Hello, welcome to our hello, there we go.

Uh welcome to our Tuesday evening budget workshop.

We're joined here by administrator Kane Rath and uh Director uh Roy, uh among other people.

Thank you, all the department heads for being here.

Uh administrator Kenrath, we had some questions uh from the last meeting uh that you can answer for us, please.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Yeah, so to follow up on our April 23rd meeting, we had a number of questions uh and information to get back to you with.

Um so we have uh a bit of a list here, uh and we'll bring up some uh department heads uh to speak in specifics about a number of these.

So we'll start with um we had a question regarding overtime and potential overtime savings uh in the departments.

This mostly impacts uh the fire department, police department of public works.

Um so we did sit down uh and discuss these budgets.

Um, you know, uh I think as we we anticipated last time there isn't, you know, a large amount of savings, I think to be achieved here.

We did want to bring up the departments to talk a little bit more in depth um regarding their overtime budgets.

You did hear from Chief Karen.

Um, you know, his largely is contractual, uh with the 17 he has to have on.

Um but uh Director Gagner, if he's here, maybe we could start with him uh and he can just talk about some of the specifics regarding his overtime lines.

And then we can uh move to the police department.

Good evening.

Uh Kevin Gany, public works director.

Um we've went through several of our overtime accounts.

Uh last meeting I went over uh page 18.

Uh there's no descriptions on those, so we're looking at page 18 again.

Uh overtime 4311 down through four three nine zero are public works accounts.

Uh some of the larger accounts are um highway, winter operations and open spaces.

Um in looking at those accounts.

Um the public works uh is dealing with uh emergencies, uh potholes, uh everything related to the streets.

Uh sidewalk sweeping is is done under stormwater, so it's chartered out to that.

Um if we look at our winter operations, uh we talked a little bit about that where um it's all staff are plowing.

So anytime uh water and sewer staff, uh anybody in other divisions outside of highway, all those divisions have crew that plow.

So they're either part of an A team or a B team, but any overtime occurred by winter ops is put into this overtime account.

So um last time uh we're requesting 255,000 in the FY27 request.

Uh currently uh we're at 322,000 spent for FY26.

So we we plan on an average of storms and cutting that budget.

You know, if we have a drought year or a dry year, may realize it, or it could be like this year when we go over.

Um one of the other ones is uh open spaces.

So we looked at our open space account and I've got uh Deputy Director Bates here to go into any additional detail if you want.

Um but those are that highway that open space account is to address all the parks in the city that we that we mow and maintain, uh litter collection, leaf collection, uh mowing, uh as well as the different playgrounds in those parks, uh as well as cemeteries and other spaces that just vacant lots that are city owned that were required to maintain.

So uh those spaces typically because of the staffing issues and depending on the type of season we have, uh wet weather, we're out there mowing on overtime just because of capacity.

So if we have a drought year, we could be under and mowing less, but we're also trying to stay to the the mowing heights that it's in city ordinances as every other uh lot out in the city is being held to.

So um we also do Christmas uh setup and Christmas lighting in that open space account.

Uh we do handle emergencies, um so litter cleanup that's happened on nights or weekends.

Um so you know, those overtime things are happening because of capacity issues on the crew.

Uh and if if we trimmed any of these two budgets that I went over, then we would be looking at uh slower response time, um large storm events, uh we'd be tapping staff in and our primary routes are the arterials.

Uh the open space account, we'd be looking at impacting those parks and open spaces, uh Christmas lights and those type of events.

So without directly impacting services, we you know we feel we can't cut uh those budgets without impacting services to the community.

Just real quickly, while we have we have have you up here also, uh there was some discussion about potentially contracting out some of the mowing or some of the open space work.

Um and from what Deputy Director Bates told us, we actually did a look at that a number of years ago, I think it was 2016 or 17.

We did actually put that out to bid.

Um and what they found was the cost savings were were not there, and also the quality of some of the contractors were not ones that we would be comfortable with as far as handling some of the services.

So any more to add on that as far as potential savings or the idea of of you know contracting out some of these services?

Absolutely.

So we discussed a little bit more internally after meeting with administration and going over these lines.

Um we do have specialty equipment equipment.

We have large mowers to address uh some of these large spaces to mow as efficiently as we can.

Uh we have specialty um sweepers and field maintenance for the turf.

Um so that's some of the startup issues that that we saw in 2016 is that the level of equipment that a contractor, it's not a regular small landscape person that's that's gonna go and address this with some of the special equipment we have.

Um of the factors that we looked at too is it all comes down to personnel hours.

So we we've gained efficiencies on a lot of our new equipment.

Um we we had staff over in rec and moved over to PW.