Welcome everyone.

We start the budget workshops for 2025 to do the 2026 Carmel City budget.

This will be two days.

There's a schedule out there if you'd like to see where you're at, and for the department heads, we will try to keep you updated on how the time is moving.

We're gonna try to keep everything on schedule as much as possible, but we also don't want to shut down important conversations.

I did want to make one note before we started because it was asked to me.

I um and he did ask me to do this, but counselor Taylor uh will be unable to attend in person uh today and tomorrow.

He will be uh watching but not um participating.

Um he had uh a surgery last week that had some complications, and he was in the ICU and it was scary there for a minute.

Uh but fortunately he is back at home.

I went and visit him at his home yesterday, and um if you he was worried that people thought he skipped the meetings, but if you know anything about Ridge Taylor, it would take something this uh drastic for him not to be here.

So I know we want to thank him for all his hard work that he put into this.

Um with that, we will get started with the first um item on our agenda, which is the mayor's office budget.

Good morning, everybody, and thanks to those who are watching uh remotely.

Uh, first up, a department overview.

Uh, I think most people don't understand what the office of the mayor does, but we oversee city operations, uh, enactment of laws and policies and representing the city's interests in a wide variety of um uh places and things.

We engage with residents, visitors, and businesses wishing to interact with the city and coordinate the representative city for local, state, and national initiatives and issues.

From a success standpoint in 2025, um we advocated for city the for the city with state leaders as property tax reform is considered in the state legislature.

As you know, we're dealing with a lot of that.

Um, but we put a significant amount of emphasis from a lot of different departments, especially in my personal time advocating at the state house.

Uh we have an active engagement with both large and small businesses.

We've spent a lot of time visiting our larger businesses.

That work will continue as well as promoting small businesses in our community.

Um we also participate in regional, statewide, and national organizations to ensure we have some regional cooperation and also that Carmel's voice as an edge city, as a leading city, and as an Indiana city is represented across the country.

Uh we are selected for a grant to participate in the Bloomberg-Harvard City Leadership Initiative.

This now has five of our staffers involved.

I actually think six including me in a month-long deep data dive project, which will be exciting because we'll use this not only for our police and fire, but the rest of our departments when it comes to talent retention and attraction.

We also advanced our city's sister city initiative.

Quatinegano delegation visited this year.

We also received an award for the best sister city for cities 100,000 to 300,000 for the 2024 activations.

And we were supposed to have France come here, and they just canceled uh because of the uh turmoil that their uh political scene is in right now.

So we they were supposed to visit the first week of um December, that's been postponed to 2026.

And lastly, we've been active with the move with the mayor goal destination.

This is a nationwide healthy community initiative, and we were active and it recognizes one of seven cities with a gold designation of 120.

Getting right to the budget request, we're requesting 1.158149 this year.

That's an 11% decrease from last year.

And we fund three areas the personnel area, external engagement, and administration.

From a personnel perspective, uh this reflects 945,000 and some change here.

It reflects the mayor and four FTEs, including Carol at the front desk.

Uh that reduces one FTE position from 2025.

As for programs, uh, this is a primary meeting in which we engage externally with the residents and our visitors.

It has four different areas.

The Carmel Fund, uh, which has funded 50,000, which is consistent with what we've done in the past.

Promotional items, that's for visitors, maybe a legislative luncheon, something like that.

Honors and awards are two areas, the Rangeline Pioneer Award, and which we are developing an actual award, which is just a plaque right now.

And then uh we gave uh some larger challenge coins to everyone who had participated on a committee commission or board uh for this year in 2024, so that would continue in that line item, and then external hospitality.

As for the administration bucket, uh that's 146,000 608.

That includes organization and member dues.

That's largely AIM is the big piece of that, which is accelerating Indiana municipalities, which all of our um departments participate in.

Uh, also uh the U.S.

Conference of Mayors is in there.

It has some training and travel, largely for me to go to the U.S.

Conference of Mayors of um pieces, uh excuse me, events.

Consulting fees of 28,000.

That's for some help with uh strategic planning consultant next year to further refine the plan that's underway.

Office operations, these are the typical supplies, equipment, and postage.

Auto lease, cleaning and gasoline is 12,650, furniture and fixtures is 2,000, and staff clothing is 1500.

In summary, you see in 2024 the actual spend was 4.8 million.

That included the support for the arts and the pack operations.

Uh we reduced that by moving those dollars out to 1.3 million and this year 1.158149.

Any questions?

Questions from the council.

Um well I'll start with a question while people may be looking at the documents and thinking.

So you've reduced um one full-time employee in your um in your office.

Can you talk a little bit about some of those um responsibilities and kind of how they'll be handled?

Uh, minus that person.

Uh uh that role is a utility role, uh, does a lot of different things for our office.

So we're gonna we've talked to the two staff that are sitting up in my office now, and also Carol who sits on the front desk, and we'll distribute between those three.

So to be specific, those it's the deputy chief staff role.

Okay.

I felt like uh if we were gonna ask other state staff, excuse me, other departments to make hard decisions, we should start with my department first.

Okay.

And what was like some of the responsibilities or things that was being done?

Again, it's utility roles.

He does a lot of different things, but uh one of the main things was preparing uh for external engagement activities, such as um if I'm gonna be presenting, helping write notes, helping figure out the logistics of those events.

He handled all the neighborhood pop-ups.

Um again, we're spot he does a lot of constituent work, responding to constituents on behalf of the office.

Um again, a piece he also has a bit player in not the external events that the marketing communications team does, but the events that we handle within the like uh ribbon cuttings and stuff that the mayor's office handles.

Okay, so would some of that go over to uh marketing department?

No, we'll just absorb it within the mayor's office.

Okay.

Questions from Council Minor.

Thank you, May uh Mayor Finkham.

Uh what uh specifically for your consulting fees, what are you going to be using those dollars for?

Do you have a specific idea or yeah?

That's specifically what I said was the uh strategic to enhance the strategic plan.

So one consultant for that.

And I don't have anyone identified right now.

We just put the bucket of money there.

Um so uh mayor, when we talk about um eliminating position, so is er, excuse me.

Well, um, is the position actually gone?

It'll be removed from the budget, or does the position remain and it just isn't being filled this year?

I'm not filling it for next year.

Again, I like we talked with other roles.

I think they should remain on the schedule on the uh list of jobs, but we're not budgeting for it and not filling it.

Okay, so help me understand then why should it remain?

I mean, if we don't we may want to fill it in the future.

I mean, some of the decisions we're making right now are to get through the rough next couple of years as we anticipate as it stands today.

26 and 27 will be the worst years.

Uh we believe that this is the position we need, as we believe a chief infrastructure officer and someone over economic development.

We need those roles as well, but we're not we're choosing not to fill them and not to budget them this year.

Okay.

Okay, and on the um organization and member dues, is that all AIM or is there something else in there?

No, AIM and U.S.

Conference of Mayors is what I had said earlier.

On the 50.

So, how much of that is AIM?

36,000.

Okay.

And then the rest is AIM is 36,747.

The US Conference of Mayors is 10,715 dollars.

AIM Indiana Conference of Mayors is a thousand dollars from a to attend.

Uh Urban Land Institute, there's a 45 fee in there or ticket in there for something.

Got it.

And anticipated 13.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

And the 36k allows other departments to participate in AIM.

It's my understanding.

This is our corporate membership fee.

As well as us, correct?

I think there's always a fee then you have to pay for each individual.

Okay.

But it's a corporate membership fee.

Okay.

All right.

And I was just curious about the furniture and fixtures.

Is that just kind of a placeholder?

Because we did everything new up in your office.

Is there something you're still needing, or is that just a placeholder?

I think that's a placeholder in case something breaks something.

Yeah, okay.

Got it for making ideally we'd like something.

We get a lot of recognitions from other cities and other things.

We'd like to put something maybe in the main entryway for awards and those things that the city gets, but I don't know that that would cover it.

So thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Councillor Locke.

Sure.

And this might just be more global as we go into the rest of these.

And Zach, you might be able to weigh in too.

But fleet management.

I know that was a discussion.

It was one of the things we talked about, centralizing finance, being able to save a ton of money.

And then we're obviously there's a recommendation to change in the salary ordinance the way that like procurement, and I think it's just for CPD streets, the uh there's a position added for a think of the word.

Um quartermaster, um, overseeing kind of all of that together.

Uh, but wondering about things that are buckets like improvements to furniture or um fleet or vehicle, um, did we move towards a centralized process and why are we seeing these in individual budgets?

Um, and is that management occurring?

Um then just yeah, we'd love kind of information about that as we go forward if there's kind of a way to say this is one vehicle, um it's for this purpose as we kind of go through each of these departments, that might be very helpful too.

Yeah, yeah, I'll just give a kind of big picture on on kind of how fleets have been budgeted.

Um so all maintenance costs have been moved for the departments that are in City Hall, all maintenance costs have been moved to the street department for the for them to maintain the vehicles.

Um the mayor's vehicle here as an example, though, um there is still a lease payment on that, and so to the extent that other departments still have some sort of payment on a vehicle, that is still funded uh within their budget.

That that's expense has not been moved to the street department.

Um you'll see uh it's listed as cleaning here.

There's um uh you'll see kind of car cleaning pop up in a lot of departments budgets.

Um we've been trying to get a universal contract, but so far have kind of struck out in our uh use using kind of three different tactics, just whatever works for the best for that department, whether it's uh a punch card, uh unlimited washes, whatever.

It it it's it's there's not a one-size-fits-all uh washing need, but we've continued to fund those under the individual departments, not moved there.

Same thing with gasoline, whichever departments using it, but the maintenance costs have all been moved over to street department.

Okay, um, and then follow up there.

Um I know that there was discussion of a change to the take-home vehicle process, and just wondering as we look at kind of gas and tracking of these vehicles.

Is that process being centralized, or can you give us an update there?

Again, using this one, we've got a little bit extra time to get through some of these things that'll be uh applicable to all of the departments as we move.

Sure.

So we have rolled out uh what I'm referring to as a draft fleet policy.

We we want to start making some changes, but at the same time need the flexibility to uh you know rewrite this policy on the fly as we find things that just don't work uh quite right.

Uh our our kind of line in the sand uh for this policy as far as take-home vehicles was whether or not the vehicle is being taken home at least 12 times a quarter, which is basically an average of once a week.

That's um that's our starting point kind of for the conversation.

Does it make sense for this vehicle to be honest?

You might not take it home and called out.

They're called out.

Uh I'm so I'm sorry, yeah.

Sorry, let me clarify there.

Yeah.

If if you are being called out 12 times a quarter or once a week, that's our line in the sand for does this make sense or not.

Um so far that's not been a firm, like uh no decisions are being made yet uh regarding that that uh 12 call outs per quarter or averaging once a week.

Um we have moved forward with uh we're we're putting uh uh geotab uh GPS technology on on all the vehicles to better understand how they're being used, where they're at, idling times, um we can even go as far as making sure that employees are buckled up uh with this technology.

Uh that will help us uh in the coming months make better decisions as far as uh where does it make sense to kind of pull back on some take-home vehicles?

Uh two things that I've offered as clarity.

Uh if we do end up uh changing uh what where somebody has a take-home vehicle today and uh perhaps would not in the future, uh one, we've clarified that that does not mean you would never have a take-home vehicle.

It just wouldn't be a permanently assigned the the nights that you're on call, here's here's your vehicle.

Um you just wouldn't have it necessarily for uh the entire uh you know two-week pay period, whenever you only got called out once during that time.

The other thing is we've we've committed that if if we do make a change, um any individual employee will be given at least two months' heads up uh before we make any changes there.

But I would say like right now we're in the we're in the data gathering and analysis phase.

We've not reduced any department's budget by gas or gas or anything like that yet, assuming uh what the results were will be, but I can say that you know we we we kind of looked at a few vehicles at Street Department, like the what if this change uh would happen, and we saw a 40% reduction in gasoline maintenance cost as well as an almost doubling of the useful life of the vehicle.

Okay, and can you send us the policy when you get to a point where you're comfortable sending?

That would be great to kind of see in this.

Um and then for this budget specifically, is this one vehicle or how many vehicles are in the mayor's budget and is that a take-home vehicle?

Yeah, uh statute or city code provides that the the city will provide the mayor with it with a take-home vehicle, and that that is the only vehicle in that department.

And it's just one vehicle.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Um I do have um one more question, and this is more holistic to kind of the notes on these sheets.

Um if we see notes next to a column, um are we to presume that that is the full use of that money, or are there other uses that might be on those line items that are not listed in those notes?

So as an example, um if you go to the third page of this budget, which is the mayor's office general fund administrative and overhead costs, we've got promotional funds, which is 7,500 for sympathy flowers and donation in lieu of flowers.

Um it appears on the 2025 budget that there were some expenses for lunch um and for other things that came out of this line item as well.

Is that are we to presume that the notes there are inclusive or are they just examples of things that will be spent from those categories as we look at kind of the information that's been shared?

Do you want to say that?

They're not gonna be all inclusive, I don't believe.

I just kind of buckets of what they were.

Just kind of an idea of notes of where they are, why it's moving.

Exactly.

Okay, thank you.

We have counselor green and then counselor Joshi, too.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um this is uh doesn't uh specifically deal with the mayor's budget, and it's following up on one of the early questions counselor Locke asked about centralization, you know, kind of a accountability and centralization, which we talked a bit a little bit about last year as far as centralizing some of the contracting and controls uh, you know, just kind of looking on the breakdown.

Is there some type of um I looked in the presentation from last Monday, you know, and didn't see it, but it was more of a kind of a strategic presentation high level.

Is there anything kind of in the aggregate on training and travel for citywide?

You know, because we're gonna go department by department, but sometimes shift, you know, especially with personnel between departments.

So if we can see kind of overall um what the city's spending on training and travel this year compared to last year and maybe the year before, the same thing on furniture and fixtures and clothing and and gasoline, those types of things.

So we can see kind of across the board, here's the impact.

Yes, certainly we'll we don't have a uh report ready, but we can have one ready later today that that gets at those.

Yep.

Yep, we can have that easily.

Council Joseph.

Just a question following up on the geotab technology that you mentioned.

Where are we going to find that in is that also broken out into each department as we use it, or is that in IT if it's been run by IT?

Because again, for for me to understand budgets, I feel like the department's budget should actually reflect what the department does in total.

So if it belongs in IT, because IT is managing in it, running it from beginning to end, then I think it's important to put it in the IT budget.

But if it's not being run that way, then I'd like an explanation on that.

Yeah, it's it's kind of being run that way, but but it's not IT.

It's it's the street department which is managing this portion of uh it's kind of me uh in finance department as well as uh street department managing the big picture on fleet.

They were uh one of the early adopters of geotab and have been using it successfully for a few years.

And now um, and in part because they have the garage capabilities, they're now kind of roll helping me roll that out to all departments.

We've budgeted that uh increased expense underneath the um uh underneath the the street department for next year.

Um the cost of geotab is $20 per month per vehicle.

Um the nice thing is though that there's not a long-term contract on on per device.

And so you know what once we start getting this data and realize um the and and I I don't know what the results will be, but you know, we we could have some underutilized vehicles that we say we we don't even need these as part of our our fleet anymore.

Um we can take those devices off and and then you know dispose of those vehicles and and turn off the that recurring charge.

Uh I think the grand total uh uh for adding the rest of the vehicles uh that weren't covered was approximately 40,000.

Um again, that was uh an increase inside of the street department's budget.

Counselor Schneider and then Councilor Minor?

On the because I tend to agree with Dr.

Joshi, like having a hard time wrapping my head around why some of this wouldn't be on IT, but is it just the the geotab, does it just tell you where the vehicle is, or does it give you all the telemetrics and data and usage and everything?

It it it has all of that and more.

The the location, uh uh and and you can set it up so that uh there are capabilities that you could track, but maybe maybe we don't.

Um but i everything from idling to uh again if if the vehicle's been uh if the driver is is buckled uh if the um I I think street department it's not the sole tool tool that they use for their uh for their snow routes, but I think it aids in in their snow routes.

Uh it also tell I'm struggling with the word here, it it tells utilization uh real-time data in terms of how fast is this person driving on on this road.

Uh you could run it to like what what's the uh what's the highest speed that Matt Higgebotham reached in his city assigned vehicle in in the last day, last month, last year.

I mean, there's there's tons of data and tons of different ways to to slice the data and compare the data.

I guess my my my overall concern, and I think if well there are studies on it, but why I think maybe it should be somewhere else, is because hey, if you want to terminate somebody, it's really easy to be like, oh well, you're going 40 and a 30.

Like there's cause.

It becomes very big brotherish.

Um the idling, for instance.

Um gets pretty cold here, and I'm not turning my car off if I'm working out in 10 degree heat, and I d I just don't see what there's a lot of data that I think is useful, but I don't think it's real time.

It really helps the human experience, especially if you're an employee, I'd be now nervous with everything I'm doing, which it causes worse driving habits according to Federal Highway.

Um just something to look at.

There's a lot of capability that we're not necessarily tracking.

I think just I think Zach's point is it's super robust.

It'll help us better manage our fleet uh and better define that policy.

And it is you're aware, you know, cities have been doing this for a little bit of a lot of time.

Oh, yeah, and I'm not saying from a from your department standpoint.

I'm just saying like if nor would I think anybody at the street department currently would do this.

But if the street department's looking at this stuff and they've got somebody they want to say, hey, Zach or Nick or say we want this person to go, find just find some sort of cause, well, then it's just really easy to it's a low-hanging fruit.

Um just a just my thought.

Uh and then you talked about trying to do a master or looking for a master fleet lease, trying to find somebody to do a I I guess sales tax, we don't get, right?

We don't see any of that other than how it may or may not contribute to MVH a little bit.

But um I guess I've never had a problem with and we've I've had this discussion about other things.

Like, yeah, so maybe there's a few cents in savings, but if there's the opportunity to spread share the wealth amongst local businesses, I don't see that as a bad thing either.

And if it's keeping people employed, then that local income tax does come back to us.

Um and then on the individual, and this this will be a prevailing question probably for every department, so just a heads up.

On the individual that no longer has or uh the will not be in your budget next year.

And you said he's the utility guy, he does all this or person.

If he was productive, if he was an asset, then it just seems like I appreciate you offering up an employee for your budget to set an example for everybody else, but from the departments I've spoken with, it sounds like it might have started a trend where they do need these people, maybe not in letting somebody go, but in not having an open position.

I understand the finite of guardrails with dollars.

But if it's needed and important, it seems like that would be a higher priority than maybe other things within the whole budget.

So what is that is that a position that you really want to do without?

I guess is the ultimate question.

Thank you.

I mean, these are hard decisions with the new reality that we have with the SEA one, and we're trying to uh minimize the impact across the city as best we can by keeping our priority strong.

So uh it wasn't an easy easy decision by any means.

We're gonna do that.

Do we have further conversation about that offline just because it's a particular individual involved here?

We'll do uh counselor Minar and then Councillor Green.

If anyone else has questions, though, think of them now because we will start wanting to move on to their department in a minute.

Okay, so I just want to drill down on this uh geotab.

And so street I've talked to Commissioner Higginsbotham, they've been doing this for a long time.

And I want to be really clear that or ask the question specifically, all this data collection is going to happen between now and what time?

How how long are we going on this?

Yeah, so so we're in the process of installing these devices across departments right now.

Um I wouldn't I don't see us taking them off.

Uh I I we we put them on, we we continue to uh initially we use them to kind of reform update this this draft uh fleet management policy, help us kind of set with those uh uh uh permanently assigned take-home vehicle, kind of what that what that policy ought to be.

Is that 12 uh the right number?

Or are we seeing other trends that suggest no it's 10 or no, it's 14, or or there just needs to be a different thought as opposed to just a uh a number.

Um but ultimate and and I we would make some changes uh based upon the the data and the analysis of that data, but we would continue to uh to keep it on our on our vehicles uh because again it it will help us better manage our costs ongoing uh so are you are you leaning on Commissioner Higginsbotham since he's he has been doing this for a while?

Is it going to be his department that's going to mainly analyze these?

Are you I mean I guess what I'm saying is that he's been doing it for so his department's been doing it for so long it would make sense that they would track the information and report back to you and help you draft that policy with other department heads, I'm assuming as well.

I'm just trying to figure out where we are on all that.

Yeah, that that no, you're exactly right.

We we probably uh a little bit more than half of our departments have uh at least one vehicle.

Um we've tried to have them at the table as we we uh it's kind of our department and uh finance and street department kind of work together on a draft, rolled that out, and we've been kind of uh getting them up to speed and kind of hear the uh hear the concerns that we've uh reworked, things like that.

Uh but ultimately what I see is kind of um they're gonna help manage from the the street department is gonna help me manage from like the the maintenance side.

Are are we are we taking care of all our vehicles?

Are we replacing them according to our policies?

And then um for me it's more of okay uh assuming that they've got that part right.

How do I need to budget for uh maintenance costs, the replacement of vehicles, things like that.

So they're doing the uh they're doing the the most of the work to help me kind of get to what what should the numbers be in the budget?

And so you will draft this policy then I mean with with with them, but yeah, it's it's it it's primarily mine, but it's with uh uh a committee, if you will.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Green.

And this will be our last question, then we'll move on to marketing tree.

Uh uh.

Okay, Councillor Green and Council Airs.

I I have a quick question.

This might need to wait until the street department.

My concern was about the vehicles.

Um is that somewhat of an incentive for some of these employees when they take home the vehicles, and will that removing that?

Um will there be another incentive or a pay increase?

Again, I can wait for the street department on that.

My thought, and that's a great question.

Um I don't know that we could say like we could look at every vehicle uh that's currently a take-home vehicle and say, like what was the logic behind that that person being assigned a take-home vehicle?

What what policy were we following in the first place that said that that's the position that ought to have a take-home vehicle?

Um today there's some that I can point at and just say I I don't know why that position has it has a take-home vehicle, it's just always been that way.

Um as we kind of firm up this policy.

Um I I've wondered the same thing.

Does it does it make sense to to do that type of an incentive?

Uh but I also wonder about well, what about the person right next to them that's functionally doing the same job that that didn't have a take-home vehicle in the first place because logic was being applied to that position, but the other one, nope, they just ended up with a take-home vehicle.

I there's kind of already a fairness issue there.

I'm not sure how to address the fairness issue with um okay.

Now let me give this person something.

So uh nothing's off the table, but we haven't come to the conclusion there.

Counselor Green.

Yeah, just a quick question, and I just want to set it up because I you're gonna be sitting there throughout today, and uh community services technology, street department engineering are coming up, and it's something that everyone's kind of asked about is kind of data metrics, efficiency, and who's best to kind of make that decision.

Are each department's kind of collecting data, you know, whether it's street department or um engineering or you know, somebody else, and then who ultimately is making the decision on that.

Um so something to think about because it I know something I struggle with.

You know, when you're in charge of a whole bunch of departments and everyone's got data and everyone's trying to figure out efficiencies, but how do you strategically you know make the right disciplines collect the data?

Because often the departments collecting data and they might be uh you know more of a status quo, kind of defending the way things are versus looking bigger picture on how to create those efficiencies.

And the other thing I want to talk about is just briefly the vehicles.

Over the course of time, you probably see someone as a condition of employment want a take-home vehicle, and that's kind of negotiated.

So over time you can get kind of disparities just because of individual situations, but the data and metrics think about as we talk about the other departments.

That's it.

I'm on the soak.

I just have two quick ones here, too, and then we'll save some time with marketing probably.

The um Covino and Smith, and this goes holistically, or most of the lobbying budgets in the they're in the law budget, right?

What what is the Covino and Smith that we paid for out of this budget last year and is that gonna move?

It was in the legal it was in the legal department last year?

There were three payments.

For 2025?

This budget, yeah, in 2025.

I thought it was are you was it 2020?

It might have been 2024 that was being paid out of the mayor's office, and then for the 2025 budget, it got moved.

Pre-paid this year.

Um maybe they're just on the check registry wrong or in the wrong line item.

But um the there are two that or three that were made this year on that budget, and then just a hunting in the there's the fifty thousand dollar for the Carmel Fund.

We talked about this last year, I remember.

Is this a specific thing or is this for specific purposes?

