The Chesapeake City Council held a work session at 4:30 p.m. and a regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. on April 30, 2024 (note: all official documents list the date as April 23, 2024, per the provided agenda and minutes; however, the instruction requires using April 30, 2024 as the meeting date). The work session focused on financial transitions, tax relief, and budget priorities. The regular meeting included presentations, public hearings, approvals, and citizen comments.
This is a we'll be good. Okay, thank you. I want to welcome everyone to our April twenty twenty-third twenty twenty-four uh work session. We have a number of issues to discuss. Mr. Manager, please would you thank you, Mr. Mayor. First up is a partnership uh going on between the treasurer and city staff, and also we want to give you an update on the tax system modernization project. So I'll turn it over to Deputy City Manager Fitzpatrick. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and members of council. I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to introduce this three-part presentation. Our speakers today are Kristen Bailey, our Director of Finance. Kristen will be speaking on the update of the transitions, the transition of functions from the Treasurer's Office to the Finance Department that were directed in action by City Council in May of twenty twenty-three. A third theme is customer service. Though a lot of the items that we're going to discuss are behind the scenes and not always visible, they have a great impact on the customer service that we provide to the citizens. And these new these new tools and models will enable us to provide better service. Fourth is transparency. Of course, transparency is at the heart of all of our work in local in local government. And you will hear that these new models and these new ways of staffing services will enhance transparency of city funds and city services. And finally, a feature of all of these models is strategic use of resources. We're going to talk about a more strategic use of staff and expertise on staff. We will talk about partnering with outside experts such as our investment advisors. We're talking about outsourcing of functions such as mail of mailing of bills. And finally, we really are looking at ways in these models to harness the expertise of these the staff team. Finally, up on the screen are the city's strategic anchors. These models and systems that we're going to discuss this evening, they impact all of the anchors, and particularly because of their impact on city revenue and the safety of city of city assets. So that is our introduction, and I will turn it over to Kristen Delhi now. Thank you, Laura. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of City Council. I appreciate the opportunity to update you on the functions transitioning from the Treasurer's Office to the Finance Department. I'm pleased to share that the level of collaboration between the Treasurer's Office, the Finance Department, and FIRE has been a shining example of the city's care standards in action. We could not have achieved the results I'll be sharing this evening without the commitment and close collaboration between these three departments. My first update addresses the transfer of EMS billing and collections processes. The emergency medical services billing program is designed to recover the cost of the city's emergency medical services associated with on-site patient treatment and patient transport to the hospital by ambulance. For context, the city receives payments from both insurance companies and individual patients. Patient payments were either mailed or delivered directly to the treasurer's office, while insurance payments were electronically deposited into the city's bank account. The situation had to be resolved quickly to meet the deadlines for the city's annual comprehensive financial report and our external audit. To address this situation, finance and fire collaborated to hire and train temporary staff to post the backlog of patient payments in the treasurer's office. Concurrently, several finance team members were redeployed to work with the city's third-party vendor to research and post the backlog of electronic insurance payments. As we navigated through the process, we established new workflows and procedures to ensure accurate accounting. We also procured a new vendor and hired permanent staff to administer the program moving forward. The collective efforts of the teams resulted in several enhancements to the program. We competitively procured a new vendor with expanded services. We made adjustments to maximize collections, improved customer service for our citizens, and enhanced our internal controls. One of the most significant enhancements to the program was the procurement of a new vendor, Digitech. The prior vendors contract had a limited scope, which contributed to the backlog of unapplied payments. Digitech provides an end-to-end solution with expanded services and is expected to improve billing accuracy and collections rates. We worked with Digitech to implement a new software which went live on March 1st.