Okay.

Meeting of the finance standing committee is called to order 1233 p.m.

on April 29th, 2026.

Happy week after Earth Day.

And at this time, I'll take a roll call.

Although Roman O'Neill.

Present.

Altman Thorpe.

Present.

Altman Hulley's here.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda as written?

Oh, let the record reflect Auditor McConti's also here.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes from our last meeting as written?

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Both motions.

Carrie.

Chief Romale.

Floor is yours.

We'll put 15 minutes on the clock.

Ask you guys to give your presentation within that time, and then we'll ask you some questions.

So you know the drill.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for having us.

Uh with me today.

To my left is Deputy Chief Matthew Lopez, who's our deputy chief of administration and professional standards.

To my right is fire administrative specialist Jeannie Coglin, who knows our budget inside and out.

And to her right is Deputy Chief John Ortley, who's in charge of operations.

You got to get the presentation going.

Do we need the two someone from the TV studio?

Or maybe we'll reset your time, don't worry.

So as they're pulling it up, um the first the first slide will be the accomplishments where we did the top top three accomplishments for the year.

Uh the first one is the one that always knock on wood because we haven't had a fatal fire in the city of Annapolis since 2010, so we're very proud of that.

And we have some aggressive firefighters and are able to get to calls very quickly, and that helps us with that.

Um also with that, the second one is our emergency response times.

We continue to meet or exceed national standards when it comes to responding to incidents.

And the third, as the council is well aware, over the last year, we were able to develop a strategic plan, and that's going to do our roadmap for the next five years.

Obviously, we've had a lot of other highlights, and one of the biggest ones there is our cadet interim program with the partnership with the state of Maryland, the city council, uh, Maryland Fire Rescue Institute.

We've been able to get eight people uh train them to be firefighter EMTs, and they are currently out in the field completing their program now.

It's been very successful for us.

Our performance measures that are in the budget, it's how we uh calculate if we're doing well or not.

Uh the first one that's up there, they these are just not in specific order, but the first one we always like to track our workers' comp or injuries on the job uh and want to reduce that, and that's what the the intent is there.

Um unfortunately we've had at least 32 people injured last year uh on the job, and this year we're right on track that we've had 15 so far, and we track the cancers in the fire service.

Cancers become the number one leading cause of firefighter deaths in the United States.

We have three active cases in the Annapolis Fire Department at the present time.

We also track our vehicle accidents.

Now, while this may seem high at 23, uh we track every time we scratch a vehicle.

We have very large fire apparatus, uh over the years we've condensed them.

We've made them city pumpers because we know our streets were made for horse and buggies.

We're trying to get around there and large apparatus and uh ambulances and medic units, and sometimes we clip a mirror and stuff.

So the majority of those are very minor incidents, but we track those and we want to reduce those.

We have a very robust driver operator program that we continue to enhance every year.

We maintain a class one ISO rating.

I believe we were reevaluated last year for five years.

That's the highest fire rating when it comes to the ISO standards.

Uh we also track our response times.

Those are the national averages that are up there according to NFPA.

Uh, from the time that our units are dispatched to the time they get on the call.

Uh the standard is four minutes.

We meet that the majority of the time.

We can get one unit on scene within that time period.

The ALS on scene means that's when there's a paramedic on scene.

Uh the standard is eight minutes.

Uh we are able to get there in less than five minutes there.

And then the first alarm assignments for like a structure fire.

You have to have a certain amount of people on the scene within eight-minute time period, and we're able to meet that standard basically within five to six minutes.

We have over 15 people on the scene of an incident.

We also track uh complaints and compliments that are received in the department.

Obviously, our goal would have to be no complaints, and our compliments are 100% satisfaction rate with our customers.

Uh obviously that can't always occur.

Obviously, that can't always occur.

We're meeting people on sometimes on the worst day of their lives in very stressful situations.

But we track that, and we're very happy to say that our complaints, nine complaints for a full year, is that's outstanding, and those complaints are minor.

So we continue to do that.

Number of public education programs out there.

We average about we'd like to average at least five a month for the 60, and we we meet that.

So our public education, public outreach, community risk reduction program is doing well.

The one before that is the soft openings, and I'm sure there will be questions that come up about our overtime and issues like uh that.

But uh the soft openings or any opening where somebody's not in the field, they're not out there doing their job.

And as you can see, uh, with that average up there, that any given month, I have 18 people that aren't working in the field because they're either injured, sick, FMLA, pregnant, uh out.

Some of that soft openings are for training.

So if I send somebody paramedic school, that could take up to a year to two years to that they're out of the field.

So that's our averages there.

And our goal is to have 48 paramedics on the four shifts.

Uh we don't meet that, but that's what we have up there currently.

Uh, these are just basically our run statistics for the year.

We run over 13,000 calls, emergency calls.

Uh, the interesting part of that is that while it's 13,000 incidents, we have well over 25,000 responses from our units and our personnel.

So basically, we have over 25,000 units responding to calls over a year's period.

That has been pretty consistent.

It increases uh over the years.

The year before that was about 13,000.

Um, so we are averaging over 13,000 calls a year, and those other ones are just inspections in their other programs.

The enhanced you all want to see the biggest one in here is the personnel.

It's six personnel to stack that peak time medic unit that you've been hearing about.

If you've been on the council, you've been hearing about it for three years that have been pushing for it.

Um, it is actually in the mayor's proposed budget.

We do estimate this these six personnel at that 588,000 that we will be bringing in probably an additional 200 to 250,000 dollars of EMS billing to offset that cost.

So that's uh that'll help offset that because there'll be some revenue coming into the city, but until we get that unit up and running, we won't know for sure how much that that is.

Our medic units are extremely busy, and uh this will help eliminate and alleviate some of the stresses on their current medic units.

This would be a 12-hour day unit, seven days a week, and it's those peak times.

We know that our peak time responses are from eight in the morning to eight at night, uh and we can go more.

The other ones on here, uh, the next one that's actually been approved in the budget is for an paramedic trainer.

It's uh 75% of what we do in the fire service is EMS based.

I have a hard time with our personnel getting the certifications and actually wanting to take that position.

I only had a couple people that actually can meet that training requirement.

I feel that it's in the best interest of us to bring somebody in from outside to do our EMS training to be part of our department, and that's what this is.

So this is a I think it's in the budget as a pilot.

I foresee that this is the way to go for the future, but this is the way to get it started to see if it's actually gonna work for us.

So it's a contractual paramedic position that's an EMS trainer, and that allows that person that was in that position to go back into the field as a supervisor where they actually want to be.

And I don't have, like I said, I don't have another lot of people that already have that certification, and I can put them right in that training division spot.

So if I did try to do it from in-house, I've got to train them to become instructors.

I got to get them multiple training classes, and that could be up to a year or so.

So I think the best benefit for the department would be is to try this and to bring somebody in that's already trained.

Um, so that's in there.

We're very happy about that, and we think that'll be a successful program.

The other ones there uh below that are all tied together with the four-person staffing of a suppression unit.

Uh, the council knows that the NFPA standard is to have four people on all suppression pieces.

We run with three.

Uh, this was just to try to get us started as fire chief and with our strategic plan.

I I would like us to be at four-person staffing, but figuring out how we can get there and being fiscally responsible for the citizens of Annapolis is it.

Uh, so that request was in there to start the program.

Although the priority is the peak time medic unit, and that was my priority because that's where we need to be, and that's what was approved.

Uh, the positions below that was just converting, bringing in some civilians where we had some supervisors there.

We need six people to staff the truck companies at four people.

That adds one person per, and that those three are just combined together.

So but they were not in pre included in the proposed budget or approved.

The one below that is I have a captain that runs every division within the department except for one, and that's the fire and explosive services unit.

That 13,000 was to upgrade that position to a captain to get us where we need to be within the department where a captain is running each division in a department.

Go to the next one.

And then with that, the 412,000 that was asked for for obsoleted equipment, uh, is just that.

We have, as you may recall, um, for those that were on the council last year, you approved uh 200,000 in the current budget to start replacing our cardiac monitors and defibulators.

They're about 50,000 apiece.

We have 15 of them in the department.

We started that with your help this year.

I'm happy to say that we work with the Eastport Volunteer Fire Company.

We also uh received a 50-50 grant from the state of Maryland.

So by you providing funding for four, we've actually been able to get six new monitor defibulators to start us towards that.

Uh, some of the other things that are in there, the homatric tools or rescue tools that are on our rescue pieces and our ladder trucks, uh, they age over time.

Uh the bomb suit, they have a 10-year requirement on those.

It's just like the ballistic vest that we wear, they have a five-year requirement, they go out of warranty after that.

Uh and they're big ticket items.

Uh but what was improved in the mayor's proposed budget was like we basically said, well, whatever can we can get helps.

So they funded 200 and some thousand, and we'll prioritize what needs to be replaced in this budget.

The next one there, which is also included in the budget, mayor's proposed budget, is $15,000 for professional cleaning of our turnout gear.

Uh, and one of our objectives that I talked about before was the cancer initiative.

We've done very well with help of the council over the last several years.

Uh we've they found out in the fire service that cancer is the number one leading cause of firefighter deaths that's overtaking cardiac issues.

Uh what we have found out is that our turnout gear that we wear to go in that protects us during structure fires actually contain PFAS materials.

The council was able to provide some funding for us that we replaced our turnout gear.

Now, at the time that we replaced it, we could not get turnout gear that didn't have PFAS in it.

But the turnout gear we had where that PFAS material is is totally encapsulated.

Uh, they are the vendors are coming out with additional gear that does not have it, but uh there's still that technology is there.

But fire some of our firefighting foam had those materials in it, and with the support of the council, we were able to get rid of all that and go on to uh a neutral type of firefighting foam that doesn't have those materials.

We have extractors in the stations where we clean our turnout gear.

So after every working fire, uh we don't have enough funding that we can provide two sets of turnout gear to every person in our department, but after every working fire, they have to clean their gear.

So we do have a supply in our logistics office where they can go into a loaner set of gear and we do clean our turnout gear in-house.

Uh but what we found is we believe that it needs to be professionally cleaned every year, and this contract service will allow us to do it.

So once a year, everybody's gear within the department will be professionally cleaned beyond what we're doing in-house.

Uh, and then the next one is it's just like anything else in the city.

Our firehouses are out of space, is what the department's grown.

We haven't grown with that.

We have no space and office space, but that's uh that was just requested in the budget.

I know there is an overall plan that facilities central services was looking at for the long run and how that's gonna work out.

Just some of the budget trends.

Is salaries and benefits.

There's no other, there's not a lot of large amount of money for anything else that we do, and uh, that's what you see there.

And the increase in there is to include those six positions, uh which, like I said, should be offset by some EMS billing funds and some other income that the city was getting.

Factual services is they've moved to the IT services, so some of the IT services came out of that, but the contractual services are our medical director.

Uh every year we have to have all of our hose and our ladders tested by third-party company.

Uh, actually, our canine services are in there for vet services, uh, and there's several other areas in there that's covered by contract services, but that's what that line item is.

Uh the supplies budget is just that, it's uh $600 and some thousand dollars.

What you'll see in the next slide is that uh we do have a concern coming up with hospital and EMS supplies, and I'll go into that.

But this does allow us to start uh putting some more money towards our EMS supplies.

So Anna Rondo Medical Center has been supplying us a one-for-one medical supplies since I can remember.

So we're talking over the last 40 years.

All the other hospitals around us had not been providing that, and it stopped a long time ago.

They came to us this year and told us they were gonna stop giving it to us, I believe, in March.

Our EMS chief was able to work with them and they pushed it off until July, but they are no longer giving us this one-for-one basis for IV supplies, needles, that type stuff.

So we're gonna there's gonna be an additional cost there.

Um, EMS division believed it was gonna cost us about 80,000 a year, but we're not sure what our burn rate is.

Um, with some of the budget reductions that we were asked for, we we believe we can do that with a little bit less, so but that money's included in the supplies account.

And then the capital outlay, um, there is that funding we talked about earlier where that we'd asked for 400,000, there's 200,000 increase just for some obsolete equipment there, so that's what that increase is.

But uh that's our averages.

We don't bring in a lot of money to the city of Annapolis in the sake that we are not a pr revenue-producing department.

You know, we are that insurance company that people don't necessarily like to pay for until you need it.

But what I can tell you is when they get our services, they are getting 100% commitment and the best services that they can get.

But with that, we do charge for EMS billing, and we bring in uh 200 2.5 million.

That's that's a pretty good average there that we've been receiving.

And then once a year we can go back and ask for a supplemental amount, which is that EP ESPP, which actually looks at the total cost of what we we actually utilize during these medical calls.

Like I believe for Medicare, we only receive while we charge $750 a run.

I believe we receive like $150, but that's just a supplement.

So we're bringing in about four million dollars in EMS billing.

Uh the peak time medic unit should increase that slightly.

And then the other ones are just the grants and the OEMs.

That's uh that's there.

But that's that's our presentation.

And the only concerns we have is the medical supplies, and uh we continue to evaluate with the EMS unit in there.

Just I wanted to make sure you saw this that in the city of Annapolis alone.

We're not talking about the clusters around us.

We have 800 more housing units that are being built with all these projects that are in in-house now.

One of those big projects is the Providence at the Villages of Providence Point, which is an over 55 community, which we know will increase our services.

So that's it.

Questions, Tom.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Um, I don't think I had any just baseline clarifying questions.

So I will turn it over to Aldo Roman O'Neill.

Thank you.

I just have a few.

Um in sorry, in your performance standards, and you talked about the public education classes.

Does that also include just for instance?

I was at Morse Blum the other night, and they told me that the fire department had been there to talk about safety.

So that's what that public education that is all of our public education programs.

The the largest one we have out there is um your life matters, which is hands-only CPR and Narcan administration.

But yes, we teach elderly fire safety care, fire safety and homes, exit plans, um, fire know your firefighter type of program where they bring children in and they see the fire equipment, see firefighter and gear.

Uh but that that is all those programs, and we offer them both in English and Spanish.

As an aside note, they want you to come back and do another first state and uh hands-only CPR.

And we can definitely take care of that.

So they want it in the evening because there's people that work apparently that keep missing it.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm just putting that as your little bookmarking.

We we can make that happen.

Um, and over to last year, I think you've you've seen that the department social media post and getting stuff out there.

