up to the house being a primary resource to put out the fire we currently have three vehicles on in our fleet that are 30 years old now they are reserved vehicles they are in there in case the front line units need to be maintained or sent in for maintenance or they have catastrophic failure we have a reserve unit in its place in order to move us back to a 15-year replacement we basically need to double that fund so we get 250 in there now in order to move back to 15-year that that fund would need to be about 500 and i'm not necessarily proposing i need 250 this year but i would really like to start moving in that direction and i understand that's a that's a big price tag and um sorry um if we could do maybe over the next three years maybe hit a little bit a year 100 this year 100 next year under the third year not only will that account for that 250 but it gives me a little bit of margin for inflation and just like shane said inflation is beating us all up right now you know it is but it is projected to go down so but going down doesn't mean we know how fast and when so right we think we've seen this peak of the inflation but we don't have any guarantee on it let's hope so let's hope so okay any other questions any questions for chief brody okay thank you very much thank you for your time okay we talked about additional equipment replacement but we did not talk about the grant administrator

[2:33:43] position for grant writing that would be proposing an additional fte to go out and look for grants for the public works department those infrastructure grants and things like that there's going to be a lot of grants available which we're aware of and generally speaking you need someone who has expertise in an area just hiring a grant writer as a person for the city doesn't help us get the grants we need per area and i think the infrastructure area is the one area where we know there is a huge need and opportunity for getting some of those grants so i think my opinion certainly council needs to voice theirs is we need a grant writer to secure these i don't think our staff day in and day out can add that to their role and responsibility they're going to have to help anyway but i don't know that they can write the grant themselves they will pay for themselves yeah a grant grant writer will pay for themselves it's not just a grand writing it's also the administration of the grant and that's where a lot of the work actually comes into it so yeah i would i would agree that the position is needed yes full support i see a lot of nodding heads all right next next for consideration is the chadburn streetscape maintenance um this would be approximately 52 thousand dollars a year to cover the cost of an employee and some and uh some minor equipment i guess and then a one-time upfront cost of about 35 thousand dollars for a truck this position would be added to the parks department and would maintain chad burn street from the river to 19th street to and you know keep up the improvement that the improvements that we've made

[2:35:44] there this was originally introduced to the tears board as a request by john james my understanding is that they denied that request but we're still bringing it to you for consideration as far as whether you want that position added to this year's budget well the tiers tears has the capability of paying for this that's part of the tears languages that tears can pay for clean up trash maintenance lands watering etc so i'm not sure why we would want to add something else here when the tiers fund can pay for it john do you want to speak to that what they kind of decided and yeah and i guess i just wanted to clarify john james director of planning and development services um i wouldn't characterize it as the board denying it so much as they tabled it for further discussion so they wanted to research it more there were some questions about how much would come from the north and south funds and so we need to do some calculations there so they did plan to take it up in an upcoming meeting but um i would say they were some of them were skeptical as well so it is part of the tears language and i think before we agree to do this it needs to go back to the tears board it appears funds can be used for that there's there's money to do that and i strongly recommend that we revisit that conversation harry i had a brief conversation uh yesterday when i visited with uh daniel on this uh i think it's something that we can take a look at in the future but i do not see that as being needed today we're not even through with phase one and we haven't even started the north chadburn so whether we look at this again next year or the following year but i can't see putting it in this

[2:37:46] particular budget i just i don't see any way that it's going to benefit don't let shane speak to it but right now shane's crews and parks are trying to take up the slack and they don't have the people to do it and so they're having it's mainly trash related and there's no one to pick up that trash and they're trying to get it done with not staffing to do it so that's why it's being brought forward to the tears board is currently the group that's trying to well what i know was done several years ago when downtown san angelo inc had the trash receptacles that people purchased and are out on the streets they made an agreement with republic services to pick up that trash and so they do that now those trash cans that they do are not the same trash cans that have just been added to the chadburn street project and there are no trash cans at this point on the north side i think we need to go back to tears and re-look at that what we didn't do we need to step back tina on the considerations for public works requests we all nodded our heads and said we believe this grant administrator position is important but we didn't talk about the additional equipment replacement um that was what shane was talking about earlier that that no it was but we didn't okay have a discussion here amongst ourselves and whether the council wants to put in the budget the 458 thousand dollars that shane says he needs to do his job i think it needs to be budgeted we have marginal revenue to do that i don't know how we need two things we need great people and we need great equipment to get the job done and tina did talk to the marginal revenues specifically about the sales tax in addition as far as the new calculations so there's a portion

[2:39:48] there's an amount that can come from that yes correct you know and the the remaining could come from a one-time source like the arpa grant or from sales tax surpluses don't we need equipment replacement on an annual basis why are we looking for additional resources when we know equipment replacement is a part of getting the job done annually sure and if we added that two hundred thousand dollars to their budget it would be in their budget every year and we could continue to build upon that i just think it's necessary i don't know how you have a request for 458 thousand dollars worth of equipment replacement and we not address that issue let me make sure i understand didn't you say we already budgeted a million and a half yes for equipment replacement yes so this 400 plus thousand is a one-time request or is it uh something that is ongoing that's a question for shane it's definitely going to be a component of that that deals with inflation and again talking about the additional 200 000 from the sales tax actually covers that inflationary part of it but as far as the remainder of it is an increase of an additional 200 000 300 000 dollars is that something that we need every year um again i know that right now we're having to address it because of the inflationary part of it but uh shane i mean i think we need to address it and then i would say the following because we do this on an annual basis his needs next year might not be so much then we take it out of the budget just because it's put in the budget this year because of the need doesn't mean he gets to keep it forever and ever and ever there's like other things we negotiate actually once we put it in the budget it is in the budget no but we can ask it to be reduced in the budget that's part of the process yes we can just because it's there isn't for life if he doesn't need that next year shane you're gonna have to take a budget cut yeah and and again we're uh you know we come every year with our handout you know because again um we are behind in our in our deal and so but we

[2:41:50] believe that uh basically this additional money the good 1.5 we had another 458 um again we we fully believe that we need that long term to maintain our replacement program because our replacement program is not where it needs to be um but again and we understand and and if there's if there's marginal revenue of 200 000 we will gladly accept that as well too any anything helps and so but again as as we were looking at where we where we currently are where we're uh and what we're looking at and moving into the future again looking at the increases uh gosh just past two years ago trying to be really nice i get it you're trying i am and i am and i am but again but we do we we do come every year with our hand out asking uh and again in everything if you need it or you want it because we need it i mean we are we're behind and we have been and so but again we again we come up with creative ways to to address these issues and so uh again our uh ryan and his staff are really great at coming up with those type of things cost saving measures uh being able to extend life of vehicles and equipment and so uh we've done a really great job uh moving forward but again we are behind and again we're just asking like we do every year and you know please help so does that answer your question yeah it answers my question but i guess as a comment you asked for comments um i guess my comment would be if we have uh sounds like 200 000 potentially of of marginal revenue use that and then i would be in favor of a one-time source this year until we hear from daniel on on the employees side um so that you know i would be in favor of that approach this year i think the 458 is necessary we've got 200 here and again this isn't to not address employee needs but if you have employees who don't have the right equipment to get the job done it impacts their morale and what we ask them to do so one isn't

[2:43:54] about taking away from somebody else or something else it is about addressing the needs period any of the questions comments input okay our next uh consideration is a health insurance benefits administrator um i'll let brian kind of speak to the need for that um but he does have it within his budget uh he would be eliminating a software product and replacing it with an fte so you might remember three years ago we talked very slowly i'm sorry and tommy will be back shortly okay so as you might remember three years ago we um came to you with what we were doing we were facing the need of either either adding an fte or trying to find some innovative way to to do the job without adding an fte and of course our desire is never to grow government and so we tried to look through a resource that would do that without without growing fte over the last three years we've limped through with that software but it did not create the efficiencies that we need it's amazing because almost always people do software to reduce the need for so there's a there's a couple of things we have a complicated retiree system compared to what these software the people who offer these software programs are used to seeing so we have a tiered approach to our retirees and then you know there's just some complications in the way that we administer benefits to our retirees particularly but then that's also exacerbated um by the um the way it communicates with our uh financial system central square and so they don't communicate well and so we're going back behind it and and

