f option one but within option one there's another layer that Pam will explain that's called current range penetration and then there's option one where you would bring them to them both you're going to bring to the minimum but the difference becomes if you pick current range penetration or if you pick hybrid year there's another option too that we didn't even bring to y'all because I don't I it would have started the officers at a lower level bringing them to the minimum so for example you'll see in a minute just using a basic police officer with this option they started they'll start at 48 the other option they would have started at 45 just bringing them to the minimum so we picked the one where they start a little higher but now the question becomes the second layer of it um that we need to describe to you so the reason why we keep referring to option one um is because I think that's the better option I'm just I had to also pick which layer of option one makes more fiscal sense but it's not just about the fiscal sense it's what I was just saying it's also about which one of them is gonna keep us placed um where we want to be for some time to come so the number the the total number to fund it so out the gate if you pick option one current range penetration that's where we are today correct yeah it's 2.2 okay so we're looking at the budget cost 2.2 no we're gonna yes the 60 that's true yeah well Pam if she's probably like if y'all ever let me talk I'll explain all that to you so um I think we we did a presentation for the public safety committee and so gave you kind of an overview we've hired a consulting firm evergreen consulting that did a previous class and comp study for us um about I guess it's like six years ago now but they have been tasked to assist us with this pay plan and so they have um done a market survey check with everybody in the state of South Carolina also compared us to the state agencies who've recently done some salary increases and based on those figures and wanting to be the most competitive um organization in our area this is the the new pay ranges and new pay grades that they have recommended so um as Miss Wilson was saying currently you'll see our current pay grades you'll see the current minimums and the maximums so that I get it all on this little chart I skipped the midpoints but I can certainly provide that to you as well um after they have um researched for us and had some consultation with us they're recommending a new pay structure so these are the new pay grades oh I'm sorry I'm making up copies here Miss Wilson say y'all don't have these um so um and then the proposed minimums and maximums are are present on this as chart so the one that Miss Wilson is making most reference to is the uh police officer currently is the 108 minimum starting salary is 36 737 that's with just a high school diploma no previous experience that'll convert to a 203 with a starting minimum salary of 48000 085 one of the things that you will all that we don't have on this sheet is depending on what they bring to the table and a new officer can be placed on a step so this plan has um steps associated with it and it steps all the way out with the consideration of someone would want to be here for 30 years and of course the steps are appropriate if you are a police cadet there aren't 15 steps to that because you'll only be a police cadet for a couple of years but for the other um classifications there are steps associated with it the concept is is that every year an officer would get moved to the next step so that's what Miss Wilson's talking about is you have to maintain this system once we start the system so there'll be steps that'll move people horizontally give people the ability to see what salary they would make 12 years from now 10 years from now they'd see those steps um and then of course there you'll see as you go up rank the pay grades go up and then the the corresponding minimums and maximum salaries are listed out there so may have questions about that so far I always like to use they've been as I've been trying to understand this just for basic understanding Pam knows I always go to the 203 the police officer right the 108 and the 203 more requests for officers than we have officers available for special requests and it's not mandatory that anybody would say it's an elective income opportunity not just starting to say that your earnings are first year to be significantly more than that I think that's often understood though in the industry what folks the opportunity to make overtime I'm not saying I think this is the right I think this is the right approach the point is when we were fruiting we would have a we have a upper we have I don't think West Columbia for example has the option they're going to upside it all the way to there and I'm not disagreeing with you I'm saying I think that's what people anticipate the ability to I guess if they know what they anticipate that ability so the next page that you'll have and I guess we should have said option one a an option one b maybe that would have made it a little bit well we have an option yeah we have an option with an a and a b so yeah we should we're working fast here bear with us okay option one with the higher salaries to bring them to the minimum that's what we're that's what we just showed you exactly so you would start once you have established these new pay grades and the new minimum starting salaries of course your first step would be to bring everybody to those new minimums so anybody you had under those new minimums for each of those pay grades you'd have to adjust their salary to that so for example if you had an officer who's currently making forty five thousand dollars a year they would have to be or 36 I should say that'd be a good reference for you then they would have to be brought to that new forty eight thousand dollar salary so that cost to bring everybody to the new minimums is eight hundred and sixty six thousand one hundred and fifty two dollars and the reason why you're seeing the three twenty five mr taylor is those are the current working with kind of the current staffing that we have now what they did was they used the census of our current employees and mapped out how much it will cost us to actually move the people we have present now so that would have to have some adjustment based on hiring some of the new staff who talked about so that's that is the amount that we're budgeting because we don't have those officers currently those sixty so in the course of time you're anticipating losing some and gaining some and so we would certainly have to have and that's what miss wilson's talking about what we might we won't be able to implement all of it potentially if we add it in say the sixty that we were going to to hire over the course you know how many let's just say for example from the budget perspective you have sixty and you thought you could do it when you're five a month that means you got five more people you got to add to that number twelve months five or eleven months we also don't we also don't know where they're coming in at you know with chief hires certified officer versus a new cadet out of the gate so we've got to do we we had modeled like we're gonna have to come up with some kind of average of what is going to cost us to hire sixty more and we will do that but right now