Uh we made some moves in the department, we moved Captain Zapata into our public education, community risk reduction, public information office, and he is getting that those uh those training courses out there, he's getting out what we do every day.

Uh, as you all knew with the council citation the other night, that was a very good and powerful story uh to tell people that they need to learn CPR and AED.

So we are doing a lot better job with that with our community outreach.

So that won't be a problem.

We'll we'll get them in touch with them.

Great.

I appreciate that.

Definitely made me think I should learn CPR.

It was it was powerful.

We had a long discussion about um hands-only CPR and how it's changed that it's now hands-only versus what you used to learn.

Yeah, there's you don't have to go out and get a certification, and it will teach you hands-only CPR, and that's that's the key is to get somewhat get CPR started until we can get there.

So I love um the PPE cleaning, the 15,000, is that one time per year?

That's one time per year.

That's all the equipment one time per year.

It's all of their our turnout gear that's that equipment that we use to go into structure fires.

We clean them in-house after every incident, every time they get contaminated.

We have our own extractors and all, but this will send it out in the professional cleaning, they'll do inspections and a professional cleaning of it once a year, and that's about the cost for the entire department.

But it is essential for our cancer initiative, and we we believe this is something our safety officers have really looked at it, and they really pushed for that that we should send it out.

Okay.

Um, and then um I know that there were several um enhancements that didn't get funded.

And is there any way to help with those enhancements without fully funding them?

Or of the four the four personnel, the moving uniformed officers, and the division uh captain.

Is there anyone that's could you rate those in the order?

I rate the peak time medic unit is the priority, and then any other staffing that we can get will help start towards that four-person staffing.

My biggest concern currently is um when we do get enough people that we can start the first four-person suppression piece.

The first unit that's we're gonna do that for is the one that cross staffs the fire boat.

Because we get a structure fire across the street, I can send Annapolis, Antarona County, Naval Academy, and continue to ask for resources, I'm gonna get them.

Prince George's County, Queen Anne's, I'll get them.

It's gonna take them longer.

But when I put somebody on the water on the fire boat, they're out there by themselves, and us getting additional resources to them is a problem.

So the four-person staffing on that one crew is where we would start our four-person staffing levels uh to make sure.

And as you know, we've got a new fire boat that's on order.

We'll be here this summer.

It is a little larger than the current boat.

Uh, it'll have a lot more um not only safety equipment on it, but a lot more resources to do the sonar and that type stuff, and it's just the number of people on that is essential to us.

But uh any help, and we know this four-person staffing thing is something that it's gonna take us years and years to get to.

It's just a matter of how we can start and try to try to get it going.

The the captain, that 13,000 increase, uh, we believe that we might be able to handle that with some reorganization within the department, but that that is essential to get us to the point where I have every division that uh that is staffed that the captain is running the division.

So they run the captains run the programs, and uh that's we have the one that's not, but that gets us to where we need to be.

Do you mind if I just jump in while we're on this topic, or are you?

I've got another question about this topic.

Go ahead.

I was just gonna say in the the four-person on suppression units, if you were able to identify sort of peak time to have four person versus four person all the time.

Would that reduce the 429?

So it's not like the peak time medic unit where we know that there's medical calls the bit where we're busy, it's eight to eight.

Uh that four-person suppression crew, we never know when the fire is going to come in.

So uh it's hard to average out that a lot of our fires are in turn dark, you know, it's after hours, but that's not necessarily true either.

They happen any time of the day.

So to adding just a 12-hour person to that unit, while it would help, it's not that's not ideally where we're we're gonna need to be.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

So, yeah, I wanted to drill down on this too.

I'm generally a little bit skeptical that as we keep getting better and better at firefighting that we really need to add four people on all these crews.

But I think it really does make a lot of sense on the fire boat for everything you said, plus the fact that you can park a truck and you can't really park a boat.

Somebody's still got to be piloting it.

So is this 429 figure what it would cost just to go to four for the fire boat crew?

So that 429 figure actually includes those other 103,000 to two below it.

We would need well, actually, probably I think when I did this, it was for both truck companies.

So, yes, the 429 would be sufficient for the crew that operates the fire boat, yes.

So, and when I put this calculation in, the thought was to put both ladder companies at four people.

So that that would have taken us the same amount as is for a peak time medic unit.

So it's basically half the price of that peak time medic unit should cover adding the fourth person to that.

I'm trying to get it.

Is it if we just went to having four people for the crew that cross staff to the fire boat, but not everywhere else, what would that cost?

That's it.

That's that's the cost, yes.

Got it.

Thank you.

The cost back to you, all the Roman O'Neill.

Back to you, Alder Roman O'Neill.

That was my last question.

All right, then Alderman Thorpe, you're up.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um Chief, just to repeat it.

Um I was the benefactor of your services, and so I can vouch for your EMS services firsthand, and I appreciate it tremendously.

Um the story the other day resonated with me.

So thank you.

Um I I have a couple clarification questions.

If uh slide three, if you could drill down a little bit for me into that second to the uh slide three.

Yeah, there you go.

Uh you want to perform performance measures or okay.

I'm sorry.

Well, I'll just make sure we're getting to the right one.

Yep, there you go.

Into the second to the last column, the number of soft openings.

Could you could you explain that?

I don't fully understand that line.

The soft openings are the personnel that we are actually have working for us, but for whatever reason, they are not out in the field.

And those reasons are workers' comp injuries, personal injuries, sick leave, FMLA.

I've had a couple of firefighters that have gotten pregnant and they've had to come out of the field.

I have four people in paramedic training, which they are out of the field for a year to two years, depending on what program they went to.

I have one that's getting ready to leave and is being deployed for a year.

Um we have some other people that are away in training classes, and uh I have a couple people that have been out on injuries.

It's been well over a year since I've seen those individuals.

So that those soft vacancies are just that.

So we need 25 people to be working every single day.

When we add this peak time medic unit, we need 27 from eight in the morning to eight at night, and then 25 from eight at night to eight in the morning.

I only have 29 assigned to a crew.

Four people are allowed to be off on annual leave every day.

So we are automatically at minimum staffing before we talk about anybody being sick and your training or anything.

So I just don't have enough people, and that's where those soft vacancies come in.

Ideally, the way it's budgeted, we should have 29 or 30 assigned to each shift if they were there every day, and that gives us a little flexibility.

But because they're off and out, uh it's not there, and that's the large is factor on our overtime budget is just getting engines and medic units on the street every day.

Now there are some other things that go along with the overtime, like special events and uh training programs that we have to send people back to research every year and that type of stuff, but the majority of it is just staffing our units every day and maintaining that minimum staffing level.

So thank you.

And it and as I look at the number 18 and 25 and 17 to date.

Uh yeah, that's per month.

So uh I'm trying, I'm trying in my mind to I mean, if we're talking 25 or 27 people, I'm not deducting the 18 from the 25 or 27.

So that they should be included.

If if everybody was working, we wouldn't have those soft openings, and we wouldn't have to be paying as much overtime, but we always have this this rotation where people are out.

As we go forward this year, uh, and I don't want to take a whole lot of time here.

I'm I'm having a hard time understanding the shifts and and the because it it's absolutely makes sense of the soft openings.

I mean, that to your point, it's just reality.

But it but I'm not I'm trying to figure out how we could compensate, maybe not too if I could just take it as a do out, if you or one of your folks and I could sit down and I could understand that.

Yeah, absolutely.

You we'd be more than happy to sit down and explain it to you.

There's a staffing factor for every position.

You need 1.34 something.

So basically, like with the medic unit, I need four people to staff that peak time medic unit to run their shift, but to cover leave and stuff, you need a half person for that.

So that's why we asked for six.

Our staffing factor over the years to meet that minimum staffing level is not where it's it's never been where it needs to be, and that that's what causes some of those concerns there.

Uh and then you know, I'm turning to you and I'm asking, I'm looking, we need four-person crew for the crew that staffs the fire boat.

So that's additional people.

Well, you know, the staffing factor there that doesn't account for the issues we've never gotten to from the past.

Um so we do very well with what we have, but it it is costly, and like I said earlier, we want to make sure we are, you know, we're the stewards of the taxpayers' money and how we can make this happen and still keep it fiscally responsible.

Right.

It's just like man in a ship.

Um so I I understand the philosophy.

I just not sure I understand the numbers.

And I'd just add, I think the public safety committee had a a good briefing on this at Auto Roman Odious reminded me I need to go back and watch because I I'm in the same boat as you.

All right.

Um you mentioned overtime.

Uh how much does this budget schedule?

How many hours of overtime are you planning on in this budget?

2.1 million dollars worth.

So we are very conservative when it comes to those estimates, but we take an average.

Um every pay we're paying about 86,000 in overtime to staff our units uh and in overtime, and that that's what this projection goes to.

As for hours, we would have to I'd have to get back to you and try to figure out how many hours that actually equates, but that's what it uh it boils down to.

And we we look at the average, uh, we talk to our finance person, uh they've increased it.

If if you go back and look at over the years, it's gonna look like the overtime budget is increased significantly, and it's because finance and the council are actually budgeting it the way it is, because what would happen before is they'd move money out of salaries or they move money out of benefits and find money somewhere else to cover it, because we have to cover that.

And there's always that equation of you know, where's that breaking point between it?

Where is it cheaper to pay overtime compared to hiring new people?

But you see, you know, our salaries all salaries and benefits as it is.

So um caprice on our budget analyst.

Does that um the peak unit that you're adding won't want it reduced some of your overtime?

No.

Okay.

Because we're we're adding additional people, and that we're actually increasing the minimum staffing for 12 hours of the day.

So it will not, but having those people on board and not out sick and injured should event should hopefully keep it consistent.

Yeah.

So uh I'm fine with measuring it in dollars, not hours.

That's the way you measure it, it makes a whole lot more sense.

So don't please don't get me hours.

Um, but I would like to get some more visibility as we go through on managing to overtime.

Not that I'm my goal is zero.

I hear you that you know, sometimes for numerous reasons, but I would like to see some visibility on managing to overtime.

Okay, that that's fine.

We can get it.

I mean, we can break it down to you and tell you that you know the majority of our overtime is called by sick leave because people aren't working, and that's that's causing us because of the minimum staffing.

And any time we have a special event, uh, we're bringing additional people in the city of Annapolis.

So I I can't reduce the number of people working and just go detail them too.

We're actually increasing our risk factor.

So any special event we do is it's done on overtime.

Got it.

Okay.

Um and then I think I have one final question, um, which is uh the fire boat.

So does the new fireboat replace the old fireboat?

Yes.

So the city will have one continue to have one fireboat.

One fireboat, yes.

And and it be down there uh at South Annapolis or at uh yes, in Eastport, right outside Eastport Bridge there.

Uh I think it's got to move one slip over because it's a little longer, and uh the slip their ends pretty tight with the sailing center being there, and especially when they're doing their events and there's a little sailboats are out there, we're trying to get out on an emergency call, they still have the right of way because they're under sale, and but yes, it's uh still gonna be there.

And I will tell you that partnership that we have with the marina there is is a very good one because we don't pay a lot of money slip.

Okay, and and do you find that one fire boat for the city of Annapolis to be adequate?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

We would not our risk factors are there because of the number of marinas.

We have like 500 miles of shoreline in the city of Annapolis.

Uh it's amazing.

So our risk factors are high, but yeah, I I would not recommend uh needing an additional fire boat.

And the fireboats cross staff, so it's not like we have a crew that's assigned to the fireboat 24 hours a day.

It's the the company from Eastport when they have to be available in quarters.

If they get a boat call, they respond to the boat, and you know they take the boat out that way.

Um so there are three primary boats in Antarctica County.

And Ronald has two of them.

One that's at uh Sandy Point State Park, and one of them is in Shady Side and in our boat.

And all three boats, when there's a uh any incident on the water, all three boats are dispatched to all those calls.

So we we have an incident on the water in the city, we have two county boats coming in to assist us also.

And vice versa.

So you and vice versa.

And they have four or five people that are assigned to their boats when they take those boats out.

Now, those boats are a little larger than ours.

They they have 50 foot boats.

Okay, thank you very much, Chief.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Just following up on that same line.

How long does it take Anorondo County's fire boat to get here from Shady Side?

That seems like it's a long time, right?

Any response on the water is a long time.

And if Alderman Arnett was here, he would tell you that you know it takes us 15 minutes or so to get around from Spa Creek to a call on Back Creek, which is a lot of uh our call area there.

So it takes us a while because it's not like the you can respond and state law allows you to go faster than the speed limit for an emergency response vehicle on the water, is not necessarily the same rules.

And if you create a wake and we have a lot of sailboats in the city that you do something that arms their boats, uh that's a liability for us.

So it takes our crews a little bit of time just to get out from the slip to the Severn River.

But uh just a month or so ago, they they had a drowning at uh Naval Academy Bridge that we it was our boat that pulled that person out of the water.

That person is still alive today.

Uh so it's a very good resource.

And as you all know, uh we have a lot of boaters in the city of Annapolis.

We sell ourselves as a sailing capital of the United States, and uh it's out there, so it's uh it's an issue that we just have to address and we're very proud of.

And our crews do very well with it.

We we have some very competent boat operators and crew.

Not that it's worthwhile to be part of the budget discussion, but I wonder if we shouldn't talk about pursuing state law changes so that you guys can be more effective with that.

It that would address some of those like no wake issues.

So uh yeah, I mean we could look at that, but our boat's so big it it would have it's gotta be in order anyway, so it's not like we can trail her it somewhere and and go you know that way.

There are some smaller boats in the county that are trailered, but uh for the fire boats and and we call it a fire boat, but it's a rescue boat.

It's the majority of their calls are just like everything else.

It's an EMS calls or a boat taken on water where there's people going in the water.

Um, so the fire fighting aspect of it is just like our structure fires, it's low, but it's it's we've got to have that capability.

Yeah, yeah.

I and it's state of the art.

I don't want to I don't want to spend too much time on it.

No, we're good.

But um I had another question about the soft openings, and I'm glad Otterman Thorpe already asked about it.

But mine is how can the benchmark for that be zero?

Shouldn't we always obviously we don't want people getting hurt, but people are always gonna be out on paternity leave, right?

Shouldn't we give you guys a more attainable benchmark for that?

Yeah, or that when we had to set a benchmark, obviously we'd like it to be that everybody's at work, but yeah, you're right.

