Two minutes until we're going.

Something meeting of the finance standing committee is called the order at 8 31 a.m.

on April 22nd.

Happy Earth Day, everybody.

At this time, I'll entertain a motion to a or sorry, first uh I gotta do a roll call.

Auto Roman O'Neill, you're here.

Yeah, oh, we can't hear you, but I could tell you were saying present.

Uh Alderman Thorpe, you're here.

All right, I'm here.

Uh is there a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

All right.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

And Kayla, we have notes from yesterday, right?

Yes.

Okay.

So uh is there a motion to approve the minutes from yesterday's meeting?

So maybe second.

Aye.

All right.

Uh Miss Gardy, floor is yours.

We uh way we normally do this is you got 15 minutes for your presentation.

We'll try to interrupt you as little as possible.

Might just ask some little questions for clarity, and then we'll go through and each one of us have questions.

We'll start with Alder Woman O'Neill, Altoman Thorpe, me, anybody else in the room who needs to ask a question, any questions that I've been emailed from other council members.

And we'll try and be wrapped up on time.

So uh Kayleigh, can you put 15 minutes on the timer?

Yep.

Thank you very much.

You're up.

All right, good morning.

Hi, my name is Neely Gardy.

I am the chief of staff for the mayor's office.

Um I'm just gonna go over our top three accomplishments um to date for fiscal year 26.

Um, number one is just the increased uh mayor's community engagement.

Um, and this is the first four months of um since the mayor has been put into office.

Um we've done events such as town halls, ward walks, and office hours reaching over 500 residents.

Um we've also conducted staff round tables and two all staff meetings um to interact and hear from the staff, um, touching over 350 staff members.

Um, constituent services.

Um, we have a full-time constituent services person um who started in March.

Um, and you can just I'm not gonna go over all these stats, but she's been hard at work.

Um accomplishments, just strengthening and expanding the mayor's communications.

Um, not gonna go over all these stats.

We have obviously a presence on social media, put out a lot of press releases, do broadcasts almost daily, um, ceremonial things.

We've been pushing out uh weekly newsletters from the mayor's office.

Um we do anywhere from five to you know a ton of speeches every week, um, a lot of graphic design, and then also just responding to media inquiries.

Um, just our direct impact in the community.

Um I'm just gonna kind of briefly just talk about our outreach teams.

We have an African American outreach team who recently did a Black History Month speaker series, reaching over 8,000 people online and 300 people in person.

We had over 4,000 attendees at our um L MLK parade and festival, which happened recently.

Our no harm outreach team has connected with over 1,400 residents, um 100 youth, and 14 different communities across the city.

Um our NAM team has delivered six opioid prevention workshops, and I just want to highlight there that our overdoses for the city are down 55%, and I think it has a lot to do with the work um that that team who's one person is doing.

Um our Hispanic outreach team um attends a lot of events, hosts a lot of events, does a lot of case management as well, has done over 780 cases, um, and then also a lot of marketing um online and directly to the Hispanic community.

So performance measures.

Um, since December of 25, since we came into office, um, we're starting to track our impact.

All events we're requiring our team to track um the number of events that they're doing and also the attendance at these events.

So then we can evaluate whether those events need to continue in the next next fiscal year.

So what I laid out here is just some performance measures that we have started to measure.

Um, and next year when we put in our budget, we will put in benchmarks for the mayor's office um to be part of the performance measures.

All right, budget enhancements.

Um, we have asked for two personnel enhancements.

Um the challenge that we face uh for these two different positions that we're asking for is currently the structure within the mayor's office is just stretched beyond our capacity.

Um, and I know I've already talked to a lot of you guys um and presented on this particular position a deputy chief of staff.

Really, the deputy chief of staff is gonna be a senior advisor that oversees key policy portfolios.

An example that I gave was housing.

Also just support the chief of staff and the mayor to just make sure that we are set up for success and also be a point person for all city council and intergovernmental relations, which we do a lot of.

I just wanted to point out that the mayor in the city of Annapolis is the executive.

So they're not just a ceremonial thing.

So we have a lot of demands coming into the office, high profile people we're meeting with, and a lot of government relations that happens.

And then we have huge projects like City Doc and CNI coming down the pipeline.

So I the deputy's chief of staff is just a practical step to help build up the mayor and make him successful in Annapolis works.

And then the other challenge that we have is our current comms team, our PIO is overextended and can't, you can't really sustain what this one person is doing.

She works a ton of hours, and especially during emergencies, there's really no backup PIO, which is just very hard to deal with and exhausting, hard to recover from.

So what we would like to do is the current assistant PIO is actually a contract position, and by being a contract position, you are unable to work, you know, if an emergency happens, you can't work over 35 hours.

So we lose that backup support.

So converting them into a full-time position would allow some flexibility and backup.

Before you go on to the next slide, I just have to jump in with one thing that our attorneys will have to remind me that the choice neighborhood initiative is not our project, it's Hocus project.

But yeah.

Okay.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Okay, non-personnel enhancements.

Um one of the biggest challenges is currently we don't have a strategic plan.

Um so we are proposing a solution of bringing on strategic consultants to do a survey with the residents and create a collective agenda.

And this collective agenda is gonna be not just the residents, it's gonna be the staff, all the input that we got from the staff round tables and set a clear vision, including achievable priorities, um, as well as long-term strategies that eventually we can tie to our budget and have performance measures that are tied back to this collective agenda that everybody agrees this is what the city should be focusing on.

Um, so those would be outside consultants.

We also, our comms team, as I mentioned before, lacks the bandwidth to really focus on the long-term comms planning.

Um, so what we're proposing is bringing in a communications consultant who would add bandwidth to that team and help kind of prioritize the the bigger picture comms plans that we need.

You know, there's city doc stuff going on, transportation stuff, we're always adding and upgrading.

Another example is our website upgrade, um, helping make sure that we are doing the business requirements and thorough review with all the partners.

You need somebody leading that effort.

Um, so that's another kind of area where that communications consultant will come in.

Um, and then the third one listed is just um historically we haven't really tapped into private giving networks in the city.

Um so we're proposing a philanthropist consultant who would help identify potential donors, craft compelling fundraising campaigns, um, where we could build in addition to the funding that we get from our taxpayers outside investments into our infrastructure.

Um, and then our revenue from the PEG funding.

Um, this was an additional ask from the TV studio to cover PEG funding.

If you're not familiar, um, our PEG funding comes from cable television, and over time they're they're making less more less money.

So that means we're bringing in more money less money.

So that PEG fund every year we're decreasing the amount of money we're getting from that.

Um, so that was an investment asked for to increase that funding.

And just to clarify, that funding is used for equipment stuff.

So, like all of the new mics, for example, in this room came from Peg Funding.

Um, non-personnel enhancements, um, the challenge that we uh run into the current capabilities in the in Civic Plus to do a newsletter, um, they don't really meet the needs that we need.

Um, the formatting is not great.

Um, there's a lot of things that are just clunky and not user-friendly.

So we've been using constant contact, so we would like to add that into our budget, and it's for 1,200.

I mean, we're sending out newsletters on a weekly basis, sometimes more.

Another challenge that we have line two is just the staff being overwhelmed by communications from residents.

So we need a better way to manage all of the inquiries that are coming in.

Indigo is a software that is part of Granicus, and Granicus is already something that the SIS that the city government uses.

So this will help improve our response capacity, just responding to resident requests.

It's like a central inbox, better management, case tracking.

You can assign track, assign the resident can review it and assign it to different departments.

So that is what Indigo is.

The third platform that we're proposing, so this is all software, the city's primarily platform.

What I've noticed is where we do our work is email.

And you know, going back and forth on email, you have to find something, you have to go back to the email, which isn't a great tool for collaboration and communication internally.

So what we are asking to do is uh pilot a tool called Slack, and that's for internal government uh communication.

It will allow us to coordinate better, um, it will break down silos between departments.

Um there's also a whole task management system.

We do use uh Google Workspace right now, um, but Google Workspace versus Slack are different.

Google Workspace is more for productivity, it's great for sharing documents.

Um, but as far as tracking work and assignments, you come out of a meeting, um, you have action items, everybody writes it down in the notebook, and you're assuming that they're taking those actions.

Um, this would allow us to put it in a tool like Slack and track it and get pinged when you're um you're due uh for something that you signed up for, and also allow people to go in and check the status of stuff instead of emailing for updates or uh updating spreadsheets on information.

Um, so it's kind of like a central portal for internal communication.

Um, and then the last one is just the city's lacking a way to systemically um involve the public in decision making.

Um so another software that's an add-on to Granicus is called Engage Headquarters, um, and this allows you to get actual community input, run surveys, forums, polls, um, and you turn it into usable data.

So that usable data would help us make better decisions about where we're prioritizing and responding to the residents' needs.

Okay, um, so I just wanted to kind of put this in like a high level.

What does this mean?

Particularly the software that I'm asking for.

So the simplest way to think about these softwares is the constant contact is outbound communication.

It's the government talking to the residents.

So this is how we're handling mass communication like newsletters.

IndieGov is how we're dealing with inbound inquiries.

Right now, it's being done in spreadsheets.

Um residents are coming to us.

Um, we need a way to handle the resident request.

So this is like a case casework management.

Um, Slack, you can think of Slack as internal communication, so staff to staff talking about things that need to get done and handling internal coordination on uh various initiatives and issues that we have.

And then engage headquarters, you think about it as feedback.

So residents shaping our decisions that we make in the government, and it's just a way for us to pull public input in a formalized way.

So I like to say this is a shift to modernizing our tools, right?

Setting our staff up for success, making us move to a digital government, and the cost of all those softwares is less than $60,000.

All right.

Um so you can see over time, um, our budget has gone down and then it's gone back up.

Um, I believe the main increase from 25 to 26 was um the allocation of Annapolis United funds to the mayor off mayor's office, which was uh more staffing to our outreach team.

Um, and as you can see, we are also asking for more staffing through the deputy director and the assistant PIO, and we are also um mainly asking for more contract services, um, contract support.

So, in order for us to get to Annapolis works, we have to support the staff from a strategic level and help kind of these bigger initiatives like the website upgrade and strategic planning and the resident surveys, we need outside support to effectively execute uh those things.

So that is why there is an increase in the mayor's budget, but you can see that we also decrease um supplies and other things.

Um and I just wanted to point out um bring up that we will be putting forth an amendment in the in this current budget um to include the community engagement administrative position, um, which is the current position in our team that accidentally was not included in the budget.

Um, and I don't know if do you want to explain that a little bit, Capri.

Capri Turner budget analyst.

Um my assumption, it's not a direct answer, but my assumption is that during the transition um from Munis to our new uh neo gov system that we're using for HR now, um, that it got lost in our reports.

