Okay.

Order.

First item is just that Mayor Pro Tem Harrison is absent and excused.

All right, and I will turn it over to Miss Sadia Sitar.

All right.

Well, good afternoon, Mayor and members of City Council, Sadia Sitar with Budget and Management Services.

Super excited to kick off yet another budget season with all of you, our fourth together, at least for the most of us.

We are kicking off our budget work session today with the engagement that we did as part of the upcoming budget process.

Later on, our HR director, Sharnell Jones, will chat with all of you about compensation and benefits.

And then after that, Assistant City Manager Ryan Bergman and our consultants at Matrix Inc.

will chat with all of you with the targeted staffing study.

So to kick us off as we dive into this budget work session, normally I would be the one who would be chatting with all of you about all things engagement.

But this year I'm going to do things a little differently.

I am going to give the opportunity to one of my fabulous analysts, Lauren Williams, who actually spearheaded this effort for the city this year, and she's done a fantastic job.

So I'm going to bring Lauren on boat and let's get started.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Lauren Williams with the Department of Budget and Management Services.

As you know, every year we try to involve residents in our budget process, and I'll be presenting the results of this year's engagement process with you today.

So we'll start by going through the outbreak.

Is it possible to move back?

We cannot see them.

It is very close.

So we can only select the top third.

Oh.

That's a lot of things.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cassidy.

All right.

Other duties as a sign.

All right.

So we're going to start by going through the outreach methods that we use to advertise the program.

Then I'll take you through our budget listening sessions as well as the budget survey that we conducted and the resident feedback that we got from it.

We'll conclude with uh next steps for the process.

So in order to get the highest participation possible in our engagement program and build a budget that reflects the needs of as many Raleigh residents as possible, we worked with our communications department to create a comprehensive communication strategy for this campaign.

So we got the word out in a variety of ways.

You might want to move the microphone closer to yeah, your thank you.

So we put a lot of intention in how these listening sessions are formatted.

So we start with an education piece so that folks are all on an even footing when they're discussing the budget.

We walk through topics like operating budgets, capital budgets, as well as enterprise funds.

And then new this year, we had a second section uh budget games that was interactive for folks.

So we started with guess the cost, which uh allowed residents to guess the cost of common municipal items like uh a fire truck or a mile of sidewalk, and then uh we ended up with a budget balancing exercise that put residents a chance to take a spin in our shoes and get a chance balancing expenses and revenues for a municipal budget.

We closed the session with our core engagement questions that we ask folks.

So, primarily we wanted to know where do people want to see increased funding for next year's budget, where do they want to see funding levels maintained, and where, if anywhere would they want to see funding levels reduced.

So this is what we heard.

Now, for all these questions, I want to emphasize that they were open-ended.

So residents were given three open-ended questions, they typed the answers, and then budget and management services staff went in, read all of the responses, and categorized them here for easy viewing.

So uh, and some folks did attend multiple sessions, however, we controlled for that in our responses, and they did not answer twice.

So, for the first question that we asked residents where they would like to see additional funding in next year's budget.

Um, we heard 25% of people say that they wanted to see more funding go towards transportation.

17% wanted to see additional funding towards asphalt maintenance.

That includes things like sidewalks, pothole repairs, and improved road conditions.

Uh 17% wanted additional funding to go towards public safety, so that included mostly police and fire staffing, community-based safety initiatives, and trauma-informed mental health care for our first responders.

15% wanted to see additional funding towards affordable housing, which included specifically low-income housing, uh, homelessness prevention and support services, as well as sustainable housing and development initiatives.

And then that other box, 26% included all other services miscellaneous that were too uh infrequent to mention more broadly.

The second question that we asked folks was where they wanted to keep funding levels stable.

So 27% were miscellaneous, 37% thought that parks and recreation had uh wanted to keep things status quo, 20% thought that community engagement had sufficient funding, and 16% uh answered transportation.

Finally, the last question that we asked the folks who showed up to our listening sessions was what services does the city provide that you feel are unnecessary, and if you could cut something from the budget, what would it be?

This generated a lot of varied feedback, but a couple of things that we have heard before.

Uh leave collection is one that you'll be hearing once again, as well as uh free parking, some folks that felt that um the free parking programs the city provides are unnecessary.

Now, while these listening sessions were being conducted, we were also holding a community budget priorities survey.

This survey asked residents about their satisfaction with city services as well as their budget priorities for the upcoming year.

It was nine questions long, and we received an incredible 1,984 responses.

This is seven times the response count of previous budget surveys.

And that is all thanks to our communications department who came up with such an effective marketing strategy for this campaign.

We got responses from each council district in roughly uh even amounts, and we got 1,676 written comments in that survey as well.

All of those were read and analyzed by budget and management services, and I'm going to give you a bird's eye view of the results that we got from that survey now.

So the first question that we asked folks was their feelings on Raleigh.

And the responses that we got back were overwhelmingly positive.

82% uh rated Raleigh as good or excellent as a place to live, 72% uh rated it good or excellent as a place to work, and 71% as a place to play.

Then uh we asked residents their satisfaction with a wide variety of city services, as you can see on the screen here.

Um, at a high level, um, what came away from this was 87% uh were satisfied or very satisfied with their drinking water, 80% were satisfied or very satisfied with their greenways, and 86% were satisfied or very satisfied with their parks.

The services that were desired sort of greater levels of service by residents were affordable housing, our Go Raleigh bus system, and sustainability.

Now, we know that Raleigh is growing.

We are poised across uh over half a million residents soon, and we know that we as a city must adapt to that growth.

We also know that residents love our parks, value our public safety, and that we need to plan for compensation for our employees long term.

You'll be hearing more about staffing studies to that effect later today.

Um with all these factors in mind, we asked residents if they would be happy to support additional funding for these things.

And 82% supported dedicating additional resources towards these commitments.

So competitive city employee compensation, enhanced public safety services, and parks and recreation.

The final question that I'm going to walk through with you guys, uh we asked residents to rank their priorities for the next year's city budget.

Um, and then we provided an open-ended portion where they were able to explain why they ranked the services the way that they did.

The top uh service from this uh part of the survey was far and away affordable housing, with 52% of all respondents listing it as a service that should be prioritized in the fiscal year 2027 budget process.

It received 284 mentions uh throughout the survey.

And comments tended to focus on housing options for low and moderate income households, uh, as well as concern that development patterns were contributing to displacement and reduced access for seniors, young families, and low-income residents.

Police was the second highest priority uh as ranked by residents.

It received 132 mentions in the comments that tended to mention concerns with staffing keeping pace with population growth, uh, as well as inadequate traffic enforcement.

Other responses urged shifting resources toward alternative response models such as our Acorns unit, Raleigh CARES, mental health support, and prevention-oriented services.

The uh third highest priority from residents from this part of the survey was our 911 call center.

Fortunately, uh not many residents indicated personal experience with the service, uh, but many seem to recognize its importance.

Our clean drinking water received 106 mentions in the comments.

Um it was the fourth priority from residents, and comments tended to focus on investment in water infrastructure, um, replacing aging systems, and also um protecting our waterways and stormwater.

Fire and EMS was the fifth highest rated priority.

Staffing tended to be a big concern here.

And finally, our Go Raleigh bus system and transit services received 133 mentions in the survey.

Comments here tended to reflect uneven exposure to the transit system, but uh regardless for both frequent users and residents who didn't specifically use the transit system, it was an important issue for folks that said they were concerned with accessibility and growth management for the city overall.

So that was a very high-level view of uh a long survey.

However, um you can learn more uh because it is currently uh on RaleighNC.gov.

We have a full engagement report published that delves into verbatim resident comments from all of our listening sessions, an in-depth analysis of comments from our survey, as well as a district by district breakdown of the survey so you can see what folks from from each district specifically said.

Next steps for this process are going to be as follows.

Uh first, of course, resident feedback will be incorporated into the development of the fiscal year 2027 uh proposed budget.

Your next budget work sessions are going to be happening on March 9th, where you'll hear from Raleigh Water, Stormwater and Parking.

And that's going to be a pretty robust work session.

So we're going to bring SolidWays services to you on April 6th, along with grants in our capital improvement plan.

And then we're presenting our proposed budget to you on May 19th.

So thank you so much for your time.

Uh the budget director, Sadia Satar and I are here to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Questions?

Councilor Brown.

Thank you.

I have a few questions.

So bear with me.

First, I'm going to start on slide six.

Um, and this is just an operational question for me.

Asphalt and maintenance, what division is that in the division.

I'm going to keep that too.

Like where do they fall?

They fall it falls within transportation.

Within transportation.

Right.

So it's safe to say that based upon this slide, transportation is morely 42%.

Based on so, oh, I see this slide here.

Yes, so transportation, the way this is categorized, it's not by department, but by service.

So when folks were talking about transportation, we as a city know that it's in the transportation department, but the transportation-related comments, we're talking about things like bus access and specifically our transit system.

Okay.

Um for me, this just could be a could be a quarry thing.

It'll be probably clear if it's more if it says more or less, you know, go Raleigh service or bus service.

Um, because when you when I see transportation, then I see maintenance and asphalt.

Us up here, for us to kind of give focus.

We know that's one big organization.

So I think just in the public, it may be so we know we're clear on what transportation is.

So that's one for me.

Um my next question, and uh we'll stop a little bit.

Um on slide eight, where it says uh what services does the city um provide that people feel are unnecessary.

Um I'm kind of perplexed because some of the things here that are highlighted are some of the things that I see on the other slide that the community says they want.

Yes, uh, you're correct.

These are different residents responding different things, and in many cases our feedback is contradictory.

That is true.

So for the we're gonna call for the donut questionnaire, that's one set, and for the word surge, that was a different set of residents.

No, so these are the same residents, but some residents um felt that we should add funding in the same areas that other residents felt we should take it away.

Okay.

And that's why you're seeing services across these.

The reason this isn't presented as a donut pie chart like the other two was because the feedback for this question was more varied and it wouldn't have been a very clear pie chart.

Okay.

Thank you.

My other my last challenge, and I'll stop here for now on slide 12, um where you're mentioning um the high satisfaction in greater areas of service desire.

I notice at the bottom we have um go triangle and affordable housing where people feel unsatisfied.

They they they feel we should put more into it.

But then when I get to slide 13, um, yeah, I think it's 13 where you have them based on ranking.

I'm seeing the bus last where I would think it will have a higher value because on the other graph where police services were, a lot of people said they were satisfied.

So when we have those conflicts, and I'm kind of gonna probably lean to the city manager here, how do you handle that differences of ranking?

So very good question.

Typically how we would do is kind of look at the question that was answered and how it was asked, to be quite frankly, because you're looking at the number of survey participants, which was well over 1,500, which was a historical high for us.

And so really when you see those that responded to this question, they may not have responded to the other question.

So as we deal, you know, dig down and drill down into the data, that's how we're able to prioritize based on what was actually said.

So for us, we will go back, we will pair this data also with our community survey data as we develop the budget and bring forward uh the proposed budget to you guys in May.

And I think just uh just uh fix for the transportation is issue would be to put transportation slash transit.

Okay.

