Let's uh get going.

Two votes here.

I'm gonna call to order the town council study session on October 2st, 2025.

I'll turn it over to Sarah Hancock to lead the way.

All right, we're jumping right in today, everyone.

Welcome to the 2026 budget presentation.

Um, we are going to jump in to uh look at the budget process a little bit.

We've got all the department directors here.

So after we go through some summary uh information, um, some basics about how we got through the budget, some things we want to highlight.

Um, I'm also going to be trying to weave in some of the answers to some questions I have received from council members.

Um, but of course, whenever we get to the end of the presentation, or while the department directors are out speaking about their items, feel free to ask if that question hasn't been discussed.

After that, each of the department directors will talk through their budgets and specific changes, and then after that we will uh talk through the long range forecast and what we're looking at for the future, and then we can get into some additional discussion.

So this will be a long night.

Um, so everybody just uh bear with us as we get through lots of information.

We also have lots of backup information too, um, and lots of folks at the ready.

So if questions come up, we'll try to get that information as quickly as possible because of course this is quite a dense topic.

So with that, I want to just start with talking through what our budget process was this year because there were some things that were different.

Um, our budget opened this year for departments on May 2nd, and this year we did ask for operating personnel and capital budgets all at the same time over two months.

Um, usually what we see are those in segments, so the departments kind of move through, but we've also seen challenges with that, right?

You're pooling personnel after you've done capital or capital before personnel.

So that was a very um helpful way.

It also allowed departments to really prioritize the areas that they needed to focus on to get through the budget process.

Um, we did some pretty extensive revenue assumptions, and we brought those to the council in July to talk through, and we did maintain those same revenue assumptions that the council did sign off on on that date.

Um so we are doing that somewhat constrained overall 4.1% uh revenue growth for the town.

The budget closed on the 27th, and our executive budget team, which you'll see us refer to as EBT, began reviewing our departmental budgets.

We met with every department at least twice, um, some of them three or four times, depending on the complexity of the budget.

And then departments did provide uh three rounds of reductions and reprioritizations.

So each time we kind of reviewed it, we went through another iteration of understanding what areas could be reduced, changed, right, reprioritized, um, and trying to align with the community and council priorities that we were seeing, as well as just ensuring that we were being as fiscally as responsible as we could with um items that we maybe weren't historically spending.

Personnel and compensation considerations were also weighed by EBT.

Um, this included uh what positions we wanted to present as recommendations.

This included the potential merit and uh grade changes.

And then finally, the budget was finalized last week and was sent to everybody on the 15th.

So that's what you've got in front of you.

Just to review some best practices and how we approach the process.

Um, this year we did use budget targets to establish our goals and strategy.

We do not use zero-based budgeting, um, but we also no longer just say, here, tell us what your budget is.

We this year did provide um targets that were based on the prior year budgets of the departments.

We pulled out one-time expenses, um, things that you know maybe were one-time influxes that we didn't feel like they needed to maybe bring in again, and then we also asked them to include any cost of economy um you know adjustments.

So, for example, most contracts go up three to five percent.

Um, so we expected those types of increases.

So we asked them to view their budget through that target exercise.

We also established our links between the budget and the adopted community and council priorities this year.

That was a little complex because we did have a survey going on at the same time as the budget process, so we did our best to align those with what we were hearing in council uh meetings, and then once we did have those survey results to weave those within the final uh product that you see before you.

And then achieving a structurally balanced budget through our projection of sources and uses.

Something that you will notice about this is some places don't look balanced, uh, that has a lot to do with debt issuances.

Um, so structurally, we are balanced in terms of sources and uses for the expenditures that we plan to spend.

Um, then anything that does go above and beyond that in terms of revenue uh is accommodated by uh expected either revenue bonds, COPs, any type of debt issuance, which we'll talk through as well.

And then just the budget deadlines to remind everybody next week.

We'll have our first public hearing.

We'll plan to adopt November 18th, and then December 9th, um, we'll have our supplemental for the final 25 year, and we'll certify the mill levy before the deadline of the 15th.

And one last piece I want to just uh note because one of our key work plan items as a finance team uh is our budgeting for resiliency efforts.

Um big items that came out of this budget process as a part of our budgeting for resiliency plan.

Um, it was the revenue forecasting this year.

We did significantly aggregate that and are trying to better anticipate our revenue sources and the economic factors that are changing those.

Um, so our long range forecasting does include our revenue and operating growth that is closer to historical actuals than we previously seen, um, and also tries to anticipate some of those economic factors that we know are constantly changing.

Um, we're also looking at the impacts of an impact fee study, which we'll be doing next year, and how we can incorporate that into a long-term forecast.

We're also considering future fees.

Um, they are not included in the 26 budget, um, but for the 27 budget for transportation or something specific to uh street maintenance.

And so we'll talk a little bit about that.

But again, that's not in the 26 budget.

That would be something that we would uh explore in 26 and then probably bring forward to you in 27.

We did include a recommended one year reduction in full-time staff merit from three to two percent to support the long-term staffing resiliency and growth, recognizing that uh staffing you know does the the banding.

Um so we want to ensure that we have a long-term resilient staffing plan that we aren't in the position that some of our neighbors are in.

Um, we also uh reduced our long-range staffing uh plan that anticipated for 2026 41 positions.

Um, Malcolm and I were like, please don't bring 41 positions.

Um, and we were very grateful the directors did not.

Uh, they brought 16 for us to consider, and then we are only recommending nine, and only four of those are in the general fund.

Uh, and actually some of them are cost neutral, and we'll talk through that a little bit more as well.

And we also, those reductions I mentioned earlier in the general fund, uh total 3.3 million with 2.6 million either reduced or reprioritized in the capital improvements fund, and overall a 4.4 million in all funds reduction in operating.

So, with that, I'm gonna let I'm gonna stop talking and I'm gonna let Cassie, our fiscal and budget manager, talk through our fund balance summary.

All right, so diving into the numbers here, when I acknowledge the big difference that you're gonna see in the revenues and expenditures.

Sarah had talked about this just a little bit earlier in mentioning it and the not being in balance.

Our total across all funds is in balance, but you'll see those big negatives, such as in the police facilities impact fund, the water fund, storm drainage operating fund.

Those are data projects that are planned to be debt funded.

We do not have the debts in the budget because we haven't issued them yet.

So this is just to show a realistic idea of what the expenditures would do if we did not get debt to a fund them, which is obviously we would not be able to follow through on those projects then.

So ultimately, like we do not expect that that will be negative in the end.

It is just to give a realistic picture right now, since we don't have the debt.

I'll also note too in the water fund, this one specifically, you'll notice that there's pretty large expenditures, but the ending fund balance is a lot less than that.

Um, the project in that one, which Todd will talk about for the water treatment plant.

That one is a combination of debt and cash, and that's also part of why we're seeing a different number there than the exact cost of the of the plant.

Um, so we can talk through that some more as well.

So diving into the general fund here, you'll see that it has the same beginning fund balance as what was on the previous slide, the same amount of revenues.

It just splits out the expenditures a little bit more to see the effect on the fund balance.

And so going through that, you can see that we're planning to transfer 10 million to the capital improvement fund to continue to fund those big projects such as street maintenance and other things that we have coming out that would have been general fund capital projects.

Um we also have a little over 2 million that's going out for the fleet.

That's the same as what we had presented last month for the fleet supplemental, those that go into the 2026 budget so that we can actually pay for the orders once they come in.

We bring it early so that we can actually put the POs in, but nothing actually gets paid until 2026 or later.

One thing I will just uh point out on this because it was a question that was shared from council.

The transfer to the capital improvement fund is 10 million dollars.

Um, and this is going to contradict what we just said a moment ago about not budgeting debt, but we did budget the $7 million for the mine mitigation and the revenues.

And the reason why is because we were using it in a transfer that was going to the capital improvements fund.

And for us to effectively show how that flows through the different funds, that one we did plug.

So $7 million of that is proceeds from the COPs that will move into the CIF to pay for the mine mitigation.

So just want to be clear that one is plugged, and that is why it is 10 million dollars, minus that 10 million dollars is three million towards the remaining projects.

So you could do the same thing for the police station, but you chose not to so that goes directly to the um we would book that directly too.

It's not a transfer to so that's part of the logic there.

But yes, we could theoretically, but the reason we did it with this one is because it's flowing through a fund being transferred to the CIF because we fund our CIF through a transfer.

Um the pub the police facilities impact fund when we issue that debt, it would issue directly to the fund.

Exactly.

Yeah, great question.

So for revenue projections, these are exactly um what we showed to you guys in July.

Um we have continued to monitor these.

We have not seen significant changes in what we expect for collections.

Um we are still seeing retail somewhat strong slight dips here and there, but still maintaining.

Um we do have some new um uh retailers that are doing quite well, and we've seen the bump from those, but again, we're trying to look at the long term, you know, how that will sustain over the long term.

Uh the other taxes, in particular, uh highway use, motor vehicle, road and bridge, those can be somewhat unpredictable.

So we do our best with those.

Road and bridge taxes have been declining steadily um over the years.

We receive those through the state.

Um, so that's why you'll see a negative two there.

One the ones that I want to draw attention to though are the building and development use tax and building permits.

We are um budgeting a negative there, so we are expecting to see a decline in permitting.

Um, and that was just that is like I said, still what we had shown you in July, and is still um what we have been seeing with with what we've been getting with the permitting reports from the planning department, but only a one percent.

It feels like a rounding error almost, but maybe not.

Well, so it's it's actually a good question because typically we have not uh budgeted as much or anywhere near as much as we've actually seen.

So we usually budget what's the equivalent to around 600 and 650 permits or so.

Um, and we've been seeing upwards of 750 to 800.

Um, so it's negative one percent from that 650.

So we're we're declining it from a number that was already um pretty conservatively budgeted to begin with.

Um so if we actually did a percentage from what we were actually getting, I think it'd be pretty substantial.

So yeah, another great question.

Um, what is the use tax there?

That's listed as a negative under building.

Use tax is on our permits, and so to replace sales tax, um, especially before we had lows, we didn't really have anywhere for people to buy the supplies for building projects.

So to make sure that Erie gets the sales tax that we would have gotten for those projects, we charge use tax, and then we can refund if there's any sales tax from Erie that is charged for them, and they already paid use tax on a project.

Okay.

Yeah, it's kind of a little pass-through.

We often um do get uh refund requests for reimbursement requests from developers um for use tax that uh they are eligible for and they will provide the uh receipts with that to kind of demonstrate it.

So it's a tax on building materials that are used in projects within theory.

All right, and just to highlight again, that's total revenue growth is only 4.1 percent.

And the increase in motor vehicle taxes.

This is I guess assumes growth in number of people buying vehicles, but probably a little bit of optimism will continue to buy cars.

It's it's a hard one to predict.

Some years we've seen like negative 25, and other years we've seen positive positive, yeah.

Yeah, so it's um it's it's a it's the most educated guess that we could provide.

Um, as you guys all know, what the way that it works, somebody buys it outside of the town, we still get that that tax.

So um it's kind of just based on our own economy and what people are doing.

So yeah, harder to predict.

Approximately how much is that total, yeah.

Around four million.

Okay, yeah.

So significantly significant, yeah, chunk of money.

Yeah, is that a slide where you have got an losses projections?

Like what we do right now.

Sorry, can you say that one more time?

What predictions was what is uh cut and oh, like year to date, like what we have currently.

Um we can probably pull that up pretty quickly, but um, we can tell you kind of like the year over year.

That eight percent has been built based on kind of what we've seen year over year, and then kind of conservatively pulled back, but we can pull that up and show that to you in a moment.

Yeah, so the last question I have on this slide is the oil and gas royalties, it's up 10%.

Does that assume anything with Draco or is that just in general?

That is just what we currently uh receive.

So expecting it to go up.

Yeah, we we've seen it pretty continuously move forward.

Um, and I actually did continu uh take a look at some of that today, and we'll just continue to monitor it.

We get it, uh it's not steady, it comes in kind of in chunks.

Um so we get a better better picture about it at the end of the year.

Directly tied to the price of oil, right?

Draco next year anyway.

Yeah, okay.

I just want to make sure there weren't estimates or anything.

Yeah, no, this is just what we currently have and comes in.

Yeah, and yes, it is tied to the price.

Okay.

All right.

So looking at the expenditures as a whole, uh, I want to draw attention to operations and maintenance.

We talked about that.

There were three rounds of cuts with the departments, and this is the result of that.

We were able to cut over 10% from the operations and maintenance budget for the town, which was over $4 million.