Um so we will be bringing forth an amendment to include it in the budget as it's an a field position.

So this is this is basically an administrative error to represent what's actually already reality.

Correct.

Okay.

Um PEG fund, this goes just goes over.

I kind of talked about this briefly earlier, but it just goes over you can see our revenues are decreasing year after year.

Um so we do have um, I don't know, pre you want to just quickly mention that we do have some reserves in the PEG fund.

Right or budget analyst.

I don't know if I have to say that every time first time for the day is fine.

Okay.

Um so we do they the PEG fund has um fund balance, what they requested for their expenses for FY27.

We only had to use a little bit of that um to get them what they asked for for expenses for FY27.

Um the hopes are for FY28 to possibly use um a little bit of general fund or additional other funds um to cover the expenses that they propose for FY28.

But for FY27, this meets their what they asked for for expenses.

You guys know what the PEG funding is?

Yeah, yeah.

I think we we heard it maybe it was right before you came.

Yeah, I think Dealy covered it.

Um okay, you got let's show you one more minute, wrap it up.

Okay, sure, absolutely.

Um, so this is just I don't need to go over the details, but I I've kind of grouped our team into our outreach team, and you can see the budget and how they're spending their money within each one of our kind of like sub-departments within the mayor's office.

Um, to the left is all of you know their stats, and then I just wrote quickly like why their work matters.

Um so I'm not gonna go through all the details here.

Um, I did the same thing for the Hispanic outreach team, um, their budget details, um, and then the comms team, you can see the TV studio, um, how much we spend on that, and that is primarily staffing for all the broadcasts, taking pictures at events, we do video production, like the state of the city, and also graphic designs.

Um, so that is all fully um staffing money, and then the community engagement um, which is our community engagement strategist.

This is all of the events that we do for the mayor that we brought on board, all the staff round tables, strategic stuff, and then also a lot of this person's time is spent on boards and commissions.

Um, we have a lot of reviewing and cleaning up of our boards and commissions and putting in processes and standard operating procedures in order to make them run efficiently.

And then constituent services, the umbuds, um, which just started in March.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Other Roman O'Neill, you want to start us off?

Yes, please.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Um, I have several questions, and I will try to frame them as we go through.

Um, if you could pull, go back to page seven of your presentation.

Um, I'm confused about the um converting the assistant PIO position from contract to full time because it lists zero benefits here, but they're listed on our um staffing summary as an N9, so there are no benefits attached to an N9.

That's my question.

So on her slide, um, it's showing what current for FY26 he currently has, um, he only receives FICA.

I mean, the only benefits that come out is FICA on in the actual budget book, but in nine is the conversion for FY27.

Okay.

So but above that, when we're talking about the deputy chief of staff, we're seeing what the cost is in total.

Um so I don't know why we don't see the cost for the conversion.

Yeah, because I think it's because he's already receiving benefits as an employee agreement, and the deputy chief of staff is a totally new position.

Is that correct?

Are you uh do you want to know the conversion cost?

Yes, please.

Um because I'm assuming that the above cost, the 1956 20, is inclusive of salary plus benefits.

But if we're moving um a part-time contracted position into an full-time exemption position, we also need to see that benefit cost because I understand.

Um, so the full cost total compensation for that position converting is 10,200.

So that would be added to the 5867.

I think that she's showing the full amount of the salary for FY 27.

The actual addition to what he's currently being paid is only 10,000 to 10,200.

Okay.

But of how much of that is benefits.

I can give you the breakdown.

I don't I only have the total compensation.

Okay, I just think it's misleading because it says zero benefits receiving as a contractor.

Um, when we're looking at the FY27 budget, um, it's budgeted apparently.

So I'd like to see the breakdown of that.

I won't belabor that, but I just feel that it's not a compare, a fair comparison if it's saying zero benefits, but that's not the case.

Yeah, and that my apologies, I think I did not display that the best way.

Um, but I will we will share with you what the salary and benefits are, and then also what we're currently paying for that position and what the difference is for the cost for fiscal year 27.

So we'll follow up with an email.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Yep.

Um, on page nine, when you talk about the non-personnel enhancements, um I know that our Granicus contract is not in the mayor's office, I believe.

Is it in IT or is it in central services?

Is that one of the things that was moved to central services?

I think it's an IT.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it would just be interesting to see what we currently pay in Granicus software usage versus adding another 50,000 in software upgrades, basically.

Enhancements, I'll call them.

So you want to know what we currently pay for Granicus as a whole, and then compare it to what these upgrades cost.

Yes, please.

I believe about three years ago we we talked about the software conversion.

Um I wasn't able to go back to look to see exactly which year, but I'd be interested to see.

Like we've been a Granicus customer for a long time, and is that additional that's being added on?

Um I think my other question was answered because when I look in the stamping summary, I didn't see our outreach um listed in that.

But so there's 23 employees, if that's if we're at I'm sorry, are you talking for the mayor's office?

Yes.

Um, so in the budget book under fiscal year budget highlights, it talks about eliminating the special projects arts administrative position, but it doesn't say anything about adding correct.

It's gonna be um a total of 15 for the mayor's office.

On that staffing summary, it also lists the eight um council members at the very top.

I want to go to Mitchell real quick, our PIO to answer one of these questions.

She's I think she's got it.

Morning, Mitchell Stevenson, PIO for the city of Annapolis.

I think it's on the next page.

Uh the Granicus, the in engage HQ.

This solves a tremendous problem that we have across multiple departments.

The city has more than a hundred capital improvement projects that are included in the budget books.

And we do not meaningfully engage our residents on what these projects are, what they mean for their community, where they originated, how much they cost.

There's a lot of information that we could deploy, and um the county of Arlington, Virginia has a fantastic model.

I met the woman at a trade show, tracked her down, found out that this is the model that they use.

It's GIS centered, so you can go to your own neighborhood and find a project, find out where it came from, how much it costs, when does construction begin?

When are there public meetings about it?

It is a very comprehensive outbound messaging tool that we'll be able to use to communicate directly with residents about infrastructure projects, capital projects that are happening uh in the Annapolis community.

So that is the Granicus add-on that uh Alder Woman O'Neill was just referring to.

I just wanted to make clear what that was.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm gonna jump in uh before we move to you're done on a Roman O'Neill, right?

You said that was your last question.

Um that's my that was my last question.

I'm gonna jump in just because I have a couple that are related to yours before we go to you, if you don't mind.

Um so let's start with these none of these are in our budget book as best I can tell.

Doesn't say it under enhancements, doesn't say it under contract services.

So where are these?

Are they are they supplies and other?

Are they contractual services?

So the enhancement requests for the constant contact, select, engage in Naples, and Indy IndieGov are software, and all software has been centralized to um ITS.

So you will see it in ITS.

Okay, that was gonna be my next question is why don't we put this under IT?

Great.

Uh okay.

Then the other thing I wanted to ask about going back to slide seven, is along with Auto Roman O'Neill's question about why the benefits are so low for the comms P uh PIO, how do we have a 59% benefit costs, fringe cost for the deputy chief of staff?

That's higher even than we pay to police.

So the benefits are based off of the salary.

Um it's FICA.

Um it's a it's fully loaded benefit.

So this is the fully loaded benefits before they um make their selections.

And FY27, you will actually see them go down based off of their selections.

We just anticipate that they're gonna select everything, and it also includes um with a family.

So it's not the true calls, it's just an anticipated budget for the benefits.

So for any position that we don't have in place yet, we would expect to see a 59% benefit rate.

It be it's based off of the salary, so no, it's gonna vary.

Um, because it's FICA, it's Viva, um, it is pension and health benefits.

We budget approximately uh 27,000 just for benefits, health benefits alone.

Okay, so it's uh I get what you're saying.

So it's a flat amount that we're budgeting, and so for somebody with a higher salary, it would be a lower percent.

You'll see an increase in benefits for a higher salary for the Viva, for the FICA, um, and for the pension.

Right.

It's a mix.

Yeah.

So some things are responsive, some things change with salary, some things do not.

But overall, what that means is that just taken as a sheer the whole package as a percentage of salary, the whole thing varies as a percentage of salary because there are some elements that are budgeted as fixed amounts when we've got a vacant position, right?

Like health benefits and some things like that.

It's just flat amount.

So if I go and look at like in the fire department where we're adding seven new positions, do they have a comparable benefit percentage, fringe percentage?

We'll see the same thing.

Okay, all we use the same calculation for all new positions.

Okay, thank you.

Um sorry to jump in before you go ahead.

That's okay, thank you.

Good morning.

Um, so the first comment I want to make about uh the presentation and the budget is I want to applaud the alignment between the budget and what the mayor said as a candidate and what the mayor is saying as the mayor and his commitment to communicate and uh Annapolis works.

So um so first and foremost, congratulations.

I mean, that's it's a tremendous job.

Um I'd like to first ask a question uh consistent with what the what the mayor has said.

Um I'd like to first ask a question uh consistent with what the what the mayor has said, um there's been a significant community outreach effort, and I'd like to uh you to evaluate for us um the cost of that uh program, presumably it wasn't budgeted before.

Um and uh I'm not asking you to comment on the impact, I'll leave that to him, uh, but the cost to date of the mayor's community outreach program.

Yeah, so the cost um we have um our community engagement strategist, um Laura Richards, she's a one-man shop um who does all of the events that are listed on the slide the town halls, the ward walks, the office hours, um, staff round tables, and all the staff meetings.

Um her time varies, she spends about so this is her salary.

I could give you exact numbers if you would like in a follow-up, but I do have kind of how her time is allocated.

Um the strategy part of it, which is like the staff round table part, it's about twice, she's about 25% doing that, 25% doing event management, 25% doing boards, and then she also 25% of her time is engaging with uh nonprofits, organizations, and businesses.

Um so dealing with some of those broader um community issues.

Um in the beginning, her time, you know, when we did the staff round tables, I have it in my notes.

The round tables were it was like three to four weeks of planning those events, and then it's probably about a week for maintenance.

So that means following up on all the things we committed to doing.

So making sure that you know, we have to deal with all the directors in the departments of what we heard from the staff and what we committed to doing in those town halls, um, or or in the all staff meetings.

Um, and then just to give you an idea of the the town hall's capacity, a town hall is about 11 to 14 hours.

I'm estimating of manpower, it's four hours of planning um from the community engagement officer.

We have um, and then staffing it is like another two hours, and then it's about five to eight hours of filming from our TV studio.

Um they filmed every single town hall to date, and we've had over a thousand views on YouTube of those town hall uh videos.

So that that's an average of about 220 views um per video, and the cost of a town hall video is um $600 per recording.

Um, so that kind of gives you an idea of manpower hours.