That would clear that one up.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

And I hope for those who are watching this too, you see the challenges that even us at the desk have based on the information the way we receive it on trying to balance these priorities and um I uh staff, you live this every day, and I commend you for the work, and I look forward to the final budget in May.

But we got a ways to get there.

Thank you.

And some additional clarity on that question.

Um this question where residents were asked to rank their highest priority services, they were provided a list of all of the services that we do, and these are just the top six.

So yes.

Okay, Council Jones.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

I've got two uh questions.

Now that we've had a few years, some of us are a few years on council, but it's especially being with with uh Asadia for a few years.

Um with the budget listening sessions, what are the trends we're seeing?

Because the changing of times each year, you know, one year we do it in October.

I'll say personally, because I go to every single one of those, I saw that number drop off this time.

You know, we went from five the first year we did it, then we went up to 20 or 19, and my and then it went back down to eight.

So what are you seeing in those trends?

Um and is there a possibility to be more consistent by bumping it up?

I understand election years happen.

I understand that that's why uh part of the at least part of the reason why during an election year we it's harder to do it in October.

Um but if the response is better other times, how how are we going to find that out?

So fantastic question and a question that I was anticipating.

Um so what we noticed was last year was our highest turn point because we did them in December.

Our turnout this year at our in-person listening sessions and even our virtuals ones was just really not great.

I think it was it's too early in the year.

Um it could also be that we didn't raise taxes last year, so folks just felt, you know, hey, I I frankly speaking don't have anything to talk about.

Um but I think December is a a great um it it was our highest showing last year, and I think it's a good month.

The other thing we've noticed is there are certain districts where we go for in-person sessions that we just have incredibly low turnout.

Um so in our minds we're thinking, is there an opportunity to host a session in person, but to make it in a more co-locate uh in a co-location where we can have folks from different districts kind of commingle and come together.

So those are definitely things that we want to experiment with in the future.

Um you were really um nice to mention how our strategy has changed over the course of the four years that we've been doing this, Councilmember Jones.

I think that we we're trying to finesse it, but I think what we're what we're learning is that this formula of hosting a session in each and every district is just not bringing staff the bang for their buck.

What really is is our survey.

And the city manager was right, record turnout um, you know, responses this year, 1,000 uh 986.

So just 14 short of 2,000 survey uh survey responses, all thanks to our folks in communications.

And we were super targeted with our questions as well and got some fantastic data out of that as well.

Our budget and bruise sessions, it was downtown.

We got fantastic turnout.

Um that those kind of events seem to be popular.

But the the in-person going to each and every council district, and even the virtual ones, the number that we're hosting, you'll see that we hosted so many last year.

We've pared that down.

Even that is just not getting the traction that we had hoped.

So definitely opportunities to tweak and kind of refine how we're reaching out to our residents.

I think us thinking out of the box and going to the boys and girls club, going to Raleigh T and Council really helped those numbers for our in-person.

I mean, those two alone were almost 50.

So you can just imagine going to each five district.

I mean, you know, that and that's like 36 people.

And a lot of them, as Lauren mentioned, were folks that attended more than one um session.

So you kind of just think, you know, what what what is making sense here in terms of time and effort and knowledge gained?

Sure.

No, I it's wonderful.

I've loved watching over the few years as you guys have grown into and changing it, because I totally am on board with trial and error and what works, what doesn't.

I guess what I'm looking for here is how do we see that?

Because right now every year we see this year, but we don't see the trends that we we unless we we don't get to see what our journey has been so we can help re refine.

I know that for me, you know, I'll have I have a monthly community meeting and I've got 25 people that come there every month.

So like let's partner.

I got you.

You know, how how do how do I get to be better at helping you do these things or helping, especially with my district, because I understand I'm probably one of the lower ones that had five people show up and and yours was actually the highest one this year.

We had eight.

Yeah.

So that that's what I'm trying to tell you.

I know.

Wow.

That's what I'm trying to tell you.

It was very, very low.

We had a session where one person showed up.

So and you know, for the time and effort that it takes, and we obviously we reserve child care um, you know, and we make sure that we, you know, we didn't have we do advertise interpreters, we didn't have anybody ask for that service.

But there's a minimum of three budget staff that attend these sessions that are taking time away from their families to be there, not because we have to, but because we want to.

But then you got to factor in the fact that are we really getting the bang for our buck?

For sure.

And so I think restrategizing but being able to see that data, I think is really what I'm looking for.

How do I how how can I help give ideas, different ideas to it?

Because I see what what I've been there the whole time and I I see what you're going through.

So that's number one.

Um and then number two, kind of in that same vein.

This year I started the budget collaborative in which I asked residents to help me come through last year's budget and bring questions to the table that they felt they needed clarity on.

So I had 30 people sign on to meet every other week and discuss what they learned.

Um they almost all reached out to staff with their questions, and some have been told that the questions will be answered, they will be answered and given to me specifically for review.

But I have not received any responses yet, so I'm just wondering if there's an ETA of when I'll receive those information.

Um staff has received those, and I think that we are compiling them and working on them, and I believe that we will get those responses to you in the near future.

In the near future.

Yes.

I don't know when that is because there's a lot of departments that your um team has set up.

So but we'll definitely provide further information.

Yeah.

We had one person from every for every department, so we do they did reach out to ask questions, which is part of that engagement, you know, just trying to help, trying to help you get the questions that are asked so that there's clarity um in the budget process.

But I'm really in interested in the future of finding out when that date is.

But uh I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um counselor Lambert Melton and then Pat.

Okay.

Hello.

Um I have a I have a handful.

Um I guess.

Wow.

Okay.

We're punchy here.

Um I think piggybacking on council member branch.

So the donut graph that says transportation, that was an open-ended question.

Open-ended question.

Yes.

And would you say, I know you you kind of hinted at it, but I just come asking for further um elaboration that the bulk of people saying transportation either on this one or the other, the other one, the bulk of those are meaning transit, or some people are meaning road widening or intersection improvements or so yes.

So how we separated it was things like sidewalk repair, pothole improvement, et cetera, all went in the asphalt category.

Mostly for understandability topic wise and transportation, yes, was mostly things like transit, um, not things like road widening, more how to get people place to place.

Okay.

Got it.

Um helpful.

And then on the slide that ranks them.

You said this was uh this was pre-populated.

This so yes, this was part of our budget survey, um, not our listing sessions, and yes, it was populated with a list of all the services that we as a city provide.

Um and our full survey instrument, if you're curious to see what that question looked like for people, is actually uh attached in our engagement report that's on the website right now.

Okay.

Cool.

Then um why did we include EMS?

Yes.

So um it was included um with with fire because it's something that, you know, yes, EMS is a county function.

Um but our fire department has obviously an involvement in those sites.

So that's why it's one response.

It's fire and residents think about you know the types of events that are response to the Trevor Burrus.

And our firefighters are EMTs.

So we typically are the first responder on all scenes.

We don't do the transport, but it's almost like a co-service.

Thank you.

Yes.

Okay.

Exactly.

Okay.

Um and then on the clean I I'm guessing just like some of these are decisions against each for for our part, like we're supposed to take in this feedback and it's these are decisions on our part against one another, and then some of them are sort of like decisions that stand alone uh against like some other set of factors, right?

So um for affordable housing, fire, nine one, those are all sort of like general and capital fund, 10 priorities to weigh.

But then like clean drinking water is an enterprise fund.

So that's a decision on like rate increases or not rate increases, but they're not really in tension with the others, right?

And the transit systems, you know, funded in complicated ways that are also not necessarily in tension with the others.

So I'm just wondering like I guess one thing to think about for for future surveys is maybe how we tee these up to help residents tea, like how how we phrase our questions to help residents weigh those things, right?

It's like in some of these you're making decisions against one another, and then on others you're just making a decision against your wallet or you know.

So I I don't know if that's a good question, but it's uh just feedback to consider.

Thank you.

Um I was wondering what the what the youths were saying about the budget.

Yes.

So um our Raleigh teen council session was actually our best attended.

Um we had 30 folks uh respond.

And they um yes, we had 30 folks respond, and uh that feedback is um aggregated out.

So uh we have what what did folks tend to say?

Uh mostly the same as as anyone else.

They were really engaged.

And um I think their feedback kind of aligned with what other districts are saying.

That was what I was interested in.

It was like if their feedback tracks I was the one who led that session and there were some real colorful commentary.

For example, Dick's Park is FIA, which okay.

Other was why do we have love the trolls dicks, it was all about dicks.

It was also we're happy that we have more trolls than Charlotte or Charlotte has three, but we have five.

So and they really, really um um um were also very conscientious about uh public transportation.

Um it was a really really engaged group, and may I add that I felt quite old.

Um but it was fabulously attended.

Yes.

Awesome.

Uh I will say the responses included the highest emoji count of any listening sessions.

That's exciting.

Awesome.

And then um one more from me, and I'll pass the mic.

Is it more feedback than a question?

Um I know that y'all prepare for these engagement sessions like they're the Super Bowl.

I also and and appreciate all your efforts there.

I also do continue to get feedback from residents who wish they could engage with the budget office throughout the year.

And I know you're a small department, small but mighty, and the minute we pass one budget, you're on to preparing the next.

So not to diminish your work, but I think it would be fruitful to just um just noodle on, explore what kind of capacity needs you might have so that there can be more engagement throughout the year and maybe move from this like surge peak Super Bowl preparation to to maybe like sort of flattening the curve a little bit.

Okay.

Counselor Lambert Milton.

On slide six and seven, the other categories fairly large.

It's the largest portion on slide six and the second largest portion on slide seven.

It is.

But it may be helpful if you could just give a few examples.

If you don't have that information today, then in the managers update.

I I'm just curious what what some of the other entails.

And I understand it's an aggregate category, but it may be helpful.

And then if there's anything measurable in there, you know, tiny little slices of the pie could be helpful too, just so we we can see where some of the other priorities are going.

Um because when I see this, it it is the largest on the one and the second largest on the other.

And I think that's interesting.

And I will also just say that I was surprised by some of these responses with um how folks were prioritizing issues.

So this was very helpful.

Thank you.

Yes, thanks.

So I think part of that answer um is too.

Two things can be true at the same time.

There are certain members in the community who feel like we do enough around affordable housing and we need to move on to other things.

There are a lot of people in the community who think we don't do enough.

And so I think what you're gonna find also there are a lot of people that are so pro-park in this community that they think we spend way too much money on parks.

So that's why you're gonna see in some of the charts there at the top, and then in some of the other ones, they're areas of we we've done enough, let's just move on to something else too.

So Councilor Ford.

Yeah.

Only community engagement portion.

I guess we'll probably talk.

No disrespect to you.

Um You may want to partner with um the community engagement department and Taisha's folks because they probably have some data about and uh around the matrix of winter good times and good ways to to make sure people are participating in these sessions.

Um that may be something to contemplate moving forward and even making sure people are aware of like these budget sessions that we have.

Because I find that a lot of people are not necessarily familiar with how the process works, and there's a lot of misinformation in the community about the timing of the budget, how we vote on it, a lot of those things.

And so that may be something that Hershop will be able to kind of partner with you on to make sure people um have a better knowledge base about how this process works.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Sullivan.

Um two questions.

