Okay.

Can I get everyone to uh all the auditors to be seated?

We're gonna get started.

Good evening.

Tonight we will start our uh committee on the whole our budget meeting for 2026 budget meeting.

And so tonight uh we started last night, so tonight what we're gonna do is we're gonna start off with uh the police department tonight the way we started last night.

We're gonna go down individually each department like we did last night.

The authors will have an opportunity to ask questions.

Um we'll start off uh with Alder Townsend and then we'll go around.

He'll ask this question, we'll go to the next order, and what we want to do tonight is make sure that all the questions that the auditors have uh are going to they they have the opportunity to ask ask their questions.

So uh at this time we're gonna start off uh with the chief.

Uh we'll have him come to the podium, and then we will start off with Alder Townsend.

Chief, could you push her?

Click on the number 2.

Okay.

No.

Okay, okay, let's do the same as last night in the front of the budget book.

Uh the list, there's there's one in the front of the budget book.

If you don't have one, we'll get you one if they have an additional one here.

Chief, we're trying to get you on right quick so you can start.

And then I'll Alder Townsend, we will come to you.

No, there we go.

All right.

I'll start with all the thousands.

Hey, Chief.

Um, so I remember from yesterday you said the with uh the way that all the calls broke down, it's averaging out to a hundred and forty-eight a day-ish right now.

Um how does that stack up compared to last year?

Um, it's uh we average out 148 calls, comes out to about fifty-five thousand per year, and that's what we've been averaging the last two years.

Anywhere from fifty-four to fifty-six thousand costs.

All right.

Um there's not like a big increase or anything like that.

We've had an eight percent increase uh in the last two years.

Yeah.

All right.

I would say for an eight percent increase.

You're doing pretty good, so that'll end my questions.

Okay.

Well, I I I can defer.

I know that the ordinance was introduced by I believe Alder Keller.

I'm not quite sure, but I'll have I'll defer that to the uh city administrator.

Well we'll have that city administrator.

Yes.

Um Council President and Alders, uh, it is in the budget because there is a fine and a fee schedule that is associated with the ordinance around hemp products.

Follow up then.

Yeah, go ahead.

Um a monetary piece to it.

We've had other ordinances that have gone before the standing committees, uh, which allows the public to have more input on those specific um ordinances.

My fear is that these ordinances get buried in the minutiae of um of the budget and don't get fully vetted during the budget season, and therefore um it still comes back to you know would this uh could this be something that should go to one of our standing committees rather than be included in the budget this year again?

I will uh defer to the city administrator.

Sorry, Alderman.

Yes, the question is um well the statement was that other ordinances have gone before standing committees that have had um a financial impact because they've had fines um associated with them.

Is there a reason why this should not go to a standing committee instead of being handled during this budget?

Uh I think that it was as I said before it was included in the budget because of the fines and the fee schedule.

Uh if the council wanted to remove it, uh they could do so, but that's the reason why it's in the budget.

You have additional or all we should go back to the okay.

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

Auto direction.

Thank you so much.

So could you help me uh point to what you feel like some of the line items that are most impactful, or if there's any specific parts that go back to in this budget um on increasing enforcement, you know, things like traffic tickets, alternate side parking.

It's one of those things we we hear in the community a lot of you know uh folks not following alternate side parking impacts the ability for DPW to plow and um you know enforcement on reckless driving and traffic tickets uh impact um you know just what it is to drive through the city on on any given day.

So are there any specific parts of your budget that you'd highlight of line items that really go towards increasing enforcement where it's necessary?

Well, uh those are more operational uh kind of questions.

I'd be more than happy to answer those that like through an email or personal conversations as far as the budgetary, how it impacts the budget.

Uh I will maybe refer to the finance director and how much money you may be uh taking in on those citations or but any operational type of alternate side, but we do have uh we have members that work uh are uh do the uh street storage and things of that nature, and we'll work real real close with uh DPW on on the operations.

So I guess my my follow-up would be that um so you know that like the CSO budget, is that fully funded where that would be um you know going after the you know alternate side parking?

That's one of the things they would do or enforcing park at me parking meters.

That budget's fully funded, and and that directly goes into their ability to where we have uh we have operations for we have uh in our budget we have CSOs uh that uh are part of the operating budget and uh they we hire CSOs throughout the year.

Sometimes they're fully staffed, sometimes we're not.

It it all depends.

But uh we are full uh we are budgeted through the CSOs are budgeted through the process, and they have uh their orders to go out there and uh whether it's humane, uh animal uh humane care for the uh animals or for the uh um parking restrictions uh violations.

Thank you.

Right.

Alright.

Could you put push button for me, please?

I'd like to know who took my cushion.

I'm sitting way too low.

I think Nick Nick has a cushion there.

Okay.

I feel like my legs are too long for this chair.

All right.

So Chief, how about I try to keep a broad uh view of public safety?

And I'm looking at the general fund expenditures for 2026 compared to 2025, and what I see is there is uh almost seven percent increase in expenditures for the general government or administration, but there is a.66 percent decrease in the budget for public safety, which would include include the police department and the fire department.

And I'm wondering if uh the decrease in your budget, being that from what we hear all the time that there's increase in cost, if this is of any concern for the operations of the police department.

As far as the funding sources, I will defer to the finance director when it comes to the bucket, so to speak, with uh how the money cuts to us when it comes to the operations, but uh the the decreases or the increases uh in the funding sources are uh I believe uh better handled through the finance director.

So if the finance director is gonna ask all the questions about increases and decreases to departments or the general operation of departments, um maybe we should just save all our questions from the finance department.

I'm concerned about your the police department operations, if you're gonna be feeling that impact of that that did decrease in your budget.

The again the operating budget is a very slight increase in the operating budget for 2026.

So then the majority of the decrease must be for the fire department.

That would be a I can't answer for the fire department.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

All right, Art Kelly.

Could you push a button, please?

Thank you.

I thought it was number 13.

I wasn't quite ready, but I will make myself fully ready at this moment.

Okay, so I'm just kind of wondering about the salaries across the line.

Looks like we're still at 196 uh for total sworn force.

Um I would expect like all of the other departments that the wage increase for the new contract would be built into the salary line, but I'm not really seeing that at a 0.4 percent increase, which is only like 68,000.

So I guess it's a two-fold question.

Where's the contract at, and why are the lines for the salary for PD not reflecting an increase like the other departments again?

I may uh respectfully defer that to the finance director regarding the contracts and the funding.

Thank you for that.

Um so contract negotiations with both police and fire are underway.

Attorney Letney certainly can speak to that as well.

Um, in terms of the budgeting for um contracts for police and fire or any of the unionized uh employees, it is traditionally the practice of the city of Arcine to not include estimated wage increases in the budget when we have not had a settled contract at this point in time.

So this is customary.

So if I can a follow up if the city attorney can just guide me as to what the expectation for a time frame on that would be.

Um we have uh the city's bargain team has met with the uh Racine Police Association bargaining team.

We've had one meeting so far.

It was I would say cordial and productive, and we do have another meeting scheduled for later in the month.

Um I see no reason we won't come to an agreement in a reasonable amount of time, but I can't predict exactly what that will be.

Thank you.

All right.

Go at Alder Harmon.

Push a button, please.

All right, you on.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate it.

Um Chief, first I'd like to commend you and your team for a really great job in doing your best in um keeping our city um safe.

So I commend you for that.

My question is with regards to operating expenditures, um, and it's within that same piece, although it's two different um line items.

On page 76 in operating expenditures, I see that um prisoner expenses jumped 733 percent.

Could you explain what that is and why?

And then on page 77, I see that copying and printing, although in years um 23, 24, 25 had have had marginal increase and then a decrease, it's significantly increased to 300 percent in 20 um for 26.

Could so if you could kind of explain that otherwise, I really see a lot of the budget seems to be um for the uh solid the prisoner expense.

We do get charged for each prisoner that uh it's taken over to the county jail.

I'm sorry, I apologize.

I can't uh thank thank you for the question.

It's we do get charged for each prisoner that's taken uh to the jail, whether it's for care for what administrative uh fees and things like that.

So we do get charged by the county for that.

Okay, uh so there's been an increase.

There's been an increase uh in the billing that there was a uh there's a lapse in their billing, and then we finally started getting bills again, so that's why you see the jump.

Okay, all right, and then copying and printing on page 77.

That's my last question.

Okay, page 77, copying and printing.

Which is just trying to say.

Oh, so went from the 2050s to a thousand dollars.

Uh I may need a little help on that, Julia.

Uh okay.

We we uh we in 2017 they stopped doing an annual report.

We started uh having an annual report as of last year.

We started that back up to give us a status of what the police department is for the year, and we do send that out to uh to an outside source to get printed.

And so that's what the increase is in the uh in the fee is.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Honorable well, one of the the benefits from being number 15 is a lot of my colleagues have already asked the questions that I would have.

I sure they're concerns about the traffic regulations and some of these jumps, but I think um they've been explained, so I have no further questions for the chief.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, honor Allen.

Push a button, just push a button.

No, you're you turn you all now.

Okay, thank you.

All right, so uh I'm looking at page 76, and I just had a question about overtime, and I'm just curious.

Now, I've I've heard a lot about how we are not at full staff, so I'm just curious.

The overtime amount you have projected is zero dollars.

Is is that that's accurate?

So we don't need to have overtime considered in the budget for any of your any of your staff.

The there is a paid overtime line above that overtime where I'm looking is zero dollars.

It was 39312.

I do see what you're talking about where it says PD overtime.

Yes, and that is the one is it one million, but underneath that I see zero.

So I was just looking for the difference in that because I this is my first time looking at this.

Okay, and that was I believe a funding source uh that became uh as part of the shared revenue.

If Kathleen, am I correct in that one?

Certainly I can chime in just a little bit.

Actually, that was a separate funding source for specific overtime.

I believe that may have either been associated with presidential election or we were helping Milwaukee with something.

That project number at the end of it means that it had a specific funding source.

Okay, thank you.

That's all.

Thank you.

Uh, thank you, Chief, and your department for the great work you're doing for the city.

I basically have one question that's related to the budget, but it encompasses a little bit more.

Uh what do you see the number one challenge to meeting the budget constraints for 2026?

And the second part of the question is I'm not trying to be sneaky to have two questions at once, but it does go together, and that is in the operational budget or current grant fundings from both the federal, state, and other sources included in the operational budget.

Well, just like uh we have to be fiscally responsible as a department had we have to be work within our budget.

That's the budget that we're given, and we want to stay within those constraints of a budget uh uh as far as that goes, and we'll we'll make it work.

Uh as far as any grant funding, any grant funding uh opportunities that become available.

We do look at all our grants at what we're available, what are we eligible for, and we'll go through this uh body here to apply for them.

And if we accept them, uh to get award, we take them as far as federally how it's challenged right now.

There have been some uh at this point, we haven't been impacted yet as to how federally we're challenged with it.

Uh but uh any grant that we apply for, we hopefully get it, and if we're awarded it, then obviously we'll go through this body to accept it.

Thank you.

Nope.

Thank you.

Hello, Chief.

I just would like to thank you and the police department for the wonderful job you do taking care of our city.

The one question that I had has already been asked and answered.

Thank you.

Thank you for the kind words.

All right.

I don't have any additional questions.

I just wanted to echo the uh I and my constituents appreciate you guys.

Thank you.

Order Davis.

Thank you.

Uh Chief, I want to follow up on the overtime in uh fiscal year 2023.

Overtime was that 3.2 million dollars.

Um a lot of money, and uh we're all aware of the struggle that the department had in recruiting and retaining officers, and I'm assuming that was the reason.

Uh a year later it fell significantly.

Um in 2025, we adopted 1.5, and in 2026, um it's proposed to be 1.5.

What is the year to date?

Um fortime right now.

Where are we with overtime for this year's budget?

Okay, I certainly I don't have that number with me, but I can certainly get back to you and the entire body on that.

All right, if you would, that would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Honor Germany.

Hi, so this kind of goes off my last one.

I maybe just uh to go a little bit deeper on it for the strategic initiative initiatives for number nine.

There was a new parking citation issuance system.

Um and so I'm wondering how that you know the getting that new system plays into kind of the the parking enforcement because I see in the budget book it talks about you know it's gonna help provide accessible parking but enforce parking violations uh and eliminate limitations of the older system.

So is that kind of go into the it'll help you guys do your job, you know, more efficient.

Yeah, yes.

That's exactly it.

When you get a new system, new technology to help sell.

We had a system that uh was needed some fixing uh so uh we got a new system that helps it's more efficient where you're not there as long as to a vehicle you can and issue citations a lot faster and more efficiently.

And so is that in my follow-up question, is that just for more so of like the the parking meters, or is that gonna be for the full city for if somebody's on the wrong side of the street or if a car has been parked in a residential street for too long?

Is that also gonna be for 2025?

That's what what it is.

Uh not only 2026 may propose something different for a parking system, but for 2025 that's what it is.

Our CSOs are equipped with this uh system and they go about uh uh issuing citations.

All right, thank you so much.

And I just wanted to echo what's been said many many times, so I'll keep it brief, but thank you for all the work that you guys do.

Uh thank you.

I hope you didn't get a ticket.

Yeah, no, I always pay my parking meter.

Thank you.

Auto the city of Racine thanks you.

Chief, I'm on page 74.

Do you have your book in front of you?

I do.

And I have just a question.

Oh while you're looking, I'll tell you what a great job you do, too.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

You should hear that from everybody.

We have many conversations.

I don't want you to think that I don't think you're doing a great job.

You've been very kind in your words over the past.

Every now and then, yes.

Are we there yet?

I'm here.

Okay.

So the significant funding or program changes in 2026, and there's several items listed.

And it mostly says that these items will be extended to uh 2028.

What is that?

What does that mean?

Is that you're gonna put off purchasing those items, or is that something these these are generally in in our uh what would be our um uh capital improvement uh capital budget?

I think these programs are here.

The vehicle uplifting is not because now we have the cars we switched over from a Tahoe over to a Ford Explorer, and the equipment that's we had to get all new equipment with for the uplifting for the with today's lights, we do all the things that come with the a newer squad.

Now that because we're using the same kind of vehicle, those that that's gonna be reduced because we already have those vehicle that equipment on our vehicles now.

So when it comes to interchanging, it'd be a lot easier than going from an old uh vehicle.

over to afford a explorer and the equipment that's we had to get all new equipment with for the uplifting for the withdrawal lights radio all the things that come with the a newer squat now that because we're using the same kind of vehicle those that that that's gonna be reduced because we already have those vehicle that equipment on our vehicles now so when it comes to interchanging it'd be a lot easier than going from an old uh vehicle I I get that but I'm trying to understand what it means when for example speed trailers will be expand extended to 2028 4500 does that mean that we're gonna have speed trailers every year this year we're not gonna have speed trailers we have a speed trailers now last in last year's budget if you recall that we had some speed trailers in there or speed boards and the year before that we had speed trailers so our next we anticipate our next purchase of speed trails will be in 2028 and the same thing for the SWAT body armor and the SWAT helmets we're not gonna purchase those elder that's correct there's a there's a there's a usually a five year process for the uh the the helmets and the in the body armor uh now that we're getting to our staffing levels it's kind of leveled off where and we still do get have to replace our body armor every five years per manufacturers suggested but uh and I believe uh yeah that so every year now we're getting to our numbers that it now gets uh our next time we purchase would be during those years okay so all these significant funding or program changes in 2026 are a reduction in your budget if I'm understanding well the vehicles are we're going we're replacing our vehicles from a uh from a leased program to a purchasing program okay CSO vehicles I believe that have been uh purchased uh in the last couple years okay speed trails we talked about our body armor we talked about on our helmets have talked about yes so it's okay thanks Chief Autoscater just thinking for a series okay thank you all right we're going this your way on to Alan you turning it off all right I just wanted to say thank you so much for being always available to answer questions and for the community outreach that you and your your department are intentional about doing uh thank you for accepting all of my 911 calls about you know my particular area and just for being the very um uh generous person that you are with your time and your and your leadership is appreciated thank you so much thank you uh thank you I don't have any other questions I would just echo what all the Alan stated thank you for your service and for your department taking all the calls that I have to make for various traffic reasons in particular thank you thank you all right all right on the carly thank you um quick question on the capital on the axon I was informed that there might be some changes for mandatory upgrades so would that be the difference between the CIP from 26 to 27 for the price I'm sorry um yes uh technology obviously is a thing that uh helps us reduce uh crime it's great for uh public safety and axon who the the vendor that we have is um just to uh we're coming to an end of our first contract that's to the five year end and so it's this is uh our next contract uh and obviously there are inflation costs that come with that so are you going with a new package then for axon uh well we're proposing that we continue with axon they seem to be leaders in industry in our technology okay is that package coming through one of the committees like finance committee then when you go to the new package you said the it's just a it'll be a continuation of a kind so there's no new package that you have to update that's correct okay all right good deal thank you so much thank you chair um chief premieres on page 76 I am looking at um the part-time salaries which has decreased 28 point eight percent and I am thinking about um the mayor's proposal as far as having more city employees um live locally and that will um not only help in the assistance of some of the unemployment or decreased um um employees in a needed area but it'll also decrease um our unemployment levels um so it has some benefits for being able to um hire within the city um what are some of the steps if any um are you I haven't read everything and it may be in it may be in here so I'll apologize for that beforehand what steps are you um taking to one increase the part-time salaries for some of the needed um police officers or increase safety maybe and

Um so it has some benefits for being able to um hire within the city.

Um what are some of the steps, if any?

Um are you I haven't read everything, and it may be in it may be in here, so I'll apologize for that beforehand.

What steps are you um taking to one increase the part-time salaries for some of the needed um police officers or increased safety, maybe and um are you trying to recruit um some residents erasing?

So then that's it.

That's a great question.

Uh one of our successful program for the part which includes the part-time sales is our cadet program.

They usually work about 20 hours a week.

We work with the Racine Unified School District, where the individuals that come out of our school district uh most of them live in the city of Racine.

They want to learn about the police program or the explorer program, and the natural progression would be going right into uh becoming a police officer.

But they're some of our part-time employees.

The same is for our uh our uh crossing guards.

Uh, all but one, I believe, if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, is they're all part-time employees.

Uh so they help us out obviously get our children across the street safely.

Um but we are we are intentional about uh getting people that under know Racine, they understand the culture we've seen, and it really helps us out in our uh our job, whether it's through the police cadet programs, it's someone for the future, uh, or having our uh our folks cross our children safely to and from uh school.

Uh those are uh excellent programs that we have here.

We want to keep them and uh hopefully uh we'll continue for the future.

Thank you so much, Chief, and thank you for your vision in um keeping racing safe.

Honor Pompei thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I don't have any questions for the chief.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh any additional questions if you have any additional uh just hit the cue and I'll I'll call on you.

