Okay, it's 3 30, and we're gonna go ahead and call this meeting to order the finance committee meeting, and today we're gonna discuss uh expenses only.

Um we've taken care of all the revenues, so everything is good on the revenue side.

I disagree that everything's good on the revenue side.

I would say everything's bad on the revenue side.

But is that you but but we we went through that?

Yeah, but I mean it's not is the term good to describe it doesn't matter what you think, it's done.

Okay, it's done.

That's how we're gonna say it's done.

The revenue side is complete or done, okay.

It's it's good in terms of what we're trying to accomplish, okay?

That's all we can do with it.

So today we're gonna spend our time on the expense side, and we may differ on opinions, but the bottom line is we have to balance the budget and come up with a working solution, no matter what we call it or how we defined it, okay?

That's our goal to do, and we're gonna respect each other and do it in a manner that works for the city.

Okay, so what I've given you in this book is revenue, and you don't need to look at the first pages.

We're gonna start on page five, and the reason we're not looking at revenue, revenue has not changed in terms of what we're doing.

So, what I've given you is the first 40 pages of the monthly um financial report, and in this report is all the expenses.

We said we wanted the expenses spelled out, so all the expenses are spelled out.

There are a couple key notes that I need to tell you before we start.

First thing is June the 18th, we will have our public hearing meeting for the budget, okay?

And that is uh required by law by the statute, okay.

Um we will be completed with this process by June the 18th, so we can have it for the public, and then we will vote on the revised budget after that based on a date that we will come up with before June 30th.

Everything has to be complete by June 30th.

Our goal is to have it done a week before June 30th.

Okay, so expenses.

What we're looking at is trying to cut our expenses in areas that we can cut and still maintain all the services to the city and reduce the budget by the amount required to get it under um balanced and at the appropriate amount using 112 million.

And so the first area, if you look, I gave you my notes, and you can do anything you want.

This is not Tina Clay's budget.

This is your budget, so work it however you want it.

But I thought this may be simple, and if you have a different way of doing it, let's do it.

Um what I did, I went through the first 40 pages and I looked at the categories, and you can look at them quickly or slowly, or however you want to look at them today while we're here.

But the goal is to see areas that we can reduce.

We know every department has salaries.

We know there are a number of people in the uh departments, and we know their vacancies.

We're gonna figure out how many vacancies and how much money is available with the vacancies.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

So at this point, we're this is still trying trying to finalize the budget for the year that ends this coming September 30.

Yes, sir.

Okay, so we're not really focused on the budget for next year.

That is not our goal at all.

On getting to the finish line on September 30, 2026.

Yes, sir.

Okay, thank you.

But this should help us in creating our next budget because it's so close to that time, okay.

So in each category, you have the um salaries, okay?

And that's one area that we know the administration has said that there's some vacancies, and there's a way to save money there.

So um this breakout gives you every department by breakout.

So at some point we're gonna have all the vacancies, and you will have an amount of money there, and um finance may have it now as to how much money we have in vacancies that we can start off with.

Do you have that amount?

10 million.

What's 10 million?

What's that?

10 million is the amount of money we have right now in vacancies and salaries, so we can take 10 million and subtract it from our shortage of 23.

So we're working with 13.

So the the 10 million that represents the the money that we've saved for having um not having not having all the slots filled through the end of April.

So there may be more money to save if if those slots aren't filled through the end of September, but 10 million is what we've we're assuming we're not filling them.

That's why we're using 10 million.

Let me be clear the 10 billion.

The 10 million is the annual salary for those vacant positions.

Okay, that's for the whole year.

Yes.

And 3.2 of that is for sworn positions.

For sworn positions, sworn uh police and fire firefighters.

Okay.

So is that I mean, does what is that special significance that the sworn positions are treated differently than we just like to bring that to your attention?

That is not just the general positions, it's is 3.2 of that is for sworn police and fire.

So let's work with 6.8 instead of 3.2.

6.8.

Yeah, 6.8 is the difference from the 10 and the 3.2.

And the reason I'm saying work with 6.8 is because we know we have a shortage of police, and that is a sworn position.

We don't want to reduce the number of police we have.

If we can get some hires that come in and they uh qualified as police, we want to be able to hire them.

If we can get some firemen that come in that are qualified, we want to be able to hire the firemen at that time.

So if we can, let's use 6.8.

If we get too close, we'll go back and use the three point two.

But our goal is not to have to use the 3.2.

Okay.

For them to be able to hire sworn officers at any time.

Yes.

So when you when we talk about six or ten or whatever this amount is, is that just the salaries line?

And presumably there will be additional savings and FICA taxes and others.

So what's the total amount we are saving in vacancies, inclusive of all departments and inclusive of salaries and FICA?

And even if we take out sworn officers, what what would what would the savings be?

That's including fringes.

It is including.

Okay.

Okay.

So it already includes fringes.

So we're looking at 6.8 from 23, right?

Approximately 23.

Is it right?

Yes or no?

Yes.

Okay.

So roughly we're working with 17 million that we need to find.

Okay.

So from that, we need to look at expenses and go through.

And so the first thing up here is so we don't even have to.

Can I ask one more question?

Uh-huh.

I I do mainly agree with you that we should be looking at the six instead of the ten because we do need to fill the other positions.

But I am wondering, um, like for instance, if we are hiring sworn officers, uh, we could only do that.

Well, no, only new officers go through the academy, right?

So if we hire an officer from a surrounding municipality, they wouldn't need to go through while we're looking at the academy.

If we hire somebody that's qualified, I said qualified.

Right.

No matter what where they come from, if they qualify to be hired, we can be hired.

I uh at first I was going to suggest that at some point uh we do count that money towards uh like raise it by six, but disregard that because I because to your point we can get some if they're qualified, they can be hired, and we got 3.2 that we can use.

Right, yes, I agree between the fire and police, right?

Right, that's right.

That's what we that's that's how we're gonna leave that for now.

Yep.

But if we get in a crunch, we may have to take some of it, sure.

But we don't want to take money that's fighting crime or fighting fires.

Yes, I agree.

Okay, so that's that's that part.

Okay, then we look at the other areas.

Every department that I've seen in the city has some money that's allocated to vehicles.

So we need to know do all departments have their own vehicles, or is this just a placeholder, or what is this money?

If you look at um the next category down, um fuel usage.

You see that the different things on we on page uh page five?

Five, yeah.

So is that something that's just a placeholder, or is that a real number or what?

Can we go in and strike that in most departments, or can we not strike it?

Let me ask a question on that if you don't mind.

This is this is for this first page.

I'm not sure which this is for the uh controller office.

Well, they don't have they probably don't you don't know if they have a car or not.

Let me just finish the budget.

Only it's only 400.

So I don't I I don't think we should work worry about trying to save money on fuel with the controller's office.

But every department has so if we got 400 times X number of departments, that's a wasted number on you see what I'm saying.

We got a lot of waste in our budget, okay?

So we might as well take those numbers out if they're not real and use real numbers so we can get to the real number in the end.

There may be some money out there that we can pay for something that a department needs, and we're holding it up for 400 for somebody that doesn't even have a car in their department.

I don't know if the city went through, and we probably should have asked this when we originally did the budget, if every department has a car, because every department on here has that.

Yes, so the there are um fuel charges in every division, pretty much, especially where there are vehicles in those divisions.

And so that 6215 line is for the fuel for the cars that are in those divisions.

So every department in the city of Jackson has a car assigned to it.

Yes.

So we don't have a pool of cars that say if finance needs a car, it's a pool of cars out there, they can go drive a car.

The department may have some that are for today, it may be a car sitting out there.

So another uh staff person needs to use the car.

We have maybe a pool car for the department, but not a city department pool car.

So administration, do we really use cars like that, or could we be cost-saving having a pool of cars in the city and the city just uh when somebody needs a car, they check out a car.

Peter Taberson, CAO.

I don't know that that's a question that's easily answerable without some thought and some research to the extent that I provide an answer.

I think I would echo the CFO and say that each recognized department ought to have some vehicles, and if we have pool vehicles within the department, that would work.

Pool vehicles crossing department.

I think I would need to talk with department directors and get some additional information as to whether they think that works.

Okay, because I my fellow councilman, what do you think?

Do you think every department should have a car to be driving a car?

I can't even see a need for some departments to have a car on a regular basis.

That's no.

No, I don't think they should all have cars on this budget, but that's something we really need to look at because the last budget, we just accepted whatever y'all gave us.

We didn't look line by line like we should have.

I feel like um they only should have a car if they don't call out or something like that, but just uh driving home, no.

I don't I don't agree with that.

And I I I would defer to the administration to check with the departments, see if it's necessary, because if there are folks just taking cars home just for no particular reason, uh excuse me, uh then you know I I think division-wise, I could see say if uh public works over here, if they have uh several vehicles, public works uh director is gonna need one.

That's a different thing.

If they if we have something uh for a pool car with them, you know, I think we should bounce balance between their responsibilities and having a vehicle for pool car.

But just I mean, obviously, when we looked at IT before, they had 20 almost 20 cars and uh 19 cars and 21 people.

That's crazy.

You know, that doesn't make any sense at all.

So I I think uh you know, I would defer to you guys to take a good hard look at at uh who needs it, why do they need it, and also having a pool cars accessible instead of giving an individual car.

Also, uh one of the things I'm running into is going to some of these community meetings, and they said, Well, we couldn't get anyone from code here because of this vehicle issue, and I'm thinking that shouldn't be a problem, you know.

I that shouldn't be an excuse.

Well, let me address a couple of those.

Well, one is sure in short order.

I agree with um uh committee chair clay, we need to look at this for the 2027 budget, and Councilman Hurley, you're correct.

We need to do a little more homework to make the appropriate recommendation to be ready for the 2027 budget uh about better use of vehicles.

We have parked a lot more vehicles than we have parked when we did this budget, and the mayor has recently signed a set of uh revised vehicle policies, which I will also share with the city council that was drafted by risk management and myself, which should park even more vehicles.

Now, folks who say they can't come to a community meeting because they didn't have a vehicle, I question whether they're serious about their jobs, because uh we've not told anyone who needs a vehicle they can't have one.

Because uh we've now told anyone who needs a vehicle, they can't have one.

So I will say there is some there's some sense in the city that if you as governing authorities or I as the chief administrating officer want to do something different, the employees are gonna push back against it and complain.

And we're all working to change that um sense of responsibility and what it means to be a public employee.

And and and again, uh uh code enforcement is critical.

We're gonna that's a discussion that we'll have afterwards.

We're just talking cars.

We're talking about a way to save money on cars and to see if there's a transportation department within the city.

That may be something we need to look at, but we're not gonna solve it in this budget right here, and that's not our job to do.

Our job is to focus on the budget, not how they get there, what they do.

So if they need a department and they come to us and say, hey, we need a transportation department, let's give them a transportation party department.

But we need to let them know that we're looking at this.

And if every department has it, we're gonna keep it in here.

But to me, it's a complete waste of money looking at every department in the city of Jackson with vehicles, and we in a budget branch.

It may be even cost effective to sell some of the vehicles, but we're gonna let transportation take care of that, and we're gonna move on to the next item.

So that's not Madam Chair.

Uh-huh.

Uh before you move on, I I would just like to say um I and maybe they can the administration helped me to recall, but what is the rule in terms of vehicles?

My understanding is that no vehicles should be but taken more than 40 miles out.

And I understand that some employees drive two hours to work every day.

And so that impacts our fuel man costs because the you know, as we know, gasoline is extremely high.

And you know, I can see it there like on a SWAT or something like that, or you know, maybe a first responder, but uh we need to also look at that and and really pull down, you know, uh, these folks who are supplementing their quality of life on the CD vehicle.

I agree, and again, I think when you see the new vehicle policies, and um I work with the directors to enforce those, you won't be seeing any more of those driving 40 miles to go home vehicles because we've addressed that in the new policies.

Okay, thank you.

Another category that's in every department is other professional.

And that category on this page is category 6419.

What by definition, not for a particular department, but what is that category?

Typically, these departments use this line item to pay for their contractual services, um, consultants.

It could be um specifically for departments, it's like Loomis, the Loom's uh contract to come pick up for our deposits.

That's that would be something that would be held in 6419, other professional services.

Now, I got a question on it.

Wait one minute before you answer the question, okay?

And the only reason I'm doing this like this, y'all, I want to keep order, and I want you to understand I don't want random questions about something.

If we can narrow it down and figure out what it is, if we see this in every department, we need to figure out what's going on because it varies from to maybe 10,000 all the way to 100 plus thousand dollars.

So if it's for something that's picking up money, that should be spelled out.

That should not say other professional, because that's something we need.

But when you just look at a budget and you see this category going all the way down and the amounts varying, it is a red flag.

So let me point out those categories have been there for several budget years, and so if they're red flags, they've been here for several budgets.

And I'm glad we're and I'm glad we're tackling this now because they are red flags.

Yeah, they are true.

And the only reason I'm doing this like this, we as a council should have looked at this budget like this to begin with.

When we did not, now that we have the time to correct it, we need to correct it before we go to the next budget and do it again.

Yes, sir.

Okay, on the Loomis Um CFO mentioned that Loom is for pick up uh deposits.