The first um in your education portion, is the public that they understand the distinction when they are responding, and I think this is what Councilmember Patton was trying to allude to, to expense funding, capital funding, enterprise funding, because looking at this, it seems like they're all all commingle.

Affordable housing could be expensive, and it could be a bond, transportation, both.

So just trying to understand, they understand the distinction because very often when people say increase funding for this, well, that's a bond.

That's a separate category than an expense uh funding.

So do they understand the distinction between those two fundings?

Yes.

So we began each session with about uh 25 minutes of education on that exact topic.

So we talk about the difference between operating funds and capital funds.

We talk about enterprise funds.

We talk about um different types of budgets so that when we get into the feedback portion, residents are as educated as possible to make informed comments.

And yes, every year we do get still some confusion, and we're always going back to the workshop of how we can be more clear.

Um we've started including worksheets too of city services as opposed to county services to help make things clearer for folks.

Um yeah, that's a constantly evolving education piece.

And if you can go to the pie chart with the asphalt maintenance and transportation slide.

Yes.

I know this is getting into the weeds, but when I look at the go Raleigh as a system, did any of the residents in their comments tie the sidewalk infrastructure and crosswalks because it's not just the system.

There are people who can't get to the bus stop because there are no sidewalks, they're covered with ice, uh there's limited crosswalks, the bus stop is not close to a crosswalk so someone has to walk.

It just doesn't make writing the system feasible.

So I don't know if they got into that level of detail, but I'm just wondering when they talked about transportation, no, you split them out, uh, but just yeah, I I would love to use the bus.

I just can't get to it because it's not safe.

Um was that taken in consideration at all, or it was just split out between sidewalks as a separate system and then the go Raleigh bus as a separate system where they tied together because they are dependent on one another.

They they are dependent on one another.

We didn't see too much of that in the comments, but we have every single comment made at our listing session typed out word for word um in our engagement report for further review.

All right, thank you.

I guess uh I appreciate the survey and that you got such a uh a good response, particularly relative to previous years.

So I was just curious the timing of the survey and what you found around that, the demographics and were they representative.

And then I guess going from third, what were the surprises?

Like I look at this and I would say nobody mentioned trees.

Like that would be a surprise for me, because trees are such a kind of iconic.

The fact that public transportation or transit was so emphasized hits me as a little bit irregular from what I hear from the public generally.

Um then I think the affordable housing question just goes to general affordability.

And I think we know in the United States in general, right?

People are struggling with this issue.

So packed into that is probably a lot.

Um if you have any ways of dissecting, are there other, you know, aspects of that that um the city can address?

Um, you know, like they don't mention utility payments or their water bill, or I mean, you know, were they mentioning those things uh knowing that's not totally under our control?

But just any thoughts you have on the sort of affordability more broadly.

Yeah, no, um, all good questions.

So for the uh how long the survey was open.

It was open about two months.

So when was it?

The beginning of October to the end of November.

Okay.

Um, so longer than we were doing the listing sessions.

Um in terms of demographics, we analyzed demographics for both the entire uh almost 2,000 responses and district by district specifically.

And so you can see a more detailed breakdown uh in the engagement report of that information in regards to both district and age.

Um we continue to see more responses from older age demographics, and we continue to struggle a bit to hit the youth response categories.

Um district by district.

We received um there were there was some variance overall, every district had almost 20 percent uh responses, which is what we want to see.

A little bit higher in district A, a little bit lower in district B.

Um, but that was uh demographic-wise what we saw.

In terms of affordable housing, uh, yes, there is more analysis of that in depth in the engagement report as well.

Um, but folks mentioned a lot of um different tie-ins to um affordability.

Utility bills specifically, I didn't see.

Uh we did read all 1,676 comments and categorize them.

Um yes, the different factors that tie into affordability.

Um, every resident had something new that they brought to their comment.

Um I wouldn't say that it was a common uh factor to tie in those other utility type things.

Okay.

All right.

I think we can't.

Thank you so much for your time.

Okay.

Next we have the targeted staffing study update, Ryan Bergman.

I think we're actually, uh, going to do the uh compensation and benefits update first.

Okay.

So Sharnell Jones.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmember Sharnelle Jones, Human Resources.

Today I'm going to give you an update on benefits and compensation.

This is meant to be an informative session.

Those decisions, no decisions are being asked for today.

Our agenda, um, we will cover total rewards, which is the total package our employees receive.

We will also talk, give an overview of compensation.

We will give a very high level of a benefit survey and the stay survey, and then an overview of our employee benefits and multi-year health plan strategy.

And lastly, we're going to talk about the two items that you asked us to bring back from the council retreat, vacancy rates, and retiree benefits.

Total rewards is a holistic approach to employee compensation that encompasses the entire value an employer receives from the city in exchange for their work.

It combines monetary compensation with non-monetary rewards like benefits, employee development, work-life balance, and recognition to attract, motivate, and retain employees.

So let's move on to employee compensation.

This is a snapshot of all that has been done since July of 2025 in contributing to employee compensation.

Over $39.9 million in the efforts to reward and retain employees.

As you are aware, the city fully implemented a comprehensive classification and compensation study in September of 2025 with no tax increase.

For general employees, the city has invested approximately $22.2 million in its workforce to include the implementation of the compensation study, award for service, and the continuous service incentive.

For public safety, this was around $17.7 million, and that included as well the implementation of the compensation study, education incentive, as well as the award for service and continuous service incentive.

Thank you, manager and city council for approving that massive budget item that aligned helped us to be better aligned with the market.

Compensation market trends for 2026 are stabilizing after years of turbulence, especially after the pandemic.

The median merit increase and or increase to salary budgets is around 3.2 percent to 3.5 percent.

And as you see on here, these are organizations that actually have a background in human resources or benefits or compensation.

The city is better aligned with the market after the implementation of the compensation study, and as we are growing, we want to maintain the things that make Raleigh the best.

And so this year's budget will embody that challenge, so we will be looking towards more so a flat annual pay increase for employees.

Next steps include the city continuing to review market conditions and trends, aligning the annual pay increase with the annual performance evaluation for a payout in October of 2026, and bringing forward a proposal with the FY27 budget.

Let's move on to the benefit survey.

I will give you a highlight of some of the benefit survey results.

The benefit survey helped human resources gather insights and feedback from employees on the city's benefits plan.

The survey was launched from August to September of 2025.

It was an electronic survey that was posted to CoreCon, Loop, and as well emailed to all the employees.

We received about $1,151 responses across departments, and that was a mix of full-time and part-time employees with different levels of tenure.

So that represented a roughly around 15.5% response rate.

The questions were geared toward current satisfaction and opportunities for improvement.

Respondents had an option of responding to each of the questions.

And as you can see, we had about 993 respondents, and that's roughly around 87 percent of those employees rated the city's health care benefits and wellness good or above.

We also asked employees to rank their top five benefits in order of importance.

They had about 15 different benefit options to pick from.

And as you can see here, the top five benefits that get got the most votes were medical and prescription benefits, paid time off, dental benefits, supplemental retirement, and vision benefits.

851 responded to this question, 73 percent are satisfied.

So let's move on to the stay survey.

Again, I'm gonna give you high-level highlights of the state survey.

The state survey helps the city gain insights into why employees choose to stay with the city.

It also helps to gather feedback on employee growth and retention.

The survey was launched from September to November of 2025.

The method that was used was electronically or in person with a member of Human Resources Organizational Learning and Development Team.

The survey was geared towards employees with five to nine point nine n years of service with the city.

The nine-year mark is where we see the turnover, overall turnover with the city.

Human resources sent the survey to those employees, which was around 773 employees, 723, I'm sorry, employees.

Of that 723, 366 responded.

And they were asked about 13 questions.

Again, we asked respondents to select the top reason you continue to work for the city, and out of the 13 options, 28.1% responded that benefits was the top reason.

The next one was I have a flexibility in my work.

Third was a I have a sense of job security and stability, and then the fourth was just I enjoy the work, just to give you a little bit of context.

We also asked how important are the following to your willingness to continue to work with the city of Raleigh.

This question was not required.

Participants could select the statements they wanted to respond to, but what was extremely important to those employees that responded to this question was benefits, compensation, job security, and stability, and that they enjoy the work that they do.

Let's move on to employee benefits.

Our health insurance is the most expensive benefit we provide to our employees and families.

We cover over 9,000 lives under our health insurance.

This past year, health insurance was around approximately $57 million.

Of that, the city paid roughly around 48.3 million, and our employees covered the remaining $8.7 million.

We are self-insured, so our third party administrators evaluate and process claims under our health plan while we have the responsibility of plan the claims, all claims up to $375,000.

This does not include the amount that we pay towards retiree health care.

Market trends for health benefits, of course, is on the rise for 2026, as well as a focus on well-being.

You can see again from those organizations, which is Sherm's Society of Human Resource Management, Mercer, and Align is our current broker for the city.

They are all predicting an increase.

Alliance, again, the city's benefit broker is predicting around 9.7%, which includes about a 7.5% increase in medical and 13% per pharmacy.

In 2022, the strategic health plan was vetted and approved by the city's benefits committee and leadership team.

The strategic plan goals includes meeting diverse needs of our employees, aligning benefits with best practices, and making sure that we are providing benefits that are financially sustainable.

So here's a look at our multi-year health benefits strategic plan.

I know it's a little busy, but this is just to give you a snapshot of what our strategy is.

The items with check marks have been completed or implemented.

I'm going to focus on 2026 column to talk about a little bit of the things that we are planning to do this particular year.

We have an employee health clinic that is located downtown and focuses on occupational health care services, and we are currently reviewing our occupational health care services.

Mental health programs and mental health awareness is on the rise, and so we will be looking at more ways to expand our wellness and mental health awareness program as well as pilot mental health support groups.

As we look to continue to modernize our plan offerings, we have to consider how we manage costs.

So it's important for us to do a comprehensive review of our benefit plans in 2026 using data trends and the feedback that we received from our benefit survey.

And this will also include a review of our dependent maternity care, dental plan design, and vision plan design.

We will also continue to review our leave options and policy as well as the annual wellness assessment process to ensure that we are aligned with best practices for premium discounts.

And lastly, cancer rates are rising globally.

Early detection is key.

And so we will review opportunities, provide cancer screenings to employees to support early detection, especially for our employee groups that are more susceptible to cancer.

So for FY26, week 27, I'm sorry, we are proposing continue to look at and review our medical dental envision plans.

We are not proposing no premium increases for medical, dental, and or vision, and we will continue to maintain our zero-dollar medical plan that we currently have in place.

So next steps include us completing our compensation analysis for annual pay increase, review our plan designs, review approaches with engagement groups, and return with recommendations with the FY27 budget.

And this concludes the compensation and benefits portion.

I have a couple more items.

During the council retreat, we stated that we were bringing back additional information for vacancy rates.

The vacancy rate is a key HR metrics that measure in the percentage of open unfilled positions relative to the total number of physicians in the city.

You saw this chart at the council retreat, and since 2023, our vacancy rate has steadily declined.

These numbers could look different today because we did have new higher orientation, as well as this does not include offers that may have already been made.

So around in from 2022, I'm sorry, February 13th, which was this past Friday, we had about 401 vacancies.

