site of remembrance because it was a site of the transatlantic slave trade.

We also have an a deep obligation to tell the stories in the city, not just of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, but also the folks who worked the water, the immigrants, the families who lived right here and made Annapolis what it is today.

Obviously this moment is important because we have to preserve this city dock for our economy as well.

All of the small businesses you see around here, every time there is a major flood, we are all on the phone checking in, making sure they have what they need, making sure we're corralling the state resources and local resources to get them what they need.

Obviously this is important for the present because of our United States Naval Academy.

And and rising seas do not respect what is city land versus what is federal land.

And so what happens here very much impacts what happens there.

And of course to the Alderman from Esport you know better than anybody when the rising seas cut off compromise street that is a real emergency management challenge for the people of Esport.

Obviously the moment of now as we address climate change across this country is so real and it can sometimes feel overburdened.

We f we feel overburdened it's just such a large problem where can we even start?

Obviously this started almost a decade ago with a vision from Mayor Buckley and the city council and the the staff at the city who knew that this was not a nice to have this was a must have not just then but knowing that the seas will continue to rise each and every year.

It's often said that success has a thousand fathers I'd like to also believe there's a few mothers tucked in there as well obviously to Mayor Buckley for his vision the city council for their dedication the staff I also want to thank the hundreds of Annapolis citizens who participated in I don't know how many charrets y'all had to make sure almost 300 three hundred opportunities for the public to weigh in here.

That's so important in this moment to county executive Pittman who has just been a a champion and and making sure that we are all staying on task and on target I so appreciate you.

The state delegation I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the state funding started under former Speaker Mike Bush.

He had the vision he knew and he wanted to respond with state dollars being the capital city um and he started the trend that I was had the privilege of picking up I know Delegate Jones, delegate Baylor, Senator Henson, make sure we in every single budget make sure we are delivering for this project.

To the federal delegation I'm so grateful that Congressman Sarbanes is here.

I also called Senator Ben Carden um the other day to share the good news there's not a lot of good days of good news in this job.

Senator Van Holland you didn't tell me that when I first ran but he was thrilled and he wished he could be here today I want to give him thanks and credit as well um it it's been said that that Mayor Littman um has taken this project and been so thoughtful and so strategic as we met this critical moment and I too received that SOS text message in February.

He asked can we involve the Navy and so uh that was my role to play in this orchestra of support that we all lent here is to call the Pentagon to call the Navy and remind them that the rising seas will also impact the readiness of our United States Naval Academy and they made a call as well there were so many calls that were made in the month Mr.

Mayor since you sent that text message and I was wanting for your vision and your commitment we're gonna hear in a minute from Secretary Strickland um from MDE who has also been just a champion of this throughout multiple administrations I want to thank you for your support you're also on our call sheet any time we get a major flood so I want to thank you and your team for that and without further ado I want to thank my predecessor who um has has been dedicated and focused to this work uh for his 18 years serving in the United States Congress I'm so grateful to be able to call him and turn to him for advice more often than I thought I would uh in this Congress but I'm so grateful to my friend um Congressman John Sarvanes Thanks very much this is a great day I'm gonna be brief I promise you know if you let a former member of Congress up to a podium they could go forever.

But uh first of all let me salute Team Maryland uh Senator Van Holland Congresswoman Sarah Elfith representative of the third district of Maryland I love saying that um to Jared uh to Stewart to everybody who's been part of this I also want to give a shout out to to Gavin Buckley um I got a lot of SOS's from Gavin over the years um so I've got a whole tech string there but thank you Jared for kind of picking up the ball and and carrying it it means so much to Annapolis it means so much uh to Ann Arnold County to the state this is an example of people coming together in a very very powerful way.

This was a Rubik's Cube from the beginning.

I mean, it had so many different and continues to have so many different interlocking parts that require special attention.

So getting these resources finally over the finish line is just it's it's a huge win.

And it demonstrates, I think, and you mentioned this here a moment ago the resilience of the people of Annapolis.

I mean, stepping up how to conceptualize this, what would it mean to execute it, putting all the phases together that you're now going to see kind of rolling out over time.

That that was a huge accomplishment.

And then the last thing I want to say is this kind of a project, this kind of a resilience project, um, in the context of what we know are going to continue to be uh increasing challenges coming at us in terms of climate change and weather disruption and so forth, is going to be a model for how you do these things around the country.

And Annapolis has always been a leader, it's always been a model.

It's always kind of uh taken the lead nationally on innovative creative approaches.

This is another example of that.

Um it's gonna be a tough slog through the execution, uh, but I know one that's going to be successful.

So, congratulations to the people of Annapolis, to Team Maryland, to everybody who got us to this point, is going to keep moving it forward.

And obviously, very much at the reins for this process uh going forward is going to be uh Mayor Littman.

I want to thank him for all his great work and bring him up.

Thanks.

Good morning.

Thank you.

My name is Mayor Jared Littman, and on behalf of the City Council members and I, it is our great honor and pleasure to thank and receive the $33 million plus the two and a half million dollars for FEMA.

And I just I am so relieved, frankly.

I know uh your my sleep isn't everyone's concern, but I've been sleeping a lot better the past couple nights, uh, knowing that this money was uh is coming.

And it this is the obviously the evolution of work from so many individuals, and they've been mentioned, but I just want to point out how our city staff continue to slog away at the financial, the technical, the environmental reviews, meeting every deadline, answering questions from FEMA.

It was a long process, and it seemed to evolve, and they stepped up and they've met all the uh burdens and and uh requests.

And their dedication has absolutely ensured our success.

To go over the funding of this huge engineering and infrastructure project, we have 24 million dollars from the concession agreement related to the building of uh Hillman Garage, 10 million dollars from the state of Maryland, and I I see uh our delegate uh uh delegate Jones, delegate Baylor, and our uh state Senator uh Henson being represented here.

4.8 million dollars in congressional earmarks, although not called earmarks anymore, two million dollars from the county, and today's 33 billion plus the two and a half million from FEMA, plus the city's bond money to ensure and that we now have all the funding in place to see this project through.

Right.

That was amazing.

This is a major investment in protecting our historic waterfront, local businesses, and ensuring that our residents can continue to enjoy this wonderful area that we all love for generations and generations to come.

This is an investment in the future of Annapolis.

I want to acknowledge we have a lot of partners, and I I recognize the city is the small player here, and so we have a lot of people I want to thank.

I first want to call out the current and former city council members who stood by former uh Mayor Buckley and I throughout this process.

They all received lots of phone calls of if this, then this, and the council, it was unanimous in supporting our efforts to move forward.

Of course, our thank you, council members.

Of course, uh I want to thank our federal delegation, Senator Van Holland, uh, Senator Alsa Brooks who couldn't be here today, Representative uh Elfrith, and of course, Representative uh Sarbans, who's always been a good friend.

Thank you all so much for your support.

Our governor and his team have been hugely instrumental as well.

So I thank Governor Moore and M Dem Secretary Strickland for your support.

The number of phone calls and conferences strategizing all along, and of course, again, I want to call out our our state delegation, Senator Henson, delegates Jones and Baylor.

I think delegate Jones gets the award for latest phone call on this matter on a Friday night in particular, too.

So thank you for being available.

Um County Executive Pittman, you've always stood behind and helped strategize, and I know that I can count on you as well.

Thank you so much.

Mayor Buckley, I know had this vision, and now the hard work of going from vision to turning into reality, but that doesn't get started without the initial vision.

So I thank you, Mayor Buckley.

A couple individuals that don't get a lot of limelight, I want to call out.

City Manager Buckland, I want to thank you.

Project Manager Eileen Fogarty seeing this through.

And public works director Burr Vogel.

Someone who never calls out for attention, but is a friend and a leader and this whole project, Matt Fleming and the Resilience Authority.

Thank you for your speech.

He's one of those guys that when we strategize of who needs to do what, he's like, I got it.

I got it.

I got it.

Thank you, Matt.

Appreciate you.

Looking ahead, I want to call out all the individuals who are involved.

We all got involved in public service because we wanted to do good for the community.

We are doing our best to serve the public.

And as uh Congresswoman Elfrith mentioned, there are some tough days where when our efforts to do good are not necessarily treated as such.

I just want to let all of us take have all of us take a moment to appreciate the enormity of today's milestone.

This is the this is the result of your hard work, your focus on serving your constituents and seeing the big picture of what can be done when we join together.

And so I just want you all to pat yourselves on the back, pat each other on the back, take a moment to appreciate this.

I know that there have been a lot of press conferences.

I am so looking forward to having a ribbon cutting where we could say, come on, and it's not last minute in hurry.

This work is absolutely just beginning.

I know that just because we now have the money in the bank, it's not all smooth sailing.

But I know with the team behind me, they've all demonstrated they're willing to answer the call, be involved, be supportive, either quietly or publicly, whatever is needed to get the job done.

And that's huge.

That is absolutely huge.

It is my absolute honor to lead Annapolis's efforts through this, and again, I thank all of the partners involved in this work.

I'm so excited to help deliver the City Doc project for all of us.

And with that, I want to introduce my friends and our county executive, Stuart Pittman.

Well, first, just congratulations to everybody.

I'm not gonna go through everybody and do all the same thanks all over again, but congratulations to all of us.

We should be having a huge party right now.

Uh, maybe this is maybe we will later.

Um I had a I had a meeting on my schedule today that got canceled.

My scheduler told me um the mayor's office canceled our meeting on Friday, didn't say why.

And then I got a text message, not the SOS one, got that too, but I got the good text message from Mayor Littman, and um the joy.

I mean the ability to sleep.

Um that meeting was about we're in the middle of our budget process.

We're in the middle of our capital budget process.

We managed to squeeze two million out last year, you know, with the help of of um um councilwoman Rodby and uh for this district for particularly the Wilcome Welcome Center as part of this project to get it over the finish line, but not having the FNMA money would have meant that the project would have been scaled back.

Um the mayor had all kinds of contingency plans, and his contingency plans included more money from the county, I think.

Um and so it was a big relief to have that meeting canceled.

Um I want to I want to I want to particularly thank our our delegation, um Congresswoman Alfred, our senators, and every the the whole team.

Um but I think I think in this time we don't we've almost lost faith that we have a partner in the federal government, and particularly in FEMA.

