All right, I'll go ahead.

Oh, I'm not close to that.

Go ahead and call our February 16th, 2026 pre-council to order.

Our main topic today is the general fund outlook and revenue proposal.

So I'm assuming I just kick this over to you, Matthew Liu.

Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And can I ask before we get into it?

Do you want us to ask questions as you go through the slides or wait until the end and then discussion?

If if you have questions, we'd be happy to answer them as we go.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So we have a few discussion points for uh today, and they are here as follow.

We're gonna talk a little bit about the general fund, uh FTEs, and the expense breakdown.

And when we do this, we'll do this for each of the functional groups within the general fund.

Uh then we'll look at the revenue for the general fund.

We'll look at sales and use tax outlook, uh additional general sales and use tax, and then uh what the priorities would be for that additional uh sales and use tax or additional revenue.

So here you have a breakdown of general fund expenditures for the uh fiscal year 26 budget.

Uh as you can see, public safety makes up almost half of our expenditures in the budget, uh, followed up by uh health and environment, which includes uh the health department.

Here's what the FTE count looks that looks like for that same uh breakdown within the general fund.

So public safety makes up over half of that of the general fund uh full-time equivalence, and then again that's followed by uh health and environment that includes the health department.

So for public works, uh public works, and uh and this in our definition within the general fund uh has streets and engineering and then parking enforcement.

Uh the changes for fiscal year 26 or through this time period.

So the time period we're looking at is basically 19 through 26.

And so uh we've had the addition uh addition of administrative uh supervisor and and 26 and then parking enforcement.

Uh it went to police and then it went back to uh public works within this time period as well.

And so uh looking at the funding for public works, about 70% of our funding for public works comes from the transportation sales tax.

So uh the funding mechanism for each of these functional groups is very important, uh, and you'll see why when we come to public safety.

Yeah, thanks.

Uh Matthew, when public when parking moved from police to uh public works, the funding follow it, or how is how is that work?

Uh so parking is has the enforcement feats.

Is it in like are you asking about the funding for parking?

Yeah, uh parking enforcement and how you know personnel we paid for previous too.

So uh most of that funding came from just uh general revenues or wasn't a specific uh funding source for parking enforcement, so that didn't really change when it moved to public safety from part for public works, but it was more just moving it from one category to the other.

Thanks.

So here are the FTEs for public works.

So it's kind of up and down, and uh you can see that movement and 21 was that shift uh back to uh the police department, and then uh you see they they came back, I believe in 25 is when it when it came back.

Here's the budget breakdown uh for that same time period.

So we increased from a little over 11 million uh to just under 17 million within that time period.

Just quickly just to point out on all these slides, the the blue is gonna represent salaries and weight and wages and then other expenditures are in order.

So just kind of that's kind of a key color uh combination throughout these uh slides going forward.

And just to clarify, other expenditures, especially for um general fund also um would be things like contractual services, fleeting yeah, basically it's traveling training, uh materials and supplies, contractual services that makes up the bulk of that.

Basically, it's traveling training, uh, materials and supplies, contractual services that makes up the bulk of that.

Thank you.

So health and environment, uh the offices or the the uh departments that are within health and environment are uh public health and human services, community development, housing neighborhood programs, economic development, cultural affairs, and the office of sustain sustainability.

Uh the changes within this time period uh where the additions of code enforcement specialists and fiscal year 25.

Uh the funding, so 33% of all health expenses are offset by the county, and then health also receives around 4.4 in state uh and federal grants, and that's for fiscal year 26.

It's been more in some years, it's been less than some years.

So and then sustained sustainability receives their funding from the utilities.

So you want to make the distinction that we talk about health and net narrative, it's the public health department.

It's not the total for that environment.

Yeah, Betsy, come on Mac from the next year.

Can I ask what um the budget is for sustainability and the utilities department?

It's it would be this uh that 600,000.

That's what they received to 635,000.

Yeah, there's a transfer that comes in from the general fund from the utilities, and that total transfer comes to that 635 amount.

So it comes from the gener comes from the general fund, or it comes through the utility.

The transfers come to from utilities into the general fund.

So it's an expense and utilities, it's revenue in the general fund, that revenue is used to fund sustainability.

Okay, thank you.

Here are the numbers for uh the departments within health and environment, and so we moved from 128 individuals in uh fiscal year 19 to about 170 and 26.

Um, I guess basically in 22, that's when we received a lot of the COVID money, and we started to get some additional funding for additional programs uh within health, and so you can see that kind of rise over those uh few years, but then again, uh it dropped off some, I believe in fiscal year 25 uh within health, but we've had some other additions as well.

So here's a budget comparison for that time frame as well.

So uh moving from a little under 14 million to just over 25 million within that time frame.

Are we going to lose a lot of this though with the ARPA funding going away?

Uh not necessarily, no, but ARPA funding uh would is not necessarily looked at in this bucket of yeah, it's it's in a separate bucket of money.

Okay.

So here's our general administration uh departments.

What who all is included in general administration is the city clerk, city manager's office, finance, HR, law, and public works administration.

And so that's just the admin for public works.

Uh changes include the PMO moving into moving from IT into the CMO in 24, so that added around eight eight positions, I believe, moved from IT into uh city manager's office.

And so currently around uh 2.4 million of expenses are offset by intergovernmental revenue because these departments are the administration for the whole city, not just for the general fund.

It might be a good idea for those who are moving newer council or for just refreshers for all to remind what you mean by that.

So the fact that utilities don't have their own HR department.

So if you want to fill it.

So for every fund, every department within the city, uh finance, the CMO, City Clerk, Human Resources, all of these departments are only housed in the general fund.

So all of the other departments, all the other funds within the city also use uh a portion of these departments to help do their day-to-day activities, and so that's why those costs are spread uh from those funds into the general fund.

And so that's why those costs are spread from those funds into the general fund.

So is this the entire budget for the for these general administration things is 2.4 million?

Or is that the same?

No, that's not that.

That's just part of it.

And and that's the part that's that's supplemental.

That's correct.

And so from 19 to 26, we've seen a move from uh 93 positions to uh 109 positions, and so the bulk of that being the move from uh the PMO or project management office into city manager's office.

Here's a look at uh the budget during that same time period, and so we moved from uh just under 10 million to uh around 15 million uh in 26.

That's a question.

Yes.

Thanks.

Okay, I seem to see a big change in each of these areas, at least beginning in 24, but really in 23, where there's or significant increases here in terms of personnel and also well, not personnel so much, but in terms of the budget, and salaries seem to be the largest portion of that.

So we're we're seeing each of these these kinds of increases because of pay increases that we've been providing over that period of time, or are there other um other things that have contributed to that as well?

A lot go ahead.

Yeah, that's a big part of it.

It's the um that we've made a commitment to our employees, and so we did our paying classification study.

In that study, we started making adjustments to salaries.

The other thing is we've also seen an increase in our health insurance costs, and so those combinations of salaries and benefits is why you've seen that rise of closing.

Yeah, great.

Okay, uh supporting activities.

Uh the departments within supporting activities are the facilities management, creative services, and the contact center.

Over the this period of time, we've seen four FTEs and uh facilities management in fiscal year 25.

Um, the funding, uh, about 795,000 of expenses are offset by intergovernmental revenue.

So just like with the administrative portion, uh these three departments also do work for all the funds within the within the city, and so there's a uh small offset of intergovernmental fees too.

So here's the look at the FTEs from fiscal year 21 to 26.