we we budgeted the two point two which would accommodate who we have right now and we will add when we figure that number out yes sir we will do that so again the first step again is to take everybody to the minimums of their new pay ranges that is an average salary right now with the staff we have of two thousand six hundred sixty five dollars and a five percent five point four percent increase now nobody go out and buy a new car or because we're working through these numbers so um that is an average i'm not saying that everybody's gonna get that is just an average this is a proposal because i know people are like i'm gonna i'm getting a two thousand dollar raise right now we are working through this process so i don't want anybody like i said go out and buy a new car or put any money in the bank yet we haven't finished the implementation process so then um one a is as miss wilson said current range penetration cap to ten percent so that concept is that we currently have pay ranges and pay grades if you are an employee that is ten percent within the current pay ranges the ones we have before the old ones you'll be placed at ten percent within the new pay ranges so that is what that current range penetration concept is because that is extremely expensive is being capped at ten percent so you would get no more than ten percent so say you are fifteen percent from your new space on that pay range you would only get ten percent you wouldn't get the entire fifteen percent yes yes you would go into whatever step is is is closest to that with the ten percent right so with this plan we would implement steps so we would we would set everybody up do all of this to to start it and then everybody would get a step every year or i think it's averaging around three percent every year so that master patrolman would just move within that pay ban and they would get a three percent every year if he doesn't choose to also grow vertically so it's not based on merit it's just a step it would they would automatically get a step yeah so they based on the way these plans are set up is an automatic step it doesn't it doesn't matter you know absolutely it certainly is that's that's one of the disadvantages to steps is you don't have some of that discretion um that's right so they'll they'll be able to move now of course there will be a cap i mean you just you don't want to you everything has a value and so there will be a max but they will see that they will be able to continue to step through and receive those pay increases as they step through so that's that that one a the one b is the hybrid year where people will be given some credit for their user service so not only they will be given credit for user service but they'll be given credit for use in their their classification and that will be where their their increase will be and where they will be placed on the step so for example for simple math that they've been five years they'd be on step five for simple a simple analogy so and this will be mapped out for each employee based on their date years of service their years in position where their current salary is how it matches up to the new salary and you know where they should be which step is the next highest step for them if anybody feels really strongly about that more simple year for step and how that gets implemented in the nation of that that was why I wanted us to have that discussion here today as well it is more expensive and that's what I was saying in order to implement it we would I would recommend for that one we start the implementation in January so we can build ourselves into how to paper this this fiscal year but that one would accommodate you know we say you bring someone on and they I don't know if it's their outside years of experience would be considered if someone's hired a certified officer well and that's we we can do that with either of these with either of these um approaches it'll just be once it's established then they'll have to be some some pay plan um criteria that are established to say if you come in with five years you're on step three or or what have you but there will be some policies and procedures that can be established to determine right where we place people in the steps when they come on with experience but in general terms if someone is already with the city and they have five years then they would be at step five yes again it's gonna depend on I mean how um far they were from yes if they're already with the city not someone I'm giving I'm sorry I'm confusing what I asked you if they're already a city officer and they have five years then when we go to implement this then we would put them at step five yes yeah so it is the is the uh current range penetration capped at 10 plant a and a hybrid year plan b yes okay so current year penetration puts them on a step but they're capped at 10 percent of of where they are now so if they were making I can't do the math that quick in my head but they wouldn't get more than a 10 percent increase in pay to get on a it'd be placed on a step yes sir would they move down on a step if they if they were hitting it over 10 percent so say if if if they're current pay would be 15 percent more but they only can get a 10 percent would we put them up on us on that step or they can move down a step so there would be no moving down a step because we gotta remember that we're starting at much higher yeah starting salaries so you would it would always be either the step or the step above we wouldn't move anybody down a step well what is the the difference between the hybrid year and the current range penetration is there's there's no cap of 10 percent and they put they go on the new pay scale wherever their years of service are yes and I think there's some methodology right Pam that for the current range penetration it's not like because you have two years of service at the city that you're going to step to right it's going to be you got to determine which step you put them at right mm-hmm you think the anticipation since we're discussing this in a public meeting do you think the anticipation from the officers would be such that they wouldn't want to wait until january they'd rather take the whatever the reduction between the hybrid year and the current year penetration is there will be some of them that will be kept I'm just speculating but I would think people people typically want something now than they do later so I would think that they would want more immediate than than later I'm fine with what everybody wants now and I recommend it what we can afford to do now and that's fine and all well and good but next year this time because someone doesn't understand why I got five years of service and I'm not at step five I don't really want to hear about that is what I'm saying so either we like you said we we don't have much longer to simmer because we advertise budget but if there's some heartburn about understanding the implementation of the hybrid of b versus a and b you know just in general terms it's kind of like your years are credited for what step you're on and then you know and that and it does cost a little bit more upfront and we may have to work our way into that I agree with the mayor that we need to do something in July then we've given you the opportunity of what to do in July let me just say I I kind of agree I've got some