In year five.

And it also includes an additional two hundred thousand dollars for affordable housing projects, which will be uh one year one of a five-year plan to get that to one million dollars in annual uh transfers as well.

So that uh in summary uh the proposed budget maintains the current tax rate at 39.54 cents, uh allocates 3.1 million dollars for the pavement management street resourcing program, uh 1.2 million dollars in funding for infrastructure improvements, an additional 200,000 for sidewalk and ADA improvements, uh an additional 200,000 for affordable housing process uh projects, provides an average 4.0 merit market increase for employees, uh adds a 2% incentive to eligible public safety officers with 15 years of service, provides for additional eight police positions and six fire rescue positions, increases investment in operational departmental funding and increased funding for support departments.

Um next steps with the city budget.

Uh at May 5th uh council meeting, the city will present an in-depth look at uh the general fund budget along with other operating funds budgets.

Um on the Thursday, May 8th, the GC uh convention visitor authority and Shepard Moore Library will have their budget presentations.

Um June 9th, we'll have a public hearing on the proposed budget with budget adoption June 12th.

And if there's any questions, I'll be happy to answer right now.

Have a couple of questions.

One is the sidewalk.

How much sidewalk does that amount of money cover?

I know that there's the engineering department has a ratio for how much funding goes to each um linear, I think, mile of side.

I think it's $50 a linear foot.

I'm not trying to step on your toes.

That sounds like the cost of that sounds about right.

They have a number of how much that goes to.

I just don't know what we're doing.

Yeah, where's the engineering?

I want to I want to believe that by the moment this is all built out, that we will have enough funding for about four miles worth of um of sidewalk on an annual basis.

Okay, by the time we'd be able to reach the year five mark, which will tremendous compared to basically having nothing right now.

I know you and I spoke the engineering, all that stuff's into it, but I think the actual physical build-outs, I mean, I'm around the money, fifty dollars craft, but we just talked about this last week.

Remember, okay.

That's um ID.

I'm sorry.

I mean, no, that's fine.

I didn't want to interrupt you.

Um, the raises, you said it's merit market.

What what's the cost of living or is that included in that?

Um that's part of the four percent of the 3% market and a one percent here.

Okay, and PCC Pit Community College.

I didn't see that.

Is that that's that's a recurring funds that's already built into the budget.

So that and we'll go into more detail about that in the budget presentation.

This is just the increases, but yes, we already have I think 25 uh thousand dollars appropriate the job skills training or recurring that and my last question is with I guess just in our society right now with so many grants being cut and terminated.

Do we have that do we have concerns that if our police officers are being hired on a grant that that would be a problem in the foreseeable future?

Okay, okay.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure.

Thank you.

Councilmember Barbara.

I think Les had his hand up before me.

No, you can go ahead and go ahead.

Go ahead, go ahead.

She loves to share the I call on you.

Okay, all right.

Um quick question: why are utilities higher?

400,000 higher.

That is something that has it's not just a one-year increase we're seeing there.

Um of this is driven by additional tools that we've developed in the finance office to track the expenditures on an annual basis and kind of projecting a little bit better about where we're spending the money.

And what we've seen over the past four to five years is the cost of utilities has increased about that 400,000.

It's not a one-year increase.

Uh, some of it's driven by stormwater fees that our parks department has to pay um to our uh engineering department.

I think is who it ends up with.

Um things uh we're seeing increased cost of street lighting with uh the more with the uh brighter bulbs that they're using, uh seeing a higher cost there.

Um, and then just other things LED bulbs aren't they supposed to be cheaper?

No, but we're expanding while we're expanding.

Yes, we're expanding markets.

Um and then just general increases uh as we have more buildings or also just uh you know costs are going up in general.

Because we're growing cities now.

Exactly.

Okay, thank you.