Okay.

We are recording, just so everybody knows.

So we do.

All right.

Mr.

Miller, if you please call the roll for budget hearing.

Mr.

Callahan, Ms.

Cramcy Smith.

Present.

Ms.

Quiotec.

Ms.

Laird.

Present.

Ms.

Leon.

Present.

Ms.

Wilhelm present.

And Mr.

Cologne.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilman Callahan advice will be a couple minutes late.

I believe Councilwoman Quitek will be a few minutes late also.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

I'll get started with the season's first budget meeting.

Tonight we're going over water, sewer, public works, liquid fuels, stormwater, and non-utility capital funds.

We'll have public comment.

We'll have a few public comments after we finish water and sewer, and then after we finish public works.

So those will be reserved for the end.

I'll open it up with any presentation the administration wants to give related to the respective budgets.

And then I'll turn to the appropriate committee members first, and then I'll open it up to full council for question or comments.

So we're gonna our first for those who are following along.

It's page 184.

It's the water fund revenue and expenses.

And I will recognize Mr.

Boscola to start us tonight.

Thank you, President Cologne.

Uh members of council and the public.

Some of our initiatives, uh, rather, and then we can kind of go through the budget book if that's council's desire.

Yeah.

Rather get rather than get too lost in the weeds with the individual line items.

So your PowerPoint goes over the water fund, water capital, sewer fund, and sewer capital.

Correct.

Okay.

Correct.

So let's do your presentation for for all of them.

And then we don't have to go, you know, line item by line item, but just hit us with the highlights and then I'll open it up to council for a question.

Sure.

Okay, thank you.

Um so water and sewer.

Um, it's kind of a unique business that the city is involved in.

It's what's known in the industry as a critical infrastructure.

So uh the government, the federal government identifies a lot of different industries that are known as critical infrastructure, water and sewer being one of them, uh, energy, national security, um, transportation, communication, etc.

etc.

So it's a it's a very critical uh business that we're involved in.

Um with that, you know, health and safety of the public and the environment are paramount.

It's a heavily regulated business, both by the EPA and DEP.

Security is important, both physical security of the assets and also cyber security is now you know a critical uh consideration.

Resiliency of the system.

What is meant by resiliency is the ability to respond to upsets and to recover.

So for example, a water main break.

How quickly can Rube respond and get people back in service?

And then the financial stability is important.

We are self-financed enterprise funds that rely solely on user fees.

There's no outside money or very little outside money in terms of there's no taxpayer dollars coming into the water or sewer sewer funds.

So our HR or people are our most important assets.

I think um we have five bureaus, and my bureau chiefs are here tonight.

Uh water supply and treatment is uh led by Steve Palone.

Wastewater treatment plant is headed by Bill Reese.

Our utility maintenance group by Joe Westfall.

Quality control, Diane Batty, and commercial operations is Jason Davis.

So we have uh 106 positions total in the department that hasn't changed in several years.

It's actually down if you look the long-term history of personnel in the department.

Uh we were probably up in the 120 range, maybe 20 years ago.

Now we're down to 106 positions.

80 of those are union, 26 non-union members, and about 70 have some level of DEP operator certification, either in either water or wastewater or both.

Uh, we are required to have operators have a certain level of certification to run the system.

So just talk a little bit about our assets.

I think most people are familiar with what we have and what we have to manage.

Believe these are the crown jewels of our system that the city has.

Penn Forest was just rebuilt in the 90s, and they both hold and combined 10 billion gallons of storage capacity up in the Poconos.

We have a water filtration plant built back in the 1990s, located in Lehigh Township.

It produces on average 14 million gallons of potable drinking water every day.

And a big capital project in the works for next year is to replace the roof.

Roof has to be replaced on the building.

We have seven storage tanks throughout our system.

One of our tanks or one of our concrete tanks is slated to be replaced next year.

And that's also in the capital budget.

A lot of this business is between 50 and 100 years old.

This is going to be a challenge maintaining and replacing this infrastructure for the foreseeable future.

Down on Shimersville Road, it produces or produces, it passes 11 million gallons per day of wastewater that gets released to back to the environment to the Lehigh River.

It was built back in the 1950s.

And the nature of the business, it uh because of the quality or lack of quality, if you will, of the fluid passing through it, it requires a lot of attention, a lot of capital improvements over the years.

So some other system information, uh, just to give us a sense of the size of what we're dealing with here.

We have 37,000 customers.

Uh, that's a meter metered customers that serves a population of about 120,000.

We produce about 5 billion gallons of drinking water every year.

We treat 4 billion gallons of wastewater on an annual basis.

We own a 23,000 acre watershed that surrounds the uh reservoirs up in the Poconos.

We serve all or parts of 12 municipalities, City of Bethlehem and the surrounding communities.

And the combined budgets between water, sewer, and the capital funds is 69 million dollars.

That's in for 2026.

Some other tidbits of information uh that sometimes we get asked about.

Uh, so are who are our top water users?

So uh in 2024, our top user, and this list hasn't really changed in the past several years.

Calpine, that's the power plant located down in lower Sauken Township.

They consume 188 million gallons per year.

That's that's a million gallons.

Fresh pet, they make the pet food in Bethlehem Township.

Lehigh University, that that's a combined total for the entire university.

Messer is the air gas company, Wind Creek, um, and so forth.

So you see, you see, we have some pretty big users.

Now I referenced Bethlehem Steel just for historical comparison.

When Bethlehem Steel was running, um, they consumed that's 3,000 million or 3 billion gallons of water on an annual basis.

That's 8 million gallons per day.

So they dwarfed everything that the city uh had in terms of water users back when they were in business.

So just remember that eight MGD number um as I go to the next slide here.

So here's a graph that shows our average water use since 1934.

So the past 90 years, and so time is along the uh the bottom axis and uh million gallons per day on the vertical axis.

So a couple things about this graph.

You can kind of see it goes up and it comes back down.

And what it reflects really is the rise and fall of the steel company.

Remember that 8 million gallons per day.

You know, we were producing between 20 to 25 million gallons per day from the 40s up to 1994 when the steel closed, and when the steel closed, that 8 MGD disappeared, and now we're down below 1415 MGD.

The other thing that stands out with this graph is look at what is happening in the past 10, 15 years.

Our production rate is flat.

We're not selling any more water.

And I'll get I'll get to this in a minute.

Um, so our production rate is very flat.

If you consider the economic development that's occurred over the past 10, 15 years, warehouses, apartment buildings, new businesses, it's all well and good, but we're not selling any more water.

And there's a reason for that.

So take a take a step back and look at this from a from a uh 10,000 foot level.

So we're part of the Delaware River Basin, right?

We're we live in a Lehigh Valley, uh, Lehigh River, Lehigh River Valley.

Uh, we're right smacking the dab in the middle of the Delaware River Basin.

Covers parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, down into Delaware.

The DRBC, the Delaware River Basin Commission did a study five years ago.

They evaluated the trend in total basin water withdrawals, both in the recent past and they projected out, they did a 40-year look ahead out to 2020, 2060.

Uh, that's total withdrawals, residential, commercial, industrial, power production, management of all the dams and reservoirs along the the Delaware River basin.

And what did they find?

So for the next 40 years, they are projecting very stable water consumption, meaning not very little change, and we're seeing that based on recent history.

If you think about our area, the Delaware Valley, Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley.

Now, Leahy Valley is a growing portion, but a lot of the parts, a lot of the part of the Delaware River basin is pretty mature in terms of the population and economic growth.

So they're anticipating very modest population increase.

And what is holding down the total consumption are improvements in water conservation and technology that are driving down consumption.

Now think about this on a granular level.

As a new house gets built, or as people renovate their homes, they're replacing the old toilet fixture, which used to consume five gallons per flush, the new ones are now two gallons per flush.

The same thing with shower heads are more efficient.

Washers are more efficient, right?

So there's there's increases in efficiency that are driving down water consumption.

Now we could the good news is that's that's a good thing, right?

We're conserving our natural resources.

We're not we're not using any more water than we have to.

Right.

So if I have rate, if I have increasing expenses every year, payroll goes up, cost of services go up, equipment costs go up, but I'm not selling any more product.

How do I make money?

Or how does the city break even with its with its water and sewer funds?

We have to raise rates.

So right now we have in a budget um money to um apply for a PUC rate case next year uh for the water fund.

So that's in the budget, not a rate increase that'll take another year for that to go into effect if and when it does.

But the last rate increase on the water rates was in 2021.

It's been five years.

Um so um we're due, basically, you know, the you don't want to wait too long to go back for rate adjustments because your rates, your your expenses keep going up.

Um, if you wait too long, then you're gonna be hitting the public with a with a much higher rate increase.

But you don't want to go too often because it costs a lot of money to go to the PUC for a rate increase.

So if I'm gonna go to the rate increase, say every year for one or two percent increase, it's not worth it.

But if I'm gonna wait 10 years or 15 years, well then you know, you might be be looking at a much greater jump in percentage of the rate increase.

So there's kind of a sweet spot as to when you want to go back to the PUC for rate rate rate adjustment.

Five years is plus or minus is probably the right uh rate amount of time.

So jump gears a little bit.

Um so we talked a little bit a little bit about that underground infrastructure.

So you say you got 500 miles of water main, 250 miles of sewer main.

Um, and that's a lot to maintain.

And I don't know if Mike is here, like Mike Alcohol who will be following me.

Um he gets nervous when he sees a picture like this.

Uh, because you know, how do we maintain all that stuff?

We got to dig up the streets.

So it ends up being a very um challenging prospect when we're out there um having to replace all of our uh water and sewer infrastructure.

So we for the past 10 years.

This is these are averages.

We average about 50 water main breaks every year, about 84 service line breaks.

Now that's the line from the main to your house.

We do have a leak detection program.

Uh we monitor about 250 miles of water main with our leak detection.

We do find leaks uh through that survey.

We also have 10,000 valves in our system, and we we exercise about a thousand per year.

And now a lot of those, I'll talk about valves here in a minute.

Uh, but a lot of those valves are as old as the water mains, and they're 50 to 50 to 100 years old, and a lot of them need to be replaced over the next several decades.

So I talked a little bit about okay, water and sewer main repair.

Um, obviously it's very messy, very intrusive.

You know, whenever there's a water main break, it can cause a mess, um, interrupts traffic, service to customers, but we got to do it.

And it gets back to that resiliency concept that I talked about, ability to respond quickly, fix the problem, and then return people to service.

Uh one unique job we did this year was uh pipe replacement.

Um HDPE stands for high dense high density polyethylene pipe.

So it's a high pressure water pipe that we installed in a couple hard to get to places on Eaton Avenue that went underneath Route 378 and then across the Freemansburg Bridge.

Um allowed us to feed this uh plastic pipe through the old pipe uh without have to with without having to dig up across 378 uh and across the Freemansburg Bridge.

Talked about valve replacements.

So we did a big valve replacement project.

This was on Eighth Avenue on the west side.

Uh the valve on the left that was removed is about 100 years old.

Um it just seized in the open position, it just never just didn't work.

So a valve of this size costs about 20,000 just for the valve.

Um that doesn't include the labor to put it in.

So you can so you can see there's a lot of expensive infrastructure uh in our system.

Security, it talked about security being important in our system uh for water and sewer generally.

Uh so we're replacing a lot of fencing and gates at our facilities, wastewater treatment, wild creek, the water treatment plant, um, installing some additional security cameras at both plants, uh installing access control.

Uh so that you need now need your city ID card, you know, your badge to get into some uh some of our locations.

So we're gonna continue to build on this uh security infrastructure over the next several years.

Water quality measures.

Um talked about you know protecting the you know the quality of our water.

Um we do a hydrant flushing program every year to make sure the line the water is maintained at a high quality.

We've tested for PFOS now over the past couple of years.

We're lucky that our water drinking water has non-detectable levels of PFOS.

That's those forever chemicals.

Uh we do lead testing every three years, and we did the last round this this past year in 2025.

All results are less than one parts per billion, that is, and the EPA limit is 15 parts per billion.

So we're in good shape with our um contaminants, I'll say.

Uh analyses on our on our drinking water every year just to ensure that we have uh high quality drinking water.

Service lines.

Um, another big topic, and especially with lead services.

Like I said, we have we respond to about 80 service line breaks every year.

Um we have a there's a program now to replace lead services.

Uh we've replaced over more than 500 so far to date.

Um there's a service line map on the city website.

We try and update that, at least on an annual basis.

There's another update due this month.

We have a final inventory.

The good the goal here is to replace all lead services by 2037.

That's the federal goal.

They want us to identify all services by 2027, and then they'll give you 10 years after that to replace all lead services in our water system.

That's the national goal.

Uh, so we're well on our way to trying to get that done.

Most lead services in the city were installed in the 1920 to 1940 time frame.

Um a lot of the lead that we have encountered so far are in the older parts of the city, downtown.

Um that's going to be the main focus, uh, going after those those older homes.

Meters.

So remember, I we have 37,000 meters in our system.

Um meters there, picture on the left.

And the new the new uh type of meter, the census uh iParl meter, and the radio frequency unit is the small box that on the picture on the right that is on the outside of the house that sends the signal to the um uh satellite towers or the towers to for transmitting the data, uh the water read data.

So we are in the middle of a six-year plan uh to replace 25,000 meters.

We're doing about 4,000 a year.

Um we now have 21,000 customers on that AMI program.

That's the automatic metering infrastructure.

So we're getting close to 60 percent.

Uh, we're spending about 2 million dollars a year uh on that network.

Um we got we're 2026 will be the fourth or the fifth year.

No, the for the uh fourth year of a six-year plan.

Um three, four, five, yeah, three, four, five, six.

Yeah.

So um, you know, we're hopefully the money, the capital stays there so we can get through the 2028, and then by that time, we should have almost all of our uh customers on the new platform.

And that will get into some customer service improvements that is related to the metering.

So just some background on customer service.

Um we do about 19,000 customer interactions every year.

Uh that's phone calls, emails, in-person.

Um a lot of them are mundane questions about their bill, setting them up bill paying options, uh, delinquencies, finals.

We do a lot of finals when everybody when everybody sells a house, you know, you got to do a final to go to settlement.

Um couple things we're we're looking to improve our our platform.

One is bill pay.

So right now, you can go on the city website, you have the eGov option, right?

You can go in and set up your your account, you can pay your bill online.

Unfortunately, you can't set up recurring bills, you can't set up paperless billing.

So everybody still gets a bill in the mail where you have to go on, and then if you want it, you want you go online and pay your bill online.

And you can only do that once every quarter.

You can't set up recurring payments.

So we're looking into some software packages that will allow us or allow customers to set up paperless and automatic bill paying.

We do about 30,000 or eGov right now does about 30,000 transactions a year.

And most of them are utility billing.

So that that demand, and that's been growing every year.

So the demand for that kind of service is only growing where people want to.

There's more and more people who want to do you know stuff online.

They don't want to see the paper bill anymore.

They want to be able to do things online, do it quickly, do it by their phone, or set up ACH payments.

So our current software is not able to do that.

So we we're looking into some software packages to do that.

And it in addition to that, we want to be able to give customers access to them to their accounts so they can see their meter history, their usage history, right?

They're cut their their consumption history.

So in addition to their billing, they can take a look at their consumption.

The problem is some of these things are of different software.

And so we're trying to see what we can do.

We've been actively looking at this this year, um, to see what kind of software package we can get that does both things so that customers can have like a one-stop shop to go in, pay their bills, see their usage, um, set up alerts.

You know, there's been talk for several months about being able to give customers the opportunity to see alarms if they get a high usage, because right now the only people that sees the high usage alarm is the city, right?

So we get those alerts, and then we contact the customer whenever we get a high level alert.

But now, you know, there's the there's the desire to give the customer that flexibility so they can do it.

So we're looking into those those software packages right now.

Um so just getting into some of the numbers again, very high level on the water fund.

Um 25 and 26.

A couple of things on this on this page.

So you can see residential revenue accounts for more than 50 percent uh of our water fund, commercial and industrial, about 21%.

The other thing to note on this page is the cash transfer.

So the cash transfer, so both the water fund and the sewer funds have a cash balance.

Okay.

Uh the cash balance accumulates year after year.

