City Council Budget Workshop 8-22-17

[0:00:00] this meeting to order at 8:34 a.m. on August the 22nd and we are today here to have a work session which is a discussion of matters regarding the fiscal year 2017 and 18 budget presentation including but not limited to one the general fund revenue and expenditures and two council initiatives and goals and three any other items needing council direction and Tina you're the lucky woman today the entire agenda is yours right okay as you mentioned good morning mayor council mr. Valenzuela Tina dear Ski Director of Finance as you mentioned mayor we are going to focus solely on the general fund as we discussed other major funds our last workshop will talk about the revenues and expenditures for the general fund as well as other potential opportunities for council to consider we'll start off with our chart that shows our revenues and expenditures you'll see an increase there for taxes that includes property tax sales tax and franchise fees the increase there shows a one point two seven million dollar increase that's comprised of one point three five million dollar increase in property tax revenue a decrease of two hundred thousand dollars for sales tax revenue and about 116 thousand dollar increase for franchise fees you break out those numbers for so we have sales tax separate from property tax separate from franchise fees so the increase for sales tax revenue dollars and then the increase from LY break down the dollar amounts Tina yes remember you have them you mean a total budget yes more properties how yes okay that is thirty-three point five million dollars for property tax seventeen point four million for sales tax but

[0:02:07] that does also include bingo tax and alcohol tax and a couple of other smaller taxes and then the franchise tax is four point six million dollars we have seventeen point four million for sales tax and thirty three point five for property tax and four point six or franchise yes ma'am and the increases in each of those is or decrease the increase for sales tax was one point two seven million dollars the decrease for sales tax that we actually budgeted was two hundred thousand dollars but again there's other taxes included in there and then the increase for franchise tax was one hundred sixteen thousand dollars and the sales tax number is relative as a decrease to the current trend for the past six months yes ma'am last year for strictly for sales tax we were playing to budget seventeen million dollars for fiscal year eighteen and that's based on the trend that we've seen over the eleven months of this fiscal year of an increase of three point two nine percent so we're budgeting for an increase next year of three percent so it's 0.9 less than current point two nine less than the current trend yes ma'am and your property tax is an increase of 1 million two hundred seventy thousand over last year the property tax alone is 1 million three hundred fifty 1833 dollars and is that based off of new properties on the tax roll or is that based off of increased in property values property values and some new construction and improvements it was about eighty three million dollars worth of new construction and improvement and the rest I believe was increased valuations these numbers come in after the property owners dispute the their property these are certified values okay so moving on to charges for services

[0:04:13] there's an increase there mostly due to ambulance revenue and in the other account the other line pardon me there's a third about $300,000 each for interest income for Municipal Court revenue and for the indirect cost that is allocated to the general fund from other funds and those are pretty secure numbers so you wouldn't anticipate a lot of fluctuation and those numbers based off of this budget I would not we real we reevaluate those numbers at the end of each month once we've closed the month in our system and so we feel like they're pretty solid of course there's room for fluctuation and we again we'll reevaluate even after at the end of August to make sure that we're still on the same track so in our total revenue line basically what we're saying is the greatest risk to this general revenue fund would be if the sales trend was different than the forecasted trend which is a little less than where we're at currently in the trend otherwise basically those revenue funds are secure numbers we know yes ma'am very comfortable with them don't think there's going to be much fluctuation can kind of count on that coming in yes ma'am this is a conservative figures based on me working with you and Daniel over the last 15 months so there's an there is a possibility that those numbers could go up in fiscal year 18 but based on what you've seen these are very conservative is that correct Union yes sir I would agree with that so if we're ready to move on to expenditures you'll see an increase to the personnel expenditure line that is mostly due to the meet and confer contract that was implemented midway through the year there's a decrease therefore onm that is mostly due to the we're no longer no longer obligated for the murder for Hirschfeld rebate agreement so there's a decrease to nm for that and in the capital line the $50,000 increase the only real big

[0:06:16] increase that we had this year was for traffic and we did contact Patrick Frick and that's due - it's a revenue and an expense so it's a wash in the end so your capital expense line here does not cover all capital expense it only covers what mostly in our capital accounts and our funds and they budget for things like computers and laptops we have an actual capital fund for the general fund for equipment replacement we have the fun 501 and for other capital we have fun 502 and so most of our capital is outside of the actual general fund and so they account for smaller items within the general fund and then the others are by area specifically the other funds or other capital expenditures other than the small things there that would be accounted for neither fund 501 or 502 generally yes or enterprise related funds right I'm speaking strictly for the general fund right now okay I think that covers that slide unless anybody has any questions so basically right now you are projecting a million seven four seven one to eight in terms of increase revenue over total expenditures yes ma'am that would be our marginal revenue for fiscal year 18 next we'll move on to general fund revenues sources I'll point out there that your property taxes makes up 46 percent of your general fund revenue your sales tax makes up twenty four percent of your general fund revenue and describe those relative to last year in other words what did property tax make up last year in terms of percent 45 Assembly was 45 percent last year we looked that up yesterday yes and sales tax was 25 percent last

[0:08:18] year okay so for budget preparation and we'll talk about the property tax obviously today our fiscal year 18 valuations came in certified at just over four point nine billion dollars last year those were four points seven billion dollars roughly and then at 100 percent collection rate we did see an increase to property tax revenue our values pardon me of four point five eight seven percent you might not have this number that's okay if you don't but do you have a break out in terms of your total dollar valuations residential versus commercial and industrial what percent each makes we have that well I'll get well I look for it and if you can find it we'll definitely let you know clear out the present presentation but I think that's something that we want to constantly keep our eye on yes is because one of our greatest challenges and one of our biggest strategies should be growing the commercial industrial to take the pressure off of the residential property taxes so I'd really like us to be able to look at those numbers as we go forward and understand if we're getting the growth that we need and how we strategize to get that so don't worry about not having it today so you don't have to dig deep but let's make sure we have those numbers yes ma'am that makes sense so here we have our chart for sales tax collections you've seen this one in the past you can see here are our growth lines the red line is 2015 and the purple line is 2016 the Green Line is 2017 you can see the green line is creeping ever closer to that 2015 sales tax level and further away from the 2016 sales tax level so we think that's a positive sign and again we plan to budget next year's revenue at three percent increase and this year we're

[0:10:22] projecting to ended the year at about sixteen point five million dollars and so that three percent increase would bring us to 17 million dollars so we're projecting self tax up the three percent idea and do we and of course I don't know that you have these numbers again so don't feel bad if you don't but we obviously want to understand the trend line relative to how much of an impact the oil and gas industry is having on us versus just the strength of our economy because what we do know is in past years the oil and gas industry had a huge impact on the total and then we get caught off guard when it falls apart so we don't want to understand the basin of the business here in financial well on a you know base level how good are we and you might not even ever be able to pull those numbers together what what is the number that you're requesting well if we take a look at if you will on the sales trend first all you have alcohol tax in there so there's that number and whether that's growing or decreasing my assumption is it grows but then I don't know if you can pull apart industry specific to the oil and gas industry and whether that's where our increases are coming from or whether the increases are coming from general merchandise purchases okay I understand what you're saying and we do produce a report every month that was sent out on Friday packets that breaks it out by industry so we would probably be able to get to that information that way we can better understand our growth even whether we need to be nervous if oil prices go down again yes ma'am we'll move on to general fund expenditures by division you can see there that fire is about 23% of our general fund expenditures please accounts for almost 28% of general fund expenditures about 51% in total and then in the other piece of the pie up there other six point one nine personnel just

[0:12:26] point out that that includes amount such as the rebate agreements that we have it also includes the CB TV contract for transit and also includes Civil Service leave payoffs in that section and then the government section includes city manager's office City Council internal audit municipal court legal City Clerk's those kinds of divisions and departments and it also includes construction management and one thing I do want to point out on the construction management cause center in the past we funded that through projects such as the auditorium project that a construction management position assisted that project was able to charge out a C that was reimbursed to the general fund to cover the cost of the cost Center so that's why we've done it in the past but we've seen a trend where that service is being used quite a bit by general fund departments and divisions so we plan to fund it partially by the general fund for the coming year we do have a funding source for that and it will not increase FTEs but we just wanted to make you aware of that moving on to general fund expenditures by category 73% of our general fund budget is for personnel 21 and a half percent for operations and maintenance what percent if you look back at 2016 what percent was personnel to total seventy two percent so we've increased and continue to increase the percent personnel is to the total general fund one percent any other questions on that slide okay so moving on to other priorities and goals we're going to talk about salary adjustments health insurance and the additional ambulance and police officers that we presented to you before first we'll talk about salaries we do have a