That put us at around 8.9% vacancy rate for full-time positions.

In 2007, the city started to look at its retiree health care benefits, recognizing back then that the costs impact and that many municipalities were starting to revamp or limit retiree health care benefits.

So in 2007, the city made changes to medical coverage for retiree spouses and dependents.

And so from this chart, you can see how our retiree health care benefits are kind of slotted.

Retirees hired before to July 1 of 2007 are eligible for their city for the city to pay a portion of the cost for their spousal independent medical coverage.

Retirees hired on or after July 1st of 2007 must fund 100% of the costs to the city for elected spousal and/or dependent medical coverage when they retire.

Retirees hired before July 1st of 2008 are eligible for health insurance paid by the city until age 65.

And for those hired on or after July 1st of 2008, the retiree with 15 years of service will be eligible to have 50 percent of their medical plan premium costs covered by the city until age 20 until age 65.

With 25 years of service, retirees will receive complete coverage paid by the city until age 65.

And then at intervals between 15 and 25, an additional 5 percent of the employer contribution will be paid by the city in addition to that 15-year-old amount.

City hasn't made any additional changes since this time.

Thank you, Sharnell, and good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Um at the council retreat in late January, I covered long-term liabilities, which really is the promise to pay in the future.

And we talked about both debt and benefits.

Today I'm only going to talk to benefits.

And the city really has three.

So we have our pension uh funding, our law enforcement separation, both of those are required by state statute.

So really what the council has control over is OPEB or our other post-employment benefits, which again you can control as part of the annual budget.

Uh so as we look to FY27, a consideration may be uh to make changes to the OPEB plan.

A change in the plan is a way to contain cost on the growing liability, which currently is 210 million dollars.

We've seen other local governments and the state of North Carolina close retiree health care plans at a certain date for new hires only, while others have changed eligibility eligibility, excuse me, requirements.

Uh so this chart uh was presented at the council retreat, and I've added two additional scenarios uh based on the discussion at the retreat.

Uh so the green line, which is the top line, is the projected spending over the next 15 years, assuming no changes to the OPEB plan.

Uh the oranges line there uh shows the projected cost of moving eligibility to 20 years.

So, in other words, you have to have 20 years of service to qualify.

Uh you'll see that that line is very close to the green line, and over that 15 years uh only is projected to save 2.6 million dollars.

The uh gray line is if you move that eligibility requirement to 25 years, right?

So, unless you serve 25 years uh of service, you would not be eligible for retiree.

You can see that that projected savings is 7.2.

And then you can see that darker blue line, which is if uh council was to consider closing to new hires only, so this would not impact anyone currently employed at the city.

That by far has the biggest impact and would be a savings of 79 million dollars.

And I believe that that was the last chart.

Uh, and so with that, I'll be glad to turn it back over to Sharnell or answer any questions that you may have.

Yep, thank you both.

Do we have questions?

Okay.

Councilor Jones.

Thank you so much.

I have a few.

Um of the 1,151 responses on the benefit survey, and you said about 15 percent of total staff.

What was the total response from previous years on the same survey?

I do not have that in front of me, but I have to get that back to you.

I can bring that back.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then how many vacant positions were removed this year?

I will let Saudi respond to that.

Are you asking in and um as part of this upcoming budget process?

I we are still in the middle of budget deliberations and reviewing positions at the moment, so I do not have an answer for you.

Okay, then what was it last year?

We removed six from the general fund.

We moved six vacancies.

Okay, yes, okay, great.

And then my last question uh and then a comment was of what is the impact?

You we had at the retreat we talked about 390, but here we have 401 of the open staff vacancies.

What is that?

What if they remain unfilled?

How do you feel our residents are uh will feel that in their everyday lives?

I can't really answer that.

However, for me and my uh team, I will just say from a talent acquisition perspective, we are trying to get as many fields as we possibly can, which again we've increase our engagement with doing the community job fares as well.

Um but some of that um do rely on departments because they have to post their vacancies and they have to go through the the hiring process.

So the departments that um you see listed probably will be better to speak to you how that has affected their ability to be able to deliver services.

Um but I know from my HR standpoint, we are always trying to work through to get as many fields as possible.

Yeah, that would be really interesting.

I'd love to hear from different departments on how the impact of those vacancies has impacted their departments.

And then just a comment um on this last slide for Ms.

Bradshaw.

Um the I I I saw I remember it from the retreat, and it gives me a lot of heartburn to think of uh cutting benefits for new employees.

I think that that uh limits what the people want, may want to join us.

So for me, that uh that that one I understand financially and fiscally it is probably the sexiest.

But um for me, thinking of the future and thinking of how we track attract talent, that's that that one scares me the most.

So I just wanted to give you that comment as part of your deliberation.

Thank you.

Um, counselor branch.

Just a quick question or follow-up of that.

Does that item help attract talent?

That's why.

Yeah.

I mean, it do you measure it?

We have not measured, but again, I will just say overall it depends on what demographics that you are trying to attract, right?

Um younger people may be interested in other types of designs, such as health savings account and high deductible health plan where they can save as well as is portable so they can move if they choose to not stay.

Um, whereas um individuals that are at the kind of towards the kind of end of their career and and being more stable, they may be looking for um their retiree health care benefits.

So it just depends.

Well, and I'll just piggyback on that because uh I was curious to benchmark against other cities in North Carolina and then other cities nationally.

Is this a benefit that you know is uh does Raleigh have it and others don't, or uh what's the landscape?

Yeah, great question, Mayor.

Um so yes, many in our local area have closed their plans.

Um and so that includes Charlotte, Winston Salem, Durham, Wake County, Mecklenburg County, Guildford County, uh Apex, Holly Springs, Wake Forest, and the state of North Carolina.

Um open plans, but those might have increased those eligibility requirements that I spoke to.

Um Durham County, Foresight, and Greensboro are part of the big 10 uh that still have open plans.

And I don't have any national um benchmarks.

Okay, that's helpful.

Uh counselor Patton.

Hi, for you, Alison.

Um I am not a mathematician at all.

I am surprised that the three lines are so close together that to the increasing the eligibility requirements are not more impactful on the cost in future.

Can you help me understand why they're not further apart?

Um well, I mean, from an actuarial perspective, you know, we're still going to be required to pay for those individuals.

We're just really prolonging that time until we have to pay.

Um but if you look today at the chart that I know Charnell covered, you know, we already have some tiers in place.

You're already required to cover spouse and dependents after a certain day.

So what what you're mostly talking about here is the pool of of workers, right, that eventually will retire.

So moving that needle just slightly really just doesn't change that long-term perspective.

What really changes is when you have an end date.

Um I think I might have spoken to this at the council retreat.

Because what that really does is this almost makes this benefit have a true end date, like your home mortgage, right?

So eventually, you know, you you are gonna need to stop saving uh for that retiree time frame.

Got it.

Okay.

And just this is a help helpful that you click to the slide.

So did you run any modeling on like I'm looking at this last column where there's all these different tiers?

And if we ticked all those tiers, like a little one step up.

So if if like at 15 years of service, we closed that, but then at 25 years of service it became 50 percent.

Is that question?

Yeah, I mean, that's essentially, and and my apologies if I wasn't clear, but that's what um the 20-year eligibility and the 25 are meant to say is we sort of do away with that step approach.

And what we're really saying here is uh a new uh employee for the city of Rally, again, this wouldn't impact the current base.

You have to work 20 years before you would be eligible for retiree, or you have to work 25.

Those are the two scenarios from the discussion at the retreat that the actuarial ran.

Okay.

And um just one more and then I'll I'll pass the mic.

I'm sure there's other questions.

Um do you need us to opine on that?

For the you need this decision to be included with the budget.

So as we continue to work on developing the budget, when we start to have our small group sessions around um the budget outlook, we will bring you all some alternatives and some options based on once we get pretty much everything together to determine what a potential tax increase would look like.

And then you have the ability for the trade-off exercise.

Um in order to do this, we've got to give up something, or we've either got to increase revenues by X.

And so right now it's still so early because we don't have a decision on the rest of the departmental items that go into the general fund budget that really would be premature to kind of do it now.

We just wanted to have it out for conversation's sake to kind of gauge a level of interest when we go to bake it in that we'll be trying to incorporate the recommendations or the opinions of council.

Thank you.

Well, I I have uh a question back on health care.

And that is I understand your proposal is uh, you know, no um out of pocket or or changes to benefits, but there's so many moving parts in a health plan, as you know.

And I'm just curious how much have we experimented with you know different preventative programs like the tobacco cessation and primary care, many of these we may already be doing, or you know, your pharmaceutical panel benefits, which drugs are covered.

I mean, all of those dynamics can dramatically change the cost.

So instead of viewing it as a monolithic, you know, I'd I'd just be curious, uh, you know, we're being presented with this option, which is a pretty you know, dramatic option with a big you know impact um sort of adjusting some of that health plan, just kind of your comments on that.

So I will say that um although for the past few years, I think since I've been up here, I always come back and say that health care costs is rising.

However, the city has pretty much trended lower than the average.

So that has kind of helped us as well.

And over the past three years, we've added additional enhancements and preventive care and some of our wellness offerings have helped us to have um better trends and see better things with our overall population as it relates to claims.

But we do know that going forward next year, we are gonna have to look at a slight increase, whether that is with co-pays or whether that is with premiums or whether that is with deductibles, right?

Because it will come a time when we have to go back and renew our contracts with our vendors, and we know that that has skyrocketed due to the economy that we are in.

So we will have to kind of pace that moving forward.

And I think Charnell, if you'll go back to the slide where you showed kind of your five-year outlook of what we're going to evaluate and when plan design is a critical piece to that, Mayor.

Um, like what are the things that we're gonna recommend?

And we start on a January 1 plan.

So conversations now will help inform what decisions we make for next calendar year.

Um those are the things that we're looking at in 2026 that will address um some of the benefits that we're currently offering that may come with the price next year just to maintain our self-insured status so that we'll be in a positive outlook moving forward.

And our active employees and retirees have the same health plan benefit.

And I mean, I know we're all grateful to be covered in the health plan, so I'll state that.

That is a change when I was on council previously, we did not have that benefit.

So I appreciate that.

Um going back to the OPEB, I will just say, I mean, I certainly recognize the budget busting dynamic of health care and retirement.

And we don't, I mean, when I was managing the state health plan, we had a 33 billion dollar unfunded liability, right?

That was the biggest threat to our bond rating.

Um I am open to this.

However, what I would really like to see is some more information, you know, on what happened in other cities when they for new employees truncated, you know, did Charlotte have a harder time recruiting people?

And I also think it's good to sort of, you know, humanize this and say, okay, here's Bob.

Bob started work.

You know, what does this actually mean?

And what I think it actually means is for people who start at age 18, it could have an impact on that.

What do they do in their 50s?

If you're start here at age 25 and work 25 years, I mean really is not going to have as big an impact on you because you're going to be eligible for Medicaid.

I think it would be helpful for the whole council to just understand how does this play out in somebody's life?

What does it mean?

Um, how many people had coverage through other, you know, marital spouse benefits or something?

But it I I think that would help people grapple with this a little better.