If you if your revenues exceed expenses on any given year, you have a positive cash balance, and that money sits in the bank.

If your expenses exceed revenues, then you have a negative cash balance, then you're then you're losing, right?

Um both funds have a pretty decent cash balance right now.

So we're able to tap into that cash balance to help fund our capital programs without having to borrow more money.

Okay, so that's what we're doing on the water fund side is that 2.5 million dollars uh from the cash balance transferring into the water fund that then goes goes to the capital fund on the expense side.

So the so the the funds are balanced.

Um you can see 30% of our water fund costs or payroll personnel.

The other big big number there is debt.

Uh 34% of the water fund uh goes to debt service.

Um, let's talk about debt for a minute, because that has been the challenge facing the water fund for the past 25 years.

So annual debt service payments.

So sewer is down the bottom.

Uh the gray line, I guess it's gray, about $2 million a year.

So the sewer funds in much better shape in terms of its debt service uh payments.

Water fund is the top line.

So it's been close to $9 million, $8,9 million.

Now I'm only going back to 2021, but it's been up there for the past 25 years.

Okay, ever since they had to rebuild the Penn Forest Dam.

And that has been a major challenge in trying to manage the finances of the water fund.

Now, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that's why that's the purpose I'm showing this graph.

That debt service payment starts to drop off in after 2027.

So starting 2028, those numbers start to drop off.

So we're gonna be in a lot better shape financially in the foreseeable future, and then we'll be able to either refi or go out go out for more capital financing so we can invest in the system, or um spend more cash and and dump it into capital rather than borrowing.

So there'll be a balance there that we'll we'll see how that how that shakes out in the next couple of years.

But we work closely with the what the Bethel Authority, as you know, the Bethel Authority is the financing arm of the water fund.

So they're very much in tune what's with what's going on relative to our debt service and what's going to be needed for capital financing over the next several years.

And then we get into the cap water capital fund.

The big it's again 12 million dollars annual budget.

The big ticket items here are the meter replacements.

So we're gonna keep keep going after meters, uh, water main replacements, the the roof.

I mentioned the roof uh replacement at the water treatment plant, and the the two million gallon reservoir, those are the big uh capital projects uh slated for the next year.

Shifting gears a little bit, very briefly to talk about wastewater.

Um like I said, we treat about four billion gallons a year, that's 11 MGD.

Um we produce 12,000 wet tons of biosolids.

Um, and that gets disposed of as beneficial use.

Basically, it's sent to farms as fertilizer, and we've been doing that since 2018.

It's been a very successful uh program that has saved the city on the order of magnitude, at least a half a million dollars a year uh since 2018 in doing it that way.

We have 25,000 customers, and we also serve about 12 municipalities, and there's no uh proposed rate increase for 2026 on the sewer fund sewer side.

We do we do a lot of uh, you know, I mentioned this at the asset.

There's a lot of capital investment down at the plant.

Um we have six clarifiers.

Um they require maintenance and upgrades off and on.

So we we we did a lot of uh an upgrade on one of our intermediate clarifiers this past year.

We replaced one of the gas membranes, and I'll talk about digester gas in a couple of minutes.

Um these are fabric membranes.

There's two of them.

We replaced one this past year, and then this the second one is scheduled to be be replaced next year.

Um these gas met the new ones hold more gas, uh, which is gonna become useful in a minute.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Another project that's under design development is improvements to our aeration tank down at uh down at the plant as well.

Again, open for tours if anybody wants to come down.

Uh on the on the on the utility side, uh, we do about a hundred mile, 120 miles of flushing of our of our sewer mains.

We got to keep them clear.

We we we TV our mains, because you know, you think about the sewer mains, it's not sexy, but you know, they can get clogged up with rags and grease and roots and this and that.

So we it's important to keep those the sewer lines clear.

Uh we maintain six pump stations and we do have a grease control program to try and cut down on that grease in certain hot spots in the city.

And we do have on uh scheduled next year a couple of uh projects to upgrade our uh two of our pump stations, one on Apple Butter Road and one on Easton Road uh in the city on the numbers side.

Uh again, very similar where where the numbers are very repeatable from year to year.

maintain six pump stations and we do have a grease control program um to try and cut down on that grease in certain hot spots in the city and we do have on uh scheduled next year a couple of uh projects to upgrade our uh two of our pump stations one on apple butter road and one on easton road uh in the city on the numbers side uh again very very similar where where the numbers are very repeatable from year to year they don't they don't change much um residential accounts for 40 percent of our total income our tributaries that's that's the income we get from the the um uh surrounding municipalities so that's about a third of our revenue comes from our tributaries expenditures again personnel eight million dollars that's 40 percent you know the the debt is a lot lower talked about debt service and the water fund debt service on the on the sewer fund is a lot better a lot lower more manageable um we don't have to tap into the sewer cash fund cash balance to fund capital this year because there's enough cash in the capital fund 10 million dollar capital budget for sewer um i talked about the a couple of lift stations the gas the digester gas membrane is another big project for this year and some uh some boiler and hot water loop upgrade and some other miscellaneous process improvements are on the schedule for next year so we've talked to the climate action plan so the the cities has that climate action plan i think there's gonna be a presentation on that in a couple of weeks um but we're we're trying to do our part in the water in sewer department to assist with this two projects that we're we're actively looking at now one is installation of a solar array at the water treatment plant um we we are reviewing a couple of proposals um that we've received to install a solar array at the plant um so hopefully there'll be a decision on that in the near future that would help offset basically the electric use at the plant um 100% down at wastewater we're going to be looking at biocast biogas CHP now CHP stands for combined heat and power plant so that biogas in the digesters it's made up primarily of methane uh which you can burn either in a boiler or an engine to create heat and create electricity so the more gas you you can produce um you get the bigger bang for your buck and pretty able to produce heat for the plant and electricity that you can either use at the plant or wheel back to the grid so we're gonna be looking a good look at that uh to see if that is an economically feasible product uh project that we can do in the in the next couple of years I think so in summary just to kind of recap or re revisit what I talked about at the start being the water and sewer utilities being critical infrastructure um you know we're here primarily you know our first order of business protect the health and safety of the public and the environment ensure a regulatory compliance secure ensure our assets are secure maintain resiliency you know the ability to respond and bounce back from upsets provide for the financial stability of the utilities um and then and customer service you know we're trying to be we try to be as responsive as we can uh to um the needs of our customers so I think that's it thank you Mr.

Boscola uh before I open it up to questions was there anything in the actual budget book that you wanted to point out that wasn't covered already in your presentation no I know that pretty pretty standard thank you yeah well that being said so what we'll do is so I'll I'll start with our public works committee what we'll go over all four uh at once so we'll we'll do the water fund revenues and expenses water capital budget sewer fund revenue expenses and sewer capital budget so any questions for Mr.

Boscola or the administration now would be the time for anything water or sewer related I'll start with Mr.

Callahan the chair of our public works committee do you have anything Mr.

uh at once so we'll we'll do the water fund revenues and expenses water capital budget sewer fund revenue expenses and sewer capital budget so any questions for mr boscola or the administration now would be the time for anything water or sewer related i'll start with mr callahan the chair of our public works committee do you have anything mr kelly i just want to thank you guys and your staff i know every year we we win the is it uh the wampa warn awop yes yeah i'm sorry i didn't mention it because it almost gets to be old hat unfortunately when you win it 15 years in a row you know but we did we did get it again yeah yeah i mean um anybody ever visits me here they say man your water's really good you know i say it is and and i try to explain them about the water shed up and you know you know on a poconos and and um you know it's it's every drop of water that goes into that uh reservoirs up there it it doesn't hit anything man made it's all natural and you know but I mean that I've been up there you know when you wanted to water looks drinkable before even goes into the the valves so I want to thank all you guys uh you know for all your work and all the guys in you know the sewer department also so thank you thank you Mr.

Callahan any other questions or comments from our other committee members councilwoman quecker laird councilwoman laird uh thank you for the presentation I feel like every time I I learn new things um that I didn't think I'd find interesting and do so uh thank you uh a few questions for you um so one uh you mentioned spray tech as one of the biggest users of water and I'm aware that they have um several EPA complaints and citations against them um I think mostly involving noxious odors but um it raises uh a bit of a concern for me that they're one of our biggest customers and have a pretty publicly noted track record of not really following uh the regulations so um are we uh paying extra attention to what they're dumping into the sewer or visiting them for inspection on any more regular basis or anything knowing that they are I think they are in our MIP yes they are in our what's called MIPP uh municipal industrial pretreatment program so that that is a a group of 35 ish companies in our service territory no i'm talking about sewer now um that send either high volume and or high strength waste to this in the sewer system and then goes down to the plant so there are special inspections and agreements and limits in place on those companies spray tech is being being one of them now that's on the suit wastewater side liquid right honestly it doesn't really have anything to do with their air permit so they have their air so yeah what they do is they make um flavors and what come on help me out sense yeah yeah the uh uh flavors and uh things for like the pharmaceutical and food industry so they get really high concentration stuff and then they they make a product and they sell it to other companies um and some of the stuff is very has a very strong odor so that's probably that's what people smell and I think they're supposed supposed to have odor control I think on their process um but on this on the water's wastewater side there is a permit in place so we monitor their the strength of their waste and it gets sampled every quarter and there are uh surcharges and you know fines or you know there there's a there's a there's a regulatory regime that regulates them on on the wastewater side are you aware offhand on whether they tend to be in compliance or whether they are have been subject to fines from the city or uh anything like that.

I think they're I think they are generally in compliance without getting too I don't want to misspeak right and I don't I don't I don't database they don't they don't stand out as being a a an outlier.

Okay.

Yeah um another question is uh you mentioned um increases in security which it is important um who monitors the cameras at our facilities is that a police department role or is it internal or a third party right now it's right at the facility so right and and it's really only at the two uh uh plants that are manned 24-7 so wastewater uh they have cameras down at the wastewater plant the fence so the operators there have access to the there's cameras in the operators room same thing up at the water treatment plant the the vision or the goal if you will is to eventually give that the capacity to see and monitor access and cameras at our um the old 911 center right the the control here in city hall um but right now they can't do that it's only local is that um in this year's

Same thing up at the water treatment plan.

The the vision or the goal, if you will, is to eventually give that the capacity to see and monitor access and cameras at our um the old 911 center, right?

The the control here in City Hall.

Um but right now they can't do that, it's only local.

Is that um in this year's budget?

No.

Okay.

Um right.

Uh next question was um right now you have the challenge as with any major system transition of um keeping two systems afloat for the metering.

Um, so you've got the old meters that were you know sending people out to read and the new meters.

Um do you have a sense of what the costs are that we're currently undertaking to keep both systems afloat in this six-year transition versus like how much it'll go down once we're done with the transition the cost in terms of labor any i I suppose it would be mostly labor.

Um there, I don't know what else is involved in terms of maintenance or anything like that.

Labor is about the same.

Okay, we still we have but but it may be slightly different labor.

So whereas we used to have all readers, but so we have six people in our meter shop right now, three readers and three repair persons.

The readers read, they physically go out and read the old meters, right?

They're on the street walking.

Um the repairmen are ones replacing meters.

So that so the transition is we used to have all readers and maybe only one repair.

Now we're getting more repairmen and less readers.

So there's that transition from one to the other, but the number the total number is staying the same.

So the labor costs are about the same.

The equipment costs, obviously, there's the capital cost of the meter itself to replace meters, right?

So that's a one-time capital charge.

Um, but then there's gonna be the the ongoing, the ongoing programmatic charge, meaning to manage the software is now an annual charge.

So that's you know, it's not zero, but it's not a crazy number either.

And there wasn't a software system for the old correct, there's not a software system for the old system, right?

Uh that was all manual, um, manual entry.

Um, so there's some software costs for the new system.

And if we go to uh you know, billing, automatic billing and you know, metering and um, you know, uh customer access, there's gonna be some software cost for that as well.

But it you know, it's not you know, but I but I'm gonna try to say it's there's there's not a bit there's not a big difference in operating cost, if you will.

There's some, but it's not insurmountable.

Um, and with those software packages that you're looking at, um, are those specified?

Like are those line items in the budget or are they rolled into it's just it's just a line item, it's not it's in uh it's in department contracts in the general um so in the water fund, it would be under account 2006.

So that would be here.

I'll I'll I'll go right to it page 231.

So utility billing software packages are in department contracts line item for 2047.

So you can see there's an increase requested for 2026.

That's for the new software that we're gonna try and implement.

And that would include both uh you referenced that it could be one package or it could be two different tools.

That would include both yes in your research.

Okay, uh so that increases from 190 to 300 to a county.

And it's and it's and it's split between water and sewer.

So a lot of because we're doing water and sewer billing.

It it's kind of it's based those those contracts are split 5050 between the water fund and sewer fund.

And uh that hundred and ten thousand increase, would that be just to would that be uh an expected annual increase then to keep those afloat, or does it include some um setup there?

There's there's a it includes a one-time setup fee, which is up here, and then there's an annual maintenance fee, which is somewhat lower.

So in theory, the next the following year will be somewhat lower somewhat than 26.

Okay.

I'm glad to see that in there.

Thank you.

Um, and then the last question I had was when you were talking about uh the sewer maintenance, um, and that you know, you're adding the bacteria to break down some of the grease and things like that.

Um would something like a citywide grease recycling program help in any notable way for the sewer department in terms of labor costs or just effectiveness of the sewer system, and has that been explored?

Um we there are municipalities that do that, like accept like food waste in Greece, but honestly, our system is not set up for that right now.

It might be something we can take a look at several years down the road.

Um without getting because I don't know too much about how it actually works, but I I just don't think per two um we're set up for that right now.

And we just don't have the volume.

I think one thing is we wouldn't have the volume for it, because right now we're just limited to what we're producing um in the city.

A lot of a lot of um utilities that accept food waste out in other parts of the state get it from all over the place, right?

Um that's that's like a whole program that's an order of magnitude above what we're currently doing, but it's something that we can take a look at.

Okay.

Um those are all my questions, and then just uh an additional thanks for uh being proactive on trying to meet those uh climate action plan goals.

Thank you.

Councilman Quech.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr.

Bascola.

Um, you did sort of address the debt service uh piece that I I wanted to ask about um and and uh how you saw it sort of going, you know, sort of heading down rather, you know, precipitously.

I mean, in a good way, obviously.

Um, and I was just wondering, you know, um, why do you project it going down?

Or is there something that's coming off the books from the Pendust Dam era?

Or yeah, a lot of those, a lot of those uh debt uh payment sunset.

So it is on page and get you can see the detail.

One 189 in the book.

And um so that's great news, obviously.

It's always good.

So there's basically two bonds that are left in the water fund uh that we're paying for the one the one bond um sunsets in 20 after 2028.

Okay, so that ends, and then the other bond goes out to 2037, but you can see there's annual payments start to dot start to drop off.

So the 1998 will will go away, go away.

Great, right?

That's a leftover from the uh Pen Forest.

Penfar, sorry.

So it was probably it was probably 30 year, it was a 30-year bond, 98.

Right.

Um that they took out to help pay for the Pen Forest.

Okay.

And in 2022, I remember this this bond and uh really favorable interest rate.

We were we were in you know, better, sort of slightly better territory at that time, but then it started started going up, right?

The the interest rates.

So yes, it took advantage of lower low interest interest rates at the at the time.

Yeah.

Um, so it do you see the possibility that we'll need to borrow again and that impacting going down off that?

Yeah, typically what they do is they took a you know, they'll they'll take a look at this.

So this 2022 guaranteed water bond, that it's it's pay schedule, and they may end up either refinancing that and or getting new money or wrapping it all together, and and you know, the bond um consultants take a look at these numbers and they can advise the city and the authority, okay, what's the best way to finance the the debt, you know, and how many years you want to go out?

Do you refi what kind of interest rate you get?

You know, there's a lot of things that go into that.

Um, because when we get to like the 2033, 34 time period, that's when all of a sudden it goes down to just one and a half million dollars a year, and then you're correct.

That's you're looking good at that point.

Right.

There's nothing there's nothing left, and then again, and then you make a decision.

Um so that's you know, six seven million dollars in potential cash that you could dump into the capital fund without have without having the borrow money.

Right.