[0:14:30] proposal for you for salaries to increase fire pay police pay and other employees as well our proposal for fire would include taking all of fire to 92% of the salary survey survey that's conducted by our Human Resources Department every other year our proposal for police would be a 1% increase dependent on the negotiations with meet and confer and then for other employees we propose a one and a half percent pay increase and you break can you tell me how the salary survey was done I can but I would prefer miss Marley to come up and give you accurate information okay good morning mrs. song okay good morning there captain morning - manager did you have a specific question about the study or just in general how it's done well just in Ghent well because when we start to quote numbers like 92% or whatever then we under need to understand what it's 92 percent of and how we got the numbers for the calculation so what's the calculation based on very good as you know the City Council back in 2008 came up with a list of 13 cities that they wanted us to compare ourselves to and the decision on those 13 cities was made based on population I've got it right here it was done based on population the cost of living as it compared to the United States and what the citizen weekly wage was for those cities involved and so the 13 cities has been our benchmark that we

[0:16:34] have used for all salary studies since that point in time the what we have is a little over 390 different titles in the city and what we do is we compare 200 of those titles against those 13 cities we do do it every other year and we send them our job descriptions and the job titles and our pay ranges for those 200 positions and then the comparable cities will choose what positions they believe match favorably with those jobs we get their pay ranges then for each of the 13 cities and we determine the midpoint of each of those ranges and come up with the average of the midpoints for those 13 cities and then we take our midpoint for our range and compare it to that number and that's how it comes in so but the basis is off of population not revenue in those 13 cities that it was one of the factors that they use yes did we look at revenue we do not we use the cities that the council told us to use one of my greatest concerns is is that we use population as a factor not revenue as a factor because we pay our bills with revenue not population then there becomes a challenge in terms of because you revenues what you pay the bills with and so we have to look at cities that have comparable revenue whether it is sales tax only property tax combination franchise fees etc because when you start taking a look at and I'm using information that the city has given us that if you take a look at your self tax collections for Midland for example which is one of those 13 cities they have a 220 percent increase in sales tax over San Angelo if you take a look at Abilene a 65 percent increase over San Angelo if you take a look at a deficit 77 percent and of course Wichita Falls is 19 percent so when you take a look at

[0:18:38] trying to use them as the basis for analysis we're not apples to apples we're very dramatically different in terms of the revenue we get and so my concern and challenges is to make sure that we better understand an apples to apples comparison and not an apples to cherries comparison because and I realize previous councils have directed so you've done what previous councils have directed you to do but I really think we need to get into the business of understanding revenue stream not population because we here in San Angelo have to live work and play in San Angelo and we only have X amount of revenue and compared to our other cities our revenue is substantially less we also going to need to make sure that we stay with what approximately what our cost of living is when we compare and I think that's what we did in that's what was done in some of these other cities was to look at the cost of living in there just because our sales tax is down doesn't mean that that that we shouldn't use some of those particular figures because our cost of living probably is less than it is in in some of these other cities so let's make sure that we get all the information together as we go forward yeah I had a survey done in terms of apartment rents and Abilene and Midland compared to San Angelo and if you take a look at a 1-bedroom 1-bath Class A apartment in San Angelo is 44% well Midland is 44% more expensive than it is in San Angelo and a two bedroom two bath apartment Class A would be 40% more expensive to live there in Midland than it is here and if you look at Class B which is in the difference between Class A and Class B as the euros build primarily so you're

[0:20:41] looking at as much as you can a palapa 'ls based off of the year built and the square footage in that facility per apartment so if you look at Class B Midland is 25% more expensive in a Class B which is an older apartment and 50% more expensive in a Class B 2-bedroom 2-bath apartment I could give you Abilene's numbers which are interestingly enough if you compare a balloon to San Angelo the dollar per square foot in a Class A apartment is a dollar 21 Abilene a dollar six so a Class A one bedroom one bath is cheaper in Abilene than it is in San Angelo and primarily the same in Class B so in San Angelo Class B one bedroom one bath is 99 cents per square foot and in Abilene it's a dollar two per square foot so your two bedrooms are pretty comparable but those are the other things and I think that not to diminish the numbers but we've got to better understand because our citizens live here we live here we need to understand what our revenue stream is here so that we make the best decisions in the big picture or our budget if you recall from the last budget workshop you gave me direction on what to gather from those comparable cities and you included sales tax property tax market value cost-of-living index and population and we have completed that survey and we'll be bringing that to Council for your direction on which 13 cities are which cities to start using for our future survey so I will bring that to Council now that was a lot of work and it was greatly appreciated I think it gives us some good benchmark sure to work absolutely and what we'll do when I bring it to you is have it on the screen so that we can run the different each of the different categories in order so that we can see which one's kind of all

[0:22:44] group together that we may have choose to be our comparators in the future council members any input any questions oh god I've got a question relating back to fire the percentages that we have here listed now how is that going to affect the rank differentials that we have established now beg your pardon I couldn't hear how are these percentages going to affect the rank differentials established between firefighter drivers lieutenant captain from Captain to back chief from lieutenant to captain from firefighter to driver the separation is greater they will get a bigger increase when they make a promotion from those ranks and you can say that one more time yes from captain - batchi from lieutenant to captain and from firefighter to driver for the promotion that would be drivers leave - lieutenant it is slightly less presently the promotional amount would be seven thousand seven hundred and seventy eight dollars a year and it would drop to four thousand three hundred and twenty-two dollars a year and that would be in this upcoming year should any lieutenant vacancies come up and a driver were to promote they would receive a 4322 dollar increase do you see a couple members of our firefighter pack here is sitting if they have any thoughts on this we have spoken on it Fred do you need to come up okay thanks right Lisa yeah I have a question on the police 1% are you still in meat and confirmed meetings and is this kind of a target number or what does the 1% represent the 1% is the number that I was told by budget that they had available for police salaries and yes we

[0:24:47] are still in negotiations thank you how about over here do we have comments Tommy question um at one point we had this is old information because I'm an old guy we had step within both police and fire do we still have those and if we do are they active in either department all right let's talk about fire first in the fire department it was either two or three years ago they went away from steps and they went to something that they've labeled loyalty pay which in effect does the same thing as steps the fire department chief done through rigorous work several hundred hours put together a chart where each rank has a base pay only so every single person that's in that rank has the same base pay and then they're paid $25 per year for their years of service with the city and that's what they called loyalty pay and so as each year increases in their service they get another $25 for that so essentially they're moving but it's not steps per se that $25 when do they receive that is that a monthly figure or an annual figure monthly it's solely for each year of service they get $25 per month correct okay as far as the police department goes keep in mind those are meeting confer contracts they are agreements that we meet with the fire with the police department and they have had steps in years past they I think the largest had ever gone up to was like 28 steps for a police officer 27 steps which was ridiculous to try to manage and I think years and years ago each step number equated to how many years a person was

[0:26:51] with the department and two contracts ago we decreased those number of steps to 13 steps for a police officer and in the current contract where we are in in 2014 when that was negotiated the police or the police department agreed that as part of their salary structure those steps would freeze and so whatever step they were in they were going to freeze on day one of that contract and because they went to a different way to calculate their pay raises what they agreed to do was to use our midpoint system that we use for all the rest of the positions in the city and so when you take those those ranks in the police department and determine a midpoint on their range and then build all the steps outwards from that center Center place so each year this contract as they've gotten pay increases we have added that number to the step so when when last year when the police officers got whatever it was seven percent nine percent whatever it was that was added to each step so although they didn't move a step they received a pay increase in that step now I was told that this question may be asked and so I did prepare an example for the police officers in what it would cost us to first off smooth out all of the steps because when you build the range from the mid point out the separation between all of those 13 steps is not the same percentage so if we were to move somebody from step one to step two and they got three percent but step step seven to eight was 2% the raises would not be comparable so the first thing I had to do was take all of those existing steps in this example and smooth it out so that they were all three percent apart and that was the number I picked based on the range of

