City Council Budget Workshop 8-12-21

[0:00:00] order i do not have my phone with me so someone give me the time it is not a 1004 on the 12th of august in this budget meeting will be called to order we will ask if there is anybody here in this audience today that would like to offer any public comment and if you would like to offer public comment we ask that issues or concerns not on the regular agenda that they 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 are is there anyone today here who would like to offer public comment there being none we will close the public comment portion of this agenda and we will move into the workshop itinerary which is item three and we will start with item three a discussion of matters regarding the fiscal year 2021 2022 budget preparation including but not limited to one general fund revenue and expenditures and two other items needing council direction and today our presentation will be made by tina dierski tina you're on thank you mayor tina dierski director of finance this morning we're here to present the draft general fund budget to you for direction um so we'll start out by going through our revenue sources and what we're projecting for those for property tax we're looking at a 2.3 increase or about eight hundred seventy thousand dollars sales tax we're projecting um an increase of one point seven million dollars you'll recall that we had discussed uh budgeting that in line with 2020 actual receipts and that is still um it will still be a decrease from current year projections of about 5 percent alcohol and bingo taxes up slightly at 35 000 franchise tax down 250 000 of

[0:02:05] that franchise tax decrease is related to the peg fees which is not down but just moved to a different accounting fund charges for services is up slightly at 230 000 that's largely related to ambulance fees and a tiffany's reimbursement and other is down largely due to interest income let's go back and start again what the property tax dollar increase is only 868 thousand dollars and what percent increase is that 2.3 and our sales tax right now is projected to be sorry about that man sales tax projection of an increase of a million 772 is what percent increase do you have the percent increase on that um because i think we talked about having a decrease in the plan and that reflects an increase which is not any conversation i've had this is a 6.2 percent decrease from the projected year i want to know actually i don't want to know about projection i don't i mean i don't care what was budgeted i want to know based off of the trend line that looks like we will achieve in the 2021 year what that is relative to the 21 22 budget 6.2 percent decrease is what we've presented here because that reflects an increase right an increase from 2020 2021's budget but not from actual but we got to talk about actuals because that's what we live with this the actuals it's not an increase from actuals that's what we have to talk about okay okay yes ma'am it's actually equal to 2020 actual receipts okay thank you yes ma'am absolutely and the franchise taxes again talk about those is that relative to actual or is it relative to um what so 250 000 is just moving peg fees um into a different fund because they're a restricted revenue source the remainder is down due to what we're actually seeing as far as revenue

[0:04:07] receipts from franchises like gas tv telephone those sorts of things and why would it be down i i can only guess that people are using their cable service less and people are moving to streaming things like that and not a lot of people have a landline anymore so that would be down and just based on usage probably because what they submit to us is based on their revenue sure a percent of their revenue so that's a big hit yes ma'am it's about 300 000 of that all right and then your other is what other includes a decrease in interest of about 160 000 dollars it also includes indirect costs which are indirect cost is um we perform an indirect cost plan every year to help pay for the cost of administrative services so those administrative services are charged out to other departments to aid the general fund and paying for it all right so when we at one of our last budget meetings we talked about there being an over 800 000 hit to the budget relative to interest income this reflects what number and where's the rest of it i assume they are by area the balance of the 800 000 since this is not that number that's correct yes ma'am 163 000 decrease to the general fund the remainder of the 800 000 would be spread out across other funds so in total it's still eight hundred thousand dollars to the total budget yes ma'am okay do i have questions from council on this first slide okay proceed okay we'll move on to property tax of course um we are keeping property tax the same as we have for many many years at points well we want to talk about that okay at 0.776 per 100 valuation uh the certified values came in at just over 5.5 billion dollars which again is a 2.3 increase

[0:06:11] from last year we added 86 almost 87 million dollars in new property to the tax roll and we do budget conservatively at a 98 collection rate okay so let's go back to the hundred dollar value i mean the 0.776 so if one was to reduce that from 0.7760 to 0.770 oh what impact would that have in total property tax it would be three-fifths of 500 000 so approximately 300 000 okay and let's go down the next line so the value certification is five million five one five that looks lower than what we had for 20 20 20 21 because numbers that i have um showed that we looked like we would be at six million one hundred and twenty nine thousand one hundred eighty one and that's five million five fifteen seven forty eight five seven four so those numbers are less than a billion but i had a number last year we were just under five point four billion at five billion three hundred ninety one million six hundred forty thousand seven hundred fifty eight dollars um where where did you find that number you gave it to me when uh when we were looking at uh other cities in comparison in terms of our property tax dollars and you gave me 6 billion 129 181 thousand dollars and so i'm concerned that this i'm sorry could you repeat that number size man i understand 6 billion 129 181 kimberly's going to check on the difference but i'm guessing it must be um net of debt service and tears but she'll check on that and we'll if we can come back to it i'll let you well if it is then what is this this is just the general fund portion it

[0:08:14] doesn't include tears or debt service okay but all right so a portion of the property tax you recall the 9.36 cents goes to the debt service fund and so we don't include it when we talk about general fund because it doesn't it's not a revenue source to the general fund so what is the real valuation of property tax dollars in total and then i want to see the change from the big number and all the things that impact the total property tax dollars relative okay yeah i want the initial number and then bless all the individuals okay okay kimberly is going to look that up do you want us to move on or do you want to wait a minute and let's wait a minute okay to see what it is okay let's go it's a big big jump yes ma'am pardon me do you have a can i look at that printout to see where that number came from sure you can thank you so these are gross

[0:10:35] okay the number that we gave you is the gross certified value and it does not include exemptions for homestead or for veterans or for the over 65 freeze so and there are actually i'm sorry commercial exceptions as well let's start with what the real number is and then how it's dumped down so to speak okay so our gross valuation this year was six billion seven hundred seventy two thousand million excuse me seven hundred nine thousand ninety four dollars okay and that gross number then what comes off of it give me those dollars there are quite a few things that come off of it um there are freeport exemptions which amount to almost 38 million what are those freeport exemptions do you know what those are what are those they're a commercial exemption i'm not sure exactly what type of industry that is this comes from the appraisal district okay but would well yeah i think we need to know don't you i think we need to know what the numbers are and actually um our new chief appraiser has volunteered to come talk with you as well if you'd like to invite him to kind of walk through how all of this works at a future meeting too well i think we need to because one of the greatest concerns people have is their property tax dollars and the valuations and what they're asked to pay and every year we have more and more people who go to the board to discuss what their property tax dollars are it's a big hit to people's lives so i think we need to understand um from our perspective tops down what the valuations really are versus what we end up recruiting re receiving in our budgets sure and for now if you like i can give you the the gross um all taxable exemptions number if that would help for now and that's 762

[0:12:38] million 140 846 dollars so that would come off of that 6.772 and then there's an over 70 freeze loss i mean over 65 freeze loss pardon me at 271 million one hundred eight thousand eight hundred fifty dollars because if you look at that not that we can change it we're not trying to change it but i think we need to understand it because you you take a look at that first one we're not talking about 7 600 we're talking about 762 million million and then 271 million it's a big chunk yes ma'am yes i can answer your question about what the freeport is yeah that is um goods that are inventory that are coming through texas that could be charged property tax but because they're here for only a short duration they are not charged property taxes so that's the free enterprise yes but i didn't think we were a free enterprise zone so how does that work well no it's a little bit different than that it's a statutory exemption that they have at the state level because they turn around and sell the goods yeah out of state so it's warehouses those sorts of places goods come in they sit here for a period of time and i think there's a limit on the number of days that they can there is a limit on the number of days and basically if it goes underneath that limit it's not included in the mirror that's one of the exemptions because i thought that there had been not at one point and a desire to look at creating a free enterprise zone in san angelo which would end up impacting this even more right it would yeah no difference but we need to understand the difference between free port and free enterprise zones okay so continue yes ma'am just a reminder for city council and our citizens that their property tax

[0:14:41] distribution is not all from the city 48 of your property tax bill comes from the school district 31 comes from the city and 21 percent comes from the county for sales tax we were up 6.34 in august compared with the same month um last year do you have those because we didn't receive those yet in an email uh yes ma'am we just received those numbers yesterday and we usually put those out on fridays and so that's why usually you put them out on the day you get them i always get them on a wednesday oh in your email yeah i'm sorry we were actually in meetings all day preparing for this but yes we can definitely get that for you so up 6.34 year-to-date collections are over the prior year by 6.76 and we are over our revenue budget by 2.9 million and of that we have used a little over 400 000 for that juxta ancillary charges and 900 000 for the standard times building have we made any progress in getting any of that money back no but we are working it con constantly and i actually just replied again yesterday to fema to ask where they were with it so year to date over 2020 were at 6.7 percent increase in sales tax yes ma'am that number didn't seem right but i mean i look at the past few months in terms of the percent increase so my um i don't know is that collections of collections though you got to make sure that you address it yeah and i think that seeing the the larger increases that we've seen in percentage on a percentage basis those percentages are over last year which the month might have been down and so it may look like it's a bigger jump than it is but overall the year to date collections are up 6.76 and

