The work session of the Annapolis City Council for Thursday, May 21st, 2026, will be called to order at 2.04 p.m.

And at this time, will everyone willing and able, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the five of the United States of America and to the Republic.

What I nation undervisible liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Yes.

The first item on the agenda is ID 7926, discussion on budget amendments submitted created by the Finance Department from ideas and recommendations submitted by the council.

Thank you.

Uh we have before us obviously the finance team.

Thank you all for joining us.

In a moment, I'll ask you to just introduce yourselves, all four of you at once, and then if you want to, I will uh Alderman Huntley as chair of finance, I'll uh turn it over to you to start the discussion.

How you want to.

I know we're you have an agenda laid out that we've all seen, so thank you for doing that in advance.

So please introduce yourselves, and then we'll uh turn it over to Alderman Huntley.

Uh Darren Johnson, senior budget analyst.

Capri Turner, budget analyst.

Hey, thank you all for uh joining us in all your hard work to get us to this point.

Alderman Huntley.

Thanks.

Yeah, I'll just give another shout out to the budget team.

Uh I said this to them when we talked, I guess it was yesterday, but it's like they're playing with the man down, and you wouldn't even notice it.

So these guys have just been uh an incredible been doing an incredible job.

Thank you so much.

Uh also uh congrats to our our new city manager.

Happy to have you.

Uh all right, so folks uh as I laid out in my email last night.

The first thing we're doing is just walking a little bit through the rest of our process for the budget and when that's gonna happen.

So we're having our meeting today.

Next step is that we still need to do a little bit of work.

I think on grouping our uh the amendments into categories, one-time funds, recurring operating capital, and exempt.

Uh, if you take a look at our working spreadsheet, which I know normally we try really hard to make sure that the public has access to whatever we're talking about.

I've had a couple folks ask me for that today.

It was intentional that this is not published because these amendments are not final, but for any public members of the public watching, we will have in advance of our June 1st meeting the final amendments that we'll actually be voting on published.

Um that to say that we're still working a little bit on making sure that all of these amendments are in the right categories.

But we do have the operating recurring, the exempt, uh, one-time funding, capital, and yeah, and that's it.

Um, we intend to send out a set of spreadsheets.

Each council member will receive a spreadsheet with these amendments on them, in which you will have a column that you can mark each one with a score about how much you care about it.

The scoring system I came up with with the city manager, with the finance team is from negative one to three.

Meaning negative one is I'm opposed to this.

Even if it were free, I wouldn't want you to spend money on it.

Zero is neutral.

One is I like it, two is I really like it.

I'm strongly supportive of this.

And three is this is one of just a few top priorities.

The point is that you really do want to spread these out.

Um don't put everything as a three.

Don't I guess don't put everything as a zero either.

That would be kind of boring.

But um be able to express your opinion so that we can use them to order the list that we later vote on.

Keep in mind this is not voting, this is just a straw poll.

This is just for us to get a sense of where everybody is.

So the hope is that you'll be able to submit that uh by the end of the day on Monday.

I know Monday is a holiday.

I also know all of us sitting up here on the dais uh have been known to work on a holiday or two.

So we're giving everybody the the whole weekend, the whole long weekend to work on that, so then the budget team on Tuesday when they come back can have all of our responses.

Um on Tuesday, then we will have that uh use that information to inform an ordered set of of spends and potentially depending on what we're gonna talk about later, the pay fors.

Now the this is really the point of our discussion here is we've been talking mostly about spends.

Everybody wants to spend money.

That's that's a lot more fun than cutting money, and so uh I don't know, sometimes I have a good time cutting money.

But uh that's generally the case.

And so what we've been trying to do with this new system this year is really work through how should we most appropriately account for the trade-offs that we are making in the budget while also being fair among folks having different levels of experience, while also um making sure that it's not arbitrary, right?

We want to account for the real trade-offs that everything has to come from cutting somewhere else, but also something that we really uh all agree should be spent, shouldn't get paired up with something that no one wants to cut from.

So we're trying to create a more equitable system on that.

So the decision point for all of us today that I want us to talk about in this next 10 minutes, is really whether we should go through by voting on all of the payforce one by one by one, and then vote on all of the spends, which is the city manager's preference from our conversations, or that we would have an ordered list of all the spends based on your straw poll, have an ordered list of the payforce based on what the city manager and the finance committee think is going to be most painful, and pair those up so that you are able to effectively understand, all right.

If I spend this money on a sidewalk, I have to cut this from whatever other position.

Uh so that's really all of the background I think we need.

Um, happy to take any questions on the process before we jump into discussing which one of those two options we should take.

I mean, obviously on June 1 we would vote on it all.

Last thing you said.

On June 1, we would vote.

Right.

That's I didn't mention that step, but that's kind of the most important step.

Alderman Savage, I think you say, Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um so I didn't entirely follow all that, sorry.

But I think I got the gist of it.

Um it's easier in writing.

Yeah, I'll take another look at that.

Um, but so but as far as you know, um I would my preference would be that we separate out the the expenses and the pay fors, just because I think some of the you may have some people who vote against uh an expense that they otherwise would support, but maybe they don't like to pay for.

I just think separating them is gonna provide for a bit of a healthier um, but also more clear distinction on what people are gonna have a preference for when they rate them.

And is that so are you add were you asked if we so we you want us to do the ratings by close business Monday, right?

Uh correct okay.

And that's just on spends, not on pay fors.

That's just oh, just the ratings on the spends, correct, right?

Okay.

Uh deputy city manager Buckland.

Well, we're all gonna have to get readjusted to the new channel and uh echo welcome to City Manager Yolanda Lewis.

Uh Deputy City Manager Buckland, uh, can you chime in with your preference and how you think we should be proceeding?

So um, as Alderman Huntley said, we this is the conversation we've been in for a little while.

Um in the past, um, and and to Alderman Savage's point, um, we've had a situation where the amendments are neutral amendments.

You're voting for both.

Here's here's places where we're adding funds, and here's places where we're taking funds away, and the net effect of that amendment is zero.

Um, and I understand the value of sort of staying budget neutral, amendment by amendment.

Um, but there is um there is an inherent equivalence that doing that kind of pairing creates.

Um, that's not necessarily true, right?

I folks may be very interested in this particular thing, and I'd trade other things for this, but I don't want to trade this thing for it.

Um so my suggestion had been, you know, do the votes on here are the places we're gonna cut.

That tells us how much we have to work with.

Here are the here are the things then that we want to add.

To Alderman Huntley's point, though, there is a little bit of um uh by separating it that way, the the sort of value of how much do I, how much am I willing to how much do I want this thing and what am I willing to give up for it is harder to put together, and I think that's why he um why that this discussion is here is how how does how does setting up the the voting, how does that help the council have clarity on the choices that it's making, right?

Because that at the end of the day, that's what you're doing, right?

You're making choices about the budget, and so I think the the point of the question is to get a sense of what will help you best understand the trade-off that you're making in budgetary terms, whether that's item by item or let me gauge how much I'm willing to cut, and when we reach my pain, you know, we reach our pain point, then that's what we've got, and now we get to vote on on other things.

I think both of those both of those are reasonable things.

I don't know if that helps you.

Yeah, I mean, I I was hoping to hear uh other people's perspectives on um which one they would like.

I think well, I I think I might have a way to thread the needle, but I'd I'd like to hear what other folks think about just between these two options before I throw that out on the table.

Alderman Thornton.

I think at the end of the day, we've got to pick the process that gets us to an answer, and to simplify it as much as possible as a benefit.

So it's kind of like democracy, it's not perfect, but it's the best solution.

So if we could prioritize spends and prioritize cut, and I think to Alderman Savage's point, separate the two, um, so for instance, I might want to cut something to pay for something, but nobody else wants to cut it, it shouldn't affect what we're looking to spend, I think, which is what you were saying, right?

And so I think there's real value in that.

And and at the end of the day, what our tough thing is, is if we decide we're gonna add seven dollars to the budget, we gotta figure out a way to cut seven dollars of the budget.

If we can only get to five, then we've got to revisit the spend and get it to five.

If we get it to six, then we gotta, you know, that's that's how I see this playing out, and that that's how you make things competitive with each other, which I think is the whole goal that we've talked about.

So that would be my thought.

Yeah, I think you just jumped ahead to m what I was gonna suggest for threading the needle there, which is to essentially take the the option that um deputy city manager Buckland suggested, but then be able to jump back, right?

If we go through the list of payforce and then we go through the list of spends, we get to a point where we say, all right, we we can't can't vote on any more spends, then we could should be able to jump back to the list of pay for's.

I think if we do that, then we're we're getting the best of both worlds.

And and continuing to build on that, I think by design, we should look to add $15, not worrying about how much we're gonna be able to cut, and then when we get there, we can only cut seven, then we go back to your point to the fifteen, we get that to eight.

Maybe we look at the seven, say, oh, can't go any farther, go back to the eight and get it to seven.

That would seem to me to be a to to be able to have the latitude to go back and forth several times until we get it equal.

Um I think to me makes the fairest and most open process and transparent.

Um so both so both the nine members of the city council have an idea of what we're doing, and the public sees an idea of what we're doing.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I agree with what Frank Alderman forp is saying.

Um I think it's a most a crucial part of that is the being able to go back and forth um as serving on the council uh for the four prior years budgets.

Um one of the things that was frustrating is that sometimes down the line, budget amendments um countered what was decided prior to, and we never had an opportunity to go back and revisit if there was a way to do one of those.

So I think it's really important to note that we can keep going back and making a modification if the council deems that necessary, um, instead of just losing it.

Um, because we've we've surpassed number six, seven, and eight, um, and now we're on twelve and whatnot.

So I do agree with everything you're saying, and I think that it's important to note that it is going to be a process of some back and forth and perhaps revisiting some of the issues.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Littman.

Um, so I would ask for this.

I well, one, I'll say we're looking for an option three.

I take it that's what this would be in option three of merging option one and option two together in a way.

Um, so I would think it would be best to maybe lay that out so we can see what the process would be as soon as we can.

Obviously, we're making enough right now or coming up with it now.

Uh secondly, um, what goes into the decision making of where we're cutting from?

So when we come up with all of our pay for, obviously, we have a list of all our amendments.

How are we prioritizing where we're taking the money from in order to pay for that?

Ultimately.

Yeah.

Uh well.

We're starting with what folks submitted, right?

And trying to order them in terms of what the city manager and the finance staff and and the finance committee all think it's going to be least painful.

So there are some places where I think we've found uh, like, for instance, I think that it is very reasonable to include the revenue in uh that we will generate from the peak time medic unit, assuming that that gets funded as uh a pay for.

I think that should be incorporated into the budget.

That is a relatively not painful thing to have as a pay for.

So it should be relatively higher up on the list.

Now uh get rid of all of our uh get rid of all of our pothole repair would be a very painful thing.

We would not want to put that anywhere near the top of the list.

So it's it's uh there is some level of judgment in it, but I think a lot of it is meant to be pretty technocratic about what impacts city operations and what doesn't.

Okay, and I think it's important then through this process, um, for equity that if someone had an amendment and they felt that you're pulling money from a place that others um would not want it to be pulled from before a different amendment, you're pulling money from a place where people will be like, oh yeah, that's completely fine to pull from that.

Then that person who put forth the first amendment may feel slighted that you didn't prioritize finding the best place to pull that money from.

So I'm just making sure that there's uh clarity in how the money will be pulled or where the money will be pulled uh for every older person to have um the ability to still have their amendments uh considered fairly.

If I if I may, I think that I think that was uh in some sense, I think the point that Alderman Thorpe you were trying to get to of the straw poll including both things, so getting a sense of overall what is the least painful, what to what is the most painful on on both sides of that question.

Yep, thank you.

So we're all in agreement of option three.

So that I was sharing uh my support for that.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

So if I could walk it through just to make sure I understand, um so if we do the kind of straw poll ranking of all the amendments, group by category, and also group by expenses and then the pay fors.

But if we do the pay fors first, so if we do all that, like you said, by close business Monday, collate all the data, share it with each other, presumably share it with the public at some point as well.

Uh, then we'll know a few things.

We'd know generally what the pay for is everybody again subject to final vote, but we'll know general inclination as far as which pay for's people are the body's gonna generally support, um, and a list of the twos, right?

The pay the twos, the pay for's ranked twos, which should be kind of like the the backup subject to more rigorous debate if we need to go that direction.

Um, and same thing for the expenses.

Um so that'll give us a pretty good idea of how much once we figure that out go through that process, we'll fairly good idea of how much how many expenses we can actually have based on those pay fors, right?

Because that'll tell us generally here's how much we would be willing to pay for.

I want to say that expenses, right?

Because before you go too much farther, the straw poll is only for the spends, not for the pay for's.

Exactly.

We're asking folks to say how they feel, how strongly they feel about the spends, not about the pay for side of it.

Or would not do both.

Why not do both?

Because our feeling was that uh a lot of these pay fors we explored in the finance committee, and we've sort of talked through them and think you could very easily cause a lot of damage if we just start ranking the pay fors by uh without having a lot of detailed um you know thought going into those.

I think the the payfors essentially are more dangerous, and so I am a little bit more hesitant to have them be solely subject to popular will.

That's that's basically where I'm going.

So just yeah, I see your point.

Just to close out, so well, regardless, that will still be helpful even if we just do it for the um the proposed expenses uh expensive.

We need to wrap up this discussion because we need to move on to stay on schedule.

I think we're at 225.

So I think we have a sense of where we are though, and I think we have enough information expressed.

Um for the next step, um, I'll again turn to Alderman Huntley and giving you a lot of latitude to lead the discussion with reserving the right to take it back.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I think they delegate it to the budget team.