Well, if um the hood building is where y'all work.

JP Morgan is about five, you know, uh 50 yards away.

That's safety.

So I don't think you should have to hire Loomis to get the money from the hood building to the JP Morgan branch.

Maybe maybe you can save some money there anyway.

Might want to call you can call JPD and have them escort you down the road, but but we're we're not that's a waste of money to to pay Loomis to come pick up the deposits in the hood building and take it to JP Morgan 50 yards away.

Well, we just got JP Morgan and we're gonna worry about safety first, and that's not something we're gonna address today.

We're gonna address but you want to save money.

I do want to save money, but let me say this.

We're gonna save money.

And we're on right there.

That is not for this it is.

They just she just mentioned that.

It was the lineup.

I tell you how we're gonna handle this.

Okay.

I'll just shut up.

No, you can you don't have to shut up, but she mentioned Loomis, and we know Loomis is not what's taking this money on this particular account, okay?

I said it was on everyone in the city.

So she can tell us which ones are related to Loomis.

And if it is Loomis, it should be spelled out.

It should not just say other professional, okay?

And that's why we're looking at each one of these categories by department.

So the first department that we're in doesn't does this department handle money?

Yes.

So the controller does handle money.

So that whole amount does not go to the Luma.

So you can't tell me that.

Okay.

So I was giving an example.

Uh you like you said, um, not specific, but I was just giving an example that Loomens is one of the contracts that is paid out of this account for the controller's office.

This was for primarily for staffers for temp staff and for um the payment of the indirect cost plan.

Now we have a category on here that says temp staff.

So to me, we are contradicting ourselves.

Yes, we do.

Every department in the city almost has a temp staff department uh line.

So I'm trying to figure out salary-wise, are these people that are extra extra people for real?

Are these consultants or what are we doing?

Every department in the city has money for consultants.

They they have a 6419 line, yes.

And money is on that line.

Yes.

And that's where they would pay for a consultant if they have one.

So I'm just trying to learn, and I think my counterparts are trying to learn the same thing, because I don't think anybody on this council really knows how many consultants or whatever are there.

But when you look at this number and how much it varies from department to department, it's something that needs to be said or needs to be spelled out that this is for a consultant or this is for this or that.

And then if you got temp staff plus a consultant plus the people in the department, do you really need all these extra people?

Are we under staff?

Why are we using temps when we say we got people doing redundant work?

You see what I'm saying?

There's a lot to be examined in these numbers, just in the salary part.

And that is one category that's pretty big that we could cut a couple million out of real easy.

Because some of these lines even have zeros on.

So that's why I'm asking those generic questions, trying to figure out what's what.

And overtime is in every department.

Does every department really need overtime?

If you properly staff, you say at some point you don't need overtime.

I can see the police, the firemen, and old speed.

So that's one category.

On overtime, I would say police fire and public works absolutely need overtime.

I think the other departments that's a department by department question.

And again, historically, historically, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, when we went through the budget process, each department would be questioned by you as a council about why it needs specific things in its budget.

So I think we should assume police, fire, and public works are gonna need overtime.

And I think every other department, that's a fair question as to whether they even need an overtime budget, because most of the folks in other departments are either gonna be exempt employees or we ought to be able to address their situation with comp time.

Madam Chair, uh, if you don't mind, I mean, what do you think about having uh um uh Mr.

Tableson to uh get with those other departments and see uh and see if they have it and uh and see the impact of them now?

Well, we can look at the impact when we look at the numbers as to how they're using it.

I mean, for the budget cut, but for the new budget, I don't mind you doing that.

But for what we're doing now, I don't think we have the time to bring them in here to tell us.

I'm just again, uh I just wanted to loop in administration because they you know they have to run it, make sure that they get productivity out.

So if you're just looking perhaps next budget season, uh Mr.

Tableson.

Well, next budget season, we're gonna have a sh uh questionnaire, and every department head is gonna fill it out, and we'll be able to tell from them.

And that's gonna be given to the department heads in June.

And councilwoman, we would appreciate that again historically, the administration did that historically.

I'm not sure when the city got away from that, but when Councilman Hartley and I were both previously with the city, you didn't go through an internal administrative budget cycle.

That's that i.e.

the questioning from finance before we came over here without having to complete a set of questions.

So we would welcome that from the council.

We may, we may, if it's okay with the council, add a few more questions from the CFO or the CAO's perspective.

And I've taken notes, vehicles, and now over time are issues.

I need to specifically make inquiries so I can bring information back.

And about the um the other professional, because if you when you all look in here at this number, you're gonna see there's a lot of money in the city in this category.

So we just need to find out what it is before we get together again so we can take care of it.

Okay.

I think that's what I was asking them to do.

No, I'm not saying I I don't think the administration, I think each the administration is fair to do it, okay?

But I think we should be in contact and we should send I got a list of questions for these department heads, okay?

And you can look at the money that's being spent.

There's no sense in asking somebody about $74,000, and they got overtime, they got temps, they got people, and you see you cutting money, and then you come on over to the other side and say you may cut positions.

Why would you cut a position when you got all these extra bodies in there?

That means somebody is not capable of doing the job they're supposed to be doing.

Okay, my my my only uh question was this before we forest overtime is concerned.

Uh I would like to have the department heads see uh, and I understand looking at from a numerical standpoint, but what is the impact and the impact can be most brought about by telling their boss what is the impact and and then telling us what's the impact.

That's okay.

I don't I just don't want to break anything.

Uh well, we're gonna break something before um June 30th, or we're not gonna be able to survive because we gotta cut something.

Okay, but what category it doesn't it didn't have to be overtime or attempts or whatever, but we gotta change something between now and June 30.

Right.

Well, I think um the department heads is in a better position to tell us what to change uh that's gonna impact their operations.

That's all.

So then we don't even need to be here today at all until the department heads tell us what to do on the expenses, if that's the case.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying regarding overtime.

Uh first of all, when we go through the budget here, and we do ask about overtime and their overtime budget.

And I assume I'm not sure if we did that this year, because it was a little different this year.

But normally that is one of the questions.

So I I'm just more uh apt to asking the chief uh the chief administrator of the officer if he can look at impacts.

That's all.

Impacts when we get the impact number, we'll subtract the number.

So we don't need to look at no other department for that, period.

The next thing on this list is that appears everywhere is rental of equipment.

Is that copiers?

What kind of equipment is that?

Primarily it's copiers, but also if um public works rents our public works is a separate category.

We know they have equipment, don't know.

They don't, it's primarily copiers in all the other departments.

Okay, and so that's why that number varies, and we spent a lot of money on copiers and we've been through that before.

Parkinson.

And I know we're still in the midst of an audit on this, but uh not only does each department, but does each division have a series of copy machines that are assigned just to that division?

Not each division, no.

Okay.

Okay.

So that's nothing we can cut there.

Not in this year's budget, but I think we need to continue looking at copiers to reduce the number, and as we consolidate individuals into the Hood and Porter building, that may also provide some opportunity because we're in closer proximity to share copiers and not have standalone copiers, or at least not standalone ones that cost this much.

I I'd also ask us to think about not only, you know, can we have instead of two printers printing 100,000 pages each instead of having one printer that can print 200,000 each, also can we just reduce the amount of printing just period?

Like, do we need all the paper that we're using?

No.

No.

We we uh we are still printing too much in the city uh throughout the administration, it's still too much paper circulating, not between the administration and council, but internally in the administration, and we need to continue emphasizing that, and I think that's part and parcel of the copier discussion is also the cost of paper and costing.

And this item is just five thousand dollars, but it's in more than one place, so that's why I'm asking about it.

Um print buying books.

So that line is for this particular division.

That line is to buying the CAFERS, the ACFARS, the financial reports, and we also have it in like the budget office, I believe, to buy in the budget books.

That's what that's for.

For when our publications office, when they do the printing or in the binding, they charge it to our department.

Okay, that's fine.

There's no problem.

Long as we know what it is, it's just when it comes in more than one department.

I'm just trying to figure out what kind of books do we have in these different departments.

And while we're reading this list, please look at the list and if you have any questions, just stop and ask what's going on.

Okay.

So we can't take the cars out.

Um we can't take that out.

Uh that we know what that is.

Madam Chair, uh-huh.

Um, I just had a question about travel expenses.

Um, I'm all I I don't want to cut travel expenses unless we have to, but some of these, like for example, the budget office has three thousand dollars for travel.

Is that money that's expected to be spent before the end of this fiscal year?

Or is that maybe we were gonna go on a conference previously, but we decided not to we try to keep money within our budget for travel um for training.

Um this year.

I'm I'm I'm unsure that we're gonna actually take any trips this year, but um that's what it is usually used for.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

On page eight.

I got a question on page seven.

I'm gonna write you getting a trend page.

This last uh set 630 other services and charges.

This is for the treasurer office of the treasurer on page seven, and it's got down here other professionals 6419, which you brought up on earlier, but this one in particular has the original appropriation for other professionals is three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars, and year to date only twenty-eight thousand eight forty-nine, which is just fourteen percent of um what had been budgeted, which should suggest we've worked we've saved you know several hundred thousand dollars or at least a hundred and fifty thousand or so far.

Can you give us some more?

Um, the like is the treasurer the same as the CFO, or is that somebody else?

Yes, this is this line is um designated for the fees that are charged by the tax collectors, and so by the tax the treasurers.

This is money we're supposed to, this is expenses.

Yes, so the tax collectors charging us expenses, fees, yes.

Some fees they charge us fees they don't they don't they don't technically charge us fees, the fees are reduct uh deducted from our revenues that we are receiving, and in the past we have just been posting the revenues with the deducted fees, however, in the prior audit, we were pinged for not separating the revenues from the fees, and so now we have to show the fees, even though we're not paying them directly, they are being deducted from our revenues.

So, okay, that aside, still for the for this period, I guess it's through the end of April, or maybe it's the end of March, whichever period it is.

The we were supposed to, you know, we were supposed to be halfway to 333,000, or which is about 160,000.

Instead, they've only got down here 28,000.

So is that a is that can we consider that a savings?

No, um, we probably need to look into that account and make sure all the fees have been posted for this year.

So we'll we can give you an update on that account.

All right.

Will you do us a favor and not put that in that broad category?

Put it in what it should be.

Okay.

I mean, it's no sense in having a broad category this broad and a number that says 300.

That was one of the areas I was going to suggest that we cut down to 250.

That was a quarter of a million dollars right there.

So if I have one question.

If you have the fees in the wrong spot, where are the fees?

So the fees are in the in this, they're in this account.

However, they would go to this account.

They they may just not be in the account yet.

We just need to look into why they're why it's only showing 28.

So when you collect money and you have those fees, where are you putting those fees on a on a balance sheet?

They're being deducted from my revenues.

I understand that, but where are you accounting for them?

They will go into this account here.

See, I understand that.

But if Mr.

Foot's point is it says 28.

350 is a long ways from 28.

So where are they in this budget book?

What can we look at to see where they are?

Can I add to that?

Uh-huh.

If I'm reading this correctly, this says in the top period 5 February, which means does this only cover revenues that go from October, November, December, January, February?

Let me tell you why this report is like this, okay?

Every time we've come in here, we've gotten a different set of numbers.

Remember the last report I said we're not gonna work with these numbers because they don't stay the same.

Yes.

So this report right here, I went over with him this morning, and this is the report that's the same.

I worked all my time spending on these numbers right here.

They should be up to April.

Right.

Okay.

So if they're up to April, we can go back and we can look at these categories and see what's really there.

So you can give us the number now for April.

What does it say on your screen for April?

What is the number for what?

Uh the category that missed uh 6419.

6419 for the budget office.

So as of today, I'm showing 154,454.04.

So did that number come out of revenue?

No, it will come out of the it will you will see it on this line when we get when we update this report.

I understand that, but something is missing in the numbers in my mind.

I'm not saying anything is going wrong.

I'm just saying tell us what March figure was.

If you give us March, give us margin, give us April and let us add them together from the 28 to the next two.

And that should come up today.

Let me make while you're working on that.

I think when you say other professional, that means you're talking about hiring a professional, like a consultant or whoever.

That's what I that's what I think.

That's why that's what how I interpret that as it is there, must be a professional involved.

Now, if the tax collector's out there collecting money and then charging us a fee, I think it needs to be categorized something other than professional services.

I I don't agree.

Money coming from the tax collector.

I mean, then they're they're professional people at the tax collector, but I think it really is is um uh confusing and and and jumbles the the the doesn't fit in common sense under a professional category, it needs to be fees to the tax collector or something like that.

That's why I said it was a red flag.

Call it what it is.

Anyway, that's just a thought.

So that is well received.

I think part of our exercise that we're doing now in planning for 27 is to create proper budget categories going forward.

Um we haven't again when I came to you in August when we talked about budget.

I said we don't have verifiable numbers, and I wasn't comfortable recommending anything.

We have collectively now dove into this in any categories you want to see corrected, just make that suggestion, and I can assure you that's well received because we all want to be more accurate with what we're doing.

And so often in government, we all say, well, that's the way it's always been done.

You got a CFO and a CAO saying, hey, if we need to change categories and be more specific, just tell us and we will do it.

I I'm with that 90% of the way.

I I'll just caution.

I think we can overcorrect too much.