[0:28:53] the difference between the steps presently the cost to do that initially right now at the current rates is $85,000 then if you were going to award one step increase for each of the people in those steps that total would come to one hundred and sixty nine thousand 631 for a total of two hundred and fifty four thousand six hundred and forty-one dollars to smooth out the steps and give everybody a step right now that at the current rates we said would you repeat that last statement about the 200 and some sure that's 85,000 ideas so I didn't get the other okay so it's 85 thousand to smooth out the steps and then it would be an additional one hundred and sixty nine dollars six hundred and thirty one dollars that's to do movement of one staff so everybody that the first step would go to second second step to go to three and that total is 250 four thousand six hundred and forty one oh then the fire each year would have included their loyalty pay within whatever their personnel budget is police would not is it basically because of meet and confer basically yes I mean that was what was agreed to in the meeting come for agreement that we're presently in now keep in mind we are in negotiations now and we haven't even started our compensation negotiations you know certainly I think the city would be you know welcome to hearing whatever ideas they have if they're interested in going to something like fire you know certainly we'd have to work those numbers out and see what it would cost I want to know you know not having any knowledge of you know how the chief fire

[0:30:57] chief came to his you know that might that might be something it may be more suitable I have no idea but that when you talk about that that just you know that maybe something for conversation at least my guess would be that it will be pretty expensive you know to find out what an app you know you don't want anybody to lose any money on doing it and so how you work that is it's a complicated formula to do commentary with you know we are also up against the gun on time for this contract it expires on September 30th and so it is something that we may have to do an agreement to to extend it so that we could continue talking about that sort of a plan because it will take some time to calculate okay thanks Tom do you have questions or comments all right Harry no I had a question on the other employees or something about the other city employees and will they be getting a raise overall or we get into where you know the supervisors merit-based is that your basis no we are not doing merit-based for them is that what you meant idea that meant okay and we are proposing one and a half percent just across the board at this point for all that and keep in mind that we're strictly talking about general fund employees here but that would apply to employees citywide you know on the other employees do you do any kind of or maybe this is a Lisa question do you do local survey to see what organizations are doing for other employees I'm sure there are similar job titles and job duties with other employers in San Angelo yes actually we are working on one that's what she was referring to a little bit earlier Billy in terms of what I'd ask him to do that she's going to bring back in terms of the next meeting in terms of all that data okay

[0:33:00] okay as we did that strategy we got an information from the Texas Workforce Commission they they provided us with a survey that's done statewide by region and by city and so they provided us with that a lot of our positions don't compare favorably to positions in the private sector but we are going through those one by one there's 400 titles that they provided with to us from local or I should say private sector positions and so not all of them matched up in San Angelo there's a quite a big number of them that actually they provided me data from Alamo Region which I you know is not a comparison for us at all so those were having to exclude it remains to be seen how many titles in the end will actually compare favorably to those private sector positions it's just a lot of data that I'm having to go through do you have any information this is somewhat back to the royalty pay step at one time and I think we may still in the police department you know the retention can be an issue just for them leaving for higher pay less stressful jobs maybe still in law enforcement that sort of thing do we have any data that talks about since the fire department went to the loyalty pay has that stabilized their retention and the the loss thereof do you have any information I don't have any specific information on that but what I can say is because of the different pension plans that are in place the fire department has it's very own specific pension plan for San Angelo that in itself detracts from firefighters leaving here and going to another city to perform the same kind of work in contrast to police that's part

[0:35:06] of the Texas Municipal retirement service and they can go to any city that's at EMRs City so I don't have the data it's only been either two or three years that they've had that plan in place but typically the turnover in the fire department is so much less than the police department so right general when we look at a 1.5 percent I'm a big believer in merit raises and one of my great concerns when we give everybody 1.5 percent those people who have worked extra hard and done tremendous amount of work and went over and above the call of duty if you will get rewarded at the same level as those who perhaps haven't given a hundred percent so I get really concerned that with a 1.5 percent for all employees that we're not rewarding those that have excelled and as well as those perhapses who've been with us for a longer period of time versus those who have been with us for a very short period of time get rewarded at the same level and so that's always concerning to me and it looks like when I go back and take a look at you provided us with summary of city employee raises and the information on here and it looks like on a pretty consistent basis what we've done is treated all employees at the same level and it's been a very long time since we've done anything about merit raises and so in addition to the fact I think it doesn't reward those who do a great job I also worry that not doing merit raises means we don't do reviews on employees because generally when you do a review on employees when you discuss and talk through raises first off the the years that we did not connect it was evaluations was driven by

[0:37:09] trying to get the pay ranges more in line with the survey the when you do a merit-based system where the meets gets one percentage and exceeds gets a different percentage then when we're also trying to move the range is to increase based on the survey you can only go up with whatever the lowest number is of your pay raises because then you're going to lead people outside of the range if you move it up in an example if you went with 5% and 3% if you couldn't raise the range 5% because the people that only got 3 or outside of the range so I agree with you I love it when it's merit-based because it does give us a better perspective and it gives employees something to work for just because we don't do merit-based increases does not mean that we do not do evaluations we do those every year regardless it's a it's an eight page document it's very intensive and it covers a wide variety of core values that you would expect in an employee with this year's projection or proposal at one and a half percent that's driven by how much money was allowed in the budget to go towards pay raises and in order to make those merit base we would only be able to go two percent for exceeds and 1% for meets to be an average of one and a half percent and when I looked at those numbers you know it didn't reflect a big enough difference for those people who really do exceed versus the people that just meets and I thought it might give the wrong impression to employees to not have to work hard because all they're going to get is another percentage it's 1 percent of X is greater than 0 times X absolutely and so if you if you were looking to go with something as exceeds only and nothing for those people who meets that's different but based on what I was told that we had available that

[0:39:14] those were the numbers that we came up with I think since we've got everybody to a standard rate and I think that's what previous councils were trying to do above 90% of whatever the whatever the medium was I think I have to agree with what Brenda said in I worked 40 years for a company and we did merit raises based on evaluations and that's the only way you're going to move the city to the next level so I think we need to as we go forward after this particular fiscal year we need to belay in place next year something where we can start merit raises so we're in the discussion at this time next year we know that that's how we're going to when we move forward at least one that can happen this I'm sorry go ahead let me just say this I know that we had discussed the 1% of 2% 1% seems like a small number for those that are exceeding but this is a kickoff and this will be understanding for staff at the following year that this is the way that we've set it up at this point we did agree to do one and a half percent to present to the City Council so we could have this discussion about merit day and I do believe that 1 1 percent and 2 percent would suffice right now is an introduction to let people know City staff that this is the way we'll be doing it right now it's 1 & 2 percent didn't seem like a lot but next year maybe much better you know so again it just signals to the staff that I do need to push myself a lot harder because next year they may not just be a 1% it may be a difference of 2 or 3 percent so I'd like to clarify that when Lisa speaks to the amount that was available for raises as you know there is that limited amount of resources you can direct us to use it in any way that you'd like and what our goal was at this point was to present you a balanced budget and so you'll see at the end of the prison presentation with that it and we'll be happy to make

[0:41:16] changes to play with the numbers and let you direct us as to how you want to see the end result Lisa one other question I think you gave us this information and if not just tell me but there was this sheet and was labeled number three okay so if we look at the grade 2015 versus 2017 what the 2017 number is is based off of the 2016-17 budget cycle in terms of those grades and those percentages well to the overall goal of 95% yeah well it's it compares the survey done in 2017 to the cities and then each of those grades rip is as compared to those grades that were surveyed so yes it just shows the difference between two thumb 2015 in 2017 I least so that doesn't necessarily mean that those are budgetary numbers is that correct those are based on the midpoint of the ranges right I mean this has nothing to do with budget I know it doesn't Alyssa but when we talk we constantly talk about what percentage we are relative to the summary of the survey so you have even though this has nothing to do with the budget it gives us a very good picture of where we are by grade in terms of where we are and you know the other thing and this is a tough thing to say two out loud but it's a fact and that is is that most companies most businesses raises are relative to performance relative to how well they did in their job but also how well the company did and the city is the company we talked about so we have to remember that already in 2000 does budget for 2017 and 18 we're taking our overall employee

[0:43:20] salary and benefits up another point to our total budget so what we can't be doing is constantly increasing that number 73 ought to be a number that's about as high as we can afford to go in terms of the percent of the general fund revenue stream we get any higher than that there's no money left to do anything else we need to do in this city so I want to make sure that we understand increases are relevant to revenue streams and if revenue streams are down we can't keep raising compensation and that has to be adjunct and that's a general conversation it's not a specific conversation but and I called several people in the city of San Angelo over the past week and asked them of out there in the private business sector and ask them about what they've done for their employees over the past several years and currently and every conversation of course is based off of well our sales are down so we were only able to or we couldn't do this year we hope we can do it next year and we have to think the same way we can't keep raising the factor the 72 point the 73 percent factor in terms of how much our cost of employees continues to grow so we either have to look at fewer personnel in order to accommodate increases and increases are warranted on merit good performance a meet standard performance means you simply met the standard for your job so salary remains the same meets expectation means your salary range should benefit from your great efforts and so you should receive additional funds meets means just did the job and that's a tough thing to have to say out loud now I don't like have to say it but it's a reality in life and whether you're in the private sector in the public sector it's a fact and we owe that conversation to the citizens of San