Uh, the difference between this one and the others is that uh a few of these funds weren't established or not funds, departments weren't established in the way they are now until 21.

So we couldn't go it wasn't the apples to apples comparison if we went to 19, and then here's the budget for that same time period, so just under 4 million and 21 to a little bit over 5 million in fiscal year 26, and then finally we get to uh public safety.

So, what is included in this public safety breakout is fire, the municipal court, and police, and so some of the changes include a one-time mid-year adjustment of 1.5 million dollars and 25, and that was mostly for the uh upgrades to um I believe was Flock and uh Axon, and there were a few other things in there as well.

Um we included five additional sworn officers uh that moved from police into the regional airport uh in fiscal year 26, and then uh fire increased around 40.5 FTE and police increased about 43 FTE from 19 to 26.

Um so one of the things that we were yes.

I didn't ask this question earlier, and I appreciate the answer.

But basically, for fire, the 40 FTE, 40.5 increase from was predominantly in uh firefighters, whereas for the police, the majority of was actually civilian employees, which I understand was issues to put police back on the streets, but we haven't had as far as the total number of sworn officers, we haven't seen a significant increase since 2019.

Whereas for the police, the majority of was actually civilian employees, which I understand was issued to put police back on the streets, but we haven't had as far as the total number of sworn officers, we haven't seen a significant increase since 2019.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Thank you.

And so sort of what I mentioned earlier about the funding.

So police and fire received minimal, they were they do receive some grants for things like uh uniforms and different.

I think fire received a few grants uh for uh turnout gear, things like that, but it is very minimal compared to their budgets.

It is mostly funded by general fund activities.

So when you look at that half of the budget for uh general fund and then half the employees, it is mostly done.

They they're basically the only uh breakout or group of employees that are paid majority from the general fund activities.

And to be clear, that's because there's not as many grant options like there is for health and public works has department of transportation, so we don't see as much opportunities for support from like the federal government or state.

Right, where we do, we we go for it, but there's just not as many out there, yeah.

Nick.

I just want to clarify to be sure here the FY19 to 26, fire increase 40.5, and police 43, those are budgeted, right?

Those are not actual actually.

That's correct.

Uh but fire is true for these other FTEs as well, right?

Well, we're all these numbers we're looking at actual FTEs, budget, correct?

That's correct.

But I believe I believe fire is full, and I believe police is close.

So uh the yes, but you are correct.

This is a budgeted number.

So here's a look at those FTEs.

So for this for this sheet, though, uh, when we're looking at these, these are actuals from 19 to 25.

So those are the actual positions, and then you got a budgeted number for uh 26.

And so that the actual the the number went down in 26 because of those airport officers being transferred over.

And then here's your uh budget comparison.

So from uh fiscal year 19, a little bit over 40 million to fiscal year 26, where we're closer to that 70 million dollar mark.

Matthew, really quick before you go on.

Can can you remind us again?

Um, the I don't know if there's an easy way to do the percentage breakdown, and you might get into it later about police fire, and then municipal court is also included in this.

I mean, I know it's a very small piece to it, but I think when we're trying to add up the numbers, um, do you get into that later with the slide, or is there a way to have how much for each?

Uh so municipal court is uh right around $800,000.

Um police, I believe is around $36.

Um, you gotta we gotta pull it up.

We may be able to pull it out.

I just think it's good because I know later on we'll start like doing the math in our head of the different things, and it might not add up because in your proposal, I don't think there's a big increase to municipal court being proposed.

So police is uh 35.1 and fire is 30 million.

Okay, thank you.

So now we'll come to our uh revenue outlook.

This is our current revenue outlook, uh revenue and versus expenditures.

And so in 25, you see, we we met our uh our revenue met our expenditure, but this was mostly due to that uh revenue increase that we saw from that that settlement.

Uh that settlement was basically the the savior for last year.

Uh that's something we cannot anticipate moving forward.

So uh you see that line more on the trajectory of that 24 number for revenue uh as we look for 26 over.

Here's a breakdown of general fund revenue.

So sales and use tax make up roughly 30 percent, a little less than 30 percent.

Uh that's followed by pilot payments and then the other and then intergovernmental and then other taxes.

Here's a breakdown over our estimated sales and use tax by fund, and so this kind of gives you a comparison of what uh each percentage breaks down, what each percentage breaks down to.

And so this kind of gives you a comparison of what each percentage breaks down, what each percentage breaks down to.

So 1%, you get around 32 million in sales tax and uh five and use tax and then capital improvements is a fourth of that.

Uh so is parts sales tax.

The transportation sales tax is about a half of the general fund sales tax.

So all in all, in total, the city brings in around 63 million in sales tax and 10 million in use tax.

That's what we're estimating for fiscal year 26.

Here's a look at the sales tax rates by most uh populated cities in Missouri.

So uh you just as you can see, Columbia is um guessing sixth place or seventh place from uh the city portion and for the tax portion.

So we're at 2% going to the city and 7.9% overall tax.

And so sometimes this gets confusing with people because there are other taxing entities within the city of Columbia, but the city does not collect that tax, and we do not uh profit off of any of that additional sales tax.

So if you have a um TDD or CID uh community investment district, like we do downtown, the city does not receive those that funding.

Um about these sales, the sales tax rates.

Uh, most of these listed have enacted some sort of public safety sales tax.

I believe the last one was independence, and uh I'm not for sure if it is if their one percent sales tax is within this number because these are the numbers that we pulled uh as of January, and I believe their tax didn't wasn't enacted until this January.

So I'm that's the only one I'm I'm a little skeptical about.

It could be 9.6 on theirs.

Uh here's what our current sales tax breakdown looks like.

So uh 4.23% goes to the state, and 1.75 goes to the county, the remainder comes to the city, which is at 2%.

Uh with this graph, we're looking at the the year over year changes in use and sales tax.

So the percent basically the percentage change.

Uh so we had a few good years uh before 19, and we had we had that that slight dip that was basically when the pandemic started.

Um, and then you see is that as basically the the cares and the ARPA money rolled in, you you can see an increase in that percentage of sales tax, and that's basically because people were spending money during that time.

There was a uh injection of money into the economy, and so you can see an increase in our sales tax receipts over that time.

But as that money dwindled, you can see our uh that percentage of sales tax increase go down till we get to fiscal year 25 where we actually had a negative uh year-over-year increase from 24 into 25.

So this is the change, right?

This isn't actually how much sales tax we bring in.

You're just saying the change is 14% more than it was before, and now it's minus one percent.

Yes, correct.

From the year before from 24 to 25, yes.

Okay, thanks.

And so I have we do have another another graph that kind of shows the year over year progression of how that sales tax progressed, but basically the the percent change from year over year.

That's what this graph depicts.

And so it's really wild to try to predict these type of things.

Um is pretty volatile.

Uh property taxes one is pretty stable.

You can always pretty much tell how much you bring it in in property tax, but sales tax not so much.

Has a lot to do with how the economy is doing.

So here's how we currently forecast.

Um the high mark here is a two percent, the middle is a one percent, and the bottom, the low is basically a zero.

Um, and unfortunately, we're on that low trajectory right now.

Uh fiscal year 26 is not looking particularly uh good so far.

Uh we can make I mean we can come out of this, I believe, but this is not a trend that we're just seeing here in Missouri.

This is a nationwide trend.

I'm not sure if you everybody saw the sales tax information that came out from over the uh Christmas holiday as one of the slowest Christmas holidays, and it's been a really long time since we saw uh two years basically with no increase.