If any of the other all this automatic I have three questions, but I'll do them one at a time and wait my turn.

Um the first question is how does your department interact with the community safety department?

Uh this is a regular thing.

Uh we we we meet on a regular basis under shoot reviews, we discuss, we have uh just one-on-one meetings as well, is to uh discuss not only what we do within the reviews and the people that we work with, uh it's usually a combination of receiving unified probation parole, uh, the community safety, um at times there's a district attorney's office, obviously with all the police department uh so we interact quite a bit.

It's it's a regular thing, and we do nothing we do for prevention as far as also for to stop retaliation when it comes to shoot reviews.

And we have gone a little bit outside that too, with because we're so connected with uh Caledonia Mount Pleasant, most of Mount Pleasant, we also bring them into the fold on this because there's no there are no borders when it comes to people being mobile where incidents do happen, happen not only in Racine, but outside outside Racine as well.

I have another question.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

I didn't want to go out of order here.

What's your greatest challenge in 2027 and how can the council help support you?

Uh in 2027, the the cost of technology has gone up quite a bit.

Uh I think we're gonna be challenged uh also in our in our just overall budget.

Uh we have to work within that, but I think that's our biggest challenge right now that the cost of technology keeps going up and up and up, and if we can get some uh state revenue funding or some other funding source that's outside of the racine, that'd be awesome.

Okay, and then the last question is um last year's budget we placed neighborhood watch under the police department's purview.

How is that working out?

Yeah, it's uh it's under our contract services, it works out great.

Uh uh Susan has been uh excellent.

Uh she's at a lot of meetings, she does a lot of the organization of our meetings, she has them at uh at the uh COP houses, she has them over in churches, so she's very big integral part of our of our of our operations when it comes to informing the public, crime prevention, things of that nature.

Right.

And additional questions for the chief nope.

If I can just answer another question, if I can just add uh thank you for listening to me, but uh, these folks here to my left, uh DC Melville, Julian Jones, and Justin Kepnick helped me a lot in my budget and how I spend where I can't spend uh and I appreciate the for the work that they do.

I'll tell you what, and I'm still joking, just to kind of lighten up the room.

A lot of sleepless nights, a lot of stomach acid, and a lot of stress, but I'm available to you guys.

All right, thanks, Chief.

All right, sorry, Mayor.

All right.

Now we'll we'll have the uh we'll have the fire department come, Chief Hanson.

Should you get them all calmed down for me?

Good evening, members of the council, President Horton.

All right, we're gonna start off with auto channels.

Hey Chief, uh, just gonna start off with the same thing.

Thank you guys again for everything that you guys do for everyone who's seen all of my interactions have been very good.

Um my question is going to be more so regarding the EMS services.

Um of these lines, the work supplies on 124 is up 803%.

And I was just curious, are you guys uh like what's shifting that's causing that?

Very good question, Alder.

Thank you.

So in the 2026 budget, we started this process last year for 2025.

In the 2026 budget, we are moving EMS related supplies, wages, salaries, and benefits from the main fire suppression and technical rescue budget to its own budget, which is the EMS budget.

So you see an increase of 175,000 dollars there in the EMS budget, but if you look at the fire suppression budget, you'll see the same decrease in that budget.

Okay.

Um I don't have a follow-up right now.

Thank you.

All right.

Owner Davis.

There you go.

Chief, um the line item for work supplies for fire.

I see it's went down 79%.

What is this just overall this has nothing to do with your equipment?

Correct.

Okay, so this is uh the older Townsend's uh question.

It went down 79% because those funds were transferred to the EMS budget.

Okay.

No matter no questions.

No auto journal.

Thank you so much.

Um thank you.

Uh uh, it's been ad said tonight, but thank you for the work that you're in the your department does.

I still have to do my right along with the police department, looking forward to it, but I did a ride along with the fire department was very eye-opening.

Um, and uh that's kind of where my question comes from.

I number three uh for the 2026 strategic initiatives.

Um there's a section on there about um leverage grant opportunities and fee review, and there's uh a part talking about uh evaluating user fees.

Could you share a little bit more of of what goes into that?

Because I I think even on my ride along, it was it was eye-opening all the different parts of the city and the community that the fire department steps in on, and sometimes outside of our community where we're going to provide aid.

So I think um it'd be just really helpful if you kind of talk about that fee review and and how you conducted it and where you landed on some of the bigger ones.

Okay, thank you for the question.

This has to do with the fee schedule, which is included as part of your budget.

As you look at that fee schedule, we re we combine several.

Okay, so we work with our EMS billing agency every year to determine what fees should be in terms of billing.

They give us recommendations, and this year they made several recommendations, including the discontinuance of some fees that are now incorporated into the base charge for EMS services.

So there's four different levels of charges.

You know, you have your basic, your advanced, your advanced life support one, and then your pulse less non-breather type charges.

So we consolidated those based on their recommendation.

In some cases, those were adjusted to accommodate uh the supplies that we use on those calls.

As you look through that uh the fee schedule, you see, we were charging for things like Lucas devices or oxygen and things like that.

Some things we typically use on every call.

So they recommended to us instead of billing those separately to combine them into one, and it also goes to uh billing for like Medicare and Medicaid.

You know, they don't want to see a big itemized list, they're looking for just a few items which we now incorporate into the base billing for those different levels of service.

Of course, basic life support is the bottom level of service, cuts, bruises, sprains, lacerations, things like that.

Advanced life support would be a little more complicated, possible blood loss, head trauma, advanced life support calls for service.

Uh, we call them LS1 calls.

Those are the types of calls that you would have an immediate or what we call an acute potential for life-ending emergencies.

And of course, possibly's number either's our self-explanatory.

I see.

So it took a lot of the frequently used items instead of individually billing somebody for a band-aid, you figure on a on that first call, you're probably gonna be doing a band-aid or cause, and so it makes it easier uh when it's billing for Medicare, but also I'd have to imagine too that it makes it easier for the the um fighter fighters and paramedics in the in the ambulance that instead of having to keep track of every band-aid that they're doing, they can just know that that individual charge is going to cover all of that.

Correct.

And again, this is a recommendation.

This is not something that we just implemented.

This was a recommendation of our billing agency, and they're looking across the industry, and they're coming back to us with recommendations is and that's what we uh implement here.

Keeping us consistent with our peers.

Correct.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

I don't have any further questions.

Chief, it's taken me a while to acclimate myself to the new budget.

I was very good at the budget up until 2019, and then when I came back, there was a huge change in how the budgets are laid out.

Um, but I do flip back and forth between the budget from 2019 to this most recent budget for your department, and I think I found why there was such a reduction in public safety for 2026, and it looks like it's coming from your department, and I do have some concerns about that.

Um at uh 2019, the fire safe uh fire department had a budget of 17,143,498 dollars this year that is down to 15,186.

So evidently there is no inflation in the cost of our um either our salary infringes operating or intergovernmental expenses for the fire department.

So I commend commend you because for example, your salary infringes are down 5.9 percent, operating is down 19 and a half percent, and your intergovernmental expenses are down or up 6.3.

So I do have a question in here somewhere.

Um I am looking at the couple things.

Um page four of the um the number of employees that you have.

Now, having passed the referendum in the spring of 2025, uh, the nine positions that were grant funded are are now being funded under the referendum.

And I remember the discussion here that there would be no reduction in personnel in the fire department, but I do see, unless I'm reading this incorrectly, that your FTEs went from 147 to 146.

And 0.38, so I don't know what three eight employee is.

So there was a reduction in the fire department.

Can you explain what even though it's a minor reduction?

We told people when we supported the referendum there would be no reduction.

So can you tell me what that reduction is?

Alder Widener, thank you for the question, and absolutely.

So historically, and being an old timer here, uh going back 15 years or so, our base staffing, our full-time equivalents was 141.

That 141 includes 135 line personnel, and then six administrative personnel, including myself and the assistant chief.

They're the referendum.

So in 2022, we lost nine positions.

So we went from 135 positions on the line to 126 line positions.

Nine positions we lost.

When we achieved the safer grant, that added those nine positions back, raising us from 126 back to 135, which has been our historical average for the last 15 years.

Okay.

So we are currently fully staffed.

The additional positions that you see within the FTEs, some of those are actually cadet positions.

Uh one of them is uh a part-time assistant that uh works on our EMS billing.

So we are fully staffed right now, as we were in 2019.

I'm not sure where you're getting the 147 number, but we've been at 141 since 2010 roughly.

Chief, do you have your book in front of you?

Yes, I do.

I'm on page four.

Okay, I don't have the uh FTEs in front of me.

Oh well, what I'm looking at total fire department for 2025 is 147.

Total for the fire department for 2026 is 146.38.

137 of those positions are funded through the general fund, and nine are through the special revenue, which is the referendum.

So there is a change in the number of positions.

Uh so some of those positions are funded through March of next year on the AFG Safer grant.

Okay.

Correct.

When that grant expires, that's when the referendum funding kicks in.

We are we are fully staffed right now.

Okay.

The the other positions are part-time positions, or they are our cadet positions that the department funds.

Okay, so maybe I'm not reading this right.

Would you I'd be happy to send you a detailed explanation and an email?

I could share that with everybody.

I I just want to be sure what's in our budget book.

No, we are correct.

From from an operational standpoint, we are funded at 141 positions, which is the same that we were at in 2021 before the nine positions uh were downsized.

Well, did you lose an administrative assistant or was that it was retitled?

The administrative assistant.

Yeah, it was retitled to we have an office manager, and uh so that's probably one of the positions you're looking at there.

So you have 0.62 of a person you've got to find somewhere.

Yes, that is our uh EM one of our EMS uh support personnel.

She works part-time, she works about 28 hours a week.

Okay.

I'll I'll send you the breakdown.

And I actually can include a graph that shows you check for the book.

Yep.

Thank you.

You better thank you.

Okay.

Oder Alan.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

I'll start off with saying thank you for your service as well.

And I just had one one question, and it is about the training.

So I've noticed at the budget that your training budget has decreased by 50 percent.

So I'll just let you fill in the blank as to why that's a reduction.

What training are you not going after now, or have you met all of the training requirements to date?

What what is that reflect?

So you're looking at the fire suppression budget, which reduced the training down to I believe it's $50,000.

The other $45,000 has been transferred to the EMS training budget, and that is used for paramedic training uh within the department.

So the the total funds are the same, it's just that they're under different categories.

They're associated with EMS.

So the reduction in fire suppression, that category under the fire suppression budget was all inclusive of fire training and EMS training, paramedic training.

Now that we have a separate EMS budget, we have broken that out from the fire suppression budget and put it over an EMS training part of uh funding.

Oh, and I think the uh finance director wants to assist here.

She wants to uh assist help out with your uh yeah, sure.

If I could just clarify a little bit with the fire department because it is a little bit unusual this year.

So the fire department has three separate funds that are funding their department in 2026.

One is their general fund, which is what is on page 68 that we've been referring to.

They also have what's called an EMS fund, which covers salaries, supplies, um, training in a special revenue fund that's funded fully by the fees associated with EMS rescue runs, and then the third one, which is new this year, is the referendum fund, which is on page 111 of your budget document.

Again, a special revenue fund that's been set aside so that we can clearly define the referendum and the use of the referendum.

The combination of all three of those funds keeps them fully staffed, fully funded at the exact levels that were requested for the referendum.

So I just want to clarify that because it does look a little strange this year.

Thanks again.

And again, thanks, Chief, and to you and your department for all the work you've done.

And me and my constituents know firsthand from last year, what a great job you do that cold winter day when we had the issue.

Uh but I have one question on page 71.

And it may refer to what Alder Towns has started with and what all of Alan just asked.

But in the total operating expense budget, I see a total decrease of 19.5%.

Is that because of the shifting to the three other uh funds that Director Fisher just referred to?

Alder Pete, that is correct.

That is a shifting of the funds from the fire suppression budget to the EMS budget.

That's absolutely correct.

Thank you.

I would just like to say many thanks to you and your department for keeping us safe.

I don't have any questions for you.

Thank you.

Audacity.

Thank you.

Now that I know all the page numbers, thank you so much.

Uh Director Fisher for that.

I didn't know what the three sections were, so we were going a little crazy over here.

Um thank you for everything you guys do.

Um I had an amazing um ride along with one of your cadets who is absolutely amazing.

So just wanted to give a shout out to the guys.

It was an amazing experience.

Um we had dinner together, it was like family style, so um a lot of camaraderie.

I just can't say enough.

It it was amazing.

Um my question is um, I guess I was kind of looking for um user fees for radios, and I don't mean to you know open that box, but I just have to ask the question.

Um, is that in the capital budget or in your operating budget anywhere for thank you, all our Kelly for the question.

Yeah.

So what the Alder Kelly is referring to is the Racine County is putting in a new 800 megahertz trunking radio system that they would like communities to participate in.

When that system goes into place, uh the county is talking about issuing new radios through borrowing, which we all know you can raise that side of the levy, um, and issue those radios to communities.

What has been suggested is that at some point in the future they may charge the public safety radio users a subscriber fee to help pay for that county radio system.

Currently, we pay nothing.

We have our own radio system, and it's actually a countywide radio system.

Um it's a con what's called a conventional system versus a trunking system, and there are no subscriber fees with our current radio system.

When we take something in to be fixed, we charge an hourly rate to fix that, and then we're done with it.

What is suggested at the county level is that they may potentially charge a per radio subscriber fee, which would impact the operational side of our budget.

And depending on where they set that fee, that could be quite a bit of uh funds that would have to come out of the operational side of the budget for a police fire and any other agency that uh joins.

We don't know where that stands with the county.

Uh that is a decision that they're gonna make down the road.

Uh we haven't had any communication from them for a while now, so we're just waiting to see what happens with that.

And you are a part of that group that meets with the other fire chiefs, and I I meet with the fire, the county fire chiefs on a regular basis.

We meet once a month.

Uh, this is a a running agenda item on our uh we monthly agenda, and we're not getting any answers.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so when you know, you'll let us know.

Absolutely.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yep.

Other army Audible Paul.

No.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Any any additional questions?

Yep.

Just Gordon.

Oh, today was your question.

Go ahead.

Chief.

There's in the fee schedule.

I noticed the lift fee has been reduced.

Is that by recommendation of the folks?

Um yes.

Uh so the question is in the fee schedule, the lift fee has been reduced, but you'll also notice that we eliminated uh towards the bottom of that sheet.

We had a number of uh different uh fees for depending on the call volume to a particular establishment.

What we determined and what we found out is it's difficult to manage that.

So we went back to the original program that we had a couple of years ago where we're just charging a flat lift assist fee.

And I believe that fee is either equal to or slightly less than what we did three, four years ago.

From a budgetary standpoint, it makes it much easier to manage that.

Those types of calls are typically called invalid assist calls, and these are where residents of our communities will call us to help get off the floor or get from one part of the house to another when they don't have any family or uh or others that can help them do that.

So you'll see that in the fee schedule where that was uh reduced, I believe from 400 down to 150.

And then and then towards the bottom of that page, you'll see we discontinued some of the uh the other fees that were associated with that.

A follow-up question to that last year with the increase of the lift fee, did that help with a decrease of cost for those um the homes that you had to go in and lift because I remember last budget that was the one of the reasons where the list LIFE was was um increase was because of those costs.

Correct.

So what I can tell you as of uh about one p.m.

this afternoon for January 1 through today, we've had 450 uh invalid assist calls for service, which is about five percent of our total call volume.

So we're still getting the calls, not quite at the level we got in 2024.

And if you'd like the history, I certainly can give you the history.

It's I got it here, but I didn't want to take the time to look through it.

So no, I just wanted to ensure that by reducing or however that it's set up now that it won't increase costs.

No, we're running about the same.

Okay, sounds good.

Thank you.

Uh yes.

Underback.

Thank you.

I have three questions uh if that's okay.

The first saw is procedural for you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, are the ordinance ordinances going to be taken up separately, or are we handling those at this time with the various departments?

Yeah, they all go to get automatic, so you can ask you can actually question.

All right.

Um concerned that uh we're dealing with some of these ordinances that should be probably brought to the uh appropriate standing committee.

But I see you have an open burning ordinance on page 12-20.

Um what are the significant changes to that ordinance, or is that a brand new ordinance?

Okay, so the question is is has there been a change to the open burning ordinance?

What this change is is it's a clarification of some of the the uh items within that ordinance.

Uh the biggest one is historically when we talk about burn pits that people can use, the ordinance called for a UL approved burn pit.

A lot of folks don't understand what that means.

So, what we did was we updated the ordinance to say that any containerized burn pit that has a screen across the top of it can be used instead of getting into the minutiae of whether it's UL approved or not.

That makes much more sense and it makes it easier for our residents to understand what that's all about.

Uh it also talks about you know, if you're gonna burn, it's got to be 10 feet from the lot line.

You can only burn from 3 p.m.

till 11 p.m.

You can only burn clean material in there, clean wood.

You can't burn tires or rubber or you know, garbage, those types of things.

So that ordinance was more of a cleanup ordinance of things that we've been addressing over the years, and uh that's what's incorporated here.

All right.

Uh my second question is is uh the scene fire department still a state regional enhancement team, and if so, um approximately how much is your budget offset by uh being an asset like that?

Thank you, Alder Mac.

And as you're well aware, you were part of that process many years ago.

The question is Is the Racine Fire Department still a regional hazardous materials team for the state of Wisconsin?

And the answer is yes.

We receive about a hundred thousand dollars a year for salaries and equipment that is used as part of the regional response.

Something else that we've also are participating in is a state technical rescue team, which is based out of Volkfield.

Uh last year, I think we received uh a little over a hundred thousand dollars in funding for that as well that paid for training and is also going to cover uh equipment upgrades for technical rescue.

The advent the beauty of these two regional teams for us is that we're getting you know nationally qualified training through what's called IPSAC training, but we also use it here locally.

We respond on far more calls locally for hazmat and tech rescue than we do the state, but when we're called upon a couple times a year, we do respond uh as a state asset.

When we respond as a state asset, that means that we become a state employee for the duration of that event, which means any uh uh workers' comp claims, any injuries, anything like that is covered by the state as opposed to being covered by the city of Racine for our participation in that.

And that's all by contract.

And then the last question is um, and I thought we talked something about that last year.

The old radio tower, did that disappear, or is that now under your budget, or what is the status of that?

Okay, the question is is uh the radio tower, which is uh the Recene City and County Communications Center.

This has been around for more than 60 years, and historically it had been under the fire uh the police department.

Uh last year we took over the oversight of the radio tower, and uh we still continue that to this year.

So that is still fully functional.

Um we made some changes and upgrades out there.

Uh we're getting better at billing for the things that we do for not only the city but for the municipalities that uh use the radio service.

Um, Mount Pleasant, Caledonia, Start Event, County uh police and fire agencies, the sheriff's office, dispatch, they all use different aspects of the radio tower for their operation.

