Welcome to the backstory on finances and finances in the context of a pandemic in the city of Longmont. My name is Tim Waters, and I have the good fortune of hosting conversations with community leaders, city officials elected officials policymakers activists on topics of interest in relevance to the community. As a volunteer for Longmont public media. And today's topic. Find city of Longmont finances in most years probably wouldn't be the kind of story that people might be interested in. But this year I think it's a different story. And here to tell that story are faces that viewers of the back story are familiar with, called the mega city manager and Jim Golden, longtime chief financial officer for the city of Longmont. So, welcome gentlemen and thank you for doing this I know how busy your, your schedules are, and squeezing this in with all of the other things that you're asked to do I appreciate and I'm certain folks who watch this will appreciate it as well. So, Jim, let's start with, we're in the first, we're in the middle of January as we record this you two fellas, along with a lot of other others put in a ton of work to build a budget for the city. And there's with accounting for all kinds of different sources of revenue and lots of estimates and this uncertainties with which you have to deal. Let's talk about the highlights of that Jim how you, what does it take to get us to into the, you know, first month of the year, having built this budget out what are the big assumptions what are the kind of sources of revenues you're anticipating and estimating that roll up into the city budget. So the city budgets, it's pretty big it's about $350 million. And so, that's a lot of staff that is involved in putting that together from their perspective of what the needs of the city may be with the operating needs or capital needs for the year into the future. So we start our budget process in in April or so actually our CIP process in March of each year in anticipation on a schedule to bring this all to the city council in the beginning of September, and have it adopted, according to the city charter and in time so that typically it's adopted by sometime in November at the latest. So, it's big deal and funding all those sources we need to do from our end of things sides pulling together all the data we're getting from departments on on what their, their needs and requests are. We do deal with revenues, quite a bit to see how we can fund these things, because we do have to make choices because there's hardly ever enough revenue to do everything that that is going to be requested. So, what's critical is is for the number one critical item is sales tax sales and use tax is our largest revenue item outside of utility fees. But within our general fund and for other major operating funds sales and use taxes is a major revenue driver. That's what we have for both operating and capital needs. And so it's pretty critical. We track that, as you know, Tim, we put out reports monthly on the status of our sales and use tax collections. Me and my staff, we watch that carefully. We look for trends we see what's going on and what we are typically trying to do is come to the budget process, probably in sometime in July, sometimes it drags or lags a little later because we're going to make the last possible decision we can with an estimate of what we're going to put into that budget for the next year. And so we, we, like I said, we put a lot of time into that. And then whatever that number is pretty critical in driving the overall expenses in the general fund, the streets fund, the public improvement fund. But what we end up doing then, in addition to that is another big factor is the market pay and and the cost of pay and benefits, because that of course besides, besides capital projects that is a very large factor in the city's operating budget is the cost of benefits. And that's something that we also have HR working on throughout the second quarter, basically gathering market data from other entities. That's going to come around to a number that's going to drive the expense side of our budgets as well. Let us know how much we have if we're going to make market pay. And then what will be left over for for other needs in that in the general fund as well as other major operating funds.  But, but property taxes, $24 million or so. But we have less of a role in projecting that that's really just coming from the assessor's office every year. So we get that number and work it into our projections as we go through the the the processor and each summer. So those are those are really the biggest things development revenues is another factor. Other smaller revenues, you know we do go through all of our revenues and make projections but the sales taxes really going to drive what our budgets going to look like from year to year. So, we get into 2020. You've done all that work. You track it diligently to make certain that your estimates are within plus provides of what they need to be so. So you've got continuity as you go through the year. And before you're through the first quarter of last year. You've got a pandemic. And I'm guessing, while you've dealt with disruptions right you have had economic slowdown you've had the effects of a flood we've had the great recession. We've had all those things, but you've never had to deal with the uncertainties of a pandemic. No one alive has had to do that so you get in the first quarter of last year. What are some of those recalculations or recalibrations you're having to do. Before you get through the first quarter of last year in the impact of what you thought might be the impact of the pandemic on your revenues. So actually, that that was, you know, come about it come down on us pretty quickly.  