It has been so frustrating and sad and terrifying in some cases to have FEMA no longer a partner.

And and um, but these folks didn't give up.

These folks continued to work relationships that they had, relationships in places we don't even want to know who they talk to to get this thing across the finish line.

Um but but thank you.

Just thank you for not giving up in a time where we all just want to fight, fight, fight.

Sometimes we also have to get in there and negotiate and and manage to get some wins.

And for the for the public, for the residents of Anorondo County, who are so looking forward to coming into Annapolis and seeing this beautiful, beautiful public space.

It's gonna be like a park for the whole county, which is why I'm open.

I've been open to investments in it is with county dollars.

Um it is it is just like a little bit of sunshine.

We haven't had sun all week.

Um, but it's a little bit of sunshine and a dark time, and that in fact, government can work and things can get done.

So just thank you and and let's celebrate.

This is a wonderful wonderful day.

Congratulations.

And I also want to acknowledge um the the former mayor, um Gavin Buckley for the work that he did um to get us to this point.

You know, his name would have been Mud if if if FEMA money hadn't showed up, right?

I mean, you gotta blame somebody, but now his name is not Mudd, it's back to Gavin Buckley, and we can all celebrate next we're gonna hear from the great Maryland secretary of emergency management, Secretary Strickland.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you very, very much.

Uh this is a celebration.

I really I like that term.

Um I'd first like to thank Governor Moore and Maryland's congressional delegation for your unwavering support of this critical project.

Uh I'd also like to recognize the city of Annapolis for their leadership and persistent advocacy to see funding awarded and the Maryland Department of Emergency Management Hazard Mitigation Team who adeptly shepherding this project through many stages of approval.

Now I'm gonna go off script for a second because there were two words that were mentioned here today resilience and modeling and emergency management's responsibilities, although many times at the back end of the crowd, just kind of watching and making sure everybody's safe, but it's before during and after a disaster that we're involved.

This is before is mitigation, and mitigation is the center of the universe.

We're really, really good at response and immediate recovery, but mitigation is that which will improve for all the businesses in the area and will make a difference of almost a dollar invested, a six dollar return when it comes time for recovery.

So I think that is so so important, and I appreciate the words that folks have used.

So the mission of Maryland Department of Emergency Management is to proactively reduce these disaster risk and reliably manage consequences through collaborative work with Maryland's communities and partners.

In Maryland, emergency management is a system of systems.

We cannot do it alone.

We are the counties and the local jurisdictions coupled with the state, working with our state agencies and partners, and with our private sector partners.

No one can, and it's only through that system of systems that we do it.

The Annapolis City uh dock hazard mitigation project is an excellent example of this type of work of everyone coming together.

So the investment today comes a result of years of partnership and collaboration with the residents, business owners, and governments at every level.

And I have to say, we've been talking about it, it started in 2019.

I started in state emergency management in 2004.

This was a discussion then.

It was a discussion of flooding back into the 1700s for Ellicott City, and when it comes time for a model, this will not only be a model, but there's another really, really good model in Frederick City that started with Agnes.

And it took 20 years to build, and about three or four years ago, there was a flooding event, and it worked.

It worked.

So we know that this funding will bring a significant return on investment for every dollar invested, as I mentioned, we'll save six in re disaster recovery.

And while the dollars matter, what really matters is our community and our survivors.

That's where our focus is.

So the hazard mitigation efforts on this scale mean more days that residents and visit visitors can enjoy Maryland state capital and the beautiful waterfront, more days that local businesses have to grow and thrive, and fewer days spent mucking out livelihoods and homes, or wondering if the next storm or king tide will be worse than the last one.

So this proof is this project is proof that together we can do things which shape a more resilient Maryland where communities thrive and where no one is left behind.

So from the emergency management community to all of you, one congratulations.

Two, thank you.

And number three, we're not leaving.

We are not leaving until it's done.

And we'll be here for another 20 years to make sure it works so we can write that down.

All right, thank you very much.

Thanks, okay.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Secretary.

Uh, thank you, Team Maryland.

Um, before we take questions, I I do want to acknowledge a few other folks.

And Sarah mentioned um my former partner and colleague, Ben Carden.

He was also tenacious about this project, and we worked very closely together.

And just like Congresswoman Elfrith picked up the baton from John Sarbanes uh in the House, um, Angela Alserbrooks has helped pick up that baton in the United States Senate.

Um, Angela Alsterbrooks has helped pick up that baton in the United States Senate.

So I just want to thank her.

She could not be here.

So let's give them both a round of applause.

So we're happy to answer any questions.

And if not, we do have a check.

Cash it fast.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Shall we uh all the time?

Yes, of course.

I also want to call out Lieutenant uh General Superintendent of the Naval Academy, uh, Mike Borg Shulte.

Uh, who was incredibly helpful.

I just want to acknowledge his things.

What do you get in the middle here?

Thank you.

It's go time.

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Use the app or call Transportation Dispatch at four one zero two six three seven nine six four.

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Or you can use your daily, weekly, monthly, or annual bus pass.

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On demand transit.

See you on board.

April 30, 2026 will be called to order at 5 p.m.

At this time, would everyone willing and able please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge of allegiance.

And to the public for which one individual with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

City attorney, please call the next item on the agenda.

Next item on the agenda is presentations ID 76, or I'm sorry, ID 7826, the Capital Improvement Projects Presentation, Debt Affordability, and Other Budget Items in a joint meeting with the Financial Advisory Commission.

Thank you so much.

So we're going to be focused on the capital budget today and appreciate the finance team and Burr uh Vogel, Director Vogel being here.

In a second, I'll ask you to introduce yourselves.

So has how I understand how today is going to work.

We're going to um work through the presentation first and hold questions.

I imagine you get through the presentation and then we'll uh open up to QA from the council.

Uh when we for the uh city capital projects, we're gonna try to do this at a relatively high level for how the budget works as a whole.

If you have specific questions about specific projects, we're gonna collect those and do if we need a work session at another time to dive into, we'll get the proper project engineer who's working on that particular project.

So I just want to separate kind of budget discussion versus what's the status of my project discussion.

Okay.

Any questions before we get started?

Aldman Huntley.

So as well as the questions we have about specific projects are budget related, not status related, you're fine with that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

Great.

Um clarify closer to the mic, please.

Bring the mic to you.

Yes.

Uh I just want to clarify our order uh of the agenda here.

We're gonna first start with our Davenport team here to go over to the debt capacity update, and then we'll flip to the capital improvement program, and then I can end with some uh just the council priorities as well as just some other discussion points, but that's the plan that we have right now.

Great.

Would it make sense to take questions between each phase of that presentation?

Yeah, I think if we have questions for Davenport, uh the team here, they're gonna exit after their presentation.

So it'd be good to have the questions there around that affordability, and then uh yeah, and then we can continue from that point forward.

Perfect.

Okay, why don't you do everyone who's at the table and then uh we can start the presentation whenever you're ready.

Oh, I just hi, good afternoon.

I am Jennifer Derrickson, senior vice president with Davenport and Company.

Uh Davenport has been financial advisor to the city uh for uh over 20 years.

I've been with Davenport the last almost 10 years.

Um prior to that, I uh covered the city actually while I was a rating analyst at Moody's, so I did your all rating for about six years prior to that.

So very excited to be here today, so thank you for having me.

Thank you.

Hi, I think.

You can bring the mic closer to the easy move.

Hi, I'm Susan Osteski at Davenport.

Um I joined Davenport in 2019 and began to cover the city at that time.

Prior to that, I worked at a different um municipal advisory firm.

So I have been doing this for about 20 years.

And I Burr Vogel, Director of Public Works.

Uh so today uh we are here to present the annual debt capacity presentation.

Um really uh as we go through this, it's uh just to provide information on your existing debt as well as the projected new debt that's proposed in your uh CIP.

And then, you know, how does the existing and the new debt sort of relate to the city's debt service to expenditure policy?

Um and this analysis is really important for multiple reasons.

Um, number one, it makes sure that the city's uh projected debt stays within its policy limit.

Um it also helps to maintain your double A1AA plus ratings with the three rating agencies, Moody's SP, and Fitch, uh, as they're looking at debt metrics.

Um, and it ensures that um you know debt service remains manageable um and that you know the city continues to maintain budgetary flexibility.

So if we turn to slide one here, this is just an overview of the city's existing debt service for tax supported.

So this includes the general fund, the fleet fund, and the transportation fund.

Um this does not include any of the self-supporting enterprise funds that are supported by their own revenue generation.

Um so we did include in the appendix the existing debt service for those self-supporting funds, um, if you um that you'll see at the back of the presentation.

Um but you'll see here in terms of the general fund, fleet fund, and transportation fund.

If you look at that total column on the left, you will see overall there's a declining debt service structure.

There is a slightly an increase between 27 and 28, but from there you'll see that it's declining.

And this declining debt service structure is extremely important because it allows the city to issue additional debt and sort of provides that capacity as you you know move down through the years to allow to the new debt uh service to layer in uh with what's already existing.

And so there's about a hundred and two million point uh 102 million outstanding in total debt service.

Um on slide two, this is the uh estimated new debt service.

So this is gonna be over two slides.

Um this slide shows the estimated debt service for fiscals 27, 28, and 29 based on your preliminary 27 through 32 CIP.

Um we you'll see that if you look at the total debt service column for uh each of those bond issuances, um the city has typically issued debt over a 20-year period using a level debt service.

So you'll see that the total debt service for the 27 issuance is about 1.67 million, and then same with the 28.

It's it's level throughout the full maturity of those bonds.

Um if you go to the next page, we've included 2030, 2031, and 2032, same structure, level debt service, and these are based off of the amounts that are included in your CIP and the borrowing amounts that we'll talk about.

Susan will talk about later in the presentation.

Um, but in total, that would bring estimated debt service for all of those issues with issuances to about 151.3 million.

So here is um on slide four, we've taken that existing debt service that's in that first column on the left.

That's what we looked at first.

That's what as outstanding for the general fund, the fleet fund, and the transportation fund.

Then um in those following columns, we've uh included the estimated new debt service for 27 through 32.

I will say that the assumptions for that debt service for 27, we're assuming a 4.5% interest rate.