I think when you're dealing with a large complicated enterprise like a city is you don't want to have like a paper clips budget and a glue stick budget.

You know, you have an office applying budget, right?

And so I I would hate to get so granular where we're budgeting every specific little thing, but I do agree with the broader point that other professional is too broad.

It's it's just difficult to know exactly what that is.

And that number in the city of Jackson goes from 5,000 to almost a half a million dollars.

So that is when I say all the time about the consultants, I've looked at the budget.

So I'm saying in my mind, we're consultant heavy.

But we are not in reality if it's other things.

If you look at that, that's what you think.

Yep.

And I say that all the time to the administration about consultants, and that's what has driven me to say that.

And I will say I have been confused when you said that because this administration has not issued double digit, we're in single digits of the consultants hired under this administration.

So I've been confused.

Thank you for clarifying that.

And it is confusing the way it's budgeted, and I think we're all on the same page here.

We need better categories.

We're not trying to get granular, but we do need to have a better understanding.

And quite frankly, if we all have a better understanding, we're more transparent to the public, and they'll have a better understanding, which is what we all want to achieve.

We'll let y'all work on that number a while.

We're gonna get to April, but I didn't want to not meet the day because these are categories that we can use no matter what month we are looking at.

And yeah, and on Tuesday's meeting, we were asked to confirm that we had received April's account.

And so my question is, are is that right?

Didn't we get asked if we yeah?

So are the April numbers finalized?

Are all the April numbers in April is sort of closed out?

Yes, all of April should be closed out.

What day of the month do you guys close out your books?

By the 15th.

The 15th of the month.

So if you give us numbers Friday, then for for May.

For April, they will have closed out.

Yes.

Okay.

So we'll we'll look at that, but let's just look at the broad categories right now and finish.

And then we are you saying you asking for that?

Yes, we're asking for that.

Okay.

Because if we know what we have here, and we can take those categories and we can see where they're falling in place.

Right?

Y'all okay with that?

You okay with that?

Sure.

I'm I'm ready to go to ask more questions.

All right, the next thing that I have an interest in, or this um P council should be uh um question.

Uh huh.

Why do the city have so many pill boxes?

Why what PO boxes I got?

6421?

Yeah.

So that is not a P.O.

box in each division, that is the postage that the divisions are paying for their to send out mail for the most part.

It's not a P.O.

box rental, it's the postage.

But the line says P.O.

box.

So this department uses $8,000 for postage.

Yes.

Okay.

Um we just want to make sure we understand.

We're not questioning whether you use it or not, because you got P.O.

box all throughout.

And so I my question on this page that I asked the council to look at was this postage PO boxes or what?

And how does it work?

And so this division is responsible for um the biweekly claims docket checks that are mailed out.

They they mail out all those checks as well as W-2s and 1099s at the end of the year.

So we okay with that as long as we know what it is, right?

Right, but I think you need to take off a P.O.

box because it looked like you're paying for a P.O.

box.

It just shouldn't say postage.

Okay.

And I'm assuming I think QuickBooks has it like that in there, or your software might have it like this.

I was gonna ask, these are these must just be what they're referred to in Muniz.

Is that the default that it comes like newness calls it postage PO, whatever rent, whatever, whatever, whatever?

Yeah.

Yeah, we can we can work with that.

If we know that's what it is, we can work with that.

We don't want to be too too exact and we weed out ourselves, okay?

So that's fine.

Um outside printing.

Do we do a lot of outside printing or minimum or outside printing?

What page are you on now?

Same page, page seven.

Oh, or but still on page seven, okay.

Just in this division, doesn't but um you may have other departments who utilize outside printing services for things that we can't get done inside in-house.

Okay, that's fine.

Ms.

Ms.

Chair, uh question, Mr.

Taverson.

Uh, have we done any type of a uh look see on uh whether these departments can use our in-house publications?

We are evaluating that, Councilman Hurley, and I think the real question, and again, this will be a 27 budget issue is whether we still need an internal publications department, or should we just park money uh for outside publications?

You know, in years past, when you and I were here, our internal publications was very robust, and we did most of our printing in-house over the years.

Um they've been moved around, some of their equipment's not even being used right now, it's sitting somewhere um somewhere.

All right, and so uh I I would encourage us this question.

We need to look at not only printing costs, but printing outside by department versus the fact that we have a publications department, and somewhere in all of that where we spend several hundred thousand dollars between internal and external, there is indeed cost savings.

Thank you, sir.

And we know about the rental of the equipment.

We know what that is, okay.

And we're not gonna delete any temps of that until we get back with administration.

So that we're on page um eight.

I got some questions.

Okay, what's what's your question?

So on page eight, um this is says director administration.

So is this your department?

Is it CAO?

On page eight.

So the question I've got is it's got salaries.

It shows that budget 591 and through the end of February, only 109, 18 percent when it should have been on 40 percent.

And then down here, other professionals has got budgeted 332,000, but only um and but in we've already gone through 89 percent of that.

So I'm just curious whether we're you is money are we uh hiring professionals rather than hiring salaried people?

Is that why that you had these two mismatches there?

No, again, these were carryover lines from previous budgets.

I can tell you I took the lead as CAO and did not fill anybody with um fill any vacant positions that were in the CAO's office by leadership, and that's why there's so little spending.

Sure.

And I've not hired any professional services whatsoever because while I didn't have the budget sorted out last August and September, I knew that we were going to be facing challenges, and I didn't think it was appropriate to staff up my office.

So this savings here that you've you've created by not hiring a lot of people, at least uh on the per first personal service.

Is that already we can't take credit for that in coming up with our 18 million or whatever, 14 million or something?

That's already well.

I think you take credit in that as part of that 10 million dollars in overall personnel savings that are there.

Yeah, it's already counted for.

Okay, but what on the down here on the on the other professional services where we've already gone through 89 percent of the budget?

You can you what um do you know what that is?

I guess it's still in your department.

I'm gonna have to defer to the CFO on that.

See that I haven't used any other professional services, so I'm not sure um what is being covered by this specific line.

So anyway, I just curious why and and if they keep running at a rate that if it's 89% through February, I hope they won't spend the rest of it because they can have a big deficit there.

Well, they they can only spend up to what you already have budgeted, so we can't spend beyond that.

But uh, I agree.

I'd like to know what's being paid out of there, especially if somehow it's being attributed to the CAO's office.

So this is for this is coming out of the office of the director of administration.

This is where the um funds are being paid to Jackson Convention Complex on the contract for for their uh management fees.

They but they they got a line item on their on their part in here.

Yeah, they got a line.

We we gonna get to that.

So what so does that mean that they at some point we're not gonna be able to pay them, or you have to find some other source uh to pay them if they're expecting I don't know, maybe it was a one-time deal.

I mean, I remember when we turned over the Thaiamara Hall to visit Jackson and the convention center and then hit and and got gave them some upfront money to oversee fixing thyamara hall.

Is that what is that that money right there?

Is that part of the yes, the reopening fee and then the uh monthly management fee?

So at what some point it looks like they're gonna run out of money for monthly management fee.

Where you where are you gonna go to to uh pay that then?

You may have already run out of it since this is the end of February.

They have an agreement with us, right?

And we we have what is the amount of the agreement?

Ma'am, what is the amount of the agreement?

There was an initial 200 uh 200, 12,000 reopening fee, and then there's a monthly 12,500 fee management fee.

Don't they have a budget?

They were not put in the budget.

They they didn't submit a budget.

There's not a part of a budget in here for them.

That's one of the problems we had with our getting our um that was with getting the the audit audit, but they have a budget in this book.

They do?

I don't know.

When when we get to it, we're not gonna skip ahead to it, but it's in here.

Well, it I think the problem, I think the confusion arises from the fact that Mayor Horn brought the proposal for the convention center to this body for consideration during the budget or right after the budget, but not in a way that we could identify a separate budget line.

I certainly think going forward, we need to make sure that whatever amounts we are contractually agreeing to pay the convention center all need to be in one place and not in more than one place.

I agree with that.

Did you give me some documents that have convention center uh expenses, blah blah blah, and some different lines up there?

I got them in my car, but I uh you don't remember one of the reports you made for me at the top.

But the this is coming out of different um account lines such as the 6419.

Yeah, but it's got a line on it and it's got a matter.

I'll get with you.

Okay, yeah, I'll get what you those numbers are yeah, we'll give them so this should not be in this spot.

So we when we adjust our budget or redo our budget, you can go ahead and put this category broken out somewhere.

I believe this will be in the thai of my budget on humaniculture once we um uh do the FY27 budget so it can be um moved to the correct division.

There are some numbers already somewhere.

We'll find them, okay.

We're good.

It's not that somebody has misappropriated or misspent any money, but there's some numbers on paper somewhere that I've seen in the stacks that you've given me.

So we'll look at them.

Okay.

Any other questions on that?

I got I got a question on so we've got on on page nine, it has the fiscal office, and then we've on page eight, we had the direct administration, and then we had the budget office, and then we had the controller and then the treasurer, all these things regarding finance, and I'm not clear in my mind the organizational chart that has the difference between the fiscal office and the treasurer's office and the budget office and the controller.

Can somebody show me a org chart that it showed yeah?

We need that uh part of the problem is this budget format has been carried over from pre-CFO days.

You used to in this city have a department of administration, the department of administration uh had all of the financial items, it also had HR, and it also had IT.

Sometime in the last 10 years, we've created separate departments where we used to have one, but nobody adjusted the budget lines to reflect that we now have separate departments as one.

So the confusion, councilman foot is we're using budget lines that were in place for say 20 years, but the format of the government has changed.

Uh, with respect to an org chart, I have submitted a proposed org chart to the mayor, and I expect him to review and comment on that and provide that to the city council.

Okay, that thank you.

We revised the budget.

Can we not revise the budget to truly reflect what what's going on in here?

Yes.

So can somebody tell me the who is the fiscal officer with the the or who the fiscal so we've got salaries for the fiscal office of 112,000.

You got salaries or the um hold on a second.

Apologize.

Uh the budget office of 226,000 salaries of the um treasurer, 155,000.

Um, we need what we need is numbers on our players, like you have on a program when you go to the football game where you can say, okay, the tight end is number 89 or something like that, where where we know it may be that that um is callwell does all those jobs, but I just don't know.

I just I'm curious.

I do not do all those jobs.

Okay.

Um so the the multiple divisions are comprised of about 30 to 35 staff members, okay that they're in different divisions respective to their job duties, and so um the fiscal office that is one person.

Um I tell you what, if there's a if it just if there's a job description, regardless of who the person is, uh the what is the job uh I it not right now, but if you could get me a memo sometime by next next week.

So that one person is this is this is what the fiscal officer does.

It's two, he said it's two people.

So it's two yes out of a little what their duties are.

If you could give me a the duties of each one of those, because I think of all of them as just one big financial blob.

Are most staff members in just one division?

Or would there be a uh an employee who a third of their budget comes from the fiscal office, a third of their budget comes from the treasure office, a third of their budget?

So most the vast majority of our employees are in one of these divisions.

Yes.

Yes, with the exception of planning department, and that's a separate headache.

We don't need to delve into today, but many employees in planning department have redistributed salaries, and uh we are working now to make sure they have not over-obligated their redistributions.

And I'm again I'm assuming that that's based on grant funding.

Correct.

But there are still caps on what we can re redistribute, and there are timekeeping requirements that I'm not sure that we are fully meeting for redistributed salaries.

So you can assume uh other than planning that most of these people are just paid for one department for certain things with planning, make sure you realize that's the exception to the rule, and we'll delve into that separ separately.

For people who are getting general fines, yes, okay.

So everything we're looking at right now is strictly general funds.

Okay, just want to make sure one uh along the same lines.

One other thing I'd like to point I would like to make is that I know when they set up Jackson Water, there were some people that ended up going with Mr.

Hennefin that had been working at the city, and they requested an arrangement where they would continue to participate in PERS.

I think that was a bad idea, but they did it.

I mean, not that I you know I let's wait till we get to war.

Anyway, so but but there that's another case where where we're paying money and we're supposed to be compensated back, or we're making pairs contributions for somebody, and we gotta make sure that we the loop is closed and we get you know um reimbursed for that money from Jackson Royal.

We'll do that on uh Mr.

Grisel, the I was trying to see, you know, budgeting nine thousand dollars for uh cell phones.

How many phones and I I realize you know a lot of that was not used, but why are we spending so much in cell phones for 35 people?

So that is the and why do they need a phone?

Are they working around the clock?

They gotta take calls after hours, they gotta wake up in the middle of the night and see about constituents.

What so we do have a phone for um travel.

Um a lot of the travelers are calling that line after hours.

Um when they check into their hotel, sometimes they have issues, and so we do have a phone in that area.

Also, with our access to different portals, you now have to have a you like log in with a cell phone number and you get a text message with a code, and so we we have maybe four phones in the department that are utilized for that reason.

So this was the original budget, the nine thousand, so that number will be coming down in your next year budget.

Okay.

Yes, it has already been reduced.

We've we've turned in I believe about 10 phones in this department.

So what can we bring this number down to m definitely less than half?

Um who is our do we have one one cell phone account for the whole city?

I mean, is it is it do we have is it with AT and T, is it with C SPIR?