That is probably not realistic.

Um maternity leave, we we have several female firefighters in the Annapolis fire department, and uh, you know, the maternity leave is an extended period of time for them because they I now I've had some young ladies that have worked up until just before that are actually riding fire engines and medic units.

You know, it's not up to me to say as long as they're doctors are good, but uh typically they are out of commission for for a while until they come back, but with that very good.

Just for my um knowledge, the three cancer cases are those the same folks from one year to the other, or are we having three new ones?

These are these are three current employees that have been diagnosed and are seeking treatment or have been known with our workers' comp that they have cancer.

Gotcha, thank you.

But it is the same three.

Yeah.

What do you think leads to the pretty big jump between FY25 and FY26 in the time for the first alarm assignment on scene?

We went from like five minutes to six and a half minutes.

So it all varies on where that incident is.

Just so if we can if we have more incidents down the Edgewood Road corridor, it takes us a little longer to get there.

So when I say we have 25 people working every day, I need 15.

That that calculation there is 15 people, but that is that encompasses our mutual aid assignments because we get a structure fire and save.

You know, I don't have enough people.

We we send 25 people to an incident.

So we don't have enough people working if all our units were available, plus a majority of them are on medic units.

So uh it's just happens to be where those calls were at the time.

Um yeah, and I imagine those are relatively rare, and so you're having a lot more variation.

And it is, and it's that is a full structure assignment, so the numbers aren't significant, or yeah, we're talking probably 40 to 60 calls type thing.

Um just moving along.

So in the police department, we calculate the vacancy savings, the how much they consistently underspend because they're not fully staffed or people are out or whatever.

We don't have a line item like that within fire, do we?

There is not a line item, and I don't uh that's been a very hot topic for your fire chief.

They call it attrition, but uh which you can find in for us, especially as long as it takes us to get people on board, our attrition rate was very slow.

Our budget, and that's also part of the increases you see every year.

Our budget always had this attrition rate in it that we could never meet.

Uh, unlike the police department, we I tend to try to be at full staffing at all times because you see how much, even with what we have with our overtime budget is.

So our attrition rate is not there.

And uh while we have some current vacancies, we're getting ready to fill those, and that's just occurred over the last couple months.

And definitely let me take the opportunity to commend you on that because I think it it's uh been such a challenge for police, and it's easy to not have the problem with you guys and not mention it, but uh clearly it is the result of some important work.

Uh under contract services, you guys have one that's just labeled special services.

Can somebody explain to me whether you or or Miss Turner explain to me what that's about?

32,400.

Yeah, that um that's just uh encompasses a lot of smaller uh items that fall into contract services.

Um you would have to pull it up.

So I I can get it back to you and tell you exactly what it is because that's that's just the amount that we have set aside to cover uh other issues that come up and it's stuff we use every year, but that that line item uh comes down every year to basically zero.

But I think that's we can give you what it is.

It's just that because there were so many small small items in there that weren't like the 6500 maintenance agreement for the radios and that type of stuff that uh we just put it all under special services.

But I can we'll provide you a list, I'll send it to you.

I think Ms.

Turner's probably got it.

Um various uh special services, contract fees including critical um incident stress management support, confidential storage fees, um, storage overhead speakers, dispatch equipment, et cetera.

Great.

And and I think it's good that we make sure departments have that agility to be able to fund what you need.

I just like to know what they are.

Um could we go back to this this new contract position?

And you explained it, but could you explain it like I'm you know, two or three grade levels lower?

Currently I have a supervisor that was assigned to the training division as our EMS trainer.

Uh and as you 75% of what we do is EMS.

We are taking on new programs within our EMS division.

So we're gonna start running uh with a whole blood program.

So we're gonna actually be giving blood in the field, what and we'll be one of very few in the state of Maryland, five, I believe, in the state of Maryland, and one very few across the United States.

Uh, we have an RSI program, which is an advanced airway program where we basically you basically paralyze the patient to do the airway because they're clenched down and stuff.

So uh the training that goes along with all that is very important.

I had one supervisor who had that training who was on day work.

Uh the day work assignment is not as enticing as our shift work assignments.

Our shift work assignments, they work one day, they're all three uh because of the call volume.

I just don't have a lot of people that other supervisors that have that certification, and because it's hard to get people to are willing to come to day work, and it's one of those situations where hey, yeah, if you take the promotion, you gotta go to day work.

While they're doing a good job there, they don't want to be there, they're always looking at how they can transfer out type of thing.

This will allow us to bring in a person whose job is that, and I don't have to worry about well, they want to go ride a fire engine or they want to go be a supervisor in a station because this is their primary function, and they will come in with the they'll be a paramedic, they'll be able to respond to calls if we need them to, but they'll be able to handle all of our EMS training, track our EMS training.

Our medics have to be recertified every two years, our national registry EMTs have to be recertified every two years, our Maryland EMTs have to be recertified every three years to take care of all their certifications, uh, and that'll just allow us to bring that person in and put them in there.

And I think that is the way we need to be in the future is to keep that as a specific position in there instead of just somebody getting promoted and put them in there, tell them you got to get you got to take this on.

Thank you.

I I understand now, I appreciate that.

Um this is really a question for the finance director, but it seems to me like the EMS billing should be included.

It seems very analogous to me to the revenue.

I mean, seems very analogous to me to like our speed camera program where we're putting in more speed cameras.

We already have some speed cameras, we can just kind of multiply it out by how many more we're we're gonna have.

Why was the decision made to not include that revenue projection in the budget?

Are you talking about with the new peak medic unit?

Yeah, with the new peak medic unit.

Um I believe the decision was that we needed to figure out when we were gonna get it, when we're gonna have the people and staff.

It's more not about wanting to include a projection as much as it's a timing thing, and so we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we're relying on revenue to offset something and then ultimately creating a factor.

So I think there's probably more tied to a first year implementation than anything else.

That actually makes total sense to me.

Yeah, if we knew that on July 1, we were going to have these people start, we could do that.

The uncertainty is not in how much money the peak medic unit will generate, it is in when we'll actually have it on the road, right?

Okay, that makes a lot more sense to me.

Uh speaking of which is how do you feel about the ability to recruit for that peak time medic unit?

Are we going to be able to fill it pretty quickly after we staff it?

What do you what's your assessment?

I know it's hard to guess.

I believe we will be able to, but we are taking a new endeavor for the Annapolis Fire Department and looking at some paramedic only positions that are not cross-trained firefighters.

Concept within the Annapolis Fire Department.

And I don't know if I've told you this, but what I told the public safety committee is there's two things you need to know about firefighters.

They don't like change and they don't like the way things are.

So that about the public new adventure.

Um we know that there's a core group of individuals out there that don't want to be firefighters but want to be paramedics.

So we believe we will be able to fill that with the EMS only positions.

Um, and we are looking at that also these AMS only positions to be able to get us some additional paramedics out in the field for not only the peak time medic unit for our paramedic units.

Uh so that that core group there.

Our job announcement that we had opening that we're getting ready to fill off were laterals, so they had to be firefighters and EMTs already.

They have to go on through a career fire school, uh, work for a career fire department in the last three years.

And we only have out of everybody on that list, I think there's only one or two that are actually paramedics.

So we are hoping that this new endeavor of paramedic only will allow us to pick up some additional people that uh just want to do that.

But we also have to make that career ladder that you all went through with this whole thing.

So we're we're making a career ladder for paramedics because if they're not cross-trained, they don't have the ability to transfer to the fire side or they don't have the ability to necessarily go work on a fire engine or another area there.

So we want it to be some job advancement there and opportunities for them to become supervisors, and we're we're setting that whole program up now currently.

So we do believe we'll be able to fill it.

That's really interesting, and I appreciate that innovative thinking.

If we go to the revenue slide, there's a big jump in EMS billing revenues between FY23 and FY24.

What caused that and how do we do it again?

So FY23 was the first year that I believe we could do the ESPP, which brought in additional and it was a partial year.

Um I'm not exactly sure why the actual was down to 972 in EMS billing, but as you can see, the last couple of years have been very um they average out basically where we thought they would be, and then our EMS billing company does everything they can to assure that we are getting that income.

Uh I don't know the exact reason why that's low.

It's that actually seems low to me too, because we've been pretty consistent over the years and been very happy with our our EMS billing company.

Now there is changes being made to Medicare and Medicaid that could reflect the amount of money that we're able to get.

And um, we're watching that closely and how that all plays factor with the federal government.

Yeah, yeah, that actually is a great transition to another question I had for you about grants and any worry about loss of potential federal grants.

Is that something you guys are looking at?

We had uh applied for a couple federal grants that that we were able to to try to do some stuff for the staffing to uh the safer grant and stuff.

We have not received that grant in the last couple of years.

I didn't see many departments in the state of Maryland that got the safer grant this year from the federal government.

I have concerns, but we don't rely heavily on grants like the other agencies in the city because we we always know the fire the amount of grants for the fire department has been low anyway, so it's not like OEM in the police department where they're so we don't rely on it, any grants that we we get.

We just figure that is uh a bonus to the city.

Uh we will continue to actively go after those.

There's some equipment grants out there, and if uh the mayor and the council decide, hey, we should look at the safer grant to try to do some stuff, we'll we'll continue to do that.

But while we have concerns about the grants not coming in, it's more the UASC grants that's comes through OEM because that helps us fund some of our hazmat unit, some of our bomb squad stuff.

Uh, and Chief Simmons, Director Simmons and his group continue to monitor that and and work well.

Uh thank you.

That leads me to one of my last questions, which is about the safer grant.

So it sounds like you're saying that in this budget we are not authorizing you guys to apply for the safer grant again and add more staff within this fiscal year.

Is that correct?

So we had requested that is to be able to apply for that, um, not knowing that's why we we put in for the the so the peak time medic unit can't come out of the safer grant because it's medical unit.

Um so we did asked to apply for it and know that if by chance we are allowed to apply for it and we get it, we have to come back for the council to make sure it's appropriate.

So the the only thing that's in the budget is the ability to apply for the safer grant, but nothing else.

We we would not move forward without council approval because that's that's a significant undertaking and uh it's changed over the years.

It went from a 100% two-year grant to now it's a three-year grant, but it's like 65, 65.

And it's been five years.

85 or and it's been five grants, so it changes every year.

So we really have to look at that to see if it's something that's feasible for the city.

Got it.

Ms.

Turney, you have something to add?

Yeah, I was just gonna clarify what um Chief just said.

Um historically we would build the grant within to their budget, but we did not do that for FY27.

So if we do receive the grant, then we'll come to you with an essay for it.

Got it.

I mean, well, it it's included in um so if it if it's less than or over than what we've put in for FY27, we would have to come to you.

Um if it if it does not, then it's already in, but we'll adjust it in the general fund.

Yes, makes perfect sense.

Thank you.

Uh my last question is about you were talking about adding units uh in overtime for special events.

And it kind of strikes me as it's like you were talking about with the fire boat, where obviously we are seeing elevated risk in those uh situations, but what is our metric by which we might, and I'm not saying this definitely, but I want to know that there's a possibility by which we might say, okay, we had elevated risk potential, but we're not actually seeing that need either for all the events or for certain ones, like maybe we get heat exhaustion for summer ones, and we don't in winter ones.

Under how are we measuring to know if there are any circumstances in which we do not need that elevated staffing for special events?

So I can tell you that, and I'll let Chief Wortley jump in.

We evaluate every permit that comes in for special events.

The majority of them we do not provide EMS or fire services for.

Even when they ask us to, well, we want a medical tent.

Well, we don't provide medical tents anyway.

We'll provide bike medics, but we don't provide a tent where if they want to do a medical tent, they've got to do something on their own, and we'll provide transport units.

But we have a matrix within our department where we look at the estimated crowd, the uh event itself and the potential there for terrorists type of incident, and uh we go from from there and determine whether or not so but like every every large race in the city of Annapolis, um, ever since the bombings and some of the races the bomb squads there with EMS transport units.

So we evaluate each and every one of them.

We can tell you how much we've spent for every special event, uh, every large event at the academy.

You know, we're we're providing uh bomb squad hazmat support for those type of events also.

So um and like the croquet match at the college.

But at least half of those are being they're those they're being built for it.

Right.

So the ones that aren't being built for the the city sponsored events or the ones that have been waived.

Yeah, no, that thank you.

That's actually the answer I wanted to hear.

I must have misheard you earlier.

I thought you said for all of them, but I must have just misheard that.

So that's for every special event that we get involved in, but it's not every special event in the city of Annapolis.

And just uh take it one step farther, whether they're being billed for it or not, we actually send our calculations to the mayor's office special events person, what and you know, then it goes to finance and they did they determine which ones go.

But for every time we actually staff something special, uh we send that down so that it is recorded.

That's great.

I got one more question, but it's a little one.

I'm gonna put it in the follow-up.

Uh Auto Roman Conte, did you have any questions you want to ask?

Oh, either of my colleagues left or right?

I I do.

I just have one more question, and that deals I thought about your your comment about the time for the first alarm assignment on the scene going from five minutes and 20 504 and 25 to 643.

And did I understand you right to say that that's affected by the fact that if you respond to uh emergencies outside the city limits, obviously the farther adds the time.

So these these times here are only for calls in the city of Annapolis.

We don't we don't calculate because we're responding to mutual aid, and that's Antarena County's issue.

So that's just for calls in the city, but it it varies because this year the call, all those the major incidents may be closer to a firehouse, which it might be closer, but it it encompasses all those outside resources that are coming in too, so that I get 15 people on a scene.

So it depends on who's available, who's responding who's on other calls.

Uh but that matrix of being that six minutes is well within the national guidelines, and and we see it fluctuate anywhere between that five to six minute time period.

Uh we are not concerned with that at all.

We just that happens that uh if you looked at our fire loss calculations this year.

Last year we were very lucky and only had like six hundred thousand dollars worth of fire loss in the city of Annapolis or something.

This year we're well over two million dollars in the first four months of the year because we've had several significant uh working fires in the city of Annapolis.

So it all varies, it comes in cycles, but our response times we're meeting the guidelines, and I would not be concerned about that that race that's five and six minute thing because we're well within the guidelines.

So I am absolutely convinced when the fire chief says that I don't need to be concerned that I don't need to be concerned.

I but I I am struck though that to go up 25%.

I mean, I think that's something that that I just need to get my arms around as I work through this in the year ahead.