Um really what we wanted to do here was just have the opportunity to walk through all of these amendments and um make sure that to the extent there are ones that still need a little bit of work, uh, or that need some of the feedback from the department heads and where there are ones that are overlapping that we uh figure out what those exactly need to look like.

So the budget team has all the information that they need to go through and turn these into actionable amendments that that we can all vote on um yeah on June 1st.

So did you guys want to start with the total submissions side of the document?

Or are we gonna go through in each tab?

Each tab?

Okay.

Can we pull it up on one of the two Ds or no?

It's not a big deal.

You can get started either way.

Yeah, beautiful.

Point of order.

Or perhaps inquiry.

It's just wanna know.

Can you walk through the process for this meeting as far as what they're about to do?

What you were both are expecting of the rest of the council?

Yeah.

So uh really the goal is to finalize these amendments.

If if we have amendments up here that are all are fully ready to go, we don't need to do much on them.

If but there, I know are ones where two aldermen submitted one sitting.

So actually, perfect example.

Look over the the very first one.

Finance committee and Alderman and uh Mayor Littman submitted essentially the same thing, but with slightly different uh amounts spent.

And so the goal here will be to talk about those two, figure out exactly how much money we need to spend, get it down to just one amendment.

Like that's really what we're trying to do here, multiplied by a lot of different amendments on this.

That answer your question.

Somewhat.

I can't see that well either.

Mr.

Pallicole, you want to go?

Alderman, hold on a second.

Alternate, um, can we is there a document that we could pull this up so we are following this?

Sure.

Yeah, it was shared um in my email last night, and then also by Ms.

Turner at 1.20 p.m.

It's called FY2027 budget amendment submission list.

I don't think there was an attachment to your email.

It wasn't an attachment, it was a link to a Google sheet.

It was in there.

Okay, so I have the you said FY2027 budget amendment submission list.

Um it's not sorted that way though, so I think that might be.

You want to go to this next tab, go to operating recurring.

Okay, that's the one.

We'll get started.

We'll get started and we'll kind of cover how to navigate the file.

So before you start, just want to make sure everyone has the document that they want so they could follow.

Everyone ready to follow.

Alderman Thorpe, you good?

I don't have it yet.

Give me a second.

I don't want if we if we start too soon and we get lost in the beginning, we're gonna.

Alderman Thorpe, did I hear you say here's Harry's email?

Okay.

I got it.

I got it from Capri.

I've got it.

Everybody good?

Okay.

Thank you, Director.

Thank you, Alderman Thorpe.

I appreciate the stall.

Gave me some more time.

Um we are going to get into this document.

So we wanted to get started with just laying the land, right?

And so starting with the submissions tab.

This is really a consolidated tab with everything that's on here.

Actually, you have the submissions one, Capri, just so we can orient folks.

I want to just start at the very beginning.

So this one is all of the submissions.

So this is gonna be very much not filtered.

It's gonna be in order.

You'll see it's by just ID number by person.

Uh and so it's gonna probably be the most difficult one to kind of look at and understand.

But if you wanted to go here to see your individual submissions and just see them in order, this is probably the best place to go, just so that you can track kind of where did your stuff come in and how did it go?

To explain color coding, because if you're wanting to see your submissions and just see what the colors mean, blue are items that our team looked at and saw that possibly were duplicative in nature and maybe had other crossover with other amendments that were submitted from other council members.

And so we'll be ones that we would want to bring forward to you all to just look at, see if there could be some concurrence reached about yeah, these are pretty similar.

We should probably look at them and maybe combine.

I think we have some notes in there about clarification questions.

There's gonna be some notes in there that uh will have point to that.

Uh orange are gonna be items that possibly are being withdrawn.

Uh we've received some sort of communication or otherwise that maybe we're not continuing forward with those.

But we would maintain a full comprehensive list, we are keeping those on the list.

Uh, and then red is known withdrawn, right?

Red is known and fully withdrawn.

And so again, this submissions list is the full comprehensive list.

It's probably the best place to go if you want to just see your submission in order.

Uh, because of the nature of how amendments work and the fact that we need to be able to kind of track to the fund or the uh you know the body that it's related to separating out operating versus capital.

We felt it was very important to separate these.

Uh, we also wanted to add some layers of separation as well, speaking to kind of the language that Harry had previously used around, you know, known, just more kind of obvious ones.

We added a couple of a category for exempt and some categories for one time as well.

And so we're gonna move through this categorization uh moving to the right.

And so the next tab is gonna be the operating recurring.

This is gonna be the more dense tab, and now you're gonna see that there's some categorization here.

Uh it's no longer gonna be sorted based on that ID number, but rather it's gonna be more uh subjectively sorted by our team based on uh amendments, and so there isn't any specific rhyme or reason to how it's sorted, but what we did is we put most of the items like items together, and so uh you'll see that there's a lot of blue items together, uh then followed by yellow, and then you get into just a regular run-the-mill amendments.

And so uh we put the blue one on blue ones at top because those are ones we really do would like to get clarification on, uh, make sure folks are looking at because uh the easiest place probably to generate some immediate cuts would be to remove duplicative items.

Uh, and then we'd want to make sure we get clarification, and then we would want to step through open items.

Uh, do you mind if I just get through the rest of the book first and then we can go into questions?

Yeah, and just Mr.

Pallicole, as we're going through this, let's do exempt last because if we run out of time, that's the best place to not go over, I think.

Okay, great.

Um, and then can you step through to one time?

So then the one-time items are gonna really be items that are one time in nature where we would expect that we're not putting them into the base budget book.

They're gonna be using one-time funds, and so uh if there's opportunity uh found in the budget for pay for's uh leveraging one-time funds or reducing one-time funds, we could pull those and use those.

Uh moving into capital, these should be straightforward in the sense that they're related to capital projects, uh, and uh amendments tied to the CIP specific projects or uh adding to those projects or changing bond type uh requests tied to those.

And then we had specific amendments tied to fees and fines, which we pulled out into their own categories as well.

Let me interrupt you just a second.

Um, Miss Starter, can you freeze the uh top three columns so that as we're scrolling down, we don't lose the headings, and then also uh freeze uh column uh C the names so that as we're scrolling, we don't lose that.

I think that'll be easier for everyone to follow on the various tabs.

Sorry to interrupt you, go ahead, please.

No, then the exempt one.

I think actually, Harry, if you I mean if you wanted to give a little bit of color.

I mean, this is probably it's not like a specific area, it's more I'd say administrative in nature.

It's these ones that are not specific, but uh yeah, Alderman.

Sorry, excuse me, Alderman Huntley.

Uh if it would be helpful, maybe um you want to add a little bit of color too.

I know you had described it in a good way.

Sure, yeah.

Uh I'll caveat it with I looking at this this morning, I realized that I think some of the things that are in here as exempt maybe uh should not be.

So I don't want us to get too confused on it, but basically the idea is that there will be some uh amendments that are either so simple or so complicated that it does not make sense to have them go through the uh the process of of the straw poll and all and generally that's going to be ones that are budget neutral.

So it would have to be budget neutral to be exempt, uh, which could mean that it's just changing a name on something, right?

It could just be a text amendment.

Uh but basically the idea is that there are some amendments that are either so simple or so complicated that we don't want to put them through the ranking process otherwise.

That's the idea.

May I can just ask some basic general questions?

Just can you reiterate what the blue and the clear cells are?

I got the other colors.

But on top of that, if you don't mind me adding out what I was gonna ask earlier, is are you allowed or if excuse me, mayor mass before?

Let's get an answer to that.

And then we'll come to your question next.

Yeah, it's it's in addition to his, it's actually his question.

But we could be somewhat informal.

Go ahead.

Um excuse me.

It's will you just add a key to this document?

It's supposed to refer to.

Yeah, we can add a key.

That's a great idea.

Um, but blue is ones that we identified.

So I want to make sure it's clear that we have identified them ourselves as items that we believe might be duplicate duplicative in nature, and so you know, again, they're not.

I want to stress that if you don't feel they're duplicative, you can tell us that.

But the colors are too organize us today, they are not something that I think we need to spend too much time focus on.

Yeah, and I I'm not trying to, but I just want to understand blue is duplicative with something like right below it or above it.

Is that the ideal or near it or on the individual tabs where their breakout is?

That is correct.

On the submissions tab, no.

The submissions tab because of the way it's organized in order by Alderman, then Alder person, then no, you couldn't you couldn't make that rationalization.

Okay, so to see the the real point about the the color code, you gotta go off the submissions tab is your point.

Right.

I got four head nods.

That was awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah, so let's let's jump into the operating recurring and start talking about some of these ones.

I think people will get what we're trying to do here as we start showing them.

Here are two that are very similar.

We need to figure out uh, is this actually a hundred thousand dollar amendment or is it actually a thirty thousand dollar amendment?

So I say we just jump right in if you want to pull up operating recurring here.

I appreciate you trying to freeze the the top.

Oh I see.

Well, what we'll do is we'll unmerge it and then we'll that's all right.

So for FC6 and then uh and uh L20, these one is a hundred thousand dollars, one is thirty thousand dollars, so mostly gonna do the same thing.

Uh the with this within planning and zoning.

So if the budget team knows the answer to it, that's great.

If not, and we need to call planning and zoning director, then let's do that.

But basically trying to get an or maybe Miss Bucklin, we're trying to get an answer to should it be thirty thousand dollars, should it be a hundred thousand dollars,000?

Should it be somewhere in the middle?

Yeah, this is one where I do want to point out this is when both this and the next one actually um cross over between that operating recurring and the one-time tab.

So the the other side of the that first one, the AI capability where it's talking about accuracy of resident permit applications, the other one that's duplicative is actually on the one time tab, and it is the um it's the the second line in that one time tab.

So they're they're they're also taking very different views of is this a one-time expense or is it a recurring expense?

So it's it's a similar idea, but it's also got this difference of viewing of uh what's the time horizon?

That's a great point.

So really we have two questions to answer.

How much is this and what type of funding?

Is this all on?

Good afternoon.

I'm here representing planning zoning director Chris Jacobiac, and I talked to him about this this morning, and the idea is that the both the one hundred thousand dollars and the thirty thousand dollars would be helpful in getting our AI program up and running to help with permitting and and licensing.

I'm sorry, it's interrupted.

Did you say your name on I didn't catch it?

Oh, Maria Brown.

Thank you, Maria.

I know you of course, but just on the record.

I'm sorry.

So he uh did want me to reiterate that they are looking for the one hundred thousand dollars as well as the thirty thousand dollars to get the program up and running.

Dr.

Bucklin, do you have a follow-up to that?

Yeah, um, so the thirty thousand, so I don't actually see for the one-time funds.

Um I see a 25 and a 35, but you're saying the right number is 30, 130,000 total.

Total.

But but the 100,000 is a recurring cost.

The 100,000 is for FY27.

Uh we don't I don't know whether or not it's a recurring cost right now, is the cost that it's gonna take to get it up and running for the permitting program.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm I'm actually seeing three separate ones about this because there is both the two that are listed at the top of the operating recurring, and then there is one over in one time for that Alderman Savage submitted.

I think what I'm hearing can we call them out by their ID name?

Sure, the one at the top.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Apologize.

I will use the ID names.

So we're talking about FC6, L20, and S33.

Um, so Alderman Savage is amendment over on the one-time, she suggested 25,000 for this.

I think maybe what I'm hearing from you, Miss Brown, is that there's both a startup cost to it and an annual cost to it, right?

There what I know that we were trying we were looking into getting 25,000 in FY26, but we know that the council is looking into giving us the 100,000 dollars for next year.

So the 125 is the total, but our idea was to go ahead and and find the 25,000 dollars in this year's budget to get the program started and uh talk to IT and see what needs to be done to do that.

I'm gonna have you oh go on.

I'm going to uh have you navigate who you want to call and to and you be your own time clock, because I think you want to have a schedule.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I know I it seems I've picked a uh difficult one to get started on.

Um, yeah, Auto Romanil, you want to jump in?

Thank you.

So, what's frustrating about this is that there's a hundred thousand, there's thirty-five thousand, there's twenty, or thirty thousand, thirty-five, there's these three different.

Um the twenty-five is something different.

Um, but do we have an actual do we actually have data of what it costs?

Is there a specific program?

Is there a specific analysis of what it costs, or are we just throwing out a hundred thousand dollars?

Oh, yes, Chris is working with a company, so there is specific data on how much it costs.

And if I'm not mistaken, excuse me.

Originally it was we had requested a hundred a hundred thousand, and I believe Alderman Savage is the one that Chris talked to about the extra twenty-five.

So I don't know where I'm not sure, you know, about this 35,000 says finance committee.

So, Maria originally it was the 25,000, the Alderman Savage, I believe, had talked to Chris about plus the 100,000.

Um just in the interest of time, would you be able to reach out to Chris to clarify that one time versus recurring, and we might be able to come back to this that might help us?

Yes, uh yes, I'll try to reach money.

So we really need to know two questions.

One is to get this going, how much money do you expect to need in one year, and how much money do we expect to need as recurring funds going forward?

Okay, sure.

Just to clarify the request, answer Alder Woman O'Neil's point.

I think if you're at what you're asking, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, what does $30,000 get us?

What does $100,000 get us so that we can make an intelligent decision or $130,000?

So that we need to know what we're buying.

What was the line item of the other one that you you said there was a third one?

Because I didn't see that one.

I'll I'll come over, Maria, and I'll show you.

Okay, thank you.

All right, next up within operating recurring, we have two similar ones also from the finance committee and from Mayor Livman for snow removal technology upgrades.