We have a few phones with both.

Uh most of them are C SPIR, but there are a few lines on the AT and T.

Do we ever go back and bid those out and see if we can get a better deal for you know volume discount?

What's that?

State contract.

Oh, it's a state contract, really.

Okay, yeah.

Cell phones and copiers, we're currently using state contract uh rates for those.

Okay, thank you.

We still have too many of each, but we're not gonna get a better rate.

We just need to continue contracting the amount that we're actually paying for.

Okay, any other questions on that page.

Uh I just should change the nine.

Um, we've already talked about the overtime, our overtime attempts is almost more than our regulated.

And Jim, can you add all the numbers together?

Overtime.

I just did the math on the overtime.

Should be overtime?

No, I asked.

What is what is that?

This is what is overtime.

It is right now.

We get a million dollars.

So it looks like we're budget by your wheel.

That is a category that we have to that is a category that we have to look at, and because it was in every one of them and it hit a problem with every one of them.

Once we got the explanation from her now, we know how we can do that because that's almost nine, six to seven million dollars right there.

And we're still in in um Mr.

Davison's department, right?

Admins?

I believe no, that's in personal service now.

I mean personal service.

Personal service.

Yeah, but that's just a generic, so we don't have to spend a lot of time on that.

We know that has a problem, and we're gonna fix that problem before we come back.

But it's a problem in every department.

So is it a problem of classification that we're we're we're putting blumping too much stuff in one category, one one line item?

It needs to be you know separated so that we understand I think that's part of the issue for a lot of the times, but it but in other cases, I think it's like I'm not sure why we need air travel separate from travel expenses.

So that might be one area.

So in other words, we've got some like we're describing that everything is put into other professional when really maybe some of that should have been split out, and then we have some cases like I would argue travel expenses and air travel, those are instances where we can probably benefit from combining.

Well, there's one thing for sure about this line that's other professional.

If you look at it, 177 versus the amount that's actually been um spent year to date, that's that's a low, low number.

So I'm saying we got a hundred thousand dollars in almost six or seven or eight of these different areas.

That's almost eight hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars.

So you follow me?

But what would be helpful?

Um, and this is what we really need from them before we start cutting is is there anything that you're like, oh, this comes in August, or this comes in and we really need to save, or or can we assume that some of these are to be split evenly be across the year because if they're split evenly uh to the chair's point, great to save so but overtime shouldn't be joined with professional other professionals, so it's not right.

That one's separate, that one's separate.

The writing down there is just to let you know how much overtime we are spending.

If you look at the overtime versus the actual salaries, we are almost at what's the ratio?

Where's the where's the line item that says overtime though?

Is this it's it's in every category if you look for it?

Let's see.

Here it is up here.

6114.

6114.

Oh, okay.

It's in every category.

So I just went in and added them up to the 40 pages and told y'all how much it is.

Okay, this book has 300 pages.

If this is 40 pages and we can do this with that, just think about it.

All we got to do is multiply that, and this is a generic category that we can work with, and we won't have to work with the small categories where you're talking about $5,000.

What I went in and looked at is if we got 2300,000s, okay.

We don't even need that anymore.

We need 16 um 100,000.

Or we can do it in terms of 50,000, because some of these categories we haven't spent 50,000 totally in.

So if we go in and count up X number of categories where we can take 50,000, we don't have to look at a lot.

We can go ahead and be finished with the revising of the budget and start on the the actual budget that we need to be working on because we need to spend our time working on the current budget, but by law we have to do this.

So I got a question about overtime.

I I think there's it's important to categorize to differentiate between overtime for um jobs where we where we have a requirement to be have people on duty 24 hours a day, whether it's fire or police.

That's not the category that we talk about.

That's one type of overtime which we we've got to we we have to uh deal with and and uh it has to be available because you gotta have people on the on the beat for for both police and fire.

But once you get to other administrative type stuff, this is all I question whether we should have overtime for administrative stuff.

We and that's the same thing.

Because that we may end up paying paying people extra because we're not getting the job done in the time that we're supposed to get it done.

Well, some of it that's why I asked about this.

We're gonna assume our people are working, but the that's a bad assumption.

I don't think we should assume that.

I I think you should say that that there's some jobs that I'm not sure if they should qualify for overtime.

Well, my question to you was, and I asked Mr.

Parkinson, overtime should be for special projects and things that you don't complete, okay?

But it looks like because it's budgeted in every department, it's okay to say overtime in the city of Jackson.

We understand firemen and police, that situation is totally different.

So we're looking at should this overtime be in our budget to the degree that it is, because in in some spots it's extremely high.

So should it really be there?

Let me help.

Umtime really shouldn't be your decision if we file federal law.

And so we are properly classifying employees as exempt or non-exempt.

Most of your administrative positions are going to be exempt.

They're gonna pass the salary test and the duties test.

They're not eligible for overtime.

Right.

Okay.

And so um for the remaining people, uh, the city made a decision a couple years ago to move away from comp time to overtime.

I understand that.

We were trying to incentivize uh police and fire at that time.

I think we need to uh go back to the policy of if it is non-first responder, and I include public works as first responder, it ought to be comp time.

That would decrease the overtime budgets as well.

And the way comp time works is you've accumulated some extra hours.

We give you time and a half.

You work you work four extra hours, we award you six, and then you take those six hours off within that same fiscal year, and it balances back out, and there's no financial hit to the city in the process.

So it's like many other things we've been we let me say this.

The seven of you, I know councilman stokes in here, and I have been discussing since last year.

A lot of this comes down to we've got to do a better job managing what the public trusts us to manage.

So I would say there needs to be some overtime in the budget for non-first responder positions, but I think we can decrease that significantly and implement other management tools.

Well, my question Excuse me.

What we're doing is decreasing it from now to October, not for permanent.

And that's why I have a question on these pages.

If you read it that says, what's the city status on exempt versus uh non-exempt employees?

So we're not talking about necessarily cutting overtime as a permanent thing, but looking at is that a category that we can use to revise the budget?

Because at some point we're gonna have to decide a priority list of what we can do to revise it.

I just think in some of these non-first responder uh roles here.

If you got all these temps, there should be no overtime.

I see.

They should be working a lot smarter.

I don't I don't know what MCS admin is, but municipal court services.

Okay, so they have a bunch of temps.

So the 6112 line, that's for people who are part-time for the most part, is not that's not temp like staffers or temp staff.

That is that those are city employees who work part-time or they are not um they're in a um appointed position.

They should be separated because of benefits.

You pay part-time people benefits, right?

But you don't pay temp people benefits.

So, where do you put that in the in in the in the line item?

You do pay part-time why we pay part-time people benefits.

Uh you may pay, I don't know.

If they work X number of hours, you have to match their um you gotta do security and Medicare.

Yeah.

You pay fringes, not benefits.

You pay fringes.

Okay.

Right.

They don't right.

They don't.

But I'm just saying at some point that has to be reflected in the budget.

Yeah, I'll just say this is another area where I would recommend just reclassifying the categories because I I you know, I assume you call a temp agency.

And get a temp.

And we need, you know, 10 people over here for three months or whatever it is, but so that's more of a contractual staffer, staffing person, and that would be what was yeah, that's that would be the 6419 or 6489.

Contractual labor.

Okay.

Okay.

So we learned something on that.

Okay.

Any more questions on that page before we move to 12 and 13?

Look at this.

Uh let me uh ask a question on this just the bottom line for this whole total administration.

That's the administration that includes all these different departments.

Is that right?

That we've already talked about.

So it says um this is the February end of February numbers.

That was the written revised budget as well.

But year to eight, year to date actual is only a million seven six seven, which is only twenty-nine percent.

It should be like 40 percent.

So is that a savings there?

And I don't even know what you'd have to go back and look where all the savings is, but that's a good thing that it's significantly below um like 40 percent where you would expect to have at the end of February.

So is that a savings?

Yes, those are savings.

Um we have made some significant cuts in this department.

Um's that I'm sorry.

I said yes, those are savings.

Okay, we have made significant cuts in this department since October one.

Is it reasonable to think that we'll have some savings through the end of September as well?

Yes.

So based on what he uh Councilman Foote just said, what amount roughly do you think, or is this included in that 10 million you've already uh 6.2 that you've already told us about?

Some of this some of this would include vacancies.

The payroll the salaries would be, but other than that, it it's not included, it would not be included.

Like we said, roughly what will we what do you think we're looking at in that figure?

So today you have 4.3 um remaining in this department's budget.

So do you think we have to do that?

Easily two, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Excellent work.

So two million, that's right there.

Yes.

So that's two of our 16, so we're down to 14.

And we appreciate y'all that uh operating in such lean ways to to help us there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So now we're saying that we appreciate it.

People aren't happy with those things.

Yeah, we appreciate you because when you look at the if people know the numbers, they would appreciate you.

Yes, but people don't really know the numbers because everybody you talk to in the city says my budget says this, but your budget is strictly paper at this point.

And if we start telling people your budget is not accurate until we revise it, then they will appreciate you.

It's possible that the the lean way that y'all have operated has saved multiple employees, multiple um full-time employees that are able to continue to work because of the ways that you have operated in a lean way.

Uh this may be a stupid question, but process of budgeting, and looking at the cuts and and doing smart budgeting.

Should we have ever budgeted that amount anyway?

I would say no.

Um, and so a lot of what we've um been communicating to the departments, you know, you inherited a budget, and so now you didn't have any real items tied to these numbers.

So for where we had a contract of a hundred thousand, I mean a line item with a hundred thousand dollar budget, you didn't have a contract for a hundred thousand, you just had a budget, and so you're finding things to you know purchase during the year that fall within that that uh budgeted amount, but did you really you know need that?

And it could what were there areas to make cuts?

Thank you.

Good point.

But we on target for the next year.

You don't even have to worry about it.

Okay, so we did that whole department, and you see how long it took us to do that department, but at least we got two million out of that department.

Yeah, and let me say this there will be no questions that this council is asking that the CFO and I haven't asked internally.

Now we may not have received the answers that we would like or unanswer, but y'all, the CFO and I are aligned with how you are trying to do this budget, and again, I've said this before.

I want to thank you for continuing to have these hearings so we can all become better aligned and serve the public.

So my question is do you guys want to keep going?

It's 444 to the to all the pages, or do you want to it doesn't we can go all the way through and we may find another two million somewhere?

I mean, it's wishful thinking, but look based on what we've done now.

We've come up with some things and we question some departments, and we know some of the lines are the same.

So if it's okay with you, I would say we would keep going at least 30, 40 minutes.

I have two night meetings tonight.

So about 15 minutes, I need to be 15 minutes.

Okay.

So but but the rest here by it's okay with me.

I don't it doesn't matter because I've looked all the way through it.

So do you guys want to commit to going to page um 21?

21.

I thought we were getting ready to do madam chair.

Madam Chair, let me ask you this.

And the reason I say that, that's the next end of the department.

And I'll also reiterate what Ms.

Clay alluded to earlier.

The the full list of revenues is I think you said about 300 pages.

So you gave us the first um 40 pages here, but this this is a fraction of what we need to get to go through.

We just need to decide.

My question is we can stop here, but we need to come up with a plan as a council.

How are we gonna handle these pages?

How are we gonna handle this amount of money?

And I don't want to say the administration is gonna handle it, okay?

Because if that's the case, I want to bag out all the way, okay?

Because I think we should have hands on and know what we're doing.

So I'm gonna take it a step further.

And I think this was part of at least my individual confusion last uh August and September.

You have a legal responsibility to do exactly what you're doing, and y'all have embraced this, and so I think we are headed on the right path.

Um, but you know, the council is responsible for the money and the auditor, and we want you involved in that process because that is your statutory duty.

So uh again, I appreciate everything you're doing to get us.

I don't know how we drifted over the last 12 years while I wasn't here, but I appreciate everything that has been done to restore us to where we should be.

So any suggestions on a plan other than and we can meet three at a time, or we can meet in here and have we have to know uh do public notice.

What is the rule on public notice?

Clerk.

What is the rule on public notice?

For budget.

Oh, I'm not talking about in terms of the days to publish and that stuff.

We know that I'm talking about the rule of notifying the people.

If we decided we wanted to meet tomorrow, how much notice 24 hours?

Okay, so 24 hours.

Okay, so we could not meet again until four four four four thirty tomorrow, five o'clock, right?

Unless you recess and not adjourn.

Okay, well, then we're gonna do a recess today and not adjourn, and we're gonna meet back tomorrow for the council members that can.

And what is a good time that you guys can meet tomorrow for maybe an hour or so?

I would suggest in the morning since it's beginning of a holiday.

Holiday again, some folks may want to take off beyond the road.

What about 10 30 to 11 30?

If it doesn't work, we don't we don't need the recess, we can just end, but we need to make sure it's gonna be worth our while.

Can we do that?

Uh the only thing I have is public work media uh 11.

Okay, so 10 to 11.

We're gonna recess to 10 o'clock tomorrow.

We're not now we still got let's let's um go ahead.

Okay, go okay.

Let's go.

Let's go to page 21.

Oh, we're not gonna skip that far.

We're gonna go in order.

Okay.

No, sir.

So no, sir.

What page we on?

We're on page uh 13.

