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.

Help us understand the services line item production.

Figure out where we move some things around.

Sure, let me that one million.

Get into the pull up the detail for it so we can talk about it.

Um big file moves a little slow.

Solid waste disposal looks to be.

So the bulk of it, yes, is in the the waste disposal is the biggest piece of it, and that was money that was being sent over to the solid waste fund to help cover the costs of the recycling, the the orange grove uh contract.

Uh part of the 23 positions they added, 11 of those are to do the work that that contract was doing.

And so now all of that money stays in public works department.

Okay, right.

So you'll see when we get when we pull up the positions here, you'll see there's there's there are 11 positions to to kind of replace the working done.

Okay.

Um done there.

Um, so on their positions, they did add 23.

Uh, this is here again, the ones in the brackets, like the transportation engineer, that is uh uh a reduction.

So there's 24 ads, one reduction, so a net of 23.

And you'll see in the middle there the 10 refuse recycle center attendance, and then the one form above it.

All right.

Uh, before I get to the capital, any questions on the operation side?

Yes, man.

Uh so uh I will say uh as councilman Harvey was talking about the the detail orientedness, Jeremy, of the way that you do your work and your leadership.

I think your executive summary speaks to that.

We've got executive summaries in here that say the same thing three times that are um or they're they're from last year.

This is very specific.

I appreciate the department wide trends.

I I want you to know that I read I read all of it.

Um within the um position request um the one I had the the question about um it's a hopeful question um is the city transportation engineer.

So I I would not dispute that it would be wonderful to have another one, but I know how hard it's been to get any.

So talk to me about you know what your experience is with hiring.

Is there a gap in salary much not dissimilar from what legal is experiencing in their department?

Tell us about that and and how helpful you are about being able to fill another traffic.

So we we actually took this position and converted it to an assistant uh city engineer position over transportation.

Okay.

Um with that, we have two applicants right now that are highly qualified.

Um we initiated interviews yesterday.

And so with those two, we're we kind of understand where we're going with them.

Okay.

Um we should have a hire relatively soon.

I will say the struggle has been for a little over a year uh since Chris Davis and Carmen Harvey left.

We had not been able to get any traction whatsoever.

There was no interest in people coming here, the pay was not what they wanted.

I can't really say that it's below what the fair market value is, but it's not what they wanted because it doesn't match the outside figures.

But there's a lot to it in what we do with family time and you know the the ability and flexibility that we have here in the city that a lot of people just don't understand until they're burned out from doing it on the outside.

So trying to capture that was very difficult.

We sat down and we looked at it and we played with the numbers and went back and forth on the responsibilities on how this should look and are the numbers correct for what we want them to do versus what it says they do now.

And that's where we came up with making it an assistant city engineer uh so that it matches the rest of the engineering core.

Okay.

Um so we have one that's over stormwater, one that's over uh construction, and one that is now over transportation.

Stormwater construction and transport.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, and I think with the two applicants that we have right now, I think it shows the engagement that we put into that is showing with the quality of those applicants that we have, and one of them is actually a local person.

Well, that's really encouraging.

I'm glad to hear that.

I know take some real pressure off of other um very important team members.

Absolutely.

Um, and then could you also tell us about the zoning development manager?

Yes, ma'am.

So the zoning development manager is one that we've had struggles with in the past as far as uh trying to get flats pushed through the system and different positions of leadership being taken care of.

And it's been a constant struggle, and with uh with Bill Gore in the seat in LDO, he has been very creative in what he's trying to come up with and how he's trying to reformat his team to look.

And the zoning development manager is one that's gonna provide the oversight directly to the zoning operations citywide.

So we'll have someone that is dedicated just to seeing those operations, and then they'll have a uh QCQA opportunity over everything that's coming in so they can make injects directly onto the permit requests and the plat requests, and then with this oversight, we anticipate that the delays that we've seen in the past will no longer be because they have the system that is going directly to them, and they'll be able to make those injects throughout the process instead of waiting until the very end.

That will make a big difference to our building and development community.

Yes, ma'am.

Time is money.

Okay, that's that's helpful.

Thank you very much.

Yes, ma'am.

And I will say our times in LDO have dropped significantly since Bill's been working on everything.

Um what used to be a three-week timeline for initial reception and uh uh reviews is now within seven days.

Okay.

Well, what's the goal to get to?

I would like it to be under five, but we're working with a lot of different companies, and the mayor has a lot of different um uh what are they called?

So I can't remember the name of it.

Cohorts.

He has cohorts that he's working with from different cities that he's getting different ideas, and we're exploring a lot of different things across the U.S.

Okay.

So we're trying to pull in everybody's best practices to get us down as low as possible.

Okay, all right.

So it had been three weeks, and now we're down to the six days.

That's fantastic.

Okay, um just make sure, Mr.

Chair.

Yep, that's all my questions.

Thank you very much.

Any questions, council at this point?

Okay, uh, on the capital side, this is kind of their their capital budget.

18 million dollars of public works capital items.

Uh, the biggest chunk of that is is the 10 million dollars uh the paving that we've been committed to.

Um then you'll see a handful of other items up there.

Anybody has any questions about any of those?

Yes, ma'am.

Um, I'd like to confirm in this in this public session.

So the Family Justice Center facility improvements, uh, the 900,000.

That uh let me just confirm that that is for um in large part the build out of the rape crisis centers.

Correct.

Fantastic.

Okay.

Um that's an important commitment that the city has made.

Okay, thank you.

That's all perfect.

All right, that's public works.

We'll again keep Jay at the table and we'll move on to State Street A.

Um, this fund is funded by our gas tax that's coming down from the state, and it's used to uh do road improvements.

You'll see they have a decrease of uh 226,000.

Uh salary most augment is in salaries and benefits.

Um, and again, they they've applied you'll see on all of these, all of all of Jay's slides here, they've applied this vacancy, that same kind of idea of right sizing the the vacancies and accounting for those appropriately.

They've done that on all of these.

So that's where that decrease is coming from.

Um they do have an increase in asphalt.

I mean, we've all seen kind of the cost is going up, and and and I imagine it'll continue to do so for foreseeable future, and then um some vehicle operations increases there.

Uh they have 60 positions in that fund, no new positions, no reorganization, so it'll be the same positions as last year.

Um questions on state streeting.

Okay, so the 10 million that's in capital, um, we're gonna transfer one million from State Street A to pay.

So that puts us at an 11 million dollar overall capital investment for payment.

Chair one of the things I want to point out with the increase in the asphalt hopefully with the attempts that we're having with the alternate means for the paving might be able to get us away from that increase so then we can use more dollars to improve in the road structure without having that large impact so uh as of June 1st is whenever the first one is going to be in place and we'll see how that goes and hopefully that will work out for everything.

That's the pressure pave yes ma'am okay and there yeah there's a significant cost difference between that and fresh asphalt yes ma'am it's about 50% difference.

So okay thank you for that yes ma'am that's all Mr.

Chair for now that's all right all right all right we'll move on for I think solid waste uh solid waste budget has a uh increase uh overall increase 34000 dollars uh benefits i mean salaries and benefits decrease 212 again some of that budgeted vacancy uh and then they moved to truck driver over to uh the general fund uh and then you can see the operations and transfers total increase um but the operations total is actually a decrease and then the transfers increased um so the operation side we decreased in services again that's related to the orange grove contract that had been previously paid out of this fund now all that work is being done by public works employees in the public works fund um and then the transfer to cat that's a transfer to capital and that's for a compactor at the landfill um the one we have out there is getting a little bit older we have to have two yes right we have to have two uh our backup one is not reliable at this point and so especially with the expansion that's going on of the landfill they need a new reliable compactor out there um and so that's what that 1.4 million dollars is to pay for the compactor Mr.

Chair might we be able to do a luncheon learn at the landfill well sure I've never been to the landfill I mean I could go by myself but I think that would be really fascinating lunch at the land just a thought it's for Mr.

Chair to discuss with you but this would be pretty interesting.

Run the way yeah it's I will write it down party at the limb food we could we could look for our own food make a picnic like top chef or something I wouldn't recommend that again we don't have any any new positions but they did move one chart driver over to public works that's a general fund.

And then on the capital side we have the three million dollars for the continued the expansion we we're doing out there and then the 1.4 million for that new compactor that they need any questions on solid waste questions I think this might be your last one all right stormwater stormwater and there may be a change to what's you guys have we we had a a late change last week on this and so we they were printing the pages when I walked over here so we'll get you fresh pages for your books um but uh as it stands right now we have a recommended increase of six point eight million dollars um salaries and benefits up just shy of a million dollars again they did do the the vacancy decrease but we added 23 positions which may be new to um is not in the book um some of them are but not all of them was four now it's 23 yes that's right 19 we're at okay explain when you say vacancy decrease explain what exactly what you mean yeah so so in a lot of uh the public works uh citywide but again public works is is particularly heavy in this of their crew workers and even some of the engineers the crew workers have a lot of turnover just naturally and then the engineers like Jay said they're kind of hard to fill so those vacancies sit open for a while when they have some of those level vacancies and so what happens is that way our system budgets is at it assumes we fill 100% of the budget of positions for the entire year.

And so that's what they've done.

They've budgeted that natural vacancy rate.

So that's not unlike what the request that I've submitted of what kind of vacance or vacancies are we having year over year to identify positions that are funded but not filled?

See yes, yes, that's right.

So they they've done a deep dive on that of looking at and it's it's a little weird with your request and you'll see some of this probably when we go through like a position.

So you may have Jay may have 20 crew workers and we may keep filling the same one you may fill the same one twice in a year because when HR that person leaves and they just hire so they don't go to the last vacant one.

So you may have one that's a crew worker that stays vacant for four years because they're just never full of crew workers because there's always a vacant crew worker somewhere and that one is just at the bottom of the list and never gets filled.

And so there's this like concept of what order we fill them in and and there's really not a method to that I think.

It's all it all goes with the pipeline requests.

And you may have something that so we have the vacancy review committee and the vacancy review committee requires that one person leaves we get an HR does the calculations for PTO.

So they do the calculations of how much needs to be paid out for that person.

And so we're always looking at the most recent things.

So if they want to replace that's all we're we're posting the positions and so yes they can post a pipeline like with Jason but you can see a perpetual vacancy because we are using the most recent one and making sure that that one gets done with zero PDO and then we're posting it because those are the ones that are coming to the vacancy review committee.

So by the vacancy review committee that's what's going to happen is that the most current one is the one that's going to get filled but that doesn't mean if we had 10 we could fill down to the one from 2022 that's not vacant.

It's just we don't really have that many people we can go to hire.

You know especially in the crew worker you may fill it and then the next day someone else leaves and then you gotta go fill vacant so there's just kind of the so there is the vacancy and probably that's across a lot of departments it is it is it's it's I think it's it's especially heavy in there just because of the size of their department and then um just the nature of the work that they do a lot of it is personnel trying to get into the city so it's the injury position and then they come in and apply for something else once they get their foot and going it's a high turnover rate.

Does it make sense?

But yes so that number is kind of tied to what what we've been talking about it's that vacancy that they just have every year that we know we're never going to be 100 we'd love to be 100% full but it's just not going to happen and so they've quantified what that what that looks like which allows them to do more on the offside or hire or hire more folks.

Good council.

Just real quick other than what we've already talked about with the positions what so what what do you plan and for the public's knowledge as well what what do you plan to do with the increase of the 6.8 million for stormwater.

So the 6.8 million with stormwater includes a lot of different capital projects and local projects that we've been working through as you know we've had a lot of flood issues and in here significantly and we are trying to mitigate all of those with the stormwater processes.

On what we need to build what we need to put in place and where we need to prior prioritize our means right then and there and that is going to be a long-term project but if we can get that correct then that will impact the entire city as a whole and negate a lot of the stuff that we've had going on.

Well well thank you I I think like you said stormwater uh especially recently for me in my district my the two highest calls and complaints I get are paving stormwater that's it and a lot of those work hand in hand and a lot of those work hand in hand exactly so I'm glad to know that we're uh looking at this especially as a long-term project to try and find a solution and get ahead of it as we see these problems uh increasing so okay good any other questions from stormwater I will point out the difference the 19 uh we did add again not in your books but we'll we have the replacement pages probably by now we'll get them to you today the 19 new litter crew yes um to go out and then Jay and his team are developing a plan on like how that's going to be implemented and so very good and that's as part of the resolution that we passed yes sir the Calcman Elliott's been elliot yes right up a week or a month ago or so yes ma'am if I may um since we're talking about the litter crew um I brought this up in my Jay and I have talked about it but um in in our meeting with uh Kevin about budget um I've encouraged public works to think about within that litter um remediation plan to consider how we might um engage our citizens in in that as part of um you know neighborhood civic pride um I know that um I have I have a couple of neighborhood associations for that that have made the litter a priority within their neighborhood um and I can what I've suggested is might they consider some type of grant program that would be available to community groups whoever they might be that if they made a commitment to you know keep a section of a neighborhood or or

Um I know that um I have I have a couple of neighborhood associations for that that have made the litter a priority within their neighborhood.

Um and I can what I've suggested is might they consider some type of grant program that would be available to community groups, whoever they might be, that if they made a commitment to you know keep a section of a neighborhood or or you know, if you're gonna do a monthly pickup that there might be a five thousand dollar grant available, because my um hypothesis is that that uh that five thousand dollars would be worth a great deal more to a neighborhood association or another community group than um if we were just spending operations dollars on that.

So if a very small portion of that is carved out, um when I think about the just the reality that that we all we ourselves are Chattanooga, right?

We work together to make our community better, and um I think there's a real pride of place and pride of per purpose when you um see your own community getting better, um be it by your own hand, um, and and learn about the realities of that.

So it's something that I've mentioned to Jay for them to decide how they might want to do that.

But um, I'd love to see that you know, across the city and all the districts.

That is one of the topics that we've included in our look while we're going through this program.

I appreciate that.

So yeah, thanks.

Absolutely question.

All right, moving on.

That brings us to wastewater.

So you need that.

I appreciate those time.

Thank you very much.

How many public works week?

I appreciate it.

Yes.

Okay as far as like locations and all that for this week's events because of this weather that's coming.

I was weathering that everybody's raining.

Rain's friendly.

Yeah, that'd be wonderful.

Come on now, Mark.

Yeah, one week you tell us about all the plans, and then the next week I hear it's 50 million over.

I'm just excited to for you to be here, sir.

Don't don't believe what you read.

Let me let me just say that.

How often is that true?

Okay.

All right.

We'll hop right into wastewater's budget.

Um recommended, excuse me, recommended increase, 49 million.

Um the bulk of that is is on the capitalist side.

Um salaries and benefits is up 1.2 with an increase of 17 positions, and they also have the COA and benefits increases included in that.

Um on the operation side, again, the bulk of their their overall increase was within the transfers to capital.

Um and then they do have some debt service that they're gonna add this year that they'll need to start paying down on.

So this is 2.6 million.

The 23 position or the I'm sorry, 17 positions are listed here.

So total last year 225.

The 17 and brings them up to 242 head count in this budget.

And with that, anybody have questions on the operation side council, any questions.

Okay, can you speak to to the class A power project and its budget and where it stands with the caption?

Sure, and what was reported in the news was that a certain technology, the thermal hydrolysis process that we had looked at.

We didn't choose that technology because it was too expensive.

But we're still doing the project, and the project is still in you know, designed to be within our budget.

Uh, we're still working with the design bill contractor to get things, you know, um doing some value engineering to try to make sure that we get within our budget, because one of the things that I was been telling the team is that we're not gonna just throw money at this just because you tell us it's gonna be expensive.

You guys got to sharpen your pencils and make this project work within our budget.

So what are we getting in for the 50 million?

What we were going to do originally was put in the thermal hydrolysis process, um, build another digester, uh, and rehab the old digesters that we've that we talked about at the last meeting where which are 60 years old.

Um but the that approach that original scope was um again, it was probably 50 million, maybe more over the what what we had budgeted.

So what we said was you know what it costs just as much to rehab these old digesters.

Let's just build enough digesters to do what we need to do.

Then we don't need to do the rehab, and we don't need the thermal hydrolysis process, which is a whole bunch of stainless steel tanks that are very, very expensive.

I don't know.

I don't know how you can fit 50 million dollars in a small space, but when you have enough stainless steel, I guess you can.

We're going with tried and true technology that is that doesn't require specialized services, it doesn't require specialized treatment.

We're building new digesters, which are in-house teams, know how to operate, know how to maintain this is the four that we've talked about.

These are the four new digesters, yeah.

So we were going to build one new digester, rehab all the other ones, and put in the stainless steel tanks.

Now we're just putting in four new digesters and we're getting the same result.

We still get the biochar.

We still get the biogas, we still get the biochar at the end of it all.

Yeah.

And we're eliminating the uh oxygen.

And and the oxygen gets eliminated too on the on the liquid process side, correct?

Does that uh I know one thing we talked about during our tour over there was the uh the reliance on EPB, that the big bill that we get.

Yes, is that still it's all still part of it?

Okay, yeah, very good.

Yeah, the the uh intent of the project has not changed at all.

We're gonna be generating biogas, we're gonna be converting that into electricity, we're going to be drying the biosolids and creating a biochar.

All of that stays the same.

It's just how we do it.

It's like we're not we're not driving the Lamborghini, we're driving the the Honda, okay?

That but we're still getting the same from point A to point B the same way for a less cost.

And that Honda's a whole lot less to maintain.

It is exactly that's exactly right.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, council?

Yeah, love.

All right, moving on.

Okay.

Uh again, the 17 positions that they added there.

And then some of the capital that they've got going on.

Again, uh, these are all at the end of the book, and then there's also a slide with the consent figures specific projects.

Okay.

Um Councilman Clark has a question.

I do, and I apologize if we have to backtrack.

Uh I got caught up talking to some of the primary.

Um can we go back to the slide with the new position?

Uh and maybe this is a question there for Councilman Henderson.

Was there a list ever sent to us of the unfilled positions?

Uh I've just received a list, I guess today, yesterday, today, but there has not, I mean, I haven't sent that out to the whole council yet.

Okay.

I are what can you speak to your unfilled positions?

Yes, we how many they are, which positions they are, and what's the what is the oldest date on the last position not filled?

I don't know that exact stat, but I can get that for you.

But we we have a lot of positions that um are cyclical, like we uh before you you came in, we talked about crew workers and laborers, where that's just kind of like a rotating position.

It's it's hard to keep somebody in there, so we always have some vacancies in that in those those entry-level roles.

For us, that's operators, crew workers and laborers as well.

So we always have some vacancies there.

Um I get that.

I don't want to that's not my question.

Yeah, the other ones you don't have, I would rather wait for it.

What I'm specifically asking for is how many unfilled positions your department has, and what is the latest date of that unfilled position.

If you don't have that, I really don't have the stats for you.

I will get those.

Someone in our breaks or whatever could because I know there's a list.

I won't get it for you.

Please do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Henderson.

Mark.

So these are 17 new positions, right?

Like newly created positions.

Correct.

Yeah.

So help me understand like at this point, and it seems like we're somewhat simplifying our operations.

Why do we need to increase positions out there by 17?

Sure.

There's there's a couple reasons.

One, we're bringing some stuff in-house that we've outsourced.

So that is a lot of the uh the some of the stuff, the building maintenance um that we're doing, and also the grounds maintenance that we've always outsourced, but we're bringing that in-house, and so some of the the maintenance positions on here are uh for that for that role.

So for for instance, for the electricians uh alone, I think we we reduced our reliance on contractors by uh $500,000.

Um but that's because we're gonna be we have electrical apprentices, we have an electrical program now that we are able to keep staffed, and so we're kind of doing a similar thing with the maintenance side.

So we've got a maintenance uh apprenticeship program that's starting up, we're gonna be bringing more of that stuff in-house.

Also, the look the landscaping work that we've always outsourced, we're bringing that in-house as well.

So that's kind of the maintenance side of this.