We have the same dollar figure on these, they're they're way easier than the last one.

I don't think there's anything outstanding that needs to be resolved.

I think these two can just be combined into one.

Is that track with Ms.

Turner's understanding?

Yes, because we turn our budget analyst.

We just need to know who's the sponsor and who's the co-sponsor.

We'll let the mayor be the sponsor.

Thanks for letting me.

Yeah, I'll I'll be the sponsor, it's fine.

Yeah, Alderman Savage, you had something.

Yeah, because I had an item on this too.

I support it, but I just want to I think we need clarity on it if this is uh gonna be a one-time use, or is it a recurring annual subscription kind of fee for software before this gets finalized?

Oh, I see that you have it as one-time also.

Um yeah.

Who do we have from public works?

Oh, Director Vogel.

I almost didn't see you back there.

So basically the question is whether this additional funding for snow removal uh technology is best categorized as one time or recurring.

Alderman Hotman, just to yeah, real quick for the point of order, kind of I it is important to get all these answers, but I'm I don't know if we're gonna have time to get answers on all these amendments.

We could always just have staff get back to us with some of these clarifications.

Yeah, I think as we're we're sitting on the first one, if we run into something complicated, it's good to just have it come back.

But I don't know, public works director.

The answer is it is a subscription service.

Um, this would be the annual bill, and we could stop it or switch providers down the road if we wanted to.

Beautiful.

Auto Roman O'Neill has a question.

Um, and I just want to make it one clarification in our discussions during finance.

You suggested that this subscription might also work for street cleaning.

Is that correct?

Correct.

So it's a double duty.

Yeah.

Okay, all the sound savage, are you alright with removing your one time amendment on this since it's recurring?

Yeah, and then if the budget team could also just make a note within the recurring that this is also for um street sweeping.

All right.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, Alderman Smith Brown, you got something?

Yes.

Hey, Director.

Um, so when we look at this technology, do we get some type of um overview of what this technology will offer or what we'll be getting for this amount of money?

Is there like a video we watch of what this technology does?

I can share a video?

I'm gonna I'm gonna cut you off that I think that's not the type of question we want to be answering today.

I think that's a values question, and we're really just trying to get the mechanics of the how much money we need to put into these today and what category.

I know you could probably answer it real fast, but yeah, do you want to per process?

How do you want um Alderman Smith Brown to get his question answered?

I think if you wouldn't mind just shooting an email to the director, well, you have the question, and right now that was the only question I had that's actually for all of these.

If that is a question like that, um, do we send we just send that to them?

Because that actually goes at end of whether we believe that this is a priority or not.

What if we look at the service and we don't think that the service should be spent?

We shouldn't spend money on the service.

The other thing I'd suggest is looking back at the finance committee meetings where we talked about this.

Um, okay.

So there's a uh overview of what uh this service offers.

There was like a video of what the service does, and is that I think some of the information I can send you would be helpful.

Thank you.

To all of us if you can.

That's just me.

Great.

All right, let's move on to our next one, which is L7 and S9 still in operating recurring.

So just to be perfectly clear on the last ones, we're combining uh or we're getting rid of the finance committee one, we're getting rid of so which was FC8, we're getting rid of S14.

We are keeping L21, and it's being noted that it is also for street sweeping.

Moving on to L7 and L9.

That is for the Harbor Masters seasonal salaries.

We have a slight discrepancy between these two amendments, one being 120,000 and one being 112,000.

Can everybody speak to which will be correct, Miss Turner?

Um, a hundred and twenty thousand, three hundred is what Harbor Master told us that they would need to operate the full cost.

Okay.

Alderman Savagers is the other one.

Do you have any issue with dropping the one twelve and going to 120?

Whatever finance takes is appropriate.

Okay, great.

Uh all right.

Next up is FC9 and S18.

Um this was, I think, a kind of general finance committee recommendation, and then also one from Alderman Savage.

And I think the I think really what we should probably do here is just relabel the more detailed version from Alderman Savage as having come from the finance committee to know that finance committee supports it, but you just did a better job of writing about it, I think.

Um, this was an enhancement, so there shouldn't be any confusion about it.

This was something the department requested, so we should have already calculated it.

I don't think there's anything else that needs to be done on this other than relabeling it.

There is a big difference in the primary.

Okay.

So for finance committee, we need to clarify if you are looking to remove staff from pit seasonal um staff from Pit Moyer and add them to park maintenance, or if you wanted to use the funding of those positions to do the conversion for those two people because there's a difference in funding.

And it wasn't specific in the report.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, I I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making.

So is your amendment to for the conversions?

It's not to add additional staff is to convert them.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Yes, it is to convert them.

Okay.

So the cost of that conversion is a hundred eleven, um, eleven thousand three hundred dollars for those two positions.

Let me ask a clarifying question.

What's the difference between the thirty-four thousand and the hundred and eleven?

The amount and the budget revised amount.

I don't know where the 34,000 came from.

Okay.

So, which number are we looking at?

Is it which number are we ignoring?

That 34,000 or are the 100.

34,000.

The total cost that I verify it to convert those two positions because they are part-time salary.

Okay, and just so you know behind you is Director Johnson.

Good afternoon to uh Rosalind Johnson, Director of Recreation and Parks for the City of Annapolis for the record.

The difference is um we were using our part-time staffing that we have three part-time staff for.

So we're using the $111 dollars, $111 um thousand three hundred dollars from our part-time staffing to convert.

So the net difference that we need is the $34,000.

Um, and that's what the $34,000 is.

So we put up three part-time positions to get two full-time positions, and we're short $34,000.

But the FC9, the department has major concerns about the funding source for FC9.

And I can share our concerns if you'd like for me to address those.

So the request is for an additional $34,000 to take the total that's in the budget to $111,300.

Is that correct?

Yes.

So she's suggesting that they're going to use three of their part-time seasonal.

So their seasonal salary funding will decrease.

Bucklin, you want to jump in over there?

Yeah, I just I just want to.

Well, as long as the cut is not removing the front desk staff at Pitmore.

No, no, no, but you you're what you're saying was reducing the seasonal and increasing the full-time and increasing the full-time, but the the thirty-four thousand represents you're doing both of we're we're signing up for both of those things.

The hundred and eleven is if you left the seasonals alone and all you did was just add the two full time.

So there is a question, I think, of just intention.

I think what I'm hearing from you is you're fine with the combined action.

Is that right?

Correct.

We do not want to keep the part-time because one, it's not fair to employees, even if they are a part-time employees because we lay them off right before the Thanksgiving holiday, and then hope that we'll get them back for our spring season.

One, we've lost all the training that we've invested in those staff members, and then it's kind of difficult and not employee friendly when you tell someone, you know, sorry, your job no longer exists right before the holidays, right?

So I think the net cost here to convert to do what we said in this, which is converting part-time to full-time, is thirty-four thousand dollars.

So that's that is the number we should be looking at, I think.

Okay, yeah.

Just to put a finer point on it, it's to convert three part-time to two full-time, and you need thirty-four thousand dollars.

I think you thank you.

I think that was the missing link.

Thank you.

Yeah, appreciate that.

Uh because probably because one of us submitted it incorrectly.

I think that's I think that's the confusion.

Yeah, thank you.

Can we just ask for clar um if that's accurate for the note to be updated to describe it?

That whatever the correct way, yes.

Yes, so does that mean the finance committee wants to withdraw their amendment?

Sure.

The FC9, yeah.

Or would you like to be added as a co-sponsor?

Sure, yeah, put it as a Savage Finance Committee, and it should read convert three part-time maintenance workers to full time.

Is that right?

Okay.

Yes, that's correct.

Thank you.

Okay, let me um for the amount versus budget revised amount.

Um, do you mind just sharing the difference between the two?

Because I think that's where the confusion was also coming from is what's the difference between regular budget amount and the revised amount.

The amount is the amount that was submitted um by the sponsor of the amendment.

The budget revised amount is the amount that budget finance um confirmed is the true cost.

So, for now that we have that information, can we get delete the 34,000 as the um, because it could be misleading or easy to forget.

We should delete the 111,000.

I thought she I thought Miss Turner said the talk cost is 111.

So the way that the amendment is gonna be written is it's just gonna be the thirty-four thousand,000.

But this is just the submission list.

When we come forward with the actual amendment on June 1st, it'll be written like that.

Got it.

Thank you.

Okay, we good to keep moving.

Yeah, all right.

Um, the next one's a biggie.

I might skip it.

Uh was what was the reason that that was on there?

Is that just for us to try and work out what the actual number is there?

What like why is that one in Peach?

It's my contingency.

Yeah.

But needs more clarification.

Okay.

Uh Joel, uh, Mr.

Palical, do you think it's worthwhile to talk through this one right now, or should we just put a pen in it?

This one is is very complicated.

Uh I think it's not worthwhile trying to figure it out right here.

So I'm gonna exercise the delegated executive privilege to skip over it.

All right.

Uh oh one O'Neil.

Just to for clarification, Alderman.

Uh H10, are you moving from this tab to exempt tab?

Yeah, I think it needs to be in the exempt one.

I think it's something that we need to vote on first.

So just in the interest of not scaring everybody with something that uh I'm not explaining.

What I'm suggesting there is that we better calculate vacancy savings in our five or six largest departments and put half of that money into the contingency, and then that would create an additional pot of funds.

This is not really spending any money, it's sort of it's saving money, but it's also complicated and fluid, and so I'm suggesting we just move it over to exempt.

We can vote on it up or down.

You guys can agree with me or not agree with me, and then we can move on with the rest of our budget.

So go ahead, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, has the next one, 01, which I think I was just told it's in pink because it needs a little more explanation.

So uh what additional clarification do we need on 01?

It was from the state.

Beautiful.

Okay.

So talk that or I think uh if you feel like you need more information for it to be finalized, then go ahead and ask.

But I don't want to just talk about it for the sake of here's why this is a good idea.

Okay, great.

Uh I see no other ones highlighted in this tab, so we could jump over to the one time or I want to see, is there anything else that you guys think?

Any other amendments here that need more discussion?

On the operating recurring tab, do any of the other members of the council feel like they need additional discussion, additional conversation with department heads to finalize those amendments.

Seeing no yep, Alderman Thorpe.

So at the risk of opening something you didn't want to open.

So the operating recurring still shows the four million dollars, it looks like right or wrong there.

Uh where are you looking?

Down at line 3940.

So I guess the question is what are we doing with that $4 million amendment?

Or are we just let me ask a question?

What do what's the plan forward with that?

Since it's so big, we ought to figure it out.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So the the plan with it is to have it be one of our exempt ones so we don't have to figure it out by tomorrow and have everybody you know put it as one of their um as part of the straw poll.

So that's part one.

And then the other part is I think I'm going to keep working with the finance committee on tightening up exactly what the numbers are.

So even just since we had our budget submission, I think we've agreed that it's going to be much more like 3.6 and 4.

Um, but we need to to really have a good spreadsheet showing why we've made those calculations.

Does that answer your question?

It does, but and and you may already be thinking this, but since we're time limited, it's so big and such a significant dramatic financial thing that it seems to me that we need to staff position on that, and what are the pros and cons, almost like a stack what we call staff report.

Yeah.

Yeah, I I agree.

Absolutely.

So tracking in that direction, is that what you're doing?

Yeah, I absolutely basically the reason why I don't want to go through it line by line today is because I want the staff to have confidence in what I'm trying to do there, to the point that they feel like they can explain exactly what I'm trying to do and whether or not they agree with it, or maybe somewhere in the middle, right?

Like there could be a we think it's a good idea, but don't do it right now, or we think it's we think parts of it are a good idea, but other parts are not.

That answer your question.

No, still not.

Well, I don't want to I don't want to go today on it.

I just I also wanted to clarify.

It I also wanted to clarify that directionally, it was listed as a positive number of four million.

I just want to make sure you knew that it was a it's a negative number.

It's a reduction to the budget.

Right.

Okay.

I just want to make sure that you know, and I do understand that, but it's so big.

Stating the obvious, and it's such a great savings that I could see us voting eight to one on this great idea, and the one being the fact that we've introduced a whole lot of risk into making budget.

And so I think at the end of the day, if all nine of us are on the same sheet of music as to what the increased risk is and how it's changing the budget philosophy that the finance team, we should all be head nodding when we make that decision based on on the information.

And I'm sure that's where you're going.

It's just we're time limited.

The the other option obviously be to look at a dramatic move like this for fiscal year 28 budget, but we're here dealing the 27 budget, and so how do we get it?

How does the nine members of the council get informed to all be voting on the same set of facts?

That's what I'm looking for.

Sure.

Yeah, and I I so I think what we would want to do with this is have it be uh under this exam tab so that we don't need to have it go through the uh straw poll, but work over the next week to really make sure that the staff can fully present on it, and then when we go to vote on this on June 1st, they will be able to lay out here's all the here's what we're trying to do, here's all the pros to it, here's any cons to it, and then we can vote on it at that point with a full understanding given at that time.

So to Alderman Savage's point, it would be on the savings list.

I mean, it's such a dramatic number that if it's up here, then this then this the spend list is a lot longer.

If it's down here, because the acting director um hypothetically says I cannot we should not accept that risk, then it's way down here.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I think that's a good way of thinking about it.

Thank you.

Yeah, Alderman Savage.

Just a few things before we leave this tab.

That's okay.

Um just to get a couple of so just to clarify again the so the amount column, and then there's the budget revised amount.

Is the is the amount the original that we submitted in the budget revised amount is revised from finance?

Is that am I understanding that correct?

Okay, um, yeah, I see you have a couple that have been revised.