And really, we, we had no clue as to what might continue to come in versus what might stop. And, you know, being conservative and trying to make projections for revenue. I took a look at that and knowing what was open at the time, and what we were continuing to see operating it within the city is what I really took a look at and said, we're going to count on this coming in, but not at its normal levels. May have reduced them down to 75% or something like that I can't recall exactly what I used. And then the rest of it that I couldn't be sure of, I said, we're not going to get. So, you know, our worst case scenario was our first projection. And, and that was as as high as a third, it was a 13 million dollar shortfall in sales and use tax. And, and that was, though, thinking that at that point in time, knowing what we did or knowing what we didn't know about the project at that point in time as little as we knew. We were thinking, well, this could go on for a couple of months. And so what we're experiencing today at that point in time, it's going to go on for a couple of months and then after that, we're hearing this probably going to be a recession, and we put that into our projections as well. And that's kind of how we got to the, the first estimates. And you said that we track, I track sales tech diligently. Before 2020, I thought I said I tracked it diligently, but beginning in last spring, and you know to this day, I track it daily. So I never paid attention to how much comes in every day. But, but all through that budget process and us trying to decide how much are we going to project that sales tax revenue at you're watching it come in day by day. And, and I still do watch there's still things I keep continue to do, even though things have have turned around from what we were looking at nine months ago.  So you're in the first quarter of the year, you're, you're your chief financial officer Harold, who is paid to be conservative, you know, I mean, that's every chief financial officer in the world. That's, they live. They sleep, eat, being conservative.  Right. Jim just is using maybe a 25% loss or shortfall. And, and what that translates into in terms of dollars, you now have a chance to make decisions with almost no data. Right. And you've got the first quarter. But, but now you're, you're really operating with a whole bunch of uncertainties. What are the kinds of decisions now as a city manager with your team you start to make in anticipation of getting the city through this where I mean you don't have options you got some reserves, but you don't have options to debt finance, your operations like the, like Congress does you got to make it all work in the year. So what are some of the uncertainties some of the decisions you were making without a whole lot of data to make them. Yeah, it's interesting. So, a joke with Jim, you know, early in my career I did a lot of budget and finance work so I like to dabble in his world occasion nuts. But, you know, I do want to compliment Jim on this as we start off. And you may remember this. I hope Jim does early on in this is so a bit of a backstory to the backstory. As a team, we started talking about this. I want to say in January when we started seeing it and we were meeting occasionally and it ramped up and when we really started getting into it. You know, it was that this conversation of, what do we think this is going to be what do we think the loss is going to be Jim actually was, I believe the first finance director in Boulder County to come forward with a projection and and eventually I think multiple finance directors in the county were calling him to go. How do you do this how do you how did you move through this. And we knew it was, you know, and this is what I appreciate about Jim and we knew this was going to be a significant issue for us and when you get that number you kind of just it's a pause like I think I've never experienced because what you also have to then figure out is. So what do we do because it's in times like these that you really need the operations of the organization to be there to support the community because you don't know what issues are going to come at you. You also have to think about the lives of the people who work in the organization and how this is going to impact them. And so it created a lot of really difficult conversations and the thing that I think, looking back on it. I think these did a lot of different things, but you know we started off to say. If we could just capture everything that we have in terms of capital projects, you know, dollars that we can really control to say we're just not going to do it this year what does that look like. And Jim was giving me some analysis in terms of the various fund balances that we have, and you know just sort of pulling this thing together to say, here's how we can try to start managing the gap. And then almost immediately we put in a hiring freeze and really just help on a lot of those discretionary expenditures and what that let us do then is really then also start looking at the operational pieces of this. You know, a lot of people know and we didn't call a furlough as early as some folks did. I think that was, and Jim correct me if I'm wrong, those were very conscious conversations that we were having to go. We need to do this. If so, when do we have this conversation, and then let's watch the data as it's coming in so it was a really data informed decision as we were moving through. And, and that was also about we knew we needed the people to be there when we came out of this. We were just moving through all of these different things trying to then dictate operations in terms of what we needed to do and repurposing folks and you know it's a long story but it was probably one of it it was the most challenging because he modeled off of the state recession. None of us knew how people were going to respond to this. We've never closed every business in our community for what was it jam two months. You know, in our conversation is this numbers predicated on a two month closure. If it goes beyond that, it's going to be different. And, and so those were things as these rules started becoming more strict and adjusting. He's watching, and he's telling us and when he's coming through, and we were literally discussing it on a daily basis trying to make daily decisions that we felt. First and foremost was in the best interest of our community. Second, allowed us to continue to provide the services that we needed to to our community during this time. And third, really respect the position where the staff are the members of our staff positions they were in, and the impacts as we were moving through this so it was probably moved around in a circle but it was it was a tough process. I think I think that's an important part of the story. Frankly, I mean everybody will be easy under the conditions with which under which everybody's been operating.  