I have some implementation questions on some other things frankly might take us 45 minutes if we get into them today and I I really would like to have until next Tuesday if we if that's acceptable to get a little more input from the chief and a lot more input from you on a cup on a couple of things when it comes to the what the really projected costing may very well be on this next year if that's okay I mean it is absolutely okay I was I was just saying yes that's fine I I don't know how we would overcome one implement day implementation date July versus January that's all I'm saying if we if we pick the more expensive model I haven't figured out how to make that work starting it in July that's all I'm saying it's probably starting January and that's one of the just one of the discussions you know that I'd like to have we're meeting again next week so are we gonna see option two or what well option two the only difference really is that it starts the bay bringing them to the minimum the minimums are lower right right yeah so it'd be less expensive okay so this is yeah by you showing us option one we well by showing us option one I was trying to get us you kind of knew where we were trending with yeah that and I was assuming that again every you know I'm trying for us not to keep having the same conversation every so many years so option one am b get the salaries up a little bit more than option two am b I certainly can share be well I want to I want to see that it's in here and I was trying to well you share option oh you didn't give him option two oh that's why they kept saying we don't have option two okay gotcha yeah I understand I'm sorry I thought you had that so again you all can take a look at option two you know maybe I under maybe I'm off base maybe we do one of those and the minimums start lower and to be I understand we're talking about this publicly mr. Deval you're exactly right but I think our officers and everybody else needs to understand the depth of the discussion and that we're trying to put everything out there and in no secret it's all expensive option two is a lot less pay for the officers it is that's why I didn't have to go over that one recognize if you put them side by side you'll see some of the difference in the minimum salaries going down there's a there's a significant difference in that can you share with us before next week a sample uh a bump up from a current grade 108 to proposed pay grade 203 over a 10 15 year time oh absolutely period just so we can see what yeah come in to start a career with our columbia police department what what that means absolutely show it at a five and seven good point good point we can certainly show you that so so that was the the one I just passed out again I I just wanted to kind of you know give you part of it not overwhelm you you'll see that it's the same approach um and the the prices are the cost is based on those approaches and you'll see there's there is a difference is because those starting salaries are a lot lower well not a lot but they are lower so it has an impact financially so what that looks like one is their option but how to phase it in is the question yes sir well the chief is the chief has laid in with me on which option he thinks is better a or b but i'm certainly i understand why you want to think about it and maybe ask us some questions over the course of the week definitely so any questions that you have i'll be more than happy to answer them if you want to send me emails later i can send you model model it out so you can see that one other question if we were reducing the budgeted number of officers down to what we can realistically hire by 60 and how much of this does that 60 that's not being budgeted in the offset from the preview i think we're about to get into that discussion follow that yes that goes what you're asking is what i finally came to me and realized that uh as we've been talking about budget we don't we haven't budgeted for this chief at full strength we've been budgeting to a number and not to a number of positions for four months i've heard these are the budgeted i understand i'm about to give you all another staffing report right now so i can finally put all that to bed and help you really understand i think what i think you've been asking us bring it on i was hoping so if you got a budgeted fte is not a budgeted fte so that'll be interesting i'll show you jeff and missy helped me explain it but i understand what you're asking ready when you all are okay all right so what we're going to now um hopefully talk about go as efficiently as we possibly can because i know it's getting later let's just give us um kind of a little history as to our staffing and some of it has been affected by pre-covid and the budgeting we did during that time frame since covid to now and also a really good effort to staff up that's occurred this more much more recently all the while moving to a budget process that truly has been more about zero or priority-based budgeting where we have asked and asked and asked got answers and went back asked again and made our own determinations on some things to try to um address vacancies overtime etc so with that i'll let missy talk about that history and an updated staffing report some of you haven't ever seen the staffing report i know mr taylor was referencing that a moment ago because of some questions he's had that we've attempted to answer over the course of the last few months when new council members have come on board but i really realized i'm just not sure we've been adequately answering the question so we need to just pull the bandaid off and try to have the discussion with everyone thank you thank you miss wilson i think and in turn starting from a fresh point a fresh view and sort of where we are today and looking forward but we did want to demonstrate and i think this probably is news to even some of our departments or maybe not news to our departments rather in terms of just the city's history recently in terms of our actual number of filled positions actual employees um and the the dates so the chart we're providing to you is a 10-year history looking at march the 31st and there's no magic of that date other than just sort of looking at a completed cycle and picking the same date of every every time of the year if we were to change this chart and do july one of every year it looks slightly different but but not but not significant so we just want to demonstrate sort of since pandemic obviously we're at our lowest point of actual number of of employees to date this chart and before you as i said mentioned march the 31st we're now at 2100 employees so we're a little bit above this number of 2032 starting to hire up for the summer so obviously some hiring events and some other things that have changed that have sort of contributed to that so in a few months we could show this chart and it would it would be a a different number of course but of course over the you know pandemic years we we've lost a number of employees that's not unique to the city it's obviously a national sort of element that's happening along with some other things that are kind of occurring but looking at that comparatively we're at the lowest number of our employees in 10 years actual actual bodies hired and looking at this chart from just this specific date again i won't don't