Do you want to talk about those?

Yeah, I hadn't quite I hadn't noticed until now, but just and I can certainly do this offline as well.

I guess I could circle up with transportation about because I noticed the let's see bus service.

Can I suggest Alderman Savage?

Why don't we jump over to the one time tab?

You look through these ones going on in operating recurring, and if you have some high priority ones to talk with the departments about today, that for whatever reason need to be today, we can come back to it.

Is that cool?

Yeah, well, just if I just want to throw these out there because I'll be following up because there was an increase on that and there was an increase in the elections reserve, or I'm sorry, that was clarified.

So you have 650,000 for revised budget amount.

Explain that.

Um so I reached out to um who handles the elections budget to get an anticipated amount for our next election, and they gave me a range, and I took the median median of that range.

Um they gave me a range of whoops.

I'm sorry, five hundred to eight hundred thousand.

And this is on S26.

Thank you.

Yes, they gave me a 500 to 800,000 of what they anticipated.

It's a cost for our next election, and I we went with the median of that.

So it could be that, it could not.

It's just a estimate.

I need to refine this a little bit.

My intention is just to get a little bit in there, plan for future years.

So I guess I'd like to know what the first kind of payment would be, first deposit would be into that account for the next cycle.

That makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah, Ms.

Buckland, do you want to jump in?

Yeah, if I may, I just wanted to provide some feedback regarding S16, which is the OCS um social worker care coordinator, adding a third one of those.

I did check back with OCS, and their pre their preference is to not add a social worker position.

They feel like they've got sufficient capacity.

Um the grantee site visits portion of that.

You don't need a social worker for, and so if the desire is to have some additional kind of program capacity.

Point of order, we're not supposed to be discussing merits of these right now.

That's a we're gonna be engaging in a debate if we go down this road.

This is not the time.

I wasn't gonna interrupt you, but I wasn't so thing.

So I will I will be quiet.

Yeah.

Uh all right.

Moving on to one time.

So S33, we are waiting to hear back on.

There are two additional ones that need some more clarity.

S30 and S35.

And that is uh, so Ms.

Turner, you want to jump in about why we need clarity on those?

Yes.

So for S 30, it's a reoccurring expense.

Um, and we can have the IITS director speak to it to confirm.

Um, but I believe it's a recurrent expense, so it wouldn't be suitable for one-time funds.

I'm sorry, what's that for 30 or 35?

30 for S30.

So you said that's a recurring?

Yeah, reoccurring expense.

Maybe Mr.

Pacquin, you want to explain?

Um, yeah, uh we would need a little more uh detail on this.

This you know, pre-2014 could go back potentially quite a long way.

Um, but so to properly scope it, we want to, you know, properly price it.

We'd like to scope it, you know, how far, how much further back would you like to go?

Um, and with that determination, I can engage um the vendor and and get you a a cost on that.

Yeah, I was told that the city clerk's office already reached out to um Legistar or somebody associated with that, trying to determine costs.

Because they have the information already digitally available, it's just not included in our system.

So that's why I was assuming it was just a one-time cost to get it into our existing region.

The the city clerk, excuse me, answer.

Um, I just wanted to say that um all of the legislation is electronically stored at the Maryland State Archives.

So that's why we only have legislation in granite granicus to started in 2014 forward because everything else is like is already electronically held at the Maryland State Archives.

So I wasn't sure why this was a request.

Because having it all in one system available with one click, one search, it's much easier than having to go to two different websites to go to the archives since we already had it available.

That's why I thought it'd be something easy to get it uploaded.

Um to speak to the the second point there, um, yes, there would be obviously a lift to upload it, but whenever you're greatly expanding what's available, there's usually increased storage costs.

So there would be an ongoing aspect to that, um, usually expressed in some number of gigabytes or what have you that are gonna be living on computers that don't belong to us.

So yeah, there's ongoing expense there.

Um, so the the scope of the project would need to be refined in order for a dollar amount to be assigned to it.

Oh, do you think you're gonna be able to get back to us with a dollar figure to get started on that this year?

And maybe you could provide Alderman Savage with both a recurring option and a one time use funding option.

Yeah, I'm I'm sorry if this sounds snide, but like it's a 400-year-old city.

Like how far are we talking about making everything that's in the Maryland State Archives also available on our hosted platform, or are we talking about going back 10 years, 20 years?

Like the that that when I speak of the scoping of the project, that's really what I'm talking about.

I want to chime in.

I think we heard him say there is no one time option that if you're doing this, then it's an annual expense.

So it's it's gonna be a little column A, little column B, right?

Like there's gonna be there's gonna be a lift involved in moving that data, which is either staff time or consultant time or what have you.

But we could be potentially talking about a tremendous amount of data that is stored in a scanned image format, not in a plain text format, storage costs go up.

You could be talking about terabytes of data that you're asking a third party to then host.

So um that would that's where I say again, the scoping of this is is important to ascertain the cost.

Okay, yeah, I mean I was not told it was going to be this complicated.

Um it's not like it's top of my list urgent thing to do, but I'm happy to circle back um after the budget to get this short.

Well, sorted out.

I mean, it I do have an interest in it, but it's not like that as far as a one-stop shop.

Sorry, I didn't mean to talk about you.

Uh, but I understand your motivations.

It's just yeah, there's it's a little more complicated than that, and there are some additional ongoing costs that would be involved.

Okay.

So Alderman Savage, oh, I'm sorry, this box.

It's funny to say that we have um uh a blue binders in our office with the legislation that starts back in night from 1980.

We rarely have requests for it, but we will happily um scan it and send it to someone if they ask us.

I'd I'd go back and look at it.

I know I ask, I ask Ms.

Reuter routinely for information, but it's just I yeah, so it's a we don't have to get into it now.

I'll do I think the the bottom line on this one is it sounds like Alderman Savage is willing to pull it.

Yes, we'll come up over the course of the next year with a tighter scope for what is definitely something I think worthwhile, but it we don't need to we don't need to figure it out in the next day, and so we're going to remove it.

Uh next one is S35, S35.

Uh yeah, Ms.

Turner, jump on in.

So, I just needed to clarify if you wanted to it says to reduce that you put in the full amount that was proposed for FY 2027.

What do you need a clarity on?

So your amendment says to reduce the amount for the APD signing bonuses, but the amount put in was for the full amount.

No, I don't I I don't care how it gets paid or whatnot.

I do.

My my only point is that it it's it's now a recurring cost we've had in one time uses for the past I think at least three years.

It doesn't seem like it meets that definition.

So I think it should come out of the police budget instead of one-time use.

That's so yeah, that's all I'm trying to do.

So you just want to remove it from one time funding and add it to reoccurring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I mean I know there's some money that was carried over.

I think only no, I thought one-time money does not get um does not carry forward.

We have to reappropriate it.

Okay.

Well, my point is that I think for the sign bonuses, only a portion was used.

I correct.

50,000 or so maybe.

Um currently, I think it's at 12,000 and anticipate it to be 51,000 by the end of FY26.

But really, how much we're using in FY26 doesn't actually have a bearing on FY27 because it's not carrying over.

So I think what should be done with this one is it should be put into the one time use bucket of pay force, and then we need a new uh line item essentially within the re operating recurring of the police budget for what is a realistic estimate of what will be spent on signing bonuses in FY27.

Is that does that get at your attempt, Alderman Savage?

Yes.

Um and so whether it's the budget team or maybe Captain Miguez, uh I think we need it to hear what I'm sorry, yes, Chief Migos.

Uh uh I think we need to hear whether what that realistic figure would be within the operating recurring budget.

So there can be an amendment for that.

And if you don't if you don't know it right off the top of your head, you want to come back to us in 15 minutes, that's perfectly fine.

It should be about 100,000.

Sorry, can you start by introducing yourself?

Sorry, acting chief Amy Megeth with Annapolis police.

It should be about a hundred thousand dollars for the next um, you know, it's hard to predict, but what we do is we give that information to finance every time someone's hired who qualifies for that, and then let them know if they are not continuing employment with us.

I do think you need to ask the question first of although this program has been recurring for three years in nature, is there an expectation that it hasn't finite period?

If it is recurrent, it just because it has continued for three years, is not automatically mean that it becomes base budget just because it recurred.

If there is a belief that it is finite in nature and that there is a goal to have the police department fully staffed and that there should be an end, I could be convinced that this should still be considered one-time funds, and that that's where the appropriate place that it should live.

So I wouldn't want you all to immediately jump towards put it into base budget because that's where it belongs.

I think that question needs to be discussed first and then make that decision.

But that's what I would encourage first, debate wise.

I mean, now now's the time to have it.

Uh uh my take is first of all, regardless of where we put it in the budget, I'll say I think this is a worthwhile use of money.

But uh, what the question to me is uh how many times do we use it before it becomes recurring, right?

Like we call it one time use money, we've used it at least three times.

I think your argument is there's some number between one and infinite that it is appropriate for it to be in what we call one-time use money.

Do you have an opinion on what that number should be?

To me, this one is more about the nature of the expense, and so the one-time nature of it is that you're doing it for one time uses of an individual that you are hiring.

It's not that it's a one-time expense related to a signing bonuses.

It's you have this person hired, that's a one-time use.

You're not giving this one person multiple one-time funds.

So it's not recurring.

That one person is not receiving multiple bonuses.

So the nature of it is one time.

And so that justification for me continues to be consistent.

It's just a matter of if the police department will continue to use this as a recruitment strategy, then yes, move it into base budget.

I my belief was that when it first was rolled out, it was because it needed to attract talent as in a manner to uh bring staffing to adequate levels and then the program would dissipate.

If that's not the case, then yes, move it into staffing.

But I would want to encourage you all to think about it from a perspective of that, not to just be like, oh, it's been in one time use for three years, it must be base budget.

Sure.

Um, I don't know if we want to make a decision right now.

I don't know if we kind of want to hear the the uh sense of the council of what makes sense.

That might be the best way to do it, or I mean, we could do kind of default to not changing what the staff has is made as their recommendation.

Oh, Alderman Thorpe is motioning to me that that is what he I think we move on, and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter for now.

And if we get into this, I agree with your last sentiment, right?

If we get into these, because there's pros and cons, and I think we've expressed our sentiment now for next year.

Yeah.

So I just want to make sure I'm clear on what's being suggested here.

Is are are you Alderman Savage who submitted the amendment leaning towards saying we should not have this, we should have we should not have this uh on here at all as an amendment.

No I still want it on an amendment because I I again I'm trying to think of other departments too like would we put all the departments bonuses on one time use or would we bake them into the individual salaries and benefits.

I agree with you is a worthwhile thing to do but it's not something I feel like I'm I'm not motivated to argue this to the house come home.

It's if council decides it's different policy direction I'm fine with that.

Just putting that out there.

I'm a little bit unclear on where we are with this at this point.

The mayor looks like maybe he had something to say you want to jump in and save me on this.

I get the argument of why it should uh not be one time use my suggestion is to leave it in that bucket this year and to Alderman Thorpe's point we could revisit it in the formation of next year's budget.

I think we don't need to further deliberate this right now.

Yeah I think that's fair.

That said if we expect to spend a hundred thousand dollars on it in the next year I think we should have the line item be a hundred thousand dollars so I do think as we have our pay force reducing it down to a hundred thousand dollars should be something we consider but we don't have to decide that right now.

Okay I believe that is all of our one times I don't think there's anything else that needs to be Alderman homely just to clarify.

So we are no longer the amendment is not to remove it from one time funding but actually the amendment is to just reduce the one time funding from two hundred thousand to one hundred thousand leave it as one-time funding make it right size to the amount that Chief Meek has suggested I I think Alderman Savage would like to leave it the way that he initially proposed the center hearing is so that might not get voted for but I think we should do it because that's that's what he'd like to propose.

And then separately let's have ourselves a pay for of reducing it from two hundred thousand dollars down to one hundred thousand dollars okay we will leave it as is thank you.

Um all right anything else on the one time side of things it doesn't look like there's any differences between amount and budget revised amount so seeing none let's jump on over to capital so what you'll see at the top of capital is that there's a sort of amalgam here from finance committee myself and Alderman Thorpe where we're we're more or less trying to get at the same thing by cutting the same pot of money we have a a little bit of uh there's a more eastport centered project I or no it's not fair to say centered but a more eastport tinged project that he's looking at there's a more downtown tinge project that I'm looking at but essentially we've got a about 80% overlap in what we're suggesting doing.

And it follows from the finance committee's recommendation which is finance committee's recommendation was to reduce internal invisible spending and to increase very visible external spending that residents can see.

So um if you look at these first I think it's really nine lines.

It's the first nine lines uh what we're Alderman Thorpe feel free to jump in if I mischaracterize where I think the two of us are at with combining these but I think what we'd like to see is essentially stick with what Alderman Thorpe had proposed.

So all of these amendments marked as Thorpe I think should stay in addition we add two new ones that put a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars each into general striping and marking and into general sidewalks brick.

That would add up to just shy of one million dollars um and that one million dollars would likely come from changing.

Well, you could probably explain it better than me, but changing, I'll just say how we uh design the three new fire stations.

You want to explain it better?

Sure, right now we have two million dollars um in the CIP for design of three fire stations in the twenty-seven budget, and the rough concept would be to do one fire station, then another fire station, then a third.

So rather than do the designs of all three in fiscal year 27 to do design of one and then learn from the construction, and so the fire chief could could affect the design of the second.

Now, what I've confirmed is that we could still contract for the design of all three, but not execute the design for all three in 27, and we would budget for those designs of design number two and design number three in future years when we would be better informed by the earlier uh constructions.