Yeah.

Well, just quickly we did get our sales tax uh earlier this month for and that would cover the Christmas holiday, and it was basically flat, which pretty much correlates to what the nation's seeing in general.

So and now we now that we have a full quarter's worth of data in there.

What we are pretty much assuming, unless there's a pretty drastic change, is that the 2526 numbers are gonna be pretty much where the 25 numbers were.

So I wouldn't expect it to see it grow much at all, pretty much stay about flat from 25 to 26.

So uh this is what you were referring to.

This is the actual what we brought in year to year, and so uh you see we we moved from um actual in 2010 to a little under 40 million to the actual 25.

We're bringing in just over uh 70 million.

Uh I would do want to note that 22, that was an introduction of the use tax, so it kind of boosted some of that money from 22 to 23, but even with that use tax from 24 to 25, we still saw a drop.

So uh while um it was thought that the use tax would would boost us up, but it basically just stabilized uh what we received in sales tax.

We are seeing that more people.

We're we're starting to see a reduction in sales tax and an increase in use tax though, but it's still following along that same line of around uh well, basically last year was no growth, but we're still anticipating around a one percent for the total growth, and then here's our projection from uh 24 through well, 26 through 31 for sales and use tax.

So uh a little sporadic over the previous years, but this here represents a around a one percent growth uh from 26 to 31.

And and just off of this year's optimistic.

Yeah, keys and microphone, just keep it closer to work.

You're next to me.

Um back to slide 22 again.

I just want to clarify here.

Um these numbers and the total revenue uh in light of the amounts on in each of these years, each of these years is actual expenditures are full or the full budget.

So 24 and 25 are actual, okay.

And then the rest are projections.

Gotcha.

None of these are actually budgeted numbers, we're just projecting off of the year before uh number of years before.

We usually try to do actual expenditures with the right okay.

But that's really what I was looking for.

Yeah, okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Okay, so now we get to uh a proposed one percent sales and uh use tax, uh basically for public safety.

And so when we when we talk about public safety in this sense, we are only talking police and fire.

We would not be talking about uh movement of municipal courts.

Um I can I think it might be good, especially for those who haven't been in the conversation before.

This is the first time I was talking about this to have maybe De Carlin kind of set the groundwork for why we're having this conversation, if that's right for you.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

So one of the things that you can hear me.

So as we started looking at our revenues, the one thing that was made plain that no as Matt said the one departments are the two departments that are actually impacted the most by the general fund are our public safety departments, which are police and fire.

And as we've had this demand for more resources, because if we're being honest with ourselves, we have not kept up with our needs for staffing for equipment for technology, and as we're trying to embrace moving forward to actually do those things, the cost has grown.

And as you're looking at uh talking to our fire chief and looking at our fire service and understanding the need for us to have more officers to be responsive, especially for medical calls.

Um we we need to see more people on those trucks, and so it's adding an additional firefighter so we can have four people on trucks.

Um we talked to our police chief and looking at the demand for responding to police service.

If we want to actually adopt a true community policing platform that which will allow us to keep officers in our neighborhoods, we have to increase our staffing.

And so as we started looking at ways to increase staffing to increase equipment, because for everyone if I'm correct for every two police officers, that's another police car.

And so it's also probably counting other type of camera facilities need to go on just to properly equipped our officers, and so we're looking at how do we do that, and so what is that mechanism to try to get there?

And so from a staff perspective, we looked at you know different intervals.

We looked at what a property tax looked like, and what we came to realize is because of the demand and the need a sales and use tax increase, sounds like the most I think the best approach for for our organization at this time, especially with the high-level needs that we have.

And so from that standpoint, I think this is what we came up with this narrative to sort of have this conversation about what this could look like on what this would be for our community, and so yeah, I think kind of because the last time we talked about this was probably over a year ago.

Correct.

It's a one and no, because we had talked about difference between sales tax, property tax, um, the hybrid, and so just knowing kind of where the proposal came from to that conversation is useful.

And one of the things you talked about, like grants for public safety, and so probably the one grant that they that we do have for staffing police departments is the cops grant.

The issue with the cops grant is that once you enter into that grant prospect, it's about bringing those people on to be permanent status.

And so if you hire three officers to cops, the first year they'll pay 100% for the salary, the third, second year, they'll pay around 75%, third year is 50%, the fourth year, they're on you, and so it's understanding that if we even using that grant process, we're still gonna have to grow our revenues in order to sustain those employees.

So, Matthew.

Well not Nick Nick has an inquisitive face off.

Uh I feel like I have resting inquisitive face.

Um said that the uh proper you looked at property tax, but came to the conclusion that sales tax is better for our organization.

Can you say more about that?

Sure.

So uh Matt, if you want to talk about what we currently bring in for property tax, so so currently uh we are at 43 cent per 100 assessed valuation for property tax, and that brings it around 11 million dollars.

So a third of the current police budget, right?

And so it wouldn't even, I mean, yeah, you could you could increase it to uh 20 cent or 20 cent per 100 assessment valuation, but I mean you're only looking at maybe bringing in six million dollars, and with the with the type of expenditures that we currently have that I mean we are already outpacing that so uh especially if we're we're talking about funding the pension, uh moving the loggers, um, adding additional fire stations.

Uh each fire station has an expense of around six to seven million dollars just in personnel.

That's not even to say how much it costs for uh the apparatus to go along with that fire station, and then the building maintenance as well.

So there we just have a lot of demand on a small pool of money right now, and uh a property tax, although it is steady and we know how much we'll get from it, it just wouldn't make too much sense because we wouldn't go out and say we're gonna spend additional 43 or double up our current property tax to get 11 million dollars.

Yeah, that's it.

Matthew, I think this was before your time, but didn't we have a public sales property tax on the ballot a number of years ago and it failed?

I believe it was a sales tax, or was it property we had a development?

We had a use tax before the first use our tax.

There was a development fee that I know was on.

There was there was a property.

There was a police tax that was it was for capital projects.

Right.

But I think that was a sales tax.

Uh uh.

It's it's listed on the tax sheet.

I can't get to it.

Nobody remembers that I probably don't know.

I can no, I can so there was legislation passed for that to go on a ballot, and so it is still on uh the tax sheet as an available tax.

Um, but it has to be voted, it has to be voted by the people.

But at Jeff City, it is on their tax roll.

So I can go back and look to find what that's called.

So 30 cent property tax increase is what we don't think that was ever submitted to the voters.

The city clerk is check and see if that was ever submitted to the voters.

No, he said it wasn't.

I don't know about the voters, but it it is at the state.

Yeah, we are allowed for it.

Right.

Yeah, I don't think so.

Yeah, Valerie.

Oh question.

Yeah, I feel like I don't have all that many questions, but these are things that we have discussed in um check-in meetings.

Um, and I want to make sure that I'm repeating things so um people can hear them in the public in an open meeting.

Um I'm wondering if there is any validity to pursuing a combination of property tax and sales tax.

Um and I specifically note that because the sales tax has been so unpredictable.

Um would that be two different ballot items?

That would be two different, yes, they would be.

And so I mean, I think that's a perspective we can look at.

I we what we know is you know, property tax tends to be a little bit more difficult to get past the voters, but no, yeah, that's uh direction the council would like for us to pursue.

I I would be cautious that when you when you split them like that, there is a there is a high chance that one passes and one fails, and then you kind of have to you there's not a good way to build off of that or project into the future what that would be.