This is to support organizations in our community as a mayor C is fit, is how that's been budgeted.

I do want to make one comment on the take on VLS before we move on.

Um so I understand like if this was something that is ex You know, as an employee, this is something you maybe expected when you were hired or were told this was part of it uh and this is no longer happening.

I mean the average car payment right now, I mean for a normal sedan, not a big SUV is six hundred dollars a month.

So we're talking about seven thousand dollars a year that this employee now will have to pay for.

And yeah, while they may get a three percent pay increase, say they're making seventy thousand dollars a year, now they're seeing a 10% decrease, you know, and then maybe a three percent making it up.

So it does increase costs.

Um so later I'd love to go into the information of you know how many people will be affected.

Um, because if you are one of those employees that now uh has to go make a car payment, I mean this is uh you are making less money in 2026 as a city employee than you were in 2025.

So I mean, just that's how much car payments are, and if you had to go do that.

We're gonna move on to the uh marketing uh department.

I do want to make one statement before we go through this.

So there is an item that we have been talking about with experience Carmel.

Uh this is certainly mentioned in the the Mac budget presentation.

It is also listed in the next item on the agenda after this, the arts budget, because that's where the grant actually would come out of.

So if we go over a little, some of that does go into the art support and operations uh line item.

Uh please keep in mind though, there are other items in the art support and operations budget that we would probably want to ask about as well.

So we'll just navigate that the best we can.

And we'll start with you, Kelly.

Good morning.

Um we'll start here with uh the next couple slides here.

Marketing community relations, we have our current structure.

Currently um we do the primary marketing and communications as well as the event planning for the city of Carmel.

We have 16 employees.

Uh three of these will be moving to other departments.

We have one temporary employee that's part-time, and they will end their time at the end of the year.

And the we have um four that will remain with the city, and the remaining will go with experience caramel.

Potentially.

Our successes for this year is um we've approved 165 different facility use requests, and that's anytime anybody has a race or a wedding or some sort of use of our um assets here in the city that goes through our department and they help manage that BPW process.

We've uh created five new events Cherry Blossom Festival, Eve Fest, Dia Day Familia, which just happened this weekend, uh She Leeds, and Americana on Maine.

And Americana on Maine was uh partially launched last year strategically, just because we have the 250th anniversary of the United States coming up, as well as um our 50th celebration as a city.

So this gave us that opportunity of having those patriotic photos and things to help um promote uh 250th anniversary.

We launched our built for big dreams rebranding process, which included um assessing where we were with our brand, our co-branding process with police and fire, creating new merchandise, call consolidating purchasing through one vetted vendor.

We were previously purchasing a lot of different um apparel or um just general items throughout the city through multiple vendors and going through one vendor.

We were able to come up with somebody that um saved us money across the board.

We are on track to host 47 different events for this year, um, and that covers 144 event days because some of these happen um multiple days, like movies at the midtown, right?

That's counted as one of those 47, and that happens multiple times, which equals to that 144 days.

We've made consistent website updates and we've managed that in-house, which previously that had not been, uh, as well as managing those updates.

We've also worked with IT in creating a new basis for our new website, which we'll be launching at the end of the year.

We've cleaned up uh the ownership of domains and website management.

Uh we've done this through IT.

They've spearheaded, but we've gone around doing all of the legwork trying to find passwords and information about all these different URLs that have been secured over the years.

We managed the new Dora sticker process or the whole process from stickers to signage to cup fulfillment, so much so that that seemed to be a part-time job for our staff, as well as working with ATC.

We partnered with uh the local organizing committee on securing and marketing the World Aquatics Tour Swimming World Cup, which is a very big deal for our city.

Uh it showcases our nadatorium at the Carmel High School, and it's been a great partnership with um Hamilton County Sports Authority, the Carmel Swim Club, um, and the uh high school.

We've relaunched Swim City USA, created a new website, we're building graphics, we're playing host to nearly 4,000 uh different visitors that'll be uh coming here October uh 10th through the 12th.

We've also um worked on some media with like Wish TV, where we were able to showcase uh all the bright points of our city, our businesses, we were able to interview businesses, the Carmel um parks department, we talked about our events, just showcasing the quality of life here at Carmel um through their Wish You Were Here series series, and we've increased our city social media following uh followers across all of our different platforms.

We also um placed nearly 60 ads so far, and I think we probably have like another 30 or more to do the rest of the year with our uh busy event schedule coming up.

And we have our new proposed experience Carmel.

Did you want me to go through this part?

Yep, too.

Okay.

So our cities become more vibrant.

We have a lot of events that go throughout the city.

The number of events, the different types of events, and the city has supported those in different ways from low-level sponsorships to partnering with different organizations to carry out these events.

So in the fact that we have so much that we're moving forward with, and that the MAC department has grown to meet this need, we've essentially become a destination marketing organization within the city.

Which when I first came here, I thought that was rather fascinating that we were able to pull off a destination marketing organization within the city.

Where I've seen it previously, and even going to three CMA conference and talking to my colleagues there, they don't run events out of their city generally.

That's something that is done by a third party, like uh downtown Indy Inc.

or a parks department.

And actually, this came up with our budget review last year, and the fact that it was very hard to draw a comparison from our current department to even our sister cities here within Hamilton County of how they're set up and how they do their events.

So the fact that we even have so many more than what they have, it makes sense to grow up essentially.

We move into this another transition period of where we have a destination marketing organization.

This allows us to have a little bit more of creativity with funding as well.

This is something that even before this became a discussion after our budget hearing last year, it became very apparent that we really needed to look at how we have funds for our events.

It's very dependent on whether or not we have the money in the city, and it just happened to be that with SEA one, we are having that issue arise.

So one thing that I had been looking at is diversifying our funding, looking at different sources of what we even currently do.

Our BPW process that we manage, we don't charge for any of our events.

We have, I think in January 2024, it was approved that we could charge for events, but those fees were not assigned.

Uh they weren't given any value.

That is something that we could start doing, and it would cover the cost of maintenance.

I mean, gazebo concerts are currently free.

That's something that could certainly be added in, having a discount for city or folks of Carmel could be at a cheaper rate versus folks that are outside of the city of Carmel.

Other cities also have the same thing where they charge for their spaces, they do it by the hour, even the our parks department pays for the or has people rent out the different um facilities within the parks.

So it's not like we're inventing something new or asking something that people are not uh used to doing.

Uh let's see.

Um, I think with with the experienced Carmel setup, we would have um we heard last year that there is a lot of concerns around the growth in the department, and that's really around the growth of the events and the marketing that has to be done for the events.

There's the transparency around decision making.

Uh, this could be addressed with the experienced Carmel because it would be something that you wouldn't check in once a year.

It would be a check-in multiple times a year, however, many times the board or council decides that they would like to check in and see what it is that experienced Carmel is doing.

There's um this also would allow the existing comms to focus on city uh communications and not have to uh jump between writing up press releases about the next event and then trying to focus in on a tornado or whatever issue, crisis comms that would come up.

I think that this would also help with the disconnected feeling for the marketing function of the city that all departments have, or all that council has because at that point you would have your two people on the board and be able to have a connection there.

Um I think I kind of covered a lot of these already.

Um the mayor had suggested the nonprofit entity experience Carmel as being the home for this ever-growing marketing and supporting the events and activities back in May.

Um experience I think the biggest thing with experience Carmel is with the community that we this gives us a better way of leveraging the as a not-for-profit of securing funds in a way that um anybody could donate and then have a tax benefit, which that way they don't have right now.

So currently, if we have a city event that is happening midtown at, you know, have a midtown block party, and we want to have some more additional funds for that.

Who are we going to go to?

Generally we go to different businesses, but at this point we could still do that, and we can um fix that curiosity of well, can I write this off on my not as a not-for-profit?

Can I write this off on my taxes?

That's something that we had a lot of questions for Diwali that people wanted to be able to write this off.

Is this a tax deduction?

There's also the question of why would I be giving you more money?

I already have pay my taxes to the city.

As a not-for-profit as a separate entity that is specifically focused on events, you're also specifically able to um have that tax benefit for folks that want to just support an event, but not want to support necessarily um you know a place that they already feel like they're paying money to.

And also I would note that any time that you're asking for those funds from a private entity, you're also not only just asking for funds.

I feel like at the same time you're asking for participation, you're asking for buy-in on those events.

You get a lot more interest from um as volunteers.

You it is a different level of commitment to the city, and I think it's um very strength building.

So to have this happen, um the city's gonna have to continue to exercise strong oversight.

That is without question.

Um there would not just be the mayor controlling this, as we proposed.

This would have equal number of um mayor board appointees as well as council appointees, and then the rest of those appointees would be shared across key members, right?

Visit Hamilton County, Indiana would be a perfect one.

Uh focused on the beds and heads number, that would be a data point that we that experienced Carmel could be then held accountable for.

One zone chamber representing business interests, the um Carmel High School would be another uh one as well, just because our events that we have in the city really support the quality of life that our families have.

It draws people to our city and to our schools, so um that is a very strong uh leverage that we have.

Kelly, how many slides do we have left?

Because we had we want to get some questions in.

Sure.

Um what would you like me to jump to?

Or do you just want to go to straight to questions?

Well, we want to we want to jump into questions.

Let's get into some of the dollar amounts and then we can get into questions.

Yeah.

Well, I guess we could jump to um well at the very end.

Whoops.

Page uh 19.

So like best four or five slides.

We like there are 25 slides, takes up the entire half hour, and then doesn't allow us to answer ask questions.

So um so on page 19, it shows the budget request, and this would be for the comms department that is remaining.

This is for 773,671 dollars.

This would uh cover all personnel costs, subscriptions, and software, the different media tools that we use for the comms side.

And that would be it.

Uh councilor Snyder first, and then we'll start doing the rounds for the questions.

Point to me if you want to get your question in the line.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you for putting this together.

Um sorry would kind of a combination from administrative meeting earlier this week and this just kind of where we are, where my head is.

One it under your and I won't get into these individually because each one has its own complications, but defining what our defining what a success is, I think should be more clarified.

We ran into you shortly after you were all dolled up, getting ready to do an interview.

When we left, I said the same reporter said it seems as if they didn't want the council council involved in this at all, and not a single other counselor knew anything about this entire television series media series about Carmel.

Um I don't need some of these is where are we putting the ads?

Some of these are the new things.

I mean, the cherry blossom that was created by Kay, and the council gave 10 or 15,000 dollars for that.

Um obviously you guys assisted, but a lot of these I think they could do on their own given approval.

One comment was made that it's hard for event employees uh because they work 37 and a half hours a week, and if they um work on a weekend, then you know what happens during the week, and I I guess I don't understand that, but plenty of people everywhere every day have hours, days of the work day week Thursday to Monday.

Like it does it doesn't particularly matter.

And I I could go through this, but that really doesn't matter.

My question is you've submitted a budget for 700,000.

So there's not gonna be any revision.

I mean, because effectively you've submitted a budget for comms.

That's we have a fact, we know that.

Then there's this non-for-profit that I is I nobody it's not happening.

So one thing I want to Hal, is the live feed on.

I'm told that the live feed went dead for the public.

We want this for transparency.

I've got people texting me because this is what they're interested in and they can't watch the meeting.

Yeah.

Let's call recess.

I will note that an experienced caramel recording of video meetings would somehow be moved to a nonprofit.

It's not on Facebook.

Still live on Facebook.

Greg, I back up.

Okay.

It's not Facebook.

Okay.

Keep going.

So and if it were to happen, that the whole timing of this, like we're saying that five employees, four employees, excuse me, eight employees are being redistributed for to go elsewhere, and for to go to the non-for-profit, and that's fine.

But when you create a non-for-profit, first that there's going to be, if that happened, it would be lengthy negotiation over what the board makeup is, which I doubt we're all gonna agree on.

But let's say we did.

Great.

Then we've got this non-for-profit board.

That board, if they're worth anything, is gonna do an uh a national search or at least a local regional search for a director.

It may not be you.

Then the board and that director would analyze what the staffing needs are, and the new director would start out with one employee, two employees.

They so effectively everybody that was in Mac department now, there's really no quick path to employment.

Even if even if we all agreed on this non-for-profit, just by virtue of how a non-for-profit operates and is created, which I've created them.

I'm the president of two currently, it it doesn't work this seamlessly, and then nobody in their right mind would just give 1.7 million dollars to a startup.

It would be coming to us when you've proven that you've got something.

So I don't see a path forward this year for this non-for-profit, which means all you have is a budget where you are letting off you're laying off eight people.

And I just want to make sure we're clear on that.

Councilman.

Counselor, we're all in.

Okay.

Um so I guess I want to back up a little bit here.

When um when the mayor came in to office, um the MAP department, and I I don't think you were here maybe at day one, but you came at some point early, so maybe I should talk to the mayor.

But um there was a system for handling events, and what I recall happening, there was quite a bit of effort put into changing the way that's done.

And what I recall happening, there was quite a bit of effort put into changing the way that's done.

We're gonna hire people in-house in the city to run those events and stop using contractors.

Is that a fair statement, Mayor?

Is that and so and I said, okay, if that's how the mayor wants to do it, then that's what we'll do to the victor.

Go the spoils.

So now we are we have a system where we have 16 people running that.

Are we still using contractors for setup and teardown and some of those kinds of things?

No, uh we have taken out different contractors.

And actually we have saved money with that model.

Well, I'm not going there yet.

Um so I'm trying to figure out on the effectiveness.

So, but the idea was bring it in-house, let the city manage it.

I know the mayor said, well, that's the information we had at the time.

Now things are changing.

So now to create a separate nonprofit entity for those events to happen, in essence, feels like we're abandoning the original concept of we want to manage those, we can do it better, and we can save money, I guess, to use your point.

We can actually do it more efficiently.

What has changed?

Why do we need to do it this way?

Well, I think that's exactly it.

We proved that bringing it into a group of individuals that were housed somehow within the city worked.

That we didn't have to have all of these outside contractors managing those relationships for us.

We were able to do that in-house, and that's like, oh, that's a great entity.

It works great.

It managed to get everything done and fix issues along the way along the processes.

So it does make sense to take that and export it out of the city as its own unit.

Okay, tell me why, or give me some examples of that.

So I mean there there are a lot of examples, there's different organizations.

I would say no DMO works exactly the same way.

Um they all are very specific to the city that they are there for.

The whatever it is that they are trying to either lift, amplify, or fix.

And I think with the city of Carmel, there isn't much that we need to necessarily fix, but I think that there is a level of events that people expect for the quality of life, and that's what this DMO would be specifically there for.

Okay.

And so would it be fair to say though that the people that we're gonna go out and ask to support this entity also are being asked to cover the operations or the expenses of that entity as well as the benefit to the citizens.

Is that a fair statement?

At some point, I mean I don't know when that I've heard nothing next year, and then I've heard, well, four years, five years, whatever.

But is there is there any fairness to that statement?

I think it depends on what you mean support uh or cover, because just like so downtown Indy, I think they have roughly 20 percent of their income comes from the city.

Uh it also comes from other different spaces.

Well, they manage buildings that make money.

That's where a lot of that income comes from, is my understanding.

Yeah, that's CIB.

That's different.

But but some of that money goes in which which group are you talking about for Indy?

Downtown Indie Inc., they specifically but there's like I we would not fit that same model except for their event space and the fact that they do amplification of businesses, which is another step of this.

So I think we're getting also getting caught that this is not just events, it would also be amplification of the businesses in the city and communicating with residents about what it is that's going on in the city.

So, and that's those three things um downtown Indy Inc.

does as well.

Okay.

Um so how are we gonna cover the salaries?

And maybe I should just ask the question that way.

How are we gonna cover salaries for these eight people?

At this point, it is a grant through the city.

In year three.

I think we can't get to the specifics at how we're gonna do everything down year two, three, four, or five, because there's a lot of the work that has to be done by this board that's coming together.

This is true of public partner public private partnership, which we've been very successful at with building our core, and um I see this as nothing more than that.

A group of people who are appointed who love the city who want to make sure it succeeds and can ban manage the manage the budget.

But to get into hypotheticals about how we're covering the salary, how many employees and all those things year one, or at past year one is just a shot in the dark.

I think we put goals together, like Kelly said, 20% reduction every year.

But year one is a transition clearly from what we're trying to do, where we are clearly trying to make sure that they have the finances necessary to be up and running and successful to then fly on their own after that.

Well, mayor, we've had two examples of people who love the city running nonprofits, and we now have a problem with that.

So I'm being very cautious about jumping on this what feels to me to be like kind of a runaway train in the end of the year while we're dealing dealing with budget, it's just a lot.

There's so many unknowns.

There's no feasibility study, there's no document I can hang on to, and we know that citizens who love the city may disagree with it what's in the best interest of the city.

And so that's why I'm being very cautious about how we jump on this, also pointing back to the fact that we gave you the opportunity to run it the way you wanted to, and I am just not convinced that going this way, getting rid of that management, that cooperation between our companies, our great corporate partners who rely on the city to make sure we're all rowing in the same direction, that there are people dedicated to making sure that this works, and it's been a very successful economic development driver, in my opinion.

I watched it for months.

That's why I was trying to understand even just this whole thing about I think in our private meeting, we talked about citizens contributing to their own festivals.

That sounds great, but I just I don't know that that's I'm not there yet in my mind that I want to start asking citizens to reach into their pocket and pay 10 bucks to go to event or to support it, support an event.

I'm not I'm not there yet.

I don't know that we've thought this through correctly.

Also on the nonprofit status of a corporate partner.

I mean, if I give you money for a sponsorship, I can write that off.

I so I'm I'm not clear on what is holding back the funds flowing because we're not a nonprofit.

So I just have so many questions.

We're not, you know, the president's gonna get mad at me here for uh getting going on this.

But so let me just switch because I guess we're gonna talk about experience, Carmel.

On the um 60 ads in support of the city plus another 30 to go.

What is the value of that?

Um those 90 ads.

Do you have that?

The monetary value of that?

Or the cost, I should say.

I do not have that number right off the top of my head, but I can get it to you.

Okay.

And if you could, could I also um understand so are there so other than these 90 that you mentioned, are there also ads that promote the city and not a specific event?

Yes, we do the quarterly page um spread that talks about the events, it talks about anything that has happened recently.

Um I think you guys are featured in it occasionally as well if we have something from you to put in there, but there's just it's basically the civic uh quarterly spread that we do.

Yeah, I will tell you.

Um now, this is just my opinion, and I'll get my hand slapped, I'm sure, but we did it once.

I led that effort, and I decided not to do it again because marketing to our own citizens in the current didn't seem like a good use of their tax dollars.

So I don't know that the council has ever been in it other than that first time.

And if anybody's upset about that, I'll take the blame.

That was my idea.

Um, but I so I see us doing those those big quarter pages.

I have no idea, or excuse me, four-page ads, I have no idea what the value of that is, but it it sometimes worries me a little bit what what our mission is in that regard.

So um I'll I'll turn off my time now and we can always come back.

We're gonna do Councillor Minar, then if it's okay, I'm gonna call on myself and then find then counselor Locke and then Councillor Green.

Okay.

Good morning.

Um so I received several emails from constituents over the last since the current wrote an article about experience, Carmel.

And so since I am their voice, I'm gonna ask you their questions if that's okay.

All right.

Sure.

All right.

So starting with um an investment of 1.8 million to save 1.7 million in city funds.

It's unclear why we would start something at an immediate loss when we have so many things being impacted by cuts.

So the question is where are we saving this 1.7 million dollars that because now I know we've asked for that information and we haven't gotten it yet, so I know it probably will take some time.

But maybe answer that first question for me if you don't mind.

Or maybe the mayor can.

Or maybe the mayor can well, I think we have savings across.

I mean, it you are saving 1.7.

It is being pulled out.

There um part of that is 600 that's going to the arts grant, which is why this meeting is after this one, and that would be helping to promote the experience Carmel events, but it's really in the fact that you have eight people that will be moving to another uh organization.

That this first year there's there's savings.

Um I think we probably need to get a better document to you that shows that because it I'm thinking about all the different points, and it's kind of like a little bit here, a little bit there that adds up to that.

But when I was looking at this with our chief of staff, it's basically we have a like find other places to cut, but events, it's either you're going to make this cut in Mac, and if you do, if we have experienced Carmel, everybody has a job for the first year.

And to Matt's point, right?

I would be interim director for that until the board was like, yeah, we're comfortable with this, or no, you know what, you need to find some somebody else.

Or you have cuts, cuts of events, cuts of people to be able to get the budget across.

Yeah.

And I think I think to that point, I think one of the things that uh most what I've been hearing, again, I speak for my constituency.

When they talk about, and I've been honest with you from the meetings we've had, that when we app we the city of Carmel donate, excuse me, I guess, donates the dollars for the salaries that's moving over to experience Carmel.

If we do that, then the following year it's supposed to be a 20% decrease.

So when you come back, the board comes back to us and says, Oh, well, you know, we need an increase in salaries because we've done X, Y, and Z, as we've seen with other uh affiliates that we contract with, they come back and say we need more money.

How are we going to fill that gap if if there's supposed to be a savings in there?

So there'll be a three.

You mentioned there would be a three percent COLA the second year, and a seven percent, what was that seven percent for?

Well, I think that's for next year.

The seven percent was to cover benefits.

Right.

So the cost savings for us, we were told would be moving you from the city payroll to a non-for-profit to save dollars.

There is a savings there because the benefits will be good and it'll be a pretty standard benefit package, but the city has kind of a ridiculously good benefit product.

I mean, I mean, which is real, which to my point, you know, it's it's basically it looks, and and this again, I'm speaking for the constituency.

It looks like you're shuffling money.

That's what that's the overriding thing I'm hearing, is that we're just shuffling money.

So in order for me to get my head around this, I have to understand the cost savings 100%, understand how we're funding uh the arts grants 100%, excuse me.

Not 100%, clearly with the budget we have in front of us, but we have to I have to understand that before I could ever get behind something like that, understanding the cost savings as a whole, and have not having any, and just being I just want to be perfectly honest with you, and I think I have been without having governing documents, without having guarantees, without having the understanding with without any of that built out, it's hard to make a decision and say I'm gonna give you 1.776 million dollars, 1.766 dollars and go on a wing in a prayer.

You know, that's just and and again, that's just how I feel about it.

So thank you for this.

I think it's also important to notice this is an appropriation, and um you know, I felt like feel like if you had we gone down the road of actually doing bylaws and governing documents, then the feedback would have been why didn't you include us?

So we really are at that point, and we will start tomorrow if you want digging into those documents to figure out how to set this up in a collaborative manner.

That's the whole point, and that's what we learned with these other two organizations, and I believe it was Councillor Locke's comments about too much executive overreach in these last two organizations.

I would agree.

So this is set up from the beginning to have a joint management, um, whether it be councils that are counselors appointing counselors on this board, or the counselors appointing others, and of course, appointments from um uh the mayor's office as well, in addition to highly regarded community leaders that are making decisions here in a very, you know, and again, you can bring them back every month to report out on the progress.

Um but this gives you actually more control of this department than you currently have now.

So um if you want to get into the weeds on the documents to move forward, I'll start tomorrow.

That's the point.

This whole the reason why we want to set up the way we do is to have this collaborative conversation.

So thank you.

All right, I'm gonna ask then after that will be Counselor Locke, Counselor uh Green and Counselor Joshi and Counselor Snyder.

But I want to ask a few questions because this is issue of written, you know.

I wrote a long Facebook post about this the other day.

Um the cost savings.

I'm really disappointed that we say, well, we can get that to you later.

So we had an initial budget meeting to start some of this process where we asked about this.

Um we had many counselors had separate meetings.

I think it was like a 90-minute meeting in your office where we said, okay, now let's go over this again.

I asked the question many times how are we saving this money?

We said, well, we're saving money because our insurance costs too much, so we're switching to another insurance.

Oh, I understand some insurance plans are more expensive than others.

1.7 million.

If if that's the the math doesn't add up there, and there's something missing that I feel like we haven't been told.

We've said it how many donations does it need in year one?

Well, this math works even if we don't get a single donation.

Are we getting rid of events or cutting the scale of the events?

No, we're not.

Are we letting go of employees or changing their pay?

No, we're not.

So there has we're being more efficient.

Okay, efficiencies do save money.