Um, the police department has a lot going on on their plate, and you know, this was a good fit for us to help the PD out by managing this for them, and we're doing very well with it.

So, where's that found in your budget?

And then uh one more follow-up on that is it used to be an enterprise fund, and I believe discussions last year it was no longer an enterprise fund, meaning it was fully funded by the users approximately how much is the city subsidizing for that.

Okay, thank you for the question.

So the radio tower was changed from an enterprise fund to just a straight budget uh fund under the fire department fire suppression budget.

If you look at your positions page, the radio tower position is listed there.

And the reason why we changed it from an enterprise fund to just regular funding is because when the enterprise fund was set up many years ago, the radio tower had two employees and at times had three employees, and they also did outfitting of police cars and ambulances for radios and all that equipment.

That's how they got the enterprise funding for that.

We don't do any of that anymore.

As you heard uh police chief Ramirez mention, that is outsourced uh by the police departments now.

Uh same thing with all the other agencies in the county, they have other entities that they outsource that to it.

So we have one employee that maintains the infrastructure, microwaves, base stations, things like that, and they also maintain the mobile radios and the portable radios that we use on a daily basis.

So, in terms of uh when I last checked, uh we were doing really well the cost, the salary.

Uh we were paying that anyhow, even when it was an enterprise fund because we did not have that revenue stream coming in.

Uh so that was coming out of the general fund, anyhow.

So, right now, with what we've been billing, uh, I think uh if I recall correctly, about a third of that cost for that employees now being covered.

Yep.

Under Jericho.

Nope.

Auto Iope.

Nope.

Oh no.

I don't see that you keep turning it off.

All right, there you go.

No all the Pete turned it off.

Tonight is to help me with this.

Okay.

Uh I don't see it, and maybe it's just something that's not included, but I am curious.

I don't see how we um or how you may track false alarms and how much fossil alarms may cost.

Uh and I'm really thinking things like uh false alarms at our schools and those sort of things.

How much do they cost?

And where do you track those losses?

Okay, so the question is how do we track uh false alarms that go on throughout the city?

In the computer aid dispatch system, the ProPhoenix system, we have the ability to go in and look at what calls turn out to be false alarms, you know, under unit disposition or you know what happened to that call.

We then uh look at at least once a month we run a report and our administrative support folks take a look at that, and you get a number of those calls free, okay, because we don't want people turning their alarm systems off.

But when they start to become excessive, then we start charging for like you know, five, six, eight, ten calls to a particular facility, they'd get a bill for that through our billing agency, the same folks that do our EMS billings.

So we have administrative support folks that look at that on a monthly basis, and when they figure out that somebody is exceeding what's called for in the fee schedule, then we notify the billing agency to send a bill out for that.

It's very low.

I mean, we might be talking maybe 50, 60 false alarms a year.

Uh, it's not a very high number compared to the 13,000 calls that we go on typically.

As of this afternoon, we've gone on 10,502 calls so far this year.

And of that, um, if I remember correctly, maybe a handful of them were false alarms.

You know, and typically those are a single what we call a single engine response that we'll send on those, or you know, it may be a reduced response, depending on whether it's a commercial enterprise or a home.

I can get you the exact number.

Oh, no, that was fine.

Thank you.

Okay.

No more.

What?

Kelly, come on.

Any additional put a cheat.

All right.

Thank you, Chi.

You bet.

All right.

Thank you for supporting us.

We really appreciate your time this evening.

All right.

Next department is the Department of Public Works.

Thank you, President Horton.

Uh I was 30 seconds.

I left on the clock yesterday, so I'd briefly like to acknowledge my staff, assistant commissioner Ron Pritzla, City Engineer Aramollater, our fleet manager Nick Becker, Facility Manager Bill Miller, and our superintendent Scott Salinas, they're integral part of putting this budget together, and they are a great team to work with.

So I just want to acknowledge my team.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Other times.

No, I'm just kidding.

Uh um.

I I appreciate all the work and planning and everything that goes into what you guys do.

I see you guys had to do a lot of shuffling around and a lot of these line items and stuff.

Is some of that affected too by the rate at which we're trying to replace a lot of the service lines and stuff.

When you say service lines, are you referring to what in particular?

Um water service lines?

Yeah, but like the paving of the roads afterwards and stuff like that after they're dugout.

Well, we have been working actively with the uh water utility on this at City Engineers Office and the Department of Public Works.

There's some other um entities involved in that as well as trying to figure out how to manage the the pavements after all this infrastructure work gets started next year and progresses through the next five years.

So we do have a strategy in place.

We use our pavement management system uh to determine uh pavement condition ratings.

So if it's between a certain level and a certain level, then just simply putting the um the road patches back as long as they do it for the street specs, is fine if the roads are between a certain level of uh of pavement condition index.

We'll be looking to resurface those.

And the ones that are really, really poor, those ones we're gonna try to reschedule um to uh reconstruct, and we're working with the utility uh to make sure that they fund their their share of that work.

Uh it that you know, this is a uh water main replacement and a lead service replacement project.

Um we're partnering with them on certain roads we were gonna plan to do anyway, but the ones that are outside of our budget, uh they need to be able to provide funding to properly restore those streets to the city's standard street restoration specifications that uh everybody works under every utility company.

Thank you, Hunter David.

And the fee schedule on page two.

I'm hoping this is for you here.

It's mentioned parade permit.

I believe that's new for the first 10 blocks with the $10, and the each additional 150.

Could you speak to why this was introduced?

Um, I am going to uh defer to uh the city administrator.

You know, the the typical events that we would have would go through public works and services, and we have fees associated with the first block and then additional blocks.

So this new fee schedule for parades, I'm gonna defer to uh Jim Sullivan.

Or is that city clerk?

Uh or the clerk.

Sorry.

Sure, thank you for the question.

So that's on the department of customer service.

I don't know if you'd like to wait till we get there for me to answer it or wait for the department to come about.

Got it.

Thank you.

This one may uh fall under the category of maybe going to the clerk, and and if so, I just wanted to talk about the the new um uh hire that would be covering the sump pump program.

Um and so to kind of make sure that my understanding is right and and jump into the question when the program first came out, it was more of a um you know the resident would put their information in, the city would help to try to get a bid put together, but we had some trouble getting um contractors to bid those groups, and it just wasn't successful.

Then we switched it to be more resident driven where they would put their name in, we would you know get them the information on on how much they'd get and how that would work, and then they would go find a contractor.

Uh and that really wasn't getting us the numbers that we needed.

And so, how would adding a uh a full-time employee to manage the program?

How would that look different for residents now?

Um, if somebody was kind of steering the ship, what could they expect that program to kind of change now that we'd be having somebody actively managing it?

Um so we looked very closely at how we're trying to get this system rolled out, and as I mentioned last night, it is without a doubt the most cost effective way for us to reduce II and peak flow at the treatment plant.

Um the the main issue here, and if you remember the number from last night, we have taken over 700 applications, and we've only issued I think 78 vouchers, and only 59 of these have been installed.

Our goal for the wastewater commission, and I will be there next month uh as I have to report to them annually about how we're gonna try to hit that 56 million gallons that were required to cut off for peak flow at the treatment plant.

And part of that strategy that we were looking at was doing a hybrid of things, and one of them was trying to achieve 2,000 some pumps.

That was a number that we thought was attainable.

So when we set this up and we thought, okay, this is owner initiated, this is as simple as you know uh getting a permit to do you know, plumbing work at your home.

Um, I think what we found out is the the lack of follow through on it prompted us, and we had discussions with the with the mayor about this and with the um uh customer service department, is what happened there.

So we wound up actually surveying over 400 um applicants um with AECOM that's a consultant that helps us out to get some feedback on what happened from the point that you actually applied that 10% of you actually got a voucher and maybe 8% of you actually installed, and a lot of it's just the follow-through, right?

And and I think they get started and they don't have the follow-through to make it happen.

And maybe they get busy with life, maybe they got a job, they got a family, they got kids, they got other things to juggle, maybe get caught up in the process of going out and finding uh a plumber or a contractor to do that.

So what we said is if we can provide some type of of hand holding to, and I think most of them in that survey of that 400 surveys that we sent out, I think the um the theme that we saw in there is they just didn't have the time to stick with it and make it happen.

So we think that this program or this position will help increase those numbers tremendously.

And this is if you want to call it maybe a handholding type of position, I think this is the right thing to do.

I think it is a position that we could put metrics to.

We can uh require that we want to see you hit a certain number and make sure you get there, um, hold that position accountable.

Um, I think it is something we're also gonna need because we are piloting another program to reduce II, and that is full lateral lining.

That also requires the private property owner to be involved and get into partnership because we can't do anything on private property and the public right away, we have the rights to do that.

So I think this is a uh a position that also, if this is another tool that is very effective, it's gonna pay dividends there as well.

Um I think the you know, the heavy-handed approach would be if for some reason you know our compass isn't pointing north, and this position just simply doesn't get the uh turnaround that we need on the number of sump pumps.

Um, you know, could we consider maybe uh uh drafting an ordinance where it says, hey, at point of sale, you need to get a sump pump put in your home.

There of all the homes that we have in the city of Racine, we estimate about 16,000 of them are of an age where they don't have a sump pump.

And we would need about 36, 3700 homes to participate, and we could hit 56 million gallons just by that program.

The other areas that we're looking at are somewhat limited.

If we were trying to chase manhole sealing, we need to seal 12,000 manhals.

We only have 4,000 in the system.

So we have to kind of grab a couple different things to try to get to that number.

So I think this position is a worthwhile endeavor.

Um it will be managed out of the Department of Customer Service.

They will be meeting with DPW and engineering and our consulting firm.

We meet every three weeks on this discussion of ground reducing II.

Um we'll have them well guided.

We have the engineering department at their disposal as well.

Answer those technical questions.

I mean, these are the people that go knock on a door, sit down with somebody in their home, walk them through the process.

You know, somebody maybe just calls and it's interested.

This position say, let me take care of everything from here on out, and I'll get your sump pump installed.

You don't have to worry about a thing.

Just enter into the you know the process of the application, and I will take it from here.

And I think it's something that is worth trying.

If we don't, I mean we were thinking seven to eight years this would take to get to that 56 million at this rate.

We're not gonna get there at all.

So we need to do something different to try to uh uh uh meet those goals that um we uh we went to the wastewater commission, told them that we think we can achieve.

So I I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, it did, especially at the end there, just to to follow up and make sure that I've got it right.

So the the goal in this, it sounds like it's more of a white glove approach where you put your information in this person would kind of take you through the process and make sure that it's it's no longer on you anymore.

Uh they're going to be there and and um take care of you know times where they would maybe fall off the the path of getting it done.

Absolutely.

This is uh uh somebody who's gonna be able to take care of the whole process from cradle to grave.

We want somebody to apply, we want to make sure we have somebody there who can make it happen for them.

Um it is by far the cheapest way we can reach our II reduction goals, and and we need to make this happen.

It's it's a it's a no-brainer, but we gotta have the uh the private property owner participate in this self-initiated attempt at it uh isn't working as we had thought, and that's why we're trying something different.

Thank you.

Um the city clerk will be.

Tells us that what we're missing is that human contact.

So I think this is a great example of collaboration together with John's program, is already up and running.

The part we're missing is the human part.

So I think John and I are both very excited to be able to present it and say, hey, let us help you get this done.

Let us walk you through the process.

So thank you so much.

On the way, thank you.

I just want to follow up on that, John.

Uh, the installation of those sump pumps is contracted out, correct?

Um it is currently it's no different than you just going to customer service and getting a plumbing permit.

You know, you get a permit, or you have your contractor do that, and and they will do the work.

So there's lots of eligible, you know, plumbers that can do this type of work.

So it's it's it's who you want to hire to do the work.

Now we can uh help facilitate that by saying we will help you through the process.

We know a list of you know plumbers or contractors that can do this, don't worry about it.

We'll contact them.

You know, the city's reimbursing for this program anyway.

So but it is it is a it is a you know by and large a local plumbing contractor that's gonna install the sun pumps and and that have in the the 59 that we've put in.

So I thought that we contracted out with a specific plumbing contractor to do all the sump pump installs.

We we tried that initially.

That was our first go around.

We attempted to bid out uh a couple hundred locations.

Very difficult.

First of all, you have to go out and individually find property owners that are willing to sign up for this and then put that into a contract.

So when a contractor bids on this, they can enter the property and do the work.

It turned out to be very, very uh clunky to do that.

When we finally got that out the door, I think it became so burdensome.

We only wound up receiving one bid.

And it turned out even that was difficult because now the contractor is trying to arrange time with you and you and you.

When can I get in your home?

And we got very little work done.

We didn't even get all the sump pumps installed that we had bid on the first contract because the contractor said, I I give up.

I I can't I can't figure this out how to get into these people's homes.

If they don't let me in the door, I can't put the sump pump in.

So that's when we uh pivoted and went to the owner-initiated program.

Were you just applying go find whoever you want?

You want to have them do it on a Saturday or a Thursday afternoon?

It's up to you.

Put the paperwork in, you know, and uh we'll get you paid.

So this is something we're trying to expand on that, but have somebody on staff here that can help them with all those things.

Just apply, we'll take it from from A to Z.

Thank you.

I don't have a follow-up, but I do have other questions.

Okay.

Oh, just kidding.

Thank you.

Pete.

Yes, thank you.

Just one quick question.

On page 86.

Uh on your uh total salary and fringe is I know this a four percent four point one percent decrease.

Uh I could you kind of explain that page 86.

Yeah, I'm looking at that.

Um it's oh, is that on is that on traffic salaries?

Is that what you're looking at?

The 6.1% decrease.

Is that the line item you're referring to?

Yes.

Okay.

So what what traffic is is that's the salaries that are associated with maintaining um our our traffic signals.

Um, okay.

And then if you look up above that, there's also you know, salaries that says lighting for street lighting.

Those numbers vary and go up and down based on how much our electricians spend time on traffic signals versus street lighting.

They also have time that they put in at the bridges, they have time they put in the buildings.

So these numbers for salaries and fringes always fluctuate from year to year.

Some years they have more for traffic signal work than they have for street lighting, that for buildings.

So they go up and down.

Um there's really no way to predict it.

It's just the number of hours that they code into TMS, and then we try to put it in the budget, and it may reflect that it goes up or down, but it's still the same, you know, four electricians doing the work, just scattered across different divisions of DPW.

Very well put, thank you.

You're welcome.

Underland thank you, Commissioner.

I want to thank you and your department for keeping us safe because a well-plowed, well-maintained street is a safety issue to me.

Now, I've noticed that you're anticipating less overtime in street maintenance.

Is that due to the increase in part-time employees?

Um, we we you know, we really don't have like part-time, you know, uh seasonals anymore, if you will.

I mean, we're we're fully staffed with with truck drivers now in DPW.

Um, you know, the overtime, you know, can fluctuate based on you know, particularly response to snow and ice events.

That that's the big driver of overtime.

You know, some people, you know, we did have uh uh one event I think we we could have responded to better.

I think the next time around we have one in February.

I think we did a much better job, but by and large, we're not experiencing the same same type of snow and icing as that we did five, 10, 15, 20 years ago.

And we keep all the the data on this.

I mean, the snow accumulations that we're seeing now over the last five years are between 20 and 25 percent of what we saw 15 years ago.

What does that translate into less overtime?

So, you know, we're not gonna put a lot of overtime in here if we don't think it's necessary based on the trends, but then again, we could get a whopper snow and ice season, right?

And you know, again, it's it's based on trends, and that's how we try to predict the the uh the uh overtime.

We only did have like I think two incidents last year, and you're right.

The second one went a lot smoother than the first one.

So thank you for that.

You're welcome.

That's my question.

Hi, Commissioner.

Um, you touched a little bit on the snow.

Um, so I just want to kind of go into that a little bit.

Um, I know we did have um some issues for the last snow season.

I think we had quite a few people you had sent us a letter that were on uh workers' comp injuries, and maybe you were short on some drivers.

So, say we get into that situation again.

How are we prepared to handle that?

Well, I think on both of those issues, number of drivers and uh workmen's comp.

Um, we don't have the vacancies with the drivers that we had a year ago.

So you know, we uh instituted a in-house CDL training program that's being extant expanded.

I think you probably heard about uh Monday night about the the grant funding that uh is gonna happen.

So uh we don't have that same issue that we had a year ago.

Um so I don't think that will be an issue.

I I think the workman's comp issue too.

I don't think it is nearly what it was last year.

So I don't see those as impediments to us provide a good response for snow and ice.

Um I I think we're we're well positioned.

The only thing I worry about for snow and ice perhaps this year is um is uh our ability to turn the fleet around the mechanics.

We've been having some staffing shortages there over the last few years.

Uh I think finance of personnel is is going to be addressing uh an increase in their shift premium.

We need to retain or attract uh those workers on second shift, you know, that that's where the equipment goes after we work every day.

So uh short of that, uh we should have the personnel to uh to respond to the events.

I think we should be better positioned than we were last year.

That's great to hear.

Thank you.

All right, I don't Harmon.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate it.

Um I want to commend you and your department.

I think that you guys are doing a really good job.

Um, and just overall trying to follow policy, follow practices so that things stay consistent.

Um, and most definitely working with the alders when there are times when there may be pushback, but always working collaboratively to serve the community.

So I want to um commend you and the department for that.

Thank you.

Um I I also um I really don't have any questions.

I only want to say that I um approve of and support the idea for the sump pumps and getting um getting people to knock on doors and just going to the residents instead of waiting for the residents to find the information and realize the benefit of it and come on their own and and read the email or or whatever.

So I just want to support that.

I hope that it goes very well and shows a good improvement so that we can get this um corrected and um just end the the issue with that sooner than later.

So thank you.

So we went around we went around once, so any additional question from any auditors just push button and be in the queue.

All right, how do I thank you?

John, I need you to refresh my memory uh in regards to the sanitary sewer lateral fee.

Um I believe when that was first implemented, that was kind of like an insurance policy for individuals who had a problem with their lateral that went from their home to the street, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, that that's that's a good way to describe it, yeah.

Okay, absolutely.

So I know the the fee is going up again.

I think it originally was around 50 bucks, now it's up almost doubled that, which is fine.

I just wonder how well this program is being utilized, what expenditures there are from that.

I couldn't find it in here.

Do you recall it's it's being uh very well utilized?

Those increases that we have, you know, the sanitary sewer maintenance fee was stagnant for a very, very long time.

We could not get any increases in that for several years in a row through the budget process.

So, you know, we had the opportunity, and that's what happens when you're not you know slowly increasing the rate as much as we don't like that.

You know, if you leave it flat, then you have these big spikes.

So the big driver of that particular is the laterals is the is the responding to these emergency repairs.

As I said last night, we've done 51 emergency repairs.

So things you're referring to that costs 1.1 million dollars.

So you think about that.