[0:16:43] truly in 2020 we didn't see a lot of decreases so i i don't think this this number is correct i mean i know that so okay there's just your bar chart for sales tax collections again projecting proposing part of me less than what we're actually projecting for 2021 and equal with actual receipts in fy 20. sales tax distribution the the county the development corporation the city and the state all receive a portion of that 8.25 percent um the county receives half a percent development corporation also half a percent city receives one percent and the state receives six and a quarter percent of your sales tax contribution and now we are coming to general fund revenue we've already talked to but we can move on to general fund expenditures just a minute so total revenue of tim is up 2.3 milli 2.3 billion is okay i'm looking at the total revenue and it says 2 3 1 1 0 5 9. that's the increase and what is that percent over 2021 actual okay kimberly is calculating that right now she wants to know what percent it's increased the 2.3 million over the 77. oh oh over actuals i'm sorry yeah we don't have actuals until september last year's okay 2020 actuals so your total revenue for 2021

[0:18:48] of the 7707808 is that actual plus projected for september or is that budgeted budgeted what's actual because we're pretty much on the downside of 2021 so we need to know what it is over actual okay through august projected september for a total net number projected over this budget for 2021 we won't know until september 30 but this is well you won't know actual but you know actual through august right now on sales tax right yes ma'am do you want to just look at sales tax what i'm asking for is what is this projected increase over the actual through august plus projected september we don't do those projections for anything except sales tax but we can bring that to you okay well because the 20 20 21 numbers is budgeted is that correct yes ma'am so you're looking at budgeted numbers versus projected budgeted 21-22 you're not looking at 2021's actual projected so if you look at that total revenue increase it's probably a lower number than what your actual or it could be higher than what you're actually going to achieve because you already know you're going to have a negative six percent decrease in your sales tax line yeah mayor yes this isn't a complete answer but i think we saw in a previous slide that sales tax collections this year are approximately 2.9 million in excess of budget

[0:20:52] so if can you go back to that other slide with the numbers yes sir if we assume that in the 2021 column in the revenue section that the other items all made budget that they were equivalent to the budget at the end of the year that 77 million would be 2.9 million dollars higher than that is that correct yes so that's not a that's not the answer to the question you ask it's a partial it's a better picture than this picture because the one your property tax dollars you forecasted about 98 so you're pretty much going to have the property tax budget line as a relevant actual but your sales tax dollars which are a significant part of our budget that is the budget not the actual so if you bring the actual plus projected september down to that total revenue line you would add 2.9 million is that correct and if you add 2.9 million to that then if you look at total revenue based off of actual plus projected september to the plan for 21 22 you're basically flat uh it's a decrease of about 600 000 from 21 to 22. so if you have 2.9 million more in sales tax dollars you would add the 2.9 to the 77078 which would get you right at 80 million that's right so you're 80 million versus 79 million so in total it would be a million dollars less six hundred thousand dollars less and that's based on the conservative method remember the three of you have been talking about the sales tax projection and that conservative sales tax prediction

[0:22:56] creates that artificial decline we hope artificial decline i know but what i'm just trying to get make the point is this would reflect if we believe these numbers that the budget for 2122 was going to have an additional 2.3 million dollars in revenue compared to the actual 2021 performance and that's not true right it's compared with budgeted numbers you're right and what we really have to look at is how did we perform versus how are we budgeting the next so if that 2021 number was 80 million like we said we added the 2.9 million to it this would represent a 1.5 approximately one and a half percent decrease to our revenue but that's what we that should have another line on there for us to look at because that's reality this is not reality well the sales tax number in the 21 22 column is also low based on the trend i know so here we are talking about what we want in a 2122 budget and yet we're looking at a slide that's not reflective of actual plus projected versus well we intentionally budget sales tax low because we want to be conservative and it's not a reliable revenue source yes and i agree with that 100 percent 100 that's the way i think we need to plan but we're also looking at a slide that's not reflective of that if everyone's looking at these numbers and you look at it and you go you're is a budgeted number we're 10 months almost 11 months into the new year and we're still using budget and we know that the budget is not what actual and we know what actually is pretty much because we're 11 months into it if we were to project sales tax in a harry go ahead and i'll take another approach uh since i budgeted for a major corporation for a number of

[0:24:59] years probably should have had three columns you should have had a budgeted column for 2021 actual plus projected and a budgeted number for 2122. that's exactly what i've been saying harry and that's that's the way i think we can we we can resolve all those things and we can certainly do that in future presentations this is the way that we have always presented it so but we that's not a problem if we needed to add a call and we could and your background document that we all have that financial summaries it does have your year-to-date numbers we do we have it but we're talking about budgets for the future year and the slides should be reflective of this plus projection so we look at a real number these aren't real numbers they're reflecting a false picture that's all because that's increasing the 21 2122 number is not a false picture except for sales tax which is budgeted ultra low to be conservative i got it it's the 2021 that we're challenging relative to the 2122 budget which would be a better reflection of what the real budget is because when we start looking at this book in october what we're going to reflect is the actuals okay [Music] okay so do you want to talk about expenditures now sure okay so personnel is showing up a little over eight hundred thousand dollars that's mostly due to the safer grant that will be fully covered by the general fund this year for firefighters o m is up slightly at a little over a hundred thousand dollars capital down by two hundred sixty thousand dollar two hundred sixty three thousand dollars 250 of that is again due to moving the peg fees out into a restricted fund and transfers out is down by 282 000 also related to the safer grant

[0:27:03] again the revenue over or under expenditures is based off of the 2122 budget it's not what we don't have is what that would look like on the actual 2021 actual plus projected are you talking about the 1.9 million so that is revenue over expenditure based on what we are projecting for the budget again we are budgeting sales tax conservatively and so we feel like this is a conservative number okay any questions from council at this point okay all right here's our bar charts that we look at every year um pointing out that property tax at 40 47 of our revenue budget sales tax at 25 of our revenue budget followed by charges for service franchise alcohol and bingo tax and miscellaneous expenses by department public safety makes up 55 percent of our budget public works at 13 percent and public service is at 5 and then by type personnel personnel's at 69 percent down a little bit o m at 23 percent and transfers of 5 and how does that compare uh percentage to what we would project our 2021 performance to look like meaning in 2021 actual through august plus projected september with what percentage would property tax be versus public safety versus personnel kimberly can pull that and when you do that you can use your

[0:29:21] your september budget if that's a quicker way to reflect it but use through august actuals for actuals we have calculated through the june blue book which is three quarters through the year and we're at 68 percent of our personnel budget so um seven percent below what we budgeted for personnel and i'm assuming daniel that's because you put on a hiring freeze when we didn't know what was going on so it's reflective of maintaining a conservative personnel it is ma'am we did that right before actually right before kobe did i did put a higher freeze in place just to make sure that we uh we maintained and stayed in the black rather than going to red so that's reflective of that i've since released that and of course at this point we're trying to hire back someone's positions though but yes that's correct okay thank you so here we have some considerations for council the the fire department of course request the continuation of the peak hours ambulance we usually recommend funding that with the charity care reimbursement which usually ranges from 400 to 600 thousand dollars and that's received by the fire department annually and what does 2021 look like in terms of because there's a 200 000 variance from 400 to 600 so where are we for this year our late i don't know what you've done is here today our latest projections were about i believe six hundred seventy two thousand so it's not in the 400 to 600 is higher than that it should be but i again i like to be conservative and let you know that it would certainly cover the cost of the peak hours ambulance so it's higher than what you said yes but we won't have any um definite numbers until just after year end um so we usually bring that back back in a