Okay.

uh alone I think we we reduced our reliance on contractors by uh five hundred thousand dollars um but that's because we're gonna be we have electrical apprentices we have an electrical program now that we are able to keep staffed and so we're kind of doing a similar thing with the maintenance side so we've got a maintenance uh apprenticeship program that's starting up we're gonna be bringing more of that stuff in-house also the look the landscaping work that we've always outsourced we're bringing that in house as well so that's kind of the maintenance side of this okay the other some of the other positions the engineering positions um we we've struggled to fill the engineering positions and conceptman clerk to your point that this is one of those areas where you're gonna see there's some vacancies uh we and you see that we're adding more how are we gonna do that so one of the things that we've we've our new program which is the energy program um we we have one person kind of trying to run that whole thing which is uh you know it's unsustainable to have one person that has so many different responsibilities when it comes to the solar the biogas coordinating with EPB TVA the maintenance on those in on those things uh and uh the coordination with the department of energy and others and that are getting us these incentives to do this project so we're we're bolstering that group to actually be um a a kind of a subgroup within the administration uh division right now and that will probably spin off at some point but right now we're trying to trying to build that group to where uh we're actually you know what we're doing today with the Class A power project is just a step one on the energy stuff we've got some other stuff coming up that we'll we're still doing our due diligence on that we'll talk about in the future but that group is actually going to be um kind of running uh basically paying for more than itself by by the time it gets all going uh so those are that's the engineering positions that you see on there um and that that's that's basically the the main things the other thing on there is the senior director so there's a lot of times we you know we're at 247 365 operations there are a lot of times that that my deputy and I are just unavailable because we're we're we're here or we're somewhere and there's got to be somebody that's uh kind of responsible at the plant while we are not available um and so this is not a uh an additional position it's actually a designation to one of our existing directors so we got five directors one of them gets assigned as a as a senior director uh to to play that role it's not really we're not adding a new position per se we have to add it because it's the way you know we have to do the HR and the accounting but it's not an it's not an additional body out at the plant it's just a a designation to somebody that's already there.

Is that the case in the seven in in administration yeah so the administration the seven administration is is the is the the the energy people which is the engineering folks and the senior director those and I think there's a uh the fiscal and there's a fiscal analyst you have seven listed in administration yeah yeah so you got a fiscal analyst two senior engineers engineering coordinator and engineering technician um senior director and I'm not sure what the last is can I give some uh counselor harve I'm sorry yeah he's he's yeah I'm sorry go ahead I looked at you and forgot the codies at the L I want to give some context and it's mostly off of some information I know that we have been studying about unfilled positions and I know the administration has done a great job and they've got a good rate of filling a lot of unfilled positions and we don't do line item budgeting here.

And so meaning those funds could be moved around if they're held and so I'm always concerned that when we add but we're not utilizing what we have like how can we maximize what we are not using into new positions and what I've discovered and this is educational for me and my as a freshman right but Chip you've talked a lot about those unfilled positions and the amounts and it's for me it's never a clear answer about how we maneuver those positions in coordination with new I mean the unfilled positions and coordination with new positions.

Like I I never understand the the rationale of unused but we're requesting new you know what I mean like apparently you must have needed those and so I guess my question is is that you have positions requested that are that was a need but unused are we going to see 17 are we going to come back fiscal year next year and you're gonna be like well we couldn't fill these positions but that money floats around in your budget like what is what it what is how do we move these positions into utilization so they're just not sitting in line items and budgets that could be moved around into something else because I really I'm not accusing you of doing that but I'm just kind of getting wind that that might be a strategic budgeting thing that department heads are doing and I think we if for me I frown upon it when we have unused positions that you cannot fill for whatever reason then to come before the council and ask for new position it's just not your department.

I just wanted to give context to that.

Sure and and they you know the ideal situation is that we fill those positions because the positions that we have the you know the services that those positions would provide are still needed and they're and they're they're outsourced if we can if we can fill those positions then we can actually reduce our reliance on contractors and things like that.

So that's the goal always.

We do have a challenge out there at the at the facility right now where we just don't have enough office space.

We're building some office space, and that's that's coming.

Um when we hire somebody, like we just have our new HRBP and we don't have a place for them yet.

Like we've got to build out some office space because the plant has grown over the last 60 years, but no office space was was added.

And so those are those are you know, you'll see on our in our budget that's what we're doing.

We're making sure we have some office space for the for these folks and some space for them to work.

Uh but ideally we do that and we reduce our reliance on uh contractors because the services still get get provided.

We've uh the um one of the other positions on here, the PLC engineer.

So that's a programmable logic controller engineer that actually goes out to the different pump stations and makes sure that they're operating effectively and and the program is is working you know uh correctly because those are automated, so it knows that you know that there's smart stations, they know what to do and when to do it.

But if the program, if the computer glitches, which happens, what do you do?

We pay $100 an hour right now for for PLC engineering services for a contractor.

And so what we'd like to do is be able to bring that in-house.

We bring that in-house and we can re respond quicker.

We don't have to go through the purchasing process and the procurement process for you know services from a contractor.

We can just send someone, hey, you know, go out and fix this pump station and get it done.

And so those are the kind of things that we're trying to do.

It's it's it's a challenge sometimes to fill some of the positions, especially you know, in the engineering division and things like that, and and the professional positions are difficult to fill, uh, but we're committed to try to do that in in order to reduce our reliance on outsourcing.

And I would just like more information on it, because my philosophy is if you don't use it, you lose it.

Yeah, and we trust me, we can find ways to help support other departments with money you're not using.

Um so I'd like more information about I like for other administrators who come before us to know what you if you're requesting new positions, you need to know what you're not using and be able to explain that to the council because we've appropriated those funds to you in our previous budget and you didn't use it.

So that's gonna be my question for every administrator that comes and asks us for new positions.

Um, and so there's some explanation, you know.

I'm sure there's a good explanation, but when I ask a question like why you're not I I really do expect you out to know that data alongside the data that you're requesting us to find.

And I think that's fair to the taxpayers because you're you're in essence, you're not using money we gave you, and so if you're not using it, then why do you need it?

Yeah, 100%.

We'll get it.

We'll get you that.

So if you can give me the explanation, that would be great.

Absolutely.

Councilman Henderson, you recognize Mark, help me understand.

So we increased our salary and benefits of uh a million two, and you said that was to reduce our dependency on subcontractors.

Yeah, basically, correct?

So is the subcontractors help me understand which line item the subcontractors are showing.

Is that under services?

Which it looks like we've decreased our services by 800,000.

Yeah, 7 million two is also the colour for the existing existing employees.

Okay.

So the so the total the total cost of the new positions would balance reduction in subcontractors.

Is that correct?

Well, yes and no, yes, for some of the for the maintenance for sure, but for the new energy uh stuff, uh there's there's we're adding services.

The other thing we've done, as you notice, we we've added large tanks around the city, we've added pump stations and electrical controls with all those tanks.

So we do have more infrastructure that we're maintaining.

Uh but uh the uh you know the all the the energy stuff is new.

That will be offset by once the once the class A power project comes online and we're generating the revenue there.

So it's that that's look that's looking out a few more years.

Um is the is the 800,000 in services is that directly related to subcontractors, whatever.

That would be a so I don't allocate, I don't allocate where the dollars come from.

The bulk of it is uh like Mark says a lot of counting half half of a million, I think, in the electricity, the electrical piece of it with the new electricians.

Yeah, that's fine.

If we look at these services line item on page 415 of the budget, some of them are down, but some of them are up significantly.

We have the total total delta being that 800.

And it does take time to fill positions, so you know there's you know, it might not show up in this fiscal year, but it should show up in future fiscal years.

million I think in the electricity the electrical piece of it with the new electricians like if we look at the services line item on page 415 of the budget some of them are down but some of them are up significantly we have the total total delta being that 800 and it does take time to fill positions so you know there's you know it might not show up in this fiscal year but it should show up in in future fiscal years like two years ago we did the electrician you know uh apprenticeships and then now we're seeing 5000 reduction this is like two years later that's kind of how because you got to fill those positions you got to get people up to speed and everything else so there is a bit of a lag one make sure that we're tracking if we're increasing on our salaries or we're decreasing on our subcontractors and not just you know the thing inflated a big chunk of that decreases the pipeline inspection piece of it yeah so 2.5 million that's a good point yeah but we're doing that in-house so you we used to have to uh hire consultant or contractors to go do the pipeline cleaning and inspection around the city all the collection system we're doing a lot more of that in-house now and so that's also reduced our our reliance on contractors oh I've asked a million questions but I think it's in your prayer time today this morning so that was really good.

This is for Mandy in conjunction to your department uh Mandy you sent the vacancy review list over that I just received um and it's not departmentalized is there you would I thought you just asked for wastewater I'll send you the whole thing oh this is wastewater this is just wastewater that I say that should be filtered for just wastewater one two three four five seven positions where you see waste a total seven fifty nine but is it under a different tab oh where's it vacancies okay so there's two thousand fifteen there's a 2015 versus 2026 Liz.

That's that's a different list that was to see what positions they changed from 2015 to 2026.

Okay.

And that's whole city so you just sent me his which one two three four five six seven so you have seven unfilled positions.

Full wastewater I think those those are the ones that are unfilled and have been unfilled for more than a year more a year or so.

So like and that was my question I wanted to know which positions how long and what how long they've been I and I think there's a column on that off to the right that may have the last filled positions last filled and it has the last fill date and the the last the oldest position that he has is a senior engineer which water one more column over councilman Henderson as chairman of the budget might be possible if next week we have some time specifically where all the council has that and has studied it and then Mandy could walk us through the intricacies of those positions of of how that you're talking about of the all vacancies the vacancies yeah because um because councilman clerk something that Mandy was telling us about like the dates on the position that so say you have seven litter crew ten litter crew and part of the vacancy that happens is that somebody might get another job in the city that's not as entry level and so they're always refilling position number one or position number two like they're so if they so like the date on the bottom of the position if they have not kept a full crew at all that time that one might be dated 2022 when in fact they've been running through these others which doesn't it doesn't really change the the question itself of well do we have an extra crew position that we don't actually need but it sounds to me like when I'm look at this at a glance I don't fully comprehend the the how it all works and so that if we do have time Mr.

Budget chair I think that could be really helpful because it does because um public works has done exactly what you're talking about like they found two million bucks in their budget from those unfelt positions that now they're able to add new positions to related to litter uh well that's in stormwater but um in some different positions that are very important recycling etc so um I'd love to be able to understand that better yeah okay we've got some additional statistics that that that came through here from my astute team back here we have we have 36 vacancies right now 24 of those 36 are actively being recruited through the HR process three are ready for for I think interviews um and uh so the other 21 are actively kind of in the recruitment process okay so I was sent the one year vacancies right these are the vacancies that are over your old that's right yeah okay so let me rephrase no I'm sorry tell no no no so the it's it was clearly very complicated I'm sorry I don't know it shows the position last fill date so on this list you have two that were last filled in uh April 26th so that's not more than a year old it could be in the way that report was put together was the vacancies as of July 1 and the vacancies as of last week when I ran the report so it could be like a crew worker that was hired and let like it could be some in and out in there which would show up differently but just the way that report was put together.

So it could be like a crew worker that was hired, and let like it could be some in and out in there, which would show up differently, but just the way that report was put together.

But we can we can come back and refine the.

Let me help reframe my question.

I would like get the pigs out of the water.

All right.

I would like a total list.

Okay.

Of all of your vacancies as in this fiscal year, because we're still in this 2026 fiscal year, which does not end until June 30th.

Up into that date, I would like to know what your total vacancy is for your department.

That's 36.

That's 36.

Okay.

And I'd like to the list that I have is a one-year variance, and there's only seven positions on there.

So I'd like to know all of the titles of those positions, 36.

So I would like to have a piece of paper with those 36 vacancies and their titles.

Yep, we'll get it to you.

Okay.

Thank you.

I don't know why that was complicated.

Sorry.

It feels very complicated.

Councilman, what I have requested Weston, so I had a document last year.

Yeah.

That listed every vacancy department.

And it budget and it gave a budget Terry number.

I mean, if you added them all up, I think it was around 18 million.

But someone took out the Borough Police the drop it's billing out down to like eight million.

But I would lock that same that same format for for this year and possibly somehow overlay it to figure out that's right.

Which positions from that last chart to this chart.

Which ones are still vacant?

That sounds like AI parts.

Seriously, you know those two to compare the two.

Well, reverse.

That's it.

I'm sorry.

You good.

Okay.

Council member.

Um because of what several people have said about how it's all always rotating.

I think it's there's some information that for me would be missing, and that's what's actively being reviewed.

I mean, I know there was a position with a department last year that maybe I didn't never saw the list, but maybe made it to the list, but we don't necessarily know what departments are actively pursuing.

And it may just be that yes, we need that position, but it's we haven't been able to find the right person.

So how does that how does that get identified on that list?

Well, there was a column, I think, and it might have been listed status.

I mean, like if if there if they were in an interview process, if not uh okay, I just want to make sure that we see that information.

There was a there was a column that kind of gave update of of where that position.

Councilman, do you still have that list?

That list you had last year.

Uh I've got the I've got it somewhere.

Okay.

All right.

I think it'll be good to send to Weston and Mandy, maybe in preparation.

I'm sure it's the document.

Yeah, it's probably in the FY26 budget full from last year.

Yeah, I'll go run it down.

Okay.

Very good.

And maybe and just a comment, and if we have the time next week to have more of a lengthy conversation once we have the information in front of us, I want to make sure that we're allowing the various departments to have the opportunity to have an exchange with us.

Again, it may not, we don't always know what's going on in the behind the scenes of yes, we need this position.

Yes, it's been open for over a year, but we haven't had the right person apply or been able to fill it.

So I hate to cross out something that's desperately needed, but there's not always the right person around to fill that spot.

So we got about six more minutes and we still got to go to parks.

So uh let's I think we have I think there's time in the next hour probably with just DTS and earlier than if it needs to go a little long, we we probably manage that.

I would imagine.

But yes.

Uh anything else on for more things I know that's what I'm playing.

Anything else for wastewater?

I think that was it.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

Come on down, Brian.

Yeah, talk some parts.

Absolutely.

City and apartment.

The fun department.

Let's just start off with that.

That was finance.

All right.

You sound all students here.

All right.

All right, the floor viewers.

All right, so parks is showing an overall decrease of 1.1 million dollars.

And that's we'll get into why.

So salaries and benefits, a decrease of 630.

And what we did is we moved um, I'm gonna get the the arts, culture, and creative economy group from parks.

Um that's the group that kind of manages large special events and things, and that's moved over into economic development.

So when you get an economic development, you'll see those folks added to that budget.

So we've moved them from here to there.

Um, and then on the operations side, there's some operations dollars associated with those people and those teams.

So those those monies have been moved as well.

Um, and then a hundred thousand dollars added for our investment and money towards our investment in the national park setting.

Um the six positions uh from or remove to economic development, they're listed there, but again, it's that that ace team, the the arts creative economy, um moving from parks into economic development.

Any questions on that kind of high level?

The the bulk of the change was just again moving that group over that generation does this budget include the new cargown district, district four road.

Okay, well, uh we did acquire uh road.

Um and our next step with that would be for working with the community to decide what we would like to see that particular park.

So um there's operations for doing that, but as far as the actual capital investment, to we're not at that stage just yet.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Councilman uh uh Chairman Harvey, I've got a question about the investment into National Park City.

Um to do more of a deep dive and explain what that investment is.

Absolutely.

So I will say this.

Um the overall goal of National Park City in year number one, which we just uh it eclipsed into year number two was just overall attention.

Uh last year uh National Park City was not budgeted, but I was able to uh work with tourism, working with our local media.

Uh I think we've all have heard the term over and over and again.

Uh so I I do applaud being able to navigate those waters without a budget.

Uh this year uh I'm hoping to elevate that even more, especially with our uh our city, and what I usually say by that is is that we can so showcase some of the great things that the city is doing that's innovative that sort of fits into that national park city realm, uh, and that includes you know anywhere from video is marketing, uh and the list goes on.

Also, too, uh all y'all are familiar with the seed program that we did launch with uh David Liljohn and Humanauts and exploring that and the next steps of that, and we'll also do some marketing around how community initiatives have sparked some change in the city of Chattanooga and how we're all working together as partnerships.

So I think really it's just we've seen millions of people viewing Chattanooga from the top from magazines like popular science to outside magazine, and the list goes on.

Now it's sort of localizing that a little bit more and then working with teams and um video uh companies like dynamic studios and more uh to sort of elevate what we're doing here locally and with our partners as well.

So the investment fund would be used kind of in a discretionary way for all just highlighting the things that we're doing here in the city, working with our partners as well, that leads into the National Park City Initiative, like nature-based marketing marketing dollars, yes, sir.

Okay, and I think that's what it should say because when you use a broad term like National Park City investment, and we're all still trying to learn what National Park City is, um, you need to be a little bit more detailed about what that investment is as far as like if it's marketing, if it's community engagement, then that to me is what it needs to be earmarked as and explained as because when I think of investment, I'm thinking like, well, it's a park, you're building more parks, right?

You're building more trees, um, and what frustrates me with these line items is that they're that broad, and they're not now and it's it's very strange for me to even ask like what is the breakdown of it.

Our whole entire budget is investment, right?

And so when I see a line item that says investment, I'm like, and to what?

And it's not explained, so not I like more of a breakdown.

Absolutely every line item in our budget could be investment, right?

So I do believe that's very broad.

Um, I like to understand, and it's just because the program is so new, we're still curious about why we're investing in National Park City, how it benefits my district or just our city in general.

It seems like we latched all to this or this global organization in another country and say we're a park city, and we and we're still trying to grasp what that means.

And we and we're still trying to grasp what that means.

Absolutely.

And I my goal is to help explain that better going into next year.

And I do believe Weston may have may have pulled it up.

It is under our advertising budget under my communications team.

So we do have it listed there, but we can you know explain more if we need to.

Councilman Henderson.

I'm gonna follow up with something Councilman Clark was talking about.

What one of the things that I think that we really haven't latched on to is really marketing this National Park City because I I've talked to several uh I guess entrepreneurs that have moved here from other parts of the United States because we are now recognized as a national park city.

So I I really think to some degree it's a it's a recruiting tool for economic development.

Um and it's and it's been effective with just the very little exposure that we've given to it already.

So I mean, if we can kind of kick that in full gear, I mean I expect that to be really an economic development tool.

Um of the things, and I don't really expect you to answer this because uh I was hoping uh our chief of staff would be here.

One of the things that I noticed when I sat in on the interviews for the park administrator, no none of the finalists, and I think there were four, really spoke to programming.

And it made me wonder, and I even brought it up in that um when we were signed kind of doing a uh debrief or brought it up to the chief then.

It makes me wonder if we have programming in the wrong department, in in my opinion, and we've already moved aquatics over to community development, correct?

Would we not be better served moving all of our programming over to community development and let community development do our programming and let our parks do the parks?

Uh I I know that's putting you, and I don't expect you to answer, okay?

I'm just kind of throwing this out there.

Programming do they do?

That's what I'm saying.

I don't even know.

Well, I mean, look all of your quarter.

So are you talking about the seed program?

Like no, no, no, no, no.

Like ball tournaments like um therapeutic programs I'm lost in what we're talking about.

Some county citizen programs.

For National Park City.

No, no, no, but parks in general.

Parks in general.

I'm so sorry.

You get a segue, the I'm so I'd say a parts.

I'm thinking you're thinking of the National Park City.

Yeah, but you're saying a parts like parts of the parks department that has our programming for Zedway.

Our programming programming for summit, our programming for Warner Park, our programming really at any of our community centers that anything outdoors.

You know, all of that goes through our parts department, but it it was it it was just very I guess evident to me that none of those finalists really spoke to that.

And it just made me wonder if if we have that in the wrong department, and and maybe that's something that we need to talk about on the 26th.

I can follow up with deputy in the corner.

Well, I was just gonna name off some of the recreation departments uh activities that we do do.

So while aquatics didn't move over, we do have therapeutic recreation, of course.

Outdoor Chattanooga program is extremely strong where we're just connecting people to the outdoors every day, so kind of that learning ground.

Uh we have a couple hundred youth that are playing baseball tonight in our RBI program.

Uh you know, the list kind of goes on.

So to your point, I'm not able to answer that particular question, and I will let that for our next administrator.

However, as far as recreation and the programs that we do, I think overall we're built on them being outside in the outdoors, and that's where it sort of fits in with the parks and outdoors department, uh, especially something like outdoor Chattanooga, but all of our ball fields, all of our tournaments are outdoors as well.