But but the calculations, the consideration of where your priorities are, and, and what kind of capacity, you need to maintain. The other side of this. No one you can deliver services through it and you've got capacity on the other side to ramp back up right to meet expectations I mean those are stuff and serious decisions and, you know, when they affect people's livelihoods. It's a big deal. In fact, I think it's important for some people understand there were cities around the long mod that early in in the pandemic, they started laying people off they not just hiring freezes. We didn't have to do that and I know there were questions that some people asked about why are why are we laying people off of, you know, a broom field is laying people or boulders laying people. Those questions we were at we were Harold and I were having those conversations quite frequently. Every time that one of those things were were announced at another entity. We kept looking at each other. You know there's a few things that that that we're factoring in here that that maybe we're not factoring elsewhere. And we had, and we're not. And keep in mind that there were you mentioned some of those communities. There are a lot of other communities that didn't have to do cuts we're not unique I don't want to say that we're unique because reality is we relied on some reserves, and we a lot of entities do have those type of reserves, it was how much impact was their communities going through though, and whether they could deal with those are not. We had not hired our seasonal workers. And so we did not have to let them go. And those are furloughs elsewhere. And so that's a bit of a difference there. We just never did put those people on the payroll because of timing there. Others had already gone that far. We had the benefit. Well, first of all, we have, we do have some pretty decent reserves we still try to continue to to reach higher reserve levels that we have as targets, but we did have a stability reserve of 1.7 million and and that was in our general fund I mean, and that was something that we intended for. I don't want to say a pandemic, but a reduction in revenues.  So this really fell right into that. That reasoning we thought well we've got $1.7 million here in the general fund. Now we're looking at a general fund shortfall of as high of 10 as 10.6 million so that's just to help right. We also though had the luck that we have had been building up this reserve for OPEB it's other post employment benefits and it's, it's a commitment that that actually we're being told we needed to put away for it involves our retirees and the fact that they get to purchase those who retire before age 65 can purchase the city's insurance and they're buying it at the city's cost. So in a sense, that's a discount. So that's a cost that that we're in is covering for them in a sense. Well we were told 10 12 years ago that by the accounting changes in accounting requirements that we need to start putting money away for that. And we didn't, it didn't quite make sense to me even back then, but it turned out that you know we were paying as we were going, and we were just paying that expense year after year so I kept questioning so when am I ever going to take money out of this reserve. And so there's new actual areas all come into place, a little over a year ago. And what they point out to us is you know what you don't need this, and you can take that reserve and take it off your books so we said, let's put it back where it came from. And so the general fund ended up getting over $2 million of a basically a rebate of money it had been putting over into that fun over the last 10 years. And the stability reserve we had almost $4 million as a starting point. And when we also had put two and a half million dollars of one time expense in that 2020 budget towards the first and main transit station we had fund balance available at the end of 19 we use that in our budgeting process to help fund that project. And so we put it on hold. And so we said well you know what that's unfunded now. And so that got us up to six and a half million dollars of potential fallback. So that only put us in a position where we needed to start to identify three and a half million dollars of reductions in our 2020 operating budget for the general fund. I think we did keep looking at each other going. Is it time do we need to do this, but we're like oh we've got this fallback, and then month after month. We began to realize that our projections at least from a sales tax perspective, we're too hot. We kept reducing them as the shortfall that we were we were experiencing was nowhere near what we had projected. Other areas that we were going to incur shortfalls for. And so that was over and above those sales tax projections and the general fund. And like I said at one point was as high as a 10.6 million dollar shortfall projection. I feel like at the end of May that we said that, and probably from that point forward, we began to notice that this is not this sales tax is not coming in as short anywhere near as, as what the conservative CFO thought