So you may be in a in a position to not have to borrow as much money uh in the future.

So but of course, there's always unforeseen things.

Correct.

So who knows?

Um, I did you you mentioned the two million dollars in miscellaneous process improvements.

Could you be more specific about what process improvements or um well there was there?

I forget there was there was uh when I was looking at it over the weekend.

Is it wastewater?

Uh it must have been in the wastewater.

Um, I think you showed us in the in the PowerPoint also that there was like two point something million dollars in process improvements.

Yeah.

Um let's see here.

So I know well we're we're doing we're doing some sludge handling improvements, um, some some pump upgrades.

There's the aeration tank engineering we're gonna be doing.

There's the hot water loop of that that's some of those were already delineated, though, right?

Yeah, um the boiler, uh the CHP uh potential project.

Um trying to think there's I'm just looking at it.

You know, I tried to summarize it without trying to get too lost in the weeds.

If you go to the sewer capital budget on page 295.

Um the this the wastewater treatment plant um is a capital intensive business.

All right, it re it the the equipment down there um requires a lot of maintenance, a lot of repair, a lot of replacement.

There's a lot of heavy um large pumps, large motors, um controls, mixers, tanks.

So a lot of that business requires attention every year, and there are so a lot of it is recurring maintenance um that we have to do at the wastewater plant.

I'm comparing it now to like the water treatment plant.

The water treatment plant is a lot less capital intensive just because of the nature of the beast that we're dealing with, nature of the business.

Um there's a lot of facilities improvements again.

The again, the other thing is to consider to remember wastewater plant is 70 years old.

Okay, um, and a lot of that stuff is still in function is still working, the stuff that was installed 70 years ago.

So a lot of that needs to be renovated, upgraded, the controls, the electrical systems, pumps, mixers, a lot of controls.

And I appreciate that.

I think I was just you know, there was a lot of stuff that was specifically delineated, and then this like two million dollars, yeah, miscellaneous process improvements, and I guess I was just looking to sort of understand what might have uh gone into that.

Yeah, it's it's it's just the total of everything that's not included in those other line items that I put there.

Okay.

Um, I mean, one thing that I do notice is that you've said we're looking at and we're looking into and you know, we're looking at and into like several times during the course of your presentation, and whether it was uh, you know, the um, you know, the it looks like you the billing software stuff you you're you've got on the on the books here, so you're you're definitely kind of moving with that, but um it just like with the with the climate action stuff, you know, actively looking at the solar installation um and the the biogas um ch is there a timetable is there I guess I'm just looking for more sort of when can we expect to hear updates kind of thing?

Uh I mean, you know, obviously we have uh a particular resident who's who's very high on the concept of the app um for the water.

Um, you know, and but I'm just looking for some kind of an understanding of sort of the the timetable, what it means when you say that you're looking into or looking at or actively looking at the solar um hope to make hope to make a decision soon.

So I would say early 26 on the CHP at the wastewater plant.

That's more of a that's a multi-year thing.

I don't think we're good, we're we're gonna be in position to pull the trigger on that, probably 27 at the earliest.

We're doing the in 2020 in 26, we're doing just doing some initial engineering evaluation to see if it's even economically feasible.

Okay.

All right.

Um the the app of uh the the billing software.

There's a lot of behind the scenes elements that go that go into this relative to financial management, data management, because it's all tied in with the city's financial system.

Um our current bill pay provider versus contractual arrangements, so that can occur anywhere from one to two years, 26 or 27 for that for the bill pay um software.

So like uh honestly, it's you know, it's in the budget for next year, but I don't want to promise it's gonna get done next year.

Okay, it may it may bleed into 27, just because there's a lot of behind the scene things with our financial systems that are somewhat out of our control my control, because we're part of the city's network on in terms of data management and financial management.

Um but um but that's the goal is to try and get it done sometime in the next two years.

Okay.

So if I had more questions about that, I might wait to talk to IT when we look at that.

Yeah, it IT is an integral part.

Um, you know, Eric and the and the financial team, we're all part of the same group when we're looking at these at these software packages, because it involves the ego, the egov site, because like I said, we currently have 30,000 users a year using the ego uh process.

So if we're gonna switch, we would have we want to do that as seamlessly as possible.

All right, so we don't lose because customers now you know are expecting that to be, you know, uh an available kind of convenience, if you will.

So yeah, I mean, obviously, municipalities, companies, large institutions change software, yeah, you know regularly now.

It's something that you know happens, obviously.

Um, and uh I'm just I'm just kind of curious as whether you know the city uses like a consultant or if there's somebody, you know, on staff who works with like enterprise systems and the you know, how data flows and stuff like that is you know, but uh that's not your area, so I'll I'll hold my questions on that.

I had just a um like one last question for you, and it's more of a definition thing.

What is turbidity?

It's the measure of the cloudiness of the water.

Okay, so very clear water has a very low turbidity, cloudy water has a higher turbidity, and there's a unit that I wouldn't even describe.

There's a there's a there's a piece of a uh analytical equipment that can measure the turbidity of the water down to very fine.

So if you with the naked eye could see something that looks fairly clear, but maybe the the machine will pick up uh you know some a certain level of turbidity.

It's very difficult to find a uh a water sample that has a turbidity of zero, say like crystal clear.

Maybe you can do that in a lab, right?

Um so it's it's an indication of other cloudiness of the water, yes, yes.

So okay.

Yes.

Um, and then finally, uh I know I think I said that was finally, but finally, um, the meter replacement project.

So there's this goal of 25,000, or we we're replacing 25,000, but you said that there are 21,000 customers now on the AMI, um, and we're doing 4,000 a year.

So why is it that we have still more years to go beyond just one year?

Like it sounded like 21,000 plus 4,000 equals 25,000.

So can you explain to me sort of why those numbers are you because you're saying we still have a a couple years, three years left?

Yeah, so six uh six, seven, and eight, that would be twelve thousand right meters.

So 12,000 plus 21 or 20 is 32, and I think we so that'll get us close to 100%.

And then there's a lot of loose ones that we end up picking up at the at the tail end of the project.

Okay, so the project was really not for 25,000 meters, but in order to do the whole city well, we've been replacing them as you've gone along with it.

Yes, we've done a lot of meters before this as well.

Yes, that's so that's what I mean.

Is that like when I saw this, I was like, oh, then why isn't it just one more?

Yeah, we've done a lot of meters before this.

This was this was just a concerted effort to do 25,000 in six years, but we've done we've been replacing meters prior to this time with the with the new system.

Correct.

Okay, correct.

Thank you for clearing that up for me because the math wasn't mathing for me.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And thanks to your team for being here tonight and for all the work that they do to um you know provide safe drinking water and and sanitary uh sewer services for us.

Appreciate it a lot.

Thank you, councilman.

Any other questions or comments from the rest of council?

I'll start with councilwoman Wilhelm.

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation.

And I will start by echoing the thanks.

Um, Diane, Steve, Bill, Joe, Jason, thank you so much for being here.

Ed, thank you as well for the work that you do.

You really do have the health and safety of 120,000 people in your hands.

And um, I know you were given a great product, but you steward monitor, maintain, and improve that system.

Um we are grateful.

I think it's we take it for granted every glass of water we drink or toilet we flush until there's a problem.

Um, and you're sort of behind the scenes doing that really important work.

So please pass on to your hundred plus or so colleagues.

Um, our thanks.

We are very grateful for you and your work.

And just a couple of small clarifying questions left for me.

You mentioned that 540 lead service lines have been replaced.

Approximately what percentage of the total is that?

Honestly, don't know.

Uh, because we have no record of how many lead services were installed in the okay early part of the 20th century.

Um we believe educated guess is maybe a couple thousand.

Okay, so a little over 25-ish percent.

It's it's it's yeah, it's just based on our educated kind of assessment of what we see when we're out there every day.

Okay, in terms of service lines.

Um, there may be at most 20, uh not 20,000, 2,000.

Um the goal for over the next, like I said, the next two years is to try and identify all of those, all of those services.

Okay.

So you come up with a number, whatever that number is, a thousand, two thousand, whatever.

And then the feds, the federal government wants you to then do establish a program to replace all of those over the the next 10 years.

You said 2037.

2037.

And that's that's the federal requirement, or that's okay.

So do you anticipate we'll we'll have achieved that well before 2037?

Well, they they gave you that timeline in anticipation of there being a lot of lead services because it's not cheap, and you do the the approach was to have utilities budget 10% a year over 10 years, okay, until until they all get done.

And it it's gonna depend on what we find.

Right, what our exposure is.

Okay.

Um my last question is just with regard to the software that you're looking at.

Um have you narrowed it down to the software that you're still in the process of picking the social media.

We we have we have vetted one, two, three, three or four, three or four different packages right now.

Um, and there's pros and cons.

And like I said, there's there's um there are the the behind the scenes things that are complicating matters relative to um the data management and the financial security and and how to hand how to handle the money and and so forth.

Okay, that's and and you know the goal is to give the you know, we don't want to roll something out that's clunky for the customer.

We want the you know, kind of like a one stop shop thing for customers to be going.

They have a they have an account number, you log in, you can set up your bill, your your your bill pay, look at your usage, you know.

No, I appreciate the attention to user experience.

Because you're you're dealing with folks who are paying bills, it's not necessarily a happy moment, so you want to make it as smooth as possible.

Simple as possible.

So are of all the ones that you have sort of vetted it down to, do they all include a customer alert feature or or only some of them?

It's nobody provides everything that we want.

Okay.

So some of it may involve multiple platforms that can that can link together, if you will.

Um do bill pay very well.

That's about it's a banking, you know, that's a bad, it's that's uh that's almost easy from the banking side of the business or the financial management side of the business.

The other side of the business is the is the monitoring of the metering and the the his your historical usage and your your alarms and that's that type of thing, uh where our system you know works for us internally, is it's giving the people that access as well as being able to do a bill pay, um, which is is becoming the challenge.

Because I could do we could do it one or the other.

Well, you can do one or we can do one or the other or both, but then that gets clunky because now people have to have two login accounts.

Right.

I don't want to do that.

That's gonna be okay.

But there it does there are systems that exist that does it.

You can link or you can link them together.

Okay, and so we're trying to find something that's gonna in a sweet spot and that works within our system, right?

Because it's not only utility billing, it's we have taxes too.

You know, we're part of the city's financial system, right?

Taxes, utility billing, other miscellaneous bills that we're trying to make it all work together.

I mean, in terms of the alerts, I assume you know, aquahawk has been mentioned, um, and I assume that these systems would not necessarily be as robust.

I one of the things I guess I'm wondering is if we end up employing a system that does provide customer alerts, does it also then provide sort of an enhanced communication method, or is it just you're using too much water call call like you normally would.

I mean, you know what I mean, is the response and and sort of the Yeah, we're trying to we're trying we're looking for something that's gonna be convenient for the customers for log in, you know, managing their account, being able to pay their bills, set up their uh alerts, alarms, look at their consumption as easy as possible.

You know, we don't, you know, we're like I said, we're not looking for something clunky that that takes a lot of navigating, because then nobody's gonna use it.

Um and so yeah, the answer is yes, we want to give the customers as much flexibility to be able to manage their accounts as much as possible, and trying to find a platform or platforms that is able to do that while blending it in with the whole city's IT and financial management infrastructure.

Understood.

Well, we appreciate, like I said, your attention to uh which system or systems will best serve uh the residents of Bethlehem.

So thank you, and thank you all again for being here tonight and for the work that you do.

Anything else from council?

Councilman Cram.

Thank you.

Um thank you to everyone.

I know um it's a really um intense and complicated system, and um it's something that is vital to everybody in the city on a daily basis.

And um, like Mr.

Councilman Callahan said, the quality of water, um, you have a spoil because if I go out of town, I can't drink water anywhere else.

So thank you again.

I just have a couple questions while we're on the um topic of the app, just so I'm clear.

So you're looking for a system where they can people can pay their bill as well as uh track their water usage, right?

Um and I'm looking like I see the one is um eye on water where you can you can do it all, you can email it, it gives you the website for right to the city and all.

I just wanted to throw that out there, but I'm also wondering that um you said it would be like one to two years until everybody has the new meters.

Is that is that correct?

Or is it gonna be longer?

No, it's it's one to two years to get the software package up and running for the bill pay.

Or for both for both, okay.

It's sort of separate from the meter project.

Okay, now that we have fifth 60% penetration with our metering infrastructure, you know, we're getting close.

Okay, you know, uh, you know, we're so few few years away to getting 100%, but we're we're um um proceeding or progressing with looking into the the the bill pay and uh option with and the uh the minor.

And once once uh we find an option that works, is it possible to put the people that have the new meter on it, or do we have to wait till everybody has a new meter to get them on that system?

It's just just the people who are on the system.

So we'll be able to get them on right away.

Okay, and the people with the old meters the old meters would would not be able to be on it, yes, correct.

Right, right.

But so there will still be some people with the old meters that can't get on the system.

No, the old meter people now.

Actually, the old meter people can still do the bill pay.

Okay.

They could set up an independent bill pay.

I just wanted to clarify the way.

I just want to clarify we don't have to wait till everybody's a new meter until we start either of these systems.

Okay, thanks.

Um the other thing the other question I have was for the the users that um the top users in the city that you have listed.

Um, do they get they have I'm assuming they pay the same rate per gallon as even like small businesses and residential, like everybody pays the same rate, is that correct?

Well, there's the there's a residential rate and then there's the commercial industrial rate.

Okay, the rates are a little different.

And how is it what's the difference is generally speaking?

So the commercial rate is lower.

It is lower because they use more water.

The it was yes.

Well, it's it's a complicated calmula.

Um the last time we went for the rate and rate increase in 2021, there was a um a rate study that was done, and they look at the the cost of service, or in other words, what does it cost to bring water to a residential customer?

What does it cost to bring to deliver water to a commercial and industrial customer?

And there's there's all kinds of analysis that go into that calculation.

And at the end at the bottom of the page, it spits out okay, here's what the appropriate rate is that you should charge your residential customer, somebody dollars per thousand gallons.

Here's the appropriate rate for commercial.

So there's a whole formula that goes into calculating um what the appropriate rate is for different classes customer.

Okay.

And I know we talked in the past about um non-residents who use our water, like the townships and whatnot.

Um, are is it the same cost for the water to go to them as the residents in the city?

Yes.

It is.

Okay.

Because that's one thing.

I know we had discussions on it, and it's very complicated, but I guess I'm thinking it's one thing that as our our um our uses, you know, goes down, and our income from that isn't isn't as high.

That's one thing I would think to think about, you know, charging the non-residents a little more for the water than the residents.

Um let's see.

The other thing I had is um oh, the tapping fee for for new buildings or whatever.

What fund does a tapping fee go into when there's a new building and they have to pay the initial tapping fee?

It's sewer capital fund, the sewer capital fund.

Okay.

Yeah, there's a line item in the sewer capital account.

Okay for tapping fee revenue.

Okay.

Um I think the other the only other thing that I'm gonna bring up is we brought it up.

We it was an issue before related to climate action, which is you know, really important.

I'm glad that you're working to um, you know to achieve that which is in our climate action plan.

But some time ago, I think it was last year or whatever, we've had residents come in and talk about the biosolids that we're we're um selling to the farmers, especially up north in the northern counties, and they have real concerns about it because of the P VOS that is in the biosolids, and some states have actually um made that they've banned selling the biosolids and and several other states have really strict restrictions.

And I know you would said it would cost it would cost us a lot of money if we did not sell the biosolids, but given that we have this climate action plan and the mayor is really um prioritizing climate action and the environment.

Is that something that maybe we can consider looking at just because of all the concerns about the people up north that feel they're affected um because they're close to the farms where we're selling it?

So we we follow state.

We think we we follow the lead of the state, right?

The Commonwealth and particularly the DEP.

Um there's currently no state regulations on uh PFOS content in wastewater or biosolids.

Now the state has started asking utilities to test for it.

So we have tested for PFOS in our wastewater and biosolids.

And that and the state is in a data gathering mode.

Okay.

Um, so they can see what exactly is the extent of the problem, and then what to do about it, if anything, relative to PFOS in the waste stream.

Um, it's not just us, there's landfills, farms.

