Thank you, Nator.

All right, good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome back.

Um, we are shifting to the office of management budget.

I'm joined this afternoon by President Hudson, President Pardon me, Counselor Hudson.

Um, Councillor Henrik, Councillor Moore, Councillor Nave, President Paniagua, um, Councillor Jones Router, and Director Evan Loving, um, and the entire budget team.

Thank you all for being here.

Um, so Evan, you have a game plan, you can jump right in.

Sure.

Thank you, counselors.

Um, I'm Evan Loving on the budget director.

I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about our office budget.

Obviously, we spend a lot of time talking about the overall budget, which is very important.

Um, and I would like to take a minute to thank my team who is responsible for the budget coming together so well this year.

Um I also want to talk a little bit about our other two divisions.

Um, so I want to thank Sheryl Pace, our assistant director for equity compliance for being here, and Laura Padget, our assistant director for uh procurement and purchase.

I'm gonna go through the numbers for our office budgets real briefly, and then I want to talk a little bit about some of the priorities that we have for the next year or so.

Uh we are paper and people, like many of the offices, so you'll see very few changes year over year.

Um, probably the largest change on the on the budget side is that one employee is moving off of Sura.

Um, so you will see that change and purchase and equity compliance are essentially flat.

We start on page 73, and it's what's the rationale for the shift from Surah to the general fund or so that's the fund?

We generally, at least I generally try and take a look at to see that to me that the baseline is that people are not on Sura, and there should be a rationale for someone to be on Sura.

In this case, I didn't feel like there was, and so it seemed like a re to me there's reason to move them back.

Perfect.

Um questions, like I said, the numbers are relatively flat, but was there anything as y'all look through that you were concerned or had a question about on the numbers before I talk a little bit about priorities?

All the positions are field.

We currently have one vacancy and equity compliance.

Which one?

In uh in the division of equity compliance, there's a vacancy.

So we have right now the division has an assistant director, and we have one vacancy.

But all our other positions are filled.

Kevin, question for you.

So out of title pay asked you, did you zero that out?

But then when you go to contract this services, that was 11,000.

So it has zero.

So there's what are you doing with that?

Are you on page 74?

74.

So contractual services would have been somewhat on Sura, but they're not on Sura anymore.

Oh, okay.

So it's zero.

So, how how many people were that that was on a server?

Sir, was just one person who one person for one eleven?

The and fringe benefits.

That's the total cost.

Okay.

Yep.

And we don't expect any special grants coming through an SL 70.

We don't we don't have anything on the horizon.

I'm gonna talk when I talk about procurement.

I'm gonna talk about a procurement grant that we currently have.

Obviously, we're always on the lookout for things, but there's nothing that I would say is imminent.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, in terms of our priorities, so a lot of you already heard me say this, but uh, my hope is that we can really improve both the budget process and product.

Um, we've started that process this year, but in the long term, I really want to make sure that we have um a budget book that anyone can pick up and use, and it answers the questions that they would have about the budget, and I'll ideally have a balanced budget.

So um I've talked to the mayor about this year having a year-long budget process that would start in July, um, working with the mayor, the council, the departments, and figuring out what we need to do in order to get there.

We have some structural challenges, as you know, and structural challenges require structural solutions.

So that's something we're gonna have to work together on.

It's gonna take some time.

It's not easy to do within the tight time frame of the traditional budget season.

Um I also want to take a fresh look at the CIP.

Uh, I would again I would like it to be a document that people can pick up and say this is gonna tell me everything I need to know about what our capital strategy is, what our capital plan is for at least the year, but ideally multiple years, and then hopefully I would we would be able to incorporate that somehow into the budget at the end of the year.

I also want to spend time in our off-peak times looking at forecasting and projections, particularly on the revenue side.

One of the things that we talk about a lot is differences in revenue projections, and so I would like to make sure that we as an entity have a sense of how we are gonna be making those projections going forward so that we have the most confidence in them.

Um then terms of our office, you know.

I often comment we're uh the office of management and budget.

I think the budget piece of that is much more clear to people, and the management piece is less clear.

So trying to get alignment in what that means.

Is that just managing the budget or some other form of management that we should be looking to do?

So that's that's kind of a high level of what I'm hoping to spend the next year on in terms of the budget piece, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about procurement and equity compliance.

Does anybody have any questions about those?

Okay.

Um, in terms of purchase and procurement, we are actively working on new guidance around waivers of the RFP and bid.

I know this is a consistent uh item that comes up, and so we want to make sure that we have clarity on when we should be pursuing waivers of the RFP and bid.

Um we're also um I mentioned working on developing a final plan for uh a grant that we got from Bloomberg a few years ago.

There's some remaining funds, and so we're working with API and Bloomberg to make sure that we have a plan and how we're gonna utilize those before the grant ends in September.