So I think that's the overall mindset of why recreation and those types of recreation amenities are in our department.

Um because it goes beyond the tournaments.

Well, obviously that's an extremely massive economic benefit for us.

Uh, just like I said, even the the little ones that are playing baseball tonight, um, you know, the yoga in the park that we had at uh at uh Ross's line this past Sunday, and the list goes on.

So well, I mean it either speaks to community health absolutely or economic development.

I mean, really it air and and I guess my point is are we getting everything out of our parks that we could with with programming being there?

And we may and the answer to that may be yes, I don't know, but but I see our parks as being a big part of community health.

I see it as being a driver as being an asset for economic development if we use it in that way, and just like the back to the uh National Park City, that could be a big economic driver once you know by getting the word out that you know that that's what we are uh because there are a lot of companies that are interested in that movement.

Absolutely.

And just a quick follow-up to those that were candidates as well.

Part of my transition uh for the new administrator, obviously, is explaining all of those uh recreation amenities and activities that we have going on, so they will be it will be ready from day one.

Councilwoman Hill Ox.

Oh, I'm sorry, Councilman Henderson.

I'm good.

Um I think Councilman Henderson, your your thought experiment is is interesting and worth continuing to contemplate.

Um something that like what I mean, obviously, yes, we have that economic development element, but we also have how are the services and opportunities and amenities and civic infrastructure that Chattanoogans have built for Chattanoogaans accessible to Chattanoogans, right?

Um and I have uh long been impressed with the outdoor the parks and outdoors guide when y'all first started doing that.

You know, that's my favorite publication of the year.

I put a you know, I bring it on my screen and porch, I look like oh, I wish I had you know I highlight things and then I have to go to a different meeting sometimes.

But thank you.

Um and so then when community development started putting that out, I saw you know there's there's there's something there of okay.

Well, we've got now we have two, but I I do think that it's it's highly likely that um there is an overlap in the folks who are interested in things that are happening in our parks, things that are happening elsewhere in our community, be that in a community center or a health fair by community health, whatever it might be.

Um, and then when community development launched an app, and and it I find that as a consumer, it is difficult to really know what's going on in the city with the parks with um uh community centers, etc.

With the library, I mean there's a lot of really neat stuff happening, and I do think if there were a way to coalesce all of that into a singular quarterly kind of publication, some of that is like getting people out of silos, maybe or Chattanooga app or the 311 out.

I mean, who knows?

I mean, I think sometimes you need a um low barrier to entry, like fail fast on something, um, not like rebuild a whole system.

But um if we think about why the city exists, it exists to provide health and safety largely, but then also we exist and provide service opportunity or services and opportunities to our citizens.

Um thinking about how we do that ever better, I think is a worthy thought experiment.

All right, council, any more questions before we move on.

We're already a few minutes behind, so um, yeah.

Sorry, yeah, I thought we were just on that one thing.

No, we got a education and innovation next.

We're supposed to start at 11.

Okay, well I'll stand down.

I'm here because it's up to y'all.

Okay.

Uh real good.

There we go.

All right, okay.

All right, uh real quick golf courses.

Yeah, kind of fall under um under Brian's purview here.

So uh largely flat um increase of around 100,000.

Um half of that is the risk allocation increase, and then um another increase for just materials and supplies and the costs of operations going on with there.

So uh they have a total of 53 folks out there, no new positions for them this year.

Uh so they're gonna keep operating with the people that have positions they have.

Um so not not a whole lot new at the golf course, kind of some business as usual for them.

So questions on golf course.

Okay, all right.

Well, I I will say with regard to their future challenges, they say that challenges keeping up with payroll, they've dramatically increased over the last 30 three years by 70 percent uh their payroll costs um and aging infrastructure, but these are self-sufficient courses, and so um I I think the green fees, cart rental, etc.

And so I think the green fees, cart rental, etc.

opportunities for revenue growth.

That's right.

That's right.

Okay.

All right.

Moving on.

And that would conclude the parks and public workers, I think.

Excellent.

Ryan, thank you very much for your time today.

Absolutely.

Appreciate y'all's support.

Alright.

I think that's going to turn it over to the colour.

Run it over to Council.

For innovation and education by the year.

DTS is DTS?

They should be.

They may be watching again.

Here they come.

Oh yeah.

Yes.

What time what time was mine?

10 minutes ago.

11.

11 to 12.

No.

Right?

No, 11.

10 to 11.

Sounds like it's 10 o'clock.

That was the old time.

Sorry.

Yeah, oh yeah.

So we'll go with who's here.

DTS is here.

They're all here.

Yeah, they're here now.

They're waiting at Anti.

Oh, they're waiting into.

Gotcha.

We'll start with DT?

DTS.

Do you want to start with DTS?

You're leaving.

All right, we'll start with DTS if that's okay.

Um this is the DTS A.

Oh, innovation.

DTS is under innovation.

Gotcha.

I have a lot of model.

What are you?

Good morning, everyone.

Cool.

All right.

Um we're gonna commence our education innovation of budget carrying for um the department of technology services, is that correct?

Yes, sir.

Okay, so I'm still learning a bunch of ac acronyms, and then after you we have the administrator of early learning, Kerbert Samos the Jones who's here with us.

Yes.

But if you could just walk us through your uh budget and then I'll yield for questions.

Perfect.

We'll start with the the high level um DTS's budget increase uh three point two, three point three million dollars.

Um salaries and benefits were up eight hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars.

Um three percent COLA was part of that.

Um then they also had uh with and Gerald hit in this a little bit with with their hiring uh folks last year we added a bunch of positions, um, and so kind of to that conversation around the engineers and some of those professional services when we look to budget, uh bringing some of those folks on board, just the cost of bringing them on and hiring them at a little bit higher rate to get the right people in here, increase uh salaries and benefits a little bit for us.

Uh they did have uh decrease in consultant fees 480,000, contracted services and training costs and other large decrease.

Um a big part of their increase, really all of their increase, is um in these IT maintenance accounts, and what that is, there's kind of three accounts you'll see them if you get into the details.

It's hosting, maintenance, and licensing.

And once you're licensing and software, yeah.

And so that's kind of the the software costs.

And the big chunk of most all of that increase is the axon contract.

We touched on it a little bit when police was here.

Last year, Axon is the body cameras, it's the car cameras for the police.

That contract lived in police's budget at a cost of 1.4 million dollars.

That contract ended.

We entered into a new contract.

It now lives in DTS's budget just so they can manage, they manage all of our our IT contracts for us.

But that cost went from 2.4 or 1.4 to 2.5.

That's correct.

Um to for the same thing.

All right, with a couple of additional cameras, but for the same thing it went up by no, we're adding a number of different uh additional body cams, okay.

Yes.

So they added, and then there was some additional police software ads to that as well.

So the bulk of that IT maintenance increase is around police technology that has been added to their budget.

So let me ask a clarifying question.

Council members, do y'all have any uh councilwoman who oh I'm still listening to the shadow?

I want to uh put a pin right there because I know and just for clarity, I think you just mentioned it that we the axiom but the axiom contract increased by a million dollars.

Is that correct?

And it it did not we made the decision not to go out and rebid that because I think the other competitor was Motorola, is that correct?

That's right, yes.

Yes, yes, okay.

And so, but prior to that, it lived in the police budget.

That's correct.

Okay.

And it was transferred to your department as a net increase in IT maintenance accounts.

Yes.

Okay.

Correct.

So can so that was that was a $1 million over it, but what's the total amount for that?

The total amount for that got transferred to us from the police department budget was $1.48579.

Okay, so subtract that from $3.2 million of your IT maintenance accounts.

What are the other accounts?

So there's there's an additional $1.5 million in cost that came to us that is police department funded as well.

So for that $1.5 additional cost was for what?

$1 million for the axon contract.

So we now have a total of $2.5 million for the axon contract.

By the way, that they started their start-in negotiating position for us was three million dollars.

So we have them down to six, and we're working for two five because that's the funds we have.

Right.

So and the chief has worked with us on that to trim the number of devices that are part of that contract.

By the way, this includes evidence.com.

Gotcha.

Why we have a camera system called FUSIS that makes it possible for citizens, uh businesses, Hamilton Place Mall to ingest cameras into the Arctic so that we can provide policing services there.

So we have uh a number of other things which I can detail for you.

So there's an additional million dollars that gets us up to the two and a half.

Then we have a system called Peregrine, and Peregrine is a data management system.

So one of the truths in in uh PD is that we have 20 years of data that has been collected through our records management systems.

That sounds like something you put in the file drawer.

We don't run a police department without records management system.

It is the way that department functions.

Every area of the department uses a record management system.

So we have 20 years worth of data there.

That's a very hard problem.

It's one of the things that tripped us up with the prior RMS that we were trying to bring in, Mark 43, you all remember that problem.

Data management.

So this gives the chief the ability to reach back into history whenever he needs it and access that data without having to bring all that into a current records management system.

Okay, so that's a big benefit to us.

They're excellent at doing this.

They have some proprietary technology.

We brought them on board last year.

That also gives all his command staff dashboards about what's going on in their areas, neighborhood policing, arrest, crime of varying sorts.

So it's it's putting at their fingertips the kind of data they need to run the department effectively.

That's peregrine.

FUCSIS I mentioned a little bit earlier, and then there's a few other things, great key magnet forensics, part of their uh fingerprinting operation, and a couple of other smaller applications that make up that one and a half million dollars.

Okay.

So that's basically the core of what got added to the uh software purchases that we manage on behalf of the city.

Okay.

And the chief did take his budget down by about three million.

I don't know if you've met with him, but if you have, you saw he had a minus three million.

So this is one of the things we're getting better at when costs move from one department to our department.

We want to have a net zero for the city.

Uh and so we're getting a little bit more discipline around that.

Uh part of what we also plan to do over time is look at how we might distribute these costs back out into so a little bit of a cost accounting principle, put the cost where the value is being generated.

Uh, so that's part of our longer term look at how to manage this uh cost more strategically.

What it's looked like year over year, and what it looks like now while we're talking about it is DTS is kind of going out and bringing in a bunch of cost, and where did that come from?

Well, that's not exactly how it happens, and by the way, underneath this 3.2 million is a lot of in and out.

We've found opportunities to say, hey, we have some overlapping software, so we're not gonna pay for that anymore.

We've found uh software usage that's not up where it needs to be, so we've had licenses that we've called back.

Some of our contracts let us adjust our cost, others of our contracts lock us into multi-year, that saves us money, so we can't actually take cost out, even though we're using less licenses, but we hold them for new people coming in.

So we don't have to come ask for more licenses.

So mundy.com, I got other things that are used all over the city.

Oracle is another example.

We have to have an Oracle license for every human being who's full-time employed in the you know in the city.

So we have a lot of ins and outs.

I have legal-sized paper here that's probably 300 line items of costs uh that we manage on behalf of the city.

It is the backbone, the software is the backbone of the city operations.

Yes.

So I would think it's the backbone of the innovation hub for the things you're doing to help digitize the police department.

And I'm really interested in the dashboard access to community policing data that'll be available in the police cruiser.

Is that correct?

Yeah, uh, I didn't know about the cruisers, but yes, we are going to have a dashboard, yes, a dashboard that's available for community policing.

Yes, that's one of the, and by the way, I would just uh like to have a little aside and say thank you to the council for your investment in DTS last year.

Part of what I'm able to talk to you about now is what we've been able to do by beefing up our staff.

Um, and we've done that very well just to pick up on conversations previously.

We have only out of the 25 net positions you gave us, we have five unfilled.

Okay.

Okay.

So we went after that really aggressively.

Uh and those five were a challenge for us to just kind of find a fit.

The environment, the hiring environment was very good to us.

Uh we had a lot of general layoffs and various other tech companies, and that anured to our benefit because we had people looking for jobs that wouldn't normally be looking for jobs.

And I will say our benefits and our work life balance, as has been mentioned earlier, was a real attraction.

We had some people come to the city who are being paid twice more than they're now being paid at commercial entities, and if you want to just generally think about the cost in our department, 2x in a commercial environment versus what we're able to pay here, uh is just kind of a good back of the you know napkin calculation, but we were able to attract people because we paid a little bit more.

That's to talk to my overage, a little bit more than we were budgeted, because I really felt like you made that investment.

We need to get the right people in here so we can do what we need to do.

Uh and some people wanted to come to work for a little bit better work-life balance, where they had global teams that you know they were up at two and three in the morning here working remotely, and that is one of the advantages of the city of Chattanooga, but it also has its costs for human beings.

So, anyway, we've been back to back to what we were talking about.

Yes, we have a number of uh activities, our AI and data area.

We've had 17 new dashboards put up since you all made the investment in our team.

That's because we have new technology that we've brought in, new capabilities, um, new new team members with new skills.

Uh so that's one of the one of the value areas and certainly how we manage software and think about it is another.

I would also say from an innovation perspective, um, we have a project management team.

So every new piece of software that comes into the city, any department that's asking for a new piece of technology has to come through my project management office.

And it's there that we have the opportunity to look throughout the two or three hundred lines I mentioned to see if we have any other software that we're already using here that would cover 85, 90 percent of what someone might be looking for, so we can talk about trade-offs.

Maybe they need that really that five or ten percent more, and then that we we can say, okay, that's worthwhile.

But we're completely revamping that whole process from STEM to Stern as part of our innovation engine here.

I'll pause for questions from council.

Am I having questions?

Is there another slide, Gerald?

Uh I want to keep us moving.

I do have a question about your AI position.

That's the last slide.

They have one new position that's added.

All the GIS positions live in DTS, but it's being funded by uh Swampwater.

This position that's on the thing?

Yes.

Okay.

It's technically in his budget, but it's being funded by Swimming.

We have a number of positions like that.

Councilman Hill.

Thank you.

Um, Gerald, I appreciate some of the details and the executive summary.

I was um interested to understand about the digital transformation leadership that we invested in last year, but you've spoken to some of that already.

Um the two the two things I wanted to ask about.

Um, number one is the cyber resilience.

Um, it was um concerning to me to discover that um despite what was said in the risk presentation, Mandy was able to clarify that we do not, in fact, have any type of cybersecurity insurance at this point.

Um so the work that you all do is that much more imperative and the training.

Um, are you working with RIST to help them identify what kind of insurance we need to have?

Yes, ma'am, we are.

Yes.

Uh, my team has the application right now, uh, and we are filling it out.

Um, Brian Hoffman, who's my director for infrastructure security and camera operations has the responsibility to do that.

Brian came to us from Hamilton County 911.

He was one of the individuals we were able to attract over.

Uh and so he's gonna fill out that application, we'll return it to risk, and then risk will shop it for you know through their uh broker for for um quotes, right?

And then risk will look at that.

We'll provide any input and feedback they want from a cybersecurity perspective, and then risk and and the mayor's office will make the decision about the insurance.

Okay, um the other I might also say too, uh Moccus and Ben is going through the same process.

Yes.

And and just as a point for counsel if you're not familiar, we also provide the underlying cybersecurity platform for Moxton there.

My team does.

Yes.

Um, so the other question I have, um, your budget overview language was interesting.

Um I think you're the only one that has said that your budget is provisioned at 26 level cost to sustain improvements, but should additional needs arise, incremental funds would be needed to add to our budget.

So nobody else comes in, it's like, but we may just need more money later.

Um so um that was unusual.

Um, and to what extent do you anticipate that suddenly we would need something that you didn't know we needed and require a budget increase?

Let me tell you where that would happen.

Okay.

When we have contracts that are expiring after typical is a four-year multi-year contract, sometimes five.

Some vendors will only allow us to do three.

So the axon contract, by the way, I think will be a three-year contract.

James, am I correct about that?

Three for Axon five.

Five, all right, five.

But we have one or two that will be, you know, three.

So when we come to a renewal period, we've negotiated terms with these folks that are usually two, three percent increases year on year throughout the life of the contract, but four or five years is a long period of time, and they will come back and they have come back and they will ask us for 50% more money.

Wow, 40% more money.

And um, and depending on what it is, we we might be able to bring some other competitors to the table uh or not.

Uh and in such cases, we do our best to get them down to the amount of money we have in the budget.

So, what I'm really signaling to you there is we will do our absolute dead best to stay within the budget that you approve for us.

And then we may find some vendors who just will not come down to the money that we have, no matter what our strategies are, in order to get them to do that.

In which case, we would either need to ask for more money, or we're going to have to find cuts somewhere else.

We could go to other departments and see if they had money, namely the ones that would be using these applications, or as a last resort, we would have to go to the mayor's office and ask do they have a fund that we could somehow tap into?

And we would do that very carefully and only after we've exhausted all the other options that we might have to stay within the budget that's already there.

Okay, okay.

That makes sense.

And and your point about if it's a software that a specific department is relying on, it makes sense that that department's budget would be impacted.

Okay, got it.

Thank you very much.

That's all.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'd like a follow-up to that because I know in most of our departments is usually a contingency line item for that.

Um for if something goes over calls or have to something has to be renegotiated because of a change order, contract changes, but you don't have that in your budget.

I do not.

No, sir.

We we uh we were asked to be, we were asked to do everything we could do to be flat this year.

But you've asked, but you have listed a contingency in your executive summary to her point, and you can be flat in ask for a contingency line item but deny.

We have a contingency line item in general fund as a whole, which DTS rolls up under so it would come out of out of that contingency.

But what's the normal variance like for one budget year two and next, where have you seen an increase?

Like, for instance, Axion was an additional increase of a million dollars.

So just on average, where have you seen a contingent increase that you would have to come back and ask the general fund or counsel for more money?

Uh I would I'll give you an example from last year with money.com.

Um our contract right now, we were renewing it.

Uh they were providing great services for us.

They ask us for a 40 or 50 percent increase.

Now we were able actually to get them down within the amount of money we had.

So that's that's the kind of example that I'm talking about.

Um, and we have been able to manage within the budget for these sorts of things in prior.

We're just so tight this year that I wanted to just call it out as a potential.

Yes.

Not that I'm looking to do it.

This gentleman here will help me in every way he can uh to make sure that we get our cost, we keep our cost within the budget envelope you've given.

I'm gonna go back to Westland because you mentioned contingency funds in the general fund.

How much is it?

3.2 million.

And so is that is that understood by administrators that that that is something they could dip into contingency usually used for those purposes?

Like this year's contingency was used large almost entirely to cover the mold remediation at the police department, just things that we have to do that we didn't really plan to do.

And so if if axon came back and we didn't have the money and we we know we need it, we have to fund it.

Then if we couldn't to Darrow's point find it somewhere else in police's budget or in theirs, then yes, we would have to do that.

Did that sync hole come out again?

No.

Um so it it could potentially but it's understood by administrators that if it's not because certain departments have like community development has a contingency line item budget, is what I'm saying.

You do have certain departments, and I have to go back and look because I saw that.

That's why I when she asked that question, I was like, oh, they were you know, I was I didn't want to insulting, sorry.

They were strategic enough to put in a line out of contingency.

Are you aware of other departments that have contingency?

Okay.

You generally it all falls underneath that this umbrella if they're in if they're within general fund, they fall underneath that general fund contingency umbrella.

Okay, gotcha.

I think to respond to you to your comment.

I I would go to the mayor's office if I needed uh help.

Yes, but I would do that as a last resort.

Absolutely.

I've that's how I manage my budget.

You've given me the money to run my department, and you expect me to stay within it, and I'm going to fall down on the last mile carrying the backpack before I go ask for help.

Well, you seem to be giving us a great return on our investment, even with the reduction in force, which is difficult for for the city and for us.

Yes.

And you seem to turn turned that back into innovation that's beneficial, not just on to the police department, but to the city as a whole, is that right?

Yes, thank you for that comment.

Yes, we worked very hard to do that.

And um and the the um uh transition, I'm happy to say, was really without any substantial issue at all.

Or impact operations, and we were able to make a number of innovations uh throughout the city.

The 311 dashboard that we have now that informs us of what's going on there, the work with 311 in terms of the application, some of the feedback that came when Kevin and team did the 311 um presentation to council about what can you find can I find uh more easily when when this happens in my neighborhood in my app.

Our digital experiences team has worked very carefully and hard on that one.

So we have been able to turn the whole transition into more innovation from the city and without any um real trouble or loss of operations or impact operations throughout this last year.

