Anybody have anything to say or ask before we get started.

Mr.

District Attorney, we're gonna allow recently pregnant ladies to Elsie, come on up.

So how long do I get to carry that title?

That's it.

This is the five, the final time.

There's no more mileage there.

I think we're doing more than the first year.

So I just wanted you guys to have that for information.

But I do very much appreciate the opportunity to have just a few minutes of your time this morning.

Um I actually will be very quick.

I am not here necessarily to ask for more money, but I am here to advocate for but I am here to advocate for the additional $50,000 that the city council approved for us last year.

Um so I want to really quickly highlight kind of what our current situation is.

So on the screen, you see what our fiscal year 2025 operating budget is.

The proposed fiscal year 2026 operating budget is just slightly higher than that.

This is to help us do everything that we need to and have on our roadmap for 2026, and then the current situation is uh we're at we we have about 1.8 committed.

This is not just the city of Tuscaloosa, there's still some unknown around City of Northport.

We all know that there's a lot of change happening there, and then Tuscaloosa County as well.

So that $200,000 is not obviously just the city of Tuscaloosa, but I wanted you to have a full picture of kind of what our current situation is and kind of that deficit we have to get to that proposed two million dollar budget.

Um the additional kind of part of this that again most people wouldn't know, but a couple of years ago we were challenged to spin down some of our reserve account.

We have done that.

We updated our policy around that.

We have to, much like the city we approved where we want to have 20% of our operating budget in our reserve account.

So we've spent that down to where we are right about 20%.

So we do not have the opportunity anymore to go into the reserve and pull money out.

So again, all of that is kind of playing into the situation for this next fiscal year.

Again, what I'm here to ask for today is not increased funding.

I very I'm very aware of the situation, but what I am asking for is your consideration to move that fifty or to add that fifty thousand dollars that uh city council approved last year back into our budget for this next fiscal year.

We sat here a couple of years ago and talked about how we do want to invest more in tourism, and this just kind of gives you a picture of what uh the city council has helped us do over the last four or five years.

So again, the goal is right now what is presented is that 1.371903.

What we had from the city of Tuscaloosa was that 1.4 million dollar number.

So it is a difference of $50,000.

The only other thing I want to call here, and I put it in the notes too, is in fiscal year 2024, between that 2023 and 2024 season, uh, you did vote to move 85,000 out of the city council's outside services budget line into our agency funding line.

I'm sorry, say that again.

So you guys, when we were going through the budgeting process and you were advocating for that additional 85,000 that year, instead of adding it as a special allocation to the budget, you voted to move it out of council's out.

And you put it into our budget.

I know, I know.

But what it does allow us to do, or it did allow us to do that one year was to not have to come back to you asking for those additional dollars again.

So um that has been kind of our challenge the last four or five years that we have had this opportunity from the council is that we are having to come back each year advocating for that 25,000, that 50,000 or that 85,000 dollars each year.

Does that make sense?

I want to make sure I'm okay.

Um, so I just wanted to again fiscal year 2024, that change happened, and that is the one year where we did not have to come back asking for that particular uh funding again.

Okay, excuse me.

We did give the $50,000 from the council money to them last year.

We gave 80 million 50 last year.

50 last year.

85 was not last year that wasn't.

You know, the year before.

85 was we set aside for ourselves.

Right.

Not ourselves.

Yeah, you're the council.

External services.

Yes.

Uh we were at the end of our that year, it was not it was not gonna be used, and so we did that.

And again, the mayor's budget last year was a slight increase, and so I do want to acknowledge that as well.

And that's again where the council agreed on that $50,000 increase last year rather than 85.

So I do want to answer the question: if we get it, what happens?

So if we get the full, you know, request that we're asking from the city of Tuscaloosa, in addition to if it comes to fruition with the city of Northport and the county, what we're asking for.

Um, it's really very simple.

We will have the ability to do two things.

We will be able to fulfill our secured events.

Um, I want to remind everyone, we fulfill our secured events.

So, just as a reminder, when we're doing our business, we're working years in advance.

So when we have the potential of a budget cut, it does impact us because we're already securing 2026, 2027, 2028 events.

This is just a sample of some recent bids that we've won.

Some of them we have announced, others we have not, but we'll be announcing very, very soon.

The other thing that I wish I could speak more publicly about, but hopefully we will in the next two months.

We have one of the most significant sporting events that uh our team has ever had the opportunity to secure.

Um, we're hoping to finalize in the next two months that opportunity.

But if it does come to fruition, it will be significant for this community.

We had a direct hand in recruiting it to Tuscaloosa, um, and it will take more of our budget to help make that event come to life.

Again, we will be glad to talk about it when we can a little bit more publicly, but please know that we have a big opportunity coming up for us in 2026.

Um we are also awaiting some bid responses that you know, party animals.

If you're familiar with Savannah Bananas, we have put in a bid to host uh the party animals, which is part of the Savannah Bananas League.

The party animals.

Party animals.

Are you familiar with Savannah Bananas?

It is it doesn't sound like something I'm gonna like.

Better than midget wrestling.

It's dwarf dwarf wrestling.

I saw it.

What is party?

Uh part of it, so it's uh it's uh a baseball, but it's uh performative baseball is kind of what it is.

But formative baseball.

They're dancing.

Carl Grove writers are baseball.

Cool.

Yes, yeah.

So again, we haven't we have not won that bid in particular, but we have put a bid in for that.

Um, so again, if we get the money, what does it help us do?

It helps us fulfill what we have already secured for 2026.

And then it also continues to allow us to do our core service of destination marketing and product development.

Um we've shared with you in the last year, we've officially launched a new website.

We have a new partnership with Lou Hammond Group, a PR agency, and what I want to give as an example there is I got an email the other day that was like, why is Tuscaloosa not in this eight under-the-radar Southern cities to visit this summer?

And obviously, there are travel riders that are traveling around, exploring these communities, but a lot of the time it is also pay-to-play.

So, with our new relationship with Blue Hammond Group, again, a PR agency, we will be working with them strategically to place Tuscaloosa in national media.

So, as an example, I've got this screenshot up here.

When I sent this article over to them, they were happy to share that three of the top four cities that were listed in that article are cities that they represent.

We have a really good partner in Lou Hammond Group, and I think it just started, so I believe I'm very confident that you guys will be happy with the results of this PR agency that we're now partnering with.

Um but we also have a lot of opportunities coming up in 2026 that will take financial um support.

You know, we are working on a frontline training program with Shelton State that I'm very excited about.

Our frontline employees in the hospitality industry are some of the most significant ambassadors for our community.

We need to make sure that they um one, give a good experience when they're interacting with our visitors, but then two, they also need to know about Tuscaloosa and what our community has to offer.

So we're working with Shelton State on developing a program uh to help uh create better frontline ambassadors for our community.

Again, lots of things are happening, so that $50,000 is very important to us.

I just want to highlight, we talked about I I remember having this conversation in agency funding presentation last year.

I mentioned we're creating this new brand campaign, Think Where Legends Are Made.

