The meeting, chaired by Councilman Cody Harvey, reviewed budget proposals for Parks, Public Works, Stormwater, Wastewater, Department of Technology Services (DTS), Early Learning, Economic Development, and Affordable Housing. Key discussions included vacancy rate adjustments, new positions, capital projects, and a proposal for a community land trust. The council scheduled a follow-up session for May 26 and announced three public budget listening sessions.
We'll go ahead and call the um budget finance education session uh to do the order. Um today's session we're gonna be covering parks, public works, and I think it's place water, and uh for that I'm gonna turn it over to the chair of that committee, Councilman Cody Harvey. So councilman Harvey, the floor is yours. Thank you much. Good morning, everyone. Thank y'all for being here. Hello, hello. Um excited to hear from our uh public works department and parks and all the things that they do. Um Brian, you're on the reading here. Um quick story before we go in and we we hear the budget issue today. Um this gives you a little bit of a synopsis of uh the efficiency, the attention to detail that our public works uh department does under the leadership of Jeremy Wood. Uh one evening, I think it was a Friday night, at like nine o'clock, ten o'clock at night. I saw a Facebook post by David Carroll that said the deputy Donald Bond uh sign had fallen over on East Brainerd Road. And so uh I quickly texted uh Jay and got an immediate response and within two hours. Uh for Deputy Donald Bond up on East Brainerd Road. So I that gives you just a little bit of a yeah, yeah, I think that deserves the age. So thank you for your attention to detail. I know that's important uh not only to the community but the family of Deputy Bond. Um so uh appreciate absolutely all the work you do and things like that really uh talk about your character and your your attention to detail. So thank you. Appreciate what you do. And with that, we'll turn it over to you. Awesome. Um well, I'll get us started and and if if we can, I think um as we get once we kind of finish this, and we'll go ahead and leave Jay at the table and we'll go through the rest of his funds, and then we'll so that way we don't make him come back and forth on us here. Uh but we'll start with public works. Uh so their budget has an increase of eight hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars over last year total. Um salaries and benefits makes up pretty much all of that, and that is largely due to the cola and benefits that were that were added. Um they did add 23 positions, and they also budgeted um having their a budgeted vacancy rate, and essentially what that is with with their departments, especially it's it's true mostly citywide, but especially in in in public works because of the nature of a lot of their positions, they deal with a lot of natural vacancy, just turnover where you have crew workers come and go and and different folks come and go, and then in some of the engineering positions if someone leaves, it's a little harder to fill them. Um and so they have a certain amount of of just historical vacancy within that fund. And so what we did this year, uh what their team did this year really is take a deep dive kind of on that historical vacancy and try to get that budget more right-sized. The way our budget system works, uh EPM kind of the technical piece of it, it takes all of your positions and it assumes 100% fill for the full year. Which we know doesn't happen, right? So they took a deep dive on it and said, hey, let's with a conservative kind of edge to it. Let's say what is what what should that number be? And so they they reduced kind of that 100% full by the 2.4 million to try to account for kind of where their vacancies typically are. And what that allowed them to do is add 23 positions that they need to further the work they're doing at kind of a budget neutral stance, right? Because they were able to kind of take those vacancies and then fill them with with these positions. So we we kind of last year we took out that vacancy because it had kind of gone folks had typically I think in the past use that as a way to kind of they they missed the mark on that vacancy number last year. We said, well, let's just not do it. And we know that's not real. So this year we've kind of again they did a good job of going through that and seeing what what the number should be and putting putting it there. So anyway, so they did add that, but again, that's the 23 positions are largely budget neutral because of the vacancy projections that they've done. Um on the operation side, mostly flat. Uh they did um decrease uh the interstate lighting maintenance piece uh by 180,000. That's in conjunction with EPB, and again, that's more of a ride sizing, it's just been over budgeted based on some conversations they've had with EPB. They think the number they have in there now is more realistic. Um, and so they were able to bring that number down. Um the space cost decreased. They had some folks over at the midtown campus that they've brought into their existing footprint at the DRC, so they're able to save kind of that space cost there. And then just like most of the other departments that have some increases within their vehicle operations.