There's a lot, there's a lot of there's a lot of moving parts to this to this problem.

Um so until some direction comes from the state on that matter.

I honestly, I don't know or think that we have really have an alternative to disposing of our biosolids, because landfills, especially the ones around here just don't want it.

They don't they do not want biosolids.

Um, and and they price you out of the market.

You know, they say, okay, you if you take our we'll take your biosolids if you pay us X, which is like way up here.

Um it's it's just not a viable alternative right now.

And you said we are testing for the P Boss in it now.

And are we finding what what levels are we finding, if any?

There's there are several constituents.

I don't know what the numbers are, they're very low.

Um, but they're not zero.

It's it's it's they're positive numbers because it is um present in the waste stream, right?

PFOS are chemicals that are um ubiquitous throughout our economy in a and all kinds of household products, industrial products, landfill.

Now the landfill to their credit, they've they've installed and are operating a PFOS um capture uh system.

Um, because that that was the one of the big drivers of of PFOS release to the environment was were our landfills.

So they're they're they're gonna head they're ahead of the game.

Um like I said, there's been no action or direction um directed at wastewater treatment plants in particular to to do anything with the PFOS other than test.

Okay, and I I understand your um your constraints, but um, I know we had talked before about some places, I think it was out by Pittsburgh, and I think down by Collegeville where they're actually using it and um turning it into uh energy, electricity, and I mean, I know it's an initial startup, but it sounds like a good system.

I would just say for whoever is here representing administration to you know, the message I think is since we're supposed to be really serious about a climate action plan, I think it's something we should really look into because even if the state isn't saying, you know, we can't do it if we really care about the environment and we're prioritizing, and I think the mayor needs to prioritize that.

Okay, thank you.

Do we need it?

Thank you.

Thank you, councilwoman.

Anything else from members of council?

Councilman Leo.

So the good part about going almost last is most of my questions have been answered um already.

So really I just wanted to say thank you to your whole team.

Uh, I believe you said it's old, it gets old when you went 15 years in a row.

Um, that's one of my favorite quotes so far for this budget season, because that's a wild way to explain 15 years of water excellence.

But congratulations on 15 years um in a row.

And thank you for explaining a lot of the these things that we continue to hear over and over again.

Um it must get repetitive on your part.

Uh, but it does help it to sink in on our part.

Thank you for explaining, especially the the water app understanding that there are contractual agreements behind the scenes that are really limiting our ability.

One of the things that I read about was most of these municipalities that go through this go through an entire IT kind of upgrade prior to doing these things.

So it's nice to see that you're kind of pointing that out to us.

Um, I appreciate all the hard work that you all do.

Thank you.

Anything else from members of council?

Mr.

Buskell, I just had two quick questions in your handout on page 26 for the water fund revenue.

It cites the cash transfer for 2026 of two and a half million dollars.

And then for the sewer fund revenue on page 36, there is no cash transfer.

Can you or Mr.

Evans just give me an estimate of does that bring it down to zero, the cash balance for the water fund?

Or what what what is the remaining balance roughly after the two and a half million is moved?

They're both around 10, I think.

But both funds uh cash balances 10 million dollars order of magnitude.

I don't have the exact number, but that's the rough order of magnitude.

And for water, that's 10 million prior to the two and a half million dollar transfer.

Understood.

Yeah.

That was my only question.

Okay.

So before I go on a public comment, I will recognize our controller and deputy city controller, Mr.

Yasso and Ms.

Liberto are here.

Do either of you have anything?

Uh do you mind coming with the microphone just for the recording, Mr.

Yasa?

Sure.

How's everybody?

So we we uh got a personal presentation of the budget from uh Mr.

Evans uh as well as Ms.

Lazarchek.

So um we did uh we met with Miss Lazarchek earlier to discuss some of our things for for tonight.

Um and we'll kind of continue to meet with them on each each night of agendas as we find stuff in the book that we want either cleaned up or want answers on, or things like that.

Um so as of tonight, we don't have anything for you guys unless you guys have questions for us.

Anyone have available the controller?

As always, we'll be available.

Thank you, Mr.

Yasso.

Thank you, Ms.

Burdo for being here.

So I will open it up to public comment.

No one had signed up.

Is there anyone in the room who wants to make comment?

Mr.

Will Weber, I ask that you state your name for the record and be mindful of our five-minute time limit.

No, you'll reply.

Uh Mark will Weber, Host Elizabeth Avenue.

Just a few comments on the ongoing stuff about the app.

Um first and and foremost, usually when these smart meters are presented, they're presented uh with the app in mind as a contingent with it at the beginning of the project, and all these other cities that I have here, the 30 or 40 that I've listed, that's that that's how it happened.

So you would go in uh with the smart meters.

In fact, they they use it as sort of an enticement to get people to sign up to have the smart meters put in.

Because a lot of people are like, you know, what is this?

My old meter is fine, I don't want to switch out that kind of thing.

So um the people in the water department, as I said, often with a little video or something are on their website saying, you know, if you sign up for your smart meter, uh, this is what we're also going to give you eye on water, aqua hawk, and you'll be able to measure your water usage by the hour.

So that's what how it often happens.

It's sort of an enticement or an enhancement to the fact that you're getting this smart meter that you have no choice and you can't turn it down.

There are some states that have an opt-out rule, but they penalize you so drastically that you they basically force you to take the new smart meter.

And as I've said often before, you have no say in what meter you're getting.

They come in, you're gonna get this brand, you're gonna get this model, and you're gonna take it whether you want to or not.

Um, in fact, there was a lady in Naperville didn't want to get it because she was convinced that uh the the way the radio waves were going to give her brain cancer.

So she built a little stockade around her old meter, put a lock on it, and they came and snapped off the lock, and when she stood in front of the entry to the the old meter, they cuffed her, took her to jail, put the square meter in.

So that happens, her neighbor went to jail for filming it.

Uh but anyhow, so to get back to the meter itself, without at the end of the day, without uh an a meter that allows the resident to without a meter without the resident having the ability uh to have this app where they can measure their water usage by the hour, then basically they're at a huge disadvantage compared to all the people in these other cities that have it that way.

Okay, and it shouldn't be contingent on how you pay your bill.

I should be able to get this app and still pay my bill with a check or 20 rolls of quarters if I go in.

Why is that contingent on paying my bill online?

That's I don't see the connection there.

You should be able to still have uh this app to uh I don't think in all these cities these people are uh uh forced to pay their bill online necessarily.

I could be wrong in that, but whatever.

Uh again, at the end of the day, if you don't have uh the citizen doesn't have that app, they're at a big disadvantage.

And um I find it it bizarre that it wasn't presented along with this the smart meter project to begin with, not as like an afterthought.

Uh so you know, people should have that.

And uh, for example, like if I had a place down at Stone Harbor, and uh and I came up here and in the off season in the winter, and my pipe broke down there.

They have alcohol or eye on water, and they would alert me.

Hey, there's something wrong with your pipe down here.

But if the reverse is true, I'm down there in the summer and my pipe breaks up here.

I'll find out in three quarters with a big bill from the city as it stands now.

I won't be alerted, nobody alerted uh all these people that have had big bills.

So I think there is an alert system that the city will alert you, but it's a huge amount.

I could be wrong, but I'm thinking I thought it was like 3,000 gallons a day or something absurdly high.

If I I'm remembering a memo from last year, and so you could very easily go through 2,000 gallons a day, which is a lot of water, and not be alerted by the city.

But if I have Aquahawk water, I could in theory know within an hour that uh that I have a broken pipe or leaky uh faucet.

Okay, so anything short of that is uh slap in the face to the residents of the city compared to these other cities that have it.

Uh that's my uh stance on it.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr.

Woolworth.

Is there anyone else in the room who want to make a comment on the water sewer budgets?

All right, we're gonna move on to public works.

Thank you, Mr.

Boscola.

Thank you, everybody from water and sewer.

Did you have something, Councilman Larry?

Can I just uh ask a clarifying point to make sure I understood uh something that perhaps I didn't of the speaker?

No, of Mr.

Baskel.

Yeah, go ahead.

Uh it was my understanding that you were saying that the systems, the administrative systems would either be one or two integrated systems for payment and monitoring, consumer monitoring, not that consumers would be required to pay online to be able to monitor their water usage.

Is that correct?

Correct, it's all optional.

Right, but like so they are two separate functions for users, but potentially one system for correct.

We want to right.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure that that was one log on account, if you will, but it may direct you to a bill pay platform or a right, but you wouldn't be forced to do auto pay or anything.

Okay, nobody's forcing anybody to do anything, correct?

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Boscola.

Thank you, everybody from water and shore.

Hope you all get home safely.

We're gonna move on to public works.

It's better be one of those and set in stream.

Thank you.

Some of them thank you.

All right, 24 just in this issue almost the times.

Thanks, Eric.

So, Mr.

Alcall for public works, we'll do just like we did for water and sewer.

I'm sure, or I assume your presentation encompasses public works, liquid fuels, storm water, and non-utility capital.

Correct.

Am I correct?

We'll cover all of them after you go through your presentation.

If there's anything in the budget book that you want to highlight, please do.

But if not, I'll open it up to questions just like I did before.

Okay.

In the interlude while their presentation fires up there, Mr.

Klone.

Yes.

I just want to explain what what I dropped off to the council.

It doesn't won't take long to provide the explanation.

But this is uh this is a short memo that references 12105 that all consultants or professional services, which cover consultants need to come to council.

So I think one of the points is that whenever there are consultants that are used by this city that does get they need to be approved per 12105.

And then at uh the bottom of this memo references the fact that we produced uh request that Mr.

Callan from last week is the is our list of professional service in the last couple of years.

So this is if you look at the back of it, starts on it's 2021 through 2024, just about to the end of it.

This is pretty much everything that goes through our SharePoint software, which represents all the professional services.

So they're listed by the date, name of the contract of the project title and the amount in the four columns.

That's a spreadsheet we pulled once before and provided too.

Uh, we want to get that to you tonight because uh if you are not to go into this now, as Mr.

Alcall's about to start his presentation, but we thought it was appropriate because public works and water sewer, as you scan through, are the large majority of professional services that are engaged through each of the years.

So if there's any questions with regards to any of them or engaging with consultants or professional services in general, uh, it would be you know, we have Mr.

Alcall available now to answer any questions about why why we use consultants, how we use them or anything else to do with 12105.

So that's what we thought was pertinent to deliver it now between public works and water sour.

Mr.

Evans, I have one request.

Can you send us the I assume this all came from a PowerPoint or excuse me from a spreadsheet?

Yes.

Can you are you able to send council the spreadsheet?

I'll send it tomorrow, yeah.

When you get a chance, yep, on email as well.

Sure.

Just easier for me to read.

Thank you.

And everybody else.

Floor is yours, Mr.

Alcohol.

Okay, there's no question on that.

Um, as usual, we'll start with the organization chart, showing all our bureaus and the various functions in those bureaus.

Um we have here tonight, as usual, all the bureau chief, the management team.

Um, they do a great job.

They do like to stay in the background, so I won't embarrass them by introducing them all.

I think you're familiar with all of them, but there's a couple of new faces I'll mention.

Dre Wheeler is our new superintendent of street maintenance.

He replaced Tom Bridgick, our former superintendent, and sitting in for Chris Sewell, our ground maintenance is Richard Crossa in that corner.

I'll start with uh operating budget, and we have it broken down to uh with and without salaries for the years 25 and 26.

Um, you could see that um, you know, overall, including salaries.

Uh the budget goes up by about 600,000.

Obviously, salaries is something that we have less control of, but the operating budget is where we have most of the control, and you can see that once again we were able to maintain our um budget pretty even with previous years, which is very critical without sacrificing um basic services.

In fact, we've probably made improvements in those areas.

I highlighted a few areas where there's notable change.

Um, in engineering, there's a decrease.

That's simply because we're not asking for um any equipment in 26 versus uh 25 or minimal compared to last year.

Um urban forestry, we're budgeting a little bit more than in 25, 25.

We didn't have any major storms that required tree cleanup.

We're budgeting for that in the event that it happens this coming year.

In the um Bureau of Electrical Maintenance, we're down about we're less by about 200,000.

We did a significant amount of uh streetlight work in 25 that we don't expect as much in 26.

And finally, um, in traffic, we're up a little bit.

Um, and that's only because in this year we hired two techs in the summer to help us with our line painting.

Um, we were only able to secure one person's this this this year.

We're hoping to secure um the customary two next year, which is why the budget is slightly higher.

Moving on to liquid fuels, we continue to efficiently utilize liquid fuel funds for road maintenance activities and improving the conditions by roads.

Um, due to a cold 2025 winter additional funds were required to cover the salt purchase, which is why you see the funding levels in 25 um at a higher level than in 26.

Our overlay program, you see a sampling of some of the streets that we did this year.

We continue to focus on increasing funding for this activity.

We reduce funding demands or reliance on liquid fuel to try to free up as much funds as possible for street maintenance activities, which is typically this fund is dedicated to.

Spending is in 2025 is flat with 2024, but we did more paving in 2025 by utilizing more in-house paving than contracted in 24.

In 2025, we did about 11,500 tons of in-place material, or approximately almost 900,000 worth of uh paving material that we purchase in place.

In 2026, our budget or available funding for paving is approximately $5 million.

Historically, we've we've been until the recent four or five years, we've been at about a million, which is really, really shy in terms of what our needs are.

Um last five years, it's been more up two, two and a half million.

Next year it's five, but half of that is from UGI cost sharing, and the other half of 2.5 is from various um funding sources in the city.

Again, you could see in-house has been steadily increased over the past six years, while outsource paving is going down.

Obviously, we're trying to maximize in-house because we could do it as a cheaper cost, so that we could take advantage of the funding as much as possible in order to try and uh catch up and improve the conditions of our streets.

We have continued to improve our house capabilities and efficiencies to allow available funding to achieve greater uh results to as much in-house paving as possible as opposed to outsourcing it.

As you can see, the trend for in-house has been increasing, as I said.

In 2025, despite in-house labor shortages that we continue to face since the pandemic and being down multiple positions in streets, in addition to a number of rain days, we had about 50 in May and June of this year.

Our in-house forces were able to place approximately, as I said before, 11,500 tons or 18 lane miles of roadway, and we only outsource uh 3,000 tons or five uh lane miles.

We are now almost fully staffed in streets, uh, down two versus four to five throughout the year and last several years.

We'll continue to increase in-house paving activities to allow our funding to go much uh farther.

Uh next year, I mean, we have in a Bureau of Streets about 26 personnel.

Um a paving crew is typically 12 to 14, as you can tell.

I mean, with the other functions and people on vacation, what have you, we can only run one paving crew.

Um, so output is limited by one one paving crew.

One thought that we have for next year, if we can maintain the um our staffing levels and if we can hire summer help like we normally do, uh, is to run two paving crews and outsource all the hauling.

Typically, the 12 to 4 for a paving uh crew, half of that is for hauling material.

So if we were to outsource completely the hauling, we can with the 14 personnel have two paving crews to try to increase our output further than we already have.

Moving forward, we will also be closely coordinating our uh paving program with improvements identified in the city's complete streets plan, which is soon to be uh completed.

Um, obviously, as we select the streets, we'll keep that in mind.

If there are at least what I'll call soft measures that are being proposed for a particular street, we try to incorporate into the paving program.

Um, of course, that depending on funding levels and that there'll be um funds for for those measures to be implemented.

Moving on to our stormwater budget, we have a significant number of projects or improvements budgeted or planned for 2026 versus 25, along with some carryover work.

Um, the 2026 budget of about 10 million includes about 3.5 million for an anticipated but yet to be identified needs, uh, which is placed in a um in a um interest generating account.

So if we're comparing budgeting levels, it's about seven and a half million budgeted next year versus two to two and a half million in past years, about five million of which is for project construction.

So obviously, as we implement the stormwater program, uh there's time for developing projects, there's design time, there's bidding times, and finally, this next year is going to be an extremely busy year for um making improvements to our stormwater system.

Some sampling of uh projects that we uh completed Madison Avenue.

You see pictured.

Uh Madison Avenue, we removed the head wall and replaced it with an M top or a flat drainage catch basin, extending an 18-inch pipe run a hundred feet to the north through an area where we uh were experiencing high amount of sinkhole activities.