13.

Yeah, yeah, we're on page 13.

13 and 14.

Yeah.

Now the planetarium, is that gonna open?

When's that when is it gonna open?

That's on here on this page here.

We are targeting uh we're targeting Labor Day for the planetarium uh opening.

We've we've got to, like many other things, a lot of money was raised for a structure.

No planning was done with respect to staffing that structure.

So um we have discussed that with the various stakeholders, and we want to push the opening um down to the fall, and then let the um the staffing hit come in the 27 budget.

It could be some savings because it's not a hundred thousand dollars or so.

We've only spent 17 percent of the money that was what budgeted for the planetarium for obvious, you know.

Yes, we we will have savings uh during fiscal year 26, and then we'll have to put a a much larger number in there for operations in fiscal year 27.

And director junior is working through that staffing.

Okay, so that's uh uh area with with major savings.

You go to the page, I was just you know, look excuse me for skipping forward, but if you look at the bottom on on 21, you get a a I know you get a total, but we need to look at these individual categories because you, as a counsel said you wanted to have line by line, and that's why I hit Mr.

Jackson to print this big book and give us line by line because he gave us about five sheets with just expenses on it, and we all said we didn't know what those expenses were, right?

Well, I was just gonna look at the big picture first and then go look at the we gonna we're gonna dig in the way we did we dug in the first category.

So if there's any questions there, and we know about this other professional, so by the time we get back to meet, if not this time next week, we'll know exactly what that's gonna cut.

I have a question.

Uh-huh.

I'm not able to recall.

Have we been provided exactly where the cuts came from?

Like a cheat sheet, some cliff notes say, hey, we cut here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

Versus taking time because Ms.

Clay got some good notes here from what I could read.

But have we been provided anything to say, hey, this is where we made cuts, and this is the percentage, this is where we are.

Yes, and you yes, we have provided um that, and that is where we reduce the department's budget and put them back to um prior year actuals so that they could not overspend where we think they should have, where we think they should be.

Also, like in the prior department where we just looked at some of these were not cuts, they were just where we may have had a vacancy and then fulfilled that position.

So that just didn't, you know, create an additional expense.

So it wasn't technical technically a cut, but it caused caused a reduction in the expenses.

But the the where we did reduce the budget and where we did um move the departments back to prior year actuals, yes, we provided that.

So just to be clear, you have given us all the areas where you have found savings.

No, because like I said that's what I'm asking for.

Yeah, so no, like the savings we just kind of looked at in in the uh department of administration.

No, would it be taxing to get that?

Because I think that could save us a lot of time here, too.

So that is what you have.

Well, yeah, but I'm talking, I'm saying I'm asking for some of the same cliff notes.

Everybody doesn't have the background to be going through budgets and all that.

But I think if we had some cliff notes, say, hey, we found savings here, this amount, this amount, this is what we did, a little short narrative, and then just go on.

Okay.

But the only thing that we have committed to you doing with those savings is the salaries.

Of that 10 million you gave us that was savings, that was strictly salaries, right?

Yeah, strictly salaries.

So we are using that 10 million and we're keeping that 3.2 million.

No, so no, so the 10 million that went down to 6.8, that is strictly salary.

Right.

The 10 million I'm saying we have given to show that.

Okay, we're yeah, I understand what we're saying.

That was that's not strictly salaries.

That we're not gonna your 10 million that you gave us.

We're using our 10 million.

Okay, you can give us that as a 10 million.

We are not right.

We know you have given 10 million where you see, but we don't want that 10 million because we're gonna look at these numbers this time.

Otherwise, we're gonna we don't, it's not that we don't trust you, but we'll be in the same fix we in right now, okay?

And that 10 million might not have addressed this professional um category, other professional.

So if we address that category, we may be better off than that 10 million.

You see what I'm saying?

Yes, yeah.

So you follow me?

Yeah.

Because you can give us that category and we can cross-reference it without a doubt.

We don't mind doing that, but at the same time, we're not gonna use that category and just do because otherwise our meeting is over.

So we can give the the savings per line and airing.

Well, you if you could just give me the department, I think that'll be a style.

I don't want to, you know, tie y'all down too far.

Well, there's another part of that.

Okay, Mr.

Jackson said he has some contingencies that he could give us as to where those savings came.

I asked him not to give us those.

And the reason being I wanted us to think through what we were doing instead of them telling us this.

Mr.

Hartley is perfect for saying the administration.

I think the administration should help us, but we should do our job and figure out what's what.

You're right.

But I I think you know, having that for me will give me something to cross reference.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't mind us having it, but I just don't want that to be.

We come in here and we say tomorrow we finish because we got 10.

Oh no, no, no, no.

We we still need to know what's in each one of these lines, but I just want to know the work that they did so we can cross-reference.

I don't want to do double work if we don't have okay.

That's what we did in the revenue part.

He when we figured it out, I figured it out, he figured it out, we figured out as council.

We took all three and put them together, and that's how we came up with the last number.

Okay.

And just want to also put on your radar.

Um, we provided um some areas that we saw could see additional cuts.

That's been what about a month ago now?

Yeah, about three weeks ago.

We provided you all with areas where we saw additional cuts could be made.

We do need your input on the was that with staffing.

Okay, we don't want as a council, I can say right now, to cut anybody unless that's just something we have to do.

We want to work through this first, and if it comes down to, I hope the whole thing will work itself out.

If we re-um draw uh design the organizational chart, etc.

If we have people that can be offered other positions or something, we need to work through the budget first without cutting if we can keep from cutting anything.

Because we only have from now to October to get through.

And if you have froze your spending to the degree that you have, then we should not be at the point of having to cut staff.

And if we got this big category that's going from line to line with overtime temp and professional other professionals, then we should be able to.

If you already got 20,000, how much of that was cutting people?

How much was cutting people?

Um, out of 20,000?

Yeah.

How much of that was cutting people?

Well, we have 20,000.

You you how much have you already saved?

Approximately two million in just in one department or uh-uh, total.

What he asked you for is not just two million, is the 10 million that we're yes.

So it's 10 million, right?

Right.

Those were already in unfilled positions or or other things.

That's she got two different 10 million.

Right.

So the 10 million that for the whole um city by department, it covers every category.

It's personal services, it's supplies and materials, it's contractual services, it's um capital alley is all of the lines.

We reduce all of the lines in the budget.

So that was 20 million.

That was 10 or right at 10.7.

You told us this 10 million was all salaries.

That's why I say it's two two different 10 million.

Yeah, and that's what I said it's two different 10 million.

So the 10 million that you gave us that was freezing salaries.

Right.

That was vacancies.

Yeah, and we couldn't.

Everybody take a breath.

Hold on.

Everybody take a breath.

Uh-huh.

Let me put my judge robe on.

One, only one of you can talk at a time.

And two, madam CFO, if you don't understand the question, you need to make sure you understand what's being asked or ask for clarity.

Because I think I think you two are talking past each other unintentionally.

Let me make that clear.

Okay.

But it's important that you have that.

And I also want to echo what um President Grizzell said.

It probably would not hurt for us to do a short summary of those various, those two 10 million and what accounts for those so the council has a clearer understanding.

Because that's what that's what I'm hearing.

I'm not sure that's what you're asking.

Yeah, this is what I'm asking.

Okay.

Okay.

Point Blake, you got 10 million dollars, okay?

That are vacancies that hadn't been filled.

Of that 3.2 is fire and police.

So we're using 6.8.

Then you got another 10 million.

I'm saying of that 10 million over here, how many people are you letting go?

How much salary are you terminating to get to that 10 million?

I don't have um.

Because if you you gotta be terminating somebody if you tell you see what I'm saying?

No, wait, wait a minute.

We cannot be filling vacancy.

Uh-uh, Vegas is already over here with this 10 million.

It may just be that the positions were never filled.

Right.

It's not that she went in and fired a bunch of people.

It just the the fact that you started the year with with a lot of empty slots, and then here we are come February.

Those slots hadn't been filled, and that's why there's savings.

That she's not terminating.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

All she's can't the vacancies.

I'm pretty sure I'm understand this correctly.

The vacancies were there at the beginning.

Maybe somebody left.

It could be that somebody left.

But anyway, you get to the end of February, and that's the 10 million million dollar mark.

Okay.

And that doesn't mean you have to terminate people.

You that going forward.

It just means that's what the same.

Wait a minute.

Let's let's make sure we're clear and let him be the judge, okay?

This is the question, okay?

You got 10 million.

You said those were vacancies and unfilled positions, right?

Yes.

Okay.

You took 3.2 of that out because those vacancies were in police and fire.

Yes.

Okay, so that's 6.8.

You got another 10 million over here.

What does it include?

It includes salaries because that 10 million was by department, and it was the charges with it was the budget within the department.

So the 10 million vacancies are part of the budget.

So these 10 million over here.

We need to understand this.

We might need to draw this, okay?

This 10 million over here has salaries in it, right?

So I think it's the same.

Are these people working for these salaries or are these monies that that are unoccupied?

This 6.18, not the 6.8.

I'm confused now.

Wait, but we got we have start over.

I'm sorry.

What is the second inside of 10 million that you're referencing?

Hold on.

Let me draw something.

Because that's not you got 10 million over here with unfilled vacancies, whatever, however, you get them.

These are people not all not working, okay?

And then you got 3.2 of this that's police and fire.

So that's 6.8.

Then you got 10 million over here, okay?

For the rest of the year.

Is that what you're talking about?

10 million for the rest of the year?

So let me see if I could clarify.

Um when we first started this process, we came to you all and said we found we realized there's a 23 million dollar difference between anticipated revenues and the um budgeted expenditures.

And at that time, we also stated that through our efforts, we had we were able to reduce the budget by approximately 10 million dollars, and we needed some additional assistance and approvals from this board to um reduce the other the remaining 13 million, and so that 10 million is what we have already gone through the departments and realized we could reduce.

But my question is 10 million dollars.

You telling me right now is salaries of unfilled positions, right?

Budgeted salaries, okay.

Unfilled positions, 10 million we can take off this piece of paper, okay.

Of that 3.2 is police and fire.

Okay, so that's 6.8.

This new 10 million over here that we are looking at.

You said it includes some salaries.

Explain that.

So what the salaries include to your point, it would be like dollar for dollar, it would be some overlapping dollars because those are budgeted vacancies.

So it's not to be 10 million.

So in our in our quest, in our quest to cut 23 million dollars, we can count on 6.8.

If it's okay with you, I'm gonna round that to three.

Or I'm gonna round that to seven.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

So we got seven million dollars that we got from um uh vacancies, and we have two million dollars from the first apartment that we went to.

That's in addition to the salaries got two million.

In my count, that's all we've cut so far.

So all we've cut is nine million dollars.

That's true.

But she said she has ten million, additional ten million that they have found, and some of that ten million is salaries.

So if it's salaries, somebody gotta be sitting at a desk getting their salary for you to cut it.

You follow me?

If it's different than the vacancy salaries that we've already said.

She says it's different money, so that's why I'm asking to make sure.

Because otherwise, you double counting the same money.

Right.

Because if it was true that we already had the 10 and now we have a new 10, we're done.

So with the salaries on the second part that you're talking about that we're trying to figure out where those salaries come from.

The 6.8.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

The one you said 10 million.

We're not talking about the 6.8 million.

So the 10 million was not salaries.

You said you said you you told us that it was salary supplies, and so on.

Right.

So we really know.

That 10 million isn't really there.

We got the 6.8, and we got the two so far.

Is it's not there.

President, yeah, but it ain't helpful if it's the same money.

Yeah, but it ain't helpful if it's the same money.

It's the same money.

So it's not a good thing.

Yeah, yeah, but it's the same money.

If it's the same money, yeah.

Yeah, so we gotta keep going.

Yeah, we gotta keep going, but if it's the same money, we all understand it's the same money.

We done all concluded it's the same money.

And now make an observation.

It's the same money.

Let me let me make an observation.

Uh and I think this, I think I'm right about this, but I may maybe way off base.

I don't know.

The so we went through five months according to our sheet here.

We're working on this ended in February.

So that's the first five months of the fiscal year.

And we saved during that five months ten million dollars.

Okay.

We that mainly salaries, maybe some other things, but mainly salaries.

We saved like 10 million dollars.

Okay.

I did disagree with with subtracting the 3.2 million, because we are not gonna go back and hire a policeman and have him work in September or October or November or December because those days are already gone.

They're already they can't go back and work those hours or those months or weeks.

But wait a minute, wait a minute, finish.

Let me finish.

So we've saved 10 million dollars, and I'm not gonna subtract the 3.2 from the 10 million I'm trying to find.

So now we've got going forward from this day on May the 15th or 18th, whatever day it is.

What is it?

21st?

Okay, so it's May the 21st.

We've got uh we've already gone almost two months from the data we're looking at, which was February, and we didn't add that many people during the month in those two months, I don't think, as far as new employees.

There's no we've been talking about subtracting 3.2 million.

I think that's a mistake.

Let me finish.

Let me finish.

So now we've got to go all the way to September 30, okay?

And we gotta find solve another, we're gonna find another 10 million dollars.

Well, I if we don't hire anybody else, and we'll hire a few people, a few people will leave, whatever.