it was going to come in. And that was to our benefit. I think to, if I can add to this, you have to go back to the budget year before this. When Jim talked about that the allocation of funds to some of the capital projects. What you may remember as part of that conversation is we had extra ongoing revenue that we said we want to put to one time funds hold because a we knew it wasn't going to be a reappraisal year. Yeah, and be we were afraid for property tax purposes property tax be we were afraid there was going to be a recession based on some of the economic indicators that we were seeing. So there were those conversations dollars that Jim just referred to. It was actually in that decision to say we're not going to put it in ongoing funding we're going to put it in one time funding, then made it really easy to say we're going to unfund those projects. And then that folds then into, while he's doing this, we then immediately are jumping into building the budget for next year again, with a lot of information that we just don't really have a full grasp on based on a pandemic that is new to all of us. Jim, you were you made reference to being lucky when you were talking about that. Is it the OPED. And I would say that I don't know whose definition it is but someone's definition was shared with me along the way of good luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.  So, yeah, good on you for the good luck that that that arrived at the right time. You get into the year, Harold, which is both of you refer to the, to the monitoring sales tax revenues that continue to materialize talk a little bit about what you know Jim you made reference earlier to not every city was affected the same way. Not every city had to make cuts, because it has the pandemic has had a very differential effect in city some of them are far more affected than others. So what are your explanations for that why is that some have been affected more deeply financially than others. You know, as far as our sales tax, we, it started to decline as soon as the pandemic hit, I mean, that even February sales tax, which was due in March 20, even that was down. And the reason being because, because some businesses weren't were not making that payment on the 20th of March. So we saw that drop and we, we then turned around and started on now that the stores are closing and now that everything is shutting down. It's going to get much worse so we, we, you know, made those large projections. March sales tax was actually up 6%. And, and that was a shocker to us but as you recall, you know, as soon as as the pandemic hit, everyone made the run to the to the stores to to buy the provisions and things. And that really gave us that boost in March. But in April sales tax was down 12.7%. And that's where everyone's sales tax everyone was seeing the same thing happen. They had a little bit of boost, and then the bottom fell out. I just didn't know how far, you know, how low how far as the floor here was the bottom. How much worse will it get and yeah we so we of course made some, some conservative projections, you know, come to find out now over time. A lot of other entities in Boulder County did much better than than what they had projected. Boulder I think Denver as well are two entities of course that we've heard a lot that about how they've had to do significant cuts and that they've, they've had, you know, large reductions in their sales tax revenues.  Well, but, you know, I think this is a big factor in these cities that didn't have as much of a revenue impact. Because a lot of people commute to work in Boulder. A lot of people commute to work in Denver. When they're there, they spend money. They spend money during the day, or when their work day is over before they go back to wherever they live, they're spending money in that in those two cities. And a lot of that went away. For Boulder, the university went away. And so those, those factors made a big difference in their sales tax declines. Boulder doesn't have as many as much big box obviously, as Longmont does and that's another factor for why they, they suffered had larger losses than other entities did. We've got the big boxes, and we've got people who were staying here and working from home here and not leaving town and going spending their money elsewhere, whether it be because they're that's where they used to work, or now they're working in Longmont, or whether they were just leaving town to go shopping, you know, at Costco, which we know that people in Longmont do, but probably stopped doing during the pandemic. And we also know that they leave town to go eat sometimes. But they certainly didn't do that either during the pandemic. And so we were benefiting by the fact that everyone was basically tied to Longmont. They were continuing to have to eat, have to get by the things they need to live. Some things stopped and went away. Automobile sales went away for like two months. It just pretty much nothing coming from that source. Those big box stores kept us going. And our restaurants, they certainly didn't do the type of business that they were doing pre-pandemic, but people did still stay and still purchase and keep some of those restaurants in play. I think to that point, you know, the interesting story here is, and I remember us talking about this, probably the first time we've ever really seen, you know, you hear us talk about leakage of sales tax dollars. Jim and I talked about this. We've seen it where we've had almost no leakage because people were kept within the community. And so the dollars were still circulating there. You know, to his point about the big box, you know, when I talked to my colleagues, that was something that we all discussed. And I think it's important to really talk about that's the benefit of having a diverse local economy. I think those communities that had a more diverse local economy are the communities that you're tending to see