Uh I don't 1.7 million.

I it it I think it would be fiscally irresponsible for us to enter into a plan without actually understanding how is it that we're saving money?

And we should have complete cost breakdowns.

I know the mayor says I don't want to go into the weeds.

We want to go into the weeds.

We want those details because this is a huge departure from the long-standing tradition of how Carmel has managed events.

And if we do this, we'll have in three years three different ways that we've decided to do events in the city.

And why in year one did we feel like we needed to fix something that really wasn't broken?

Um a few other concerns.

You mentioned that we'll have more control and more oversight with this nonprofit.

I don't know if that's true.

Why we get two board appointments?

Currently, right now, money can be city council at any point can transfer money in and out of the marketing budget any time in the year.

If you need more money, which you came to us and asked for more money when you had an employee go on uh maternity leave and you needed to bring in outside help, and we approved that.

But we didn't wait till the end of the year.

We didn't have to do that.

Um right now, the only course we would have to make changes would be to go to our two out of was it eight board appointments, uh, and then ask them to please advocate on the city council's behalf.

So I guess we got to really pick somebody good, because if we get that wrong, then we don't have any control.

Um then once a year we get to approve a grant, but this grant will be decreasing every year to the point that the city council no longer has any control over this.

And then, yes, we can ask them many times to come report to us, but that's different than actually having a say, you know.

Um I do think there is an idea here that could work.

And you mentioned how it's happened in other cities.

Um you mentioned that parks departments manage a lot of these events in other cities.

I asked the question, was that explored?

Our parks department uh has a great track record of running things fiscally responsible.

It's already set up, it's already an organization.

If we needed, they most lot of the events are on land that you know in some cases are managed by the parks.

So I wonder, or at least some case, you know, like in Carter Green, like the shared or the midtown plaza, there's some shared responsibilities.

But um, why wasn't that explored as an idea if that's really what we needed to do?

Uh and two, if this is going to happen, which I will not support it happening in this year in this budget, it's just too fast to get this done by mid-October.

But if this idea is something that we want to explore in the future, I would suggest more of a main street organization where business owners have a say in this.

Perhaps they have a membership.

Um, maybe the business owners get to get together and elect one of the board chairs.

Um, I that's something that could maybe work, but it's not something we're gonna get together, I think between now and again.

I think by October 20th, we're supposed to have this budget passed.

So what I've always been told is when you rush, when you act out of a panic, you're gonna make bad decisions.

And I don't want to see us panic about the effects of Senator Rolled Act one and make a decision that really will affect city events for decades to come.

So I'm sorry, I've talked a lot.

Any response before I kind of move on to some other counselors?

I'll make it super quick because I know other counselors want to talk.

I say we're not panicking.

This is something we've been working on.

We don't need to have it done by mid-October.

We have the right through the end of the year to get this done.

So we've got plenty of time if we you know put our heads together and roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Um we I agree with you that some of there's some really good main street models.

We looked at Greenfield, we've looked at Madison, Indiana.

We could put business merchants on this board.

That's the kind of things exactly we need to talk about in starting to figure out what this looks like.

But remember, there's more than just one merchants area in the city of Carmel.

It's not just downtown.

There's Village of West Clay and other areas that we would also want to highlight.

So I think that'd be a great thing to consider.

How long have you been considering this idea?

Well, you know, pitched it out in May with, and I had a, you know, kind of in my head the why of it.

But we're really the last eight weeks have been cranking out how this would work, right?

With the Hamilton County with the Hamilton County Community Foundation as the back office supporter and uh the other board members as well.

Because we were told, I think a little briefly during some of the Chris Kendall market um stuff, like this was an idea, but it was a general thing, and then I think that was it.

That was in May.

Okay.

So did this really start eight weeks ago or I mean, even eight weeks ago, I would have loved to at least been involved in.

Again, this is part of the executive function to bring the budget together and bring our vision together for next year.

And I would agree, this is a different way of handling this.

And there's two main reasons.

One, I'm now more fully engaged, not just the first uh quarter of the first year, mayor.

And second of all, um, I can't stress enough.

The reality has changed with what our finances are, and we have to look at innovative things and new ways of doing things.

We feel if we put this in place for 26, then in 27, when our financials are worse, um, it'll be rolling.

So counselor Locke.

Sure.

So I would love to get back to kind of Mac.

Um we're talking about this nonprofit, very cool.

We've done that a lot for the last year and a half.

Um I would love to figure out if we can hone in on what the core functions the city requires to do the things the city has to do are, and how do we ensure that they stay and remain with the city?

So I hear my words come back at me, and I love that because I say cool stuff.

But the idea that we will have more control over a nonprofit than we do with the city is just objectively wrong.

Um, the goal of the city process is to do the things that are necessary to our citizens that they've elected us to do to put us in positions to do.

Um the MAC department, which to Councilor Wurell's point, started as kind of a comms department and a different events department and became what it became under the last administration through a bunch of different operations was a different thing before you started.

Um we listened last year and we gave you an appropriation to kind of build up the MAC department and put it under the centralized scope so that communications and whether those be executive branch or city branch communications are managed under one spot.

Um I think we saw all kind of the ebbs and flows of that externality where other departments that needed to communicate had to go through a new process and put us in a position that it was a different kind of bureaucracy, which becomes stressful, uh, which is one of my concerns with Mac on the front end.

When you give communications a position at the leadership table, you start to do things for communication purposes.

Whereas if communications is a function of the government, it's a supporting mechanism for all the other things that are core function of the government, it starts to flow in a way that you're doing the right thing.

And I think what we've seen is the expansion, um, which makes sense because you had to build something kind of from nothing of the Mac department to have a bigger footprint over operational efficiencies of the city than it could have or should have had or had before, and we saw some growing pains.

Um that gets to the point of we're leaving four people here, no matter what.

I mean, we're gonna have to come back and figure out a new budget, and I have made a request to see what what are those things, what is the ask that we need to have to leave Mac in the city.

Um but it's at least four people.

And we know those four do things that are so important to the government, and then three that are transferring to other departments.

I would assume those three are transferring no matter what we do with Mac in this budget.

So seven people can do the functions of the city, minus it sounds like events, which is being contemplated to move to this thing.

But I I would love to see a list of what are those core functionalities, what are the things we need to do from a comms perspective for the city, and then how do we fit it into a budget that makes sense for next year?

Um again, we've had conversations just the last week about this, really for the first time since it came up in May, um, and all things about it were in my thought, completely paused after that first initial discussion because of the undertaking of something this complex, um, strategically just disaligned with where we are as a city from a growth perspective from revenue standpoint.

Um it put us in a position where when this came back around, and this was the only ask about Mac, which is the thing that we spent this meeting at last year, really honed in on and focusing on, um, was disenfranchising to me.

Um it puts us in a position where now we're relitigating the concept of what is the purpose of marketing for a city that is growing faster than the revenue it's allowed to collect from the growth that it is seeing.

Um and we're there even worse than we are.

So when we we talk about SEA 1 or changes the State House has done, we are still a city growing faster from an assessed value perspective than we are allowed to grow to collect more revenue from the growth that we are seeing.

So the idea that we are marketing or economically developing for that matter, in any direction other than a direction that gives us more sustainability makes zero sense because we'll have less money for more to provide less services that we'll need more services for.

So I say that.

Um I think we've got a lot of work to do on Mac specifically, regardless of experience Carmel.

I think there's a broader conversation that needs to happen there.

But I would love to see a list of what those essential core functions are, what they look like, what they mean to the city, and why we should appropriate money to this function moving forward.

And if it truly is just four people are necessary to do that with three moving, we need to have a broader conversation about why we are where we are and the savings I think we can achieve there then are how do we make that function more efficient to support the things that are there?

Um the idea of a nonprofit, and I'll stop kind of waxing poetic because my request is just more data as everybody's is, but um the idea that we're setting something up to be a public-private partnership that's going to give more buy-in and control to the people of Carmel based on this, seems like a good thing to say.

Um, but what we spent the last year on as a city about nonprofits was an attempt to create marketing outside, which was promote Carmel, which you guys came in and said, look at this, and oh my gosh, we didn't have enough oversight, let's get rid of it, which I don't think was unreasonable.

Um next mayor could do the same thing to this, and then we're in the same boat we're in.

Um but we also spent then with an affiliated entity of the city, a nonprofit spun up that was independent, um, with government control over that from a board perspective, taking that into a different direction for whatever purposes, right or wrong, unreasonable, reasonable, um, to make decisions about that, and we've disenfranchised the people related to that entity, the citizens of Carmel that went and worked and spun up a nonprofit related to it from an event that they cared about.

So, from a context of how we are working on this and what we're looking at here, if we can break it back down to its component units, what is the purpose of communications for the city?

Is it promotion of city events?

Is it promotion of city things that are happening?

Is it a telling of people that their water needs to be boiled?

How do we put those things in a hierarchy of need, say what the city needs to achieve those outcomes and ensure that we're paying for them through a city process that's there because those things will function and need to function no matter what, just like the live stream of these videos.

Um there are there are then things that are asks or growth initiatives related to other things that we're doing that we can add to that bucket.

But to get to a point that we're gonna have any kind of conversation about what the future of a potential nonprofit related to the operations of our city events looks like, we're gonna have to set that base first.

And I'm I'm not certain that this presentation has advocated for the MAC department at all.

In fact, I think it advocates against the MAC department in an image for a nonprofit that doesn't exist yet, for work that hasn't been done, but it's been done to the point that people are having conversations with community foundations and other people in other places, to the point that it seems as though the labor of our MAC department for at least eight weeks, it sounds like has been focused on doing something that is ancillary to their actual labor, uh, which means maybe it's too broad to begin with, um, or we're not allocating those 37 and a half hours to the right things.

So I I share that just contextually.

I would love to know what do we need Mac to do, why do we need to do it before we start to get too agile and move in a direction where we're saying that it shouldn't happen.

Um the idea of comms going back to a position where maybe there's a comms of manager in the mayor's office managed by the chief of staff, which is a new role as well, um, for those things that are essential, you know, promotion of the promotion function may be a better state too.

So uh maybe it is a failed experiment that Mac is not the right setup, but I don't think that it is.

I would just love to know why we should be appropriating money to it as opposed to kind of talking about this side quest as the main quest for this department.

All right.

Um Councillor Green, then Council Josh, and then Councillor Snyder.

Um, yeah, the uh we're we're in this predicament, you know, as we keep restating, because uh Senate enroll act uh won, you know, and the all the budget restraints.

And as a mayor you said, we're not nowhere near panicking at all.

Um, you know, but this year's this budget year is important because it sets a stage for next year that we definitely have to make more cuts and and kind of figure things out.

So I really appreciate kind of the creative way that you know you you're trying to kind of set the stage for next year in the really tough budget discussions because ultimately this council's got to cut somewhere, maybe not so much this year, but definitely next year.

You know, so having those discussions and it and it's really tough as a council because we want to provide all the services, you know, and obviously you can tell no one's really talking about cutting other than Mac, um, or at least so far yet.

So um so I appreciate this number, slide 21.

Uh, the 4.2 million, and we need to know more details because everything's kind of hitting us really fast on this nonprofit, you know, but just kind of ballpark.

So 4.2 million in in last year's budget.

Uh you're asking for 3.4 million less, but 1.7 um is going towards our 1.8 would be the grant.

So kind of ballpark, you know, you're asking for about 1.7 less.

You know, and we don't know the complete details, so 1.7 less in savings, maybe as a ballpark, but again, we still need to see those savings.

Um, something counselor Locke asked, um, the role of Mac, you know, something we're still kind of trying to figure out.

Because there's definitely what, 47 events.

You know, we want those 47 events for economic development.

Um I assume Mac's done the bulk of work for those 47 events.

So just because we suddenly go, or you're asking to go to four people versus whatever it's stationary or 13 people, whatever it is today, in the end, we're still collectively, whether it's the nonprofit or the MAC department, still going to be providing those kind of services to market the 47.

So it's not as if I don't think we're expecting to just go down to four and have those four individuals be able to market 47 in the end.

If that's all that's there, um those 47 events are gonna have to be dramatically cut because you're not going to have the manning to specifically do that.

The issue I have, and and in some agreement with some of the other counselors is it's really fast.

We're setting up a nonprofit.

There's lots of questions historically that we've had with the affiliated review committee on the governance of the nonprofits, the structure of the nonprofits, the control of the nonprofits, you know, and I'm glad Councilor Locke, you know, you know, uh brought it up that the former structure of nonprofits, there was a lack of oversight.

You know, even with counselors kind of participating directly or indirectly, there was still a lack of oversight of those nonprofits.

So maybe a nonprofit isn't the proper structure.

And if it is going to be the proper structure, how do we provide that?

It's just not reporting, but we're going to get the right governance structure and control over the you know, over this nonprofit, because as counselor locks said, the more you become more a nonprofit, the less control you have over it.

And I understand in the slides you had three mayor appointees and three city councilor appointees, you know, which might provide that structure, but it's something we're gonna have to kind of really dive into in this uh specific um uh you know, when we start getting into the details of the nonprofit that who's gonna have control.

So my question is if this nonprofit isn't started, and you have this budget request, kind of what's what's the alternative?

Um how are we gonna provide those 47?

You know, um are we just gonna have to cut or you know, which will ultimately hurt the economic development piece.

So what's the alternative of not creating this experience, Carmel?

We don't have an alternative at this time.

This is what you think is the best thing moving forward.

So if I can also just respond from a financial perspective, um, you know, there's been some uh points made about you know this number reduced compared to last year, this reduced.

We're going about this a different way.

Um the the deputy mayor position in the in the mayor's office is an example.

I mean, we've had uh the revenue um for this year for 27 was forecasted to be one for 147 million.

Um council passed a budget that I think was 143.6 uh last fall.

Um slightly less than the available revenue.

Again, 143.6.

Our proposed budget totals 143.3.

It's 300,000 less than what was appropriated last year because that's all that's available from a general fund standpoint for for next year.

So um you know we know we have some costs that have to go up in terms of uh uh uh filling vacancies at the fire department or or uh uh cost of the matrix, other cost increases.

Um so we've you know we've had to go through and and uh make some cuts to some departments, figure out ways to do more things uh more efficiently, cut back on on you know uh employee travel, things like that, just to make this this budget work.

And I know some of these things um are are uh whether they're uh not yet completely understood or or unpopular, it's just man, how how do we work together to uh there's only so much money to go around and how do we how do we write a budget that fits within the available revenues?

And Zach, you said 143 million.

Um is that total revenue though, because we've had that discussion on is that just general fund revenue or is that total revenue we have for a budget?

Yeah, um that that's a general fund number that I'm citing.

Counts then counselor Snyder?

And then counts.

So I just want to go back to the concept of a marketing and communications department and also ask you said something earlier, Kelly, um, about the fact that you felt that when you started with this new structure, that you actually saved money and that you actually had efficiencies.

And if that is so, then to me that rang in my ears as this is working for what we needed to do if we actually saved money in the department.

So I want to hear more about that because I don't I haven't heard anything.

I don't know if other counselors have, maybe I missed it.

Um, but I I want to hear about those numbers because if those numbers are adding up to a better, more efficient, more effective department, then why are we looking at this?

That is kind of just from what you said.

I can pull um per event like you and I had chatted about before and look at our costs at our events and then see where we have save money in those events, or at that point in time where we didn't need to necessarily save money, we're but were able to add more to an event to um but there was the savings that was there.

I mean, I can pull that.

And our all I mean, I know we said we have 47 events, but I thought some of that conversation also in efficiency is about which events, which events are economic drivers, good development opportunities for the city, and which maybe have underperformed, and how do we evaluate that as potential savings?

Because yes, I agree we have a certain amount of money we have to work with, but I think there's a different way to structure maybe that conversation.

So I'm just curious about those issues, if if you could help me understand that.

Yeah, we're looking at the ROI of an event and why it's successful or not successful, and that would be attendance records.

It would be the sentiment that it has on um social media if it's gone well or not.

And then there's also just um if we fit into the um budget for it.

So the cost of the event versus the you know the perceived returned revenue to the city, just like we do with everything else, the arts, other things where we say this is an economic driver for our city.

So we have not done a study like that on our events.

The only one that I know of that has been done is the one on Chris Kindle Market.

Counselor Snyder, then Councilor Warrell, and then if you have any questions, let me know.

Otherwise, I do want to get to the rest of the arts support and operations.

Thank you.

Um procedural things.

One thing, uh one concern I might have.

One is you talk about access to dedicated funds and you reference the ice rink.

Once this non-for-profit would have those, then like I mean, I'm it that ice rink has a lot of problems.

So are you gonna inherit the problems as well?

Or if it wouldn't need to be relocated somewhere that's not a drain on our infrastructure, like is that a now would that be a new board situation?

And if so, the dollars in the fund that you would want access to I'm just using that as an example of do we lose control over things and then we lose the council loses control and even the administration loses control over some like critical decision-making opportunities because eventually, and I've seen it happen to nearly every non-for-profit, the biggest donors get the board seats.

That's just a fact of life.

Um then I have concerns we keep bringing up Diwali for some reason as an example, but what's to say then that good events that start making money, like a Diwali, which really the organizers of that event, I have no doubt in my mind with an approval from DPW in some coordination with the Street Department, don't need anything else other than a Facebook post.

Um then the city doesn't take over those events because they see dollars.

Uh not the city, the not for profit, excuse me, because they start seeing dollars and they're running short on donations for whatever reason.

Um there's a couple of those, but I've I've said it, and I just want to make sure I'm crystal clear.

Right now, we have a budget for a MAC department with four people.

And the mayor just said that's it.

So I don't see us funding I I I based on what I'm hearing.

I don't see us doing this grant moving allocating the money, appropriating the money, anything with the money, and you're gonna have a MAC department with four people in your unemploying yourself.

Like I just want to make sure that's crystal clear.

Without an alternative budget, that's all we can do.

And then I looked online and because I wanted to see, hey, have you guys actually filed anything?

Well, no, you haven't.

Like you didn't even reserve the experience carmel name.

I did just now, which I obviously will give to you, but I went through the process.

So like you if it was this meaningful, like we've done nothing.

So again, I don't want to take away, I think it just needs everything.

I uh my opinions I think are pretty clear, so there's no reason to belabor the point.

But this year, I don't see a path forward, and you've got a budget that unemploys yourself.

Just that's all I'm just want to make sure we're all transparent about that.

Counselor Warral, and then um after that, although I told him please rest counselor Taylor would like to ask a question.

All right, thank you, Mr.

President.

Okay, so I just want to drill down, Zach.

Um so I I've been trying to do some homework with our uh financial advisors.

So when we look at total revenue for the city next year versus this year, is there a three do we get three percent more revenue next year versus this year?

You're talking about for all funds, not just general funds.

Let's just talk about revenue.

Yeah.

Uh because I I didn't clarify that, but that's what they were telling me.

So I guess you could answer GF if you want to, but um, yeah, I I would say you know, general fund is is flat.

There's a little bit of noise.

Uh when I say flat, somebody could say, well, the the food and beverage tax, how how that has worked, you could you could probably spend that a little bit different.

No, it's it's not flat, it's down a little bit.

Or no, it's not flat, it's it's slightly up.

In my mind, once you take out the noise of the changes to the food and beverage tax.

Our overall budget uh and available revenue from 25 to 26 is is negative.

Okay, now I'm not talking budget.

I just want to know revenue.

Yeah, our fundamental.

And and I just want to be really clear.

Um, so that you know, I want to be transparent to the taxpayers, I want to deal with reality, I want to understand in my mind, having done this for a few years, there's a big difference to what we thought we were gonna get versus what we get.

So that's you know, I that's always in my mind kind of not fair to the taxpayers.

We thought we were gonna get 10 million dollars more than we did.

So I'm just asking, let's start with yes or no.

Yep.

Are we receiving three percent more revenue next year than this year?

From a general fund standpoint, no.

Okay.

Uh all other funds, I it it would be hard to s give you a like a real yes or no answer because there's there's some things like okay, we we will have we we have budget as if we'll get the new revenue from the wheel tax and surtax next year.

You know, how how do we score that in terms of it uh towards like the three percent number?

Um we we have we've assumed that there'll be a 2024 25 uh lease rental bond.

We put an appropriation in to make those payments.

Uh that revenue technically you know isn't here yet.

So I it it's it's hard for me to give a uh a meaningful is the overall revenue up three percent.

But if I just look at the general fund budget, no, it's it it it is flat to down, depending upon how you uh look at those numbers.

Okay.

So I've got to square that with our financial advisor because that that's a concern to me that we have disagreement.

So and you haven't heard that before?

No.

Okay, thank you.

And then Kelly, just real quick in my last bit of time here.

Um in my when I was asking questions, you said you've saved money uh from the I'll call it the old system versus the new system.

Is that true?

And then Dr.

Joshi kind of expanded on that.

But when you looked at cost per event, you you save money, is that yes or no?

I would say yes.

I need a full um I will say like not every event, because some costs went up.

I think ice went up.

So we did not you know save money on Festival of Ice, but we have where it was not increased due to costs because a certain particular thing like ice went up, we saved money.

Yes.

Yeah, so where I'm going um is uh and I could see how you might save money cost per event, but are you factoring into the fact that we now have uh 16 employees uh and those personnel costs and how employee costs to the city go up exponentially as we're all dealing with right now.

So are you applying the fact that we've hired six more people or whatever the number is?

Full-time videographer, full-time channel, full-time event planners, all that kind of stuff.

Are you is that going into your analysis?

I think with that we're relatively flat.

Okay.

So if I can get you very specific numbers, yes, I I think so.

Let's let's look at let's be fair, because if we're reducing contract costs, I get that.

But if we've got two employees showing up to an event, they're each making whatever that number is, then I think to be fair, we've got to look at that.

Council War, I think also this is why we're asking for an EAP, right?

To have better numbers from our and I'm sorry, ERP uh better numbers for from our financials.

If you recall, we've discussed both last year's budget and through the ARC.

We don't necessarily have the line item detail necessary to track every single event by hour.

So she's got some generic numbers, but we don't have that ability to do that.

Okay, but I'm just whatever stats she does have, if I've got two employees going to the event.

She can absolutely share all the time.

I'm just saying, just remember we've had those conversations that we need some more robust abilities to track these.

Okay, fair.

Okay.

Which is uh think next up is counselor Taylor, and then we can get the counselor Minarin Lock.

And Jessica, you got him.

Counselor Taylor, if you're watching can hear us, you can go ahead and ask your question.

Thank you, President Austin.

I just wanted to uh make a a couple comments and maybe direct some people to some best practices used across the state of Indiana.

There's actually a nationally accredited model and an Indiana accredited model for what is called a main street organization.

These organizations typically handle the events and the events and uh organization related to main street event activities, such as what we're talking about today.

There's actually an accreditation process to where you can receive accreditation through the State of Indiana OCRA uh department and also a nationally accredited model uh to deliver these type of events and programming.

Um I would just direct you know, I mentioned this to the mayor, direct this to the council to other counselors.

This opens up also to national and state level grants um for a main street organization.

So I just wanted to mention that.

Um but in effect, it's uh what's being proposed today is different than a main street organization, but maybe already a uh proven accredited model, maybe a hybrid of what's being proposed today that could be effective.

Um I do share, I did tell the mayor and others I do share concerns about certain strategic marketing um going to an outside organization, but related to uh specifically events.

There's an accredited model to it that we don't have to we don't have to recreate a wheel.

Um that creates a number of opportunities for the city of Carmel if we went down that path.

That's all I had to say.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Um Councilman Arcounstr, do you?

Councilor Lochland, Councilman R.

Yep, and this is uh another broad to apply to kind of all the conversations we're having.

One of the things that's going on here too is that the budgeting presented is so thin, razor thin.

We talked about this at the kind of initial hearing too.

So part of the process as we go through these individual discussions are how do we find that float?

Obviously, we are very capable of cutting the budget ourselves, and we'll likely have some of that that comes back for discussion as we move forward.

But like the idea of honing in on what is the actual need specifically for your department.

Like I I hear you both that there is no other option right now.

There needs to be.

Um, or at least a story of why there is no other option based on the actual financial reality and the structure of what the city needs from a marketing department and the event side too.