Most likely if you went to the market today, you would get under the 4.5%, so that is a conservative estimate.

And then to be conservative for 28 through 32, we've assumed a 5% interest rate.

So then we've uh in the total new debt service that includes the existing debt service plus all of the uh projected new debt service.

Um, and then you see that overall uh there is uh increase in debt service to about uh 13.8 million in 2031, and then it's declining from there.

Um now your policy uh is a debt service to general fund expenditure policy.

We uh base expenditures off the preliminary 27 number um of about 125.2 million and then increasing one percent thereafter.

Um, and you can see that if you look at that last column debt service as a percentage of expenditures, uh you are um you know really your policy is between 10 and 12 percent.

You only um go over the 10% policy um in uh a few years between 29 and 33.

Um, but as I said, there we were conservative both on the interest rate as well as the 1% expenditure growth because we went back to look about um what happened with expenditure growth over the last five to 10 years.

Your expenditure growth over the last five years was about 6.3%, and over the last 10 years is about 4.8%.

So well above that conservative 1% um assumption that we've made.

And then here on slide five, this is just looking at a visual chart of what we saw as the debt service to expenditures on the previous page.

Um, this is, and you can see that they're in that those few years that I talked about, you go slightly above that that 10% policy.

I think you know, staying as close to that 10% policy and giving yourselves flexibility um makes sense.

I think you don't want to necessarily go above that midpoint of 11%.

Um, so and the the 10% range tends to be on it uh in line with industry standards and what other local governments have adopted.

So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Susan for the remainder of the presentation.

Thank you.

So the next part of this presentation is dealing really with your debt capacity.

How much can you issue in order to stay under your policy?

And again, we're using a more conservative estimate.

We're using 5% interest rate, and we're still using that 1% expenditure growth.

So we believe that these numbers are conservative.

The um the first slide here on page on slide six shows the existing debt service, how much you can each issue each fiscal year with your existing debt service to remain under the 10%, 11%, and 12% policy.

So, for example, to stay underneath the 10% policy in fiscal 2027, you can issue up to 32 million dollars.

Now, if you did not issue that 32 million dollars, that number would roll forward to the to the next year.

So if you only issue 20 million, that would give you an extra 12 million, for example, in fiscal 28.

So these are rolling numbers.

This is the maximum you can issue each year, but you can issue more, you can continue to issue if you do not issue at that point.

The total number then to stay under the 10% policy over six years, we get to approximately 85.9 million.

To stay under the 11%, you would go up to approximately 101.7 million, and then to stand under the 12%, we would be looking at 117.4 million total.

Um, the following page, uh page seven, this one shows the proposed borrowing as you have shown in your current propo uh preliminary CIP.

Um, so the um we are in addition to that, we're adding a little bit of a borrowing and an additional borrowing amount in fiscal 27 and fiscal 28.

And this is relating to the prior unissued, authorized but unissued um debt.

So when you issue when you authorize this your debt each year, you don't necessarily go to the bond market for that full amount because you're trying to keep in line with your actual spend.

So there's always a little bit of money that's been authorized but unissued.

And so we're assuming over these next two years that you would issue some of that additional um that additional unauthorized.

So we're including a $7.5 million increase in 27 and 28 just to cover some of the prior years.

This means that of the proposed CIP amount, it's 80.2, but the actual borrowing amount that we're showing here is going to be 95.2 million.

Um so then the next slide on slide eight, we're showing the debt capacity, assuming that you have issued that those amounts on the prior page.

And you'll see on that line then that to get to the 10% policy, this does go over your 10% policy.

I mean, and you saw that in the prior slides.

It doesn't go over them by a lot, but it does go over, so there would be no additional capacity at that point.

For the 11%, you can issue additional $5.8 million in 27, and then after that, you would be able to issue another $3 million in 2031.

Again, if you don't issue that $5 million, though, that does move forward to the next years.

And then the 12% uh policy, you have a 21.6 million in 27, and then a total and the six-year period of 26.7 million.

So we believe that this does provide flexibility for you based on your current CIP.

We think you have room within your policies to to use that CIP.

We also believe that our assumptions are conservative, so hopefully over the course of the next few years, you actually do better than that.

But we don't want to show that because you know we don't want to be overly optimistic.

Um and then the rest of the the only other part of this presentation is actually an appendix that shows all the city debt.

As Jen mentioned, we really want it to focus on the tax supported debt because that is what your policies are based on, and that is what the rating agencies in particular, what SP and Fitch are going to be looking at is your tax support at debt.

But you do have other enterprise debt.

Um so just showing you here of your self-supporting debt, you have existing water debt, um, about 58.7 million outstanding.

You have sewer debt of 19.2 million on page 11, we show the existing parking fund debt of 26.9, existing watershed fund of 5 million, and then the existing refuse fund about 450,000.

Um this combined and page 12 with your existing tax supported debt, um how total debt of the city is approximately 189.1 million at this at this time.

Um and that is all of our presentation, but we are happy to take any questions.

Thank you.

Uh a couple preliminary things.

So we also have members of the uh Financial Advisory Commission in the audience, so thank you for joining us.

If uh if time allows, we'll um uh give you an opportunity to ask questions as well, but give me some flexibility on how the rest of the evening goes.

And I'm just confirming whether we there's a seven o'clock meeting afterwards, so whether if so, we need to clear up by 6 45.

And so clearing out that uh element.

Um also want to, I should have asked initially when you started.

Is this document uh publicly available?

So if a member of the public is watching this and want to see uh this, how do they get to this document?

Is it what's that?

It's not linked to I got it in line.

What's that?

I got it, I got it in late uh the team.

So if it's not on the line starts my fault.

Okay, so if we could at least make sure it's attached as to this presentation, so someone watching can at least go back and if they're watching a recording of it, they might be able to follow.

Okay, thank you.

And is there a seven o'clock?

Okay, great.

So we do have total seven o'clock.

All right, with that, take questions from the council.

All right, I guess we're all clear on our debt.

Uh Alderman Smith Brown.

Sure.

Thank you all very much uh for joining us today, Haver.

Um if someone's watching this and they see that in 2027 it's starting off at zero dollars.

Will you explain why that is for page three?

Well, page three.

Oh so uh yeah.

Well, page three.

Yeah, so the reason that you start out with zero um for your this and this is for the total new debt, is because even though you're going to be borrowing in fiscal twenty-seven, you're trying you're most likely not going to have a first interest payment until fiscal twenty-eight.

You typically have borrowed at the um sort of towards the end of the calendar year of that fiscal.

So you typically borrow in December of or Jen, yeah, it's been normally December of that fiscal year.

And so what you do is you actually don't start paying interest until the following fiscal year.

So while you are borrowing in fiscal 27, your first debt service payment doesn't occur until fiscal 28.

Thank you.

So what this is saying is we haven't borrowed any money uh in 2026.

Did we do this in 2020?

Well, this is only the new money, right?

So when oh, I'm sorry.

So if you go back a slide to page to page one, you'll see that there is principal and interest in fiscal 27, and that's the borrowings that you have done prior.

Right.

Thank you.

This is all new.

Yeah, no problem.

See, there you no, no, I meant the monies that's coming for next year, not the process, but yes, just clarificate.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alderman.

Uh Alderman Hunt, I got to you in a second.

I have a question about page four.

Um third from the right column, it's titled uh total debt service.

Yes.

When you were I was expecting numbers to be in the 20s and 30s million.

So for each year, like for 2028, we're estimated to borrow, I thought was closer more in the 20 and 30 range in those years.

Why is this only showing 11 and 13 million?

So, yes, because yes, in 28, you're expected to borrow 35.4 million.

Um, but that debt service is um it's not total debt, it's just the debt service on the city.

It's just the debt service.

So that's over a 20-year period for that 35.4 million.

Yep.

Very inclusive.

Yes, we took me an extra minute if I got there.

Uh Alderman Huntley.

Thanks.

I I've got a couple questions, but uh I would just say to the mayor, I I do think it's important to make sure the FAC has some time to ask them too.

So I'll try to be fast.

Uh looking at slide, well, actually, any of the slides.

So it makes perfect sense to me why we are considering what's like you want, I'm sorry.

It's any of the slides, it's not specific to one.

Okay.

I had it written on slide five, if that matters, but it doesn't.

It makes perfect sense to me why we're considering debt in the general transit and fleet funds.

But as we are in a sort of our numerator for uh calculating that 10% figure.

But it sounded like you said that for the denominator of that, we're only looking at the general fund.

Why is that?

Why do we not consider all three of them in the denominator?

That's what your current policy uh specifies.

Um, and that's typically also a similar approach that the rating agencies take.

It's more conservative just as a percent of general fund.

Um, you know, I think the general fund and the fleet typically are funded out of the general fund in terms of the transportation transit fund.

Um that was added in a year or two ago um due to the fact that they get supplemented from the parking funds, so they're not technically uh fully self-supporting.

So, but that's why we just use general fund expenditures.

All right, yeah, it seemed it seems weird to me, but uh your answer of that's what the rating agencies do is fine with um my other main question here is if we go to slide seven, how were you calculating the seven million dollars in 27 and 28?

I mean no, it's based on what we issued, but what specifically were you looking at to come up with that number?

We got it from the city.

That's came from city staff.

Okay, so that's yeah, Mr.

Pallicole.

If you were to do a reconciliation of the total uh issue authorized but not yet issued, it's slightly higher.

But in discussions amongst city staff, there was a determination that this number both applies a level of conservatism that not all projects move forward, right?

So in the CIP program, there's an expectation that there's bond funding that's occurring over years.

Some of those projects may not happen, they might not happen at the same time.

You may not ultimately let your entire amount of bonds that are issued or authorized.

So there's a bit a layer of conservatism baked in there as well.

Uh the so we settled on 15 million spread over two years.

So I'm just trying to understand this this 15 million dollar figure.

Would it have been reflected within if I'm looking at our capital budget now?

Would it be reflected in where I see prior approved appropriations?

Yes, that okay.

Yeah, where I would point you to, and I don't have it in front of me, is we have a uh bond issuance issue bond authorization document.

Right.

That was published for fiscal year 2026.

And on that, you'll see what was appropriated through fiscal year 2026 and beyond, or through fiscal year 26 and prior approved, and then you would see what we've actually let against it, and then that would give you what you're issued but authorized but unissued.