Last question before we transition over to early learning.

Oh I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

Sorry.

Oh, I did it's I wanted to ask the question about the position that was added for the director of AI, and there's another portion of the AI data.

Yes.

Uh do you want to speak to that and what that role is doing and how they're integrated into some of this innovation work that we're doing throughout the state.

So that's Jonathan Taylor who came to us from Kroger.

He was part of their community uh consumer research business, which is about a billion dollar business for them.

They basically take data from their uh customers and how that uh how people purchase and buy, and they um make that available to the people that sell to them.

It's a it's a crazy business, but a crazy profitable business for Coger.

Uh so he has excellent skills.

Uh, what we've done in that area, I combine the AI and data uh function into one.

And the truth about AI, whether it's unstructured data like this information here, that's what's unstructured or structured like what you would find in a spreadsheet in a database.

It all has to be good data, and it all has to be annotated and tagged and understood, and it needs to be accessible for AI to use it.

So we have taken uh a system that was 10 years old and replaced it with a modern system.

We've we've and we're leveraging our strategic partnership with Google.

We're using their platform called Big Query, and this is their big database that handles unstructured and structured data for their company.

They operate their company on it, and we have used some Google tools as well for analytics and visualization to be able to provide the dashboards that we have now.

Uh and so Jonathan spent the first nine months transitioning from what we had to what you know to where we are now, which and it's a significant level of effort to do that well.

Um, and also worked with Brendan Cleary, my GIS manager to stand up the new budget site that we have and the new open data site.

So we moved when we moved from that 10-year-old system that housed both the data and the site for open data.

Uh we made the transition to BigQuery and then also to our GIS platform that now hosts that site.

So they've worked together on that.

We've also been focused on some pilots for AI.

We worked on a pilot in constituent services to try to help that team take all this kind of email, phone messages, money.com feedback from you all and sort of get that together in a way that they could see what I call signal and noise.

So there's a lot of information that flows, and this is one of the challenges we all have about you know you can buck a mole by attending to every single problem that comes to you.

Each of you appreciate that idea.

You can try to get a sense of what's the bigger problem that's going on across my constituency across the city, and then try to put some resource behind that.

That was the intention of that position.

Of that particular innovation.

Awesome.

All right, thank you, Chairman Henderson.

So this is not really a budget question, but I called you Friday.

You know, we've installed the smart uh lot technology uh there on Breastbury or Comes Highway, and I think down Broad Street as well.

Yes, sir.

But I had to call to say we've got congestion.

Yes, sir.

And I think you made some changes in within an hour or so it helped and it cleared up.

We did.

Is that something we're gonna have to call every time?

No, sir.

To clear up.

No, sir.

So one of the other investments that you all gave us in the uh budget amendment was some uh capital money for a transportation management center.

So uh uh that is over on the third floor of the city hall of annex.

Um, and we have now a manager hired and a we've made an offer for a lead position operator to run that.

And when we and we're in the final stages of uh procuring the software that would make all this possible, we will have a team there who will be watching around the city so that you won't have to call or your constituents won't have to call you and then you call me and hope that we can get something done.

And that that's certainly that is how we plan to operate, and I would say it will take us a little bit of time to ramp that thing up fully.

We've uh talked to the city of Nashville uh about how they run their transportation management center and taken all the learnings and feedback we could from them.

Kimley Horn, who consults us on multiple projects on transportation and works with the RPA on their multi-year uh programs out there as well, has given us a lot of feedback, and so we have a good understanding.

We've been out to uh T Dots Transportation Management Center to learn from them.

And so our intent is that we have eyes on at least probably I'd say 18 hours a day.

So if something happens in the middle of the night, we're right now we're gonna be comfortable with uh just having to deal with that reactively, and we'll have a way to do that.

But for about 18 hours a day, we're gonna be watching traffic in the city and being able to activate an incident plan uh that would flush traffic out of a problem like uh you described to me on Friday afternoon, or just any other kind of congestion that we might be able to make some tweaks.

Until we get that in place, just go ahead and plan on uh some kind of response and on Cummings Highway about three o'clock every Friday.

About every Friday, yes.

Yeah, so uh we will we will keep our eye ball on that.

So we need to put Gerald's number in our cell under favorite.

Yep, fix it.

Yes, okay, Gerald, do you have any closing or any closing comments or questions for the administrator?

Okay, also thank you, Joe.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Next, we're gonna up uh the early learning department.

Um the department of early learning, which is uh ran by Caritza Mosul Jones.

Their mission is to help children receive the best possible start in life by increasing their access to high quality early learning experience that shape their future is the mission of the department of early learning.

So uh administrator Jones, welcome.

Thank you.

And thank you for being prepared to ask our questions.

Would you like to introduce any of your team members here?

So this morning is just myself and my deputy administrator, Dr.

Marshall Drake.

Thank you, Dr.

Drake, for joining us.

All right, we'll jump right into your presentation.

Very good.

Daily learning's budget shows a decrease of of just at a million dollars here.

Um just a second.

Uh salary benefits of 87,000.

That's the COA and benefits increase we've been seeing in each department.

On the operation side, 1.1 million dollar decrease.

That's moving some RFP agencies up into that other agency.

We have that bucket in general government and the four million dollars.

We've taken all those four-year contracts now that they've run out and taken all the funds out of those departments and put it into that one line item in general government.

So uh this one million dollars represents the agencies that they previously had that now live in a single line item in general government.

Um so other than that, their budget was flat.

Um they have 17 folks last year, no new reorganization, so 17 folks again this year.

Um so that is early learning in a nutshell.

Any questions?

No.

Thank you.

So following up on some of the presentations that we have had with you all.

The commitment that the city has made to early learning to our youngest residents and to families is obviously very important to the one Chattanooga strategy and I think the values that we hold as a community.

So I'm starting to now that we've had we're in year five, really, of the these investments from the Kelly administration to better understand how our commitment is turning into outcomes.

And we talked about this a little bit the last time you presented.

Because there is that goal to have children be more ready for kindergarten.

And I know we have a we have that bridge of the data.

Where are we with understanding if what we're doing is helping kids be healthier when they get to when no more words when they get to pre-K, be more ready for kindergarten.

How are we tackling that?

So those outcomes come from in a variety of spaces, right?

So we have four divisional four divisional offices.

We have four divisional offices.

Good morning, Council.

You're doing all right to learn the expert.

You're like, all right.

I didn't want to talk open, but I didn't want to be like, so I was just like, let me just follow.

Um sorry, good to meet.

Okay.

Um, so we have four divisional offices, and each look at those outcomes in different ways, right?

And so Head Start, of course, is the um example, I guess you should say, um, or the or provides us with the the way in you can the way in which you can look at readiness most generally, and they they have set guidelines in which they do that, and that data is always available.

So depending on what I would say this, depending on what you want to know, we can pull that report together.

Most recently, we um I did have as of last week, actually, did have the staff to come um to provide me with their latest impact reports.

So they do have impact reports as we were um preparing for the release of our um acceptance into the the newest NLC cohort that talked about um pathways, right?

And so we wanted to make sure that we were able to speak um directly to some of those things.

So it just depends on what you're wanting.

So I will say that, but each division, each divisional office is looking at that differently, and we have the course the newest body of work, which is the parent family community engagement directorship, which will have the specialists under that division, and they're she's looking at how basics plays a part, basis Chattanooga plays apart into that and other initiatives that we do in the prenatal to um to three space.

So it just depends on what you want, but I can get that information to you.

Well, I I think but do I feel like let me say this?

Do we feel like we're doing the work and that they are becoming prepared?

Yes, we are.

Yes, they are, based off our C S for success cohorts, um, the providers there with um head start.

Uh-huh.

Um, and when you look at the data for those children going in, they are ready.

Well, I mean, that that's exciting.

Like that's what we all want to hear, right?

And um, I know that I know that through this department, the city does a lot to get in front of families, to be at the health fairs, to um to get Chattanooga basics out in front.

Um, and obviously there's an immediate economic benefit to having families have access to a thousand secure child care seats, right?

Like that's a it's clear.

Um, but then the really manifesting that improvement of life based on being more ready for school and being prepared for school success.

Um acknowledging that you have these four different lenses of looking at it through.

I will I'll be excited when we get to a point where you can say, and we're working.

Here's the one.

Yeah, so I'm just working on it when that happens.

That the um we're working on that, and we have clearly partners that do that work as well, right?

And so we partner with chamberless, we partner with signal centers, we partner with Hamilton County Schools, we're part of Early Matters and the Bright Start Coalition.

I mean, there's so many pieces there, and what that looks like, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, what that looks like would be a case scenario, right?

It's like it's not just oh, this is what it looks like to be kindergarten ready because every child is going to be kindergarten ready in a different way.

Because I could say kindergarten ready means you come from a two-pointer household, you have X amount of money and income, you live in this kind of house, and this side of that's what I could say, right?

Um you following me here, but that couldn't that could not be the case because you could have all of that and not be ready for kindergarten.

So we look at um through through early matters, there is a scope of kindergarten readiness where it looks like can they count to 20?

Yeah, that means can they use scissors?

Um, can they identify these colors?

Can they um I said that's a count?

Can they identify these shapes, all those things?

How are they social um with their social skills?

How do they interact?

Do they play alone?

Do they play together?

Um what I don't want to get into reading, but just like are are they reading because if they're reading it prior to kindergarten, clearly there there's an advancement there, right?

So there's just all these various buckets there, but we do use that tool as well.

Um coming up on next week, next Saturday.

It is right May 30th, there is a day um in kindergarten festival that's coming up at Archer Knob Elementary School in which the Office of Early Learning is going through each step of what it looks like to be kindergarten ready based off of um what we utilize from Early Matters and and what the community um through early matters, the coalition has decided um is what we feel like deems them as ready to enter, being able to do these things, and a lot of those things do align to what they do at Head Start, but they will be able to go um from station to station and completing like a bingo car.

So, like can your child do, I mean, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this as they get all the way through.

Um, they'll be actually able to go through the classrooms and see what that looks like, um, have the experience of what the lunch line looks, all those things.

So those are pieces too to getting you kindergarten ready because you can be academically kindergarten ready and not socially kindergarten.

Right, but yeah, but we know that we have a huge number of young children who are not ready, right?

And that's the purpose of the Department of Early Learning.

And making sure that we're exposing every child that we can um to those efforts and making sure that parents know that these resources are available, taking them to them, providing them spaces that they can come to us.

Okay.

Um one other question.

Um on our agency allocation um proposal right now, there is there is a proposal for um for an item at the um Montessori Charter School.

Um my understanding is that it is um kind of imploding.

And I'd like to not our commitment to them, but is the what is this hundred thousand dollar commitment to the Montessori charter school about?

So their proposal to us was that it would be be to support pre-K seats.

Okay.

Did some investment I will say this.

Let me pull that up because I did not think that that was gonna be a uh asked today.

Well, and if we need to work on it, yeah, and we can work on it, but I can tell you because I did have, but it is towards pre-K seats, and they do they do they do have a pre-K program there.

Um, did have an ask out to them, and I know that information was received back through our fiscal analyst as to how many seats um does that amount support?

Uh-huh.

Um, how many seats based off of what that amount supports are actually city residents that actually live within the parameters of what Montessori supports, which would be um, I believe it's district eight um residents and um some of our highest needs areas that would be well highest need students that would be zoned for our schools that are in highest need as well, right?

So I asked for a little more in-depth um answers to see.

So, like, is a hundred thousand dollars paying for five kids, or is it paying for ten kids, or if it's paying for a hundred kids?

Like, what does that look like?

Um, and I do have that information, I just don't have it readily available to you pulled up, but I can get that to you.

It'd be interesting to understand.

Um are they seats that wouldn't exist without that?

Um, you know, it is a it already the I think primary target market for that Montessori is the community around chat prep and CGLA, right?

So it's it's serving that community, but it's been um concerning to see comments and and read in the paper about just that monessory concept not necessarily coming to fruition.

I mean, you know, as a school board member that sometimes charters uh great ideas, but not always it can't always happen.

You know, is is that does that investment make sense um if that school is floundering?

Does it help it not flounder?

Does it are you asking because of the success of the Montessori school?

Would it be is it advantageous for us to put a pre-K program there?

No, so I think she's when I looked at the list, I thought this school is the school is not living up to expectations.

Why are we putting a hundred thousand dollars in it?

What's the note that I made to myself?

Is for a pre- it's for pre-K for pre-K seats, but not all of them.

You don't fund the entire program.

Correct, right?

Right.

So I just we need to better understand what that investment has.

The rationale of that investment.

Yeah, because pre-K seats are valuable anywhere they are.

Um, but is that school doing what it says it's doing?

Yeah, because I think the thought also would be that those children might matriculate into that school.

Well, yeah, typically, I think for my understanding, when you apply to that school, um, those kids then go into they apply into the lottery.

I hate to say lottery with the process for kindergarten.

But they do support this.

I know they support that they I should say preference.

When you look at the application, it says preferences given to students that reside in that in that neighborhood, which would be in the neighborhood surrounding that, and then anyone who is a sibling to a child that is a student currently in Montessori Highland Park or CGLA or Chaprap.

That makes perfect sense.

I want to yield to some more questions.

Councilman Harvey.

Thank you, Chairman.

Clark.

My understanding is early learning is nearly completely funded by a federal grant.

So I guess my question is what if any uh is the city's portion of funding early learning?

That's probably a Western question.

Our portion of funding early learning is 2.3.

Is that that's in addition to the federal grant?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

The federal grant is not included in the federal grant only supports, well, we have two different federal grants.

Yes.

Um, the main grant that you're talking about is it relates to early learning education, that would be the head start grant.

And in that grant, well, in that body of work, we have the main grant, the CH grant, um, and then the HP grant.

Okay.

Um, and that's about a 12.5, 12.8 million dollars, 12.5, I think it is, million.

Um, that is their grant in its entirety to support Head Start and early head start programming.

Of course, the city does supplement, you all supplement um sal support there for income for the staff, and then the foster grandparent program has a grant as well, and that provides um the budget for expenditures for the foster grandparent program and everything else, the other um two offices and administration and parent and family community engagement are funded on the general fund.

Gotcha.

Okay.

All right, that's all.

Thank you.

And thank you, Council Harvey.

Any other questions?

I have two questions, Ms.

Jones.

Ms.

Jones.

And uh the first question is a budgetary question as it relates to um capacity expansion of head start operating hours.

Um I know that all of the administrators submitted a flat budget with not a lot of increase to program, and you've we've seen an agency shift to yours and youth development one million dollars.

But what is the strategic trajectory to come alongside some of our other partners that are providing head start care after 2 p.m.

Because right now we stop after 2 p.m.

But we have other partners, and if I'm not correct on that, please correct me on that, that provide Head Start, they supplement their funding to sub to provide Head Start services after 2 p.m.

for their parents and family, but the city does not.

So our city main sites, Avondale, Cedar Hill, Daisy, and Hope City, um, soon to be James A.

Henry, those sites run strictly 7:30 to 2.30.

Um, we have collaborative collaboration sites and our partnerships.

So example, Chainless or Purpose Point, they um provide child care on their own in addition to our Head Start classes.

Um also with their programming, they provide what they call wraparound services before and after care.

So they're able to um start their children are able to start their days due to working parents and situations, they're able to start those days from 6 a.m.

Um and end them by 6 p.m.

Correct.

That is something that Chainless provides in its own entity, not it is not funded by Head Start.

That is something they provide out of their own um their own budget and as people pay, and the same with Purpose One.

Um I don't know.

I guess my So we so the question, so the thing is if we were to do that in our four main sites, we would have to have city funding for that because the grant does not afford us to be able to do that.

So why is that not a priority from the we we talked about this last year, council, and it's you know, early learning as we know because it's kindergarten readiness, and we use this department as a community development function.

We have a they have a line item called community forward, but our if we know most of you who are working parents, your work day does not stop at two o'clock, but yet our city has not put the investment.

This is not a dig on you, but it is a criticism to the administration that we have not invested properly into early learning by expanding head start care past 2 p.m.

and our other partners have.

Well, and so what I'm the council that appropriates those opportunities, and I guess my question to you where is the advocacy for that and the will from the administration to do that, and how can the council support you in that?

Um so I in my having been administrator here in the three years I've been here, I do feel like there is will at the administrative level to support that.

Um I just know that from my other life, when you have when when you all look at the grand scheme of things, and even when leadership is looking at the grand scheme of things, um, you prioritize and does that become a priority, although it is a priority.

You have to figure out what that looks like, right?

I can't speak to that.

I'm not at either one of those levels.

However, I do know that there have been several conversations on that same question has come to me from from administration from administration.

Actually, May Mayor Down had that's come to me.

Um Mayor's Cabinet, Mayor, you all.

So it's come up, and we have I mean, we presented most recent recently, even last year we presented, um, I actually put it in my budget last year, and we had to take it out because it wasn't there.

So there is um we would like to expand, but um eight eight to five, um, looking at ways to do that if there's funding available.

Um we do if and we do have I could say I I know that I presented a proposal and Weston and I talked about it, and I've talked about it with my direct reports, which are the chiefs, um, and up until we're gonna do that.

And we do have in the in the sheet that Kevin sent with the agency allocation of that four million dollars, there is money set aside within that bucket.

The pilot extended hours at the James A.

Henry site, and uh it's around the state.

So that was gonna be my it's around substitute.

Uh and Chris, I think has the specifics on what that looks like.

And I can send that to you, but yeah, it was a proposal that we came together as a team and show and and send up um and we've got we've garnered that support from that level, and which that was sent to Weston, and here we are.

So, and I'm gonna let you close and talk about some of you know the returns on investment, but I just kind of go into your point when we're I know Head Start has national benchmarks in which we measure success, right?

You know, I'm big on what tool are you using to explain to us the rationale on why we should continue funding your department, and usually the return on the usually the return on the success for this department is how we measure kindergarten readiness, right?

And I'd be curious to learn more about what those tools are and what those benchmarks are.

And I know they are set by Head Start has a national benchmark by which they are set.

So I know we're following and I know that it's there, but I really feel like if we're really serious, right, about how to ready these children between kindergarten and third grade reading levels, right?

That's how we measure success if they're attriculating from a pre-K program into the monitor, and we're measuring that, but we're not paying for it like the rest of our partners.

It seems a it seems like we're not putting our money where our program, you know what I'm saying?

So it's like we're not we're not doing it.

And so I've this was something, in other words, I think this is underfunded uh in a way to where it does not help us reach that milestone of kindergarten readiness if we're not doing a standard of providing care after 2 p.m.

to allow those children to remain in that program for that extra curriculum that they're experiencing at our other partner sites while our parents are at work.

And I would, and I so I guess my request of Kevin or whoever is monitoring or taking notes on this, I like to know what the cost analysis would be.

I know we're moving into James A.

Henry, which I'm really really excited about because that is a that's gonna be a very innovative site in how we start measuring kindergarten readiness by those expanded hours, and so I would be happy to see those outcomes, but we're doing it there, right?

Right.

What would be the cost analysis for us to replicate the action?

I can tell you that now.

So if we did full option implementation for scope of six full days of classrooms, 12 part-time teachers, two part-time floaters, that'd be a total of 330,000 dollars.

For the year per site.

Per site.

This is starting at James A.

Henry full coverage of six classes.

Gotcha.

And that's until what time?

And that would be um start date of eight, I mean start time of um a full day of eight to five.

So I think you'd mentioned six, which does feel like it's a little bit more flexible.

Um each year per site.

And this is what, and I will say this, this is what we we've set down with the head of start staff based off staff capacity, what they'd be able to do, all those things that this is what's based off of that.

So, and that's a full day.

Um, if we did a uh partial implementation, sorry, that was full implementation.

If we do partial implementation, it will provide um this is after care.

And I will say this, let me go back.

This is after care proposals because yes, some places do before and after care.

However, when we um did our community assessment, which we're required to do by the federal government in the area that we were looking to pilot, which is James A.

Henry, there's not a need for before care, there is a need for after care.

And so um we had a before and after care plan, came back and had and revised that to adjust an aftercare plan.

So this is full implementation after care.

Um we did partial implementation, which will be three full day classrooms and not six, because we're opening with six full classrooms, opening with six.