that didn't have the same impacts of those that are solely dependent on tourism or depending on universities that don't really have that diversity in their retail. I think that was a big component on this, but the other thing that I think was incredibly important was really the people that lived in our community and their support of local businesses and whether it's going to the stores that remain open. There's so many number of stories of people going to hardware stores, nurseries, staying local to do that. What was important but then also supporting the local restaurants and retail that we're doing stuff with pickup and drive through. They really supported those businesses but also supported us by keeping that revenue in there. And so there's a big thank you on that one. That was an important part of the story people need to know that was that wasn't just rhetoric that translated into some surviving, and at the end of the day the city being able to continue to deliver services that's a big part of the story. You're now, we're now middle of January, when we're recording this. So Jim talk about. Where are we now in terms of the kind of estimating you're doing going forward. The types of revenues still have not kind of materialized or or rebounded the way they will eventually. And how do we account for that and then what are the implications that residents ought to understand. Well, well, first of all, with the sales tax and sets the number one revenue. Ironically, we, you know all my projections were horrible right so they were nowhere near reality. So as it turned out, we, we are probably going to end this year and I only know right now through November, because December results will come in during the month of January, but through the month of November were probably up around 3.8% over the previous year. Our budget was 2.9% increase or so so we are actually exceeding the budget that we had for sales tax for 2020. And I'm sure that we will will stay above the budget level with only a month ago. So, that's, that's finished well sales tax hopefully, especially since our projections for 21 were again somewhat conservative because we made them all the way back in July when we were still projecting shortfalls. So, we, we would have to have a decline and a large decline to actually not meet budget. So, so we're in a good position from that perspective, but other revenues. They still suffered and anything that was tied to a service that is is was not fully available as it was pre pandemic, and then maybe had a user charge attached to it. That really did have an impact and in the general fund we still did have at least $4 million of shortfall from from revenues impacted say by the pandemic we had a few other revenues that just didn't come in as budgeted for other purposes, non pandemic related but at least a $4 million shortfall from revenues that that didn't come in because we did not offer our services at at the fullest level so and recreation is you know over 75% of that number. You know we do also have other revenues tied to the museum as was also really had a large shortfall and revenues compared to their budget at least, and then fees for for disconnects we stopped shutting off our utility service for our customers. And so there's this revenues connected to that but there's also costs that went away there as well so that one didn't hurt us as much. We were able to reduce costs in these services that were shut down or, or not offered that was offsetting that revenue shortfall, but we couldn't entirely do that for for recreation and museum and so we had large shortfalls there. So revenues are fine revenues from anything whether it be parking library fines obviously these things weren't happening during the pandemic so we were, we had a reduction in all those as well so they all make up to $4 million. Those haven't stopped yet. I mean we, we have to expect to see that again in 21. We did build our budgets, a bit more conservative with an expectation that this would, would roll over into 21 to some degree. But, but I don't think to the, you know, if we're sitting here saying that, that we're not going to be fully vaccinated before, at least halfway through the year or later. That's not how we projected our revenues. And so we still have challenges in front of us with 21 revenues, not potentially meeting budget either. And from the same types of sources from recreation activities, the museum. They're not, they're really fee based right I mean the revenues that are generated through fees and fines. And so, Harold talk about some of the specific examples because I know there'll be interest in the whatever that it is right whatever program is someone's particular interest. And wanting to see it back to normal or you know fully operational or on the right on the schedule they're accustomed to. What are some of the examples where people just need to understand. Those are not funded, those are those programs not funded with tax dollars. And until there's until their activity resumes, there won't be revenue generation. Yeah, so I think to go back to kind of set the stage for this and talk about what Jim pointed out. When we went into the budget and presented it to council, essentially what we projected. And this was done in conjunction with our with Jeff Friesener and our recreation group I think we projected a 25% reduction in revenue and recreation services. And so they did a 25% reduction sort of across the recreation sector, and then we did a 30% reduction in the hours for temporary staff members. So if you go back when we talked about we didn't have to do furloughs and things, we were still paying those individuals, but we need to go into 21 we couldn't continue that based on that revenue structure coming in. And, and so what does that mean well that means when you were now covering operations with our full time staff members in different venues and in a combination of some of the temporary