Um, and I could run the numbers and give you exact numbers per hour if you would like.

Um, our walks that we coordinate are about two to four hours, and why it's two to four hours is you know, the planning of the walk, you do the actual walk is an hour, and then there's all this follow-up afterwards.

So if residents are providing feedback, we have to make sure that okay, if there's a you know, a pothole and they need to submit it somewhere that we're actually taking action to follow through with what we heard or handing things over to our constituent service ombudsman.

Um, and then we also do the office hours, which are about anywhere from three to four hours per office hour.

We do them monthly.

Um, and this is also staffed.

You take notes, and then we're following up on all the things that we heard to make sure that there's follow-through action to respond to the residents.

Thank you.

So I this is probably the most important question I'll ask in the whole in the couple weeks here because the challenge is the better the staff does, the easier it looks, and then it's really easy to be critical about the amount of staff.

So I would encourage the staff to continue to communicate the amount of effort that goes into a successful communication effort.

And I think you just outlined it really, really well.

So if we could transcribe that or something like that, that'd be useful.

Um connected to that, the ombudsman, and um with the change of administration, new ombudsman, um, new members of city council, there's a significant level of investment in the ombudsman.

Um individual working for uh the strategist.

Um can you just briefly explain what that investment goes to for the residents, uh, the role of the ombuds, and what is their their focus area and why is it worth a significant amount of taxpayer money?

Yeah, um, so this is a full-time position, and in a lot of cities, they have somebody doing constituent services and somebody serving as the ombudsman.

We have one person doing both, and I'll kind of clarify the difference between constituent services and umbudsman.

Think of constituent services as you are helping the resident get through our system faster, understand how to pay their utility bill, understand how to get a pothole fixed.

So trying to get them, we have those answers, we just have to guide them down the right path.

So think of that as constituent services.

A lot of um are executive administrator picking up phone calls is a lot of constituent services response.

Um, but the umbudsmen think about it as they are serving as like a neutral party between the government staff and the residents and finding where the holes are.

So, like kind of coming up with these systemic issues like parking.

We hear a lot about parking, making sure that we are coming up with solutions and possibly even legislative changes that can streamline our processes to help the residents.

And these are these are these like one-off issues, you know, you're having trouble with permitting, and there's like something you're missing.

So, really getting to the bottom of what's causing these bigger systemic issues.

Um, so think of it as like more of like a strategy which then helps support the legislation change and also just uh proposing solutions to the departments, like what if we did it this way instead of this way?

Is that possible?

Um, so that's really the role of the ombudsman.

Um I mean, you can see just in one month, you know, responding to almost 600 emails, um, you know, writing 245 responses, and these responses aren't just like here's where you pay your water bill.

These are complex things that you have to coordinate within different departments and their staff to get the right answer to the constituent.

Um 120 cases closed in a month.

Um, and we're we're building processes and systems um that will help um feed more information to the residents to hopefully help them respond on their own, you know, such as um the website redo.

Um that's a big thing.

We're already making changes to the website when you go to the ombudsman page to make sure that the tools that we do offer are are right front and center.

So they know exactly like the frequently asked questions.

Um that's kind of my long-winded answer.

Now, thank you very much.

I think that's useful and another answer we might transcribe.

Um I think my last question is on slide five.

Um we're on day two of finance committee looking at the budget.

Um, and I want to point out that your benchmarking um performance metrics.

And this is a tough balance for the city.

Um some should have been benchmarked um across the city and aren't.

Um and some, as I think this is an example of this is honest planning where you could make up a number and put it here, and it doesn't really mean anything.

And the answer next year would be, well, we made up the number.

And so I want to applaud this, and I want to use this as an example as we go forward where you have committed uh to stating uh uh to creating benchmarks for the future.

And and that's actually not really a question as much as it is a statement.

And so uh Mr.

Chairman, if I have a do I have another minute?

Sure.

Um the um the the web the the page about uh slide three about broadcasts this year, this seems to be uh a challenge.

And I'm speaking specifically about broadcast.

By my math, um there's 237 broadcast events um in 26, and by my math, uh five working days, 52 weeks, there's 260 work days.

So we're talking about one day a month that this team is out uh one day, one event a day, this team is out there.

Um as you look at at modern technology and and residents starting to get used to being able to watch events like this one um online without having to come into City Hall.

Do we have enough investment in our broadcast capability in order to do what we need to do, not what we want to do, but what we need to do, and is this something we should be looking at to invest more in the future?

Um that's a great question.

Uh I mean I would be happy to, I can share with you the calendar also of, I mean, some days it's two broadcasts a day.

Um, and it also breaks down the staff that it takes to set up a broadcast.

So I think there's a lot more work that goes into the broadcast than people think.

You know, it's a half hour to set up one, you know, an hour to four hours depending on the meeting, and then a half hour to tear it down.

But we do have a breakdown of all the people that work um for the TV studio hourly rates, so we could, you know, you can dig into how much we're doing.

Um, another thing that's part of that is we are going through and doing a process evaluation of the boards and commissions um and just determining maybe some of the we don't need to be recording all of them if if we have them in person, um, and if we have them in person, then that could alleviate some of the broadcasting staff to do other things like the state of the city and um be at events with the mayor to take um so we're still trying to kind of figure that out, and I welcome my PIO to come up to say more about the broadcast and that question because I know she probably has some more to say.

I just want to provide some con uh Mitchell Stevenson, PIO for the city.

I just want to provide some context because that those numbers do not include August.

We go quiet in August.

So we often have multiple broadcasts, you know, starting from financial advisory or early morning city council broadcasts to you know, planning commission, which can go till or city council meetings, which can go till midnight or later.

Um, so it is not just a matter of one a day, it is making sure that we have capacity to start a meeting at 7 30 in the morning and go till one o'clock in the morning the next day if we need to.

So, yes, building capacity for our TV studio is very important.

Part of that is that PEG fund where we're talking about mean making sure that we maintain our capital expenditures within this room, but also being able to take that on the road.

And so those are some of the enhancements that I'm I think.

Are we doing a uh um amendment for that for Peg?

Doesn't matter.

Um, don't want to put you on the spot.

But yes, so make making sure we maintain our capacity there and building it is very important.

So thank you.

I I do not need the staff analysis.

That's not that's that's you.

I guess what I would ask to get back to us on is really a yesno question is do you have the capacity in fiscal year 27 to do what you think is going to be required of you in this area that that's so important?

And if the answer is no, it's a one-word answer.

If it's yes, what do we need to do on a budget to make sure you're able uh to continue to inform the residents?

Because I do know that people are watching this and and it's a key part of what we're doing.

Yeah, and I I'll get back to you with an answer to that because I do think there's you know, there's times where we're like, oh, this would be great if we could do a video tutorial on this, but we don't have the bandwidth to do it.

So my gut is yes, we could probably always use more capacity because you can always do more videos, you can always do more interactive things that would benefit our residents.

And I think I'm out of time, so I'm gonna just gonna ask one more question, and if you could just get it to us um as part of uh, should I say all of the thorpe?

Why don't we put it in the follow-up document that we have talking about?

Yeah, okay, great.

Is what is not in this budget in the mayor's office that you all need to get done, uh, that you need to be in the budget that six months from now we're gonna wish was there.

And if you could just get that to us and we'll we'll put it in the document that we're putting together.

Okay, you don't want me to answer that now.

I don't we'll put the question in the document for follow-up.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh okay.

I want to dig in a couple places.

Um the big thing, the big changes to me here is that we're increasing salaries by about 20%.

We're increasing contract services by about 50%, and we're kind of offsetting it with a big cut to salary.

It's two supplies, which is really in the special projects category.

And I'm trying to understand what we're cutting.

That was not in the presentation as far as I saw, but that's a huge chunk out of supplies and other.

What is not going to get done because of that?

Um, yeah, so one of the things, um, and Capri, feel free to chime in on this, is we had received a lump sum for Annapolis United.

And some of that money would go to the police department, and some of that money would go to the fire department.

We have now in this budget move that money to those departments.

So they don't have to come to me to get approved for that money.

Um, so that's one thing.

And then the other trying to think that was probably the biggest one, because that's most of the meetings.

Community initiatives.

So that has moved to contractual services instead of being in supplies and others.

And the only other thing that to the other departments.

So it's listed for us as being special programs goes down and special projects goes down.

And those two I'm like, I don't know what that means.

So is special programs as Annapolis United.

Okay.

So some of the um no harm salary and benefits used to be in contractual services that has moved up to salary and benefits now.

Well, I think it was in special programs, right?

Yes, it was in special programs, and now it's in salary services.

Yes.

Got it.

Okay, that's helpful.

Um sorry, remind me you just said no harm or nam.

No harm.

Got it.

Thank you.

Uh this is really probably more a question for the city manager or the, or maybe it's for you, Kubernetes.

But why are these three well, two new and one existing consultant not listed as staff?

Why are we not putting them as contract staff?

So um generally um so the city uses contract staff in in a couple of different ways.

We use the same word, but we mean a couple of different things by it.

Uh and in our casual usage, we don't make much of a distinction, but there is a difference when it comes to the budget.

Um, so for a lot of the contract staff that you see listed in the budget where there's they're included in the column, those folks are city employees, right?

Like there's there's an employment relationship that's acknowledged on the part of the city.

Um so that's one kind of contract staff.

They have an employment agreement, right?

That's that's typically how we will internally refer to them as an employment agreement.

And then you've got true contractors where who are gonna get like a 1099, and there is not an acknowledged employment relationship between that person and uh and the contractor.

So that's part of the distinction you see here is that is that for some of those folks, they are true contractors, they're 1099 contractors.

Got it.

I think that answers my question.

Um kind of transitioning from that, and maybe our PIO wants to come back for this answer, but uh maybe, yeah.

But uh it seems to me so absolutely no doubt we need additional capacity relative to what we've had in the past in the PIO's communications role.

My question is why does this arrangement that we're currently being proposed of we've got we've got the main PIO, and then we've got an assistant who's relatively low grade, and then we also have a sort of presumably if we were to hire them very high grade consultant as opposed to just having the main PIO and then having a second person who has a high grade, but not having an additional consultant to get like those are two options.

I'm trying to understand why we went with one rather than the other sure, yeah.

I'll take that.

Um I think as far as the communications consultant, a lot of the stuff that they're working on is like in-term things, you know, like the website upgrade.

Once we get past the website upgrade, like next year, we might not need a communications consultant, or maybe we only need half of that.

So I think it allows us with a little bit more flexibility when we're really needing to focus on that strategic stuff because we don't have the bandwidth to do it, that we have the flexibility of bringing somebody on, you know, 30 hours, 20 hours, 10 hours, depending on what's on our plate.

Um I also I mean, what would you have to say?