Um, and it sounds to me like there's a whole lot of factors, and I'll I'll work and start listening to some more of your committee meetings and try to get smart on that.

We can go back and look at because we we check we do every month, we we evaluate it and we'll let you know where where it stands currently.

But that is all dependent on where the incident is and what incidents we're having.

That's and like I said, this year we've had significant fires in the first few four months of this this year or so.

Um we're seeing that increase, but it's all cycles.

It comes in cycles all the time.

How many of these are we talking about in this year-to-date figure?

Is it in on the order of five or on the order of 50?

Somewhere between five and fifty.

I we we can go back and look at it.

We can run a report and let you know.

But it's not these, yeah, it's not they're relatively right.

It's not more than 50.

It's it's it's that.

And like I said, these are only calls in our response district.

What was it?

He's just looking at how and this is for this year.

This year to date.

Yeah.

All right, so yeah, except for the website.

I got you.

So that is is for this year to date.

The six, yeah.

Thank you.

So that does make more sense.

But it could go down because we got several months in the year, so as we do that calculation, the average, it's just at the present time, that's that's the current average.

So but but that does make more sense if the denominator is somewhere below 50, and 10 of them happen to be at the far edge of Ward 7 or something, as compared to four doors down from the fire department, the number gets skewed pretty quick.

So I hear you, Chief.

Don't that we shouldn't worry about that.

And I noticed that the first unit arriving on the scene, which goes to more to EMS, is very close.

So okay.

Thank you.

With that, we're at time.

Thank you again so much for being here.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks for answering so many questions.

And uh just uh just another year for you, right, Chief.

Not my first rodeo.

All right, uh, we will recess for eight, or I should say it's our motion to recess until 140.

So all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye, motion carries, or in recess.

Called back to order at 142 p.m.

on April 29th.

Meeting called back to order.

Okay.

Uh all right, Ms.

Burger, floor is yours.

Good afternoon.

I am the acting city attorney, Carrie Berger.

To my right is Karen Steele, our legal assistant, and then to her right is Regina Watkins Eldridge, our city clerk.

How about her?

So what's that?

Ashley.

Oh, I didn't even see her back there.

We have Ashley Leonard sitting.

Do you want to come sit up here too?

Okay.

Because we're on camera, Gino.

All right, so we'll jump right in.

Um so I kind of took the creative approach here with our presentation and not only did accomplishments but also did stats so as to hopefully give you guys a better idea of the more realistic approach to the law office and the things that we do on a daily basis, and then separated it out into the three real core functions of our office.

So beginning with the litigation, since July 1 of 2025, we've investigated approximately 140 claims that have been filed, and that's exclusive of our workers' compensation claims.

I will be honest.

We do that in conjunction with our risk management administrator and then also our third party uh claims administrator.

Um then 20 lawsuits uh have been handled entirely in-house since July 1, 2025.

One has been sort of a mix of in-house and outside counsel, and one has been handled entirely by outside counsel.

I sort of I understand the 20 or 22 looks sort of like a small number.

Um, but I kind of want to make it clear that it's not litigation lawsuits are not just like walking into a courtroom and presenting before a jury.

There's a whole lot of time and effort that goes into it, beginning, you know, at the very beginning of a case where you have the evaluation, you do the strategy, you have client management, you enter into discovery, you do research, you do drafting, you have mediation, uh trial prep, and then trial uh expert management's another thing, and and so there's a lot of of elements that go into a lawsuit.

One of the things that I did about 10 minutes ago, um was pull some numbers for specific cases that that I handled, two cases in particular uh over the last several months.

One of which was a lawsuit that was filed, I think it was like June 30th, so technically in the last fiscal year, but only by one day.

So there was approximately 300, not approximately exactly 389 filings in that case that I had to review, research, respond to, um, and it was about 220 hours of my time was spent on this case.

I will be honest with this one too.

It was a pro se plaintiff, and he really loved using chat GBT, so it was not really the norm, but that doesn't mean that I didn't, you know, spend the time on it, I didn't have to take the time to respond to the several hundred filings.

Karen can attest to it because she's the one that had to download them all and save them on the H drive.

It was it's a very was a very time consuming case, and that's just one case.

The other example that I had is Mr.

Pro Se means overrepresenting themselves.

That's correct, did not have an attorney.

Um, the other case, uh, I calculated the time that I spent in the month prior leading up to trial.

So I had trial last month in March, and it was approximately 110 hours that I spent on trial prep alone and actually being in trial.

And truthfully, I wish I spent more time on it because 110 hours may seem like a lot just for trial prep and trial.

Um, but it was while I was in this capacity as acting city attorney, and I definitely did not feel as prepped as I normally would if I were, you know, as the assistant city attorney.

So that's just to give you guys an idea of how much time we spend on these cases.

So while the number 20 or 21 may look relatively small, the hour spent on each case is going to end up really um accumulating.

So going down to the transactional component of it, you see you do see some big numbers there.

Um drafted negotiated about the 410 documents in DocuSign, and then the remaining documents on there, it's I think it's about 250.

Um all were either drafted, negotiated in some way, uh reviewed for legal sufficiency through our office.

And with the PIA requests that we have here, it was approximately 140, probably a little bit more.

Um, Ashley did a better job of tracking them than I did for the ones that I've handled, but we also had nine email searches that were related to those with several thousand emails each that we've had to go through.

Outside of IT, there's only my understanding, three people in the city that can actually review emails that are pulled from IT, and that's the three attorneys in the office of law right now.

So I think I might currently hold the record of having to review a hundred thousand emails in one search, and it's not a record that I am happy to hold, but it is one that I hold nonetheless.

So even doing things like that, responding to PIA requests, and especially when they have a large amount of documents that have been requested, we still have to review them for legal, um not for legal sufficiency for redaction purposes or to determine whether or not they need to be withheld, and that ends up also uh taking a lot of staff time.

Um lastly, we have the municipal infraction citations.

We processed about 60 of those to uh go through the district court process as a result of violations of our city code.

Moving on to legislation, um, we have successfully made our legislation ADA compliant uh with the legal changes that are actually being enacted a year from now.

So we're we have got an overachiever in our office and our legislative and policy analyst, and she made sure that all of it is is um web accessible to be compliant with the ADA, and all of our old legislation has now been digitized, and it's a lot easier to locate and review, at least from 1980 and 1999 to 1994.

She's working on doing 1995 onward.

Uh there were about 150 bills that were drafted since July 1, 55 of those were adopted, and then 95 either failed, were withdrawn, or never introduced.

And so, again, as you guys are fully aware, since you work with our office uh frequently, it's you know a matter of making the legislative request, having it drafted, having it reviewed for legal sufficiency.

It's it's there's a lot of work that goes into producing legislation.

Now for the city clerk component, um, which I think is a pretty underrated function, and I'm not just saying that because I have two city clerks sitting up here and I'm outnumbered.

Um they are well, starting off with the administration of the 2025 municipal election went without a hitch in large part thanks to Regina and Caitlin and Cindy and Ashley in the back there.

Um and when it comes to legislation, they're sort of like the air traffic controllers for legislation.

Um you have you guys, the policymakers, you're the ones that obviously make the policy, then that policy is reviewed for legal sufficiency by the lawyers, and then the clerks are the ones that ensure not only are the public notice requirements being met, but they're also making sure that the legislation itself is is properly documented and procedurally sound.

And so to that end, they have attended and recorded the minutes for the 24 city council meetings and work sessions, and then 66 standing committees all since July 1st.

Moving on to the the liquor license component of the clerk's office, you can see the numbers there that since July 1, there's been 857 applications for some form of liquor license, whether it's sidewalk cafe license, one-day liquor license, um, it's a pretty big number.

And the total revenue and realistically kind of the only revenue that the Office of Law brings in is projected to be the 5400 7,000 dollars.

All right, so performance measures.

Sort of is in a I'm sort of in a unique position here because I'm not the one that created these performance measures.

Um, and you're probably wondering why there's one that's been sort of altered, and I'll explain it when I get to it.

Um but these are relatively standard and you know, first performance measure, the amount of time it takes to respond to a request for legal advice or conduct legal review.

We want our at least an acknowledgement or response uh to be sent to the requester within 48 hours, and then completion of whatever that request is within two weeks.

That may fluctuate given uh the complexity of the request, and the same for the average number of days for the between the a legislative request that comes in and the final draft to sponsor.

Now, I believe the benchmark initially said within 30 days there would be the production of a draft or final draft of legislation that's legally sufficient or um and error-free.

I changed it to reasonable time because again, depending on the complexity of a request, 30 days may be either too much time or too little time.

Um, for example, there's a piece of legislation that I came across from I think 2002 is years ago that was 336 pages long.

I don't think anyone really reasonably would expect a bill that large to be drafted and error-free and legally sufficient within 30 days.

So that reasonable time is why I kind of unilaterally made that change.

Um for the third performance measure, what was part of the resolution that was passed last year is that strike through language.

And then I added the italics part because I don't think it's really a proper performance measure to base the benchmark and our success on how the rulings are made by a judge or a jury.

I look at it more as um we're trying to reduce the possibility of a liability situation facing the city.

Meaning, you know, we it's our preference to prevent the fire from starting in the first place rather than having to put the fire out.

Uh way I look at it, it's a lot easier to fix a draft than it is like, and it's a lot cheaper actually to fix a draft than it is to defend a lawsuit.

So what that really means is it we shouldn't be so reliant on rulings because you never know what kind of ruling you may get.

You may get a judge that's in a bad mood, you may get a jury that's you know emotional or fickle.

Um, the law may not be on our side, the facts may not be on our side.

So we want to prevent those exposures and to the best of our ability, and whether that's sort of analyzing trends, are there certain you know, trip and falls that are becoming more prevalent because it's the a lot of loose bricks or sidewalk or um can't speak in my language, um, or like you know, the manhole covers and things like that.

And if we start noticing some of those claims that come in, then taking action there to prevent more of those claims uh being generated, if that makes sense.

Um, and then the remaining ones are you know, just making sure that everything that is public facing, every materials, whether it's the final legislation, whether it's um anything publicly posted online is error-free.

And um including M MPIA requests or responses to those requests, making sure we're providing all the documents that are requested and in doing so with the proper redactions and withholdings, and then the last is you know, uh properly staffing our boards, commissions, standing committee meetings, city council meetings.

As you guys are aware right now, there's only three lawyers in the office of law, and so we're you know spread out pretty thin, but uh we're doing our best to make sure that you know, if there's a request for us to be in attendance at a standing committee meeting, um, we will be there, or you know, if there's any sort of prior to any requests for legal advice, we are absolutely be giving that.

All right, so our enhancements hopefully are not going to stress anyone out too much because it's relatively small and it's included in the budget.

Um, so please don't remove it.

So, what this really means is our access to legal research databases is not as comprehensive as it could be, and it puts us in a position to have to sort of do either manual research or rely on outdated materials.

And I don't think anyone wants us to be using Google.

So we don't want to be using Google.

So we're just trying to expand that database and allow for the ability to conduct more thorough and deeper research.

And in this uh particular subscription is labor and employment related topics.

So, and and that you know, as you guys probably heard from HR, there's changes to the federal law.

Um, and so keeping up with those trends, keeping up with those authorities that are kind of all ever evolving.

This helps us stay on top of that so that we're not in a position where we could miss something, and and when it comes to the law, when it comes to you know uh being successful in a case, one minor factor, one slight change in the case law could make or break a case.

So this just helps us stay on top of the research and the evolution of a lot of our labor and employment related um matters.

Budget trends.

Um I don't know how much explanation you all expect from this, but we do have a little asterisk uh under supplies and other for fiscal year 27.

That drop down from about 20 grand is is just because those funds are now being moved over to our ITS department for I think telephone and copier and um software subscription, thank you, expenses.

And this is just a breakdown of to provide some examples of our expenses and elections.

Um this isn't here to show you guys the real the discrepancy between our budgets on in the two years where we're heavily working on elections versus the downtime, those two years where there is a jump in expenses from 2021 election to 2025 in about 220 grand, and I believe that that number is only gonna get much higher, right, Regina.

Um I think that's what the state board of elections presented to the council that we can expect a significantly higher amount above the 220 um at our next municipal election if we continue.

Uh again, like I said before, here's our only revenue that we bring into the office of law, and that's through liquor licenses.

Um, our liquor license fees have not changed in quite some time, but still do bring in about 500 to 550,000 dollars relatively consistently over the years.

Keep going, I think.

Perfect time.

All right.

Uh I don't have any clarifying questions.

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

Great, thank you.

I have one question about the uh on slide 10.

It talks about special projects assigned by the mayor or city manager.

Can you discuss like what kind of special projects fall under that line item?

So I'll pass them like to Karen after this, but my understanding is these are these are the special projects that the mayor has asked that the office of law to undertake, whether that was doing um some research into real estate survey things of that nature.

I don't know if you have anything specific.

Title searches, easements things.

And so that's where for us, I think it's showing up as under supplies and other special programs.

Is that what we're talking about?

It's under uh on slide 10 special projects at the bottom.

It says special projects, but it's really in our special programs um account.

It what it started in special program um special projects um as one time funding, and then I think the second year or third year was moved to special programs because it was no longer one time.

All right, there's a couple of other departments that have special projects.

Are all these all under one special project line item or a separate by department?

Every department that um has funding using any anything that's using one time funding is in their special projects account.

Every department has this account, it may have funding in it, it may not.

That's based off of if they have one time fund usage, or does that funding come what line item does that funding come out of?

What pocket of money one time usage?

Correct.

No, but I think for us we're seeing it out of supplies and other.

I think that's what you're I get what you're saying.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood.

Supplies and other is the category roll up, the actual account name name.

The name of the actual account is special projects, but the the bud the way that budget does it, we roll up those accounts into categories, and the category is supplies and others.

You're welcome.

Question about a little bit talked over the about the contractual services and the 141 could that special I almost said special need.

Um special category attorney for a specific case that city attorneys don't have familiarization with yeah.

So an example of it which is ongoing right now is um collective bargaining.

So we have retained outside counsel to represent the city and all for collective bargaining negotiation.

So um that falls under that category.

We also will use it for um uh administrative boards and commissions, especially in in instances where we have one of the attorneys that is representing the department, and then you need an attorney representing the board.