think that would fluctuate too much from near you know if we were to look at a different month of the year but just wanted to sort of start that from a point of conversation since a lot of what we're talking about is how we then budget for these positions and what that looks like going forward okay so just again this is just netting and just discussing what i just mentioned in the sense that the city is actually a reduction of a net of 261 employees over that same period of March 31st 2020 to March which is right around the time we were closing or shifting to remote settings for some offices not everything obviously majority of city services are still provided in person until the March 31st of this year pre-pandemic we averaged about 2,300 employees of course we're we're adapting service deliveries we're taking advantage of technology consolidating some services and some things there to be able to meet still be able to provide those services and of course some other things contracting overtime and at this point we're starting to re re re you know re-engage in some services that we may have previously suspended during covid during that same period two or recent months of course the city has done a number of efforts in terms of recruitment and retention in February there was the custom the Columbia Cares press conference in terms of discussing sort of where we are with our positions and also talking about where we are with our work orders i think there's been some positive come comments from our customer care in terms of meeting those numbers now which has been helpful i'm sure we've held a career fair we're doing open interviews as mr. Anderson's mentioned in terms of what they're doing and fire department's also mentioned i think some other departments have joined in on those open interviews with public works it's obviously shortening the period of time to hire you've raised the minimum hourly rate to 14 50 an hour along with some other feathered up of those positions above that rate and of course we're doing some marketing and promotion so of course we're doing a number of things to be able to address our vacancy rates and be able to fill those positions as we have obviously had some help from city council that guidance and directions in terms of looking at our processes as well as doing things that we can do to attract and retain employees so that's where we are with the um slides miss wilson the next if we want to go into the the chart absolutely we thought it was relevant um part of what we wanted to demonstrate in terms of this prior two-year period is that as we've mentioned in prior conversations with you department's budgets are still are just starting to return to a pre-pandemic sort of status in terms of what things look like but staffing wise and cost wise prior to prior to the pandemic not that we're trying to get back to those full amounts but in the sense of just sort of where what the what budgets just again budgets look like over the past two years so we're showing you what are pre-authorized pre-covid authorized positions because that's a number of fluctuating some departments may reference that number is their number of positions and then some departments may reference that they have a lower number of positions that were frozen because we froze positions during the pandemic so there's been some cuts pre-covid what day are you i'm looking at the i'm looking at 1920 fiscal year 1920 so when we went in fiscal year 2021 we did have a hiring freeze and departments were frozen at a certain levels and then that's the the freeze on while we may have been hiring for fiscal year 21 22 departments were still holding those positions or the number of positions that may have had sort of frozen so again coming into that period going forward what is reflected now in the fiscal year 21 22 column is trying to be get a better idea of actually what is closer to what was budgeted so obviously some of the numbers that are going to stick out the most is police department as the chief has mentioned as many times is that we budget um a certain number of of sworn positions and non-sworn positions that's referring to his authorized strength there's a a purpose for retaining that authorized strength number especially in regards to a number of the grant activities that we do and i'm looking to the chief if he has any other kind of pieces to add to that but as we as we go through our sworn position discussions and as we go through our granting be able to retain that that is his sworn strength or the authorization that he has for strength but in terms of what we've actually funded is closer to a 420 number which is a significantly lower number than where we were i'm sorry 420 is what we are close is closer to what we funded he was the the the authorized strength is a combination of the 543 which is both sworn and unsworn and that's obviously one of the high that's obviously one of the numbers that probably sticks out the most and again just so i'm so the council is clear on why we would do that not just for police but throughout the the budget or general fund and i don't know if jeff and you want to take that on but it's it's a budgeting um methodology i mean and we we've got we pulled articles from other communities and gfoa so no one thinks we're making this up but we jeff has taught to his counterpart in rock hill and green bull and other places and everybody does some iteration of it what we have come to know this year based off the questions and going into this idea of zero priority based budgeting is that i believe we need to be budgeting going forward to the positions so that there's a clear understanding of of what the numbers correlate to in each department from a personnel perspective not just budgeting to the personnel line the number and then the departments have to stay within the number and work within the number with their hiring and and so on and so forth um but jeff or missy d i want to add to that before you go into any other discussions about certain numbers on here well i did have a quick question so are y'all saying that the industry standard is to budget to the chief's authorized string i mean what are what are we not just the not just the police department um what we what missy was saying about police though because they have certain grants and because he's it's very important to any police chief to carry their authorized strength so we always want to keep that top of mind what his authorized strength is i think what we're going to now is what can he realistically hire and retain right so what we are doing for this next year is we've determined that that number 60 and so we're looking at it from the standpoint of what was what does he have right now which is as of i guess last week he was around what for 20 and then or he's hovering and so if he's going to if he's going to hire 60 plus three code enforcement officers and that would put him at the 483 that we're proposing yeah and the 420 is resulting but sworn and non-sworn so he's hovering hovering around the 311 that's got i mean in a rub but that's where the confusion is coming i mean you're showing at least calling it budget fte's of 420 but we're only employing 311 right so sworn that's right of sworn plus about 100 or so well they're above the 320 correct so they're 107 i'm sorry so there's 107 non-sworn and then we