Henry there is not a need for before care there is a need for aftercare and so uh we had a before and aftercare plan came back and had and revised that so it's just an aftercare plan so this is full implementation after care we did partial implementation which will be three full day classrooms and not six because we're opening with six full classrooms opening with six um but if we only did three that would be um six part-time teachers two part-time folks and that would be a hundred and ninety thousand dollars so the total cost analysis to launch the expansion of those programs that are three main sites so we have to look at I can't I'd have to get you there because I'd have to get so that way last time we talk about this we can actually talk about real numbers and what we can strive towards because that's a big deal with the fact that we stop and that's not a knock on your team but when we talk about developing families who are working and we're trying to get families into work but they gotta get off work to go pick up their kids at two we're working a little backwards and that's not to the fault of the administration or this administrator but the fact that we've got to put our money where our mouth is we want to talk about kindergarten readiness we need to replicate those programs that we know that's giving us this evidence-based practice of results by expanding those hours after 2 p.m because everybody else is doing it uh council on the birds just a quick question to add to when you provide that information for us thank you um is that like from two to six or after care we'll be from the time so aftercare will be from the time school ends until six o'clock or five o'clock okay so six o'clock and then uh we include how many students that would that would serve for that pilot and I can say I want me to talk with you and council it is 11 a.m for lunch and I'll yield to uh councilwoman birds that that was administrator jones is going to get some of that because I'm curious about that cost analysis is Weston so that when we do talk about this if not for this budget but for next that we could be like oh this is what we need to strive for because that is a request for council and I can't tell you this I'll for time for the full full implementation starting out we'll be reached to 1130 five children.

And then we'll pick up with um I mean I would like to see it in all the main centers one center and then today we'll be a different administrator Josh do you have anything in closing before we break for lunch um I do not thank you for your time um I I know oftentimes like people ask for outcomes um it it just looks it's it's a moving ball I mean there are children there's um mobility issues there's staffing issues in our field we have had a tremendous amount of um staff retention workforce development issues I mean given COVID and all the things so it just every second every every of every day looks different for us in our world um but they're touching people making impressions um and children are leaving this the spaces that we support and that are welcoming to our supports better than they're well thank you so much you're doing amazing work I'm so glad to be your colleague council we will break into 1130 and then 1130 we will pick up with councilwoman birds who will be chairing the planning and zoning uh budget care was that's what you didn't no head of them too about the whole R

On track.

Everybody did lunch break.

Oh.

Quick lunch break.

So we are our next presentation is going to be from the regional planning agency.

I'm gonna turn it over to Weston to first go over the financial side of it, and then Karen has provided, which I've given to each of you in front of your materials on the highlights for the program and her organizational part.

So Weston, I'm gonna so we'll start it's kind of two components to this discussion.

There's city planning as it lives in general fund, and then there's the RPA side of it.

So we'll uh just hit kind of the general fund piece of it.

Um their budget recommended decrease uh overall of 116,000.

Um most of it in in operations, 142,000 decrease in operations, so reduction in consultant fees, and then um some expenses that they're moving over to be covered by grant funds.

Um and then they did have a swap uh for grant funded position.

The positions with this kind of plays in with the RPA overall discussion in the word chart, I think that that Karen has provided.

So um position-wise, um city planning as it lives in general fund is net neutral.

So that started with five, they have five in this one.

We did do some reorganization, some some position swaps, and then a position change uh with losing the transportation designer and adding the principal planner.

Um then Karen, I don't know if you want to be better just to go ahead and hit RPA real quick and talk about just kind of overall then RPR, our the RPA budget is not in the book.

Um it kind of hits that our budget as one line item as an appropriation to RPA.

Uh but we wanted to kind of just add a little color to it.

Um so they do have a budget, and this is their budget.

It shows a decrease of 767,000.

Uh if you'll remember um Hamilton County um pulled their funding out of that, it's roughly 900,000 of funding that RPA lost this year.

Um so there's just been a lot of moves and and Darren's fills you in some and then Karen will we'll kind of continue to fill in.

But we've eliminated four positions and and had 400,000 of reduction in operations, either things being covered by grants that we're able to move to the grant or reduction in consulting, advertising, other operational decreases that Kevin or that Karen were really hard on with administration to kind of get this budget uh where it's at.

Uh the four again we had the reorganization, so we saw those on the other slide, so those are just positions moving in and out between general fund and RPA, and then the four positions that were decreased, uh that were that were reduced are right there.

Um important note, and I'm sure Karen I'll touch on this and Darren did as well.

No one was riffed.

We didn't have any any people lost your job because of this.

Um I believe there was one one employee that retired and the rest of them we found spaces for in in other places.

So while we lost the positions, we didn't lose any bodies.

And so with that, I will kind of turn it over to I guess questions or or Karen if she wants to add any questions, council members.

Yes.

And you also you all should have this was put in a folder.

This is the added slides that you should have in a folder.

This one it was in that uh planning and zoning folder.

It's not in the book, but it the digital costume should be available.

I guess what would be this may be just my ignorance, but what are we advertising?

That was one of the previous slides you had was I think was it is it's a relatively minor reduction.

It is it's a relatively minor reduction.

We um advertise for legal notices for planning commission, and then we cover the cost of advertisement proportion of city council.

Um and so that is that legal primarily notice.

Okay, so like public hearings and then we do um have um we provide 20% of the cost of legal notices for MPO meetings, the rest is reinforced by the federal government.

Okay, gotcha.

Question what other questions, council members, do you have of Weston before Karen moves into the supplemental sheet that I put in front of you?

Okay, seeing no questions, Karen.

If you want to go over the lights of work program, okay.

Um these are um I think I'll start by noting we have a lot of ongoing activities as part of our kind of review with the loss of county funding.

Um we started with what are our core services that we provide and just build up from there, and so we might be a little bit closer to about 80 to 90 percent of staff resources, or um are just kind of those ongoing responsibilities related to both the MPO and the Planning Commission City Council zoning and subdivision plotting process.

Um so highlight-wise, um, this is for the whole organization.

Our org chart is on the back.

I'll start by noting the MPO, which is the Chatting Hamlet County, North Georgia Metropolitan Planning Organization.

We staff that organization, and I think staffed it since 1977.

Um and that has its own work program.

So I put a link here, which I realize you won't be able to get until you get your digital copy.

But the work program of the MPO is its own standalone item.

There are um it's a two-year program, but I put the link there, and then just to talicize the items that are um related to the work of the MPO.

And so this year thinking about community planning and zoning, which is that implementation tool, the plan, moving Plan Chattanooga on towards adoption.

Um did a presentation at Planning Commission this past past month.

It's on Planning Commission's agenda for June for adoption.

Um we already talked about having metrics coming out of that, and since Plan Chattanooga is a high-level policy document, we will be looking for opportunities for for refinement or a little bit extra attention if needed.

Um, and then outreach communication about that.

So I'm thinking that is really going back to the neighborhoods, reminding them of Plan Chattanooga, reminding them you know how to use the plan is um and be thinking about their neighborhoods.

Um, and so thinking about implementation, we're gonna complete an update to the form-based code.

This is something we've had on our agenda for a year, and um and so we are we've restarted that to do um and update that, particularly thinking about the work of Plan Chattanooga and some of that kind of some of those changes in the downtown area.

Um so that that project scope, we are um gonna revise that project scope and can share that with you.

We also can continue to um monitor the zoning ordinance.

One project we have to do is look at constructed project using the new zoning tools, particularly urban residential tools.

So, one of the big pushes of the new zoning ordinance was to allow more residential tool options.

I think we need to go out and take a look at them and think about the zone and the tools.

And are they meeting, are they providing um the housing and the compatibility and based on what we're thinking they were were?

Um and so that would be a project for the year.

I'm thinking probably um think about the zoning district and the looking at pictures of those developments and then coming back to you all.

Um we are gonna hit do the MPO work um last um continue to work with reconnecting communities.

Um the cities has a obviously a uh foot in that grant, and we're the neighborhood implementing entity.

Um and so um one of the planners um is working as the choice neighborhoods um kind of grant coordinator, neighborhood coordinator for that role.

We also um want to um set up a socioeconomic.

We're calling it a I put land use dashboard, that might not quite be the right term, but just to um provide more information and track changes going on in Chattanooga.

There's probably an overlap with the metrics that's kind of a um so that's one that we're gonna need to refine a little bit more, and then in the sustainability shop, um working on the electric vehicle transition planning, partnering in efforts residential waste aversion, a lot of this are partnerships with public works.

Um we have um had a CPACER which is a um it is a more of an economic development tool, it's that in sustainability.

We've been transitioning to it that to economic development that will come in front of council to make some changes.

And then also we are developing an outreach kind of communication programs regarding sustainability and stewardship, but at a local level, and we just had a um discussion about that with administration on Friday, so we're still refining that.

And then just any other direction or projects coming up.

But I put at the 2025, we have we processed 135 rezoning mandatory fural applications and 42 major subdivision plots for the city.

We also do all the minor subdivision plots.

You get that monthly email from Brian about the minor subdivisions, and that takes a lot of time also, but that is a a lot of communication and coordinating with applicants.

They're also updating the land use model, which we use to help inform plan of Chattanooga and updating the travel demand model.

And so those um those provide that um some of that um the database support for the regional transportation plan and then um because their regional transportation plan is a five-year project.

Melissa has her team working on a biennial amendment for our current transportation plan because enough changes they do a biennial amendment for that.

Um we'll we'll start the work the new work program for the MPO will kick off probably right, it's usually like December or January.

We'll kick that off because it takes about eight months to get through the adoption program for that um that work document.

So happy to answer any questions.

I can always provide more detail in any of these if anyone's interested.

Um whatever information you might like.

Um yeah, I wanted to say thank you, Karen, for your leadership through this re-work.

I know that that had to have been a difficult thing.

And actually, um I would appreciate a digital of this, but the overlap with the executive summary that's in the budget book is I mean immensely helpful.

I mean I I see that this is almost like the short form of the long form that you've already provided here that we've had the opportunity to study.

So I was very interested in this because it it just helped me better understand some of the bigger picture planning things.

Um I think the one thing that that really stood out that I wanted to point out was um about the Office of Sustainability, and you make a point that the office seeks to amplify not duplicate existing city-led sustainability outreach efforts such as Rain Smart National Park City China Tree Project, etc.

Um, I I think it's it's wise to be looking to amplify not duplicate.

Um and I was pleased to hear with public works the way that they're kind of stacking on some things with that, um, just to be people can only pay attention to so many programs, right?

So if we double down and all focus on promoting some of the same ones, I think we're gonna get more traction and better benefit to the group.

So thanks for what you're what you're doing.

Oh, and also the idea of consideration to existing nonprofit-led programs that you all can come alongside and be supportive of without recreating the wheel within RPA.

And Madison Rawlings is the director of sustainability, and she's done a great job of kind of transitioning from it was very heavy in grants and then 25 um 2025 came along and so shifting to still provide kind of that value but with a different focus.

And so she's been a good creative thinker about how to do that.

That's wonderful.

Thank you.

Government cannot be all things to all people.

So that's all, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

What other questions, council members?

Okay.

If you all have nothing else, I think we're good.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Karen, for putting all of this together in Westonsville.

Uh DPT, thank you for all your work working with RPA.

We appreciate everything you all did to move us forward.

I'm excited about the next year.

Thank you.

All right.

Um is it time for you can't.

It is, and uh, we were efforting to get them.

We're way ahead of schedule, so we're gonna call them so we may just need a quick break to get them down.

Okay, let me go back to my uh 12 uh moved up from 1230, so let's see if I can move that up even for giving us that group.

Sounds like we can have a quick break.

Yes, you can't.

Okay, and then we'll

Okay.

Um now we're happy to welcome uh Richard Bieland, who is the administrator of economic development to um or the question to present and answer questions about the economic development proposed budget.

So economic development as it sits inside of general fund.

There's also economic development fund, separate from this.

We'll talk about it on a um after this one.

Uh but this is as it lives inside of general fund.

So their uh budget overall recommended decrease of 117,000.

Um it's uh relatively flat at that level, but lots of ins and outs uh in between.

So they are adding uh 1.3 million in salaries and benefits.

Uh it is an increase of nine positions, but really it's just moving um as we've talked previously, uh a handful from mayor's office and a handful from parks.

Um, and then the coal and benefits changes as well.

Um operations was down 1.4 million.

Um really all of that um decrease, and then some is moving out RFP agencies, those four-year contracts that expired now live in the single line item in general government, so we decrease their budget uh related to those.

Uh that was 1.7 million, and then the operations piece of of the arts culture and creative economy group coming into their budget.

So their budget was flat, other than those kind of weird uh all those folks moving in and then the RFP's coming out.

Um then their budget started last year was 31 positions.

Uh we've added uh 10 positions, nine of them were just as reorgs from the other departments, they're listed there.

Um and then we have one net new position of a special housing programs manager that is 50% grant funded.

Um I will pause there real quick for any questions or conversation on their operations.

Can you go back to the other slide?

Yeah, sure.

Council, do we have any questions?

Councilman Ellie, or Vice Chairman Elliott, and then followed by uh councilman Dotley.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um what is the new special housing position to the special housing programs manager will manage the down payment assistance program and the other programs that are within housing of the city?

Okay.

Okay.

That's all thank you, Madam Chair.

And I'll just add too that that they're five they're 50% grant funded.

They'll also be working on part of this um C uh community development block grant funds that the city receives that that they are already working on, and the other half of them will be doing these for the down assistant programs or other programs.

Councilman Dolly.

Oh, that's all right, councilman.

Anyone else right now?

Okay, Richard, I'd like a little bit more clarification on that position because when we spoke, um Sharita said that there was already one person that was 50% grant funded that was doing that, and you all were requesting an additional hundred.

You're moving a position over at a cost of $125,000 to be a second person to do that.

That's correct.

So there will be two people in this scenario, there will be two people doing that.

That's correct.

And the grant that they are being funded by is what?

The the position is uh the community development block grant money that we're seeing right now.

So CDBG will be paying for 50% of each of them.

No, 50% of one of them.

The other will be fully uh general fund.

Okay, so my understanding was we already had somebody that was 50% grant funded by C D BG.

We did.

That's yeah.

And now we are adding a second one, which is which is 100% that's right funded by the general fund to the tune of 225,000 dollars for both of them.

For both of them.

Got it.

Okay, well thank you.

Uh they do have uh some capital funds.

So uh there's some public art at the West Side project, and then they're Roswell Gateway.

Okay.

Moving on to Economic Development Fund.

Um this fund has a budget of 20 million dollars.

Economic one is the fund.

Um chart here to kind of show this is also in the in the budget book as well.

Um seven million of that total bucket is going to uh capital to fund some of the projects we've seen here.

Um then the agencies again.

We we touched on those agencies last week, but they're enumerated here again.

Uh there is a 260,000 dollar contingency line because things do come up within to uh councilman Clark's point.

That was a question I asked you earlier, and you said you weren't sure if you're if a contingency was in the so some of the other funds do, but the departments within the general fund typically fund department, but we do do contingency is what I was asking.

Yes, so sorry, yes.

There is a sm uh contingency fund within this uh group because things come up um where it makes sense for us to step in.

This allows us to have a little bit of flexibility on the in the economic development space.

Um we pay some fees to the county for where they collect sales tax revenue and remit it to us, so they charge us an administrative fee on that.

And then uh there is uh lease payment, it's debt on um that goes over to the C DRC that's for the invention center, the Chattanoog and DRC uh market growth and the parking lot.

That's the seven million dollars.

Yes.

Is the H E B two million dollar appropriation here?

Is that to support our commitment to the West Side?

That is for down payment, uh it's for uh homeowner and rental rehab.

Homeowner rental rehab.

Yes, a million each.

Last year we had that in the capital budget.

Um, but I just through the discussions, we think it makes more sense put it in kind of the operations piece of it.

Yes.

Okay.

Uh Vice Chairman Elliott.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Well, listen, this is not necessarily on this in particular, but you said something that uh sparked a question.

Are there any parameters outside of of course like infrastructure projects that we have to follow when we're putting something in capital budget versus the operational budget?

It's typically based on kind of the size and duration of the project.

There's a few things.

We're working on kind of one of the things when I stepped in, there was some some gray, and I feel like in a little bit of that, and what we were putting in capital versus, and so we're working with our capital team to share up that policy of like you know, very bright line, kind of this is what goes in capital versus operations.

I I'll be interested once you guys kind of get a better home on it.

So I don't think it's a big deal.

I think it's just gonna just be uh educational opportunity for myself and whoever else is interested.

No, I agree.

Often capital or one-time expenses as well, right?

It is, and and there are some things to my point.

This this ended up in capital last year, and I think there's some guidelines we can bring up.

Yeah, and I I think we're gonna so we're gonna true up that policy and kind of really put in there, hey, this is capital, this is operation, so we can kind of take that line.

That'll work, yeah.

Okay, thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay.

Councilman Clark.

I and I think I just I was hit down on this computer when you said that the seven million dollar capital fund.

Could you reiterate what that is again for me, please?

So there are projects we've talked about in all the other departments, and part of the cap the funding for those projects is coming out of this economic development.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And I thought that's what you said, but do you know specifically what those projects are?

Is it in the in the capital?

It is in the budgets.

I can pull it up.

I'm just curious.

I mean, does anybody else know?

What was the question?

It's in the projects that are funded with economic development.

Right.

So the specific question that I'm asking you or any other council members, does anybody else know?

Okay, here it is.

And so it starts here and it goes down a number of pages.

This is the breakout of the seven million dollars in the economic development capital funds.

That's correct.

So this column right here shows the seven million total.

It gives a breakout kind of by fund, and then if you continue to scroll through it all, it goes by project by project, and it does the same for there's some money we'll see in a second, um funded by bonds or by the hotel motel, which is further down, there's some money um from that fund going to capital, and it it tells kind of which projects are funded by which across all the different the buckets of funding.

So in your budget book, this is going to start in the capital budget where there's kind of a narrative at the beginning.

Um and then you can as you move through that capital budget, there's labeled C at the bottom.

So I believe that was page C 14 and 15.

Yes.

Where you can see the individual um breakout accounts.

Yeah.

But so even then, like seven million from economic development, that's general government.

I think it's not quite as specific as it it gets into the details.

Yeah, we if we had to like page C19, you start to see um, let's see, for example, um Avondale Community Center Crosswalk Improvements, 230,000.

Um is Carta, Carta's funding comes out of the economic development.

Um West Side Evolved.

So this is our commitment then to the next build phase of Western.

Year three of year eight of that commitment is is in that.

So if you scroll through these pages and then even if you keep going, it it goes down into some other buckets around the hotel motel dollars and some different things.

So parks and recreation has several items.

So that's the allocation of that equipment seven.

If that makes sense.

And I think may I follow up, please?

Um I and I think for me, as we're navigating how you guys construct the workbook, you know, to know that there's a cross-reference to that, because for me, I thought it was an additional sure.

In addition to what was already broken out in the capital budget.

I was like, oh, well, what is it?

So I would that's right.

So yeah, this is just the funding source for those projects.

But yes, that makes sense, and maybe we can I need to find that in the capital tab under C19, and it gives me those breakouts.

That's right.

Okay, it's all the way at the back of the book, which is the last section.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I find it sometimes I'll be looking at why is this chart different than this next chart?

It can be tracking.

Yeah.

Councilman Harvey.

Listen, what's you mentioned earlier in the lease payments that Carter Street Corporation was part of that?

Well, what's the difference between that and then the other line item Carter Street for AO?

So the Carter Street, that's an operations commitment.

The lease payment is just for the work done over there.

There was debt associated with that, and so that's the repayment of that debt.

Okay.

Yeah.

Vice Chairman Elliott.

Speaking of Carter Street, how much is owed on that commission center?

You know?

Roughly 17 million left.

You're good.

You're on it.

You you can't here.

Should add fly 29.

That's what we want in our CFS.

Okay, good.

And how much do we pay on it every year?

Do you know?

Uh roughly seven million.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

I didn't think you're pretty impressive.

I wouldn't even try to like throw a finger at you.

I was really curious.

We should have a session test listed.

No, it's not.

17 million, we're paying seven million.

Well, the last year.

That's right.

And it's like what, four years, five years?

