Let's do it.

All right.

Good afternoon.

Good morning, everyone.

That's still morning.

We are moving to part three of the finance department.

We're going to be discussing the financial operations.

We are joined by Councillor Hudson and Councillor Caldwell.

I forgot to recognize you earlier.

Thank you for coming.

And joining us at the table is Anne Marie Deegan.

And so we're page 93 for financial operations.

And where you've been here for the last couple.

If you want to give a an overview of how everything all fits together, and then you two are down a little bit year over year in your budget.

And so if I had to guess uh the same trend will follow that we'll have more of a conversation around operations rather than numbers.

Right.

Sounds good.

Thank you for taking the time.

Financial operations kind of does a bunch of different things.

So the main our main areas of focus are payroll, um requisitions and vouchers, so that's getting purchase orders and payments in and out for the city, as well as uh special projects.

So we are involved as you all know with payroll project.

We also are involved with the center of excellence for the grants, um, and so we have those three areas that we focus on.

Um I did print out a couple numbers that you guys might be interested in.

Uh we last year, last fiscal year, we processed just over or just under 25,000 uh voucher payments.

We um entered approximately 4,000 requisitions, so that's a purchase order.

So purchase orders are created, multiple payments can hit those at some time, so that's why there's a disparity in in that, as well as the team that is actually cutting the checks and ACH payments.

That is about 18,000.

So those are kind of some of the numbers for the one part of my team.

Um payroll, obviously, is working hard every day to make sure that everybody gets paid, and that is that is still going forward.

They're still doing that in the midst of also just starting our new payroll project with our new consultants that's just getting underway, and then the financial um or that excuse me, the center of excellence for grants is a process we're just kind of well, not just we've been working on for about a year, and we are now have some other supports in place.

So uh along with uh the mayor's office and research and all the departments that function in the grants world, we're getting together and trying to find efficiencies around how those are processed, how we get refunds and reimbursements and that sort of thing.

Just kind of jumping into numbers a little bit.

You had a little bit of an overrun in salary for the current year projected, but then it's back down again for next year.

So that is uh doing part for two things.

One, we have uh people being paid out of title, and that adjustment happens because they're you know we're trying to get people in the right position.

Um, and so that's that's the main reason why that's uh different, and then um we've kind of restructured how our workforce functions.

So that'll be the other part of the reduction for the future next year.

You're one overall reduction in position.

Are you going to be impacted by that reduction?

We should not be.

Okay.

What do you do well?

What do you need to be doing better in terms of resources?

Right?

In terms of resource-wise.

Um, I think that what we do well, we we get payments out the door every week, whether it's to our vendors or to our staff.

Um we work hard to make sure that that happens in a timely fashion.

Um there are some projects that I have on my list of things to do to make those processes easier on the on the vendor side.

Um, and hopefully this next year I'll be able to move forward with that.

Part of that is taking out uh right now we use help desk to help manage our workflow.

I'd like to not use help desk to manage our voucher workflow.

Um, and so there are some efficiencies I think that we can gain there.

I need to work with the county a little bit more closely to to see if we can get that off the ground.

Um so that is one of my hopes for this coming year.

I think along with the Center of Excellence uh with the grants, um, just being able to manage those, making sure that we're getting those reimbursements timely, working specifically with the departments that are have grants, and so they understand how finance is connected, um how budget is connected with that process.

I think that'll overall be a good game for the city.

Will you give them a little more info into that relationship and what we're trying to where we're trying to move and to go with the Center of Excellence?

So the Center of Excellence is um started about a year ago.

We have uh a consultant bust who's come in and trying to help us map out all of our grants processes, um, which are very disjointed.

We have, you know, everybody kind of does their own thing.

Research tries to manage what they know about, they don't always know about things.

Um, finance sometimes finds out when they're like, hey, this grant closed.

Did you do a reimbursement?

And we're like, what are you talking about?