staff members of the reduced hours. But if you look at things like the hours that we can operate the rec centers. How many people we can have in there and others to drivers in this. And they're both playing with each other so one driver is, what are we allowed to do, based on the health orders that are in place at the time and and how robust can our operations really be. Going into the end of the year we actually were allowing more people in until we saw the spike in cases and then they they backed off of that so in many cases we went from approximately 50% 25% so we're now able to have less people in facilities, which then reduces that revenue stream and the best example on this and there's a lot of questions on it was our hockey. We have to prepare a month ahead of time. So that we can open in October based on what we were seeing on the numbers. We felt comfortable on the financial analysis that at 50% occupancy. So we start doing that work. The changes and we go to 25%. We really had a long conversation of do we even open it or do we not open it we said well we don't want to lose what we've invested. People need an outdoor recreation opportunity. But as we look into 21 based on how we structured the budget we don't have the coverage that we do in 20. October, November, December and that fell within that budget that we knew in 21 in the January was probably all we could absorb and so that's how we talked about that issue, because those user fees really come into play. And so if you keep going and you keep losing and then we know that many of the recreation programs probably are going to be fully operational until much later in the year which is going to exacerbate. We're going to create a more difficult situation because we projected potentially an earlier opening that starts feeding so that's that other deficit and we're going to have to continue evaluating this to the point what we said, is when we set some of these. When we set the budget as orders change, and we have the ability to open up. We will then get together, assess the revenue stream says what we can do, but then we actually have to come back in the budget process, adjust the revenue projections potentially. And adjust the expenditure so we can open up so it's not an immediate switch that we can flip as we have opportunities because we still have this broader budget pressure in place. And I'm focusing on right but there are other areas where this. Jim, did I miss anything or mistake anything. No you didn't but but I think what I need to add in is that you know so I talked about how our sales tax ended the year, I think that the fact that between that, as well as the fact that we were able to save a lot of expenditures in the one from our operating expenses as well. We were able to withstand the reductions that we had in in mostly the recreation revenues and the other revenues the 4 million plus of shortfall that I was talking about. We used up I would imagine not know all this for sure until we close out the end of the year and a couple of months or so. But we probably used up that OPEB reserve, but we would not have touched the stability reserve. And in fact, during the budget process, we did add another $1.4 million to that stability reserve so it's now over $3 million stability reserve. We were able to also refund the first and main transit station right and any of these other capital projects that we had unfunded or put on hold. They've all either been funded again or re budgeted for 2021. So we we've really been able to take care of those things and didn't have the hurt that we thought that we were going to have so. I want to say that yeah we're going to come up we have these revenue shortfalls that we're going to have from these services, but there are fallbacks now that we had last year. We don't have that OPEB anymore but we do have a larger stability reserve. We do have capital projects again. We're still in a position to be able to deal with things. And that that's you know that's something that we have in our hand in our pocket that that we know going forward. It's going to get a lot worse for us to be in dire straits. Yeah well part of the story is the stewardship that you're describing now, and, and how there were kind of responsibility that you to assume from making certain that all those funds are managed, the reserves are are conservative enough that they're there in the hard times, and to restore a number of the projects that you've referred to. And for me it's it's kind of a good news, bad news and cautionary tale right the good news is sales taxes have, have continued to materialize and, and many of the cities operations funded that way, kind of bad news is, you're still going to have to bring back up to kind of pre pandemic levels, some of the fee funded activities Recreation Museum, etc. And then the cautionary tale and this is maybe how we'll close it out. There's still uncertainties you're managing. As you anticipate Jim or Harold one of you made reference to the, you know, the speculation about a recession. You're, you still got a lot of uncertainty that you're managing so talk a bit about what that is in 2021, and anything else that that long monitors out of here from you to about city finances and what, what to anticipate or maybe to be looking for or listening for as the year unfolds. Jim go first and then I'll go. Does anyone really look forward to city finances. I've been in these conversations with you for a lot of hours, you're more animated this conversation to me. I love it. So, some people who are interested. You know, I don't, I think I have too much new to add to what I've said, I think it's, we're in a strong position because of the fact that that sales tax projection or budget I should say for for 2021 is below our 2020 actual so that's, that's a good thing where we should be able to easily surpass that budget hopefully if everything stays well and we continue along seeing