[0:31:24] budget amendment but based off of projection where are we based off of what our where we're at actual plus one month still remaining so this month and a half i mean this is um more like a grant and so we don't know the actual amount until september but based on discussions with our consultant it was about 670 000 that we were expecting from the grant and it doesn't usually vary a whole lot from that yes ma'am and how has the because we changed the strategy and allowed other ambulance services to come into the city of san angelo and work because of a huge need how has that worked out so the impact of these private companies so when covett hit our non-emergency transfers went absolutely through the roof which took that unit our utilization way beyond the 0.24 or the 0.24 and that's why the great need for this these private ambulance companies come in so they have now come in they have relieved that burden and that's what these numbers these new numbers reflect is with those these units here have relieved that burden and moved us back closer to our target of 0.24 so without them and without the peak ambulance we'd be well beyond the 2.689 so that has helped tremendously tremendously helped there's some issues we're still working out but it's helped tremendously what's the biggest issue availability but we're working to them and do you feel comfortable with the quality of service these outside ambulances have been able to provide compared to the quality that you all provide i'm not sure if i'm the exact person to ask that too i'm kind of displaced from that because i handle the administrative side okay but chief dunn he would certainly be able to answer that more effectively mayor by maine we did have a discussion on that item along with shannon hospital just to make sure that we were all okay with the services being provided we did have a concern with the primary that we're using

[0:33:26] as far as the the the transfers and the availability they had so we did have the secondary and third other others that actually provide the service so we're looking and making sure that we have a continuous service and so we do have the the second and third option that we're looking at at this point but we did have an initial concern on the in the first company and we're looking and working with the second and third company at this point i think we're in good shape right now all right yeah good to know we're excited this program has been a big deal for our department so and with coven being a large conversation again um i'm assuming that that need continues well i'm sure we're going to start to see another spike in ambulance calls and our run volume is going to probably increase just like it did last summer whenever we had a fairly significant spike the differences this year we're going to have some relief with these non-emergency transfer companies so hopefully we won't extend too far past this unit utilization you're very tall in what happens when you're very tall you don't speak into the microphone so i'm not sure everybody can hear it sounds like it's coming through i'm sorry you speak very low oh sorry no i mean voice thank you any other questions any questions no thank you um the second consideration we have for council is health insurance and we're seeing um two amounts presented here 67 488 dollars would be the cost of the city for a split increase between the employee and the city and then eighty five thousand nine hundred eighty four dollars if the city would pay for the entire cost of the increase about an eighteen thousand dollar difference between those two options and with questions um at this point i think uh we'll have brian i'm not sure americans that's something room for the salaries or yeah

[0:35:28] we had a request on salaries as far as post pointing but um no we're here we're making okay we're ready we're ready to present as well so we're good okay don't stay here take me a few seconds to get set up brian's just going to take a few minutes to set up but he'll be ready to present anybody want to take a restroom break do it now because brian's getting ready to set up so it's a perfect time to take a break come here we are going to call this meeting back to order at 10 50 on this august the 12th date so if everyone would take a seat and we will get started mayor council uh before we get started in here i want to uh uh and i'm going to start by speaking on our brief history but even before that i just wanted to confirm that we have listened to y'all's concerns about our approach historically to how we survey and get compensation surveys and how we process that data and personally i really do want to thank

[0:37:30] each and every one of you all because i believe you've stretched our department and we've become even more professional about our approach because we've widened out that thing so i think you've stretched us as professionals in fact i think that this would have been a great project for my final statistics my final on my statistics class um so it's kind of been fun to dig back into those kind of uh things from from you know you you spend time in college and you go am i ever going to use this you know statistics here i am so uh we have adjusted our approach to provide you with a more holistic approach and hopefully um you'll have all the information you need to make a wise decision concerning the plans for the future and part of making that decision i think to plot a course forward we need to understand where we've been so i'm going to share a brief history with you in august of 2007 the city council awarded bid h.r 207 hr0207 to public sector personnel consultants for the study of our classification compensation plan a month later in september of 2007 the council approved benchmark cities those 13 were abilene midland beaumont odessa brownsville temple denton tyler clean waco lewisville wichita falls and lubbock six months later our compensation classification plan was implemented and during the 2017 strategic planning and budgeting process what we heard from from all of you is that we don't want to necessarily just limit ourselves to comparing to those 13 cities because we don't compare well in certain areas and so well i think the big the the correct statement is the fine this is the city that we live in this is the city uh we've chosen to live in and what's most relevant is this city not other cities but this city because this is the one in which we

[0:39:32] um collect property tax and sales tax and we don't do that in any other city this is the city we live in so what's relevant is this city yes ma'am and that's that's you'll see in a few slides that's what i've tried to implement so you'll see that you know we kind of accounted for those things in our process um so over the last just the last part of this slide over the 13 years since we've implemented those that plan we've modified the grade ranges by total of 8.9 percent or 0.66 percent per year that's just the ranges that's not raises and that wouldn't include any promotions correct no no that's just the actual structure that we've moved the structure that much and over the same 13 years of course we face you know inflationary pressures particularly in this last 12 months which is the highest in those 13 years in fact well but let's also reflect on the fine there were two or three years that we've had deflation inflation so this does not reflect deflation numbers that might reflect the past six months november on but it's not relevant to historic yes ma'am i'm getting to that too um and as i was gonna say the last 12 months we've seen a 13-year high in inflation it's 5.4 percent gas you can see some of those things up there i would just point you to the last one on the list bacon going up 8.4 percent affected me personally is that because you know i like bacon i mean is that why that's on there i don't drink milk so i mean i don't really care it affected me personally and i just wanted to you know make note of that so these are cost and one of the reasons i wanted to point these out is because there's you know there's all kinds of other ones but gas natural gas milk used cars clothes bacon those are things that we we all have to account for remember last year in august we paid the lowest we've paid

[0:41:35] for gas in multiple years so that might be a current number but it's not reflective of the entire year sure and i'm getting to the 13 years overall too 13 years since our plan was implemented inflation has totaled 24.17 which is not high i think it's considered the lowest inflation rate historically if you take a look at that yes ma'am it's 1.68 per year which is quite a bit under our historic inflation so we have we do account for a couple of years of deflation in there and so that's just what's happened over the last 13 years 24.1 percent one seven percent total and then as we consider morale as you all know as everyone knows the city has faced many challenges over the last year i think thanks to conservative leadership both elected and and city management we've we've been able to kind of come at those things we've implemented the hiring freeze that you spoke about a little bit a little while ago we implemented that one week before our first positive and i personally take that as a badge of honor that we we were looking at being conservative we didn't know what we were facing and we made took those steps earlier than any of the cities in texas i think we were probably the first one i agree so at the end as in at the end of july uh which is my latest numbers uh we had 81 vacant positions still from us essentially from whatever we lost whatever we froze and trying to hire but we haven't started i mean we've just started the rehiring piece yeah yes yes ma'am stayed that way because we didn't know what was going on so it's not that we're still there because we've tried it's because we've tried we've not attempted to hire until now well yeah we're about maybe 45 days into it now so yeah so yes that's true but just to make you aware of where we are we're 81 vacant positions currently or as of the end of july i

[0:43:38] haven't checked the last week and i think that's a residual effect from both the hiring freeze and some is from the overall marketplace because what we see is now hiring everywhere and then we've got there's 3 500 people unemployed sure and and some of those are still still receiving enhanced benefits i believe so hopefully when that i know the governor has made some move to to remove that maybe he has but they also started the child credit program at the same point in time so even though the additional unemployment benefits have stopped the child care benefits have kicked in so there might be and that's 300 a child per month yes ma'am so there might be a portion of that that percentage that that we probably can't reach into the into the job market for a little while because of those things and i believe you know we are providing uh increased services as our community grows you know no matter what we're still in we're still making sure water flows to additional housing we're we're making sure streets are maintained as things like our job yes ma'am and we're proud of that i just wanted very proud to mention that um i think it's uh easy to see uh that staff has valiantly in many cases uh responded to do the call to do more with last and i want to call them out for that and and give them a pat on the back because i think they deserve that because as everyone else was also facing these things that we faced with work environments being disrupted due to covid the synergy of having everyone around the same area to meet was impacted and everybody had to kind of learn how you know we even had to learn how to do council meetings differently and so forth and then about 10 months into those effects when things were seemingly starting to get better then we had to deal with the back-to-back crises related to the water contamination issue and the winter storms we're all fully aware yes ma'am and and that's i'm just going through a