[2:45:58] catching errors and essentially what we do is we keep a uh christine our hr manager has not been able to be an hr manager she's been a health benefits administrator for the most part and she's keeping she's keeping a spreadsheet that has more colors on it than the rainbow of how she's tracking all these things behind the scenes to make sure that you know one thing we never want is somebody's benefits messed up when they need to go in and get something done and so our desire to you now is instead of using that money for software that's diminished returns at best to go ahead and use that to create the ft that you know and maybe that's my fault uh three years ago when i thought we could find some efficiency so i'll take that but we needed the fte three years ago and and now we have an opportunity since that three-year contract is over with plan source that we could we could fund that position um and then we could get some bandwidth back within our department especially as we're trying to recruit as much as we're trying to recruit right now is some of that extra workload because of the increase in the casualty no this is solely in the health insurance fund um you know as you as we all know federal government has more and more requirements how we report things and and and you know making sure folks that come in are educated about how they can change uh benefits mid-year you know there's certain life events that allow you to do that under irs and other ones you know won't and people don't understand those differences so there's a lot there's a customer service component to what we do making sure retirees and current city employees understand those things because they don't deal in those areas on a regular basis and we need people who can speak to that

[2:48:00] be available and again we thought the software because it was it was kind of like it was presented to us that it would be sort of like going on amazon you click what you need and you go to your checkout and you you have your your new it did not work out that way and so we need we need somebody to manage that process and we believe um we believe we can do it cheaper than the software and uh we'll employ somebody in san angelo and i know this is not necessary what's your cost savings then um i i believe our projected cost on uh software would have been 6.75 this year and i think we were at 165 000. no 75 000. okay just seven wow fte with benefits would be 65. yeah so approximately 10 000 savings and it'll be better it'll be better than what we currently have questions yes tommy ryan this is maybe a silly question never stopped me before um today's your day yeah thank you i see the the aetna up there our our uh insurance carrier if i'm not mistaken in the in the first years of that contract with that now the first year or two and it may have been a one-time thing with them they had money that they would make available and that's my question for was it a specific thing or things if i'm even thinking correctly am i am i even in the right ballpark yeah it could not be used in this particular thing but we do make use of that it's kind of a it's something that doesn't have to come out of our expenditures but we can uh partner with aetna to do some of those things and it would not help you here not not with this okay okay all right that was my question thanks i think it would be hard not to support and pretty

[2:50:04] much a net wash software for human being i think i like the human being better yeah so other questions comments on that i think that there's support go ahead larry are you going to require some overlap if you get this administrative position with the existing computer with the software no we have already canceled the software because we couldn't move forward with it i mean it creates additional work which has really really cut into our our ability to to handle our our department okay all right thank you 11 49 we have one last consideration if you want to go through that or where are you going to break okay um the the last consideration we have is for health insurance you heard about this at the last meeting um if we share the costs with the employees the um increase to the general fund would be 99 000 versus if the city picks up the full increase of 20 124 000 to the general fund and we are proposing to cover the full cost for that nominal amount of a difference of 25 000 and so that concludes our considerations that we have for you today the next part of our slides will go into brian kind of speaking to our employee issues and vacancies and things like that yes i have one question and it goes back to the first few slides you have is we all realize there's a serious imbalance on property tax revenue what are we going to do about that imbalance well you've got commercial paying 14 that's something really um i know the mayor's been harping about this and she got here it really goes back to economic development and building building that that tax base for commercial um as long as that commercial tax base stays that low you'll see the the taxpayers as far as the residential

[2:52:06] taxpayers continue to pay at a higher rate as we bring in more commercial accounts it will actually assist with that so that's the the goal right now is to work that economic development development as strongly as we can to get those businesses in here but really what it comes down to is we need more businesses in our community one of the big things that we'll be strategizing and really looking at as we go forward because we talk a lot about economic development but the big impact to our community has really been property tax dollars and it's really been residential in the county it's different because they've gotten a lot of solar farms which have brought in a tremendous amount of additional property tax dollars but we don't benefit from the wind towers and the solar farms so really the impact on our world has been truly residential there's been some commercial but residential if you take a look at those apartment complexes they've had a tremendous amount of property tax dollars to it which keeps it up at the 71 percent because where we see the big development is residential apartment complexes family i i may admit it'll be probably a little bit easier in the future once of course we talk about the interstate system it's going to take a while to get them here but once the interstate system is here in the future that's definitely going to assist with helping build up that commercial but right now it's just a matter of working those accounts and working on what we have at this point the same thing with the rail park it will bring in those um additional commercial industrial taxes um two things one obviously is waiting for the bridge and the custom border patrol to get their act together and get that opened up for us but there are projects in the works in terms of looking at that rail park and there is a commitment i think it's in five years i can't remember so don't quote me on this but that that rail park will be brought into the city limits which is not it's in the county

[2:54:10] right now and there is a commitment to bringing that whole rail park into the city's property tax base annexing it so that'll be a big one it'll it'll help but it's still it's going to take a lot to reduce the 71 percent mayor because this is a break can i ask you a question uh we have a gentleman from or greg from mhmr who uh was wanting to see if we could up his the the money that we gave him is this the par the proper time to address that or is it till after i don't know it's not on the agenda yeah we can i mean i can visit with i mean we can definitely sit down and talk about that but it's not a part of the discussion right now no it's not i just didn't want him to have to stay all this time it's not an agenda item so i'll talk to you in just a little bit okay all right thank you all right we're going to adjourn for lunch it's 11 53 we'll try to get back about 12 30. okay the thought out it is 9 8 p.m and the budget workshop will be called back to order and we will start with the city council brief history overview of hr yes thank you uh so just this first slide when we have it up all right i'm bad with technology uh okay so uh a brief history just to make sure we all know the history because i know you know we've had a couple of changes on the seat probably since last time we had

[2:56:12] the discussion in august of 2007 we awarded a bid to have public sector personnel consultants look at our classification compensation plan in march of 2008 it was what they had the work they had done was implemented since that time it's been 14 years a little over 14 years we've modified those grade ranges a total of 11.9 percent and i would add that you know through the work that y'all this council did last year three percent of that was last year we moved from 8.9 to 11.9 over those 14 years so we did make some progress there and we went from an average of moving those ranges from 0.66 to 0.85 so i mean it's it's progress we want to we want to move those ranges um the next slide unless anybody has questions on that okay um just want to talk a little bit about the situational considerations um as of this slide was prepared before the inflation numbers hit yesterday um and in june we had hit an uh inflation high of 40 years it did come down yesterday when they reported july but you know it's kind of funny you know you you look at buying power and i did after i got that number yesterday i went on to the cpi uh adjustment um and and looked if you had a hundred if you had to buy a hundred dollar product in june what does that cost to buy today and you know after they got the july numbers in it was 99.99 so we got a penny more buying power out of every hundred uh with that inflationary downturn so well it is but listen but it is it is moving the 9.1 is also a one or two month number and yesterday's was a one-month number so yes it's relevant but it is not apples to apples

[2:58:14] etc right right i'm merely pointing out that in you know it didn't change that much in the month so uh even though that slide's a little bit old it does kind of still tell us the the situation over the last 12 months um over the 14 years since the plan was implemented inflation has totaled 38.77 i believe i recalculated that and i believe it was 38.75 now so it still averages out to be about 2.77 percent per year and that's again just some situational things for y'all to be aware of and i'm sure you are vacancies is the next um the next real consideration and i have a slide here that shows you um typically and i was asked for this slide from councilmember miller as we were discussing vacancies over time because any of you know that spoke to me at least since spring i've been pounding this drum for a while that vacancies are becoming a real concern so historically we would we would plan to see somewhere in the 2 percent to somewhere in the 4 percent range uh if it was going really bad we might get into the five percent for a little while but typically that's where we would see the vacancies um of course we implemented the hiring freeze and i stand by daniel's decision to approve that and i stand by my recommendation to do that we were trying to be fiscally responsible we didn't know what the pandemic would nobody knew what that would bring and so if i made a mistake i'll own that by recommending that we should hire we should have a hiring freeze um but you know i think it was the right thing to do at the time and if i had the same information i would probably make the same recommendation today um but with that being said when we came out of that we were at 11 um and you can see that we we took a little bit of a downturn we started we

[3:00:16] started being able to recover a little bit i think we got down in the eights a little bit under nine percent uh but then we've seen a steady increase ever since then um and uh it's i mean it's a it's a huge problem when you combine that with these other considerations that i'll speak to on the next slides unless somebody has a question about vacancies well when you when you go back to that earlier earlier slide when you were talking about a couple of things uh the one before maybe the one before let me see yeah because i think in you look you talked about the average increase of what was a total of 11.9 increase but i believe in 2014 if i'm not mistaken there were cash bonuses given instead of raises right i'm simply talking about what we've done with the ranges because you know one of our biggest my biggest story to tell you guys what i think is the main story to tell you guys is the the the problem that we're having to attract and recruit um and so those ranges are one of the primary things that you do to to to recruit and attract i do want to point out that um those bonuses or stipends were given back then it was only effective of course for that one year so we would have to adjust maybe maybe like the uh with the presentation by one year but it's still everything but just to give credit for credit due sure you did that yes which was a good thing to do not debating it okay right does anyone have a question on the vacancy situation as we see it where we're 18 um the question mark i have is because as we were talking earlier on the percentages and taking a look at the positions open by definition of each of the individual