[0:45:23] Angelo because they're the ones who including everyone in this room who helps fund the budget that's why it's important to grow that sales tax because we're using other people's money because a lot of people come in to send Enslow spend money from around surrounding areas and when they come in for conferences and stuff so that that's the key how do we how do we grow that because we know that the property tax values are typically not going to go up that much to cover all these we hope not he's spotlighted we hope not we have we do have one of two options Mary you talked about increasing those revenues but it's also decreasing those expenditures and you're correct and the topic may have to be about as far as the services that we do provide you know which ones are least the priority for the city and which can we can cut back on which would also cut back on those expenditures so that's something for the later day but absolutely it's either you increase your revenues you decrease your expenditures or a combination of both so we have a lot of new members including me on the council and one of the objectives that we discussed yesterday is making sure that we've got a full year ahead of us in terms of really looking at the 2018-19 budget is really looking at those areas where the it's a consistent expenditure but not a revenue stream to cover those costs because at the end of the day we do know we want the city to have some of the best and brightest employees and we want to make sure that the best and the brightest employees are rewarded so we've got to look at all kinds of things and one of those is decreasing our expenditures to allow for some growth and some promotion for our employees but it's going to take a lot of diving in on each one of us here and we'll have time over this next year to do that where so many of us were brand new and you guys were way ahead of us in terms of the budget in the process and so I just want to set the standard for where we're

[0:47:27] going to go forward there always do we currently have your plan how many current employees does it fit here we have like 982 that's including part-timers and full timers Thanks those are positions are filled employees fill positions those are filled positions filled positions positions and you also in September give us a data as it relates to that number of employees and versus our past history given it as like an October 1 date or something yeah whichever is the easiest way for you to pull that information Lisa so however that is and you know this system better but whatever is the quickest and easiest way to get to that data but I think we need to look at whether we have an employee growth and whether that's creating the struggles in terms of budget high centered a little bit on this slide we'd like to know what council wants to do so that we can keep moving and get to what we hope is a balanced budget proposal in that last slide well I think that there are a couple questions out there one is we don't know exactly what's going on with police but there was is there another slide that's after this that goes through that total picture Tina in terms of I think you had another slide that we reviewed earlier can you go to that one real quick and it was the one no go forward not by one starting with marginal revenue and moving forward or very last slide you had yesterday there so this is your total proposed expenditures relative to the things that we just saw previously in terms of the breakout by grade or basically 1.5

[0:49:36] percent for all employees and then you went through yes may under detail would be bringing fire to 92 percent of the salary survey giving police 1% based on the meet and confer agreement and one and a half percent for all other city employees can you show us how this it works in perspective for what monies you have available yes so the total expenditures were almost two million dollars we started with marginal revenue of 1.7 million dollars for the general fund and then we we would propose reallocating a half cent from debt service and back over to maintenance and operations to fund a remainder of those needs which leaves the budget balanced so when we talk about a balanced budget conversation always ultimately is what is left out of here in other words are there things that were not spending money on because they need because we don't have the money but are going to become a crisis issue over the next year are there things that aren't be maintain that really need to be maintained but we don't have the money to do it I mean it's one thing to just look at the numbers on a slide and say okay we've made the numbers match up here's the revenue here's the expense here's what we're asking you to support bottom line is here are the numbers but what aren't what don't we know what has been eliminated from the budget through the process of budgeting that someone might have wished for well several years ago we did eliminate the transfer that we were making to fund 502 which is our capital improvement fund so we would probably want to try to build that back up over some period of time and I know the Daniels had extensive conversations with operations about equipment replacement and the needs that are there and I believe that they have come to a plan or a goal for that as well that's a

[0:51:41] big one actually the vehicle replacement part of it and Shane and I and Patrick etheric we talked about that in Michael to determine you know what is it that we absolutely can get by this year we know that our sales tax numbers have been down so we're working with that we but we also understand we're going to make some adjustments upwards the coming years to make sure that we have a solid vehicle replacement policy and at this point what we're presenting is a number that we feel we can give by this year again we're very hopeful that those revenues to go buck back up all indicators show that they that they will but regardless as we move forward mayor as you're talking about reducing expenditures we can every allocate that to areas which are most important to us and that's to make sure that we do have good vehicles for our staff anytime I vehicle goes down we lose productivity or we're spending more money on maintenance costs so there's some issues there so that's one of the areas quite frankly that I wish we could have more money for but we do have an amount at this point that we feel that will properly address our needs for this year and we did make sure that we keyed in on replacement of vehicles like our first responders police officers you know fire truck I mean a fire truck ambulance we're making sure that we're addressing all that as your priority right now for now getting by until we get into the next year but you're right there's certain areas that we still do have needs we wish we had more money for to replace more vehicles but right now we do have a number that we feel we can get both there in just one remote excuse me I'm sorry I just want to remind everybody that a budget is a fluid document it changes every month based on your revenue streams and and and we did it in fiscal year 17 when we knew that we were down we cut back on a lot of things so this document can change it's just a plan today to get us started if the revenue streams go up and we find that we've got needs we will change this budget we do it every every month so just want people to understand that this is a start for us for fiscal

[0:53:46] year 18 so we can see where we are and then we will adjust it as we go forward whether it's month or quarter or whatever the case may be based on revenue streams there are a couple of highlights in the presentation we've skipped over that I think are very important and there are a couple of lines on here Tina would you cover the ambulance and officers lines please and as well as health insurance because we haven't gotten into the details of those issues yet back to where we left off in the presentation we have three options available for you for health insurance one would be for 0% increase to the employee and a 2.6 increase to the city that would cost somewhere around $80,000 that number is not certain yet Lisa has I believe quarterly meetings to discuss that one and she'll bring it back to the council once we have a more concrete number for that but that's a good estimation of what it would cost another option would be a 2.2 percent increases employee with a 2 percent increase to the city at a cost of about 63 thousand dollars and then your final option would be a ten point six and percent increase to the employee with a zero cost to the city and the budget numbers you showed us which one of those options did you use in calculating the budget and presenting the balanced budget we chose the I guess the split or the compromise in the middle of 2.2% increasing the employee and a two-person increase to the city others are health insurance measure up to other private employees and/or other cities I know that Lisa has done a research on that do you have that available Lisa when you say how does it stack up what do you mean well for example if right now I think based off of the last budget 2016-17 we were spending about a little over six

[0:55:50] thousand dollars per employee on health insurance in terms of the city's coverage and correct me if I'm wrong on that number I'm pulling it up from memory so I could be off on that number I think that's their televised for health insurance alone it's five thousand eight hundred forty-four dollars per year so how does that compare to other so that would be four hundred and eighty seven dollars per month per employee all right I have it here alright so we surveyed again in the thirteen cities and five of them we couldn't get responses from because we did this in a hurry a couple of days ago the average and let me give you the cities that responded Abilene Brownsville Denton Killeen Louisville Midland Odessa and Wichita Falls the average that those cities pay which and again they're self-insured just like us the average for those cities was six hundred and fifteen dollars and sixty seven cents per month that they pay for all their employees and retirees ours is for eighty six ninety-nine do I have comments questions this side alright so based off of the budget your it reflects the 2.2 percent increases employing the 2% increase to the city of San Angelo and that's that 60 to 69 line yep that's correct then go through the ambulance conversation okay so we have also included in the budget presented an additional ambulance the cost of the city would be about four hundred and thirty two thousand dollars that asterisk there is to note that that we did include some amount should there be raises included with that as well we

[0:57:55] that would entail keeping a peak hours ambulance crew in effect for next fiscal year but we would recommend using another source another one-time funding source for that since it's a temporary cost so this just includes the cost of the frontline ambulance contained all of the training and everything associated with bringing on another ambulance the 432,000 yes ma'am that's my understanding I will say that these numbers were provided by chief done and and the training portion of that is the time necessary to bring those new employees on on the floor and keeping that peak ambulance in place is the temporary expenditure that Tina talked about okay that includes all your equipment needs that that they would have as well chief 4:30 number that number there is the number to get those kids into rookie school for that year there is some additional expenses into the next year as they will their pay will go up and then I will have to start paying for certifications and some of their gear and they've been included into that next year's cost also but not in the 432 don't need it that first year ok other questions comments see for you just very briefly talk about the importance of getting this ambulance so why is it that we need a 6000 to this currently right now we have five and when we say six Dan ones we mean staffed right right now we have five staff dammit susp kind of in a circle around the city at the station's right now our run volume is so great that we killed fire trucks or shut down fire trucks two-man reserve amel t'as over 200 times last year so when that happens that means you're without fire suppression for about an eighth of the city during that time frame these runs can take from