Sorry.

Uh, and then it's using that terms to then figure out what is still available to let in the current year related to historical authorizations.

That makes perfect sense to me.

Thank you.

Those are my main questions.

One thing I'm taking from this and looking for confirmation is that the borrowing that we have planned is responsible, but we're close to capacity, and we don't we're not with all these conservative estimates in place and with all borrowing plans, we don't have a ton of money, ton of capacity left to borrow in the next five years.

Is that a good is that a fair uh conclusion?

Yeah, I mean, I think you are at a good place based off of where you're estimated to be.

Um, you know, as both uh we mentioned with those conservative estimates, we expect that most likely you'll end up under that as you have in the past.

Um but yes, there, you know, as Susan showed you, if you want to sort of stay, you know, at the 10%, there's nothing else um that could be issued, you know, based off of what you have in the CIP.

There's a little bit um available as she showed, um, about 10 million that you would have if you wanted to stay under the 11.

But we think while these are conservative, there's probably a little flexibility in there, but until the actual numbers sort of come in, you know, we prefer to show a more conservative approach.

Yeah.

And I would probably push us back to that one percent growth rate.

That is just that is fine.

That that is just arbitrarily uh restricting or constraining your future capacity because if you're really truly growing at greater than one percent, your capacity is gonna expand beyond that.

And so there is just numerous conservative uh figures figured in here.

And so when we discussed internally uh the consistent messaging that Davenport has experts has shared with us, is that we are within a very good position as a city uh operating in that right above 10, right around right above 10 percent, and then we're having the capacity to go up to 12 in the case of a significant need.

All right, and if you able to comment on how this would look, will look to the bond rating agencies, assuming we made no changes to it.

I don't think it would cause any concerns in terms of uh um you know rating uh negative pressure on your rating.

Um, you know, as I said, uh a lot of local governments and sort of the industry standard is around that 10% range.

This is historically similar to what your um debt capacity presentation has looked like in the past.

Um, and so we went to the rating agencies at the end of last year, and they were comfortable with where you were from a debt standpoint.

Thank you.

Excuse me, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um yeah, so my question is, I guess has to do with some of the trends.

And if so, and again, I wish I had more time to look at this ahead of time.

But um looking at the past three fiscal years, there seems to be the city's debt position seems to be deteriorating incrementally with each cycle.

So FY25 CIP first breached the 10% policy for one year, reaching 10.51.

FY26 CIP exceeded it for two years, and then this FY27 CIP now exceeds it for five consecutive years, with zero residual capacity at the target level.

That seems to strike me as a worrying trend.

And it's because if the next year's FY28 CIP follows the same pattern, the question is going to become whether or not that 12% ceiling, not the 10% target, becomes the operative constraint.

Um, so it's that that drift, that continued trend is what worries me.

And I'm wondering if it's worth the finance committee digging into that a little more or the fact as far as should we be trying to stop that trend.

Is that a worrying trend from the bond agencies and from your perspective instead of sticking to that 10% more consistently?

Yeah, I one comment I would make in terms of the denominator, the expenditures.

I will say that the growth uh between years, I would say in the last two prior years of that expenditure number was more significant than it was this year.

There was less growth between last year, the expenditure number that we used last year to this year.

So that gives you a little bit less capacity, and I think that's why you're seeing more of the 10% range than you have in the years past.

I think you know, this is a tool that you can utilize to sort of figure out.

Um, you know, I think you're in a safe place given the conservative estimates, but you know, um, it it's definitely a tool to you know consider as you look at this CIP and also upcoming CIPs, um, you know, in terms of making sure that that remains affordable and well within your policy.

I don't know if you have anything to I'd like to add something to that too.

Well, so part of the context of your question, I think bears in mind two things.

One the long-lasting effects of decisions that any council makes, and certainly the previous administration started a lot of projects, a lot of investment in capital projects.

City doc is obviously a huge one.

That's 11 million dollars off the top just for that one project.

It there's so there is a long-lasting effect.

So the effects you're seeing now are due to decisions that were made years ago.

Uh well, I I'm I disagree with that.

I because that's not what the data is showing.

The projections were not showing us that exceeding that 10% is often it is now.

So I'm just wondering like if we should be, would it be more sound for us to actually try to push back perhaps some of the CIP projects so we are more consistent with our policy instead of again increasingly pushing past that 10%.

Is that something we should try to strive for just again to adhere to our own policy, but also to um you know make sure we don't have any bad news from the credit agency or bond rating agency.

I I also wanted to add additional context.

So there was a significant effort this year going into the development of the CIP budget to not front load expense.

And so what you may actually be seeing is a little bit of a smoothing effect as well, because of what what happened historically is that there's been a larger portion of bonds budgeted at the outset of a project rather than in the out years.

Uh, and so there was a significant effort made to try to make that a little bit more normalized.

And so I think what you are seeing here is a little bit of that effect as well, too.

So instead of having a stark jump in a period, and then the historical trends always been that it has trickled down over time because the out year letting is much less.

This year you'll see in 27, 28, 29, there is actual letting that's occurring that's smoothing those CIP budgets across.

So it could be a factor of that, but your point is taken and we're happy to go back.

And so I'll I'll throw a nod to the Financial Advisory Commission, something that we've been talking about is getting a uh spendable spending authority commission and getting some other things going like that to evaluate out year type activities.

Well, I would like to get thank you.

I still have the floor.

Uh I would like to get the input from the FAC at some point on their recommendation in that regard, because I I do think because we don't have too much more time left to draft amendments as the council, and so if we do if if we are if it's recommended by the FAC or even our own committee to try to get down to that 10, I think that's something we need time to figure out how to do it.

Um, but again, I think it's if if FAC or yourselves think there's a benefit in providing, you know, kind of deviating from this deteriorating trend, getting back to that 10%.

If there's a benefit for us to do that, then I think we might want to I believe Chair how to do it.

That's all I have.

If I may address Alderman Savage's question, sure.

Go ahead, Mr.

Cardillo.

This is Jim Cardillo.

Uh I've been a FAC member for the last eight years.

Um, first of all, uh Joel mentioned uh the key assumption on the debt capacity is the denominator, the GFE.

And if we continue to accept the inertia of the general fund expenditures growing, yes, there's debt capacity, but uh the FAC has been concerned with the growth of GFE and has uh it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you're able to have debt capacity if the general fund expenditures keep growing.

Secondly, uh it has been discussed that the FAC is concerned about decisions that have been made in prior budget years that impact this year and future years, which is why we have pushed repeatedly for a forecasting and spending affordability plan to be performed.

So those are the two of the fact concerns that directly address the debt capacity.

Second point was a sentence was a better way of saying what I was trying to suggest.

Thank you.

And there are fact members present in the room as well who can also.

Any other council members with questions?

Any other fact uh members with questions?

I I don't have a question on here.

Do you want to come into the podium?

Sure, sorry.

Uh Peter, you start with your name, please.

Oh, Peter Vale, I've uh been on the FAC for about a year now.

Um, trying to understand why uh we're suggesting taking out $15 million of additional debt um above what's already been issued, like the the what's what's been authorized versus what's been issued, and we're assuming you know, just that there's an up there's an opportunity to take out that 15 million, but where you know, where is that going if it doesn't line up with the CIP plan?

Yes, so the the 15 million is part of that prior authorized but unused, so it's been approved in prior years, but it might not have been issued because those projects haven't weren't moving, you know, and didn't happen in that particular fiscal year.

Um so uh in combination with the staff, uh it was decided to add 7.5 million it in fiscal 27 and 28 to sort of account for any projects that had been approved prior that are moving and might come to fruition and need to be funded in 27 and 28.

And and just so I understand that those projects aren't included in the 27 million dollars that we have let's say earmarked for the for the FY28 capital plan.

Those would be in prior capital plans that had to be.

Sorry, sorry.

I was I was just gonna say that probably the easiest way to think about it is if a project came in and was approved in the CIP in 2025 and said it was going to use bonds in 2025 and 2026, and we approved that, but then ultimately we ran into some sort of delay, whether it was like uh, you know, I'm sure you know public works runs into delays all the time, right?

So we wouldn't have just chosen to let that money because we'd be paying interest on that for a project that we weren't executing upon, and so it's still authorized to be let, but we just haven't let it yet.

So you wouldn't see it in the existing debt.

And so on a conservative basis, we're gonna say the project might get back on track, we may let it now, so we're gonna incorporate that into the funding in 2027 because it's already been previously approved, it just we never actually took it out to not be charging ourselves interest on something that wasn't moving forward.

Okay, and then when just follow-up questions, my my apologies.

So it what is the mechanism where you know we have these projects that were delayed, which conceivably might also, if we actually do them, delay the projects that we're gonna be doing in in 2028.

Where do you sync what actually can get done in a specific year versus what was approved for the last three years versus what's actually going to get done in the next three years?

And that's that's where I see this disconnect between the debt that we're saying we we have the ability to issue, but we might not actually have a need for it right now, given the capacity of the public work staff to actually get the work done.

Not not that you know, not that they couldn't, but it's just a capacity issue.

Yeah, I think again, from a finance perspective, we're just taking a conservative approach so that we're not creating a situation where we're not planning against letting that money.

But Director Vogel, I don't know if you want to touch on execution timing for projects and how when something gets delayed in a prior year, how that then affects future years.

Very few projects um depend on another project finishing first.

Yeah, so so most of them are sort of standalone, they're they're ready to be a contract to be uh awarded and then invoices to be paid when when they're ready.

Okay.

Um so there's really not that linkage that I think I'm I'm hearing you asking about.

But of course, just as we've been talking about the uh when we go to the bond markets, we only ask we we only look to borrow the money we think we're actually going to need if we're gonna plan on, let's say, doing uh uh going to the market every other year.

We do a really detailed forecasting, not just of when we need the money appropriated, which is really what the capital budget is about, is about appropriating funds, giving whoever that procurement officer is the authority to write a contract at that instant in time, even though those invoices might take 24 to 36 months after that contract is written for them to you know, contractor to invoice us, and then us having to pay that that invoice.

So we we go through this fairly detailed process with uh finance department and then each individual project manager kind of doing a cash flow analysis and saying this is what we we think we're gonna need that cash, and that helps inform what we actually go to the market for in terms of the bond amounts.