[3:02:19] positions the two biggest ones that that are seasonal and yet they make up part of this total is the 27 positions that are open in civic events and the 16 positions that are open as lifeguards so those are calculated into your total but legitimately through august they kind of just no the civic events does not change as much but those lifeguards have as a as a part of that 18 would disappear as a need come september that's a great point mayor and and that's that's in my vacancy calculation i make sure to make an account for that so those 27 positions for civic events or or i'm not quite sure what all those are because it was just listed as civic events assistance civic events 27 positions so i'm not sure what those are extra help for civic events that's what it's the the the way we advertise it is civic events extra help but it's really just assistance to make sure that uh they can pull off the events that they need to pull off and so if you if you look at those as seasonal particularly lifeguard since you since you mentioned that and you know they go away once the pool season is over yeah because you have a summer camp coordinator one position well summer's about over summer camp counselor recreation four positions summer's about over so and it's important to them they were needed we didn't have them we couldn't hire them and it's a great point to make for for public uh clarification um the way that that's calculated into the vacancy calculation is if you take those um those uh 16 lifeguard positions the way i would calculate that is essentially five and a third positions because we anticipate we'll have those for about four months and so i don't calculate them as a full so that they don't impact that percentage as much so if they impact the because they do impact 27 positions listed as 17 16 positions it's listed as four positions and

[3:04:21] right so so the way it would break down for everyone's information is the full-time employees non-civil service is 16.01 of that 18 and that's that's full-time ftes non-civil service we have an additional uh you know part-time positions at 30 hours and um so we calculate those at 0.75 because they're you know permanent positions and they work about 75 they work 75 of the of the full-time schedule um and they uh they are 50 vacant uh but there's only nine positions so it doesn't you know it doesn't impact that overall the biggest driver on that is the full-time 101 positions then we have part-timers at 20 hours that's actually completely full knock on wood hopefully it's still full by the end of this time are those positions hard to hire because they are only 20 hours because a lot of people need more than 20 hours so the question mark is are we having difficulty filling those positions because it is only 20 hours no we actually have zero vacancy there's only three positions that are 20 hours it's zero vacancies i believe most of them sounds like we need more 20-hour positions um they're most of them are long-term uh people in those positions and um typically what we'll see from you know on 20-hour employees or somebody that's retired and they just want something to do for part of the week and so they'll come back and and do something like that just just to have something into their schedule because you've said that let's talk about that so we have a lot of these open positions we have people who have retired is there any way that we can help support our staff with some more part-time people in some of these positions they're having a hard time filling by going back to our retirees who are already trained and already know the job we could certainly look at that i know um i know it might not be ideal but it's a body when you need a body well and even some

[3:06:23] of the people that we've lost i know officer bellini is is reaching out to some dispatchers that have moved on to try to fill that void so we we are as creative as we can be in trying to um you know trying to solve these these issues especially um as large of an issue as having essentially an 18 vacancy and i just wanted to be clear since we brought that up that 16 of that is full-time some of that is part-time but it's a much smaller amount the temporary seasonal again they're counted at a third of a position so it's it's not impacting that overall even though there's a lot of positions seasonally they're not impacting that overall vacancy calculation because i want to make sure i'm giving you a number that makes sense lucy brian when you say 16 what is the number exactly we've got 101 ftes open currently or vacant currently um and that's out of 623 632 632 positions 631 sorry i was off by one and again i just asked the question we we advertise them we promote that they're full-time positions at what point have we looked at it and said we might have a broader range of people looking for it but they don't want full-time position we do have those internal discussions do you think that maybe splitting this out and having two part-time positions would make sense most of the feedback we get is that they don't believe you know in some of these positions like heo with for instance that's one of the i'm sorry heavy equipment operator um that's one of the positions uh is within the full-time group that's that's more of them open um i think we have a total of nine heos right now of open you couldn't split those into into two

[3:08:27] part timers because you're trying to get somebody that has a cdl that's willing and like i said we'll have those discussions where we can and and we do have those discussions actually veronica and i have done that with animal services uh and we have we have done that with animal services um and we've seen some success there but it doesn't translate as well into every position as you as you might i think a lot have experimented with that over the years for instance in parks we tried it it did not work we could not fill the part-time jobs at all so we had to do the full-time in nursing sometimes with sandra on covet things they've been able to find part-time that work better in that department so it kind of depends on the department yeah and it does just depends on how we might have tried to do 10 years ago or five years ago we didn't have employee shortages like we do and not only just in the city but to sit for all businesses we've never had as a country as much need for workers so it's not just the city of san angelo it's the country as a whole so whatever we might have tried before and didn't work might not be relevant to today when we do have those discussions on that we are um we are trying to be up to the task of meeting this need um the task is extraordinary but we are trying to be meet that need as best as we can as creatively as we can any other questions about the vacancy percentage okay so some compounding issues on top of the the vacancy percentage that i just want to paint the real picture uh so that you'll see what we're up against um our struggle on the civil service side because i haven't really talked about that because we're largely full in positions there it's not yet translated to a vacancy percentage but overall applications and interest in becoming a first responder has been on a downward trend for quite a while 10 years ago for example we would hold

[3:10:29] one entry test for pd at the beginning of the year one entry test for fire at the beginning of the year and through that process you know we'd have people that passed all the things ready for the background investigation or whatever we would uh we would end that year and some of those names would expire because they're good for you know to the end of the year um now we have to have multiple exams every year just to try to keep keep up that makes sense i mean that doesn't surprise me with much more work on you know staff to do those uh to go through those exams to go through the background it's just it makes it a longer process throughout the year where you used to have just one busy time at the beginning of the year and it just shows um how many people are also interested because again we used to end the year with multiple names that would expire now we barely drum up the the folks that we need and i can give some statistics on that 10 years ago we had one entry exam in 2012 for for pd 72 signed up to take the test 13 were pre-exam disqualified of the 59 that tested 44 applicants passed and 31 of them scored higher than 80 percent uh and the average score was 84.43 now that's before any back you know they go through the background they go through the oral boards and anybody might get disqualified during that our most recent exam comparatively we had 41 sign up for the test so it's almost dropped in half eight were pre-exam disqualified because we're not getting the as many qualified candidates as we used to um of the 33 that tested 18 passed so at every level we're losing more and more folks 11 scored higher than 80 percent and the

[3:12:32] average score had dropped three percent i think comparing it to 10 years ago is probably not relevant i'm just trying to tell the the long-term decline that we've seen there and so though there's not a vacancy issue right now i want to make sure everyone's aware that i believe we will eventually be facing some vacancy issues there and just to go through real quick the the on the fire side just to be fair 2012 we had 157 sign up for the test 45 slides on those i i just calculated these numbers just to be able to talk through it i'm sorry we had a 157 sign up to take the test 112 tested 73 passed 46 scored higher than 80 and the average score was 84.33 [Music] in our most recent exam for fire this year we dropped from that 157 we used to have a lot more people interested to 50 signing up to take the test 18 were disqualified pre-exam 32 tested 29 passed 22 scored higher than 80 percent and the average score was 83.93 so we can just see you know over time that we've had a lot less interest and if as we have more and more folks eligible to retire we're likely to have some issues there um moving forward and that kind of brings me to the next point the retirement eligibility for the entire organization and this is something i've reported to daniel since since my first year as your hr director and i've seen it kind of grow over time and this is the first year that i've went to daniel and kind of went wide-eyed and go within the next three years we could have 30 percent of our folks retire um 22 are eligible today um and it's just a concern that we need to be we need to be aware of we need to be lucid about because it's on the horizon

[3:14:34] uh out there i'm not saying they're going to retire today hopefully hopefully we can talk them in to stay in as long as we possibly can but it is something that's kind of looming on the horizon that i want to make sure you are all aware of how does that compare to state of texas i do not uh normal um compared to other folks i will say our vacancies uh are higher than the cities that i've seen percentage-wise but i'm not sure that all of them went through a hiring freeze you know i mean it's kind of it's hard to compare um you know those kind of things because some people i mean again if we if if we broaden out the numbers then the statistics can get skewed because the workforce is so low uh you know based on a city of 25 000 so how do we compare you know it's very difficult to make a one-for-one comparison um but again i i think i've heard uh direction and and y'all correct me if i'm wrong i think i've heard direction from council that you know we're not midland and so i'm this year i'm worried or odessa and i'm just trying to paint the picture of san angelo here um and so we have we have 18 um sometimes it's nice to know are we better than worse than the state sure sure absolutely and you've looked at other cities you're saying so you it's relevant and you're trying to talk to a relevant sure absolutely yeah i wouldn't say our position is completely unique no that's all i'm saying um which makes makes it a bigger issue which makes it yes that makes the the challenge even greater because if everybody else was was stocked up we might be able to recruit a little easier um so with that being said um next uh point that i'd like to make is is morale um i see it um i see it when i talk to folks um i've heard it in their voices