She got a whole no, I'm not counting double counting anything.

I just counted five months' worth, and we saved 10 million dollars.

We got another seven months, and the opportunity to save even more than 10 million dollars if we don't hire anybody.

Didn't you give us an annual salary based on the budget?

Your 10 million her 10 million covers the whole no, it doesn't.

She said it in.

No, my ten million covers just the five months.

No, you're where did you get that 10 million?

Where did you get that 10 million?

Based on the math, you get you got it.

No, you're 10 million million is gonna come from the next seven months.

What is the annual salary?

No, but but I'm talking about the vacancies that were in the first the um first five months.

So let me let me tell you.

So if I if I have a vacation, this first line here, which which page on uh page five taxes, okay, it's part of the four hundred sales, uh provided in the six months.

Okay, so it's on both of those lists because it's a budgeted salary, okay, and so through the month of May, whatever that would have accounted to that that's how much I've saved thus far, and if I don't fill that position before September 30th, I've saved a whole salary worth of a position.

Okay, but it's only told us the 10,000 includes the 10 million includes everything you anticipate saving plus what you've already saved, right?

The 10 million is gonna get us to October plus what we saved, right?

Yes, okay.

So we can't go get a new 10 million out of that 10 million, right?

Right, right.

So we we on the same page, okay?

We have draw we we on the same page, so we have to find so then you told just like uh councilwoman uh brown thumbnails said you told us it was salaries, supplies, etc.

So we asked are those salaries bodies sitting in a desk, some of them are and some of them are not.

Well, if they are not, they already counted in the team.

Correct.

Okay, so you they ain't they're not part of this 10 over here.

So what is and I asked, what is the number one of salaries in your 10 that's sitting in a desk?

The dollar value for the one sitting at the desk is what we don't have broken out, right?

So we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and recess our meeting and come back on another uh tomorrow LC.

Okay.

Question No, we're talking their their numbers talking layoff.

Our number's not talking layoffs.

Because if you got a body sitting in a desk and you get rid of it, you got a layout.

So we're not talking layouts.

So that's why I answer what was that number, so we could go back and find enough to cover that.

Yeah, y'all don't get confused on the mail and tell us nothing else.

Let's resist, okay?

Queen won't go home.

10 a.m.

tomorrow.

Yes, because we don't want you to tell us a number.

Um wait, what we got to vote to be said?

Yeah, madam chair.

Yeah, I move that we recess and reconvene at 10 a.m.

tomorrow.

Second all in favor.

Well, do we have to do the discussion?

Okay, all in favor?

Okay.

I'm opposed.

Okay, fine.

Uh county.

Good morning.

The the recess is ended, and we would like to call this meeting back to order at 10 a.m.

Finance committee.

We'll start off where we left on page 11.

So are there any other questions on page 11?

Hearing none, we'll go over to page 12 and 13.

Okay.

Um we'll go to page 14 and 15.

Are there any questions on these sections?

Madam Chair.

Uh Peter Taylors and CAO.

I just this is a little follow-up question from yesterday.

I want to make sure we're on the same page with the council.

We spent a lot of time yesterday on other professional services.

I am gonna assume that when the council comes up with his questionnaires, one of the things you're gonna put on there is you want to know by department what their other professional services are.

If not, I'm gonna tell you that the CFO and I will make sure that question is answered so you will have that information as you plan for the 27 budget.

Thank you very much.

And this morning I asked our um chief financial officer to give us it, doesn't matter what that category is, but that broad category to give us the grand total of money being spent in that category.

Do you have it for us?

It's still printing.

It's still printing.

Okay, I think it's very important that we get the grand total, and it does not matter what that money is being spent for.

We need to realize that that is a large percentage of our budget, and that is an area that we need to look at, whether it's being spent or not, and it can be cut because if we don't cut large areas of the budget, we will never get to the other 10 million that we need to cut.

And the other item that I asked her to look at is printing all the money that is spent on overtime.

What no matter what department it is, so we can have a good picture of how much money is being spent on overtime.

If that much money is being spent on overtime, then we ought to need to look at um the department heads need to look at management, they need to look at leadership or what's going on in the department to see what it is.

And if it's just on paper and we're not spending it, we need to take it off paper.

So thank you.

Any other questions?

Mr.

Parkinson.

Thank you.

And we're on page 14, is that right?

Uh municipal auditorium, is that dialogue?

Okay, thank you.

Can I also ask uh we were just handed this executive summary, Chiperson Clay, is this something you produced, or is it something the administration produced?

What is this document?

Councilman Parkinson, this is um something I asked uh the CFO and Mr.

Jackson to work on yesterday evening and this morning based on uh the comments yesterday, and there's some confusion about what the CFO and her team have previously recommended.

So we were trying to clarify that and give that to the council to help you know what they had previously recommended and and answer those questions.

Likewise, um I talked with the CFO this morning, and we think if you'll give us to June 3rd, we can give you a set of recommendations about uh possible ways to in a in a cliff notes way uh to look at the 13 million.

There is gonna be some additional vacancy money that'll chip away at that number.

There's some other things.

So what we tried to do is piggyback on the questions from yesterday, come up with this brief executive summary of what had been presented, the 10 million or 10 and a half million, and then we'll try and do the same thing for the 13.

If I could take a stab at summarizing some of this, please.

I think ultimately we need to cut 23 million dollars.

I think we have two categories to cut from.

We have the easy stuff and we have the hard stuff.

I think this page represents the 10 million dollars of the easy stuff.

If I'm understanding that correctly, this is stuff that's vacant positions that weren't filled anyways, uh things that maybe uh directors kept in, even though we're not needing them again this year.

So this is when we have to cut 23 million dollars total.

This is 10 million of that, and that's the nobody's even gonna notice, nobody's gonna sweat, nobody's gonna there's it's just cut this.

This is just paper to Chairperson Clay's point of of budgets not being real if it's on paper.

This is a 10 million dollars, this is the easy stuff that leaves the remaining $13 million.

That's the harder stuff that that's the stuff that someone's gonna feel that we're we've got to find approaches to there.

And if I can understand what I think you just said, you think that there's a chance that of that $13 million, there's even some easy money left in there, and we can maybe find a few million of easy stuff even in the even in the hard um if we give you just a little bit more time.

Councilman, that's an excellent summary.

And I uh, you know, I don't know if this was easy, but this is the easier of the two for sure.

Uh and I will say there have been some directors who did squeal about this easier money, but as counsel as chairman clay is repeatedly said, this is just numbers on paper.

They they had not spent this money, it's not impacting operations by what we're doing.

There is a potential that our next recommendations may have some effect on operations.

We're gonna try and minimize that.

But you're right, councilman.

This represents a solid 10 plus million dollars that is out of the budget that reduces that deficit that does not affect services, and that's our approach.

Perfect.

And just to clarify with with Chirpers and Clay, because I'm with this approach, I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page.

Rather than adjust the budget with this $10 million first and then find some others with the 13, we're gonna wait till we have all the 23 million altogether.

We're gonna do the hearing on whatever date we set the hearing on, and then we'll be done in one false swoop.

That is partially correct because we have to agree and we have to look at this 23 million that they're bringing us.

I'm saying the way we got in the position we in now.

Yes, we did not really look at it, and if we had looked at the bottom line number, no matter whether we were new or not, we would have seen we only had 112 that came in, and we would have been conservative enough to say we may get 10% more.

So we would have budgeted 123.

We just went with what was presented to us and said, okay, these numbers match.

Let's use these numbers, okay.

I I agree, I respect everybody in here, and I know you guys are the professionals.

We are just looking at numbers and trying to make it work.

But at the same time, I don't want to be in that same position again.

And in talking to Ms.

Cartwell this morning and tell and then how she told me about that software.

I think as a council, we need to look at whether that software is the best software, and I know that's a cost factor, okay?

But if that software cannot pull out line items and give you a total by the line, no matter what the category is, that software is no good because you could go in a spreadsheet and do it yourself, okay?

So if we ought to need to be trained, fine, and and we don't need to spend any money on training.

I'm sure there's a summary telling you what that software will do.

Something as easy as QuickBooks will do it.

So I know if this software costs this much money, it's got to be able to do more than we are saying is doing.

The Munich software.

Yes.

It's got to be able to do it.

Otherwise, Munis is something that the city needs to look at getting rid of almost instantly.

Because if Munis is what's keeping us from being able to turn in our audit numbers and et cetera, then Munis isn't working for the city.

So we need to figure out that part, and we're not IT, but I know we all can read and um with um artificial intelligence.

Anybody can go out there and figure out what's going on right now.

So we'll work through that.

So some categories, the larger categories, I answer for line by line.

Um Ms.

Caldwell told me Munich won't break it down like that, but it's gonna break down the categories, and we have to figure out in that category.

The main thing is if you got a category that is say 30 or 40 percent of your budget, you need to be looking at that category line by line to figure out what's going on, and it's in every department.

So I'm good with the 23, but I think we need to keep working while they give us that number, at least to make sure, and we may come up with the exact same page like we did with the revenue.

There was not much difference at all in revenue and what we said as a council and what finance said.

So it's how you want to handle it.

I'm good with whatever y'all want to do, but we can't wait and uh we can wait to June 3rd if y'all want to meet just not meet anymore until they give us the numbers or whatever.

But we can start working with what we got and keep going.

Madam Chair.

Yes, sir.

Can I ask you a question about page 14?

Yes, sir.

Okay, the the um I'm trying to make sure I understand how this is set up.

The I'm looking at the art center.

Now, that's the art center, that's the building right over there next to Thalamara Hall, as I understand it.

Okay, and it starts at the previous page, it's got 41810 art center, okay.

And supplies and it lists all these things, supplies, cleaning, I'm sorry, Mr.

Foot.

You're on page 14.

What's that?

You're on page 14, Mr.

Foote.

I'm on uh page the the it the it the art center thing starts on page 13.

Oh, okay.

And you turn over and it's got cleaning and sanitation, office supplies, non-capitalized, other repairs, total supplies, materials, sixteen thousand, other services 400, 1360, total art center.

According to if I understand this correctly, the total amount budgeted for the art center is 18,460.

Is that correct?

And over here, then it says um so far they've spent 2,570.

Okay.

And it and I think the maintenance comes up must kind of out of another um part of the city budget.

Because it's so the this would not include things like getting the bathrooms repaired and things like that.

No.

Okay.

All right.

I just make sure I understood that.

So the only amount allocated for the art center is only for the full year, is only $18,460.

Okay, that's very little money for a for a pretty big building and uh offers a lot of services for um uh the arts community and all, and and for students that that uh take lessons there in ballet and other things.

Okay, then the next one is the municipal auditorium.

Is that Thalymara Hall?

Okay, so that's Thalamara Hall, and it's got down here, you go through the salaries, got 11,000 in salaries for Thalamara Hall, and then it's got other stuff, and you go down here, and then on page 15, it says total municipal auditorium, Thalamara Hall, 215,000.

Well, we all know that we spent a whole lot more money than 215,000 on Thalamara Hall.

So that there's a disconnect between this and the reality of Thalamara Hall for the last year.

Because the mayor to what's that?

This is general funds only.

That money was not.

Well, that's I'm trying to understand I don't understand.

I'm trying to understand the budget should tell us what's going on for that particular location.

So in the in the Thalamara Hall, we spent millions of dollars on it, okay?

And and rightfully so, it's an important part of Jackson's cultural landscape and all.

I'm not complaining about the dollar amount, but the point is in this, it really doesn't tell us the story of Thalamara Hall.

It's it's it's numbers and that are disconnected from the reality when the mayor is is taking money from what was the other department we we allocate we spent money from uh administration.

The department of administration was was money was taken from there.

So I'm just saying that the the point is uh is sort of detached from reality from the from a budget standpoint for us trying to understand what's going on.

Um anyway, I I just want so then we go on down here uh to um the next facility is special programs, and we go through special programs, okay.

We're gonna go page by page.

Yeah, I just it's fine.

What is the so if there's a salary for Thalamara Hall?

Who is that?

Because the Jack we turned it all over to the Jackson uh convention center and and visit Jackson.

They're the ones running it.

Why should we have a salary at all?

Now that's a good point.

So that should be taken out.

I don't know.

I mean, somebody tell me.

Well, I think uh councilman foot.

I think I addressed that yesterday as I recall the timing of us adopting a budget and the mayor presenting the proposal for Thalia Mara Hall.

I think the finance department already had the existing employee for Thalamara Hall included in the budget and didn't go.

So is that an opportunity for savings to just eliminate that line?

Should be.

You can't eliminate that line because you've spent 29,000, but what you can do is take the difference and make that savings.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

You can do that.

Yeah, and we of course wouldn't have that for the 27 budget.

But my question is, is that money already in unfilled positions?

Yes, it is.

That's in the easy money.

That's in the easy money.

So what we need to make sure we understand easy money has taken every position that is not currently filled and put it over there.

So we cannot double count easy money.

It's laying out there, but we cannot double count.

We cannot go in the system and change the system other than in the training system because we cannot change the paper on the budget on paper until we have our public hearing and we vote.

So basically, what you can do is take an X and scrape that number and subtract that amount, and we all do it at the same time, and we know we have that amount.

But it really doesn't matter at this point because it's already counted in the 10 10,000 uh 10 million.