started with from a from we started with 313 in terms of where he was but he's adding 60 on top of his 313 i think was the number i know looking backwards sure what my what i was my understanding was that if our full we were budgeting 420 sworn officers but we only had how many sworn officers hired wouldn't i was going to say yes so that that 420 would have been sworn and unsworn it wouldn't have been just that the the sworn and unsworn is over 500 with the budgeted in that first column the 4 the 420 on 12 30 the report i that i was given show the police department budgeted fte's a total of 512 which includes the sworn and the non-sworn correct that it sounds okay so right now i mean i mean so so at the time my understanding was of that 512 approximately 420 thereabouts were sworn officers is that not correct so the the budgeted sworn officers excuse me budgeted 512 of the budgeted 512 420 were budgeted sworn and we had at the time 112 vacancies in that in that group not necessarily all sworn but mostly sworn is that not correct and this is i mean i'm just looking at what i was given right so the 512 number is now 420 that's what we're saying is more reflective of what was actually funded in his budget in the new budget or the old budget current budget current year okay the 512 was the number was in terms of getting back to where we're saying in terms of what he was of you understand where the ambiguity is right i mean you should probably i mean you got budgeted and funded or two different ball games yes that's that's a good point i think that is a so what you're saying is when i when we get when i got these reports it was 512 were budgeted of which there was a much lower number funded that were funded yes okay yeah and that's what i was i understand but i understand but just so just so everybody understands where the confusion came from oh i went through the orientation period and everybody every department head said this is what i have this is what i have unfilled and i wrote all those numbers down and that was the reports i got back absolutely this is correct this is this is this is our new starting point that's what we're starting from here i know but just so you know i've been working with something completely different well i know because you told me a number and i'm i was wondering and that's now that's what i'm saying so and that's really we were getting to is where what reflected positions or a number of positions versus and and here's the and then so here comes the here comes the $64,000 question that i think the mayor was asking way back at the first budget meeting is you know if you're doing a zero base budget and a priority base budget and we were as low in employee level as the previous chart for 2049 2032 full time do we need i mean do you think it's imperative that we and we function not necessarily on all eight cylinders everywhere but we function we need 400 additional employees over and above where we were at our low point to really pop and rock or do we allocate some of those resources for raises here and raises there and and can we function with a lower number that that's the $64,000 question and i think that's part of the conversation we're we're going to be going through in terms of what is in the budgets now for departments in terms of positions i think some departments of course would tell you no they're not operating at optimal levels with the current staffing totally understand and then what we're talking about in terms of funding see there in kin comes the question is when you look at your comparables that you sent us on fridays you know and you're looking at your 22 actuals i think it was a 22 actually 21 yeah let's see yeah 21 actual yes sir and then we're looking at the budget number for f21 for f22 which are there's 400 people missing in there based on the new numbers yeah you're i mean the whole fiscal 22 you're running way under so the question is when you look at when you look at fiscal 23 budgets what number do you compare it off of because the budget of 22 is not necessarily accurate because we had 400 people missing and so and in some cases i think you did a very really cool thing by contracting out things you know that may not cause us to bring these things and i'm just saying we have an unusual situation to to look at our our hr situation here with the cost of eight health insurance and things like that are going up to to to improve the folks that we have like what we're talking about and and and maybe you know maybe keep our staff lower than we have in the historical and look i ran a state agency look here i respect every one of you guys and gals in this room y'all trade fte's like their cash okay i never forget that that government we were in the great recession and they required everybody at a state agency they asked for any money howard they asked everybody to turn in all their extra fte's and i thought it was going to be a civil war in state government so i get that but my point is i just when you're comparing the budgets i'm not so sure you know what to look at well i would tell you what would be clearer and i just just think about this so i'm looking at the pre-covid authorized ftd not the actual and i'm looking at a budgeted number and then i'm looking at a vacant number and then i'm looking at a proposed number ftd which is actually what we're proposing is a budget and the swings in these things are tremendous and so then i look at the chart that's here and none of these numbers match this number either so trying to understand what we built up and i think part of it is is so that we know and and i'm going to repeat this a thousand times as i have on it part of this is making sure that we're running effectively efficiently and that we have the resources to invest in the human capital the equipment capital and the technology and the training that we need and so there's ultimate goal and i'm not that's why it's so confusing because just in in in two minutes sitting here with my pen i got a 400 swing i got a 300 swing in one year that's authorized versus actual and then the next year it goes up and then i i just look at for one year there's 400 different and trying to understand is that really what we need to fill i mean is that and i think the bottom line question comes is just trying to understand it it's hard to follow i don't know that we're going to be able to totally make these numbers think up because it's a totally different approach because i've heard what you've said about it and i think we also haven't gotten to the point of saying the other policy a new policy type thing that i think we have done this year is actually implement a vacancy adjustment of three percent so just take i'm waiting for jeff and busy to get to that point to explain it to you so that we can also try to build in this opportunity if there is some turnover have a cushion and a reserve hypothetically if robert were to cut whatever he cut but he still gets to a point or there's some program that you all want to implement and we need to hire up the reality of if we're going to really hire all 400 of these positions is we probably won't but then build in some type of go ahead and cut across the board three percent more so that we're using that funding to get the pay plan to your point about that done and if there's some reason that we need to hire up that there's