[3:16:37] um i believe that morale could exacerbate that all of these situations everybody got worn out over coveted and i think our first responders a lot of the gentlemen sitting here today absolutely we're tested at all levels i mean and i hate to talk about cova but i think there's some first responders who absolutely and so extra burdens and so what we see is now that we're you know again 18 vacant use that number um 81 percent of folks are doing are trying to do not can't they can't do it it's impossible eighty-one percent of the people are eighty-one and a half percent of the people are trying to do a hundred percent of the job and so what they're doing what we're seeing is they're working harder and harder but they're falling further and further behind in their duties i mean that's the reason you know we can't keep up with potholes we can't also the reason why i talk about making sure we have the equipment they need because if there's a morale issue morale can be about the equipment's busting couldn't work it delayed me it you know so what i hear you know those are the things that you worry that we haven't addressed either and we need to make sure our staff have what they need absolutely to do the job i think that's a good point what i hear more when i talk to managers um is the fact that they're trying to do so much with so little staff i mean it's really it's essentially four people trying to do five people's jobs and you just you fall further and further behind it yet you're working harder and harder and you just feel um maybe a little less satisfaction in what in in oral you know accomplishment like you don't see things come to their completion because you're falling further and further behind and and i think we all know where is that the most prevalent um i think that's that's pretty much throughout we see that throughout i mean i would you know we could call up we could call up directors and have them speak to it but i see that pretty much throughout everybody that i talk to is

[3:18:42] there's that part of the discussion that they're trying to do more with less and and it's just it's getting to a point of burnout we've got to address these things and that's i believe all all that i have unless you'll have some more questions about retirement the vacancy percentage um how our challenges in first responder recruiting because that's i'm telling you right now i feel like i've got to have that's my obligation to you guys to paint the picture as i see it for the next several years and we're going to have some issues there if you know if things don't change which hopefully they will i mean i'm sort of an optimist but when's it it was a board create an enthusiasm for the job sure sure no i think that's that's true and i would say you know even in you know if i could speak just personally um i'm third generation public servant my grandfather worked on the roads around lubbock and when he got off work he volunteered in the slayton fire department and he raised his kids to all have that love of public service and so my uncle was a was a chief accountant for the city of mckinney my dad was a water superintendent my mother was a city clerk my brother is a police officer my cousin worked for the county i mean like it's it's throughout my whole uh life and so i've always been raised with this idea of public servant you know we want to be public servants we want to be good with our community we want to help our community as best we can i was actually the only one that didn't go that way i went into retail management straight out of uh school and um did that for a little over a decade before i came to came back to that love of public service

[3:20:44] and i just saw that i could make a change at the city of dallas first and then as soon as i got back to san angelo we we made that effort here and i say all that to say this i don't see that as much as i used to people used to aspire to public service it is getting harder to recruit to public service i do want to add you mentioned enthusiasm for the job this board myself we can actually assist with creating enthusiasm for the job and that's by all of us showing that we do care about our employees we do care about our staff and we're going to do everything we possibly can to assist our staff and the reason i keep bringing up equipment well yes ma'am we'll address equipment as well but we didn't we need to address uh pay uh which is really important okay so i want to make sure that with all the comments made we do understand about cobit we understand about all the situations those are the entities that have to deal with that we're gonna have to deal with it ourselves here in this city so i just want to make that point that we all do have a responsibility to our staff and we need to show that and i want to speak one more thing to that brian groves has some great ideas for trying to promote that love of public service by spotlighting some of our folks that that go above and beyond and so he's started working on that i believe the first one's filmed or it's close to being finished and so we're we're trying to create enthusiasm for public service and make it something to aspire to like i think it used to be and it's just it's it's it's lost out to social media influencers i mean like that's ridiculous but anyway i won't go off in that diatribe i think your idea of using brian grove's office to highlight is important because not everybody goes to our city of san angelo website and looks for job openings yeah and it's actually it's actually brian's idea i can't take any credit for it he came to us and we go oh that's a great idea let's do that um so so that's all his and laura lie's work you know shannon hospital does that and they highlight not only patients but also doctors and their lives and i think

[3:22:48] it brings a lot of per um a lot to the table i do want to add that some of the best recruiters we could actually have is our own staff yeah and our staff really loves what they're doing they feel appreciated then they'll reach out to others and say hey come work for the city this is a great job i mean we you know we have a pretty good program here so that's a big part of it and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to to support that staff have some questions brandon go ahead so brian if we're looking at this in a big picture we're going to have people transition out people transition in people retire you know and go how often do we get to bring somebody in less than the level the person exited i mean that's a good great thing in my industry and lots of them you know that person left and now we're looking at trying to recruit that person very seldom do i see as being able to get somebody below where they left that that's that's a great point because i mean again there's that there's that love of the community that that's that's here uh long term um and you know folks leave and trying to get somebody in that can that can do that job that maybe hasn't been in our community as long or whatever the or again maybe didn't wasn't didn't grow up in that love of public service or or aspire to that that's a noble venture um it's looking for some factual i mean have you been able to bring some people in in any of your recruits that can come in at a lower level than what has exited very rarely i would say but veronica can see that because mostly we people work their way up into those positions so you'd be half you'd have to hire from another city that same level is that where you're asking i mean that's kind of part of it is because a lot of our people have worked their way up from this position to this position to this position so this person retires is this person available to go up and then

[3:24:51] you start that step ladder yeah a huge part of of any plan that we've that we move forward with is succession planning because you do get a hometown discount for for growing people within your organization they are kind of again they build a love for the organization they build a love for the community and and there is in fact a hometown discount um if you have to go out and recruit that i mean you could talk about the city engineer position that's been open now for almost two years what we lost landsat we don't have a hope of bringing somebody in at that salary level we have are we working with the engineering department out at asu because i know there's a lot of interns and people are using some of those earned interns are we working with asu to fill some of those jobs with the asu people i believe kevin and shane might could speak to that but they do have an intern program where they're trying trying to meet that need and you just you know from from my part what i would say is you know we cost we talk about the costs of things and of course we should but one of the things we rarely talk about is the cost of not filling a position and my uh my thoughts are on a city engineer if we don't have that position when we engage in a 21 million dollar bell street project what did we lose what could that position could have caught if they were if the if the engineering services was fully staffed had a city engineer what might they have caught that they didn't catch and i'm not saying there is but it's it's impossible that's a whatever it's impossible to put a number on but what i would expect is a city engineer worth their salt is going to save more than their salary in the projects that they that they oversee as i look at it and say we've got some great engineering students at asu some of them will be seniors some are

[3:26:53] juniors some could start working for us as they graduated because they've already worked their some time here in the city of san angelo so yes we're not competitive it's starting pay for engineers either i'm talking interns i'm talking this my conversations about running a 30 million dollar uh a street reconstruction project they're interns they're brand new we need an experienced engineer to be our city engineer correct but if you can't hire them and you're saying for two years you haven't been able to hire them you've got to look at alternative approaches and my point is alternative approaches working with asu with the people in their engineering department it might help i'm not saying it will i'm just saying we've got an engineering department that are people looking to become engineers i think shane's going to speak to their intern program yes ma'am we we do we we always have at least one intern and sometimes two interns depending on because there's a ton of competition for them out there as well too so but we always have at least one intern we just recently hired for an eit project engineer we just hired a recent graduate from asu so we do work with their program very closely in both even allison as well constantly engaging with them so i guess man i believe we work with them and i believe daniel and i just approved to hire another intern too that kevin had yeah they're not going to be a full i mean they're not going to come in experience as engineers but if we're having difficulty finding the graduates if we can take people that are in our city in our school and get them attached to our city services we might find some wonderful employees out of asu and that would be great just real quick to add and answer tom's question i'm sorry veronica sanchez assistant hr director i would say i approve all of the the hires and i would say probably less than one percent are hired below what the exiting person is making so it's very rare

[3:28:56] well and it's not just a problem i mean that's the entire industry nationwide and so everybody's making a move i'm married to a teacher it's the same thing they're dealing with certain departments here at our city are lined up structurally to protect themselves which is a good thing to protect who we are of course our hometown the lateral part restricts but it's just becoming a huge issue now can we can we fill the holes i see people that are just worn out i get it you know and we have equipment to take care of we got people to take care of and we need to take the gifts and opportunities laid out in front of us to try to mend those as fast we can yeah and and again part of that is succession planning talking about you know one of the things i'm a big advocate for is creating job families so that people can progress in their career and again they will be cheaper than recruiting outside that's just that's just a fact the more that we can grow from within um the more the better fiscally we're going to be there is a current cost today of some of these vacant positions the city engineer is an excellent there's no telling how much work we're having to send to the outside today we know we are well i mean we know we are so there is not only future what is the cost of a vacancy i mean i can't put a hard number on it but we know we know there's a cost of every one of these vacancies and some of it is just the burnout to everybody else there's a current cost today what other areas that asu exists that we would be able to recruit from because it's such a so you know between howard college and asu there's such a bonus to this city there the fact that we have them here in the city of san angelo is fabulous we've utilized student interns with them but we can certainly reach out

