There we are.

There we are on line.

So, um, thank you all for being here.

I have had the opportunity to watch every one of the videos that were done this after this mor today, and I just think that the council did a lot of great work and so really appreciate that.

I'm hoping that we have other people that will have that same level of effort.

Um, but today is the day that we're going to start talking about the Charlotte City Council having the meeting specifically for the adjustments that were proposed on the meeting that you had on the 18th.

I think that what we really want to try to make sure that we do is that we provide the adjustments, and we then I know that many of them were saying like how do we explore something?

What do we do?

What is the information?

So that take the time to have that done, but at the end of it, to make sure that we have a budget that we can be proud of and that we want to do.

Oh, that's right.

We should have introductions for all of the council members as well.

Can we start with our city clerk?

Ariel Smith, okay.

Andrea Leslie Pike, City Attorney, Victoria Watlington, Councilmember at War.

Joey Mayo representing District Three.

Kimberly Owens, representing district six.

Good evening, Renee Johnson, District Four.

CFO, sorry.

All right, Marie, this is your day.

As she mentioned, you have a packet in front of you, and these are all the items that move forward with at least five votes from your May 18th meeting of items you said you want explored, and the front page is each of the sources, and we'll that'll mean more to you as we get go through them, but if you turn to page two and cherry's got it up for us, asked to be explored in the board, page reference for those.

So I'm not sure if there's any particular one that you would prefer to start with, or you would like to just start from the top with public safety.

Ms.

Yes, please.

So uh thank you, Mayor, members of council, and thanks, Marie.

Uh, one of the things that we we tried to do with addressing many of the uh questions that came up uh in the previous meeting was to really try to lock in the two things one to see if we could within the existing budget provide you sources for some of the requests that you wanted us to explore without increasing the uh proposed tax rate.

And we also tried to look within the public safety uh budget for some of the public safety related requests that you had, still trying to stay within that 1.89 property tax increase.

And lastly, with some of the one-time sources, ongoing sources, it seems like there's some flexibility with all of the requests that you've had to be able to attempt to fund them within the parameters of public safety being within public safety, and some of the one time and ongoing sources that we identified as well as one additional revenue uh opportunity as related to animal care control.

So I just wanted to set the stage, Mayor, that um that there are sources that are available to address uh many of the items that we were asked to explore.

And is that a part of our um?

Yes, ma'am.

So we'll agree.

We go ahead and thank you, Madam Mayor.

And as the manager mentioned, a lot of us get tangled up sometime, one time sources.

They think, oh, we have some money here, but one time sources can only fund one time expenses.

So if it's something ongoing like salaries, it would need to be from the ongoing expense category.

Any questions for her before we start out, Ms.

Mayfield?

Thank you, madam mayor.

So just for this is more of a clarifying question, because we're getting ready to go through the recommendations and the PowerPoint in here, but I want to make sure that we're level set because the team did share with council regarding our proposal around fire, and a proposal that I believe the proposal that I initially made regarding the decrease from 10% to 7%, which would have saved us around six a little more than six million from the fires pay that there were not enough council members to support that moving forward.

So now we're having a different conversation, but I want to make sure that we level set with the PowerPoint that was sent out, what it looking at Aldington, Austin, Columbus, and other areas, what was not noted is that their starting pay is 5,000 more than what our starting pay is.

So when we're gonna have the conversation, I want us to make sure that to the best of our ability, we're having a transparent conversation when we're saying other areas are there's a 14% gap.

We're not at that.

That's true, but also our starting pay is not what the starting pay is in these other areas.

So I'm still even though four of the people didn't join me with looking at that exploring the 10% increase to fire with the reduction from police to offset those funds.

I want to make sure that we're being transparent about the dollars and that is a considerable difference with starting pay of five thousand dollars.

Thank you, madam mayor.

All right, thank you.

All right, okay.

Yes, Mr.

Jones.

Marie, um, do you mind if I call it audible?

No, please.

So I think the biggest item that we will discuss will be uh the 10% increase for fire, and I think the easiest way to approach it is to actually go backwards, okay?

Um there was a question about what would happen if we just reinstated steps and put a two percent on that.

And the reality with that, if you slide over to page three, I believe, um, it's actually a savings to the city of about five point two million dollars, and it's really because if you start to look at the steps in that table, you would have a number of folks that would have a five percent step with the two percent market adjustment, which is about fifty-one percent of, I'll say fire sworn.

So we're talking about captains, firefighters, engineers.

Okay, and then if you just did the two percent, I'm sorry, the two percent increase, and that and I'm sorry, there would be uh 18 folks that would get about a four and a half percent increase, but the key is that this concept of people being topped out, you no longer get a step, so whether the step was five percent, two and a half percent, ten percent, twenty percent, you wouldn't get it, and what you would just get is the the market adjustment if I got that right, and so in that example, the big savings comes in because forty-seven percent of the firefighters, the engineers, the captains would only get that two percent, so I don't think that's anything that anybody would recommend, but we we actually did it, and then there are a couple of options that are in between this, which would provide an opportunity to have um maybe a five percent market adjustment with the staff, as well as a five percent market adjustment with even a bonus so that we could get people up to 10 percent.

Those are two options, but I think instead of spending a lot of time on those options, let's go to the the request, which was going right to parity 10 percent and 10%.

Okay, so that would be going to page five, and as you knew the last time we talked about this, the cost of that is about 4.4 million, and what we put in front of you instead of increasing the property tax to pay for this 4.4 million, we gave you a series of options on the cover page, that could get you to some level close to that 4.4 million.