So with you know, uh Board of Appeals, Planning Commission, Building Board of Appeals, we have outside counsel who advises the board in those regards.

All right, the 141 is pretty consistent.

It's the last year, this year.

I mean it went down a little bit in 2025, apparently, but yeah, I think generally it's been about well, I think yes, it and the thing the thing that makes it difficult to really pinpoint is obviously you don't know what how far the legal services that you're in and need are.

So, for example, with collective bargaining, we can't guarantee that you know it's only we're gonna meet for a certain amount of hours, and we're gonna be using that attorney for a certain amount of hours at that hourly rate because it all depends on how negotiations are flowing and how how it's progressing.

So it's hard to sort of be able to give a specific number and be accurate on that, but we try our best.

I think the starter has some addition too.

Yes, and from a budget standpoint, we only budget when we um our in union negotiations, so there's a line item in there for negotiations that we add budget to.

Um, when we're in a fiscal year where we're going to negotiations, we add it to the budget.

When we're not, it's not in the budget.

So you that's the trend you'll see that rolls up in that category as well.

That's not coming from the law office, that's coming from yeah.

I think it's the legislative aid position is um in the city manager's office.

Initially, we had talked about it coming through your office, but that's we're on the council.

I was not the city attorney at time, so I'll take your word for it.

All right.

Um, those are my questions at this time.

I had a couple other ones, but they're not as we can come back to them if you want.

We're final time.

Audible Thorpe.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um if I could uh so if I could refer you to the actual budget document with a couple specific questions and and I'm just trying to understand the budget uh input, not trying to re look at the performance metrics.

But the the first performance measure is average number of hours to respond to an initial request for service.

In the last two years, the number has been 24.

But the benchmark and the proposed is 48.

And then the sec then the next one has the same situation.

Average number of days between request and final draft benchmarks 30.

25 was 6.75, 26 is five, but the proposed is 30.

Is there an explanation for that?

So I can only kind of give a half an explanation because the performance measures were not done by me, they were done by the former city attorney.

Um, and I sort of explained that I changed the 30 days to reasonable time on this for this purposes of this presentation.

Um 30 days being too much of a variable that we can't guarantee based on the requests that come in.

Uh so I can't really explain why the prior performance measures were written the way that they were and for FY25 actual, why those numbers were reached.

I can only really provide an explanation as to like the numbers provided in the FY26 end of year, that some of which were a guesstimation because I came in halfway through at the fiscal year when I took over.

And so I can't.

Okay.

Um then the last the last one, and this is a blank, but I just want to draw your attention to it.

Uh, because it my take is time for you is money.

So how to reduce unnecessary requirements, how to have the tools in order to save time, uh, when technology can come into account or something like that.

But there's a performance measure, number of meetings, staff and council not present if requested and or required.

And the fiscal year 25 actual is 95.5%.

I think it's backwards.

Again, that's one of the ones if you'll notice on the PowerPoint.

I changed it because the way that it was written was confusing.

Um I can tell you as as a staff attorney at the time that this was all happening, very rarely was there an instance where there wasn't whether it was a staff attorney or because our office also has three liaisons to the boards and commissions, in addition to to case um that very rarely was there not an attorney or the staff liaison present and or available to assist that body.

Okay, thank you.

And on that note, as we go forward, I think it's incredibly important that we measure that uh input metric.

Um because you are a perfect example, and your department's a perfect example of the better you do, the more you'll be in demand, and we could easily wake up in the morning and find out that your requests, requirements, obligations have grown by 20 percent.

So I appreciate you tracking that.

Um let me shift course a little bit um and ask an information question.

140 PIA requests.

Is there a limit to the to the amount of effort that you are required to go to before charging a request, a PIA request?

So we have to do the first two hours for searching and reviewing free.

Um you can sort of do a baseline, I'll I'll use an easy example, a police report.

So you can charge for the police report itself.

Um, but first two hours of of searching for it have to be free, and then after that two-hour mark, you can start charging a certain fee per hour.

And what is the policy of the city of Annapolis for the third, fourth, and fifth?

It depends on the record.

So in our fee schedule, we have it outlined as to you know, for body worn camera footage.

It's it's a certain amount per minute.

Same with our 911 calls.

Um, and so it depends on what's being requested.

Some of like some and one of our suggested changes for the fee schedule is to actually change the hourly rate for staff time that goes into reviewing and for redacting and making it the hourly rate of the employee rather than that flat, which I think is like $30 an hour, regardless of the employee.

So that would probably result in an increase in some revenue to recoup time essentially.

When you say suggested, is that in the mayor's fee schedule is proposed?

I so we submitted a request, and I am not did it end up okay.

So yeah, thank you.

Uh between now and the time that we look at the fee schedule, just make sure that you're good with that, because again, your time is money.

And so while I'm very much into a transparent government, um, as I think we all are, there's also a cost to that.

And if the laws state that there's a cost, I want to make sure you're comfortable with those costs if you could check those for me.

Yep.

Thank you.

Um I see the addition of Nexus Lexus is great.

Where would I find that $3,000 in the budget?

Yes.

I got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um and then a broad general question.

Do you feel do you think you have the right amount of technology and the authorities to use the technology in order to conserve your time in order to do other things?

The obvious example, and I don't need you to address whether you do this or not, but nowadays minutes can be taken electronically, and the person just reviews it rather than then writes it.

Again, not worried whether you do that specifically, but do you feel you have the tools and the authorities in place to save time where you could save time, or is there something that the city council could do for you that would provide you more time in order to spend time on more important and more and things that you're trained for?

I mean, we could always say more technology is better, more money is better, and and things of that nature.

So sure, yes, absolutely.

But with that said, what we have now is manageable and um is not I don't believe that it's putting us at a disadvantage or putting us so far behind in terms of time spent on doing legal research on something.

Um, but I also attribute that to us being efficient at our jobs and and those that are doing the legal research have been practicing law for uh you know at least 12 years, so um at a minimum, and so it it's not a situation where you have like a brand new lawyer who's just learning how to research and it's gonna take them a lot longer to do what would take us a lot less time.

We would love to have the most expansive databases and and abilities to do our jobs, but what we have right now is not prohibitive in any way either.

All right, but I'm not gonna lay off that easy.

If there is something that you think that we could provide to you that you don't have that's reasonable, right?

But but I but I would ask you to to add that to the list of things that we need to work.

Um if there's not, there's not.

I totally understand that as an answer, but I don't want to let you off the hook to say there's a whole lot of things I'm just not gonna ask you for.

So I think we owe that to you.

So because one of them is that's a follow-up.

Is what that's a follow-up, right?

Right.

Um that make sense?

It does.

Okay.

And then the last thing is elections.

And uh with the fear of uh causing Ms.

Regina to flinch a little bit.

When we're sitting here next year doing this budget effort, we will be budgeting money for the following election, because we'll be two years out.

Um I don't know if this is a statement or a question.

Maybe it's a question.

Are we planning on doing the deep dive into the future of elections in the next 12 months so that you have the tools in place, financial tool money as well as tools that you need to buy in place in advance for the following election in the next 12 months?

Either one.

Yeah, so so that's more a question for the mayor than the administration because as you guys are aware, there have been discussions about whether to continue on this election cycle or to jump on to uh the other two.

Yeah, so that's more a question for the mayor than the administration because as you guys are aware, there have been discussions about whether to continue on this election cycle or to jump on to the other two.

So I think that decision making needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Um and then once that decision's been made, the next steps can be planned out as to time, effort, resources, things of that nature.

I'm happy to also throw in my answer to that if you want, which is that I've been talking a bunch with the chair of the rules committee, who also is a former chair of the elections board about getting more resources to the election board.

Because they only have three people for all the work they do.

And our philosophy has been we got to get them to have more people so then they can do that work of rethinking how we could make our elections better.

Yeah.

I think that's a good answer to a different question, though.

Okay, sure.

Um that uh and I it is the mayor's decision, got that good point, but I think it's you all that are gonna drive that decision in the next 12 months as to what our way forward is, and I would ask you to spend some attention on that, which you probably already are.

Um, but I just wanted to get the shocker statement out that next year's budget is when we'll be talking about it.

So as we think about it.

Yeah, I'm confident that Regina will not let people forget about it.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Sure, and I'll just say on that topic.

I mean, we're kind of in this weird gray area right now where we're not fully run by the the county, but we're also not fully running it ourselves.

We we're relying on them as our contractors.

So to the extent that we're thinking about other options, I think one option is go far in the direction of have them run everything.

I'd also like to know what the cost is in the other direction of have us run everything, of us get our uh materials.

So not a this year issue, but I'm just well, I think that they did sort of speak to that when they came in for committee.

You would speak up just a little bit more.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

There was uh there was that whole um I think it was close to half a million dollars that they estimated it would cost to run the election, which is about what we're spending, right?

Yeah, cool.

Thank you.

We can follow up on that in the FY28 budget hearings.

All right.

Uh I wanted to start by saying how much I liked what you had to say about changing that performance metric to because it was like in my head, it's it's an output, it's not the outcome we really want to measure.

If I'm gonna be nitpicky about language, I think we want to reduce the amount of payouts rather than the number, like total amount.

Yep, I hear you.

Totally love what you're the direction you're going on there.

Uh uh when you said there are three attorneys in the office of law right now.

Do you mean there's three assistant city attorneys plus the acting city attorney?

So four, or we have me as the acting city attorney and then two other assistant city attorneys.

That being said, the new city attorney starts next week.

So beginning next week, we'll have the city attorney and then three assistant city attorneys.

We did have you're making a face, so we did have an attorney recently resign.

Okay.

Um so yeah, we're down to attorneys currently.

Thank you.

That's I had missed that news.

Uh the salaries and benefits, actually, just the salaries line item is higher in FY26 projected than in our adjusted budget.

Oh, I see Ms.

Turner jumping in on this one.

What's going on there?

Um, for the two severance payouts as well as acting pay.

Uh wait, so two severance payouts.

So one with the former city attorney, I take it.

Well, maybe you can't tell me specifically.

I I'll not ask that in public session.

Uh, but basically you're saying it's because we had to make severance payouts.

Yes.

Okay, got it.

Back to elections.

If God forbid I were to drop that tomorrow, we had to have a special election.

Do we have money put talk about really making the city clerk cringe?

Uh, do we have money put aside for that?

Where would if we had to have a special election, where would that money come from?

Probably a question for the finance director over there.

Uh we'd have to find it.

Right.

I mean, by code, you would have to have a special election.

Right.

We're still in that time frame.

So we would have to find the money somewhere.

Okay.

Got it.

For FY27.

Where we were able to do that.

Yeah, I guess.

It could even be FY26 if you said tomorrow.

Capri Capri wanted on me to clarify.

Uh if it was for 27, we would make an amendment now.

If it was 27, we would find funded, but most most of the time it's the contingency funding that we add to the budget.

Um, but we would find funding for it.

Got it.

Thank you.

Uh okay, a couple of questions for the clerk's office.

Uh are sidewalk cafe, are liquor licenses included in sidewalk cafe licenses?

Yeah.

So okay, so it's not two separate things that you have to do.

Speak in the microphone, please.

I'm clerks are not supposed to speak, so this is new to me.

Um we um we renew every year the um liquor licenses and the sidewalk cafes as a part of the liquor license premises.

Got it.

Okay, so it's also it's one application as far as the applicancies.

No, it's two applications, yes, because some uh establishments do not um have sidewalk cafes.

Got it.

Okay.

Wait, I'm sorry.

For if I'm an institution that has a sidewalk cafe that serves liquor, do I walk into the clerk's office and ask for two forms, or do I ask for one form?

It's one renewal packet with two applications.

And the reason why we have two is because we have to send one application we keep in our office's office for processing the liquor portion of the inside, and then the second application goes to public works for review.

Got it.

So we can send that down there.

We can't just send all of our information to them.

Sure, thank you.

Yeah, and so how does the new parklet process compare to that?

Is it the same idea of two in one?

Okay.

That um Cindy Gaines is the um administrator to the board, and she's handling that portion.

I don't have any okay.

We can put it as a follow-up.

Do you mean the street cafes now?

Because now we're changing terminology.

And I I think it's the same, it's two separate.

It would be the same as this the sidewalk cafes where it would be a separate application.

Yeah, there are two.

Oh, oh, we got it.

I know we can pull you in sooner or later.

That was my last question, too.

You almost got out of it.

Um Ashley Leonard, assistant city attorney.

Um, yeah, we're we're running the street cafe similar to the cyborg's.

So the same sort of process.

We have to have sort of a separate form as part of the renewal pack.

Well, we've never done renewals for these yet, so right now it's just a separate form, but it'll go with the renewal package, but it has to be able to be pulled out because it does have to go through a separate review under public works and then come back to city clerk.

Got it.

Yeah, I'm just trying to think about we how we can streamline all those.

It this is the first year we're doing it, so it's unfortunately gonna be a little bumpy because we're trying to take something that was approved through um a lease through city council and transition that into a permit process.

So we are trying to make it as consistent with the other permits.

Um, but it might take uh year or so to you know work out some of the kinks on that.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um, and I'm actually I'm gonna ask you one last question while you're here, which is I think we have a real need for more real estate capacity.

Like that's something I've heard from some of you guys at this table, and we heard it from Director Flinner when he was here.

And so we've got some money in the budget for a consultant under his department for central services.

But I'm just curious if you guys have any thoughts, and maybe ideally we would have him him here to talk about it also.

On do we need additional legal resources?

Is it better if there's a sort of big pot of work to do with real estate in the city that we're stretching to get done?

And some of that is what would naturally fall under central services.

Seems to me like some of it falls under Office of Law.

Do we need more resources for it in both areas?

Do we just need more resources in one department?

And if so, which one?

Do you get what I'm getting at here?

Yes.

Um, so I think central services role would be more of a management operational, as in like they're going to manage the day-to-day, month to month overseeing of property we own, property we lease.

Um, we haven't as a city had much of that.

It's been sort of haphazard as to who's doing the day-to-day management from the office of law standpoint.

Um the legal part of that is preparing deeds to sell and buy things, doing the title work that needs to be done, drafting up of the the easements, drafting up um the leases, and I I have handled it most of it for about the last decade or so, but I am by no means in an expert in real property, and so um when we get into more complicated real property issues, generally we have to go outside of the office of law at this point.

So um we have a new city attorney coming in.

He might have his own thoughts.