It's about 20,000 dollars uh on average uh that would cost a private property.

Is that good insurance on a 90-something dollar?

Yeah, I guess if you will, but it doesn't just fund that, that also funds the other infrastructure uh repairs and maintenance that we need to do on the system for the manholes for the for the uh mainline sewers, and and that's that's part of that fee as well.

And and it does cover you know some salaries and fringes in the engineering department, but only about nine percent of that fee goes with salaries and fringes.

There nine ninety cents of the dollar goes back into infrastructure for that ninety three dollars or whatever is proposed right now.

Or ninety-seven.

I don't recall the conversation about this going to cover man covers, but oh, sure, it does, absolutely it does.

Yes.

The conversation the original conversation is what I'm talking about.

I don't recall that that that fee would be used for anything other than just the sewer laterals.

And I'm not arguing, I'm not arguing what you're saying here.

I'm just trying to find where in the budget book do we see any kind of expenditures in that in that area.

I you'll find it in the in the CIP for the actual work in the collection system, and you'll find it in in the operating budget for the amount of money we fund for lateral repairs.

It's all represented in there.

Okay, because I I couldn't find it in there.

Sure.

So on the CIP, for example, if you look on page 15 of the 10-year capital improvement plan, there's 850,000 there appropriated for sanitary sewer uh repairs various locations throughout the city.

Um we also do appropriate some of those funds to go towards pavement.

Somebody's got to pay the money to replace the pavement above those repairs that we do.

Um, and then we put money into sanitary manhole reconstruction, a quarter of a million for that as well.

On that same page is a million and a half dollars that is for inflow and in uh inflow and infiltration reduction.

That's what funds some pumps, full lateral lining all the way to the property, those types of II reduction programs.

So it's all represented in the CIP.

The lateral repairs themselves, that's an operating, and that would be on that's what I'm looking forward to.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Page one, page 144.

Thanks, Ron.

Um, and you'll see that listed 141 starting on page one.

141.

Sorry, that's okay.

We'll get there.

Okay.

I'm almost there.

Yes.

Because I was looking in your other budget.

So sanitary sewer maybe.

That would be under infrastructure repairs on page 143, 900,000 is budgeted for laterals.

Okay, and that's about what you collect.

I get I guess that's no no, we collect uh we collect nearly three million dollars from the fee.

There's like 28,000 laterals out there, you know.

The fee is just under 100, and then the rest of that revenue is collected through the surcharge uh fund.

Okay, thank you.

Do you need any more clarification of that?

Maybe the finance director could answer anything.

Crystal clear, John.

Okay, I hope so.

All right, on a Alan.

Okay, and this will probably be the last snow question, but anyway, who knows me knows I hate snow.

But we're gonna go into that season, and as it was mentioned a couple of times, uh, we did have a couple of challenges over the last not just past one, but the one before.

And so when you are doing your projections for how we're going to address snowfall and ice, um are you that part-time employee question or that staffing question you said the drivers and whatnot?

I'm specifically thinking about I know when you start out, you have a schedule of how you address which streets you're going to serve first.

Um I was asked a few times by my constituents about you know, cider side streets or other streets, and when that falls into the schedule.

So just so that I know when I'm asked, what affects that schedule?

Is it is it staffing?

Is it budget?

Is it a combination of both?

How does that play out during you know a snow season?

Um well, we'll be sending out probably in about a month the snow and ice manual for 2025-26, as I do every year.

Um, that's all in there, the schedules.

That snow and ice manual does not change based on budget, nor is it uh based on personnel.

It is a hierarchy of the way we attack uh our plan to uh deal with snow and ice, and we start um you know with the uh with the you know the the main arterials.

We have two districts, the mains and the districts, and we start in them in the main district areas, you're starting with the highways, then the arterials, and the collectors, and then we have other uh areas that need to be addressed first, and then we fall back into the residential districts and and do that type of work.

So whether we have 70 people that are out plowing or we have 85, that doesn't change our operation.

That only changes how you know quickly or slowly we can respond to an event based on the duration and the intensity of it.

Now, please don't think that I asked that question because I have any lack of trust in how you how you do your leadership in that space.

It is just it's the question I just want to make sure I have the right answers when I'm responding to those questions.

Yeah, it's it's not budget-driven.

Our our our plan for snow and ice, it's it's just a sound plan.

Decades and decades of tried and true practice uh for snow and ice operations.

Okay, goodness.

Audible thank you.

Again, thanks for all the work and support that your department does for our uh community.

I'm gonna go back to a budget specific question.

It's about it's on page eight eighty-eight.

The uh traffic equipment repair and maintenance.

It looks like that fluctuates significantly year over year when I compare 2023, 2024, 25 to 26.

Uh, is there any particular reason why it fluctuates so much?

Yeah, for the exact same reason that I explained about salaries and fringes.

You know, a lot of the stuff there is preventative maintenance, if you will, that we do on our traffic signal equipment.

You know, we we visit every controller once a year, we take care of those things, but the bulk of this is is emergency type of response, right?

Um we have knockdowns, people knock over our traffic signals, and we have to go out and repair that.

So it it all depends where the where the um activity is needed, and um, so again, you know, along with salaries and fringes, the amount of materials and equipment that we use to take care of that asset, it it varies from year to year.

So it can be down one year, could be up another year.

You know, some years they like to run over the street lights, some years they like to run over the traffic signals, I guess.

Uh might be a okay, a silly way to describe it, but you know that that's just the way it ebbs in focus with those uh budgets.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I don't see anybody else in the any other oh, this is in the Q.

Any other okay?

Thank you.

I know that yesterday you'd mentioned about Pearl Street and with uh you know changing the hours to make it so that it's it's open when it's really needed, but not when it's not necessarily used as much.

I I did want to ask about how it goes how how we treat residents versus non-residents when it comes to the the fees of using that um and and how we're enforcing that.

Are we checking driver's licenses to make sure that folks who are using it live in the city, and if they don't, are they you know charge a different rate, or how is that handled?

Those facilities are only available to residents, so there is no non-resident fee to uh take any material uh to our transfer station where we get rid of tires and white goods and uh you know electronics or bringing in yard waste.

You're a resident.

If you are we check ID and you bring it in, you don't have to pay to dispose of yard waste at Pearl Street.

You do have to pay to dispose of those other items at uh at uh the transfer station because we have to pay the vendor that has to dispose of those items properly because they cannot be landfilled by law, they have to specially be treated and handled and disposed of.

So no, we only allow residents to use our facilities.

And they are ID'd and so the ID is checked every time.

Uh it should be.

Okay absolutely.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

John, I'm on page 144 in regards to sanitary sewer maintenance.

And in comparison to 2023 to 2024, 25, that there's uh increases that went from 2 million two hundred thousand, two million uh six hundred thousand, then the sixty six million five hundred now we're up to six million seven hundred that which is a big increase.

So there's also what was the other page.

There was another page that had in the the debt that was related to this.

Yes.

So that must be on page 143.

Okay.

So I'm looking at the debt service related to that, which is something kind of new to this, isn't it?

Because I don't see it in previous budget.

I will set this up and then I think maybe it's best to turn over the finance director.

Okay.

So what you see in in 2023 and actual 2024, this is those are the revenues we collect from that sanitary sewer maintenance fee, right?

Yep.

Okay, and that's what we took in.

The additional revenue that you see is on a second line item there.

It's you know, it's under uh the same exact org object, but then it's got a 40101 after it.

Those were revenues that were collected by the wastewater utility, those were the II, the the surcharge fees.

Now those are being managed by finance over here.

They used to be collected by wastewater, and then we had projects we would get the money back from them and do the work.

Now that is all being managed by finance department, you know, uh, and and that money is used for II reduction.

It's also used to pay, you know, for debt on our uh cost of service share for some of these large wastewater projects.

We are a sanitary sewer recipient um of the wastewater services, and they are the sanitary sewer provider.

That's okay.

Um that kind of explains what my question is.

Why are there two sanitary sewer charges here?

What you just explained does explain that, and that's why we have that dramatic increase.

Yeah, correct.

So that makes sense.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Just a quick question.

I was looking over some of your um streets projects.

Is that okay to ask about those?

And in the CIP?

Yeah, okay.

So I just noticed for 27 um the LRIP dollars.

Are you applying for those every year?

Yeah, so LRIP, that's local road improvement program, it's a local program through WISDOT.

Those monies are actually um an entitlement program.

So if you are a community with over 20,000 in population, uh, there is an allocation that is made to those communities.

You apply for the funds you have to apply for on them.

They don't give them to you if you don't apply for them.

And based on our population size, our allocation is around 150,000 every other year.

So we apply for those funds.

We have to use those funds and pay for uh a project, but we have to pay more than 50 percent of the project share uh to use those funds.

We we can't get 150,000 for 150,000 project.

We have to find a project that would be at least 301,000 dollars.

Um, and then we apply for reimbursement and we get those uh monies back.

We have used these funds in the every year that I've been here in the last 25 years, and we apply them therefore um they are for uh not arterials or or highways, these are are used for our collectors or local streets.

We use these funds for.

Thank you.

Honor Harmon.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I know that there is going to be a increase in the fine amount for dumping, and this is one of the big issues in my district.

Okay.

Um so there is a five thousand dollar fine increase for anyone who dumps, and then a 1,000 reward for anyone who um notifies the department of this, and the person is caught.

Okay.

Do you see this being um adding any significant revenue to the budget um come next year?

Do you see any significant increase in revenue with these fees?

And then are this are any signs going to go up?

Any new signs that announce that?

Any cameras and are any cameras gonna go up and how will that impact the budget?

I'm just gonna say this that you know uh we support this type of initiative because it is a problem.

Our role in DPW really is is helping the other uh departments who are really leading this effort, identifying you know these habitual problem area alleys, right?

So we know where the kind of the bad actors like to throw their stuff.

So uh and then there is another team that's gonna be looking at doing the camera installation that's through MIS.

I don't know if if uh uh Jim uh you want to take the lead on maybe explaining a little bit about the ordinance and what the expectations of revenues are for fines on that.

I I cannot answer your question on that.

I'm sorry.

Auto Harmon.

I was told that this is something that's uh city development uh in city development.

City development would answer, yeah.

All right, okay.

I apologize, wrong department.

All right, no other questions for uh directory.

All right, thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, Department of Water Utility.

Good afternoon.

Thank you so much for giving me a chance to answer any of the qu any questions you have.

Right.

All right, Audor David's back.

Thank you.

All right, honor Mike.

All right, um, what page are we on?

I'm sorry.

Got my list of extensive notes on page 202.

On page two oh two I don't know if you covered this uh yesterday or not, but I believe there was a um increase in PSC expenses of a hundred and eighty five percent.

What is that?

Yes, thank you.

Um important question.

So um you know, we have been increasing our uh CIP plan uh aggressively.

So we are not proposing any budget uh rate increase for two thousand twenty-six, but uh since two thousand twenty, I believe there was no rate increase.

So uh we need to submit a rate case in two thousand twenty-six, and it takes about nine to ten months for PSC to review uh the revenue, the asset.

They have a process, and that uh whole rate case is usually uh carries by a third party.

So that fee is associated with the PSC's uh fee to review our data and also the third party who will help us uh move forward with that request.

I don't have any questions.

Uh we talked quite a bit on uh the Waterworks Commission.

Um so no no further questions, but thank you for uh putting this together tonight in the work that you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alan Pete Kelly.

All right.

Any questions for director while she's here?

Right.

If not, thank you.

Uh at this time we we're gonna take like a fifteen minute break if that's okay for the council.

Thank you.

Whatever we're gonna have to live is in the library, so we're gonna ask the we're gonna get started for the uh other part of our budget hearing.

So we're gonna ask all auditors to come back, please to your seat.

Uh we're gonna we're gonna start with our uh our next department, which is the water and waste uh water waste utility uh director Tillis and the page number is page 2050.

All right, we're gonna start with uh we're gonna start with Alder Townsend again.

We'll we'll go around.

Uh I see that there's a lot of auditors that after we go around the first time don't have a question.

So once we go around the first time, then I'll be asking for those that might have additional questions.

If I don't see you in the queue, then we'll go on to those that do have the additional questions for uh the director.

So we'll start off with you, uh Alder Townsend.

Yeah, Davis.

Okay.

Hi, I know we talk a lot on wastewater as well, but I just wanted to, you mentioned yesterday about uh a new UV uh disinfection um system, and one of the the questions I had on that is uh what when we have beach closures due to bacteria counts uh in the lake, it impacts um businesses and the economy and and just it's just flat out no fun uh when you when you live close to the lake, you can't go to the beach.

So by installing the additional UV disinfection improvements, is that something that down the road residents may see uh a decrease on beach closures because we're we're putting less bacteria into the the waters around us?

So the short answer is maybe, right?

So uh we installed it it was identified in our 2020 uh facilities plan that we need to upgrade these, and it was a regulatory compliance.

So we went from monitoring one bug to a different bug, and this one is uh uh um I guess nullified better with the UV system that we're installing now.

So it's associated with those beach closings, but I wouldn't say it's causative.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here and your patience.

I know it's late already.

I'm on page 205, and I'm looking at your significant findings or program changes for 2026.

And I'm uh especially um curious about the professional services for both the sewer agreement and the electric service.

Can you explain those two things a little bit?

Absolutely.

Uh so let's take the uh the sewer agreement first.

Um in 2024, uh there was some conversations surrounding sewer agreement.

So we made sure in 2025 that we budgeted extra funds to help facilitate those conversations.

And uh we we a lot of those conversations have already passed, so in 2026 we kind of lowered that budget a little bit.

And then the other question can I just ask you are which sewer agreement are you referring to?

The uh wastewater sewer the intergovernmental sewer agreement.

The one that was negotiated back in 2002?

Correct.

So you're considering re renegotiating that.

There were some uh concerns brought by some of the SSR parties that we've discussed in the in the wastewater uh uh the wastewater commission, and we have consultants that help us along that conversation.

So this was funds to pre to uh hire professional services to help those conversations along.

Well, I'm curious as to why you would be funding for that and not the CDA because that's where the intergovernmental fund goes.

So can you elaborate on that?

So the the sewer commission is is uh there they carry out the sewer agreement.

So we facilitate the sewer agreement.

We're funded by all of our member partners, so uh through funding it, we're we're funding it through the through the communities themselves.

Sorry.

Tickle.

Okay, thank you.

And then the electric service.

Yeah, so the electric service, we are uh anticipating some uh increase in industrial rates and electric service, but also uh we have uh treatment plan upgrades going on.

So uh our treatment plan upgrades are going to affect how we take equipment on and off.

So we're expecting to use some of our heavy equipment um during on-peat times, which give us higher electric rates.

So we need to uh budget more for that flexibility.

Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you.

No, Army.

All right, any additional questions for uh all right.

Uh one more, yeah.

Sorry it's back to me again.

So I'm reflecting back on your comments that you made last night during the five minutes you got to tell us all about for you to stretch your stuff.

Um you had said something about um having to change uh part-time employee, either transferring to another department or could can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Absolutely.

So uh previously uh water and wastewater shared an executive assistant between the two of us, and for 2026, we're proposing that we each get an uh an executive assistant, so we each had to add 0.5 FTE.

Oh, okay.

Okay, because I didn't understand that at all.

Thank you.

That's simple explanation.

Appreciate that.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else for the director?

If not, we will have our next department, which is parking right.

Thank you.

And that that is uh parker right on page 90.

Audit.

Hey, I uh don't really have any questions.

I just want to say I'm excited to see some of the stuff you guys are working on, especially like the water safety initiatives and everything.

Um with uh strategic initiatives like the replacement of the boat launch piers.

Are you guys gonna be possibly implementing any new signage over there as well?

So that is in our our um our detailed information sheet that that piece should have been removed.

It's it's been pushed out one year.

Okay.

Um but what that will be doing is the peers that are down in the boat launch area are looking to be replaced, and we're gonna put a few years phase into it.

So that's been pushed out to next year.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, that should have been removed.

Thank you.

Yep.

All right, honor Davis.

Okay.

Honor Jacques.

I just wanted to thank you for uh always being available.

I know that you and I had a lot of stuff that we've been working on you know for the past couple weeks, so I just appreciate that uh you've always been available and always to answer questions and um thank you for what you do.

Thank you.

Honor Wagner, contribution button for me.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, I have several questions about different departments that are now under the auspices of the parts department.

The one is the cemetery, but I can't find what page that's on.

Kathy probably can tell me.

Thank you.

Looking and looking.

I had it.

It's one of these little tabs that I got going on here.

Okay.

And then yeah, you are psychic.

All right, 135.

So last year we did you did something new.

You proposed that there would last year you proposed there would be no levy uh for this operation of the cemetery, correct?

No, I said that was the goal over the next few years is to uh reduce that levy to zero eventually.

Oh well, I thought it would according to this in the revenues, there was zero in our adopted budget for the cemetery.

I'm on page 135, Tom.

And where is that again?

Page 135.

Okay.

Yeah.

So in 2025, you were projecting uh no, we budgeted no levy dollars for you, but we substantially increase the fees for all the services provided by the cemetery.

So when we put this this part of the budget together, um we work with finance to let them know what we would be charging or what we feel the revenue would be, and then they kind of figure out what the levy would be.

So I would have to refer that to Kathleen.

Thank you very much.

Yes, actually, so when we do the estimates for revenues, obviously we never know what's actually gonna come in in this particular case.

I would say that we were probably a little ambitious allocating no tax levy to the cemetery for 2025, which is why you see uh about 65,000 allocated in 2026.

That's far more of a realistic number based on the actual revenue results.

So as we see the results of revenue in the cemetery for 2025 so far, we probably should have had some tax levy there because it still requires tax levy support.

Okay, I understand this, and and this is really a policy issue that I'm I'm trying to drive at regarding the cemetery because we no longer have a cemetery commission.

There really is not a reporting out to the park board regarding any discussion on what we should do at the cemetery, what kind of are we having a lot of burials are our it our revenues down from all the things that we charge for at this at the cemetery?

So we don't we don't really get that information.

So it's my understanding.

Well, so uh cemetery since it uh the commission is gone, um, has always did a report with whether whether it was what was going on at the uh at the cemeteries or financially, and it goes into our park and rec board uh director's report, which my understanding somehow you guys have availability to go to.

Correct, correct.

But there's no discussion like there used to be monthly on the number of burials, how many uh interments we had, how many grave open.

So that discussion really does not play take place within the cemetery commission.

And I'm not trying to dredge that up again, except to say that we would the cemetery commission would always look very carefully on how the price of the services that the cemetery provided, how that would uh encourage or discourage the sale of uh plots or lots in the in the cemetery and how many burials there, because there's other cemeteries people can get buried in.

And when I look at the year after year increases in price, I guess what I'm trying to get at is do you feel that the substantial increases in prices that takes place year after year is decreasing the usage of the cemetery?