Absolutely.

Any other questions?

Counselor Patton?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll say sometimes uh as a as a millennial, sometimes we look at those future benefits that might be offered at the federal level and uh feel like they may not exist at the time when we're ready to use them.

Social security and Medicare being amongst them.

Um but that's neither here nor there.

Um my question is on the surveys.

And so one thing well, this is kind of just a comment.

One thing I've heard anecdotally from um just like conversations with employees, is that the new PTO options that we rolled out, like birthday and other ones.

I know they were sort of meant to respond to a different leave options that we had.

Um those previous setup was they were like they could roll over, and the new PTO doesn't roll over, like the birthday doesn't roll over.

So it resets.

It doesn't roll over, it doesn't accumulate um those five days which you're talking about, the three personal leave days, the birthday birthday leave, as well as the well-being.

It is use it or lose it, right?

Doing that calendar during your anniversary year, and it resets.

So it doesn't build and sit because it is not a uh like a it's not like the vacation.

So it accrues, which with the vacation after so many hours, it does transfer to sick.

So that's why we don't have it in that in that vein.

Okay.

Because we do not pay it out once you leave the city for those five days that you're talking about.

Okay.

I think some of the feedback I've heard is they would like for it too.

So I offered that up for consideration.

So I will say as part of 2026, we will be re looking at our leave options and the policy as well.

Is this really Did you want to follow up on that?

Yeah, I was just gonna add that.

But I was just gonna add, I've also heard that feedback.

And then I, you know, I've not experienced this.

Um, but it would seem like if it's a user to lose it, we're actually like encouraging folks to take time off during the year.

And if it accrued, then we may have fewer call-outs because they don't feel like, well, this is a benefit.

If I don't use it, I I lose it.

So I would encourage maybe we look at that as well.

Okay.

We are in this one of the things you might recall that after the pandemic, that was one of the things that we heard from employee well-being.

So we put those in place so that employees would have the opportunity.

It is also like our personal lead that you can take um volunteer service hours.

You don't continue to accumulate because the reason we don't accumulate it is it said liability and a debt on the books.

So if we allow people to compound it year after year after year, there is a liability and a way of payout at the time that they separate from the city.

And again, it goes as part of our annual actuarial study if there is an accumulation.

So we encourage folks, as you all encourage me to take a day off here and there, here and there, um, so that they can take care and level set and reset and be energized to come back.

And those are kind of what we heard from employees through the survey after the pandemic when we came back really into full operation.

And then just one last one.

Um again, maybe more of a comment.

But um you offered the benefit survey and the stay survey for people at a certain kind of career part, but I do we have an overall employee satisfaction survey that goes to all employees and on a range of topics like relationship with your manager, organizational satisfaction, et cetera.

No, we do not.

Um that is maybe sometimes done by departments, certain departments, but no, we don't have an overall CD one.

I think it would be really useful.

Um I take them at my company and and they roll up and it it is really helpful.

That is the item with the strategic plan.

It is Council Jones.

Um I I'm imagining that when you go back up for the in terms of health care, back for whatever conversations you have.

Are there other options?

Is this the most effective health care and wellness program?

Or are there other ones out there that you're kind of like eyeing for a future possible switch to?

So I will say that with the comprehensive review, we will have our broker to bring in also because we do have a new broker that just started in January.

So we have a different lens of looking at municipalities and what private sectors are doing, what is in the market, um, to give us some options.

You know, we just offer two PPOs.

Is it that we need to offer narrow network or the high deductible health plan with the health savings account?

So they will bring all of that back of what is what is trending and what is best practices and what other municipalities and or private sector is doing.

So that'll give us a better view of how we stack up against others.

Okay.

And then um Councilmember Jones, I did get an answer to your question.

Country Josh, I benefits manager said 432 responded, and we did that survey in 2023.

So that is an increase from 2023.

You said 400.

423 in 2023, and now it's gone up to 1,150.

Yes.

Congratulations.

That's awesome.

Okay.

And I think that's it for now.

And we will uh invite back up Ryan Burton.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Ryan Bergman from the City Manager's office uh here to introduce our consultant to talk about the staffing study.

Uh this process started uh over a year ago.

It initially was designed to be primarily a police staffing study.

Uh we pivoted a little bit to get through the class and comp uh evaluation, which was really the most important step we needed to take at that time.

Uh and then at that point, we looked into other operational departments that we would also want to include with police.

Uh we primarily looked at departments that are susceptible to stress from some of the geographic growth that we're experiencing and that we will experience.

So you'll see that uh when Aaron talks about it.

Uh just wanted to make it clear that we did pick these departments and divisions.

Um the overall uh the overall strategy of this is we know that we are providing very good service in Raleigh, uh as you'll see uh on many lists, and we really want to present council with an option to get ahead of some of the growth stresses that we've experienced thus far, and we've will experience again.

So you so you'll see that with the study, that it's not just trying to match up where they think we should be now with workload analysis, but also looking at the parts of the city that will grow over the next five to ten years and what they anticipate those staffing levels should look like moving forward.

Um I did want to point out that fire is not in this other than the fire marshal's office, and that is because we did the fire master plan last year, uh which would have been uh overlap.

Um and then also just uh calling back to the conversation that we had at the retreat.

Uh the budget office and all the directors are doing a lot of work right now trying to solve problems, find more efficient ways to provide services to close the gap that we have now based on some of our declining revenues and our current service level.

Everything we're talking about today is essentially enhancing that that service level.

Uh so with that, uh I will go ahead and call up Aaron from Matrix.

Thank you, Ryan.

Uh Aaron Bags.

Aaron Baggerly at Matrix Consulting Group project manager uh for the targeted staffing study.

And uh we're gonna go through uh these eight departments that were included as part of this targeted staffing study, as Ryan said, you know, looking at the police department as a whole, some other uh components of some different departments of these eight different functional areas and talk about the current staffing need, but also that projected growth over a five and ten year planning horizon as Raleigh continues to grow, expand, have a lot more development uh forthcoming.

So just a quick overview of the study, uh identification of the current staffing needs by functional areas, talking a little bit about the phase implementation and a preliminary growth model uh that outlines some of that growth and development over the next five and ten years and the impact to the ultimate staffing and resources needed uh for these targeted uh departments and functions that we looked at.

So we did a deep dive uh staffing and workload analysis for current and projected needs based on service analysis that have been adopted by the city, historic workload uh for each of these functional areas, and then also included a scheduling evaluation for a few of the select departments that have more unique scheduling, such as the fire, I mean excuse me, the police department, solid waste services, and emergency communications.

This was a very deep dive into your historic workload for these selected functions.

I mean, we looked at performance levels, performance measures, historic workload, adopted service levels, and applied these into our comprehensive model to develop a staffing analysis to meet the service level and workload needs that your teams have here with the City of Raleigh.

Also, there was alternative response for the police department looking at opportunities for maybe civilianize some of the responses uh out there in the field uh as part of that assessment of the police department, then also a comprehensive growth model as I mentioned before.

These are the eight departments divisions that were included in this.

This includes the emergency communications center, uh looking at the fleet maintenance fleet management uh team out of the engineering services department, the office of the fire marshal and the fire department, uh code enforcement out of housing and community development, and the planning and development uh department.

We looked at the building safety team, which is building in uh plan review and inspections.

We looked at Solid Waste Services, uh, the police department and the maintenance and traffic engineering divisions within the transportation department.

So some very unique and distinct functions here uh with very limited cross collaboration between some of those and some very distinct and unique functions.

And we're gonna go through this as uh mostly to order step solid waste and police will be at the end.

So looking at the emergency communication center, obviously that is a service that is provided outside of City Raleigh, focus uh supports Wake County, many other jurisdictions here within uh Wake County providing services uh with that.

I will say, just talking about vacancy rate, uh talking with the director earlier today, they should be fully staffed by the end of the month, and that is something that needs to be commended.

This is the first emergency communication center that we've seen that's had more than two people be fully staffed in over seven years, and we've done over fifty studies as a firm uh with that.

So moving in the right direction uh to fill those critical vacancies that are there that really serve many agencies within the county and certainly within the city of Raleigh with this.

With that being said, yes, ma'am.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to stop you.

In in that uh I I have heard is there a mandatory overtime policy where the employees in ECC are mandated mandated to work overtime?

I am unsure of that.

I would have to defer that to the director to answer that question.

Can we answer that?

We do have a Mando overtime in extreme emergency situations, and during the period when the vacancy rates were much higher than they currently are.

Yes, we did have Mando over time.

They worked a modified DuPont schedule, which will mean nothing to you, but they get several weeks off, like during the week, as part of their regular schedule.

So as a result of that, they've built in some mandatory overtime in that for employees.

But once we get these additional staff and um members on board through this last academy, he will be good and he'll be able to bump that over time significantly down.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

Great question.

So looking at emergency communications, uh looking at that staffing and workload, which is obviously community generated calls for service, you know, requests coming in, and then dispatch services for the various public safety agencies with that.

There is a staffing shortages, even if you were completely uh full with all of those positions uh filled.

There's a need for 22 additional positions here.

There's also a need uh to continue growing the staff there.

You come in as a call taker and you develop those skill sets in about three months, and then over the next four to five months, staff should progress and become more well-versed in dispatch functions to become a telecommunicator, which is also call taking and the ability to dispatch to various public safety agencies with that.

And so there's a strong emphasis to continue to grow staff there.

So part of the new positions is to convert six call taker positions to the telecommunicator classification to ensure that there is proper funding as staff continue to grow and evolve and develop the necessary skill sets to provide the greatest flexibility for the communication center with that.

And so we spread out uh the additional staff here in 2026 and 2027 with converting the six call taker positions and the next year budget, but also adding 10 telecommunicator positions and one records analyst position here in the next budget cycle is what we recommended to really get about half of that need that is there today with this.

Can you just remind us what the total number of positions is today in this in the ECC?

I do not have that in front of me, but I believe it is currently approximately 130 budgeted positions.

Okay.

Your your friend was about to go.

They got that they got dead.

So I might not have that for all the other departments, so uh we'll caveat that immediately here.

So transitioning to engineering services fleet management.

Uh they are generally uh staffed with approximately where they need, um, but there is a need for three and a half additional positions.

These are more in the support and administrative roles within it.

When you look at the number of mechanics or maintenance technicians that are there within it, it generally meets the number of assets that fleet management is maintaining.

So that include everything from lawnmowers to dump trucks, the other city-owned vehicles and apparatus and equipment that are there that are covered by this team.

So we propose phasing these 3.5 additional positions over the next uh three years to provide some additional support as this team uh continues to expand some of the administrative services that they're providing.

I'm going to be repetitive.

I mean, and maybe you don't have all the numbers now, but I would love to see you know what percentage of total positions these gaps are.

Um if you have those for each of these departments.

Okay.

I might be able to get that towards the end uh to what QA to have more of that uh to maybe pull that up.

So I just want to know what's the like that was 17 percent of the department was the gap for ECC.

I'm assuming this is smaller, but it is, it's certainly smaller.

I think they're mid-80s, roughly.

Yeah.

So we have at the department level, not necessarily this is specifically fleet management.