[0:45:42] brief thing of you know recency bias is huge in people's minds and this is this is our reality with our infrastructure that was pushed absolutely to the limit the city staff worked right through many of our folks left their homes that were still you know not without without power without water and we handed out water bottles and then when we got home we had to melt snow to flush our own toilets you know we had to deal with the suffering in our own and and i'm proud of that as publicly i just want to make sure we're not just focused on the city because see so did all the citizens yes ma'am okay so yes our staff went over and beyond to make sure the citizens of this city got what they needed and they worked endless hours to provide that yes ma'am i'm just pointing out that i'm proud of our staff um i i've been with the city i will say this i've been at the city and this is anecdotal and certainly discount because it's just my opinion i've been with the city for almost 13 years and when i walk around i i do see morale about as low as i've seen it and that's my anecdotal thing other people might be seeing something different but that's that's what i see and so that's one of the things that we need to talk about a little bit is morale and then retention i think is another situational consideration for us you know many of the studies that have been done show that the number one thing that employees want and need is not not that it's not important morale is not just financial oh i agree morale is a much bigger scenario and you have to be holistic when you start talking about morale because it's not a single issue and pay is not on the number one line for morale yes uh yeah i think one of the things is you know um being being short staffed right regardless of whether or not it's you know it's it's from a hiring freeze or whatever i think that's impacting a little bit so maybe as we get a little bit more fully staffed that'll allow some people maybe

[0:47:44] that couldn't take vacation or or something to to do that and that will help morale as well two seconds one i want harry wants to make a comment and then i have some comments okay so having been in business for many many years myself do you have an idea of what it costs to train a new employee when you lose somebody for whatever reason uh we are so varied in our disciplines that i mean i might work to try to get you an average but it'd be kind of be hard to speak to because i mean planning is a different world from fire different world from police and so forth so well i think it'd be interesting to know i mean if you've got this many openings we could find a way to retain those individuals there there's a cost to train those new people to come in and and typically if you can get to that five-year anniversary you're going to retain a majority of those individuals so the bottom line is is if we know what that cost is to have to retrain new people coming in regardless of what is across all those disciplines you have an average dollar amount for those 80 some people that you've got openings so so that may be something that uh you guys can can figure out what it is and then we'd have an idea of what it's costing the city when we lose somebody yeah i think that's a fantastic question that's a good question i'll try to get you some information on that i'm sorry mayor well i think one of the subjects that i think we have to talk about and understand because this is a very complicated thing first of all i think we have a staff and i think we have personnel in this city that is some of the best in my mind it is i've seen the hard work the effort the energy during times of huge amount of stress

[0:49:49] and with a lot of pressure at all levels i mean no one likes to have to show up and answer the questions about why we don't have water why we had a contamination why we have water breaks no one likes to answer to all those but then on the other hand this is what the city does and so it is our responsibility to own that and it's not fun believe me as mayor i know how much unfun it is it is not great but i also look at it in this sense and i it is not reflective of decisions that this city made it is decisions that we were asked and forced to make because of governor abbott's emergency declarations and so yes i think all of this is sort of good information to talk through but i also say the following based off of governor abbott's executive declarations guess what happened businesses closed people lost all of their income if you're a hairdresser if you're a barber if you were a gym and involved in a gym if you owned a business you were shut down yes ma'am you got zero income and the the money that the federal government sent out did not and in a way touch the lost income the lost number of employees the huge amount of people who lost their jobs so when we talk about this we in the city did not decrease anybody's salary we did not reduce the number of hours they worked in fact unfortunately some had to work more hours because of the crises that we were in but we have to look at this as an entire city we made had to make ugly decisions and teresa would be the person who you could talk to the most about the phone calls she got when we said no the golf course is going to close no you can't play golf no you can't cut hair and no you can't do nails zero so i want to make sure when we talk about this this

[0:51:51] it's two things first of all i think the that we have and i repeat this incredible staff i think our staff compared and but again i don't live in another city this is a city i live in and this is a city that we recruit within we have terrific staff but let's also talk about when we talk about some of these things what the rest of the citizens went through they don't have paid vacations our employees are going to get paid vacations because we're not going to take that away from anybody and no one maybe got to take it when they wanted to take it but we didn't take it away nor would we or should we we need the staff that we have but let's be holistic in our approach to what we're saying yes ma'am uh and and i'm just simply i know you're pointing at pointing out the i know you are the fact that i think we do have a great staff and i'm in total agreement with you on that also want to point out that we had staff as uh as you mentioned that was out there that were working in the cold they were working through all of this and you know but i do want to point out that there's people that were laid off as well that were earning 300 more a month okay we know so there's people at home that were making more than our guys that were out there working and we have to keep that in mind as well no we have to but i i just say we've got to have a holistic conversation that's all i'm saying i agree but what our guys did was unbelievable i can't even imagine being in those conditions doing what they did i can't yeah but with having the holistic approach i want to make sure that we look at all of it as well it's not just what i'm saying shut down but it's also those individuals that were home they were earning that initial income getting paid more money than our people were they were out there delivering the water and everything yeah the federal government did not make it an easy conversation for anybody okay that's that's true again they were out of our hands those decisions yeah and i simply just wanted to say there were many times during the during these last 16 18 months that i was absolutely just proud to be among the workforce that we have

[0:53:56] totally so as we consider retention we we can move on to that um one of the things i think to give just a kind of a rule of thumb for harry in just the industry does speak to the cost of replacing and i would have to look into it for us but as an industry they usually say six to nine months of the salary that seems a little high to me but it that might bear out if you're training them from ground zero the issues whether you hire people with experience and you do yeah you do lose uh um and you know the institutional knowledge uh when you when you lose somebody because i i can speak to a little bit about that when i came over to human resources veronica had had left the organization a little bit before that one of my greatest successes i think was talking her to come back and get in those 12 years of history uh back with us because that's been invaluable to me in in that so there's something to be said i would much i'm so grateful to to have been able to to get her to come back and talk her into it i just want to repeat i believe strongly the staff that we have the work that they're doing what they accomplish and what they do day in and day out when they're asked to do it that is not what we're talking about i just want to be clear on that our staff did miraculous things this past year yes ma'am so as we consider retention we understand that the five-year is very important particularly for a city employee in tmrs because at five years you're vested you know i know that's different in certain in certain areas i believe with the fire it's actually 10 years but getting to that point where you're vested whether it's 5 or 10 years that's an important milestone because then you really begin to look at things like you know this is a career this is not just a job i can actually finish out here finish well so typically if you can retain somebody through that through that five year

[0:55:57] anniversary they start to look at it as a career so one of the things that i did as i was preparing for this i kind of wanted to take a look at the average city employee that's been here celebrating their five-year anniversary right now um in those five years with the city they've seen a total of 4.75 percent and raises it it's just part of my talking point for this but they've seen um they've seen a total of 4.75 in raises or 0.93 that's the average city employee while cpi inflation over the same five years is 12.73 so it just kind of gives you an idea of that and the average city employee has been has been working in a short staffed environment for the last 16 months so there's something to be said about recency bias and then that's probably affecting morale as well so next up our municipa our municipality survey approach as i said that we had listened to y'all's concerns we've widened out our survey from the 13 comparable cities that we previously used to 47 cities that range from populations from 50 to 150 000 now that allows for a better analysis because it has more data points and anybody that took a statistics class will tell you that but still doesn't answer your question of where not all those cities were still san angelo and we only have the revenue we have that's right yes ma'am so we though we've you know included the most common uh job descriptions in that and we've compared that we also wanted to hear the other part of that conversation which was we need to account for tax base and population so that we can kind of normalize that data to compare as close as we can apples to apples which is what i what i heard from from you guys over the last three years or so so we do realize that we cannot compete step to step with cities that have a larger tax base that's that's life so i just want to go through a little

[0:58:01] bit about we understand that there's a competitive average and that would be defined as the amount that it would take to protect us against most if not all poaching of an employee like some somebody recruits from outward that would be a competitive thing we can't keep up with some of those cities so there's a normalized average which is we account for our tax base we love our community we think we've got something here and so we've lowered what would be competitive to what would be normalized based on tax base and population yes tommy you know it just occurred to me you're talking about the competitive aspect there while we may not compare ourselves to other cities it seems to me that in reality they are our competition regardless of whether we compare ourselves to them or not to some degree i think that's true um you know and we just i mean i think you know with reality we might not go out and get the best person for a high level position because we just might not be able to to afford that i think we've just got to keep that in our mindset that we're already you know because we we don't have the same tax base as maybe another city it's going to be really hard to compete for that that very top level talent so it's important for us to uh increase our bench strength that's one thing i've preached since i've been here is try to grow people up in the organization but there is sometimes a need to hire from without and we've seen that what exactly what you're saying tommy in the inner city engineer i was going to say we've got some positions that are open that we cannot fill because yeah we can't compete um so our competition is other cities whether or not we use them as a benchmark or not or the private sector i mean it's not just other cities it's

