I call the meeting to order.

Uh let's stand say the president's Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of the Uh to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for stands under that individual with liberty and justice.

All council members in attendance entertain a motion for the consent agenda.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Any discussion?

All those in favor?

All right.

Opposed.

Uh and the mayor had a scheduling conflict, so Roger is mayor per temp today.

Okay.

I didn't so we understand what's happening.

Sure.

That's what happened, Jill.

Just want to make sure everybody stands what's happening.

Joe cannot make it, so I'm stepping in for the day.

Resolution Resolution 5A, resolution 26-140 continued from 4626, authorizing the creation of a new assistant city attorney to position with the within the legal department.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Discussion.

Go ahead.

I say we had a lot of discussion the other day.

Um couple folks had asked for a little bit more time, a little more information on what uh how this would affect uh our legal department, I guess.

So hopefully they've got that at this point and can make the educated decision.

Did you want to kind of I was gonna say I talked quite a bit the other night?

Um Tony did send out an email on Tuesday night at about 6 30 p.m.

Um the seventh, in case you haven't seen that, and it does a really great job of laying out the financials that we do have.

I think an even bigger part of our argument though is financials that we can't quantify at this point.

Um it's really just a change in the scope of our work, and and much like I talked about the other night.

And one of the things that I had talked about the other night was you know, maybe having a business plan as to the reasons why and and what some of the benefits are and what some of the costs are, and and more details of what we were looking at, and Tony put that together.

Uh we did get that document um the other day, and I appreciate you thank you for doing that, Tony, because um coming from the business side that I've come from, that's kind of a standard process when you want to add staff and and are looking at doing something kind of major to this.

Um and I did have a couple of questions that I had asked Tony uh prior to that, and I don't know if you maybe want to should we touch on those now so everybody hears or are we okay with um to you?

Okay, you need a microphone.

Yeah, uh Doug had a couple follow-up questions following uh the email I sent with with more information.

Um, and you know, I kind of further explained some of the constraints on the data that I was using, and um I also um one of the questions that that uh council member did ask was specifically about the benefits.

Um I just had a conversation with Danielle not too long ago, and and she estimated um for the average employee uh benefits, which would include full family health insurance, FICA, um, IPERS, things along those lines.

Uh they typically budget about 35,000 dollars per employee, which would be on top of the salary number that you're seeing.

Okay, yeah, that was something that kind of stood out as I went through the business plan.

We talked a lot about salary, which I get it, that's important, but then from a business perspective, you got a lot of other cost and things that go into that.

Um, so you got to kind of add that to this factor, and it's a lot easier to add a job than it is to take away a job.

I think we all understand that if things were to change in the future.

So when you do an addition to staff, those are things you really want to get to the nitty-gritty of when you're trying to look at whether it makes sense or not with some of that.

Well, and I think in the future, depending on what happens with potential cuts or where we have to cut services, whatever that may be when we have a business plan like this, or talk about how it's working, right?

So as I I called you and I said, you know, as Danielle said, we've already taxed the folks for this year, right?

And so future savings is really where I you know, like this is we're not gonna go outside council for these few things, you know.

You can't control the tort levy, or if one of Matt's guys the plow slides into a vehicle, right?

We can't we can't control that.

It's not savings you can predict or you know, yeah, I agree, Joe.

Let's not make that happen.

But so future savings is where I you know I we talked a little bit about and in the years to come, uh you know, council should take a look at hey, this is the work that's being done, this is why we hire this fourth person or fifth person, whatever the number it's five, I guess, with Jake.

Uh, which is only one additional from when city attorney Wade was here.

Um but I think understanding, you know, hey, a year from now, let's look at this and say this is where we're at and why we did this.

I think that's important.

And then going through the numbers for anybody else, right?

Matt comes up and says, Hey, I need another employee.

Like, hey, here's here's why, and this is what we're gonna do, and because I'm sure it's gonna happen, right?

I mean, w we probably need more people and and potentially less people in areas and more people in more areas.

So I I think we just have to, as Doug said, having a plan and understanding why we're doing it and the potential savings, the actual savings and things like that are important to discuss before doing something like this.