Um I would say yes, there is some decrease because of the dollar amounts.

Um we are still very competitive in most of the areas of the services to the point where we are below, but there are a few that may have creeped up over the last couple years with the percentages that we have put in.

Okay, what was that page number again, Kathleen?

I keep flipping back and forth.

Uh thank you.

So there was some on 135 that I did want to ask you about one of my tabs here, and that was the substantial increase in contracted services.

So we um what it was in 2024, then it went up to uh 349.

And I'm wondering what those contracted services are, Tom is that just the grants cutting and is on on page 133.

It's the contracted services under operating expenditures.

So is okay.

So yeah, so if you if you look at it, 2023, yep, 2025, yep, and 2026.

Oh, I see what you're talking about.

We're in 2023.

So the last two years, um, think for a second.

So the contracts that have been give me one second, let me look that up.

So this is mostly for grass cutting at Mound and Graceland and Yeah, so the the what's underneath there now is um janitorial contract, um the security alarm, uh the bigger thing is the U.S.

cellular um headstones, fire extinguisher, grounds maintenance, which has stayed the same at 320, and then there's grounds maintenance miscellaneous at 19.

Yeah, so the the what what's underneath there now is um janitorial contract um the security alarm uh the bigger thing is the US cellular um headstones fire extinguisher grounds maintenance which has stayed the same at 320 and then there's grounds maintenance miscellaneous at 19 so that that makes up that dollar amount so that the actual contract itself for maintenance burial and snow removal that has uh that dollar amount has not increased even though the request from uh the contractor has gone up a little bit over the last couple of years because of their expense.

This has stayed uh the same.

So the contract itself is never exceeded what that dollar amounts in there, even though it's there just in case.

Okay.

So I hope there's a way to kind of track if we are pricing people out of using the city owned cemetery if they're going other places because of the prices.

I I don't know if you do an analysis like we used to do.

Um but I don't want to uh see our cemeteries not be utilized by the residents of the city of Racine and I think you're seeing a uh a trend all across the board with cemeteries.

Um as you know, a few years back, even almost six to seven, eight years back, uh we saw the trend of going to the traditional burial to uh cremation burials, and although we thought it was gonna happen a little bit quicker, it hasn't, but it's you can see it it's rising in that request.

But even with those dollar months across the county, um we're seeing more people having going to commission but not even doing anything, keeping them in their homes or scattering them someplace else and not using the cemeteries, period.

Okay, so you're seeing a you're seeing a trend that's going down more than up at least in burials as opposed to cremations, which I think are up, if that makes sense.

Yep.

Do we have burial space in Grayson Cemetery in the military uh area?

I believe we have a few because I think there was one just um within the last year.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Yeah, uh and I'll acquiesce to anyone else that has questions, but I do have more.

Great.

Thank you.

Alan Pete.

Oh, you said yes.

Okay.

No.

Thank you for a very well-run department.

I think we have a lot to offer in parks and recs.

Uh especially the summer youth programs, they're great.

That Easter egg hunt you had last year, that was great.

So thank you for that, and thank you for everybody in the department.

Great, thank you.

Audley?

Good evening.

Um, where in the budget would I find the um 250 trees located?

What that the 250 trees are in the stormwater utility CIP, which I'm not sure if my page is aligned with yours, but I have page 23.

Catalina's gonna give us the page number here.

1850.

Is it described as on page 1870?

And improvements all their Kelly.

Okay.

That's the parkway tree planting, or is that a different item that I'm supposed to be looking for?

Okay.

Could you say that again?

Is that the parkway tree planting?

The 177,000.

That's correct.

The that includes our normal tree planting budget, and then there's additional funds for those extra 250 trees.

Can you delineate out what that would be?

Um I believe the standard program is 115,000, which is the same as is uh proposed for or expected for 2027, and then the the remainder would be for the 250 trees.

Okay, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Oh yeah.

Come on, no.

At this time, any additional questions?

This would be a time to be in the queue.

Oh, out of Pete.

Thank you.

Just wanted to say, Tom, thank you and your department for what you do, and my constituents appreciate the new part and the one that's being finished.

Thank you.

On Alan.

Okay, so I don't have a question, so mighty to say thank you.

I'm really excited about the things that we've been talking about to do in uh our area and how that's going to impact not just District 9 but the city.

Um I also wanted to say that out of we have a few places or spaces in Racine where they act as hubs for our our city that are warming for people who live here and for people who would consider living here.

And I think the way we are working with our parking racks with the intentionality that you have as far as uh being one of the spaces where we are intentional about showing our diversity, our outreach, and our connection with each other for the city.

I really appreciate everything that you do in that in that way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In addition to questions for the director.

Kathleen, what page was the civic center on again?

I don't see it in the table.

What is that listed under?

Do you know it's not enterprise?

Thank you.

So I see in the uh book of ordinances that we have attached to the budget discussion, there is the elimination of the Civic Center Commission.

And I don't, I'm sure you don't have anything to do with the ordinance being in the budget book.

Um, but I did want to have a couple questions about what's going on at the Civic Center.

So I don't see anything.

It says here 2026 fees and charges, see festival park policy rules and fee structure.

So I don't know where to find that.

Is that back in the fees or where's the best yeah?

At the time this book was I wasn't sure where that was gonna go either.

Um I can get that uh book to you guys with all the new fees or not new fees, but the fees and how they're structured.

Um I can certainly get that to you, but it did not make this book.

Okay, but there should be something in here about what we pay the contractor that is now operating.

So shouldn't that be in here somewhere?

Sure.

That's um so in the budget.

If you go to page uh 192, I gotta get a little closer.

Hold on.

Um you'll see uh uh management fee for 150,000.

Uh what that evens out to is 12,500 per month that they get to uh use for operations there, and then right above that you'll see operations uh subsidies, which is uh 200,000, and that is to be used for um shortfalls and and in certain months that uh may where revenue doesn't exceed the the expenditures and they can request uh money from the subsidy to help um even out that that monthly difference.

Okay, so that's basically their budget.

So that's the page I was looking for.

That's that's it.

So there's a 34% increase in the operational subsidy, and I don't see anything in here as far as um what has been spent in the 2025 adopted budget.

Or I mean, are we right on budget or is it under?

Is it over?

Um I I think Kathleen wants to answer that.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Yeah, the reason that you see that increase for 2026 is because we are running over budget right now for 2025.

There's some excess utility costs that weren't anticipated by the contractor for specifically for we energies for the buildings.

Uh I think honestly, and Tom can talk about this too.

I think honestly, there's more events down there, so the lights are on more, and it's just more expensive.

So that's why you see that increase for 2026 because it's risk reflecting 2025 results.

Okay, so then we're also expecting a about a 17% increase in the revenues.

Yes, for next year.

Um right now, right now, if we were to end the year in September, they're right around a revenue of six hundred and twelve thousand dollars revenue.

Um they feel that by the end of the year they'll be around 750,000.

Okay.

Next year they're they're forecasting because of some of the events that they are are have already booked that are bigger, and obviously a little a little bit more in in revenue that they think that they'll get to that million dollar mark.

So I have had about a half a dozen complaints, and I don't know where to tell people to go with that because the only place to go is to the operator.

So I would give them to Matt Kepnick.

So the city forester is gonna take complaints.

I guess I guess really what are they?

Um I would direct them to our department because our department is the one that uh oversees the function of the festival hall and memorial hall.

So if there's some complaints, I'd have them give me a call first.

So they're I can give you two off the top of my head because they're most recent ones.

Somebody um had rented the hall and part of the grounds for a wedding, and at the same time out on the grounds, there was also an event that had a band which disrupted the wedding.

So there was a um point of order.

State for one.

So when we discussed the budget, we are discussing policy, and this is part of the policy.

In our budget book, we have several ordinances, and one of the ordinances in our budget book is to eliminate the Civic Center Commission, which in the past was a receptacle for complaints that took place.

The director of parks asked me about what complaints I'm giving him two examples.

Well, and and I'll answer real quick.

There may not be an advisory group, there may not be a commission, but when we were taking on this responsibility for our department, one of the things I did as a director is I scheduled monthly meetings, and those monthly meetings go over activities, events, budgets, CIP, what's going on with the activities there, are they haven't any problems?

And honestly, our department has not really received in probably this whole year, if not most of the year, a complaint of anybody down there.

Um, and when there was one complaint, I think it had to do with the veterans uh group, and we actually made it perfect for them.

They love what they what they have down there.

So I can't fix something that doesn't come to our department.

So if you're getting complaints as an alder, then you should have them come to us okay so that we can fix that.

Okay, and I know Tom, you've always been great, been very responsive to any complaints or any concerns that people have, and uh it's not a criticism of you, but there should be a clear path for there is you have something you want to say just said it the clear path is so okay.

So go ahead.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I think that's the end of my question.

All right, thank thank you, Mr.

Director.

Thank you.

Next department is the Department of Community Safety Director Tate.

The bidding will now open and I'm ready to go.

It's the fast talking last night, you get it.

All right.

Out of time.

Hey Director, um I was just curious.

I see in here it says that for your exponentials, you're only planning to spend around a thousand in office supplies and work supplies.

And um, how do you how do you think you're gonna be able to do like really effective outreach if you without like a lot of like printed materials and stuff like that?

Well, we already have a lot of printed materials on hand.

Um certainly we'll try and uh advance ourselves with the remaining budgets that we have for this year, but you know, what's being requested right now is just kind of the bare bones for the department from the city levy.

Obviously, as I mentioned last night, we are still pursuing grant opportunities to round out our expenditures, but what's being requested from the council right now is really just the bare bones of maintaining the department.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um page 80 and 81.

You have your proposed budget, but there's no numbers for the prior year, 24 or 25.

Right.

Could you um elaborate on like why that's missing when I believe we had requested this previously?

Go ahead.

So I maybe Director Fisher wants to talk to it.

I could as well, but because we were previously grant funded, and this is our first time within the general levy, there is no history associated with the general levy.

Um but if director fish wants to speak to it some more, we can do that.

Sure, just quickly, I know that Alder Mack had asked this same question of um Director Tate, and I was putting it together, I just didn't get to putting it together, but I will send out to all the alders the 2023, 24, and so far 25 actuals under his grant funding, just so that you can see what that looks like.

So I apologize, but yes, he's absolutely right.

Because it is new in the general fund and a new department in the general fund, there is no history in our MUNIS system for him in the general fund.

Thank you.

Procedural question for Kathleen, and then I have a question for uh director Tate.

Um, is it then the system that doesn't differentiate between um grant funding and levy because I ran a department that was heavily grant funded, but both my grant funding and the levy showed up in my budget, and you just mentioned that in your specific system.

So is it a system issue?

It's not a system issue, it's how the city of Racine handles its grants.

So our grants are all segregated in very specific segregated areas within our financial system and not within the operating budget of the general fund.

And one of the reasons for that, the largest reason for that is because of expenditure restraint.

If we included every expenditure in the city of Racine grant funded or not in our general fund, we would be extraordinarily far over expenditure restraint, so we just can't report it that way.

So those grant funds are segregated and not included in this document.

Okay, thank you.

Um, my question then for Director Tate is um what are the grants that you're going to be applying for for the next fiscal year, and are they state or federal grants?

So, right now, as you all approved and gave us permission to pursue a federal grant, um, that is a four-year two million dollar grant.

Um, so if you do receive that, we would definitely be covered for through 2029.

Um, there are also pending funds uh from the state.

Um the the amount that's gonna be available is to be determined, but that was from uh the Office of Violence Prevention being established with a 10 million dollar seat funds with intention to get funds to the communities in 2026 as well.

So we'll have two pathways essentially to pursue.

Uh, considering what's going on in Washington, I'm sure you're following it closely.

Um, are those federal grants going to be released or are they gonna be pulled back in your I couldn't even speak to that?

We don't have a federal representative here to speak to it.

Um, couldn't anticipate what's gonna happen there.

We do know that those funds are appropriated and have been released for expenditure in 2026.

The real question for us at this point is when will the shutdown conclude?

When will the operations for the DOJ resume and when will they be able to process those applications?

I'm less concerned as to whether those funds will actually make it out in 2026.

But that is part of the reason why we're concluded in the budget here because of the uncertainty with if and when those funds will be released to make sure that we don't interrupt our operations or our impact on the community.

Thank you.

So it's my understanding there there's no other department in the city that has an expectation that it's either 100% grant fit grant funded or it wouldn't exist.

So this would be the first time that you'd be going into the general fund potentially if the grants don't come through, much like many other departments work where they you know you can't bank on a grant before you have it.

So I'm wondering if you could just walk me through, you know, maybe what changes the community could see if this department wasn't funded.

What impacts could we see right away?

Uh, and then maybe within the next year or two.

Sure.

Um, so this certainly isn't to fearmonger, um, but we do know that this department is created at a time um where we saw an increase in violence within our community, also coinciding with the tertiary effects of the pandemic and the destabilization that comes with that.

Um so extracting this department and anticipating some future economic turmoil within our community, um, we could would very reasonably expect an increase um in criminal activity, violence, and again, without this department being there, and the part the engagement that we have with the residents, the connection with that we have with people who are higher at high risk, that means there's no interruption um prior to them crossing the line of law enforcement.

That means the police will be busier because the people that we ultimately deter and um discourage from engaging in violence, then ultimately commit that violence, that means additional resources required for prosecution, additional resources required for arrests, additional resources required for hospitalizations for gunshot victims, additional resources required for victim witness support.

So everything that happens as a result of violence increases in cost.

Everything that we do to prevent it brings down the necessity of those costs that are born by the broader community.

So that's what it would ultimately look like if we don't have these interventions.

It's not just us.

Like if it didn't exist within the community connectors in the county, we'd see some similar outcomes.

If it didn't exist for the violence intervention that happens at the hospitals, we'd see these things.

So having this ecosystem here, and particularly having our staff that works with a population that is largely not thought of as much, which is the adults who are at high risk.

Um and as we started this in the beginning, we identified that the adults were the ones really driving the violence within our community.

We just go back to what we were doing and what we were experiencing in 2020 and 21.

Thank you.

And for my follow-up, I can't remember if it was last night or at the introduction, it's all kind of blending together at this point.

But there is a case study for this, right?

It was I think it's Boston, where instead of seeing it just continue to where it is, it's almost like a snapback effect where it goes uh very aggressively almost where it was previously.

Well, I would I would even say less about Boston, and you know, President Horton could speak to this in Racine when we had gang diversion programming in the 90s, there was significant progress.

Once we drew back, we saw a rise in return of criminal activity within the community and violence within our community.

Now, certainly, you know, we have never returned back to those 90s peaks, even at 2020 in 2020 and 2021.

But I think we also have a much lower tolerance as a community for what sort of violence we're willing to accept and sustain and um allow to continue to occur in our community.

Thank you so much, Director Tate.

All right, uh, one question for Mr.

Tate and another for our finance director.

Um, I believe the application date for the grants you intend to apply for had a end date of or uh date of uh October 27 to apply for.

The real date is November 2nd, but yes.

November 2nd.

And you you have not heard any notification what would happen should the federal government not open its doors.

So the application portal is still available, so we'll be able to submit the application as planned if that's your question.

Like, will we even be able to get it in?

That is open, it's functioning.

Um so we'll be able to get it in without interruption.

Okay, thank you.

And then my question for the finance director is most other departments have intergovernmental charges and all that.

Um and this one does not.

Is there a reason for that?

Um, so this one right now is intended to be funded with tax levy.

That's why there's no other revenue sources here.

So no, I don't mean revenue, I mean intergovernmental charges.

Oh, like interdepartmental charges.

It's a good question.

I didn't put them in for this budget again.

We kept it very bare bones.

Um this was a bit of a last minute only because we didn't know whether the grant funding would be here or not be here.

So we took the conservative approach of putting it into the general fund and showing tax levy.

So I did not allocate interdepartmental charges.

They would be relatively minimal for a department of his size.

Okay, so I guess my last question for you is, and I know I had the conversation with the mayor when we bet about the budget.

Is that there are other options rather than put a three positions permanently on the levy that had been created with grant money, and that was there?

Are there any ways to fund a position from a contingency fund or something until such time the grants would come through and reimburse that contingency rather than putting this on on the levy if we're so assured that the grant money is gonna come through?

Um it's a good question.

I mean, in the grand scheme of the general fund, you could say that this is being funded with the use of reserves.

We're using four and a half million dollars of reserves, right?

So we say funded by tax levy.

It's funded in the general fund with everything else in the general fund.

So I I don't know that there would be a specific other allocation that I would use.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay, auditors.

All right.

Thank you.

Uh one more.

Um last night you had mentioned that one of your department's bigger successes is the work that you had done through some music video interventions, and so I call me naive.

I just would like to know a little bit more about that, and uh just to get a little bit of background on it.

So you caught that, huh?

Um the so what I mentioned in the music videos was not necessarily something that we produced, but there are individuals within our committee that have been producing these really inflammatory music videos, naming names of people who've been killed in the past in order to kind of trigger and activate a retaliatory response from others.

Each time those have happened, you know, we were actually reviewing them in our shooting reviews with uh with the police department and others.

Um and ultimately the strategy is then to you know engage those who are in the music videos, both you know, identifying who's in the video for one, um, and see if there's anything that can be done in terms of enforcement side.

That's obviously not our part, but that's probation and parole.

Um, but then also reaching out to those who are creating these videos and those who got influence those who are creating these videos to really bring home the point of like this is not healthy for our community.

This is not healthy for you.

This is not healthy for those who are seeing it.

There are people that you know and love that might be connected to the names that you're naming in these videos, and really trying to get these young adults to understand the broader impact of putting stuff out there.

Um also try to get a sense of like where they're at when they do this.

Are they just doing this for the sake of um, you know, it's just rap, and that's just the way you're gonna do it, and you're gonna keep it in the studio, and if that's the case, then fine.

But these things can very easily go from the studio into the streets, and when that happens, things escalate beyond control and beyond anticipated outcomes.

Um, so that's the kind of work that our team has been doing in the background with these individuals, and thankfully, because we have these relationships, but also because we have this ecosystem that is connected to people and able to reach people in ways that are impactful.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, Davis.

I'll come back to you.

Thank you.

This will part for Kathleen and Tate, Director Tate.

You spoke that this is the bare minimum.

What I do know what I notice missing is there's nothing about professional development, any conferences, and I believe previously doing a grant that was some things you you all traveled out to.

How do we how will we move forward during the 202 20 26 year if it's not listed here?

Like PDs and stuff.

It's a very good question.

As the budget is currently proposed, those line items are not in here, so technically they would not be able to do those activities because it is not currently funded unless for some reason, you know, they were short staffed and they moved money around to do that.

But this is their budget as it is proposed today.

No, I can say thank you for the question, Alder Davis.

Um, we have used the funds that we do have to the maximum extent possible to get as much training and skill and um resources available into our team, so they are really well positioned.