[1:00:03] also the private sector yeah i think that that's true the city engineer for for instance and i might be getting a little ahead of myself here but city engineers been open since um november um the last two that we lost we lost locally you know that's in addition to if somebody was to have poached them we we've lost our last two locally so the federal government one to the federal government one to a local uh engineering firm yeah so though i know this is you know kind of this is that competitive thing and i know we can't keep step for step i just wanted you all to be able to see it these are the things that you know when you start talking about morale i think one of the most difficult things that exists as it relates to morale issues is what we go through in a budget session because in most corporations it comes from top down and said this is a percent increase that you're going to have in each of your departments and you figure out how you're going to spread it unfortunately what we do in the city business is out in the open out in the open and that is a huge morale issue if we made a decision in terms of through the budgeting session what we were going to do before we ever presented the budgets it would change morale issues this is a disgusting way to have to talk about i i agree it's awful and it is a morale issue i wish we could have all uh employee related uh discussions in executive session but i believe the state won't allow us if that's still true from my previous world so so when we look at the competitive uh if we just compare and again it is apples to bicycles or whatever the analogy was because we can't compete step for step but if if we were to get to the point where we could you know kind of protect ourselves from poaching that's what this competitive thing would be and that's fifth we we come out at about 84.36

[1:02:07] competitive but what we don't talk about is cost of living in other cities what we don't talk about is why some people choose financial and some of us because the wife or the husband also have a job here and they're looking for a job so i mean it's some of that's on my next slide you know it's this whole holistic approach to it and it's not so again a warning on this slide is that's the information that's prior to accounting for those determined factors that we talked about to normalize the data so as we get into the normalized data when we adjust our survey data to account for the factors of tax base and population for those cities it results in a pretty large reduction for you know that that average that we would be competing against so when we normalize the data set where we jump up to 91.76 percent of the normalized average or 8.24 below that normalized average when you account for the tax base and population so one of the things i heard asking when the presentation was asked for was a plan to address concerns so i think there is a structural concern i talked about that early on the ranges need to be moved probably every year and i think we can do that in a way that doesn't impact the budget by whatever that lowest raised percentage is we just move those ranges at least until we get somewhere close to where we should be for the ranges meaning that the biggest deficit is in the lower part of the tier versus the top end is that what you're saying because otherwise it's hard to understand when you say ranges need to be moved every year is it saying that entry level is the problem no well i mean so like we have a grade 15 employee that that grade has only moved 8.9

[1:04:10] percent while inflation has moved 24 over 13 years and so i'm just saying we need we need to instead of addressing it ever so often we probably need to look at addressing it every year in a way that doesn't uh cost anything extra for the budget in a way that's fiscally responsible not more than we can i'm not asking for that i'm just saying you know as we can move those ranges we probably need to so that we don't get so far out of line that we need to pay for another consultant which i don't want to do we spent 120 000 i believe 13 years ago on that consultant i'm trying to do that work so that we don't have to spend that again so that's that's my concern with the structural it's not a huge uh issue and i think we can do it in a way that doesn't because the other part that you keep referring to is inflation and no one no one addresses inflation issues they either do cost of living and no increases in salaries or you do increases i mean it's you know so i think this whole throwing the inflation thing in there because you also aren't doing deflation sure well really and well and that 24 does account for the deflation in that time and i'm just throwing that out as a as a number because i mean i don't know we could pick a number out of the air but that was the best thing that i could kind of go by and even if we cut that in half we haven't moved even that so um so it's just a structural concern that i think i i just don't want us to get into a place where we have to pay a consultant to come in or i just i want to try to maintain money can be better spent on it yes as we can afford it um we need to move those ranges just to try to keep keep up with what we're seeing and then there's the normalized concern as i said we're 91.76 percent below that normalized average and what we're seeing from those cities is they're planning on an average of about a four percent increase it ranges from three to five now none of

[1:06:12] those budgets have been approved so we don't know exactly what they are but when when we ask we're hearing between three and five and and it usually hits right around four uh i've looked at the budgets that have been presented in abilene lubbock and midland and they're all in the three percent just fyi so then there's the retention again retention concern that five-year mark and moving from a job to a career and to increase the retention i think it's really vitally important that we expand the loyalty pay to all city employees not in addition to the raise but as part of whatever raise or maybe all of that rate describe that currently there's a loyalty pay that that is there to try to retain both fire and police i would just like to expand expand that same program to city employees so that does any city do that yes i'm not aware of any city in our region that does that yes ma'am i think braun actually just approved it just like yeah exactly who where yeah okay yeah um there but it is something that cities do i mean cities have so many different approaches to this it's kind of hard to um to pin it down there's there's longevity there's loyalty there's you know i mean some some have steps all across the board i mean you know it's just kind of all over the place but yes there are there are cities who do have loyalty pay and what they're trying to do is increase that retention so we don't have that cost of turnover and the problem with turnover and so i'll give you a warning about this next slide it's a bit of a sticker shock but we're just going back to look at the competitive and then i'm going to skip it real quick that competitive if we wanted to be competitive that would be a huge number that's just the general fund alone and obviously that's not even remotely a possibility so i'm going to skip that one real quick unless you all want me to go back to it

[1:08:15] and go back to that normal life go back and if if i'm the only one so be it to go back and just talk through that briefly just for for my understanding again if we wanted to be uh competitive against being poached essentially from you know losing people to to anywhere else that's every company every city i mean you can't stop coaching right i mean that's not even a realistic conversation because if if husband gets a great job in another city wife and children are going to go i mean this i mean you can't stop poaching it's like you can't stop lows from poaching from home depot right it's gonna happen it's why sax recruits from neiman i mean this is what happens you can't be in the conversation how you stop it it happens and and you know that this reason i was just going to skip the slide is because i know that that's not a realistic conversation i just again just trying to provide all the information that i have to you guys again i wish it wasn't necessarily an open session i'd rather i'd rather be able to do it differently but laws wouldn't allow for that so i'll stick within the law [Music] the normalized need when we talk about that we also know that that's probably not a likely number there at the bottom and uh and i got there's there's a error on this slide it's actually about two and a half percent to uh utilize to implement uh loyalty pay so it should be 5.74 but obviously we're not doing this one anyway and i've corrected that on the other slides um so we see that normalized need that's a real need and i think i would really be negligent if i don't at least show y'all that that's where we are compared to when we adjust for tax base that's that's the reality of our situation when you talk about tax base are you doing a combination of sales tax and property tax yes ma'am because when i take a look at numbers okay for example

[1:10:18] abilene if you combine their tax base plus their sales tax base they're 68 percent higher in revenue well if you if you compare it to medline they're 101 percent higher than we are if you compare it to odessa they're 63 percent higher than we are right and so i mean so i've adjusted those things so i've added the sales tax and property tax just like that but but also accounted for population because they're providing that they also have to have more people to serve their communities if they're quite a bit larger than us um and so what i've done is i've come up with a per capita so that we can compare apples to apples as best we can and that's what caused that reduction so so though we know that's the reality we also know that that's not possible within any given year and so what i've tried to do is put together some sort of plan so we know the 82.24 percent is there and we know even if we were going to go with say abilene just say everybody goes with a three percent raise we know that's going to be effective in october so those are kind of two realities that were we're seeing and so what i'm asking for and what i'm presenting is some sort of commitment to a five-year plan to get us to that eight percent um and i realized that you know you though it might be something we plan we might go through a bad year and we might not be able to stay on course we might go through a great year we might make up more ground i don't know but just trying to get something in the works so that we're you know we're committed to try to uh approach that and address this issue this concern and go ahead sorry and so uh what i've taken that 8.24 and i've divided that by five years um and kind of just broke it out um you know that's there's no uh method or madness except that uh the first year is the lowest because i know that you know there's

[1:12:20] still some uncertainty about how the pandemic's gonna go and stuff like that so um and again it's just a plan it doesn't mean that we're gonna be able to do it we might be able to do better uh but that's that's what i'm suggesting so every year we need to make us more competitive so if they move three percent in order to achieve 1.5 we would need at least uh 4.5 percent to get one pers 1.5 we got to live in this city here's what i think is that number one i am not prepared to vote to support uh and commit future councils oh i'm not and that and that's kind of what this does but really what we have to decide today is what we want to do for year one sure exactly and not what we want to do in year five and those and i think this is a great presentation i think that your thought process and the analysis that you have done to come up with this proposal is again i'm going to say well done and i think it's something that we as a council have to look at and have to say what do we think because this council will be here year one year two we don't know what's going to happen year three four or five and i don't want to commit just as we don't like it when we are forced to accept something that prior councils have done yeah and and technically we really can't tie the hands of future uh legislators even i mean we do try to honor uh those things as best as we can but yeah i think we all realize that this is a very tentative plan that i've laid out i get it but you spent time and energy and effort to help us better understand where we stand uh relative to our competition if you will but again i say that people move around for many reasons and sometimes it's because mom's sick