I also want to be clear that this does not tie us into any linear fashion.

This would be the director of central services working with the fire chief to to uh plan it out.

So the rough estimate is if we put a million dollars in the budget for 27.

Obviously, the first fire station would be the hardest, most complex to design, and then we we could use uh the additional we could budget the additional ones in the future.

Does that make sense?

So, in terms of actually creating these amendments, here's what I am suggesting the finance team do the budget team do.

It is delete FC1 and H1.

It is then relabeling what's currently in rows six, seven, eight, and nine, to keep them exactly the same, but label that relabel them to be finance committee amendments, and then to add in two additional finance committee amendments, which would be $125,000 for brick sidewalks and $125,000 for marking for general striping and markings.

Alderman, I'm not sure why you're relabeling it from the just the sponsors as if they're Alderman Thorpe's amendments.

Why are you why are you changing them?

Yeah, because I think Alderman Thorpe and I both tried to put into actual amendment form this very general recommendation from the finance committee, which was to uh go from less visible to more visible infrastructure, and so I mean it's it's not a hill I'll die on, but essentially I think we were both trying to enact the will of what the finance committee recommended in our report.

Could do um combined sponsors, sure.

Yeah, you could call them Hudley Thorpe.

That's fine with me too.

Whatever.

Um I also want to be clear.

So Alderman Thorpe described them, want to make sure we're getting a chance to discuss the merits where we can ask Chief Romelli and Finance to talk about the merits of what was proposed.

Sure.

And let's let's do that.

But if you wouldn't mind, let me put a pin on that while we keep talking about a couple more of the um, just trying to follow process and not want to lose track of that.

Totally.

Uh I will make sure we do not.

So the other two here that are also kind of along those same lines were the Thorpe T1 and the Savage S4.

So Alderman Savage, you're also looking to put more money into road resurfacing or sorry, move money from road reservacing and put it into non-brick sidewalks.

So what I'm trying to do here is get more money into those the sidewalks too.

I think that was a goal of the finance committee.

The reason why, look, it you want to ask me spend $500,000 on sidewalks.

That sounds just dandy to me.

What we did though was talk to, and and really credit goes to Alderman Thorpe here was talk to the director of public works to understand what they realistically think they could spend, and the number that came back was $150,000.

So I appreciate the intent.

I would love to spend $500,000 on sidewalks, but I think it would be more prudent to only put in the amount that they're telling us they can spend.

That is fine.

I withdraw mine.

Oh, since I've heard about ultimate forps, I think I'm good with that.

And then I think that um that T1 could be also relabeled as as uh Hudley Thorpe or Finance Committee or whatever we'd just have this discussion about.

Yeah, and then Miss Buckler wants to jump in.

Yeah, I just wanted to uh clarification.

I know we're well we're trying we're not trying to add amendments at this point, we're trying to clarify them.

So that your point earlier about we've got um some slight mischaracterization.

You had said we're gonna add two amendments might I would if we want to revise the existing ones, then let's do that.

Even if that's a larger revision, I'd rather not just outright add.

So if you can if you'd be willing to work with them on what that wording should be and what that revised amount should be, that would that would definitely be my preference rather than just us outright adding stuff.

That feels more complicated to me, but if what you want is for me to dramatically change FC1 and H1 rather than add two new ones, I can do that.

Yeah, that would be my preference.

Thank you.

Okay.

And just add three um change F C one to 350 and leave the others as they were.

And then just put the clarifying uh two projects that you wanted for FC1.

Sure, yeah.

Well, I I mean I think the benefit is we had been breaking these up so they were funding for each one.

But uh let's just talk about this offline.

And I'll I think I don't think there's anything that all nine of us need to discuss, and we can talk about the exact mechanic of it.

Happy to make that work with you.

All right, uh, where are we?

Oh, we want to talk about fire station.

So Alderman Thor, um sorry, Mayor Littman, why don't you jump in and we can call up Chief Romali if we need or just want to start with the premise of uh that there's two million currently budgeted for uh design and planning, and so I want to start with the premise of if we're only designing and planning one this year, what does that cost?

And I don't know if that's a finance question for finance team or for chief for Malley if you've have an answer.

I've heard this is thank you.

I didn't think of that, thank you.

And just for anybody listening, Chief Romali said he would defer to Director Fletter.

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

Sure.

So the budget the base budget, sorry, the proposed budget has two million dollars for design and planning of the fire station, and then eight million dollars for the construction of one fire station.

And so as I understand the proposal is let's just do um, let's figure out the design and planning for one station, construct it, and then learn from that before designing and planning for two and three, either consecutively or staged out.

And so just trying to understand what is the actual if we're reducing the cost from two million to some less number because now we're designing and planning one instead of three.

What is that cost?

Thank you.

Matt Flair Central Services.

Um, that is accurate.

We would want to take them one at a time and learn our lessons from the first fire station and leverage those on stations two and three.

One of the challenges we have this first year, however, is we can't tear down and rebuild a fire station somewhere else.

We have to rebuild on that existing building.

So a huge challenge we have is how do we remain operational while totally doing a facility renovation at the same time.

And we wanted to look holistically at all three in that do we move some staff or some services, ship them here, maybe, or we we add on to the capacity at one firehouse so that it can take on some others in the short term.

So really we wanted to bring in a vendor next year to help us understand how would we do this over 10 years very, very carefully phased out one phase at a time.

Um, and that's why we're guessing on eight million a fire station after that, but our analysis would also come with a cost breakdown and when we would need to request that and have it added to the CIP budget.

So, really, in the short term, we need help figuring out how we would go about that project, and that's why we asked for funding the way we did.

Okay, so what is the funding you need to just do design and planning for one station?

We asked for 200,000 to get us started.

It's merely a guess, and we don't have any vendors on contract, but that would get a a design construction vendor here to start looking at it and to start asking questions.

So for FY27 spending, you'd be okay with reducing the 2 million for design and planning down to 200,000.

I think we'd be very hard pressed to spend.

I mean, two million would imply we're starting design and and we don't even know.

We haven't even started the planning yet.

I'm sorry.

I think you meant two million when you said two hundred thousand.

No, we we estimated that the analysis would be two hundred thousand.

Um that that's pretty standard just to to bring in an architect to give us a breakdown and how we would go about this, look at designs.

I mean it would we wanted to start small before we asked for a huge funding increase because we know we're not going to spend that all that first year because we don't even know how we would go about it yet.

And then once we get those recommendations, we would want to share that with all of you to get your preferences on the best path forward.

So that I understand it, it's a rejection in FY27 spending from two million to two hundred thousand, but that doesn't mean eliminating that one point eight million, it means pushing out that 1.8 million to future years.

Absolutely, yes, because then we would hopefully want to grow upon that, or maybe we would need to do further analysis in 28 and beyond.

Okay.

Um between now and when we get to January, I'm sorry, June 1st, if you could um just spend some time on that sheet to better allocate the timing of the spending so that we don't accidentally remove funding or lose track of what my my concern I that I'll try to get to is if we eliminate say the 11 million um uh that's yeah, say it's uh eight million for construction, so it's nine million total.

I don't want to just reduce it to two hundred thousand and lose track of the ex the planned expense because it's gonna bring the total debt load um deceivingly down, and then next year we're gonna come back and put it back in.

So I just want to make sure we are getting more accurate with that, not eliminating it.

Happy to refine those numbers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Mayor, I I also just want to point out that through first of all, I exceptionally appreciate the conversations we've had about this, but if we walk down the 200,000 path, the consequence of that is we would not have funds in the budget to design any fire stations in 27.

And I don't want to put words in Chief Romale's uh voice, but I think he's looking to get a fire station designed pretty quickly.

So you work through these numbers.

Over to you all, but I just want to point that out that that I think we don't I ask that you, you, and you to uh and and the two ladies over here to figure that out before we have to vote on this.

Happy to, thank you.

Thank you.

Apologize for pointing in news, but you follow what I meant.

But I think the goal that I heard from Alderman Thorpe, and then I'm gonna hazard a guess that Mary Littman shares is we want to do the planning uh for all three and the design for at least one.

Maybe you want more, but at least one within FY27.

That's the thing we're looking for.

So the the proposed budget was to do the design and planning for all three, and then just construct one.

The um amendment, which uh I'm supportive of, is to design plan one, then build one, and then come back to it.

Is that but I think I think we can we don't need an answer necessarily today.

I think we need feedback and let the director of central services chief of fire finance and our city manager and deputy city manager to discuss how that should look.

Happy to I just want to throw out really quick we do have other active CIP projects at those fire stations too that we're also expected to get done in 27.

So I mean, with one uh facility engineer, we only have the bandwidth to do so much realistically.

Yeah, actually, while you're at the mic, could could you just answer that for us that we have a quite a few projects in here going on at fire stations, and at the same time we're talking about tearing them all down.

Could you just give us some explanation for why that is?

It's the challenge we have with such outdated facilities, right?

Right now we have two projects underway to add uh women's restrooms to the fire station because we only have single sex restrooms and locker room facilities currently.

That's a huge problem that we need to fix immediately, and that's why we're trying to fix the restrooms.

We also have a leaky roof at Forest Drive that we want to seal up to seal that facility envelope to get more years out of that building if we do have to hold off for a few years before we can do that full renovation.

So we really need to get them up to snuff, make sure they're okay for at least the next five years, and then explore further renovations and really taking them down and building branding state of the art facilities.

Great.

Thank you.

Are we good on this topic of combining mine and then Alderman Thorpe's and the finance committees and then also talking about fire station?

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh so moving on down.

We're now at L3 and T4.

So these are two that are very similar.

Uh hopefully it's pretty straightforward to agree with them to, or sorry, to get them to agree.

But 77,913 from Mayor Littman, 80,000 from Alderman Thorpe.

Is it fair to say that uh Mayor Littman had the more precise number?

Oh I I am ready to pull that amendment.

Okay.

Keep it easy.

Um and then I think we have a handful of Savage and Smith Brown amendments need some more clarity.

I actually I'm gonna need some more clarity on one of mine, but let's just start with S1.

My intention on this one would be for can we start with the budget team to tell us what the additional information they need why it was highlighted?

Um it just needs to be clarified if it's going to be a CIP or operating expense.

Yeah, my intention with that is for CIP.

Okay, that's it.

I think that was clear.

Unless you guys are gonna tell me that's it can't be, then great.

We'll move on to the next one, SB5.

SB5 is the same thing.

Sure.

As CIP are operating expense.

The intent was for it to be operating long term, but initially you could start as a CIP, because it's it's for us to have consistent cleanup across the city.

So what would your recommendation be?

Can I ask a question on this?

Might help.

Yeah, so I'm trying to remember the description on this.

I'm sorry I can't recall it, but if this is to clean up is it to clean up waterways and that kind of thing or streets?

This is to have a uh to identify hot spots within our city, which is highly which are highly polluted, as you all know.

I mean, we're not to get into the detail of what it is, but that's what it's prioritizing.

I'm just asking because there may be other pools of funding, the the watershed fund or our existing public works has a number of different funds for illicit discharge detection elimination.

That's what our street sweeping program goes towards.

Um I'd be an operating expense, uh recurring operating expense from my read of it.

Mr.

Palicole, you want to weigh in on that?

No, I was I was gonna go down the path of Alderman's.

I was curious if it was if there was opportunity to put it within one of the enterprise funds as additional refuse or anything.

But I was just curious if Director Vogel had any thoughts on that.

I we were unsure of if it was building a project for something or if it was that operating project at all.

So it's just maintenance, but then I think just if it's related to trash or if it's otherwise, I would be curious if Director Vogel bought it.

Could be captured underneath the bottom.

Yeah, I'll save it in the walk-up.

Uh I'm pretty sure I know what Director Vogel's response can be on that, which is that he would prefer it not be in the enterprise fund to not be paid for with fees.

He would rather uh and director vocal, if you if I say the wrong thing, feel free to speak up.

But I'm pretty sure your answer is cleaning up trash on the streets you would not want out of an enterprise fund because it should not be paid for with fees, it should be paid for with general fund revenues.

Is that you want to add along to that?

Yes, great.

That's what I thought.

Um, o'Neill.

Thank you.

Um, I actually think that this could possibly be combined with mine, although mine was very specific to a street.

Um mine was specific to a street because it happens to be in my wards um and has been complained about by residents for a long time.

But if we're going to keep it as operating, then that could all be combined into one, so we could do a co-sponsored.

Yeah, I'd welcome that.

I was thinking about that also.

Can we move the other one from that we spoke about?

Uh, I was thinking I welcome that.

Thank you, Alderman O'Neill, for your support.

And then co-sponsor this one.

Okay, and who you want me to add you as a co-sponsor to SB5?

SB5, okay.

And then uh Alderman Savage wants to jump in, but I do think a question we still need to answer on this is whether a hundred thousand dollars is the correct amount.

But why don't you go?

Well, how much was um Alderman O'Neill's?

How much was yours?

Minus ten thousand, um, because that was the number I was given that would that it would cost to do uh weeds and cleanup sweep of for several times of a claistered area.

So, I again my two sense is that I think there's a good argument to be made to have at least some of this come out of a watershed restoration fund if it has to deal with trash removal.

That is, my reclusion is correct.

How we pay for our street sweeping program, um because it does help get us credits towards that program, so may need more investigation as far as if that is appropriate, but that may be one way to have a dedicated funding stream for that.

It's trash and weeds, so it is some sidewalk upkeep or at least initial upkeep.

Those weeds are preventing erosion, okay.

We'll get to that.

So take some of it out of the sidewalk maintenance fund.

I'm just trying to think of ways because I so we don't have to keep I think we're gonna have a problem if we keep taking things out of operating.