Um I also want to take a fresh look at the IMA with the county.

Um, as you all probably know, the county does play a role in our procurement process.

Our current IMA is expired, so I want to make sure that we take a fresh look at that and that it aligns with our current goals.

Uh, and as well as taking a look at how we do procurement as it relates to the school district, because we also do the school district's procurement.

So I want to make sure that we have alignment between us, the county, and the school district.

Can I ask a quick question, Evan?

Yes.

I noticed that all the budgets have office supplies.

Yes.

We don't have like a general place where everybody can we could buy office supplies in a bundle and then departments could go get them as needed.

I think we'd save money that way, wouldn't we?

Yeah, that's a good idea.

I think we we haven't done that historically.

Some of those departments that you know they have different office needs.

Obviously, you can think about it generically, like pens and paper, but like take the budget office, for example, we have to buy special paper just for the budget.

Um, so there are sometimes some unique needs in that in that space, but I think it's something worth taking a look at across the organization, seeing how much we're spending on and if there's a way we can streamline it more effectively.

It's a good idea.

You mentioned the grant that ends in September.

Yeah.

With Randy's that one.

It's a Bloomberg procurement transformation grant.

And what what do you have left there?

Um I think the uh the amount remaining is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 400,000.

What will the cost of open government on in the future?

Because you know, we lose bloomer funding we're losing.

Yeah, so one of the things we're thinking about is whether or not we should use some of those remaining funds for an additional year of open gov.

I believe the annual cost is 85,000.

Um but it's it's something we we are looking at.

One of the things that we're talking about through the grant process that we're going through now is how we are planning for expenses that are gonna transfer off of grants onto the general fund.

So that's definitely high on our list, and ideally not making too many of those decisions where we're paying for things with a grant that we're gonna have to move on to the general fund long term.

Has any evaluation been done over the procurement process and you know an 85,000 dollar investment?

And then what are we potentially returning given that we presumably have a wider variety and a larger number of RFPs coming in?

Have we looked at that?

Can you can you ask it a little differently?

If we prior, you know, if we were buying concrete, yeah, historically we had three vendors and they were asking roughly 100,000.

Um open gov, now we expand that to nine vendors asking 75,000.

You know, there's a savings attached to the expansion of the pool in terms of the and you're asking about the uh how we're tracking the data on it.

Yeah, have we have we looked at that?

We've talked about how we're measuring success.

I would say we don't have uh like a set framework and how we're gonna do that.

That's another thing piece of the puzzle that we're working on.

Um, you know, having come in here in November, I see a lot of the changes that we've made, but to your point, I think it's how are we defining success, both in terms of the grant, but then also more to me, more importantly, how are we defining success in terms of our procurement process long term, like overall?

And you know, the grant obviously that the very it matters is very valuable, but then also like what is success look like to us in terms of what we want out of the procurement process.

You know, is it is it driving down costs?

The other piece that you'd have to take into account.

I think if you're gonna look at that and make it apples to apples, is let's say you have more uh more bids three years later, you know, but you've had 15% inflation.

You'd have to kind of try to game you try to have to get that out to say what's the real underlying savings on a year-to-year basis.

Not if you don't think it could just be the raw number.

We've we've had more RFPs coming through, we've had more proposals.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I and I think we especially with that as we look at what we're doing with waivers, I think we're gonna see that number increase substantially.

And have we seen a corresponding increase in local and or MWBE proposals?

I don't know.

Sure Pace, assistant director of the division of equity compliance and social impact.

Um as far as responses to the proposals, um, it's a complex conversation.

We do have more visibility and more subcontracting because of the visibility on these projects, but as far as them taking on the project and bidding on them, there's a lot of education that has to go into how to do business with the city, a lot of access to capital conversations, and basically how do we get them to a point where they have the tools and resources to be able to respond to these projects.

So we are seeing an increase in participation as far as subcontracting, but not necessarily responding as a prime.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Sheryl, I um just looking at some of the past um recently past uh RFPs or RFQs.

Um I have been pondering like there are time when we we get responses, but they're just not the perfect ones per se.

Um, and we reopen the um the RFP or RFQ for to possibly get maybe the deadline was just too short, and you know, not enough people responded, you know.

You some of them we've had like two people respond.

Um, and for me, some of even some of those two, you boil it down to one is just not what I would like to see.

I'm just one person.

Um, but so is there an opportunity when we open it back up?

Um when does that take place?

Is it during the RFP um group conversations where we say, like, you know, we should look at putting it back out there.

I think part of it is you know, working in coordination with the purchase division to make sure that the scopes are clear so that people understand what they're responding to.

Um again, there's an education piece to it.