Oh, he's also a real estate.

Right, I was getting he has his own background.

So he he might want to weigh in on it.

He might bring a different expertise.

We've never really had someone in the office of the law since I've been here that has had that particular background.

So that might help.

I think we can say safely forget I asked it given that our new city attorney has that background.

Yeah, thank you.

I totally forgot about that.

Alderoman O'Neill, did you want to go back to some questions?

No, I'm good.

No?

All right.

Alterman Thorpe, you got anything else?

We're gonna let you guys off easy.

Thank you.

Finish early.

Appreciate it.

Um I'm just thinking let's recess for recess for 20 minutes.

We'll come back.

Hopefully, planning Antonio will be here a little bit early if that works for everybody.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

So is there a motion to resess for 20 minutes?

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Meeting adjourned.

And we will turn the floor over to you.

Okay, um Chris Kubiak, Director of Planning and Zoning.

I have a brief presentation based on the template provided.

Um I appreciate what people follow the template.

Um I focus the accomplishments on the aspects of our department that are of particular concern and interest to many people, and that's uh building permitting mostly.

Uh so um fiscal year 26 accomplishment accomplishments.

We've reduced the average days for residential building permit reviews from 27 to 14.

Uh this computes to a 48% improvement.

Uh we reduced average days for commercial billing permits uh from 16 days to 19 days per submittal, and that's a 44 percent improvement.

Uh and we've expedited 240 residential permits, and we call these a simple permits, uh decks, um, sheds, and the things that are um the mom and pop uh uh applications.

Uh these improvements were achieved through the addition of one architectural plan reviewer and an internal promotion, and I should say also with uh renewed focus and commitment and some realignment of staff, but uh those things don't have cost implications.

But the the cost that the um previous city council um included in its budget a total 191 uh thousand dollars in 2025.

So uh for that we we achieve this level of accomplishment.

Seems like a good investment.

I think so, yes.

Uh and which sets us up for our performance measures, and again, we're focusing primarily on those that are qualit quantitative um and uh that are focused on development review and and permitting um and enforcement.

You know, one benchmark of successful zoning enforcement is um the degree to which people's engagement with their zoning enforcement is generally amicable friendly or resolved without a lot of uh complication or cost.

Uh so generally in this benchmark of 80 percent of um zoning violations being resolved with a notice of violation letter or just a personal outreach.

That's uh in the industry and planning and zoning officials, municipalities.

If you're achieving 80 percent, that's a pretty good sign that you're doing the right right thing.

Some jurisdictions have slightly more than that, most are under it.

Um, but we're at 83 percent uh in current times.

Uh and we didn't the cost of actually obtaining this information was quite expensive, extensive to us because we've never really calculated that number before um until this year um doing our performance uh measures.

Uh so I didn't ask staff to go back to 2025 and do the same.

Um but uh we propose 85 percent is our standard, so um only 15 percent should moving forward, which would um only 15 percent would actually require citations.

This would be improvement over current conditions and certainly be much higher than our benchmark.

Um major site design plan and plan development.

These are the major developments, and we don't have many major developments in Annapolis.

We do have them from time to time, and they can be very time consuming, or they can go fairly quickly.

Of late, they've gone much quickly, much quicker, but they've also in previous times gone quite slowly.

So the benchmark is about 90 days.

This is a reasonable benchmark, 90 days for a project to be in the offices of planning and zoning.

Now it's not unusual.

15 days of that are tied up in just uh public notification.

Um 35 days or 30 days in or tied up in advance to a planning commission meeting.

So there's things that are embedded in that.

There's not even work time for us.

Um, but the um so we took 90 days as a benchmark.

Our actual 19 uh in 25 was 88 days, uh 26 were about 85 days, and uh we expected our new proposed uh uh metric to be about 80 days uh for fiscal year 27.

I could talk a little bit more about what it would take to get to more improvement in that area.

Um but the minor site design review that's a little more complicated.

I think the a reasonable benchmark is a month for a new house plan to get approved.

Uh but in Annapolis it takes quite longer than that.

And largely because most of our house plans or major additions to houses are in the Eastport area and uh in Ward 8, or I should say more specifically within the R2NC zoning district, which is very complicated, adds quite a bit of time.

Uh 15 of those 30 days are devoted just to the public comment period uh for the ECA to review projects.

Um we have built-in um uh inertia in our zoning code that makes it slower for the average applicant to get a minor site design plan approved, like a new house plan.

Um, and that's a condition that uh I'm suggesting we're gonna live with for another year because we're focused on other things right now.

Uh so I'm showing a 50 year a 50-day um proposal for fiscal year 27, uh, which is basically in alignment with how things have been for past number of days or number of years, excuse me.

On the billing permits side, commercial building permits, this is the average time in-house of build a building permit is being reviewed.

The the a reasonable benchmark for CDR size is 20 days.

That's 20 days, it's being reviewed, and you should know that it's permits are not reviewed just by planning and zoning staff, the review by fire marshal and by public work staff.

But the permitting process begins and ends with us.

So we embrace the reality that we can't control the outcome of the permitting process always, but we have really good partners in both of these agencies, uh, and they perform really well.

So, but it's a multi-departmental process.

Um, but as I mentioned earlier, we've brought our um performance to 15 days.

15 days is the average that we have a project in submittal.

Now that means, for instance, a project comes in, it's reviewed, uh, revisions are made to it or identified and necessary and sent back.

That process takes 15 days.

So an applicant will resubmit it, and usually that process, the resubmittal might take one or two or five days.

Sometimes it could take additional time.

So when we say the average benchmark across the country is 20 days, everyone accounts for the fact that there could be multiple submittals.

The multiple submittals in the revision process is the issue that jurisdictions face in um making their flow smoother.

That is the most important uh aspect to making permitting more efficient, is reducing the number of revisions necessary.

And I could talk a little bit about that under our proposed budget.

Just to understand, when you say in-house here, does that mean within city government or within planning and zoning?

Um within city government.

So we could be finished our reviews, and the stormwater management folks are still reviewing it because that's the more complicated part of our project that's happens for instance, or fire marshal service might be reviewing part of it after our building people have finished, or vice versa.

Um on the residential side, I think we're performing quite well actually, and have for a couple years.

In fact, uh as of now, we're doing nine, right now we're nine uh days for the average submittal for a residential building permit, uh, and our target is nine days, so we're right on our target.

As of um uh about four weeks ago, we were at five days.

I mean uh literally five days average submittal time.

Uh part is because our permits administrative position, the promotion that I referred to before, has become much more efficient and demanding and uh engaged and managerial and moving this forward.

We have a very dynamic approach where we can anticipate the amount of time and set the clock for the reviewers based on workflow.

And this has really proven to be very beneficial to the city, especially for the residential permits, which is where we really are focusing our efforts.

As I indicated, we're doing doing the expedited permitting now.

Okay.

Any questions on this slide?

I I have a bunch of questions, or I'll wait till you finish the brief.

Fair enough.

Budget enhancements.

The first two are would be truly enhancements.

This the last one is not so much an enhancement but a correction, but I can get to that in in a moment.

The first a lot of text up there.

As I mentioned, we did add a new architectural plan reviewer, but apart from that, we have the same staffing as the city had 20 years ago.

Although we're doing 3,700 building permits a year.

A year and 6,000 inspections of residential properties a year.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the things that that department has been asked to do.

And we're not even talking about short-term rental or leaf blower enforcement.

These things get quite complicated.

But the person that manages this on a day-to-day basis is the chief of code enforcement.

And John Manassa has been with the city for quite a while.

We have to prepare for his eventual retirement.

We have to build redundancy.

And we also have to break the this huge workload into pieces that could be managed properly and that allows the staff time to reform practices, innovate.

Everything is a day-to-day reactionary response right now.

We hardly have time to sit back and say, how do we improve things?

And so, like the city council has done with other parts of planning and zoning, we're asking for uh an assistant chief of code enforcement.

Uh and what will likely happen is that assistant chief would take ownership of the uh licensing and inspection uh side of things, whereas John Manasseh, who's the official building official and floodplain official for the city, would stay within the building um aspect.

He of course would maintain ownership or manage your responsibility of the whole thing, but um the this will allow those complications related to inspections permitting licensing, trade licenses and permits to be managed separately.

Um so it's it's about capacity building.

And uh the cost, including benefits for that position is 166,000, and it's in our proposed budget.

Uh in addition to that, uh we have a proposal for a new permits associate in the same vein as I mentioned before.

Uh, this position actually would allow us to uh terminate a contract and uh relationship we have now to make a full-time position, free up room in our um staffing to have a real receptionist at the front uh to handle customer service uh and phone calls.

Uh and the it's likely that this position would support our permits administrator in in intake of applications and answering questions from residents.

Again, it's about capacity building uh ultimately for for this um department and the costs for this particular project uh person and um or position, including benefits is 117,000.

Uh lastly, we have an assistant chief of historic preservation.

Uh we hired her last year, fantastic uh asset to the city without question, and anybody in the historic district or in the building community will attest to that.

Um, however, the position was advertised as a merit-based civil service position, but when it came time to make the offer to the person, uh we were informed by HR that actually it was a contract uh position, that we didn't actually have it as a merit-based.

Uh so um she agreed to take the job anyway with the understanding that I would seek from the city council approval to make this a civil service position, which effectively this position requires because we can't have people in charge of uh historic district permitting uh be uh subject to just firing at any any point.

They need the merit protection of civil service, and she's exceptionally qualified.

Um so those are our enhancements.

Um and Kennedy uh with a number of innovations that we're contemplating and actually improving right now.

Um and Kennedy, uh with a number of innovations that we're contemplating and actually improving right now, I don't see the necessity of expanding or enhancing the capacity of our permits building permits function for quite some time, quite literally, if ever, because of AI and the innovations that we anticipate making.

But I this you're the first person to say that to us.

I'm so excited.

Thank you.

Oh, I could talk more about it too if you want to.

Um sorry to interrupt you, but I'm genuinely so happy to hear you say that.

Oh, good.

Um so here are budget trends um from fiscal year 23 to 27.

For us, this was an exercise of filling in data that was available in other historic budgets of the city.

Um, but our what's I guess the most relevant is the right-hand column, perhaps the um budget uh total is five point nine million dollars, represents eight percent reduction off of our projected.

It's actually gonna be a bigger reduction because we're not going to achieve our projected costs.

I think we're gonna have more salary savings uh than HRs and or at and finance might be anticipating.

Um that's even with adding our additional staff.

Um 66 percent, 67 percent, that's just call it two-thirds of our operating cost is covered by our revenue.

And I want to make it clear that the permitting side of things, permitting license, that is entirely covered by revenue.

What's not covered by revenue are the the plan long-range planning function of our office.

Uh, there's no fees attached to that.

Um but the city actually has done a remarkable remarkably good job aligning its fee structure with the cost of providing service with respect to permitting and inspections.

Uh and each year, um my budget often includes some fee adjustments.

Uh this year it includes an adjustment of the um short-term rental licensing fee uh to $650 from $420, and it includes an adjustment of the biannual licensing fee for long-term rental units, and combined those fees would raise those increments would raise roughly 150,000 dollars, which will supplement and cover some of the cost of these positions we were asking for.

And that's the last slide in my presentation.

Wow.

Phenomenal timing there.

That's a day.

Uh yeah, spot on.

All right.

Um I think we we were gonna reset for five minutes because Samair needed to use the room briefly, but I think we're good.

I think that was this what Mitchell just did the signal just Mitchell just gave us.

So um with that, I will turn it over to Otto Roman O'Neill for questions.

Thank you.

Um I have a few questions.

Um to the uh assistant chief of historic preservation.

Where is that on the staffing summary?

Sorry, I was looking for it up at the top where it was A's.

Thank you.

I needed that.

Um, my other question about staffing summary is the short-term rental coordinator.

I see that you don't you're not staffing that.

Can we talk about that?

Sure.

Um we're very much doing short-term rental.

Um, and uh but what would occur to us very soon after we actually brought a short-term rental coordinator on was that the capacity that person provided, that position provided was more important than the that role itself, because there's so many people that are involved in short-term rental, uh licensing inspections, uh, the management of it, the reporting of it, the coordination with finance, it's just beyond the ability of one person to do.

But because we work as a team in in that section of the the office, uh just having another person allowed us to absorb absorb the function related to it.

So we don't need that position.

In fact, we we tried it out.

One person can't do it.

Um I can get into more details in terms of how things operate, but the the having the request that we're made for the permits associate allows us to shift responsibilities around to free up people that do it.

Um so we do have a point person doing short-term rentals, um, and she will continue continue to do the intake in the licensing of it, but um there everyone else is it also has a hand in the the effort.

So you we brought on a short-term rental coordinator, and it can increase capacity.

You're bringing on two different roles, taking that out, and those two different roles are going to be working more in that person's role.

We can only bring us short-term rental on last year as a contract employee, and that contract expires on June 30th.

So rather than renewing a contract, we're asking for a full-time position.

Okay.

So that's that's a we still we things will stay level.

It's just that there'll be a new position that would be a full-time civil service permits associate uh rather than uh a contract person.

Okay.

One of the goals of that position was not only to do the intake of licensing, but also to be helping with the research of for instance, like the one I had sent you a couple weeks ago that is somebody operating in without a license.

Like, will we still have the capacity or will we be able to expand that capacity to be doing research on properties that are operat without a license, both short-term and long-term rental properties.

Uh we we do that.

Um, John Manassas is probably the most equipped to do that, and he spends a lot of time actually doing that.

Uh, and having this assistant will actually free him up to do that or have this the assistant do it, which is probably more likely where we'll we'll be heading.

Um we actually have another person in our comprehensive planning section doing research in support of that because he has GIS geographic information systems um expertise, so we actually can map things and coordinate with um our host compliance partners uh easier.

So um I I believe we have it covered.

Um yeah, we and but but those positions allow us to absorb this additional short-term rental um work.

And it's also occurred to me that depending on how um the city council decides to move forward with short-term rentals following the moratorium, we may need to make adjustments.

We may find that we've got more capacity than we need uh to deal with it uh if if we get to a simpler version of short-term rentals um uh at the end of the game, um, or it may require us to make adjustments further in the new year or next year, but but I think we're in a good position right now with with the proposal changes.

Okay, and then it's it's always um the assumption that if we have fees, the fees are covering the cost of being able to handle that portion.