If we can find dedicated funds, this seems appropriate for sidewalks because it's the safety issue, maintenance issue on them.

Just again, throwing that out there.

So I think it's suggestion.

So I just but I think we need an answer from um finance whether that's an adequate use of source of funds, because that would yeah, so if that's an if if we're it's an allowable source, I mean, finance deferred to the director and I pop ited the director, uh so it might be better for the city manager to weigh in.

Okay.

Oh no, just the to me this feels like something that we should go take offline and come back with a recommendation on.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then to the point of the size of this, Alderman Smith Brown was there a reason why you went with a hundred thousand dollars.

Really, it doesn't, as long as we're investing some money into cleaning what we know to be the reality of human beings, which is trash and pollution.

So if we can invest 20,000, we had a team of five people going out.

Really it's just a uh invest as much as we can initially and see how we can do it long term.

Yeah, Alderman Thorpe.

Yeah, so if I if I think I hear you saying that this is about street cleaning.

No, this is about environmental cleaning.

There's no specific street, it says this is citywide clean team pollution response to pollution in general.

If you go in many of the wooded areas in Annapolis, you'll see uh a high, at least in my ward and across the city where I've gone, you'll see a high rate of pollution trash.

And so if we're identifying those hot spots across the city, we can invest time and also some of our our people to go out and clean that trash up instead of it just being during, you know, Earth Day.

Got it.

All right, I understand that.

Thank you.

Folks, I I think we need to move on on this unless we hear otherwise it'll stay at a hundred thousand dollars if uh Alderman Smith Brown wants to revise it in the next 24 hours to increase its chances of passage.

That's his prerogative, but otherwise, let's keep moving.

I'm sorry, yes, it is the two of your prerogative.

Yes.

I have one additional um Miss Buckland when you are having that conversation about the other source of funds.

If you could look at road twenty-eight, which is SB4 spot creek cleanup might also be um you might also have a might also appropriately fall under another source of funds funding.

Yeah.

Alderman Thorpe, do you have something to add on this before we move on?

Fully respecting you want to move on.

Um I love this idea.

My concern is that um I think we need a city staff estimate as to so I would encourage perhaps uh Alderman Smith Brown and the Director of Public Works or the City Manager getting together and scoping it so that when we vote and we vote enthusiastically for this, we know what we're voting for.

It makes all the sense, but but it's not the time to bring up the Director of Public Works and have him, you know, explain, but I do think we should have that for this, if we can.

Uh where I'm leaning on is it might end up being a little bit like uh Alderman Savage's records request where it's it's worthwhile, but it would be better suited in next year.

But let's move on.

So uh boy, this one will be fast and easy.

Uh S2 on the electric Annapolis mobility plan.

Uh what do we need from the budget budget team?

What do we need to better understand this one?

Um this was just to make sure that everyone knew along with that 2.975 million dollar FTA grant comes up a city match of 525,000.

So if we're adding the 2.975, we're also adding 525,000 city match.

I would have thought that the amount would highlight the city expense.

So that isn't that what we're we would be voting on.

Um we we included everything down at the bottom.

There's like different things that but we can tell I can certainly take that out.

Um, but down at the bottom we have a breakdown of what's bond funded, what's general funded, what's grant funded.

So just to back up a bit, because I my amendment did not actually have any kind of monetary request in it because I was really just putting a placeholder till I got sufficient information.

I needed to understand better understand the CIP, and we dug into it a little bit in environmental matters, but bottom line, um so I don't know where this 525 K came from.

I think we could work it out perhaps offline.

My understanding was most of the costs were already absorbed in um uh by staff um staff time, but then it came up through some of the recent meetings that we may need to put out a separate RFI to get some additional information to address some of the parking concerns from Eastport and elsewhere.

So I want to I want to get Alderman Savage the information he needs to get this finalized, but I'm just gonna be blunt that I'm gonna keep us on a short leash on this one.

So if guild why don't you weigh in?

Budget team can clarify if we need any additional info and then let's move on.

Jackie Guile, deputy city manager.

So the local shit match, the city's match would be in staff time.

That's what we put in the budget.

It's not asking for any revenue for that project.

Um, and then we were going to put out an RFI for operators.

That doesn't require any money to do that for me to put it out in RFI and gather that information.

It the other study, I believe you were referring to is you thought as you explained it to me that you were going to try to gather more information about routes, types of vessels, passenger use, landings, and that sort of thing, akin to what the county is doing before they even start their RFP for the design build of their vessels.

That's right.

And so that part of it wouldn't have funding.

No, the the grant cannot be used for studies.

It can only be used for up to two vessels, the design build of up to two vessels, landing improvements, and charging infrastructure that if we go hybrid, we don't need any charging infrastructure on the dock anymore.

Okay, well I'll circle up with staff about this too.

Mr.

Chairman, this this amendment is not properly marked.

Yeah, I think that's this amendment appears to be for the hybrid ferry, and this would be putting money to the hybrid ferry.

No, which is uh doesn't have said that his intention was for it to be budget neutral.

Yeah.

So correct, but but there's been so I'm I'm concerned about anything that would be in this an amendment to the budget, which is not revenue oriented, but rather affecting the decision of the mayor to move forward on the hybrid ferry.

So I don't even know why this is.

We're gonna move on.

We're gonna move on.

That you're both allowed to put in whatever amendments you want.

The point of this meeting is to make sure that we're clear on what the amendments are.

Everybody has enough information.

If we all hate it, we can vote it out later.

If we all love it, we can vote for it later.

We have the information we need, we're going on to the next one.

S five.

For the record, I have no idea what this amendment is for.

It has no monetary impact is what I got.

And so that's all I need to know.

Uh that's five.

To be clear, it does have a monetary impact.

We just heard there's an a local match of 500,000 dollars.

I just said my intention as I submitted had no dollar amount.

I don't know where that dollar amount came from.

I did not have that in my list of amendments.

So I don't know.

That's I'd want to get with staff and figure it out, but that was not my intention.

Okay, let's move on.

So that's five.

Um this the note here is just amendment not required.

Is it what can you explain why?

Which line?

I'm sorry.

Uh S five, it's line 14.

Thank you.

Uh for this one, it's just a text amendment.

And since we didn't submit the CIP budget in full, like by document in the ordinance itself, we just submitted the uh master listing.

We don't have to submit every single text change as an amendment, so this shouldn't require amendments.

Which one are they on?

In past we have voted on those, so I I just ask, we can keep this as it is, but let's move it over to the accept.

Which one are we on?

We are on your S5.

Oh, this yeah, this isn't uh needed anymore anyway.

It's not needed at all.

Okay, then great.

We'll strike it.

Beautiful.

S three.

This one, uh I don't know what you were trying to do here.

Alderman Savage.

Uh if the budget team wants to start us off with that's fine, but I feel like we all needed some more explanation on it.

So yeah.

I gave explanation in my list of amendments.

I felt pretty thoroughly on all these.

Um, but to reiterate, um, I'm trying what I because what I'm trying to do is get down to our 10% target.

I know it's not a hard target for our debt capacity limit, and um I don't know without getting assistance from Davenport, the dollar amount of that actual what that would look like.

Would we need to push projects out as far as their start date?

Uh what are some scenarios as far as how we could get down to that 10%?

What is it doable?

Um that's the only thing I'm trying to get at.

My, you know, it's it's certainly a just a policy debate as far as whether or not how hard we should be trying to get down to that 10%.

Uh we're exceeding it quite a bit, and um that's the only thing I was trying to get is some kind of scenario from Davenport, what that would look like, how we could do that.

Yeah, so I touching on this.

So we only exceed the 10% starting in 2029.

Um everything in that point is hypothetical.

And so if when you're looking through that that capacity analysis, there's a lot of assumptions made in that analysis.

So there's first of all, in 2027, I don't have it pulled up right in front of me.

I believe we only really get up to 7.8%, and it grows to nine, and then it grows to 10.6 in like 2029.

In 2027, there's an assumed fifteen percent or fifteen million dollar let related to prior approved, uh issued but unauthorized in 2028, there's an assumed 15 million dollar let from prior approved, uh, authorized but not yet issued.

So like there's a lot of assumptions in that number.

So it's while it's uh an analysis to show you over time, I wouldn't necessarily get extremely hung up on this 10.63 number because it's extremely hypothetical in the sense that you're gonna issue all of these bonds that you have like authorized and that like there's a lot that and doesn't happen until 2029, and so the debt capacity analysis by nature is actually to inform you that we are managing in those guardrails, and so to try to say, hey, I want to manage the guardrails below 10% would actually be counterproductive to what the nature of those guardrails are because it's a 10% policy target up to a 12% ceiling, and so you're managing within that arc.

And so with all of those hypothetical uh scenarios, you're showing and demonstrating that we're not subjecting subjecting the city to undue risk to just our to say that I want to operate below that limit would actually be creating a uh scenario that is uh underexposing the city to debt.

And so it sitting within that limit is actually what is the advisable amount, and so seeing it come above and then come back down is actually a good trajectory.

Um, and that's what the the demonstration there is actually supposed to be.

Uh from Davenport.

Understand it quite well.

I've seen it for nine years now, as far as this Davenport presentation.

But I mean, uh I hear you as far as hypothetical, but our our budget policies are not hypothetical.

We have those set, these targets for a reason in our policies, right?

And so um those correspond to these debt ceiling calculations and forecasts that are put together by Davenport.

So I guess it boils down to I don't need to have a policy debate with you on this.

What I'm asking is for my amendment to move forward, can I get some kind of estimate from Damenport or Finance Office as far as how to achieve these targets?

That also is a hypothetical, but let's explore that.

How much of our planned capital investment bond funding would we have to reduce in order to get down to that 10%?

Yeah.

So to push back, and that's the scenario I'm looking at.

I don't think we're gonna sort it out today.

So the question would be can Davenport get that or you guys get that for.

But is your question to only reduce 2027 to do that or because it what's causing it is actually out year funding?

So it's like it's it's the stacking of addition.

So it's like it's multi-year.

So are you asking like for multi-year adjusting, or are you asking for just from 2027?

I want to see a number that then pulls the entire balance down.

We don't need to bog down this meeting anymore.

I can circle up with you afterwards about exactly what I'm looking for.

Okay, I want to clarify before we um move on from that subject.

Certainly any older person could ask for what projects could be postponed to bring out year uh spending below the 10% cap in those out years, and that's a fair um question, although there's so many variables at play, I think it would be difficult to answer with any sort of certainty other than just hypotheticals.

But I want to be clear that the suggestion that the policy would not be uh complied with is a misstatement.

The policy is to target 10% with a cap at 12%, it's not to aim to be less than 10%.

And so, certainly um uh you know, encourage an answer to the question of how do we how could we re-uh time projects so that we're always staying under 10%, but that's just want to clarify it's not a just want to clarify the miscle uh characterization that it's a violation of policy to go over 10% and be between 10 and 12.

Uh Alderman Hunt, I just want to point out we have forty uh 55 minutes for this conversation.

Yeah, thank you.

I think we are uh I think we actually that was our last one on capital, unless anybody has any other ones to bring up, which actually I do.

So we're we're basically where we we're actually in advance really of where we need to be.

Uh but also yes, I really agree with your point.

If the goal is to be at 10%, then we should expect that in some years we're a little bit above 10% and some we're a little bit below.

So with that, we've gone through the one Sid Finance Committee uh finance staff has marked as needing some additional information.

I have two that I've put forward that I have not um frankly done my due diligence on and need a little bit more info.

I want to make sure if anybody else has that uh on the capital fund on the capital amendments that they have the opportunity to go first.

If anybody else has anything they need to work through, get a more precise estimate.

Alright, now I will uh ask you to come up here, Director Vogel.

Sorry, I got a question for you.

On the H5 and H6, I've put my best estimate of funding for these.

One is ensuring that Acting Cove Park is shovel ready.

So this is something that we're expecting to have grant funding for, but um we don't have the grant funding yet, and I just want to make sure that if we need anything additional so that when the grant funding does come in, we can absolutely get immediately started on it.

I think we talked about this the other day, but I wanted to make sure uh it might be able to be withdrawn.

Do you mind do you mind?

Okay, I'm not I'm not sure I can answer your question in in terms of the details of how much design is left to do and how much funding we have.

I I'd have to get back to you.

Okay, is that really the question?

Yeah, basically, um, yeah, I think that's more or less the question.

Do we need more city money so that all of the design can be completed before we receive the grant money so that when we receive the grant money we can immediately start construction?

I'll look into that.

Okay, but I got one other thing for you, which is um I might end up withdrawing this, but we had previously talked about undergrounding service within the historic district.

We had a CIP to do a bunch of planning on that.

And um we're kind of at the point where we've done the design, but we don't have the construction money.

And my question is just would it be helpful to have a relatively small additional pot of funds to keep up the effort on that and on finding grant money for it?

And if so, what should that money look like in terms of where we should put it and how much of it there should be?

It sounds like a good idea to have a consultant help us figure that out.

I don't know what kind of a firm would be would do that kind of thing.

Or how much, yeah.

Or or how much it would cost.

Yeah, okay.

I will um I will consider withdrawing that one, but thank you.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, you got something on it, Smith Brown.

Go ahead.

Yes.

So when you refer to undergrounding, are you talking about electrical like what are you referring to?

Oh, yeah, you tell electrical telephone, that kind of thing.

Yes.

Have you looked outside of the scope of the historic district at all?

Because this is actually a concern across the city.

And I think uh a lot of our residents have brought this to our attention.

Well, I've looked enough in the historic district to know that it's w really expensive to do it on even one block.