I gave the example, we are building the plane, we are putting it on the runway, but we need your support to help take this brand campaign off of the runway.

We've got all the assets now, we've got this new campaign that we're really excited about.

But again, that financial support from the city of Tuscaloosa and from all of our partners is what's going to help us get this out into uh out into the world and sharing it with our potential visitors.

I just wanted to really quickly uh 60 seconds.

I did want to highlight this new video that goes with our new brand campaign.

The thing I want to mention here too is we were very intentional with this video in the way that the music, when talking about the background music, we said, how can we actually get that locally produced?

So I'm really excited to let you know that Stillman, uh, their drum line actually produced this uh soundtrack for us to go with this video.

So if you don't mind playing it for us, we'll see.

This isn't just a place, it's a pulse and a rhythm.

Where game day is more than a tradition.

Heart pounding yet.

This is where the flavors are bold.

The portions are generous, and everybody feels like home.

Mouth watering yet here, wide open water and endless skies.

Deliver the kind of peace that stays with you.

Breath slowing yet, art, music, and culture, paint the city's soul, creativity flowing yet.

This is where the community comes alive, and every night holds a new story.

Magic setting in yet.

So whether you call for the thrill, the taste, the beauty, or the tradition, you'll stay for the Tuskali.

Ready to fill it.

This is Tuscaloosa.

Live the Tusca life.

So we're very excited about that.

And what's uh really neat too is we've used that soundtrack for all of our radio spots too.

So it is a soundtrack that we're really proud to have, and we'll get to capitalize on it more moving forward.

So I just wanted to showcase that.

Now, if we don't get the chance, let me see if I can move forward on it.

See, do you mind?

Thank you, Brandy.

Maybe yeah.

Thank you.

All right, so uh if we are in a situation where we do have to cut funding, which I knew that that was a possibility going into this year, so we've already kind of identified where are the areas that we have to cut if we are put in a situation where we do have to do that.

And I just want to highlight kind of that's where unfortunately I will tell you Loretta does such a good job with our budget that uh she's got our bills about to be as low as they can.

She is calling pretty regularly to see what deals we can get.

So unfortunately, where we're cutting is cutting from the day-to-day operations of our organization.

Uh, it's so what I had identified was actually close to uh 70 because again, I was preparing for a 5% cut from the city of Tuscaloosa.

Um, I think the point that we have to make though is when you're cutting things like travel and attending trade shows and conferences and your traveling tourism business development efforts, those are the things that are bringing business to this community.

So again, I want to make it really clear when we have to cut, these are the areas where we're cutting, and most often that's going to directly impact what we do every day at visit Tuscaloosa.

Um again, so I'll be glad to if you have any questions on that list of what does that mean or what does that look like?

I'll be glad to answer any of that for you as well.

Yeah, Kelsey.

Yes.

What is your funding amount as in the last this budget we're in right now before this this new one currently for the county and Northport?

From the county and Northport.

County is at 90,000, we've requested 120, and then uh Northport is at 105, and we've requested 120 this year as well.

We are also in discussion with River Run Park on possibly some opportunity to create generate some revenue through some services that we can offer.

So that is something as well that is new that we've not gotten the chance to explore before as well.

I can't tell you what exactly that looks like yet, but it is a new development.

I know I think the county, they're probably in the process of doing the budget.

I bet you it's coming up maybe next week or so.

I haven't spoken with them, but do you have a sense of where any of that is for them or I feel positive.

Uh I feel positive with the county.

We have a new board member, Chris Cunningham.

He is on our board now.

He's an employee of the county of the county.

He has been a great advocate for us as well in all of my conversations with Judge Robertson, uh, Commissioner Nelson, Commissioner Acker.

Um, they continue to praise what we're doing.

So I I have positive uh experiences with them, but obviously I do not know where we're gonna land on the budget.

Uh Northport's an interesting one.

Again, there's a lot of conversation that needs to happen over the next month, especially.

Um I am not sure.

And there really is there's some serious conversation that needs to happen with Northport at this point.

Good thing is if they're funding 105,000, that's really strong.

Yeah, I mean it's we've gone from 25 to 105.

It's definitely growth, but you know, I think there's opportunity for more.

We are spending, I've got a pretty detailed list of what all do we provide from a service standpoint for Northport, and I think we have put it been able to put the value to that.

Um so again, I think we've got a good case.

We just need to get with the new council.

They're they're up against that on the budget.

Yes, yeah.

The new council coming out.

Yeah, that is what I'm doing.

Yes, yes, sir.

Yeah.

Okay.

So again, there is a big question mark there, and a lot of conversation does have to happen between now and then.

Any other questions on this particular okay?

The only other thing I want to share is just again, our strategy has not changed from when we met with y'all last year.

We are continuing to identify how can we get more people here spending more time and doing more in our community as a catalast for community vitality.

We are gonna continue to target these audiences.

We've already made progress this year.

We've got a new relationship with uh the University of Alabama Alumni Association.

We've had good success there.

Um we are now that our website's launched, we are excited to really kick out kick up our digital media campaign.

So again, nothing has really changed from a strategy standpoint from last year when we presented with y'all.

Just as a reminder, these are the benefits to destination promotion.

Uh there's a lot of benefits to it, but at the end of the day, what I want to also talk about is now is not the time to cut tourism dollars.

We are building new facilities in this community, we have a new tennis center, we're gonna have pickleball courts, we're gonna have this beautiful Sabin Center.

All of this is going to help us bring more visit visitors to Tuscaloosa.

So now is not the time to cut the dollars.

Again, I'd be glad to answer any questions, uh, but that is what I wanted to come here and ask y'all for consideration today.

Is again not more money, but I am asking for consideration of that $50,000 back into our budget from last year.

Kelsey, thank you.

As always, strong presentation.

I I do have a few questions.

Yes, sir.

I'm on your board, so I see it, but for those who are not, give us a quick 30-second uh 60-second synopsis.

What's your organization?

So visit Tuscaloosa is Tuscaloosa County's destination marketing organization.

At the end of the day, we strengthen the economic position and the vitality of this.

Oh, what do you your staff?

What do you what do you got down there?

Who do we have?

Okay, so we have nine staff members.

Uh fortunately, we've not had any change in the last year.

We've got, I'm gonna go through the offices.

Alicia Richards, she does all of our events, Chelsea Barton Kelly does marketing, uh, Jasmine Rainey does uh tourism development, so she's bringing in meetings, conferences, that type of stuff.

Jimmy Hart, marketing, Loretta, VP, or director of finance, she might as well be a VP, director of finance and operations.

Uh myself, Robins Bonner is sports, and then Josh Rivers is director of uh community development and group tour experiences.

So he's bringing in the groups, uh family re or uh travel groups, youth groups, motor coach, that kind of stuff.

So you mentioned y'all's goal is to settle in at 20 percent of your operating that's what our so when we were challenged to spin down our reserve, we realized at that time there was not like a good reserve policy in place, and so we looked at what the city does, and the the board at that time approved a policy that requires us to have 20 percent of our operating budget uh sitting in a reserve account.