So what we need to do is not look at salaries.

When we look at what we're doing for today, it does salaries is already been taken care of across the board.

We need to I disagree.

I think we need to look, I don't think we should take salaries off the board.

I think we need to be part of it.

Well, she's already given us the 10 million on it.

Well, just a minute.

So the 29,000.

The 29,000 that shows up here as actual to the pool.

Who did they get paid to?

Now that's your question.

Yeah.

Who who got paid the 29,000 dollars?

I mean, if if the Jackson Vincent Center and all that, should we did it get paid to Jackson to the uh visit Jackson?

When did that deal go into effect?

Did it go into effect on so there would have been a few months in October, November, December?

In which we could have had a city employee.

We've had it, we've had at least one Thalamara employee for years, even when it was closed, correct?

Yes.

Okay, anyway.

So this 29 number should not change because that's the last time we've paid somebody that would be in that position, right?

So there is still one employee that's tied to it.

Um, but this person was the manager over the art center and Thalyamara before it um pulling over.

Well they're late.

So this number is gonna increase.

So I think that number has increased, but it will be rolled over into the art center budget.

And I do have a solution for that.

But my question is if we don't have an employee, how is this number going to increase?

This number should never increase if what Mr.

Foote is saying is true.

Who does the person answer to?

Who oversees that particular employee?

I believe that it'd be the director of human and culture.

So they get money.

That's crazy.

I mean, it is the person is still employed, they're just over the art center now, so that money just needs to be rolled over into the division.

I think he was not have money for salary.

Yeah, I don't think he was a French Archives.

He was over both of them before the uh rollover.

So he got double pay.

No, see that one salary.

But I'm just trying to see, but why wouldn't that number freeze because the art center has salaries?

They don't have any salaries.

Okay.

So the so that number is gonna freeze on this side.

And so we're gonna keep the 29 here.

And we're gonna move the difference to the art center.

Okay.

You okay with that, Mr.

Pitt?

I guess.

I don't know.

I just I mean, it's it's uh it's weird to have a set of a documents.

This is how we draw up the organization chart, but we're gonna run it over here.

And and we're you know it it hard how do you hold people accountable if if you've got one set of books for for um for purposes of that's the way it's always been done, and another we turn it over and visiting the city.

I think that's what Mr.

Taylor said.

I think convention center are running the.

But this isn't the only place.

I mean, as Mr.

Taywison said yesterday, we used to have one department that included HR, TAC, finance, and there might have been others, Mr.

Taverson.

I can't remember if you said that.

And now we've separated, so now we have uh HR department, we have uh office of the CEO, we have finance.

We have tax its own separate thing, but some of those are still included in the legacy system that used to be there.

So there is a there is a disconnect, Mr.

Foote, to your point around the actual operation of the city and how our finance systems account for the actual operation of the city.

Well, that is something that needs to be addressed, but common sense tells us if you know where you're spending the money, you should be putting the money where you're spending the money, no matter what has been past history.

You would create a new line and go in there and put it.

You would straighten that out.

But we are glad we're finding it.

It's no misappropriation of money or anything like that.

It's just how it's being accounted for.

So we're gonna straighten that out.

So we're gonna freeze this number and move the difference over.

And just to uh be clear, as of this report date back in March of 24, it was 29,000.

It's currently 44,000, so you will see 44,000 being moved to the art center as opposed to the 29,000.

Okay.

So everybody clear on that.

All right.

Any other questions on page 14?

What about 15?

I have a question.

What is the recreational um fee that's on here?

So uh historically for recreational supplies, especially in special programs, which is basically like the administration of human and culture, they have programs such as Giles for Jacksonian and other things.

This is you know, a place where they buy more supplies for those programs.

Okay, that's fine.

And another item, um, data processing.

They they have a very high budget on data processing and have spent very little on it.

So what is that?

So this is where they actually buy computers and software.

Um, this line is actually part of that 10 um that 10 million that we were discussing.

The ease money.

That was a one-time um usage uh in order to buy purchase um computers um last year.

So we've already taken that money out.

So why when we did a budget, would we put things that we knew were one-time items in the budget to inflate the budget?

You would have to ask Mr.

Mallambecker that.

I want to remind you that madam uh CFO was not confirmed, it did not take over until this budget was adopted.

And I think that uh all of us have a number of questions for the previous CFO that we simply cannot answer at this time.

And quite frankly, I think the previous CFO, as I've said, was merely adopting categories as have been on paper year after year after year.

Um and so we are doing the heavy lifting that hadn't been done in past years.

Okay, we're good with it then.

We know to look at some of these zero categories and remove them instantly.

Okay.

I just I I'm not pointing fingers or anything, I'm just asking because if we know, and if you all were working in budgeting, to me, you would have said, hey, city council, y'all don't need to have this item or send a note or something.

So we're gonna all communicate.

Don't think you can't talk now, okay.

I think what that's exactly what we're saying, and that's what I've been trying to say since March.

And I want to be realistic to anyone who's listening.

If anybody thought that any of us were gonna sort this out in the first 90 days of this administration, that was delusional.

We have got to make up for COVID.

We've got to make up for lack of audits.

We didn't even have verifiable revenue numbers to after this budget was adopted.

There was no way we were gonna do anything other than exactly what we are doing right now.

And if we had rushed to try and figure out how to do this in the first 90 days of this administration, we would have, without the depth of knowledge that the council now has, we could have really handicapped this city inadvertently if we had done that.

So y'all have set your priorities, uh, blight being one, uh, crime being others, y'all set priorities, and now we're doing what I think is appropriate, asking the tough questions, and we will we will take out categories.

We want to do that.

I asked those same questions to uh Mr.

Jackson for the last six months, so we're all on the same page.

Okay, sounds good.

Now there's a category right here with 75,000 over here.

Um 65, 17.

Have you guys already taken that out?

The other repair and maintenance is budgeted like 80,000.

We spent five and a 75,000.

What page?

What page?

Um, page 15.

Category 6317.

So, yes, we did decrease this on line item.

The reason why we decrease this line item.

We don't need a why.

We can see 75 million over there, 75,000 over there.

So we just need to know is it in this number right here or not?

It is.

It's already in that we're gonna use modernization instead.

Okay, it's already y'all.

Okay, anything else on page 15, Mr.

Parkinson?

Yes.

Let me just do a quick calculation before I ask my question.

Okay, so I'm looking at okay.

That must be all of the divisions.

I just want to make sure, because again, chairperson Clay keeps asking, was this included in the easy money?

Was this included in the ease money and this included?

And so far the answer's been yes, yes, yes, which is bad news because we would have liked to.

Oh, that's next to spider, that's the next exposure.

That's next to the spot.

But so far it's all been included.

But let me just make sure I understand this.

So I see here humanicultural services, and I see supplies and materials.

You're estimating we can save nearly 170,000 from there.

So that in order to do that, what I have to look at is humanicultural services starts on page 13.

So there's supplies and materials under planetarium, there's supplies and materials under the art center, supplies and materials under municipal auditorium, it's applies of materials under special programs of all those supplies and materials sections.

You think that combined in all of those is 168,000 in easy money.

So if we go through this and we actually find 250,000, then that's where there's the extra that would be extra savings.

Now we understand we got a simple process now.

Very simple.

Just take this number that we see over here on this page, subtract it and see if we can find it.

And anything above that is information to come back and bring and see if the department can work with it.

Okay.

So that's good.

So we've done everything there.

Page um 16 and 17.

I have a question, and I may not understand what it is, okay?

On this uh capital outlay, what um, how does that work?

The capital outlay is the portion of lease the human and culture department is paying to occupy the 633 building.

And was it it was it budgeted or not budgeted?

So, due to um some accounting guidelines, we have to move that to another um category, and so it was not originally budgeted for in this particular line, but that is where they're paying the bill from.

Okay, but was it in the original budget?

No.

Yes, correct.

So now you're taking it from where look at each other.

It looked like to me, one of y'all can give an answer.

That's a disturbing signal to just want to be on the same page when we get the answer because let me say that councilwoman clay, I respect you, but taking shots at the CFO and Mr.

Jackson or speaking to them in that manner is unnecessary.

There has been no CAO or CFO in the last eight, 10, 12 years who has tried to be as transparent as Ms.

Calwell and I.

And so if they need to look at each other to make sure they're providing correct information, this is a fairly complex budget.

Okay.

That all of us are trying to make sure we are properly up to speed on.

Okay, well, I just it was once I'm just saying if the if if they have to talk to each other about the answer, that's fine.

But I don't the answer to me, if it's a category that you know you're taking the money out of somewhere else, so it's a point blank, the money is coming from here.

We don't it's not that we question where the money is coming from.

If it wasn't in the budget, then I know you know if it's not in the budget, I'm getting the money from somewhere.

I got a question.

Yes, sir.

On that uh same category, I guess that's the same paragraph on the top of page 16.

This is for uh it says the page before other professional service, um, 630, other services and charges, and it gets over here to general fund, and you've got all these things listed.

I assume this is still for human and cultural services category, but it's got gas, 100,000 one hundred dollars, and then year to date through the first for the five months is 17,400.

So it's only 17% of what was budgeted, and there's still 82,000 available.

But when is that gas, is that natural gas you get from Atmos?

That is Atmos.

And and uh so um I'm puzzled that that the number is that low, but um is it is the 100,000 originally appropriated more than we needed to appropriate.

You have any idea why that we've only through five months, including the winter, um when you sometimes use a lot of gas, natural gas for for heating, uh why that gas line is is only 17 percent, and why you're there's also electrical.

Yeah, electric lights, it says uh budgeted 230,000 dollars.

Um and um it's only 29 percent of this is 40 percent of the year, and you've only paid use 29 percent of the electricity.

I mean that's good.

I mean, I just curious uh w are if our numbers on the front end were um you know too rich for those categories.

I think this is common thing, and I'll share there doesn't appear to be a human and cultural services other services and charges, which means we might have found some hard money, whatever hard or easy, it's all the same.

So I mean uh I don't I I you know I don't know why I don't expect that the a specific answer.

I mean, I have no idea why the gas cost would be, but it may be that we hadn't paid that bill or something, I don't know.

Anyway, I just point that out.

So to um just to clarify any funds that are not spent on these lines that will go back into your fund balance at the end of the year, sure, and you can you know, once we get further along in this fiscal year, um closer to our budget season, we'll have you know a fuller year to look at, and we can you know make adjustments as needed at that time for your utility type line items.

Uh yeah, okay, yes.

We we have separate accounts for our different departments within my control yes, so it's not just one building.

No, the the um utilities are divided up among the different departments.

The one thing that I think that just becomes challenging on is is like the hood building where there's so many.

Do we do we divide it proportionally based on how many offices each person has in each department has in that building, or like does one department just absorb the cost of gas at the hood building or and then separately we have multiple accounts, like we have an account for each one of our buildings or each one of our we don't get one atmos bill that is the bill for the entire city.

We have we have multiple so like planning and public works is already good.

Which one of those is about the uh public works?

Public works.

So for the hood building, the porter building and city hall, all of that comes out of public works.

Okay.

And that's the type of question that's why we need to have these hearings, you know.

Again, that's what had been done historically.

I don't think that makes sense going forward.

There ought to be a line that says hood hood building utilities.

Maybe that's parked under administration where you capture everything broadly, but it's it's misleading to put it in public works.

And so that's one of those things where we know that in both the Hood and Porter buildings, we have multiple departments in there.

It needs to be in a central place and those bills not make it appear like there's more money in public works or any department than there really is.

I mean, because honestly, it would make more sense to have it site-based.

Yes, then because it even if you got three departments and one building, we need to know that this building itself is because there could be a myriad of reasons why the utility bills leaking windows, you know, traffic, you know, like my mama said, you let my air out.

So you need to, you know, we need to know those things.

The good air.

Right.

So we need to know if it's if it's by the facility itself, because it will also tell us well, maybe we need to be looking to move these folks somewhere else to save some more money.

Can I go back to Ms.

Clay's question on page 16 about the capital overlay?

When will the 633 we're still in there?

When is that right?

Or did we move out already?

What when will we be done paying for that?

We have moved out.

Um I would prepare to deal, I would rather deal with this in executive session.

Um I would have liked to have had us out of there about two months ago.

Um there has been some consternation by departments who simply don't want to move into the hood building because it's of a lesser physical quality than the space that we're paying rent for.

And so again, I'd rather discuss an executive session because it involves personnel and some other matters, but at the end of the day, um trying to fit the people in the footprint and make sure we don't lease any more space than possible has had some unexpected challenges.

I'm not trying to be combative and I want to stay on task.

Why know you're not?

Why do they get to decide?

They don't.

Okay.

Uh at least in my opinion, they don't.

But again, I think anything else I would have to detail.

Um I I can't speak to openly.

Because if we stop payment, then what?

Exactly.

And uh you know, uh I have said as the CFO repeatedly to people in the city.

Um need to understand the city council makes the finance decisions, not the budget decisions.

Um whether you like it or not, we have a budget to balance our obligation, uh, Ms.

Caldwell's and mine is to make recommendations on how to get there, and ultimately y'all are gonna make those decisions, and nobody's doing that to punish anyone.

Uh I work in the hood building, so does Ms.