There's a difference between the day-to-day operations of the public information office.

Um we are helping all eight departments.

We don't do police, fire, and recreation and parks, but everybody else we are helping with public information, just ongoing communications, what have what's the fire sprinkler application process?

What what are inspections?

Where I have really struggled with the capacity of the job are these big projects carving out enough time to be strategic and thoughtful about the website redo, making sure we're capturing all of our stakeholders, City Doc, and I know C and I is not a city uh initiative or project, but I am the communications liaison for that project.

I manage the website, I push out all the press releases, create all the flyers for the community meetings, all of that lands on us, whether it's ours or not.

When we have those kinds of things, I don't have the time to be strategic, plan it out and do it well because I'm always in putting out the fires mode.

Having a communications person who can come on and help us to strategize and do these things right so that it's not always just putting out fires, is critically important to how we communicate to the public and get their buy-in on these uh initiatives.

You know, part of the part of the challenge we have is we're putting things out.

People don't know anything about it.

If we can be thoughtful and pay out the information of why it's important to people, we don't have to answer those uh uh arguments later.

And I think having that communication strategy person in there to take on the long-term big projects is is really important for us to be able to get it right.

Yep, thank you.

Yeah.

And I would just add that, you know, you're if you're looking at the communications consultant cost versus you know, the deputy chief of staff, as a question you asked earlier with the benefits, you know, and I mean that saves some money, right?

And it gives us more flexibility.

Sure, we'd love to have somebody in another senior person like Mitchell um in the office to support uh the PIO because I I think there's plenty of work to be done, but there's also a lot of work like all the citations that we do.

There's a lot of stuff that gets done that is not at the level uh of a higher paid or higher grade employee.

Also, just for comparison, other municipalities near us, Laurel, Bowie, College Park, none of them have a one or two person shop.

Um, you know, their five or six people doing what we're we're pretty tightly run and efficient with what we do.

If we could be a little bit more thoughtful, I think we'd we'd crush it.

Yeah, I don't I don't doubt it.

Like I said, clearly there's additional uh capacity needed to question the structure.

And along those same lines, is there a philosophy about why it does or does not make sense to have PIOs sprinkled in departments versus centralized?

I believe that would be a question for the city manager.

So there actually are a couple of folks that are that are scattered in other departments.

Um the police obviously has a position and there is someone within the Office of Emergency Management that has some um bears some communication responsibilities there.

Um on a day-in and day out basis, um, police obviously probably has the most volume of public information that gets put out.

That person also tends to provide some level of service to the fire department, um, just kind of public safety in general, uh not all the time, but sometimes.

Doesn't it?

Fire has a fire has a PIO detail, so it's not always, but if there is a an incident, then that battalion commander can call in a fire PIO who will come in and take on that task.

It's a retired guy who's a contractor, right?

So well, no, so Bud Zapata is a bada who's normally working on the as a fire.

Kenny right sometimes too.

Yeah.

Uh so there is a little bit of capacity in some other places where there's a little bit of a heavier load.

Um there's also within Department of Recreation, um, and she was here yesterday um, who works on advertising and stuff like that, not an official PIO, but provides some kind of graphics support and marketing and and stuff like that.

Um so there is a little bit of capacity across the rest of the city.

I think that one of the things that having a more centralized office allows and having that extra capacity here does is there's a level of coordination that happens here because Mitchell and the rest of the team see across the city.

And I think that coordination and and consistency and messaging is important.

Uh, and so I think have you know, focusing here, I think furthers that particular good.

And I just want to add, I would welcome um you to participate in a demonstration of IndieGov, which is going to help us.

It's one of the enhancements that we have, uh, one of the software pieces that is gonna help us with some of our outbound communication as well as some of the the inbound ombudsman communication, but our ability to take things like a sanitary sewer overflow that you know impacts just a neighborhood.

We don't have to tell the whole all of Annapolis about that.

This will allow us to geolocate exactly the community that we want to speak to and speak directly just to them.

So using a little bit more smart government technologies that exist to help us really almost communicate one-on-one with our residents.

Yeah, I think that's a good goal, and I'm gonna ask some questions of IT about it.

Mr.

Chairman, yeah.

Can I just comment on this?

Because I don't want this conversation to end with it.

This is what I did for a lifetime.

What we do in Annapolis is best in class.

I mean to have the centralized communication response reporting to the mayor, um, where she can engage with the department heads and and actually get the truth quickly.

Um and reduce the number of staff we have to have across departments.

I mean, I think I'm I'm really impressed at the way we do it in the city of the city.

I appreciate that because I sort of have crafted this in my seven years here.

So it was not this way when I first came, but I appreciate that.

I want to make sure we have time for auto room and also Johnson to ask any questions she might have.

Okay.

I don't I don't think you're I didn't see your mic light up, but uh for the TV studio, she said not at this time.

Uh Alderman Savage sent in some questions.

I've got some fun ones for you guys.

Uh uh one just pulling from these um the philanthropist consultant.

Uh I'm editorializing and mixing it with his question.

I think it's a good idea.

I think we will make money off of it.

I object a little bit to the characterization that we haven't done it before.

I mean, I I think there has been private funding, but that's I I still think it's a good idea.

His question was whether this is one-time use or something that we anticipate to be recurring.

And then a question I'd like to add is what are our performance metrics for that?

How are we evaluating did they do their job well or not?

Yeah, I mean, that would all be set in the scope of work, you know, with the contract.

And I think this is something, you know, why you bring in a position like this and uh as a contractor is we test it out, we set the scope, we pick projects like big, you know, City Doc or CNI or whatever the project is that we want to bring additional outside funding in.

We pick those projects set targets, you know.

We want you to raise five million dollars for City Doc.

We want you to raise 10 million dollars for CNI and set timelines.

I mean, it would all be in the scope of work for the contract, and I feel like that's how you measure it and you know, along the course of the year of the contract, and you know, by halfway, you should be hitting X numbers um to meet your goals.

Great.

Okay, thank you.

Um I'll be interested to see what those end up being.

Uh that's all I have, and we're just about at time.

I'll give time for my colleagues if anybody's got any burning last thing.

Auto Moment O'Neill.

Oh, Miss Turner.

The other part of that question that it does not use one-time fundings for that.

Yes, thank you.

I I understand that my question, uh, and thank you for reminding me.

I feel like I actually did not get an answer to it.

Is the mayor's office anticipating that we would probably have this next again next year, or you don't know yet.

Yeah, I feel like that's where in an evaluation period, right?

You bring it on, bring the person on for a year, and if it's successful, then I think we either you know decide to bring that position in full time or continue keeping them as a contractor.

Okay, thank you.

And the person right behind you is going to is the IT brief.

So, Mr.

Chairman, I commend you for putting these two together.

Um worked out at some point between the two of you, I would love to get a discussion a couple minutes about what the plan is in the next fiscal year to update the website.

And Ms.

Gardy, I'll leave it to you to say you want to do it now or or we'd be happy to.

We have a plan, and we have our our comms consultant that's on board right now, has a plan and a timeline and is starting to engage with the director.

So we'd be happy to schedule time to sit down with you guys um and share that.

We could even do it, I don't know, with the whole council if they're interested.

Okay.

Helpful.

All right, thank you.

Um let's see a motion to recess until 9 35.

So moved.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries, we'll stand in recess for four minutes.

Guys, we're gonna start.

Welcome partner seating.

Meeting called back to order at 9 39 a.m.

again, still on Earth Day.

Uh Mr.

Packlin, thanks for being with us today.

Uh without further ado, I'll turn it over to you.

If you can put 15 minutes on the clock.

Morning, uh, Brian Packman, uh, director of integrated technology solutions.

And away we go.

Um, and I'm gonna say um a lot, I'll apologize in advance.

So, one thing I wanted to um say before we dive into the bullets in this slide is um we kind of go through this with finance committee in any public discussion every year or whenever I'm up here is that we're very proud of what is listed in this slide.

Um, I think it's important to note that our operations team does a lot of work that we don't particularly discuss in public settings with regards to keeping the city safe, things of that nature.

So there's more behind the scenes, and I always make the offer to talk offline with anybody that's interested in those sorts of that being said, um, the first one on the list is we we've worked very hard in conjunction with the planning and zoning staff to make refinements to our enterprise permitting and licensing software.

Um, and I'm sure uh Director Jacobiak will discuss this uh when it comes time to discuss his accomplishments is that there's been a significant reduction in the average turnaround time of of permits as a whole within his department.

And I feel um our EPL analyst on our staff and the amount of work that she's done in refining the product and generating reporting.

Uh the director and leadership in that department are now receiving real-time statistics as slides with uh on the home page uh that they view every morning in that product.

As part of so our as you'll see when we get to them, our performance measures were new for this fiscal year, completely revised from previous years.

And as part of that, we we've had to implement some new tools specifically uh for help desk ticketing, trouble ticketing, and uptime monitoring systems for our critical systems.

And and those were rolled out in Q1 of this year, um, or Q1 of this fiscal year, I should say.

Um, and they have led to uh really good uh measurements for performance reporting.

Our GIS team has worked with uh we've partnered with a consultant, it's it's more than a consultant, it's a it's a team that we've migrated our entire GIS environment to a managed cloud-based environment.

And what that really means is that um we're no longer doing our own system upgrades.

Um, we're performing uh scheduled platform upgrades, so we're staying far more current with the versioning of RGIS.

It's also hosted in um AWS, which means there's greater redundancies there.

Um uptime is very nearly, you know, two, three nines on a platform like that.

Um so yeah, it's it is reduced the lift on the GIS team and the operations team to do routine maintenance.

And you know, updating the platform as a whole is a very big lift.

So um offloading all that and allowing them to be more project oriented has been a great win for us.

Um part of one of our enhancements for this current fiscal year has been um a strategic plan project, which is underway.

We're uh kind of wrapping up phase one stakeholder engagement information gathering.

Um, and we're about to enter phase two.

We anticipate the entirety of the project, be uh ready for um presentation by the end of the fiscal year, June 30th.

Um, part of what that's helping us with.

We haven't had a strategic plan done in IT since 2010.

It's probably changed a little bit.

Things the landscape's changed a little bit, and um, and I think it's important to mention really quickly that you know that one was kind of like here's your strategic plan, it was presented, and then it's in a binder on a shelf.

Um we plan on continuing the engagement with this vendor.

We're very pleased with the work that they're doing so far and the engagement that we've had with them.

And we really want it to be more of a living document that evolves over time as we learn of budgetary enhancements, constraints, personnel changes, things of that nature.

Um, and as you can see in the slide, it's providing some guidance on our mission, vision, staffing, definitely, um, project prioritization.

Um so yeah, we're really excited about that.