If we're counting on vote and we split the predictive amount that we would need across vote and one fails, then we haven't budgeted correctly for the one that passed, nor would we want to over budget for both.

That's great.

I think it also might just be confusing to people to have two different tax issues on the same ballot.

Sure.

It could be wrong, I guess, but I think it would be confusing.

This is why I asked if it would have to come up as two ballot issues and be voted on separately.

I'm I'm curious, and I don't know that I would expect anyone to actually have this answer because it's very spur of the moment based on that.

But has anyone successfully gotten a prop a combination property and sales tax approved on the same ballot?

Has have cities done that?

I I haven't I couldn't tell you for sure I'd have to research it, but all of the cities that have passed a recent uh public safety tax have been sales taxes.

Yeah, I can accept that it's a wide question.

Um I would generally prefer to have a property tax over a sales tax because it impacts residents differently.

Um, and it impacts us differently, it's more predictable.

Um that seems all around better if we had the ability to make the pool of money that we needed to cover public safety expenditures, or that is needed for this type of fund.

I'm kind of gonna have a scroll on, but but I would also say also in Missouri right now, also property tax seems to be also kind of up in the air on some things.

So it's it's predictability is unfortunately also that's I mean, well, that would be a problem.

Also, here in Missouri, uh your property tax is mostly reserved for your school district, and so uh I've seen it in my in my past job, it was looked at as like an attack on the the school's revenue when we tried, and so we it was very hard discuss having that conversation with the school board to say, hey, we want to do this and to make them understand this is why we want to do a property tax.

We ended up getting it passed, but it is a big conversation because the schools are so much of your uh property tax.

They they give the lion's share.

And just as a side note, yeah, Sheila found it in November of 2014.

The both issues were on the ballot at the same time and both failed.

One was an increase for property tax to uh 30 cents uh per 100, and then the other was the development fee, which was uh 50 cents per square foot, and both failed.

So in case you want to look that up, November 4th, 2014.

Or just actually have it on our book.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, uh, this is another one that I know I've talked to you about in uh in a separate conversation, but in an effort to bring it to a public meeting.

I know concerns have been raised that um sales tax in Missouri, additional sales tax needs to have legislative approval at the state level.

Um can you talk about whether we're concerned about that?

There at the state level, there's a lot of different things going on.

Um I can't speak to that right now, but I do know there's legislation that would affect uh income tax, and on the back end of that, it would affect the amount of sales tax that uh uh municipality.

More to our ability yes to be allowed to have to go to the ballot.

Yes, we would have to go to the ballot.

I'm sorry.

Um is the city of Columbia allowed to increase sales tax without the governor's approval.

Yes, yes, it's our character.

So I'm sorry.

I I know that I was raising a question that has been saying that you have to say what you know.

Yes, that is.

So come over here with a microphone because you don't even have a voice anyway.

Right, no voice, no.

Sorry, um, so I think the question that you're asking is that there was some talk early on.

We had to seek legislative authority to get a public safety sales tax.

The state allows municipalities to do up to two cent sales tax, general sales tax.

Um Columbia only has imposed one cent.

So we have that extra once capacity, and that's why Matthew on his slide called it the additional city sales tax as opposed to a public safety sales tax.

So we call it an additional city sales tax up to one percent capacity, and it can be dedicated solely to public safety, please survive.

Thank you for reading my mind.

That was the exact question I was trying to get to.

Thank you.

We would have gotten there a little bit later.

All right, so uh oh, I'm I'm sorry, I I must have hit next.

And so uh here you have what it would look like with an additional one percent, and what the total for the city would look like.

Uh and so what we will be looking at would be a one percent dedicated to public safety um in financial terms and how we would account for it, we would create an additional fund within the city's uh special revenue.

Current current budget, it'll be a special revenue fund where this money will go into on top of a portion from the general fund, and we'll talk about that in a few slides later.

Uh but that would be basically to segregate these funds for use for only the police and fire departments.

Here's what it would look like if uh one percent were passed, and so it would basically put us at 8.9 percent uh overall tax uh sales tax rate and three cents going to the city of Columbia again, Kansas City, St.

Joseph, St.

Louis all have a public safety tax, independence as well.

Uh Springfield has some sort of public safety tax, too.

I'm not sure how they use that.

I'm not sure if it's a if it's property or if it's uh sales tax.

And you said independence just passed.

You said independence just passed a one cent.

A one cent.

I think it's for the police department totally.

It's not putting up here.

Is it only yeah, I think that's uh we we did this.

I mean, we've been working with these numbers for a while, so I'm not exactly sure if it is included in this number.

I don't think it is.

I don't think it is eventually.

So again, here's a breakdown of what that would look like, uh just kind of showing the difference.

Oh yeah, so it was not, it was 9.62 is where they're at.

So yeah, so they they would they will put them in third and drop us out of fifth.

So again, here's that that breakdown with 23% or 4.23 going to the state and 1.75 going to the county, and then 3% going to the city.

Can you do me a favor?

I'm sorry, Matthew.

Um we were speaking up.

Can you go to site 33 really quick?

Um, I think because at first I was like, oh, wait, why did that number change?

I I think it's just important to highlight too, like when we say the three percent, it's because it's including those other specialty taxes that have also gone to the voters.

That's correct.

So our the capital improvement prices.

Actually, does transportation sales tax go?

I can't remember.

Is that part of it is a permanent that's a permanent one?

So, but those are that's what adds up to the three per potential proposed three percent is the one the two that we already have, but which one is dedicated just general fund sales tax.

Okay, yes.

Thank you.

Okay, so here's what it would look like uh with the projections out.

Um that first year 27 is a partial year projection because we would we would not if it was if this was passed um in um August ballot or after this money would not be received until January or after.

So that's why uh that 27 numbers smaller than the rest of the numbers.

This is what the impact would look like uh to basically uh to a resident.

And so for a four dollar cup of coffee, you'd be talking about four cents.

Um for a 12 meal, you would look at you would be looking at something like 12 cents additional uh that you would pay for that, and on a hundred dollars of retail purchase, you'd be looking at about a dollar grocery as well.

But um that it's a little different on the the 107 because for groceries, groceries aren't charged, uh the full sales tax.

I think the state only takes one percent.

Yeah, so it'd be a little less than that for uh groceries, but it would still add a dollar to it.

Oh yeah, I was just gonna say so.

That bottom where it says that 107 and 108, that's like if you're buying something that's non-grocery, if it was a grocery if it was a hundred dollars worth of groceries, it would be like 104.75 to 10575, just to give you some context there.

That just confused things for you.

And also different legislation proposing, yeah.

Food's taxed differently than non-food.

Yeah, Nick has a question.

Well, I'm thinking of a couple of things.

I think I heard a story today about um some efforts on the state level to limit localities.

Am I right?

In terms of uh taxes on groceries in particular, yeah.

So I mean that's still outstanding.

I guess the point I'm getting at here is that especially in the current environment, these projections and numbers it could change.

They could change right.

The other thing I just point out is I I'm looking at this and seeing this additional sales tax.

Um, you know, raising this amount of money over a court period of time.

That doesn't necessarily that but that really doesn't help us because this would be a dedicated tax.

This doesn't really help us with the total of our budgeted amount, does it?

I mean, if we we still are gonna fall short of other items that are budgeted.

Well, we'll we'll I have we have some slides in the at the end to kind of we'll kind of talk about some of your concerns there.

But I think the the biggest part of it is when we start looking at what are some of our goals that we're trying to achieve.