So uh for the ones that are specific divisions, we'll have to get that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Uh so transitioning to the office of the fire marshal.

Uh there is a need for 14 additional positions needed for the fire marshal's office.

And the fire marshal's office is primarily focusing on new construction plan review and fire related inspections with that.

Also, in addition to that, they're conducting annual inspections for obviously commercial buildings, multifamily residential, those types of areas that require annual or more frequent inspections as part of life safety systems with that.

And so there is significant uh challenges as the city is continue to grow on with the increased workload related to a plan review and associated uh new construction inspections, but also keep in mind for every new building that comes on that is not a single family residential or two-family with that, there is a uh reoccurring inspection that has to occur uh with that, and so there's additional capacity as you continue to add to uh the new development within the city uh to continue with that.

And so we took these six fourteen positions here, uh separated them out over the next couple of years as you're continuing to see a large increase in new construction activity permitting an inspection uh components here within the city.

So with the these uh fire marshal at the fire department, are these captured within our fire master plan or is this in addition to what was recommended from our fire master plan in terms of staffing?

Uh primarily these are in addition to what was recommended, uh what was recommended.

There was some administration, but it was mostly um sworn firefighter positions.

These are uh primarily uh fee-supported positions.

Okay, thank you so much.

All right.

So looking at the uh housing community development uh department code enforcement operations here.

Uh this is one of the few departments here that we uh evaluated that the current number of authorized positions is appropriate for the type of service level that is being generated out there both for proactive and reactive code enforcement cases.

There are some opportunities that we identified uh to realign some roles uh within that uh team of approximately uh 30 individuals uh to realign with the type of work that they're doing and to better serve both internally but ultimately the public out there addressing some of these code enforcement issues that are out there in the community with that.

So no changes in the authorized uh positions there, just more some internal stuff to really realign uh what they're doing and how to better serve and work more efficiently internally.

In the planning and development department, uh the building safety team uh was looked at, and this team here is the residential and commercial plan review team, but also the corresponding inspection team.

Uh there are some significant uh challenges here on meeting desired service levels uh within the community from an inspection uh side of things.

Ideally, you like to get some uh get your inspection.

You request an inspection uh today, you generally want to have it within one to two business days.

Uh there's been some capacity issues and challenges uh with that uh to meet that historic workload, but also uh what we have seen nationally across uh the country is the type of development and construction activity that is out there, the quality of plan sets that are coming in, continue to have a decline.

Uh the number, the type of construction and the quality of it that is being inspected is also uh declining out there in the workload.

So it's creating more inspection workload, completing uh requiring more rounds of review for an application, et cetera.

So that workload continues to increase as Raleigh continues to also see an uptick and the number of new application and new permits coming in related to the significant growth and development uh that is occurring here within the city.

Overall, and this is a significant number of 29.5 additional positions.

And I do know that I think there are approximately 71 budgeted positions in this team.

This is a significant increase here that we part out over the next three years uh to look at this as this development continues to occur and development within Raleigh continues to be more complex.

And so we're looking at both residential, it's mostly residential here uh type inspections, because this team is split between commercial plan review and inspections and residential plan review inspections and residential is one and two family homes.

Uh commercial construction is multifamily or multifamily falls under commercial inspections with that.

So there's opportunity to convert some commercial inspector positions here to residential to balance that workload, but also add additional resources uh to the plan review teams for residential and uh the residential inspectors and a couple of supervisory positions here immediately uh to address and maintain proper span of control for these teams.

And the transportation department, uh, this is the maintenance and engineering division specific here.

Uh there are six additional positions needed here.

Uh they are primarily around some of the asset maintenance, particularly in the traffic signal arena with this.

As you continue to grow, have more traffic signals out there and items to maintain.

Uh, those are a hard asset that you obviously have to maintain for public safety uh reasons out there.

There's a need for uh additional traffic signal technicians, which is very technical field and requirements with that, supervisor for the team, and a couple additional uh inspector and field supervisor uh position for the right-of-way pavement maintenance uh component of this.

So six positions here.

I'm not quite, I can't recall off top of hand how large uh these two respective teams are.

Transitioning uh to solid waste services.

Uh this one here has a large increase as well, but this the team is also in the process of transitioning yard waste and leaf collection services from the transportation team to solid waste services and also increasing uh the frequency of yardways and leaf collection here.

And uh when you look at this, approximately 21 of these positions are needed immediately in the near future as this transition occurs this year.

Um as solid waste services gears up to take that on that leaf collection, which historically been completed by the transportation team with that, but they'll still be involved in 2026 with this.

And so that's why there's such a large increase here in 2026.

But then there are some additional positions uh down the line that are looking at residential garbage and recycling services, special services administration as uh to meet with the service demand that is currently out there as part of this team uh in the future.

As the city continues to grow, obviously you're gonna collect more uh waste, whether that's household garbage recycling or yard yard debris or leaf collection.

And the police department here uh will caveat this.

This is more of a draft analysis with this.

This report alone was 202 pages for the police department.

As you can imagine, police department is your your one of your largest departments here.

There is a significant workload analysis uh that our team has gone through, presented here a preliminary analysis with the police department.

Uh we're working through some data validation uh with this.

Just for an example, there's 186,000 community-generated calls or service that we're evaluating going through, uh, looking at that as part of that data validation uh that we are looking at and understanding with this and how are your patrol officers responding to this.

But we feel really confident uh that there would be a max addition of 89 sworn positions uh within the department.

Some of this is related to field operations, which is your patrol functions, uh which are individuals dedicated out there to responding to those calls for service, uh community generated, uh, community policing activities, but also that proactive patrol such as traffic enforcement is included with that.

The second uh component of this is detectives.

Uh obviously they have a significant caseload supporting field operations and diving into those additional investigative uh functions there.

And that workload is obviously based on the number of caseloads there, case clearance rates, and there are some gaps in the ability to meet that continued increase in workload with this.

And there are a few other positions here in a couple of different areas.

This is sworn um positions.

The next table will have uh civilian positions as well, which are more support roles.

I am sure there's probably questions, but just I would love to understand that detective piece better.

I know one of the points of pride in the police department is that we have almost 100 percent like homicide, you know, uh uh sort of we've cleared all those cases.

Um just understanding the dynamic and ratio between those and the field ops at another time would be helpful.

Well, I can just give a little bit.

You know, when you look at detectives, obviously homicides, those types of cases are the ones that make the news and are most prevalent and the most pressing.

It takes a lot of resources to do that.

And so that's part of that workload associated with that.

And then there are other caseloads such as property crimes.

You know, if somebody breaks into your house, you know, it takes investigative workload to respond to that and to work through that.

And so there are opportunities there uh to do that.

Chief Boyce, would you like to speak?

I think you'll hide back there behind that sign.

Nobody saw you.

Oh, yeah.

Good afternoon, Rico Boyce, Chief Police.

Uh, Mayor, more specifically with our homicide units, uh, the reason why we have such a high clearance rate is because we have two teams.

They typically work together when they do catch a case.

Uh so it would be good to add additional staffing to that unit uh because of just how they investigate those cases.

It's quite different from some other cities, but it has worked well for us, and we see the result in always well here the past five years having a high 90 percent one year 2023.

We had a 100 percent clearance rate.

We want to continue with that high rate.

So adding additional resources to that particular detective division is fine.

On the property crime side, what we have seen the increase is at our financial crimes uh unit.

Uh obviously with uh cryptocurrency, bitcoins, those tight elderly fraud cases starting to increase, we need to put more resources towards investigating those crimes because we've seen a link between those financial crimes as well as some of our violent crime.

So there's a linkage there.

So we want to put a little bit of additional resources on the property crime side when it comes to detectives.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, now many questions.

Uh Council Branch and then Councillor Jones.

So my question is looking at this outside of maybe field operations, I I see those as kind of entry-level positions as you move up to 65.

But for these other positions, even to promote people up, you need someone to possibly backfill those positions.

So at 89, not having retirements, that number works.

But looking at retirements and everything else, what's the real number that's probably needed?

We're still looking at that.

What uh what I will say is we're currently facing retirements from some of our largest police academies in the late 90s.

Uh those academies were 60 up to 70 plus uh and they stayed throughout their career and they're starting to retire.

What I see going forward, we obviously we don't have academies that size.

Uh so I don't have the exact number, but it won't be as as large as it is what we are currently facing.

If that answers your question, Kelly.

Well, well, it helps because I'm looking at this and I see 89, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying we need 89 now, like today.

That is correct.

Is saying that also as part of this calculation, you're right.

It goes back down to patrol.

When you start filling other specialty positions within the police department, you you always gonna backfill bringing in new recruits coming through the academy with that.

And so any changes that you make as you get promoted as you go into detectives, or you go to special operations, you make that.

You're gonna backfill through the ranks and even all the way to the chief.

If the chief says I am going to retire here, well, somebody is going to get promoted, then you start moving up each of the ladders with that.

We do incorporate a turnover factor into our patrol calculations because it takes generally a year from the time if I'm a new recruit coming in, I am hired as a police department today.

It takes a year for me to go through the basic law enforcement training academy and to go through the field training uh officer program within it.

So it's one year before an individual is typically released to riding a car by themselves with that and to count as part of that compliment on the patrol shift today.

And so we do incorporate that a turnover factor into that to account for that bench strength to really get the reserves in the ranks pretty much there.

That way, when there is a turnover and you have that large class from whenever that is about to retire, you have ideally more staff in the pipeline to backfill those positions with that.

Unfortunately, I think the police department has been running out of deficit with some vacancies here.

I think they had the highest uh here looking at this.

I think there was 149 vacancies there, which was 16.1 percent uh based on the HR director's um previous presentation with that.

Sounds like we'll have an update on that number.

Well, there's there's some that number does not include our current academy, and it doesn't include our pre-hires.

So we currently have an academy going on.

Uh we're already hiring for our June Academy as well as our June Lateral Academy.

Those numbers are not reflected in that 149.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

All right.

And I want to.

If I could just provide a little context to make sure that part isn't lost.

So there's a little bit more work to be done on police with some of the data validation.

And so that's the only reason you're not seeing this similar to what you see with some of the other departments where we have a phased-in approach over a number of years.

As the Chief mentioned, it's going to be really about how do you maximize the academies and get as many people into the door as possible, which is really the only way that you can uh that you can grow staffing within the police department.

Uh but over the last five years, Raleigh, just like every big city in the country has had a lot of the same challenges recruiting and keeping police officers both in the academy and in the profession.

This is for Chief Boyce.

Uh if with these 89 uh positions, if magically we could just put them all in in the next budget, are you able to absorb them within uh the academies?

I know we have one, and I know last year we talked about needing to add some more.

Are we set up to add more academies, or is that something that's gonna have to wait for a different budget cycle?

It is gonna have to wait for a different budget cycle.

Um scenario, if you gave me a hundred officers today, I would need a space, I would need a training officers, I need a field training officers to even get them through the process that one year.

We're not there yet.

We're working on that.

Uh I'll outline that with the city manager of how I'm gonna phase that in.

Um and we're on track for that.

But right now, 89 vacancies today.

Uh I I just don't have the space in the uh training officers for that number.

Sure.