Uh it it ends in 29.

So yeah.

Okay, so 29, that'll be done.

Riverfront will be done in 31.

It's cool.

Neat to think about opportunities.

Um I'll add to this, this fund also, it's not, it's we don't budget it, and it's this concept of of um volatile revenue.

The TDZ sales tax money that comes in, flows into this into this fund.

We don't budget for that revenue because it is extremely volatile.

It could be zero one year, it could be if you look in actuals of 25, you see that last line, uh tourist development zone transfer to CDRC.

It was five million dollars and twenty-five that we got.

But some point in the recent past it was zero, right?

So it it's a weird funding formula that the state's got set up.

Um, and so essentially what happens is if we get TDZ funds, that money is first transferred to CDRC to pay the debt, and then this fund makes up any any gap.

So if we don't get anything, we'll pay 7.2.

If we do get something, we'll pay less than 7.2 out of this bucket of money, right?

So yes.

So in the I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So I like the respect decorum.

Um so when you say uh flows back, so the state collects the tax and then sends it back to us.

So if the state decides uh maybe not, they just we don't get it.

The state has to send it to us, but it's a weird the formula for it is based on growth within the TDZ zone, which is surrounding uh Finley Stadium, kind of the south broad area.

So it's it's a kind of weird footprint, but it's based on the growth within and the growth without, and it's this kind of complex funding formula that they do.

Okay, and then they run it through that, and then they say, well, here's what you get, and they send it to us.

So is it new growth or is it just world growth?

It's just yeah, it's just growth in general.

So whatever the sales tax kind of outside and inside, they do a comparison last or this year.

I want to say uh that maybe not uh 5.9 million we got this year, uh 5.2 million 25, but again, it could go to zero this year, we don't know, right?

It's just it's it's kind of wonky that way.

And so uh we've not really seen it zero.

I think I saw I went back and looked delays, and it was maybe a year or two, but I mean it has been significantly less than this multiple times.

So we just don't budget it.

If it comes in, it just reduces the amount that we pay out of that line.

Okay.

Um I think in a point for me asking is because I know Finley's that the legislature just passed the the bill for particularly for Finley Stadium to some of the funds within the stadium.

Right.

So the the bill that the state passed was for Finley to be able to capture some of their sales tax in order to do improvements that they need to do at the stadium.

Right, but that is designed, we're still working with them to negotiate the kind of work through the agreement of that, but it it it should not and will not impact the TDC piece of it.

Okay, because that this supersedes kind of whatever they're doing.

So the state, it'll be just work around the TDC, whatever they get.

So we're still working with them on that.

Um, but yeah, they did pass that, so the stadium can get some money to do the infrastructure changes they need to do.

Okay, they were thank you, madam chair.

Absolutely.

Any other questions?

Um I'd like everybody to have like the full picture of all the different ways that economic development fund but budget are working together, and then I'd like to come back to the approach to workforce development.

Um so do you have another fund that you want to show?

Uh hotel motel.

Hotel motel.

We want to do that one.

Yeah, let's go ahead and do that.

Great.

There it is.

Hotel motel fund.

Um so the hotel motel fund is funded with the occupancy tax that was set up some years ago.

Um, and that money again flows through.

I'm gonna go to this chart, it's a little easier to see.

Um flows through the county, comes to us.

Um, and the breakout is there again.

There is uh capital funds, there are capital funds that are moved from this fund to fund things like um we've used it for Walnut Tree Bridge, the riverfront is what it was initially set up for.

It was for the riverfront project, it was expanded some years later to tourism and tourism development.

So we any capital related to tourism and tourism development can be used, or these funds can be used for that.

Um we also have in this uh budget an allocation to Chattanooga tourism of a million dollars, that's the same we did last year.

That's the support uh the work they're doing.

We have an additional 600.

We talked about some of this already, but we have an additional 600,000 dollars to support the FIFA uh security program or security efforts with the World Cup coming here in the next month or so.

Um then uh this Chattanooga Hamilton County history experience partnership with Songbird and uh Hamilton County education collaboration um with them.

We have $850,000 in contingency again in this fund.

Um that's just again as as tourism opportunities come up that we didn't foresee, it allows us some flexibility um to kind of do some additional things.

Uh the you see there, the hotel the hotels get to keep a certain fee uh out of this tax, so that's the 204, and then the county keeps 182,000 roughly, that's another two percent.

And then the debt service is the debt on the riverfront.

Uh the narrative for this fund includes a two million dollar transfer to HEB for affordable housing.

Is that is that a tie because I'm not seeing it in the itemization.

Is that a typo that we said it was coming out?

It's actually coming out of the economic development.

That must be a yeah, that must have been dropped in front of it.

Yeah, okay.

Got it.

Thank you, Councilman Henderson.

The debt service question.

Yes, sir.

Down 178,000.

Would we not be better off putting that towards a personal getting that debt down quicker?

We could.

I think that the difference in the down last year we budgeted.

I want to say that piece was budgeted for um this fund backstops the Series C debt on the stadium.

And so the the overall debt, it's the five million dollar note.

We had put something in there last year just as a contingency, just because with the project still ongoing, we just wanted to make sure we had it covered.

Um we've done kind of our analysis.

Sharita did a great presentation the other day in sports three.

I think it was.

I'd have to look, I can look at the specifics of that one and see.

Okay.

That's a very interesting question.

And would you repeat your question?

So we're taking 178,000 out of the debt service.

My question is could we not leave it in and put that towards the principal to get the debt paid?

That's the first I did part I didn't hear.

Okay.

Thank you.

Some loans allow you to do that.

I don't know if this is one that and like what would that you know if we did that year over year, how many years would that eliminate paid off quicker?

And I did not write my notes down on the balance and cost unmute if we weren't ready for it.

I was just thinking about how much I appreciate that you were able to very quickly tell us that this fund backstops series C debt on the stadium.

I thought that is the kind of um guidance we've been seeking for.

Yes.

Since we lost days.

Uh so the hotel motel funded debt.

Well, let's go down.

So there's Goldberg, if you're watching.

A couple of different issuances uh where it's been refunded kind of since since the inception, the latest, I know it's our agreed.

Um is 2031 is the latest maturity on that.

And we've got nine point two outstanding on that one, yes.

And we're paying in paying in four million, but it's not gonna be until 31.

Okay, any other questions, council?

Okay, so now that we've seen all the ways that the economic development dollars, hotel motel, economic development fund are being uh invested.

Richard, uh something that stood out in the uh in the narrative from the economic development department was the thought process on how you all are shifting your work around work and investments on workforce development.

You know, last budget cycle we talked a lot about how that got kind of mushy, kind of muddy.

Can you speak to where the department is headed in the coming years?

Sure.

So Andrew Hudson heads up the workforce development division for the for the economic development and um has just launched Chattanooga Works.

I don't know if you saw that recently, but it's like a reverse engineering of workforce development.

So a lot of times in the city we were training, but we weren't training for jobs that were actually open that people could move into.

We were providing some skills that may or may not be needed in the community.

But this way, if you identify a job that's available and then back from there, begin training for that job, so the person has a position to move into once the training is done.

So that's the direction that it's moving into now.

Thank you.

Um also something that Sharita pointed out was that you know, in the wake of ARPA dollars, there was money that was specifically allocated or available for workforce development, and so a lot of things that were not workforce development became that, yeah um, which added to the the muddiness of that.

So this is now we're in a season where we're really um distilling down into the essence of what workforce development is to get people into jobs that we we have in Chattanooga and that we want to have in Chattanooga.

And then we want Chattanoogans to have.

And that we want Chattanooga's to have, right?

Yeah, and there was there you're right about the money though.

There were a lot of things.

If the money was available, then anything that they could say if it was workforce development, it's gonna be workforce development if the money was available.

And um, it wasn't a lot of times.

Yeah.

Not that it was bad work, just no, not that it was a bad work.

It was unclear.

But it wasn't moving someone into a job that was going to be producing so they could be paying taxes here in Chattanooga and supporting their families.

So we should expect um in the coming years I think greater um efficiency of use of that amendment and focus.

Focus that's the real word I think I was looking for thank you.

Did you raise your hand councilman?

No.

No okay councilman Henderson.

So explain in the uh future challenges and opportunities look like we have an opportunity for um the strategies of recompete the research and develop talent training is that along the same line what what is this what is this what what are the strategies of recomplete so the recompete was a grant that the that we received for a half million dollars over I think it's over five years but to identify obstacles to employment like transportation or child care.

And so we're two of the big ones so in childcare it's like what kind of attention should be paid to child care could it be micro child care um facilities that could um uh uh provide the services for the person to go to have a job or could it be uh an employment that would have a uh child care service within their business within their manufacturing plan that would be able to uh provide that service so that people could work there and then um there other like I said with transportation as well and then training so is we're using those fund that funding to be able to um provide services that we're talking about for this reverse engineering to get person into a job to provide the training to get them there so what how much available funds are left then so we you're saying we got a 500 thousand dollar grant yes and how much of those are is all of that funding still available or no it's not so I would have to find out the exact number that was still available.

Okay.

So employing the strategies that you learned not with the money that's already spent is that what that means I guess I'm sorry.

I guess what I'm asking is is there a dollar figure to employing the strategies on this recomplete let me get that information for you council okay I mean doesn't really do us any good to develop strategies I read that as taking the learning from that $5000 grant and using it to inform work that we would do in the future because as I looked at these challenges and opportunities some of them are are pretty big um nuts that they'll be working on so good to at least learn but I hear what you're saying.

Do you got anything to add to that chief you it's in line with what uh my chair just said that that the uh the funding was for planning and how they paid into implementation and so uh the the strategy that they're pursuing now is actually it's funded by the budget of the department now there might be additional opportunities to go out and get actual implementation dollars to further police it but the strategy realignment is kind of the outcome of that okay and Richard you weren't you weren't here you might have been watching with great interest but we had a a good conversation with early childhood uh department about what it might look like to extend time um in the day for some of our head start or all of our head start facilities and it occurred to me um that that there's a clear line between that and economic development because we really are helping people get to work the the question of what that what happens in aftercare as a parent after care I've never seen be like an especially educational time it's just more safe child care um but that you're talking about those micro child care and things like that that that is in line with what the council is discussing earlier.

I was watching that and when you were talking about the James A Henry hub and and then studies on the west side have shown that the barriers sometimes are early childhood or early um care and after care that um people need to be able to have a full day at work.

Yeah makes sense full day of work and it's an economic development improvement yeah okay okay council do we have any other questions all right uh worth noting that the Office of New Chattanoogans has moved into economic development as has the um events and the ACE group so help me get really good at that I have a proposal yes ma'am um and then office of I don't know if it's off is what creative economy they've movement yes the ACE art culture creative art culture and the creative economy okay ace culture and creative economy so they have officially moved into economic development okay yeah that's how Miss Wellship thank you well um we're gonna have a special pull out um in this uh with uh chairwoman dotley about affordable housing I sent all of you um some an idea about um some strategic refinement of uh this budget but as it all spoke economic development proper and some specifics of affordable housing I'd like to wait to talk about it until after um chairwoman dotley has done the affordable housing piece oh okay well I just asked that here uh but I don't have much you can go ahead

Well, we're gonna have a special pull out in this with uh Chairwoman Dotley about affordable housing.

I sent all of you some an idea about some strategic refinement of uh this budget, but as it also spoke economic development proper and some specifics of affordable housing, I'd like to wait to talk about it until after um Chairwoman Dotley has done the affordable housing piece.

Oh okay.

Well I just asked that here.

Oh, they don't uh but I don't have much.

You can go ahead and cover it with then and um so I don't I'll let kind of Richard take it.

We don't specifically have affordable housing lives kind of within economic development and so there's so talk about the the programs that were funding so the funding remained flat in affordable housing as well.

So the proposal has a million dollars to the HEB for affordable housing, which is a rental assistance and could be split between rental assistance and rental rehab.

Um there's a half million dollars to HEB for eviction prevention.

If you know you've known about the program, if you could keep someone in their home before they become homeless, then that's the best use of those dollars and keeping their so it's a real successful program now, and our partner in that is legal aid of East Tennessee proposing three million dollars of to HEB for the Down Payment Assistance Program, which was um funded last year as well and is just now launching, and then there's also two million uh to the HEV for affordable housing, which is to fund habitat's um critical home repair program.

Thank you, Richard.

Um, so to that point, and again thinking about the the whole department.

I um I here is a copy, a paper copy of the proposal that I sent to council yesterday for for your consideration.

Um so um in the budget amendment last year we had um three million dollars in this in this 2026 fiscal year for down payment assistance program, which launched um this month, um and people are excited about it as as um we would have expected it to be.

Um so I have a proposal to um strengthen the long-term impact of our of our housing investments while also ensuring the responsible stewardship of public funds.

Um so what I am suggesting, and I honestly I was kind of so when it wasn't in the capital fund, I was not I thought that the date DPA, I figured that three million dollars had been absorbed in in other projects.

Um, but it was exciting to see that affordable housing and specifically home ownership was something that was continuing to be uh prioritized by the administration.

And um for about five years now I've been learning about and um studying and trying to um help any kind of group think about um permanent affordability, and you all have heard me talk about that some from the dais.

Um and permanent affordability when it comes to homeownership is most often achieved through a tool called a community land trust, and when the community was doing uh some uh feasibility studies, that would be the word, um earlier this year.

We brought in for strategic planning some of the planners within that group to talk about what what they were thinking.

The community land trust is uh moving forward, and so my proposal is that we um allocate 2.25 million dollars to the existing down payment assistance program under the current program guidelines.

So the transfer was a three million dollar transfer to the HEB, so this would add another uh two and a quarter million dollars to that fund to the tune of five uh and a quarter million dollars in a down payment assistance program and make a one-time $750,000 investment in operating expenses for the Tennessee Valley Community Land Trust.

Um my thoughts on this also are that we would reallocate $125 in funding for the new position to manage additional DPA work to instead create an economic development incentive manager position.

Um when I was meeting with the economic development team, uh Richard Sharita, um we discussed the fact that we need as a city better oversight over our uh major economic incentive packages and tools, um, most specifically TIFFs.

Sharita was explaining to me that there is a huge volume of work that should and can go into making sure that TIFF commitments are upheld, that funding is appropriate, etc.

And if we she would very much like to have somebody who wakes up every morning and that's what they do all day when she started listing it all, and then I think about all the other work that Sharita does, this person would report directly to her.

And so the rationale is that right now, FY27, the DPA program is going to be have a substantial capacity at $5.25 million.

And so what it does is gives us the opportunity to invest a portion of those funds into a permanent affordability solution that will begin to create a community asset, not just a community funding program, right?

So the Tennessee Valley Land Trust is completely community-driven initiative.

And I've give actually our esteemed vice chairman is on the founding board.

And it's worth noting that the city housing department has actually twice applied for funding to start a community land trust and expected that to cost about six million dollars.

So knowing that we have community support for beginning this long-term investment strategy toward permanent generational affordability.

Create permanent affordability rather than one-time depreciating subsidy assistance, preserve and preserve public investment in perpetuity through that subsidy recapture and appreciation sharing.

So you know, the way that down payment assistance works in our current program, people can receive a down payment assistance zero percent loan for $15,000, potentially qualify for an additional six from the state for a total of 21.

But it's um it's a commit an agreement that that per that new homeowner can use that $15,000 until they sell the home and then they return that $15,000 zero interest to the DPA, well, to the city of Chattanooga.

I'm not sure if we have clarity, well, to the HEB, so perhaps it does get immediately pushed back into the fund, which is good.

However, we all know that $15,000 today is going to be worth a lot less than it will be in 10 years.

So what I see it in as much as it costs more money to buy asphalt, it's gonna cost more money to buy houses.

And if uh if the city does want to continue to encourage and make home ownership possible in a time when that gap is getting bigger, to have a way to grow the value of that subsidy over time is going to give us longer-term ROI for our community.

So to that end, um, my thoughts about the 750 is that though this is a newly forming organization, um, I have been advised by the administration more than once that sometimes multi-year commitments can be challenging, right?

Um, so this would provide start-up funds that would cover three years more than cover, I think, um, because hopefully their cost will come down the operating of the land trust.

So making it clear that as a city council and as the administration, we want to see permanent generational affordability and wealth generation equity growth in our community at a time when the DPA is very well funded, right?

At 5.25 million dollars, um, so that then we can move back into just focusing on the DPA moving forward.

Seems like a really great deal when you think that the city was looking at six million dollars to be able to get one started for 750.

Also, I would add that I'm suggesting that we make the 750,000 allocation contingent upon the Tennessee Valley Community Land Trust securing double that amount in subsidy dollars so that they raised 1.5 million dollars to provide the subsidy for home building or not home building but home buying, excuse me, that is part of the land trust model.

So I know you all have had this for a while.

I've already talked about the piece about economic development oversight with the the TIFF agreement.

Um so I would certainly appreciate your feedback on this and hopefully earn your support uh for this this tweak.

Yes, Vice Chairman Elliott.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to provide one bit of clarification.

Okay.

The seat that I'm serving on CLT is actually a council seat.

So council.

Council will have permanent representation on the board in perpetuity.

So I'm just a novel council person.

So after that, one of you all will take over.

Uh councilwoman Dotley, thank you, madam chair.

So I did have a couple of questions uh regarding this.

I guess I'll start with the more easy one for the regular um for the new incentive manager, which I do like that position, would they then be also well, I guess I would ask for them to um give us regular reportings in regards to those TIFS and to those pilots because I know we've always asked for that, and I always got it in a um I say a readable manner, I guess you can read it, but it's a lot of information.

So just that's just kind of my ask on that one.

Great, great, great point.

Yes, and then so for the land trust.

Um, I know they came and presented uh I don't know, maybe less than a year ago.

At the time they didn't have an ask.

So and they are, and so I know we received a list of agencies uh the agency proposed agency appropriations.

Uh so I guess what has changed, did they go through that process, and then um is the administration in support?

Well, I guess clearly in support because they've already applied for those things, but what has changed from them coming because when they came, they said they didn't have an ask, and so what has changed.

Right, yeah, great question.

Thank you for that.

So when uh when they came, they were in a fact-finding uh what is possible in our community.

Is this something that our community is interested in?

How might it work phase?

Um, and they came to we invited them to come and talk to the council so that we would just be informed that this is conversation that's happening in our community.

Um, and I remember back when I was running for counsel for the first time five years ago, um, Caleb had done a big study and they they had identified different ways that a community land trust could be pursued.

Um, and so it's a an ongoing conversation in in the community at large.

Um they did not have an ask then, and I will be completely frank, they did not come to me and ask me to ask for this.

Uh, when I um put together my budget list for um for district two request, I included district two request, I included citywide requests, and I included um just thoughts that I had about how individual departments might deploy funds um in in strategic ways.

And this was a city wide request.

I honestly was not expecting there to be three million dollars for for down payment assistance in our budget when I didn't see it in capital.

I thought it wasn't there, but what I'd actually asked for was if if that three million is floating, let's use three million dollars to to fund the startup of a community land trust because I personally just think it's that important for long-term preservation of Chattanooga for Chattanoogans and consider the rapid rate of housing costs, where nine years ago, city council was not sitting around the table talking about the fact that working families making 80 to 100% AMI couldn't afford homes.

They could it it we are in a changing landscape, and then we think how many homes have been purchased by corporate ownership.

Um a land trust to me is part of stewardship as as a body of leaders to say we want Chattanoogans to be able to own homes, and we know that we can't just afford to continually find more money in the general fund to make this happen over the next 20 years.

So here's an opportunity what I saw was an opportunity where we had three million from that amendment plus real energy and formation of this uh land trust.

And so that that's how it happened.

They didn't specifically come, but when I asked, okay, what's your what's your operating cost for a year?

And they estimated 250,000, and I thought, well, let's see if we mayor Kelly has three more budgets.

What if we just do this in one so that we don't have to feel like we're torn between down payment assistance or this other thing?

Okay.

Thank you so much, madam chair.

And then I think one of the questions I asked when they came and they hadn't quite solidified what it was, what's the equity model, the shared equity model with because generational wealth is important and we want to make sure people have that.

Um, but when I think about the the incomes of those who would potentially apply for a home within the community land trust, equity is going to be important to them because a lot of them may not have had the opportunity to establish a generational wealth.