So, right now that's about 350,000 dollars sitting in.

Is that what you've got now sitting in reserve?

A little, it might be slightly over.

Uh we have a bill that we have to pay soon.

Yes, yeah.

Um, and then what would you anticipate that coming in use for?

So, for example, you just put up a list of a dozen or 15 things that would have to be cut if there's not an additional 50,000.

Why would you not go to your reserve for that?

Well, I will say we have to finish out the year.

There will be a little bit more dipping into that reserve account to finish out the year if everything that we have planned comes to fruition, and then that will put us back in a situation where we will have close to 350 or 375 at that point.

That is 20% of our operating budget.

So we would have to get, I mean, that's a question for the board of directors.

But that board would, I mean, any organization has reserves for a purpose.

Understanding we we have policies to require it to be there of a certain amount for a purpose.

What would you see warranting utilization of reserves?

But it's not it's not a loaded question.

It's a general what I mean.

I mean, you if we are struggling to get the funding that we need, that is an opportunity to explore.

I just do not know if the board will feel comfortable with that.

I can tell you they felt really uncomfortable a couple of years ago, and this was what allowed them to get to a point of comfort is having a policy in place.

Um again, I would have to gauge the board of directors on if they'd feel comfortable continuing to dip into that.

How do you measure how do you measure how you how we're doing?

Yeah, that's a good so that's a really big question.

Um, but I can what I the example I handed to you on the three-page paper.

It's got a lot of numbers on it.

So all of our sales team now has goals in place.

Uh, up until a couple of years ago, that wasn't the situation.

They all have goals, and that's everything from room nights booked to client check-ins to economic impact.

Um, and I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me.

Those are kind of the high-level goals that they have to work around, site visits, how many conferences and trade shows are they attending, etc.

That's kind of the sales team, which is very traditional for our industry.

Um, on the marketing side of things, right now we do have limited dollars that we're spending, but with those dollars, we try to do as much digital as we can so that we can see those ROI, see the ROI with our digital spend.

I gave an example in our annual report.

We spent about $50,000 last year with a digital media company.

The beautiful part about their technology was they were able to know and understand and follow the people that interacted with our digital ads and that were then seen in Tuscaloosa up to six or eight months later.

We tracked 9,000 visitors from that digital campaign that interacted with our ads, and if I remember correctly, um I think it was either two or three million dollars in visitor spend.

So again, those people interacted with our ads, were seen in Tuscaloosa within the next six months, and we know that they spent money while they were here.

It was an $85 to $1 ad return spend.

So that's the type of stuff that we're trying to do more because I get the ROI question, and we should be asked that.

You know, there is some things that we are not going to be able to measure.

Brand awareness, we need to be doing that.

That's much more difficult to uh track ROI.

However, the more that we can do, like the digital campaigns that do allow us to, we will continue to do that.

But to those that can be to those that can be measured.

Uh-huh.

When you as the executive director go to bed at night, assuming you go to bed at night.

What are the three or four things that you know that that number I gotta hit?

And how do you know if you're from a goal standpoint?

Yeah.

Again, it goes back to economic impact because it know we know that it generates tax revenue for our funding partners.

I mean, that really at the end of the day, when our executive committee met in the last six or twelve months to talk about goals for the lodgering tax right now.

I mean, yeah, and sales tax revenue.

So that's again why we look a lot at um our hotel insights, our short-term rental insights, and because of our Zardico data, we have really good insights on visitor spending from a uh credit card standpoint.

You know, I'll never be able to track cash spending, uh, but we do have the ability to track credit cards.

So I can very much articulate what is a visitor do and how are they spending their dollars when they come to our community?

And of the ones that you can measure, what are you seeing?

Um, well, for 2025, it's positive news.

2024 was not a good year for the tourism industry, um, but 2025, we are seeing growth both as a as a tourism economy here in Tuscaloosa, but I want to reiterate, we as an organization are also experiencing growth.

We went from 29,000 29,000 room nights booked as our goal last year to 32,500.

We are tracking really well on uh achieving that goal.

Um, so again, not only is the community experiencing growth or recovery from last year, we as an organization are experiencing growth and having good success too this year.

Does that answer?

I mean, I can go into more detail, but is that well actually we're we're gonna meet separately, so we'll we'll go into more detail.

Okay, that sounds good.

Um I do have questions.

I may have to ask Savannah or London's question, but part of our um lodging tax goes toward tourism.

How much money do you know?

Do you know how much money that is a year and then and like how much is it right now?

So it's one percent, which right now it's been give or take around if they want to correct me if you can, around 900,000 to a million dollars.

But again, remember that's split.

Uh so one half of it goes to bid fees and sponsorships, and the other half does go to um tourism capital improvement.

Yeah, so that's so yeah.

So I was just coming up to you right here.

Sorry, in the back.

Um, yeah, just so just to echo what uh Ms.

Rush is saying, yes, we have one percent of our lodging, so we have 11% total of our lodging tax that we charge.

One percent of the 11%, like not one percent of the total receipts, but one percent of the 11% gets set aside, split between split 50-50 between tourism bid fee, which is um you know what she was what she uses to uh attract all of the events that you saw, and then also our tourism capital fund.

The tourism capital fund is really based off of project specific requests, and you've seen some of those before, like the youth baseball tournament that we did at Bowers Park had one um a couple of years ago, things of that nature.

Um, and so current and so both the different funds have different balances in them.

So how is that spent?

So the money's in a lot, what's in it right now for it.

Sure.

So the bid fee is pretty much at the at the lowest amount that we would want to hold it at because what we do every year at the beginning of every fiscal year, we will write the check of the incoming amount to TTS for them to spend on the bid fees.

They then report back to us about what they spent about.

Correct.

So then the um tourism capital right now, uh, it's built up over the last couple of years.

I want to say it's around half a million dollars.

Uh we can look up specifically what that is.

That would be things like actually the obstacle force out of COCO.

That was very tourism with public funds.

And it remains there forever.

Now, one caveat I would like to say about the capital funds is that there is a there is part of a bond issuance payment that is paid out of the tourism capital funds every year.

250,000 is pulled out and paid towards the 2016 debt that we took out for um improvements to Bowers and Sokal Park.

Um we did that you know years ago, and that's that debt service payment's been coming out every year.

Um so that's one thing that does draw the capital fund down a little bit, but I think there's about half a million in there right now.

Spend on capital.

To spend on capital, yes, and with code, it requires it to be a capital expense, yes.

And I do just want to mention uh on so for checks and balances at the beginning of every fiscal year, we put together a projections list for the city of Tuscaloosa on how we are gonna spend those dollars.

Uh we identify potential economic impact, room nights, tax revenue generated, et cetera, um, to help justify those requests.

Like Carly said, they give us the check, we meet with our board every month, they review and approve those requests, and then we also send a monthly report to the city of Tuscaloosa.