[1:14:22] and i need to go home and we'll always have that right and you're always going to have that so really the issue is what it gets down to is what can the budget afford and how can we do the very best we can do financially for our employees and that to me is the most important conversation is what is the best we can do for the people who have come who work at at the city of san angelo and who have done a terrific job of providing the infrastructure that our citizens deserve and to me that's why we're here today and my presentation does not take into effect the the marginal revenue those are realities you're going to have to deal with in a few minutes my presentation again is as you said i'm just you know we talk we hear all the time about following the science and there's different science here and there i've tried to just follow the science i've followed the numbers as best i can and conservative from a fiscal approach because i know you know you can't do certain things in one year and so this next slide is is what i would recommend again i i did this is not i don't know what marginal revenue is you're going to have to talk about that here in a few seconds i mean i think i saw it a little while ago but it's not in this slide so the this option would make us 1.5 more competitive again based on what we're hearing is the three to five percent among those all those cities uh if it's more three maybe yeah again that's a discussion for y'all to have this is based on what i've what i've found um and that would be uh five and a half percent salary increase to civil service employees and then i would recommend that we split that that five and a half percent among the others or whatever percentage it is to implement loyalty pay and whatever remaining portion in just salary increases and then again move the ranges in in line with the

[1:16:25] minimum increases so it doesn't cost any extra but we at least able to make some ground on the structural issues and so that's that's the end of my presentation unless y'all have any other questions for me and then i think you'll probably talk more about what what we can do tommy has ryan let's just say we did nothing whatsoever it's a compound effect in my mind if we if we i'm going to say continue to kick the can down the road so so can you talk a little bit about to me i see a need to do this candidly i see an urgency to do this because of we're only going to get i'm going to say deeper in that hole we're in can you can you put a little more yeah i think if we're not careful we train ourselves at not paying what we train ourselves to do is to make sure we take care of our employees the best we can and that is because you can only provide services absolutely you have good staff and so what we have to do is to train ourselves to live within a budget take care of our employees the best that we can and make sure that we are not trying to do things on the cheap but to do things based off of what we can afford to do and it's all about financial and so and so what i've tried to do and i hope i hope you see that is i do feel the urgency that you're talking about but i also see the fiscal you know situation and so i've tried to kind of strike a five-year again i don't know what y'all will finally decide on but this is uh this would be my recommendation based on the numbers and i think i would not be doing you all service as your hr director unless i presented what i found in in you know and in a conservative fiscal approach which is what i'm trying i would request right here right now

[1:18:29] i think i have two more one more budget whatever depending on whether i would run again or not but i would appreciate you coming back to us with this type presentation in our budget process i know we can't commit future councils i realize that but i would appreciate this type presentation on an ongoing basis i've laid the groundwork where i can it can be easier it took me uh because i kind of switched stream after you know some of the discussion that that was had uh in the council that requested this um i've kind of laid the groundwork to be able to do this in future years and i've you know looked at it from so many angles that like i said i think it would have really done well as a finalist in the statistics class harry has something to say yeah well i preach first of all i want to say thank you i really appreciate the approach that you took on this uh and and as the mayor said i don't think there's anybody up here that doesn't want to do everything we can do for the employees the city of san angelo we have got top-notch employees in every position and and everybody's heard me say this before i appreciate what the men and women in blue do firefighters but we've got to take care of those people that are in the ditch those people that are making sure that our water is is fit to drink all of those other things so i want to do what we can do but we got to do it within budget constraints whatever that number is you know we got 2.19 right here the on on the last slide that you had if that's available then i certainly want to see where where we are with it and get to where we can be well i think the big issue is um number one is when you're living with a budget you're living with the unknowns and what you don't want to do is get committed up to the ultimate last dollar that you have

[1:20:32] because what you can't do is if you don't make your sales tax revenue you can't take away salaries and nor should you even consider it so the issue is you don't want to spend the last dollar you have and not have flexibility in the budget tom you're on did you have anything i don't know if you've been able to listen in or here or whether you've just joined us i've been on for about the past 15 minutes and i'm i'm listening to both sides of this um i miss some key parts at the very front and i apologize for that but i'm kind of with hebert i would love to see something coming back in with what we've talked about taking care of those core ones up front brenda you and i have talked about you know how do we judge those and and we just don't want everybody to check a box but this is key for us to keeping our most important people here and our i mean it's very relevant for us right now so um i've said what i'm going to say on this one i need to go back and watch some more but i'm good for right now miss brenda all right thank you all right so what is it that we need to do today you all done with me brian can you bring up the slides for tina so the main goal of the general fund budget workshop is to get direction from council on what to bring back in the budget ordinance when we introduced it on september 9th and then adopted on september 21st and so some items come for consideration are how we want to move forward with using marginal revenue we have created a couple of options and we can certainly create more options but these are based on what we knew of brian's presentation and what his recommendation was and we were trying to get as close as we could to his recommendation within as you said

[1:22:35] mayor the dollar amount that we have available so first of all marginal revenue is 1.9 just over 1.9 million dollars projecting that at a five projecting sales tax at a five percent decrease from fiscal year 21 gives you another 259 thousand dollars and then of course all of those amounts that it would cost for employee raises and the first option considers 5 percent for police and fire with 1.75 percent for other city employees and then incorporating that loyalty pay as well and then health insurance we have presented here the 50 for the city and 50 percent for the employee which would cost sixty seven thousand four hundred and eighty eight dollars again i want to point out that that was an eighteen thousand dollar uh difference from the city picking up the entire cost of the health insurance increase in option two same of course for marginal revenue and sales tax and then that would be considering a five percent raise for police and fire a four percent raise for other city employees and not implementing the loyalty pay as right as brian has recommended um again 50 on the cosa um health insurance increase so one of the things and you can continue but i think that all of us would prefer a lot much longer conversation about something new called loyalty pay for all employees that was a presentation we really didn't dive into it and when you start talking about that is a first year new program i think it deserves more conversation yes ma'am okay so that's why we presented also an option without that just we didn't know what your direction or you know which way you'd want to head with that so um these are the two options again that we created kimberly does have the spreadsheet pulled up here so if we need to look at some other options we can and i'll go back to so this was the one with loyalty pay again

[1:24:37] five percent five percent one point seven five percent in loyalty pay versus five five and four percent for um salary increases all right one of the things that um i think over the period of conversations that we all talked about was also some consideration for reviewing the property tax percentage and this is not this is reflective of maintaining that same property tax percentage so and the first thing we have to do is decide if we're all going to sign off on that property tax number are you talking about the 0.776 tax rate i am okay so if we reduced it to the 0.77 oh i think i said had what impact on the budget it's about approximately three hundred thousand dollars just doing the rough math in my head but because it's about point six cents of five hundred thousand so because that's one of the things that i think we want to talk about and discuss and and perhaps today is not the day that we finalize it but if we don't finalize that conversation and talk further about it we can't talk about this stuff mayor i'm good i'm good with leaving it at 776. it's been however long it's been there i'm i'm good with leaving it at 776. i'm also good to leave it at 776. i'm not so uh repeat again what you said if we were to bring it down if we were to lower it to lower to 0.77 flat would be a loss in

[1:26:40] revenue of about 300 000 what is the increase in property tax dollars not in new property but in just property tax dollars based off of the new appraisals the 868 000 that we presented earlier but what is new property new properties were 86 million dollars is that what you're asking yeah yes versus about 41 million for existing properties yeah yeah exactly repeat those numbers about 86 million dollars were from new properties going on to the tax roll and about 41 million dollars from existing properties that were valued this year those are the actual valuations not the revenue yeah i know you understand that so in total we bring in about a million to more in total property tax dollars uh 120 oh no ma'am 120 million a new in increased value or almost 130 i think but the but that of course is multiplied times the tax rate yeah i know so then so the additional revenue to us is that 868. okay i'm going to ask that we take a break right now yes ma'am 12 41 and we're going to wait for larry to sit down and we will get started okay so uh one of the items that we would like in the future meeting because we're not going to vote and make any decisions today this is presentation only is that i'd like the marginal revenue