And then so we're going to uh in this age of everything become software as a service eventually.

Um we're moving from persistent licenses of our office uh suites, that would be your Microsoft, your Adobe, things of that nature.

And it's it's a multi-year process uh or multi-fiscal year process, but moving that to the software as a service was is much like the GIS platform, you're always up to date, you're always on the most recent version, and as an added bonus with our push towards uh ADA compliance on the website, these tools or the new versions have tools built in for real-time compliance checking for ADA, um, which is really was like kind of like the last straw, it was just like, okay, we gotta get away from persistent licensing.

Um, performance measures, um, you know, a lot of these speak for themselves.

We're we're looking for three nines of uh uptime percentage, which is about eight and a half hours of downtime per year.

Um we so far, year to date, we're right on the number for that.

Um, and we'd like to continue that into FY27.

The difference between server uptime percentage and software uptime percentage is sometimes that piece of hardware can actually be up, but the application that it's running is having issues.

Um, and we've done very, very well, as you can see with this.

Um funny thing is I'm putting this slide deck together and putting the phishing touches on it yesterday.

We experienced a roughly three hour outage of our ERP system.

So those numbers might dip a little bit in this current quarter.

Um part of the aforementioned um, and that's also as we had talked about earlier in some of our accomplishments.

That's a brand new tool this fiscal year that we've implemented that tracks those critical pieces of hardware and the software that's running on them.

The other part of that is our help desk ticketing software, which integrates directly with our endpoint management system, which is a really nice tool to have.

We can tie tickets to pieces of hardware and end users that are already in that underlying system.

Um what you'll see here with these numbers.

Um, I kind of want to just briefly explain how you have some tickets that are open for multiple days as you're pursuing a solution.

You have some tickets that are closed instantaneously, right?

So you this two and a half hours is an average of some kind of wildly different um you know, high and low point numbers.

Uh so I figured that was um important to point out.

A portion of that ticketing system that uh we actually only very recently stood up is this feedback system.

So when you open a ticket through the software or through the portal uh as an end user, once you receive confirmation of resolution, you have the ability to provide I think it's a five-star system on how satisfied you are with the product.

And so far, we're getting really good feedback on that.

Um thing I want to point out on the bounce rate, uh, a typo in my original version was discovered.

Um so we'll get to that in a sec.

Uh ab site uh average website session duration.

Um, we want to see that either remain stable or increase, op for obvious reasons for end user engagement.

Unique visitors per year, you know, it's not just the residents that visit the site.

We have a thriving tourism industry, obviously, a lot of a lot of people, a lot of events, things of that nature.

So we would really like to see that increase year over year.

Um, and I think as part of the afford uh the website redesign that was mentioned in the session before me.

Um we'll see success on that.

And the bounce rate, for those that don't uh know what the website bounce rate is, it's it's the percentage of visitors that see one and only one page on the site, and then they leave.

They're not exploring the site, they're not there, they're getting to the site and they're either finding what they need or they're not happy with what they're seeing, and they and they leave.

So currently we're sitting at 48%.

Um my notes are gone.

So I have some notes here.

Obviously, uh our webmaster is is our subject matter expert on this, but um as far as what's average, 25 to 40 percent bounce rate is considered uh exemplary.

50 to 70 percent is common, but not ideal, right?

So you'd really want to hedge on the lower end of that.

And we're hoping that the site redesign will include well, we know the site redesign is gonna include some more engaging content.

Um, the theme, thematic choices and things that are made by the by the leadership on that project will hopefully drive engagement and get that that number to go lower.

Right, and I don't want to rush you, but I just want you to know we're about two-thirds of the way through time.

Well, yeah, we got I think you have six minutes.

Okay.

Well then we won't get into the additional statistics there available for your review, and then we'll just go ahead and get into the enhancements if that's okay.

Um, the personnel enhancements that were submitted by our department, um, the challenge, limited staff, um, on our the analysis side of the house.

So you've got um you've got your analysis team, which is GIS, the permitting and licensing suite in our ERP suite.

Um we run into chip bandwidth challenges all the time, and you're gonna, I'm sure you're gonna hear this from every department.

I already heard it in the presentation before me.

Our idea is to have two analysts in each of those disciplines, right?

Kind of a lead analyst and a secondary analyst um in all three of the disciplines, ERP, EPL, and GIS.

Um our request was for two of the more junior level analyst positions.

Didn't make it this year, that's okay.

Um the Annapolis, uh the second one is uh the fire department historically, and I've as I think all of you guys know, I've been here a long time.

And the fire department, they're gamers, right?

They're gonna do whatever is asked of them.

And a lot of times technology based products are falling to captains, battalion chiefs, things of that nature.

These guys are these guys are smart and they're really good, but they're they're firemen by trade.

And um we were lucky enough to get some consulting money in FY26 um to bring on an analyst consultant to assist in they have one very large implementation that they're in right now, but just to assist them so you're not having firemen, you know, basically not doing their job.

So um this was included in the budget, and that is the conversion of that consulting role into an employment agreement position, and we'll be looking to continue that into years into the future.

Chairman, can I hang out at that second?

So this this says that the cost is 133,800.

But if you're saying it's a it's a conversion from a consultant to a staff member, if there's not 133,000 added to the budget.

No, sir.

That's um the enhancement for the consulting position was a uh an even hundred for 26.

The conversion takes that with the the salary and benefits number that goes along with the employment agreement, takes that to 133.8.

So that's an important designation.

But it is new money because it was uh funded out of one-time use last year.

That's why it's new money.

Got it.

Okay.

No, I've forgotten that part.

My apologies.

Thank you.

Um very, very quickly.

So I forget how many years ago it was, I believe it was six or seven years ago.

The police union negotiated take-home vehicles, which involved the rapid acquisition of a bunch of police cars.

And part of the budget that went into that was upfitting them.

Um, you know, of course you've got radios, light bars, but part of that is this ruggedized laptop that serves as their mobile data terminal.

And the fleet has not aged out uh the way that was anticipated at the time.

So we've got aging rugged laptops in these in these cruisers.

So the proposal initially was um 100,000 to replace up to 35 of those laptops.

They're they're significantly more in spent uh expensive than your average you know, floor issue laptop.

Um, we've been informed uh that the pace of replacement of these uh squad cars is going to increase.

Um so we've reduced that number uh in accordance to the number of cars uh that are supposedly gonna, I'm sorry, supposedly is a terrible terrible word, but are planned to be put on the road uh in FY27.

So we've reduced that to meet the number that we wanted to meet as far as replacements in conjunction with the replacements of the cars.

Um and then finally the chart of accounts and workflows in the ERP so in our current ERP software are in rough shape from a series of decisions that were made during implementation to usage patterns over the uh over the years, and um we've identified a product that we really think is gonna help us um identify issues uh and help us refine workflows, roles, and permissions within the system.

Um, and that's the line item you see there.

And so there's an acquisition cost in there.

There is an ongoing cost that is roughly a third of that 18-5 figure, but I actually apologize, I don't have that in front of me.

What's ERP?

That is our munis system, that's our uh resource planning, this is that's budget, general ledger, those sorts of things.

Okay, so this is uh I have I have a thing in my notes here of like um that might be a little jarring, but we can explain.

So um you'll see that there's this 42% jump, and and um I want to be clear that this is not new money uh to Mr.

Thorbes' point uh previously.

This is the reallocating of funds that have historically been dispersed throughout the departments and centralizing them within IT.

And if I may skip ahead into the additional information slide, there's a bullet in here that I I just want you to see, and I'm happy to go back.

Um so the supplies line includes special projects, and the special project that's included in this is that there is the potential uh merger and upgrade of computer aid dispatch between Anarondle and Annapolis.

So there's 343,000 in special projects, which is why you're gonna see a tremendous jump there.

Um in addition to that, contract services includes that of roughly a half million dollars of all the city cell phone budget being reallocated from the departments into the IT budget.

Um so that's where you're gonna see a very large increase there, and I'm going as fast as I can, Harry.

I promise.

Um the capital outlay uh line includes this massive number of taking all of the software support maintenance and subscription fees out of the departments and under IT.

And that if we had more time, I would tell you about all of the benefits that go along with with doing so.

Um, but there are numerous, and it's really gonna improve our posturing and and our ability to reduce overhead in the long term.

Um that kind of thing, that behind the curtain work that I was telling you about on the first slide that we don't necessarily talk about, like it's kind of like fight club, you know, first rule, you don't talk about it.

Um uh so there's been plenty of that going on.

Um I'm sure you all seen the discussions uh from our webmaster regarding ADA compliance.

Um we've selected a vendor for end user training or for our content providers, and um that training is gonna be underway shortly.

And as the mayor's office staff said in their uh presentation, the website website redesign kickoff is underway.

There's a project plan in place, and um Annie uh is almost ready for prime time.

This is a public facing uh AI concierge.

Um is very it developed completely in-house uh by our webmaster Ina Young.

Um it's incredibly impressive, and we can't wait uh to show it to everybody.

So we're about probably four to six weeks minimum away from releasing that, but we're very very excited.

We're we've put it out to the departments for for testing now.

We just want to make sure it's perfect or as close to perfect as it can be before we put it out.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Um yeah, I've got a bunch of questions, but I'll hold back.

Uh auto of an O'Neill.

Uh I will limit mine to a couple of questions.

So thank you for um describing the capital outlay um huge increase.

I looked at that number and uh was shocked.

Um, so I guess it's a question for our budget analyst.

Um, the 2,194,000 I would expect to see at least uh a large portion of that 90% of that come off of other budgets, um come out of other budgets.

How does that compare?

So if I were looking across the boards, um in every other department, it should be decreased the capital outlay, I'm guessing.

Correct.

Um it's gonna be their capital outlay.

Um, some of them had software within contractual services, so you'll see a decrease there as well.

Um it may not completely tie out though, because also any enhancements that were included for software for FY27 um were moved to ITS's budget as well.

Okay, so um from the presentation from the mayor's office, the three um software upgrades that they were looking to make um would be included in this portion.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, I'm sorry, it's in capital or it's in contract.

It's in capital outlay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um I've noticed that we're doing quite a bit of cybersecurity, but we have not filled the cybersecurity specialist position.

Is there a reason why that is not filled?

We've um changed course on that.

Um rather than so I don't want to get too long-winded on this.

We're gonna use an existing class spec.

We're really trying to simplify and use as few job class specs as possible.

Um, so rather than a standalone position that would have required development for yet another career ladder, yet another job class code.

We're using the existing ITS network engineer uh class code on that.

And uh so that's why you see that where it was approved in 26, unfilled, this is actually getting filled in 26, but we're we've changed course in conjunction with some discussions with human resources and the city manager.

We're gonna use an existing class code.