Um I combine them because we combine them.

I see them as the same thing.

Um but I do want to be clear like the question of the above and below line revenue on just general fund.

We talk about general fund a lot here because that's kind of the operational money of the executive branch.

Um a lot of the other revenue goes to that stuff too, streets and other things.

But as an example, the food and beverage tax, which was allocated to the general fund in the past, is now allocated to its own individual fund this year, which is seven and a half million dollars into next year's budget.

Um to we're using four million of it in this proposed budget to buy down leases to save other money.

So uh to Councillor Warrell's point, there is more money that is being appropriated in this budget that's taking care of some of these needs.

And I say that because we can get very creative.

If we focus just on the general fund and what it's doing, it does appear to be down.

But if we take into account the other funds that we've used in the past to support those initiatives and things like the wheel tax that are coming in that are gonna draw down a need for an appropriation from the general fund to pay for the road repaving and the things that are it's going to, uh we do have a more creative approach.

So I I say that is we're looking at this year and then next year with the changes if there's not changes legislatively at the state level to give us more like budgetary options.

We're gonna have less revenue next year.

Um not we can get rid of the graph of what it would have been before the SEA one next year because we'll be so beyond it, it doesn't exist.

If we don't do it, it doesn't exist, it never existed.

Um but we're gonna need to find some float anyway.

So the idea of going into a time of savings and the idea of paying down capital leases that make sense to pay down is a wonderful fiscally responsible thing to do.

Um but the idea of having more than a thousand dollar margin in an appropriation coming from the executive branch now uh for what we need to be doing moving forward, I think is going to be important.

Um and I say that again like let's let's get creative.

Let's look at those things that are stretch goals that are asks um that are uh potentially money-saving nonprofits in the future.

Like we don't know that for certain.

In fact, we probably know that it's gonna need more.

Um it's gonna take more to do that, and when you get into the space of that external thing now, having to make sure it's doing okay, um, you're gonna see different needs and different requirements there that put us in a different position.

So I just I don't want to hear again that there's not a way because this whole budget is mutable.

We can change just about everything in it if we wanted to from here until the end of this process to put us in the best position to do the things we have to do as a city for our constituents moving forward.

Councillor Minar.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Okay, so just I just want to kind of back up just one last time and just kind of reiterate some of the comments that I've made.

And one of the things I want to tell you is that I did pull data from the budget from your budget, um, the contractors that we had used from 24, actually 22, 23, 24, and 25.

So I want to give you some credit to say that you you did reduce contractor obligations that money spent through that.

So I want to give you kudos for that.

So I guess when we go back to that purpose of efficiencies for purposes of efficiencies, we may have saved, I think 400 and around 405,000 in contractual obligations to June of this year of 2025.

We don't know what that I don't know what that final dollar amount will be, but it's likely a lot less than what we're we're looking at now.

But at any rate, what I'm saying to you is that when we look at efficiencies and we're looking at the budget as a whole, and when we're moving forward, where did that cost savings really help us?

And what are the efficiencies that came from that to all of their points?

Where are we going with this?

So I mean, it it was a data that I could pull right off.

Could you say that number again?

So in 2024, we paid 446,181 dollars and thirty-five cents.

Is that actual or is that the proposed budget?

No, no, that's what was amount paid in 2024.

Okay.

And then this up to June of, and I've I forwarded all this information to all of you.

Um in June of 2025, up to June of 2025, we've paid 40,000 $560.

Um I'm going to make one last comment, and if that's okay, and then we can get to the rest of the arts support and budgets.

Um I have told people at the beginning of this meeting, we have another meeting scheduled on the 23rd, and if we need extra meetings scheduled, I will do that for the council.

So we're not trying to stifle discussion.

Um I I do appreciate your points, Councilman R, that we've saved money on contractual obligations, but at the same time, um payroll personnel costs for the marketing department increased by something like 70, 78 percent from before Mayor Fickham took office into year one.

And also keep in mind under before Mayor Finkham took office, it was uh the community relations and economic development department, which was split into two different departments.

Um if you consider that there's a doubling of personnel cost from before office to that.

So, yes, we did save some money on some contractual obligations, but we took more of it in-house, and as we mentioned, our insurance benefits.

Having it as a city employee does allow maybe some more um control, but doesn't doesn't necessarily save us money.

Um Councillor Snyder's point, we talked about what do we do if this is an idea that the council doesn't want to proceed with?

Well, with council is limited in our options.

I want to set this up for our entire budget.

The council cannot increase any item in the mayor's budget.

We can ask her to, and we're gonna get into some of the arts money here.

We cannot increase her budget.

We can cut, we can decrease, we can unappropriate, and unappropriate means the money is still collected but kept in the general fund, and then later can be appropriated with the city council approval, but we cannot increase the items.

So we are limited in our options.

We can um simply cut the arts grant from the the budget if we don't want to see this created.

We can unappropriate it, which means it sits in the general fund, and later the council could take an action to move that money somewhere once a detailed plan is presented to us.

Or if we don't have votes to do one, either of those, I mean I would be prepared to.

I don't know.

I I can't support this budget within with this in there.

Um, but I think we will solve something so we don't have to vote down the entire budget.

Um other last comments or thoughts, Councillor Minard.

Yeah, thank you.

I want my the reason I brought that up to you, Adam, was so that you could see what the cost was for savings versus what we were paying in payroll and where that cost saving is.

That's thank you.

Thank you for bringing it up.

We're already a little behind schedule, so we the arts this I want to move the arts support and operations budget minus experience carmel, if that's okay.

We can you know we can still show in the line items, but we'll just keep the discussion to the other areas of that.

And that will that uh Zach, are you the one presenting here?

I am so Kirsten's uh passing out this this packet.

Um again, this this uh line in the budget was previously referred to as building operations, and and last year we we tried to get it more um it was unclear kind of which buildings we were talking about, and I think there were also just some operational costs there.

So we really tried to define it as more of you know it's it's it's the art support.

It's the it's the grants, the art grants, it's the um uh the management fee to uh the Center for Performing Arts, it's the other expenses uh that we reimburse the center for for maintaining the the palladium as well as uh REI for the James building.

Um so there's a lot of things in this budget that that frankly just don't fit anywhere else.

So we we've combined them in this department.

So again, art support and operations is is used to fund the operational and facility cost of the palladium, uh, the center uh support the art supports for the arts grants as well as the James building.

Uh we as we've discussed, we're also including the uh almost 1.8 million grant for experienced Carmel in this budget as well.

And again, uh you guys are aware of the purpose of this, but to to ensure that the key cultural facilities and events remained safe, functional, well maintained, uh supporting both public access and the needs of the staff involved in Carmel's vibrant arts community.

Um so this year we uh made some investments uh the uh Tarkington as well as the the palladium.

Uh there was a major lighting upgrade project uh uh that was implemented again.

The the palladium was constructed, I think in uh was opened in in 2010.

Um my my kind of past experience in uh facilities management tells me that you know once you get uh an asset to 10, 15, 20 years, a lot of those original uh components of that asset are going to start to fail.

And that's what we're seeing now is that lighting systems, microphone systems, uh even seating, things like that.

They're they're nearing the end of their useful life, or they're at their end of their useful life and failing, and and we're replacing those.

Um again that we we replaced uh consoles and infrastructure as far as this lighting project, uh the the fixtures themselves, and uh the third phase of it we we funded for next year, but we could not afford to pay cash for for this component, and so we're capital leasing the the third phase of the lighting project for the Tarkington.

Um the the uh what's referred to as the management fee for the Center for Performing Arts uh just historically uh I think that started off at 2.5 million in 2017, that was reduced to 2.25 million, and uh our budget proposes reducing that by another 100,000 to 2.15 uh again as the management fee for the center for performing arts.

Uh the overall arts grants we have in at 1.25.

I believe we have a little bit of money left over from this year.

Uh uh this year's appropriation as well.

Um but this is the dollar amount to be to be uh distributed out uh as far as the art screenets go.

Okay, then contracted services, and in a minute I've got a pie chart that I think uh adds more clarity to this.

Uh but from a contract service standpoint, we've budgeted 3.1 million for next year.

Uh that's the various needs that we we reimburse the the center for every year.

Uh things like uh we pay for part of the security cost, we pay for the maintenance cost, we pay for utilities.

There's a lot of expenses uh for the operations of that building, uh which is our asset that that we pay for.

And and most of those are again they're they're paid for by the center first, and then on roughly a monthly basis, they invoice us and we we reimburse them.

Uh in total, uh they had requested and uh and we every year, and and it happens a few times a year, we sit down and look at the kind of the the capital needs the the investments that uh that the center needs uh for failing components, if you will.

Uh this year with budget challenges, uh they came with a list and we kind of said, okay, what what has to be done in 26 versus yeah, this we we agree that this needs to be done, but we just can't afford it in 26.

Maybe it's a 27 or 28 project.

We eventually got that list down to about uh $700,000 worth of projects that they need, and that's in comparison to the approximately one million that we cash funded in the current year for the lighting project.

The 700,000 for next year, though, we ultimately uh uh have broken in and am I saying the right number at 700,000?

For the let me come back to whether that's the right number.

In my head I had a 700,000 figure, but it but we could not afford to pay cash for those projects for next year.

So we've we've uh uh these are all uh things that we can use a capital lease for uh you know, by by distributing the cost over five years, uh we're covering like the at least the minimal uh useful life.

Uh but again we we just couldn't afford to cash fund some of these things like we did last year, uh so we've reduced it to to paying for it but through a capital lease.

Uh utility costs uh run um about 759,000.

We've budgeted that for for next year.

And then again, I've got two pie charts here that explain how the uh the dollars have been allocated for both uh 25 as well as 26.

Um happy to go through this, but again, you you see where uh there's an energy center payment uh made by the by the city every year to CRC.

Uh I think we're probably ready for questions.

Okay, so like to go first.

Counselor Schneider.

Anyone point to me if you want to be next.

Okay, Councilman.

I'm gonna try to mix up the order, but you gotta point to me if you want to get in there.

So thank you.

Um couple questions, a couple I'll start with my first question is the lighting, for instance, like why wasn't that part of the reimbursables?

Like, why would that be segregated out?

I mean, it seems like a gen, it seems like it would be a reimbursable for capital improvement.

Yeah, um counselor, I think as you're aware uh there's there's been kind of multiple agreements in place between the city, CRC, and the center.

Um I don't think uh up until this summer there had been a specific agreement in place regarding how uh some of these things uh would be handled for the other theaters and things.

So so for the Tarkington uh that did not fit into the normal reimbursement agreement, which was palladium center specific.

Uh so we had to enter it into basically a new type of agreement for how we're going to uh uh district, whether it's grant dollars or or covering expenses, but but for the the Tarkington so that's why it was handled outside of that for the management fee, which is a reduction of a hundred thousand dollars, like maybe that's what it is, but I haven't heard anything from the center that says, yeah, we had that conversation, and we think that's where the fee should be.

And the overarching question I have, and you you just referenced it is we do have all of these agreements that are ill-defined, and there's no fault of this administration or anybody here, they're just ill-defined, poorly written contracts, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around.

So, in lieu of words on paper, we have historical data, we have what we've been doing, we have uh we have kind of our word.

Um to me, a better approach might be before we start making cuts getting the legal team and everybody's legal teams together because I've there are other, and I'm I won't bring it up now, but I've found at least three different conflicts with various contracts for that general geographic area.

So probably need to get together and agree on contracts that are more legally binding because it seems to me at this point anybody could get into any sort of drawn-out, litigious nonsense.

And I'm not saying any entity involved here would do that because I think everybody has the primary love for the city in mind, but it could be administrations change, directors change, organizations change.

So I'm not in love with and would not advocate or probably support the removal of that $100,000 only because I don't know what it means.

It's just like, oh hey, here you go.

Um then finally, and I will not I will spare everybody the importance of the arts spiel.

But I I have a little more understanding because I've had conversations with the mayor about what was spent this year and what is being proposed this year.

But I I brought this up last year, and you know, one thing I think is important is we look at this as an asset.

Now I've talked about the need for the palladium in the center to seek more revenue.

I and I think we should.

I think it'd be silly if we didn't try.

But it's still a community asset, and it's really in my experience, one of the last bastions of true performances that haven't been sold out because and I I can look at Gregory Hancock and his dance is pure dance.

It's not been commercialized just for sales.

There's no blood and gore to get people in the seats.

There's and I think that's something we should be very proud of.

That while it may not draw the majority of the people, it is carrying on several thousand years since the Greeks of the pureness of art.

And I struggle with having to commercialize it to the point where it loses what it was supposed to be.

So in that, I I want there's got to be a better way.

If it if we've always said, or we've historically said one percent of the budget funds the arts.

And last year, I recall saying, I think some and maybe somebody else did as well that they're on a different fiscal cycle.

They need to be made aware that they're gonna be cut before their fiscal year ends, because they've already done their budgets.

And now here we are undoing their budgets without a warning.

Because we didn't have one.

But now we're in a position where that dollar line looks short, and I would like clarification that it's not really short in the commitment that you're bringing it up based on unspent dollars, this is my understanding, to one percent of the budget.

Am I uh in my understanding that clearly if somebody could answer that?

Not exactly.

Okay.

So thank you for asking.

Uh the arts grants line item in two years ago was I think 1.27 million spent on it.

Last year was 1.35.

Give or take a some dollars there.

This year proposing 1.25, so slightly less.

But we're gonna prioritize our resident companies for funding, as we should.

Because I believe we had 25 off the top of my head, different entities either apply or receive grants.

So uh I don't believe our resident companies are gonna be hurt.

I love the prioritization of the resident companies, and we and I know I have a concise list of that without going through where we wrote checks.

Do we have an easily accessible list of all the non who would be who would fall after that?

Or do I just need to look it up?

I mean it's okay.

A quick Google search will find it because the current report the whole list, um, but we can get it to you.

No, it's fine.

I'll find it.

Council Bernard.

Mayor Finkham, I'm really grateful to hear you say what you said about that you're gonna prioritize our resident companies.

That's that brings me a lot of peace, especially given our budget constraints.

So with that said, I heard Zach say we had left all leftover dollars not appropriated for the 25 budget.

Um for the ants arts, excuse me, not the ants grants, the arts grants.

Um if if we didn't have those appropriations or unappropriated money in the bank, would we have had to cut further on our arts budget?

Meaning, would we have had to drop our support even more?

Does that make sense to you?

Zach, we're not carrying over those dollars.

I thought I heard the budget, correct?

And just to clarify, that those are appropriated.

Uh we we just did not obligate all of those dollars this year.

So we had 5.2 million dollars of underspend this year, and so that's part of the underspend.

And if you recall the underspend is going to pay for the capital leases that are helping pay off debt now to help for future years.

Okay.

Would you correct anything I just said?

Yeah, I um we've not used any of the dollars in the arts it in this fund to pay off any capital leases.

It was uh correct.

So just to clarify, so we didn't we the council, you know, last year and previous years, you know, appropriate a certain amount of money to go into the arts grants, not all that money was spent on the arts, and will be spent on something else instead.

Not on something else.

Uh just although it's the general fund, which didn't get spent on something else.

Well no, it in terms of not all the dollars that were appropriated by council in 25 were matched to a grant and distributed.

There's some they weren't spent on the arts.

Yeah, and are on track to revert back to the general fund at the end of the year.

And the that was my question.

I was yeah, yeah, that was let me clarify it's executive's decision and authority to underspend any budget that's appropriated, correct?

And so we did that across the board to try to get us to austerity measures to make sure we have returning dollars.

So no, I understand.

I mean, uh I know that we've built our city a lot of our economic development based on the arts, and it's not just because oh, it's fun, it's fun to go to a show.

It's it's not just about that, it's because it is a revenue generator for our city.

I mean, there are multiple studies.

Um I just looked up one, but you can look at this that for every dollar spent on the arts in the community, the one that I just put out, 49 dollars are then created for local businesses for tax dollars.

So the less we spend on the arts, the less we're gonna have that ripple effect, which has been part of our economic development strategy.

So I understand we're trying to save money.

If you're running a business, the last thing you cut is things that generate revenue for your community, because right now we're talking about cuts, cuts, cuts.

We also need to be talking about well, how do we grow our tax base?

How do we grow our economy?

And for more than a decade, we've said that arts was a way to do that.

So I just want to kind of point that out that the 200,000 dollars, if they are for local companies that are things that are, and those are going away, and as sense, not only is it a smaller pie, but we didn't even give out all the pieces of the pie last year, then less money is going to the arts, which could mean less ripple effect when it comes to our community.

Consider that's a fantastic conversation that would have been really helpful at the state legislature earlier this year.

But the reality is we have a budget where there's lots and lots of mouths to feed, and we are trying to make sure that the effect is as minimal as possible for all the departments.

And um I can't look at our departments like police and fire and streets and DOCS and on and on and on and say, you know, take a haircut for all that you requested and not say that to you know have that this major arts line, this grant fund line as well.

But I know it's a minimal amount that we're we're we're asking a tiny reduction here that we're trying to apply across the whole thing.

But I don't want this conversation, this budget to be one department versus another, and us versus them mindset.

And that's it wasn't until you brought up the arts versus everybody else, ms.

Mr.

Pennsylvania.

I didn't mention a single department.

I mentioned the impact that the arts has on generating revenue for our city.

I didn't say, and that's why we should cut this other department.

But I never said that.

But that's the effect.

We don't have extra, we don't, as you saw, $1,300.

So every dollar we take from we add to something else, we're taking from somebody else.

That's the reality.

Okay.

Well, we have had some departments that are increasing their budget this year, and we'll get to those departments.

Correct, they are increasing, usually because of labor or again, the fact that we've got more money for MVH.

Um, but it's not necessarily everything they wanted either.

If you remember our budget requests came in about 15 million, 16 million above what we had available for revenue.

So we have been working with our departments for months, two months trying to win away what they they believe as experts, the best thing, best way to serve our community, just like the arts is the best way to grow the arts programs or you know, for increasing uh appropriations, but we have to make our decisions all across the board.

Councillor Locke.

Yeah, and I just want to kind of hone in there too.

Like you guys made austerity decisions as an executive branch with the budget we appropriated on the things that we strategically appropriated at specific numbers.

Um this gets to the broader conversation we're having about how do we shape this budget.

Um, because if you underspend last year when we did have the money that were this year, 2025 budget on the under on the grant money that we appropriated for that purpose for this year, then you made the executive decision to underfund the grants or the arts this year.

Um so as we're going into next year and we're trying to be as open and and figure this out together as possible.

Um if we put a number at a point, obviously you do have the authority to administer the government that we appropriate to you.

Um, but how do we have assurances that you're going to appropriate it or use it at that right level?

This goes across all of it.

I I know we've had conversations about personnel and how we're interacting with them and the idea of the take-home cars like that comes up today, so we can reiterate these things that are happening so we can figure out a path forward on them.

Um it needs to be collaborative for there to be that control.

Um but like for grants, this is not a city department, it never was, it was under the regul the business operations, whatever that weird line item title on purpose because it's not a department of the city, it's a funding mechanism for an external thing that we are funding.

Um to go through that, like with the concept that we've got 1776 in the budget for a new nonprofit that's gonna fund that.

Really, it's just the personnel and some of those extra expenses, so that's fully out the door, but then we're not gonna spend the arts money in a year to make austerity measures for the next year and then argue about what that number should be for the next year, is just a wild conversation here.

So I hear kind of that back and forth and that this became an issue because Adam brought it up on this issue, but like we're we're trying to figure out how to write a budget that allows us to help administer a government that this constituents want.

Um and just figuring out how we ensure that that is happening.

Um maybe there are more checkups we need with the arts commission, um, who I don't think have ever come before us with the council.

Um maybe there are ways for us to kind of do those things to ensure that money goes to the right thing.

But even the conversation about what that number is, we minimized it.

It was 1.47 last year, is what we appropriated because it was one percent of the amount of revenue that we had all originally appropriated, and then we missed at the end when we cut 3 million to kind of give us more flow to shrink that to 1.43.

Um that was intentional because it was based on that promise to the community that we were going to invest 1% of the general fund revenue in the arts.

So to then not spend it from an executive branch perspective, even though it was appropriate, it becomes a secondary concern now we have that how do we ensure that what we are asking for or what we're setting up to be administered is being administered by the executive branch.

One of the things I ran on was fiscal responsibility, and I felt it was fiscally responsible to underspend our budget this year in order to prepare for what's coming ahead.

So I'm not going to apologize for the fact that we able to able to spend less money this year to run the government.

And I think that's the right- I know it's the right thing to do, and we may have to do it again next year, but it'll be so much tighter.

You mentioned one of the ways.

But the idea that we have been presented a budget that has a thousand dollars of float without any of that austerity built into this going into a next year where it's going to be tighter, I think flies directly in the face of that comment that we're being fiscally responsible with where we are with this budget.

I I hear you, and I've seen it, and I have gotten Facebook posts about it from the city.

Like I I think why we are here is to do that together.

The purpose of these two bodies and the purpose of this back and forth is to do that.

Um it's not combative, it has no necessity.

We're just trying to get the ideas and the concepts in place so that we can help you build a budget that works for the city.

So that I'm gonna leave it at that.

Um but but it's just a it's a wild position to be asking for information and being told that, well, if we can't have that, it's not gonna work.

So would love for all of us to think about how do we get to a point where we've got the information we need to ensure that we're appropriating the money to the city the way we should be.

If if I can, counsel, can I clarify one thing?

There's one piece that I I I should have mentioned during this presentation and neglected to this budget would have been pro approximately another million higher in terms of our ongoing costs for maintaining the energy center.

Um but given that the general fund could not afford that, just there was not enough revenue to cover that.

That's one of a couple of expenses that we've moved to the uh food and beverage tax uh to to be funded out of that for next year.

Happy to get more details, but just wanted to to note that that would have been an expense here, but just not available dollars to to fund from the general fund.

Counselor Joshi, Councillor Snyder, and then Councillor Taylor has a virtual question.

So again, uh 15% reduction in the arts grants um, and it was something that we prioritized as a council.

So just want to make sure that people understand that that is the reduction we're looking at when we look at percentage reductions in other um departments as well and how that compares.

Um the palladium James uh building operations has not changed one dollar.

Can you explain why there's been no change in that?

And who else is funded out of the James building?

Because I don't think it's totally just the arts.

So I want to understand who else is being so we have a contract with REI to essentially um they they do a lot of the same things that the center does for the palladium, but it's it's more focused on the um day-to-day maintenance, security, uh central spaces, the theaters in the James building.

And so we have a contract with REI for this amount every year.

It's not it's not increased in um in at least three years, I'm not I'm not sure prior to that.

We pay it uh in monthly distributions to REI, and that's how they cover uh those maintenance costs that they have to perform, the uh uh any type of like security or any other reimbursables that they have.

It's it's all covered through there.

At the end of the year, we do kind of some sort of settling up to see um uh it's not as if they just whatever they don't spend they pocket.

There's some sort of, and I'll double check this amount, but kind of like a a five percent, I think, administrative fee for REI is built into that 1.25 million number.

The rest of it goes directly towards uh cost and whatever is left over at the end of the year, which is usually um I'll I'll say tens of thousands left over at the end of the year.

It's not a huge number, but but tens of thousands.

Uh we we kind of decide all right, um, there is this capital need.

Can we afford to do that uh out of the the float that's remaining here, or is that a capital project we need to fund elsewhere?

But but essentially it's the same amount every month to to cover those needs.

So it's again this goes to my my first question about um which departments, what line items belong in which departments again, trying to clarify this for me because my understanding is that um the uh RAI contract doesn't just cover the the two theaters that are in there, there are other non-arts related entities that exist within that building, or am I incorrect on that?

Yeah, I I I think you're right.

Uh it's just that our the portion that we address with the REI contract, I believe, is the theaters as well as kind of the um the common space in that building.

And if they're paying, but those other spaces, offices, other things, are they paying into the fund to REI to support their own maintenance, or is the city paying for the maintenance?

Yeah, I I'd have to double check.

I I don't they're not paying anything into the city coffers.

I I believe that their revenue is is uh I'm trying to phone a friend here.

I believe it's attached to um yeah, the the um yeah, for C D C I think is receives that revenue and somehow is associated with the hotel um debt.