Uh greatly helps with offsetting more than the salaries and benefits increase, but also our continued projects that we're building out in the capital program, and then the debt that will go along with that.

We have built in there the estimated payment that will go with the COPs, where we did put in the revenue, but we also have the payment going forward that's included in their debt, and then the transfers across funds, and so you can see there the total expenditures only went up about eight percent, but the categories there it's mostly in capital.

So in the salaries and benefit, if there's a four percent um raise included in what's the difference between the four percent and the ten percent?

That is new positions, increases in benefits.

Um I was gonna say new benefits, but now we don't have any new benefits across the town.

But um, our benefits premium went up 8.5% across the town, so that's a pretty significant amount.

Then we went up six percent.

So went up six, and we have different raises for different groups in the town.

For instance, sworn officers have a much different raise than the rest of the town, and so that also feeds into it.

Yeah, okay.

The um debt and transfers of 20 million six six eighty-five.

That's the transfers from silite the previous slide seven, I guess.

Um plus already acknowledged or known known debt that we definitely have.

Yes, so that's going to be um the uh debt that we already have for the water funds, too, which are pretty big payments.

So we have regulated bonds, we have CPs.

10 million plus the and we can absolutely, if you guys would like to see a breakdown of that, it is in the budget book, but we're happy to pull that out if that would be helpful.

Um, and then also just to highlight there on the positions on the bottom.

Yeah, because that that 6.5 is different than the nine, and we want to be clear about what that what why that is.

Yes, so the reason that it only shows six and a half positions there is that one of our positions that was proposed was offset by a reduction in part-time hours, and that reduction was equal to about one and a half FTE.

So that accounts for that.

And then we also removed the affordable housing manager from the budget.

That's a frozen position, and it is not budgeted for 2026.

So that is the two and a half reduction from the nine.

So, yes, a net uh total 6.5 uh increase.

And I know that's small, and I I have a pet peeve about this, but slides are only so big, so bear with me.

Um so just want to share here uh the the positions that you'll see.

I will let the directors talk through this in more depth because they you know can talk a lot about what the needs were here.

Um, the four general fund positions are police officer, uh, an assistant coordinator for parks and recreations and facilities maintenance and streets techs for public works.

Um the assistant coordinator that um is the one that is offset by the uh part-time positions that Cassie just mentioned.

So those are the four for the uh the general fund and then the parks maintenance superintendent and the conservation trust fund is funded by the proceeds in that fund, so it is a self-funded position, and then the water resources, the water fund, what wastewater fund and storm drainage fund, those remaining four positions are all um self-funded by uh rates.

So those are two in your are accommodated by our rate study.

We know that those are coming and are incorporated as a part of that.

So I'm gonna pause there before we jump into the um the department and just see if there were any additional questions.

I know it's a lot of information.

Um, but of course we have plenty of time.

Okay, all right.

Well, I'm gonna let Denise jump into the IT budget.

All right, Denise Jacken, IT director.

Um, pretty much for my budget.

Um, the salary and benefits went up eight percent.

We did add an individual last year for desktop support for PD.

Um and then for our operation and maintenance, we have a budget of 148,509, which is a reduction um capital.

Um, capital, I do have a capital project, refreshing the servers at town hall, and then um total million dollars.

So the uh operations amended um maintenance went down uh 59%.

What were you able?

Well it was uh 2025 higher than normal or we had some projects in 2025 that we don't have this year.

Okay.

Um we also had um areas where we were able to put um some of the things that were in our maintenance into the regular general fund because it's used town wide.

Um, and then other things were just savings that we you know we're we're going lean, very lame this year.

Okay, thanks.

Yes, and when she says the general fund, she's referring to the central charges account.

So if something is used town wide, um it especially uh used daily townwide, we try to avoid having it in the departmental budget.

So one of her items did shift to that central charges account.

I've got a bazillion questions, but they're probably better for an IT study session somewhere in the future.

I just uh appreciate with such a small budget what you're doing.

And um, do you feel like you have what you need right now to protect the town primarily against cyber threats?

I do another one of the reasons that our ours did go down, is um we did get a few grants to help us out with our cybersecurity um with that.

If those grants do not come through for 2026, as we're hoping, we'll be coming back to you later to ask for some more.

And I would say just be assertive with that, right?

And help us understand what the uh gap is.

Recognizing a lot of the stuff I don't want to talk about in public, you know, we may have to do an exec session just for uh the nature of cyber uh work.

Okay, all right, all right.

Cool.

How much um were the grants for or how much or hopefully they just be in the grants?

Um depending on the different services.

Um, one was about 38,000, and the other one was about 12,000.

Not huge ones.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks.

Okay.

All right, thanks, Denise.

Thank you.

Okay, my turn.

Uh Gabby Wright, Director of Communications Community Engagement.

Um my budget looks like I didn't do a great job, and it looks like it went really up.

It did not, I swear.

Um, so some of the things that are in here, I don't know if you had described this earlier or not, but we as individual departments are now um taking over our insurance claims.

Uh, and so that is quite a large um addition to my small budget.

So they I think it was $35,000 that was added to my budget that will be mine now, which was previously done, I think all in like the HR budget or central charges or something.

Um, so that that's an increase that went into my budget for 2026, and then the rest of it is software related.

Some of its cleanup, uh, we're combining some uh contracts that previously were separated, so I'm taking on some of the contract that finance had for a software service that my team actually manages, so we're now gonna manage the contract as well.

Um, and we hadn't fully been budgeting out for the AV system um in the maintenance of that software.

We've been kind of pulling for different uh buckets for that.

So we consolidated all of the funding into my budget as well, and then the final piece of that is actually kind of a test run that we're doing.

So if any of you have noticed on the website for the last week or so, we have a new button on the front.

Um, it is an AI-based search engine for our website, and it prioritizes any videos that we have so we can get kind of more human faces to our residents.

So that's called Rept, um, and that is uh new for 2026 if you decide to approve that um budget, but it does crawl our website and and give a summary of whatever somebody asks for it.

So it's it's been live on our website for about 10 days, and we've had more than 300 questions go through there so far that have been answered by this new button.

Um that's kind of that describes the increase that I have there, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm glad you mentioned that because I should have had that on an earlier slide.

Um, one thing that did go up across the board, and you'll hear a lot of the departments talk about is the insurance.

Um, previously we did have that all budgeted together, but we are moving it all into a fund, which creates a cost allocation out to the departments.

So all the departments now have premiums and deductibles that they are budgeting in their departments, and then as things come in that'll be charged out to fund that insurance fund, and that's a way for us to better predict and understand our insurance costs for casualty property and liability.

So, like you know, Gabby said, you'll hear a lot of departments talk about that.

I'm in the same boat.

A lot of the smaller departments in particular are.

So just be aware of that as that comes up.

What was the basis used for the allocation?

So we worked with an actually uh Lori Weisner, our uh risk manager, she partnered with our um insurance uh companies and how they they kind of looked at things.

Uh our consultants looked at how the best practices for those allocations are, and then used how we have been um submitting claims, how much those claims have been to understand how much that cost would need to be allocated across the departments, and then uh use that that data to essentially say how much we thought each department would need to budget for that, um, and then that is what we budgeted in the department, so that if um say somebody tripped over a court in the finance department and had a workers' comp claim, then we are now budgeted to be able to pay out for that claim, and that would actually be pulled from our budget, and then um can be effectively cost into the insurance fund.

So it becomes more self-contained and a little easier for us to predict the cost.

Um, we've just been not, it's not been as easy um for them to do so, and it's a lot easier when it's self-contained.

One of the reasons we did that, and Lori kind of alerted if you want her to is to have the directors see what their insurance payments are and um the claims associated with them.

Lori does a great job of consolidating the claims that we've had throughout the year and giving us a quarterly update on claims for each individual department, the nature of the claims and other things.

So we see where it's happening and can focus attention on those areas that need it and celebrate those areas that are doing really well.

And encourages me as a director to say, please don't trip over those courts and keep a safe environment.

Visibility is good with budget.

Yes, did you charge the people to let the quarter of the clumsy go?

So does that mean we should expect either excess revenue or excess budget that'll roll back at the end of the year?

Hopefully, there's not too many trips.

Hopefully, there's not too many.

Um, it's hard to say in the first year.

We're gonna keep a very close eye on it and see how it how it works.

Um, and definitely we'll report back because you're going to see in the AC for um in 27, it'll be a new fund.

Um, so we'll actually have financials like reporting out of how it's functioning.

Um, so it'll be this will be the first year we see it unfold.

So I was actually just gonna add to that.

Yeah, the idea is that hopefully the allocations are a little high in the department so we can build up that fund balance in case we have another like hail storm or something like that come through.

Yeah, and then we're not pulling from fund balance in the general fund to accommodate that.

We actually have a fund that can provide for that.

Under medical are we self-insured or is it all part of Kaiser?

Yeah, Kaiser does not do self-insured, so we're fully insured under Kaiser.

Okay, yeah, probably not big enough to get there.

I know when I worked for Boulder Valley School District, they were self-insured at that point.

Yeah, when we were under Cigna, we were self-insured.

Um, well, actually, it was called level level insured, which is a form of self-insured.

Um, in order for us to add on another plan, such as Sigma and Kaiser, we have to have an employee count around 500 before anybody would entertain doing that with us.

Got it.

And then my last question is uh we've spoken about um branding and logo consolidation.

Are you able to do what you need to do within the budget you have?

Um, to create branding and talk about that and have the discussions, yes.

Um, to actually implement, I would have to come back for supplemental to do that.

So I'm not sure what the the timeline looks like or the discussions or or what we would be hoping to do, but to start the discussions and bring forward some possibilities, yes.

Okay, sure.

I think we're good.

Thanks, Gabby.

All right.

Okay, Alicia Melinda's director of human resources.

Um you'll see a decrease in the HR salaries and benefits.

Part of that is due to we no longer have like an official DEI program.

You'll see it still left over in the budget, but going forward it won't be there.

Um, and we had a DEI manager that we now do not have, instead, we have an HR business partner, and then we took another position down and had it become a learning and development specialist.

So that's the decrease there.

Um, our operation and maintenance again, HR, even though risk is under HR, we still have to have our own insurance, part of our insurance fund that we were just talking about, especially in the others.

Um, but I will tell you, I hope to goodness none of my staff get injured since we own that program.

Um, and then you'll see an increase in capital.

It's uh, you know, it's kind of a head scratcher.

What is HR building?

Nothing.

Um nothing.

So we recently, the last three years underwent an ADA transition plan, which you might ask, what was that?

Um so back in this is really embarrassing, but back in uh January 26th of 1992, any public entity with 50 or more employees was mandated to have an ADA transition plan.

We did not.

And Lori was the one that discovered that we did not when she came on board.

So we hired a consultant and they helped us for three years.

They go out to every property, whatever.

We came up with our transition plan.

We're awaiting the final report of that.

We do have some of this stuff already.

Um, and so we are now um tasked by the federal government that we have to implement this plan and we have to start figuring out our priorities as to what can make the town ADA compliant.

Um, and so that first initial 100,000 is going to be um we know some easy fixes that we could do, so we're gonna do work on that.

And then the other, I believe, is consulting dollars.

But HR is not doing any of this work, it's gonna be done mostly by transportation.

So they, if they would have more specific questions about that, um, it's just because it was a result of the ADA transition plan is why it's still why it landed in my um bucket.

And just for get grins and giggles, we were supposed to have everything that was on the transition plan implemented by January 26th of 1995.

So a lot of entities are in the same that didn't pay attention to it, didn't do it.

Um, and now they're getting caught.

And so they're coming out kind of doing um like First Amendment auditors, they're coming out to different uh municipalities and figuring out what they haven't done, and then um it triggers off something that is not good, and if you want to know more, you can speak more to it.

Um so that is that is why HR has some capital money this year.

So all right, and I'm I'm looking at John back there, but I'm guessing this is like curb cuts and um things that uh make it easier to get around.

It covers all kinds of things, some of which we've done, like the visual things, our website that's compliant.

Okay, it's gonna be transportation sidewalk related things, it's gonna be building improvements like the ramp that you used out front.

Yes, all sorts of things.

Yeah, all right, so 100,000 isn't gonna go very far.

I even think about I'm very familiar with the ADA um accessibility laws that uh just went into effect that we gobble up to 100,000 right there.

So do you see this a need for this to go up?

Are you working it over a 10-year plan?

Or what's the so that's a great question?

Um, we are budgeting 100,000 next year just to start getting something going.

Um we do anticipate that that number will increase.

Um, we're still wrapping up the ADA transition plan as we get more of that data and kind of process through it.