[0:59:58] an hour to hour and a half to make those runs and get back in service so you're leaving and at the rate that that was occurring 200 times is a lot of times to shut down a fire truck during the year the run volume and as I talked to you in the strategic plan of Mayor the old metric used to be about 2,000 damage runs per staff tamerlan's and the mayor to ask me about new metrics well I went out they do have a new metric it's called unit our utilization and where we're sitting right now is about 0.35 but that doesn't include pt time training time and other time that 0.35 is currently just the time it takes to make the emergency response run and do the paperwork required with it so you're looking to get down lower if we can get down below three that's much better than where we're sitting now basically it kind of tells you how much time they're out of service when they're with that metric there and so if we say two day go by the ambulance when would it arrive well we have it's not the ambulance we need I have to train the staff and that's 16 months of training before I get them trained this is the other reason she was talking about the peak Hamlet's staying in that keeps that going during this time frame because right now I've got a pile of recruits that are already through all their polygraphs so basically I've got a list that would be ready to go by October November timeframe to start them and then you're talking about 16 months before they're through and this number they had that number is while they're in school being trained that's that's the question mark is if it takes 16 to get them trained if we buy the ambulance today October 1 new year new budget who's going to man that ambulance so does that mean your current staff gets pulled because or do you wait to get them trained before you buy the

[1:02:00] ambulance because if by the ambience today you don't have the staff to run it right this is where we're doing the peak ambulance right now right now we're staffing a pea camels from 9:00 to 6:00 to offset a lot of those runs not buying a new ambulance for this crew right now no no even if you told me go by the analyst right now by the time we got it in it would be probably next fall before we even got it because of their wait times so what we're looking at here has nothing to do with buying the ambulances just the cost of staff this is staffing up of the animals because I think I don't know but I thought part of that number was buying the ambulance the ambulance cost comes out of capital which we purchase animals every year and working those in is not a big deal we have five staffed Hamiltons we keep seven amel t'as in reserve to do things such as the rodeo football games or if Hamilton's break down so we have reserve hensel's this is what the fire trucks use when all those five staff temel - when there's no amal two's available and we're going to say shutting down a fire truck to make an amateur run that means every one of those five ambulances or with patients so there is nothing left available I do want to point out also that we do have a our vehicle purchases we do have a night and for $250,000 purchase for an ambulances Palmieri's so that's already we thought there was something magic for that but I didn't understand that that was not in that four hundred thirty two thousand I thought that was inclusive of the cost of the ambulance plus the personnel we had that separated and I do want to point out as well mayor you know we talked about it unfunded mandates the cost of an ambulance for us went up from about 120 thousand dollars to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars pretty much overnight and that's something that is being mandated at this point chief that might be something you might want to talk to talk to you but now the d-o-t after some of these wrecks I believe they instituted in January of this year they put all these safety provisions in there such as everything locking down all cabinets and the which added tremendously to the cost of the animals

[1:04:04] but not only do that the weight that they added to those animals because of that stuff is going to force us to go to a bigger ambulance which is in turn more money so these these things came down on a federal level not anything from here so that's what's going to happen to new ambulance what happens with ambulances you already own they're our grandfather's as long as you remain with the initial chassis you have it's all based off of in numbers chief that raises the question for me based on your timeline you've talked about here we can get it down which does not include if I understood you correctly does not include your training or your PT in the point-to-point to 9/4 is that correct that's correct so at what point then what we're getting it down below the point three which you said is good that a goal is between the point one six and point two five at what point are you going to have to look at number seven got this is number six but at what point are you talking about we're going to be having this same conversation this time next year for number seven for those very same reasons I have to see once you get an animal tune source and see how many times that we're shutting it down I mean the P camelus is helping if we can keep that going you know that would certainly delay that big expense for quite a while and it is cheaper to run that which leads me to my next I guess my next question do you have a mechanism where you can start setting aside money so that it can help it might not fully take care of but so that it can help with number seven whenever the weather that's where that's next budget year or two years from now as those revenues increase off the emmalin's if they were designated or set to that you could use that I mean that should be what they would be is for I would I would encourage Daniel I would encourage the council to allow them to start setting those aside at some point sooner rather

[1:06:07] than later because we're going to we're going b-back having this conversation at least in my opinion the way the way you're talking chief within at least two years if not next year based on how to utilize your number six and off us as the city grows and the population ages that in turn does nothing but generate more runs for us tell me that definitely was our intention my discussions with the chief as well as a matter of fact the sixth out or the peak ambulance that they're running at this point is actually fully funded by their runs and that is the intention of course moving forward as those ambulances are needed that we do allocate it from those revenues that are coming in the numbers call help again the question on the ambulance no Brian does the new federal mandates do they take the residual value of our ambulances when we're done with them you spin them as well or do we end up I mean when we're getting done with them they've got a hundred and something miles on them I heard something thousand miles on the chassis zand there because we were like oh we just will keep the boxes and run new chassis well they attached the VIN numbers to when you have to upgrade your boxes so I guess it's somebody well those boxes won't even fit on a big one as far as I know so we had I know that we kept one of the most recent chassis and we've refitted it so they can be used in the code enforcement department so they may not those suitable for city shop uses our chassis z' for city vehicles when we're done with them so we've answered what I mean and we've remounted those boxes that was one reason we went to those type of boxes we instead of having to purchase a whole new one every year we have them go through them down there at the factory they checked the wiring put in a new if it needs update everything and then we come out with Orion saves the city tremendous amounts of money and we've been doing that since 2002 Thank You Brad she's done I'm just a question for understanding you

[1:08:13] mentioned that there are so many ambulances in reserve when we have a big event in San Angelo how do you staff those the reserve balances are not staffed on a daily basis now if the school districts like on Friday night's football season's coming up the school district pays us overtime or pays us a fee to man those and they're reserved for them so we hire over time and overtime goes in Manzo's amal t'as but the school district or or the rodeo or whoever needs those animals is there for that occasion they pay for those to be me that's not out of your budget and no you know them it gets rolled out but I mean it build out if you will it's a per you sagiv hit on a good point special events does have an impact on overtime for fire and for police and I think police up they're really struggling with it and they may be asking for guidance at some point I mean because right now I mean you're thinking about it we have almost a hundred football games on the books because we're the camels countywide so we're doing you know cristobol grade creek wall we're doing all those football games on Friday and Saturday nights ASU do we have and doesn't mean we have to have this answer now but do we have the number from the police department in terms of what overtime based off of special events is as a part of their dollar budget Frank could you come forward just a minute we go ahead and advance the slide and we can talk about PDL so the first question then we'll go through these line items Frank but for mr. Carter the question is is do you and I know you do because you're really worked with your budget a lot is what's the number that it cost you in overtime for special events about 240,000 not reimbursed for and is there a strategy to help solve part of that

[1:10:22] problem that would be your decision I guess your councils in yours some of those are nonprofit organizations we've been helping out for some members of the school district inside the stadium we do get reimbursed by the officer too but all the traffic control outside of the state and we don't probably the next biggest expenditure and overtime would be the rodeo the officers get paid inside but we don't get paid for traffic enforcement outside there he he modestly skipped over they changed their schedules in an effort to reduce routine overtime so he I know you're talking about special events but he they have really attacked the overtime issue on a day to day basis not just on a special event spaces I remember that because I remember you the way you decided to organize the schedule helped reduce the amount of overtime so right now the overtime that you have is basically for all special events is there at one point I know that we had looked at changing the routes of parades in order to reduce the number of officers required for some of these special events is that something that needs to be looked at again in terms of making the parade path if you will smaller than it is requiring fewer people cut down cost that's certainly something to look at other things we're doing is evolving reacting Plus we've expanded our volunteers program which is pre a charge of the city and our Reserve Program we expanded so we utilize those free of charge to the city for special events such as that and going by and just our regular budget and overtime due to short fall we probably saved close to 300 thousand dollars in our budget this year from overtime that's correct some overtime is unforeseen we have a major crime a murder or something like that we have sent a lot of criminal investigation units or if a patrolman gets hung up on a late call that's