That's all one thing that we've been talking about for the last one years with the city is our place of our pension and trying to figure out how can you how can what can we do in order to fix the pension issue that we have.

Yeah, and I'm not arguing that I'm not arguing that either.

I'm arguing that we need to be clear about what this will actually accomplish.

Yes, this would this would not be a cash flow for the city that now we can do all sorts of new and it was.

I mean, that's right.

No, no, I was hoping to stabilize a little bit, but you're right.

I mean, there's things that there's additional things we'd have to do in order to continue to grow revenues.

Okay.

I will say that the us as a city, we respond to fiscal notes on uh everything that that is affecting us.

So the finance department in conjunction with the city manager's office, we we've been very diligent and uh responding to those proposed legislation that may cut funding for the city.

So their expectations are that we still do just as much as we've always done.

But yeah, yeah, Valerie, did you have a question?

Yeah, do we have this um grocery tax freeze on our tracker?

Yes, I believe.

I don't know.

Yes, I guess, yeah.

Yeah, we'll ask for help later then.

Our our economics team has put a fiscal note together showing the effects of it, yeah, just roughly speaking.

All from it, all the sales tax we collect, 17% of it comes from food items.

So removing that would have a devastating effect on our ability to keep keep bringing in the revenues we need to function.

Yeah, we we were we were recently at our um government finance association meeting for the state uh last week, and there are a lot of cities in Missouri who basically depend on that revenue because maybe all the the smaller communities, all they may have is a Walmart, you know, and so that is like the bulk of their sales tax revenue.

So it's it's really concerning.

So here is uh our current sales tax receipt who is paying our current sales tax.

So about 68% of our sales tax receipts come from our local residents, and about 32% of that comes from uh outside of this outside of the city.

So 26 in state, 26% in state, and then another 5% from out of state visitors, and uh we purchased some data uh through CVB to actually know uh some of this information.

So how like how detailed did it get with is local residents including like Ashland and Sturgeon or just City of Columbia residents?

You can you can get to um basically a 10 mile radius uh of Columbia basically so just then you go out 10 miles, so we cut it at 10 mile radius basically.

Thank you.

So how will we fund this new public safety fund?

Um like I said earlier, we would be creating a separate fund uh to segregate those police and fire expenses.

Uh we would add that 38 million or whatever additional revenue we would receive from a 1% sales and use tax, uh and then we would add 60 million from the general fund uh to supplement as well.

So uh initially we would have we would have enough to fund what we're currently doing plus additional uh expenses as we move along.

This is something that we would have to talk through a lot though, about how what would come first uh because what we're anticipating is uh something like a 30 million dollar bill for the to the movement of fire onto loggers, and so we would really have to figure out how we would fund that thing, how we will fund that movement.

Um you had a question related to this one, yeah.

So ongoing ongoing allocation from the general fund at 60 billion.

So that would that's a reduction, I think this year we budgeted 65 um for fire and safety.

So you're saying you're suggesting we reduce that by five million then instead of just maintaining the 65 and then maintaining the six forward.

So you're saying you're suggesting we reduce that by five million then instead of just maintaining the 65 and then maintaining the forward we right now we can't maintain the 65.

So if you remember what that that budget and the projections look like over a period of time that was maintaining that 65 and and a little bit more each year.

It it that we we cannot handle that in the general fund.

We can handle about 60 billion and so we'll get I have some projection slides as well.

Is that then sorry to kind of to Don's point is the thought that part of that 38.6 is making up so it's we're not cutting anything.

And then you're talking about how do we phase in the additional capital or the pension investments as well as any capital as well as any growth in staff.

So and it do we have numbers on that or plans on that?

Yes I think that's the goal is to get us to this point where we can do the things that will allow us to grow the needs of the department so it's looking at the pension is looking at staff and it's looking at equipment and so it's looking at what the need is and then budgeting budgeting accordingly to what that need.

And so I think that's what you'll see in the next few slides.

Yeah.

Okay so uh the next few slides like like uh the corner just said we'll look at the additional sales and use tax and the priorities for those and so basically the the most critical thing that we want to take care of is the police and firefighters retirement fund.

We have our current funding gap for the police pension is 51% unfunded liability and 57% for the firefighters pension.

We have a total unfunded liability of around 156 million dollars and then the breakdown between that is below 66 for police and 89 for uh fire million maybe we what we would be looking at in addition to stabilizing the pension would be adding 50 police officers over four years and 40 firefighters over that same four year period uh we'd be looking at uh new police station uh two new fire stations with apparatus police vehicles and then renovating three current fire stations and then creating a police and fire technology plan as well as um a business main uh building maintenance plan to kind of make sure that we are taking care of the the buildings that we currently have yeah can you tell us anything about the technology plan and what that entails so both police and fire have a lot of ongoing technology needs I think as very evident as we we did the flock and uh the axon it's a I think those two together are like 1.2 million a year and so um kind of planning for those instead of instead of uh playing whack them all as they come up so but that base that's basically what this uh fire police and fire technology plan will be to anticipate those expenses and be able to pay for them within the budget so one of the things you're looking at with modern day policing modern day fire is that you rely on technology in order for you to you know move your move your forces I think uh chief schaffer's done a great job of actually trying to modernize a lot of things that we're doing in the fire service uh with that there's gonna there's a need for us to start buying new equipment finding the technology and it's it gets expensive uh I think Chief Schloody's done the same thing you know we're really looking at how do we modernize what we do in order to make sure that we're providing the services that are needed for our community and so actually taking a step back and looking at what technology we should be adopting and when it's important and that's a plan that we need to develop and so it's actually creating a process to allow us to do just that we can do this so is this like a strategic council to review parts of it would yes ma'am because it all would have to be budgeted and but so we know as we're adopting these new platforms we have the budget for it and so that would come forward to the council to see exactly what we're looking at does I think with the uh build with the building maintenance fund of like we've we've had to do with our uh vehicle maintenance fund is for long time we really didn't we budgeted forward as it came up and we never project we looked forward to see exactly what we what our needs are and so you find yourself now with house five needs to be completely redundant if we were budgeting for these things accordingly we wouldn't be there and so it's actually being a process so we can go in and do these improvements on a regular basis as opposed to as opposed to waiting so there's a disaster to do it.

And so you find yourself now with house five, we have to be completely redundant.

If we were budgeting for these things accordingly, we wouldn't be there.

And so it's actually getting a process so we can go in and do these improvements on a regular basis as opposed to as opposed to waiting till there's a disaster to it.

Uh for the uh police new police facility.

If you go tour our current uh headquarters, I think right now we're looking at um buying a new uh HVD HRAC unit because the current unit has gone, but there's it's it's at its life, and if we don't make a change, we'll find ourselves in trouble in the near future.

Yeah, done.

So this would be the like four years here, and talk about stabilizing the pensions.

Um I had asked a question about implementing this if it were passed a quarter percent per year, just uh less of the less of the impact as as we go forward.

Um the response that I got are you looking at if we do the full one percent up front that we can in addition to this also be able to stabilize the pensions within four years if we uh if we start at one percent from the outset?

Yes, there's a couple different ways we could look at doing this.

Um a lot of this is gonna depend on the conversations we have with the actuary that works for the pensioneers.

Yeah, so I wouldn't actually commit to completely stabilizing the pension in four years.

No, not I I think in four years you'll be able to see that you've made huge strides into in order to do a lot of a lot of that process.

I think in four years you'll be able to see that all firefighters would be on our uh loggers program.