But uh but I couldn't intelligently watch it.

A little clarification on that for me because I just um as I'm as we're looking at reductions, you know, this study out to me as something that wasn't being reduced, and I was trying to understand why.

Yep.

Councillor Snyder and then Councillor Taylor.

And if I could just clear to me, this is more comparable to that uh the reimbursable line that we have with the center where we just pay for their like what what's listed on the slide here as the one point as the 1.6 uh center for performing arts reimbursables.

It it's the comparison to that line, if you will.

Right, but that goes, I mean, we understand what the plate the palladium is responsible for the arts and nothing else in that building happens that's not arts related.

So that's why I'm trying to understand why is it all in the arts budget.

Yep.

Uh Mr.

President.

Yes.

Real quick, if you were you may recall in 2024, both uh the pack operations and the support for the arts grants were in the mayor's budget.

We tried to move that along with other things into one budget that made a little more sense.

If you want a pure five uh pure budget that's for arts versus other operational things, we're still on the hook for the other operations of the James building.

But if you want that purely separate, we can is he's got it spelled out here.

So it's fine.

I'm just trying to understand it so that like as we look at arts funding, you know, we have to take into account like what they're bringing in and what their you know what their expenses are.

And so I was just trying to make it yeah.

It's just the account, it's just the bucket that's been put in, but no one's trying to say it's arts when it's not arts, it's just the bucket that's been put in.

Counselor Snyder, and then Councillor Taylor, and then let me know if you have other questions, because I'm gonna try to get their community service and technology and get us kind of back on track with a shortened break.

Hey, exactly the ditch assessment fees, $72,000.

That's a county thing.

That's correct.

And my understanding is we're beginning the process of working with the county to have to stop paying that well.

Or at least kind of figure out why.

Yeah.

But yeah, there are ditch assessments that we pay to the county.

That to me is is asinine.

Yeah, that's not a city issue.

That is a that's just an asinine fee for no good reason when they do nothing.

Um the uh I guess my last comment on the on the on the arts funding.

I hope I've been clear on where I am, but if there's dollars left over, and to counselor Locke's point, because I don't know where they've never presented, so I am not aware of the whole process of going through the arts commission.

Can't then what's stopping groups from just going and asking for the money and depleting the dollars still available.

We do a one time one-time uh arts grants process.

So that's up in the process today, and I'd be happy to give you the link to the document we did before as far as what the there's a whole process and application process they go through.

Well okay.

But we're we're changing lots of processes.

I mean, you there's been no hesitation wanting to change a huge process.

So I don't understand.

I mean, if there's dollars left over the remember the arts, why not just let them have the money?

I mean, I guess that would if that was the intent of the money.

But but I'm not gonna get in.

Okay, it goes back to underspend.

Uh counselor Taylor, if you're on, if you would like to ask questions.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, President Austin.

Um, I'm able to shed some light and hopefully add some value to this conversation because my history with the development of the Center for Performing Arts.

The it's very important to understand because actually this question was raised via email regarding expenses being shifted from the for-profit tenants in the James Building to the Center for Performing Arts.

That is not the case.

The James Building is owned by the four CDC.

Sections of the four CDC are condoed out.

As in any any traditional commercial lease, common area maintenance charges, whether it's a triple, triple net lease, or a what's called a gross modified lease.

Since this four CDC owns the James Building, however, there are costs related to the envelope, roof, common areas that are attributed to arts operations within that building.

So it's very important to understand those differences, and uh the CDC could provide those leases to help provide clarification to that.

The um related to the Hotel Carmichael, at the time when uh I was president of this organization, uh, not at the time of the Hotel Carmichael, but very familiar with what happened.

At the time when there was needing an additional funding for the Hotel Carmichael, the James, the for-profit component of the James Building had net operating income.

Income over and above its expenses for the for-profit entities in the James Building.

The uh to shore up the funding of the construction cost of the Hotel Carmichael, the CDC went to a traditional bank, obtained a mortgage on the building to help uh to help pay for those cost overruns for the Hotel Carmichael.

So there is a debt service component that is that is also paid for um out of the net operating income of the for profit components of the James building.

All those things are important to note because I know that there were some concerns by the arts organizations that they're subsidizing operating costs of these for-profit entities in the James Building.

The I did want to offer um my thought and one suggestion since I'm struggling to participate.

My suggestion would be to keep the management uh obviously I'm a huge supporter of the center, took a lot of took a lot of risk and flack for being involved at its original development, uh, just like others uh others in this room, and uh want to continue to see it be successful.

My suggestion would be uh to Matt Snyder's counselor Snyder's point is these lease agreements, these these management agreements um were put in place a very long time ago and are no longer I think serving both entities um the way that they should, and they were put together quickly to try to accomplish the goal of executing the Center for Performing Arts.

My suggestion would be to maybe um make sure we full fund the full amount of the management fee for the Center for Performing Arts, but we can take we can uh whether or not we appropriate it in the 26 budget or not, we can take those from general fund balances, and then we begin renegotiating these man uh these management agreements with the Center for Performing Arts.

Just like any venue, uh, such as uh the Marat downtown, now the old national center, uh managed but now by Live Nation, there are fees that could be passed along to uh many times non-residents who are attending these shows that could uh directly flow through to the city budget uh to not only shore up and and possibly can increase the management fee, which the management fee hasn't been increased since it's been implemented for the Center for Performing Arts, but also create, which is my major concern, and we have some of this, we're getting some of this data now, to create a capital asset reserve fund for the building maintenance related to the James building, the uh uh this the parking garage and this uh pain and messy as palladium.

So I'd be happy to help and discuss this further with anybody just based on my historic knowledge related to how things work.

But that's I just wanted to make sure to make that comment.

Thank you.

Umless anyone has any questions.

Um here's I think we're gonna do next.

Um we're gonna take a break for like five-10 minutes.

Um, because I know it's people who are just for the arts.

Then we're gonna get into the next two departments, community services and technology.

My goal is to probably get through them by noon.

Um also during this break, counselors.

If you wanted to get a lunch order placed, we can get that placed for delivery, and that'll be ready for us at noon.

So we'll for that.

I'm gonna call a five, ten-minute recess.

All right, everybody get seated.

We'll start get started once everybody gets seated.

All right, how you ready?

Okay.

Welcome back.

Um we have the DOCS budget.

Director Halibah, and just so the public knows they're gonna be going through some of these slides kind of quickly to catch us up, but all of the documents and all the slides will be available pretty soon on the City of Carmel website, so you'll be able to check out everything.

Council Mike Hollabaugh, Director Department of Community Services.

Um thank you for the time this morning.

Um still morning.

Um the uh DOCS team is forward-facing and customer focused um professionals that are dedicated to serving the mayor and the community in our two main areas, which is building safety and planning and zoning, and within those two areas um were organized into four programs, which is really how the budget is structured.

The uh 2025 highlights.

I mean, we've had a busy year, but an average year um permits are down a little, uh petitions are down a little, but we've had um some a couple of landmark approvals with the Jackson's Grant Village Town Home rezone and the uh Edward Rose US 421 project, also uh PED ordinance.

Um working with the council, we have to change the use permit, uh approved this year, um, a couple of big development plans, which um the council was um a part of as well with Grammar C East and North End Phase 2.

Uh we also completed the Carmel Transit Implement implementation study.

Um we're currently working um through the plan commission on the home place and US 31 uh plan updates.

We held the uh initial mayor's advisory commission meeting on housing.

We're uh we started goal setting and um working through the uh housing task force report and those uh recommendations and have a meeting coming up in September, and then um working through the CNO district next great neighborhood, which was um a lot of fun.

So the the uh personal services request for this year is uh 2.7 million, which is about 80 percent of the DOCS budget.

We have 19 uh full-time and one part-time uh employee, and there's three open positions, and this is how the program summary um is divided up and actually so the budget in general.

So the the uh admin program is 82,000 of that, and the personal services budget for admin is 335, and it goes on down.

So I'm gonna skip some slides because I know we're um moving along here.

Um DOCS also um is responsible for uh some non-reverting funds.

Um we have the historic preservation fund, and we uh we do um work with um the historic preservation commission um by managing their budget.

This year is 100,000.

We have the non-reverting bicycle facilities fund, and we're uh requesting that money be appropriated from that, the non-reverting sidewalk fund.

Those are our three, and then um for areas of focus for next year.

So we'll be implement implementing the residential rental permit program and continue to work with the council on the UDO updates, which would include it, you know, as we work through the those plan updates for home plays in 31 moving to update the regulations in the UDO to support those.

One, the uh the state also uh approved it a uh a requirement, local requirement that um that we allow for private inspections and plan review, and we're working to uh get that in place by the first of uh 2026 as well, and we'll uh continue the work um with the advisory commission on housing, along with our uh dedication to the plan commission and the board is zoning appeals.

A good uh percentage of uh the budget, non-personal services budget is dedicated to software, which we um over the years we've automated a lot to uh allow us to continue to serve our customers in the community um efficiently and uh without bringing on more people.

And then um every year we uh keep track of our um permit and um and plan review activity and um which includes some revenue and um through August of this year uh we've collected a million fifty-four thousand, um averaging two hundred and thirty-two transactions per month.

And the uh in summary um our general fund request is three million three hundred and eighty-one thousand, and overall we quote request, which includes the non-reverting funds 3.7 million, and happy to answer any questions.

All right, counselors questions start.

Councilor Rao.

Uh I'll kind of kick it off here.

Um just a quick question.

How are um so how are I guess I want to know about City Forester and how how the changes the city is that am I calling it the right name, City Forester?

Okay.

Urban urban forest.

I'm sorry, thank you.

Urban Forester.

How is Urban Forester over in the street department?

How's that going?

Um what kind of change has there been to job duties?

Help me understand all of that.

And when did that take place?

Um so the the forestry division of DOCS was transferred to the street department.

And we've for the most part um we've lost control of that whole forestry aspect.

Um Darren has continued to, Darren Mindham has continued to do the plan review and inspections that occur through Project Docs through the electronic plan review, and you know, all the departments are plugged into that, and so that part has continued to operate seamlessly.

Okay, yeah.

Oh, good, okay.

And will it continue to is that still his function to do that role?

Um it is, although I I'm not sure what his future is with the city.

Okay.

Um, and the this budget reflects a uh $50,000 allotment that would uh we would contract the plan review process, the plan review out to a third party.

Okay.

All right.

So um I thought that's what I'd heard.

So the now my I think there's a counselor on the DS that might disagree with me, but um it seems to me that our urban forester has created an environment that is pretty unique.

Um tree canopies, I mean I've been out with with him on uh property sites and property visits where no, this tree should not come down, we're not you know, even though the neighbor wants to do it, and then over here it is that that probably needs to go.

So if we're gonna contract that out to that kind of stuff to a third party, or I'm I'm not sure what you meant by the other statement, but do are we gonna get the same quality?

Are we gonna be I mean, who am I gonna call to say, hey, this tree is a problem?

How does this all work now?

Making it a contractor, and I'm sure they have five other cities they're working with.

I'm I'm I guess I'm a little concerned about one more instance of you know, sending that away from our employees who care and have the history and the experience, and I can see the fruits of their labor.

Sure.

I mean I think it's kind of a work in progress still.

Um Todd Gillian Street Department is highly qualified arborist um along with Darren, and we've been blessed to have you know that skill set uh for a number of years, and to your point.

I mean, the the the uh tree canopy, the tree environment um in the community um is very high quality, and and you know, it was largely because of those two, and and the support of the mayor and the council, you know, to fund those.

And um I think I mean we're committed to make sure that in the DOCS arena, I mean we have landscape review that's you know part of the UDO.

I mean, there's standards that will go along with that, and we think that can occur um without any interruption.

Um we'll need to figure out kind of the the field aspects, whether it's you know, tree preservation or just you know, kind of the follow-up landscape inspections.

Um little later this this fall, we'll be proposing some some fee adjustments, and some of that includes um inspection costs that we we may be able to contract you to utilize the contract uh with you know private sector professionals to do tree preservation or landscape inspections too.

I mean, we think we'll we'll be okay however this thing shakes out.

And but are we eliminating a position?

Is that I mean or how does that all work then?

Well, um I mean DOCS, we we're relying on the street department at this to figure that out.

So we're we're not losing a position.

DOCS is not okay, thank you.

Councillor Manar and Councillor Snyder.

And then Mike, thanks thanks so much for your presentation.

Um I want to get to I want to put on my plan commission hat just for a second.

Um when we go through projects and we go through ADLS, we we utilize, as you said, the um UDO to make those decisions based on a particular project.

And so during those projects, when we're at the Plan Commission and we have specific questions about ADLS outside of using the UDO to Councillor Warrell's point, who will be the person standing at the dais to back up those recommendations, who's going to be there to um decide whether this was a good choice or a bad choice, given the fact that that's not somebody who was who will be employed within the city.

So who's gonna be the face of all that?

And you're referring to the that landscape or that urban forestry aspect?

Well, um TBD, but we'll I mean the way that I envision it is that we'll we'll contract with you know a qualified third party who will then do those reviews similar to Crossroads and Willie Hall in engineering.

And so we'll those comments will be documented and um I mean Darren really doesn't uh make appearances or rarely makes appearances before the planning commission of the BZA, and that message is conveyed by the planning staff, whether it be Rachel or Alexia, and I imagine that's how we'll continue uh going forward.

So, and then I guess the other question I might have is um after losing our beloved um Lisa Mott, um how are you guys coping within the department, not having an office manager there?

And is it a position I I'm I wasn't sure if that is a position that we are backfilling going forward?

Can you give more information on that?

Um that position will not be filled in 2026 or this year, and so um I mean we're we're working through it, and and I'm I've acquired some new skill sets myself and um and working with just we've distributed some of those responsibilities internally.

Um I mean it's I mean the other departments, um I mean IT has been very helpful, the finance office has been helpful, and um HR's been helpful.

I mean, I think it's it's not ideal, but um you know, thank you, Governor Braun.

Right, and and to your point, because I you know I'm I appreciate Mayor Finkham reaching out and asking me specifically being on Plan Commission how I felt about your budget, and you know, my biggest concern, which um Mayor Finkam can speak to, I was concerned that with the lack of a we lost Christina, Lisa.

Um, you know, how how you're going to do more with less and not have things fall through the cracks.

So that was something having been on council and also on plan commission was a big concern for me.

So thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Councilor Snyder.

Hey, Mike.

Um so the I'm gonna the urban whole all of urban forestry is at the streets, right?

But they're doing plan review for you.

That's being presumably being contracted out.

And that's not is it when you say contracted out, is that all landscape design review or specific to trees.

So the the street tree function um is within the street department, the landscape review, the the UDO reviews, um that's been Darren's arena, and and so that would be contracted out.

But it's been done in the street department, and you guys share the his salary, right?

No.

No, no, it's uh I mean, just it it would be similar to you know, engineering is plugged in to uh project docs, street department is utilities.

I mean, the street department has been police fire, they all um comment on whenever there's a new project.

Okay, yeah.

So and that's not unheard of.

I didn't I mean many people, I mean it's no different than our stormwater review being done by another engineering firm.

Um the nuance gets a little lost, is it was nice to have that person you could call and ask, hey, what what kind of tree is this?

Or like can I should I cut this down?

Should I not cut this down?

Like so if our urban forester went to Street Department and now is not going to be doing what he took his job to do.

I just I don't know what is he doing.

It sounds like he'll be doing a job he didn't apply for.

Maybe this is a question for street department, and maybe it's not needed.

But um are you when you do the plan the when I guess well you're not doing it?

They they're hiring out the rent plan review then, or it's coming you're doing it will come back in.

So you're not doing anything anymore.

Yeah, I'm not aware what his job will be going forward.

Yeah, so who will that person be that the resident can call and say is this an invasive species?

Is this who who can identify is this is that a you function?

Is that the street department function, or do you do what the rest of us do and call the parks department?

Um I still think I mean we're we're working through all this, right?

And and you know, I know that there's a real relationship between Darren and Code Enforcement.

Um but I don't know if if if that call comes in, if it goes to the street department and Todd.

I mean, that I think that's something that we'll you know we're we're committed to continuing, but don't really have specifics right now.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Um well, you know, I have so we'll we'll go ahead and uh thank you for your time and uh try to get back on track with the next department.

Technology, everybody good afternoon.

Um Kevin Cusamano, Department of Technology had to check real quick, make sure I knew what time it was.

Um the Department of Technology's uh vision and mission and responsibilities are to ensure that um employees, uh contractors that we're working with, as well as resident residents have access uh to the technology resources that we can provide.

You'll see a number of things listed there.

I don't want to harp too long on this, um, but really move on to the next slide and just talk about kind of where the budget is to help uh bring things back on track.

On the next slide, it's a little bit small, but this is really where the other operating expenses for the technology budget are structured across a number of programs.

Hopefully, many of these seem familiar, even though the names may be a little bit different.

Some of the items that I'll point out as we kind of look at each of those, cyber security.

This is to continue maintaining multi-factor authentication, as well as virtual CISO services, security logging, and the piece that I would point out that will be new to us next year will be will be to do some penetration testing.

I'm not sure if that's been done in the past here, but that is definitely an area of opportunity for us to really help us find and hone in on those places where we need to make sure that our cyber and technology is secure.

Public facing services, you'll notice a lot of things related to those those services that are forward facing to our residents in that.

We keep things on a five-year kind of rotation with those kind of things.

Citywide software, this is where our some of our largest costs go.

Our largest costs in the software space at the moment is the continuing uh use of Microsoft Office and that licensing that we need for M365 and that.

We continue to see those costs for licenses per user continue to go up in that year over year.

City facility technologies and that again.

This this helps to focus on those those things that are in this building that are needed, whether that's A V or it could be telephony in this building, or it could also include and does include HVAG fire alarms, those kind of things that we need to ensure are protecting the assets.

Public safety technologies.

So this is where we do roll up and roll in things like the purchase for flock cameras and the continuing use of those, as well as the event radios and other things I just mentioned is somewhat business continuity.

Under business continuity, we here we uh are funding technology training for folks to continue to educate and bring our employee base up in terms of their use of technologies, uh networking uh alternate data center and for disaster recovery in that, which allows us to ensure that if something were to happen to the Carmel Data Center, we would be able to automatically switch over and use that alternate site.

This also includes uh replication of all the data that the city has and ensuring that that is available to us and we can automatically switch between that in the event of the worst case scenario.

Uh we had this line item around existing leases.

It's been mentioned a little bit earlier this morning, I think.

Um those have been paid off for next year, so that number was moved to zero.

We do in the new capital lease line related to related to some of these networking pieces as well as AV assets, the larger capital assets that we need to invest in.

We're gonna roll those into or we're planning to roll those into capital leases for next year.

There's a small item here around AI, and I wanted to call that out for the council.

So the goal here is to work with that as a fund of a small fund of money, uh, and then start to use that and apply that to specific use cases where we think it's applicable.

Um as a technology group, we've established a we've established a uh citywide IT steering committee to help us with that activity as well as some of the other activities around different softwares that we purchase.

But really, the goal would be is for that committee to help with you know what's the best use case for for spending this money on for AI and that.

Travel and training definitely related to continuing to maintain our workforces helps us with some of the I'll say accreditations that we need in order to maintain those public safety spaces and be able to install cameras and troubleshoot those across the city.

And then finally administrative overhead and this relates to the things that are a little bit more foundational in terms of rent and workstations for our employees, you know, trash collection, mechanical services, those kind of uh definitely keep the lights on kind of uh things that uh give us a location to work out of happy to answer any specific questions or go into more detail as you guys ask.

All right, um, Councilor Joshi first.

And then we'll council Minar.

Thank you so much for being here, Director.

I appreciate it.

Um obviously IT is a huge part of what everybody's lives entail these days, and managing the security of that is super important.

Again, going kind of going back, I guess I have a theme going with just departments and where things belong, and I think that's because that's how my brain works, so you'll forgive me, but um 225 uh thousand dollars of the camera systems, the flock cameras.

How do you man do you install those?

Are you fully responsible for those?

Is that really a police department function, or is it your department's function?

Because I thought that was supposed to be administered by police and that they were sort of responsible for that.

So just trying again to understand what the relationship is.

So uh my team definitely helps in the coordination and installation of those things.

Um we get a little bit more involved in um some of the replacement and retirement of those things.

I think probably the reason why it may make sense for it to be in the technology budget is just because of that coordination aspect, ensuring that you know, is the network correct in that location?

Can a camera be installed there, making sure those infrastructural things are in place before we do that?

That is also very much coordinated with the police department, of course, right?

We're we're not just randomly doing that.

No, of course, I didn't think that.

Um, just wanted to also talk about then the security, because obviously people's data is very important with cybersecurity.

How is that managed then by is that managed by you?

Are the policies there in your department to deal with that, or are the policies there in the police department to deal with that?

And just again, trying to get a better understanding.

Yep, for sure.

So from a technology standpoint, we've established a number of policies this year uh directly related to our data protection as well as how we administer systems that we put out there.

So, yes, uh, my department manages all the access to those systems, uh, ensuring that the police department and the the folks that they request have access to those uh cameras and other such uh that they can get into those things.

Same thing with all of the access controls for buildings and other facilities.

Um that comes through our department, uh, the technology department, and we manage all of that.

Councilman Art.

Thank you, sir.

Um couple questions.

I'll get hit you with the questions, then you can answer them if that's okay.

Um one of the things I didn't uh I didn't see under this was our utilities and how you were uh how you are supporting our utilities from cyber attacks and where that comes out to Dr.

Joshi's point, which which department does that come from and how do you manage it.

Then also um with this AI fund, this 40,000.

Can you explain a little bit um what you mean?

Because we're getting we're using 365, we're paying for that through CityWork, is it called CityWorks?

What do we call it?

Um through Microsoft.

Microsoft, sorry.

Oh, I should know that, right?

That's okay.

Um I'll take softballs all day, by the way.

Okay, great.

Great.

Um, so trying to understand what this 40,000 exactly will be used for outside of 365 and workflow.

So I'm just curious to to what you're gonna use that for.

Yep.

So thank you.

That's it.

Very good, very good.

So uh, in terms of uh utility support and that, we definitely coordinate quite a bit with the utilities, uh, especially in the space of of the networking uh and that related to the SCADA and other systems that they have in place, right?

Um, all of their technology requests for endpoints, so laptops, desktops, all those devices uh come through the technology department, and we do a lot of special activity related to ensuring that uh the network space that those systems operate in is operating in a secure uh environment to ensure data protection and ensure that no, you know, no one can get into the utility if that makes sense.

Yeah, that's what I was more concerned.

I'm not so well I'm always concerned about people's laptops and their security around that, but I'm thinking more along the lines of the actual operations that go on within the city of Carmel with the utility department.

I mean, one of the biggest threats is I don't need to say it, but you know what I'm saying.

So it that's that's really what where my main concern was.

Yeah, for sure.

And so we're definitely we coordinate uh with them and ensure like the the networking components of that uh of that framework, we we help to provide and protect uh for them, ensuring again back to the access controls and and those pieces that need to be done.

All those come through the technology department coordinated effort, of course, with the utilities and then was part of the I we just we just we approved those switches through insight, correct?

Was that part of that whole process?

I'm just curious, just for my own curiosity.

Could be, but I'm not uh I'm not I'm not remembering it exactly, but more than likely it is, yes.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

There's a there's a lot of things with switches that go on.

Um the uh the other item that you asked about was the the AI fund or the artificial intelligence piece.

So forty thousand dollars at the moment.

Um what we've been thinking about and working towards with that uh is to think about that as how can we put some uh general AI capabilities out there?

The example that I would use is Microsoft Copilot um as a capability that we could roll out.

The um AI continues to be a growing space, right?

Uh I think the reality is that if we were to try and do that for all city employees, uh that that figure is about I would say on magnitude of almost six times that number to do it for everybody.

So the reality is our thought is let's roll out very slowly with a little bit of that general AI.

Uh, one of the other capabilities and thoughts and some of the use cases we've been thinking about is how do we ensure that things on our website are easier to work with uh in that, and so whether that's related to having a chat bot or having other features like that uh where folks could ask questions of, those are all things that are kind of going through our mind.