some but what a cushion there and i because i had my hand so what i want to say too is we look at this budget it is my understanding that this budget was created based on what you all wanted which was zero based and priority based so while historical data is interesting to me i am looking at the current budget as if because if we truly do zero base then we don't really care about the old because my interpretation or if the assignment was done correctly is this is what we need right now to function and so i don't really i'm not confused some of the numbers i want them to fluctuate because to me that means that there was a thoughtful exercise as to what was needed and what wasn't maybe it may be asking those specific departments i don't understand that fluctuation but if i think every i mean i think staff was very clear on the directives and so the question today is just is this what we need now we may disagree and so but so we just need to say we disagree i mean just say i don't think we need that many but i think that is a question i think staff has done all that they are going to do and if we as a council want to make those decisions then we got to we got to make those decisions the amount of amount of people that you have in this year's proposed budget is 2454 yes and that shows a net reduction in the departments of 51 employees yes yes sir let me just make a couple of three comments for this um if it's a zero-based budget any priority-based budget it doesn't have fudge factors that you budget in a contingency if you want to but you don't over budget here and there you know for just in case i mean that's just the way it is and i would what is contingency though i'm just saying but what is contingency now you sent me a nasty text about interrupting you right two meetings ago and i have a really long time you're going to talk but i'm just saying what is contingency what is contingency but my point is this make me lose my track of my thoughts um that what are you telling people my secrets i mean point being is i had hoped when you and when you do a priority-based budget at least this is my understanding is you know we articulated what the priorities are and sometimes if you don't have enough funds you give up some things to achieve your priorities and and what frankly i had hoped and and one of the reasons i'm looking so hard at these personnel numbers is i mean i had hoped that we would get to the point when i look at what i think i heard is that we've got about three million dollars worth of new income coming in this year this projected for next year we had about a three million dollar budget left over from fiscal 22 and is that correct we incorporate it three million of your fund balance and then three and then three million of new revenue or is that is that the three million of new revenue in order to increase tax collections increase this increase that bottom line is you would hope that if we prioritize this is where i'd like to see us get to at some point in time is that we could achieve the raises that we did you know by prioritizing them inside of our budget and the in the carry forward then becomes a maintenance cap x account for us at some point i mean uh you know we just we need the funds to fix the parks to fix this and if we can generate these operating surpluses that get spent not on next year's operating funds but on yeah that's what that's that's what i was trying to see us get to now and what i'm seeing when we get here in this discussion today is you know and that's why i sent you the note you know all of you know all the police raises are they in the budget well we don't we haven't decided you've got two options up there we don't know which one we're going 2.2 in there that's what i was saying put that in there i cut even though this is just the numbers i cut three more percent off of this budget so the three million dollars that i'm referencing that's paying for the police pay plan if we do the 2.2 is coming out of vacancy money but what's but let me ask you this but when it's being paid for is the three million carry forward still factored into your budget yes yes and it's creating a 2.2 reserve to do the maintenance cap x and the projects and i know wouldn't it be nice for that to be 5.2 me that's where i'm that's where i'm trying to get to uh and and you know i mean let me just you know share with everybody in the room i think we've got tens of millions of dollars worth of maintenance cap x that we probably need to do and that's what i'll say trying to look at how we can do things and frankly i like to get the city to where we don't have to 30-year finance everything we do you know i mean like like you know again if we can end up with five million dollars here and we and we capture some tourism infrastructure fee over there we sell a couple of buildings that aren't being used today and henry's got the money to do family park next year and we didn't go do a 15-year bond on age tax you know i agree with you totally i mean we we didn't take we've still got the list of the where there's the gateways the beautification of all kinds of things that we showed you that could come out of a fund ballot but you can go back later and capture some of that once we have those discussions so i did not take any more out of fund ballot to achieve any of that yet we've still got to have a discussion of the municipal court but my point is you've got three million dollars of fund ballots already into the budget that's what we do you know but i'm explaining to you if again if we if or if we're prioritizing and we're zero based if what you're saying is we really need to go back up again i hear you but when i look at this it looks like we're hiring several hundred more people this year you know do we have you know show you the snapshot of what the numbers actually are and what it would look like the reality is i took three percent more out with equate so about three million dollars so right now today or july one if one of these departments wanted to go hire somebody they might they their budget is going to be cut three percent more but they might they probably wouldn't be able to do that and the reality is because they're still in this we're in this ebb and flow of what they're trying to do and how they're trying to hire i don't agree with you i don't i do not think that we probably will hire 400 vacant positions although we're making all these efforts and we're doing really well right now because of all the recruitment efforts we're making so because i think we're gonna hire some we were trying to figure that sweet spot out of allowing them to still go through all these recruitment efforts and the mayor just said even here today put on the computers we're hiring we're hiring we're hiring right so we're trying to find that sweet spot because we want to do that but what will we really do and so we took a three percent cut which they're just hearing this for the first time as a matter of fact across every budget and that created three million dollars outside of the fund balance that we had already abused in the budget to help pay for some of these other things like the pay plan and whatever else that it might be that might be personal i understand and and again if that's if that's how you prefer to do it i'll be fine with it i would just tell you in a priority based budget you don't do