Uh we'll see that new police officers will be on loggers and we'll start being able to see momentum moving forward to stabilize the budget.

But I would not say that we say that within four years without doing a true analysis that we'll say it's stabilized within four years.

But they're closer to they're closer than where we're at with the 20 year model at the end of that present plan.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, one real quick thing about setting timelines for a pension is that we are at the mercy of the markets for a great deal of of uh our uh liabilities.

So if you know you have a down market, you're gonna be you know, kind of fighting against the tide to make yourself better.

So putting hard dates on when you expect things to occur would not be advisable just from the fact that you're still relying on investment returns to have a to pull a big port portion of that weight.

So true, but uh regardless whether it's under us or under loggers, any retirement fund is gonna be somewhat dependent on market from now.

However, far out you all yeah, thanks.

Okay, so here's kind of what we were talking about earlier with uh what it would look like with that.

So with uh kind of stabilize on what would be going to the lease of fire within the general fund, you can see that it would allow for a little for the general fund to have a little roll uh from 27 onward.

Uh and so this is just basically on our same one percent increase uh for revenue, but just looking at that 60 million going instead of that that 66.

So it does bring it under our revenue.

I mean uh the expenses under our revenue over it.

So that that's why I was saying that we can't we can't actually we can't do the 66 now.

Uh if this were if we did not have an additional revenue source uh within the general fund within the next few years, we're we're we're at we have some real issues.

There's gonna have to be something done if if we do not receive another revenue source.

Matthew, can I ask?

And and I know you don't have the the pie chart for it, but I think something that would help kind of understand what this is moving forward is that percentage breakdown, right?

So right now, 48.1% of our general fund goes to public safety.

And so with this, well, that same the same dollars, not the additional dedicated one percent, but it might be useful for us to have that sort of pie chart that shows what is five million in that huge pie to see whether or not it looks like how much of a percentage we're changing or not changing.

But it might be useful for us to have that sort of pie chart that shows what is five million in that huge pie to see whether or not it looks like how much of a percentage for changing or not changing.

I I don't know, it might be a lot more.

I haven't, I think it's 160, whatever it is.

I think it'd be useful to know going forward.

Yeah, yeah, we definitely do that.

Yeah, Betsy.

Um, something else that I'd like to see anyway is I I like your list of all the things that are the priorities if we can get this passed, but I guess I'd like it narrowed down or a little bit of like what's the anticipation over the next five years or 10 years, you know, if we get this tax passed within 10 years, we will have this, this, this, and this, you know, whether it's the 50 new police officers, whether it's um the 40 more firefighters, whether it's you know, I mean, it's you know, 38 million dollars sounds great, except we have a lot more funding needs than that over the next five to 10 years, whatever.

And you know, so while I like this idea, I think if we're gonna if the public's really gonna back this, we need to be able to tell them exactly what we're planning to do with this money, not I I mean, I for me this is too general.

Well, this this is the list of what we plan to do within the next.

This is just come up to the microphone.

So this is over the next five years, so this this would be the plan.

We do have specific numb uh numbers outlined for each of these.

We have a uh about a 15 year look in the future projections off of these numbers, off of adding this many firefighters, this many police, and then kind of projecting off to see what that would look like.

Uh a piece of it is here in this uh public safety projection.

So you you do have a piece of this here, uh, but it's not the actual numbers.

We do have the numbers to back up these expenses moving forward, and that's something we can definitely look at uh if that's what you uh want.

But this was for me, this was like the introduction for all of this information.

So I'm so Chief Shaper and I have worked on some documents where we broke down based on the needs that you see up here, the number of offices, number of firefighters, and then also the building projects.

So, for example, in my arena, um, we did some pricing last year with an architect and design firm on the South building that already exists.

That project would be about 36 million dollars right in there.

So I don't profess to know anything about bonding.

Um, I should probably watch a YouTube video, but my understanding would be there'd be like a yearly payment about a million dollars on that debt service.

So there's a million dollars there, whatever goes towards the pension.

The people costs alone on my side, considering you have to buy cars um just for rough math, and it's actually not very rough math, it's pretty darn close.

Every police officer that we hire would pay benefits and equipment that's not counting a car is about 135,000 a piece at current wages.

So if we hire 50, do the map on that and then calculate 80,000 per police vehicle, so 25 cars for 50 officers, and then additionally, I would certainly want to look at what other professional staff might need to be hired to support those folks because we potentially need more other insurance staff or record staff, folks of that nature.

So someone wants to go with Carland can to hold sheets and add us research what we needed.

So we've been working for literally several months with our staff researching actual costs, projected future costs, and putting in into a matrix to back up all of the all of the plan that's right.

It's an Excel spreadsheet, but it's got the projections for I'll just add to this this part of the conversation.

For some of this, like you know, you I appreciate you saying, like, this is the list of the things that we have, and I think there's that point when we're talking to the public where we say this is what my professional police chief has told me she wants to do over the next five years.

This is what my professional fire chief has told me.

I'm gonna go with what they know because I don't I don't know what they you know, I don't know what it is that they need to do their job.

I just want to make sure we have the resources to do it.

And so I think there's that conversation.

I know there's some that would like us, you should pay off the tension tomorrow.

We would love to, but they also have other expenses that they need to do, and so I appreciate the the information and the research they put into it, and if they have worked with their staff on it.

Uh I'll just put that out there, yeah.

Nick.

I'm gonna assume that if this were to pass, we wouldn't hire 50 police officers overnight.

It's gonna it's something that's going to take a period of years.

So we'll have that kind of income for that purpose, but does this mean that we'll be doing more towards the pension in the early years of this?

How would that how would that roll out over time?

That part uh it can it could play out in several different ways.

It could be uh year over year type of increase to the pension to pay one down and move to the other, or it could be an upfront cost, and and we would maybe delay the hiring of uh police and firefighters if we did the upgrad for upfront cost maybe in the first year or two years where you just pay basically what you receive from that sales tax uh to to pay down that pinch portion, and so it it really depends.

That that's a plan that we all need to probably talk about is something that we'll have to talk about with uh the police and fire chief and the calling as well.

So that that part is kind of what we've projected is looking at over time paying that down, not really paying it down all up front.

But that's uh I'm just gonna do that.

I know these details are not to be you know they're to be determined, but I just this is just where my mind is gone.

38 million dollars per annum.

That that's a lot of money that we're not going to spend immediately on personnel or equipment for that matter, but but we may spend some of that toward uh for the um buildings and toward uh retirement funds, and so I'm just putting that out there because I'm imagining this is going to be part of the conversation as well.

How would you go about extending that?

So you're correct.

I think I mean ideally what we look at is just the whole breath of everything that we're trying to do.

And so you're looking at what are your pension processes in order to slowly to move that down.

We know we have a plan on you know, how do we move the fire department to loggers?

And that's it's easier to move them to loggers than it is to the police departments because of the way the pensions are set up, and we know what that cost is.

So, when and how do you pay for that?

Uh, as we're looking at uh police and fire staffing, we have both an in-house police academy and in-house fire academy.

Both of those regularly run around, I want to say there's is it three classes a year, Chiefs?

Two to three, depending on needs.

We also have a high number of police and firefighters that retire, and so we're we're battling both that people are some of our higher paid uh officers are coming off and we're bringing on new, but we have to make sure that we're continuing on recruiting and bringing people on.