We're gonna evaluate it and see where we can couple it with our concrete maintenance program.

We're gonna see where we can couple it with uh new capital projects, uh new facilities projects and different areas where we can kind of not have to spend just ADA transition money and then also figure out what's left over after we're we what we figured out with those projects and budget additional money.

There's gonna be grants that are gonna be out there that we can pursue as well.

So we'll come up with a more uh strategic plan once that plan is finalized.

All right, well, it's good for us to kind of tuck it away in the back of our minds as the needs arise.

Um is there a way for individuals to say, hey, we've got this problem.

I'm I'm actually thinking of my neighbor, you guys took care of this, he's legally blind, and you put the um uh the audible signals on the on the lights over there by lows, it's a big help for him.

Um, is there a way if somebody's really struggling and saying, hey, I need you know, you guys should be doing this that we can become aware of it?

Yeah, uh, we do have I'm the town's designated ADA coordinator.

Okay, awesome.

And so they can submit that to me, and we will work with the the departments to make sure that we get that addressed.

Um, so we do have a process for that.

Awesome.

And just so you guys know, too, this plan, we will be bringing it to you on January 13th.

Okay, so you will get to see it.

Um, and our consultants have advised that we would have typically between 10 and 15 years at the most to implement all of it.

Okay, um, it is gonna be quite extensive.

So I I appreciate that you're gonna have that in the back of your mind.

Yeah, um I hear yeah.

I would note too, in the process of building this plan, I worked with Lori and her team and the consultants to do a lot of engagement about this.

So the community has been asked multiple times to come to virtual meetings and in-person meetings and fill out surveys and specifically to do exactly what you're saying is that you know this is missing, or I struggle with this, or my kid needs this, whatever that looks like.

Um, and they have been able to gather quite a lot of really good information in addition to just the regular inspections that they do.

So the engagement I think was really helpful and ongoing, they can certainly reach out to the town since the project will be the plan will be finished.

And if they wanted to find how to reach out to Lori, could they go to your new gadget and say I need an ADA accommodation?

And they would find her.

Yes, I couldn't.

All right, I'm gonna try that.

One more thing just to add.

Um, so if we came to you and said we need you know five million dollars, we wouldn't have the staffing and personnel to actually carry out that kind of effort right off the bat.

So by kind of taking care of the low-hanging fruit initially and building towards it with the transition plan, kind of getting into it systematically, we'll have more information that we can actually also share with the community with our progress.

Yep.

And then there will be knowledge around the staffing and other kinds of resourcing needs to make sure it's sustained for that 10, 15 year period.

So we'll have more information coming back to you on this particular topic.

All right, cool.

Well, Malcolm was uh alluding to it, and my knee was replaced eight days ago, and I came up the ramp.

And it's probably the first time in my life that I've actually um needed the ADA um requirements, and had it not been there.

I don't know who I would ask to carry me up the stairs, but um it would have been highly awkward.

I would say it's surprising.

I'm sure you've used ADA improvements many times.

Maybe, but not within airplane, not explicitly.

Not out of need.

Yes, I think the Anne's got it right, not at a need.

Um, awesome.

Thank you all.

Any other questions for ETR?

Um, I have a question training, is is there a separate budget for trainings and that kind of thing?

That is all in my operations and maintenance.

And um, yes, we do have we we have it pocketed out for uh training and development.

I don't know if this was part of your question, but each of the departments budget individually for our own training, so it's not all in HR's budget.

Right.

The training that we budget for is we deliver town wide trainings, and then we also develop we're developing trainings all the time and like a manager's foundation's training.

Um, and so we have budgeted for that.

Um, so our budget is trainings that we deliver to all employees.

But if you if a department needs to send somebody to a specific training that's trade specific, they budget their own training dollars.

Okay, and that was actually something that we uh really combed through this year as a part of the reduction process too, because we have uh a new learning and development person in house who is very knowledgeable and is developing those type of trainings.

We did ask departments if you have something that's like more managerial or supervisor, like we have that in the works because those can be very pricey, those those type of conferences.

But if it's trade specific, keep it in your budget.

So uh folks did do that um and are gonna rely on the program that Alicia has in her in her uh wheelhouse.

Okay, all right.

I think we're good.

All right, the cycle change here.

Yeah, and in the heart of the rotation, yeah.

Yeah, I know about it too.

Okay, yeah.

Okay.

We got the next plugin there.

All right.

All right.

Town admin.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Meredith Muth administrative services director.

I'm happy to say that a good portion of the increase in my budget is your fault.

Which is actually because as I understand it in 2025, they did not include the legislative division within the avenue.

In the 2026, they included the legislative division.

So that includes all of you.

Um the memberships and like CML dues, uh, grants to communities, boards and commissions funding.

That's so that's part of the increase in there.

The other major increase is um we've kind of fully fleshed out the city attorneys or the town attorneys um budget.

So a lot of those increases are in there.

I'm also happy to tell you about five minutes ago I got assigned contract.

So moving forward on that one.

Um, so those are the big changes for my budget.

I will say the one major project the admin department has next year is a 2026 election.

It doesn't cost very much, but it is budgeted for next year.

And it doesn't cost very much because the county's burden most of it we're coordinating with them, I guess.

Coordinate with the counties, they charge us back for um the amount of basically the amount of real estate you should pay, take up on the ballot that we get charged for.

I'll have to see how well county does it.

So it's about we expect between 40 and 50,000 unless you write a really, really long ballot issue, in which case it could go up good caveat.

Ballot issues do take that price up.

Yes.

And if we budgeted for the potential of a ballot issue or two, yes.

Okay.

Perfect.

Other questions?

We don't want to question our own budget.

Yeah, you guys are going to CML.

I do hope that most of us, if not all of us, will go to CML.

Yes, it is in that.

Okay.

Environmental services budget.

Uh so I'm David Frank, director of environmental services, and as you can see when asked to take a haircut, just like in real life, I don't do them often, but they are big.

No, the fact is we had some very significant projects uh wrap up in 2025.

You can see the capital.

Um that's primarily the the very large purchase of half the street lights in town, which we expect to wrap up uh with United Power in the next couple months.

If it does uh spill over into 2026, we'll do that with a with a rollover.

Um we've also got some pretty significant uh decreases in operations and maintenance.

Um part of this is obviously the couple hundred thousand dollars we're saving in air quality monitoring.

Um but also uh the ending of the um pairing of recycle bins with trash cans.

If you if you walked around our parks, you've noticed that every single trash can is now paired with recycle bin townwide.

Uh so that program is wrapping up, so we can take that out of our budget.

Uh and then just a lot of little things.

Um this is our department's second full year.

So this is the first time we actually had full control of our budget from beginning of process to end.

Um so just a lot of going through all of the nooks and crannies and uh and just cleaning house.

Okay.

No new FTEs this year.

Not this year.

We were fortunate enough to get a new FTE last year, and and we're gonna uh you know, work them to the bone uh before we start asking for more.

Because there's a lot of people who want votes that we says for one.

Sure.

Um yeah, well, well, as we go through 20 uh 26, obviously, we have a lot of of really big projects going on the sustainability action plan, the uh beneficial electrification plan, the resilience plan.

I think once we have those pieces in place, we'll have a much clearer set of goals.

I don't want to just budget on we may want to do more.

I want to be able to tell you what more we're gonna do before we come ask for funding.

So um for this year, yeah, I think this is a very adequate budget.

Um, we're not reducing any of our programs or any of our services, um, despite uh being able to reduce the overall uh burden on the general fund.

Thanks.

So with the um I know we're still in finalizing negotiations with with um uh the landfill.

So is there any expected costs that will come out of that process or hopefully the landfill is gonna be uh you know, pay for their own business as uh as a private business.

Um yeah, we're we're in the initial process of um going through their pre-application for the changes that they want to do out there at their property, um including moving the entrance, um moving our water tanks, etc.

etc.

But yeah, there should be very little financial burden on the town beyond um just the time and salary of of the folks to review all of those permits and to make sure everything is um according to OIL.

Excellent.

All right, I think we're good.

Thank you.

Yeah, easy when you're uh reducing.

Okay.

I'm not reducing, but it's not my fault.

Um, sorry, that was too easy.

You gave that one to me.

Um so yes, the finance budget uh is actually relatively the same, just then some things have shifted around.

Um I'm gonna start with operations and maintenance.

Um the increase there is primarily the uh insurance allocation, but also we did move our clear gov software out of central charges and into finance.

Um we really are the ones in that one pretty predominantly, and we are also now using it for our ACFAR, um, which will be ADA compliant by the end of the year.

Really excited about that.

Um, so because of that, we felt that it was better in our own department rather than being in central charges.

So that's part of that increase.

Um, our salaries and benefits, um, there is a slight increase beyond um some of the other increases that we've all mentioned, the benefits, um, because we did have uh our accountants were falling underneath um grade and did have to have some in-grade movements.

So we had two positions that did need to shift within their grades.

Um so those were rectified uh last year, and those are now hitting the budget.

Um I don't have capital, and uh I'm not asking for any new positions, so that's the finance budget.

Any questions?

Pretty straightforward.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's never as much fun as everybody else's.

So I've helped with the whole thing.

One of these years you're gonna get capital.

I know, I know.

Oh famous last words.

Well, speaking of somebody who finally gets cash.

I think I drew short straw.

There was a conversation of who gets the mind mitigation and a landing on mine.

So welcome to the elephant in the room.

Um I can out of element, I'm the Julian Jack when the development director.

So uh right now for 2026, uh, we are still we are the smallest team on town staff.

We are still going to be the smallest team on town staff.

We have four FTEs, uh, and we're not asking for any others, so we're staying at four.

Um, for operating costs for traditional operating costs, there's an increase of about 50,000.

Really, we have almost like a decrease of 50,000.

The reason for the increase is now that we have an approved incentive policy.

Uh, we have an incentive fund in our department budget that we can draw from throughout the year as applications come in.

And so in 26, we increased that incentive fund from 100,000 to 200,000, which is why that number is in the positive instead of the negative.

So now for the elephant, um, in 2025, the 1.2 is the construction of the makerspace, which is being completed this year and should fall off by the end of the year.

Um, and then for 2026, the big one is the 7 million.

That is for my mitigation to include both the town owned property and the ECC across the street.

Um, obviously, it impacts several different apartments.

Uh, mine, environmental, public works, but since I put it in ClaireGov, I got the bonus of having my budget.

Than that, pretty easy.

Um, any questions?

No questions, but just um, you know, this is uh a topic that I know the council's been wrestling with, and we gave direction to figure out how to mitigate uh the undermining uh for retail.

Um, and that's a big deal, right?

These are I don't think it was easy for any of us to say, yeah, let's take this on.

On the flip side, not getting the small format grocer out there just didn't seem like an option either.

So I think I recognize it, and I'm guessing all of us recognize the impact this will make um once we can get it all done.

See, it's a good thing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, thanks for taking it on.

Yeah, happy to do it.

Be out there with a truck.

Just think about how the bars will go down so much.

Yeah.

Any other questions for Julia?

No.

Okay.

We'll take the last seat at the table next to the mayor whenever I ask for money.

Yeah, they always end up here.

Um so for the police department, we did uh request one new police officer position.

Uh presented of the council a few weeks ago uh on the facilities study session that our calls for service are up, accidents are up, crimes up.

It's just a function of population.

So we do need more personnel.

So that's that's the increase you're seeing there.

We're also having longer, longer tenured officers, so they're starting to move through our step scale.

And so they are their salaries are increasing as they go.

So you're seeing a 16% change there.

Uh that's mostly that.

And then obviously the market adjustment to the step scale as well.

Um, our operation and maintenance, we tightened our belts a little bit when it came to like training and uniforms.

We looked at some areas.

Um, hopefully we don't have any disasters because we may be coming for a supplemental if we have a big big crime scene or a big incident where we need some of those things, but we did tighten a couple spots where we haven't been spending to the level that we've been budgeting in past years.

Um, our capital went away this year.

I got to stow away our biggest capital in somebody else's budget.

But our capital in our budget was a drone and a canine unit for la for this year, and those are done, and next year we don't have any capital requests.

So we did tighten up a little bit on operations and maintenance.

Uh, one thing I'll point out is you all approved a fee increase for 911 fees for Bretta, the Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Services Authority, and that actually saved us Brettza is now contributing more to Boulder County dispatch, saved us around 40 to 50,000 dollars our dispatch fees.

So those actually went down too, and you'll see that in the operations and maintenance.

Cool.

So the other elephant in the room.