three percent across the board yeah well we didn't prefer to do it that way but i also know that we're being asked to do some things off the fly right now that i think are meaningful things like the police like pay plans like this discussion of the municipal court like the gateways and some other things that i mean have just come up and so because we're transitioned to a new approach is certainly imperfect it's not how we've normally done things i'm trying to get us there because i'm hearing what y'all are saying about budgeting to the position but it certainly wasn't a switch that i could flip because we just hadn't been doing it that way to your point i mean it just finally i kept saying to the staff you know we've been for example having these discussions with mr taylor and showing them a number about what was budgeting that's really what was authorized it wasn't necessarily the number that was fine because we had that now but i mean that was i understand why that's confusing to you certainly and it's it's confusing at this juncture to be switching to doing it a different way although i think the exercises need it and i think once we get through this hard part right now this year trying to figure it out will be the better for it to budget to the positions going forward but it's not perfect right this one didn't expect to be perfect but i mean it's not big swings in some important categories for basic services for citizens utility operations public works i imagine in parks and rec by the way i imagine that big swing is offset by some of the contractors subcontractors that we've hired to do some of this work so i just want to be sure we're not we're not sacrificing services to our residents with this big swing it is being uh i guess replaced by the different delivery models for services right you do realize that we don't have any of this right now right i just want to make sure when when the when the public sees this it says oh we're cutting cutting everywhere oh public works great mr. Anderson doesn't have the way that it's presented right now and the way it's being perceived to the public right now it is i want to make clear here with with the video we're not sacrificing we've talked about this public services with this new budget approach right in general overall should be increasing exactly that's what priority budgeting does we're spending the money on what is considered to be our priorities right that that is my point is that we are not sacrificing services anywhere if anything we're increasing them part of the part of the misnomer is and that's why i just said when we get to next year's budget we're not going to have things that are as confusing because of what we've gone through today but with somebody the gym public just looked at that and said well that's authorized that's budget that's vacant and then they go look at actual and this and that it's just very hard to follow because what what you may have authorized what you may actually have and what you have budgeted are three completely different things exactly based on to where you are and so i think is we transition and to the priority base we're focused on doing what our mission is to come up customer service for our constituents and we're doing it based on actual delivery of service not tied to an FTP i hate to use that term but that's the currency that we use and i think simply that's that's that's that's where we're trying to head and that's why i hesitate with a lot of these numbers because it's you try to sit down with somebody and they start pulling out last year's budget the year before and then we talk about pre-covid this and that you just look at this and go this is confusing one year it's 300 one year it's 400 one year it's 500 this is that but we actually never had half of those right well and and part of the demonstration of talking about where we were pre-covid versus now and showing our historical hiring was the fact that it's what's compounding the confusion is the fact that our number of our employees actual filled positions is lower than what we are normally used to um and what we normally would say in terms of what is your authorized strength or what is your budgeted positions so when departments speak to that they're speaking of the positions that they could hire that they actually have authorized to them and i think the difference funding now we're talking about actually delivery of service and what we're investing internally to make sure that that that service gets delivered and i think that's the end of the day that's that's that's where we're all headed the way in the meeting to the meeting next next Tuesday she at missy wouldn't finish jeff jeff has some stuff not done yet little man needs to be picked up you look what i'm waiting on Danny this is your this is the proposed world fund budget it is not reflective there is nothing about more than that past one question it would really be a help we get we y'all are kind enough to send us a package on friday this is different from the package we get we're handed out in here on tuesday for additional it's additional information no but i'm just saying how are the questions that you answer let's see how it i eat which is what we should be doing so i don't feel any guilt for asking questions i walked in with all my homework already done you know what i'm saying i'm just yeah it is not our we very much do not want to give you a document today that is different than what the documents we talk about on tuesday for that exact reason we know you're looking at that making your notes and having his comments as miss wilson's mentioned there's a lot of things that we've been doing we are shifting i think shifting um some focus on certain things we're hearing some additional information so we are are developing this budget as we go along um and so there i will apologize in terms of some of what you're getting now in that sense but it is an effort to try to meet meet and provide you the information that you've asked for and then the document said we've just going out that the one additional document we gave you today was one that was updated on the county fire budget number what information we're giving to you now is really for discussion for next week but just to try to demonstrate what miss wilson was describing in terms of um an opportunity to reflect a within the budget that is already advertised funding that would address some of the things that has been discussed with the police pay plan so holding back a reserve um for those departments that would um need it if necessary with regards to hiring um as well as being able to as and then of course we still want to be able to talk through if not next week in some future conversations the general capital projects and that's that would be the list of the things that you're referring to um with regards to our facility needs um parks playgrounds police fire stations our roads sidewalks and so forth i've seen this a couple of times and just have a question so we had three million dollars in bad debt what is that that i don't need to look at that that might be a misplaced number we don't normally have the general fund doesn't carry bad debt like it would be on some others um i need to see that might be a reference to um i'm looking at that we don't normally have to have that kind of number no it's not water it's not water