Then at the end of the fiscal year, there is another report that we send back to Carly and her team that again articulates how are those dollars used, what was the economic impact, and just for perspective, we probably support close to 100 events just with that um that fund right there, it is critical uh to our everyday operations as well.

If we did not have that financial assistance, we would not be able to bring the events that we do to this community.

And the more that you do, the more lodging taxes.

Correct.

That's that's the hope.

Yes, Mr.

Lanier just whispered in my ear, he said y'all are one of the few agencies that actually brings it.

Yes, I mean again, we have improved.

I I do want to make this point, and I'll be glad to talk to anyone about it.

We've invested in new software, and that software really allows us to dig deeper into our impact.

I can tell you that one just through our our events from last year, we generated a minimum of 1.4 million dollars in tax revenue back into this community.

If I remember correctly, um approximately six to seven hundred thousand of that was lodging tax.

So again, I want to be clear that's community-wide, um, but that lodging tax is a direct uh hit to Tuscaloosa because we know that we're putting people in Tuscaloosa hotels, uh, but we did generate 1.4 million dollars back into this community with tax revenue last year through our events alone.

So I do want to I'm proud of that.

Very proud of that.

Mr.

Chairman, I'd like to say something.

Um first of all, thank you for the really incredible work you guys do with such a small staff, and I'm still embarrassed that Auburn just runs circles around us as far as funding for tourism.

Um exactly what Councillor Near said.

I've been saying this as my colleagues, many of them have been saying it for 20, 25 years, you're the only agency that generates revenue for the city of Tuscaloosa and to the magnitude that you do.

And I just think it's very important to know you're not asking for an increase.

Basically, it's not really level funding if you don't get that 50,000.

Yes, sir.

Um, but with the HBCU, that was huge, three-year commitment, the Gulf South conference commitment to the tennis center, that's huge.

You gotta have those dollars to promote.

And of course, you can't start early enough from the saving center, but anyway, I'm when it comes down to deliberations or whatever, uh, I don't look at this chair Chairman Busby as an increase.

I I look at his level funding because it wasn't that's that's what it was.

I thought it was meant to be, because everyone knows, you know, I worked very hard, and the other members of this council did too to get that 50,000 last year.

So um I'm hoping it'll work out uh that way as well.

But thank you all for for all that you do for the city.

You're really kind of an arm of the city, you're our sales department in a way.

That's how I look at it.

Thank you.

And I'd be glad again, I may sit down with Councilman Busby and talk more later this week.

But if anyone would like to sit down, look at budget or ask any questions, I'd be glad to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Anybody else?

Thank you very much, Kelsey.

The the the downside of a good presentation is we keep you.

When you're when you're ready.

Mr.

Web, just Carney.

Come on up, hey.

Thank you for having me this morning.

We've all talked about this in the past.

Why are we here?

Funding, right?

And interestingly, I heard you speaking with Kelsey about their um reserve account.

Um, I want you all to know we're here because we have no reserve account.

We are in, we remain annually in dire straits, right?

And we are not chicken little out here ringing, you know, false alarm bells.

Um we look at carrying forward probably into this next fiscal year around 200,000.

But the reason we're gonna have 200,000 is because we are no fewer than four lawyers short than what we need as far as bare minimum.

Out of what basis?

Excuse me.

Four four out of what?

For four.

So if we talk about our office does performs multiple functions.

We have lawyers in multiple roles.

What I'm talking about now is our circuit court lawyers.

There are currently four circuit court courtrooms.

Each should have that's where our felony cases are handled, okay?

That's where they're brought up and resolved.

And uh, and each should have no fewer than two lawyers per courtroom.

What we have is for four courtrooms right now, we have five lawyers in total.

Okay, we should have no fewer than two per courtroom.

And in fact, right now we're at a state where it is likely that we're going to one has already put in our notice because of pregnancy complications.

So we will be down to four lawyers for four courtrooms.

Each of those courtrooms have at least high hundreds, if not a thousand to twelve hundred cases apiece.

Okay.

So that's where we are with that.

Um, in addition, we have two other lawyers who are likely of those five, right?

What's now four, we have two others who are likely to be leaving.

One of them, Corey Seal, is most likely to take Judge Alman's position, in my opinion, December 1st.

Okay.

She is our lawyer with nearly eight years of experience.

After me and Paula, and and Paula's our chief assistant, okay.

She's got 30 plus years of experience.

She handles all of our capital cases.

We counted yesterday.

She's got 30 capital murder cases pending currently.

So she handles all those.

It does not leave her much time to help our other lawyers.

So our next most senior lawyer is Corey Seal.

She has got seven and a half years.

She's likely to be leaving in December.

Okay.

I didn't mean to thank us off the case.

So yeah, but but it's important, right?

Because you know who we're going to backfill with, if so, we've just hired five.

That's good.

Except each one of those five, first of all, have to pass the bar, which is not a given.

We'll re we'll learn those results September 26th.

And at least three of them, if not four or five of them, will wind up going directly to circuit court, beginning where, not with more experienced lawyers, but with other zero-year experienced lawyers handling felony cases from day one, everything from felony drug possession cases all the way up to murder cases.

So that's the reality of where we are.

Okay.

So it is, you know, when I come in and say dire straits, it's not, it it's not again chicken little.

And why I on that past slide, it said, you know, because of what?

I know you're focused on public safety, right?

That's one thing, and for whom?

You know, not outlying areas, but who, for your constituents, right?

So what are our responsibilities?

And you see right here, what I've got, I told you we have lawyers that do multiple things.

We have staff that do a great job at multiple things, but we starred two things here that I think are of particular relevance to you.

We prosecute every single solitary felony case that occurs anywhere in Tuscaloosa County, including every single felony case that occurs within the city limits.

Every single felony case that is affecting your constituents.

The next star, what else do we do?

Every single juvenile crime, whether traffic, misdemeanor, or felony, we prosecute every single one of those, again, including all that are here within the city of Tuscaloosa.

So it is bearing directly on the public safety of your constituents.

We talk about the investment in public safety, and I know that the local governments are pleased with and routinely talk about their investment in public safety.

And we are glad for that and have wonderful relationships with our local law enforcement partners, you know.

You can look around a lot of places that don't have the same thing and don't have the same good relationships.

If you look up here though, we talk about investment in public safety.

You see those two light blue things.

Those are the only two things with which we, our office, are not involved.

So the top left is an arrest.

And and and people focus on the arrest as far as public safety.

Every single thing beyond that, down there to the bottom center, is what our office is resolved is involved with as far as resolving a case to get it from arrest through completion.

Okay, so we're absolutely essential to the totality, the big picture of what does it mean to actually do public safety.

So then we ask, as again, as we focus on public safety and public safety for your constituents.

Why am I focused on violent crime cases?

Because that's the crime that burdens your community, our community, your constituents more than any other, and it causes the greatest, it requires the greatest effort from our office workload-wise.

Okay, so where do they come from?

These statistics right here come from the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office's violent crimes unit.

It's a multi-agency task force.