Yes, the uh expansion of the police station, that'll be on a slide coming up.

Yes, so that's capital.

That's our capital.

Yes, okay.

I get to stow that away in facilities so it's like chad, what's going on?

So it doesn't look at the Chad, what's going on?

So I have a question about the um co-responders.

I know that we is that included in your budget, or is that coming out of somewhere?

It is, yeah.

We currently budgeted uh for 2026 for two full-time co-responders.

We we pay their salary and benefits, but they're actually employees of Boulder County.

And so are we maintaining that at two?

And are there two filled right now?

No.

No.

We have there has been a vacancy there since I want to say about April or May, and they've been looking for a co-responder.

Good news is we heard today that they have identified someone to hopefully fill that spot.

Um they're in negotiations with them now.

So we currently have one, but we do have that position.

So how's that work with the budget?

When we haven't there hasn't been a spot filled since April.

Do we have savings there?

Technically, I would say no, because it's an IGA that we have with Boulder, so we're paying them a set amount of what the salary benefits would be for two co-responders.

So the savings probably is in boulders.

Um budget, unfortunately.

We could maybe negotiate that with them, but uh, but we do pay for those two, and we get coverage from other co-responders in the county.

It's not like they'll send someone over from Lafayette at Lewisville, uh, wherever the county is.

So it's not like we're out that full position, we still have access to those co-responders as part of that agreement.

It's an agreement of two FTE equivalents.

That's correct.

No two named.

Right.

So would that be in your O and M, right?

Not in your that's correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um I think what we're largely seeing here with the questions is we make so many study sessions and things to keep us abreast, and you guys know it.

That it's this is going because we expect no, it's wonderful.

Gave us good direction.

Yes, you did.

Okay.

Sarah, we could discuss planning at the dollar.

All right.

Um so as you can see, we are definitely reducing our budget from the this year into next.

And the biggest one is well, the biggest reason is that we um are freezing our affordable housing manager position.

So you can see that does impact our uh salaries and benefits, so it's a very minimal increase as a result in that line item.

And our uh operations and maintenance, the it's pretty similar to last year.

We are uh this does include 250,000 dollars that we had also included in 2025.

So this is a double counting of um what you see from 2025 within that 712 is 250,000 for the UDC code update that we never uh started or initiated this year, and so we are asking again for it next year.

So um, more likely than not, that would be something that Sarah's team would move into, or I guess it would roll over.

I don't know, I'm not gonna say the technical thing because I don't want to screw that up, but uh it includes that, and then we also have just some minimal consulting services um projected out for assistance with other plans.

We had anticipated some um consulting dollars to go towards affordable housing, uh $80,000 next year for matching grants if we were to move forward on something like ADU and um uh assistance or something like that.

Um, we do not have any capital requests this year, and so yeah, we are running pretty lean.

Like everybody else, we have looked at every line item in our budget, yeah, you know, from training to outreach and all and marketing and all those things.

So we are um we have reduced would it be fair to say that without the insurance changes, yours would have gone down.

Most likely, yeah.

The insurance was approximately 150,000.

That's reflected in the operations and maintenance line item.

So it would have dropped significantly, yeah.

140 is so I am looking, I think it's in January.

We're gonna go through uh hopefully an interactive exercise to look at the densities throughout town.

Um, if that results in any changes to the comp plan, do you have that budgeted?

Is that something that could be done in-house, or is that something you'd or maybe it's too early to even have that conversation?

No, not at all.

We would have included dollars for that had we anticipated that it would have needed consulting dollars, but we are going to be doing that update in-house.

That's we have long-range planning staff that are eager to uh provide plans for the community, and that is something that we would like to be able to do and resolve rather quickly at the beginning of the year so that we can move into the UDC update, the unified development code update.

Yeah, and actually, Malcolm and I were talking about what areas do we even need to look at, and I think we only came up with maybe three because everything else has already been either you know developed or have development rights.

So I'm guessing we'll get through that in one meeting.

I think so.

I think we're gonna um work internally first to make sure that we are um being efficient with your time in that discussion.

I think it's you're right, there aren't that many places, and I think we want to just help you understand what is what are the densities look like and how we how can we calibrate those and update that element in the comp plan and get going on the work we need to do.

Okay, perfect.

As far as freezing affordable housing manager position, that just means I know we've talked about this before, we don't have any projects in the works right now.

And so is that was that the motivation?

I think it was twofold.

Uh we um we had the vacancy, we decided that it would be best to fill the vacancy when we had an updated direction from the town council regarding the affordable housing policy that was on the work program for um for next year.

Albeit it's a lower priority, but um we would like to be able to update that, have some direction determine you know what we need to do for housing moving into 2027 because it is frozen, the position's frozen for 2026.

It was also a budgetary opportun opportunity.

And I will add because it's frozen and has reduced the FTE.

If we were to want to fill it and the council will want to move forward, you would have to authorize it to move forward.

So we couldn't just fill it on a win.

We have to move through council.

So with the increase of nine and and the reduction of two, is it a net seven?

6.5 because of the um it was the part-time position, yes.

Consolidated and one of mine, I believe in the negative two positions there was just move to a different department.

So I'm net for the town who has just the one frozen position.

Okay.

So then I have another kind of operational question because I know that um I talked with MJ about the cheeseman residences and sort of operations or you know, kind of the whole process of interviewing and um whatever residents are coming in with fall to her, but then hopefully go to Folder County Housing Authority at some point.

What are the what's the plan there?

What are we so right now?

We are doing the support for review of potential residents, and so we are confirming and working with the developer and the bank to ensure that they are um qualifying under the requirements for the project, and that is that has been reallocated within my department since we do not have housing staff right now, and so the um and we can't, then that's just to finish out cheese and regarding future development and monitoring of future units.

That's something that could be completed by the Boulder County Housing Authority through the regional housing partnership, but right now that partnership is still working on what their structure is going to be, and so there are other ways if we do have more units that we can have those monitored potentially even by the city of Boulder.

We've talked to you about in the past.

So is the Chiefman just gonna we'll monitor that in-house?

Yes.

So Time.

I think we're good.

All right, thanks, sir.

All right, parks and recreation.

All right, here we go.

So let's start with salaries and benefits, eight percent increase this year.

Uh, this year we took a hard look at our organizational structure, uh, and we looked at how we can better align uh responsibilities and leadership capacity across the uh recreation division.

So we are going to be reclassifying two recreation supervisors into recreation superintendents and five recreation coordinators into recreation supervisors.

So uh these only not only expand their duties and spanner supervision, but it also gives them the capacity to lead their staff and provide better mentorship.

A lot of these coordinators and supervisors are supervising five, six, seven employees, which is not good for organizational capacity.

So with this reorganization within recreation, uh, we're gonna be dropping that down to three to four, which is much much more efficient for the department.

And it allows for organizational growth as we take on more parks, as we take on potentially more facilities.

This enables those supervisors and superintendents to better perform their duties with those future facilities.

It also aligns with what we're already doing in the parks division with a division manager, uh, two recreation superintendent or two superintendents and supervisors.

The uh park superintendent that that uh Sarah mentioned is funded out of the conservation trust fund.

So it does it not impact the general fund.

I'll talk a little bit more about the conservation trust fund where that money comes from when we talk a little bit more into uh capital.

Uh we also took a hard look at our part-time staff, as Sarah mentioned, and we looked at historical hours that we were allocating towards uh part-time staff.

And due to some incredible work by Rachel, we were able to reduce that by two percent.

So that essentially uh is a uh uh savings to fund our assistant coordinator for special events.

As we get more events, more event requests, uh we decided that that person needed some assistance, and that's Brandon Grasmick, who is gonna be a recreation supervisor if the budget is approved, and that person will come in and help Brandon with all of our internal and external events.

So hopefully we can start offering more and better coordination amongst uh all of our special events in town.

Uh and then we uh and then let's talk a little bit about um operations and maintenance.

So I have a saying in parks and recreation that today's capital is tomorrow's operations and maintenance.

So a couple of reasons why you see that 19% increase.

Uh we moved uh our Erie neighborhood improvement program over from capital into our operations and maintenance, um, even though we reduced we did reduce that from 150,000 to 50,000 this year as part of the overall uh budget reduction.

Um the other big organizational change that we made is typically a lot of our equipment that was less than 10,000.

So think of your ellipticals, treadmills, small equipment, mowers, things like that are that, even though they were less than 10,000, we're always funded out of the capital.

We made an organizational shift this year to put that, put those items that are less than 10,000 into our operations and maintenance.

So we did see some of that equipment that we were budgeting for come over to uh that operations and maintenance.

We still treat that as as capital assets.

Jay Mauer and Matt Spinner do a fantastic job in in tracking all of our assets and and we can tell you pretty much when every treadmill needs to be replaced when and how much that's gonna cost.

Uh, the other thing that's a pretty significant increase this year is now we are in our first year of our battery rotation.

So as you recall, a couple years ago, the state mandated that all the handheld equipment, so your your leaf blowers, your trimmers, the small equipment transitions from uh gas power into battery powered equipment.

So this is our first year of replacing uh a third of our battery supply to make sure that batteries are healthy, they don't start fires in the facility, and and we can keep up our level of service.

And we we do that, we do a third of our supply every year.

So we're not hitting the budget all at once with a complete battery replacement.

So this is our first year of doing our battery replacements.

Um we are doing some incorporation of some autonomous mowers and uh robot painters.

Uh so that we're gonna we're gonna look at some uh staff efficiency, some force multipliers as I like to call them.

Uh so when we go out and we mow our small areas and we paint the hundreds of soccer fields that we have, uh, we're gonna be doing that a little bit more autonomously.

So that's a couple of more of the increases that we see in the operations and maintenance.

And then we also uh mosquito contract for the entire town that lives in the parks and recreation budget.

So that's upwards of $55,000.

Uh so just a couple of highlights there.

And uh finally, I just want to touch on uh we're we are making a 200,000 dollar request uh in consultation services for the second community campus.

And I know this kind of question came up of um of the second community campus, um, and then how it how it kind of works with the expansion that we also have and Chad and David are gonna touch on that a little bit.

The community did show a strong support for a second community campus uh at the at the 25 acres at Colliers Hill.

And then we are showing um some additional design engineering for the ECC expansion.

Those two projects don't have to be mutually exclusive, right?

So um, because there was a recommendation in the playbook to revitalize and expand the existing ECC.

Um the potential ECC comes at a significantly lower cost than it does to build an entire new facility.

Um and it addresses several of the key needs that we know right now.

So expanded space for active adults, enhanced fitness spaces, more drop-in fitness areas, uh, more community rental space, and then uh just the nature of the expansion of the ECC frees up space for an actual staff break room, an actual staff conference room, and some additional offices.

But those are very small in comparison to the overall uh renovation and small expansion of the ECC.

And as we start planning for that second community campus, the intent is for that campus to duplicate or excuse me, complement, not duplicate what we're doing at the ECC.

What we heard in the playbook and what we heard from our 2024 community survey is that it's not what or we can we can offer what we're doing, not excuse me.

The second community campus will expand what we're not doing and what we're not doing enough of.

So indoor sports, enhanced and quatic facilities, additional gym space.

We're gonna try to push um and and spread out our our programming over to that second community campus and keep the ECC as more of that drop-in, really kind of neighborhood space.

Uh so we really just kind of wanted to touch on that uh from an operations and maintenance uh uh budget uh standpoint, and we'll kick off that project immediately in January.

I know we're gonna have a lot more discussions on you know a potential ballot item, but we want to be prepared as as best we can to have those conversations.

So let's talk uh a little bit of capital.

Obviously, you see 175% in our capital budget.

Um, that is largely due to that uh $7 million uh ask uh for the compass and Morgan Hill projects out of the parks improvement impact fund.

So that's three and a half million to both to kick off both the design and engineering and hopefully first phase uh for each of those projects.

So while I'm talking about the parks improvement impact fund, I want to talk about the other three funds that parks and recreation utilizes for capital.

So we obviously we have the general fund, we have the trails and natural area fund, which is our four mil property tax, and we have the conservation trust fund.

The conservation trust fund is uh dollars allocated uh from the Colorado Lottery through the Department of Local Affairs, DOLA, and the town gets about 350,000 a year for that.

And so we're able to fund pretty much anything parks and recreation related.

We're the only state in the US that allocates their lottery dollars towards parks and recreation.

We're very fortunate to have that fund.

That is also lottery proceeds also fund Great Outdoors Colorado, which we which have seems grant funds.

So just a little background information of you for uh for CTF in the general fund.

Uh we looked at projects that have safety-related issues and and uh things that we need to redesign because of other projects.