[3:30:58] to them and see what more we can do and even creation where we've hired from asu and the recreation department so we've worked with them there we've done that in hr we've done that in legal over time so we definitely have a strong partnership with asu but we could we're always willing to look and see what more we can do i mean they have a career development staff and i would think we'd want to sit down with the career development staff at asu and find out what we as a city could do better to hire those graduates and because you know just because you got a degree in education doesn't mean you're going to become a teacher so that's an excellent point it could be another job that you know i think that's an excellent job for me to assign to christine when we can get her out of benefits so it sounds like a good plan okay thank you okay oh sorry mayor oh geez we gave you the council direction right on budget and property tax levy ordinances did we do that no this uh that comes back in september for the final um formal adoption but are we going to talk about some of that so we're prepared to talk about it or not yes the whole the purpose of this meeting today is to give us direction on what to bring back within that budget so the next slide will go through marginal revenue and and get your feedback on that as i stated earlier we have marginal revenue and the amount of 4.3 million dollars we're proposing personnel salary increases and at 7 setting aside market rate adjustments in the amount of 881 000 and that would be to address

[3:33:01] pay structure and lower level employees we're proposing to cover the entire cost of the increase in health insurance at 124 000 dollars leaving us an available revenue over expenditure budget of 186 000 that can be allocated as council sees fit we're also um proposing employee stipends uh usual utilizing the arpa or american rescue plan act um the cost of a two thousand dollar stipend would be just under two point five million dollars the cost of a 2500 stipend would be almost 3.1 million dollars there is 8.1 million dollars left and available funding from arpa which if you funded at the 2500 level would leave 5 million left for other initiatives or projects i think we always kind of thought the american rescue plan would go towards infrastructure issues but certainly it's up for discussion amongst council and one of the reasons i you know we want to talk about that separately from raises and et cetera is we have this capital improvement plan that's got how many dollars in it i don't have the exact dollar amount as far as that but he's going to look it up but it's i don't have a total 100 i don't have a total so i just have the paperwork while you're looking at information up mayor by me um we've talked a lot about as far as the presentation brian just made a while ago um i do understand that that we can argue just about any point and say there's some issues that need to be considered in certain areas you know we did deal with covet we did do hiring freeze it did a lot of different things in order for us to sustain uh during that time period but i do know that going back years now that we

[3:35:04] haven't put forth the the effort that we should have and i can take blame for that to address the needs for our employees and so when you start looking at the pay for our employees and the level that they're coming in at it's really difficult at this point to really hire for those positions it's almost actually becoming almost impossible to hire for those positions especially when you have uh you have companies here in this town you have your hebs you have your targets your mcdonald's and other places that actually pay more than what we can offer for people coming in you know brian talked about service and it's hard to convince somebody to come in here and provide a service for a community to be a public servant when we're not showing them that we really appreciate them as a public servant so one thing that i want to make sure that we're very aggressive about really to be honest with you it's not just this year and what we're requesting right now is to develop a plan for the next five years to address employee pay for the next five years i strongly support what's on the screen right now and i do know america that we have to take a look at other other items that we talked about a little while ago but in this what we're presenting right now we really feel that this will bring us a little bit closer to what our needs are the market rate adjustment for example will definitely allow us to address the lowest paid employees it'll allow us to address any compression issues that we have and this is significant for us you know if we're going to survive we can't go above the numbers at this point 18.38 vacancies is ridiculous if we wait another six months and really don't do anything about it when we started hitting the 24 25 point uh at that point we're talking about services shutting down and i don't want to i don't want to express a doom or gloom type of a situation but right now looking at 18.3 and we can say you know what a lot of the country is is hurting right now uh you know i understand that but right

[3:37:07] now what i'm concerned about is the city of san angelo and what can we do to address the needs that we have at this point and right now what we see on the screen is a good topic for us to discuss and start talking about other needs yes we do need equipment i do get that and we can talk about how we can spread that money around to address that but right now this is a huge uh concern for us and it's something that just absolutely has to be addressed and i do understand that council members mayor all of you sitting here understand that and it's just at what level are we going to kind of move forward and say okay this is what we need to do at this point to really get get us to right in the ship so with that said i know that y'all were looking for information if you'll share that information as far as capital equipment 548 million in the capital improvement plan question one of the things that comes up on a regular basis and i think that one of those issues was addressed earlier it's something that tommy brought up and that's that group 11. grade 11. grade 11 that we've eliminated and i know that what and i say this relative to the entry level that twelve dollars and two cents that we're paying is that when you give across the board a seven percent what you do or those people who are making 150 thousand dollars that seven percent really impacts them in a big way if you give somebody a seven percent increase and they're being paid twelve dollars an hour they don't see the benefit in that seven percent the same as those that are in the higher salary ranges and so my question mark is when we talk about this and you're talking about market rate adjustments describe to me what this market rate adjustment is because the biggest issue is

[3:39:10] are we or are we not really addressing the issues of the lower or the areas that tommy referred to as tough jobs to feel because they're not competitive if you will with whoever you name so you're on um so you know one that's been our concern as well to disproportionately affect where we can the the lower uh range and we did that with the 11 to 12 and more is needed you're absolutely right the market rate adjustments what i would recommend probably most of that money be used for is to um to what made up this number that's what i'm asking for there's a number up there it's called eight hundred eighty one thousand nine hundred ninety eight how did we get to that number and what what composed that number because for us it's just a number on a sheet of paper okay um i think that was based off of i had submitted a proposal for um changing to a 1330 minimum wage which makes us a little more competitive still not we're still not out of competing with uh fast food restaurants at that level um but it would it's certainly a huge it's huge progress from where we were just 15 months ago um so i had submitted that it was a it was to get to 13 30 and then have the grades be evened out with a there's a five percent difference between the grades and i believe that calculation came to 881 998. i didn't do the calculation but i think uh somebody did yeah and i left it i left it for the experts in finance to give me a number i just i submitted a plan to them and i think that's where the 881 998 came from who really did the math on that she did the calculations based on the numbers given us to by brian describe to us what that is which is a number for us mayor let me let me just address that a

[3:41:14] little bit okay so he didn't talk about the uh re we already eliminated grade 11. what we would like to do is eliminate grade 12 and get it to a grade 13 as far as the starting pay and some of those employees will be affected even though we're doing a seven we're talking about seven percent increase some of those employees that'll be moved up not only get the increase but they'll also benefit from the change at the lowest so you'll have some employees that'll see like a ten and a half percent increase at the lower level so compression will become an issue so we do have to make adjustments between the different grades and this is all calculated into the market rate adjustment is to address the lowest level and address the uh those in between as far as the adjustments uh we want to make sure that we're fair to everybody across the board we want to cr we don't want to create any problems with how we adjust uh the grade levels uh the percentages between but again even with a seven percent increase to make that adjustment at the lowest level and also to uh to address a compression again some of those lower level employees actually quite a few of them probably would be looking at a probably about a ten and a half percent increase we'd have to work the numbers on that but they'll be benefiting at the lowest level as well that's what we want to address it's one of the things that tommy brought up and i want to make sure in this conversation we're all having the same conversation that's a number you didn't tell us what we did with that number what did it solve in terms of our ability to recruit and fill these jobs because we make it more market with with a seven percent raise at the our lowest rate right now at 12.2 cents that would get them to 12 i think 1285 or 1286 so it's not still not even getting them to the 1330 so this additional amount will get us to where brian says we need to be at the 13 30. and that's a plan moving forward because we know that minimum wage will eventually be 15. i don't know that 1330 is but again i'm well versed with municipal budget and the constraints that we all have

[3:43:15] um and so i would have said we need to get out of competing with mcdonald's for positions i realized the constraints that we all have and so i'm just trying to make progress toward that so that we can recruit again and we're going to we're going to work on every level exactly what we talked about mayor we'll talk to asu to try to solve some of the problems we'll we're going to promote public service try to make public servant being a public servant great again i guess and do those kind of things but we think the 1330 is is going to make us more competitive to try to get folks that we can have maybe grow into long-term careers and again it's that's the first i think diane bayes said the first step to economic development is tourism or whatever everything starts with a visit with everything starts with a visit everything starts with getting them through the door and so if we can recruit them then maybe we can uh have succession planning and promote them within our organization but we have we have to get people in those in those lower positions and and we do understand that's a challenge and so it is dis what we have presented here is disproportionately affecting the lower end without without you know negating the needs that we have to be able to hire we've got two directors open it's only the second time i've seen two directors open since i've been with the city and i do want to address merit the seven percent you asked about that as well um well my biggest issue is if everybody gets seven percent and you make 150 000 you see a big bump seven percent if you're making twelve dollars an hour you don't feel it so much and what we've talked about before is our ability at those lower levels to higher or the beginning levels i don't call them lower levels because those jobs are hugely important to us is are we addressing the needs at the beginning wage level i think