You all know that you have people on this as well, have a co-commander there, and they do a great job.

But so these numbers are from them.

And what you see is this totals 97%.

I think we've got 3% of the violent crime comes from unincorporated uh townships out in the county.

Otherwise, what you see is 8% of our violent crime comes from city of Northport, 30% from the county, 59% is directly affecting your constituents, the public safety of your constituents, and our workload.

What does it take to run an office?

There's our budget for 25-26, the $3.9 million dollars.

This does not in any fashion contemplate our child support unit because we are reimbursed by 100% by the Department of Human Resources for our work there.

So this is just the other prosecution of cases.

You will see of the $3.9 million dollar budget, 89% is payroll.

Okay.

89%.

So 11% overhead.

We are an exceptionally lean, lean run office.

Do a lot with a little.

What are our funding sources?

We say, hey, we're a state office, we're a state office, we're a state office, and we are, but we're a state agency.

But really, what we are is a local office dealing with local issues.

And what you'll see here is only 29% of our funding for this coming fiscal year will come from the state of Alabama.

38% will come from court costs, and we have a 1.3 million dollar shortfall if you just consider those two funding sources right now.

The locals absolutely positively must make this up, um, or we will not make it through the next fiscal year.

Here's our shortfall.

If you brought that 1.3 million dollars forward, that's the shortfall, and you look here, funding at 2024 levels, you see that the colors there, we get 50%.

If Tuscaloosa County does the same thing, it'll leave us 600, give us $650,000, 65,000 from the city of Northport and 100,000 from the city of Tuscaloosa, leaving us a nearly $500,000 deficit, right?

Again, remembering that we have an 89% of our budget goes to payroll.

All right.

And this is not at, hey, I wish we had this platinum office, you know, and we're overstaffed.

This is with bare number of lawyers and people to get the job done.

Okay, so we're looking at a $486,000 deficit coming into this coming fiscal year.

Other communities have recognized, right?

That despite the fact that they have a state agency, their district attorney's offices, these are the other high crime circuits in the state.

And what you'll see is if you look on the left-hand side, that first of all, you'll see which counties we're talking about.

There are 42 circuits in the state.

These are the high crime circuits, and let me say this: this was compiled not by our office, but my good buddy um Rob Roussard, the Madison County District Attorney, because he was going back to his county commission saying we don't have enough money to properly run our office.

Okay, so these are the figures he got from the administrative office of courts.

You look here, and you see if you look at that first column fiscal year, 24 district court felony cases, and you'll see they are um come down Jefferson County, 6,400.

And the important thing there is to see what's their multiplier, what's their caseload of the other circuits compared to our caseload?

So Jefferson County with the highest 2.12 times our felony caseload.

Montgomery County, fewer than 60% of our felony cases.

Mobile County, twice Madison 1.5, Jefferson Cutoff, and that's the Bessemer cutoff area.

They've got a separate office there, fewer than 60% of our caseload.

Okay.

Then you go over to the far right and look at the county funding from those officers.

So this is the local funding that they received because again, those locales are saying, hey, state agency, yes, but this is a local office, right?

That's dealing with local issues.

And so what?

Jefferson County, over eight times our funding with two of our of our local funding with 2.12 times the case load.

And then you continue down Montgomery, again, a little over half of our felony caseload, five and a quarter times our local funding.

Mobile County, twice our caseload, four times of funding.

Madison County, one and a half times our caseload, 3.8 times our funding, and Jefferson cut off their investmenter 3.75 times our funding.

And when I say our funding, if you look at the bottom, I used a 650 figure, that's for our county compared to those other counties, and then 815 is including what the municipal municipalities add here to our office, okay?

And the multipliers we used were not on the 650, but we're rather on the eight hundred and fifteen thousand dollars.

And zero times have ever come and said, hey guys, this is what they get, just give us, right?

What I do is come in and say this is what it costs to run an office.

And if we don't have it, we're not gonna make it.

And we wouldn't have made it this year.

Now I've told you before, several years ago, five approximately, we were down.

We had two thousand dollars.

Remember the no reserve account?

We owed eleven thousand dollars, we had two thousand dollars to the district attorney office's name.

There are no separate accounts, no slush funds, no nothing anywhere.

This is we shoot to zero every year.

You know, we share every month with the with the Tuscaloosa County Commission, um, we share with them every bit, it's a multi-paged um uh expense you know sheet that we have, okay?

Absolutely positively transparent about every single solitary thing that we do.

So, what do we need?

If you look this, when I say 295,000 from the city of Tuscaloosa, that's out of the 486 or 500,000 that I said was a shortfall after what I'm expecting is 24 funding, meaning 100,000 from y'all.

So it would be a total.

Say that again, please.

So it's this 295, you see you see Tuscaloosa up there.

Each of those, you see Northport Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, we did 500,000, rounded up from 486,000.

The projected shortfall into 25,000, 26 at using funding at 24 levels.

Okay, so last year y'all gave 100,000.

Counting that as done, if you will, okay.

What do we need in addition to that?

We need an additional 295,000 from you.

And if you look here, this presupposes that the other uh governmental agencies will also do more than to make up the projected 486,000 shortfall.

So hey, is the 150 you're showing?

Tuscaloosa count.

The city of Tuscaloosa, you're showing 295?

Yes.

Is that after the hundred we have in here?

Correct.

So what we did.

That's after the hundred.

That's right.

So if you took our total local shortfall projected for 25,000, 26, it's 1.3 million dollars.

But it but funding, local funding at the $815,000 level, leaves us approximately $500,000 short.

And so we took the $500,000, multiplied it by the percentage of violent crime coming from each of those governmental geographical areas.

So and that's how we got to the 59% because that's Tuscaloosa's percentage of the violent crime.

You know.

On the last slide, you show uh what the counties deal in Jefferson County was at six million.

You have a breakdown on what the municipalities in Jefferson County give towards that.

I I I think this is it, I've said this multiple times.

I don't think Northport started away two years ago.

I my belief is that Northport was the first municipality in the state of Alabama that voluntarily gave non-earmarked funds.

Okay.

And they started with $30,000.

Is that six million in Jefferson?

Like, do you know of that six million?

My understanding is that every one of those figures that you saw came from counties.

That's exactly right.

100%.

My understanding is that 100%.

Yes, that's my understanding.

Is that 100% of that funding comes from the counties?

So this is the interesting situation in which I find myself, right?

Year after year after year.

And we we can't build widgets.

We can't bring visitors, right?

We can't, all we can go do is to do our job and do the best that we can, right?

And I and I'm gonna talk in a minute about what a good job our folks do.

Um, but here it is, even here.

Look, y'all give you can give $395,000, right?

And and you know what, and we could still be $200,000 short because the other governments don't do more as well.

You know, can we go to the county and say, hey, look, thanks so much.

I mean, I'm can I be truly appreciative for what they do and also say, but look at how we compare to other high crime circuits, right?

Can I be so pleased that the city of Tuscaloosa is only one of two municipalities in the state to my knowledge, and I think that Mobile has just started doing a five year $500,000 because guess what?