So at this, I guess at this juncture, do we know what the equity model would be for the land trust?

The shared equity model.

Um council vice chairman Elliott, do you have any um guidance on where the board stands on developing the resale formula?

If I remember correctly, we talked about this some time ago, so you're with me because I don't know all the details.

We actually have a workshop going on right now.

So today and tomorrow.

Um I do know when a person looks to sell the land, they it is in the deed that they can only sell it at a certain level for AMI.

Right.

And I believe I'm not mistaken.

Let's just leave it there.

I'll look into it and get you as much information as I can by next week.

All right, that works for me.

And then my last question is you mentioned that um, well, in the proposal, it says based on current projections, once approximately 225 homes are placed into the model.

What is the current plan to acquire that part?

Because at the moment they don't have any what's just started.

Yeah, so they don't have any problem.

But what is the current plan or what's the scope of that being placed into the um to get to that level of how because we know land is scarce in Chattanooga.

Yep.

Uh so what is the I guess the plan to do that?

So in the conversations that I have been a part of, and again, I'm not on the board, um, and so we could get more information from them about projections on projects, but I know that there are um there are already some trusts that have land in them that are interested in building something, like for example, for teachers who work at Howard High School, for example.

So uh potentially seeing multiple homes built in a single community that would enter into the trust at a single time.

I think that's what we would expect, and what I've learned from working with Nicole is that you're often looking at volume, right?

How do we get volume, not just one off two off?

Um now something that I always have my mind on is any type of land that we have in our land bank or that we're holding as a potential opportunity.

You know, I think we have um there's some some individual streets I think that maybe have contiguous land that could potentially go in.

Um to my knowledge, they've been talking with all sorts of of developers.

Um, but I uh we can find out more information on where they stand on their exact resale formula and their growth strategy.

Okay, um, but I do think that um it's much and I won't say anything is easy, right?

Um, but it is more straightforward to raise support for subsidy dollars to actually help like to basically say donate money so that we can help people buy houses.

It's easier to to raise money for that than donate money so we can run the back office to help people buy houses, right?

So um I could see us as a city council making a real leadership commitment um allocation in this way to then propel them to have the funds to then be able to secure land um to purchase.

Okay, and then my last question, and I promise is what is the I guess the community plan around it?

So let's say for instance there is a block that has vacant home.

I would use Alta Park, for example.

There's a block around where the library is this completely fat uh flat undeveloped for decades on by a local agency here.

Okay.

Um so what is the plan surrounding like for instance that particular one?

Um how do they what's their community plan in regards to engagement uh around that community land trust particular not particularly in that one because I don't know if that'll be included.

I'm just exampling right.

Um, so what is the community plan around engagement and and and things of that nature so that the those communities understand what this is because some can look at it as when you look at share equity, um, and that was actually a um when our housing team first came on board that was something that was brought to I to the Alta Park community, and a lot of the a lot of a lot of the constituents were concerned about, you know.

Um, so what is the community plan around engagement and and and things of that nature so that the those communities understand what this is because some can look at it as when you look at share equity, um, and that was actually a um when our housing team first came on board that was something that was brought to I to the Alzheimer's park community, and a lot of the a lot of a lot of the constituents were concerned about you know, well, if I bought it and I want to sell it, I should be able to sell it for whatever I want to sell it for and receive that equity.

Yeah, and they felt that any percentage off of that to go to or something else was taken from them, robber from their generation or what that's rotten devil's words they use.

So I think education is gonna be super duper important, but also so I guess, and I'm sure y'all don't have that now, but it's just the community engagement plan around what does that look like, especially when you think about the percentage, the AMI percentages that will be more than likely to take advantage of a community land trust because it's not a bad, it's not a bad thing, it is just making sure people understand what they're buying into is important.

So I think that would be the only other question I have, other than that.

Um I'm good to go.

Thank you, ma'am.

Okay, um, well, one thing I will share about community engagement with um with community land trust is that my understanding is that the board, uh the founding board will within their bylaws identify at what point it transitions from a more like a standard board to being what's called a tripartite board, um that's three-part board, um, and a key part of requirement of that board is that a third of the board has to be made up of people who live in community land trust homes.

Okay.

Now that it answers a different question than the actual education around whether you want to purchase a home in a land trust.

Um, and I think you're a hundred percent right, as a novel in this area approach to home ownership, um, people are gonna have a lot of questions, and from the the fact-finding um committee that I was on, that was something that grounded solutions, the network who presented to us really drove home the point.

Education, education, education, stewardship, stewardship, stewardship.

Um, because you know, the the reality is that that a subsidy is money provided that that you didn't have, right?

So um, I even going back to that idea of like we all together are Chattanooga, like if Chattanoogans have money for if I can't afford to buy a home and a hundred percent equity model um if I choose to take on um to to take advantage of a down payment assistance program and community land trust purchase, then it is um I think reasonable and uh citizenship kind of head space of I want to pay that forward that I couldn't afford to get in with 100% equity right now because I didn't have the money for it, but I can stay here for four or five, seven, eight years and then sell it, and now I have the the wealth to then invest in my next house in a hundred percent equity because I have made that, and and now I'm paying it forward for my neighbor, you know, who now can afford to buy.

Um but yeah, you're you're spot on about we the education that will be necessary for this.

Um let's see, some uh councilman Harvey and uh councilman no.

Um just a couple of questions that again this may be my uh ignorance when it comes to this, but is this the same organization that also procures um land for for the city for parks?

Um, this is different.

This is a different proper yeah, all right.

So there are so many trust things so the trust for public land, um actually um David Johnson of the Trust for Public Land is going to come be our parks and outdoors director just to make those lines a little more confusing.

So we have a um we have a community land bank, a land bank authority that is run by the city, and Megan um currently sits, Megan from our staff currently is their employee.

So there's the land bank, and I believe Megan is not on the board but is an advisor, maybe to the CBLT?

That's correct.

Okay, so she's an advisor.

Um and then you have the land trust the trust for public land and some others like that.

They're about preserving land just for whatever.

Um, and then this is a community land trust, which is not it, it's an entity of itself, not officially part of any other organization here in the town.

It's it's a new thing.

Okay, okay.

My recommendation was if it was the same organization.

I was gonna say we need to make sure that this is used for only housing.

A hundred percent okay, all right, that clears that up.

But I'm gonna make that point used for only housing.

Yeah, oh well, for management of the affordable housing, yeah.

Yeah, oh well, for management of the councilwoman and then councilman Henderson.

Okay, thank you, madam chair.

So my question actually, you've at Councilwoman Dotley as three of the ones I was gonna ask.

But um I didn't hear her touch base on you are asking for $750,000 from the three million.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, so my question would be how many fewer families would receive down payment assistance immediately if you pull that $750,000 for that.

Is there an estimate as to how many families that that would affect?

Well, we could certainly do the math on on that at the 1500.

So 750 divided by 15.

Uming, however, that the first three million dollars that has been allocated, there's only two months in this fiscal year to spend that down.

So the likelihood of that being spent down to zero, I think is zero in uh in this month and next month.

So then if we look at um two and a quarter million dollars heading into it, um we have a we have an opportunity to then invest so that generationally more and more families can do this, even if the city of Chattanooga gets to a point where it's unsustainable for us to have three million dollars dedicated to down payment assistance, we have assets in our community that are providing affordability not just this year for one family, but consider if every if every home that's in the land trust turns over five times, you get a five X return on investment.

But what's the exact number?

So 50.

So it would take the subsidy of 50 um in the down payment assistance program and put it toward um founding a community land trust.

So if we think about that 50, multiply that by five, that becomes 250 families potentially that would benefit from that.

Okay, so but that's putting it into something that you don't have uh actual warm bodies that is going to be taking part in that right now, right?

Not today, but over the long term, yeah.

So it's an investment in the future.

So I know uh I met with um Micah Gillian and Janet Goodwin um last well, no, the first part of this year, I think, maybe, or maybe the last part of last year, in reference to this uh land trust, right?

So at the time they did not even have um a formula for it to do what they needed to do.

Um my question then was, and if I remember correctly, the individual that buys into this never actually owned the property.

They actually just the physical part of the house.

Correct.

So then what is it to guarantee that they will get the full equity?

Is it anything that would guarantee they would get their full equity out of being in that house for whatever X number of years?

Well, so and then I think you have to kind of um balance that will how many we're gonna not give the down payment assistance to a family that will be able to own their land and their home that is sitting on that land and get full equity out of that property when they do decide to sell.

That is definitely a trade-off when we think about a community land trust model, um, and why I think it's an important tool in our toolkit because if a family doesn't have so 20% down payment on a $200,000 house is $40,000, right?

So that would be to aim for not having mortgage insurance, which I think was kind of our olden days, pre-COVID kind of concept.

So if a family doesn't have $20 or $30,000 saved up to be able to purchase a home, and also let's remember for area median income of family of four for um, and that I'll use those numbers because that's the ones I'm most ingrained in my brain.

A family of four can purchase a home at about 260,000.

The and that's for 100% AMI.

So a family uh, but our area median home is $340,000.

So we have a significant gap, and it it's it requires a bigger down payment to buy a home.

So what we what we can reasonably expect from the down payment assistance program as we have it, is that that $21,000 is gonna be most useful to families that are at $100 to $120 area median income, which is fantastic.

We still are getting first-time home buyers.

When I looked at thinking about like how this might open doors to younger home buyers, because keep in mind home ownership, first home age is now getting to be in the 40s, 41, 42 years old to buy your first home, not in your 20s, the way that um kind of American wealth building has has been built.

So let's see, I put some numbers in here.

So a hundred and twenty AMI for a two-person household right now is 80 to 90,000 a year income.

So there if that's really how far our 15 to 21 is gonna go is to be able to get somebody at that with a land trust model, you do trade off that the land itself is really a lot of the subsidy.

The land might be worth 30,000, 40, 50,000 in a land trust model.

So if I as a home buyer am not buying this plot of land, I'm buying the house on top of it, then right away as a subsidy, we've got 50 grand in the deal, right?

Uh at if we're trying to make a home more affordable.

So that's why then we could potentially see folks who are making $60,000 suddenly be able to be back in the market of first-time home ownership.

And it's true that in that scenario, okay, they don't have $60,000 to be able to put toward the purchase of a home.

And we have a we have a tool in our community toolkit to help them become a first-time home buyer and generate equity.

Maybe they don't walk away with everything because they got $60,000 in subsidy to buy this house.

So it's fair to say, okay, we're gonna try to move take like you get you raise, you get all the money on the appreciation of this house, whatever the formula is, and we'll find out more about it.

But then you can um then you take what you've made and you can go buy something else in a hundred percent equity environment where you can afford you as a purchaser can afford to own 100% of the equity.

This is a way to have long-term um investment in the community, but but not necessarily right for every person, but by no means would anybody ever be required to do this in the same way that you know they're not gonna walk out that $15,000 that they're putting in now, arguably they don't have 100% equity either because they have to pay that $15,000 back.

You know, it's $15,000 that has to get paid back.

It's a question of how much is that going to be worth to the next person that we try to help with their family.

But um, at least with the down payment assistant, like I say you own the land and the house that is on.

That's currently land right now is um is um it's expensive.

It's expensive.

So the house that you that you build on there is not gonna the materials of the actual framework of that is not going to mean equal out to ever what the land is worth itself.

So to me, you still not coming out uh on the good end of it.

Someone else is um that's just me.

I don't understand personally, and and I will look into it more how that actually builds uh generational wealth.

Sure.

It just gives you a place to pay rent for for a little while where you would be paying it if you were in your house to own it anyway.

So uh no difference than you rent an apartment, you rent a space that's there, you don't ever own any of it.

Well until you just paying to have access to it, that's what that sounds like.

Well, that's pretty much here.

The models um the financial models uh that to my knowledge, almost every land trust in the nation, and and what I'm hearing from the board of the Tennessee Valley land community land trust is that helping create a tool to facilitate the building of generational wealth is a non-negotiable, like the the formula absolutely will help will help people walk out with equity when they sell their home.

But it does come with the reality that if you needed money to be able to afford to purchase a home, that some of that money stays with that investment so that it can be affordable to another person and another person and another person.

But it is very different than renting for a couple of reasons.

First, when you secure a mortgage, as you know, most often you're gonna secure a mortgage that is a if it's a 30-year mortgage, you're agreeing to a payment that will stay the same over those 30 years, where rent would go up, up, up, up, up, up, right?

So you are you have stability there while also building equity in your home and creating a financial tool that, for example, you could uh refinance to be able to fund your education and use that equity to do that and then still have a home or refinance to pay off debt or um any number of things because it does become a real asset for you, right?

Um councilman Henderson had a question, but did do you have any other questions?

Oh no, other questions and then and then councilman Dotland.

So this actually gives us a dual path to some homeownership.

I mean, you can either I mean you could choose the down payment assistance, or you could go the land trust uh can you use down payment assistance on the land trust?

Yes, that was something that I have talked with the team here about that already you would be able, yes, you'd be able to use that toward a land trust.

Which is how then if you think a home becomes affordable at 80% AMI in the land trust, then if you have down payment assistance, it starts to become affordable at 60% AMI, which is a game changer.

Yeah.

And who carries the loan on the uh land trust?

Does this will a bank carry a loan?

Yes, yes, it's it's a traditional mortgage, yeah.

Okay.

Um that if I'm not mistaken, the 2.25 million that's left in there still allows us to help about 150 families with down payment assistance.

And do we have any idea how many might even apply for that, Richard?

Yeah.

I I think it's been very well received.

I think there's a lot of interest in the program.

But also um, something that's important to remember, council is there's a cap on the amount that the home can cost 400,000 is the upper limit.

You have to be within that one twenty or below AMI.

Yeah.

Um, and then kind of the uh Peggy Becker, follow up a little bit on.

I think you asked the administration's position on this.

I don't know.

Do we actually know uh Chief what I mean, like what position the administration is taking on the sure uh community land trust?

Yeah, sure.

Richard, can I sit for a um thank you, Councilman Henderson?

Um thank you, Councilman Hill, for your continued leadership in this space and for your um thoughtful advocacy for long-term solutions.

The administration is supportive of the land trust, as councilwoman Hill pointed out, we have pursued this separately prior to the formation of the TV CLT.

Um can we kind of go backwards though, just think about the proposal, starting with the the staff proposal.

Um we recognize the tremendous need that that Sharita has expressed to me uh for some time as well.

So thank you for acknowledging that.

You you will note that we we didn't put that forward in our budget proposal.

We feel like we can take care of that, meet that need administratively.

So there Richard and I were talking yesterday, there is a there is a vacancy in OSH, which is also in economic development that we're not going to need to backfill.

So our intent is to parf that position to create this incentive position uh that would report under Sharita.

We feel strongly that we need both given the portfolio of housing programs that we have built out over the last few years, particularly with DPA coming online in a real way, we do feel like we need the capacity with with both of the program managers that are uh reflected in our proposal, and with Hanukkah leaving as well.

So we feel like we can do both on that front.

Um then with respect to the CLT, so the the administration is committed to supporting the CLT.

We are committed to um yeah, we see it as as a as a value add, right?

Like the more tools in the toolkit to your point, the better.

One thing that I would offer as kind of a counter consideration with respect to the amount in this budget, is I would ask for you to consider instead of 750 doing 250 in this budget, and there are a couple of reasons why one, I I feel like, and some of the questions have come up with respect to the fact that the CLT is in its nascency, doesn't have an executive director yet.

As far as I know, it doesn't have um an uh an executive director.

Um I think yes, go ahead.

No, this is for chairwoman.

Oh, sorry, just agree on a few.

Do you want me to keep going?

Or no, please.

Okay.

Um and I think to Councilwoman Knowles' um point about the trade-off here.

We think about how do we invest the the dollars in a way that can make the the biggest impact the soonest.

And I don't think that we lose anything towards the long-term strategic investment represented by the CLT, but we know that land trusts take a minute to get going, right?

Like, so if you think about what is the material impact on housing affordability for Chattanoogans in FY27, it's gonna be I mean, at least on average five years for a uh land trust when you think about you know nationally, the time it takes for those institutions to have a portfolio large enough to make a material impact.

It's a long-term flight, to your point, exactly.

And we support it, but in terms of this budget, um we feel we feel real confident that the dollars that you guys have appropriated for down payment assistance previously, and then what we're proposing in this budget, we think that we'll be able to deploy all of it.

I mean, we've had over 150 loan officers come and attend our trainings.

We've had you know more than 30, I think it's 34, 35 local financial institutions.

I mean, there's just a lot of activity and enthusiasm around down payment assistance, and we know that it's a real need in the community, and so I I wouldn't I wouldn't want us to um while I do acknowledge and share kind of like the the strategy of like smoke them while you got them, like a go get you know, go get it while you can to secure that.

I think that in this case we need to think carefully about the opportunity cost because I do think that it's a real one.

Um then lastly, um actually no, I think that that's it.

So that so the administration again, we are supportive.

We want to this is the other thing I wanted to mention.

We want to partner year over year for the for the remainder of the Kelly administration with the CLT to help it get going.

We think that there's tremendous opportunity through our land bank as well to actually we encourage them to apply for the next RFP, which I think is later this summer.

I don't know if it's been scheduled yet, but that's what I've that's what I've been told is that there's one kind of in the works, and they would have the CLT would have a competitive advantage because of the long-term affordability dimension of any proposal that they would put forward that would make it very appealing for the land bank to want to partner in that way to help transfer properties into its portfolio.

Um and so in summation, we uh we support it.

We would ask that that that the council consider a 250,000 dollar allocation instead of the 750,000 dollar allocation that we would commit to repeating for the subsequent two budgets for the remainder of the Kelly administration.

Okay, thanks for that, Kevin.

Um I think key to this discussion is if this council and this administration decide to take this leadership stance, whether 750, 500, whatever it might be.

We consider how other how we might also make further partnership commitments like the land bank, like to say we've talked a lot about land bank properties should be for affordable housing, right?

Well, what does that mean?

And it does do we then start to say we want our community assets to stay community assets, we want to have a a natural transition where not just an RFP but the land trust gets right of first refusal on properties that are there, right?

Like write a first refusal, meaning the land because we are trying to build this is something I would think as a council person, I want to see us build a large civic holding of properties that that our community is is holding in perpetuity and and providing affordable um generational wealth building and home ownership.

Um and also as a counterpoint to what you said about things being in their nascent stage and when the city invests, we put three million dollars toward down payment assistance last year, and it's only now beginning to be deployed.

Um we also invested 20 million dollars in affordable housing the first year that Mayor Kelly was in office, knowing that that was an important investment, the same with the DPA, and we now have the very first Invest Chattanooga program coming out of the ground.

But if we had waited, it's not even coming out of the ground yet, but it's going to come soon, and those were investments that we think are important, right?

Absolutely.

Um what we knew was we had 20 million dollars then.

We don't have 20 million dollars today.

For sure.

Um so just just for thought.

So that was an appeal to to just timing, not merit.

Okay.

Um councilman Elliott and then councilman No.

And then Councilman Dominic.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Did I get it in the right order?

No.

No.

You can go before me.

I don't mind.

Councilman Dominic.

Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh I want to highlight a couple things from conversations with the CLT.

And I appreciate the administration's perspective.

So I think you, Kevin.

Um, we do have an executive director.

It's temporary, uh, and we do have a posting for a more permanent role.

And so there are also our plans for us to have at least 25 homes by July of next year.

Wow, great.

So the we are looking to scale pretty significantly.

And a lot of that work is already in in place to move.

And I do want to echo some of the things that everyone has said, but particularly I want to say this, you we can walk in true gum at the same time.

And we can provide down payment assistance for our people, and then also make sure they have an affordable home, they can use that down payment system.

Right?

Um I look at it when I when I look at this, it is an exorbitant amount of funds we're putting towards down payment systems, which is needed, and I want us to keep supporting it because it can help so many folks.

Um, but we also have to be mindful of how we also are lowering the barriers or connecting the dots for people to even get some of those traditional mortgages so they can use that down payment assistance.

So that's something we have to be mindful about.

Um to that to that point, we have allocated three million dollars already that has not been exhausted.

And these are funds that are going towards something that is art that's looking to have an exponential growth.

And uh understanding how priorities change, financial situations change.