Does that help?

No, it all helps just part of the conversation.

So thank you.

And also keep in mind public works doesn't do all these projects, right?

There are other departments that are that are that are involved.

Yeah, right.

But I'm just the only one who's here.

Yeah, I don't know.

I draw the short straw every year.

Um Sir Arnett, would you like to come up and just want to keep an eye on the time?

We have two more topics to get to.

This is a simple question.

I think I'd probably have asked it for 19 years in a row.

But I'm a bottom line guy.

So I'm looking at the um the total total across all funds for all years in the CIP, and it's five point one five hundred and one point two million dollars in the Davenport is five hundred and forty-one point eight million dollars.

I would that could imply that there's some pay-go money and grant money or something to make up that uh 40 million dollars, but I don't think we have that much paygo or grant money uh in this.

So at some point I probably need a another remedial session to crosswalk between the tables in the CIP and the tables in the Davenport fund.

Observation.

Okay.

Suzanne, do you want to speak to that?

There's another table that's not published that's part of our workbooks that is bond, the bond portion of each project only.

That's that's not readily visible in the upfront tables of the uh the capital budget book.

Can we get that unpublished table?

Ultimately, just ultimately I I had uh I had Claude make a exactly what that chart is that the director Vogel's talking about, so I'd be happy to share it with you.

So I wanted to know exactly that there is a lot of grant money out there out there.

That's that kind of really explains most of the delta you're you're looking at.

Suzanne, would you mind speaking to the microphone, please?

Introduce yourself first.

Suzanne Player, uh budget accountant.

If you look on page 15 of the capital book, there is a listing of all of the grants that um refer to the different or I mean it's not by project, but there's there's uh a listing of the different grants that we received, so we can certainly total those up to see how much it is.

I mean, it's not by project, but there's a there's uh a listing of the different grants that we received, so we can certainly total those up to see how much it is.

But if you look at 15, it's pretty significant.

I'll also point out on page 12 of the CIP book.

There's an all-fund summary page there as well that breaks out the total bonds, pay-go grants, and other funding sources.

Um it also shows the outer years of the totals as well as what's for 27 and prior approved.

Page 12.

Oh, sorry, I said page 15 because that's the page that it is in PDM, but it's different on the numbered page.

So we're referring to the same thing.

Thank you.

Anything else for this phase of the discussion?

Okay, is there anything else for Davenport?

Who we can we excuse them.

Anything else for Davenport?

Can we excuse them?

Oh no, I'm sorry, I had an onda.

That was directed at me.

Um I don't have anything else for Davenport today.

I just do want to thank them for all their efforts.

Absolutely.

And uh, you know, they've been great partners for the city and they've helped steward us through this, and so uh, especially in my time here, uh, they've been exceptionally helpful, taking a lot of time to walk through this and spend a lot of time going through.

So I really appreciate their partnership and uh I think they've been great representatives for the city.

100% agree.

And I you're certainly welcome to stay, but uh just always try to be respectful uh for guests like yourselves to uh give you the opportunity to exit as soon as you can.

But thank you for your contributions and keeping us straight on all these issues.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

Okay, so uh for new council members, welcome.

This is uh tonight's presentation or the slides that you have in front of you are are largely self-explanatory.

So um I could I could pretty much stop talking and just tell you this is a guidebook.

Uh the capital budget book itself is very dense, it's 130 pages, and you might be interested in seeing well what what's new, what is changed, and that's really um what does the information that's in front of you is for.

So I'll just uh jump right in and then we'll I'll probably be done in two or three minutes, and then we can go after questions then.

Next, please.

So here's just an overall uh kind of a summary of the different projects that make up the capital budget or the different fund sources of the capital budget.

Keep in mind from our last presentation that uh just in the general fund alone, there are six or seven million dollars a year of projects that carry forward, and so of that 255 million dollars, uh some of that goes back 10 or 15 years uh of those recurring projects, and they just keep adding and adding and adding.

So it can be a little bit of a uh misleading picture there, but it is uh our our kind of plan in the next couple of years to start closing out uh some of those those prior years, so we won't see that in the future.

Next uh just what I was was talking about, that's six million dollars a year.

I actually just took a screenshot from the the last time I was here.

Next.

Okay.

Um so what are the the new projects?

Um right here that I think in the public works side, I'll just point out that the general striping marking is something uh we've we've gotten a lot a large demand for.

That is for painting red curve, that is refreshing crosswalks and and other striping.

We've done that a little bit of that out of the operating budget in the past.

Um, but here we're we're putting more resources towards it, and uh you know, we think that'll be uh well received.

Next last year when I did this, I uh was able to do it with just a couple of bullets.

Um but this year there is uh so much change in the budget that I I went ahead with with two tables, and so this the first table that you see here, this is where funding was removed from fiscal year 2027 uh versus what was was prior approved.

So uh this is what Joel was was just speaking to about our uh kind of taking a deliberative look, and if we didn't really need the funding uh to move it to the year where it is needed.

So many of these uh projects, for instance, the you know the Stanton Center reservation, I think that money shows up in a future year.

Um, but we just don't need it right now.

So we're removing it and putting it out in a future year where it is needed.

Next slide.

And then this is what we did with all of the money that we um moved out on the previous slide is this is this is kind of where it went.

And as you can see in uh in 2027, 16 million dollars goes to City Doc, which had previously been in the 2028 budget, moved it forward to 2027.

Uh, and that 16 million dollars is not all bonds, uh only about uh 11 or 11.5 million dollars if that is bonds.

And and that is really it.

Um the the rest of the slides are just a quick description of each of the new projects, uh, and you can look at those um at your leisure.

So as promised, I think I probably finished in less than five minutes.

Council members, Alderman, Alderwoman, excuse me, O'Neill.

Thank you.

Um that spreadsheet where you showed where you took it away and where you added it, is that available to us?

Can you send that to us?

That I think is again taken right out of one of those tables that Suzanne and Capri just mentioned.

If you go to you all will find it faster, I can I can look here.

But in the upfront tables in the capital budget book.

Okay, all of that is there.

Um so it's PDF page 12 and paper page seven.

Thank you.

I hadn't seen that.

I I copied straight out of there.

Any fact members with questions?

Uh one more caveat to that.

I copied out of there and then did a filter.

Only changes more or less than 200,000.

So less than negative 200,000 greater than positive 200,000.

Oh Otterman Savage had his okay.

Um so I have two big questions for you.

One is can you talk some about for the projects where we chose not to appropriate entirely or as much in FY27 because there was money left over?

Can you walk us through how those determinations were made, how much we decided we didn't need, and going even beyond the money part of it, the talk a little bit about the capacity part of it.

Like, say we I'm gonna use roads as an example, um, which I should probably flip to.

But if we normally wanted to be spending three and a half million dollars on roads, how much money do we have left over?

And is that enough both to meet our obligations of 3.5 million a year?

Is it enough to keep up with actually repairing as many roads as we really should be?

And is it physically possible for us to spend all of that money if the entry to the first two is yes?

You picked the perfect example.

Um if you don't mind bear with me, I'll look it up in my book and then we'll we'll all flip to it.

So this is general roadways should be somewhere um page 60-ish.

Page 58.

Thank you.

What was that again?

Suzanne?

58.

627?

57.

One more page up.

All right, I'm here.

So in this case, we didn't actually remove money in 2027, we just added less than we typically would.

So uh you'll see um ordinarily three three million five hundred thousand dollars has kind of been the pattern, or it that's up from three million dollars previously.

And we just we simply looked at this with the with the project manager and said with the remaining with the money that you currently have, um how much could you possibly spend in fiscal year 2027?

And she said one million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

And and that was it.

So it was just that was purely a capacity and the ability to write those um task orders to that contractor and manage that work.

So that's kind of why this one looks the way it the way it does.

And that that figure of with the money you already have, could you explain to everybody how that gets calculated or how they can figure out what that is?

I know you and I talked about it yesterday, but oh the figure you just said uh with the money that she already has, how much more could she spend, right?

Right.

And so what I'm getting at is how would our colleagues here see what that number is for how much she already has?

You can only see that in as of January 31, 2026.

You can see that there's uh 17 million dollars there, and then prior approved was 21 million dollars.

So you would know that as of January 31st, there was four million dollars unspent.

And so I could look it up like right now because it's live.

And do you mind if I keep going on this?

Yeah.

So to stick on this one, like you said, we've got about four uh four point three million dollars uh as of January 31.

But it seems to me we should subtract out what we're gonna spend between February 1st and the end of this year, right?

The end of this.

Right.

That's that's what we do in the office.

Is exactly that.

Okay.

So how like I'm thinking for our budget figures, in the operating budget, we have a projected figure.

So that uh 4.3 is like year to date.

And what I'm trying to understand is what is uh projected at the end of FY26 figure for that 4.3.

Nobody asking it a different way?

No, it's just meaning to have to do arithmetic in my head.

Oh, okay.

2.7 million dollars or something.

I think Ms.

Turner's trying to assist.

Sorry, excuse me.

So that encumbered figure that you see there is the amount that they have encumbered for the rest of 2026.

Anything outside of that, the additional four million, say they need it more than that 2.6 that you see there, they can add to that encumbered amount.

But as we budget for our projections, if it's encumbered, that's what they anticipate to spend for the remainder of FY26.

But they do have the option to increase or decrease that number.

Here's how I would do that math.

We we can do about three and a half million dollars a year.

So thinking about two full years worth of work, calendar years, I'm switching gears on to calendar years now.

2026 and 2027, we could probably spend seven million dollars.

We have four.

Um adding one point three here that takes you to five point three or five point five, and then some portion of the FY28 money comes into play in that in that following.

So I think we'll by the end of this year we'll probably have spent that down to uh two million dollars.

The four million will become two million dollars by the time we close out the books for twenty-six.

So if someone were to ask me how much is Mayor Littman gonna spend on general roadways and the city council, because we all approve it.

I shouldn't put it all in your shoulders.

How much is this administration gonna spend on fixing roads in FY27?

The answer is this 1.4 figure plus the difference between the 21 million and the 17 minus what we think we're going to spend in the rest of FY26.

So it's somewhere around.

We can get you a better answer.