Remember, they said at their three million dollars or whatever it was from the county, that was insufficient funding for their office with twice our crime, okay?

Insufficient.

So now what is the city of Mobile says, hey, we're gonna go invest as well because this is our problem as well, you know.

So it is a it is a problem because the fact that any governmental agency does more, I mean, y'all are required to do nothing, right?

Required to do absolutely nothing, but we won't have a district attorney's office.

You know, that's a fact.

You know, and I can go up there and do whatever and bounce between courtrooms myself.

But I mean, fully one third of what we're talking about here, you saw is is of our budget is is unfunded projected into this coming year.

You know, and and again, there is a model for this because other communities have stepped up and said, hey, guess what, man?

Sure, state agency, we can say that all day long.

But at the end of the day, again, local issues, we need to have a local solution, right?

And the local solution can be in part, let's get with our legislators and say what's going on.

But there's no direct, this is important for y'all to understand this.

There's no direct the the legislature doesn't send us dollars directly, they don't send it directly to Birmingham or any other circuit around the state, they send it to the Office of Prosecution Services, and then those dollars are distributed, and in fact they're not even distributed because we don't re ever receive money.

In fact, we're at such a deficit, we send checks twice a month to OPS to pay our payroll.

You know, they're not paying our payroll, as far as it's not covering our payroll, not close.

You know?

So say here, this is what we need this year, but that next thing, collaboration, if the governments don't get together and say, hey, look, you know, and and I never said I want to come in and say, y'all give us this, you know, because I said so.

I've said, hey, let's all get together.

I've in I've invited over and over and over again.

Let's get together, let's agree with what our office needs.

And then the governments get together and say, how are we going to apportion this, right?

How are we going to operate together?

Because again, y'all can go above and beyond.

The county can go above and beyond.

And guess what?

If Northport doesn't do their part, we're still not going to have sufficient funding, and again, shooting to what every single year up to zero, right?

Not to some reserve amount.

What are the consequences?

I've highlighted some of those right there in bold uncertainty of staffing.

The five, think about we just hired five.

Well, how many of them are gonna pass the bar?

I don't know, I hope all five.

It left us a buffer of one, except now we know we've got one leaving, we may have three leaving within the next couple of months.

Okay, and then what does that mean as far as as far as the ability to keep people when they look around and see either no one in the courtroom next to them or another zero-year lawyer standing in the courtroom next to them, you know, and they and here they divide 1,100 cases trying to figure out what's going on, right?

Where's our leadership?

If Corey Seal gets this judgeship, our next most senior lawyer in the office will have five years that deals with the felony cases, we'll have five years of experience.

We'll have five years of experience.

Then we've got a couple of twos, and then we're gonna have zeros.

Which is pretty dang significant to me.

You know, if you're trying to assimilate, I think you'd rather have more and take in news over time as opposed to all of a sudden we dump in five brand new lawyers out of eight who are you know looking around scratching their heads and we're trying to say this is what things happen how things happen.

You know, last year I talk about these operating at extreme efficiencies, leads to catastrophic results, right?

When something goes wrong.

And exactly like I said, the past two years we've had canceled jury weeks because we didn't have enough lawyers to go to court and handle the cases.

Okay?

You know, which is a real issue.

It's not just an issue in the criminal realm, all of every single jury, essentially every single of the 22 jury weeks every year, essentially all of them are dedicated to criminal cases.

So when you've got friends in the business community saying, hey, we've got this lawsuit, it's been pending for seven years.

You know why?

Because there are 4,000 criminal cases pending ahead of it.

Okay.

So it affects all of us.

You know, I've gone before, had the chamber of commerce over there like, heck, we don't need to raise taxes, we don't need to do this, we don't need to do any of that because it's just 1.3 million dollars in total local money.

And for some reason, you know, it's like, well, sorry, man.

Okay.

So and then what do we have again back to our public safety issue?

Then you look next.

Defendants on the street and reoffending.

When cases take years and years to resolve, what happens?

Right?

Where are the defendants?

Some are in jail, overcrowding the jail, that's additional expense to people.

What else is happening?

More difficulty getting jobs, and what else is happening?

Ask chief, where are they?

They're out in the streets over and over and over again, okay, being rearrested, taking your resources and affecting again our public safety.

Then what else we have?

Here's our reputational harm to our schools and businesses.

I think that's without a question.

And then that's a miss typing there.

It says 2026, it's actually 2027.

We don't have enough lawyers to cover the courtrooms we currently have, okay.

In January of 2027, there's going to be a new circuit court judge here requiring two more lawyers.

So whose idea is it to get another judge if we don't have enough lawyers to deal with?

You'll have to talk to that.

You know what?

I don't think it has to be an either-or, but I'll tell you that's it's it's it's the issue has not been to me a deficit of judges, the issue has been a deficit of lawyers.

And I said, if we'd had three lawyers per courtroom, heck, we can't keep two.

If we had three lawyers per courtroom, I believe we could have netted out an additional 400 cases per year, taking that 4,000 down that keeps that stays as our typical number, you know, decrease it over time and get it to a manageable state.

Yeah, I've I've long said that.

But we've been in a position where, hey, you know, um, I'm doing this every single year, coming out, having the you know, pray that we make it through and wondering how in the world is it gonna happen.

And let me tell you though, I can assure you this our office is a good investment.

Um, and failure of funding is not in because of any failure of our office.

If you look at the things, the things that we control, lots of things within the system we don't control because there are judges, defense lawyers, etc., right?

Multiple parties involved, the things we control, our grand jury, completely current.

We were the only grand jury in the state.

I don't know how many in the United States can say that they are completely current.

It was said to me before I started that we couldn't do it, and we've gotten there and maintained it since the fall of 2017, one year after I started, has been completely current ever since, other than COVID, when we didn't have grand jurors come, any jurors come to the courthouse for a year.

Okay?

So we've not just gotten there and arrived there, we have maintained it.

Right?

What else?

Our second second chance program, what do we do?

It's a diversion program.

Y'all may be familiar with diversion, gives people second chance opportunities, our low-level drug and property crimes.

Okay, good.

You know what?

Everybody said you can't do this without side grants outside funding.

Do you know we have a model program working with multiple relationships with the chamber, uh, Shelton State, etc.?

Okay, and you know how many out the outside dollars we take?

Zero.

County commission pays for two-thirds of one Indian Rivers staff.

So they pay 45,000 dollars a year for a dedicated Indian Rivers staff person.

Otherwise, we take zero outside funding.

Find another diversion program that can save that, and then and then that has the success that we have.

And finally, our courtroom successes, despite the fact of this deficiency of lawyers, the folks that we've got are really good and have been.

And you know what?

When I was a criminal defense lawyer, I could tell you this for sure, Tuscaloosa was a laughing stock, literally, okay.

And and routinely they were trying drug cases and losing.

I would say at a tick of 80%, okay?