Caldwell, Mr.

Jackson.

And of course, the council is also aware we're in the process of securing the titles to those buildings, so we can use modernization tax and make some upgrades.

Um, but it is um we're not as unified as a city as we're going to be, or as we need to be.

Let me ask you a question.

So are you talking about the lease purchase line there?

That's the 23,000.

Is that what we're talking about?

The capital overlay.

But there's no purchase.

In the middle of the city.

But that's money.

Where did that money go to?

That went to the hood building?

Uh-uh.

633.

633.

So 633, where's that?

What where the clinic is.

I think parks and rigs is in there, HR is in there.

Oh, okay.

So this is um payment for rent.

Is that what is it?

Who else is in there?

For their for their parks and rates.

You're providing programming.

You need to be out there meeting the people you're providing programming to and not sitting in any office, whether it's leased at 633 or in the hood building.

So there they're um it looks like we will need to uh at lease some minimal amount of space for human and cultural services at the medical mall.

Everyone else we can fold into hood or and or porter, and that would be a significant savings of about um taking their $35,000 uh monthly payment down, we would say to about 10,000 a month.

So you're looking at at least a quarter million dollars in savings right there every year.

Well, my ask is that that happens with delivery speed.

Yes, sir.

I hear you.

Thank you.

When is you said that public is 633?

Oh, not for another eight years.

But we can get out of it.

Yes.

Oh, well, we need to be moving fast.

I thought that's what we decided to do.

Okay.

That's a good point.

Any other questions on 16 or 17?

Aging, I'm sorry, aging programs.

I thought all of this was grant funded.

We have general funds that were using aging programs for this is like meals on wheels, and I thought CMPDD paid for all of that.

I thought CMPDD did that.

You have CMPDD, which is our grant funding, and then you have um our general funding that basically takes care of the community centers.

So it's about um five employees, five or six employees here um that actually tie into the grant, but they're not grant funded.

Okay.

Page 17 uh 18 and 19 19 and 20.

Uh uh, I'm sorry, 20 and 21.

As a question, the um if you look at the bottom of page 21, it's what so it's it completes their halfway down the page, and it's got um, so it's total human and cultural services.

We had budgeted three million eight thousand dollars for uh purposes of budget year to date actual through five months is through 40 percent of the year, it's eight hundred and twenty-five thousand.

So that's only um twenty-eight percent of what we budget the um so they're about ten percent ahead of what they budgeted.

So is there any expectation what the the um uh is gonna things gonna change?

Are we gonna end up getting through uh and having um a significant savings there because we were you know ahead of where we should be as of the end of February um about six hundred thousand dollars of uh other savings from here as well, though, is already included in the 10.7 okay, but but so there may still be um additional savings there, but we do have to pull that out, you know, to separate that from the actual amount expended as well.

Well, it makes it confusing trying to figure out where the savings are coming from if we go back and forth between we've already counted that as you know, I I'm you know it uh uh it sort of muddies the water if you if I'm coming from.

I mean it's good.

I mean, this is a good thing that they're they're below their budget expectations as a department.

No, the heat is getting but it's confusing to say that that um we've already counted numbers.

Let me count it somewhere else anyway.

I it's frustrating trying to figure out if when we're playing two games of chess on different boards.

So let me ask this question.

Um early on during these discussions, we provided a draft of an agenda order that would allow us to reduce these the budget by the 10.7 that we had already identified.

If we could move forward with that agenda order, we we could go ahead and make the adjustments in the budget, and you would see what is actually remaining.

We need to we don't have the got a question for you.

Is that including layoffs or not?

No, no layoffs, just 10.7 is just hard numbers that we got.

Yeah, then we need to do that.

Those are the easy funds, yes.

If it's too easy, but we asked about that when you gave us the training.

Remember the training on the training budget, and I said you said the numbers changed.

Was that document including all 10.7?

I don't recall, but I know we we provided a draft order of the right.

I understand, but I'm asking, and you may not remember, Mr.

Jackson.

You know that when we you brought a document in here, y'all brought a document, okay?

And it said training, and you said you couldn't change numbers.

Y'all remember what I'm talking about?

Because we hadn't voted on.

Does that training document reflect these 10.7 change?

So that was the full 23 million.

No, uh so it doesn't.

On the on the trendy document, it was a full 23, it was both of them.

Is it possible for us to get a training document that reflects the 10.7?

Yeah.

What you say it's we are we looking at the other political time.

I'm skeptical it would cause confusion to to do it that way, but we can, you know, well, why do we can give you a report that would show just the adjustment for two 10.7?

It's not gonna cause confusion at the top of it.

If you say this is 10.7, training, because training is on top of that sheet of paper that you gave us.

Because the one I got says training.

So when you change something, and this is training, that is not a hard change.

That is training.

And now that we know your system is training, because at that meeting, we didn't know about the training because I'm the one that said the numbers were not the same.

And you said it was a training system.

We can't go in and do.

So if that's the case, then you can give us a training document, and we are smart enough to look at it and say train.

Training, you could train it on every page if you want.

You can stamp it if you need to.

We can go ahead and vote on that.

That'll be out the way.

Then do the other part, but then we really will only have to be working with 13.

And that'll make life really simple.

Are you saying it would cause confusion because some of the other columns that are included?

Is there a way to remove but you can tell us what those columns are, and we can we can draw.

I know as as a as a as a person selling insurance.

I can't write on an illustration when I sell it life insurance, but I can tell the insured this column has no value, draw a line all the way down, and every council person up here can draw a mic.

And will that require a hearing, a vote?

It could just be a special council meeting or a regular council meeting to vote on the um the revision.

But we're gonna get it first, we're gonna discuss it, and then we can have a special council meeting saying we are reducing our budget by this amount.

We're continuing to work to get to this amount.

Can't we do that?

Hearing is for the adoption of the budget, but we can we can do it like that, I believe.

Um, we don't even have to have a council meeting.

If we get to 10.7, we can see it and we can take the trunk and copy and we can continue to work backwards and order.

I I like that idea.

So we can still go for the plan of only doing one adoption once it's all done, but it at least to Mr.

Foote's point, we keep saying, Oh, we can find money there.

Oh no, that was already included.

We can find money here.

Oh no, that was already included.

We could find okay, that wasn't included, and it it just gets a little confusing.

Do we have to have a motion to do that?

Or can we just do that as a committee or what?

Well, we don't have the no she but the the the plan is to have finance give us the training copy that eliminates the 10.7 no the to me, these are all still these are working sessions, so we don't need a motion for okay.

So, what we're gonna do is request or ask you guys to, and whenever you can get it to us, if June 3rd is to date, if it's whatever, however much time you think it's gonna take.

Well, we don't have the no she but the the the plan is to have finance give us the training copy that eliminates the 10.7 no the to me these are all still these are working sessions so we don't need a motion for okay so what we're gonna do is request or ask you guys to and whenever you can get it to us if June 3rd is to date if it's whatever however much time you think it's gonna take I think sooner we need it as soon as possible if you can give us that then we can get back together have a working session and then we can work from there and we'll probably be a lot faster and a lot clearer and we'll be done soon yes yes can we get that okay and and even if you have a draft of the order you can put draft real big at the top and we can entertain that too unless we're at a point where we can amend that well I don't even think it needs to be in order and voted out of committee but they say they had something they wanted us to vote on but I but we're gonna do it all at one time now yes so when they give us the training thing the training document that saves 10 million dollars okay we're gonna take that document and we're gonna continue to work side by side we'll know what we have and then we're gonna get together meet and have the whole 23 done that's the plan right that's uh I think I think that's a good I think that'll be a great plan and be no confusion nobody be asking anything because everything will be current yeah and I'm not trying to put the carrot before the car before the horse but and just in just being honest in terms of how I feel I think we're at the the a crossroad now where we're pinching pennies and all of us need to get in mind in our minds that you know there's an awaited reality on the other side of the stop sign and we will have to make some really hard decisions because this finding a hundred thousand here is not gonna get us the other 13 that we need we're gonna really have to start looking at some other stuff.

I agree but we have one big category in here that if we look at that category and we figure out like um councilman Parkinson said what's really going on with those categories we're gonna make the hard decisions don't get me wrong okay we get we all are gonna be in agreement of what we do and we're gonna make the decisions but I don't think we have to make the decisions not knowing what's really out there.

I mean I get that I just I just don't want it to seem like when those decisions are made there's just some big sticker shop folks need to understand what's coming down here it's probably worse before it gets better.

Yeah absolutely well I mean it is what it is if you look at the numbers everybody in the city can see the numbers everybody anywhere when we have the public hearing they can see and um everything is public information so I don't see a problem I see what we're working toward is I don't think we need to create any illusion that it's something different just look at the numbers okay everybody can count add the numbers up and keep trucking so and I know you're trying to I'm not trying to take over your meeting but my hat goes off to you and these two great people right here y'all have done a yeoman's job trying to work this out uh I'm in my second term councilman hardly's in my second in his second term we've never done this before and so this is a this is this is some heavy lifting and I just really appreciate all of you for taking this on yeah and let me forward that too uh we remember some of those days we couldn't have access to the data and we went through that five thank you for your openness and you patience and thank you and I I as an outsider didn't know that and would never have been in that environment so I'm glad I wasn't part of those teams because you know what I could not have worked like that I would have cut up every so maybe my attitude is different because I don't know the past history and I just assume that these things should be done and this is how it works so I appreciate you and I'm never attacking you or never never negative but I just say hey how could you have worked in this environment and if anybody is working in an environment similar to that they need to come forward and let us know now because I would never because your numbers if it was Tina Clay would probably be all bad because I would screw them up intentionally if I was in that environment so let's work together and we appreciate you very much so and we look forward to getting those numbers so we can keep shopping and going where we need to go is there any other discussion I'll just say Mr.

Taverson if we haven't yet had a chance to establish it um can we quickly set up the anonymous inbox or even not anonymous inbox where employees can email finance suggestions at jacksms.gov or whatever uh and and let all employees know that they are able to submit um insights and suggestions there and if we could maybe get a summary of what's being submitted um I I think that would be wonderful.

Yes sir, thank you.

And Mr.

Tavison, uh I had requested some uh grant statistics during our last, and we we took we pushed it till the next weekend uh until the next meeting.

But if you you don't mind, can you get with our grants department and let us know what's going on for us, how many grants out there, how many we've applied for, how many we get, how many we're tracking, that type stuff.

Uh I was given a report, but it was basically just job descriptions and mission statements.

Yeah, and you were looking for actual um statistics what is being applied, what we're seeking, what we're returning, this sort of stuff.

Yes, okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm uh and I have meeting with um director of the grants team on Monday.

Uh sorry, Tuesday, Monday's the holiday.

Uh so that'll I'll make sure I discuss this with her and get you that.

Thank you, sir.

And Councilman Parkinson, I did have that discussion on on uh your idea with uh Mr.

Slater.

I'll circle back to him and see where we are.

Thank you.

All right, madam chair.

I I believe that we go into closed session for the purpose of going to executive session for the purpose of discussing personnel matters.

Second, it's been properly moved and second that we go into executive session all in favor.

Okay, uh say how to you vote.

She raised her hand.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, we're out of executive session, no um business, no voting bus, no additional actions were taken during the executive session.

Okay, Mr.

Foot.

Thank you, madam chair.

The um as we've been doing all this stubby pencil work going through on these line by line items of different departments.

Uh it's a useful exercise, an important exercise to go through from the bottom up to try to identify opportunities to save money for the the um uh city budget.

There's also benefits to looking from the top down as well.

And I ask with that in mind, I ask uh Miss Um Calwell to provide me a overview um of the top-down type overview of um the year to date through March the 31st.

We've been looking at Mark through the end of February numbers, but I asked her for for this number, and I then I went to the bottom line on the third page, and this is um the the numbers for the um grand total for the budget uh original appropriation budget was 135 million, 5232 14.

Uh as the challenge we're trying to meet that the 135 number, obviously we're gonna be short on revenue of that, but you go across the the budget uh revised budget, and then that hadn't changed, but yeah, year to date expended through March 31 was 56 million seven hundred and sixty thousand nine hundred and eleven thousand dollars, and and then it says available budget 76 million 140,825 dollars, and it says percentage used.

So in those six first six months, we used or spent 43.9 percent of the budget.

So if you take the grand total 135 and you divide it in half, because this was six months, you end up with 67 million seven sixty-one six oh seven.

So if you subtract the budget that we actually spent, you in that's 56,760, 911.

You end up with 11 million 696.

So the point is that the city's been on a run rate for those six months, much lower than what the budget was.

Okay, I say that as an encouraging figure.

It doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work to do and cutting we got to do, but we're not on on we don't have to just find out, you know, here you know, cut 10 million dollars out of somebody's budget or whatever.

We we still have to do the nitty gritty work of uh looking at each line item and trying to find efficiencies there and cost savings, and some of the ones we taught things we talked about in the in the uh special in the executive session, but I just wanted to pass that along.

I mean, um they we still got a lot of work to, but it's not the end of the world.

I don't think we're gonna have to amputate our legs or anything like that.

Thank you, Mr.

Foote.

Any other comments?

Do I have to have a motion to adjourn?

This meeting is now adjourned.