[3:45:19] that's the best way to say it are we addressing it that's all okay i i'm concerned about addressing at all levels definitely at the lowest level but seven percent when you start looking at uh for example you talk about the higher pay employees directors or what have you they at this point are directors and and yes we do compare the sister cities we compared all over the cities and even our our directors are underpaid when you compare to those cities so when you talk about seven percent increase that's justifiable for those directors because even with that seven percent increase when you start doing a comparison with other cities we still don't we still don't we're not even competitive with those so when it comes to filling positions and we better hope that we can actually uh train employees from within and promote them because if we can't do that we're not going to hire them from the outside not for the pay that we're offering so the seven percent is is a huge impact for everyone across the the uh the the city the different pay grades you know so again i do understand that some people get paid more that's part of the great skill that's part of the skill level is part of the education is part of all of that that's why we have great levels but it doesn't mean that those individuals don't deserve it either i mean but you also have to yes you're competitive there you're exactly right and talk to us about longevity because we um i was just one step but i don't mean this to answer everybody's uh issues here but longevity was created i was actually just about to bring that up that's the that's one of the steps we took last year to disproportionately affect lower end because that's a a fixed dollar amount for how long you're here and i'll tell you that what y'all did what y'all approved you saved at least six to eight positions that have talked to me and said i was going to retire now i'm here for a uh you know at least another year two three years um i even heard somebody that's going to add five years to their retirement plan because of that and so that's that's again a huge component especially at that lower end because those you know if you've been here 20 years and and you got that that

[3:47:22] disproportionately affected the lower end and we needed that um i don't want to mention names because i just don't want to do that but but i have spoke to many people and and heard back from directors and then uh another thing i would say the when we adopted the budget last year um grade 11 was set at 1086. if we get it to 1330 which i do believe we can within this that's 20 it's not seven um so that's we are making disproportionate movement at the bottom end and so i think we are doing i think we're on the same page as what i'm saying yeah and we you know earlier that that conversation came up and there was by no means um an attempt to say that given longevity pace solved the issues but we hope it was a step forward and that's all that comment was meant and it was a great step and then i can't tell y'all how much that means i think some people took it as all she want that's that she thinks that was enough we don't believe that was enough i don't think anyone on this council believes it enough but we also believe it was the beginning step to help and lucy has a question or comment yeah i just have a question ryan and cities our size how much are they paying the lowest entry level people um you know everybo a lot of city and a lot again public servant have we have benefited from have been able to get people into a life of public service and that being a thing uh and now they're not so there's a lot of cities struggling through these same things that we're struggling through especially with the market forces but we are seeing movement we are seeing exactly what we're doing or or even more in some cases of course um is is being done i mean that is that is kind of a best practice right now just trying trying to bridge that gap again not to we we cannot get there's at some point in there there's a slippery slope in what i said with the 22 percent currently eligible another eight percent

[3:49:25] we we can't kick this can down the road we've got to do something this year um and i you know that's that's the reason the picture is so bleak that i'm painting but it is the real picture uh that's why i'm trying oops good lord go ahead and have a voice okay now i'm trying to wake everybody out there that's falling asleep now what i really wanted to ask was is if if we get up to at least 13 is that going to be enough compared to somebody that is our size of city paying their employees like like we said well ago mcdonald's we will still be behind other cities but again i'm just trying to paint i go out one of the things i've done this last year is go out and talk to managers of um of restaurants because that's who we're competing for at that lower end and well fat fast you know fast food uh fast food particularly are the ones that i've talked to because you see they're post-it you see um you drive by uh whataburger or um mcdonald's um and mcdonald's is hiring up to 14 an hour to start but i asked him about that and there's stipulations on it but nonetheless that's what he averaged and and again i've i've spoken to some of the managers and and asked them about their challenges because again we're kind of all vying for that same you know next year's professionals really because they're trying to i mean they've got a they've got a crisis they're trying to figure out who's going to be their restaurant managers in 10 years they have a succession crisis as well and so i've talked to them about some of their challenges and tried to learn what they're doing and and and try to see what what i could possibly propose or maybe what we can do to to meet that need because we're all vying for this those professionals of next the next generation of professionals that's what we've got to find yeah well like um not a long time ago you know you would talk to people

[3:51:28] and they would really go the city is the place to work you know go and apply the city yes because of the benefits because this you get you know to promote everything that's what i would like in the future for it to be again is hey get a job with the city it's a great job to have well and and and there's there's a sense i mean i'll tell you i loved working in retail i loved it i loved the challenge of it it was it was you know i think any of you that's worked in that environment um it's a challenging environment it is a cutthroat environment and it was it was very rewarding but if i compare that honestly to what i do here when i feel like i'm actually serving my community at the end of the day i feel this is a job well done and i feel like you know i'm leaving a legacy that that that like i'm proud of my grandfather and i'm proud of my father that that hopefully my kids will be proud of what i did here the other thing that we as as you looked at um historic increases and again this is not to negate is that many cities we want to talk about many cities have not covered a hundred percent of health care increases over the past five six years and five years and we have and there's that you know one of the biggest issues people have today is health insurance and medical costs yeah the city council has been very good at of supporting the employees with their health insurance yes i i've got a survey um that i'm certainly willing to share with you all um i can get it in a friday packet it's about a year old but it shows what other cities were doing with their medical insurance and i think the thing that hurts us there is that we've made a commitment you know to retirees which i'm glad we did i don't want russell smith calling me i

[3:53:30] go to church with him and we want we make no mistake about it we want to keep that alive um and we're proud of the fact that we've done that for our retirees but we are carrying that burden that is a real legitimate burden and so some cities that don't have that their health insurance is a little more robust and eventually because we've made that change 20 years 22 years ago now eventually i believe we will be able to even modify that benefit because costs will eventually start to take a downturn on that liability that we have for that group um but with with that being said i'll restate it because brussels russell will catch me in the four year of church on sunday morning we do support retiree that retiree insurance benefit and it's a it's a good benefit okay so yes tom me tom b um over the past two to two and a half months i spent i really don't know how many hours but i'm going to guess it probably approached 30 to 35 hours talking to i believe most of the directors and many of the managers that work worked with those directors and daniel i will say to you that i fully support your recommendation i support the seven percent the market rate adjustments covering the health insurance i personally support using the arpa funds and giving a 2500 stipend let me tell you why um we've got some some folks sitting here in the audience that work hard every day we've got everybody that's at work as we speak that works hard every day they are doing more than their jobs i can run down a list y'all probably don't want me to but

[3:55:34] i can run down a list of people that are doing the job of a city engineer because we don't have a city engineer i can tell you about people in this city that get their 40 hours before wednesday at noon because they don't have enough employees i can tell you about people that cannot buy a tank of gas because they don't make enough money and they have to go ask for overtime to get enough money to buy gas to get to work so i can go on i can go on folks i fully support your recommendation daniel seven percent the market rate adjustment covering the health insurance and i support the 2500 stipend would just like to speak and say harry and then karen perfect you've heard me say this over the last six years since i've been up here i fully support pay increases across the board for every city employee in my early years as a council person we talked about the fire department and we talked about the police department in making those rate adjustments and i've always said we need to take care of those people in that ditch on christmas eve in 20 degree weather fixing those pipes those people that are making sure that we've got quality water to drink those people that are repairing those sewer lines everybody in this that works for the city we need to be taking care of them so i'm going to reiterate what tommy just said and say that i support the seven percent the market rate adjustments city paying for the health insurance and the stipend of twenty five hundred dollars tom you're rolling i mean you're looking out and okay all right but karen i said you're on next no speech necessary two great speeches already i stand with harry and

[3:57:38] tommy um i'd like to talk a little bit about the uh seven percent across the board now you can tweak that a little bit so that the lower level gets a little bit more in terms of it but i believe that it's the old saying a rising tide raises all boats we work in a pyramidal structure there's a heck of a lot more people on the bottom than there are at the top so i'm not concerned about the so-called fat cat at the top making a little bit more when everyone in the system is benefiting from it that's that's a very true the 881 thousand dollars that's the purpose of that amount is to make sure those low lower levels are addressed this plan disproportionately affects the low end i think our question and the reason he brings it up is we just see a number and i've brought it up several times we just see a number here what we don't see is the pyramid that larry's talking about what how what percent of those employees make up this market rate adjustment of 881 is it 50 is it 30 is it 100 employees is it 20 i mean what it's just a number on a screen right now we and i keep saying we need the details what does this do for us and there's various comments about it but we don't know i would say it's going to we're not saying it's a wrong number but we want to understand what it is um i would anticipate that that what i submitted to finance and where they got that number um i would submit that that's going to affect 99 of our 101 openings uh of our vacancies as well in other words it's all the way up from the top of the pyramid all the way down no no the two that i left out were directors um they're that they're on the high end most of most of the ones that we have vacant are not on the high end it's not about the vacancies about