[1:12:25] unforeseen overtime but as far as scheduled due to shortness once we went to the 12-hour shift we expanded the band power out on the streets and we also saved in overtime already within your budget you have decreased by 300,000 practice my schedule changes chief Carter when you support an event do you charge when the event organizers reimburse you for the police service d are you reimbursed 100% of what it cost for instance when there's a funeral and I see for you know motorcycle officers are you reimbursed 100% for those officers majority of those or during the day time during their shift hours so they're on regular duty and also don't be confused some of those are actual private escort company they look just like our guys and kind of ride the same type of motorcycles but the answer to your question a lot of it is private over time like at a bar they're paying that officer direct it's not to the city thank you yes possible I think it would be great if we re review those parade routes because I know I have attended several of them and the breadth of the parade route gets pretty thin in certain areas and it would seem to me we could tighten that up a bunch I don't think I think we want to have a good attendance at the crowd and it doesn't need to be spread out over 40 blocks or whatever it is so I would encourage us to relook at that once again and tighten that up again and save on some of those costs really it looks like you have a question chief Carter on the slide the cost for year-end 18 or for fiscal year 18 I'm sorry would be 319,000 what does that include what all does that include

[1:14:27] that's just the officers pay itself I think we can sustain over the next couple years with the vehicles that we have probably about year three or four if we continue to expand by five I think at that point we'll have to start looking at additional vehicles that does also include $10,000 a small amount for equipment as well if we remind us how long it takes to get an officer through you well from the time that they actually apply until they're on the street officer ready we've cut down the hiring process some were bound down to three months by the time they take the test but overall by the time they go enter into the Academy to actually get out on their own it's about a year it's a little over a thousand classroom hours and then they ride with another officer for fifteen weeks so it's pretty close to a year's time by the time they're fully training on their own so if we approve the five officers for the budget that starts in October when would those officers actually physically be out and a part of support in terms of additional officers needed on the streets be close to October the following year having hiring boards today as a matter of fact so that the timing is just right as far as if that was to be approved you have a pretty good applicant pool on this list we had 20 applicants that went to the oral board and we started with 52 and then after the physical assessment the written portion and the minute background we willed it down to 20 I would certainly like 10 to begin with I don't like putting on Academy would find because it cost the same amount of money with 5 as it does 10 but by the same token I want to be conservative with the budget thank you for that you know one of the important things I think chief Carter on these five additional officers

[1:16:32] is is that we've been told of course that the county has happened to increase our tax rate because of the tremendous amount of capital murders and crime in the cities so I look at it and say somewhere we got to stop the crime reduce the crime because that helps every citizen if we can reduce the crime we reduce the murders we reduce the cost to the county reduce the ultimately hopefully the cost of property taxes going up because crime reduces because that has been adjusted for these increase in County although obviously were the city what you guys do on the streets can have such a huge big positive impact on this community Thank You chief give us some something said just made my ears perk up a little bit cost you the same to do an Academy for five as it does for ten compare and contrast what additional things could be done with an additional five officers above and beyond these five right here that would be of benefit to the students I'm going to take it to the point the mayor just made I'm assuming that would obviously give you a much better crime-fighting initiative and effort so what what other things would ten do for you today as opposed that five would help but but ten would be that much better in 2016 we saw a large spike in violent crimes also property crimes roughly back in February we've experienced a lot of property crimes and burglaries particularly in the Santa Rita area we pull together a burglary patrol unit and they work nights and they targeted these repeat offenders

[1:18:36] basically the majority of people who deal with are the same 20% over and over they get in and two days later they're out solve significant numbers decrease over those two months when we had Burger Patrol that's one of my plans with the additionals to have an anti-crime unit specifically the target sees repeat offenders and actually patrols hotspots and undercover vehicles that the other addition would be child crimes detective the number of cases that are coming through that office is alarming so those would be certain different areas that we would look at also in addition with increase in our full-time staff I'm sure that's going to reduce our part-time staff and we have one part-time right now and his sole job is cold cases that's something I'll never let go and that's something very important to me we have about 48 that again cold cases Mercosur of at least 15 cold case murders that were actively looking at so it you know the the additional five would I don't want to put words in your mouth but would no doubt help you just in your crime fighting efforts and initiatives and your if I understood what you said there what we were presented in the strategic time your goal at some point is in additional 20 to get to your recommended numbers they're from the FBI and the other still please thank you thank you to help you get there the 20 would help but based on our population size help us get there so the ten would get you there sooner but it would also then make a with the child crimes you mentioned with the burglaries that you mentioned can make that much bigger of an impact today well because again to the mayor's question you know it's going to be a year if you get the

[1:20:39] okay here it's going to be a year before these folks are on the street so for this time next year we've got we're talking five more we've got another year before those are on the street okay all right thank you quit yesterday and so yes I know a several that are going to be retiring in the near future as well some of those positions will also be added patrol were projected to increase calls for service in 2016 and 17 by 10,000 calls and based that on that 20 that's the actual minimum recommendation if we stretch it out for years when we have a growth of 1 to 1.5 percent then we're talking an extra 5 bodies by the expiration of the four years you know just a real quick question and it kind of brought it to mind when chief Carter talked about October of 18 before these officers are all Street this 319 815 that we see in fiscal year 18 what's that number going to be for those five officers in fiscal year nineteen because obviously then you've got five full officers that are on the street so we've got we've got a look at the next year's budget that's going to be an increase without even additional officers so that 319 815 for fiscal year 18 is going to increase in fiscal year 19 because now you've got five certified officers on the street I think that would be a question for Miss Marley depending on you know what the ranking I'm not sure what those differences as we move to a new recruit are from I guess my point I'm trying to make is is yes there would be some additional loss or whatever looking at this particularly year and those rookies are going to be in school all year during this fiscal year for them to be trained in fiscal year 19 that's going to be in a there's going to be an additional cost to the city's budget in order to make that happen and I think people need to understand that what

[1:22:42] we're trying to do here is fiscal year 18 but we got to be cognizant of what impact that makes for for beyond this fiscal year describe what that 319 eight one five is in terms of is that all salary and benefits is that describe what that 319 thousand four thousand of it is just salary and benefits we did include the one percent raise just to be conservative in case council did direct us to do that and then there's the ten thousand dollar allocation for equipment if there's the ten thousand does that get you the equipment that those officers need to not only do their job but to adequately protect them to the best of your ability to protect them Harry I did find an answer for your question that cost for fiscal year nineteen would be three hundred forty-one thousand dollars plus any raises or anything like that that would increase it but your base is already established that 3:41 is for that's just these five 319 would become trained for $320,000 for salaries and $21,000 for equipment including weapons an additional 21 to 22 thousand dollars just for these five thanks is what I just want to make sure that as we look at numbers we know that making this particular decision makes it impact on next year's budget even before we ask for additional officers so people need to understand as we go forward with these things that it just is not fiscal year 18 that we're looking at we got to look at beyond this in order for us to get to the numbers that that the chief needs to protect the citizens he does do additional officers have an impact on overtime not really not now that we change to the 12-hour configurations and just this

[1:24:46] week our Criminal Investigation we switch from a 10-hour shifts an eight-hour shift so we collect that all you can save even more overtime so actually due to manpower shortage know our overtime is unforeseen over time like I mentioned before and the special events so additional personnel assigned a regular Duty would still would be working overtime for special events that's correct but it'd be safe to say right now if you doubled that number to 10 we'd be close for that 319 then the 341 I mean it's going to be cheaper to start you off with ten over the next 3-5 years and start you off with five and then do another five incrementally okay I think that's what Harry's trying to plant are the questions your card I think you're we've asked all of our questions thank you nextslide yes and that brings us back to our expenditure listing and the total for those expenditures and then the next slide again any of this can be edited I would point out that of the proposal that we present it to you over 1.6 million dollars of that is related strictly to public safety and to initiatives that keep our citizens safer two things that I want to point out as we move forward on on this budget is number one way I think is most important and I think the city staff has done a great job of making sure that these revenues and expenditures fit into what would be the equivalent of a tax levy that is neutral to last year meaning that we are not asking for or proposing to increase tax at all and that to me is number one because I think we have to be prudent with what we're asking the citizens to give to the city so I