Because I know the public listening is going to want us to hire all of the people right now.

And that's that's not that's not possible or feasible, but I want to make sure that they understand we are thinking about it and that and that you you do have a plan for it.

Um there was another question, but I forgot, so I'm gonna let go.

Any others?

I know Counselor Silver.

I want a few slides before, but I'll Okay, we'll keep going and we'll come back.

All right.

Continue.

No, thank you.

Really good questions.

And we're going to work on a phase implementation plan with the city manager's office and the police department to really look at there's a lot more moving parts for the police department on some of these with the academy and the training needs, as the chief mentioned, to really work on that.

And so that's part of our data validation uh with that to make sure we have the right numbers on the workload and the right metrics that are adopted, developing that phase implementation plan uh to really guide them through that to give you realistic numbers down the line with this because this is a large number, and it's not just getting the 89 positions that are there.

As the Chief said, there's some training officers, you've got to have the academy space both physically within the building itself, but also the training officers to do that.

And then if you have got a lot of new staff anyway, you might not have enough field training officers uh for that buddy system when they're out there in the field on that last six months of their training in that first year.

So as far as the police department, there are civilian positions that are non-sworn with this.

There are 12 additional positions needed to meet the current workload.

They are really primarily in administrative services and special operations teams, focusing more on some of the civilian positions, some leadership roles, some analyst positions there, and some additional administrative support and the various teams with that.

And so we did phase this over the next couple of years or three years with this to really kind of even that out and balance it out as part of this team who is really supporting uh the greater mission of the police department.

And then here's a uh a summary slide of looking at the three-year implementation as proposed here.

Obviously, this excludes police uh since we have not done that phase implementation plan with this and looking at this over time.

The first year here uh within the next budget cycle is proposed at 52.5 total positions as we presented here throughout this presentation so far.

In 2027, it goes down slightly down to 48, and then in 2028, uh 35 and a half positions.

Overall, this is a additional need of 136 positions uh that are ideally.

If you had 2 billion dollars in the bank and you could do it, you'd like to get those today.

Uh obviously that's not feasible with that uh from a variety of standpoints, but we looked at this phase approach uh with the various teams and departments to really try balancing this need out and something that is hopefully more digestible uh moving forward with this.

Understanding some of these have more a higher point of emphasis and priority uh than others as part of this list.

Does this include retirement as well?

No, this is positions that are needed today that need to be filled by body.

So that means none of our directors can retire for the next three years.

Okay.

Uh Counselor Silver.

Uh thank you so much for the presentation.

Um I had a question on one in particular, very familiar with the planning and development.

Seeing those numbers, uh, every municipality in Way County in the state is growing.

Uh I see the need.

The question is how we're going to recruit those specialized positions when you know there's the private sector, times are good.

You know, I know you could either poach them from your other municipalities, which is not the best approach, but these are very, very specialized positions.

People have to understand building codes, zoning codes, conditions that we at Council add to these zoning cases.

So I'm just trying to understand the strategy, not just the number.

That is a very hard number to reach in this market that's growing.

So it's not just the numbers, but over time, what is our strategy?

You know, for example, police and fire have academies.

So they can train and recruit.

Uh these could be architects, engineers, planners.

So it's very specialized, so I see the number, but to get there, how do I know?

Because I ran this department, I know how difficult it is.

Uh and then those that are staying is retaining those because burnout is a real issue with pressure with the amount of development.

So to me, I get it, I agree with it, but to me it's not the what, it's the how do we recruit and then how do we retain with that pressure and volume of work to move and pressure from the development community to move those projects, you know, get approved in a safe manner.

And that also relates to the fire marshal as well, because they're also related to that.

Uh good afternoon, Pat Young, planning and development.

Council Mr.

Silva, you're you're right.

Absolutely.

It would be nearly impossible to bring on that many employees in one year.

So we're going to be presenting a multi-year strategy to bring that on.

And um to your larger point about uh being part of retention and recruitment with the manager's office support, we have done a number of things over the past several years.

Uh take home vehicles for folks in Wake County, small signing bonuses.

Um we increased our retention.

When I came on in 2020, we had a 17, 18 percent vacancy rate.

It's down to five, six percent.

So I think if we can retain uh that rate um and do this over, say three to four years, I think we can we can resort.

What I'm suggesting is we have some amazing universities in our region, whether we can figure out, you know, we have engineering, you know, we have NC State Duke and UNC, each one of those have degrees that would feed into this as an entry program.

And I'm just wondering, you know, even if you stagger the 10, that's still a hard number to attract with a level of specialized talent.

So I'm just trying to figure out the way in which we start to attract, because I think it had 10, 10, 9 over that time.

That's hard.

So I just don't know whether we can establish whether it's some kind of apprenticeship and internship program with the School of Engineering at NC State or architecture, landscape architecture, just so that we can start to create.

We don't have an academy, but how do we have that pipeline of talent coming in since we have amazing institutions right here uh in this region?

Yeah, that's a great point.

We we certainly welcome your further input and insight.

We do have programs, uh feeder program with Wake Tech and with ECU.

Um but we certainly are always looking to expand those, and I think we'll need to to be successful with this amount of recruitment.

But so thank you for that.

And we'll we'll bring back a report with more details on that.

And if I could just add, I mentioned at the beginning, it was intentional that we decided to do this after the class and compensation study.

So the work that we did with that, making our positions more attractive means that we hope we'll have uh a little bit more luck with some of these positions.

You know, part of the reason we're phasing in uh is not financial.

It's really the reality of who's going to train them, the equipment, the leg and everything.

So I I think that's really uh really factored into this.

And then while I'm up here, I I did get the uh numbers for these, uh, the current uh positions.

I wasn't just playing on my phone there.

Um it's police, 920 positions, uh fleet, 80 positions, uh housing codes is 30 positions.

Uh building safety is 69 positions, solid waste is 209 positions, ECC is 130 positions, and the fire marshal's office is 38 positions.

So that's FTEs.

So any time you have FTEs, you are always going to have a percentage of vacancies, and that's because I can quit in two weeks if I'm a good employee, and it's going to take probably two months in a good recruitment best case scenario to fill.

So you are always going to have that 5 to 10 percent churn.

I think we are doing pretty good at that.

But if you still add to the FTEs, you still have those vacancies, but you might end up with a little higher working number.

And Councilor Silver, I will say this is a challenge as you mentioned.

We are seeing in planning and development across across the board.

And when the team saw these numbers, the first question was very similar to you.

How do we address this?

It's very technical field with that.

And we're going to provide some additional uh thoughts for them on proving efficiencies and effectiveness and the services we are providing, but also some other avenues out there because it is very competitive.

This is one of the most competitive areas that we see outside of engineering plan reviewers and inspections inspectors here within local government.

So I think we were on the three-year implementation uh slide here.

Uh we've got a couple more slides here to talk about the growth modeling uh that we uh plenary completed uh working through some of the validations with this.

But we were charged with developing a five and ten year projection model uh for the services provided by these department.

Uh this included about 40 to 45 different variables uh across these eight departments, because clearly what is going on in transportation, uh that input and is much different than what the police department is doing and looking at.

So we created different variables and workloads and dynamic staffing or growth models here with this.

This is an example here uh that is uh geared more towards uh I think uh transportation is what this one is.

Uh but when you look at the workload staffing needs, workload with that, you've got or no, this is an overview.

Sorry, that's the next slide.

We looked at the workload, we looked at the service level, aligning what you need from a staffing perspective, and then scaled it out uh for those functions that are scalable workload, you know, cost for service and police, uh number of lane miles maintained in the transportation department, et cetera, to do that.

Some other positions are not scalable.

Obviously, you are only gonna have one police chief.

You are only going to have one planning and development director.

Uh, those are not scalable, so we looked at those a little bit differently uh than we would the number of inspectors that are out there, and to ultimately create by employee classification, a projection model for each of these functional areas, which included all employee classifications within these eight teams.

Getting a little bit more uh in the weeds here with our workload metric development.

Uh, we looked at, you know, projected population.

We looked at the number of parcels being developed.

We looked at the type of development because that is going to impact a variety of these external facing operations.

Commercial development has a different workload for the fire marshal's office.

It often has a different workload for the police department than a single family subdivision coming in with that.

From a transportation component, it's going to look a little bit different uh for residential versus commercial.

Uh, here in this example, we looked at the sidewalk miles added uh that will ultimately have to be maintained by the transportation team.

Our other right-of-way elements that are included as part of that.

The number of lane miles or the number of street miles that you have out there are all individual metrics uh that we projected based on the growth metrics uh that were provided by the city, um, the other uh the campo agencies and some other entities that uh we got information from to develop a comprehensive and holistic model looking at these 40 or so metrics included in this uh analysis over the next 10 years.

And these are some different workloads looking at this, as you can see, transportation.

Uh you're gonna have a lot more infrastructure in the maintain.

I know the the fire marshal's office on commercial inspections are gonna continue to go up after those initial new construction inspections with this.

Population is one of those that's gonna influence police, but also the number and types of development that is occurring is gonna be there.

Solid waste, obviously, more homes, more homes have to be serviced, more uh yard waste that is going to be collected or more trash cans and recycling bins that have to be picked up.

You know, code enforcement is gonna look a little bit different in the future.

So as you can see, we didn't use a flatline X percentage in our projection model.

Um we changed these based on the variabilities of each of these eight functional areas.

And this is uh a projected staffing needs over the next 10 years, and this number here includes individual new positions above what is recommended today.

So for ECC, we're making a recommendation you need additional 13 additional positions between what is recommended today and in 2030, and then five more additional positions in 2035.

I will say uh there is a negative number on here.

This is building safety.

Uh at some point you're gonna peak on the number of permits that are coming into the city.

And this is one that we need to refine this model a little bit more because you have been in a peak for the last five years, and that is serving as that baseline.

Obviously, there is a limited amount of land that can be developed within the city of Raleigh, your ETJ that you are responsible for in any areas that you may annex in the next 10 years.

Also, a lot of that easily developable land is already developed.

You are getting some redevelopment, uh, which looks much different than new uh greenfield development that is coming in.

And so this is where there is a significant need now uh to meet that workload, and we're gonna work with them uh on balancing that out.

Um but the long-term needs here is probably gonna be back down to closer uh to what it is today, but not back all the way down because it's gonna look different and have a different workload driver with that.

So that's the one caveat uh that I have with this.

But overall, uh there's about 11 percent increase and staffing needs for these eight or seven functional areas here.

So with that open it up for discussion.

Counselor Patton.

Hi, thanks.

Uh so many questions.

I'll just do a couple and then I'll pass the mic.

Um is around like sort of the care and keeping of this document.

Um like are uh part as part of your contract, are you going to pass to us any softwares or provide us with ongoing um reevaluation so we can continue to maintain it?

As as out outside of the reports uh that will come as part of this one for each of the eight functional areas here.

Um they you the city will be provided the growth model that is dynamic.

So if something changes in the future, they can put those parameters or variables in and they can see how it impacts the growth model and what the future workload and subsequent staffing needs are as part of that.

So that will be an Excel-based model that we will provide to the city as part of this engagement.

Okay, great.

Helpful.

And also a scheduling analysis for those departments like ECC and police, there will be a dynamic model too.