So it while that position in and of itself is gone, the the role exists, which is with a different class code.

Yeah, I I think the way that I would would phrase that is they the intention has not changed, but what we've tried to do is to leverage the existing job class structure um to provide some additional flexibility and um and and also to sort of speed as as Brian said speed that process along a little bit.

So um by doing that through those discussions, that's that's in the works.

So there is every intention to have someone who's really got um cybersecurity as a primary, like a that's that's their responsible for for cybersecurity in the city.

Um that ends up being sort of a subset of what falls under network engineering writ large.

Um, so sort of a technical answer, but every intention to do that, there is absolutely a need for that.

Just to just to add on to that a little bit, like as as we go through the strategic plan and staffing recommendations are given, and um hopefully it grows over time.

Um we have every intention of following that mantra of keeping the number of job class codes to a minimum for simplicity's sake for uh flexibility's sake.

Thank you.

That's all the questions I have.

Thorpe, you're up.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um thank you very much.

Uh your performance measures are very impressive.

Um so appreciate the uh the work you put into that.

Yes, I concur.

Uh on slide three, um, and you talked about it uh briefly in your uh discussion, but um the website bounce rate of less than 60 percent.

Uh and you mentioned typo.

Yeah, so I when I became aware that that was 60 and not 50, it is it has been changed.

I that was not my intent to make it 60 percent.

It was my intent to make it 50.

So and it says 50 up there, yes, sir.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

And and it's been revised on the file in the drive.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um I want to follow up on uh old woman o'Neal's point about the capital outlay, and and I I would like the finance committee to get a little deeper dive into this because as we work through a budget process, it makes sense exact it.

I don't question what you're doing here at all, but to give us a level of confidence, I think we're talking 2.0 million dollars.

So what I would like to see is a spreadsheet that says one point or or two 2.3 million was moved from the departments to IT um, taken out of their budgets.

2.1 of that or 2.5 of that was put into IT, and then enhancements over and above that was X number of dollars.

Um otherwise, we really have no confidence as a finance committee what happened here.

And so if you could you provide us that kind of detailed, yeah, we we can work together on that and get that to you, absolutely.

Okay, and I would ask you to run that through the city manager as well, just to make sure that that we're all speaking apples to apples to apples.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, and and not only that, we you know, as part of this, we actually moved some of our software out of miscellaneous contractual services as well.

Um we can generate a report.

We have an inventory of what of what was moved in dollar amounts.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, we have an inventory of of what was moved and the dollar amounts.

So I can work with Capri and we can kind of show you how that shook out.

That'd be great.

Thank you very, very we can make a nice psyche diagram out of it, you know, where it's flowing.

Um we talked about website.

I just would like to add that to your your do outs as well with you and a mayor's office to provide the city council what the future is of the website, and and I think what what I'm looking for is a high-level brief of what the strategy the vision is for the new website, and then more specifically, how much you're you plan to spend on it and who's managing that project.

Having managed a couple new websites, um, four dollars becomes a hundred dollars pretty quickly.

Yes, sir.

So um we've we've been a partner with our our website platform vendor for quite some time now.

Um and part of our contract with them actually includes a periodic website redesign at no cost.

It's part of our contract.

Um it's supposed to be every four years.

That fourth year came up last year.

We negotiated with them to put it off for a year so that we could have the new, we knew we were gonna have a new administration one way or the other, so we pushed it back a year, they were kind enough to agree to that.

So the baseline number as far as from the hosting company and the assistance that they provide through the web design, there's no cost to that.

Um, and from an ITS perspective, our in-house staff, uh, namely you know, the webmaster is going to be working with office, their consultant, though, is mentioned earlier.

Um, and so really, as far as a nuts and bolts perspective, um, it's included in our uh support and maintenance costs with the vendor.

Okay, so that I think could be great news, it could be bad news, right?

Um sometimes if it's free, it's worth what you paid for.

And I think we have to be open with ourselves, and I don't I don't look back at all, I look forward, but the website's pretty clunky, and I think those of us now who use it a lot, I can navigate it pretty quickly.

But the public who goes on to it to try to find out how to watch the city council meeting, um, it just that basic kind of thing, much less put in a report and and together with your point about Annie and all that.

Um, I guess my question would be: are you satisfied with this arrangement that we will create a website that you stand proud of as a director of Annapolis IT that is useful for the residents?

Without hesitation, yes, sir.

Um I think the partnership between IT and the mayor's office.

Um, the mess uh I forget what what uh the title of the consultant that they brought in, but uh in our monthly director's meeting, we uh recently received a project overview slideshow that we'll provide to you um a project plan.

Um there's gonna be a ton of state both internal and external stakeholder engagement that goes along with that.

The platform itself supports uh enough change.

Um, you know, the degree of change that I think this administration would like to see, and and speaking to your point, some more engaging content, um, reduce that bounce rate, you know, get people to stick around and explore a little bit.

So my my confidence in the platform without hesitation, yes, I I I believe in that, and I believe in the team that we've assembled to guide the the redesign forward.

Thank you.

And I would ask you and the city manager to if there's any problems or any need for resources or need, this is so important for the for the residents that to let us know.

I agree with that and I appreciate that.

Thank you, sir.

My next question is credit cards, and this kind of goes to your point about consolidating um efforts.

Yesterday we heard from the director of Rex and Parks that she doesn't take credit cards at Pit Moyer a couple days ago at uh transportation.

We don't take credit cards on our buses.

It seems to me that to transition to a new technology for any department head on their own is a challenging task for a person who's already busy.

Is this something that you would be interested in taking on in the future?

Um, and do you see a way forward?

And I'm I'm also might be looking at city manager because I might be adding workload.

And is there anything in the budget now from either a staff capacity or financial to move into uh a more efficient way uh using technology?

And I'm purposely staying away from the word credit card because that's a possible solution to a problem.

So I'm talking about the problem to move to technology in our payments across the city.

So I will take uh a little bit of uh let's start with Wreck and Parks.

I'm gonna take a little bit of ownership of um we're we're behind on something here.

I have we have uh in place a new merchant.

We have the machines, we haven't had the time to roll it out for wreck and parks.

It's tap to pay, it's an entirely new merchant account for a number of reasons and which we won't bring up here the we haven't been able to synergize and and get it pushed out, but it is absolutely a priority.

The Reckon Parks department, both uh Pitmoyer and Stanton will get these new uh uh the new merchant account and new machines as soon as we're able to from a bandwidth perspective.

Um Marcus and I that this is something that comes up to Marcus on a on a frequent basis.

Um and Marcus and I, I'm sorry, Director Moore and I have uh spoken about this on several occasions.

Um that is an obvious need.

Um there are challenges that go along with that that are unique to transit.

Um but it's in an exploration phase now.

There's vendor engagement happening.

Um the existing fare box vendor has a solution.

The merchant account that goes along with it provides a separate set of challenges because this is a series of very small transactions, which means that you're hitting up against that flat rate on credit cards versus a percentage, right?

So it really the agreement that you come up with with the merchant account and the underlying legislation on the you know from citywide on how we handle those fees is is an important part when you're dealing in thousands, tens of thousands of microtransactions.

So there's some complexities there.

Marcus and I have discussed them, and we're active actively seeking a solution to that.

I I will add to that that there's a component of all this that also sits in the department of finance.

Um the vendor that um that he was referring to, there are a variety of vendors.

Um, and depending upon the solution you've chosen, they sometimes um really work with one particular vendor.

Um what that what that means for the city is that we end up having to maintain multiple financial connections then with multiple vendors, and that does get more complicated from a from a finance perspective to the extent that we can, it's helpful to sort of be on the same platform across these different things.

Um, but there are limits to that.

Um but as this is definitely an area where it's a partnership between the department um who's uh who's the the using department, they they're the ones who are actually interacting with the public, IT, and finance.

Um, and it really does take all three of those working in concert to really make that work uh work well together.

Is it a fair question to ask you to tell me today or to take the question?

What is the plan?

What is the date that we plan to have a solution?

I I think that's a fair question.

I'm not prepared to give you an answer um today.

I I think that I would speak for both of us in that um there are a number of those things that we would have much preferred to have gotten to the end of sooner.

Uh and so part of our long-term challenge is management challenge is taking an honest look at where are we, what are the roadblocks we tend to run into, and how do we start moving those roadblocks out of the way so that we get to those endpoints sooner?

I I would ask you if you could get us that and maybe add if there's a road, if there are roadblocks that the city council could help you get over, and if it's worth it.

In other words, you know, I'm I'm about to ask the question of if you had five percent more, what would you do if you have five percent less?

What would you give up?

Um so uh Ms.

Buckler, I I don't I'm not trying to drive this to the top of your priority list if it's not, but but I think the residents are looking for this, so we we need an honest answer to them.

Hey, we're looking to do this in 2029, or we're looking to do this in whatever.

So okay.

Um how much time do I have?

I have a minute.

Um so let me get right to those questions.

If uh two questions if if uh if this finance committee looked at you and said, We're gonna give you five percent more on your budget, what would you do with it?

What would you where do you what did you give up in this budget as you negotiated your budget that you are worried about or that you think you could do your your job better if we were able to support you with more more funds?

Um positions, people.

Um it's there is no other answer.

Um we were just talking about like uh or the city manager was just speaking of like what are identify roadblocks and and in our department, our staffing levels have remained static for a decade.

Long before you know I I was promoted into this position.

So yeah, it it just blanket terms, it would be staffing.

And I don't want I want to be very careful in saying that, right?

Like it's I understand the constraints with which the city is operating, but yeah, if you were gonna just magically summon five percent, that's without hesitation where I would put it.

Seems like you had that slide up about enhancements where there was one you got and one you didn't get, and or or the two people you didn't get, but like that seems like a ready-made answer to where if you had to cut back, you cut back the thing that you've got next year on, and if you had more, you'd take the things you wanted but didn't get, right?

Yeah, I mean, it it's not punting, it's it's yeah, it's it's honest.

Got it.

So, but let me ask that question.

So if you had to get so first of all, I think I'm inclined to ask the other directors now that you've consolidated it, would you prefer to put one more person in IT or one more person in your department?

Um because I think don't do that.

But what you do crosses all the departments, so I understand and every department is equally important to the operations of the city.

And I I you know I I would humbly request that you don't put me in that position.

I will humbly not to it.

Thank you.

And then so if if uh if you had to give up something, what would you give up?

I'm gonna make a joke directed at her.

I'd give those cell phones back.

Um, I it that that's a that's obviously a far more difficult question, right?

So five percent of six million is three hundred thousand dollars.

Umfortunately, even though I was forewarned, I forgot to come equipped to deal with that question.

Um can I answer part of that question for you?

Yes, ma'am, please do.