So is that why you're asking for the fee increase for the short-term rental and the biannual rental?

Yes, I I well, on the biannual rental.

Um, last year the city council increased the fee on the annual rental, but we neglected to put in our request the biennial rental.

So it that just brings it up on par with the the annual rental fees.

That that's just uh the clerical fix.

But on the short-term rental, we we did the math and actually looked at how much time we spend on short-term rentals, and it was apparent that we weren't charging enough, nearly enough.

Um, so we came up with a conservative estimate of six six hundred and fifty dollars, which is a sizable increase over the current, but that reflects the the extent to which staff within the department planning zoning are involved in dealing with short-term rentals.

So actually, the fee would generate the new fee would generate roughly 260,000 a year.

Total.

Total.

And like that is on short-term rentals.

Yeah, that's how much the city of Mannepolis commits resources to this topic of short-term rentals internal.

In other words, we would be able to spend 260,000 dollars worth of effort on other things for the city if not for the short-term rental program.

Right, right, which is good, and I'm glad that you've done that assessment.

Um, I appreciate that.

Um, and my last question is writing it down.

Um I'm gonna go ahead and let them go because I don't see where I wrote it down.

Sure.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Mr.

Jacoviac.

Um, if I could follow on just to clarify, because you said something that I'm a little concerned about on the short-term rental fees.

You used the word conservative.

I clocked that too.

It would be my input that every penny paid that the city pays for a program be folded into the fees, whether it's whatever it is.

And so uh when you say it it costs two six, so I'm not gonna do the math here, but but either can you assure us or can you get back to us?

Um I would not want that 650 to actually be 695.

If it's 695, I'd want it to be 695 rather than 650.

Um do you want to get back to us?

No, no, I don't I'll just answer you.

And so um I approach these things in a conservative way.

I I think it's important that we don't charge more than what the actual cost is.

And if at the end of the day we have we're making estimates, I'd rather look at the estimate and say, okay, well giving the benefit of the doubt being as conservative here because we want to stay on the proper side of the line and not sure charge more than.

I mean, there are other ways of get generating revenue from uh function, but in terms of fees, we want to have a balance.

So when I say conservative, I mean we've thought about it, and we we come up with a good estimate that we can hang our hat on to and to defend.

That's what I mean to suggest.

Um could it be a little higher or a little lower?

Perhaps, but the time it would take to sort of ferret that out would be quite extensive.

We'd have to have a timer on everyone's desk to track that.

And I just don't think we we're gonna do that, although we could.

Um we can never anticipate the short-term rental issue that exhausts us that goes well and beyond the the typical.

Well, we have a couple of appeals now because we're enforcing the moratorium.

They're gonna cost time that wasn't included in my estimate because we didn't have any appeals up to this point.

Uh so we're like we're involving uh the law office now in uh setting up appeals for the um the building board of appeals.

So it's conceivable that in next year when we look at this again, it might be a little bit higher, and then we'll come to you with a new estimate, a new and one that I would be able to say is a conservative and thoughtful estimate.

I don't mean to uh suggest that we're under counting.

We're just we're we feel like it's a confident number that I can support.

I'm gonna push you here a little bit.

If the city council were to increase the the fee to 675 in order to not be as conservative as you're looking to be, how would you respond to that?

I'd say that's within your your ability to do, and you have the discretion to do that, and wouldn't concern me at all.

I think you'd be fine.

Okay, thank you.

So I think isn't is the concern because I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from here.

Is the concern that if we say raised it to 750, then somebody might challenge it and say, no, no, the department's not really costing that, and they take us to court.

Like, is that the why you're trying to be conservative?

I was seeing if the law office is your conservative because generally speaking, fees should align with the actual cost of service.

That's that's all.

That's the principal reason.

We don't want to be beyond that.

Um if if there were some other revenue raising authority that the council executed to to deal with this issue, then that would be fine.

But in terms of fees, our fees have to be in line in a line with our actual costs.

That's the the kind of the guidance I've always operated under here and in other places.

Go ahead.

Sorry, I jumped right in.

Thank you.

Um, Mr.

Kubia, I like to go back to your slide three, which in my in my mind is a headline news story.

Um, and it is something you have talked about doing, and I want to make sure that I'm understanding it with the follow-on question that I'm gonna ask us as I after I go through these five lines.

Do you have everything you need to get this where your uh proposal is, and is there anything else you need that would help along the way?

So um I think the first one's pretty self-explanatory.

I uh I think that's the what I'm learning.

The city of Annapolis's mantra is we're not looking to find you, we're looking to help you.

And and uh it's always tough to create a benchmark there, but um sometimes you get what you measure, but that's called leadership in your case, and and so uh the headline to that first line is that that our planning and zoning is not looking to find you 85 percent of the time we're looking to help you get right, and then if you don't get right, um then you become in the 15 percent.

100 percent of the time we're asking people to get right, and um but if they but but there are some bad actors, there's some people that ignore the ordinances um and sometimes it only it takes citation to to compel action.

And um, but if they right, but but there are some bad actors, there's some people that ignore the ordinances um, and sometimes it only it takes citation to to compel action.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um can you give us a couple examples of a major site design plan?

Um 15 Ridgeley Avenue, it's a 28,000 square foot office building, West Annapolis, just approved, but approved two months ago by the planning commission.

Um pro place, um these are an older one.

Uh um uh the Willows, another recent project that was actually completed and occupied just this past year.

Um that's good.

Yeah.

So that gives me an idea.

So and what you're saying here by this line is that from the day that permit is submitted until the day it's adjudicated that it's uh granted, um, the average is 80 days.

So for every 60 days, there's a hundred day.

For every 200 day, there's a there's a couple 20 days or whatever.

I wish that were the case, but no.

For that 90 days as a benchmark is the time that the project is within the city of Annapolis in its review procedures.

There's time when our review process is completed and is up to the applicant to redesign a plan or to deal with the issues of traffic or uh off-site improvements or do an engineering study.

Those are added times that a developer faces, but uh are not within our ability to impact.

Uh so the you know, it often takes much longer than 90 days, of course, to get through a approval process.

But our aim is to make most efficient use of our time to get through the process as quickly and efficiently and as with as much transparency and public engagement as we can uh in 90 days.

Um, but we can't control how long an applicant takes or an engineering project might evolve.

For instance, uh Robin Wood uh has a uh a redevelopment project uh that will be coming to us.

Uh once they submit the plans, if they've not figured out technical issues really related to the pumping station in the Forest Drive corridor, before they submit the plan, it'll lengthen their submittal time.

And that's certainly not on the Department of Planning and Zoning.

We've advised them of the issue, and they they could prepare that and resolve that now uh and then submit an application or submit it now, then they sit in the queue until the issues are resolved with public works.

So it which is which is important to note because these numbers are are for us and what we can control.

The overall process is something that we the bureaucrats can't change or or uh affect to that level of degree.

We can facilitate and have a friendly and transparent process, but ultimately applicants control their destiny when they start through the process.

And those that are prepared have complete applications and things worked out go much quicker than those that don't.

So how do you measure this clock of 90 days?

Um our uh reviewer, we have uh uh the energov system.

We know when a project is in review.

The project is assigned to staff to review, they're giving certain number of days to review, 15 days to get comments done, goes back to the applicant.

Uh applicant may spend months just redesigning or fixing issues or doing their traffic study, you know, and then submits back to us another 10 days to complete the um the the application gets back to us.

Uh then it's you know, we could final it then, or if there are other outstanding issues, um, it might be sent back to the applicant.

But the the time that the project is in front of our plan reviewers is the is the time that's being counted.

So just to confirm, there's a start and stop in your world.

Yeah.

And then it could be six months before they get back to you.

Yeah.

Quick, they they get back to you, clock starts again, three weeks you've got it, get back to them.

Um and so that that I think is significant when you're looking at these numbers on the right column 80, 50, 15, 9.

I mean, that is really measurable information.

I mean, I don't feel compelled to ask the same questions for the next three rows, right?

But I I figure they apply, right?

These this is for building permits residents at the bottom, the the bottom row, uh average in-house business days per submittal.

Your proposal, you're shooting to get to nine days in-house for you.

Yes.

And we're at nine days now, as if uh this so far.

And uh, and this is actually a remarkable achievement.

Um at 16 days.

Uh a year before, we're 19 days for the residential.

Um, it was amazing when we doubled the capacity of our architectural review process.

Uh, but we all that that was the fundamental change.

We just had more manpower.

But the just aligning our office to go through the permitting process easier has been helpful.

And we've be been able to become more facile with uh Energov, the system itself.

Um, and we have new staff.

I mean, it's just the uh there's been a turnover and an outlook and approach to uh residential and building permits.

Uh of course the building permits in the residential, these these permits are a step following the the site design plan.

Once the plan is done, then the construction drawings, the permits are submitted to us.

Um but most people when they refer to permitting or permitting issues or problems or delays, they're referring to the building permit process.

And I think we've made remarkable improvements in that so far.

So there's two other elements to this, yeah, being from Ward 8, right?

There's the R2NC, and then to your point, the second part of it.

Um do we you measure the amount of time it's in the R2NC process?

Yeah, um we we just call that the minor site design process.

That that would be in the category above minor site design review.

Oh, so that is in the 50 days.

Okay.

And then the second phase of the permitting process is a whole nother number that amount of days that you measure.

Right.

And that's not on here yet.

Well, that that's the second uh that's the building permit process.

So you'd go through the site design review, which is really a zoning review to make sure that the the house or the building uh match with the zoning code, and then there's a set of architectural drawings that architects mits to make sure that the the building complies with the building codes.

So I I don't want to pound this dead horse too hard, but I want to make sure I understand.

Is it an accurate statement for me to tell a resident of Eastport that the number of days if you want to redesign, if you want to do a new porch, the number of days you should be, you should expect the average number of days in planning and zoning is 50 plus nine days.

I would say if you submitted a perfect application, because that's the time it's in our and that's where AI can come in.

That's our fix.

If we can help applicants perfect their applications, let them know in advance where building code issues are likely to occur, they can make adjustments.

Even their architects can make adjustments uh and submit plans that are perfected already, not perfected, but that are code compliant.

Yeah, it's the the time it takes to make adjustments to plans that are found to be beyond what the code allows uh that takes time.

In most cases, the amount of time uh that folks complain about is the amount of time that uh permit sits on someone else's desk outside of the city because they're responding to comments from the city.

Um, or it just because it's complicated and it's hard to deal with a building permit while you're running your real life, right?

And if I submit it to you three times that needs to be corrected, I'm now adding to these number of days.

Right.

It might be 20 times, 20 days the first day, a first submittal, 10 days, the second submittal, and one day the third submittal.

Yeah, that's quite how it normally happens.

So you have 31 days, it's with us, um, but it might be six months with you or three months.

I mean, because you're you may have to finance the architectural services over a period of months, you know.

It so that's the reality.

What we'd like to begin doing is tracking the bigger number too, even though we can't control it, it's a measure of general quality of life.

How long's it take generally?

Uh and uh we can but the way that we can improve things is reducing our time uh on on permits.

And and that's what we're doing.

And your point about adding AI helps them reduce their their days.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So I mentioned I would thank you for going through these five rows.

I mentioned I would go through them with the idea of asking you the question: do you have what you need?

Do you have the tools you need time, technology, people, resources to reach these goals?

And the next question is gonna be if we gave you more, could you reduce them even more?

Well, um, as you can see, we're right now we're at we're reaching our goals on building permits, but we can't sustain it.

We literally cannot sustain this workload, and that's why we're requesting those two positions, first of all.

Um what would allow us to not only sustain those but allow our staff to focus on other things as well and maybe even get even better, and I think we could get better, is a greater commitment to AI.

And so I I with key staff are investigating this already, and I'm trying within our current budget to reallocate some dollars that we're not likely to spend for some supplies and um training and things like that, to have a consultant come on board with us to create a platform that allows applicants to pre-qualify their applications before they submit it to us.

This would be a phenomenal improvement because it would allow only good complete applications to go through the process, and that's the key to performance.

Uh and it's not as if we would say, okay, you you have to perfect your application, don't come back to us.

We'll be of assistance to people because we'll have free more free time to be of assistance and point out how applications could be improved.

But folks need to know ahead of time, and I've seen demonstrations.

This analysis can be done in a matter of 10 seconds.

An analysis that might take a person in our office to do over several hours uh of time.

Um, and this is not just a um something that's relevant for small mom and pop application, but major, major, major uh developments.

So um, but it takes time to think through the systems that are necessary and the protections and the management structure we need to do that, and we have to teach the AI system.

Um it's not about us learning it, it's about it learning us.

Uh and there's an Annapolis way of doing permitting, and we want that spirit of quality to permeate in through what AI delivers.

So I think a request of an additional hundred thousand dollars for this fiscal year, which is far less than the five percent you you mentioned.

I mean, five percent of our budget would probably be 280,000 or something.

Uh that would be all that we would ask for as an additional request.

And why wasn't this uh an enhancement in our original budget?

Is because I was still in the early days of this, since I had had opportunities to actually meet with the building community who are testing AI themselves and using it, uh, and meet with someone who is an expert in this.

And I'm convinced now that there's a pathway for an a lit, like as I said, I'm looking to find um an initial 25,000 dollars to bring someone on for three months to deliver that short-term package um that we would use internally.

So 100,000 in fiscal year 27, I think builds a really good foundation and a new sets um uh a pathway for permitting.

And I I think those numbers are inherently achievable with with AI.

In fact, or we can get to improvements.

And I even think that within the year, we would be able to bring down the minor site design review times um below 50 days.

Um right now we're showing it at uh 50 days.

I think we can get much closer to a benchmark, probably require some zoning text amendments, um, but I also think the AI will be of great help to us in site design as well.

So that I would use that year, fiscally year 27 to integrate AI into all aspects of our department, not just the building permit function.

Mr.

Kubek, I look forward to working with you to try to find that hundred thousand dollars.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That was great, great explanation.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Yeah, I'm just blown away.

Uh you're uh I love it.

Um I don't even know where to start.

Uh I got a couple mostly small things.

Um when you're talking about build building permits, sir, does that include HPC permits?

Uh no, it hasn't.

Actually, it doesn't include HBC permits.

Right.

So that would be a separate category that's not listed here.

It would be.