Uh reality-wise, though, I don't want to be the only person thinking about what those are, but really would like that steering committee uh to come together of the different departments and kind of weigh in because they may actually have a use case that you know, being in the technology space I haven't heard about, um, and could be a real definite opportunity for us.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Questions?

So I uh Councillor Snyder, and then I have a question.

Uh thank you, sir.

Uh one thing that I zach I've mentioned this, but I struggle with is you guys have revenues, and why aren't the revenues show show up in their budgets?

Like, why don't if there are revenues that are because of IT expenses, it doesn't show any of their revenues anywhere.

Just declare what which type of revenues are we?

Well, they are responsible for maintaining the cell tower, which generates a sizable amount of money every month.

They get a $15,000 check from the judge this past year that doesn't show up anywhere.

They've got uh I'm gonna list here.

And I'll just add those are built into the overall general fund revenue estimates.

They don't specifically control those.

But I'm asking why.

If it if they're the ones responsible for the cost, shouldn't they get the revenue?

Like who's gonna pay for the repainting of the tower, which is monumental.

Ultimately the general fund or or uh partner that would want to take it over.

Seems like a non-reverting fund to save that money so we're not scrambling when we need a few million dollars to paint a tower.

Yeah, our our revenue that we get from the cell towers is not all that meaningful in the scheme of things.

Um in terms of using it to to paint the tower.

We'd we'd probably be talking saving up for several years and then still subsidizing elsewhere.

But it don't it only gets painted every several years.

So I I mean I checked with the county and it was something like third 27,000 dollars a month.

I don't think that's less than meaningful.

That's enough to do a revenue, it's enough to borrow against with committed contractual revenue.

It could also be used to fund another tower to generate more revenue, but just a thought.

Um the AI thing, like why is it so important it needs to be in a separate program?

Who's gonna be able to use this?

Because 40,000 certainly can't cover the licensing for every employee.

And my biggest fear about this is are we just not gonna is AI going to start responding to constituent emails?

Like I I really think that needs to be vetted as we talk about are we losing the human touch, which I've spoken on several times.

Um the steering committee, I absolutely love that.

I've I've talked with you about that.

Um I think that's great because I think there's a lot of redundancies, and I think that it's human nature that when you research a computer software, you've spent time on that, whether it's 10 minutes or 10 hours, you feel like I've vested all this time into this, so it must be the best one.

When in reality IT being the presumably apolitical just data backed entity, really ought to be assessing all the options.

I and I think that's where you're heading.

And I I really like that if uh if I'm understanding that correctly.

Um the vehicles.

When I pulled that inventory, you've got a truck from like 2014 or something.

Like are you getting a new one?

I think it's I think it's closer to 2009, but I could I could have my dates incorrect.

It is one of the vehicles that uh we have talked about that needs to be switched out because I think it's at like 190,000 miles in that.

I think as we were talking about some of the fleet stuff, that was one of the is to see if there's some opportunities kind of to get rid of that vehicle and switch that out uh and see how that all consolidates, is my understanding.

All right, because I think that that's probably not the best thing to have a vehicle from 14 or 9 when it's on city business and um you have talked in the past about wanting that human touch, because people like me don't do the computers um as well, and just want to say, hey, here fix this.

And you'd I think you had mentioned maybe having somebody either at the courts or here at City Hall.

Is that in is that did that make it in the budget?

So, yes, we have that planned as uh one FTE.

Uh we would like to co-locate them so that they're uh near city hall, courts, and CPD, right?

Um, and then have them able to move kind of part-time between there uh and then also help in in the IT building over on College Avenue as well.

Um, but the main goal there is to be on site and available.

Um, you know, it's the example of kind of that walk-up place where you can kind of come to and say, hey, I need this help.

Obviously, support for courts and that uh is critical and important.

We want to make sure the dockets are moving forward in that.

So that role being uh co-located there would definitely be a help so there'd be no five or ten minute gap as people are moving around to try and solve a problem if it if it if it happens.

Excellent.

You mentioned um or I where am I?

Oh, as we continue to lean more heavily on IT as things get more and more complicated.

It was one thing when Excel was new, and then we mastered Excel, and more and more things become new, and you guys become more and more of kind of this presumable experts in all of these areas, um, ensuring that your training stays in there and all of that, which I think you have done.

Um the uh things and we've talked about comms this morning.

We've talked about communications.

It seems to me that you you guys have the infrastructure to do things now.

You don't have the that kind of marketing component to massage words and do all of that, but having you guys there like kind of that first line and a critical response.

There was a when the water thing happened the first thing a counselor, one of us did was email the CEO of the company that handles utilities invoices and said, Can you immediately send out an email and text message to all residents?

And the response was absolutely here's my cell phone number.

Like why that was never done, but I feel like someone who's not looking at things in a different lens that's truly objective, would have made that call.

And so as we move forward, do you see yourself more engaged in emergency communication, less engaged?

Do you have enough you have the funding able to handle things as they happen?

So my hope is that we're more involved in emergency communication.

I think there's quite a few opportunities in that um to kind of work through how we can improve that so that um you know those that are the right folks to be informed, whether those are our folks that are our residents, or whether that's you know, directly internally within to our employees and that um who need to engage on those kind of activities.

I think that's an area that we can definitely dig into uh as a technology group and help to support, you know, um supporting our utilities as those things kind of occurred in that uh is definitely important.

And I think our our commitment in the development of the EOC and the and the amount of work that the technology team puts into that space in order to ensure that it's up and running and available, um I think is just you know a small part of the commitment we've had up to this time and would love to continue to uh work towards that in that.

I think there probably are some opportunities where as we think about how that communication happens, if there isn't funding within this budget for us to to look at and and try and deliver on some of those things, I'd be more than happy to come back to this group uh or another group uh and kind of discuss what it is we need to you know kind of advance that piece of of the emergency communications piece.

To Dr.

Joshi's point, I I still don't quite understand why the a lot of the flock stuff's in your budget.

If the police department handles it end to end and everything in between, why that's not in their budget.

Uh there'll be a question for the police as well.

But and then finally, um last year, you had the most detailed budget submission of any department.

Um I'd say comparable to the parks, I'll always give them the edge, but you had the most detail.

And in talking to some of your employees this year, they said that you were so detail-oriented that after being able to explain how much was spent on toilet paper last year that you have generated a price per wipe quotient.

Would you like to comment on that?

No, I would not.

Any other council questions?

So I have some questions if it's all right.

So and I want to preface to saying I echo all the comments, you guys do a great job, love your department.

We're being forced to make some tough decisions though.

Um, last every department we have today has made decreases in their in their budget.

The next one after this will see a decrease.

Um you are second highest in increase in your budget of any department with a 9% increase uh coupled there right with fire and police.

Um so my ask question is I heard that the mandate was for every department to search for cuts.

Where have you cut?

And then second, you know, again, we're not trying to pit departments against each other, but um are there any new things that you've put into your budget that we could possibly wait on?

I mean, we can all describe it as a need, but every department, some of the things that are cuts, they weren't fluff, they were things that were needed.

And with a 9% increase, you know, I have some questions here of could we wait a year or two on some of these things?

Because as we know the funding situations could improve in the next coming years, um, could we fund things in a different way?

So I guess that's my general question is what cuts have you made, and then is there anything in here that could possibly wait?

And if I can just head off the Kevin, do you want to talk?

Yeah, yeah, but we we could talk through the the that list that original list that we pared down.

Zach, I asked, I asked I asked him if that was okay.

All right.

So originally when we presented the budget, we had um approximately I'll say about 1.2 million more uh in our budget.

That was related to uh additional AV uh upgrades and that and and those things we removed because they were more of a want at this point.

Um, if we look at what is in this budget, a lot of things are very foundational.

There are things here that if we chose to say, for instance, hey, it's 125,000 for network switches to replace those on their five-year life cycle.

If we cancel those next year, then what that means for us as an IT group is we won't replace those, then when the switch fails, then we will be in a situation of trying to beg borrow and steal and figure out gosh, what do we do to bring SETI Hall back up?

So some of the uh things that we have to do from that end of um you know end of life planning activity is know that these foundational expenses are going to remain there and have to be there.

Um because if we waited, and you know, this year was was um an interesting example as we start to see tariffs and the slowdown in some of the technologies that we purchased already, we've had uh times when we've waited three to six weeks for things that normally we would have gotten much quicker than that.

Uh and so the reality is we know that if we don't fund those foundational end-of-life network switches, things like this and get those replaced out, we could end up anywhere with a three to nine-week kind of activity where a certain room or certain building loses um you know, loses connectivity in that to the to the city network.

And I think those kind of things kind of um, you know, they're they're critical business continuity things that we need to ensure uh do not happen uh across the board.

Uh when you mention new things, you know.

I I think uh easy picking here is basically talk about AI.

AI is a new thing, right?

Uh that's listed there.

There's $40,000 listed for that.

I would say of the things that we've uh that we've got there, there's probably one of the larger items.

Uh as I mentioned before, things like Microsoft, um, you know, uh licensing in that for the city did not go down for next year, and that was uh only with a very minor increase in the number of licenses that we need, knowing that the city was gonna stay um you know stay stay pretty close to even with the number of employees that that we have, and so those expenses are kind of just going up around us, and so unfortunately, there's not much that we can do to kind of drive those foundational things down.

Uh but new things, AI, that 40,000, that would be a new thing.

Um, but we you have to also realize as a service provider, um, we see all of these things coming in to us from everywhere, asking for this or that, uh, especially in the AI space, which is one of the reasons why we kept why we kept it on the list rather than cutting it.

I hope that helps to answer your question.

I I'll you know, and I'm gonna defer to later days, but I do have other questions about things like you know, we say A B technology for upgrades for you know, meetings, you know, are these end-of-life things, or is this hey, we got the new best technology and we need to do this, uh, broadcasting microphones for Carter Green.

Um, you know, there's some things here where none of all of these things are important, so I'm not saying anything's important, but we're gonna cutting important things from a lot of areas, but your head counts the same, same number of people.

Um so the the cuts would say is you asked for more, 1.1 million more, so it would have been maybe a 20 to 30 percent increase in your budget, but it's now it's just a nine percent increase.

Right.

Okay, yep.

Councilor Menar.

Um, Kevin, this is a procedural question for you.

So when you contract with these partners to get I'll just use switches since it's on the top of my head of off the top of my head, is there a state contract uh for technology?

I know there has been for years and years and years with the anyway.

You know where I'm coming from.

Yep.

So is are you buying off the state contract?

Are you using those because I know that they offer a lot of discounted prices and bulk pricing and that type of thing to cut down on your costs?

And if so, are you going outside of the QPA or whatever they call it now?

Um can you explain that just a little bit?

So, yes.

So, every piece of software, every piece of infrastructure that uh we purchase, uh, we do work through those uh through those purchasing vehicles.

Um, and yes, generally, if if not always, those are the best pricing uh for those things, and we're definitely leveraging that as much as we can uh in all the spaces, and we ensure that that's you know, that's that's really our modus apparenti, if that makes sense.

I appreciate I think people just don't realize that there is a place that all municipalities can go to and get really good bulk pricing.

Yep, for sure.

Any other questions?

All right, I'm gonna call a quick lunch recess, maybe 10-15 minutes.

Do we Ryan is your food gotten here yet?

Okay, and then so we're not eating on camera, and then we will move to street department after that.

Uh we'll say 1245.

Everybody's got to eat a little quick if that's okay.

Yeah, it's alright.

All right, that's all right.

We'll uh we'll start with the presentation for the street department.

Good afternoon, council.

Uh, before we use our budget for fiscal year 26, as you know, um you've probably read through all the the roles that we play in the city.

I like to refer to my team as the skeleton of the city.

Um a lot of supportive roles across different departments.

Um, some of our 2025 successes, we uh redesigned snowpower outs for approved efficiency.

Um currently we're gonna have uh over 50% of the market HUDs um installed on trailer frames, which will uh drastically reduce our personal uh manpower hours, um our tornado cleanup response, and um this year we've moved and and uh basically got trained trained the trainer uh so we now have two staff or two two team members that uh could do in-house CDL training for anybody in the city.

As you know, we're uh one department, we have a few different funds.

Um, a couple changes you'll see this year is um uh we'll be utilizing the stormwater fund, uh small amount in there for um drainage stormwater repairs for inlet repairs and things on the paving list.

Um we'll also uh be utilizing Carter Green Ice Rink Fund to purchase sand, lime, timbers for the ice rink, uh 1206 general fund and the uh 2201 MVH fund.

Summary of uh personal services.

The total is uh nine million three hundred and eighty-nine thousand eight hundred and thirty-two dollars.

That that is uh attributed to sixty-eight full-time employees with no new positions requested for 2026.

That also includes our part-time, uh, which will range 10 to 13 part-time and roughly 20 seasonal help.

So moving on to the stormwater fund.

As we said, uh we have 46,000 dollars that we'd be budgeting for that.

Uh, that'll just cover gravel sand, safety supplies, grounds, maintenance supplies uh for the drainage project, stormwater project.

Uh the Carter Green Ice Rink Fund.

We have $36,000 budgeted out of that fund.

Um mostly that's uh sod replacement, um any kind of uh dashers or any kind of repairs to the rink comes out of there.

Then we get into the general fundract green space maintenance with 180,000 dollars.

This is for everything out of right-away fertilization, um mowing, things of that nature.

The majority of that is with our mainscape contract events, um part of this is uh as you know.

Last year there was uh 580 some thousand to the uh CKM that was reduced by them taking on those contractual expenses.

Um this also has the uh east side of the Carter Green, um, different things with the uh pavilion and things of that nature, those costs associated to it.

Facilities a lot of if throughout our both our budgets 1206 and 2201, the majority of the changes that you see are uh shifting of funds to the appropriate account codes, so um there is an increase here, and a lot of that came from the uh other contracted services, the money being put in the right line item.

But this is uh Carmel loss for Sophia Square, um Civic Square Garage, City Center IDC, things of that nature.

Landscaping 112,000.

Uh this includes the majority of this cost is our uh chemicals for the reflecting pool, and then some minimal costs for plant replacements capital leases.

This is a new in our 1206.

Um this is for putting all the uh market huts on uh frames.

Uh that we took the uh targeting light lighting out of this, so it's a reduced number.

This will put all the huts on trailer frames that we're estimating should cut our man hours by more than 50 percent.

Uh winter operations 214,000 that's snow removal, the icer on all the outer right-of-way areas administrative and overhead costs 171,000.

Uh that's uh mostly electricity and other utilities on the outer right-of-way locations and water and sewer.

Um, then we get to 2201 uh contracted green space maintenance 2,217,000.

Uh the majority of that is our scape contract for mowing, uh mulching, fertilization, flower install maintenance, um, and uh included in that is also our uh we have a small amount of 75,000 in there for uh tree work that could potentially be in the power lines or hazardous where we wouldn't want to assume the liability to take it down.

Total cost is five point seven million in this program that includes four point four million in paving, um in path repair and resurfacing, seven hundred and fifty thousand road maintenance and preservation, a hundred thousand uh for concrete road maintenance, and a hundred and fifty thousand for street striping.

Our total paving though for the year will equ equate to the five or to the eight and a half million uh events.

This is again most of the majority of this cost of this program comes out of other rental and leases inside our account codes.

Um this program's all the different events that we we help with throughout the city facilities 1.328 million.

This again is a big increase in theory because we've we've shifted lot numbers around out of other contracted services to the right account codes.

We've been working on that for a couple years.

Um we've budgeted for repairs of gazebo, um to improve the trench drains at the city center, um, trash, garage door repairs, things of that nature.

Our street light repairs are in here, um, and traffic light repairs.

Fleet this program totals 1 million eighty-two thousand six hundred and fifty dollars in that three hundred and sixteen thousand is repair parts, our gas and fuel, tires, tubes, oil, and um auto repair and maintenance is about another two hundred thousand for stuff that we uh send out.

Landscaping five hundred and seventy-eight thousand.

Um that's our uh annual the part of that hundred and eighty thousand of our annual flowers and hanging baskets, irrigation fountains comes out of that.

Um the rest of it's uh grounds and maintenance type things, uh statue repainting, repair, um, wall repairs, insurance or uh accidents, irrigation, and then uh there's a little there's 40,000 there for uh kind of uh miscellaneous things that we may add to the landscaping contract, uh street program 355,000 and fifty of that basically is uh concrete repairs, guardrail repairs, um, patching or uh bituminous material for our our patching potholes, uh 25,000 and concrete and then some rental equipment and things make up the rest of that uh urban forestry.

The program that uh is basically 150,000 for some we have to do some work uh on US 31 contractually for the vines and the volunteer trees.

There's 55,000 in there to plant trees, um another just over 30,000 for mulch, and then some rental equipment capital leases Zach has got this down to think you went the wrong way.

Uh capital leases the only two capital leases we'll have uh for 26 that aren't encumbered from this year or paid off from this year will be our VAC truck and the uh solar install that happened in 23 uh at our shop.

So that total that that number is reduced.

Winter operations nine hundred and fifty thousand two hundred that includes basically five hundred and forty thousand in salt and then three hundred and seventy-five thousand in uh contractual uh snow removal and roughly forty thousand in bag salt, twenty-two thousand in training and travel as we continue to uh pursue our APWA certificate or accreditation, our urban forestry team members, their certifications and other team members that's all included in there administrative and overhead costs 1.2 million.

This is utilities, the biggest chunk is utilities, and then uniforms, laundry service, and small consulting fee, and that IT hardware, 36,500.

That includes computer replacements, iPad and cell phone replacements.

This is our includes our phone bills and iPad, our iPad and phone bills.

This includes the geotab subscription cost.

This includes every other subscription service used within our department of weather command, geotab, fleet pride, street logic street scans where we get our roads scanned.

That's all included in that.

Key areas of interest, we have an ongoing goal of 70 for a PCI rating.

Currently we're at 64.

And the last page, everybody's favorite to summary.

All right.

Questions from the council?

Councilmanar.

Getting the weeds a little bit here with you, Matthew.

So I know we talked about this, but can you remind me why are we having to pay for the vine removal on and all that on 31?

Is there a reason for that?

Because I don't see we don't own it, so why are we paying for it?

So when the state came through the city internet agreement of maintenance, most likely to get a more decorative interchanges, and so I I'm assuming on that one.

Um, but we are bound by the agreement.

If we don't, we can choose not to.

Um, if we don't, then they can hire whoever they want to do it at whatever cost and send us the bill.

So we will I think we can find a more efficient working with our own, working with Mainscape currently in our contract.

I think it's gonna be long term less cost for us to go this route than uh waiting on them to bill us.

Questions?

I'm gonna ask one for so we go to the page on events you talked about there too.

So obviously we're talking about events costs when it comes to managing and planning the events, but obviously there are costs for city events that are another items of the budget, including here, and you'll see later when it comes to police.

You know, there's there's areas that are budgeted there.

So give us some details on what this includes.

Is this what kind of events are we talking about?

Do any reimburse you?

Is this just the kind of things that we see in experience Carmel, or is this also like putting up banners for Swim City, which I know they're doing at the moment?

Like what kind of or putting up something for Swim City?

What's on our Facebook page right now?

Um what kind of uh events and costs are we talking about here?

If I can get to the right page.

So in this in this fund, the majority of this cost is associated with rentals when we and equipment rentals when we set up the market.

Um this is one of those numbers that once we have every once we have the trailers on the frames.

This number should continue to decrease.

Um, these are estimates based on where we're gonna hit for this market season.

Um it also includes bottled gas, um, paint, trash collection, like when for a lot of the times on most events.

Um we have some dump fees and things like that associated with trash collection and stuff.

Um so is this just Chris Kindle market what you said, or is this this is all this is all city events, but the biggest chunk of this number will come from equipment rental for the Chris Cup?

Yeah, okay.

So the rest of the city, if you take out the Chris Kindle market, the the cost of closing streets, cleaning up for the rest of the city events is pretty negligible.

The it's it's negligible depending on the event, right?

Carmelfest is a little bit bigger, we have a little more cost with that.

Umistically, the the market has always been the biggest um cost as far as events.

I think our typical cost.

Um we're talking tens of thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands.

Yeah, I think it's the our total with labor and everything for Carmel Fest is usually around 45,000.

Okay, 45 to 60 off the top of my head.

So and that includes labor and everything.

So as we continue to make these improvements, we'll drive down all of those costs.

Um but the city events, they're not creating a burden on your budget at all, it seems okay.

Uh not, I mean, not you know, essentially with the market taking on those contracts for England, the decorating, you know, this year, all we have to do is set up the set up the site.

So that that lowered our budgetary needs by roughly 450,000.

Sounds to Minor.

Thank you.

A follow-up to that, you know, one of the things we discussed in our meeting was I was concerned about your overtime budget because you cut it substantially, and knowing that we can never predict what your overtime schedule is, um, and with all the cost reductions that you've made.

Um can you just go over for the general public where you how you came up with this reduction in your overtime costs, which I think it was 600,000 if we uh we reduced it, we reduced overtime by 250,000.

We increased part-time by 150,000 uh with the plan that we can't predict the weather, so as we move forward and we try to go off the historical data of what has happened in the past, um, you know, as as everyone's alluded to with SEA1, it's an it's a kind of a new reality, right?

So um we've had to become strategic in how we plan.

Um currently we switched our overtime or I mean our on-call policy.

Um, and that's that's helped in reducing.

So now in the past where we had one person, we would struggle to find people necessarily to work on weekends for events and things.

Um that would typically be all overtime.

Now an entire crew, uh, the foreman and their crew take a week um on call.

That crew works all the weekend watering, uh, events, anything that comes up, they're able to they they comp that time and they have to utilize that time within the next before they go on call again.

So they have two months to utilize whatever potential overtime they may get.

That's helped.

Um historically, a pay period for uh a weather event may be around 44,000 dollars in overtime for a pay.

Um this year we had one pay that was 187,000 in overtime because you can't predict the weather.

Um with that being said, we're positioned at the most of our overtime typically will fall on the first um 12 pays.

So before I bring on seasonal help, I have I do have some cushion there, but as we've as we've worked to narrow to a kind of a zero-based budgeting, you know.

Um if we were to I I would essentially have 550,000 to work with because I I wouldn't have to come to council to shift that part-time back to overtime if I needed it.

I just I don't feel like we need it necessarily.

You're not gonna know because we can't predict the weather, but um we have that flexibility there built in, and I think um it was a efficient responsible way to kind of give us that cushion, and yet realistically drop some numbers and drop some money.

And I appreciate that, and I really I give you a lot of credit for doing that.

I know it wasn't easy for the employees losing out on that overtime.

Some of them really depended on it, so dependent on it.

Um so I just want to give you kudos to really taking the time to um consider your employees the best way you could.

So thank you.

Council Locke Yeah, um, top line.

Um you said 68 current employees' positions filled, and that's how many you're gonna stick with.

Is that enough people without the overtime to kind of continue to maintain service level with what the budget's prepared, I believe we can maintain our services.

Um does it require some creative approaches, yes.

Um it's definitely an opportunity for success.

Um, you know, so you you you have to you have to do, you know, you have to do what what within the parameters of what we've got, right?

And so is it ideal?

No.

Um, we we do a lot of things throughout the city.

Um and I would and we try to be as efficient as we can.

Um we'll find out.

Um, but I I feel like it's an appropriate number for the direction we're heading, and I and I feel like with this budget, it's what I we budgeted what we thought it would take to maintain expectations that the bar is pretty high, um, and we've helped set that bar.

So we we understand the consequences of not meeting expectations, but I I think we were careful in how we plan the budget so that we can meet those expectations of the constituents.

Okay, um, and then on the event side, I know we talked a lot about kind of the work you guys do for the city.

Um are we looking at collecting more money from events that are outside the city?

Obviously, there's a big moving process there, um, but I feel like we had more information about the amount of money that was being appropriated for those services last year than we do this year, um, and that just might be kind of changes in process.

But um wondering if there's a thought there specifically like Chris Kennelmarket coming up.

Obviously, doing things to minimize that amount of work man hours that it's gonna take with the trailers and things is great, but we took a large reimbursement from them last year.

Um are all of those moving in under those new contracts, all those things that we reimbursed for, and will we see the conversation about receiving external money to support personnel services this year or next year?