Um, this year we've had cognitive behavioral um theory training, um, you know, and they you know, everyone when we've hired them in, give kind of like a core battery of competencies as well, and most recently had them engaged in some um dual relationship ethics trainings because that's one of the components of the work that they do.

It's not just a raw and a very clinical, you know, client practitioner relationship, but it's it's blended because of the nature of the work.

So um, but again, if we're if we're going to be able to do in kind of the the broad depth of things that we did in the past years, we're gonna need grant funding to round that out.

That's not currently proposed in the budget.

So I'll last question is I believe the county has a department that's similar to yours, and I'm curious as to what kind of collaboration takes place between the city and the county for uh community safety within the city or Cure.

So that I don't think they have a department created, but they have roles within uh human services.

I think actually President Horton could probably speak better to what the county does and what what resource they have.

But um the violent crime reduction initiative still exists.

There's a steering committee along with that.

We meet regularly, generally ideally monthly, to discuss um you know the broad the broader vision, how we're collaborating, how we're making sure that our agencies are aligned.

Um, but outside of that, you know, we communicate almost every day with our county partners.

Uh the GVI strategy that exists, the core team is essentially myself, the violence prevention manager Horton, because he's not president when he does that, um, and Jesse Matoyer, D the DC of the police department for investigations, and we're constantly communicating about what's going on, who's doing what, who do we need to reach out to, who needs a custom notification, and what that looks like, who's out of town and who's in town, like really granular about the people who are at highest risk in our community, so that we make sure that both if PD needs to know that someone's back in town that's you know been a factor that they're aware, but also if there's someone that we need to be reaching out to who hasn't crossed any particular lines, we can do that.

All right, all right, thank you, Director.

There's nobody else in the queue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, next department is to transit.

Director Young, page 160.

Wait.

I'll keep my answers brief because I know we're looking forward to Judge Weber's presentation.

All right.

Yeah, I uh don't really have a question.

I just want to say I think again a lot of the stuff uh the department is working on is really cool, helping make sure people can get where they need to go trying to adapt with everything.

So thank you for all the work that you guys do.

Thank you.

All right, honor Davis.

On page 170, uh part-time salaries are up 152%.

What is the reason for that?

Uh that's a very good question.

So we transitioned from uh ADP to MUNIS when we were an external party now being an internal party, so this was just proper budgeting after we saw how those inputs changed with the software.

So this is just a reflection of what we would normally spend in that category.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Um, and I also want to thank you.

Uh recently I approached you about uh rerouting a bus route for safety issues, and uh you promptly addressed that, and I appreciate that.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Auto Church.

Thank you.

So I've got a question.

Um in looking at the the budget, I see that we uh contract through um Mount Pleasant, looks like there's some Caledonia in there.

Um, but most notably I'm not seeing the village of Sturtevant, but I'm I'm fairly confident we still have service going through there, right?

Uh that's correct.

We have 12 stops in the village of Sturtevant.

Uh, and so we have to get through the village of Sturtevant in order to continue to serve uh Mount Pleasant.

Uh in 2017, the village of Sturtevant stepped away from their contract uh with the city of Rosine for greater transit service.

So we went from having Route 20 and Route 27 to simply having Route 20 serve as a commuter service so that we could follow state protocol around serving a community that doesn't contribute.

But if you look at our third goal, expanding uh partnerships, it is our intention to continue to do our best to um communicate with the village of Sturtevant the benefits of public transit and get them back into the fold.

And my my follow-up here is so if we're still running service there but in a limited capacity, it's it's fair to say that Racine taxpayers are being asked to subsidize the the village of Sturt if it's non-payment, right?

That would be fair.

All right, yeah, very interesting.

Thank you.

Honor Allen.

Oh, there we go.

I've learned something at almost midnight.

Okay.

So I'm looking at revenue page on 178, and I just had a question about the increases.

Uh I see increase of fare box.

And so I'm gonna just assume that's exactly what it means.

That there's an increase to ride our transportation.

Uh yes.

So what we're assuming is that ridership continues to increase, and that's reflected in what we receive in fares.

So the you're seeing as uh increase in person, not an increase in what we charge.

Correct.

Okay.

Small question.

Harmon.

Papa.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Director Young, I just looking over this onto page uh 171.

If there are some rather large spikes throughout different things, so spike in uh proposed funding for overtime, we have holiday vacation, sick leave, so on and so forth.

Is just this is this just an anticipation of these being used more by the employees, or are they all getting you know more allocation for these kind of things?

I'm just curious as to why we're seeing these spikes.

So um, referring to a previous question regarding our um software that we used for payroll, switching over from ADP to Munis.

This is just reflected in proper budgeting.

Uh, when we switched uh software from an external party to an internal party, a lot of these were estimates, and so now that this is our second year using uh this software, we can properly illustrate that in the budget.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Any other questions for the director?

Nobody else is in the queue.

Thank you, Mr.

Director.

Ladies and gentlemen, Judge Weber.

All right.

At this time we had a municipal court coming up.

Judge Weber, page 127.

I certainly appreciate Kathleen having set up the schedule so that young and vibrant is followed by all the decrepit.

Thanks, Kathleen.

Anyway, so we will start off with what Alder Thompson.

Okay.

Automatic.

I don't want to be uh sharp.

You are my biggest concern.

Auto director.

Just have one question.

Um, and if you have to tag in Kathleen, I I I get it.

Um for on page 131 for interest income.

Now I am I'm learning.

I see that there's an ERP code, so I'm guessing there was this from something.

But the there's a section for interest income, and so in 2023 there was like 5300 dollars, 2024 was like $8,000, and then it's been zero since then.

So I'm just wondering if what the backstory was on that.

So I can answer that one for the judge, most certainly.

So municipal court does not have a lot of cash on hand at any period of time.

So it's unusual for them to have a whole bunch of interest income.

Actually, 2024 was extremely unusual.

Um so we normally budget pretty conservatively for interest income.

If they do bring a little bit in, it would just fall into their fund.

This is a standalone fund and would remain in the Muni Court for them to use in subsequent years.

Thank you very much, and thank you very much, Judge.

All right.

Uh yes, as she said, they don't trust me with money.

Auto I agree.

All right, on Allen.

No.

Pete.

Larry.

Okay.

Audacity?

No.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate it.

Um Judge Weber, I I really loved your announcement from Trevor.

So I see that there is um uh a lot of property tax increase.

Is that um the revenue from that?

Is that just uh something that is um typical?

I don't know if you can answer it, Judge, but it's a part of that, maybe Kathleen.

Explain that a little bit because we have been um hearing a lot of um complaints about the increase in taxes and things like that.

Sure, absolutely.

So municipal court has two revenue sources to fund the salary infringed benefits mostly that their department is made up of.

One is tax levy, the other one would be collection of any fines or forfeitures that the municipal court may issue.

Their fines and forfeitures have been going down the last several years.

They may start going up, but we haven't seen that yet.

So again, we like to be conservative in that space.

So then that offsetting revenue is property tax levy.

So as wages go up, as office supplies go up by 804 or whatever it was last night.

Um, the property tax has to go up with it.

All right.

It and uh if I could just add on to that, um Mr.

Lettney, who's also a municipal judge, could um attest to our forfeitures.

It seems like the fee schedule that we get in our forfeitures would generate a lot of money, but in truth, a great deal of that goes to the state.

Very little of it comes back to the city.

Um, just so that you understand it.

However, I will say this with the 25 new officers, we are seeing a huge increase in the number of um ordinance violation charges that have been made, and I expect that our forfeiture revenue will increase uh considerably.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um in your area.

And I just want to commend you for being very meticulous and studious and intentional on how things are structured to make people feel welcome, even in a circumstance that they are in front of you for something.

So I think that's to be commended.

Well, thank you very much.

I just have to say that my staff and I take great pride in treating everyone not only with respect, um, because you want every court to do that, but also most people who come to the municipal court have never been in a court before and maybe never will again.

They're always nervous, often annoyed or upset by what they perceive to be ill treatment on the either on the road or by somebody else.

And so you have to make a special effort.

This is not a criminal court.

This is a local community court, a problem solving court.

We deal with all exactly the same issues that you deal with as Alder persons.

And so we try to make people comfortable in that court.

We go out of our way.

I have a great staff.

How if I'm sure um everyone remembers Holly Mauler from the finance department, she used to work for Kathleen, um, Carrie Miller, and um uh Michelle Belair.

In addition, our court officer at uh Chief Remires is kind enough to supply us with kind of a gentle giant uh former football coach at Horlock and uh at uh um Carthage College kind to everyone.

It makes people feel comfortable when they come in.

My clerks will go out of their way, they get so many phone calls from people who are annoyed about something.

I honestly believe they are the nicest people that you could possibly meet in the court officer.

I was mentioning this, uh Eric Prabilski, um, who um has his own personal um contact with this community um for many years, and um is just uh a wonderful help in court.

I I I really enjoy my job.

Um I really enjoy the people that I work with, and I uh thank you every year for giving me the opportunity to come.

All right, thank you, General.

There's no one else in the queue at this time.

Thank you.

Uh, the next department we will have the uh library director, director Dembski.

Evening, counsel.

All right, honor.

Counselor, just like one like before looking over everything, and looks like you guys are working on some really cool stuff.

The increases are pretty inline, so I just appreciate everything you guys do for the community.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Honor Davis.

Thanks.

I have several questions, but I'll go uh take my turn.

On page 115, uh contracted services is up 46.9 percent.

I'm just curious what falls under contracted services.

So great question, Aldermack.

Obviously, you know, the the obvious answer is anything that we basically have contract with.

Um, the things that are driving the increase, uh, Wallviews certainly aren't the only two, but um our janitorial contract, which is pretty expensive and which is only going to get more expensive to the degree that we might actually be.

We we might be switching that contract to a different contractor, but it'll still be equally expensive one way or the other.

Um, another one that's really driving that is our contract with our library system.

Um so we belong to uh a system that uh we're we're one of 17 libraries in that system, and it's called Prairie Lakes.

They are the systems in the state are responsible for a lot of the resource sharing with the libraries due.

And um the good news is our system is increasing some of its services.

Every library in that system will have an increase to their contract.

We're one of the two biggest libraries in that system, us and Janesville, and so ours is having the the biggest uh the biggest increase along with Janesville.

Thank you.

Sure.

Push button.

Go ahead.

All right, thank you so much.

So in very a very similar theme to my past questions tonight.

In in looking at the the budget, there's the the local agreement um for for wastewater, and and there's a formula, and we don't have to get into it tonight, it's already pretty late.

Um so we by no means need to dig through the entire thing this evening.

But there's a part that talks about circulation count and it tries to assess you know how what use is coming from the the collar villages.

Um in that uh a trend that I've seen, I know just even from my own library habits.

I've I found myself checking out more and more books um using Libby and online.

Um do those numbers um play into the the usage of the library that we kind of assess against the villages around us, or currently is that number um just the physical copies that come through the doors of the library.

Just the physical copies, Elder Jarginson.

Uh it's very interesting, thank you.

And and and you'd mentioned about the prairie lakes.

Uh, I'm gonna test my my Libby knowledge here.

When you go sign into it, that's the the same system um that you'd you'd select when you're picking the which Libby system you go with.

So when we talk about the increased fees, that may be a component of it of just in general, they're the they're who we kind of contract proof for Libby, right?

Yeah, a lot of our electronic resources in general.

They certainly do much more for us than that, but uh that is basically when you're working with the system, they have uh the ability to do bulk purchasing and things like that.

Uh, and so a lot of the electronic resources fall under that.

All right, thank you very much.

Sure, thank you.

Otherwise, my question is probably more from the finance director, and it looks like we're doing some accounting corrections on the budget, and what I'm referring to is in 23, 24, 25, we had allocated transfers from the general fund for 125, 150, 200,000.

And I know last year it caused some great distress.

Uh, wondering why we were applying uh funds from the general fund rather than just putting it on the line item.

So now it looks to me like we have corrected that there has been about a 400,000 dollar increase or 18% increase in the line item for the library for the property tax levy for the property tax levy.

Okay, but then I'm wondering why are we continuing to use um fund balance for this budget.

Why wouldn't we just put it on the levy?

It it's a very good question, Alderman Weidner.

And one of the reasons why is for the last few years, the library has been adding relatively significantly to their fund balance, they have their own fund balance in the library, but also in addition, to be quite honest, there's only so much tax levy to go around.

I don't have another 75,000 dollars of tax levy.

So either we use some from each of the funds that may have some available, or it all comes out of the general fund of which we don't have that much available.

So library has some available.

We talked through it with the library board as well, and they're aware of that fact, but that's why.

Okay, so their their budget really did not go up 18%.

It's just now it's just it's just the difference between a transfer in and tax levy.

You're absolutely right.

Okay, thank you.

Pete Harma.

Thank you, Chair.

No questions, just want to commend you on a job well done.

Um, I have seen improvements um as far as just overall um the homelessness problem at the library has seemed to gotten not homeless better, but the opposite anyway.

Um and the staff is really really good.

Um I enjoy being able to come to the staff and get my questions answered, um, service with a smile, no issues, and I really want to commend you for um the staff that um accommodated us over the summer when um the building was being um um re um you know remodeled and stuff.

Um our meetings went well, no issues.

Um so I just want to commend you on that.

And your staff honor proposal.

Thank you very much, Alder Holmes.

Any other any additional questions for the director?

All right, nobody is in the queue.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Director.

Next department we have it would be the uh information system, MIS Director Edwards, and the page number is 217.

Sorry, Hunter Townsend, Otter Davis.

This question may be for you or Dale or Kathleen.

I'm trying, oh okay.

I'm trying to locate where where is the line item for the closed caption that's provided during the council meetings.

Is that with MIS or that's actually included in the common council's budget that Jim will be covering?

Am I correct, Har?

Thank you.

Oh, and I don't know.

I was just I was looking for that.

Thank you.

Auto Wagner.

I I have no questions, but I do want to commend your staff.

They have been just so helpful every time I've come down here and locked out of the room, or can't figure out how to get into my email, or don't know how to run the printer, or don't know why the printer's making so much racket when I do figure out how to operate it.

They've always been just Johnny on the spot and just so helpful.

And I want to give them a shout out because they deserve it.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Audible Pete.

Yes, thank you.

No question, just wanted to uh commend you and your staff on the rollout of the new program with the computers and the training.

I did attend the event last week.

It was a great event.

And support the efforts that you're provide services that you're providing the community, and I'll be glad to help out.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Auto Harman.

How to Pabone.

I see no other, nobody else in the queue for the director.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, next department is the public health director, Ministry Nabras.

Good evening.

And page number is 52.

62.

Honor Townsend.

Question.

Honor Davis.

Otto Wagner.

Other Allen.

Pete.

Other land.

All right.

I don't see anybody in the queue.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Oh, you're just yakking.

All right.

Uh human service.

So we will have uh director Horton.

City development.

City development.

I'm sorry about that.

City development.

So we will have Director Williams coming.

Good evening.

Good evening.

And the page number is page 100.

I'll give you guys time to find that a little bit.

And when you guys find it, we will start off with Alder Townsend.

Honor on the back.

All right.

Hello.

Hi.

So I have a quick question on last night you'd mentioned about NOMO Main.

Part of the budget is removing the sunset clause in it.

I had a question around the signage.

And so in the past, you had to come in and get a sign yearly for your front yard so folks knew that it was, you know, you were participating in NOMO main.

You weren't just not taking care of your yard.

Question though, are those signs, now that there's not a sunset clause and it's it's going here on out.

Are those signs able to be reused?

Um where you know if I get it one year, I don't have to come back in and get a new plastic sign the next year.

I can just keep reusing the the same sign I have in an effort to maybe reduce plastic waste and that kind of um we have the city clerk to answer quite.

Thank you.

Great questions.

This one is a good collaboration between the NED and Department of Customer Service.

Um, whether or not it's approved in this budget to approve that ordinance really makes a difference on how we move forward with it.

I think the anticipation is to working with the communication director to create a new sign to be used for a few years, but not indefinitely as people move the NED department needs to be able to know where those properties are located so that they don't get cited.

So there will be some sort of deadline, but to balance out that budget and not spend too much, we will be looking at hopefully doing it for a couple years.

I don't have the answer on how many at this point in time.

So the follow-up on that, so just make sure I've got it right.

It sounds like depends on how this all shakes out uh on how it'll end up, but that is the plan that we in some fashion there'll be much longer than just the the yearly um sign that it has been.

Correct.

I anticipate it being more than one year per sign.

All right, thank you so much.

Yep, all right, AutoWagner.

Could you push button for me, please?

Thank you.

Are we doing city development and NED and all that?

Okay, okay.

Um I believe it was through city development when you spoke last night regarding the TID grants being used for uh what do you call those clean sweeps?

I think you mentioned that last night during your presentation.

Where can I find that in the budget?

Very good question, Auto Widener.

That was part of the infrastructure uh that was delayed um for the committee of the whole, so that wasn't decided upon at that point.

The TID infrastructure.

So it's not in the budget it's not in the butt.

It's not in the budget, Kathleen.

Could you get your button from please?

Okay.

All right, go ahead.

Let me help out a little bit there.

Okay, so clean sweep is included in the budget under regular operational city development, which is on page.

Sorry, I should know.

Right around page 100, it starts.

So there is an amount allocated for clean sweep under city development.

In addition, it is intended that there be two other clean sweeps that would be within neighborhood TIDs.

Those are not included in this budget.

Okay, so I'm trying to find that.

I'm on page 104.

Let me get that.

I'm sorry.

My apologies.

It should be a good number that jumps off it because I'm just not seeing it.

I think it's under contracted services.

16001.

160.

Sorry, I know Jeff knows WRS residency over to 105 on to contract services.

Yep.

Right towards about the middle of the page, Alderman Wynner, say 104?

105, I think you said page 105, excuse me.

Okay, so the 100,000 that was this is more for Kathleen.

The hundred thousand that was budgeted last year for the clean sweeps was through the city development.

It was budgeted for in 2025, it was budgeted in the NED division of city development.

Okay, but then other departments also collaborated with that.

Correct.

And then while we're on that topic, um, did all the hours that were uh charged from the all the employees that volunteered to work on those clean sweeps, was that charged back to that grant?

No, it was not.

It was charged to their departments, charged to the department.

So the hundred thousand was over and above the salaries that were paid for the city employees that were volunteering for that?

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

Then I do have some questions about the net, but I'll wait and I'll come around.

Auto land.

Audible bone.

All right, back back to you then all uh oh auto time.

All right, this is just kind of an everyone questions since we're talking about the ordinances too for 001725.

Who would that fall under?

I was told that is the health department.

Okay.

I'll follow up with her.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh no Wagner.

You put your button and you're good to go.

I think you're the only one being the queue.

Go ahead.

So this is for the NED.