[1:28:42] line to reflect the 0.770 or 0.775 instead of 0.776 and also knowing that tax rates are set from january 1 to december 31 so from october to december of this year obviously it would have to maintain at 0.776 because that's the tom greene county appraisal district's calendar so in for january 1 to december 31 22 also you would have that break in budget years so look at what the impact on property tax dollars would be if it used a 0.775 or 0.770 versus the 0.776 that we're at today [Music] does that make sense because you're not going to get a full year i mean you get a full year from the tax appraisal it's partial so the tax rate is set oh i'm sorry kimberly hawley budget manager the tax rate will be whatever we set the ordinance at on um january 1st that's when they'll send do the tax bills so even though we change their calendar year is different than ours there's no financial impact i know but it would be in our 2022 budget 2223 budget uh we'll project it on whatever you'll set the tax rate at and when's the last date that we have to make a decision on the tax rate and we'll have our tax hearing on the september 9th council meeting and it would be have its final approval on the september 21st meeting all right so how do we see what that impact is today we have a chart set up so you can change that number and it reprojects for you are you still talking about the point zero zero six decrease to the tax rate well as i've said i'd like to see two

[1:30:44] numbers point seven seven five versus current which is point seven seven six and then a point seven seven zero versus a point seven seven six so she did already do the point zero zero six decreasing that equated to three hundred twenty four thousand so you've done that number so we know that number for yes ma'am but then the question mark is so that's 324 000. that would be again because the calendar year our fiscal year is different than the calendar year so is that 324 000 as if it impacted the full 12 months of the budget versus the 12 months of the tax appraisals calendar typically we collect most of our property tax revenue before october so i wouldn't think that would be i mean i think it would be the three it is a it is a full year though yes well yeah it is a full year in terms of the tax appraisals calendar because they appraise it january to december right so that tax rate would take effect january one yeah and by september the end of our fiscal year typically we've collected all of our property tax revenue for that year right does that make sense go ahead michael that's not what she's asking she's asking because she's asking calendar year versus fiscal year and the taxes have their full impact in other words it wouldn't be just a partial impact it would have the full impact of the 324. sure yes it would absolutely but that was a good question so that would have the full impact of 2022 our budget year because it ends in oct september 30th but it would then have an impact on your 2022-2023 budget go ahead which we're not discussing today but that budget would have whatever tax rate you approved and it would have its full impact there there is no overlap between the two fiscal years the tax burden for

[1:32:46] taxpayers in our next fiscal year is that amount that's set i know that's what i'm saying so with it at 0.776 right now in this budgeted conversation that we're talking about the full 0.776 if we left with that but i'm sorry if we change it to 0.775 for example it would impact this budget because of that going rolling into the 2022 year there is no difference in this for this revenue stream the difference between the fiscal year and the property tax year there is no difference taxes are due in february and generally collected by september but they're they're collected i know but this budget is from october 1 through september 30th if we change the budgeted rate to be 0.77 i'm just throwing a number out 0.7 let's just say 0.770 um when does that impact the budget revenue line that's the way to ask it on day one which month october what what you're suggesting is that people who pay their property taxes for next year who pay before december 31st or before january 1st would pay the old rate and that's not that's not the case whenever you pay for that year our the levy has its impact for that entire year i know so if we changed it today and people have already but our new budget doesn't go into effect until october people have already paid by september of this year would not be impacted by the rate change in terms of what they pay this september it would affect the budget cycle that's why you say it she raises a good point is the effective date of a rate change if we were talking

[1:34:50] about ambulance fees you could determine that date since we're talking about property taxes that process is locked up in state statutes and you make that we step through a very rigid process to determine that rate and so there's not a split in the middle of the year so again my question would be if we changed it to .770 when we voted on september the 9th what impact in what year would that be reflective 324 000 in the 2122 budget year regardless of the fact that we're this budget year doesn't start till october and you say most of the revenue you collect is in september by september if we vote 770 it would be 324 in the budget you're 22 23. no 21 22 213 october 1. so that affects the budget year coming up so whatever that number is when you reduce it you're going to have to find a reduction in expenses whether that comes out of salary or services for citizens or whatever that's going to be it comes beginning october 1. so it's talking about the budget we're talking about right now it's absolutely a good question it's all locked up in state statute so there's no splitting the year but that's that does have an impact on expenditures and revenues where we have full control i know that's why we're asking the question because we are projecting right now based off of the slides that we've seen collecting a tax rate of 0.776 and all the entire presentation is based off of a 0.776 if we change that number and vote to change that number then you are saying that all slides would have a change yes yes ma'am that's all we're saying

[1:36:53] and you asked about that i'm sorry even though the calendar year and fiscal year are different you asked about the um change to 0.775 that would be about one sixth of the three twenty four so about fifty four thousand dollar difference so for every point about fifty four thousand yes ma'am okay so go to go to 770 would be about 325 thousand dollars which again you're going to have to find a reduction in expenses whether that's services to citizens or salary or wherever it comes from you got to have to find that in order to balance the budget the reason we're bringing it up okay so where are we update us in terms of what's all right so right now we have uh two options and one we have one option that this is the first one and then you have a second one i think lane is talking about trying to have two more options presented too actually like about three i don't know if that's reasonable brian um i do have another question for brian kendrick uh pertaining to health insurance when we have compared in the last five years to other our sister cities have we taken into account of whether they have picked up the entire hundred percent increase of health insurance compared to us because i know we have or have they passed that to the employee creating a little bit more of a revenue stream to funnel over to the salaries so what we typically uh well one of the things that you get i guess you've got to kind of say from the outset is not every city is self-insured is what not self-insured self-insured yeah so how do you evaluate that when

[1:38:57] you do these comparisons um well i mean that would be a benefit survey which we do um but you know it's kind of hard to know exactly how their health care plan is laid out just whether or not they provide it sort of thing i will say that what we see typically whether you're self-insured or not is i think we're much and again i'll kind of pat us all on the back here i think we're much more transparent whether that's to our detriment or whatever many other cities the in the original budget they'll go ahead and assume the cost of health insurance where we talk about it like are we going to fund this i think that's that's appropriate but a lot of other cities just assume they're going to pick up you know and the budgets i've read in comparable cities around us reflect not picking up any of the health insurance costs so i mean again it just goes what's apple's fabulous that's hard that's the information really that we can we can actually truly kind of research and kind of look at those numbers as well so just to show which cities we actually addressed and that's that's not a problem whatsoever that's going to be a bigger effect how much they have towards raises to bring up their values and as far as another option or two other options we can definitely develop those two other options again this was in response to what uh brian had put together actually we were meeting this morning just to kind of get this information together and come up with it yeah so uh quite frankly we can definitely come together to take into consideration what the merit has said as far as the the rate and look at how we can actually implement a an adjustment for staff that we can bring back to you all and we can take a closer look at that as well take into consideration the the the issues that you have brought up all right there's a lot of numbers on there that you can play with that can create five six seven options so it's i think and i have some other thoughts as well

[1:40:59] you know i just think i need to i want to make sure we go back i have some other shots uh some thoughts that i want to share with the finance department see what we can and can do and uh come back and really present a solid uh option that you know that you all can take a look at and say hey this is something that we can definitely support okay tell me you wanted to say daniel if for my benefit if you would leave uh at least option one and two on that we're not going doing away with those we want all the other options okay to be looked at it's not to eliminate us to add to absolutely that's all got you okay thanks do we have a timeliness when we want this back when do we have to make decisions well we have to adopt the budget with the first and second reading on in september so the ninth and the twenty first it'd be preferable for for finance and for budget to have some direction to include in that budget for first reading and if we can't do that then we'll make it work but obviously that would be optimal yes i realize that on tuesday if possible i'm not sure we will but are you going to send the information to us over the weekend so that we have it so yeah there's not a first look at it on tuesday the other option might be to have another workshop i was going to say a short workshop um just to make those decisions what about the 24th or the 31st i'm not here on the 24th i'm not going to be on the 31st i mean i just i mean we've all planned around this yeah okay so i mean maybe part to that uh mayor you so you leave on the 24th he's going to be a little bit part of that because we can work the schedule out as far as well here's the thing why can we not have two things one is our meeting is tuesday at 8 30 we could break and come back after lunch it's not going to be a long city council meeting so we could actually conclude the city council meeting and go into this so we could do the reverse we could go back and re-look at some of these issues prior to the city council meeting and then have the city council meeting i don't care