That's it that it's too convoluted.

Okay.

Yeah, that's that's what I'm getting at here.

Is I just think it would be very helpful for us as we're looking at particularly the CIPs that are ongoing to know what we want to get at is how much are we going to spend in this next year?

So and and I think just best way is pass this prologue.

If you look at the box there, the financial activity, uh, you can see that a year ago, 14 million.

Fast forward a year, 17.3 million.

So during that period of time, we spent or encumbered 3.3 million dollars.

Pretty good chance this year is going to be close to that.

No reason to think it won't.

That's a much easier way of estimating it.

Thank you.

Uh I I do have another kind of broad question, but I'd let somebody else take a chance because I spent a lot of time on that one.

I'll take uh the uh uh responsibility of spending the money if you give me the credit as well for getting the roads done as well.

Uh Alderman Savage.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

So just two questions.

First question has to do with um the equitable public water access plan and that I just to understand the bigger picture of what is happening there because I noticed the FY27 budget was greatly.

Could you give us all a minute to get there so we can follow along?

Um public water access.

I think it's called citywide public water access, right?

It's number 40051.

You have a page number from the uh CIP.

36.

Gonna be in the 30s.

41 electronically, 41 in the PDF.

Thank you.

So I was just wondering if if if the does this reflect a reduction because those costs are being sent to specific projects, or is this reflect something else?

Just a uh general reduction in this.

I I can't I can't speak to this is one of those projects that isn't public works.

Okay.

So finance will have to take that one.

Yeah, so it actually says on there that some of this locations haven't moved to new CIP projects as far as which ones those are.

I'd have to get with the engineer to make that determination.

Now, where did you see that note?

Scope changes.

Oh, I see.

Well, some yeah, signage locations.

That's not a lot of money, but okay.

If I could get if somebody could give me some more information on that, that'd be great.

And then that would is very likely Eric Lyshinski.

Very likely what?

Eric Lashinski.

Um just for the record, try as we try to get the do outs to the right person.

Yeah, he didn't know.

I asked him, he didn't quite know what was going on.

Uh so the other question is let's see, complete streets.

Let me see if I can find that one.

Next page.

Oh, isn't the next page?

Thank you.

That also has like just a reduction in one fiscal year, FY27, and then jumps back up to normal in the future fiscal years.

Is that just because it wasn't all spent this past?

No, no ability or plan to spend it.

Nope no projects under construction for which that those funds could be used.

All right.

Um thank you.

Any fact members with questions.

I want to return uh to the roadways.

Um years ago, we funded $2 million and kept each year and kept coming up short on getting roads resurfaced, and all of you fresh off of campaigning know what an issue this is with the electorate.

And so we increased it to three million dollars, and the rationale was average life of a road is 20 years.

So they have to be repaved every 20 years, and we divided the number of roads into the years and came up with 3 million.

Now it looks like we're saying it's gonna be 3.6.

Um, I think I heard Mr.

Vogel say we don't have the capacity to do more, but I don't think we do it.

I think it's done by contract.

So uh if we really want to resurface the roads on a 20-year basis, are there more contractors that we can go to?

I don't know if this is on or wrong.

Yes.

Uh a little bit of a so with the new microphones, it's always on.

You don't have to worry about turning it on and off.

So we heard you.

A little bit of a chicken in the egg.

We have the overall, and just in public works.

We have the staffing to execute the plan that we have in front of us.

Really last year's plan.

Um, but there's not a significant difference.

So we I feel really confident that we have a uh a solid match between workload and staffing at the at this time.

Um same thing, same principle applies with contractors.

We have a contractor that we work with, they do a lot of the work for not just us but many of the other municipalities.

Uh they dedicate sort of one crew to the city of Annapolis or the city to city council to say we want to double this.

Let's go to six million dollars a year and let's plan to do six million dollars a year for the the out years, especially give me a year's heads up to spin up.

Then we could go to our contractor or or get another contractor, just as Mr.

Arnett suggests.

We just need lead time for that, and we need that sort of stability and visibility, and we and we could do exactly that.

Are we on a um let me ask you differently with the amount of spending that we're currently spending on roadways?

How many years does it would it take to get to all of our roads?

I believe it's actually a 30-year cycle.

I'd have to flip over to the performance measures, but I think that's that's what we have.

The roads generally last 30 years, or is it in general?

I I feel like we are keeping up.

Um I look at it a little at a little more of a granular level.

I look at roads that are in really bad shape, and we had we do a consistent condition assessment every four years.

And I I like to look at where where how many zeros and twos we have.

Those are our worst roads, and uh put my eyes on them and say, Yep, you know, it seems like this is we are taking care of our worst roads uh uh pretty in uh pretty quickly.

So they don't nothing stays a zero for four or five years.

Fernando, do you have a follow-up question?

I do.

Uh it's on the next page, and it's sidewalks, and um we're spending normally we spend six hundred thousand.

We're proposing to spend less this year, but three hundred thousand of that goes to something which I agree is very much needed, which is re-bricking the sidewalks in ward one.

But um uh I think that this only maintains sidewalks.

We have a lot of places in Ward 8 or Alderman Thorpe has a lot of places in Ward 8 that don't have sidewalks at all.

It's particularly pernicious on Chester Avenue, and it puts a lot of people walking out in the streets, and we've never really we have a complete uh sidewalk plan, and it talks for having sidewalks, which I believe is a public safety issue, but we don't put in the money, first of all, to keep sidewalks up to the satisfaction of the residents, but second, add the needed new sidewalks.

And so uh I would raise a question about why we're actually going down in spending in fiscal 20 uh seven.

There are multiple sidewalk projects.

I'm not sure there isn't.

There are multiple student new sidewalk projects.

There is also uh planning and zoning is working what they call a mobility action plan, but is really a plan for prioritizing where we need to add new sidewalks.

Um and I wouldn't argue this it's it's council's view uh or council's um prerogative to to put more money into repairing sidewalks.

I I was just gonna say to Alderman Arnett that I think the answer is also largely the same.

It's with the roadways that we have a delta here of about eight hundred thousand dollars between what we've previously approved and what we've previously spent.

So we are leaving eight hundred thousand dollars in addition to the two hundred thousand dollars for those sidewalks.

But yeah, well, I agree.

Why didn't we spend uh I hear you?

Um, but my are you okay with me going on to a question?

And let me wrap uh wrap up if you can go to Almond Thorpe hasn't spoken.

Yep, I'm wrapped up.

Old Marthur.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

So I'm not sure if we're gonna go through each one of these questions, uh, whether that's tonight or another conversation, but Director Vogel and I have had this conversation, and I'm in the middle of working this very issue, and I'll be coming to you uh with that discussion.

Yeah, I think that level of granular details best for another day.

Yeah.

Hold on.

Uh okay.

Just want to make sure there's no one else waiting.

I'm sorry.

I feel like the guy who keeps putting his hand up, I feel like Hermione Granger or something.

But I'm asking questions, not answering them.

Uh what uh I'm trying to understand is when we do the operating budget, we see uh take central services as an example.

Central Services came forward and said, you know, these are the enhancements we asked for, these are the enhancements we got, and that gives the council something of a window into what we could potentially fund.

We could look at that and say, you know, we really think the real estate consultant's more important than the uh risk manager.

Gives us some options.

So I'm hoping I'm looking actually kind of at the mayor, but also maybe the public works director.

You could help us understand what is some of what got left on the cutting room floor here.

What are some of the potential CIPs that were considered that aren't in here?

Uh and for the ones that are, how do we decide that they are more important than the ones that didn't get put in, or even putting more money towards ones that are in here?

I'll I'll defer to finance on that one.

I I'm not always in those conversations.

Uh you don't we don't cut anything, right?

Yeah.

I I would say to answer your question, we actually are doing a comprehensive sourcing of projects.

And so any projects that need to come online are brought into the CIP workbook, and then there's just an evaluation of execution timing and spending along that execution timing, and then there's just a lot of detailed work there.

And so I don't, I think what you see is anything that's marked as new is really coming to council to say this is the new projects that we're bringing into the book this year.

Uh you've never we've never told anyone no, we're not doing your project, right?

But the city manager might have.

I think city manager might have.

Um I will say that the process that we use for the operating book with enhancement requests is not the same process that's done with the CIP book.

Um I've only for the time that I've been here, there's only been one time where we have reduced projects.

Um, but it was never in like cutting them, it was more in combining them into one project, not leaving a project out.

I could probably point you to a place to kind of look to these kinds of questions, uh, apart from the recurring ones.

Um, which are so few that we can really speak to them at an individual level.

If you go to the main table back in uh pages 14, 15, maybe before where we list all the projects.

So let's take perhaps uh Eastport flood mitigation.

Is that when I need to zoom in a bit?

So you see uh 2.6 million dollars out there in FY 2028 and and 1.5 million after that.

If there's bond funding associated with this, is where I have to flip over to another um kind of behind the scenes spreadsheet to see where the bond funding is.

Those are the kinds of things that maybe things got deferred.

What page are you on again?

I'm on page 11 in the PDF.

This is the upfront tables that show project by project.

Thank you.

Now, unfortunately, here as we're looking at this PDF, what you don't see is grants versus bonds at the project level.

Um, but look to see things that you kind of have to compare uh 2020, you know, the last year's book versus this one.

Did money move out?

Things of that nature.

There was there were some timing conversation.

I don't think anything got cut.

It's just about, you know, maybe particularly beyond next year.

I think everything we kind of needed to do or ready to do in 2027 and in 2028 when I mean do, I mean appropriate.

2027, 2028.

I think we got things in the right places, but there I think there's some things beyond that that may be shifted.

I'd like to move on to the next topic.

Someone who I've been promising Alderman Smith Brown that we're gonna go through the word by word capital projects and want to make sure we'll leave plenty of time to that.

So if you don't mind real quick.

Well, it's a question about one of our finance policies.

Okay, that's the question.

Uh thank you, Mr.

It has to do with the the capital reserve policy.

And it's another question I think I'd be curious what the fact facts input would be.

Um because we do seem to be increasing some of our the policy is kind of general, it's just like one sentence, maybe appropriate as pay as you go funding for capital improvement, but we are using it for things like fitness equipment.

Um I think uh I can't remember if we're using it for striping or not, but um General Roadways is relying on it quite a bit.