Installed a new head wall with an angled trash rack and graded the sinkhole prone area to improve stormwater runoff and solve a long-standing sinkhole issue in that area.

The cost was about 42,000 for this project, and the system is working very well, and we've had no sinkholes in the area since this improvement was uh completed.

Another completed project is Johnson Drive Squale rehabilitation.

Um swale was rehabilitated for power discharge and management of stormwater after it was damaged by significant storms.

This project was completed by in-house forces and not outsourced the construction of it.

A carryover or new projects in 26 include improvements to the East Boulevard change uh detention basin to prevent flooding in the area and increase the quantity of the quantity of the water treated, which provides more credit for our MS-4 permit.

Anticipated modifications are to make the basins larger and deeper with additional modification for rerouting existing storm pipes and upgrading the outlet structures.

By doing this, we are trying to slow and filter the stormwater flow and prevent flood damage downstream in the township, back from township.

This project is also part of the city's uh pollution reduction plan, uh, which will ultimately reduce sedimentation within the city's MS-4 system.

The total value of the improvement is two and a half million dollars in on the city side.

Uh the project will be completed in partnership with the township.

After losing the FEMA money when there was a change in administration, the township was able to secure replacement funding, but only a million dollars in grants.

So now our share for the project is one and a half million dollars as opposed to previously uh at 600,000.

Um the project is detailed on page 314 of the budget book.

Another project in 2026 is to regrade the swale and stabilize the outfall on bridal path road to eliminate erosion and ponding that occur even during high frequency storm events.

The design was completed in the summer and it was bid out.

Construction was awarded and anticipated to start in the spring of 26.

This project is on 314 of the budget book.

Moving on to completed non-utility capital projects.

Um heard plenty, and we're very excited about completing uh the improvements at French Park that included upgrading the basketball court, adding shade areas, improving the trail, and adding a water feature or slash feature.

The total project was a million and a half dollars.

The Rose Garden is another completed project this year that included light lights replacements, additional walkways, benches, and bignic tables at the garden.

The cost was approximately 150,000.

This concludes the improvements at least for now at the at the garden, and it's on page 282 in our book.

This should be done by another several weeks.

We're waiting on the lights to be delivered so they can be installed.

I think the benches was just were just recently installed at the garden.

Another soon to be completed project is the reconstruction of sidewalks, including ADA curb ramp upgrades in the Southside Arts District between New Street and Broadhead Avenue.

The project will be completed by the end of this month, and the cost is approximately half a million dollars.

And it's funded by grants, I believe.

Some facility improvements included the replacement of one of three boilers here in the city complex and two large domestic water tanks with hot water exchanges, which will result in additional energy savings for the city and improved efficiency.

Both projects were a total of 400,000 in costs.

Non utility capital projects in 2026 that are in the budget book are you've heard plenty about the um conversion of Linda Street from one way to two-way traffic from church to Fairview.

The city was successful in securing a uh carbon reduction um funding to complete the project, so it will be done with a grant.

The design was awarded, and currently we're in the preliminary design phase, which will be followed by the final design by the end of 2025 or early 26.

And construction is expected in the spring or summer of 26.

This project is in the budget book on page 282.

Another ongoing project is the East Broad Street Active Transportation Plan, which is a nearly $1 million project funded by a multimodal grant and LRR funding from the city.

This project includes the extension of median on Broad Street in the downtown core area, eastward from Sunday Street to Penn Street, and pedestrian safety upgrades, including bump outs at the intersection of Maple Elm and High Streets.

The project will include street trees and lighting along with complete ADA upgrades and bike lanes to either side of the street.

Engineering design and construction is being coordinated with the safe streets for all funds for the West Broad Street quarter improvements.

And the project is further detailed on page 279 of the budget book.

Speaking of West Broad Street safety and streetscape improvements.

The focus of this project is to improve pedestrian safety and alternative transportation modes on this wide streets, including incorporating incorporation of protected bike lanes, bump outs, decorated crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, and street trees.

The goal, of course, is to create a culture of safety for bikes and pedestrians by introducing these traffic calming measures.

This will be consistent with our soon-to-be-completed complete streets plan and a citywide bike infrastructure plan.

The majority of the funding for this project is federal funding, specifically the secure safe street for all grant of nearly 10 million dollars.

The city is still seeking grant fund grant match funding of approximately 1.4 million dollars for the project.

The SS4A grant agreement was executed and the design was awarded this year.

Preliminary and final design is anticipated to be completed by the end of 26 with phase construction to start in the spring of 2027.

The project is on page 279 of our budget book.

The project is a continuation of phase one, which was from Memorial Pool or Ilksmill Road to Shannisville Road, which was completed in 2022.

Phase two will continue the trail from Shannisville Road to the DL canal.

Design of phase two was completed, and the project is currently in the bidding phase with construction anticipated in the spring of 2026.

The final phase of the greenway trail on the south side.

The final phase will connect the greenway trail to the Sauken Trail.

Funds for the railroad right-away acquisition design and construction were secured through TASA, DCNR, and Northampton County grants.

We will begin the uh design shortly with permitting and construction to follow in the summer of 2026.

This project is on page 285 of the budget book.

Of course, we continue our efforts to electrify our fleet.

The city, including the parking authority, now has 27 EV and hybrid vehicles, consisting of approximately 7% of our fleet.

And we are adding approximately six more in the 2026 budget.

There are 13 charging uh chargers installed at City Hall, and we are looking at adding a fast charging station at the Stefco municipal um complex.

And finally, uh we continue to provide engineering support to the water and sewer department.

Um designing bidding and managing various capital projects, including what you see pictured there, which is the uh digestive cover replacement at the wastewater treatment plant, the wastewater treatment plant main control building there on the left upgrades and various other maintenance and system rehabilitation projects.

That concludes my hopefully short presentation.

And if you have any questions or want to discuss anything in the budget book or in the presentation, be glad to thank you, Mr.

Alcal.

Ms.

Evans, do you have anything else you want to share?

I I do have tied two somewhat related um to the capital fund, the the funding mechanism which we would like to have an opportunity to present, but it's a little bit separate from Mr.

Alcall's, which explains the projects in detail.

So maybe should we allow him to finish that part?

Take questions about the projects, and then we'll transition into the funding for the projects the next four years.

We'll do that.

Gotcha.

So I will as it relates to the public works department, liquid fuels fund and stormwater fund.

Again, I'll start with Mr.

Callahan, our public works share for any questions for Mr.

Alcohol or the administration.

Mike, I just had one question.

So on the um on the Johnson Drive swale.

Is this the final work that we're doing?

I mean, this has been on yeah, we've had issues over there for since I've been on council over 10 10 years ago.

So is this like the final work that we're doing over there to fix and and remediate the problem?

We talk about the swale, not the detention basis.

Right.

Well, the swell too, though.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the swale is in the um in the five-year capital uh to um basically it's a channel.

The issue that we've had there, as you may be aware, as we've discussed in the past, is there's dumping activities that happen in this whale.

Um we we we quite honestly don't get to it as often as we'd like in terms of cutting cutting it down.

Uh and there's been a project on the in the five-year capital plan for quite a while, but it's not in the 2026.

I forget what year we have that project in.

Um, but it's not in the 2026 budget.

Um so you you don't know what you don't know when it's going to be, though.

It's not gonna be we we still haven't been able to move it up yet.

All right, thank you.

Councilwoman QuiaTech or Laird.

Any questions from Mr.

Alcohol?

Yeah, I think um for the East Broad Street improvements that you said are um the through the safe uh streets for all grant.

Um, I think I heard you correctly, but just would like to confirm that grant is secured and therefore not at risk of being canceled or rescinded, correct?

Right.

Both East and West Broad Street money is secured.

We're just looking for 1.4 million in grant matching funds for West Broad Street.

Okay.

There's a 20% match requirement.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, and we're using the funding on East Broad as part of the match for West Broad.

But and it we we still need what we're still short by 1.4.

Got it.

Yeah, my concern was just uh with current federal stuff happening, uh that it could vanish, but it sounds like that's no.

I think we're pretty good on both projects.

Cool.

Great.

Uh I believe that's it.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from the rest of council?

Councilwoman Cramsey Smith.

Thank you.

I just have a couple.

Thank you to you and your staff for all.

I know you've been working hard, especially on the streets.

Um, and even though I cursed you going to all those detours this summer, I'm glad we got a lot of streets done.

Um, can you just clarify how many miles of streets did we get done last year?

Because I thought I saw on page 94 said like 2.3, but then I thought I saw 22 on the three was uh was it like 22.

16 or 18 plus five, right?

Yeah.

Like 22, 27.

Okay.

20.

I think it must have been an error there.

All right.

Yeah, 23 miles.

And I wanted to ask, so you talked about um one of the issues with the streets is being understaffed, and I know you said about being down two.

How many staff are you down at this point?

Or have you been down?

Now we're down to two vacancies.

Yeah, two vacancies.

Okay.

For the past four years at least since COVID, we've been down um four to five throughout the years.

Is there like what do you think the rationale is that you can't get people?

I mean, is it the type of job, the salary?

What I mean, after the pandemic, there was a shortage of of workers for quite a while.

Um and in our street operations and many of our operations, we require the commercial driver's license, which sometimes gets in, you know, reduces the pool of applicants.

Okay.

And we require that they have a possession of that before they gain employment with the city.

Okay.

Yeah, because I know this is a good thing.

So those are some of the contributing factors, but the labor pull has seems to have eased a little bit and we're getting more application.

Okay, good.

More recently.

I think the two vacancies were working on boarding.

We are yeah, so we're about to fill those two, and if we can stay full, we have a good chance next year, maybe to try our theory of doing more in-house.

I I know Dre is ready.

Good.

Good to hear.

Good.

And then my only other question is um on page 97.

Um, the business district streetscape, and there's 10,000 allocated last year and then this year for that.

And that what I read is it's gonna include like improved um, you know, improvement replacement benches and improvements for the sidewalks, which I know we've talked about, like the sidewalks, especially the slate ones are in really bad shape, and a lot of the businesses are really uh concerned.

I'm just wondering, is the 10,000 going to be enough?

Because it looks like it, I mean it it's not increasing from last year's budget.

And it's it's honestly it's it's it's somewhat of a token budget item.

Um to try to like, especially when it comes to making small minor repairs to the sidewalks.

If it's a minor repair that our in-house crews between our grounds and streets can make quickly, we forego the the process of notifying the buddy buddy property owner and having them do it, which will take a long, long time.

So we just take care of it.

Uh and it's for the other the streetscape items, uh, benches, urns, what have you.

And it's been at 10,000 for 40 years, and usually we do all right.

We stock up on some slates and brick, and we may we do the minor repairs and we repaint or replace a bench here or there every year.

And and that's that that's what that line I'm uh item is for.

It's not for any major repairs to the sidewalks.

All right.

The only reason I ask, I know that I've met and have had the business people reach out to me over the last year or two about concerns, and given that we're we're a world heritage site and the number one main street, and all I think is just you know, it's an important debt prioritize um, especially the safety for the sidewalks and whatnot, too.

Yeah, and yeah, as you as you know, the bunning property owners' responsibility for the sidewalks.

Uh we are looking at all the sidewalks on Maine and broad in the downtown area and identifying we we stopped that for a little bit because we're doing all those street lights, we're replacing them.

So that'll that's gonna disturb some of the at least along the curve, and we'll make those repairs as part of that project.

So it's a minor benefit, but it'll benefit the condition of the sidewalks.

And then after we finish that, we're gonna reach out to the property owners and discuss what can be done with you know, at least the ones that have some significant safety related concerns, right?

Certainly, addressing aesthetics would be a plus, and we certainly encourage it, but with our focus will be on any safety concerns, right?

Tripping hazards and what have you.

Great.

Okay, thanks a lot, Mike.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Any other questions or comments from members of council?

I'll start with councilwoman Laird.

Go down the row.

Uh so I had just uh noticed the urban forestry um the tree inventory.

And I was going to ask, could we put that out there?

Like what is it like, etc.?

And then I was like, let me look at the website and I see it's there, and it's so cool.

Uh so I hope that we can uh maybe spread this around some more.

Um, because I did not know that we could just walk down the street and say, I wonder what tree that is, and click on it and see what it is and how big it is.

So um, yeah, if we could like get that out on social and bring it up in the chain of website, I think that's a really neat resource for our community.

Just a comment.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Leo.

Um Councilwoman Laird kind of slow my thunder there for a little bit.

Like you're totally fine.

Because it's honestly um I don't have a lot of questions about your budget.

It's lean and mean as always.

You're doing a lot with a little bit.

Um, but it's very rare we get to thank all of public works and they're here.

Um, so thank you to everything that you guys have accomplished um over this past year.

Uh on council, I kind of wonder sometimes like what is the core of what we're doing.

And honestly, it's just everything seems to come back to public works.

And not only does your team do it, they do it with such a community focus.

I can't thank you enough for people like Basil, for people like Ryan, who a year in he's coming out to community meetings and talking about traffic issues that communities have been facing for a couple of years because we were down that position for a year.

And he comes in and he's ready to address all these conversations with uh with data and with a lot of grace when those meetings get heated.

Um, so with you all in the room, you guys do an amazing job, and you do it with such community focus.

And it is so, so very important because when people get to see you all and like understand your job, they understand what you're doing, and they're less abrasive when it comes to why it takes so long.

So you just you have a really, really, really great team.

Um, just wanted to take the moment here with them all here to say thank you for everything that you do.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Wilhelm.

Well, I I don't know that I could say it much better, but I do want to say it again.

Thank you all.

We only get one time a year to have all of you in the same room, generally speaking.

And uh the amount of work that you do.

I mean, it's such an extraordinarily public facing, it's the face.

It's what we walk on, drive on, play in, swim in.

I mean, it's it's just uh it it expresses such a vibrancy, but also just you're keeping people safe.

You really um, much like we said about um the water and sewer department, this what you do is um deeply connected to public health and safety.

Um you make it possible for people of all ages and abilities to move throughout the city to uh find space to exercise and gather for free.

Um, so it's just really an extraordinary amount of extraordinarily important work, and we're very, very grateful.

It's nice to be able to look you in the face and say, thank you.

Um I I'm not looking at the street tree map.

So perhaps if I were, I could answer this question myself and maybe should have.

But um, I was wondering about trees.

Um, because I had run into a a sort of private tree person on Market Street at some point who indicated that some of the trees in particular on market are um, you know, were planted long ago without a sense of sort of what climate impact would be, et cetera, et cetera.

And and sure enough, I believe last year a tree fell straight across the street, which by the way, your department was extremely quick to respond and take care of it.

It was very impressive.

I could watch it from my window.

But um, do we have the capacity?

Do we have a sense of sort of the streets or neighborhoods where um, you know, we need to keep an a particular eye on I see you back there.

Um to keep a particular eye on trees with safety in mind, because um that tree, I believe did land on a car across the street.

And I was just curious to know to what extent we're aware of situations like that that need to be watched carefully, and at what point do we do something proactively about that?

So obviously, number one priority is safety, always, always, always for me.

I think it's more important than saying like we're trying to get our green space, and of course we try to get more three times.

But this is the big thing is that they are planting all trip.

Do you mind coming to the microphone, please?

Yeah, no more.

I can take it away.

So safety safety is my number one priority.

So that's why this um re-inventory that you might have mentioned or you saw in the budget is really important, because we're gonna have an update on what trees are in poor condition that we can potentially, which you guys know is the property owner's responsibility, so we can be proactive with sending them that letter and telling them that it unfortunately does have to come down.

And these are some really big trees too.

So they're really expensive and it can take some time.

That's what I always tell, even though we have the 30-day notice, it can take it could take up to three notices, and then we might potentially have to take it down if the property owner can't.

Um, but yes, we do have in our system, I can see um the condition of it, and that's the number one importance of this reassessment of the inventory.

Um, but that's not public knowledge.

Like you wouldn't be able to see like the violations or the permits or any condition of it.

You could just see the species and the the size of that tree at each location.

Um, so with the storms that we've recently had, a lot of people have been um questioning their street trees as well, which is good because I want people to come to me and ask about it because we do run on a basis of um complaints or like service requests.