[1:43:01] mayor we'll we'll make it work yeah either warren it's probably best to keep the city council meeting at 8 30 because that's what the citizens generally expect and then we could follow up but we would want this information uh over the weekend for us to review kimberly has indicated that we could give that to you by tomorrow because you did a spreadsheet you just changed the numbers yes ma'am but i access haven't mayor but i do have some other considerations i want to make sure that i meet with them and i'll take that part of it okay now if i might to clarify mayor um elaine did you want to identify what options you were looking for yeah i would almost consider as many options that you have for the 0.776 is what you need to just convert over to the 0.770 just so you can see those number options in the spreadsheet okay um if we wanted to we can always easily calculate the 0.775 if need be is that that's pretty i think that's fair but so we can compare those two numbers and i would probably say maybe play with the health insurance uh the four percent maybe a 2.5 or a three percent just so we can see these numbers and for civil service maybe a four four percent to five percent just so we can for salary for salary i'm sorry for health insurance health insurance whether we uh one i think both of the slides on option one and two had 50 50. do 50 50 or a complete hundred percent but put the 100 in that brian we're talking 18 000 it's 18 000 difference yeah um and you know one of the things i would say is you know part of being self-insured is we have kept these increases these increases pretty low compared to uh you know other people that are not self-insured and i think we've done a really good job managing those increases over time so that's one thing i think that has benefited us um is i mean overall an 85 000 increase to you know the amount of souls that we're covering is is pretty low overall i think i mean i know we have i know we have to i know

[1:45:04] there's a reality of funding it but well because the 85 000 is just the increase you're not looking at the total expense right right but it's i mean other people are seeing much larger increases only when i'm yeah yeah there's like a compounding effect over the past five years if since i've been on we've i think 100 percent covered it with cosa and never had it by 5050 or even a what i was implying a 100 percent employee see what that would be i mean it's minimal when you start looking at it but not times five and how long will that progress because when you start looking at the overall number yeah if it was 100 if it was a hundred percent employees it would hit some pretty yard um that's what i'm wondering compared to the other cities that we look at right and i will point you back to i believe it was my first year when we did you know we were able to bid out pharmacy separate from health care which we hadn't done i believe we gave 200 000 back to the general fund that year if i'm not mistaken and so i think as a net we're probably flat for the last three years yeah that was three weeks ago when you did that correct three years ago and we kind of set a new baseline there which really did help us out because now we're kind of working off that of course there's some uncertainty in the future depending on how the bid process goes so i can't promise this is always going to be the world we live in but we've done we've done what we can and we tried to get as creative as possible to hold down that cost and there was that one year where we were kind of like the deflationary comment we actually did give something back one year uh and and that's one thing i'm real proud of cause that's not typically what you see so are we gonna have a full council on tuesday no we can send the options to uh to tom as well and just kind of review those and kind of uh i'll visit with him as well and see what his thoughts are but mayor could i attempt to answer a part

[1:47:06] of lane's absolutely yes i think you ask what would it look like a hundred percent in on this slide you can see marginal revenue at 1.9 assume sales tax at a five percent decline and then spend all that other money that health insurance at sixty seven thousand with a remainder of nineteen thousand the difference between going from the fifty percent health insurance premium uh strategy to the hundred percent city paid could be paid by that nineteen thousand so all that remains in this option is to deal with councils priority associated with the property tax rate well we just need to see it on a screen so we see it it's one thing to talk it out loud see the numbers on the screen so that's what we want okay that direction a lot of numbers pertaining to what property valuation percentage we go on all right with that then i think that concludes this presentation this meeting today so i would ask her mayor i believe we have some people who uh wanted to speak today and good afternoon council and mayor my name is jeremy kennedy i live in single moon brew district six and i'm also co-president of the san angelo police officers coalition i greatly appreciate the effort and outlook that mr kendrick has has on the current state of city employees pay competitiveness and his ideas for the future i appreciate his work to make a broader comparison of all the cities with population between fifty thousand

[1:49:08] and hundred fifty thousand i've done a pay comparison for civil service police employees based on the benchmark cities and mr kendrick's numbers are far more generous on the side of the city than what the benchmark cities show at least for police i believe that that a comparison among all city employees with the benchmark cities would show the same or a similar comparison to the police department the city council sets those benchmark cities and has the ability to change the benchmark cities if the council doesn't want us to be compared to those cities they have the option to change them to cities they want us to be compared to it's not on loss it's not lost on me or any city employee that we aren't abilene we aren't midland however we do compete with them for recruiting and retaining of officers firefighters and other city employees the fact is our police officers and firefighters are being actively recruited by these other cities the ones that are targeted the most are ones between three and ten years of service coincidentally those are the officers that are furthest behind their peers in the in the other cities our five-year officers are paid just under 77 percent of the average of the benchmark cities of a five-year officer in another city [Music] our pay scale is essentially an upside down bell curve where the officers between 3 and 12 years are paid under 80 percent of the average of their peers in benchmark cities it's not just those officers that are behind though i as a sergeant with 12 years of service with police department could go to abilene and make a pay increase as a patrol officer i can name 21 officers over the last four years that have resigned to go to work for another department in another industry or have retired earlier than most officers do while not all of that can be attributed to salaries at least some are every single person that resigns in this way or retires early costs about a hundred thousand dollars in a lost year of produ productivity to replace and train in those 21 people we also lost 170 years of combined law enforcement experience i'd bet the fire department numbers are similar there are pay structure problems across the city

[1:51:11] obviously not everyone in the same percentage of their peers and we need a plan to fix that in addition to catching up to the average but i see this year as a year just jump start on that plan i recognize that by the information posted for the agenda marginal revenue for the fiscal year 2022 is 1.9 million i also recognize the sales tax forecast is a six percent decrease it was a six percent decrease in sales tax from the end of fiscal year 2021 projections i asked why there's doom and gloom at this point in the sales tax for forecast for fiscal year 2020 even the most uncertain period of covid produced more sales tax revenue than fiscal year 19. 2021 forecasts for a dis 10 decrease from 2020 and instead is on track for six and a half percent increase i asked for a flat sales tax forecast that would provide an extra 1.3 million dollars in marginal revenue and a flat sales tax is still conservative given what the economic status appears to be the last four years roads water and economic development have been heavily invested by the city i applaud the council for doing those things as they were needed i'm asking for an investment in city employees and the ability to recruit and retain them a flat tax forecast and putting marginal revenue into pay increases and pay structure changes for city employees will begin to make city competitive again it could fix the police department's pay structure issue provide loyalty pay to all city employees and give significant across the board raises that are desperately needed to eat into that competitive disadvantage we are currently facing to retain employees and recruit the best applicants across all city departments but it will require an investment by council and a commitment to make it a priority going forward i've shared with chief carter my thoughts on how to make the most of those dollars and believe he and other city management could come back quickly with a solid statement to the current and future employees that we are valued i'm asking the council as a taxpayer citizen of san angelo co-president of

[1:53:14] the san angelo police officers coalition to forecast a flat sales tax revenue from fiscal year 2021 to 2022 and to commit that marginal revenue already forecast and the difference in sales tax forecasting to city employee salaries thanks thank you very much i don't want you to have to ask me to put this down you've already asked like three people to pull it up and i don't want to go there uh i am mason matthews uh single member district six i'm also the president of financial firefighters association um as jeremy uh mentioned a lot of our numbers are the same and i'm not going to go through it again um i want to thank you for the opportunity to address you here today and to speak um and i want to thank mr kendrick for the work that he did in the presentation that he gave this morning clearly there is a ton of time and work that went into that um we spoke just like uh jeremy said we did our own witch comparison surveys i know what kind of time goes into that i just want to thank him so much for for the work that he did to put that together um i love the city of san angelo and the only thing i love more than the city of san angelo is getting the opportunity to serve the citizens the cities of san angelo um i'm not alone in this sentiment as over 900 city employees show up to work every day and work hard for our citizens this plan and presentation is about showing our employees that we are valued and appreciated this attempt to keep our salaries being evaluated and a proactive plan of maintaining our salaries at a competitive competitive level is needed to maintain our city continue at the high level but it already is great employees should be proactively retained and great employees should be recruited to join our team as civil servant as a civil service employee and as an elected representative of the national firefighters association i have the liberty and opportunity to come before you and speak on this and several issues there are many city employees that do not have that luxury numbers and percentages absolutely matter but a plan is a commitment that sends a clear message to city employees that we

[1:55:18] are valued appreciated and important i'm one of the over 900 city employees of city of san angelo employees that i feel deserve and would greatly appreciate this plan's consideration thank you thank you anyone else like to come forward okay with that we will ask for an adjournment move will we adjourn mayor second by by lucy i suspect no one's in a composition so meeting adjourned

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=7KbAzlVRJLA