Uh we've gotten to the point of we've spent money on actually I think it might have been some state money, but we've spent some on the design and basically did enough to realize this is astronomical in cost.

So, I can add information.

You're talking about underground and electrical lines, right?

Is that PGE as well?

Do they have the responsibility?

So just to let me give you a data point.

So to underground East Street, which is not a long street, it's from the Capitol, basically to the naval grounds.

Two, three blocks.

Five million dollars.

And that's why it's already gonna be torn up to very um uh water and gas lines.

And that's why we were trying to get funding, five million dollars of funding for the electrical component while it's torn up to do the BGE portion of uh the one and the uh which is uh um gas and the city portion of plumbing, then we're gonna also try to do electrical five million bucks for three blocks.

And so uh Merylman, it sounds like you have thought about this a fair amount also.

Are you of the opinion that an additional twenty thousand dollars is not going to make a lot of difference there?

Okay.

Well, with the idea that it would be to to help us find some additional funding.

But in seeking five million dollars from other people's money, as uh Alderman Thorpe likes to say, this is connecting the state capital to uh the Bryce House, which has 24 million dollars of the state money to revamp.

So we thought we might get some state interest and couldn't get any takers um in comparison for that kind of money.

So again, so I'm gonna say, Miss uh Ms.

Flyer fla missed Flayer Day, we can remove that one.

We can I can withdraw that.

Um I do want to circle back on the uh on H5 and see if we need any additional funding for that.

But otherwise I'm good on capital.

So with that, I think we are through the main pots that we needed to go over.

I see some additional colors in the fees and fines.

Do you guys want to go through fees and fines I mean I was kind of thinking we wouldn't end up with time for that but we could jump in on it.

Darren Johnson uh FC 14 um there's a note to increase the amount to 45 dollars a day for the daily fee do we want to increase the weekly amount as well because there's a weekly amount attached to this uh fee yeah I believe that recommendation from the finance committee was at the suggestion of deputy city manager guiled so I might ask her to come and weigh in on that FC 14 which is to increase the main mooring field daily fee to 45 dollars.

The budget recommends an increase from 35 to 40 and the finance committee discussion was to go from 40 to 45.

Yeah and I think the budget does not well maybe you can just jump in before I start speculating.

Okay.

Um it's exactly what Alderman Thorpe has said that the finance commission um committee recommended and a further increase to forty five dollars.

Now that the mooring balls have not increased in cost for over 10 years and we are well below market if you look at up and down the east coast so um the Harbormaster is first was not enthused but now when she's thought about it she's like you're right they haven't increased everybody else charges more um it's a potential it's an increase in revenue when we aren't able to have people on slips right now so um it could be helpful during city dock construction.

And and I think the question sorry from the from the um from Darren was this is this is framed in terms of an increase in the daily rate but there's a weekly rate as well and so right now if we don't change the weekly rate commensurate to this essentially you're a weekly rate people are it's time seven forty five times seven then right whereas right now there's a little bit of a break cost break if you if you lease the boring ball for an entire week get a little bit of a cost break um and that is true also of the amendment there's a little bit of a cost break with it so either pass both increase and the weekly rate or just one or the other yeah so I I have the the numbers in front of me that the increase from 35 to 45 would be $10 a day.

Right now the weekly rate is two 10 which to your point is would be a savings of about 35 dollars a week right so I think the answer to your question was we should we raise the weekly rate $70 seven times ten to two eighty and that's a great catch.

So let's just add that as an addition to this amendment that we would also raise the weekly rate as Alderman Thorpe just said thank you.

Um we so when we go through this um straw poll we're really talking only about the operating recurring the one time and the capital we don't uh need the fees and fines and the exempt to go through it.

So that was why I was thinking we didn't necessarily need to go through all of those today.

What is the budget team's preference do you guys want to work through remaining questions on those three pots today or you want to save us all for another time um and I'm sorry before maybe before you answer it looked like Miss Buckland wanted to answer.

Well I know at least for myself we've got we've got some where we explicitly have questions because for all of these they're gonna have to actually write up what the final amendment is so being able to get that information, I think is is important.

So we've got some where it looks like we have some overlap.

So clarifying, are we writing up two things?

We're adding up one thing um and then we've got these others where it's just like we have have questions.

So one of them we've dealt with, but there's some others, and you guys want to go ahead and so let's let's start working through these now, recognizing they're not as time sensitive.

And if we when we get to four twenty-five, which gives us a half hour at the end, we'll put a pin in this.

Okay, so um R 1026 fees, we have two duplicates.

Um so we can come, we need to know if you want to combine them, but also amounts were not provided for the specific increases you want to increase them by.

Um FC 13 and H11.

Yeah, and I'll say so.

One thing about this is H11, so it's both Rack and Parks and Harbor Master.

We found out we are not allowed to do that for Harbor Masters, so certainly as we combine this, it would be only relevant to Wreck and Parks.

Is Director Johnson still here?

Yeah.

Uh yeah.

Uh so we maybe we could when she's ready to come back, just get a recommendation from her on what this could look like.

Okay, so do you want to withdraw H11?

Sure, yeah, we can withdraw H11.

Yeah, I have it just BC 13.

Sorry to call you back in.

Uh, we're talking about a finance committee recommendation to increase uh fees for wrecking parks for non-residents while potentially decreasing them for residents.

We don't have a dollar figure on that, and we're looking for your recommendation on it.

Good afternoon, Rosalind Johnson, Director of Recreation and Parks for the City of Annapolis for the record.

So fines and fees, we currently have a difference between the two between residents and non-residents, um, and we could probably check and look at the percentage of residents versus non-residents, um, and that's certainly something we could do.

I would venture to say we're probably about sixty percent residents, 40% non-residents, of course, depending on what we're looking at, because we do serve a lot of people who are in Ana Rondo County, but not in the city limits.

And so I'm sorry, did I hear you correctly just now that it is the fees are already differentiated?

The fees are currently already differentiated.

If you want to rent a meeting room at Pitt Moyer, there's a resident fee and a non-resident fee.

If you want to have a membership, there's a resident non-resident fee.

Um, in years past, we've asked to increase the non-resident fee, and that was denied.

So it's usually about depending on what the cost is, it's about a couple of dollars to 20 more dollars an hour if we're looking at room rentals.

So, maybe auto Robin O'Neill, you want to jump in?

Yeah, yes, please, thank you.

Our discussion was to increase the non-resident fees, but not to decrease the residence fees.

We were going to maintain the residence fees because we already based on that as a base fee, but we wanted to increase slightly by a percentage the non-resident fees, um, in order to help add to their revenue budget so that we could in future years use more of that revenue budget for programming at parks and rec.

Sure, you're right.

I apologize.

I was getting the finance committee recommendation you've used with my recommendation.

So, if we were going to increase the fees for wreck and parks for non-residents, do you have a recommendation for what that should look like?

And would you want to do you want to tell us now, or would you rather get back to us with a number?

Well, we will want to look at it across the board, and I wouldn't just want to say a set percentage rate.

We'd want to look at our usage for certain things.

For some, you know, if we could increase it and we have two people, that's not gonna make a huge impact.

So I would recommend that you allow us to look at the numbers in particular and then make that decision.

We're looking at summer camps too, though.

So um, you know, is that something that you know the council has an appetite for?

We do um try to allow um Annapolitans to register first for summer camps and then open it up to the greater um area, but you know that's something as well.

We currently just have uh it's about 25 dollars difference per week.

About 25 dollars difference per week or per um camp session or so.

So I think at least uh without speaking for the whole council, the finance committee definitely does want to see that.

So if you wouldn't mind just working with the budget team on what you think the most appropriate numbers are, then I'm happy to defer to you.

And is that on field rentals as well for resident and non-resident?

Because currently for field rentals, nonprofits, um, we charge nothing for field rental.

I'm gonna say since we didn't talk about that, let's let's leave that out of the discussion for now.

But uh yeah, because I think we were thinking more for individuals, right?

For for an individual, whether they're resident or non-resident, we don't we weren't thinking about nonprofits maybe residing in the city or not.

But so that just feels like an additional complicating dimension.

But might be a good idea anyway.

We were put on hold.

Um, I think about three years ago.

We had a set cost and with all that was put on hold.

I wanna keep us moving along, but if you wouldn't mind just, oh, I'm sorry, Altaman Smith found you got something on this.

Sure, yes.

Uh just quite quick.

Thank you for everything you do for our city.

Yeah, um, where does the conversation go?

And obviously, maybe not today, because we're talking about money, but where does it the conversation go?

And but this does tie directly into funding um with extending hours at our Pit Moyer Center uh to meet or be in line with other record other gyms in the Anron County area.

Uh I'm sorry, Otterman's the ground.

I gotta tell you that's that's unrelated to where does that conversation go?

I said yeah, yeah.

What is that?

How do we fit that into the larger conversation?

That's what I asked.

Like, what is that go?

Can I just ask you to shoot that question to the director as a follow-up?

So that's what I'm asking.

Is that a budget increase?

I do want to share that because we're not currently funded to stay open beyond the current hours that we're open.

Okay, that's what I was asking.

How do we fit that into the conversation of the grander scheme of fame?

So I will send that or follow up with you because this is brought up months ago, but I'll follow up uh with you to have that discussion.

Thank you.

Um, two points.

One uh technical uh in order to start the five o'clock meeting on time.

We've been asked by our IT department uh or sorry, the media department to finish at 4 45 to give them 15 minutes.

They normally like a half an hour, but we're squeezing them.

I thought we squeezing them to five minutes was enough.

They want 15.

So if we extend past 445, it means we're not starting the five o'clock meeting on time.

The second out of uh order, but I'll take prerogative.

I want to share a press release that um went out while we were meeting about the Juneteenth festival, um including other events.

The June the Juneteenth festival is on, taking place from one to nine o'clock on on Juneteenth at the base athletic um complex.

Actually, I just want to make sure I got the date right.

Uh it's following the parade, which is the 20th, so I correcting myself.

So on the on June 20th, the festival is on.

Uh the we had some hiccups earlier in planning this week, but our team from multiple city departments came together to resolve those challenges.

I also want to acknowledge Bishop Coates, who was patient in working with us to ensure our shared interests in the success of this festival.

I'm happy to report that the festival will go forward, and I look forward to seeing everyone at the 20th on the 20th.

It's exciting stuff.

It is all right.

So with this new information that we want to wrap at 445, I think we need to skip over the rest of the fees, fines, and exempt.

So that uh I think all the questions I'm or the recommendations, uh all the questions I am seeing are on recommendations from the finance committee.

So I'm happy to just circle up with you guys on those feeds and finds and make sure we get to what we need, get you what we need.

Um with that, the last part of our discussion was around the pay for.

So we're gonna give the budget team a bit of a heads up and then take us to something else briefly.

So what I think we need to know in the next couple minutes is how far apart are we on pay force and spends after what we just did.

So with that said, I'm gonna take us back to process real quick in the hopes that you guys can answer that question for us in a few minutes.

So taking us back to um the very first thing we talked about, just one point that I forgot to bring up earlier.

I think with this process, it's even more imperative that we not go to off the walls with new amendments uh on the day of June 1st.

And so my suggestion that I want to float to all of you is that we all agree and and we'd probably vote on it on at the beginning of the meeting on June 1st, that we not debate any amendments that are not part of our list without a supermajority of the council agreeing to debate.

So we would adopt a rule at the beginning of the June 1st meeting and we'd say, all right, normally anybody can bring up a change and they just need a second.

But in this case, we would need six members of the council to agree to debate audit.

So I want to throw that on the table.

Hear what folks think about doing that for June 1st.

Alderman Thorpe is going to say six members?

Yeah, I suggested supermajority, as in two thirds.

I would agree with that wholeheartedly.

Debate it.

Yeah, to debate it.

Right.

And then ultimately to if we get six people to debate it, it would be standard subject to our normal threshold of passing.

But the idea is that by uh it keeps us from getting derailed, right?

We see initially that everybody wants to talk about it.

It's for a good reason.

The alternative would be that we agree no more amendments.

Uh I think that's something we could do.

I'm trying to give us a little bit of an out on this.

Okay.

Mayor Lippmann, did you want to chime in?

Yeah, I mean, you're both right.

We we want to minimize new amendments, but things have come up that so I think we need some grace.

And so I think having some um recognition, if we want to add hypothetically 12,000 to add in fireworks for Juneteenth, 2027, we might want to still consider that.

That is not in the budget.

Can I second that?

What's that?

I'm just kidding.

I said that kind of second thing.

Yeah, thank you.

So, and I know Alderman's uh Smith Brown had some.

You want to go next?

Thank you very much.

Um, so is this process similar to what was been done, what has been done before, uh, where there had to be a supermajority to bring up any amendments, or is there even a laid-out process?

Is this just fluid based off of who currently is the chair or leading that meeting at the time?

How does that uh so we still have our rules that apply?

So, what we're discussing now is if we want to uh essentially amend the process so that we are efficient.

So there's that.

Um I do think if we're going to be discussing new amendments that introducing on the day of is uh is a horrible situation, yeah.

And so I think we should be able to agree to ourselves no day of, and obviously the sooner the better.

So if if we want to have a category of emergency amendments and create some uh deadlines, we're obviously smarter now than we were what whenever this process started.

I would agree uh fully to that.

I do not agree to making it a supermajority of some sorts because then you're kind of limiting what the natural voice of democracy of our uh powers are.

So I I do appreciate that.

Wait, I I'm confused.

I want to make sure that I hear what you just said, Alderman Smith Brown, because it sounds like Mayor Lippmann said we shouldn't do it at all, and you said you agree we shouldn't do it at all, but you don't like the idea that we should have a supermajority to debate it.