Um so you know, when people come to me and they they have a concern, that's when I go out to address or assess a tree.

Um, but it's not we don't we don't really go looking for it unless there's something, of course, that we see that's like a big big red flag for it.

But yes, absolutely.

Um safety is a number one concern.

Anything within obviously these can fall on streets, these could fall in houses, anything like that, these big trees that we do have that we love, but have to be maintained, absolutely.

Um, number one thing is maintaining so that we don't have problems like this where a big tree limb could potentially fall on a car or something.

So yes.

We appreciate that and appreciate the work that you do.

Like you said, on market in particular, they're very large trees print planted in a very small strip um between street and sidewalk.

So I know we have conditions like with rain.

Um I think it's saturated.

Unfortunately, we have a again.

I'm gonna ask you to speak at the microphone.

Sorry, yeah, sometimes we'll have uh that could be like a system failure where um it's too small of a of a planting strip where when it gets too soggy, that wind just uproot it.

Right.

Okay, I'll stop asking you questions.

You can actually sit down.

As far as safety, quite honestly, the best defense is property owners, the general public, and our own workforce.

If they observe a tree that looks like it could be, you know, stressed or could pose a safety if it's a broken branch or whatever, is to report it.

And I know Olivia will jump right out there and assess the uh the viability of the tree and follow up with the property owner um as may be appropriate to take to to keep to take care of that.

And uh our shade ordinance in general has evolved over time.

Some of the older trees um we've learned a lot about trees, you know, you gotta consider the environment that you're planting them in.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of areas in in the in the urban canopy where we in the past at least we squeezed trees where they weren't gonna thrive either because they're not um fume resistant, you know, from cars and buses, whatever.

There's certain types of trees that are that that can withstand that a lot better than others.

Certain trees branch higher or lower.

Obviously, we it's for street trees, we want them to branch uh higher.

We've also introduced you know, root barriers for trees get root down as opposed to out because they seek water, obviously they'll impact other utilities.

So it's been a learning curve.

And uh in the past, for I mean, we've had trees for a hundred years here.

Um there are some trees that are in areas that are maybe not the best and not the most suitable for that area, as nice as they are.

Um, but but I would say to answer your question, um, the best defense is property owners who are responsible for for the tree, pay attention to the tree.

And if there's any concerns, we will be more than happy to come out, assess the condition of it and do what it takes to make sure it's safe.

Thank you.

Indeed, you are always extremely responsive.

Um that um on page 120, you refer to upgrading Sand Island's restroom facilities.

Um, we've talked about public restrooms on and off for quite some time.

I was just curious to know what um what is in the plan.

And I recall you saying, I think last uh year at our budget meeting that one of the things you were looking at was a like a remote because vandalism is a concern.

You were looking at a remote locking and unlocking system.

I was curious to know if that was part of the plan or what you have in mind.

I mean, those bathrooms as we've discussed, they've been vandalized from time to time.

And we don't want to do the upgrades and replace all the fixtures until we have that till we're confident that we have that situation under control.

And um, because obviously you're wasting money if you upgrade it and then people come in and yank all the wiring out of the walls and what have you that's occurred in the past.

Um and we are looking at controlling access to see if we can address that issue.

And if we're successful when we're successful, we'll move forward with replacing the fixtures and those bathrooms.

Okay.

So, but that is planned for okay.

I'm I'm glad to hear that.

I mean, I as it relates to the 40 and 10 and the parks plan at large, I personally feel like Sand Island has the potential to be Bethlehem's central park.

It's about as central as you can get, right?

It's walkable, bikeable from both sides of the river and and has the potential to bring folks to the river as opposed to our seeing the river as a thing that splits the city in two and something to get across.

And so um any steps we can take to make it more even more user-friendly, and there's so much potential there.

Um, I say yeah, yes.

Um I'm happy to was happy to see that.

Um I think that's it.

Thank you for the presentation and for all that you all do for for Bethlehem.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

Councilman Learn sorry, with water and sewer.

I was prepared and I had a slight family emergency come up and am not as prepared with this one.

Um so I keep thinking of things, but uh I am seeing, I'm not sure whether this would be uh grounds maintenance or a parks uh rec uh question.

I'm seeing in the goals that um you say what page you're looking at.

Oh, sorry.

Uh yes, one twenty-six would be uh the grounds maintenance point that I'm looking at.

Uh the first goal is um about enhancing playground and recreational areas with equipment repairs, upgrades based on the 40 and 10.

Yeah.

Um, and I know that uh tomorrow is the public uh the final public meeting to review some of those recommendations.

Um, and I'm wondering um, and I am guessing I just missed it here.

Uh, where are the uh funds set aside?

I know we don't know the specific things that will be recommended necessarily, but where are those funds in the budget to make those improvements?

Uh when they are in in the non-utility, I believe, Eric.

Yes.

Okay, so they're not in this book.

They they are they oh okay, they're looking at the wrong non-utility session.

So not wrong section.

Okay, no problem.

Um got it.

Well, yeah, ground capital.

Okay, all right.

Okay, wonderful.

Now I see it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions from council?

Thank you, Mr.

Alcall.

Thank you to all your bureau teachers for sticking around with us tonight.

We we will let Mr.

Evans present.

I don't know what questions we'll have based on his presentation, but they may only just be for you and Mr.

Evans.

Okay, thank you.

What's up?

I was gonna say I think he's saying cut everyone loose.

Cut everything loose.

Okay, thank you.

Not you.

They don't need to hobby.

Have a good night, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr.

Evans.

Okay, thank you, Mr.

Kalum.

Uh, we just want to transition to stay with the non-utility capital fund, but this year is unique in in the way it's funding, and we do want to share that information with you as opposed to many of the previous past years.

The last section Mr.

Alcohol just covered um was a non-utility capital.

It's on page 274 is the graph, the chart that shows the sources and the uses in a grid format, and then 275 to 287, the descriptions that he walked through and showed some pictures, and that's pretty much from the capital plan that was shared with you in in October.

Uh what I wanted to move through is actually on page 273 and uh sources of revenue.

The last one listed as a new one, capital reserves 2026.

There's a number of 9.1 million dollars.

That represents 9.1 of our 22 million dollar capital plan for this next four years of the administration, 26 to 29.

And we do intend to fund it, the entire capital plan without debt.

So we want to show you some ways we're going to do that.

So I have slides to walk through hand them up.

Thank you, Mr.

Evans.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, try and be self-sufficient.

You're doing a good job.

Okay, so the goal of this plan is the leverage our improved balance sheet to fund the 26 to 29 capital plan without debt.

If you turn to page two, there are five primary points about how we do fund capital and historically.

One investment is scheduled at schedule numerals is required for capital projects acquisitions.

Any of these things on this list, the longer you put it off, uh it's going to cost more, it's going to cause problems.

This list, as Mr.

Outcall covered them, is roads, bridges, and equipment that's critical for the operations of municipal government.

Two, the funding has historically been provided through debt and through bond issuances for the city of Bethlehem, typically six to nine million dollars every two years.

Third point, the city has relied on a bond issuance every other year for decades, uh, going back to the uh pre-2000s, 01,003, 05, 07.

The last borrowing was 2019.

Point number four, the last revenue reimbursement provision of the American Rescue Plan was unique opportunity.

It did provide four years of investment in the city and infrastructure.

We use $9 million in 2022.

That's uh nearly expired, and then $9 million in 2024.

That was intended to be used through 2024 and 2025.

And that's all also being used and will be finished up next year.

The proposed plan we have for you would fund the next four years of investment into infrastructure 2026 to 2029.

So on page three of the slides shows the capital plan from four years ago.

If you look at uh the area in green, 22 to 26 is lit up in the circle in the middle of your sheet.

You're familiar with what the cover sheets, the capital plan looks like.

Uh, what you'll see here in the left margin is the bonds from 1370 to 19, the remaining amounts next to the circles.

You'll see four years ago when we sat here in the same room at the same time.

We were talking about using ARP or what we eventually will call LRR for lost revenue reimbursement of the ARP at uh in 22 and 24.

So those were the proposals four years ago.

On the next page page four.

I know we need we need a wireless keyboard in here.

We don't have on page four is a capital sheet from last year at this time.

And what this is again showing you is that the bonds remaining of 13, 17 and 19 were on that capital plan.

Uh lost revenue in 2022 and 24, we're listed at 1 million dollars left and five.

And we had a a line listed for reserve slash bond.

And as we work together with mostly public works and some of the other departments that put together all the items are in the capital plan.

Uh, we were in broad discuss this discussions about are we will we have enough to be able to use reserves partly or mostly or all and whatever's not using reserves, then we would need to borrow or go to a bond issuance both in 26 and 28.

So we had that slash just kind of uh hedge uh until we got to a decision point.

Uh on the next page.

Um, thank you, Basil.

On page five is the list.

If you isolate from the capital plan, capital plan itself on uh page 274 is 39 million dollars for a number of different sources that CDBG, it's federal, state, county, liquid fuel, stormwater.

But if you look at just the items we would typically pay for with the general fund, typically through a bond, the items listed on page five are isolated to say that's only being paid with general fund dollars, and it's ambulances you can see on that list, intersections, fire trucks, ceiling tile replacements, ground improvements, pool improvements, and the bottom is 22 million dollars.

The 22 million dollars is a four-year plan, and next week, uh as the or as the ordinances come through in the budget is set up for the first vote.

That's usually done without prejudice.

Uh historically, you'll see the other request to move the 22 million dollars into the capital fund.

Of the 22 million dollars, 9.1 is activated for 2026.

The remainder would then take place through years 27, 28, and 29.

Uh next page.

Thank you.

On page six, uh, the need that we're presented with is to provide 22 million dollars for capital needs for the next four years.

So rather than doing a two-year plan, this is a four-year plan.

The plan will provide 22 million for capital through two two funding sources.

Uh, the plan is to do it without debt.

The alternative, which we do want to list whenever you list a proposal, you might want to also uh list options and uh not to do these projects, as we know is not so much an alternative, but there isn't an alternative, and that would be to issue a bond.

But to show you what that would look like, issuing a bond at assumed rate of five percent for 20 years, which is a standard issuance.

We line up the asset, the the bond issuance with the average life of the assets being financed, would equal a new debt service payment of 1.765 million dollars a year every year in the general fund for the next 20 years.

If you multiply the one seven 1.765 times the 20 years, uh total of payments will be over 35 million dollars, because you'll see you're gonna pay the 22 million back.

There's also 13 million dollars in interest you would pay.

So for the 22 and million dollars in projects and purchases, the payment to the city would be over 35 million.

Uh on page seven is our debt service.

Uh, we have talked the last couple of years about uh our work to reduce debt and how it can uh not only impact the balance sheet, but also eventually have an impact on the income statement.

That's what's starting to do.

On page seven is the uh annual debt service from 2022 to 20 third 2034.

This is everything that was left at the each blue bar shows how much we paid each year.

If you add up all the blue bars, it would add up to 121 million dollars.

Uh the red 10 line is 10 million dollar baseline, is also lit up there.

If you move to page eight, you will see that slide shows you that over the first four years of this administration, we reduced uh that amount in the yellow 22 to 25 have now been paid.

So the 121, 120 million in debt was reduced by 44 million dollars.

It will leave us 77 million dollars in debt when this year begins, and that's in your budget book.

We'll talk about debt service.

You'll see some of these same slides on Wednesday night.

On the next page, page nine, if we follow this proposal and do fund our capital needs without debt, it would allow us to take out those next four years now.

On page nine, you'll see in yellow 2026 to 2029, four years of debt or 41 million dollars of additional additional debt service reduced, which would then lead to if you look on page 10.

At the end of four years, uh the remaining debt, which was once 170 million dollars in 2015, would be reduced to 36 million dollars by 2030.

Uh page 11 again shows you an alternative.

There are options.

If this is if we had borrowed, just to give us all some sense of of what it means, in order like to flip the script and pay in cash, just like you do at home when you're paying cash for a car, you always want to if you can, but if you can't, you pay it back with debt and it takes longer and it will cost a lot more.

But on page 11, if we had borrowed in this scheme or this scenario, you'll see uh the box in the top right, 9.3 in 22.

If we had borrowed 8.9 in 2024, and if we were to borrow 22 million in 2026, uh you will see the orange bars are what the debt service would have been each and every time.

In 22 and 23, the orange bar is 738,000 more than what we actually paid for 24 and 25.

The last two years, we would have been paying a million and a half more.

And this is in our operating account.

This is our debt service.

And then to balance our uh operating budget next year, you'll see by 2026, we would need to pay instead of where we are with that blue bar, we would be paying an additional 3.2 million dollars on top of that.

That's if we would have borrowed each of these last three times versus finding alternative ways to fund our capital.

And that $3.2 million would then be in addition to what our debt service was all the way out.

And you'll see on the on page 11 on the far right side, instead of ending in 2034, our debt curve would go out to 2046.

And in the yellow box, you would see instead of our debt being at 36.5 million dollars, when we got to 2030 four years from now, our debt would be at 83.5 million instead of 36.

So it flips 50 million dollars in debt load and three and a half million dollars each and every year.

Uh page 12 is simply so our plan is to provide 22 million funding sources.

Both sources were about to show you been built through time.

They didn't just uh fall out of the sky, they were built through uh five years.

The first one, if you go to page 13, is a uh a five-year build.

The capital reserve escrow account is 10.7 million dollars.

This is an account that was created in 2021.

The goal was to either supplement or replace a bond and associated debt service.

And it was built by earmarking unexpected revenue.

Revenue that was not anticipated, that was not regular reoccurring or routine by any stretched imagination prior to 2021.

And if you look on page uh the next page on page 14 and slide 14, there is that list.

You'll see there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven items that total that 10.7 million dollars that's in the escrow account that makes the first half makes up almost the first half of the 22 million dollars that we will be we are proposing to use instead of borrowing.

You'll see Act 42 is listed a number of times.

I'll adjust that in a moment.

That was new to us in 2021 when it arrived in the form of an ACH transfer in a short email.

Uh in 2021, uh the post-COVID impact when salaries dropped because of open seats.

We had a lot of open seats, had a hard time finding people, the labor's force really tightened up.

EIT uh started to move up when inflationary pressure started when um part-time job and full-time job salaries and even hourly instead of seven, eight dollars started to become 10 and 15 dollars.

We saw an impact on the IT.

Drant transfer took off with the pricing of homes as well as low interest rates until they took until they until they started to climb and EMS revenue as it started to pick up post-COVID.

That was 1.9 million.

You'll see in 2022, there was also a unique industrial, uh, rather generic but very expensive industrial property sold for 96.7, well without the range of our normal property transfers.

That single transaction generated 483,000 of uh de transfer tax.

We isolate that into this capital reserves account with the hopes of being able to um hold off a borrowing, and then in three, four, and five, you'll see the act, this act 42.

So the 10 10.7 million dollars has been accumulated from 21 until through this year.

I will note at the bottom of page 14 that in 2026, this act 42 funding will be used to replace the $2 million ARPA allocation.

I uh we'll go back to 2021 as we sat here at this table and talked to the council at that time.

The way the ARPA rolled out, we placed some into the capital account.

We used $2 million for each of four years, 22, 23, and 24 and 25 in order to balance the budget.

That gave us four years for revenue to come up and for us to find another source to replace that as 2025 turned into 2026.

ARP would no longer be used.

And uh, what we're going to plug in and what we have plugged in, and you'll see it, and we'll talk a little more about it on Wednesday night is Act 42, which is part of the host fee, uh, will replace what was the ARPA allocation and allow us to balance the budget without that ARPA allocation going forward.

Uh, on page 15 defines what Act 42 is all about.

Uh Act 42 is all about the gaming law, the state level.

2016, there was a large lawsuit.

Mount Ari filed a lawsuit, Mount Air is a casino in Monroe County.

They felt it was unconstitutional the way casinos were being hit for their host fee.

They felt that they paid too much and the bigger ones didn't pay as much.

So there was a uniformity clause that they pointed to.

They took it to court, and uh, which was some very tense time is the Supreme Court struck down the casino.

Maybe some of you on council, if you go back and remember this time, the Sands, when this happened, they said we're gonna sit back and see what happens because this the Supreme Court says this doesn't work anymore, you can't do it.