And this is in regards to the full-time salary CDBG.

I know that the CDBG committee had discussed, but I don't know if they had allocated that 658,000 to the NED program that we had discussed.

So is that what this is, Kathleen?

Is that part of that 658?

Yes, that is correct.

Okay.

But then there's additional money.

Is that somewhere else in the NED budget?

So the NED budget is made up of multiple funding sources within that budget.

So again, sorry, just for everybody else.

It is page 136 that the net budget is on.

Yep.

So the NED division is funded 162,000 of property tax levy.

And then fines and forfeitures, charges, those types of things of another 600,000.

And then the funding source of CDBG for 685,000 for a total of 1.4 million to cover.

Okay, where did you see that 685?

I'm not seeing that.

It's actually if you add together license and permits, which is on page 139 at 305,000.

And then on the next page of 140, there's another 305, which makes it a little confusing.

Can't we all be accountants?

No, I was just kidding.

Um so that's where the 610-ish comes from fines and fees.

Okay.

So is the 345, I believe it it was.

Uh from C D BG, that may or may not have been allocated through the council last time, or maybe it's not supposed to, I don't know.

Maybe something clarifying that for me.

If it's in the budget, we would know better whether CDBG allocated it or not.

Yes.

Um, when we approved the consolidated plan in August on Common Council, that was part of those budgets.

Uh that was the meeting that you attended uh for the community development block grant, and at the time we had to get it approved so that we can get receive our allocations from HUD.

So we approved the consolidated plan.

And just for memory, uh, we did pull two items from that budget.

That was the funds to our size service providers as well as ESG.

So we approved all the dollars to receive all the dollars from HUD, and that was part of our consolidated plan.

That's where you will find that large bucket of 600 some odd thousand dollars to Ned.

So just so I'm understanding, we we the council don't have to approve the allocation of the 658,000 or the 345,000 for the um for your department because it's in that consolidated plan.

You approve the consolidated plan so that we could submit it to HUD to receive those funds.

So you did essentially approve it.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Any question?

Any questions for the director?

I don't see anybody okay.

Yes, I do.

All right, auto Davis.

That one again.

Thank you.

And I'm on the fees on the fee pages, page seven, and this is just I can get some understanding.

It has certified the certified survey map.

Is yeah, come on, Jeff.

Is that a map that the constituents can reach out to you?

Is tell me what is the survey map?

Is it the survey map that a constituents are reaching out asking me about their plots, or is this something different?

Uh something different.

Very good question.

What that is when someone owns a piece of property and they want to divide it into a different configuration.

That's the fee we charge to route it through the plane here to the design commission.

It's not something that someone would come in and you know request, like if you owned a lot, we charge you 270 dollars.

The official record keeper to that is actually uh the register of deeds at the courthouse.

That fee is simply if you own a piece of property and want to chunk it up into different lots to run it through our application process.

So we can maybe chunk it up for um ADUs.

Is that what we reach out to you for that?

Potentially, yeah.

We check the zoning regulation if you wanted to turn your one lot into two or three or four or something like that.

That's what that fee covers exactly.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you, Chair.

Point of information.

Um earlier this evening I asked um public works the question about the five thousand dollar fine for illegal dumping.

Was I informed that that was city development?

Thank you.

I just want to make sure, because I'm gonna ask the right question, the right person.

All right, so um a lot of my residents are really happy about the um initiative to decrease the illegal dumping, especially in um streets where residents own homes or and or in the um alleys.

Can you explain to me um how this initiative um is going to um how much money could it potentially add to the budget?

And with that money, what what do we see happening with it?

Alda Harman has an excellent question.

I'm going to defer the question to answer by the uh city administrator.

All right, thank you.

Sure.

Um can feel free to chime in any time that she likes.

But so uh all of our uh Harman, the uh um there is actually one of the ordinances in the budget packet of ordinances addresses the uh illegal dumping, and that's uh 0020-25, which is littering illegal dumping and incentivized reporting.

So the proposed ordinance helps us to um we're actually modeling on the Milwaukee uh effort here, which has been highly successful.

Um, and the idea is to uh go head on at the problems of illegal dumping with a five thousand dollar fine.

And in addition to the five thousand dollar fine, there's actually a thousand dollar incentivized reporting fee.

So we are uh both punishing the wrongdoers and we're encouraging people to get that information out there.

We think that this is intentionally set at such a level that uh we will see uh people aggressively report it.

Um we're also going to need to um uh roll out some kind of camera system, which will be far from comprehensive, but what we intend to do, uh this also kind of folds into the administrative uh budget priority of database decision making.

What we intend to do is to look at the city, look at the citations, look at what are the hot spots for dumping, and in many cases, we'll probably actually be talking to residents about whether or not they'd be willing to have a camera in their alley.

And I think that a lot of people where these problems are especially bad, uh, will be willing to do it, and it's simply easier to put a camera on a participating residence's garage than it is for us to put anything on any kind of a weenergies poll.

So um that it is uh uh there's a lot of policy behind this trying to go at a problem that's been a serious issue for us, but is of course also tied to um fines and incentivized reporting, so it's in the budget.

Thank you so much.

Um, especially providing the additional information on um purpose and how it got initiated and um our benefits for it.

I appreciate it so much.

Audible bow.

Nope.

All right, I don't see anybody else in the queue.

Um, well, one more auto wagner.

Thank you.

This is in regards to several new fees that are coming through.

Uh several new fees that are coming through your department.

Uh fine which page that was on.

Page eight.

So I'm correct.

On page eight, uh neighborhood enhancement division is implementing a half a dozen or so new fees regarding um, and I think these are maybe in one of the ordinances.

So can you kind of explain about those X escalating penalty fees, what those are for sure thing?

Thanks for the question.

So those are for if the property uh it's a vacant property registration that's been a problem we've heard a lot from a lot of all their citizens, etc.

about um vacant properties and other deteriorating neighborhoods.

So this would establish a registry for those properties, and at the time they register, if there are code violations in the building's not up to code, if it's vacant, fine, they'll pay the registration fee beyond the list.

If the property has code violations associated with it that are you know, building code, zoning code, habitability code violations, that's when those penalties would be imposed based on that fee schedule.

Well, thank you for that.

I do have a concern about the um the reinspection fees that uh homeowners suffer when they have a code violation.

Um, in a lot of cases, those homeowners may be eligible for CDBG grants or TID grants, but they're not aware of that.

So it's my hope that that department, your department can work on generating a letter along with the code violation, informing people that they can contact your office to see if they are eligible for any kind of loans or grants from CDBG or TID so that they can rectify those code violations.

Uh that has been a real issue in TIDS 27 and 28.

Um, and a lot of people missed the app the window for applying for TID grants when they had code violations and they didn't know that those grants were available.

So I'm hoping we can better inform people uh going forward into this next year.

Good noted, we'll uh we'll look at what we can do in regards to that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we don't have anybody else in the queue.

Thank you, Director Williams.

At this time, we'll go to the human service, human resources.

Uh, Director Horton, and also she we'll start off there on page 37, and following that would be the insurance on 228.

So I'll let it take the first one and then we'll go to the uh what's our next one?

Starting with you, Otter Townsend, Otter Davis.

My question is um about your goal number three, increasing uh employees utilizing the health and wellness center.

Do you have the number like a percentage now of the employees that are utilizing it?

I know you want to go up three percent, but what are what cur what's currently going to happen?

Okay, let's see.

I believe I have it somewhere here.

I'll let manager gross answer.

Yes, good evening.

Um currently, as far as employee utilization, we're at about 46 percent.

For retirees, we're about 39 percent, and for dependents, we're about nine percent.

Can you give me those numbers one more time?

Yeah, yeah.

So for employees, um, I think it started with employees.

We're at about 56 percent.

Um, retirees were at about 39 percent, and I believe dependents are around nine percent, and that's for acute and chronic care.

So that one about that's for acute needs, um, some more urgent care services, and then also chronic care needs.

All right, thank you.

That's all I have for that small.

Thank you.

Thank you.

On uh page 40.

I don't know if you covered this yesterday or not.

It's all becoming a blur.

Um part-time salaries are up one thousand one hundred and three uh a hundred and thirteen point five percent.

Yes.

What is that?

That's for the YEPRE program.

So for the youth employment program, we incorporated it into our budget this year, or for 2026.

Where was it found previously?

It was under grants.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

I I just had a question.

So in here, you know, a couple of your objectives highlight, you know, recruiting and the importance on recruiting for positions.

For as part of that effort, is there a part in here whether it's the new recruiter position or what it would be for somebody to go through and review the the requirements that we have tagged for our either open positions or positions that will become open around what you know we require, whether it's degrees or certifications in a way that maybe shifts that from hard degrees or certifications to maybe more of a an experience portion or a blend thereof to help with recruitment?

Yes.

So we previously changed our requirements to incorporate both experience and education.

So it doesn't just have a hard four-year degree, it could be two years with a certain amount of years of experience.

And that is evaluated on each position by the HR generalist that handles filling those positions with the department.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Please do not take anything when I say personal.

But I've been around for a long time.

And City of Racine used to be one of the most desired employers in the state.

And it has nothing to do with you or your department.

It's probably more societal changes.

And probably changes that took place because of pay and benefits and all that, and those kind of changes.

Could there be improvement there?

So I will defer to Keisha, who is our workforce innovation manager.

Okay.

Hi, good evening.

At this time we do refer like positions that we have to them, but our relationship could be stronger.

We're hoping for the recruiter position who can you know be more of the outreach person and start strengthening our relationships with our nonprofits and programs to take take on that role in and strengthen our relationship with the workforce development center.

But as of now, we we have um hosted sessions there, you know, like where people can come in apply and hear about positions, but I look forward to doing more with them, and we do share our openings as well.

Okay, and I don't know.

Thank you.

And I don't know if I'm reading this wrong, but it looks like your FTE equivalents are going from 9.56 to 17.

Okay, where are you at?

I'm sorry.

I'm on your the positions page on H1.

So you currently have 9.56 employees in HR.

Yes.

And you're gonna go up to 17.

And that is also with the YEPRS.

So we included the part-time YEPERS in that um count.

So we have you know, we're able to split up the the positions depending on how many hours they work in the various departments.

So the YEPRS are the youth employment coordinators, yes.

And interns of the YEPRs too.

The the YEPRS are under the part-time salaries where you previously um indicated the increase.

Yeah, this doesn't show that, just director.

Yeah, just to clarify, um, so the YEPers are under the youth employment intern as you um suggested, Alder Weiner, and I just wanted to I mentioned this a little bit in my overview the other day, but there was a lot.

So for each one of these part-time positions, these students or interns only work maybe six weeks out of the year, right?

It's over the summer.

So we hire about 40 of them, but they work such a short period of time.

That's why it's such a small FTE.

To be honest with you, it probably should have been included here last year.

We've had this youth employment program for some time.

It's just been funded out of ARPA in the past.

It will still be partially funded out of ARPA for 2026, but partially out of the general fund.

So this is a suggestion.

I rather than those positions being funded out of HR, because it's quite alarming when I compare our HR in Racine to HR in Kenosha, just like when I compare the city attorney's office in Racine to the city attorney's office in Kenosha, I see double the employees in each of those departments between Racine and Kenosha.

And I know Kenosha has much larger geographic area, many more uh employees, many more of my residents.

So I have a hard time justifying creating yet another position in HR when we already have so many people in HR, and I don't think our population in the city of Racine is any different than the population in the city of Kenosha.

So and I do know that they also struggle with hiring because I watched their job openings just like I do ours, and they're very comparable.

So I I just wanted to bring everyone's attention to that.

So if you see an amendment from me, you'll understand where I'm coming from that Allen.

Thank you.

All right, on page 38, I'm I'm looking at, and I guess I'm gonna continue with what uh Alder Whitner was talking about when it comes to uh positions.

So and I'm gonna speak from not from comparing so much Kenosha to Racine, but speaking out of life experience as an HR person myself uh in my career history, and so I have a couple of questions when it comes to being able to one attract our employees and the and how we are recruiting them.

So are we partnering at this time with a service that goes through assessing our candidates?

Is that an outside source?

No, it's not okay, and so the follow-up question on that is when you are uh posting a position.

Are you aligning the assessment closely to uh what will actually be required on a day-to-day duty?

I'm gonna say I'll use an example typing for excess example.

Uh how many positions do we currently have that require a speed typist?

And why would that be on an assessment?

So if you have an if you have a resume of a person who has checkbox off all of the other requirements, right?

And your position, and I'm I'm saying this because I've done the research on this.

So they they check off all the boxes, but they don't even get called in for an interview because they can't type fast enough.

That could happen, correct.

Yes, right.

They would take a um exam prior to right.

But is that an accurate assessment point for the job that they would necessarily be doing, where they would need to have to type 65 words a minute or 90 words a minute in order to get like in order to get an interview based off of their core responsibilities that they can meet for the job that they're actually going to be doing.

Okay, using your example as typing, I can't say that we have a position off the top of my head that requires that typing skill, but we do assessments depending on what the job requires, and those assessments are usually necessities.

So I did have a few people take go for some of the jobs that were posted, and their resumes did meet the actual fit.

Where they did not meet was this was the typing speed, but from what the job required, that was probably not going to be something where somebody stood over them and said you're not typing 55 words a minute.

So how can I say this?

It depends on if that was a hard, fast qualification, one of the things.

When you list the things, but that was part of the assessment.

Right.

But just because it was part of the assessment does not necessarily mean that's why they didn't move forward unless they received some kind of communication saying you were eliminated because of XYZ, meaning you're a type in test.

So it could be that they they didn't do as well in the typing test.

Um it could they absolutely they actually did not do as well on the typing test.

But what I'm saying is that it could be a uh an average of everything.

I'm I'm not sure, but if you have, you know, if you'd like to call me on that outside of here, I could talk to you about that um offline.

So I I I appreciate that.

I guess what I'm just saying is that according to what we're looking for and how we are assessing people who would come into into working with Racine, are we aligning our assessments correctly with the actual job that would need to be done?

I would say yes.

Thank you.

No, the land.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate it.

Um I want to commend the HR department because I I've worked in HR and I know that it's not easy.

There's a lot that people don't do.

It's not just the interviewing, it's not just um training and development, it's not just onboarding, it's not just policies, it's not just it's it's a lot.

My question to you, especially with the budget and the hiring.

Then there's um a new position that you are looking to get filled, a recruitment position.

All right, and I think workforce development director mentioned it, stating that it would be beneficial.

How um how so?

Because even um just just explain that a little bit because yes, there's a lot of responsibilities in the human resources department, but recruitment is one of them.

That's usually just done by one of the HR managers or somebody.

Why do we need uh whole separate recruitment position?

Um walk me through that.

I'm gonna let Keisha walk you through it because it would fall under her if approved.

Oh, do I need to wait for your turn then?

Or come.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening.

Um, for one, we're in a very competitive time of hiring.

Um, I attended event last night where different um directors and CEOs were speaking of, you know, we're having to take employees, you know, or use each other um for to find great employees.

So for one, the city could benefit from an outward-facing person who was representing the city and working with people in the community and educating people on the community.

The YEP program, the fire cadet program, and the police cadet program showed us that there are people in the community who wants to work for the city and just do not know how to obtain these jobs, even as um the last order just mentioned, or you know, mentioned even um how to get into you know how to pass the hiring process.

There needs to be someone um in the community, not only give them that giving them that confidence, but showing them exactly how to work for government, um, you know, for the private sector, it's a little easier, you know, the wait times are faster, but in public in the public set sector, we have a lot more steps that we have to um you know, and in order to get someone in the door.

So if there's someone in the community educating people, showing them or even giving them the confidence and letting them know that they have a space here at the city, and you know, for them, then I believe we can really benefit from just from that service overall.

Okay, thank you so so much.

And then my very last question.

Um, the mayor has mentioned that we are that we could benefit from um having many more city employees live locally, live locally.

Um will the recruiter, will that be one of the recruiters' goals to try to recruit racing residents, or is it just the best res, I mean the best person for the job, or first start locally to build that best person?

Yes, talk just answer that question.

Sure.

Um I would say it's a combination.

We always want the best person for the job, but the recruiter, as Keisha stated, would be working to help build that best person from our community, the city of Racine.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Um I definitely support that, and if there's anything that I can do to assist with that, I'm definitely thank you, Honorable Bone.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I was just reading some of these in your uh initiatives that uh were recently accomplished.

There's number two that you revised human resource policies and procedures to remove barriers and promote equitable access.

Three is strengthening recruitment data collection and analysis to inform inclusive hiring practices and increase residency, which is something that um Alder Harman just touched on a little bit there, and then number six, which is revise the human resource hiring procedures to remove bias through anonymization job prescriptions and promote equitable access to all kind of going on with that, and then also uh question for you is is community outreach not in HR scope right now.

We do community outreach, but it is a strain on our department because of the limited number of staff.

So we only have two generalists that work on filling positions and are available to go out in the community, and that's based around them doing interviews, job posting, and all the other meetings that they do with the departments to keep their positions filled.

Okay.

I'm just looking at this, and it seems like a lot of that things that the uh recruiter would do is already being done, maybe not in as broad of a scope as you would like, but I'm not sure if that necessitates a whole nother position.

Um just looking at this here, but um I can definitely understand what your the scope you're trying to describe.

Um, but I think right now that job is already being done.

So thank you.

I apologize if this question's been answered already.

How many open positions do we currently have?

Um throughout the city.

Okay.

I don't have that information with me right now, but I can provide it to you at a later date.

I like about uh our HR department is its diversity and its current leadership.

What I'm I am torn about this extra recruiter position, but I'm leaning towards uh thinking that if we did bring on another person, then you termed it as building a person uh the up from the bottom or from within we scene.

Okay, so because that ultimately is something that I think is important as far as growing our community and encouraging people uh to either come here or to stay here.

With that being said, uh the outreach that you envision that includes what our high schools for our academies, our Gateway Technical College.

Do we talk about people who are already out here uh maybe who want to trans?

How do we communicate that out?

Because if you weren't going to get this position, but you feel like this is a need, how would you be able to implement these uh job duties that you imagine this person would do into what someone is currently staffed in your office could do?

And how many hours would that require to reimagine their job?

Okay, so I'll start and I'll probably pass it over to Keisha.

Um right now she is um taking on those duties that um Alder Pabone in that you're asking about, but her main focus should be on our internal department succession planning and training and getting the staff up to where they need to be, our current staff.

So um she's splitting her time right now as well as still mentoring in managing the youth employment program.

So there's a lot of demand on one person.

Um, as far as the time it would take, I'm not sure off the top of my head how many hours it would require.

Alder Davis.

Thank you.

On page 40 for HR special programs and events, it's looking like um 66.7 percent increase.

Yeah, um, can you speak to what special programs are event that is increasing those numbers?

Yes, um, that would be the 20-year club that was rolled under our department, I believe, in last year's budget.