For example, coal miners park down here in downtown.

Um, that playground is old, it's presenting some safety issues, the volleyball court, and then the mini miners uh playground inside the ECC is reaching its useful life.

That is not part of the expansion.

It does need to get replaced.

The bone yard design, which is our dock park at the reliance at Reliance Park, that needs a redesign because of the Coal Creek Reach 2 Coal Creek Alignment project.

So we'll be uh spending some dollars to uh make sure that remains a highly popular amenity.

And then on the recreation side, we're replacing a few of our treadmills and a couple of ellipticals, and then of course, managing aquatics facilities.

You're always gonna be replacing uh something.

So next year we'll we will be replacing our main hot uh main pool and hot tub controller.

And then our trails and natural areas fund.

Uh we're gonna be continuing uh our our trail connectors.

Um I know the the compass uh neighborhood is really looking forward to some trail connectivity, so we are gonna work with that project and hopefully get them some trail connectivity uh to Cole Creek Regional Trail.

We've been I've been working with uh John Fruzzi and Transportation and David Passic in public works on on getting that trail connection east uh out of compass.

We're gonna be creating a redundant irrigation system at Serene Park.

Unfortunately, we're beholden to the reuse system that's managed by the Colliership Metro District.

So we're gonna be creating a redundant potable irrigation system so we can keep that park looking sharp in the in the high growth season.

And then finally, a big project out of TNAF is the Cole Creek Reach 2 trail.

Because that Col Creek Realignment Project is funded from FEMA, they cannot pay for the trail.

So we are going to pick up the tab on creating which I think will be an excellent trail from Reliance Park under County Line Road and then into the existing King Open Space Trail system that was just celebrated this past weekend.

And then finally in the concentration conservation trust fund, uh we've got a we've got a couple of projects that we've been deferring with uh more events, tournaments, programs at Erie Community Park, we're gonna be upgrading our maintenance and storage, right?

More events, more programs, more tournaments means you got more stuff that you need to store and more maintenance that you need to do at that park.

So uh we're gonna be doing that this year.

We're also gonna be looking at the linear trail area, uh installing a main line and an irrigation system to preserve those uh trees in that area, uh, but also uh create uh some additional tree diversity in the old town area.

Um what we're also gonna be upgrading the reliance uh park parking lot.

Um we're moving toward we're moving away towards gravel lots.

They require a lot of grading, snow removal's difficult.

So we're gonna be putting asphalt on the reliance park uh parking lots, make it a little bit easier to maintain and improve that user experience.

And then finally, we're gonna be doing a little bit of Coal Creek disc golf redesign once the Colliers Hill pedestrian bridge and trails installed uh later this year or later in uh 2026.

So that's what I have.

Questions.

Are you bored?

Don't ask me the question if you have enough because uh I'll have a different answer.

Go ahead.

You have a lot on your plate.

Yes, growing population, growing open space, growing park.

And yet you're gonna do with fewer part-time people because of your analysis.

Is that are you gonna have a scheduling kind of a thing?

And actually, that's deeper into that.

That was more on the recreation side where we did our our part-time staff reduction.

Actually, our our parks and open space part-time uh pretty much stayed flat for 26.

So it was more on the recreation side where we made those reductions.

And remember, we had a part-time person who was serving in that pseudo uh special event role.

So we included those hours as well as part of that reduction.

They were pitching in and okay.

Um the $10,000 capital improvement.

No, in OM.

Is that is that town wide for all departments, or is that a park special thing?

That's across the board.

It used to be 5,000 and everything costs more than $5,000 now.

So it got to the point where yeah, capitalizing our assets was becoming cumbersome.

So we did increase that to 10,000.

Um, that is at the discretion of the town.

Some towns have it at 50,000.

Um, it's just kind of dependent.

So, yes, it's across the board for the town.

Okay.

Um, thank you.

So the reduction in part-time employees, does that result in part uh reduction in programming?

Nope.

No.

And actually, if you look at our if you look at our individual programming areas, active adults, aquatics, therapeutic recreation, there's probably actually some increases in those in those operational budgets just because we're we're still growing.

So no, we're there, there'll be no reduction in services.

We were just looking at historically, right?

What we spent in terms of hours for part-time employees, and just like a lot of the other departments did with their operations and maintenance budgets, we were just able to say, hey, we didn't actually need that much, that many hours for 26.

And we were able to, and and now we have a little bit more uh full-time staff, and we're just being more efficient with our part-time staff.

Thanks.

So I know uh for your department specifically, you mentioned it before the operations and maintenance is always kind of an ongoing things.

And the what would how'd you put it?

The capital project.

Today's capital is tomorrow's uh OM.

Yeah, yeah.

So um since uh we only see two years in here, I just I'm trying to remember from do you have kind of an idea of like how much like uh year over year, say maybe the past three or four years we've we've been incrementing.

It usually averages on the on the parks maintenance side, we usually average between that three and five percent.

Now now now that's depending on if you have if you build a new park.

So when we were building a park in 2020 and then 2022 and then 2023, um obviously, you know, there are some costs that go up a little bit more.

Um, and then we you know we add maybe a staff member, um, but usually we're right around three three to five percent.

Now, when you're talking about 25 acres or another 15 acres, then that's probably where you start creeping up into the probably the five to 10% increases in certain line items when it comes to operate when it comes to parks maintenance operations.

So, and then maybe some additional equipment costs, um, some equipment acquisitions, maybe a few more pickups and things like that.

But usually when uh the how how we calculate it's it's really kind of one FTE per 10 acres of park, and then you have associated equipment that comes with that.

That's kind of the general uh NRPA adopted standard of get a park, you get a person, and you get some additional equipment.

Okay, makes sense.

And then um just had a general question about um with our our parks if for the public if they want to uh run out a picnic table or whatever.

Uh do we look at like uh um you know cost increase with that over time as well.

Is Rachel smiling right now?

There we go.

Rachel Rachel has done a fantastic job in looking at and we do.

So we do have an adopted uh cost recovery model that we update every five years, which we're actually looking at updating in 2026.

Oh, cool.

So we do look at everything from membership rates to party rentals to to room rentals to shelter rentals, and we look on on hey, are we are we matching the market?

Are we achieving our cost recovery goals when it comes to those those private rentals?

So to answer your question, yes, we do look at those.

Um the the general practices is every year you look at fees and then uh or you evaluate fees and then every other, and then on the off years you increase fees.

Yep.

Okay.

I want to loop back to the assistant coordinator special events position, and just to highlight that it will help support expanding programming, volunteer development, which was a specific ask.

And I'm hopeful that um we'll get some traction in actually getting a group of volunteers that could then be used in so many of the events that we have that could help, you know, all these groups from uh BBN to the Optimus Club to the chamber to the town events.

So fingers crossed, we'll get some uh good uh uh coordination around our our volunteers.

Yeah, thanks for doing that.

Um a lot on your plate.

I appreciate everything's going on.

Um I talk about what are the things that bring us together, and it's oftentimes community events.

Um it's music, it's art, and I think you have a big chunk of this in our town that helps us um be eerie.

Yeah, it's an honor.

I love this job.

Yeah, good deal.

Kudos from some from several people for returning the functionality to the water features in the lazy river.

Oh, just as a funny side note.

So, as I'm laid up here, my kids suppose that you gotta start watching parks and rent from the beginning again.

So I have been, so I get all their jokes, but it's like it's so funny, but it's so true.

No, it's so funny, it's so true.

Yes, you know, and we often make a lot of comparisons too.

Is it like the show?

Sometimes it is a lot of fun.

All right.

Thanks a lot, Lou.

Regarding the battery recycle program, yes, does the manufacturer take them back, and then you're buying them from the manufacturer.

I do believe they have it's it's kind of a swap program, like when you have a treadmill, you know, that that's that that's reaches the end of useful life.

You kind of swap it out, you give it back to the med.

Now I don't know what they do with it at the end of the day, but yes, it's a it's a kind of a trade-in program.

But it's not a stat, so the staff doesn't have to deal with it.

Yeah, you know, throw them in the dumpster.

They get they get properly recycled back with the I think I think David would be knocking on my door if you're throwing his dumpster.

Yeah, exactly.

Tossing the group.

He's gonna actually use it.

Yeah, now cost.

You're starting at some old work now.

All right, good deal.

Oh, you're all right, we're gonna jump in.

I just stayed up here from earlier.

Yeah, I'm gonna be up here.

Uh good evening, uh David Passek, Public Works Director for the town.

Um we'll just dive right in.

Uh salaries and benefits.

Um you'll see uh about a nine percent increase.

Um there are some reclassifications accounted for for some specific staff moving up in grade um just due to a uh tenure and experience.

Um there's also gonna be some in-grade movement anticipated for one of our engineering positions uh pending as PE licensure exam.

Um so we're looking at that for right now.

There's also anticipated uh grade adjustments um for a number of positions within public works right now, and then the largest portion of this will be the addition of two uh new positions within public works, a facilities maintenance technician too, and a street maintenance technician too.

To give a little background as to why we're asking for these positions, um, facilities maintenance tech, we should be sitting at around four and a half FTEs based on the square footage that we currently have with the town.

We're about to add 20,000 more square feet next door and uh pending budget approval for EREPD, we're gonna be adding even more.

Um we are currently at three FTEs, so we need to add at least one this year, and we need to start looking at some additional um FTEs in that area moving forward as well.

So trying to right size, make sure that we can keep up with the level of service.

Um, you know, talking with Chad, we feel like we have a pretty lean but efficient crew right now, um, but we definitely don't want to see any dip in level of service for our staff for our residents or for our council.

So that's the position uh that's the reason for that position.

Uh street maintenance.

Um, our last street maintenance technician, I don't, I think was added in uh 2023, if I remember correctly.

Um, since then we've um in 2026 we will have a 32% increase in lane miles of road within the town.

We're also adding uh street light acquisition to our uh asset management inventory.

So as we take on more assets, we need more uh contracted services and staff to help keep up with all of that.

So that's the reason for that position as well.

So operations and maintenance.

Um, you'll see a very significant reduction from last year to this year.

Uh significant reason for that is we have a number of grant um projects that are funded in our operation and maintenance um line item in 2025 that will either be rolled over but not carried forward or not having to need uh repetitive budgeting for moving forward.

We also took a really hard look at our consulting dollars through the budgeting process this year across all divisions.

Um with that, we found that uh we were over budgeting from historical standpoint for things that may arise versus things that we actually need to budget for.

So we wanted to make sure that we're right sizing that to a certain degree and really just reprioritizing making sure that we're evaluating how we're budgeting for training and other opportunities.

We want to make sure that we're budgeting for staff to go get training, but we don't want to budget more than what we're able to use in the given year.

So significant reduction in that area.

We're we also had a lot of uh increases in specific areas.

We did add a fair amount of dollars for um contracted services for street light maintenance.

There was um some adjustments up for just the ongoing maintenance that we have to do with street striping crack ceiling just due to increased costs.

Um but uh overall balanced out to still a net savings amount for the operation maintenance land items.

Uh, for capital, I won't go through all of our capital projects.

We needed a much longer meeting for that to cover all everything in public works.

Um I will touch on the highlights.

The significant portion of that will be the EREPD building.

Um addition to that, we will have we do have money budgeted for final design for the ECC expansion and potentially for the village at Colk Creek Parks and Open Space Facility.

That is just for design at this time.

This is that it does not account for any uh construction dollars at this time.

That is all pending um direction from council to move forward as well.

Um we also have some strategic uh renovations at the laws facility planned.

I know that there was a question about uh temporary measures for additional staffing at the laws facility.

Um we have uh renovations to the front lobby area that we are accounting for to add additional workspace.

We're also accounting for some renovations to our sign shop area to add some additional workspaces in there.

In 2025, we actually have a portable unit that's going in out there that will offset about nine spaces within the facility itself.

So we do have some measures that we are taking currently to help create innovatively more space out at Laws until we get a good path forward, whether it be a laws expansion or a new facility at the village of Colt Creek.

So with regard to transportation impact fund, we have uh continuation of uh county line road projects.

Um we'll be budgeting for the next phase of Erie of County Line between uh Erie Parkway and Tallene, as well as um beginning design work for some improvements north of Cheesman up to 52 as well.

Um we have budgeted for the county line road and Erie Park re intersection improvements.

Um that is a high crash area in town, so we want to make sure that we've already done a conceptual analysis of that, so we're gonna be trying to bring that forward for final design and um in 2027 look at bringing that forward for construction funding as well.

Um also in this, we have most of the pro most of the funds for the Coal Creek uh FEMA project that Luke mentioned are budgeted in the stormwater fund.