And for us, that was a huge amount.

You know, we as you're all aware, 10 million dollars a year of host fee is in our operating account, and it would be a hot mess without that amount.

Uh, fortunately, the state legislature went back to work, revised and changed, and you'll see in 2017 when they changed or reformed Act 42, what they call legislative fix and amended what they call the racehorse development and gaming act, and it allowed interactive gaming, video game terminals, eye lottery, table gaming, airports, fantasy sports.

When they added that, they reformed the way they calculated our host fee.

Uh instead of what we used to get two million dollars every quarter, two million, two million, two million, and then what they call the true up of about four, which totals ten.

When this was rewritten, we now get, and you see the memo each quarter, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 for the 10.

There, this it's very flat.

But when they rewrote this law and they recalculated uh what they call a really a revenue loss factor, they used that $4 million, what they call true up payment as one of our payments for 2017.

They used the true four, and then the two and a half to three newer level payments for baseline that would eventually increase our host fee from 10 to 11 and a half million dollars.

Now, a lot of this was difficult to understand at the time.

You'll see at the result on the bottom of page 15.

What we received, and this is COVID, it was very hard to connect with many people.

Many people of the state were not available, they were working uh from home, and it was not very responsive.

So this is a it's a little cryptic in this written in state code that said the distribution is not part of LSA, they're part of a new annual distribution.

And um the department revenue would determine whether county hosting a license affiliate received less than an amount received during 2718 under 14.03.

It was very difficult for us to calculate what that meant at the time.

So that first year, if you look on page 16 of my slides, when it arrived, it was 2.2 million dollars.

We were happy with what it was.

We didn't fully understand what it meant.

We were unable to get an explanation of what it meant at that time.

At that time, we received ARPA money, we received CARES money.

There was other funding sources related to COVID.

That's what our first belief with what Act 42 was tied to the casinos closing down during the COVID, which they were forced down by the state.

So the 2.2 was a uh very welcome source of revenue, but it wasn't something we knew what to do with because we couldn't understand would it be reoccurring, would it be recurring at the same level?

So in 2023, we did receive another ACH payment.

It wasn't 2.2, it was much less.

So it was 1.5.

It was still a welcomed receipt.

We placed it.

We didn't do anything with that time.

We put it into the capital reserves until we understand understood would it be a reoccurring revenue.

So uh in 2023, when it came in at 1.5, we had uh so much called a pattern as it's a second year in a row of 1.5 million dollars from uh the gaming revenue source, this new ACH payment, which we get in September.

Um, it was also recognized in 2023 that that ARPA allocation would be ending in 2025, which is went within a year budgeting wise from that point, and that revenue could replace the ARPA funding.

So we place it into the um capital reserves with the plan we could avoid a borrowing and at the same time set ourselves up to replace the ARPA.

In 2024, uh, for the third year, we received 1.5 million dollars.

So we felt, albeit short, there was a pattern of 1.5.

We understood the calculations.

We had opportunities, speak to many, many more people within the state that gave us a stronger feeling that this would be consistent.

And in 2025, uh, we as we sit here in front of you, it has been added into our operating budget next year at 1.5 million dollars as a host increase to the host fee account.

And 2025 was the last year that we would be able to use this to build our capital reserve.

So we have built 10.75.

Uh, we will use the act 42 for the operating account next year.

Uh next page, page 18.

Page 18, then we'll define the second part of uh our 22 million dollar proposal.

Uh, that is to use cash balance.

Uh, we did cash balance one time.

It might have been five years ago when we moved uh two million dollars from our our our balances in order to continue or complete some public safety projects.

But in this case, uh the cash balance is 11.3 million dollars.

Now, this is something that's been built over 15 years, and I'll I'll show you some slides that help explain what I mean by that.

Cash, of course, will increase or decrease each year if we're running surpluses or deficits.

And also it's it's in relation to where we budget our revenues and where they come home.

If we budget and it exceeds and it and expenses hold, then we're still gonna have a surplus.

The opposite also is also true.

If we get too aggressive with our revenues, which has happened through time, and even though we hold our expenses right to what we're budgeted, if our revenues don't meet what we project and propose to you, then it's gonna result in a even if we control expenses and end up under budget with regard to expenses.

If revenues do not meet budget, we're also gonna have a deficit.

And neither one uh over time can have an impact.

Uh, I'll turn to page 19, slide 19.

Thank you, Basil.

This one takes us back in time.

I think this is a real important slide because it's a long time ago, but not that long ago, that you'll see familiar names.

This is a finance committee agenda.

This is an actual memo, and it gives some history and perspective to past levels.

You'll see the mayor's name is on it.

My name is on it.

It date's November 19th, 2010.

Down below, you'll see there's a solicitor spurk and our director of budget and finance, Linda Lazarchek is also copying on this memo from 15 years ago.

Uh, there's a couple things on it, but item number one, 21 million dollar debt refinancing.

There's something to talk about on that.

So on page 20, it's a little more in-depth.

This is you'll see this is uh part of that actual memo, 2011 budget information.

Uh, on this memo, to give you perspective, in 2011, you'll see the 20 month 20 million dollar borrowing.

Of that 21 of that 20 million dollars, the breakout there is is really something to behold.

But this was fall of 2010.

There were not a lot of other options on the table, but when council was sat and sat and we needed to consider, and this was eventually approved because there weren't options or alternatives available.

But of that 20 million, there's not a lot of infrastructure investment like you saw in the slides that we're looking at before.

There's 1.2 to pay the MMO, which is the pension payment, the 4.3 to pay the 29 and 2010 medical bills per CBC is capital blue cross.

So two years of medical bills, 6 million for operating expenses for a payback, 2.7 escrow borrowing, four and a half to make pension payments, and another 1.3 million of EIT borrowing.

So it was a very different time for us here in the city and in what was going on economically.

And I think we've come a long way from that, but at least it goes to show you the perspective where we've been and where we've been able to do through a number of I'm really strategic and conservative and consistent decisions through these past 15 years.

On page 21 is is one more slide of that same year, has my name as a sponsor when I was sitting where you are now on that side of the council desk.

This is a resolution to borrow 900,000 from treasure's ESCO.

And the purpose of the borrowing from our escrow account is to make the 26 payroll.

So at this time we were in the city.

Uh, we were working to make sure we we can make the 26 pays and get through the year.

So cash at that time was obviously zero.

Uh page 22 or we title this one early progress towards recovery.

This is the date line 2014.

This shows you a cash flow throughout the period of a year.

And um, in 2014, we should start around 6 million.

You'll see that where it jumps up.

That's when property tax bills go out, or actually actually when they start coming and they go out in January and people start paying at the discount or making their first installment in February, March.

And at that point, we're bringing in a lot more than we're taking out.

That's uh the bulk of our income as you're aware of 30 percent, 35% of our total revenue comes in through property tax.

From then on, we continue to make money through all other sources, but we're spending it at a quicker rate than we're bringing it through the remainder of the year.

So you see the cash level drop month to month to month, and at the bottom, you'll see some drop-offs when we make a debt payment, and then the MMOs or the we pay right at the end of the year to pay towards our our pensions, and that this year in 2014, we weren't at zero, but we're at six, and we ended at four.

Nothing to write home about, but we are are building towards and and took all the steps that were made in 2010, 2011, 2012.

We're paying off by 2014.

Uh, as we ventured down this path and this discussion we're having right now, uh, we did reach out to PFM, and that's on page 23.

PF is uh is Scotch here, who I believe you are all familiar with.

The Scott's been in this room a number of times.

Uh, he will always be here when we are issuing bonds.

Um he comes in to evaluate and whether we meet on site.

We have a lot of phone calls to evaluate our our our existing debt portfolio.

We talk about opportunities to refinance to restructure in 2026.

We've talked before, we may restructure some debt if interest rates drop as they're proposed to do.

We may tweak some the way it is.

We right now it's a little bit of a tabletop that we've talked about.

We'll talk about debt service on Wednesday.

But Scott's here is a manager director for PFM, a very reputable and large financial management group that we have used for a period of time.

And Carly Casling is also the senior analyst, and she's also worked with us a little bit on some of these things we're talking about tonight.

Page 24 is an opinion delivered from PFM.

When we talked to him and said, you know, if we do want to use cash, we built up our cash account.

What is a good level of cash to hold?

Just like you if ask each of you at your households, you'd each have a different number.

There's a bit of subjectivity.

What's the appetite?

How conservative are you?

How volatile, what are your future expenses look like?

But we did want benchmarks to move off of.

So you can see the top of the page on page 24.

This opinion was delivered last month.

And they start out by saying Bethlehem is double-A stable.

We know that that's SP.

And they gave us a couple of benchmarks.

One is GFOA, Government Finance Offers Association.

And that's a metric that says there should be a minimum of two months operating expenditure, should be your cash levels.

That in two months is uh 16.7 total revenues.

Uh SP, they look at a number of different metrics when they are giving us our bond rating.

Uh, they sit with us and look at our balance sheet, they look at our income statement, they look at our projections, they'll look at our audits, they will interview us on the phone for sometimes a couple hours.

They've done that past.

And uh, but the the part about cash level, what they look at when they do look at liquidity and reserves is they say 15%, which is actually less than the GFOA.

15% of annual uh revenues should be in cash reserves.

Down below, third, he does reference Moody's, which we have not used.

They say if it's triple A, that's much higher.

That's at 35%.

And at the bottom from a policy perspective, the review is to use some blend of GFOA, SP, and Moody's.

An option could be set of floor and then maybe a soft target.

On page 25, you will see we use a GFOA.

For example, the GFOA says 16.7.

So our 2025 budget, which you have now is 112 million dollars, 16.7 would say that our cash reserve should be at just under 19 million dollars, 18.8.

They also tell you that there's factors of influence.

If you have predictability, stable diverse, you know.

Um, that may impact your reserves.

If it's expenditure volatility, if you have significant upswings in spending, if that's the case, we don't have that.

And also potential for emergencies.

That's one of the biggest reasons you would keep.

We're not so much likely for natural disasters, but yes, we are like anyone open to economic downturns or unforeseen events.

So this idea of 19 million dollars is it is a little low for what our appetite was.

We talked internally.

SP on the next page on that slide on slide 26.

Um, that's where they refer.

They had the 15% to keep the um triple A, and we're at the double A stable.

So having those two in mind with the idea that Moody's is higher than those two, we move into slide 27.

This is titled Umproving Toward Target Levels.

This is that same spaghetti pattern you'll see.

You'll see how consistent we are the being in the air.

It jumps up and then moves slowly down at the end, a couple step steps down towards the very end of the year.

On this slide, I point out a couple different things.

Number one, first of all, our cash flow, same pattern is consistent each year.

You see some early bumps the first third of the year in April.

That's mostly can has to do when we have our three paydays per month.

We have 24 um 26 paydays.

Um, 12 times two is 24 months.

But there's two months where there's that third payroll.

And if our payroll is large enough, it does make an impact.

So depending on what happens in April or again in October, that's gonna swing those a little bit.

But in the end, you'll see uh one point here is that they each year after year, small incremental gains.

If you look uh in 18 to 20, that's the orange band, the blue and then dark blue, they all land around that 15 million dollars.

So we moved up from that $5 million to six to 10 to 15 and three years in a row, 18, 19, and 20.

It ended very close.

It started close and ended up very close.

In 2021, it took a bit of uh a step up.

You'll see the gains all through the year.

There's a little more striation, and in the end, it just under we ended just under 20 million dollars.

It was actually 17 million dollars in 2021.

So at this point, cash has improved toward target levels.

It's not the target level that GFOA paid, it should be at 19 million.

And according to two, three years ago, we were not there, but we certainly were much closer than we were in 2014, 15 and 16.

Uh, if you move to page 28, this uh page is is different.

That we titled this in position for strategic decisions.

So now at the end coming close to the end of our 15 year time period, I put that blue at the bottom.

There's our baseline of 2014, which we were happy about at that time, five years removed from the 2010 memo.

I did share with you.

And you'll see in 22 in green, we're just under 20 million, about at that or by end of 2023, we ended at 21 million.

And then in 2024, uh, we took a step up to 30 million, and now 25.

If you look, or you know, we're over half we've closed out of October.

We're running along the same patterns.

Uh one could project we could end at 35 million at the end of the year, which is now higher than we were when we were talking about below target levels now or above levels.

And the question becomes what are the strategic decisions?

These are this sum that took 15 years to do.

It was slow growth.

There were some large steps in the last year or two in some of the occurrences, and I'll share those with you in a moment as well.

But what's the highest and best use?

Do you keep building cash?

You because this cash is one-time use.

What you would not do is put this into an operating account.

You don't use it to pay operating bills or balance the budget because this is something that took 15 years.

You would use this to in order the highest and best uses clearly to put into a capital position.

So on page 29 is that same graph that has everybody on it, 14 all the way.

Now they're all together.

You'll see the growth.

Uh, only the one year in green when we made a cash transfer, it backed off.

But you'll see some in 24 and 25, a little bit wider spreads than the previous year when we're just moving up one or two million year, one or two million dollars at a time.

So I'm gonna use three slides to explain why it's grown quickly over the last two to three years.

On page 30 is EIT.

We've talked a lot about EIT these last two years.

And if you look at the blue, if you focus just on the blue bars, you'll see the growth.

That's what we budget each year.

And you'll see in page on 2015, we nailed it in 2018.

It didn't reach budget.

In 2020, it didn't reach budget.

But then the starting post-pandemic, as things escalated, you'll see, even though we moved the blue bars up each and every year, it escalated at rates we have never seen before and created large surpluses.

So we moved it up pretty strong.

Look at the amount.

We moved it up last year.

If you remember that, we moved it up again this year.

It's been a strong contributor to balancing the budget without a property tax increase because EIT is running.

Uh and it's up four percent this year.

So in these three years, in the meantime, we have contained expenses.

And if we do that and medical and we know a pension and we know debt and all our operating expenses are in line, and something less like something this like EIT has a surge.

We believe we've caught up to it.

We don't expect these surpluses to continue.

But in the meantime, those surpluses right there are four million dollars over three years.

On page 31 is an example of mercantile tax.

In this case, you'll see 2022 is level, and we saw the jump in 2023 and 24.

We moved it up in 25.

You'll see the blue line of the budget.

We moved it up again in 26.

We believe we've caught up to the mercantile.

But in the meantime, that these uh economic factors, these dials were moving up quicker than we moved them up according to budget, which is a good thing.

Because in the meantime, that we accumulated 1.5 of surplus in mercantile.

On page 32, we're all very aware of interest rates.

And you will see uh that they exploded for a number of years.

We made less than 100,000 in interest.

It was at if I go back, I don't have it in here.

But 2019 and 20 and 20, 17, 18, 19, 20, it was very minimal.

It was not really uh an income item to speak of at all.

Then as interest rates surge and our balances also uh were increased.

We saw it take off and it created a surplus of a million dollars in 2023 and 800,000 24.

We also realized that that number is quickly falling as interest rates have fallen and they're projected to fall back.

You'll see in your budget book, based on what we're seeing this year, that surplus won't be nearly that.

And we actually took this opportunity to lower our budget in this case.

We moved it up, but we're also decreasing it because uh we don't feel it will make a million dollars next year or much less less $800,000 next year, according to what we're seeing now, and based on all projections you see with regard to interest rates.

So we did make it up as it took off, and we're trying to control and not get caught with the deficit uh on the downside.

And uh last um one more example, and then there's an expense one is deed transfer on page 33.

We know about housing prices and when house prices take off, interest rates were low.

D transfer tax took off.

We get one half of one percent on uh a deed transfer.

So you'll see in 22 coming out of the pandemic when house prices took off, so did deed transfer tax.

Um, but then in 2023, when interest rates climbed, you'll see it's good in 2022.

We didn't move the budget up to what we saw in 2022.

We knew rates were coming up, so we backed it off with that.

We that did prove to be the right thing to do because deed transfer revenue fell.

So we lowered it.

Um, this year we moved it up.

We're trying to find that right amount.

We brought it down now.

We're to bring it up.

So we think it will it should be on the mark for 2026.

It's always our goal to exactly hit it on the spot.

It's almost impossible to do that.