And so I don't want to say that we wouldn't recruit and bring on new police and firefighters in the same breadth as when we first get this tax because we know the idea is that if we hire like in the last year, last two years we've hired around 50 police officers, Jim.

Pretty darn close, and but you also had about 10, 15 retire out, and so it's right.

So it's that constant evidence of how do we keep things moving forward.

We also know that we need to really start looking at our police precinct, and so you know, if we get this funding, it would allow us to go out and bond for that improvement.

We know that there's two uh there's three firehouses that need to be replaced.

Right, and so the two new firehouses probably wouldn't come on for maybe five to six years, but the three that need to be replaced are the or the hopper that we really need to look at trying to move something forward, and most likely would bond for two of those, so I think the third one we're in the process of actually building out now.

You were holding a mic a second ago, Betsy.

Did you have a question?

And then you had your hand up.

Um I don't know that I have exactly a question, but um, I think I'd like to see something laid out saying if we get if this passes and we get 38 million dollars a year, or you can say 36 million, I don't care.

Um, you know, we're planning to bond, you know, for three fire stations, and this is what we anticipate it's gonna cost per year to pay that back over 30 years, and I would like to see something that says for those new fire stations, we're going to need we're projecting over the next five years, we're going to need to buy this.

We're projecting, I mean, I'd like something your list is fine.

We we have all of that really, yes.

Yeah, we would we are I mean, this this was what is up here is basically a projection of what you're talking about.

So we have uh I think we'll have people that'll be asking us more specifics.

Yeah, we can't sure I can just say, oh, look at this and trust us.

So we know we have to be asking for that, Betsy.

Yeah, that what yeah, I think this is our first presentation of this.

We haven't even started talking to the public, and we're kind of seeing the overall, and then we will get the agenda.

That's at least what I understood what you just said.

That's correct.

Two slides ago.

Yeah, so this is but this is the culmination of that information.

So you have your police and fire personnel and 27.

Uh, and then we expand upon that with our projections moving forward.

What is in these projections are uh 20 police and 20 fire for fiscal year.

Uh, I believe it's 27, I think we have them budgeted for.

Uh, and so we the reason why we said three to four years on the police and the fire positions is we built in that factor of uh attrition, people retired off, and so we built in 20 per year for each uh for the first two years, and then 10 uh in that third year, and then we projected those out from that from 30 moving forward, and so we have those projections in here.

The debt service line, which is at gray bar, it was great.

Yeah, uh, is what we would expect to be paying for uh the debt service for the police precinct and the fire buildings.

We estimated that we would do a debt uh debt issuance of I think it was 50 million, 50 million dollar debt issuance.

Uh so we have what that tax, what that rate would be the interest rate that we'd be paying off of that, and so basically that debt service line is what we would be paying uh for the debt for those uh buildings as well.

Uh one thing though that I would be cautious about is how quickly we grow this fund because if you notice in fiscal year uh 33, looking at all of these, if everything holds true to what we have now, all the expenditures that we listed on the the previous slides.

That you see that line is starting to creep closer and closer to that revenue line.

Yes, from 27 to 33, probably 35, we would be building a uh a reserve within this fund, but there will be a time where those lines would potentially meet, and so just like what what we're dealing with now, we just have to be cautious on how we grow and how fast we grow.

Yeah, I don't have to show that yeah.

Um I think that's it's really on the same question that I had.

What I'm hearing from the folks who are sitting directly behind me, um, is that they have all that information and everything's planned out for years to come.

I think what I would be looking for before this becomes a valid item would be um the list that you previously showed with our objectives for what we would do with 36 million dollars, um, and then some kind of implementation pipeline.

Um I I'm fairly confident that we have that.

Um we can't conceptually distill that out from this meeting, and I don't expect that, but I do expect to have it in hand for the voters beforehand.

Oh, absolutely.

I think that's always been our plan.

I mean, right now it's the first conversation about is this something we would want to entertain?

And if it is, if we can kind of show you exactly what that plan would look like, and how do we move forward?

The point thing that Matthew is kind of pointing to is we still have to make sure that we're looking at how do we grow our revenue base, and so what does that look like?

And so one of the things we're doing a little differently is that for economic development purposes, we've always done economic development to bring in the big boxes.

We have not done economic development to actually go out and do retail recruitment, and so that's something that we're looking at trying to do now.

And so that that's not part of this conversation, but that is something we really have to look at is how do we grow our sales tax base?

Right, big boxes.

You actually mean big employers, not big box stores, because that would be retail.

Okay, yeah, Jack, you have a question and then Vera out of curiosity, how do you do projections on the pension plans?

Is it like so much per active officer?

So much so, or is it by positions?

Like if we have this many positions per officer, so it's active.

That's correct.

Um, so there's a dollar amount tied to each individual within each of those pensions.

Uh and so we we know the dollar amount for this year, and we just project that out for next year.

We've even looked at um if we pay down this amount, uh, what that would do to what we're actually paying in.

And so currently, I believe we're at for fire, we're at 57% unfunded liability.

So we basically we pay 57% of a firefighters uh pay into this pension.

What if we with that move to loggers that five 57% would drop down to about 20 over a period of time?

So we've got to build that in as well into our projections, and the same thing with with police.

Thank you.

Yeah, bear.

I know that we had just heard about the the increasing costs that we're going to be seeing for police vehicles as we get more officers.

But on this chart here, I'm not seeing the light blue bar of other expenses grow by a lot.

Is it that the vehicles got lumped into personnel because it comes with personnel cost?

Or is it that the cost of the vehicles become a drop in a bucket when you're on the scale of 20 million per level?

Yeah, it's more than better.

Uh, but also what we've done to kind of smooth out that uh is right now we're we're contributing to a vehicle and equipment replacement fund on a yearly basis.

So they have an amount that they contribute on a yearly basis.

So it's not so there's not these big ebbs and flows.

So you don't have a one year you spend in 1.5 million, then the next spending uh 500,000, you know what I mean?

So I believe we've built in something like 500,000 for the next few years.

So it'll just so that's why it's smooth and it's not a huge jump.

Thank you.

And that's the same way with the building maintenance as well and the technology.

We've kind of built that in.

So you you can you add it up over years, you know, stretch out those payments like you do a bond payment or house payment or something like that, instead of paying a big big chunk all at once.

These are obviously our um proposed budgeted numbers, a lot projections, but also this is projected of our budget.

This is not projected of the income, because that's the orange, right?

This is the projected of our budget, what we think we'll spend in each of those areas.

Realistically, I mean you mentioned um, I mean, it growing.

I I'm realistically, when you are looking at those the numbers that you're putting in, especially for personnel.

What if we don't meet it?

And I say this to say, you know, right now we know that you know we propose that there's gonna be 33 million for police, but with retirements or just vacancies, certain amount of that general fund just goes into the reserves at the end of the year.

Since this is a technically just an additional general sales tax, but it's dedicated for public safety.

What will we do if we don't spend it all?

Is that the ability would we that just go towards the pension or like what's the plan?

It could it could.

So what we're proposing is a fund.

So this was this would not be general fund.

This money would be in its own separate fund.

So the money within that fund once it's allocated to that fund, it stays there.

So if you didn't spend all of a budget one year, just like the general fund and rolls back, uh and you have an additional amount to spend for that next year.

So it would not go into reserves, it will go into the reserve for that fund for this fund.

Perfect.

I just wanted to make sure that you know it wasn't been lost.

If we spent all this political capital, social capital, actual capital that we're continuing to do the intent of what it is we're trying to solve.

Right.