Sometimes there are vendors that are minority or women or service disabled veteran owned that just are not either interested in doing business with the city because they have a perception of it's difficult, the payment process, different things that could potentially be barriers to them wanting to respond.

So some of what we've been doing in this past year is really just trying to tap into the education piece, making sure that they understand the background of how we come to the conclusion of uh awardee when we're doing a proposal, making sure that they have access to resources that can help them with putting together a proposal that's maybe more in line with some of the other respondents that we're seeing because again, you don't know what you don't know, so making sure that they have access to that information.

So if we do put something back out, we can actually see a change versus the same people responding a second time.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm gonna ask you on the same thing.

Some of that is I believe not a fees for MWBE and WBE, and a lot of it is when it comes down to the uh requirement when in insurance.

That's a big catch 22 for a lot of these smaller projects.

Yeah, so one of the things that we've been exploring is the potential to like unbundle some of the contracts that we have so that there's a smaller scope for participation.

I think when we have a project and you have to be able to bond to two million, that does like remove a lot of possible respondents from those projects.

So we definitely are exploring some you know innovative ways that we can approach that.

We're also doing a really good job right now of trying to be proactive in our outreach, trying to make sure that all of these vendors have access to these projects now that we have open gov, they get notified immediately of any projects with the city versus before our system of the SYR.gov website where you had to go and periodically check to see when any projects are coming up.

Um, we're making sure that they're understanding that a lot of the projects are relationship-based.

If you can, you know, connect with some of the prime contractors that are doing these larger projects, you can kind of get your foot in the door as a subcontractor.

Once you start doing more projects with the city, then it's a lot easier for you to take on projects as a prime yourself, but getting that experience on the city project so that they can actually start having an idea of like what they'll need to do when they are the prime contractor in the future.

And I'm I might add, as we look at our procurement process overall, I think holistically we need to evaluate what our requirements are and make sure that they align with our goals.

So I, you know, when we talk about we're gonna go through the procurement process step by step and say, you know, is this working for us?

That's gonna include things like our insurance requirements.

Requirement.

So there's a little bit more.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and to make and the counselor Williams point earlier, just to make sure that we're evaluating to the extent those are not working as we making changes, make sure we can say we saw this change or we didn't see this change that we're hoping to get from that process.

Essentially, we just don't want to say that we're doing uh we're providing the opportunity for vendors.

We want to actually assess and provide resources to help them get to the point where they can take on these projects and do it successfully, because we also don't want to set people up for failure either.

Thank you.

Real real quick, thanks, Rail.

Um equity compliance.

So we are focused on making sure that we're fully staffed.

As I mentioned, we have a uh we have a vacancy currently.

Um we're talking about you know how we're incorporating those goals into more of our procurement processes, you know, going back to waivers.

That that's a process that doesn't incorporate the goals, so making sure that we're figuring out how we can incorporate those into more procurement.

Um and and then also talking about what we're defining as social impact.

You know, it's division of equity compliance and social impact, so making sure that we're aligned as city in terms of what we mean by social impact.

Um, across the three divisions, I want to make sure that we're aligning strategy and implementation, promoting organization-wide awareness of our work and why we do it.

Um I want to do citywide training on the budget procurement and equity compliance so that staff feels comfortable and confident in what their expectations are in that process or those processes, and then I want to make sure that we have cross-training succession planning.

I want to make sure we're a relatively flat operation, as you can see.

Uh, I would like to make sure we don't have any single points of failure.

You know, turnover is a is a major driver, in my opinion, of failed projects historically, and so I want to make sure that we have uh backup in each spot.

That's key to our operations.

So questions.

I did I myself do this?

No.

I love it.

Okay, we did this, but this is I love this.

Sounds okay, thank you.

Well, then on that case I should have said always ask if somebody liked your idea before you say whether it's your idea.

Sorry, Councilor Navy, do you have a question?

Yes.

Um can you explain what is a social impact analyst?

So, like I said, we're still kind of refining that.

That I would just say that's an analyst position in the in the division.

So what what the specific role that person will play long term, that's gonna depend in part on our long-term strategy.

We know that we having a division of one is not is we know we're gonna need more support than that, but I'm not prepared to sit here today and tell you exactly what we need.

That's why we're working on it.

Okay, so that's okay.

Okay.

Other questions?

Okay.

I just really want to thank you know your entire team for putting in all the hard work and able to get us the budget book that is you know, always.

Oh, blessing and occurs, right?

But thank you, thank you very much, and for being here through all the hearings to answer any of the questions that we have kind of on demand.

It's uh great to have your support.

So thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you all, I appreciate it.

All right, thank you very much, everybody.

Um we'll be here tomorrow morning with the auditor.

And second one that I can't remember right now, but we'll see tomorrow morning.

With an extent.

Yes.

Thank you.

Exactly.