That will be passed along.

Okay.

Great.

Um there's an and then there's a handful of things.

Um I thought that the fourth shift analysis was part of that for fire for part was part of this for fire.

Is that you will recall we asked for that as an add-on a little bit later, so so that we can advance this for budget deliberation purposes.

It's coming late March.

Late March is our contracts is April 1 and we'll have a draft before then.

Yes.

Great.

Perfect.

And then also a timing question.

You had said you're still working on the data validation that will help with some of the police numbers.

Is that also late March?

Yes.

We will we will have a draft model fully vetted and and much harder recommendations by the end of March with that.

So we hope to be at the final report stage then.

Um might be close, but it will definitely be a third third draft report by that point that will be close to finalization.

Okay.

Helpful.

Um then there were a handful of things that came up throughout that were not um that felt like you kind of they were like kind of like these flags, but are not necessarily related to personnel only.

So I flagged on uh the quality of the plans coming in for review is not good.

And so it's requiring more of our staff time, like more teacher time, revise and resubmit.

And so I uh not for you to answer, but uh I would be interested in what we can do with our development community to ensure that the quality of the plans coming in is better on the first draft, so that it takes less staff time.

Um that's one offer for consideration.

And then solid waste services.

Uh I won't I hope we're evaluating service delivery models like you know, downtown still does like roll-off carts.

And that takes a lot of time, a lot of manual labor and effort, and I don't think that we should be treating Morgan Street Food Hall the same way we treat my house.

And so I think like service provision should also be updated to that that was one.

And then the on police, I don't I have as not at all professional heard anecdotally from police officers that the shape of the districts, the shape of the police districts can require a lot of driving and they're just so if redrawing the police districts allows for more efficiency, then that is something we should look at too.

So that we're not just we're not only adding people, but we're finding other footholds too.

Sounds like the chief might have to want to comment on that.

Because I know I bugged you about that very matter.

We're currently looking at that about every five years we look at the workload in each of our six police districts and see if we can uh shift about shift the boundaries of each district to make the workload a little bit more equitable for the officers.

Uh we did that just right after uh 2021.

Uh so we are currently looking at that right now, looking at the numbers of number of calls, the types of calls that are going out in each district, and looking at what we need to do to uh to to redistrict some of those uh districts.

It's not an easy lift, so it takes a lot of uh coordination, uh, not only with just the PDE but GIS, make sure that we are aligning with EMS and FIRE.

So it's an extensive uh plan to look at switching boundaries or changing boundaries.

So thank you.

Well, while you are up there, just one follow on.

Um there's a lot of new softwares and technologies coming on the market, and some recently were that you know it could help the um every officer debrief their shift and you know, consolidate their reports for them and maybe save them, let's say an hour a day.

Yes, ma'am.

Is that sort of factored into some of these numbers?

I mean, it is kind of assumes that you are adopting some of those best practices, or do you think there is additional gains that could be made if we invested in additional technology?

I will let you talk about the report, then I have my own answer if it's different.

Thank you, Mayor.

It's a great question.

When you when we look at patrol officer needs, we dive into that workload.

What is that cost for service?

What percentage of those costs of service require backup response?

Are a supervisor coming, are multiple officers responding to that based on the obviously the priority of that call, et cetera.

What percentage require an arrest and taking somebody down to Wake County that takes them off the street uh to be booked into the jail?

What percentage of the report or cost of service require police report?

So we calculate each of that, uh those components to understand the totality of workload per call.

And so we do look at that and we do look some of that data is coming out of the CAT system, commuter uh computer aided dispatch, and it includes some of those timestamps on there.

And so we do look at that, and our team did not see any major red flags uh that this is taking way too long or this is way out of line with what we are seeing.

This is actually the third study that we have done for Raleigh PD over the last 11 years.

And so we have seen some of those changes and efficiencies and effectiveness in the services that they have been providing since we first uh worked for the city in 2014 and 2015.

Obviously, when you have new technology uh that can do it, it's gonna take an officer maybe from instead of having to sit there and type on their uh computer in their car uh with that, they can talk to text, but they still have to review it.

And so they might save a little bit of time there, but there might be some additional workload elsewhere that kind of balances that out.

We have seen that in studies across the country.

Uh looking at that, where we might say 10 minutes here, but we lose the eight minutes over here because there is an additional workload there as to specific things that the PD is doing.

I will let the Chief uh answer that.

So I'm glad he said it.

We are looking at technology allowing officers almost to talk through their report.

Once that report is generated, they are able to review it, make sure it is accurate, and that it is saving time on actual re writing report.

Something else we are looking at is here in Raleigh, as long as PD has been around, we have been a single officer car.

So we get a high priority call, say a domestic call.

ECC is sending two vehicles to that call.

Where there are certain zones or beats within the city where we're looking at putting two officers in one vehicle.

Uh by doing that, it's more efficiently.

We are only sending one car, we're saving gas.

It's an officer safety issue where we got just two officers right there at that initial call.

So we're not sending two.

So that is the biggest thing we are doing in the department to try to uh be more efficient in our police services to our community is doubling up uh officers in specific zones throughout the city.

I guess I will also just say as as the chief and the city manager both are well aware, this number is lower than what a lot of folks were talking about for the police.

And of course, it is higher for certain other departments, and I am just hoping we will have, you know, your take, the the police department and city manager, you know, why is that?

And you hope it's because we are a safe community.

We are safe.

Really great residents, and we're not uh, you know, we're we're having a good quality of life here without having to add.

But just any top-of-line messages for you as you saw this report, and I also welcome Chief Eunically.

Your comments.

Yes, well, the report very accurate.

Uh it aligns with what we are seeing within the department doing our own study, our own uh benchmarking in inside of RPD with other cities similar in size and call volume.

Uh so that that is one welcoming thing that this report is right in line with what we are seeing.

I guess overall, like you said, people think that we need the a large number of officers to keep this city safe.

And it's probably not as large as what people think it is.

We're in a good shape with our technology capabilities as well as some of the organizational changes that we've made in the past 11 months in making sure that we have the resources in the right place.

So we're we're doing overall, we're doing very well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

From my lens, uh, two years ago, if you had asked this question, I thought the number was lower.

But I think what we've done, we've made those transitional steps over the last 18 months to include this study to use technology as a force multiplier.

It is amazing what a drone can do that normally required 12 officers out in a field.

We put a drone up and you can isolate a subject in a matter of 10 minutes that would have taken us 12 people to find.

And if it gets dark, it's almost over for that day.

Um so in addition to some of the changes that we made operationally, I I think this number kind of aligns with where we should be.

I think also in addition to public safety, which obviously gets most of the airtime for the public, and rightfully so.

As I mentioned to you all when we included these additional departments in this study, my first conversation with you was that the city has grown.

We haven't grown any of our staff really to compare to correlate with that growth in the number.

Each annexation, each approval for rezoning where we're up zoning and increasing entitlements means additional work for our employees.

One of the things I think we take away from this, or I take away from this is we have an amazing staff that regardless of the number of people that we have, they get the work done every day in and out, and they come in here with the propensity to serve, and we haven't seen really a drop-off in that high level of customer service to our residents.

But I do think it kind of aligns, and I've worked with Matrix a few years back when we did the study in 2014-2015 with Chief Deck Brown.

And basically what they told us is you need to strategize and maximize how you use the resources that you currently have, not necessarily adding to that count.

And as we've grown, obviously, we do need to um increase the number of officers, but I think we need to work smarter, not necessarily harder in that in that vein, and try to make sure that we're keeping up with the trends along all the departments.

And I think Solid Waste Services, I saw your faces when those numbers came out for Solid Waste Services.

What we're thinking about as we transition, we told you that it wouldn't necessarily be a cost savings to shift leaf service over to um solid waste service.

What you're gonna get is operational efficiencies on the transportation side.

You're gonna get more sidewalks to be done.

You're gonna get more attention to crosswalks and things like that on the infrastructure side on transportation, because those people are freed up to do true transportation work.

And so it kind of lands at the feet of Solid Waste Services now to assume that responsibility.

So it's kind of kind of where I expected it to be, Mayor, if we if we're looking at it strategically over what I've seen in my tenure here.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other questions?

Just want to highlight one thing.

Um first of all, thank you for the presentation of the report.

And I want to thank staff and everyone that contributed and something to think about when we're looking at, especially your 2026 numbers that were on slide 14.

Um I'm gonna pick on ECC, the because it's set at the top.

We're talking where we need to add 11 more, but then when we look at the presentation from HR, um, we need six more positions currently of what is already allocated.

So when we think of our plan and things going forward, you know, and this is really for the community because salaries, if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but salaries is a general fund cost, is that correct?

For ECC, yes.

Yeah, for EC.

For public safety, yes, those are but really for the majority of all of our employees.

It comes out of general.

And general is finance majorly through property taxes.

So we really have to be strategic in how we plan and how we look at this and and how we move forward because we're talking about salaries, and then we gotta look at the other services and other things that we say we want to add on top of that.

So there's gonna be some tough and hard decisions that we're gonna have to make.

Some people are not going to be happy that we're probably happy last year when we didn't raise property taxes.

But these are decisions that as a council we have to think about that help to propel the city for the next four to five to ten years.

Absolutely.

And it's our job to bring forward some recommendations that help you that help the decision become easier for you.

We do the complicated, complex trade-offs behind the scene, and then we bring it forward so that you all will have some options to make the decisions that will ultimately get us to a balanced budget.

Well, I think we're going to end it there.

So there's these 52 positions.

So a total of seven 74 new positions called for, just giving me a lot of sticker shock.

And I, as you noted, man, Madam Manager, like our our staff is so often victims of their own success.

But I'm just uh I'm taking in that that Raleigh has been growing for decades and that this work probably should have been done over over decades, and we are making up for a lot of a lot of lost time.

And so what we'll do behind the scenes is part of that complicated, complex um discussion is we'll look at recruit academies and when the timing of those academies are.

So we're not going to bring you something that says we're hiring 52 firefighters above what we had already planned for, because we know we can't get them through.

Just like if we authorized a hundred police positions today, he he wouldn't be able to hire them.

We don't have anywhere to train them, even if we accepted B L E T from somewhere else, which we don't, but if if we did other than through a lateral program, we don't have anywhere to get them through to get them on board anyway.

So we kind of will bake some of that into the decision-making matrix that we kind of figure out before we bring that to you to to kind of level set some reasonable expectations.

And we have been working with department heads over the last several months when we kicked off the budget to understand, hey, for those positions, I think Councilmember Jones asked the question, what happened to those positions?

I started a couple years ago.

If it's been on the books for 365 days, it's not a priority, right?

And so if it is truly a priority and a business need down the road, we'll give you the position back.

But what that basically does is ties up our FTE count, and we have to budget for the position for the entire year.

So that's an expense, whether we hire or not.

So that in addition to some of the recruitment efforts by HR, the job fares and all the things that we've implemented over the last 12 to 18 months have knocked that number down by 50 percent almost, roughly.

Okay.

Well, that concludes a long and a lot of data.

So I'm sure there will be many other conversations on this, but we appreciate all the work by all those and uh we'll adjourn our session.