[1:26:50] appreciate the fact that this is living within the current tax levy and number two is I caution us and I want to make sure we set a standard that we get back to having the maximum amount of employee pensions and pay back to 72 percent factor in the 1819 budget we went up 1 full percent on this budget we went up to 73 percent of the revenue going towards personnel and we need to go backwards not forward so we need to be looking at the year 18 and 19 to be doing that and with of course if we get increased revenue that can happen but we need we got to stop growing the personnel percentage to the budget may I say something is there going on that if we do have these five additional officers as well as the eight firefighters that will impact that number and it might be higher next year well we go ahead Daniel and I do understand what you're saying there and that's part of what we talked about a while ago where else can we reduce our expenditures as well so that's something with a closer look at Bettina is right even we're proposing right now I probably go up another 1% so we have to be mindful of that but we also have to be mindful of the fact that we are looking and we'll continue to look at other expenditures that can be reduced but again in pushing for revenue somehow we can decrease those as well that will balance that out so I do understand that and just can't keep growing that line and that does not mean I don't support what we just discussed because I do but we've got to work on bringing those numbers back down we can't keep growing that personnel line as a percentage to the total budget because we've got too much we need to take care of in this city and it can all go out in one area so we've got to really focus on that and that means we've got to make great decisions as it relates to what we can cut out of the budget next year so that number comes down and we've got to really push the economic development

[1:28:52] piece of our city because that's the important role that permits and planning have on us is we've got to make sure that we're allowing businesses to grow and expand and create additional revenue we got to have it and yellow-white Carrie go ahead one other thing to those remind and rindy you said this often and I know that the Chamber of Commerce has looked at this thing we've got to remind citizens that sales tax is really very important to this community and those individuals that are buying outside of Santangelo are impacting that bottom line so we really need to encourage people to buy local if we can continue to increase that sales pack tax number significantly enough that 73% will automatically go to 72 and 71 and Undine we know we're not going to be able to grow the property tax significantly sales tax is the key for us to increase dollars to the city services both firefighters and police officers so we have to continue to do that when people spend money other places and on the Internet I can tell you there are a lot of people that do that we lose sales tax dollars in San Angelo we have to continue to grow that and it takes everybody's effort it takes everybody's effort that's in the audience well there's two factors and Harry thank you for that because that's hugely important but number one is there's this continuing thing that they call the Amazon factor and as we know the internet sells continue to grow at a faster rate than brick-and-mortar does so we as a city out here in remote West Texas as we say will constantly feel

[1:30:56] feel the impact of the Amazon of fact effects so it means that we really have to look at it aggressively and try to support the community here we don't want to open up the sign Angela standard times again and see more businesses closing we need businesses to be healthy we need them to be successful and that means locally we've got to support those businesses second of all is is that as all of you are aware that property taxes have gone up from evaluations and that means from evaluations to your pocketbook and we have to be cognizant that most people only have X amount of income so if there's more money have to go towards paying the property tax bill that means there's less money to spend on the sales tax level and so again it becomes very important that we look at economic growth and supporting our local economy speaking of sales texting are we still working on our self tax audit no that is still in progress we haven't received the results yet with that I would like to and I might I just I might need some coaching to say this appropriately but I would like to make a motion that we keep our tax levy for our city for the current budget for the we're not honest or another I don't have to do we got to really not hosted for any action and in the workshop though what's on that well but we let a good instinct because we could go ahead we would appreciate some direction and a consent Tucson them because we do need to publish for the citizens to know what we plan to do with the tax rate before we go there Tina and maybe I was distracted and this was fed earlier and I apologize but we know the number of city employees for San Angelo compared to those cities that the 13 cities that Lisa talked about the number of employees they have did y'all say that earlier believe Lisa said that with the city we have 982

[1:32:59] employees but I am not sure how that compares with other cities I'm not sure if Lisa tracks that information we don't have that Lisa okay we do have that information we can definitely get that to you as well but I appreciate that Jake oh we can compare sure and see if we're you know way out of line with our 982 employees versus those cities and maybe we might want to wait to do that until we pair that number down because as the mayor said earlier some of those cities are not a direct comparison so to speak when it comes to revenue streams and the cost of living so but I would like to know how we compare in that area I do want to point out that 982 also includes part-time employees and and also I'm getting you that information it'd be important also get you the information on the number of services we actually provide compared to those communities as well and that's what I'm talking about we may have to take a look at those services to see where we can perhaps reduce as well so but yes we can definitely get that number for you no I don't know how I say this then without taking a vote but I am I am a believer that we must keep our tax levy the same as it was in 2016 7 2017 I think a statement like that from each one of you would be would be fine and also can I get further clarification on the proposal that we presented to reallocate a half cent back from debt service over to the MNO side because that would we need consensus on that and have to publish that information as well I'd like to start with the tax levy conversation first and we'll move to that okay to explain it to everyone okay there when you express your opinion would you specify the tax rate not though it's poetry wait seven out of seven point seven seven six four one you know what what what does one sent on our air all right here went sent is four hundred eighty two thousand dollar four hundred eighty two thousand eight hundred eighty five dollars a property

[1:35:02] tax revenue to the city Billy would you like to make a comment yes I support us maintaining our property tax rate at zero point seven seven six cents Lane agreed seven seventy six see you've heard me Harry based on the light of where we are in this community I cannot see us raising the tax rate I have to support keeping it at 0.7 seventy six I'm with Harriet seven seventy six point seven seven six here that give you the direction you need it does as I said I would like further direction as far as reallocating that service portion but that does give me the direction for the tax rate in total all right so give us a better description when you talk about reallocation exactly what that means right now we have 0.67 for sorry I don't know the exact number dedicated to maintenance and operations for the general fund the other 0.98 six cents is currently allocated for debt service payments for the general fund and so what I'm talking about is reallocating one half cent from the nine point eight six or 0.98 safe pardon me back over to maintenance and operations to help fund ongoing operations of the city in the past we've had a debt model from specialized public finance that there are advisors that includes an amount for Street issues of sixteen million dollars over the next eight years I believe that we have left every other year to issue that for a street reconstruction program reallocating that half cent would still allow us to do that I've asked them to run the models for us to make sure that that was allowable in the past we've also had a marker for a five million dollar placeholder if you will that we thought we may eventually use for some kind of police station

[1:37:06] either remodel or reconstruction something like that it would affect that aspect of our debt model and so that would take that down to an available amount of just over a million dollars for that placeholder and so we do have a capacity to move that half cent back over to M no but we would need council's direction on what you would prefer to do as far as that goes let me see if I repeat this if this is clear basically what we're saying is that we borrow money to redo the streets and that right now based off of that debt load that it's costing us less than originally forecasted on an annual basis and so we're moving some of that savings on that debt back into the general fund as general fund dollars should be spent accordingly I would say that's partially true part of it was probably due to savings um due to interest rates and things like that but again I want to point out that we did have a placeholder in there for five million dollars and so it what placeholder is we had a five million dollar based on previous council a previous council direction to include five million dollars when we run our debt models in the event that we needed that money to fund the reconstruction I guess or police station there's a placeholder an estimated amount for police state for a police station that's not anywhere near what the costs have been in the past and so we've put that debt issue off-off-off because there has not been a solution in that price range but we've kept the placeholder in that debt plan in case we did find a solution and until council said move away from that as a solution the solutions that we had before it's the last couple of years were closer to forty billion dollars and so we're basically paying money today for that placeholder presume animal or not oh man so just keeping our capacity that was available to issue debt in the

[1:39:10] event that we in the future needed to issue that amount of debt and I want to be clear that in no way are we changing the dollar amount we have budgeted and planned for in terms of redoing the street so we're not changing anything as it relates to the program for reconstruction of the streets correct right that was my goal when I asked them to run to model the models that we would keep that 15 million dollars every other year for Street reconstruction within the debt model and within our existing capacity okay do any of you have questions about what Tina has just described or shared with us any questions mayor I'd be in favor of reallocating the 0.5 cents hey Tommy Tom I mean I mean agree with Tommy arias I agree with mr. Hebert in favor in favor of the reallocation can we go to the slide where you list the individual initiatives we are nearing the end of the budget preparation cycle and do you know how soon do you need guidance on these items do we need a pretty good idea today that this is how we want to move forward slightly well one of the issues I think we have to hold off on is we don't I think is was described to us earlier is that we don't know what meet and confer means exactly so until I think we have some final information on meet and confer maybe I heard that wrong I think it's wrong for us to sign off on this if there's new things they're going to be presented to us in the next two or three or four weeks well we will go ahead on September 5th we will be bringing back the budget ordinance and the tax levy ordinance and we will have to vote on them where will worst public hearing and then we'll have the second public hearing on September 19th and where will we be on the meet and confer as it relates to any changes that would impact