So one of the there are several reasons behind the centralization of software.

Um there's there's oversight pieces of that, there's cybersecurity pieces of that, there's synergy pieces of that.

And of course, the other desire is to make sure that we don't have duplic duplication either.

And so I think that part of certainly certainly my hope is that this arrangement will help give us some better insight into streamlining our software footprint overall.

And I that's not that's not a five percent today reduction, but to me that's an investment in the long term of trying to streamline our software outlay.

All right, I want to thank you because that is something that I really did want to get to, and she summarized it very well, and I think I had mentioned it earlier in the presentation of some of the the benefits of bringing this under the IT umbrella is we we're going to embark on an audit of where are we duplicating, where's their overlap, where where we have multiple departments using similar software, where a site license of one software could serve the entirety uh of the city government, and there's inherent cost savings there, and then the other side of it, as she mentioned, is the cybersecurity aspect, right?

We have a vendor vetting process that we undertake when we onboard new software.

Anything from as minor as a browser plug-in to you know, enterprise uh permitting and licensing or what have you.

Um and not only do those vendors have to be vetted from a cybersecurity and safety aspect, but in this day and age, they have to be vetted for ADA compliance for any public face, things of that nature.

So um, yeah, I'm so glad that she brought that up because I really did want to get that in there today, that there's a lot of benefits of moving it in-house.

I I would encourage you to track that as you go forward and next year when we're sitting here, point out.

I mean, building on the spreadsheet that you're gonna provide us about the costs and go into next year, I think that's a real opportunity for you to provide the provide information about how you're making our organization better.

Thank you very much for yeah, and just uh one more thing about that is is the plan is a formalized audit of these subscriptions with tangible outputs as far as changes that are made, cost savings that are associated with that.

So, yeah, that is absolutely part of the plan.

Thank you.

Great.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

So when we put that money in last year for the fire department IT analyst, my understanding at the time was there was a specific project they needed to get done, and we wanted it out of one time money very explicitly.

I was sat there and made the argument because there was a project that needed to get done.

It seems so it it just seems to boggle my mind that we would say instead of having a uh IT administrator who's going to work for all the departments.

Well, we're gonna fund the one that only works for the fire department.

So I'm looking at the city manager or somebody from the finance department to uh I mean, or maybe you can ask this, but I'm guessing if you asked for both.

The the question is why the heck will we do somebody who's only gonna work for one department instead of somebody who's gonna work for all the departments?

Um I well inevitably in a department as small as ours, there's overlap everywhere, right?

We don't there's no one in ITS.

They're probably as long as I'm around, won't ever be a situation where we find ourselves in where one staff member is siloed and works on specifically one thing, right?

So um onboarding this position to a full-time employment agreement.

Yes, the primary objective of that role is to continue the furtherance of of the ongoing project, other projects.

There are other modules uh within that one product that we'd like to see and the fire department would like to see implemented, but day to day uh seven hour day, eighteen hundred and twenty hours a year, that's another set of hands in the department that that can assist us on any manner of things, and the skill set required for that degree of position is wide ranging, and uh there's benefit citywide, even though the focus, the stated focus and the the actual focus of that position would be to continue to support fire from a technological perspective in any of their ventures.

You got anything to add, Ms.

Buckle?

I from my perspective, the question of the them being sort of the point person for fire projects does not mean that they are unavailable to anyone else.

And I I think from my perspective, this is why that position belongs in ITS and not in the fire department.

Because Brian should be able to tap that person for other things.

Yes, we have a proximate need in fire, that's ongoing, that's fine, but that's not exclusive, right?

He should be able to use that person for a variety of things.

The same way that you know, there's a point person that works with planning and zoning because there's a particular piece of software that planning and zoning is sort of the business owner of.

Um so you know, Stephanie Connor it works a lot with that department, that's the primary thing on her plate, but she also gets pulled into other things.

So it's it we're seeing it in the budget because of how it's labeled, and we don't specifically call out the other people.

Um but this is why I want it in ITS, it's because it shouldn't be.

Uh I don't doubt that it should be in ITS, but my concern is that if we fund it, if we fund this as is, that we're gonna have somebody spending all their time working on fire when we've got IT needs all over the place, and the need with for IT within fire was supposed to be distinct.

It was supposed to have an end.

And my worry is that it is not appearing to have an end.

And I think when we funded that, there was a discrete project that is like, okay, let's get us over this hump.

But there's any number of other use.

I mean, we just heard all sorts of them about how we could be better utilizing our IT capacity outside of the fire department.

And I'm loath to fund this right now because it seems like the status quo is they're just gonna go work for the fire department.

So that's it's not a question.

That's a statement.

Uh, can we go back to the slide about the personnel enhancements?

I just want to see those numbers again.

I guess I could pull it up on my computer.

Thank you.

Okay.

So the difference in price is about $33,000, $32,000.

33.

Okay.

Thank you.

On a position by position.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Um, okay.

Moving on.

Can we talk some more about the aid of dispatch and why that is needed, what the benefit is of that, the the C and Rondo County police aid of dispatch.

What's the deal with that?

What is it?

I will it for the minute details, I would uh defer to uh the police.

That's fine.

Okay.

And I'm not, I'm not trying to pass the buck here.

No, that's fine.

I will I will share with you a high level of so Anne Rondo County is unifying their police and fire dispatch.

So when you call 911 and you're within uh Analdo County right now, isn't a dispatcher.

The first thing they ask you is police fire, you know, what's your emergency, right?

And they route you.

So I the county stated goal with this project is the dispatch is unified, you're skipping that step, you're saving time response time.

Um, fire department is dispatched by Anoronville County.

Um has been the world was young.

Uh and um the idea here and the intrigue for the police department is again if if this is the if we have been invited to participate, and this is the rate we are going, and the service that we provide our constituents is improved, then this needs to at least be considered.

Um there are some monetary discussions that are going on that I I'm not well versed in.

Yeah, I think I get what you're getting at.

I think you've answered my question.

Okay.

Yeah, this is the this is would would be should we participate our upfront capital investment in the implementation of the system?

Got it.

Thank you.

Um the software analyst consultant is something that you guys have 200,000 for.

Can you explain to me what that does, why it's better to have it as a consultant than a staff member?

This is um again, small department, small staff, specific needs during implementations, report building, uh, data gathering.

Um, and and that's available to all three disciplines within our analyst group, right?

GIS, permitting and licensing, um, and ERP.

Um we have a wonderful partnership with a consultant that works very closely with Stephanie Connor on the permitting and licensing project.

I mean, to the point where these are regularly scheduled.

Um sometimes we need um we don't have a need on staff day to day for a database administrator, somebody that's gonna sit at their desk all day long and run SQL queries.

Uh but when I need it or we need it, we need it.

Okay, so let me just put a fine point on that question.

It is not 200,000 going to one person.

Oh, absolutely not.

No, sorry, it's spread that makes senders.

Yes, sir.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um maybe we can update that in the budget book to have an S on the end.

But that's uh all right.

Uh let's see, what else did I have here?

Um, so last year we funded a strategic plan consultant, and you talked a little bit about updating that strategic plan.

We don't I don't see money in this budget for strategic plan.

Is that are you are you comfortable with that?

Is that we've given you the money last year, you're good, now it's all in owls.

How how does that relate strategic planning relate to the budget at this point?

So the 75,000, um again, I I'm not sure if it was sourced in one time or not for the strategic plan, but um you think it was, yeah, I think it was too.

I just didn't want to say something that was that I didn't wasn't certain was true.

This is for the entirety of the initial build.

And I spoke very a little bit about our desire for this to be an ongoing engagement for it to be a living document, and things like that are exactly why that pot of money we were just discussing exists, where if I need several hours of re-engagement because of changing circumstances or our desires or or um administration's desires, uh, I know that they're gonna be embarking on their own kind of city strategic plan at some point.

Um, if we need to change course or tack to vibe with the outcome of that, that's that's exactly why we've got that pot of money for consulting services that's available across the disciplines.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Um my last question for you, I think is just what's IT?

Well, maybe I'm gonna make this into two questions.

I'll start with what is IT doing to encourage the use of these new AI tools across city staff.

We heard about Annie uh external facing, internal facing.

It what is IT doing to encourage that?

And um, you know, we talked a little bit last summer about the project, but can you provide us an update?

And frankly, do you need any money to do it?

Because it seems to me like a place we could really improve efficiency and save money.

Short answer is uh for the money part, stay tuned.

Um so a big area of focus, obviously, within our strategic planning process is development of AI usage policy.

Um for which we already have developed kind of a wireframe, but I want some more they they have the the vendor that we're using for the strategic plan has an extensive AI background, so they're gonna be a great resource in helping us flesh that out.

Um, but it it's going to be a big area of focus, and when we present the outcome of the strategic plan, you'll see that that that's that's really helping us um drive.

So Annie is obviously kind of like your public facing portion of that.

The other part of that is I just got back from a conference uh from one of our main vendors.

They're the provider of our EP uh ERP product, our EPL product.

They also provide several other services for us in the city.

Um most of the sessions that I participated in is or not most, but uh a large chunk of the uh sessions that I participated in is where are they going with AI, right?

How are we gonna compact uh combat silos?

How are we going to allow staff to leverage AI to peer into our own data and and easily generate meaningful reports when that's not something that's easy to do now?

Um and I was very happy to see what's in development.

There's a few things that are actually available now that I'm working with our rep uh to see what the lift is as far as uh a uh a good example of that is uh AI powered accounts payable, and that's something that's actually available on our current version on prem, no pressure to go software as a service, which is an entirely different discussion for a later day as far as these services go.

But um, so the engagement with the vendors as far as where are they going with their own product and their AI development um is a big part of where we want to be.

Could you come back to us with what it would cost to have right now?

We have access to uh I think of their sort of three big players here.

Right now we all have access to Gemini on our city one.

So you know, I had to ask you to get that activated for us.

Yeah, but um could what I'm asking is if people within city government wanted to use enterprise versions of open AI software or anthropic software, I'd like for that to be an option.

Um unless you have some strategic disagreement, which you can I'd be happy to hear about.

But what I'm looking for is a cost estimate for to have, let's say, 10 enterprise seats of each one of those, so that if folks want to try them out and encourage that experimentation, that uh I'd love to know how much that would cost.

Absolutely, we can get the costing on that.

What I really want to see before we can get you cost information, but a big part of that um where we I think as an organization want to be first is have that usage policy.

How are we safeguarding PII and those sorts of things?

We want to make sure that our end users are bound by a set of rules that prevents the sorts of nightmare scenario things that we've all read about with um protected information being fed into a large language model.