Uh 19 million of capital reserves over the next six years.

Um that consumes the vast majority of the capital reserve capacity.

Um so it might be a question for finance too.

It's like what is that again good practice to to have, or should we be trying to um protect?

I mean, we're gonna it brings us right down to the the required minimum for capital reserve, right?

Um so should we be trying to preserve any more of those appropriate uses of some of the capital reserve?

Um, general sidewalks also proposes to use some capital reserve.

Um so I just want to get some clarity on that policy.

Yeah, the policy itself is very loose, as you just said.

Uh the great way to think about capital reserve is that it is generated as part of the end of the year allocation of excess reserves above the fund reserve policy.

And so capital reserves become effectively uh cash that can then be used in other projects.

And so when you have a project such as general roadways or general sidewalks that are recurring in nature, you're actually putting the taxpayer at a disadvantage by putting bonds every year because now you're just creating a cyclical event of bonds.

So it's actually a very appropriate use of reserve because now you're pulling down and not going out to market to fund those projects with bonds that you know are recurring in nature.

And so that's one justification for it.

Um then in terms of just general hygiene on the capital reserve, uh, you do want to have a maintained reserve to use for uh emergencies.

And so there is a portion of that as well.

Thank you, Q.

Let's move on to the next phase and the uh word by word portion.

I just need a moment to switch computers.

Thank you.

Smith Brown, thank you for your patience.

We talked about this a few times, and uh now's your moment.

Of course, but you've been very patient, so I've been uh want to thank you for your patience.

Uh is my screen presenting TV team.

Okay.

Um so this is not something that you guys have in your hand today.

We can work towards getting that to you, but well, we uh went through an exercise of requesting DPW and other engineers who are owners of specific projects to go through the project mapping as requested by uh councilman Smith Brown, Alder Alderman Smith Brown to give some level of understanding as to which wards projects existed in.

And I know this is super small, I'm not I'm not intending to zoom in right now.

Uh what we then did was summarize the information in this document, which is a uh just a really high-level summary by ward compared to projects.

And so what we did is identified all 117 projects based on which uh enterprise fund or general fund that they're in, and then you have what is a gross amount, and so just to be really clear about amounts here, this is the fiscal year 27 to fiscal year 32 funding amounts, so not inclusive of prior approved, and then you have by ward, which the count of projects that were indicated by the project managers uh as where they affected ward, so then uh what it is giving you is then what is by the number of projects, what is that percentage of the total population, and then similarly the dollar amount of the project and then the percentage of that dollar amount.

And so the one thing just to be completely transparent upon is that this is not doing an analysis and a cutting up of an individual project.

So if a project is deemed to so if a project had 10 million dollars of uh cost associated to it and it's deemed to affect all eight wards, you would see that 10 million dollars eight times.

And so this is meant to be a uh analysis to just give you a high level view.

And so the results that are here are um they're actually pretty they're pretty cool in my opinion, and that you can see that there's pretty consistent funding across majority of the wards being in that 60 to 70 percent range with a larger portion on what's happening.

Okay.

Um and you can see that there is a larger allocation to ward one, and that can be almost exclusively explained explained away by city docs and that being um allocated there solely.

So this hopefully Alderman Smith Brown kind of gives you that.

This is in one of the documents that I posted out there for call the council priorities presentation, it should be the very last page.

Well, well, they're talking, you know, something to point out is that there's a lot of projects on city facilities, city city facilities just are where they are, right?

So it's not necessarily relevant in terms of uh insider analysis.

Right.

Right.

I I think that's an excellent point.

And obviously City Doc is a big portion.

So if you obviously ward one has um outsized, outsized uh spending if under this analysis versus the other wards, but aside from ward one, which again is City Hall, um City Dock, obviously, the other city uh resilience project compromise street, the other wards are largely in the same vicinity of each other.

I think is is the big takeaway I took from this.

And the where I'm looking at that, if you look it's almost which I'm now two, 40%.

Thank you.

51% for ward one, 40%, ward two, then we get to ward three, 25%, 25%, 20 uh 30%, and 33%.

So not saying they're exact, but they're in the ballparks of each other, except for ward one.

Questions about that slide.

There's another ward by ward presentation that we have next that talks about specific priorities for each ward that I'd like to make sure we get to.

But I thought this was a good slide and appreciate it.

And again, the call out he was making about not trying to parse projects between different wards is an important one.

If you add up the totals, it won't make sense because of that.

So just want to be clear about that.

Aldman Smith Brown.

First of all.

Okay.

This is a phenomenal first step uh in the direction exactly of what I think all of us and our residents um would appreciate.

So thank you for taking the time to go about doing this and uh just for the productivity of our city.

Uh this is a a great way to visualize what's to come, what has been um and uh to the point of the parsing of the projects.

If someone did wonder, you know, how do I know if it's general sidewalks, which sidewalks are going to be repaired in my area um or if it's another general fund, what what's happening in my ward, is there um a breakdown of that somewhere?

Sorry.

So for general sidewalks, for example, um, if I know we said it's let's say the 10 million dollars that was said um and we didn't do it by percentage per ward.

Um, how do we know, not just us, but people in general, um, which sidewalks will be done in our ward um based off that amount.

Um there's a there's a really long explanation of how we do roads and sidewalks at the public works web page.

Um so that's really where folks who have that particular uh concern or interest in that topic, I would I would absolutely uh recommend that folks go to the public works website and look on the left side, and there's something there for roads and sidewalks.

But it basically says for um sidewalk repairs, we do this two ways.

One is somebody can just put in uh a submitted problem request that says my sidewalk is is is dangerous, people might trip here, and city crews will go out and they will fix that particular acute problem as reported by a resident or uh a member of council.

The other deliberative part is we follow the paving program.

So where there's a uh road in your ward that's about to be paved, we go out and we actively inspect those sidewalks, mark up all the things that need to be fixed.

Uh typically we will address the uh the handicap ramps, the crosswalks, and and make those ADA compliant if we can.

Um where are sidewalks going to be repaired in my ward, follow the paving program.

But you have to look at that because that's got its own website, and you can see what our plan is for paving.

Right.

Okay, so that the listing of all the streets is it's in order on the paving program.

Right.

Because the exev seen that before.

Okay, that's and they can refer to that.

And you'll know, okay, next week this street's gonna be paved or next year.

Yeah, but this is generally speaking, kind of making it more minute.

Okay.

Thank you, Alderman.

Smith Brown.

Any other questions?

Alderman Arnett.

Former Alderman, I'll let you know.

What's the appropriate way to refer to the city?

You can just call me.

You can call me your honor.

Um Mr.

Arnett.

Uh my eyes are old.

I can't see this.

Can we get copies of this?

And apparently there's more slides about spending by ward and yes, I'll ask uh Miss Jackson to add this to the presentation for today's presentation.

Thank you.

Okay.

Maybe go on to the next uh document that you prepare.

Please.

Yeah.

And so this is a presentation that actually is a just a accumulation of the information that we've gathered from the councilman uh through what they've said are their priorities.

And so it's really just taking a moment in time to just reflect on what was shared with us, and then being able to kind of speak to how the budget is reflecting those priorities.

And so just really going through it one ward by ward, uh, just trying to understand where we saw priorities from each of you, um, going through uh Alderman Huntley's, you know, we can see that the key priorities were infrastructure, tax relief, and then customer service as shared by him in uh his notes.

Uh so focusing on roads and utilities, and then also uh increasing responsiveness.

Uh Alder Woman O'Neil's, we what we gleaned from yours was pedestrian safety, focusing on new sidewalks uh with some specific locations as well as uh the CIP maintenance plan, meaning long-term maintenance around the parks and city dock and stand center, and then also uh wanting to evaluate the grants program for reform for the community grants.

Uh Alderman Smith Brown, you know, a strong focus on infrastructure, upgrading lighting, traffic controls and calming, uh expanding sidewalks and repairs, and then also identifying uh investment in public safety and youth, uh, as well as clean, green and affordable, thinking about beautification, composting and housing stability support.

Uh Alder Woman also Johnson.

We saw from your notes that there was a strong focus on streets and lighting, getting signage replacement, uh, as well as safety infrastructure, increasing uh police presence and repairing drainage and water pipes, and then also providing services more for youth and elderly, um, as well as identifying ways to make security better for those uh areas such as locks and cameras.

For uh Alderman Shamlemeyer, uh, there was a very strong focus on the maritime apprenticeship and renewing that program, uh, focusing on child care assistance, and then as well as emergency services such as the peak time medic unit.

Uh, for Alder Woman Conte, there was a lot uh around the hack uh resident services to fund uh staffing for rec center access, buildings, and homework support, as well as additional traffic calming measures, and then also providing uh signage for uh homelessness support services.

Uh uh Alderman Savage uh had a strong focus for sustainable mobility, speed cameras, micro traffic circles, uh, and other infrastructure for cycling, uh project implementations for benchmarks for fund for establishing metrics around both uh funded projects and then uh ensuring that council approved studies go to RFP and uh are move towards execution, and then the watershed restoration fund to uh make sure that it is funding the 2050 tree canopy goal and uh update rep parking regulations, and then lastly, Alderman Thorpe's focuses have been on track traffic and parking, making sure that we're increasing safety around traffic calming, uh parking reconfiguration, and then sidewalks, uh really uh updating the sidewalks and completing gaps uh in high pedestrian areas, and then also just the overall long-term infrastructure plan uh to be multi-year funded to remove utility poles from sidewalks.

And so what we did when we looked through that, we saw that a lot of the council really did agree on many things.

Uh, you know, we have pedestrian infrastructure, so we've talked about sidewalks a lot in this meeting, even um lighting and visibility that adding to the safety and just calling for folks to feel more safe in the city, long-term planning.

I think there's many uh instances of like beautification, maintenance, the striping uh and other types of projects, traffic calming and safety, just the continued enhancements within the uh sustainable mobility uh efforts, such as adding speed cameras and red light cameras and other just uh traffic calming work, uh youth and community programs.

There's been investments across rack parks and racks and parks for additional programs.

There's been discussion about uh adding to the HACA group for their their needs as well, and then also um just additional investment in existing programs.

Uh and then for environment and sustainability, I think we've seen significant um measures there with the tree canopy uh continued investment for flood resilience as well as just the watershed restoration overall.