[1:41:14] this budget as presented we have a meeting scheduled tomorrow as well as on Thursday I the last meeting we had we made a lot of progress on issues but I guess what we were kind of hoping for is to get your consensus on what we can take back to them propose as far as salary is concerned we have avoided that issue until this meeting happened could each council member talk about their perspective on today's proposed expenditures I have a question Teresa when you say you were waiting for this meeting to happen to sort of get some direction before you go back can you say a little bit more about this um what has happened so far in the meet and confer process and I know Lisa you know might want to come up and speak to this as well is that we have exchanged issues on the issue of compensation we were not presented with any percentage of an increase but rather just a request to study that issue so we have primarily worked on issues like rewording some of the sections of the contract looking at the fitness program and those sorts of things whatever we agree to here today when you get into those monetary negotiations it's possible that we're going to follow way short of what they would be requesting well at least that in fact listen I know Lisa appreciates this what what we what we look for is some direction from Council on the direction that we should go in negotiations you know if I mean it's very difficult to to come up with what to tell you in an open session but

[1:43:17] obviously we are negotiating we don't know what they're going to present to us that they want we need direction from you on how far we can go I mean that's that's kind of where we are right now if you know obviously the numbers that are on the board a 1% increase you know they all got 7 and 9 percent increases in April and that carried forward to this budget year and so you know we're look we've been waiting until the final budget workshop to to kind of get a sense of where we need to go in our negotiations and that's where we are okay so in open session you're saying you aren't comfortable saying whether you think they're going to be looking for 7 to 9 percent again and so we're going to start here and they're going to start here and we're going to meet somewhere in the middle maybe are we mean where Council says we mean okay so this what we're putting forward today would be what the council would agree on that we go forward with and you are able to present in the meet and confer that's correct okay um Lisa this moves that's from 92% to 93% is that correct as far as a number on paying for police officers yeah it's not Hansen okay all right well on the salary for police officers then I would go with the 1% that has been proposed Lane I'll say this is a good start on what subjects change depending on meet and confer but this is good direction until we get those numbers in I've always been dedicated to the fire and police of getting additional officers and getting their pay to what is needed for retention and additional ambulance to cut down on their workload and bring those numbers down that we saw earlier also in relation of bringing in revenue from the ambulance services retention has always been a big thing

[1:45:23] for me keeping those officers and the fire here because we put a lot through training and expenditures that way so but I think this is a good start start with this see what meeting prefer comes back with on our meetings this week and go from there Casey I thank you to everyone of you for your hard work um I think we have a good pretty good idea of what we need with the chief of police and the chief fire speaking to us and letting us know what is you need in their departments and how to make our city more efficient and and protect our citizens so I also agree that this is a good starting probably we're really good exactly what we're really excited about is that we didn't break any of our taxes so thank you very much Harry I also want to thank this group I've had the opportunity to work with with them over the last 15 months and I think they do an outstanding job when it comes to the budgets and balancing and make sure I would also say that even though we may not know what meeting confer would would they come out of if there was something different than what we've seen up here during those negotiations I would remind Council that either we're going to have to make some adjustments or we've already made the commitment of staying at the tax rate that's at so it's going to be very difficult for us to change these numbers so unless somebody else takes hit and you know whether that be fire or other employees salaries or the additional police officers or the additional ambulance Manning the district has some ambulance so hopefully those types of things will be talked about as we go through these negotiations in the meet and confer so I am very comfortable with the numbers they are today and I am proud that we were able to hold the tax line just like

[1:47:25] it has been so I think from the citizens perspective we are doing what we were elected to do and I hope they realize that we've got a balanced budget and as we move forward in fiscal year 2018 we're going to be doing better than we did this last year all going out I have no problem with the 1% while we have here but what I want to emphasize this meet and confer has a lot more effects than just this year I mean what was the effect of the meet and confer on the budget this year instead of the sky and we incurred an extra several hundred thousand six hundred and seventy thousand dollars six hundred seventy seven thousand because of how we did that okay my main concern here is we're fair and consistent with all our employees all right and that goes from the person starts today to the people that have been here thirty forty years I agree with that I want to be very cautious with meet and confer on what we agreed to and we need to look at the three four year effects of that because it's just what Harry said it'll change that number huge if something goes through that we don't sit and look at it we're going to have to adjust it's not saying we're saying we're not going to work through that but the point of it is it has severe effects and all that and how consistent we are with everybody across the board honey I I can go along with these proposed expenditures as we've seen these here and I echo everything that everybody else has said along the diaster something that I did say during our strategic planning our employees are the greatest asset mayor no doubt they are our largest expenditure but they also are our greatest asset so while we I think everybody up here wishes we could do more we are living within what what we have so I can I can go with these this proposal here I will say that I feel strongly that we have to live with the total proposed expenditures based off of the revenues that are forecasted

[1:49:27] and that means that there's any additional expenses that come up over the next couple weeks we're going to have to refigure those numbers relative because we've agreed to tax levy and so we can't our totally proposed expenditures cannot exceed the numbers as presented today so we will have to rebalance areas if necessary if expenditures as presented today change I think we need clarity on that mayor there is a temporary expenditure that goes with the peak out ambulance that is not included in these numbers that is approximately 199 right why was that not included it is a temporary expenditure that we would not propose funding through the budget process because it's not an ongoing expense from year-to-year we would propose funding yet with a one-time source such as fund balance or some other measure what is the standard for determining Sud balance our goal for fund balance is 70 days of operating expenses I'm sorry to say 70s 75 sorry about that and it is and we're at about 71 last time I checked I think after the end of last month I'm lowering it by the 200,000 takes it down to 70 0.99 it's not much I mean it's not much in our grand scheme of our general fund budget it's a small amount but it's not consistent with the way you worded your present so we wanted you to wanted to remind you to clarify well but again those expenditures that we've put up here today are the ones we were talking about so now the sudden there's another 200 thousand that we haven't been talking we mention that when we went through the slides but yes ma'am it it's one of those things we covered yesterday but it is the temporary it's the cost of keeping that peak out ambulance running during the time that the new crew is in training once that new crew is on board

[1:51:32] then that cost goes away that's why we call it a temporary expense that we don't want to fund through the ongoing budget process but it is money that comes out of the fund yes so it's regardless of how you talk about it it's money that disappears from an account and pays for something yes ma'am and we could include that in the original budget but we could also bring it back to a budget amendment to council after the beginning of year everybody aware of that darnell so what is the total expenditures then including the peak out one moment please I can get you there million $184,000 five one hundred eighty four thousand five hundred thirty dollars when you look at total revenue and total expenditures what's the net so all of a sudden we're not does that wipe out the three thousand four hundred seventy eight and create a negative number and it would be about negative 195 but again we would propose bringing that either in the original budget through use of fund balance or with a budget amendment that would be brought to Council for your consideration and approval well but maybe I'm slow here and missing something that 195 is if I understood is a one-time that's miniature these numbers are ongoing year over year that's correct so we're not you know I guess we got to figure out what it come up with one hundred and ninety five thousand is what we got to figure out because we're not we're not adding a hundred and ninety five thousand to our to our ongoing budget comes out of the money it comes out it comes out of it comes out of a pot somewhere you don't have it to spend on something else yes correct

[1:53:33] well this is a fun balance that we've been building up actually since I've been here we've been building up that fund balance we wrote in excessive expenditures mayor and councilmembers it there is an opportunity throughout the year for me to make a recommendation and pull money out of the fund balance for one type one type one-time expenditures I haven't done that since I've been here I've been very conservative when it comes to that I've always felt that you leave the fund balance alone but in this instance it is a one-time expenditure and we wanted a budget for the ongoing expenditures that we have coming up regardless that we do it right now it would probably within a recommendation either next month or two months down the road anyway but it is something that I do feel comfortable at this point saying that we just need to be transparent was it transparent the conversation I apologize I did mention it when we went through the slide but I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear enough so you want me to restate my statement so basically is that what you said did you ask me to repeat I don't I'm a better life scientist I think is always long verification making sure you're clear known as the clarification is understood among everybody here and I think we're good okay rather have a little car wreck right now little fender-bender than a big car wreck with you later thank you any other questions comments those of us that have our our blue book up here the fund balance as of July 31st in the general fund was nine Alison 19 million excuse me please traveled okay then I that is roughly 1% you are far off do I need to call for an adjournment yeah yes if you can just state that we don't need to take a motion and I will adjourn this budget session at 10:29 on August 22nd and again thank you to all the hard work and effort that you all put into it you're very organized answered our questions you did a great job

[1:55:35] thank you and appreciate that thank you

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-eKZWLwCw