And so that sounds like sounds to me like saying I like the more restrictive option.

I I don't I didn't understand what you just said.

I just want to clarify, I didn't say we should not do it at all.

I said we should have the option to bring up some emergency category of amendments we should try to constrain ourselves, we should not do it on the day off.

But but between now and the day of, I think we should have some time, whether it's next week, to get those those final amendments um proffered so that it can be reviewed by finance and law and um the city manager's office.

Yeah, I'm really trying to strike a balance here of just saying anything outside of the list of amendments that gets distributed would require two-thirds to even debate it.

So we can just respect the two.

We all, the point is that if we're all the no of what we're saying today and we have a priority list set before, we don't even need to set those parameters because we should, unless something isn't an emergency, uh we should just let it be what it is and respect the time uh frame that we have.

That's what I'm saying.

I don't think that we need to set those strict rules.

No, we're uh, Smith Brown, do you think it's fair to say if you have any remaining amendments, um, a self-discipline among all of us to keep it really tight to things that actually came up, you know, in the last couple weeks since we had, and then May 27th, which is Wednesday, to submit them.

However, Harry's plan to submit it, and then uh we can get some feedback by the 29th from finance and law to process them.

There's a die situation in those three days leading up to change it, but I absolutely I think that that's reasonable.

Yeah, it gives us six days in fact during the holiday to get in those last few things.

Friday gives two days for the department, again, one or two at from each of us at most type of thing, maybe even less, and then we vote the following Monday.

Alderman Savage has something to add.

That sounds good to me.

Um, and uh, but just to re tend to agree with um Alderman Smith Brown.

I don't really like the idea of supermajority.

Um, you know, I I don't know, we might need to ask the city attorney if we decide to end up changing our own procedures too drastically because the code does we have our own procedures in default to Robert's rules if we're talking about having something else that is related to an actual binding legislative vote.

I think we'd have to be really clear on if we can just have ad hoc um procedures that are not the resolution is not binding, it's guidance, and we should absolutely adhere to as much as we can.

But I like the flexibility that the mayor brought into it, and I think we're all just have to we have already committed to be reasonable with this, and yeah, I think we could all move forward in a reasonable way.

Well, I'm I'm happy to be the optimist on it that we're all gonna move forward in a reasonable way.

I wanted to tie our hands into being reasonable, but uh that's uh I hope that you guys prove me wrong.

Uh Alder Thorp seems to have one last thing on this, and then let's jump over to the pay for side.

I do.

It applies to amendments, um, and it applies to our process.

Um, and I'd like to make sure I get the director of finance's attention as he's put in a finer point on other budget items.

Uh I want to applaud this budget process as as you have done, Mr.

Chairman, on several occasions, and how the mayor's budget has uh use the one-time use money.

Um we've competed everything in the budget, um, and uh I think it's been exceptionally responsible budgeting.

The discussion we've heard today may open up the say additional significant savings um of expenses, and we've also talked about additional uh expenses to add to it.

I would like to amend our process, and I intend to introduce amendments to actually cut spending and compete cutting spending with some of the additional expenses that we make.

Um I'll have to work with the director of finance and the mayor as to what the ramifications of that would be, where those that money would go, contingencies, reserves, cutting taxes, whatever.

But I think as a city council, we should, as we create these two sets of lists now.

Now that we look like we have some, if we did go down this path of not funding um billets that are not going to be filled, that we should have an amendment that says, and and I would actually perhaps propose eight amendments that says save two cut two hundred and fifty thousand dollars expenses, cut five hundred thousand, so you know, whatever, maybe acronyms of two fifty or whatever.

Um, and I think we should seriously look at the opportunity to cut overall expenses and compete that with any idea of additional expenses.

No, I I love it.

Um I do want to be mindful of the time and make sure we have enough to get to this pay for discussion, but wholeheartedly agree with you.

That's a great idea.

Anyway.

No.

All right, how are we looking?

So, as I put in my email last night of this part of the meeting, is just for us to take a hard look now that we've got our amendments narrowed down and say how far apart are we between what we want to spend and the pay force that have been identified.

So my hope is that we can have something of an estimate of that.

I know it's probably not going to be perfect, but uh give us a sense of how much more we might need to do.

Yeah, Ms.

Turner, can you please go to the key and summary tab?

So we've created this tab now just for folks if they need to be able to reference back the color coding scheme, uh the color keys there, and now this amendment summaries also here too.

So it's broken down into two sections.

You've got your budget summary, which is gonna be really your operating, uh, where we've captured our pay for amounts, and so where this number is coming from is really that exempt tab.

Uh you're so gonna see that there's about $2.5 million of uh negative monies coming in, meaning really additional funding offset against base budget or recurring expenses of three million dollars and then additional one-time funds.

So for this budget right now, we're still about eight hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars in the hole.

Uh I do wanna acknowledge that there was the one item that we moved to the exempt budget that uh Alderman Huntley uh and I still just need to have continued discussion on around uh vacancy savings.

So that item that item is currently marked as zero and not pulling forward into the pay fors.

And then for the capital budget funding amendments, we're we still need to uh I want to caveat that these numbers we're still like based on the discussions that we were having, still moving stuff around.

But what we want to be able to do is uh articulate where we see additional funding related to bonds, uh general fund uh pay go grants, the reallocating bucket really should just be uh moving money around.

So I think ultimately we are expecting that'll go to zero, right?

Once we get all of our numbers kind of in the right spots, and then the TBD is us still figuring stuff out.

So as we continue to move stuff around, you'll see that table get fixed.

But we've been live changing here, so it's not fully flushed, but this is what we want you guys to be able to see as we move forward is the pay for is recurring one time.

So again, on an operating side, currently need to find an additional eight hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars, and then on the capital budget side, um that's well we'll have a better picture for you once we get through the information a little bit more.

On the capital side, it sounds like it's about a million, right?

If we it's two million minus that one million that we're reallocating, yeah.

I just watched Ms.

Turner do it.

It's a million, then it's dependent on that 525 match as well.

Oh, gotcha.

Okay.

Thank you.

Were you about to say something?

Um yeah, I just uh the in some sense like the two things to here is that if you accepted absolutely everything that's on the table with the exception of this one item, right?

Here's what the gap is.

But keep in mind you might not actually accept every single item either.

So um just as with that as backdrop to what you were gonna talk about.

And we do need to look through the list and make sure that there isn't any commingling of funds.

So as we continue to evaluate if there's enterprise fund specific amendments or anything like that, we would need to parse those out individually because we wouldn't want to show pay fors from an enterprise fund paying down base budget amendments because that would be inappropriate uh commingling.

So we will make this summary make more sense as we look through the list.

Or go ahead.

Am I the only one that doesn't fully understand what he just said?

If I am, I won't ask any questions.

If I'm not if you don't understand, you should ask the question.

So I I can and I was having a hard time hearing you, actually.

Um if you could explain in uh what where are we to the specific question that Alderman Huntley asked?

Are we looking for money or do we have extra money?

I'm I'm just I don't understand what you said.

Okay.

Which is there a specific piece?

So if you could walk if you could walk across line 14 and tell and and and define what those numbers mean.

Yes, so the first one, the negative two million five hundred thirty four, that's what we're qualifying as our pay for is that are those are dollars that have been found.

Okay.

Additional revenue, if you will.

I don't want to call it revenue.

It's money that has been found cuts or otherwise potentially revenue as well.

Uh those are offsets.

The next column over are the recurring numbers, meaning base budget additional amendments.

So monies that have been added into base budget.

So three million dollars, assuming all those have been accepted, and then the one-time fees are then the tabs.

So Ms.

Turner, if you could actually flip through the tabs, if you go into the operating recurring tab and scroll down.

So the that $3 million number is just simply pulling from this H41.

It's the sum of all of the budget of revised amounts for the entire column there.

And then if you go to the one time tab.

Got it.

If you scroll down, it's the total of all the budget of revised amounts for one times.

And then if you go to the exempt tab, the pay fours are the total of all of this H column for the exempt tab.

One of the pay fours that was being proposed was saving four million dollars from the vacancy.

So why isn't the minus two point five show can you scroll up, Ms.

Turner?

Scroll up to the vacancy savings one.

And so I tried to touch on this and I just was mumbling through it.

It's marked as TBD, so therefore there is no amount to pull.

And that's because uh Alderman Hunley and I needed to continue discussing.

We have no amount to put, so therefore it's coming in a zero.

I don't know.

They don't have um he hasn't validated the four million dollars.

Okay, so so in this zero less.

Yeah, it's it's assumed to be zero, but it's also definitely less than four million dollars.

Right.

So say it was a million, then two point five million would go to three point five million.

Correct.

Can you put can you put negative one million there, please?

And now go back to the summary tab.

And now we are the other way.

And that would be my amendment to begin with.

Please mark him as co-sponsor.

And and then below that, um the two two million, that's the capital budget.

Uh we need to we need to refine those numbers just because we're we're live updating those, and since there's so many more buckets, let's give us a chance to fix those.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate you taking the time to go through that again.

Yeah, Alderman O'Neill has a question.

Thank you.

It's it's less of a question.

Um, what I looking at this number is really important, but also keeping in mind that there were we only went through a fraction of the actual amendments um and discussed them.

There were ones that either were do possible duplicates or they had questions on.

Um, there are a lot of other amendments, and I encourage all of us to be reaching out and talking to our colleagues prior to the June first state to find out more about each of those.

Um, because we didn't have time to go line by line today.

In years past we have gone by line by line, so we all had a really good idea of the basis behind the amendments, but there are quite a few that are pretty complex.

That's great.

Um I agree.

Uh the way I thought about it was that we would have the opportunity to really go line by line and argue over them as it were, uh, on the first.

But yes, I I mean to some extent you need some level of knowledge to know how to rank it, but that's also part of why we decided to go with this relatively compressed ranking system, in that you might not have enough information to know whether you want to put 60 points behind that something or five points, but you should hopefully have enough information at this point to know whether it's a three, a two, a one, a zero, or a negative one.

I think I think we're pretty much right.

So good.

So uh Madeline will be very happy with us uh in terms of timing.

Um thank you, Alderman Huntley for leading the discussion and organizing thoughts, and thank you, uh uh deputy city manager Bucklin for uh coaching and guiding um uh Chairman Huntley as well.

Of course, the finance team and the the whole finance team uh before us.

Uh appreciate everyone's participation.

I think we uh will just wrap up a few minutes early and just uh, oh yes, Ms.

Brown.

I just I just wanted to address Alder Woman's O'Neal.

I find I did get a response from the director of planning and zoning.

Um the 100,005 dollars was the request.

He was going to request 25,000 now to get us started with the pre-qualification steps so that the applicants could judge the completeness of their applications and plans before submitting.

That was what the 25,000 was for.

But because we're already in the end of May, and you know, June, the end of June will be here.

He just deferred that to the FY27 budget along with the 100,000.

Also, it is not a recurring fee.

The annual fee he said should be about 10,000.

This is a one-time, the 125,000.

Yeah, so I'm sorry.

Okay, so so I just putting a fine point on for the budget team.

So these all those ones about planning and zoning AI should be condensed down to a $10,000 annual one recurring one and uh a hundred twenty-five thousand dollar one-time one.

That is correct.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

Uh Alderman Huntley, before we wrap up, do you want to just um sort of summarize and reiterate where we are and what steps remain?

Thank you.

Yep, I appreciate it.

Uh so rather than say all of the steps remaining, I think maybe it's more helpful to focus on just a couple that folks need to be aware of in the very near future, which are if you have anything outstanding with your amendments, get it fixed ASAP.

Talk to the budget team by I don't know, let's say before noon tomorrow, like now.

You need to do it now.

And um then tomorrow afternoon, the straw poll will get sent out.

That will be just spends.

You're only looking at the spends, you're not considering the pay for's part of it, and you're ranking those on a scale of negative one to three across each one of these three buckets of money.

I think that's kind of the what you need to know version of things.

And then June 1st, we'll reconvene to vote on all those amendments.

Yeah, do you want to jump?

I have a question.

What do you mean when you say the straw poll is going to be sent out tomorrow?

You guys are going to be voting in an email.

But we're not voting.

We're not voting.

We're definitely not voting.

We're definitely not voting.

Everyone is receiving a copy of the amendments to write down how they feel about each one.

Which is not an up or a down vote.

It is a uh, it is their sense of how strongly they feel about it.

It's definitely not voting.

Can I can I clarify the purpose of it is not to vote on the amendments?

The purpose is for us to gain feedback about what order we should put the amendments in for the just for the actual voting.

So which thing should we list first, which thing should we list second?

It is not to replace actual voting, it's simply an administrative information for us on in how we order them.

My only concern was it that you're sending it to the whole council.

That's a council meeting.

So I was wondering if it was any type of violation to the open meetings act.

That's it.

So they would be the intent was to send it just to each person individually.

We would collect their individual information and we'd aggregate that on the back end.

Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's right.

I think um Vicky, you've done a nice job of uh explaining that, and it does not involve either a group email chain with any ongoing discussion, it's just an individual administrative uh step that's being taken and is not a substantive uh debate or discussion about any policy or any particular amendment.

And so that but thank you, Regina, I for clarifying that.

Um, but yes, I think it's I think you've described it well.

Any other points, Alderman?

All right.

Uh I think that concludes this discussion.

Uh Mr.

City Attorney, please present the next item on the agenda.

The agenda has been completed.

Very good.

Is there anything else for the good of the order?

All right, very good.

Hearing nothing, the session is adjourned.

And I will and I will remind uh my colleague.