what we've seen to this point. We should, we should do a good job of surpassing that. It's just the what the services that are fee based that will continue to be on limited use or on hold until this, this passes a golf on had a record here though. One thing people could do and they did a lot of it so that's actually a pandemic impact. It is. Yeah. Well and it's interesting how if you because they didn't have the same limits. They were able to do really well versus outdoor work did have limits, they were actually restrained in this pandemic across the country has been probably the one that has fueled more golf activity across the country than anything else but besides besides Tiger Woods right to have fuel. Actually we've I mean what's interesting is when we look at it we've outperformed the Tiger Woods I mean the tiger actually seen as the peak. Yeah, we outperformed that as we looked at the numbers. One of the things that I would say so we still have demands and demands that I don't think we fully understood but we knew we're potentially there so when we talk about things like how we support the Boulder County Health Department or and how we work together to bring forward a five star program that none of us even had a clue was going to exist is that we need to support so that can support local businesses and how can we repurpose folks. How can we potentially support vaccine operations as those continue to develop. And handle the needs that exist within our community that are the result of the pandemic. And you can see it in our business assistance grants and repurposing people and utility assistance and what's that going to look like as we continue to move forward and people So, so there's a component of this on services and what do we provide. On the other side of it, it's, what's the world like today. And we, we have a better sense of the, what we can expect via the pandemic, you know, Jim and I, what we also didn't say is, you know, man if we get to another shutdown. Who, who's going to survive it. What's that going to look like. Who knows. And then unfortunately you just see the state of the world or the state of the United States today. And I think any of us can answer, you know, clearly, what is the potential economic impact of what we're seeing right now and, and how is that going to impact us as an organization and a Those are all things that you still have to keep in your mind and we have to continue being diligence to diligent to try to go what is the future going to look like in a time that no one's experienced. And that's the challenge that we have and I'm lucky that Jim's here. You know, I would say, once they, if this had happened three or four years ago, when we were not receiving the level of internet sales tax that that we are today. I mean, in the sense of, we were not receiving it from the providers. They didn't have to register with us they didn't have to pay us. And a lot of that's changed in the past few years, and it's actually even getting better going forward. So we were really bailed out by the fact that we were receiving sales tax from from internet sales activity because there was a ton of it going on and still continues to be all the way through that pandemic and I think that. So if they're there entities that didn't have those agreements say with Amazon, and we're not having a lot of the places that have a nexus here, we're doing sales over the internet to and so we were receiving that as well. And that they lost out if they didn't have those things. And, and we did and we are in a sales activity was up, or like 150% or something. So we're looking ahead with what the council did last summer, getting us involved in the state's internet portal that will allow out of our state businesses that do internet business to actually just pay one entity instead of every home rule city in Colorado will hopefully make it so that those businesses are using that portal to pay long line and all the cities in Colorado for the sales they make in our cities and that might even give us even greater internet sales sales tax. Well, and I think I'm going to add one more thing if it's okay. I think the other thing to the that I know we've talked about is is again when you hear me talk about a diverse local economy. I think because we had a smuggers producing and crustables we still had folks coming into Longmont to work because what was interesting that product the demand for that product zoomed in the pandemic and they were having to put I think their people on distribution amount of excess. I know they were continuing to work and in and bring people in so when when you talk about a diverse local economy. You have to also talk about those components that have come in where people weren't going to work in certain communities somewhere still come into work in our community because of the employment opportunities here and so on a diverse local economy I think was also an important piece of what we experienced. And we all know that the economic development efforts are not going to stop, you're going to continue to do the recruitment of primary employers and obviously the success rate has been pretty impressive. Part of the backstory here as far as I'm concerned for for Longmonters is just how well these resources have been stewarded. There is no luck here you guys this the finances for good hands. The city and the community are fortunate to have people of your experience and your talent and your expertise. Because if you guys don't get it right with this part of the operation, nothing else is going to work so thanks. Thanks for sharing the story today. More importantly, thanks for what you do day in and day out in your roles and in your selfless service to this community as the city manager and the chief financial officer. So Longmonters, that is your backstory on City of Longmont finances in the hopefully soon post pandemic and post pandemic era. Thanks for listening. Thank you.