Now we try routinely murders, attempted murders, shooting into occupied buildings, shooting into occupied vehicles, child sex cases, and it's gotta be 80 plus percent convictions instead.

Okay.

Focus on the violent crime and the repeat offenders, people are hurting the people in our community, okay.

So if you have any questions, happy to answer them.

That's a lot.

We appreciate you coming.

It is a lot.

Anyone have any questions or coming?

I appreciate it pretty much.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate your interest.

Thank you.

Let's see.

I uh promised Mr.

Fayel we're going to give 10 minutes at least to uh Tuscaloosa Theater revenue.

Come on up, and then we'll uh we'll take a break.

And Chief, after a short break, we'll want to get hi, how are you?

Good morning.

A little bit of a lighter subject.

My name is Adam Miller, and I'm the managing director at Theater Tuscaloosa.

And I want to thank you, especially Mr.

Fale, for inviting me to be here today to tell you a little bit more about our organization.

And like any great actor, I'm going to stick to my script to make sure that we make the most of our time together here today.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Theater Tuscaloosa, we are an independent 501 C3 nonprofit community theater whose mission is to elevate the quality of life in West Alabama by producing world-class theatrical educational programs that encourage all people to engage in the art of life theater on stage, behind the scenes, in the audience, and in the classroom.

This year we'll be producing our 55th season themed Finding Home.

After a two-year absence from our home venue, the Bean Brown Theater at Shelton State, we're finally back in a beautifully renovated space and producing shows including Alabama Story, Scrooge the Musical, Arsenic and Old Lace, Peter and the Starcatcher, and Big Fish.

So, how do we afford to produce world-class theatrical programs here in Tuscaloosa, Alabama?

Well, here's Theater Tuscaloosa by the numbers.

Our overall annual budget for the 25-26 season is 343,000.

Let's break that down into income and expense.

Where does that money come from?

So, first income.

Our earned income is projected to be approximately 163,000 or 48% of the budget.

This includes revenue that comes from season ticket sales.

We currently have 380 subscribers and growing.

Individual show ticket sales, and we expect to sell about 6,000 individual tickets this season.

Educational programming tuition, play bill advertising, and concessions.

Our contributed income is projected to be approximately 180,000 or 52% of the budget.

This includes public grants from the city of Tuscaloosa, a first-time ask from Tuscaloosa County, thanks to a suggestion from Mr.

Fayle, and continuing funding from the Alabama State Council on the arts.

We also receive grants from foundations and donor-advised funds.

Corporate sponsorships from businesses like Bank First, Afflink, Mercedes, and others bring in approximately 43,000.

And we have more than 170 people who donate individually to our annual giving campaign, which raises more than $60,000 each year.

Now, on to expense.

The single largest expense, 73% of our budget, is direct production costs, 250,000.

This includes paying for the royalties to production for each show.

The designers and the creation of costumes, sets, lights, sound, and props, paying for directors, stage managers, playbills, instructors for our educational programs, and more.

What you won't hear that we pay for is actors, and that's because all of our actors are volunteers from our community.

The remainder of the budget goes into the boring stuff like paying accountants, advertising, fundraising, and other administration.

So that summarizes the money that comes in and out of Theater Tuscaloosa's accounts, which are totally separate from Shelton State.

But it's important to understand that our decades-long partnership with Shelton State makes everything else that we accomplish possible.

What's not on the budget is the in-kind support that we receive from Shelton.

This includes first and foremost foremost, the five full-time employees and two part-time employees, which include an executive producer, Tina Turley, who just retired and will be replaced soon, a managing director, that's me, a technical director, a scene shop foreman, a costumer, and two part-time support staff.

So very little of Theater Tuscaloosa's budget goes into paying payroll expenses and none of it supports our full-time staff.

So with all the support in our community, why is it important for the city to continue to provide agency funding?

Because the truth is that no matter how popular production is, it's very, very rare for it to make money.

For example, this summer we produced Anastasia, one of our most popular shows every people auditioned to be in this show.

We cast 40 of those people and more than 2300 people bought tickets.

And by the way, we recently did a study of the 5,000 people who've come over the last year to Theater Tuscaloosa and they represented 90 different cities throughout Alabama and 21 different states.

So while I can't flash the flashy numbers that Kelsey Rush can about you know hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars, I can tell you that we do have a positive impact on the economics of our city by bringing in folks the show Anastasia brought in more than sixty thousand dollars but it cost almost $9,000 to produce to keep ticket prices affordable for the people of West Alabama and by the way our top ticket price is only $26.

It is critical that we continue to receive funding from the city.

For the last two decades we have been level funded each year at $15,000 and look at all we've been able to accomplish with that amount represents less than 5% of our annual budget but it helps magnify every other donation we receive.

Having the city's stamp of approval on our work encourages other businesses and individuals to chip in too please consider making a modest increase in the city's funding this year.

With an increase of just five thousand dollars from the city imagine how much more impact Theater Tuscaloosa could make in our community thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have thank you Adam Thank you sir I don't have any questions just a comment it would be real easy to cut out some of these agencies but I think arts entertainment is a big part of Tuscaloosa I think it may be continue to support things.

Yes sir studies show that having a vibrant arts scene is critical to quality of place which is the Chamber of Commerce has identified as one of our top priorities as a community and we're proud to be part of of helping to build a qua uh high quality of place that attracts more people and more industries to our community.

Thank you.

Thank you Adam appreciate you coming in for sure thank you very much for your time let's take a short break and uh reconvene back in here in 10 minutes or less and uh we'll start working into uh farm police

But I'm for the open book.

I'm for all about that.

Okay.

Okay, let's uh let's go back into session here from our break.

Yes, sir.

Thanks for watching.

What page are you on here?

One forty-five.

Just for the public, we're pro police.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

I know y'all looked over my budget, and I'll answer any questions you have.

Sir.

You're pretty happy with what you're doing.

Yes, sir.

Some big numbers there, Chief.

Why don't you start?

Um why don't you start and what's your plan of presentation?

I'll just answer any questions.

By describing the shape of the department.

What you're dealing with.

And what big big sources are not big uses of funding you think that requires, and then we'll start taking it down from there.

Yes, sir, we'll do.

Um, one of the biggest things is, you know, we're slotted for two hundred and sixty-five positions at the school's police department, and those are sworn positions.

Uh, we currently have two hundred and forty-four of those positions filled with working officers.

Um, we have twenty-one vacancies.

Uh, we have thirteen in training, and four either on FMLA or military.

Um, in non-swore positions, because we do have two parts of the police department.

We have ninety-three positions.

Um, currently ninety of those are filled.

We have three vacancies.

Um, an auxiliary police officer, a auxiliary SRO officer, and a crossing guard.

Um, so on our civilian side, we are almost fully staffed, and we are constantly recruiting on our sworn side.

So nine of ninety-three on the on the civilian side, and uh two forty-four, but that includes probably you know, when you reported a month or two ago, you were at two thirty out on uh on duty, another fourteen on tip leave, all that stuff.

Yes, so about the same place.

Yes, sir.

We've been maintaining.