But we feel um for 25 and 26 that ending this year should be very close to where we're budgeted, and the 26 budget number should also be equal to, as a lot of these things post-pandemic and the way things came out or just things both with regard to EIT, mercantile and interest.

If I showed you 2010 to 2020, didn't do anything like this.

We didn't see swings to this level, and we are quite confident that the swings will level out uh moving through in future years.

And then the last savings is on 34.

These items show salaries in 22, 23, and 24.

Uh, our total salaries is nearly 34 million dollars.

This is general fund salaries.

We we assume in our projected budget, which comes to you that every seat is is full year-round.

As you ask questions, and we heard the questions and answers are asked before about open seats.

Naturally, there are going to be some open seats, and until they are filled, if they're not filled immediately through the normal churn, or if there's a delay in finding appropriate candidate, savings are achieved.

It's not our goal to have open seats.

We want all seats and production to be full, but uh through that natural churn of our 500 positions, the savings are are are acquired.

Vacancy salaries in the past have been used to pay for medical expenses if they're over budget over time if they overrun over budget.

Also, um things like gasoline in 2022 when Ukraine was invaded and gasoline took off and doubled.

We use these savings to move over to pay all the overages that that took off that were unforeseen.

But you'll see in the last three years there were savings and salaries each of the three years.

So through that and through that accumulation of those four or five line items, especially that we picked out for you, is to show you how that um cash balance has increased significantly over the last two, three years.

But in the whole store, this is a 15-year story from 2010 that's brought us to 2025 that's put us in the position that I believe a number of cities.

If you read any newspaper reports of the amounts of borrowing and what it means in total payback to their cities and to their operating budgets and their property tax rates in future years, that this is the best and highest use of uh the funds we have and the balance sheet and how we want to um leverage this balance sheet to fund our four-year capital without debt.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Evans.

I will I'll stick with our public works committee because it this relates to the funding for non-utility capital.

So I'll start with Mr.

Callahan if you had anything.

No, thank you.

The other committee members, councilwoman Que atek or Laird.

I want to thank uh Mr.

Evans for going over that.

We I know we had gone over this in our meeting um earlier, but it's still um kind of such a journey to see um where we were, where we are, um, and how you know the careful planning can result in having um a liquidity that allows us to avoid borrowing um for another few years at least.

And uh again, thank you to you and your team, Ms.

Lazarchek and everybody who works so hard to uh to keep an eye on all of these moving parts and uh and result in in fiscal stability for our city.

So thank you.

Council, yeah.

Just echoing thanks uh for the thorough explanation.

Um and it, you know, it's it's smart, it makes sense.

Um, and it certainly builds on the work that decades of people have done in the city.

Um it's you know, nice to see it coming to to a point where you can make strategic uh decisions instead of uh you know reactionary, as many businesses or municipalities have to do.

So thank you.

Anything else from other members of council?

Councilwoman.

Thank you again for all that valuable information.

Um, I just have one quick question on the salaries on page 34.

Do you have any idea?

I mean, it seems pretty significant in 23 and 24.

Um, where most of the vacancies were.

I mean, I know Mike had issues in public works, but Mike has the most public works.

That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's some every police has, you know, as we mentioned at council meetings, I know that police and fire.

I each have about you know 10 to 15.

You hear that vary, but I think just the number of bureaus.

Mike has the 10 bureaus, and you'll see a lot in streets, grounds are the most.

Occasionally facilities, electrical had a few.

Yeah, electrical, yeah.

Engineering for a while.

So I think you know, it streets.

Okay.

Looking dollar wise, but also head count-wise, it's gonna be a public works.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Sure.

Other members of council.

Councilwoman Wilhelm.

I don't I don't have any questions, but I I want to echo the thanks.

Um I know I've only served on city council in Bethlehem, so I don't know what it's like to review a budget um for a minute municipality that is not um as just uh fiscally responsible.

I I am sure it it impacts our experience of reviewing these 312 pages.

Um it again reflects just so much work and many building on the decades as councilwoman Laird mentioned.

So I just want to thank you for that work.

Um, and for that uh you didn't take a breath.

That presentation was really quite extraordinary.

So thank you for doing it and for always being available for our questions.

Um, both in and out of this room.

So thank you.

Councilwoman Leo.

Can I echo the echoes of the echoes?

Um, that was 36 slides, and you did that incredibly quickly.

And that is again another wild way to to mic drop 15 years of just concerted effort of if you want to go over anything after the meeting or any other time, please let me know.

If you want to go over anything after the meeting or any other time, please let me know.

I don't want to rush it.

It's a lot of numbers, but after the meeting, I know I know it's been a long night, so that's why I moved quickly.

But if you want to meet another night, yeah, anytime it makes it makes sense, it makes it so responsible, and it really is just such a privilege to serve on council at a time like this.

It really is.

Uh, I'll try to be brief, but we we really could you know anyone in academics could do uh a case study that would really highlight the financial health of Bethlehem.

I mean, looking at your slide 20 going back to 2011, that's that's not a healthy financial picture for any city to be in, and going back to the but seeing a lot of the names and the leadership that's stuck around just speaks to the value of longevity and the institutional knowledge that a lot of people in this room who aren't sitting up here had and were involved in and making tough decisions at the times and maybe changing a little bit of how the city was doing things.

Obviously, there's economic factors that happen outside of uh the boundaries of the city of Bethlehem that influence a lot of that, but just looking at even the SP ratings going from triple B back in 2014 to the the steady incline that we see there, it it just speaks to it.

And I know I've kind of joked before, and and but I I mean it as a budgeting principle that you you don't take the money out of your birthday card to pay your mortgage, meaning you can't rely on this this you know, one-time money that comes in, whether it be at uh roulette wheel or a birthday card, or you find 20 bucks on the street to balance your budget and changing the way we did things, or at least modifying it in a healthy way, and now being able to avoid borrowing for so many years that there's not I don't I don't look at the books for every city or every third class city here in the commonwealth, but it's just something that Bethlehem should be proud of.

And it's not just this council, it's previous councils, his previous administrations, his previous controllers, it's everyone that's involved because we've seen here in the Lehigh Valley um other municipalities that have been in dire financial straits as recent as post-pandemic.

So I think sometimes when we talk about the financial health of municipal governments, there's this misnomer that somehow ARPA money was the savior for every municipality.

That's just not true.

Uh, I know I cite it every year when you look at things like our tax rate in the city of Bethlehem, whether it be for the Northampton County side and the other city in Northampton County or the Lehigh County side, just even our property taxes, which people like to cite.

And I will say people often are not um filling my inbox when we've had to raise taxes, but just this understanding that we have had a times to make decisions for incremental uh raising taxes or or again just changing the way we do things that now because everything that we look at under capital, well, at least the you know, most of it, I won't say everything without being able to cite everything off the top of my head.

These aren't things that just go away if we don't fund them.

Yeah, when we're talking about air packs for the firefighters or paving the streets or go department by department, these are things that you're just kicking down.

And I know there's no one else here from the public.

I asked Mr.

Miller, there's three people watching on YouTube right now, which I'll assume are two media outlets and my wife trying to figure out when I'm coming home.

But the the this is where people really should be paying attention.

These are the things that we should be proud of as it relates to government, government administration, um, budgeting, the things that make Bethlehem a very special place.

There's there's countless things that make Bethlehem a special place, but what tonight's a budget hearing, and when we look at our budget books, when we talk about the things that we're able to fund, how we're able to fund them, where we've come, how we've prevailed, where uh others trying to accomplish the same goals we have have stumbled.

It's something that again, it's not just it's it's 15 years of people making difficult decisions and staying disciplined in uh how they make those decisions and how they implement those changes.

So I think it's something that even if it's only heard by us here in this room, everybody should be proud of who's involved in budget preparation and administration of what we do here in the city of Bethlehem.

Anything else from members of council, Mr.

Yasso, you have anything?

Really, really quickly, just two points of clarity they're riding high right now, Mr.

Yasso.

Don't I know I'm not trying to I I don't want to be a downer on anybody.

I will I will I'm sorry, I have to say the um when you look at the story, it's a phenomenal story.

My one comment will be uh the uh the capital preservation fund 10.7 million that was built up uh by unanticipated or unexpected revenues for an account built up like that.

When you break it down, it sure has a lot of the same numbers year after year after year.

It has been our contention that it probably should have been introduced earlier, however, we're happy to see it now, and and we are happy with the overall result.

We know it's a phenomenal, phenomenal result.

And then the last point of clarity I just wanted to make because I don't I know we don't dive into the budget books much, but in the in the non-utility capital, when you look at a lot of these, I just want to make sure everyone's kind of clear.

Um, because it's it's done differently than it has been done in the past.

Uh, you'll see a lot of wine items where the actual line item and the cost, the funding uh source is a much much higher number, which is never never really been done in the past.

And the concern that we had, and we just wanted to make sure, and it was part of our meeting with uh Miss Lazarchek today is the numbers that will actually get entered into the system for the budget are not going to be those large uh funding source numbers, but they will be the actual numbers that they anticipate spending this year, those will be the only numbers that can actually be encumbered and spent.

So when you see some of these projects, I think that's done more as a method to keep an eye on things as they go in the future and make sure we we understand what is because it is a uh uh you know, they are looking 26, 27, 28, and 29.

I think they're trying to keep that in mind as they go, which we understand and we're we're completely fine with.

Just want to make sure everyone is aware that the numbers that will get entered in the system and that are able to be encumbered without having to make transfers or go back to you guys at finance committee, um, will be those those actual numbers there.

And I it's also uh again just the point that we wanted to make because there are certain certain moves that they can make um without going to council and finance and certain certain moves that they have to come to council, and some of that has to do with like the the percentage of the overall budget for their department.

So if you if you go by these funding source numbers, it's gonna be an inflated number, which would give them a little more leeway.

But that's not gonna be the case, it will be by those those numbers that they expect to spend in that year that those will be based off.

So I just wanted to make uh those points of clarity, but certainly nothing to take away from uh the phenomenal job that they've done uh with creating this outlook for the city.

But that's it.

Any questions?

Mr.

Yasso, I have a question.

Sure.

So you referenced the capital reserves escrow account that's now showing up in the budget book.

What I'm saying is is as we look at that as the the plan, right?

The 10.7 a part of that 22 million, yeah, right.

That was built up for years, described as unexpected or unanticipated one-time revenues.

To me, it not necessarily the case, right?

When you have 1.5 and 22 and 1.5 and 23, 1.5 and 24, 1.5 and 25.

We certainly expected it in we were not shocked when it came in 23.

We expected it in 24.

We expected it in 25.

So we are happy to see that that what I'm saying is that 1.5 million is now included as recurring revenue, as where in the past it has not been, which is how it built up to this 10.7 million.

So would and I don't want to speak for you if I heard you correctly.

Would you have wanted that have been accounted for yes in a previous budget plan?

Yeah, that would be that would be our contention.

And then my follow-up question, because if you did, I don't remember, so I apologize.

Was that ever communicated to council either through the finance committee or through the president of council?

No, internal conversations between myself and the administration.

That's fair.

But again, this is not meant to take away from the work that they're doing or the the phenomenal outlook that we have.

Just a point of clarity that we wanted to make because it it's you know, it's your guys' budget, and and uh we just want to make sure we we we point out what we uh what we at least feel ourselves, you know what I mean.

I understand that.

And my only ask would be moving forward, because I'm not gonna be the chair after this year that should something like that arise that you communicate it, whether it be a memo, just to kind of bring everyone within that con not to be contentious, is it that's not what I mean at all, but just something that if there was a prolonged discussion or belief on your part, yeah, well, that would that we could have had a conversation and uh and I understand the point of the administration, I understand where you're coming from.

This may not be something that council is always fully aware of.

I mean, the money's accounted for, it's not like money went somewhere that it wasn't accounted for or anything like that.

That's I I want to be very clear on that.

There's not money that came in that we we just put it somewhere until it found its way in the budget.

But if these were conversations that were long going or ongoing for however long, I think a memo to the whether it be the finance chair or the council present would be appreciated in the future.

Yeah, agreed.

And I think uh when Mr.

Evans and myself and Michelle had the conversation last year.

He was in agreement.

We were, you know, we we knew that it was going to be here.

So at that point, you know, we we we were happy going forward, it's just something that we wanted to kind of talk about.

Um, again, however, we're we're again very happy with the outlook.

The uh cash balance is phenomenal.

The story's phenomenal.

You guys all saw it.

It's it's a great position to be in.

And just like you guys are are fortunate to be council people, we're fortunate to to be where we sit as well, too.

And uh looking forward to uh again another uh another successful year.

So thank you, Mr.

Yasu.

Any oh, did you want to add something to that, Mr.

Rev?

No, what two things.

I appreciate the comments from the control because yeah, we obviously we had those conversations about that amount.

What does it mean?

Where is it and when to enter it?

I think last year we brought forward one of our thoughts too was and no tax increase last year as well as this year.

So I think if we needed to, it may have forced the hand earlier.

But if we added in to balance it, then it would have left us a two million dollar shortfall.

So there's moving parts.

We had those, you know, again, elongated discussions about right now it's the highest best use of keeping escrow.

When do we when do we apply it?

And when we kind of kind of I agree with like 32.

We knew next year, too many is disappearing, no tax increase this year.

If we go no tax increase next year, too.

When we pull it out, because now it's gonna go into the operating budget, it would kind of meet both.

So we had we had a good debates about that.

Another thing I want to point out, I want to thank him for bringing up is on page 275.

There's an example is what Mr.

Yasso was talking about is the ambulance replacement, just that is a simple, you'll see it continue through.

Is on the ambulance replacement, you'll see cap reserve 1.45 million dollars underneath the description.

But to his point, it's not 1.45 available.

The ambulance is only 350 available because we're buying one for each of the next four years.

So each year we'll release the amount, the whole one for not available, then go out and buy three and say oh, two years from now.

So the idea uh, and that's what I was gonna bring that up, I forgot.

So, Mr.

Yasso, thank you for you know bringing out that detail, and that continues throughout, as you'll see.

When I talk about the 22 million we're putting into the capital fund, 9.1 is available because a lot of it's held back like this.

So two years from now, Mr.

Alcall made the choice too, and that decision along with Mr.

Yandum to decide how much to release.

So this is a four-year plan, not a two-year plan.

Yeah, Mr.

Yasso, because I'm gonna open it up to council if there are other comments, but I just want to another point I want to clarify.

And gentlemen, correct me if I'm wrong, just for everybody's working knowledge, our budget book is not a full accounting of every account and what sits in those accounts in the city of Bethlehem.

Like we talk about rec fees, you know, we're pulling so much from rec fees to apply to the capital projects.

There's an account that has a certain balance to it.

So going back to sort of these unexpected revenues, I guess the same rationale was applied, like the money just sat in an account until it was applied to the budget.

Yeah, fair kept earns interest and escrow until we have to come to council if we're gonna spend it in any way, and that became the discussion when you know how and when do we because the first couple years went dropped, it was certainly we weren't sure what it was.

We're not gonna say 2.2 and 22, and then falls to 1.5.

So it did take us those first two years, understand what it was.

Would it be recurring at one five?

Would it continue to drop?

So by that third year, halfway became then the real debate.

Do we add it next year?

And when do we do it?

And here it is, here we are.

So do you mind going to the microphone?

Oh no need to apologize.

Um I call I tried to contact the state multiple times to get a definition of what it was and whether we should put it in the budget.

And for years they said, no, we can't guarantee it.

So we weren't, and then um, my family, I kept calling, and then somebody showed me finally told me what it actually was, and that was last year, I believe.

That we actually got uh at 24 it was that we finally got a definition of what it was, and that we could put it in the budget because the state was saying don't put it in your budget because it's not guaranteed.

Sounds like Pennsylvania for you.

The uh any other questions or comments from members of council?

Thank you, Mr.

Yasso.

Thank you, Ms.

LeBrone for hanging out.

Well, we are going to adjourn.

I'll remind everyone that we have our next budget meeting.

The second one is on Wednesday of this week at 6 p.m.

And the final reading and ignite and and enactment, excuse me, of the 2026 budget ordinances will take place at the Tuesday, December 16, 2025 council meeting.

Get home safely, everyone.

This meeting is adjourned.