[3:59:40] because part of that 881 998 is not vacancies it's employees sure but it it it raises the rate at which we can post those vacancies which is better for recruitment and retention it is for that purpose what we're asking for are those people who are already employed by us right and i was i was kind of getting there um so if you take those 99 that we know that the good news is those people have stuck with us we know that those 99 positions are more than 15 of our total workforce in non-civil service um and it's going to impact all of them and all of their um everybody else that is in those heo leo i'm sorry light equipment officer uh operator maintenance workers uh office assistants um administrative assistants all those all those all those ones that are in those first grades if it's going to affect 99 vacancies it's going to affect a lot of folks on that bottom end believe me we are all on the same page the the market rate adjustments are going to disproportionately affect the bottom end of our range for sure because we're talking vacancies and my issues employees and hopefully we'll be able to recruit but i also want to just make sure the people who've had to work those extra hours and those times and the whatever feel like we're not talking about people who don't exist within our organization that we're trying to say you have who've put in the hours who've stuck with us who and of course they get longevity pay but you know we just want to make sure that it's not about the vacancies only it's about existing employees and mayor okay so those those bottom three grades sorry uh the bottom three grades um the the vacants most of the vacancies are in those bottom three grades so that was my point in bringing up the vacancies and filling those vacancies is important to those folks too

[4:01:45] believe me because they are all carrying a heavy load in addition so we're going to disproportionately affect them we're going to be able to recruit better and that's going to affect them as well and that was that was kind of where i was i was trying to paint a full picture by starting with the victims we want to say thank you to the ones who've hung out and worked and did overtime and tommy said 40 hours by wednesday whatever the story he's telling they're people who have believed enough in the city to hang with us absolutely and and boy we're thankful yes yes we are and we're all on the same page there i have some information for you on your question earlier um this this plan that brian has proposed will impact 221 current employees 155 of those employees currently make less than 40 thousand dollars oh i'm sorry 182 of those make less than 40 000 will impact 221 yes ma'am nine ninety percent of people that may are people that make under forty thousand so what we want to the other thing i'm sorry the other thing that we um thought about proposing if council does um direct us to employee stipends is to hold off on paying those stipends till right before christmas and right before summer so that that also aids with retention and holding on to those employees as well that's a good plan great idea lucy you keep raising your hand i'm sorry sorry i just have a quick question and that's just do the employees say for instance the street and bridge the water employees the ones that we actually say they go out there in the cold they go out there in the heat do those employees get paid extra not over time but extra during the hour i mean like instead of your regular pay grade hourly when it's in the middle of the night or something like that it would be over i mean it would typically be an overtime situation if you had a breakdown what if it's not overtime that's what she's asking

[4:03:48] the week starts on monday morning and it freezes monday night so that's what she's asking right i mean so those hours might those hours would count to the overtime that they would have by friday they get paid straight time for the hours that they are working and when they hit their 40 hours regardless of when that is they go to right time and so if you worked if you worked four hours on monday night you know digging a date that's my problem is when they're going out at two o'clock in the morning that's not the regular eight to five job that's why i'm saying do could you make it to where they would make a little more money during that time because they whether and because it's not going to be overtime so there there are a couple of a couple of things that i was kind of getting to so if if their schedule is monday through friday say it's eight to five they work monday monday eight to five they get called in for four hours they're still going to be there for the rest of the week so those will translate into overtime hours and in addition to that in addition to that there is on-call pay for those situations so yes they will get overtime because then i mean unless they choose to leave early on on friday which why would you if you already have built-in overtime just to work the rest of your schedule uh most people aren't going to do that and then they also get on call pay for coming in in the middle and if they if they actually work and come in in the middle i don't call pace but i was getting at because the overtime i wouldn't i wouldn't want to get overtime and get up at two o'clock in the morning to go see about a ditch that's full of water i had to be up no that's what i'm saying yes ma'am we we do account for that i have a question i know the answer to already but i think everybody needs to know this and you probably know what it is is this sustainable if we don't have good sales tax increases next year and we build up this new big base what do we do next year we can when you

[4:05:50] do start sorry then you do start to have to cut in other areas to pay for the big base right that you we've created and we are budgeting sales tax um very conservatively at five percent less than what we expect to see um as well uh property tax is certainly sustainable we expect to continue to see increases um at least the next two or three years just because there's a cap on homestead exemptions you cannot increase the value of your home what you actually pay tax on more than 10 and again lower than property taxes and so within the next two or three years we'll continue to see 10 percent more on most of our residential homesteaded homes as well and if i may kind of flip that since i think it's inherent in the question 18 vacancies is not sustainable okay so um oh yes sorry keep whoever's on next tom let me go to the market rate adjustments we get rid of 11 and 12. grade 11 12 just goes to 13 and that also is the roll up for everybody that was 11 or 12 2 into the 13. and it covers that it goes all the way up to about really about halfway through the so it's going to impact everybody on that lower end quite a bit because yeah i need to know that's what i keep asking yes i want to say to every employee sitting in this room and that's nearly everybody with the exception of people up here on the dice um and i want to say there's probably some watching and there are the others that watch the youtube later thank you thank you thank you for what you do you you go to work every day you show up every day you work hard every day we've been sitting here talking like almost like y'all don't exist out there um you do we see you i see you these people see you thank you for what you do thank you for working hard thank you for staying with us

[4:07:52] thank you for your perseverance thank you for your endurance i say that to everyone in this room thank you that's the reason i keep saying we're not just talking about the vacancies we're talking about the people who are here every day and have been here even when the vacancies so we might not know your name we might not see your face today but that's the big part of this conversation that we're having right now uh tina you were talking about the stipend and areas of of options on that repeat that i think it got lost in the conversation are you uh referring back to what i mentioned about spacing it out and doing okay so i would um propose to give two separate allotments um won the last pay period in november right before christmas and one the last pay period in may six months later right before summer um and that also just to clarify that meaning if it was twenty five hundred dollars you'd get 12.50 exactly yes ma'am yes ma'am exactly um i think that also aids with retention as well good idea well i'm going to say that i support this marginal review revenue of doing seven percent salaries my biggest concerning question was what the market rate analysis was and making sure we all understood if it addressed the issues because that has come up on multiple occasions what are we doing for these lower level and making sure that in this that next year we don't talk about that same thing again which keeps coming up and then the health insurance and then i i would support doing 2500 with 1250 and 1250 split and that's what i would recommend that we consider today add one thing daniel you said something in your presentation to us and to me it is as key as doing this and that is the plan that you come back

[4:09:55] i don't know whether it's in 90 days if it's in 120 i don't know when it is i would prefer before the end of this calendar year but come back you and brian and what yeah your other directors appropriate directors that we have a plan that we can work toward year over year so that we don't get to where we are now um so i that would be my preference as one candidate it's important that we actually do that because we talk about sustainability we start talking about uh we do have to look at forecasts for the future and you know affordability there's so many different things we have to look at but i do i think that's a great idea and that was something that that i'm glad you caught that because it's something that's important that we do please please do that don't don't let that fall through but i also want to hit hard on the equipment's important here i don't want to bring it up again but we need to finance the equipment that our staff needs yes ma'am i recommend that we put that extra 8 186 000 towards equipment replacement this year well we said and we continue to build up 458 000. i think you just said 800. i said 458. oh 186 this is what we have left i would recommend that we put that towards equipment replacement this year and then have a plan to continue to increase it year over year no they have a 458 thousand dollar problem so would you like to cover the remainder with a one-time funding source i think we have to talk about it but we can't i think we should ignore what shane said we can do that has needs we can bring that back uh with a budget amendment this year and then they can carry it over to next year and use either sales tax surplus arpa grant money or let's don't let's don't leave chief brody out of this because he needs money in his budget to increase the amount that is being already allocated for equipment replacement because of the cost the cost of increasing equipment so let's let's don't leave chief brody's department out of that discussion and if pd has