Okay, and thank you.

Just another question.

Now the work supplies has originally was zero dollars, and now it's 13.5.

Is there any was there's just moved over here perhaps?

Yes.

Yes, it was moved from another area.

I believe it came from I'm not sure if it was the publications or not, but it yes, it was moved from another area, it was already in the budget.

All right, that's not uncomplete.

All right.

Any quote?

Uh no way.

Thank you.

I'm not sure who this question is for, but it's on page 40 and 41, and that is in relation to uh employee reimbursement.

It went from 6,000 in 2023 to 20,000 in 2024.

In 2025, it was 120,000.

And for 26, it's budgeted at 85,000.

What is this reimbursement for?

So you're saying on the uh bottom of page 41.

No, it's in the middle of page 40 under HR employee reimbursement.

It's right above total salary infringement.

Okay, that would be the tuition reimbursement.

So we didn't um receive as many, if I'm not mistaken, that's the tuition reimbursement.

So we went um you guys approved, I believe it was two years ago in the budget, a four thousand dollar increase from I believe it was originally a thousand dollars a year.

So we estimated that we would get this influx of um tuition reimbursements, but we have not.

Is that just for your department or is that for the entire city?

Okay, yes.

Okay, so evidently the employees really like that benefit.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

All right, any other questions for the director.

Any questions centered around?

Um I think she's also here up for insurance on page 228.

Oh, insurance, we don't want to talk about that.

All right.

All right, thank you.

Page 48.

Oh, Scott, you know state work.

And we'll start off with uh we'll start off with uh Thompson.

Hey um I was just curious about the salary increases.

Is that just because you guys are taking on more workload or just a 23% and uh 7.2 percent?

Well, um we don't set salaries, they're set for us, but the for the full-time salaries that's just whatever the finance department came up with.

The part-time salaries, I think it's an issue of uh you may recall that last year there was the potential of eliminating a part-time city attorney position, and it wasn't eliminated, so when the budget was printed, it assumed there wouldn't be the part-time city attorney, but in fact it was retained.

So my understanding is the number that's in there isn't really an increase, it's just a reflection of reality.

So on page 51, um attorney professional services is listed at 400,000 dollars.

Um no change to this year, but two questions.

One is what are the year-to-date actuals and what falls under professional services.

Uh professional services in my department is by and large hiring outside attorneys.

There's a few other things that may fall into it if we need an appraisal or something like that, but generally it's outside attorneys.

We actually I have to say one of the things I'm really proud of is we have been working really hard to reduce outside attorneys almost every year.

We've been over budget for a long time.

Um, and part of the change in personnel in our department and some of the things the council's approved over the last few years, has given us the ability to bring more things in house.

So as of yesterday, um our outside counsel for the year is I had it right in front of me, um $57,712.

So I'm sure we're gonna be well under $400,000, but uh for this year, but sometimes you never know what's gonna hit us.

So that's why we didn't ask for a reduction just kind of to see how it plays out for another year.

Just a real quick one.

Um the attorney licenses and permits and fees, it usually is like uh $2800, $1400, $2500, and then this budget is $7500 or 2% increases.

There are yeah, that's an unfortunate name for what the account is.

We actually use that for court costs.

If we have to um I've lost it on my list, but if we have to pay filing fees in court, um, yeah, that's a court fees and filing fees.

So if we file a lawsuit, it costs $400 or something like that.

Um we actually were short money this year because there were a lot of actions we had to initiate, and part of the reason we asked for even more of an increase is some of the things that uh that we've been asked to work on and anticipate for uh 2026 is some of the uh blight elimination efforts, and we anticipate there will be court actions we will have to initiate to further those efforts.

So, really again, mostly this is filing fees before the circuit court.

There's also if we acquire real estate, then there's uh recording fees with the registered, those are relatively small, but it's really the filing fees in court.

Perfect, that makes a lot of sense.

Thank you so much.

All right, Otto Wine.

Thank you.

I just want to clarify.

We did hire someone as a part-time attorney.

That position is still vacant.

You remember that attorney R left during the year, and we've been recruiting, and it was sort of a unicorn position, so we're reassessing how it's gonna be.

But we did fire a full-time attorney after the council approved a full-time attorney for us last year.

Correct.

So I think the reason we retained that part-time position is because we did not want to eliminate a long-time city employee um from that position.

So we allowed the creation of a full-time position with the intent when my understanding that when the part-time employee went away that that position would go away.

So would it be a problem?

So you said you're reevaluating.

Well, I I there are there's a lot of things that we do, and I I could take many more hours just to talk about all the different things my office does, but I will just pick one thing.

Um, and it's the police department that frankly is causing all this work for us.

We we get a lot of public records requests that we have to respond to, and more and more those records requests involve watching squad video and body camera video.

And if you imagine there's four officers on a scene and each one of them has a body camera going, and they're there for an hour, that's four hours of video that somebody has to watch and determine whether there's anything that has to be redacted or hidden or something like that.

Um last year, uh I'm gonna get these numbers off a little bit, but it's pretty close.

Last year we got around 525 requests that my office had to deal with.

This year, as of the end of September, it was over 630.

So I anticipate we'll be closer to 900 or something.

And you know, I will say, I mean, Ian uh Pomplin is uh filled in really well with public safety and licensing, and I think he'll probably just stay there.

But he's the one, in addition to the civil litigation, he's the one that's been doing the public records responses, and it takes a tremendous amount of time, and frankly, he's working a lot more hours than I probably can reasonably expect.

So I believe we really do need that person just because of the workload that we have.

Okay, makes sense.

All right.

Uh on Harmony, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I just want to um commend you and your office and all the attorneys that we have here at the city.

Uh, when you have 15 of us trying to get at you for any type of ordinance or any questions on top of the other myriad of things that you deal with.

Um, I have always had very pleasant professional uh and quick responses.

Return uh uh attorney Pomplin and yourself and Robin and other people, so I just commend everyone in in your department for oh job well done.

Thanks.

I appreciate that.

I'll pass it on.

All right, how do I just a quick question might be for Kathleen?

I don't know if it's under the city attorney's budget or if it's someplace else for judgment and claims judgment and claims is under the non departmental budget, which is on page thank goodness for this thing, page 58.

Okay.

So and we have that budgeted at 350,000 dollars for 2026.

And what was it last year?

So it was $300 for 2025, and we are over that $300 for 2025.

Okay.

Thank you.

I don't have any more questions for the attorney.

All right, thank you.

All right.

There's no one else in the queue here.

So thank you, uh city attorney.

So next we have the uh finance director.

Uh Kathleen, are you covering all three or just please it's up to you?

Would you prefer to sit?

If it's if no one objects, I don't mind that she does.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

So the finance department, she would be on page 53, the non-department will be on page 58, and that services.

Yep.

And we're gonna start with uhlesson.

No, Davis.

Oh, to charge a real quick one again.

Um I see that the the copying and printing, and it's not a lot, but it went up a lot, and I know that that's there.

What's the story behind the the copying and printing?

It it's a good question.

So some of that relates to the budget books that you have have in front of you today.

Um, so obviously they're in color, they get run by a cono print for us, so that's a little bit more of a cost, and then the final budget book itself is pretty expensive too.

All righty, all right, thank you.

Otherwise, okay, so I see we're adding two more positions, 2.25 positions to your department.

Um, I also see in your department, and I don't see a corresponding uh ordinance in regards to having hired a purchasing manager rather than a purchasing agent, as had been discussed last spring maybe.

Um I believe another position was created to go along with the purchasing.

So there's a purchasing compliance specialist and a purchasing manager, correct?

Correct, straighten all that out for me, just give it to me.

Absolutely all that flows.

So I'm gonna start with the reorganization in the two positions that are coming over to finance from water and wastewater.

That is a reorganization, they are not brand new positions right now.

They're housed at water and wastewater, they'll be coming over to finance because water and wastewater are going on to the city's MUNIS system.

Okay, so that's just a switch.

Which two?

Which two?

Um the billing specialist, I think, is there a billing specialist, and then the accountant utility accountant, the technician.

No, utility accountant.

There should be a utility accountant in there.

Oh, yeah, I see it.

Okay.

Yep.

So those are the two that are coming over from water wastewater.

I think they have an asterisk next to them to denote that.

Um the purchasing compliance position was authorized by the common council last year during the budget.

So that position works closely with our purchasing manager in our office.

Um lot of the priorities that they deal with is the Racine Works Program and the compliance associated with the Racine Work Works Program, but in addition, they do compliance for any purchasing associated with grants and things like that, some of the more detailed purchasing things like that.

So that's what that position does.

That position is filled at this point in time in our office, and then we have the purchasing manager position, which again we did talk about quite a bit.

I am actually appointed as the purchasing agent for the city of Racine, no different than I am the finance director and the treasurer for the city of Racine.

So I function as the purchasing agent.

My signature is on the purchase orders, as my signature is on every contract that is signed by the finance director.

Did the council confirm that, Kathleen?

I don't remember that.

Um I was appointed by the mayor last year.

I don't know that we went through the confirmation process because I have been confirmed once before, but I would have to defer that to the mayor.

Okay.

Um but the purchasing manager does the day-to-day operations of purchasing most certainly and reports to the deputy finance director, and then of course we collaborate together if there's any issues associated with that.

Okay.

Okay, so they're really not two new positions, they're just transferred from water wastewater.

Correct.

And and actually will be funded by water and wastewater, so they are not tax levy funded.

So that's the enterprise correct.

Okay, that's it for me.

I think um your department, I think.

Okay, great.

Order under Alan.

Yeah, intermate.

Okay.

I just want to just give a blanket statement right now.

I know it's getting late, and I just want to thank everyone of our staff, our city staff for being so patient and working with us tonight as we ask these uh important questions so that we can get our city moving for next year.

Thank you all for being so patient.

And no, Kathleen, I don't have any questions for you and your staff.

You all are doing a great job.

Thank you.

All right.

AutoP.

No.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Director Fisher, it could be that my contacts are drying out or my coffee's wearing off.

Um, but I just why are those two positions coming over from the utility to the finance department?

It's a really good question.

I talked about it a little bit last night in my goals, but I'll I'll certainly cover it again.

So the the water and wastewater department are actually a department of the city of Racine, and I am there for the finance director of the water and wastewater um departments.

For decades, they have kind of functioned on their own financial system, of which that financial system is aging to the point of not being supported any longer.

In addition to that, their administrative supervisor that has been over there for decades is retiring.

So about a year ago, the utilities and I started conversations of what are we going to do?

And this is a great example of process improvement in the city of Racine and how we really look at continuous improvement.

Um they should have always been part of the finance department.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

Um there's a lot of duplication that goes on because we have separate financial systems.

I'll use one small example.

We have to manually hand enter their budgets into our document because we're not on the same financial system.

That's just one example.

I have 20 more just like that.

So those are the types of things that we started looking at when we started having these conversations, so that is why they're coming over.

Okay, thank you.

And just want to say that you've I think I have a lot of stuff to remember, and then I meet people like you.

So I'm really grateful for all the answers that you've given us and the patience you've displayed, as well as everyone else here.

So thank you.

Thank you, and I appreciate all of you.

It's great questions and and all everybody.

It's been great.

All right, I don't see anybody else in the queue.

Oh, one more.

How do I it's a follow-up on the conversation that was just taking place about the water utility, which I remember for decades hearing from Tom Bunker and Keith Haas that the utility is separate from the city, just like I hear from the attorney that the CDA is separate from the uh uh the city?

Is that not accurate?

That is not accurate.

Okay, so the water and wastewater utilities are departments of the city, they have their own governing body that are the two commissions, but they are departments of the city of Racine and always have been.

Um, and again, it's very clear in our ordinances that that is the case.

So would not the same apply to the CDA?

Isn't that a department of the city?

No, so the CDA is not.

The CDA actually has its own EIN number, it's own uh it's a nonprofit, has its own entity number.

The utilities, their employees get a W-2 from the City of Racine proper.

We send their W-2s out of the finance department, we run their payroll checks out of the finance department.

But is it the layers for uh the CBA from the from CD uh city development?

So I would have to defer to Scott on that.

I can tell it's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.

No, no, no, it's fine.

Um I just wanted to make sure the chair wanted to go down the path.

So the community development authority isn't a department.

It's uh it's an authority, like we have boards, we have commissions, we have authorities.

And it's set it's provided by state statute to be specifically says by statute, a separate body politic.

If you can imagine sort of the legal fiction of corporations are legal entities distinct from the people that own the corporations, the community development authority is a lot like that.

It's specifically defined by statute to deal with blight and and urban planning issues, excuse me, not planning issues, but urban redevelopment issues, because municipalities in Wisconsin are not allowed to own real estate for the purpose of redevelopment.

That's why redevelopment authorities, community development authorities, housing authorities, those all exist.

So the city of Racine has a community development authority created by ordinance pursuant to statute that specifically is allowed to engage in those redevelopment sorts of activities and related functions.

By statute, two members of the common council have to be members of a community development authority.

Our ordinance says the same thing, and I would just remind you that statutorily the mayor is a member of the Common Council.

So we have one alder and the mayor, and there's seven members on the body, there's five others that are required to have some kind of expertise in real estate or economic development or something like that.

But it is a legally separate entity, very similar to a corporation.

So but my question was point of order.

Relevance to the budget and what we are talking about right now.

So my question was she asked you asked about CDA, but is it is is this both uh budget focused, like far as his budget, as far as uh sky's budget.

Well, I think the the conversation started out as that so we have kind of meandered at when other people do, and other aldermen have not yelled out point of order to stop a discussion that I think is very important for this body to undertake.

And during the budget time is the only opportunity a lot of us have to have these discussions, and because we have new alder people on the on the council, they need to understand some of these nine out of ten questions that I ask.

I already know the answer, but I'm doing that for other aldermen that may not know these things that it's needed to know.

So that's why I ask most of the questions that I ask.

I don't, you know, I'll acquiesce to the alder from the 14th district if she wants to interrupt me every time I'm asking questions.

That's fine.

I will acquiesce.

But I I'm speaking.

I will stop.

You can't keep screaming point of order to stop me from speaking.

Let's let's let's keep it, let's keep it, let's keep this in order.

You she had yes.

I was allowed, I was allowing her uh Otterman from the six to complete, she was completing what she was saying, and then we were going to uh move on.

Thank you.

My the question that I had asked if if the CDA is a separate entity from the city, but it's still uh we still cut checks for the staff that leason to the CDA, and that's that's okay.

He's one person that has two separate roles.

Okay.

Simple simple question, simple answer.

Thank you.

We don't see I don't see anybody else in the queue for the finance director.

Uh we're gonna have uh we're gonna have uh department of customer service.

Oh no, no, we have debt service.

That's our questions any questions for any questions for counseling.

Yeah, just one minute.

Anybody oh Davis?

I just have a question for the president.

Can we have a five-minute break reset, please?

Yes, if you want if it if you like a five-minute break, we can we can journ for five minutes and then we'll proceed on drawles to be.

She probably has to go to the back.

Well, we could have done half of this last night.

Hello, Jess.

Don't look at me.

Don't look at me.

Oh mine is that's what I had here, so that's what I use.

I got fade.

You know, I said they put these in.

I'm gonna get I have a plug in at work that I use the resume for I think it's half here.

All right, all right.

All right, we're gonna ask the artist to return back to the chambers.

Let's get it to you.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

We will have Department of Customer Service, and we are going to start again with Alder Townsend here.

And the page, the page number is page number page 42.

42.

That's customer service.

No.

Okay.

Order Davis.

Thank you.

Oh.

Yeah, you were going to do debt service first.

Okay.

Okay.

Sorry.

Sorry, Tara.

Sorry.

Sorry.

So Mr.

Chairman, why don't you?

She's already there.

Why don't we do her thing and then go back?

That's fine.

Thank you.

Come back.

Thank you, Honor.

It's my turn now.

Yeah, you ready?

Yep.

Awesome.

Thank you.

I going back to fees.

I believe I asked about the parade permit.

They say that's customer service.

Yeah, so thank you for the question.

Customer service will be essentially processing the parade permits.

They touch multiple other departments.

So this is the first year that we'll have a parade permit in the budget.

It's a new anticipated fee and goes along with the proposed ordinance that is also in the ordinance section of the budget book.

The reason for these fees are how many multiple departments will be required to review the parade permits.

So it includes not only the Department of Customer Service, but DPW, RPD, Fire Health, and Attorney's Office.

So this is to cover all of the administrative fees of the parades.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Not finding it here, but those parade permits.

So the June is it a hundred and fifty dollar flat fee, or it said something about 150 dollars per so many blocks.

Yeah, thanks for the question.

So it's $10 for the first 10 blocks.

So a great example would be the Memorial Day parade, is only I think nine or ten block radius.

And then each additional block after the cost goes up.

That requires not only the review of RPD, the staffing of RPD to make sure that they're gonna have staffing time, those administrative services that go into expanding parade routes longer than ten blocks.

So some of these parades are quote unquote city sponsored parades.

So are they exempt from the fee in this new ordinance?

No, they're not all right.

And one being a communication director.

Well, maybe you want to explain all five positions.

Sure, yep, let's go through them.

So actually, none are new to the tax levy.

The first one being the communication director, that was a budget amendment from last year to move the comms director underneath the department of customer service.

So that position is being moved from last year just to be shown in here.

It was actually already in in 2020.

That's the existing that's the existing comms director.

Correct.

The marketing specialist is, I believe, already on the levy from the Department of Parks, but will be under the management of the communication director.

So that's an already existing position upon the levy.

Um I believe the other three are the ones anticipated to come from water wastewater to do the collection of the water bills along with the merge in the finance department.

So will will those positions be moving from the city hall annexed to your office?

That is the anticipation, correct.

Oh so will uh that their positions include being customer service specialists, or will they just be doing the billing?

So I believe the specification is going to be dependent on the inflow of the office.

Right now we're currently in the research phase to see exactly how many in-person bills are coming in.

The anticipation is always that everyone would eventually be cross-trained in multiple tasks within the Department of Customer Service to allow for flexibility and for department employees to actually take a vacation and not have to worry that they're coming back to a large workflow.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Other Alan.

Honor Honor Pete.

How to Harman?

Honorable.

All right.

I don't see anyone else in the queue.

Thank you.

Now we're gonna go back.

We're gonna go back to our finance director for debt services, page 148.

And non-departmental.

Anyone for debt services?

Not letting you off the hook.

Let's start with your auto times then.

No, honor daily.

Automatic.

No.

Auto I are we on debt service or interesting.

We're on debt service.

Non-departmental.

Then we're gonna go back to non-departmental.

Is that anything I can do?

We can do them at the same time if you want.

You want to cover non-departmental?

Well, no, I just I didn't want it get lost.

That's all.

We can we can do debt service.

Okay.

That's page 148.

Yep.

Oh, I'm on 149.

Yep.