bills so that is a reserve on that and not a reserve but that is accounted for in the revenues that you get for that come forward to you and then also in terms of our actual collections so the when we brought with you the water and sewer budget um you're talking about the the the debt we are now yeah right it's already night backed out that was just a request from last time it's part of the personnel budget it's part of the personnel budget that's in the budget those are actual costs but let's put it in that bad that's a big difference now are we doing on that i'm just gonna say on this one see ideally we have salaries that way everybody's seeing whether one man's in the other time about it i was just giving you this for your you're talking about this sheet right here i'm just saying an ideal budget by the department managers will get to see how they're doing every month yeah whether we're over time going up over time going down benefit costs they ought to be looking at it every month yes whether or not they're making adjustments accordingly that's the difference they're perfect they they ought to be looking at their overtime expenditures every month they know they're gonna look at it is he did you have anything else you want to point on that point out or jeff on this fun summary i do not at this point unless there's other questions but um preparing for next week's conversation jeff did you have anything you wanted to contribute to is there anything else missing or jeff you all wanted to go over on this i know you all want to go but this this is this is the most important thing we're gonna do and i and i just want to make sure that when we get to gene seven i think it we will need some direction on the last slide uh here about the potential items needs requests i mean all of them are important um we've are like i said we haven't captured any more fun balance right now um there's about two points next week i mean if you to be thinking about it thinking about these items and there's some items in here we might have risha you have already got the 2.2 million for the police in in these numbers yes or you'll see a line there um at the bottom of your um before your non-departmental okay so we take it out three million or 2.2 million sorry is the other 800 000 above the 2.2 been allocated in the budget what other 800 000 sorry you're moving three million over from the carry forward yes sir so it's there it 2.2 million of it's going to you've got budgeted to the police is the other 800 000 already included in your rest of your general fund budget it is it's right you'll see it's actually um because we also did that vacancy adjustment so it's really a reserve of two point two eight that's left for you all to give us some direction on if you want hypothetically the gateways or the before we would capture any any additional fund balance or cab carry one part of the file discussion we still have a fairly significant i mean a big number of a r a r a month that we should probably look at how some of that might be incorporated into the capital whatever's eligible right for eligible capital yeah mm-hmm so everything we've discussed today is included in the budget that's been advertised anything else above that we could either do through budget amendment and another during future conversations as we bring the additional information for you about capital projects um as miss wilson mentioned and the other items has been discussed um but at this point the the pay plan is incorporated as well as there's a reserve of 2.8 million well you know between the arpan month and this i think we we've got some time and we can think about it but we always hear about sidewalks and roads and other things so i think we have an opportunity really to make an impact in our community if we leverage those two pots the right way but i don't i don't know about the rest of everybody but i don't think it's something we have to decide before june 7th you know i think we got a little bit of time correct if you want to capture additional fund balance or arpa fund yeah absolutely you don't have to i think we focus on this and then come back to that that would be one of the things i'd hope that we won't do it this year but next year we have a we really concentrate on the operating budget and then like i say what deliveries may be out of operation that could then flow into a a basically a separate almost standalone capx budget i mean i'm a big believer in reserving just today so it's at some point like you say in our capx budget can be include all kind of sources of funds it could be surpluses from the general fund it could be grants it could be you know and again it comes a schedule of capx probably it's probably a five six seven year capx budget that we ought to be doing you know that includes things like the diversion canal and stuff like that that lets us plan a budget for beyond just fiscal the next fiscal year so certainly water and sewer with diversion dam they obviously water and sewer and storm water does have a capital improvement program that carries out beyond of course year one you approve year one you prove a year to tom as far as general capital projects we certainly can also show you capital project requests that are both for your one and i would tell you it would be a very good exercise for us for even storm for water and sewer especially to have a five six seven year capital point capital expenditure and we do we do what's brought to you for approval is that you is a year one at a time yeah but you want to what you never see you're wanting to see the rest of this plan that's right here but six months we'll bring that as it is now and maybe that can lay the foundation for doing it in the way that you're describing going forward got it yeah i mean else i mean this is y'all i want to make sure we have all the information because we make sure it would be our last budget meeting prior to our public hearing i think at this point i mean we're pretty close if we got to stay a little bit longer i mean i would suggest you take a nap before you come that we do i mean me personally we should stay focused on the budget itself answer all the questions make sure we're clarified and then leave that for july august sometime sit down and you know that way we've got the budget levelized you know where we are and then we can figure out the big how that fits in the priority to do it because the big decision pending is option one or option two option one a or b yeah well the municipal court i mean i do think we need to talk about that too so we may and what it may be beneficial next week do we have schedule for next week do you have a the time set i always that's what i was getting right suggest is let's talk about the police in the court first that way we can wrap it we can wrap it up then we're not going back because at that point we'll have transition to that we have a couple other things that we remember oh yeah we do that all first and then we'll be here whenever y'all tell us if one o'clock is a lot of clock like the mayor said sleep in because it's going who goes to the office every day so you want the we'll top wrap up the police and municipal court and then whatever other items we might have after that we can get through it and not have to try to go back and online anything else anything else thank you so much motion to adjourn