And I mean, we'll allow you to do some of those those extra things for public safety because this fund now creates an ability to if you do have this large reserve balance, then you can go ahead and make you add additional to the pension, or you if there's a special project where the apparatus that needs to be replaced, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

So I think that's we've been doing for the last 90 minutes.

Yeah.

So what are the next steps?

I mean, obviously, you're looking for feedback from council on our thoughts to this, and then as well as I think it'd be I think it'd be useful for council to hear what are then the proposed next steps.

You mentioned August for potential ballot.

So logistically, something would need to come to council to put it on an August ballot.

I assume by then we would have the detailed list that Betsy and Fallery and everybody's been kind of asking for.

What would that be?

And then would it be would there be a committee form to kind of go out to the voters and talk about it?

What have you put I'm gonna look to you on this one?

No, I'm sorry, Matthew, I'm not gonna put it all on you.

You're making eye contact.

Well, I mean, I could have I could speak to it, but I think it'd be better.

That's exactly it.

I mean, so no, right now it's this introduction of this concept is it's something that we want to pursue.

If it is, then we can bring back that actual list of exactly what it would look like, and when do we see those things being spent out?

Uh we know we have to work on ballot language, and so what does that look like?

Uh then it's it then it's actually creating the committee to kind of move forward with that process.

Uh, we have met with uh both the police union and the prior union to have this conversation about what we're looking at, but we gave the same presentation to them.

Uh I think they're in favor of it.

They are they do want to see what the ballot language will look like.

They want to make sure that it's guaranteed that it will just be for police and virus services, is what and that's exactly what we're proposing.

Uh, but ideally it's to allow us to kind of create this nexus where you can see exactly how this plan unfolds.

I know there's a lot of people in the community would like to understand exactly what we're doing and why we're doing it, and so having those that conversation about what it looks like, but so what Betsy's asking for, you know, what does that plan look like and how do we see it moving over the next five to ten years?

We we can show you exactly what that looks like and what the plan is.

Yeah, done.

Um, a couple of questions, yeah, as far as what we're gonna do with it.

I mean, we've already got a template the capital approved sales tax.

We have all the projects listed and approximate timeline.

Uh the other one would be uh what if we're looking to put this on the August ballot?

What's our deadline to vote on this?

Introduction at the first meeting in May.

Okay.

On the second second meeting in May to vote.

Yeah, and that'll put it on the August ballot.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Sheila.

But yes, uh, Jackie then beer.

Can you um I'm too short?

Who who is going to be working on the ballot language?

Like who's actually writing that language?

So that would be our that would be our city councillor.

Oh, means you can't is May to August a realistic timeline to get this passed.

That's that's what that's what we've done before for the last four taxes that we've done uh the use tax, the uh parts uh tax, and also the uh capital improvement sales tax.

So that's been our process.

I think a lot of it relies on the information we get before May, yes, right, and then obviously then hitting the pavement afterwards, being prepared in May to move immediately.

Yeah, and I think I think to this, you know, to both both Betsy and Valerie's point, like, yeah, I agree.

Obviously, voters are gonna expect residents are gonna expect what is this and what isn't this?

Um, it's hard so often is that the conversation happens before we've even sat down like we are today, right?

And it's already kind of taken off on the radio, on the news and the social media, and so it's like how do we try to stay on top?

And I think for us, it's asking for clarification, getting the information, hearing from the chiefs on like what it's gonna be and what it's not, and then providing that.

So I'll encourage all of us to have that.

And so for our city, and we're gonna lean on you a lot to make sure that proactively getting that to that information, and then I would say for us too, as questions come up to us, sending them so that you have the opportunity to respond and we can respond to people who ask that.

Yeah, Betsy.

Um, some and maybe you're gonna be bringing this up, Barbara.

But something else we need to think about is the city staff can go out to rotary clubs, Kowanas Clubs, Packaderms, you know, all the different clubs and give information.

Correct.

But they cannot advocate for this.

So that's sort of our job or a committee and/or a committee that we uh get together to help advocate for passage, assuming we want to advocate for that, but that's not something the city staff can do.

So we need to be thinking about who we would like, you know, who's willing to work on a committee from the community.

Maybe I'll pass it back to you, Barbara.

I don't know if you're gonna bring that up today or what?

No, I think that's I think it's good.

I think we'll help us to have the information and then um for us to kind of put the ask out there, obviously working with um local community groups, um, obviously reaching up to our unions to see their interests, and then also you know, just all of us understanding and what role we'll play in talking to people on ops like this is other questions for staff questions on this so when will this come, you know what I mean?

Like, what's the next step in the conversation on this?

You're working on the ballot language or Nancy is correct, and so we'll we'll bring the we'll we'll start working on the staff, so we'll share the ballot language with our units so that make sure that we're all on the same page because this is gonna be a collaborative approach, uh, and then we'll bring that forward.

We'll also bring the plan on what it looks like for tackling the pension, tackling the staffing, tackling the uh our facilities, and so that you can see exactly how that will progress over the next 10 years with this green with this uh sales tax.

The the one thing that I do want I wanted Matthew to touch on and created this uh flyer for you.

There's this misunderstanding of our cash funds, and so you constantly see it on social media social media that the city has 532 million dollars, and how come they're not using that to take care of its needs?

And so uh this is a really good um flyer that kind of explains exactly what is what isn't, and so I'll kind of let Matthew kind of take that on and kind of talk about everything that's so basically this is what we do on a quarterly basis when we report to you all the cash balances uh for the city.

What we've included is a cover page that kind of breaks it down into terms that can be easily digested uh by the public to kind of understand what this cash is and why it is used.

Um this is this is one of the tools that that we wanted to use upcoming as we start to talk about uh the sales tax.

Another important thing that I think there's gonna be uh a discussion point probably for this next budget is uh what we're doing to look at our current revenues.

So uh we have we're currently looking at a uh service service.

A cost of service study uh for the complete city.

So all looking at all of the uh services that we provide and the cost associated with those services, and so we'll have that ready for uh this new budget for you all to look at as well.

Uh we are we aren't necessarily saying we need to increase prices or anything, but it's something for you to look at to see the levels of service that we are offering and what we're actually getting back for those levels of service.

Uh on top of that, we have uh someone a vendor that will be looking at our business license fees.

Uh I know that was a hot topic last year, or something that uh was brought up a few times, but that is something that we'll look at.

We'll have an official document for that as well.

So on top of on top of looking at expenses, we're also looking at maximizing the revenue that we currently receive.

Very handy.

Yeah, are we gonna get a digital file of this so we can share it out?

Yes, I can send it to you.

Mail.

Is this what it normally comes with the monthly finance report?

Yes, this was part of your packet for last month or something.

But I can write it in the detail, but I can't remember.

But yeah, if we can get these pages separated out, thank you.

Any other questions for staff on this subject?

Any other on any other subject questions we have while we're still in free council?

Yeah, Betsy.

Um, I don't have a question, but I want to thank um the chiefs for going through with uh five home apparently as to what they actually need, and for you for getting this whole thing together.

I know it's been at least six months of work, uh, if not longer, to try and make sure that the information is correct and that we know what we need.

So thank you.

Anything else?

All right, well, I'll go ahead and and oh wait, you know, is there anything else that I need to ask that we have like on scheduling questions or anything?

I don't believe okay.

Sometimes she's like, Oh, you could have asked it during that time, sure.

Okay, all right.

Well, I appreciate I'll go ahead and close our pre-consult session.