And so that was more just be a highlighting of bringing the uh council's priorities forwards, and just then now we've already spoken about some of the projects and some of the investments that are being made uh on the CIP side and and how that kind of aligns with what you guys are focused on.

Thank you very much for that.

Questions?

Alder Woman, Smith Brown.

I mean, sorry, Alder Woman O'Neil.

Forgive me.

That's all right.

Those are some tough ones you got confused.

It's not like me and Brooks.

Um I think this is great.

Uh I love the fact that you put it into presentation form so that we can kind of see how it plays out as far as the number of times each of us.

Um and I think that a lot of the budget reflects uh some of that.

Um I just wish we had more.

I'm not play with.

I didn't want to say play.

More money to put towards some of those projects.

Um, because I don't see a lot of maintenance plans and long-term planning in our current budget.

Alder Min Smith Brown, did you intend to say something?

Well, the question is gonna also go to um about I know we talked a little bit about the general sidewalks.

What about sewer?

You like the uh pipes and things of that nature?

Is there a priority listed off for that online or yes?

That there is an asset management plan.

It's uh from about 2018.

It's not something I think we have posted online, but we could we could certainly give that to you.

It's in the process of being updated.

Oh, wonderful.

Okay.

It's really important because then when we go out and we're talking to our residents and we're saying, hey, look out for that new sidewalk that you asked for, it'll be coming up, you know, in a year and a half, or hey, don't worry about that pipe bursting uh right now because we're prioritizing it being fixed in the next two years, you know, those types of things.

It's really uh important for us.

So thank you.

Thank you.

If you um go to um Mr.

Vogel's presentation, one of the interesting facts I heard from your presentation the other day was that we have sewer systems that are from you know the 1800s that are fine, but from 1980 that are not because of the quality of materials.

Do you remember saying that?

That's correct.

That's correct, yes, from finance committee.

Um yes, there's there's that.

And so the the asset management plan takes into account uh risk.

So what would be the consequence of this particular piece of pipe failing uh combined with its likelihood of failure, which would be kind of our assessment of its condition at the time.

And so we go after those um high likelihood, high consequence things, just kind of how we how we generally prioritize.

But for the near term, uh I would suggest if residents are interested in what we're doing in the utilities world.

Do you remember that uh GIS tool I shared with you all by email?

That's the best thing.

Because that we that's really our near-term plans, our asset management plans would be things that we would get to after all of those projects are done, which would be two, three, four years from now.

And so that's that longer range forecast.

Ultimately.

That I do see in the budget.

If we go and look at after City Doc, our biggest uses of bond funding are we're doing a bunch of stuff with fire stations, we're doing a bunch of stuff with police stations, we're doing a bunch of stuff with City Hall.

And I don't uh I mean, I think those are things that our residents are not necessarily clamoring for.

No, there might be reasons why they're not clamoring for them.

But it strikes me that there's a pretty big difference between what we see up on the screen and what we see in as our at least our biggest ticket projects in here.

And that's where my question from before of how do we determine which ones go in and which ones don't go in.

If uh if the council is saying, boy, we want more projects on traffic calming.

I don't think there's a bunch of new projects in here on traffic calming.

Um but the council's not saying, boy, we want to redo all the fire stations.

Again, there might be reasons why we have to.

It's not always about what we want to, but I'm just getting to, I think there's a I'd love to know how we're determining which projects go into here.

I wish the city manager was here.

I feel like she would have some great insights on that.

Um yeah, so I don't know if there's a real question in there, other than it would be great to hear that from the city manager.

But to dig in on a couple of those.

We have three, we have four actually, but take out the the um old fire station one, the forest drive fire station renovations.

We've got three active fire station renovations in here.

The overall rebuild and then two specific ones.

And I'm just trying to understand why we're going ahead with doing specific upgrades if we're planning on going to rebuild all of these in the next few years.

How do we determine that we're not being duplicative?

I'm gonna take try to take a stab at answering your question.

I don't know if it'll be satisfactory, and I certainly agree having uh city manager here will be helpful.

On the fire stations in particular, I think we might have discussed this uh maybe this would be information for everyone else.

There's not enough money in the CIP for actually re uh rebuilding three fire stations.

There's only enough money for coming up with a uh plan and a design for the three, assuming that there will be some duplication.

You wouldn't do one at a time and do another one three years.

So you do the planning at once, and then there's just enough money for and with a really rough estimate of what one station costs.

And I want to emphasize really rough estimate piece of that.

As after you get through the design and planning stage, you fine-tune those numbers.

And that repeats itself in a lot of projects.

You brought up that once that was just a really good example.

The the other way I want to answer is you, we collectively, we hire a city manager to filter through the expertise of all the direct input that they're getting, he or she is getting from, I guess she, and then it will be she again, all the uh input that they're getting from all of the directors, their various plans and like fire department in particular had a very thorough um long-term strategy, and so there was some good information from there that I think fed into picking what was in there and what was not in there.

But I think that's that's I think a very important expertise that certainly we want to the council sets priorities and policy, but the biggest thing you do in setting policy we do is picking a city manager to filter through to the experts of how do you run the city and let them make some of the decision making.

So, like I said, I'm not sure it's a very satisfying answer.

But the last piece I want to say is obviously in a very compressed time frame in getting this budget out.

So we began staff round tables to get staff inputs of their priorities in the budget, as you as you know that because you saw it in the mayor's budget, there's an effort of getting more engagement with the public and uh with council members, and so and we have uh the eight town halls in the fall.

My hope is with a new city manager, hopefully we have a new finance director, no no offense, but you know, a permanent finance director.

We'd love if the no was you, Joel.

Yes.

So certainly no disrespect meant by that, but a uh new new city manager, new finance director, finish, let us do this engagement with the public, let us combine that, and you'll see you saw a lot of efforts of uh collaborative agenda.

Um might not be the exact term of Laura will see what she would tell me with the the right term, but something to that effect.

And so I'm much more optimistic that when we get to next year's budget, it'll be hopefully a better synthesis of council, staff, resident, and director priorities in a more defensible explainable way.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain that.

I and I I agree with your philosophy about the city manager.

I think just like on the operating budget side, we need to be able to see these are the options the city manager made this call.

We don't want to second guess them on everything, but for our ability to evaluate the city manager, we need to know what the options they were choosing from were.

And why?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um so okay, I guess we'll uh on that like very specific question of how we know we're not duplicating this.

I would love uh that as a feedback or uh whatever we're calling it, a do out is what Alderman Thorpe would say.

Can I also speak to um pedestrian infrastructure and traffic calming and safety?

There is a very significant project, uh 40060, which is traffic safety improvements that is developing the concept plans for things that will become very large and probably expensive projects to do these things.

We just don't even know what those projects will look like at this time.

Um, but I feel like for next year's budget, we will have concepts and we will have estimates, and so that will be a more robust discussion next year.

We have prioritized those three quarters.

Thank you.

Alderman Smith Brown.

Yes, if I may, mayor.

Um, do you mind clarifying just a little bit?

Um, which you can I identify an older person really quickly.

First, um, do you mind Alderman Thorpe sharing?

I know you were talking a little bit about uh a private conversation you had.

Is that something that we're all gonna be privy to?

Something you were saying you talked with Burr offline about uh I think we were referring to uh sidewalks when Alderman uh Arnette had brought it up.

Yeah, no, I I'm or thank you.

Sorry.

Um get me in trouble.

Um I went through uh the capital projects with Ms.

Director Vogel.

So I'm available to all of you anytime.

Yeah, very high level, very high level.

We took I took the priorities discussion and then looked at the capital projects for about an hour after the finance committee meeting, and and I find him to be exceptionally accessible.

Okay, it was uh I wasn't certain if it was something maybe about sidewalks specifically because I know all of us are prioritizing sidewalks, etc.

So I just wanted to exactly whatever we needed from us or and Aldermart, you know, talked about Chester Avenue.

There is no project to put a sidewalk on Chester Avenue at this time, but it will likely show up in that mobility action plan that um Eric Lashinski is working on.

Okay, thank you so much for uh putting these slides together.

Um if Alderman want to ask specific questions about I would imagine you have where is the funding for these priorities, how much, and and someone, you know, I think um send those to the finance director.

Yeah, I'm sure he'll be happy to help get you that granular detail that I suspect you want.

All right, yes, Alderman Huntman.

Can I just suggest rather than emailing them to the finance director that we create a tab in our finance committee follow-up?

Uh the the same one that we're using.

I would be happy to take the lead on how you want that organized and be the and yeah, facilitate that.

Yeah, sure.

So what I'm saying is Ms.

Jackson will create a tab in the same document we've been using for all the other ones, and you can put questions in that.

Excellent point.

Let's get off the email.

Alderman Smith, are we looking to add something?

That's really good too, because it keeps it all together in one space or place.

Um just I think we should just say thank you, Mayor, for even having this and being so inclusive and understanding and supportive.

Um I'm sure we'll be complimenting all of us each other throughout the years, but this is extremely important and valuable.

Um, and for your direction and making sure that our team here uh can provide that information.

So I just wanted to throw that out there.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay.

If there's uh if there's nothing left on this topic, I will ask our city attorney for the next item on the agenda, giving one last look around.

All right.

Um thank you both of you, and thank you, uh Ms.

Turner and Miss Flattery for joining us and for providing your expert guidance.

I just want to reiterate again.

I know it's at my state of the city, but I don't think you were here then.

So I want to say in in front of you that I was extremely impressed with the the knowledge that the two of you and and Darren Smith.

Darren, Mr.

Smith's name, Mr.

Smith.

Um, but all of you um, in addition with um uh Karen Jay and of course uh director uh acting finance director, just how much knowledge, expertise you brought, and I I'm a curious person, pushed you with a lot of questions, and you always had answers, and you came back with a lot of direction.

So um just very impressed with a behind the scenes finance team that we have in the city.

So thank you very much.

Darren Johnson.

Sorry, I just that last name wrong.

I'm used to calling everyone by the first name.

You kind of forget sometimes last names, but uh Darren is certainly included in that.

All right, um.

Okay.

Anything left for the good of the order?

All right, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Worst session.

We don't need a motion, we're done.

Thank you.