However, there are some dollars budgeted in the transportation impact fund because there will be two bridge replacements anticipated for that project on County Line Road and Kenosha.

Um so those are other big dollar items that we're working on right now.

Um some other projects that I do want to highlight.

Uh we have bus stop construction budgeted for next year.

Uh, we do have some additional feasibility analysis for North South Connectivity that council had requested that we bring forward.

So we are we are accounting for that at this time.

Um, and I do want to highlight um a huge win for our team.

Um we looked at the CIF fund, which is funded from a general fund transfer, and we were able to reprior prioritize projects by looking at our TMP and our our town wide safety analysis, and we looked at some projects that had been previously budgeted for, and we're not saying that we're not gonna do them, but we did find that they're not needed at this moment, so we're gonna push those out, look for other funding opportunities, whether that be uh grant funding or kind of coupling that with our street resurfacing program, and we're gonna be um as a result, we're gonna be saving about three and a half million in the general fund as a result of that of that reprioritization.

So I do want to just emphasize that we took a really hard look at a number of different options, both in our operating budget and general fund line item capital projects, and made sure that we were being really responsible with the dollars and how we're spending those.

So that's a highlight of anything.

I'm happy to answer any specific projects on questions or specific questions on projects that I didn't mention or any that I did mention as well.

And I'll also note that this is the department where the police building is.

So we have Chad here.

We can answer specific questions about that, and I do have slides later that will talk about where the debt payment is.

So this is the time definitely to ask about that project.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Um on the projects, um here it says that the 111th Arapahoe turn lanes got pushed to 2026.

Is that right?

Uh so they that project is out to bid right now.

Um, we anticipate based on the time of year that we're in that when we get bids in, they'll probably start work on some of the utility work this year, but that the actual work in the area that requires pavement will be deferred till next year just due to weather.

Okay.

So we are moving that forward.

That is out to bid, and we plan to get somebody under contract this year.

All right, sounds good.

Yeah, and then the design and um of the drainage improvements on 111.

Where are we at with that one?

The flooding.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Um, so we have a meeting with mile high flood district who is kind of leading the charge on that project, and we contributed funds towards that effort.

Um, we have a meeting with them coming up here in a couple weeks to kind of talk through um options and um different methods that we can we should be looking at, whether it be um areas along the 111th or areas upstream of 1111th, trying to overdetain upstream how however that might look.

So we are still in the beginning phases of that, but we are gonna be meeting with them here in the next I think month.

Okay, do we have any money set aside for that project?

Or is it just yeah, that's in the utilities fund?

Okay, so yeah, and that is actually in 2025 right now.

So we have allocated those funds to Mile High Flood District to start um the fees, the conceptual analysis of that, and then as we flesh those out, we'll budget funds appropriately to with Mile High Flood District, hopefully, to help uh fund construction project for that as well.

And then my last comment is the um FTE for the roads and the maintenance and all that.

It's that's the one thing that we've got to keep up on.

Um people will get frustrated if we're not filling potholes quickly and they'll get frustrated if those streets are deteriorating, not being done.

And um, at least I've gotten good feedback from where you're coming in and scraping and putting the new overcoat um on, and uh I certainly want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to keep the funding of that absolutely I appreciate that.

Yeah, we're uh excited to get another staff member out there and uh excited for the the keeping moving forward with the level of service that we have.

So PCI's increased, hasn't it?

Yes, yeah.

So I'll highlight that all right.

Will Kenosha get done this year?

I know it's it's imminent, but I don't know if it's gonna get done.

Uh John.

This calendar year.

Uh Kenosha neighborhood.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Uh so we're currently actively working in that neighborhood.

So uh there's mill and overlay activity, and we're gonna we packaged rebundled traffic calming as part of the projects there.

So concrete is done, current milling is happening, paving is next, and we're gonna add some signings, tracking, and traffic bombing as part of the project.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I I got one good complement for you from one neighbor.

Well, I might in the in Kenosha.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That look is awesome.

All right.

Other questions?

I have some questions.

I probably more for finance, but first I I know that you know, in the um tip form for South West Wild, we did add some projects for consideration for the regional transportation plan, which hopefully they'll move forward and be considered in the future.

I I it's just because I don't really understand how it works.

But so as we're moving projects forward, and we maybe get funding, you know, from Dr.

Cog or C dot or someone else.

How is that reflected in the forecast or the budgeting?

So because that funding is not guaranteed, we don't put it in there.

Um that said, um, you know, we budget for the projects usually fully.

We don't supplant any funding.

Um, so my guess would be I'm not sure how it's structured, but if it is in type of reimbursement structure, when that funding comes in, it would essentially offset the cost in whatever fund we did the project in.

So if it was the general fund or the CIF, we would offset that revenue.

Yeah, and we would wait until we have actual notice of award before we budget anything into any cycle.

So we put those projects in for consideration as we get clarity of their whether or not they're approved to move forward, we will make sure to get them budgeted appropriately with our grants team in our public work.

We may bring that as resolution like we have with the previous one.

Because one of the things I'm remembering is the confusion around the Eerie B grant from Tot that took forever to come in, and then it was not there.

And so um, I'm just wondering if there's anything like that that we could expect in 2026.

Yes, I I think um one of the it's it becomes very chicken or the egg, so I understand.

Um, and there's there's two different ways to do it.

Um, some folks want to do a you know a grant fund pot, and you know, they kind of allocate out matching funds and things like that.

But in this case, it's especially if it's reimbursables or if the project um has to be funded in order to move forward, it's really best for us to bring a resolution forward with the grant application and say this is what we've been awarded, this is how much it's gonna cost, and then we can actually put it in the budget as a supplemental, and then that way it's a lot cleaner and um just easier for everybody to understand where the money's coming from.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, no problem.

Um, so uh yeah, with you said the uh the county line road improvements uh for achievement to 52 that's bud budgeted for 26, but that is in the 2026 budget and the transportation impact fund.

Okay, all right.

So uh do we know approximately when that would start or um next year is when we're gonna start design, so probably just start on construction next year.

Um yeah, we're we took the approach this year with our capital budget of minimizing anything new that because we have a number of items because we public works also heavily assists uh utilities with their capital projects and project management.

So um we're trying to make sure that we're catching up as much as we can on projects that are active before we start adding too many new things moving forward.

So we're just trying to capture the things that we feel that we can take on starting in in the next year.

So and then uh I guess with respect to uh street repair and things like that.

So uh I know you guys are tied into like asphalt prices and those sorts of things.

Are we seeing more of a studying in that market, or is it uh asphalt's been pretty okay?

Concrete seems to be the one that fluctuates a lot more.

Um but we've we've seen pretty good pricing on asphalt so far this year, at least this year, um consistent with last year.

Um so we feel good about the dollar amount that we have budgeted currently for the street resurfacing program and pothole programs.

So cool.

Yep.

Um, the only other thing I was gonna say is like for poor Julian.

I mean, your total expenditures were all a million dollars more is than his, but yours shows up 11% increase, and you have more than 286.

So yeah.

Yeah, I I was like, you can't give me the extra seven million.

I can't see that uh county line road, um, north and south of Erie Parkway.

What's that gonna look like when it's when it's all done?

Yeah, so um south of Erie Parkway, which is under construction now will be uh four lanes down to uh so two lanes each direction down to the roundabout, the roundabout will be two lanes, and then it will transition back to one lane each direction, so two lanes total south of the roundabout until we um kind of look at the corridor south of there.

Um north of Erie Parkway, it'll be um three lanes, so two lane, one lane each direction, north and south, and then uh center running turn lane where appropriate.

Um, and then the big expenditure expenditure on the north side of Erie Parkway is gonna be the underpass under the um that leads from town center over to the rec center.

So ECC.

Yep.

Thanks.

Yeah, no problem.

Regarding street maintenance.

Um the request for 26, 27, and 28 is four and a half million.

Yep.

Is that um and then it jumps a million in 29 in another half million and 30?

Those three years, is it anticipated that the miles milled and repay will be less over those three years?

Um, not necessarily.

We have so we did get our our new street scan in um this year.

We have gone through and done the analysis, and we're gonna be sitting down and kind of prioritizing those projects.

Uh, we don't anticipate necessarily a reduction in total lane miles being resurfaced.

Um we do anticipate that in the coming years there will be increased costs accordingly.

Um it's hard to predict.

Sometimes you know we get good pricing, other times um it's skyrockets and and we just have to kind of adjust accordingly.

Um I will say that uh as we continue to do these projects, we're gonna look at the cost of asphalt year over year.

We're gonna look at um our continued street can street scans and see where the deterioration is occurring more rapidly and making sure that we're prioritizing um resurfacing in those areas or reconstruction if needed.

So there might be some adjustments to those numbers in the coming years, but we feel good about where we're at right now.

Sounds good.

Yeah, and just want to give another shout out to uh the Austin kind of line road circle.

Um, I've only heard positive things about it.

Appreciate that.

Yeah, thank you.

It's been a it's been a uh good project so far.

Um, hopefully we'll continue to keep that moving forward.

So my wife was trying to track you down at the wetlands to oh gotcha.

I appreciate that.

It's always good to hear us to drive it every day for school pickup and drop off.

So yeah, that's great to hear.

Um, yeah, that the wetlands for those of you that are able to come is great, great turnout.

Uh, really great project.

I encourage everybody to go out and check it out when they can.

So cool.

I think the only thing that was in question in my mind was the million dollars for the page property for the parks and rec campus, Sarah.

We have a study session coming up um early November.

And so from a budgetary perspective, depending on what we learn and give direction on that could um adjust somewhat.

Yeah, and we wanted to make sure that we just had that money in there if we decide to move forward with it.

If we get different direction, we'll have to kind of reevaluate and then probably pivot to looking at a laws expansion and starting kind of more design efforts on that front.

Yeah, it's a good point.

You'll still need the money regardless of whether it ends up there or someplace else.

Yep.

Okay.

Cool.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Todd.

All right.

Um, Todd, talk about that.

Todd Fesson, uh utilities director.

This is my last day.

Julian looked good.

Um I appreciate whoever put together these graphs, so I didn't have to scroll like five pages through Dream to get to the rest of it.

But um, I'll talk a little bit about it.

I think we all know what the big what the big things are, but we'll touch on those two for the record.

Um so I just wanted to mention, as Sarah said, we do a rate study.

Um historically, we've done rate study every five years.

Nowadays we're looking at doing them every two years.

There's some folks who actually do it every year.

Um, you kind of tune it up.

Um, and we do the rate study because the funds that um typically we're operating out of in utilities with um with help from public works is the water fund, the wastewater fund, and the storm drainage fund.

And storm drainage is actually a growing area of our operation.

Um to give you an idea of the way that we like to approach our work is from a um from a maintenance management standpoint.

We want to shift as much as we can towards predictive maintenance.

And there's there's really three modes of maintenance.

You're either doing predictive, you're doing preventative, or you're doing uh corrective maintenance.

And um, we're trying to bring more work in-house and um add the staff in those places to do a lot of that really expensive heavy work that we do and shift towards predictive.

So the easy way to see it for those of you who aren't really familiar with that is um for me is if you're driving down the street in your car and your data and your engine light comes on, that might be because your gas cap is loose, or it might be because there's a major problem with your car, and that's predicting something's gonna happen.

So that's when you want to get on that.

You want to know ahead of it.

Um, the preventative is more you're changing your oil, are you filling putting air in your tires so you don't have you know some kind of unforeseen or a problem you could have gotten ahead of, and then corrective is more um you're to you're getting your car towed off the side of the street because you've been taking care of it.

And so we're really trying to shift in in and everyone does this in the industry, it's always trying to shift more and more towards predictive.

So that kind of leads us in a bit to talking about the positions and salaries and benefits are first.

Um we are looking at adding four positions in utilities.

We originally on our um our uh projections, staffing projections that we've been keeping up year after year.

We keep pushing over a year to not have to hire as many people, and so at this point, we were stacked up about 14 staff members.

We were able to cut half of those, say we can comfortably cut half of those with where we know where we're at right now, which brought us down to seven.

Then we cut another two, which brought us down to five, and then we said one of these is gonna touch the general fund.

Let's let that one go too, because we can we can look at that later.

Um, we can keep up.

Um, the four that we are looking at the first one is a water resources manager.

Um all the communities around us have a water resources manager, if not several.

Um, those folks are the folks that I often see at the NISP meetings and the Windy Gap meetings and a lot of these other high-level meetings.

We um tend to send attorneys to those meetings uh to have the expertise there that we need there, where a lot of the other communities are sending water resources managers.