[4:11:57] something as well let's try to incorporate that we'll have to sit down and work through a lot of and remember this is a one-time thing we're not saying as we said earlier we put 400 and i'm just using that number yes it doesn't mean it includes if we have a 458 000 need that doesn't mean that next year that 458 thousand dollars do you guys have a question no ma'am okay so that doesn't mean that that 458 000 stays in the equipment purchase it is it as we add we can take yes and so we are trying to get us up to speed in terms of where we need to be but if in fact we get there you don't leave that in the budget you take it away from the budget and then get back to a more normal replenishment of those things they had to make decisions along the way about not buying new equipment because of budget constraints and issues but we as a county council have to understand it's not just about people it's given people what they need to do the job we can do that we'll make note when we bring back the budget next year that we'll talk about that additional amount in equipment replacement whether we want to keep it there or not yeah okay do you know what else do we have i'm just a reminder that we do still given the direction i think that i have now i think we still have about five million dollars left in that arpa grant and just a reminder that there is a timelines associated with that we have to obligate the funds by 12 31 2024 so we still have some time but some of our infrastructure projects do take quite a bit of time what was that number on capital improvement 548 million got it down to 543 mayor i got some in district one no no nobody's getting anything to like get my sidewalk got it yeah we don't necessarily have to have direction today

[4:13:59] but i just want to make sure that i continue to remind y'all that we have that money available and that it does have a timeline so that's all the first half right yeah i know that we have people in the audience i don't know if somebody want to come up and say something oh absolutely the microphone's open we can always count on mason opportunity i made a comment earlier about uh the gentleman being too tall speaking down into the mic i was really worried about having to stand up there so i appreciate that so uh i prepared a speech i wasn't really sure how today was going to go what was going to be said so i'm going to repeat some things that obviously that we've talked about i apologize for that but i think it's important uh obviously i've got some supporters here today i think it's important that it's said and not just for uh the organization uh that i represent prefer as one of many uh city employees some that don't have the ability or the opportunity to come here today and stamp and talk so my name is mason matthews a single member of district six i'm also the elected president of the national firefighters association um i want to start by saying that i love being a citizen of san angelo um i love being an employee of the city and i truly love serving the citizens of san angelo um i've got these red shirts behind me uh and i can assure you that they uh share this one's still sitting in the audience i want to know why you're not he's got a back problem he's broken uh i can assure you that they all share my sentiments as i mentioned um a lot of a lot of city employees that do not have the ability or opportunity to come here today and stand up but i can assure you that they come to work daily with the exact same attitude and do the exact same thing i want to thank mr kendrick and finance for the work that they've put into the presentation today and as we're well we've got as we're all aware we've got many vacancies

[4:16:00] throughout the city uh difficult and it's been difficult to fill or even receive applications for these jobs employee compensation is at the root of these vacancies and the lack of applicants for them i'm not familiar or as well versed in all the departments in all of their issues but i am um familiar and well versed with the issues that we face specifically in the fire department but i can tell you the two words that keep coming up today are no different in our department and i do feel that these are uniform across the city and that's retention and recruitment um you know in regards to retention mayor you brought up uh several times that you know we got to worry about the people that we've already got here that have stuck with us i completely agree you know the slide and some of the the numbers that brian uh presented earlier that we're talking about 40 of our workforce uh by the year 2025. just in our own department we're talking about 20 by that same mark at 2025. um you know and i'm gonna tell you some of the the discussions and decisions that we're talking about on there that are possibly going to be made uh now into maybe the next few years um may increase that number right depending on how this goes and it's not just the eligible retirees um that are an issue we've lost 15 percent in the last five years um and that's money leaving every time we talked about what's the cost of a vacancy uh you know we put there's a price tag on on on training of just our personal in our department 70 to 90 000 and you're looking at 15 of those in five years that's substantial so there is a cost of a vacancy you want to talk about a plan we brought this up and i'll elaborate on this more here in a second but it plans a commitment i know that in previous meetings there's been some um you know talk about well you know committing future councils and i'm not sure about that i'm going to tell you every decision that's made in this room is committing future councils whether that's fees or pay or you know rules or whatever you want to call it even the decisions that you do do not make commit future councils um i'm going to tell you they're we're here and brian painted a picture that we're on the verge of already having vacancies and possibly more by not doing something you're also committed committing future future councils

[4:18:02] now i'd like to talk a little bit about recruitment um there's less people choosing the fire service and frankly uh for being the first pineal first responder profession altogether um that's not an angela problem that's not a texas problem it's a national problem um this means that basically the pool of potential candidates or applicants potential applicants is getting much smaller i currently act as the main recruiter for safety as i attend several job fairs and recruitment opportunities throughout the year i get the chance to promote this department and the city and try to attract potential applicants i'm gonna tell you something we talked earlier about creating enthusiasm i don't know you know we talked about brian groves in his department helping we've got a talk show i go on every piece of social media media that i can possibly go on and not just as a member of the central fire department but also the president of the employee organization i i know that i am currently personally trying to do everything i can to create enthusiasm as is everybody standing behind me and everybody in my department so i can assure you that is absolutely happening but usually as i go out and i've been i've been acting as the recruiter for several years but when i go out and i start trying to do these recruitings really people are applicants fall into really two groups right either they're from san angelo or they're not right they're non-residents or they are um when i go out uh uh you know usually when applicants when i talk to these people they're not applying one place right in order to basically increase their opportunities or their options they apply several different different fire departments this is not just they don't just go for san angelo they put out five app basically five applications they go apply at all those places and they pick the best deal really um and i really when i go out i usually basically comes down to four things they're trying to check four boxes what's the pay how busy are you what's your schedule look like what's the cost of living there right i'm gonna tell you usually if you can check one of those boxes just one uh the likelihood of you getting an applicant gets better i'm going to tell you currently we can't check those boxes i used to be able to check i used to be able to possibly check the box of cost

[4:20:04] of living right that used to be kind of our golden goose right we didn't really have to pay we're a busy department eight stations hundred thousand people we're doing 20 000 calls a year that's a busy department oh that's a lot they hear that you know and then okay well what's your schedule like well our schedule is different basically than the then the mate the trend i guess you could say or the majority of the fire departments it's a little different well it kind of throws them off you know and the next thing was the cost of living and obviously we know where that is now um that's making recruiting that much harder you know in the past our salaries have been measured against comparable or benchmark cities and addressing and then addressed using a set uh standard or goal to keep uh employee pay competitive we no longer have anything like this firm in place and it's been mentioned in previous meetings when discussing employee salaries that we live in san angelo we should be focused on us and what we do here in our town and not other cities in our career field and with this dwindling pool of interest in individuals we do not have the luxury of relying solely on the local talent to replenish our staff we have to recruit outside of san angelo as well the reality is is we are in a competition with other cities fire departments for these interested individuals as we desperately need to become more competitive so we can check more of those boxes now because it's been said that we need to focus on san angelo let's focus here let's focus just just at home in the past few years as has been said today um there's many companies right here at home that have increased their starting pay significantly and we're now less competitive right here at home the fire and ems career field requires a lot of time and training and an individual can uh before an individual individual can go out and save lives and protect property and the dangers in our profession are real and present obviously daily there's several businesses here in san angelo whose starting pay and benefit packages are better than what we currently offer and without the risk of these dangers so as i recruit locally i go out i'm talking to a potential candidate and i start getting trying to generate some enthusiasm and i i explained we have a you know we

[4:22:06] have a sixth and a nine-month hiring process and uh followed by an 18-month academy where you can possibly you're going to receive the equivalent of two degrees and basically you're also going to have the real realness of possibly risking your own lives to save another and what i'm competing against is you know another store or fast food restaurant offering a one-month orientation um and equal or better pay with no basically risk uh a potential risk to their life um obviously what i'm trying to get to is we're not having great success in getting these people to submit an application it was also mentioned that well you know some of these places that have these fast-food restaurants i think mcdonald's was mentioned well you know fifteen dollars an hour there's stipulations we have those two our stipulations currently at the fire department you sign a five-year contract and 15 people in five years have said yeah we're good and they're gone um we are in competition with other cities and we are in competition right here in san angelo uh retention and recruitment throughout all city departments is directly related to pay it's just this we urge you to consider this proposal and aggressively address salaries so that the city can keep the stellar employers here and attract new ones to come through the door again i want to thank mr kendrick and finance for the work that they've done we'd also like to say thank you to mr valenzuela for listening and working so diligently diligently with us for the past few years when we first came to him several years ago i came to him not with a percentage or a dollar amount but it came to him with hopes of a plan a plan that would be a commitment to all city employees and basically a commitment to keep us all moving forward financially this proposal is a plan and it's a great start in sending a clear message that speaks to how wha how valued all city employees are and their financial financial well-being is important we look forward to developing a long-term plan possibly over these next three years and putting something long-term in place and finally thank you mayor and council members for leading the city our employees and all of our citizens we urge you to consider and support this proposal in its entirety

[4:24:09] you this meeting is adjourned i don't think i need a motion to do that do i do it i don't think we vote but anyway we're good okay yeah you

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=4AZDDHy-fxk