Um, but it it's not it's not part of that the what's counted the the normal HPC the certificate of um of um of of excuse me uh of approval is uh is something different than a a building permit.

But if it's a building permit within the historic district, it is counted as a building permit.

So if it's a building permit in the historic district, yes.

But if it's simply a certificate of approval, the things that we frequently that go through the HBC or go through administrative approval, then that's a separate line on him.

Got it.

If you ever got the chance, I'd be interested to see that um the stats for that, but I don't need it within this budget season.

Okay.

Um we have listed in our books that we're going from two planner twos up to three.

I think that might just be old from last year.

Is do you have any knowledge of we're not adding a position there, right?

I think we're going up to I would welcome that, but I I think we had a um we have we have a um part-time.

We pay someone on an hourly basis to supplement.

Um she was a former employee.

I I didn't I didn't realize we were adding, I thought we were just maintaining that.

Darren Joneson, uh senior budget analyst.

It that could just be a typo.

I'll double check that.

But we weren't adding a we previously had sort of two people who were civil service and one who was part-time, and we're going to keep having that.

Okay, thank you very much.

It's probably just a reflection of how we've been changing how we categorize part-time.

Uh the zoning compliance officer is listed as TBD grade.

Any particular reason for that?

Oh, that's fine.

If you oh Mr.

Johnson, you want to jump in?

Yes, because initially it was a new position, and we were waiting for the code.

Um what is that?

I said code.

Great.

The class and clump study to be finished before us to update it.

So yeah.

So it's not a new position or anything, we're not changing them.

We're just figuring out what it is in the new classic comp study.

Okay, great.

Um can you remind me what a couple of these funds do, particularly the affordable housing trust fund and the community legacy fund?

Yeah.

Um, well, the community legacy fund um is um a reserve as is a reserve for the state's community legacy program.

Uh it's uh can I uh receiving uh space for the grants that are called community legacy grants.

Um the city has not sought or achieved a community legacy grant in some time, but those are meant to do a variety of projects, street uh sort of sidewalk repair or sometimes park repair, things like that.

Um the city has gotten grants through other vehicles.

Um and so that that's the community legacy.

Um if you want to if you're going on to affordable housing trust, I have a second question on that one, which is that we're we're projecting a significant difference between revenues and expenses for that.

So I was wondering why.

Right.

Um I I would ask Darren to maybe touch on that because there was uh a large influx of uh capital years ago uh in that fund.

Um the that is a the trust fund uh facilitates the restoration of rental housing within the city, or I'm sorry, ownership housing, owner housing rehab program.

Uh and that's what it principally does.

It used that fund was also received um fee in lieu of the MPD MPDU program.

Okay.

Um, but those that has been extinguished now.

Developers have to provide the units on site and can't pay a fee in lieu of providing those.

Um so I can't account for that that change that you're referring to or the difference.

Um at least not this moment.

Uh Mr.

Johnson, you got anything to add or do we want to make it a follow-up?

Okay, that'd be great.

Just uh yeah, I mean, basically what I'm looking for is why our uh FY27 proposed is significantly different from the FY26 projected for that affordable housing trust fund.

Uh one last question about grants.

Are we at all concerned about loss of community development block grant funding?

Uh that's something we've been talking about with a lot of federal grants.

Uh no, the city's been assured that we're gonna get 260,000 roughly, which is about equivalent to last year.

The only way that uh uh our our formula results in a slow reduction uh in the amount of funds that this the city gets, um it's just because Annapolis is becoming much more affluent.

But no, there's no there's no reduction in our community development block grants.

Great.

I'm glad to hear that.

Um moving on to the restoration fund budget.

Uh sorry, not restoration for I probably gave you heart attack there.

The this new fund, the restoration fund, no, the reforestation fund.

Um where this is consistently running expenses higher than revenues.

So what is the fund balance in that?

How are we able to keep for three years now, spend more than we bring into that?

Um the magic behind that is uh in finance, and I I will certainly work with with Darren and the staff there to get those answers to you.

I I don't know that in the uh we'll look into that.

Yeah.

Mr.

Palicall, did you have or anybody?

You guys are fighting over the microphone today.

Um Capri Center budget analyst.

So for all of these funds, um, if you see an increase in the proposed amount, it's because the expenses for FY26 were lower than anticipated.

Um for instance, the how the affordable housing fund.

That fund is a combination of four programs.

Two of the pro two of those programs, I don't believe had any expenses.

Um, so the that fund balance rolls over to the next year.

Got it.

And then it also includes the anticipation of the revenue for FY27 as well.

So it's a combination of both being added.

And this just gives the spending authority so we don't have to come back and ask for spending authority if we include it in the budget.

But specific to the restoration fund, uh I keep calling it that the reforestation fund.

I don't understand how it can be negative every year unless we started off with some big chunk of money.

If it's negative, it's because the revenue has decreased over time and the expenses have increased.

Right.

But so it started off like prior to FY25, there's a bunch of money in that fund.

And now we're slowly spending it down.

Is that what's going on?

Yeah, if you go to the if you go to the summary tables and go to the fund balance summary, you'll see that there's the relying for reforestation.

Our starting projected fund balance is gonna be 1.4 million.

And so we're just drawing down against that balance.

And so similarly to the points made about the affordable housing trust, there is that expectation that because we didn't spend as much that we're gonna basically operate at 100% uh utilization, and so we're just drawing down the balances.

And so as it as the program is not utilized and it continues to roll over year over year, you'll see that there's more revenue coming in and therefore larger expense because the prior year utilization is now getting baked into that.

And so that's not true for all of them.

Yeah, that's true more for the affordable housing trust one, but for the reforestation, you can see clearly on the fund balances that it's just drawing down over time.

That makes perfect sense.

I should have thought to look at the fund balance.

Thank you.

Uh within the sustainable mobility fund, we've got uh chunk of money budgeted in FY26, we've got a chunk of money budgeted in FY27.

What exactly is getting pulled?

What what are we funding with that money?

Well, we'll take this one, Chris.

You want to take it, Capri?

Um, so for FY26, um, it was created and we didn't have any expenses for it for FY27.

It's going to be funding two positions.

Um, one of the positions is the bike pedestrian coordinator position, and what's the second position?

And the I'm sorry, the position that they added for the speed cameras, the reviewer um last year in FY26, that's the second position that it's going to be funding.

The new sergeant.

Correct.

Yeah, got it.

Okay, thank you.

You you want to jump in on that?

Yeah.

So where do those people show up in the budget?

Do they show up in police or in public works?

Correct.

One is in transportation and one is in police, but the allocation for those positions are coming from the sustainable mobility fund.

Yeah, well, just because I'm sure this is what you're asking, uh, Frank, from the understanding cash flows.

The money is coming into the sustainable mobility fund and then being transferred back out to those funds.

And so then that's why the how the personnel sit on their individual uh teams.

I was just making sure that there wasn't some magic magic matrix of people that was it was here that we didn't know about.

The enterprise funds, the staffing is allocated to those funds because they're paid and from that those funds.

This is a little bit different because it's there's an acknowledgement of the expense hitting the sustainable mobility fund, but it's by transfer back to the uh the respective funds at which those people stay.

Got it.

Thank you.

And that's why like when the headline is so the budget is 204 million dollars.

It's actually really less because we're double counting in that both the money coming out of the sustainable mobility fund to go into the general fund and the money coming out of the general fund to pay people.

Uh I don't know who I was saying that for.

But um Mr.

Jacobia, one thing I you and I talked about, well, I think like way back when I first met you was you guys said switch to this energy system.

You thought it was working well, but you also had some concerns, and you said at the time, which was like a year and a half ago now that you thought maybe at some point you were gonna need to switch to a new enterprise management software.

Is that still something that's on your mind?

Well, it's it's always on my mind.

Um but the software is citywide software and it's integrated into so many different functions.

Um and I've kind of wrestled with that candidly and um for quite a while and expended some energy looking at other options, but realizing that it's a citywide approach uh to a decision of this magnitude.

Um, particularly since Energov or the EPL system is the legacy software now.

Um through that process, I've developed a closer alignment with the IT department, and they've become much more responsive to our concerns.

Uh so much so that they've hired a former employee of the company that made the software to be a consultant to the city that provides expertise to support their staff.

And in fact, they have a staff person at almost exclusively um services planning and zoning related issues on Entergov.

Uh and I'm encouraged to say that uh Brian Packwin just recently told me that at a conference he learned that the uh company is innovating the software quite a bit, which will be really responsive to the things that we can we're concerned about, especially in the sense that these innovations should improve the interface for the average citizen submitting a permit, a friendlier, welcoming uh connection.

Like there are so many things we'd like to do, but we we cannot change because the software is what it is.

There's so many things you can't change about the software, but now uh the manufacturers considering changes because I think these concerns are universal.

I mean, I don't think they're just unique to Annapolis because uh other jurisdictions use this software.

It may be that um within one main line item of our work, we do need to go out on our own and find software, and that's in the licensing of rental apartments.

We've been very dissatisfied with the what EnergyGov can do, and it's been uh a bit of a hardship for landlords, um, particularly those that are larger.

Uh and it's been a and the the hardship they face is doubled on our end.

And I won't get into the details, but it's far more time consuming than it has to be.

These steps ought to be automated.

There's no question about it.

Um the the worse than if it were just doing paper copies of things.

That's how it is.

And we know we know that we'd like to see if we can fix that.

And hopefully with the new up upgrades of the software, we're gonna have those issues fixed.

If not, we may need to go on a different route.

But in the scheme of things, um, the bigger priorities are the ones I've discussed so far today.

And um, and IT has so shown such resiliency in being responsive to our concerns.

In fact, um Stephanie Connors developed this hub for me to track that's why I can produce numbers like this now.

In fact, I can go even deeper and track the performance of individual reviewers and time devoted to projects and and and what's not my desire to be at that level of manager or review um with the new position we're adding.

John Manasseh can now.

He can be more dynamic in his management of that function.

Um hats off to IT for their support and stepping in uh when we needed the most.

Uh so we're I think we're we're moving forward now in light of the with the current software, and um uh we're gonna keep riding this horse as far as we can.

But the reality is though that AI really helps us solve some of the more systemic issues that we have, like applications coming in coming in that are not good.

We're been training our staff to catch issues ahead of time and answer questions from the applications, but they're not qualified to be building plan reviewers.

They can't tell, they can tell if a deck has what's necessary to be submitted, but they can't tell if a uh a structural plan is is adequate to move through the process.

Uh but AI can can readily make that determination for us as one example.

So I think the AI will be a good supplement to uh to our functions and not require us to go a different route in terms of overall software package.

Well, I can keep you another half hour, but uh we're running out of time, so I'm just gonna ask you two questions, two more questions.

One's hopefully really quick.

That hundred thousand dollars you were talking about.

Do you think that could be one time, or are you imagining that like it could it be one time money, or are you imagining it being something you would need recurring?

One time just for Fitzpeaker 27.

All right, thank you.

And then the it's kind of a bigger question, but I'm trying to keep it narrow.

Is um I know there's some concerns about downtown Annapolis partnership.

My and I don't want to get into it, but my specific question is we've changed around how we allocate money to them.

There's sort of three buckets of money to them.

One is unrestricted, one is for holidays, one is for downtown Annapolis in Bloom.

And what it seems like is that in this budget, we knocked down the Bloom program, and we bumped up the holiday one.

And I'm just and I know one of those, I forget now if it's Bloom or Holiday, it's not in your department.

But I'm just curious how we determined how to make that five thousand dollars more here, ten thousand dollars last year.

Uh that's what I'm not understanding.

Uh so uh the holidays are not in my department.

Uh and in fact, these two items are in my department too, but they're not something that we've ever been influential in dealing with.

We we just sort of accept what the council puts in the budget.

Um, however, last year's budget was 70,000 on account of the council's actions, and when we were asked to reduce our budget by five percent, I reduced uh that budget from 70,000 back to the 50,000 that it used to be.

And I think I made a comparable change to the flowers or the the DAP flower program, um, thinking that uh we're very spare.

Our budget is is very tight.

Um, I can assure you that.

And uh to meet that five percent, I had to find savings elsewhere.

Sure, yeah, I I can understand.

I it was it was something that was particular to me that I was the one who bumped it from 20 to 25.

Okay, so that's why I was asking.

But uh, I know Auto Roman had O'Neil had another question, right?

It did.

Yeah, go ahead.

Um, two questions actually.

There I think they're both a little bit related.

But film festival used to be in your budget.

Did that get pushed to another budget?

Last year, I believe it was moved to another budget.

Um last fiscal year, and I I don't know where.

I don't know if it's funded through grants or or what, but uh I didn't even see it in our line items of uh in our budget this year.

Um Darren Johnson, senior budget analyst.

Um, per Vicky's guidance, we did not include it in the budget this year.

Not included up it's not included, yes.

And then my second one kind of related to that is um last year the HERO program was in there and it's not anymore that Darlene Jaya was head of again both these programs are ones that we don't come to the mayor with recommendations for the city council adds or subtracts or decides each year, um, but they're placed in our budget.

Um the hero program was placed in your budget after you and I had that conversation last year about it, and I thought when um Ms.

Stewart and I had the wrap-up meeting in January was indicated to Darlene that it would be continued for another year, but I didn't know the funding of it because she hadn't used all of the funding from last year, but you don't know anything about it.

So maybe Darren can comment on you question, please.

Sure.

There was a program called the HERO program that was under planning and zoning last year.

Um they ran the program.

Um perhaps I will look at it.

I'll look for it exactly.

Um we're we're happy to look into it, but I don't think we are aware of it right now.

So if we can just connect to look into it further.

Okay.

Like I said, when we did the wrap up in January with Ms.

Stewart, it was indicated to the lead on that, Darlene Najay, that the program was gonna continue for another year to be funded.

So we'll put it as a follow-up.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Certainly, no decision on our part has been made not to fund it.

I it just never presented itself in our initial materials that we started with as an as an item.

Okay.

That's later.

I can keep you for another half hour, but that's all the questions I'm going to ask today.

Looks like I'm seeing Otterman Thorpe closes his computer.

Thank Auto Roman O'Neill is done.

Autor Roman Conte, did you have anything you wanted to ask?

No.

All right.

Then we're actually five minutes over time, so we will call it.

Ms.

Jackson, we don't have any additional business, right?

So then with that, is there a motion to adjourn the meeting?

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Meeting adjourned.