Um, so though that has gotten better over this past year, we're have better communications between our finance team, our budget team, as well as research and with the center of excellence.

We are looking at trying to get some practices in place where there's a uh at least in the short term, either a SharePoint or some type of site that we already have software that we own utilize so we can kind of manage that holistically with with research being the what are we saying, the quarterback of that, and then uh we as a finance team are coming in pretty early, so we know that as those accounts get set up, they're also reaching out to my team and saying, Hey, we just set up this account so we can make sure that we have portals set up, we have the right people that are actually checking in.

Um so I think it's a matter of working more closely with the departments to make sure that they're on task every quarter, and also requesting those quarterly reimbursements so we can help manage our cash flow better.

I think that there was um I would that was my question originally, but um I think that there was some minor confusions with some of the reimbursements as to what could be reimbursed.

Um, how how are you guys working through that?

Um, more or less that maybe there was more sidewalk done than probably should be, I'm not sure, but um there was some discrepancy in um what can and can be uh you know submitted for reimbursement.

Um so grant reimbursement's really all about the specific grant, so it we take them as case by case.

Um in the in the case of CHIPS, we can ask for reimbursement on a variety of different things in the CHIPS program, and so um multiple departments sometimes are like, hey, I can use CHIPS money for this, but if we have DPW that's budgeted X dollars from that, then you know they were like, wait, if we're gonna budget it here, and then we need to kind of shift some money around.

So I think it's just that same kind of thing, making sure that we're managing that pool of money.

And right now for chips, we are um we've it we've fully requested all the reimbursements for all of the outstanding chips funding.

Um so we are anxiously waiting for the state to tell us what our CHIPS funding is for this year.

We have uh we already are prepared to submit our first claim, which should be in May, um, unless that date gets shoved because we haven't gotten that number yet.

Um so that will be finishing up anything that we didn't ask for reimbursement last year, so by the time our August reimbursement comes up, we'll be fully in the current fiscal year that we're looking on.

So, how far back are they in email?

I think they're caught up.

Oh, they could no I can we could look into that.

Yeah, examination.

Well, you're looking if we could figure out how much is out there in reimbursable funds that you know, I have no idea if we're talking a couple million or tens of millions.

Um that would be good information.

I will say that we have a over 300 active grant accounts.

So uh part of the center of excellence we starting are trying to get we've gotten together a master list.

We're working with the departments and with budget to make sure that like are these still all active, can we close any of them?

You know, have we missed out on any re-imbursement?

So we are actively working on that list right now.

And um, I just know in in my world, um, you have some companies that play games of denial and delay.

Um do we experience any of that with any of our um rent reimbursements?

Is there any specific um state funding or federal funding that where we've constantly had to go back in and input this because they keep asking questions?

Anything um not typically hasn't been my experience.

Can you tell me?

Travel coordinator.

What does that get used to?

So that is a position that I've been actively trying to get in place.

So this is a person that has travel uh experience.

So they were a travel agent in their home country of Ukraine.

They have now moved to the US.

And so he just started, he's actually stationed at the police department, who does the lion's share of our travel.

So his position helps them secure hotels, airline tickets if they need a rent cars for a variety of their trainings as well as extraditions.

So they'll manage that once he's has that fully under in hand.

So if we have people that we want to next question is I want to travel and especially if they're wanting to get airline tickets and that kind of thing, he has some ways to do that that I don't know about as a non-travel agent person, but he has some different access uh to get us the best rates we can.

So I'm hoping that we see some reduction in what our travel costs are.

Um we won't really know that until the end of next year, as he said, he just started.

So of your positions field right now.

I have one vacancy right now for the just double check business operations specialist that just recently was vacated, so I'll be working on getting that.

But that was recently vacated?

Yes from the council.

All right, well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate your time.

Um to adjourn.

All right.

Motion.

All right.

And so we will be back here at 1215.

Um we have one more hearing for the day.

Um yeah, I would know.

That is uh OMB Office of Management Budget.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, thank you.

Great.