So the um we outsource a lot of water resources, water rights related, water resources, water engineering work that we could bring in-house.

So, this position, I think in the first year would um, I would think at least like 75% of it would be paid for by us reeling some of that stuff back and taking it in-house.

And um, and I say 75% because anybody takes time to get fully up to speed.

Um, I think over time we could we could cover the costs of the whole position um through uh uh in-sourcing that kind of stuff.

Um the other position is a wastewater utility mechanic.

That's our actually already in the budget.

It was in the budget last year for a uh operator, and the staff at the plant felt they didn't need another operator, and we said now's the time we have to get a maintenance person because that plant is probably about a hundred million or so dollar asset, probably 150 million dollar asset, and we're having the operators maintain it.

You know, they operate, do the lab work, maintain it, fix things, keep it running.

That starts to push us more towards that corrective type maintenance.

And um, the analogy I like to use for that is a 737 costs about a hundred million dollars, and the equivalent of having the operators maintain it and operate it is probably the equivalent of having the pilots maintain the plant while we've loading up bags.

Probably not the plane you want to get on.

And our our wastewater plant has to run 24-7.

I've seen it when it shut down for a few hours and it filled up with 30 feet of sewage in the headworks.

So it can never fail, it has to be maintained from that more preventative, predictive model.

Um, the other two positions that we're looking at are a storm drainage uh technician and adding another person to the storm drainage crew.

Uh, this is a new crew we've been growing, and we've been getting more equipment for and stuff to build our in-house expertise.

Um, that allows them to do a lot of the maintenance that we're currently farming out to contractors.

Um, that position pays for itself in the first year, and it also allows us to utilize the equipment that we have already to do that work.

Um, when we farm it out, we find that we don't get as high quality work and we don't get as much work done.

Sometimes the crews leave for a week because they got to go somewhere else and come back and work on our stuff.

So having our dedicated teams doing that.

Um, and the same thing's true on the distribution side.

We have four people on the wastewater collection side, and we only have three on the water distribution side.

So adding a distribution operator um allows those crews to stay up doing more maintenance 24-7 or not 24-7, but you know, five days a week.

I don't want to overload them.

Um, but um having also with the equipment that we've acquired and then having these crews separated in the summertime, they're not trying to share like a vector truck or a camera trailer, they can stay working all summer long on these things.

So that's a summary of the positions.

Happy to circle back around.

Um, I figure I might just keep going through the rest of the budget.

I'm just thinking we had the sewer plant, the wastewater plant down.

And we had guys working around the clock to get it working again, or remember, right?

That's right, yeah.

And when it does, it it what it is is a screen that's at the very beginning of the plant that screens out all the heavy stuff for rags and stuff like that.

And when that thing breaks, we can't not do that.

So people have to come in around the clock and manually rake that screen into like 55 gallon drums and get rid of that stuff.

Um when we had the plant failed like four years ago, um, it power went out.

We'll keep it simple like that.

And we were down for probably like five hours.

When the power went out, the computers at the plant froze, and so it looked like it was still running, but it wasn't.

And the headworks, which is the main building when you first get into the plant where water first came in, filled up with like 30 feet of sewage, and it was probably like a hundred foot long room by 50 foot, just full of sewage.

And we got it just in time and managed to get the plant back up and running.

Um, and that was a simple, that was another thing that simple maintenance program, a better maintenance program probably would have got ahead of.

Yeah, I remember you sent pictures of that.

No need to reset.

It makes these budget discussions easier.

Next year's budget, yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, send pictures of sewage, even from other plants.

So um what would your show be called the impression, right?

Yeah.

I don't want to know.

I don't think we can say that a little bit.

Wouldn't it be funny?

Let's just say that.

Um I want to jump into the um, I'll jump into the operations and maintenance now.

That's another big jump.

You see, a 40% it looks like it looks like we're not doing a very good job because uh O and M should be pretty stable, but we just have a lot of big stuff hitting this year.

Lots of the strategic plans that have been we've been kind of stalling on while we're waiting for the comp plan to get finished.

And I mean, we have a handful of them, and they're a couple hundred thousand a piece.

We've got the 11th and um the 111th flooding thing, it's about a million dollars in the budget, I think for that.

Um, we've got uh the camera trailer, which is 350,000.

There's just it uh I guess I should add to that, we've got about a half a million dollars to dredge out some um detention ponds that have filled in, silted in.

Um, and our water um water rights fees have gone up.

They when they jump up, they jumped up like 100,000 each in the last year.

Um, and there's a handful of those.

We lease water from a company called Bijou Irrigation and Ditch Company, I think.

Um we leased like 950 um shares of CBT from them.

It's like a gap supply between now and um this, and those went from about 330 dollars a share a year to five five hundred dollars, I think 475 a year.

And we've been leasing those for like probably eight, nine years.

I asked them for a return return customer discount and they declined.

Um is the market price.

That's that's what they're going for now, and they just kind of realized it and went, hey, we've been undercharging you.

So um that's critical supply for us.

But when you look at that jump about four million dollars, it sounds like wow, what are you guys doing?

That's 40%.

But it's it's all of these things to just add up really fast when they're a dollar amounts.

Um, I could go on about other things, but you kind of get the sense um of what we're talking about there.

And um, and so then I I'll talk probably pretty briefly about the biggest number, um, which is the capital, and the majority of that is is due to the north water treatment facility, our redundant treatment plant, the plant that's gonna treat Boulder Creek water and give us a reliability for the future and keep up with the demands that we have coming.

Um, it will eventually be the treatment plant that we'll treat NISP water at by expanding it.

Um, but this initial phase is the heavy lift, and we have to build a lot of the infrastructure that um we don't want to build the tanks for the size of the plant now.

We want to build them so they're big enough, so when we go to expand it, we don't have to also do that too.

So um, this first phase of this plant is is very expensive.

Um, we've been planning it for I think as long as I've been here.

Um, and in fact, it Paul Zilas was his idea.

He has hasn't been here for a while.

But um, and then we have the other big projects like the the water storage tanks.

We have two water storage tanks, which we've been trying to get the land for for seven years, eight years, and then all of a sudden we've got it.

And now I feel like the dog that caught the car.

Like we've got to build these two.

Um, so uh just a lot of really big infrastructure stuff.

And um, and then of course, we're still in NISP, we're still working on that.

That's big dollars every year, and uh Chimney Hollow, we're working on that.

That's now that it's coming into operational mode, we're having to pay higher amounts for that.

Um, we've got issues to deal with there too.

So um, I think I'll leave it at that.

Alicia told me to not talk for too long that she's HR director.

So the first year I presented the budget, you remember Gary Baylin.

He told me, Are you ready?

I said, Yeah, I think so.

He said, Are you sure?

And I was like, Yeah, he's like, have you read through the entire budget?

I said, I guess I'll look at it.

So I I did it line by line, the entire budget.

It took like an hour and a half, and then they decided to come up with a different format, which is what you see now.

Yeah, definitely.

I see Gary periodic audibly up in Winter Park where he lives.

So I'll let him know.

This is uh the teachings of uh Terry Don.

Yeah, he's a good guy.

All right.

Any questions?

I mean, you got big things, right?

We we know that they need to be done.

Um yeah, go ahead.

So when we look at this and we see, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.

Um that's not obviously going to be spent next year.

So it rolls.

Yeah, we so that that's a great question.

I'm glad you had us asked it because I wanted to touch on this.

Is Sarah and I have been working with a financial planning group called PFM, and they handle like big, big infrastructure projects, and they can help us kind of like figure out how to structure debt because that's what we'll need is to um to issue bonds.

But you're right, it it the project will take at least three, four years to build, and so um we'll have to incrementally do that, and you'll probably see a pretty even amount of spending over those years.

There we'll be doing some early procurement, some of the electrical equipment and things like that are like three years out.

So right now we're in design, but we might start acquiring some of that equipment, getting ahead of that, acquiring that.

And to add to that too, um, much like Hilltop, you know, they they're more specialized.

PFM is more specialized in water, but what they'll also help us do is is identify the right time to issue the debt.

Um, because of those, you know, we've talked a lot about those three-year thresholds and the 85% spend.

And because these projects can take so long and have such you know iterative design phases that that helps us know how much cash to use at what point and then when to insert that debt and bring that forward for you all to make the decision to issue it, um, so that we're doing that timing well and making sure we're we're doing that uh in a way that makes sense.

Um, so that's also part of it as well.

So, yes, to just add to that, uh, the debt issuance may not come next year.

Um, but it could, and it'll all depend on how that planning moves forward and how much money needs to be spent for the project.

And it gets paid off through water tap fees or water rate fees, the the water study that was done last year to get things in alignment.

They're revenue bonds, so we pledge the revenues um, yeah, as the payment source.

So actually that part of your good question because with the tab for fee uh changes, so I've noticed just in building permits, we've gone pretty far down.

So are is there are we sure we're yielding what we want to out of those um with the lack of permits?

Yeah, we'd rather be seeing more of those.

Um we were relatively conservative with how many tap fees we did put in.

Um, because we were we were a little afraid of this.

I think we did we did 600, even though we were at the time around 800.

Now that said, to Todd's point, we are planning to do rate studies more often.

So if um something has to shift, we have to look at that.

We'll be uh engaging Rafatellis in the next year to start looking at that again.

Um so if we do find ourselves in a position where we need to reevaluate, we have the consultants to help us with that.

Is that part of the fees and charges?

You meant you know the email I sent you.

You said you're we're at like 83% or right on track for our fees and charges.

Or is this so those are separate?

The fees and charges um that you're talking about are are just a different revenue source.

Um, I think those kind of encompass all of the different fees that we collect for a variety, like what you see on the fee schedule.

Um, the rates that we actually click for utilities, those go directly into the utility fund and those fund as the enterprise fund.

So it's that's more like you know, whenever you put your paycheck into your bank account, then you pay all your bills out.

That's more how that functions.

Whereas the rates and fees you're looking at are more of those um fees that come in through our fee schedule.

So are we how are we doing, you know, with the building permits down?

Um, you know, how are we on track for our latest forecasts?

We're looking still very good.

Um, but we can put together some more information.

Um, Kristen, our CIP analyst, um, she takes a very close look at how our capital projects um and then also the operating alongside the revenue that's coming in, how that not just for the next year, but how that looks for many years because many of these are multi-year capital projects.

Um, and everything that she's put together for us have been very um structurally solid.

Um, we always bring that to the first reading for you to look at, but um, we'll have those materials very soon for you so you can look at all of the um utilities funds um forecast and see what those revenues are looking like.

So yeah, just want to clarify real quick.

Our fees and charges revenue does include the utility rate fees, it doesn't include the water tap fees or the impact fees, those go into the other funds, but the amount spent the about 84% that does include the rate fees and rates themselves.

Okay.

Um yeah, it would be helpful to know based on the building permits and whatnot if we're behind, you know, where we predicted, you know, for this year, and you know, what we might anticipate for next.

Yeah, and another part too of the way that the rate structure uh rate studies are structured too, um, the the tap fees and and those those all really go towards the growth component, whereas like the rates are really for the operational component, and it's really split up that way.

Um, so I think that's something else for us to consider as well.

Those rates are really going to be funding most of what you already have, whereas those impact fees really support the other side.

But I know there's a lot more granular to that.

Yeah, and there's some things that have a both both a growth and a redundancy component.

So we try and find figure out how to split that up.

Um and the the bonds obviously are financed, so you pay them over time, we'll have an annual debt service payment.

And so we'll have to really work those numbers to come back and say based on the reserves we have and the money we're bringing in, this is what it could look like on a water bill or something like that.

Exactly.

Yeah, the quite the challenge when you have yeah, certain revenue coming in, but you have these big expenses now that you have to get there.

No, it's a great point too, because I mean, all the more reason for us, especially when things are a little bit more volatile or uncertain, um, to do a rate study a little bit more frequently and really understand the impacts.

Thanks.

Okay.

Thanks.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Okay, that includes the department budget.

That yeah, that that concludes the department budgets.

We're in the home stretch, everyone.

Thank you, everybody.

But I'm sure there might be more questions, so we'll stay with yeah, no escape fees, please.

So um with that, um I will just say that part of what we're incredibly proud of this year is that we were able to budget or to balance the general fund budget through 2030, um, minus the CIF, which we'll talk about in just a moment.

Um so what you see here, um, obviously those lines do get quite close together, the end of expendable fund balance and minimum fund balance.

Um, but again, as you get to the out years, there are always strategic decisions we'll continue to make.