So absolutely, I can have costing information in hand and provide it to you, but we really want to take this in a stepwise manner, develop the usage policy, um, explore options, um, and then if it's cool, we already know what it's gonna cost, and we can come back to you guys.

Yeah, part of why I want to potentially allocate money towards this is because of that PII issue and making sure that right now we have enterprise Gemini, we can go ahead and and put information into it, and it's not going to go outside.

And so I know there are plenty of city staff who are using these other tools, but they can't do anything in regards to to PII with those because and and should at least shouldn't be.

Yeah, they shouldn't be.

And so getting those enterprise versions if people want them seems like a good opportunity.

And then, you know, if we come back next year and we've allocated five thousand dollars to this and none of it's spent, no, I'm no foul, but I want to make sure we have that pot of money.

I'm looking to, I'm not 100%, but I want to.

That sounds to me like you and I want to be in the same place.

Um I just want to make sure that we're not operating only on my limited knowledge of the topic that we're engaging experts and they're guiding us towards a safe usage policy.

Thank you.

Uh we're just about at time.

Alder Roman also Johnson, you got any questions you want to ask?

No.

Okay.

You got it.

Um I think I tried to already hit a bunch of Alderman Savages questions.

Anything last from Alder Roman O'Neill Altman Thorpe?

One question, you could take this and write it down, and maybe it's for the city manager to listen into your brief.

First of all, it's fantastic brief.

You did it.

This is the brief, the presentation, you're tremendous.

Uh if we were to not fund that second IT specialist, I would like to know what would what would not happen that you are are looking to happen.

We're speaking of the one that um Alderman Huntley was discussing.

Drill down into exactly.

So you don't have to answer it now.

I I'd actually ask you to put some thought into that and let us know uh what it would cost.

Don't read anything into it other than yes, maybe it is a possibility to cut it.

So uh, but uh I would uh we would like to know what impact that would have.

And if you could put some thought into that and let us know, that'd be great.

The three of you.

Yeah, uh she's collecting Kale's collecting all the the uh the do out.

So we're doing this with every every department head.

Yeah, I think um she's put together a spreadsheet so there will be some written yeah, I saw the link.

Okay.

Stick it in there.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Beautiful.

Not only a great presentation, but we ended right on time.

All right.

Uh with that, I think Mr.

Packwin, I think we're good.

Appreciate you being here.

We've got thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, I should pull up our uh finance committee agenda.

All right.

Um we do have a couple supplemental appropriations and fund transfers to consider.

The first is uh three thousand dollar grant to recreation and parks.

I think initially we were planning on doing this yesterday, so Reckon Parks would be here, but it's also not a lot of money, and it's just us accepting money, which I always like to say is my favorite kind of supplemental appropriation.

So perhaps uh Ms.

Bucklin can speak to this so we can vote on it.

Uh sorry, I will need to I will need to pull that up.

It's it's a three thousand dollar grant that they're accepting to do adaptive tennis.

Seems uh seems like Sunshine and Rainbows and Apple Pie.

So I guess uh if I can ask my colleagues, does anybody have any questions about the supplemental appropriation?

Anything you want to know?

No, nope.

Does anybody nope?

Karma said no.

Is there a motion to provide a favorable recommendation to SA 2026?

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Beautiful.

All right.

Next up, oh, I closed my agenda.

Next up is our fund transfer, which is a little bit bigger.

Uh and this, I'm guessing, maybe Ms.

Bucklin, you can speak to because this is about our fleet operations, which I know has been uh important topic.

So what we're looking at here is basically transferring some money from our non-allocated debt service to our fleet operations.

So if you want to maybe just give us a bit of an overview, but really my main question is gonna be how do we undercount our debt service?

Because this is now the second fund transfer that we're taking from that uh unallocated or from that essentially unspent debt service.

Uh uh it's it's the other way, not under not under counting it.

Um the part of what happened this year um was that we did not actually go to market with as many bonds as was authorized in the budget.

So part of our task um and part of the discipline that um that the budget team provides and and finance provides is trying to um not let excess bonds because then you you have a specific timeline to use them and you start paying debt service on them.

So part of this is the result of that discipline.

So because we didn't let the full value of the bonds, we therefore don't have the full value of the debt service on them, and therefore then these funds um can be used to fill in other gaps, such as this one.

Yeah, Capri, if you have anything you want to add.

Um, as far as the transfer to fleet, um it was a budget deficiency error that um we didn't fund we allocate the expenses for um vehicle repair and maintenance um to each department.

Enough was not funded to planning and zoning for the transfer.

So this um corrects that I'm sorry, where did planning and zoning come in?

Planning is that that's what the um the allocation is for.

So it's it's going directly to fleet.

So in the budget, it would have been allocated to planning and zoning repair and maintenance vehicles, but because we under budgeted it, this is gonna put the funding directly to fleet as it would with that transfer.

Okay.

I'm not a hundred percent sure I understand, but I don't think it's I don't think there's a problem with it.

You want to go ahead?

Yeah.

Does planning and zoning have their own vehicles that is not in central services?

Well yes.

So for FY26?

Well, so so um yes.

So the the vehicles that the city has, um there are a few pool pool vehicles, but most of them are specifically assigned either to specific people or to specific departments.

So the inspectors, for example, in planning and zoning have vehicles that help take them from place to place as they're going around the city doing their job.

Traditionally, the cost of repair and maintenance for vehicles has been allocated out to the different departments that have vehicles.

And one of the things that happens right away as the year starts is that that money then gets sort of charged against and pulled into just the overall fleet um uh fleet maintenance bucket that then fleet actually draws from day in and day out rather than this bill goes to this one and this bill goes to this one, right?

Um in this particular case, that pre-allocation to planning and zoning was underdone.

But because of where we are in the year, we're not gonna we're not gonna sort of do that dance of allocate it to planning and zoning and immediately transfer it to fleet.

We're just gonna stick it in fleet and and be done with it.

All right, thank you.

Makes sense.

Any additional questions about FT 926?

No.

All right, so you none.

Is there a motion to make a favorable recommendation?

So move.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Okay.

Uh last up we have R 826, which uh I wanted to have a bit of a discussion with the committee.

To me, it makes sense to consider this at the same time as our fee schedule.

So uh Alderman Thorpe, I know you had an amendment.

I'm happy to talk about that.

I don't think any of this, no, I'm confident, none of this is time sensitive.

It can go at the same time as our it starts in in July at the same time as FY27.

So it seems to me that we should put a pin in this and consider it the same day that we consider the fees.

Does anybody have an objection to that?

Any discussion on that, Clutch?

I I just don't understand why we just don't get why we don't get it done.

Just get it.

I mean, that's kind of fair too.

Um I mean, only because we're either gonna do it or not.

Yeah.

Um and while there may be a discussion about the future of this, I think for fiscal year 27.

The there's no discussion about a change in policy.

Yeah, the dias cast, as it were.

Um yeah, I mean, hard to argue against let's just get it done.

Uh you know, that's what I always say.

So and I think the organizations are are in their planning phase as we speak.

So well, yeah, I'm fine with that.

Uh you added an amendment.

Do you want to describe it?

Yeah, I would like to uh to amend the list to add East Port Arakin.

Um an event that's been going on for many years.

Uh uh brings 40 local bands to an event that's exceptionally widely attended.

Um and they've they put one 500,000 into charities over the over the years they've been doing it.

And I would add uh uh proposed amendment to add East Port Orack and the fees waived would be approximately $7,000 based on the the cost last year of uh $6,700.

So I'm gonna count that as a motion.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

Uh anybody want to discuss Alderman Thorpe's amendment one.

I would have a question.

Yeah.

Um well I support that.

Um that's an organization that um myself and my family has been involved with for many, many years.

Um and um in particular, my spouse has done um hundreds of hours of work for them um over the years.

Um so I understand that completely.

Um as far as the waiving of fees of 7,000, um is it just because that would be their total fees it specifically it would waive the fees for police and fire.

Um, and the cost of that, I said last year it's really this year, 2020 uh five, six, because our fiscal year it was sixty, seven hundred dollars.

So it's so I think the specific answer to your question is we're waiving the fees for police and fire, and the number for planning purposes for finance department, that was sixty, seven hundred dollars.

Okay.

Um I think that it also talks about a larger discussion or a longer discussion, and we're waiving fees for some events and how that is affecting specific departments, specifically police and fire.

Um, when they are sending employees to these events to work these events, it is most often overtime.

And as we see our overtime numbers increase over the years, you know, fire has almost two million dollars in overtime, I think for FY26.

Um fairly close.

Give or take, a couple hundred thousand.

Um if we continue to add events where we're waiving fees, that's just more I don't want to use the word taxing, but it's more burden on our budget.

Um I think it's a longer discussion.

Um, like I said, I support adding it this year, but I think it's uh it's a bigger discussion to have on all of the events that we're waiving fees for.

Go ahead.

Uh woman O'Neill and and Mr.

Chairman, I I absolutely agree with that.

Um, I think a review of I'm gonna say exactly what you said slightly in different words, but 100% agreement.

I think I think the city council and I think the the city staff should take a look at this policy as to what we waive, what we don't, um, who's asking for who's not, what's the criteria?

Um, and to your point, the financial impact, especially since on the overtime thing I plan to ask uh the all the people who do overtime, as I did yesterday with Wrex and Parks, uh, or the fire harbormaster.

How do we hold how do we set a goal and objective for overtime?

Um, because I think that's a metric they should use.

So I I would totally agree with you that we should look at this policy and what is the city taxpayer getting out of this policy.

Um, and is it the right use of of money, realizing we're giving up in revenue?

So yeah.

I I think this is uh a good discussion to have.

Maybe we should put it on our agenda for things to talk about after the budget season.

I would just put it more on the flip side, which is do we need to be expending as much money on these as we are?

It's less uh I I'm generally supportive of the idea that we should be waiving the fees, but uh why are we having such insanely high costs on some of these?

And my understanding, yeah, there's police.

There's also increasingly we're asking public works to put up, you know, these barricades or trash trucks or whatever it is for uh some of these events.

And I think making sure that we keep those costs in check, that would be my priority for it.

Uh you looked like maybe you had something to say.

No.

Uh okay.

Any more discussion on this?

Seeing none, uh I'll call for a vote on amendment one to FT, I'm sorry, to R826.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Uh motion carries for the amendment.

Is there a favorable recommendation for the legislation as amended?

So moved?

So moved.

Uh same second.

Uh all right, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Beautiful.

Motion carries.

R826 has received a favorable recommendation from the finance committee as amended.

With that, we're ready for adjournment.

Anybody got anything last things we need to go over today?

Nope.

Seeing none?

All right.

Move to adjourn.

Uh second.

Uh all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And we're out.

For some reason I always get tripped up on the motion, which are it's like I'm ready to go.