Uh if we can solidify this investment now with stipulations that matching funds meet it, we don't have to think about it again.

It's a one-time investment that can multiply over years.

You know, we can really show up for people in a special way for Chattanooga.

So I appreciate everybody's conversation to this, and uh, we're all just trying to figure out how to best show up for folks in affordability crisis.

Um but I I do support this.

Um if our down payment assistance program is successful next year, let's put another three million towards it, right?

Because this that's how you really change the lives of folks we're here to represent to change, but I think this is a good step in the right place.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilwoman Dolly.

Thank you so much, uh, Madam Chair.

So and I think it just goes back just echoing the sentiments to Councilman Henderson and Councilman Elliott in regards to the dual path at the end of the day, it's just another tool there.

Uh I think my question surrounded um well, two, because one was brought up.

Uh first, I messaging is important to me, and it is important to especially the people I serve that I know that are gonna be below 80% uh in some of the conversation, especially when you think about the comings of councilwoman knowledge, that is what people would think, and they will begin to feel like they're being penalized for being poor, um, that equity will be taken from them and things like that.

So messaging is gonna be messaging and education is gonna be key because we don't ever want to be seen as a city that's penalizing people for wanting to build wealth.

And so that is the first one.

The second one is um, and I wasn't planning to speak about this, but since uh Madam Sherry, you brought it up regarding the land bank.

Um, I believe the land bank, I don't I I don't believe that the land trust should have the first right of refusal.

I know that was just a thought, um, but that it remains a competitive process simply because you know it's almost forcing the city then turns around and pretty much if if they have the first right of refusal, the city is forcing people to be in a land trust.

And as mentioned earlier, everybody does not have to participate in that.

So if everybody doesn't have to participate, then why would the city give land to the land trust?

And pretty much if you want to if you want a home, if you're on land that the city has, you have to help being a land trust.

Like the builder has to do everybody has to be a part of this process and then becomes a forced process and really takes away some of the equity, some of the inclusion and that competitive process for other types of builders, minority women owned business builders, um, for other organizations to come in and participate.

So I just want us to kind of think a little bit more critically about that particular thing because the land bank is is for you know, whoever puts in the best bid for that property for that area, and not necessarily for the land trust to come in and take, because we don't have that.

I mean we have some properties, but it's not a lot of properties.

So we don't I don't I think that commits people to being a part of something that they may not want to be part of.

Because some people may just, you know, it may just be I know a couple of builders that could get into you know get a property from land bank and build it at a really reasonable rate, um, depending on how many you know units they put in, you know, we density is keep in the core.

So you have those, and then they may be able to build at a affordable rate and then rent it or sell it at an affordable rate.

So then you have that, um, but I don't want it to be a sole source for well, it's not because they already have 25 houses of this property.

The plan, oh okay.

They already have a plan to do that.

So I just want us to just kind of step back on the land bank piece and just you know, think about what messages that send it is sending, you know, the city has property, and if you want it, you have to participate in this program.

And that's not necessarily I don't that kind of excludes a lot of people from participating.

So that was the only other comment I had about the land bank piece because that uh sure, and that's just my I know it's just thought that yes.

Um, but other than that, I mean, generally speaking, I do support funding it.

I think figuring out what level is you know, but I think the dual path as Councilman Henderson, I think that was the best way to put it, it's a dual path.

You know, it you can take this or you can take that one or other, you know.

Yeah, so yeah.

Or both.

Yeah, yeah.

The the both is just opening the door.

Yeah, but again, it goes back to the messaging.

Yeah, if I don't, if I make $50,000 a year, and I can I can get both, then when I get ready to come out of this, and maybe you know, God's been good, I can make a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Um was I penalized at the time for being I don't say poor, but penalized at the time for not having money.

Um, I don't know, but that's that's just kind of my thought of it.

Cause when I get out here to my neighborhoods and I have to explain this, that is gonna be the first thing that has already been the topic, and now I have to figure out how do I explain it from a city perspective of you know how do I explain this?

I guess it'll be on the land trust to explain it, but I still need to have that understanding and be able to articulate that to the my constituents.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense, and I think um my hypothesis would be that the uh the advisors who've been helping the land trust the grounded solutions think through this have encountered that in a lot of that very question in a lot of places, and probably will have guidance um toward that for that long-term communication and stewardship.

Um, and how might we turn that conversation if you weren't penalized for being poor, you had an opportunity to buy a home you wouldn't have been able to buy otherwise.

And that was an amazing blessing for your family that now will continue to bless you as you take, you know.

But anyway, yeah, they're fair conversation, absolutely.

Councilwoman No, Councilman Clark.

Thank you, ma'am chair.

Thank you, madam chair.

So, in a perfect world, um 750,000.

If you could go through three neighborhoods in this city and purchase homes that are vacant or family members that no longer want to stay in the area, and you take an invest in those homes, and you get them up to par.

Um it would definitely be affordable to a whole lot of families, and they would not, I mean, definitely generational wealth.

They own the house and the land, and in a neighborhood where they want to be, or maybe didn't think they could be, but hey, I'll give you uh an example in my neighborhood.

Two homes came available.

Somebody snatched them up for a hundred thousand a piece, those homes will work every bit, probably 450.

But if we had had a portion of that 750,000 and given it to that neighborhood to purchase that home and put in maybe 30,000 to renovate it, 130,000 home.

Definitely affordable and definitely generational wealth, and you own the house and the land.

So there is uh million dollars in the budget for um for that kind of rehab already.

That that's that was the a different HEV allocation that came from um the economic development fund.

So that point, Councilman Clark.

Uh thank you.

Uh shh.

Hill.

Councilwoman Hill.

First of all, thank you for this.

I think sometimes we wait for people to ask us to do the right thing.

And when you should just do the right thing, because one, I support this in its entirety.

Secondly, I want us to remember the word investment.

And because I think there's some things that are that's getting in the that's muddy in the waters about what this proposal is.

One, we can't do more than one, we can do more than one thing, right?

Our portfolio, first, I accelerate the mayor's portfolio.

It's one of the things that actually makes me excited about some of the things you all do is your housing portfolio and the options that you have made available for people who will not qualify.

I just I just want to let you guys know because we we like to brag about this down payment assistance program, which I think is great.

And I think our raise this point is that that $21,000 for the average medium home income in Chattanooga, don't is not a down payment.

So while y'all want to do cheerleadings and great down payment program, it's great for who it works for.

And that's wonderful for those families who are going to do that.

So guess what?

If that doesn't work for you, we have uh other options, right?

And this is just another option.

It's an investment.

Community land trusts are working throughout the country.

I think we're behind the wheel on it.

Uh the city did apply for the funding, and we did not get it.

So I know there's a desire for you all to get into the business of land trust development and could not do that.

Uh I think this is the will to do that to start that investment over a long-term period.

I think it should be more than $750,000.

Because there are people.

There are people who fall in the gaps that will not apply for the down system of payment program.

That program will only allow you to live in certain zip codes in our city.

And some of your zip codes that are gentrified, you cannot live there with that program.

We really want to talk about that.

And so I champion this because it does go another layer down of people who are experiencing poverty in this economy.

If you guys were familiar with the term Alice, the working poor, there are people who work two jobs.

Some of them work for our city.

Let that linger.

Some of them work in our council office who are working poor people who would qualify for a program like this.

So we fund a lot of things as an investment.

One West Side, when the money, the federal dollars fell out of one west side.

What do we do?

We shorted up.

Okay.

So please, you know, I know we have amnesia sometimes in how we fund things, but not when this helps things.

This is just another notch in the belt of the wonderful housing portfolio that the mayor's office, I believe, has established.

And I think $750,000 is a wonderful one-time investment.

Meaning, yeah, it may be in its infancy stage, but we have put a lot of money in things that were not in this infancy stage and did not get a return on his investment.

We just heard the a board member of the organization go, hey, we gotta go to do 25 homes.

I we spend money, and I still don't know a return on investment on some of the money we spend in community development.

So I'm excited about this because we can do more than one thing at a time and giving and investing in a program that people are already doing.

Like this is not even new to us.

We're actually behind the wheel on helping poor black people get into homes because they're using it in Indian reservations.

Did you guys know that?

Land development trusts.

They're doing in Atlanta and places like North Atlanta, and when they sell the homes, because this allows people who don't qualify for assistance down payments to actually enter into the housing market as a starter home.

Some of y'all have these multi-million dollars home, and you can borrow your money out of your home.

So some of us don't have that opportunity.

This program allows us to do that.

So you may not own the dirt, which is fine, but if you if you didn't have a program like this, you wouldn't own the dirt, the mailbox, or the house.

This gives you an entry into that, and guess what?

You sell it because hopefully you will level up and to buy another house at East Brainer or North Chattanooga.

So remember that this is an entry.

And to other tools or options that have not been available to the city.

And I know it's an interest to the city because we tried to do it.

And I I and again, as I stated when I opened, thank you.

Because I don't think we have to be asked to do the right thing.

I think we saw an opportunity and did the right thing.

So thank you for educating me on land develop on what a land uh development trust is.

I got it confused with David Johnson's organization.

And they're just like, well, how do we explain it?

Similar to what we're doing, invest Chattanooga, right?

So anyway.

Chairman Davis.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, I just want to say I supported as well for many of the same reasons that you all have mentioned.

I think it's a good additional tool.

Of course, there is some risk, I think, with supporting a new group like the land trust, but there's risk in anything, and I think it's a measured risk relative to the other investments we're making.

Um with down payment assistance and other areas.

And the fact that it's stackable, I guess you would say with the down payment assistance.

I think that's very exciting for folks.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um how much more time do we have to do?

Well, we we've got a 15 we're gonna start at two o'clock, correct?

Yeah, I just want to understand.

Yeah, councilman.

Okay.

So I want to I'm gonna come back uh and address the fact that you said that was a million dollars for that type of program.

And I just went over the fact that the C that million dollars.

We just looked at it for is what not for rehab.

It's for housing rehab.

Yeah, it's not for purchasing a home and selling it to those that would be available for it.

Right, no, it's for reasonable.

Okay, so I want to get some clarity on that because I thought a million dollars in there, and I didn't know about it as much as my constituents.

We talked about this same idea about being able to purchase homes that come available in our neighborhood and then be able to sell it to those that would be able to afford it.

Because I would have been on that if that would have been the case.

Yeah, okay, thank you.

I was wondering how or every comfortable.

Um do you happen to know would the uh the TV CLT's acquisition strategy be for property adjustments and no, what would it be?

So we're that's why actually it has name.

Um I was somewhat joking when I threw out the name there.

Oh, it sticks.

Oh, we're our focus is beginning in the city of Chattanooga, but um long term the footprint may expand based on where we can build affordability.

But we're gonna start here.

Um, but you don't want to close off boundaries because you may find somebody who can find a cheaper, more affordable home in Ford Oglethorpe or Utawa, right?

Uh, but we're gonna keep the footprint local at first.

And the DPA program from the city is only for city uh city president geography, right?

Addresses so there wouldn't be that overlap.

The thought around this too is I think everyone we're talking about economic development, we need to think more regionally, like all roads in this area lead back to Chattanooga, and if we're gonna be attracting people to invest here, live here, uh pick up jobs here.

The thought was we need to also have affordable housing for people to contribute to our economy.

So I I've got a follow-up on the we've talked about the 250,000 versus the 750,000 as far as funding for operating costs.

Um I guess I'm curious where did you come up with a with the 750?

I mean, I know it that's a three-year, basically we're saying it was a three-year commitment.

Was that so did you feel like it was easier for them to backstop going out raising funds to say we've got it covered for three years now?

I do I do I see it having a few different advantages.

Um, with regard to the matching fund, I like the idea of of really holding that accountability and and so often we say skin in the game.

Obviously, the land trust has a great deal of skin in the game, they're creating this whole thing, but for them to be able to go out and fundraise and say yes, we have our operations covered for three years.

Every dollar that you put in is a dollar that helps us get help families buy homes affordably and also moves toward that 225 home mark that then sets them in their business model self-sustainability, at which point they won't need to raise money for operating dollars because the land trust itself will support itself.

At 25 homes, 225 225.

So that three years is a good runway.

Um, but also I think the opportunity is here while we have two months and three million dollars in a fund for down payment assistance, it just seems like a good time if we're gonna throttle back and make a secondary investment if we're gonna switch I don't know what the car metaphor is there, but um it felt like a good time that this would be um would not be as uh felt potentially in the down payment assistance program um because the down payment assistance program will be so well funded.

If we're gonna switch, I don't know what the car metaphor is there, but it felt like a good time that this would be would not be as uh felt potentially in the down payment assistance program because the down payment assistance program will be so well funded.

Um and the third thought um was just generally that multi-year commitments have proven to be challenging for the city, and so let's do it once and and uh make this a leadership get uh a leadership allocation to say the city believes in this, the city wants to be a partner um thought partner, a uh whatever it might be.

That that was my thought.

What level of funding has the CLT already secured seed funding?

Um I believe that they have already secured a million dollars, so they need to raise another 500,000 to match our 1.5 million dollars to be able to draw this down.

So right now, you know, if they have a million, that means 250,000 of it is gonna have to come out of uh is for operating would come out of that, which reduces the subsidy that they'd be able to do to build homes or purchase homes or whatever they decide to do.

Um we would count uh a million dollars that they already have towards their one match.

Yeah, issue.

Yeah, um I thought that lost me.

Councilman Harvey.

Thank you.

Um this is a fascinating topic to me.

Uh if you remember the last presidential um race, both candidates actually uh talked about this exact model.

Well um Colin Harris and Donald Trump Donald Trump.

Um so it's an interesting, uh it's not it not a partisan issue.

I don't think it to talk about how we uh help our uh fellow Americans in in finding affordable housing.

Um I think about my little girl uh who's eight months old, you know, how if she how is she gonna afford a home years down the road?

So it's it's an interesting thing that I think is important to talk about.

But just a point of information for for myself.

Uh this may be a more of a uh question for Councilman Elliott.

Those 25 homes are those new built or the acquisitions, some of them are going to be transfers, more than likely.

Uh C and E is looking to transfer some property over to the CLT to ensure that the properties can remain affordable purposefully.

Is that just the property, just the land, or does that include a home on it?

The whole of them.

Some may be land, some may be complete homes.

Um and then just to help me understand what tell me the difference between the land bank and what the CLT is.

So or would be so the land bank when we have properties that most often when we have a property that goes into a back tax environment, there is um a back tax sale, and the city and the county have that list of properties, and then um with our functioning land bank now, the land bank looks at them and assesses which would be appropriate to say we want to hold those back.

We don't want to put them in the auction.

We want to put them into the land bank.

There's a lot of work that comes once you have a property in the land bank, very often the titles are a mess.

You know, it might be that 35 people own this piece of property because it just is the way that things have passed down, or they've been they've been um forgotten about or or whatever.

Um so the land bank then pulls those in, and that is something that we founded as a city, and then our uh our council cohort last term um got it up and up and running, and now um under this most recent term, um they have their first employee moving somebody from housing into uh land bank and okay.

Oh thank you.

That was more information.

So it's it's a way of conveying titles and clearing a lot of what they do is clear titles.

Um, but a challenge that the land bank is gonna have is that most of the property that we currently have in the land bank is um dirty, is it needs environmental remediation, and when you have properties that that need that kind of remediation and they're coming from the city, we then have a long-term liability.

So whomever the uh RFP winner, as it were, is like they are gonna need to remediate that to the tune of 20 to 30,000 dollars, probably to clean the lot before you can then actually sell it for homeownership.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Well, y'all, thanks so much for thinking so deeply about this and um asking awesome questions and pushing me to learn more.

I'm gonna do um my darndest to get y'all the answers specifically about um where they are with the resale formula um and which relates to the amount of equity somebody generates up.

We're gonna hand it back to the VC.

Um the they get two percent each year they live in a home and equity of what they can get when they resell.

So I think we probably need to see what that looks like in a form, like what the actual number is, you know, like 15 years from now.

Well, and like how much that how much money it is.

I can get that'll help.

I can get that um all that'd be awesome because we could probably get some like comparables of like what rent would be versus if you have that.

Okay, thanks so much.

Thank you, Chairman, for letting letting uh present that so it looks like we are going to need to schedule some time on the 26th for some follow-up items.

Uh and this is what I have so far for the 26.

Um we need a walk through on uh funded but unfilled positions, kind of what that dollar amount looks like.

And you know, I and I guess the easiest simplest way to put it is the ones that um are not being interviewed for, and they're just right wide open, and and we're looking for an overlay from last year to this year because we had a list from last year as well.

Um, and I'd kind of like it in that same format.

Uh I think there was mention of uh fall uh follow-up on a pilot for the early learning uh for after school care.

We need uh pilot.

Well, that's what I put down is a pilot program for after school care.

Not a payment and limit of taxes.

Yeah, yeah, uh a pilot program, not a project.

Yeah, there we go.

Demonstration that that and then um there is something that I want to bring to council concerning the economic development uh demonstration.

Start to call that a pilot uh that I need to bake a little bit more before I bring it that I would like to discuss next week as well.

And then uh it looks like we may need um a follow-up on the community um land trust on a growth strategy.

Well, we've got the resale formula, but we're gonna try to put some numbers to it, and then a community engagement plan.

Uh and then I guess to decide whether we're going to go with the 250 or 750, like whatever funding amount that we're going to do.

So we're was there any other items for discussion, Councilman Harvey?

I have a resolution ordered fourth to council.

Okay.

Let me ask you that.

Well, okay.

A budget?

Yes.

It pertains to this year's budget, I guess.

Well, more of a policy.

A policy for the budget.

Yeah.

I think okay.

Uh wait, we'll we'll find a we'll we'll figure.

I mean, yeah, we can do we can do that.

Okay.

Um more thing, budget chair.

I think we should just um when we sit back down and just review all of the agency funding proposal.

I've gotten feedback from multiple members, and there's gonna be a little bit of movement with respect to what was originally put forward, so we should probably do we want to start off with that then next next week.

Start with the agency proposal.

Yep.

Okay.

When will we get a fresh copy of that?

Um as soon as I land it.

Uh it's close.

Wes and I are uh working on it.

Um we meet.

I I think we might need nearly a whole day, so 10 o'clock.

Is everybody good starting at 10?

Nine seems to be a little early for some of us.

I want to make sure we're all here.

Okay, so we'll start at 10 a.m.

Um next Tuesday, the 26th.

We'll start off with uh agency proposals.

Uh then we'll walk through the items that I just listed.

Okay.

So councilman Clark.

Thank you, Chairman Henderson.

I also um want to add that Chairman Henderson and I have been discussing.

I know we we often hear from our constituents that we'd like to have public involvement and public input in the budget process.

So uh Council Henderson and I have come together and we are gonna do a series of budget community listening hearings out in the community.

Right.

Um and we have there will be three of them.

The first one uh will take place uh and thank you to Kim Straw, who is our director of the constituent services, who's helping make the connection to our constituents, right?

Let's go out into the community and do this.

There will be three which will be centralized to cover each of our districts.

The first one uh will be Monday, June 1st, pro tentatively, uh Kim is working to confirm these locations at the Family Justice Center, which will cover districts four, five, six, and some overlapping into nine.

Uh the second one will be at the downtown library, uh, which will be uh that Thursday, June the fourth, uh and these will be from 6 p.m.

to about 7 30.

We'll do like a short bright version of the budget, allow for people to give some public input, and then the last one will be in Chairman Davis's district um during one of his community meetings on June the 14th.

Um and tell me that time again.

Two to four.

Two to four.

It's on a Sunday, June the 14th.

And those are just three opportunities for the community to meet with council people, uh, to get a short version of the slideshow presentation that you all have presented to us.

Um and just for the community to feel like they are a part of this process if they cannot come to our council meetings or be participate in our morning budget hearings.

And so we will have that information uh confirmed uh Ms.

Strong uh preferably by our 330 uh business meeting.

So I just wanted to make that announcement.

That's a great idea.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, we do have strategic planning at 2 o'clock.

So we will break until who's our deal with that.

Yeah, blame me.

I was joking with Jeff.

I was like, who's ideal with that?

Yes, yes.

Listen, you did great.

Thank you.

I appreciate the uh your extra June 2nd.

I think we'll have June.