But I think the most important here is that we have um been able to create a sustainable budget over time.

Um in uh 2026 column there.

What I want to call attention to uh that CIF transfer, as I had mentioned earlier, that does include those uh revenue proceeds, um, but that will transfer to the CIF, which you'll see in the next slide.

The fleet transfers uh are the all of the fleet items that you have already approved, and then the debt.

So this number here, that 4.6 includes the remaining PD payments and the uh sorry, the remaining ECC payment and the PD payment for 2026.

And then it also includes um a an anticipated debt payment for the COPs at 3.3 million.

And I also added a 5% escalator on there of 150,000 to accommodate any fluctuation in that payment that may come from uh a slight increase to the cost, a slight decrease to the cost, interest rate change depending on when we issue.

That's the deadline that perfectly.

Yes, that's that debt line, the purple line.

Okay.

So you can see there, um, then the debt payment does drop slightly in 2027 because we make that final payment on ECC, and we're only paying at that point the COPs, and we are paying the um remaining debt on the uh on the original police station.

Yeah, so basically at that point, that is PD debt and uh mind mitigation.

Uh sorry, Lee.

And uh so that is where that fits in there.

And as you can see, we can do that.

Um we still have uh operating turn back that we're accommodating for.

We are continuing to um, and just so everybody's aware when I say turn back, I mean funding that falls to fund balance in the end of the year.

We anticipate those savings.

We are continuing to refine that.

We're getting better.

As you can see, we're getting better at budgeting, we're getting better at refining that.

So that number may start to shrink over the years, um, but it might still increase, but like I said, shrink in terms of percentage.

Um, so ultimately we are seeing um a healthier budget.

Uh so with that, I'll I'll ask if there's any questions about how we've structured this, or Cassie, if you have anything to add.

Makes sense to me.

We're quite proud.

I guess yeah.

So based on the projection of the yellow and black lines there.

So pretty much from 2028, we're kind of doing uh pay as you go with with um the with capital with capital.

Essentially, yes, it's it's a great way to put that.

Um, and I think what that does open up room for uh is what kind of ballot items go forward, you know, what frees up possible general fund balance to go towards other projects, um, then we have dedicated funding sources for other ones.

So if that's the direction the council goes, that's as yeah, essentially where we would maybe want to try to fill the gap with something like that.

Okay, and that minimum fund balance is the 25% of revenue of projected expenditures, right?

Yep, that's as low as we can.

That includes a table reserve, taber reserve, emergency fund and a contingency or stabilized stabilization, yes.

So we have we have an extra one that most municipalities don't have, so we're like extra cautious.

So if the economy downturns, we can handle that for a couple of years.

If there's an opportunity that looks really good, you want to spend five million dollars on, or just funding for that.

Um that's what that minimum fund balance is because in a downturn, if it does happen, that's really the time to build big capital things in the sense that they become less expensive.

Um so if we've got the money, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you think about any of the recessions, the big recessions, right?

The 08, the tech bubble, um right, the government was pumping money into the economy um because projects had just come to a screeching halt.

So believe me, I'm not hoping for that.

But if we have a little bit of reserve that we could tap into if that were to happen, um that could play well for us for the long term.

Yes, and we absolutely maintain that.

Yeah, it's there.

Okay.

Um this before, I didn't want to go too deep into this, but just um uh and this is actually from the budget book, but on um page 22 um for revenues by type.

And I was trying to do a comparison because of trying to compare the sizes of these bar these bars, but uh you know, I realize permits are you know less of a um uh we're not totally relying on that for for um uh our total revenue sources, but with the downturn that went in 25.

Um I was trying to compare because like 2020 was fairly sizable.

Uh so uh for 2023, I I don't know how 2025 and 2026 compare to 20 or what we're projecting, sorry, for 2026 compares to 2023 because that seems like they're more closer in size amount.

Um for like the actual number of permits or the revenue, all the revenue, yeah.

Um we can pull that up uh for what we're projecting.

Um, but yes, I mean we we like I said we're doing negative one from what is previously um budgeted, which was also which was pretty conservative.

Um I will say that part of the reason why we're only doing negative one is we did have conversations with the planning team and with with director Normella um about what she does know is has been discussed and could possibly be in the pipeline for next year too.

So um, in terms of how many permits, it's so hard to predict.

I mean, you know, the years we did 650, then it was 800.

That's that'd be great.

But um, I think uh we tried to make the best educated guess that we could, kind of knowing what was possibly in the pipeline.

Um so I don't know if that really answers your question.

We can talk with specific numbers on the case.

I also clarify, I think part of the issue here is the the negative one percent is from the current budget, not actuals.

And so to put numbers on that, last year we collected 8.1 million in building permits.

We budgeted for this year 5.5.

So it's one percent down from 5.5, but last year we got 8.1.

Yeah, so it's actually a big decrease.

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

Yeah, so I was just I mean, from on if you're looking at the actual permit numbers from page 99, and this for some reason in the budget book that's got truncated a little bit, but if it's the PDF, it's yeah, sorry.

We're working with clear gap on that one.

Um so but uh yeah, from 2024 to 2025.

So there were uh you know, 3800 almost 3900 in 2024, we're down to you know about 1600 for for this year, and then um yeah, uh commercial really went down as 146 in 2024 and and 50 for yeah, so um I just yeah, I know we're aware, but I just yeah, I always wanna I think we we're gonna keep a close eye on it.

Yes, and I Sarah will absolutely be helping us watch that.

So yes, and I would say in 2024, we also had a lot of uh permits that were pulled for roofs.

Oh, okay, yeah, so that was abnormal.

Gotcha, yeah, yeah.

I was one of those.

So I'm not all of them.

So the minimum fund balance is it real cash that we have?

Well, that's that's a kind of a complicated financial.

Yes, we we have quite a bit of our um our assets are liquid.

So we keep um a significant portion of our portfolio in uh accessible money markets um and short-term uh treasury bonds.

So um I reinvest quite a bit of our portfolio on um six to six month to two year terms, but we keep a very large portion of um our portfolio in that in those money markets so that we have access to that.

We also keep um a pretty good amount of money in our just our checking account to move.

So all that to say yes, that money is liquid and available to us based on the way that our financial uh policies, our financial investment policies are set up.

We have to have them structured in a way um that align with those policies and that requires us to keep a pretty good portion of it liquid.

So the the portion which is not in money market is up to a fluctuation.

It can make money or lose money.

So yes, it is, but um, because of also the way that our policy is set up, we have um we generally do short-term treasury bonds, commercial paper, things like that.

So we um are generally over the benchmark in our investments.

That's actually why our investments are up about 10%.

We're seeing a very high return on our investments right now because we've been able to reinvest in short-term um uh treasury bonds at least over the last year and a half.

We've seen almost everything reinvesting at about four and a half percent.

I'm only seeing them come down to four percent now.

Um so because of that and because they're short term, we get the higher yield interest rate um and there's a lot less volatility.

Um, we do not invest per our financial investment policy in high volatile um uh areas, and there are actually areas where we are not um able to invest in purely because of the way the policy is structured and as a governmental entity.

So risk investment.

Yeah, low risk, absolutely.

So in other words, this money is making it.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes, and actually, if you look in the budget at um our uh our actuals for investment income, you'll see I believe we um had investment income of about two and a half million dollars last year, and that money um continues to make, like I said, above the benchmark, our benchmark's about 4.25, and we see investments right now about 4.5.

Um, like I said, those are starting to dip a bit, but our benchmark does adjust as uh the market adjusts.

So does the money go into the minimum fund balance or goes into the general?

Um so the budget or it goes wherever we're budgeting it essentially.

Um so it's it's kind of it's a portion of the revenue.

Yeah, it's a portion of the revenue, exactly.

Yes.

Yeah, those are great questions.

I love to answer those questions.

That's that's the one of the fun parts of my job too, by the way.

So one of your comments was that um it would be great if we had I think it was whatever it was 800 building permits because from a budgeting perspective, that's like makes everything.

I don't know if it's great from a yeah standpoint.

We are dealing with the other end of that, which is the general feeling things need to get back to a predictable um pace.

And I think we're there.

I just hope we haven't gone too far the other way.

Um where we don't have enough permits to do what we need to do.

All right, I think I have one more slide.

Yep, one more one more slide.

So this is the one that we just have to keep a close eye on.

This is to to counselor Bell's point, pay as you go.

Um, we have been able to balance the uh CIF out through 2028 with transfers in, but beginning in 2029, we do have to begin to really take a strategic look at how we are funding um those projects.

Now, keep in mind a lot of these projects are far out, they're iterative, um, they may or may not have capacity, but just want to call attention to um, you know, that will we do have the funding um to continue to work through um projects for the next few years.

Um, of course, some of those projects may roll over and continue um and push other projects out.

Um, but for the time being, what is currently in the CIF um will we need to be um considered uh over the next few years to ensure that we can continue to fund those capital projects.

And there's things that are not included here.

Um this is a statement, tell me if I'm right or wrong.

But if we do go to the voters and ask them to help fund certain capital needs that could help us in this, yes.

Yes, and we would have a dedicated um funding source to transfer into the CIF to fund that specifically.

So absolutely.

Yep, that would offset quite a bit.

Okay.

Whoop.

And then finally, just reminding everybody what I said at the beginning on dates.

Um, we will have a public hearing next week with the proposed budget.

We'll have some more information, but obviously it will be um a kind of you know reformed version of what you've seen tonight.

Um encourage you to continue to look for questions and uh dig into the budget document.

I've gotten some great questions and I love that.

Um public hearing um November 18th to adopt both the URA and the town budget, and then um we will do our final supplemental and the tax levy uh certification on December 9th.

Wonderful.

And if the sorry, the the tax levy, assuming we don't extend that is at the oh sorry, we still have the police station, so that will be so that's not dependent on the levy.

That would be purely for um the items that uh we just have to make sure that what we're collecting will sufficiently cover the payment for uh the debt payment for the uh ECC and the PD building.

The COPs are not funded by tax dollars, they're yeah, they're general funds, so those um we do not have to certify anything related to that.

Okay, especially since we probably won't issue till next year anyway.

All right, I just want to say a big thank you to first you for getting this in a format that at least I was able to absorb.

I um appreciated the the department formats for all the same, and then it allowed each of them to come up and explain what the nuances were and what they needed.

That was easy for me to take in.

Um, and then I want to thank all the department heads, obviously doing the budgeting process, which by the way, I'm in your job.

Actually, I'm in Denise's job for my day job.

I get it, right?

And it's an iterative process, it's not always easy.

Uh, it could be frustrating.

Um, but I think what you brought forward to us is um reasonable, and I certainly uh feel like I can hold a straight face when I'm communicating um what we've done.

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

I do appreciate it.

Any other comments, thoughts from the group tonight?

It would be button had some savings.

We just go see.

Yeah, except your line.

We threw straws on this.

I do want to extend a thank you for um, I know we've had a lot of study sessions this year, a lot of information, but um a lot of why this budget I think is reflective and is digestible, is we've gotten a lot of feedback this year from the council, and that helped us to really um make sure that we brought something forth that you guys could understand, get behind and um feel good about.

So thank you for that for taking the time to spend with us to make that happen.

I know it's not always easy, but um I think the budget is a great budget, and I think it shows that it's worth it.

So thank you for your work to get us here.

Totally, but a lot of those debates and discussions, right?

They played out there, and then we got into a place where you could do what you needed to do.

Yeah, yeah.

Appreciate not only all the work from from everybody, but uh yeah, I know with the survey being late, you know, we put extra pressure on and then our our uh our I we always call it a retreat.

I think it's more of a summit.

I I don't see no retreating in those days, but um uh you know you took that feedback and and I think you did a great job, so I appreciate it.

Yeah, I just I want to echo, I always feel so grateful because this is not my how my brain works, and I so appreciate you, Sarah, that you're able to help me, you know, figure this out and understand it just like you said, make it make sense and with all the departments.

This is a great strategy, and I think it's great for the community too to digest it.

I also just want to say kudos to the whole team because um you know we're seeing that this is challenging times in government and seeing a lot of um surrounding municipalities that are struggling right now and having to make some really difficult choices, and so um I'm just really grateful that we're not in that situation where we're having to totally make terrible choices.

So um thank you so much.

Truly, truly grateful.

You're either growing or dying, and we're fortunate that Erie is growing.

So that is helpful.

All right, with that, it is 8 15, and I will adjourn this meeting so I can get to my next episode of parts.

With that, it is eight fifteen, and I will adjourn this meeting so I can get to my next episode of Hearts and you get to season four.gov forward slash trail map.

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