Personally, I'm not sure where uh where we're where the the conversation is on on like reimbursement for personal services.

They are moving forward with all those contracts, they've taken them on in-house.

So to my knowledge, they're they've they're pursuing all the same vendors with the same expectations, they're just managing those contracts within uh their nonprofit.

Gotcha.

And then question about the ice rink.

Um, you've got a little line item here from that fund where you're gonna buy stuff for it.

I'm wondering, and this might be for Zach or Mayor Broader, who else administers that fund in that process.

Is that something that we do from a centralized or does Streets have control over?

I I'd have to look up to see what might keep that same.

Yeah, I need to look up to see who uh by code is is over that fund.

I mean, we uh finance department to an extent make sure that they're uh we're not requesting more funding than's available structurally balanced things like that.

But I'd have to double check to see who legally is over it.

Awesome.

I asked because there's you've got the whatever 36,000, whatever the number is here, but there's 550,000 appropriated from that fund, and I know it was referenced for experienced Carmel to having access to that.

So just wondering who which department is gonna administer that other obviously that's during setup and it's other things related to the operation of the ice rink itself.

I just want to verify that we know who is administering that and where that money is going.

Council Snyder.

Thank you.

Uh kind of a overall a general question, and since I've brought this up and you provide counterpoints, and then I inevitably prove I'm right.

Um 96% of all counties use PASER, 83% of all cities use PASER.

Why do we feel the need to be different and use a PCI rating that makes it more difficult to compare standard level of care to other communities?

And those numbers came straight from LTAP.

Um LTAPS did a good job push and pacer because there's not a real cost to it if you send somebody out that's been trained to visually inspect the road.

Once you get into actually scanning this the roads, whether it's through um imagery or it's through um laser system like we use, or whether it's LIDAR, arguably PCI is a more accurate count because there's better there's better breakdown over it.

You know taking out the human element of eh, it's a four.

Yeah, it's a six.

Like that you take that out of it, it becomes way less subjective.

And um I think for us, that's uh you know, with the system and the company we went with that they their matrix are best based in PCI.

Um that's the main reason.

I I've looked um, you know, it gets a little challenging when you get in rural communities and and you're trying to compare apples to apples and they've got a two-line, I mean the N DOT just chip sealed three state roads up north of me.

And on a rating scale, it may look really good, but it's a chip-sealed road that doesn't really I mean it's not the same.

Why you you walked right into my argument, uh which is a road that is full of crack seal, but PCI rating says it's great, is not a road that uh a normal human being that knows nothing about roads would think is a good road.

I don't disagree that the PCI rating is far more in depth.

It is but I've also done every LIDAR visual and scanning and I've had them all converted to PASE because it's a uniform and because it helps the state on their data.

So as we go through these, it's it's still I talk about and I will continue to preach that there's a level of expectation and an alligatored road just because it is striped with crack seal is not a good road.

Whether it's structurally solid, sure.

But is it what our community expects?

No, it's not.

Um beside that maintenance contracts.

So I I question maybe you know, or maybe this is gonna be for Bradley, but north side of 116th Street between uh 31 and Westfield Boulevard.

They went through and did pavement repairs, it looked like full depth repairs on the multi-use path.

Is that maintenance or is that a new project?

I bel I'd have to check with Brad.

I don't know.

I think that was probably part of our maintenance contract.

And I would have so then and if it was, then I would argue we just shorten the life of that trail substantially by doing full depth paving and creating 67 new joints, putting in longitudinal patching, which created hundreds of linear feet of new joints when milling and resurfacing would have it I anybody I think would think is a much better approach.

So as as we're going through some of this, I keep talking about expectation versus good.

Well, good is yeah, you can go fix a pothole, that's good, but is that what we want?

No, I I don't.

I don't think most of the community does.

Alright, I'll get off my soapbox there.

But I'll sort of come back to it when I ask about these budget questions.

Uh you there's 214,000.

One one problem I'm having is the the project activities don't necessarily match.

So there's 24 not on this one, but moving forward.

214,000 for out of right-of-way salt and shoveling.

Like why are we doing things on properties we don't own unless it's a pure Target and Garage, Civic Square Garage, those are all out-of-right way areas, sidewalks around the palladium.

So why does it why isn't that called why is that under uh program?

What program it's under, but why aren't we just say that?

Like it's uh it's under a a fund that doesn't quite make or it's under the general fund, but it's labeled just out of right-of-way winter operations.

When yeah, it's winter operations, which I think it doesn't quite tell the story that we're doing this because we have probably legal agreements to take care of those, which I have no problem with those.

I I think that's it's totally appropriate.

It just could be a red flag or confusing if somebody's really looking into this.

And I know Zach, you and I brief conversation, no, I don't I have no ideas because I don't know how it works, but is it we still rely on the school system?

And like the more I've looked into that.

They're gonna fight for their diesel for their buses.

Matt, you probably would fight for diesel for most of your stuff, but are all of our fleet vehicles are gasoline.

And at what point are we big enough that we don't explore other options for our petrol?

Like I don't.

Yeah, I'll say the the deal that we have with the schools is basically kind of whatever their wholesale prices, um, they mark it up by one percent to kind of cover their admin costs and and uh replacement, maintenance of their pumps, things like that.

Uh if we were going directly to the the pump, you know, there wouldn't be that one percent, but there'd be the the 7% sales tax on that.

Um I think we could we could consider having our own tanks and everything, but those do create kind of a maintenance nightmare down the road just in terms of leaking and things like that, but but we've not I don't know that we've looked into um if we would take that on ourselves and have our own tanks.

That's where it goes one percent of the amount we spent on gas, though, is a lot of money.

I just I I prove me wrong, but I think it yeah, we've I I at least think we should attempt to negotiate yeah, we're we're spending about a million bucks on fuel a year combined between gas and diesel uh okay.

Um the well, I got you, Zach.

How are we so historically money comes in and it's dumped into MBH?

And based on the numbers, me trying to track the best I can, it's not all coming from MVA, the MVH fund.

So we've dumped more money than we need to into it.

And it looks like you've tried to fix that, which I think is a good great thing.

Um so the money that so in theory, the MVH fund should be decreasing.

Yeah, yeah, if if so um let's say for this year, I believe the the total MVH appropriations were in the ballpark of like 28 million dollars.

Um that usually means something like six to seven million comes from the state in the form of like true BMV gas tax, real MVH dollars.

We put those in our MVH fund.

We also get um we when we're setting our property tax rates each year, we put a portion of the property tax dollars on the operating side of the equation into the MVH as well, and that's how we put in like another 21 million a year to get to that 28 million uh through kind of paying off some capital leases, some other belt tightening, both uh street department and engineering uh we're able to get uh instead of needing 28 million next year, I think we're down to 26.6.

And so I've uh I I've kind of throttled that percentage of of the property tax dollars that we put into the uh into the MVH, I was able to shift uh a little bit more to the general fund of that distribution because we didn't need it in the MVH.

We'll still carry forward a balance of well over a million dollars in there just in case revenues don't come in as expected.

But I but I think yeah, to your point, we're we're now in a good spot on the on the MVH.

And as that number decreases, and I I know I bring this up, and we have there are multiple people that have are on one side of the fence or the other, but um VH funds 50 percent is restricted, 50 percent unrestricted, and I have St.

Board of Accounts gives one interpretation of what restrictive funds can be used for, and the state auditor's office gives an entirely different point of view.

Yeah.

So to the best I've been able to determine, the state really only cares, the auditors really only compare about the portion that's coming from the state, the BMV gas tax fees.

They want to make sure they understand how that part is used, and that's where the requirement that half has to be used in a in a certain way.

So we track half of that revenue separately than we do anything else just to make sure that it's only paving type projects that are being expensed towards that.

Um the rest of the true MVH uh uh you know is used for other purposes within both departments.

Uh but then what we get from the the property tax piece, even though it's going into our MVH fund, it does not appear that the state uh takes exception to how we how we use those dollars.

I would agree.

All I wanted to hear is that you're tracking it, and sounds like you are.

The uh the money then go ahead, Adam.

You tried to cut me off like four times.

Oh teasing, go ahead.

I'll come back.

Okay.

Um on the I Matt on the uh ICE car uh excuse me, events, ice at Carter Green, you've got that 36,000 that Ryan alluded to.

I couldn't find what you said it was you said there was money being spent on something else, but my based on what I haven't looked at that, but this is one of those examples where the program activities don't exactly match kind of where the dollars are going, even on the surface.

So it sounds like Ryan got in a little deeper to it, and I just want to make sure that when there's a programming, when there's a program created, do you think that like so this 36,000 is that specifically for what is listed here, or is it sp for what is I mean?

This talks about logistics cleanup, traffic control, uh public safety, and really nothing to do with maintenance supplies of 14,000 or grounds maintenance of 16,000, which is the lion's share of this budget.

Right.

So the historically we've eight those costs within our budget.

So this is so typically I believe um that's estimating hold on.

I have it here.

Um that includes the sod installation on the west side of the green, the propane refills, and uh for the festival vice stuff, the heaters, and then um some additional costs with the rink setup and tear down.

Historically, we've been able to turn in through um marketing, like when we had to replace dashers and things like that, those things got covered out of that fund billed through marketing or cred before.

So, like uh also the uh the glycol.

If we had to refill the glycol system, that typically would come out of that fund.

So, why wouldn't the ice rink fund be paying for the glycol for the ice rink?

It it has we don't have a need for it yet.

So that that's one of those things.

If we end up needing glycol, it will come it would be in that um probably other maintenance supplies line.

Okay.

I'm gonna ask the same question, Ryan did, maybe in a different way, though.

Being pulled in multiple directions and having more things added, like the fleet services, the garage, um back to urban forestry, which is another question which I can ask or somebody else can, what the future of that is it still seems just from a black and white, that you don't have enough people, and you keep saying you can manage, and I just want to hear you say again that you're fine because if you're not gonna fight for it, we we sure as hell can't.

I I think we're at the crisp of maintenance of what we can do.

Um a lot of it depends on what comes on board in the next few years.

I mean, we were reaching a point where we'll the decision will have to be increase more over time or increase staffing dependent.

Um I try to be creative in how we approach and manage the department.

Um, and sometimes it means we don't do things how we've always done them.

There are things as we identify things in areas that um going forward, as we talked about with you mentioned the fleet, right?

The goal of the fleet um is that there's a singular funnel of information and data and processes so that all the different garages are operating the same way with the same set of eyes on it, making sure we're collecting the same information and we're we're putting ourselves in a position to um have a better opportunity for purchasing of oil, tires, lube, things like that.

Um internally, my garage is only gonna be taken on maintenance if I think it's 18 vehicles, but my team member will be helping oversee the big picture fleet of the city, so that all of the same information is going uh the in the inspections and all that stays consistent across the board across the city.

Um this time next year, after we get start collecting all the data and we get the information across the city, it it may look different.

It may be a different um we may need another mechanic.

We may have justification for that, right?

Um that's that's what we're doing with uh utility locates, right?

We it that in my budget, almost a quarter of a million dollars was cut out because we're able to shift the electrical locates to utilities, which we were having to pay contractually pay for.

So they already had located system, they already had locators going to sites.

That to be more efficient and and collaborative there.

Um we're we're pretty thin.

This is gonna be this will be a challenge, but I think it's a challenge for everybody.

Do you think everybody employed by you makes the appropriate amount of money?

Um I budgeted for what I think is the appropriate amount of money in this budget.

Good answer.

There have to be some changes.

I I have some I had some recommendations on um some changes, and I I budgeted accordingly.

That's a good answer.

Um, and then I apologize, but to your data collection point, and this is simply an opinion piece.

This isn't do you think you should be as the street department the ones managing this technology and data gathering, or should you just have a portal to be able to see?

Because it seems like that be an IT goes and purchases it, and then you have all the access, but when there's problems, it just sounds like if you need this stuff's complicated, and if you need an IT guy or you have somebody doing IT work, even just making the two-hour phone call to the software company to figure out what's going on.

Should that be you or should that be IT?

Um in this case, it should be us.

We were working with I like so IT's involvement is they're working to help um integrate the geotab with CityWorks so it auto-kicks off work orders and things like that.

So they're heavily involved on that side of it on the technical side with the enterprise thing.

Um our reseller of geotab is the responsible party to figure out the loopholes, and those loopholes will only come like or the issues will only be mostly focused through the mechanics, and so it it's not necessarily the IT, there's not a thing for IT to manage from that standpoint, it's on the company to fix, and geotab's been very good about that.

Um, a big brother type of thing.

Um we've been utilizing telematics for close to seven years.

Um it has greatly reduced our inefficiencies from being able to look at how we how snow power outs and things of that nature.

Um it's greatly helped um on the maintenance aspect to be getting all the all the um that's the main goal of it, right?

Um at first, our department seven years ago, everybody thought this is just to get us in trouble.

Um in seven years can count probably on one hand the amount of times where any of it has ever been used in anything, and it's only if somebody had called in or reported something, and we've had to look into it.

Nobody that I know of actively sets out to look for those things, at least not in my department, and then how this will be set up, right?

Is uh Chief Sterling will be the only one that has access, and whoever he decides for police, Chief Thacker and his fire guys, it would be Chief Thacker and whoever he says that's the only people that actually get access to know anything other than the mechanics getting the work orders generated, and they don't have access to like location or things of that nature.

It's a very robust system, and each director can utilize it how they want with their fleets.

But that's we're not we have no intention of being a big brother to the city fleet from that aspect of driver behavior and things like that.

Questions?

I have one about the garages.

You which garages are you talking about when you talk about maintenance costs term or you're talking about which garages first off?

Um so we uh Sophia Square, IDC, City Center, Tarkington, uh Civic Square, or the five garages.

So I just make this as a comment that we can do now, but this is why it's important whenever we have private public partnerships to make sure we look at some of these parking agreements before they take place because you know, some of these garages, while they do have public parking spaces in them, they have um private tenants that take up a lot of spaces or take big uses, and some of those maintenance costs for some of these old deals are still on us for years and years and years to do all this because um of the way these were written up.

Is that correct?

Kind of understanding?

Yeah, that's that's fair.

So um other questions or comments?

Well, thank you so much, and we will move on to engineering anybody need water.

Thanks, sir.

I don't blame them.

Well, they should contribute to the amount of spaces there, but we have anything questions or anything right now.

What?

Yeah, it was a good question.

All right, so we got engineering, and then after that is police, and I already um uh texted the chief to let him know kind of how we were doing the schedule.

After the council, uh President Austin and the rest of the council members uh excited to talk to you about the engineering department in our 2026 budget.

Uh sorry, what's that?

I was just making a joke of the transition.

Oh, you like that.

Uh I thought I'd pep it up since we're late in the afternoon.

So uh I'm just gonna touch briefly on this because we're gonna come back to it, but this is kind of a different way to look at the overview.

There's five uh sorry, four funding sources that five funding sources that we have, six programs.

This shows the funding sources on the left and how that gets distributed to our different programs on the right.

So our 2025 successes, four roundabouts.

I think we're at 158 now.

Uh 28 race crosswalks along town road corridor are just about done.

Eight different multi-use path gap projects we've done, totaling eight miles of connection.

Um spill responses, 33 drainage complaints, uh almost 1,500 right-of-way permits with 3,000 inspections to go with them, 27 development permits issued, which is our private development activity that's going on.

150 contractors have been trained through our MS4 requirements.

A couple neighborhood drainage improvement projects are in there as well.

Um a lot going on.

So you can see how I grouped that last four.

That's sort of how I've uh organized uh the core responsibilities of the engineering department.

Nothing has changed from previous years.

I've just reorganized it to help explain what we do as a department to you to you, to the public, to our own team better, and that's our capital improvement, which is our roads roundabouts, multi-use path, our stormwater management, which is flooding and water quality, keeping dirt out of the river, our right-of-way management, which is utility, another permitting, and our uh development oversight group, which is holding that high standard for Carmel's capital approvements to the private developers.

Most of our budget uh for the engineering team is personnel of the MVH funds over 90% of what we do.

It's um these are the different teams and the different team members uh in each of those groups, uh a little over 2.6 million dollars in personnel services.

So you click uh our stormwater management team.

I'm just gonna go back again so we can see all the things.

Okay.

So uh Shane Burnham, who was in our stormwater management team, uh GRS, GIS analyst uh program administrator, he's moving to IT, uh so one of the efficiency things.

Uh so he's just transferring over there.

It made a lot more sense uh as we look forward.

He's still gonna provide the same services to our department, but he's working in a lot of other departments too, so he's moving to IT.

So this is our capital improvement uh group.

Um we have a few engineers, a part-time uh person that's kind of focused on signals and traffic as well as helping us with some project management.

We have one vacancy there uh that we hope to fill before the end of the year.

Um the only other cost of this is uh uh vehicles to share, some traffic equipment, um, and then some outside engineering fees that we use for some plane review or other services that we don't have inside in-house with our own engineers that we rely on consultants.

Those are all the MVH funds, which carries over here is just under a million dollars.

There's three other funding sources uh in our capital improvement program.

I know you guys are all familiar with this, but for everyone listening at home, that's a local road and street fund, which is the state gas tax that gets split based on BMV registrations in the city, as well as some lane miles.

There's a formula there.

Uh revenues for that is a little over three million, less some money that we give to paving, which you saw in the last budget, less uh a bond payment that comes out of that.

The CCI fund is um cigarettes.

Cigarettes, yep.

And it doesn't help if you smoke more.

I checked it's not by city, so you don't need to smoke more to increase that.

But it did increase substantially.

Yes, it did.

So thanks.

Yes.

So they increased it.

We get a little more revenue from that.

Uh CCD um is another property tax fund.

That revenue is actually a little over six million, but again, less uh a bond payment.

The yearly revenue we have that's 421,000.

So all told for that program a little under $4 million.

Our stormwater management team, uh a manager and inspector, uh plus one vehicle.

Uh again, that's just educating the public on stormwater management, ensuring we have proper drainage, flood mitigation, those kind of things.

That's the MVH funds right there.

We also have the stormwater fee that all Carmel uh residences pay, uh $6.65.

Um those revenues are just under $5 million.

There's some of that money that goes to MVH or the Street Department, again, which you saw on their budget before.

Um so less those, this is uh what the yearly revenues we have for that.

Our right-of-way team, uh, one right-of-way manager and inspector that does those 3,000 inspections talk about, which is a little over 10 inspections a day for one inspector.

So he's kicking butt.

Uh our other inspectors help him close some of those out.

Uh it's one of the efficiencies we've had this year.

The development oversight team, two to development reviewers and two inspectors, again, making sure that those 27 projects we can have ongoing are meeting Carmel standards for capital improvement.

And they have two vehicles.

The rest of the cost, this is uh paper for the printer, cell phones, uh etc.

Sort of all you know, mundane things, I guess.

There's a big one up there, those software maintenance.

You'll see uh over 120,000.

We sort of talked about that one last year.

Uh real essential for our team to save a ton of labor hours, um, sort of softwares that we couldn't provide the service if we stopped using those.

Um, we've really reclumped come to rely on those and they save us a ton of time.

And then our training and travel budget, we have a number of different licenses in our office.

This training and travel um helps uh keep our team on the cusp of uh engineering standards and maintain their licensure and certifications.

This is that all together uh again over the the 24 spend, 25 budget, and 26 request.

Um you can see some modest increases over from 24 to 26, so we're down uh from twenty-five.

This is sorry sort of the boring version, so if you go to the next one, there's back to that uh for the visual people that kind of want to see how that shakes out.

That's it.

All right.

Um I just want to say that was probably the best slideshow presentations of the entire uh previous session.

If we're giving out grades, I get so far.

So far thus far, I should.

Well, wait, wait, we haven't seen police yet.

You better have brought your A game, sir.

All right.

Council question.

Anyway, Councilor Snyder, then I just make sure we'd always call on you first, just second.

Mr.

Pease.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Uh can you go one slide back?

Uh so your stormwater management request.

Is that really just what's left over after paying debt?

Yeah.

So it's not really a request.

It's what's over.

Yeah, that would be the same for LRS, CCI, C C D.

So we don't do there's not a lot of budget for this purposes, but I want to include those in those.

Yes, there's it's I just think it's uh I think it's clear to know that there's revenue, and then most of the revenue is consumed by debt, not not bad debt.

I'm not commenting on the nature of the debt, but that it's not really a request.

It's just a leftover.

It's yeah, again, several of those funds is what revenue do we make, and then we get to spend it.

If we don't spend it, it's non-reverting, and would then come into the 27 cycle.

So we try to spend, I mean we have a lot of projects, so we try to spend it every year.

We have it, so that's what uh we'll be hoping to spend in 26.

And then finally, I've been waiting 367 days for an answer to my question at last year's budget workshop of the $800 in miscellaneous.

You'll notice we have no more miscellaneous line items or other line items in our budget requests this year.

Much appreciated.

Thank you.

Questions from any counselors.

All right.

So some of the the biggest cuts, you know, getting rid of the chief infrastructure officer was probably the one that drove most of it.

Yeah, not backfilling that position.

Um there's some training and travel cuts that we made.

Uh again, we're still meeting all of our certifications, um, but we did reduce that somewhat from last year.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, one another serious question though, and I think your guys do knock it out of the park.

Uh your inspectors that average 10 inspections a day.

That's private development, or that was just our or that was just our right-of-way, not our uh capital improvement part that's for private projects.

So that's all utility cuts in the roadway and driveway repairs, uh things like that.

New utility pole goes in, and there's a hole that got to get back filled.

Um so that's all work within the right-of-way.

I just don't I don't know how the math the math works at 10 a day.

I mean, if one of these presumably takes an hour, then it should take more.

And then there's follow-up.

Like I unless they're working 24 hours a day, I don't see how that actually happens.

Well, again, so we have one right-of-way inspector, the two developer or the two development reviewers have been helping out close some of our right-of-way inspections.

So that's three employees between ten a day.

Um they're not devoted full time, it's mostly as relying on one person.

But um we don't, unlike some other inspection services, we don't get paid by the hour.

So they're they're quick and being efficient and moving on to the next one.

But to at what expense, I guess.

I mean, you know this, I'm not telling you anything.

You put in one piece of concrete pipe.

There's uh is the pipe been damaged?

Is the has it been looed?

Is the gasket rolled when it's uh inserted?

Is it I mean there's a million things to look at, and if you go out there and watch one stick of pipe go in, you're not really inspecting anything.

You saw one stick of pipe go in, and then they're going.

Yeah, so that's more our the development review inspectors are those activities.

Right.

The right-of-way ones are.

But they're helping right away.

So how are they doing the development when there's still plenty of development going on?

Well, they're not there full time.

Uh it's a risk assessment, right?

So we're triaging all the activity that's happening in the 50 square miles of Carmel and trying to do a risk assessment.

Uh those assets that we're gonna take on uh the liability.

So we're doing a risk assessment of how where they can go, what they need to look at.

I don't think I don't think anybody up here, and I I know that because I hear it from several can look at basic arithmetic with an abacus and understand how we are protecting our assets by observing things installed or go on the ground with the amount of hours or people you have.

That is just a statement.

And it's certainly a concern, uh, something we monitor, obviously that shows up best on the problems that we see from the past.

And so we're we are always monitoring that and eye on it.

Counselor Smith.

It's just just a follow-up, so I'm not sorry if I'm jumping in between other people's questions.

With uh BBW just approving utilities, capital asset plan excuse me.

For utilities, will that help you with some of the ongoing um structural needs or needs that your your department will have?

Um, they're probably not exactly not at all.

I mean, there might be some play, you know, we're doing a roundabout and then we can work in conjunction with them because we're in the area doing something and some play there, but otherwise it's a separate stormwater utility is separate from the other uh water and sewer utilities.

Okay, I just was curious if there was some sort of overlap there whatsoever.

Okay, sorry.

Any other questions for anyone?

All right, well, what comment I would say is um had this not been a difficult budget year with cuts.

First of all, thank you for for making cuts and and um being responsible with your budget.

But had that not, I know there's areas that we can always grow in our engineering department.

We continue to have needs in our city.

Um one area that while you do a fantastic job on, which I know is it can still is a growing need, is communication with the public.

Um, I know you personally have taken time away from your family to attend you know HOA meetings in the evening and communicate people, and so do your staff.

Um but I we're always hit up with questions on what's going on with this roundabout, what's going on with this project, and we try to do our best to answer that, but we don't have as much answers that you have.

So I want to thank you for that.

Um if we had more money, I wish we could invest in that aspect more.

Because and one day when we do have more money, I think that's something that is just gonna continue to grow as a need in our city is communicating with the public about construction and future road plans and whatnot.

Yeah, I'll I'll take a compliment and return one that all the work you guys do saves us.

So there are many of the things that you're answering yourselves.

Obviously, if I have to answer all those questions, that takes away time from actually building the thing, right?

So that's for all of our team if we're answering what we're doing or how or why or whatever, and we're not actually there doing it.

So I appreciate all the time and the filter and the the great communication you have with our office, and that you can give the constituents.

I think it saves us a ton of time.

Any other questions or comments?

All right, well, thank you so much.

We'll move on to police.

Thank you.

And Chief, whenever you're ready to get started, just go ahead and start.

Everybody ready?

All right.

Well, thank you very much for the opportunity.

Excited to present our 2026 budget on behalf of the incredible men and women of the Carmel Police Department.

I'll start with our accomplishments, but those are all in addition to nearly 80,000 calls for service that our officers responded to last year, over 2,000 arrests, over 2300 accidents that our officers worked along with giving away to our people nine life saving awards and two meritorious service, meritorious life saving awards.

So I wanted to highlight those up front before I mention these accomplishments.

Obviously, our remarkably low crime rate, which we're very proud of.

The UCR data from the FBI came out just a couple weeks ago.

Our 2024 property crime rate came in at 8.1 per thousand people, which as compared to the state of Indiana, which is 14 per 1,000 people, bodes very well.

And then also our violent crime rate, which was right at 0.67 per thousand people, which again well under the Indian average of three per thousand people.

So we did quite well there.

We recently uh in the past year we've been awarded our uh accreditation certification from the uh commission on law enforcement accreditation.

We are the longest uh accredited police department in the state of Indiana.

We're one of just 13 municipalities uh that have earned that accreditation.

Uh we're over 30 years now of having been accredited through them.

The implementation of our drone first responder program, uh, which in its current capabilities is on pace to uh respond to about 500 calls for service this in the in the uh in this calendar year, uh, and then with the expansion of our drone sites and maybe some personnel, we could see that tripling if not more.

Uh so some good things happening there, uh, which is attached to our real-time information center.

Uh as of last year at this time, uh, we were very fortunate to be awarded another position for our crime analysts.

Uh we took that person, we assigned them to the real-time information center, uh, and she has done quite well.

She's led the center in activity uh and tapped on to about a thousand calls for service as well from there.

Um then the last thing there, or two two more things, implementation of procurement specialists.

So that was a position uh that we reallocated within our PD to find some savings, and she's been very successful.

She's uh paid for her position many times over just in the savings that she's been able to find uh through some of the open gut bidding and some of the uh her kind of squeezing people for a little bit better pricing.

Uh and then donations and grant savings.

Uh we've received about 138,000 worth of grants, uh, which have funded uh canine kennels, best carriers, uh, some of our drone programs, some of our operation pullover, which uh is our seatbelt program, our uh OWI enforcement DUI enforcement program, and then also our bus uh stop arm violations.

Uh those are all funded through grants, and then about 83,000 worth of donations, which uh have again uh benefited our drone program, our canine program, uh, and some other things.

So those are our 2025 accomplishments, kind of last calendar year.

Going to the next slide, uh personal services.

Uh, you can see uh there, these numbers have been updated a little bit since this was submitted.

We uh are currently sitting 147 sworn officers and 32 professional staff positions, uh, which actually leaves us 16 short uh on sworn officers, which uh don't worry, we'll be bringing some to council here in the next month, month and a half.

We'll be swearing in quite a few.

Uh and then one professional staff position, which we have vacant right now.

We've held that uh vacant since uh some of the austerity measures were put in place uh in April this year, so we're just holding that for now.

Uh so one open position there.

Next slide.

Uh existing capital leases.

We have one current capital lease.

Uh that is as part of our 2025 lease that you all approved last year.

So that funded 33 vehicles last year, so that's the only open one we have at this time.

The uh next program is uh basically everything everything associated with the costs for our uniform personnel.

That's not just our police officers, that's also our CSIs and our uh community service officers, our CSOs.

Uh so you can see there on the screen uh some of the things that that that those costs are inclusive of probably the the one of the most note here is uh an increase in our gasoline.

We did put in about 10% extra for gasoline, uh both for just trying to protect from maybe some increasing costs, but also because we do anticipate to be fully staffed next year, and with 16 more cars on the road, we expect to spend a little more on gas.

Maintenance and garage expenses.

We have over 200 vehicles in our fleet, and this these garage expenses have remained relatively flat year over year.

And so we're pretty similar.

You know, this year as far as oil, tires and tubes, garage motor supplies, repair parts, small tools, auto repair and maintenance.

So all that's kind of included in there, and as I mentioned, it's pretty flat.

Personal services, our professional services, sorry.

This request again is very flat as compared to last year.

This helps fund the cherished center, which we've paid for many years out of our budget.

Our towing fees that we sometimes occur, incur our CalEA costs, IntelliCorp backgrounds, our prosecutor, which we have an in-house prosecutor that we share with the prosecutor's office that works out of us.

And again, that's that's pretty flat.

Wellness program.

So this includes our medical exam fees.

We have two programs that we do on an annual basis.

That's physical and that's mental health.

So we require all of our officers to attend both of those.

So medical exam fees, mental health counseling are both included there.

Those have actually come down just a little bit again due to that procurement specialist negotiating some good pricing.

We're able to get some really good physical pricing through the same vendor.

And then we also build in for new hires, so when we hire, we have to put them through some state required physical and mental health testing.

And so that actually was down a little bit.

This also has a our 4-TA athletic trainer built in here, and then some of our kind of unassigned fringe benefits, which includes our wellness payout, vacation buyback, and then some of our on call and instructor pays are all in here.

The next program is community outreach.

This includes classified advertising, promotional printing, promotional funds, and then a new line for us, which is uh special projects.

Uh so from what we brought over from last year, this was actually down quite a bit.

Uh, and then we implemented the special project fund to help uh with the city's funding of the Carmel Youth Assistance Program.

Uh so that has been uh included in our budget now.

Uh so that is uh kind of the main reason for that increase there.

And I'll just clarify that was in a different department's budget previously.

It's not a new expense to the city.

Yep.

Uh next slide is communities uh community service officers, CSOs, and animal control.

Uh so included this is our humane society services, which went up about 4.4% this year, uh, and then our in-house animal services, which help care for our canines.

That includes vet services, medication, uh, leashes, e-collars, boarding, all the kind of continuing fees that go along with having a canine unit, which you'll get to meet two as we square them in tonight, two new ones.

Uh we do have one new capital lease that we're making a request for.

Uh, this will help us purchase 22 vehicles uh in 2026, which will help us keep on pace with our fleet replacement plan.

Uh so that's our that's our ask.

And then the next slide is training and travel.

This is pretty flat to previous years.

Uh so we built in out both out of state and and state required training for all officers.

Uh as you probably know, all officers in the state of Indiana are required to attend 24 hours of annual training.

Our officers typically do about four times that, which is obviously great.

That's something we want to continue to encourage, uh, and keeping them you know apprised of the emerging trends and things going on in law enforcement.

So we have a pretty good uh budget, we think there to fund some additional training for investigations, intelligence, CSIs, our CIU, mental health team, our drone uh certifications, more part 107 licenses, some leadership uh development, quite a quite a bit of training we'll be able to do with that money.

In the administrative and overhead, obviously, this is most stuff that's associated with the building, and then uh you know, some other things here and there.

Um thing I wanted to note here was the county changed the way that lit uh pays for our department cell phones.

So currently, as is uh the count we send the bill to the county and they pay it directly in 2026.

They're gonna change that, so we're gonna pay it, and then we're gonna submit for reimbursement.

Uh so we went up about 150,000 there for that reason, but we'll get that reimbursed on the back end.

So I just wanted to make that note.

Uh and then I get to the other funds.

Uh, the 910 fund is one that uh you all helped us create earlier this year.

This is our forfeiture fund.

Uh, we the way we plan to use this and the way we're kind of moving forward with it.

This would be unexpected, unplanned, one-time equipment purchases.

Uh it could be software demos.

Uh so if we see a piece of software that we'd like to take kind of a one year uh trial run on, we'll we'll fund it out of here initially, and then if we see value and continue to use that software, we'll build into our general budget in the in the future years.

And then also there's uh some auto lease money in there just in case uh some of we're adding quite a few detectives from the field to detectives here in the next year.

And so just making sure we if we don't have enough unmarked vehicles for them, we're able to lease some.

In the 911 fund, this is our drug task force fund.

So our drug task force houses uh nine agencies total from Hamilton Boone County.

Um then so this is pretty similar to other years.

Uh this has a very healthy balance in it, obviously, much like the 910.

This is an honor burning fund, it doesn't have an impact on the general fund.

Uh there's a little bit of an increase here because they want to go back to how they were operating two years ago, uh, where they were uh able to like lease a vehicle to each agency and they are able to trade those vehicles out uh interchangeably and so that they're if they're burned, if they're on surveillance, something like that, they could pick up a new vehicle without any questions asked.

The pension fund 801, uh this is the same as as previous years.

This is for uh officers who've retired who are part of the 1925 pension.

Uh so this is reimbursed through the state.

So we just submit this uh up front and then we get reimbursement on the back end.

Our 210 account is uh continuing edge, so we get this uh revenue from court fees, accident reports, fingerprints, gun uh gun permit grant, uh which was changed a couple years ago.

And so we have a very healthy fund balance in this, and this will be the same amount that we've allocated in the past $80,000.

Uh and then on the next two on the next slide, you can see the general fund total and on the final slide you can see our our budget summary.

Uh so I just wanted to highlight we had a total increase of about 2.9 million dollars.

Uh the matrix and the cola increases alone uh accounted for $3.1 million.

So actually our actual operational budget was decreased by about 209,000.

Uh and then when you factor in what I mentioned earlier with the lit reimbursement, we'll expect 150,000 back uh by the end of the year.

Uh and so I know it's of interest to you some of the cuts that we were able to make because we were able to bring our operational budget uh down into a deficit.

So of those I wanted to, it'll be a list and I'll give you a total at the end.

Uh so we did uh eliminate one professional staff position.

Uh we took down the following lines uniforms, uniform accessories, safety accessories, ammo accessories, uh dry cleaning firearms, special department supplies, organization member dues, safety supplies, oil, auto lease, special special investigations fees, task force equipment, tires, tubes, laundry services, medical exam fees, mental health counseling, promotional printing, promotional funds, postage, other miscellaneous, water and sewer, other fees, licenses, and copier for a total of about 396,000 in cuts.

Thank you.

Um questions from the council?

Councillor Green, and then Counselor War.

Thanks.

Thanks, Chief.

Um, you're talking about the crime stats that were pretty low.

I might have missed it.

Is that Nash comparing to the national standards?

I was using the comparison of state, the state of Indiana.

Okay.

Yep.

So uh our property crime rate uh was eight point one per thousand, whereas the state of Indiana average is fourteen per 1,000.

So we're doing quite well there, and then violent crime rate was 0.67 as compared to the state average, which is about three per thousand.

Okay.

So we're doing well compared to the rest of the state.

But uh you just come kind of some quick examples.

You had the grammar seat situation.

I know Village West Clay, we had 13 break-ins and one stolen car in the span of less than an hour a couple months ago.

Um so it seems like for my constituents, crimes going up.

Is that the trend that crimes going up?

I I wouldn't say the crime's going up.

I'd say it's relatively flat.

Um I mean we're certainly not immune to it, and we'll see pop-up events like what you're speaking of.

Uh we're hopeful to have a better dashboard back online here in the next couple months where we can highlight some of that because uh I know that that when people see crime, they uh what they uh kind of think is that oh, it must be increasing.

Yeah, and what we're seeing is very flat uh as far as our crime stats.

Okay, and then um 163 sworn officers, only 149 kind of serving right now.

And you're anticipating filling those 15.

Yeah, we have uh five that'll come to well, they have a higher date of October 20th, so we'll swear them in at the next council meeting following that.

And then we have uh nine more in backgrounds currently, they're all laterals.

So we're hopeful to bring them in about November 10th ish, and again we'll swear them in.

So potentially by the end of the year, we could be really, really close to being fully staffed.

Good.

Uh just one kind of follow up question of that.

How many retirements coming in the next year?

Yeah, there'll be some that'll kind of trickle out throughout the year.

I've kind of pulled the group.

Um I only know of two at the beginning, kind of first quarter of the year.

Of course, one could pop up here or there, uh, but we're in we're in pretty good shape.

Uh and we're we got a pretty good read on what we think is gonna happen.

All right, thanks.

Council Rao.

Um Chief.

Chief, thank you very much.

Um appreciate all your hard work and your leadership.

The uh just really one question.

I just was uh noting that you mentioned in the cuts line items, mental health.

Yeah.

That um if if I were a resident listening, that would worry me.

We all are hearing about the stress and uh the concern of mental health, so could you address that a little bit deeper?

Yeah, I should have been more clear rather than just name that off.

So we overfunded mental health counseling last year for about 101,000.

That what we've learned is that we're just not using that level of services, so we kind of re reoriented around 85,000.

Uh so that is more than enough to continue to fund all of our mental health programs, our counseling for all our officers and our professional staff as well.

So I have no concerns with that map.

But yes, thank you for making mention of that.

Councilman Narr.

Thank you, Chief.

Great presentation, but not quite as good as engineering, sad to say.

I understand.

Still love you anyway.

Um so you and I talked a little bit about uh your sworn versus civilian employees.

And we were talking we we've talked a lot about the um the vehicles and the take homes and um what that means, and I asked you specifically about what your policy would be going forward.

And I think it would be uh I think it would be good for the general public to know that our non-sworn civilians are also a part of this whole structure and what that overtime looks like for them as well, if you don't mind me asking or explaining that, please.

So take home vehicles and overtimes that would show me to touch on it.

Correct.

Thank you.

Yeah, so uh our take-home policy or the one that the city is looking to implement uh that would uh certainly have effect on a handful of our civilians who do have vehicles.

Uh but our CSIs, we have one that's on call throughout you know, 365 days a year, that that changes between the four of them.

They will be able to continue to use their take-home vehicle on their on-call weeks so that they can respond direct to the scene.

And then also our CSOs, um, kind of very similar to how I believe um Director Hollibaw mentioned uh of his people sometimes when they come in, they cross city limits to come to work, a lot of time they're deploying right to a call.

We would advocate for the same thing for our CSOs, and so that when they come on duty, a lot of time they're responding directly to a lockout or to a nuisance call to a parking complaint, uh to an animal call, so we would advocate for them to keep their take homes as well.

Uh so I I would hope that that we can be able to do that.

Um and then the other, and then back to the overtime point.

Uh we we have uh taken a pretty um measured approach to overtime for professional staff.

So typically what we do is we ask them to flex uh or or uh you know use their time throughout the week.

So if they pick up a little overtime on the front end, we ask them to to work that out on the back end, um, except with the exception of when it's you know emergent circumstances.

So if our CSIs are coming out in the middle of the night, I I expect them to be paid, and I have no problem if they turn in some OT slips because they're coming out in the middle of the night to process the scene.

So you know, we try to use a pretty common sense approach when it comes to that.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Councilor Schneider.

Explain to me this yeah, so you have one CSI that's always always on, and then do you have others that shift?

So we have four CSIs total, and they rotate their on-call weeks.

So they each take one week a month.

Okay.

But they're losing their vehicles.

So that they are losing their vehicles?

They they are all currently assigned a full-time take-home vehicle, yes.

Okay.

And they're keeping them pending.

They they will keep at least one that can be rotated for their on-call.

So you're sharing a vehicle between four people?

Potentially.

But right now, how is it?

They each each get an individual car.

There will there will be more than one available though.

Well, I and I guess that's my point.

We're already gonna have the car.

Where's the savings?

Like and gas?

We spend a million dollars in gas a year, like I don't understand why the the four employees that do the same job, and now you're gonna tell them each week you get to borrow a car.

Like that makes zero sense to me at all.

And I and there is no policy, so that yeah.

So that has not been implemented yet.

Correct.

That's part of uh what Zach talked about this morning.

Um the Well, Jeff asked about mental health, and I and what you're saying you overfunded it.

Does everybody on the is every everybody have access to the mental health?

Not only do they have access, uh, all of our sworn employees and our CSIs are required to go for an annual check-in.

And then Okay.

I could probably ask this.

Um I'll cut to the chase.

I could ask that question a million different ways about access.

Because this is gonna be a question for the fire department as well.

Okay, at what point the the sworn officers all got their good raises.

The non-sworn did not.

So at what point are you a member of the Carmel Police Department or not?

Because I'm really struggling with that.

And it will if we're gonna treat employees if they have access to everything, it means they're also victims to all the bad stuff.

Why aren't they treated the same?

Well, they couldn't and you can make the argument about putting their life in danger, but I could make the same argument for the person sitting behind the desk, because we've been there.

Yeah, 100%.

And that was something uh when I arrived here, I wanted to be sure of is that our support staff, our professional staff receive the same access to mental health counseling as everybody else, because if you're a records clerk and you're pulling up those reports every day and you're reviewing them and you push them through, you're seeing a lot of the same stuff that's sworn are, and that's really concerning, right?

Uh and so yes, they do have access to it just like our uh our sworn do.

We have uh right now I think we have four licensed counselors that we work with, and you know, they can uh kind of do a speed dating, they can see who they like, they can you find the right match for them, and they can uh attend those services on department dime.

Um as far as you know the other things you you mentioned the raises, yeah, salaries.

Um we we have the best professional staff in the business, I believe that having worked around you know a little bit, uh and I would love to continue to compensate them as as well as we possibly can.

Um right now, you know, this is what we're working with uh with the three percent cola.

But I I guess as the as the chief, as the leader of CFD.

Why wouldn't you have put forth the raise for them to be to allow it to be cut?

So the entire city is has that the same three percent cola in their budgets.

But you I get that.

But you're either on the police department or not.

You're they're on the fire department or you're not.

And when you only X gets a raise, then I would be saying, Am I really on the fire department or the police department, or am I just, which it should never be adjusted, city staff?

Sure.

And that that's where I that's where I have a fundamental issue because I think it I don't they never felt that way.

They used to get whatever whatever the what is negotiated, they used to get.

And then that stopped.

So I just it doesn't sit well with me.

It shouldn't sit well with them.

Yeah, it's it's difficult.

I understand.

Um and finally you uh the and this is more for Zach.

I mean we just went through a whole list of revenues that they're applying to things, so I just think that that model should carry over to other departments.

If it's a revenue generated by that department, the line item should show a reflection to a department.

And and again, are you you saying you want them to have access to those dollars once they've collected them?

If it's coming off their backs, they're spending their department funds.

Which are general fund to create other dollars that go back into the general fund is the way it's right.

Why wouldn't uh if IT generates revenue, why wouldn't IT get the money?

I mean I IT generates what 1% of their overall operating cost.

Okay.

I counselor I said it's it's also we can make this overly complicated and have 20 or 30 or 40 more funds, but the point is it goes to general fund the appropriate, you know where it's going, so it's really kind of semantics and disagree, and uh overly complicated.

We already have a 30 extra funds, so I'd love to reduce them as much as we could, but some we can't, some are in code, so it's hard for them, it's hard for the public to understand it as well.

So I think there's a benefit to keep it cleaner.

But your your objections noted.

Counselor Counselor Joshi.

Uh just a question, this might be for Zach, but the um we mentioned the Carmel Youth Assistance Program that was in a previous budget.

What budget was that in?

Just have curiosity.

I think that was in the MAC budget, but yeah, Mac.

Okay, that was in the MAC budget.

And then the question on that we've asked to IT previously that I'm gonna ask you is about the flock cameras and why if it is an integral part of what the police need to operate effectively, why is it not reflected in the police budget and why is it in the IT budget since you my understanding is that you really do manage the entire flock system?

Yeah, I can make an I can make an argument either way.

You know, it sits in IT currently, it could easily be in our budget as well.

I don't I don't know, sorry, historically why it was that way, but that's just how it's been here since since I got here.

Um question.

So first off, um will there be any kind of um change of the look of our police vehicles with the new logo?

Yes.

Okay.

And that's that coming out of the Capitol at least.

Explain the cost in the plan for that.

So that is all included in our vehicle uh vehicle repairs and vehicle maintenance lines.

Uh so those are you know pretty similar to pr previous years.

So rather than you know, we we were gonna put the graphics on cars regardless, so we're just planning to put the new graphics instead of the old ones.

So you were gonna so you were gonna change out the the cars with the current say the we didn't change the the logo.

You were just you were gonna redo the logos on the cars with you know a new wrap on them every you do that every year?

No, no.

So we just the new vehicles that we purchase, we'll put the new graphic package on the right.

But you're gonna do it on all cars though.

You're not gonna have some cars with the new logo and some cars with the old logo, right?

The current budget as is would not support redoing the entire fleet.

So we'll have some with one logo and some with another right now?

Correct.

They're pretty similar.

Okay.

The priority right now has been to get all the patrol vehicles done first.

Uh so our first batch of of new graphics will be the ones that are kind of out in the community doing uh in patrol.

Okay.

Um the uh kind of and I probably the social worker position that you share with the fire department, that's in the fire department's budget, correct?

We do not share a social worker with the fire department.

Am I calling it the wrong thing?

The quartermaster?

No, the I believe we were talking about the physical trainer, the partnership athletic trainer.

No.

No, the partnership with Anna, that there's gonna be more access to it.

Yeah, yeah, we we want to extend so Hannah Cowells is kind of our lead uh social worker, and and I think the fire department wants to try to uh drum up a similar program to what we've had success with.

So I think she's gonna help guide them along the way.

Uh but we're still she's still uh included in our budget and she's made it.

Okay, but the fire department has access to it right now.

Absolutely, yeah.

Okay.

So it that it's still shared, it's just in your budget.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

And then finally, like I I haven't found a lot that I can cut.

And first off, nobody ever wants to cut anything in public safety, you know, uh, because we all support public safety.

Uh specifically don't want to cut any kind of head count or pay for our people.

Uh the only things I can even maybe make an argument for is just slight trims in areas like you know, community outreach, how many t-shirts, you know, swag we need to buy, but that's not really saving us much.

But and this is maybe a bigger question.

2027 is gonna be uh much tougher than 26.

So can we sustain this budget into 27, or are we gonna have to see cuts coming into it?

I know we can't predict, but I mean we have a general idea of what we're looking at if the law doesn't change.

Yeah, my that was my thought coming into this was potentially, you know, what cuts would be looking at.

And maybe you could trim, you know, a little here, a little there.

Um I kind of put it in four buckets.

I could kind of put the first bucket would be the benefits that our employees are accustomed to.

That would include you know, dry cleaning, car cleaning, um access to our athletic trainer, having an on-call or uh in-house prosecutor on site.

That's kind of bucket one, bucket two.

Uh you would potentially begin to compromise some of the city services that we offer.

That would be you know, our vehicle program if we were able to take a year off a lease or something like that, but then you kind of get behind the curve in terms of replacing vehicles, and I would worry about what that would do long term.

Uh overtime, uh, our training fund, uh, that's kind of that bucket too.

Bucket three would be the supported organization, so uh chair center, car uh carmel youth assistance programs, and then bucket four, you know, then becomes personnel.

So uh that's kind of like you know, the the first four things that I would take a look at or how that's helpful to know because while I really want to focus on the 2026 budget, you know, it'll be right around the corner when the legislative session starts up again.

And I know many of us will want to contact uh our state representatives and state senators and let them know exactly what kind of cuts we can anticipate if you know the things continues the way we see them now.

So um Councillor Minar.

To your point, I I you know I I'm concerned, especially with the youth organic system.

Thank you.

And then also with the cherish house, those those things are applicable to our community being safe and feeling safe.

And I could not imagine cutting those things.

So those are both both organizations are really helpful to us, especially Chair Center because they handle all of our forensic interviews and a lot of our cases.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.