If you look at our our stats probably for the past year, we're maintaining we'll get two or three officers, we'll lose an officer.

Um the the problem is you know, we have a very high standard.

But 230 is where it's shaking 230 on duty is where it's shaking out 245-ish on the payrolls.

Yes, sir, is where it's staying.

Um, and I know that some other departments across the country are to parts across the state.

You're seeing where they're getting tons of officers in.

We focus on quality.

I refuse to fill all of our positions with people that are going to get us on the news that are not going to treat the citizens of Tuscaloosa right.

So I do want to point out to the council that while you do see other cities fill in positions, we're not low in our standards here in Tuscaloosa.

That's something very important to me as a commander of making sure we have good quality people.

Um we have done different areas.

You've seen our drone program.

I think that's a that's a success.

The drone program.

Um we have four pods, two of them are already installed.

Uh concrete is being poured for the other two locations.

So before the end of the month, all those will be up and operational.

Um, and they those drones are you know beating officers to some calls because officers have to face traffic in non-emergency situations and emergency traffic in emergency traffic.

Um so those are becoming the officers are really enjoying working with those, so that's a very good investment by the city, and we appreciate that from the mayor and council.

My memory is that was that four four drones or six drones?

Uh as a total of four nine drones is what the city purchased for our inside pods at all times.

Um what'll happen.

Didn't we shift six sworn over to the six drone operators?

For drone operators, yes, sir.

Yeah.

So those that are in the 9093.

Yes, sir.

Yes.

Where are we?

All six hired?

All six are hired.

Um there we're fixing to go to a 24 hour shift.

Um they had to go through training once the new drone pods got here.

We make sure they were up to date and um highly trained on that.

So that'll be shifted in the next couple weeks to where we'll be fully operational around the clock in our cyber division.

Okay, and the the was it two park rangers?

Two park rangers.

They are your sworn side, they are non-sworn.

Um we hired one and then the other one is in the works.

So one starts Saturday.

Um, we've had a lot of problems hiring at that position.

We tried to make that an A post position, um, but the I I guess the pay wasn't there for people, and so we wanted to get those.

They'll they'll have a city vehicle, they'll have a radio, um, and officers will of course monitor you know what they do, and if they need anything, we'll be there to help them.

And they'll rotate from park to park each day.

Okay.

Um, and I I'm I'm sorry for interrupting you early, but I want to um I think as we get down to it, not not at this minute, but as we move into it.

I think and certainly open to yours in the mayor's or attacked in on that.

But to me, financial the elephant in the living room seems to be that delta between the 245 that you can kind of consistently stay at, and the two sixty-five that we've got.

Yes, sir.

You and I talked in session a couple a month or two ago, and we figured those officers are about 174,000 a year.

When you when you pour everything in, pay the salary, you gotta outfit them, you got to train them all that.

But the piece I want to come back to, I don't want to go off it now, but that's that's 20 positions at 174 grand.

But we're funding that is sitting not deployed into officers, and it comes back around, and we can have Ms.

Stanford's brief that later about how that uh works its way back into the system.

But that's if Mayor, if you or Chiefs, that's what I see as the strategic level um financial piece because that's three and a half million dollars.

And that yes, sir, and circulates back into that RSA.

And I'm about to depart for Montgomery, but um, and then I know Chief and the standards can follow up.

Yes, sir, you're correct.

We do normally in budget years have somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 FTEs within TPD, excuse me, that do not in the end get billed.

Now that creates a lot of salary savings that the year in end of the fiscal year is realized in our surplus transfer, and that surplus transfer is what uh funds our ability to do capital purchases, infrastructure purchases, etc.

And that surplus transfer is what uh funds our ability to do capital purchases, infrastructure purchases, et cetera.

Um this year, I think we spent close to a million dollars on PD vehicles, take home vehicles.

Uh large portion of this year's a large portion of that came from the surpluses that were generated by TPD.

So in many respects, they do find their way back into TPD's budget.

Over the last few years, as Chief described, we've eliminated FTEs within PD to fund other programs.

Like eliminated that what is uh full-time equivalents, full-time positions um within TP.

We worked down from 290 or 292.

291 or five years.

And that's been able to fund the drone drone program, the rapid uh pro drone response program and others.

My concern is if we keep dwindling that amount by massive numbers.

I believe there's going to be a time in place, especially in the years following RSA conversion, we're gonna want to ramp up again our hiring of patrol officers.

I don't want us to get so whittled down that when that time comes, all of a sudden now we're searching for a million or two million or three million in new salary line items.

So we're trying to reflect that balance.

And one other point I'd like to make on that, Mary, is also we may hire five or six right out the gate.

So that number from twenty may jump down to 15.

But the problem is like we cut one loose yesterday because it didn't meet our standard.

So if we hire seven, realistically, three are gonna make it out on the streets by themselves.

So we overhire because they're qualified on paper, we're gonna give them a shot, we think that they're gonna be good officers, but then they can't meet that standard.

If we go down um super low to where you know we we're like, oh, we're full.

Well, we know some of those we hire are not gonna get there.

We have to have that surplus because we know officers are gonna fail out.

You know, we set a high bar, and we have to have that flex room to have officers come in that we know just like the one yesterday that you know we fired.

It's hey, you're not gonna make it, you're not our standard, but if you don't have that flex room, then you're cutting yourself down even more if that makes sense.

Because you know, next week we get a class of 15 officers.

We don't know.

Um, they're doing a lot of recruiting in the city.

We have officers that go to job fairs all over the place.

Um Sarah's group is doing an amazing job.

I've seen more billboards, you know, they're up constantly.

Um social media campaigns, you know, there's all kinds of things, but we have to have that number of positions because we want to fill them all.

But if we dwindle down too much, then you set the new standard.

And one thing I've been the chief for almost six years, I've learned once some something's taken away, it's very hard to get back because the operating budget level funds most years.

And so if those positions go away, and then we go to RSA, and I want to restress this council of the importance of going to RSA.

Right now, if if let's just say I've got an officer, I'm gonna pick out a county so I don't start any county feuds.

If there's an officer in Jefferson County, he's a five-year officer and he wants to come to Tuscaloosa.

There's no way he is going to leave five years of retirement just out there in the wind.

Because when he comes with us, we're under our own pension right now.

October one next year, that's not the case.

We're moving to RSA.

At that point, that deputy from Jefferson County can come down here with his five years intact, and that is huge.

And so I believe, yes, we will.

We will lose some next year.

We will have some people that have done their career and they're ready to retire and they're gonna take it to the house and enjoy retirement.

We may have an officer too that says, hey, I'm gonna go somewhere else now.

But I believe our return of influx is gonna be much greater.

And I believe we will fill those positions at that point because now we're at a level playing field.

We're not there right now with RSA because we don't have it.

Once we get that dynamic in there, we're at that level paying field of where we need to be at that's why we passed it.

I agree, sir.

We're very grateful for that.

Hell the doubters it's okay.

So I still get y'all aren't really gonna do that, right?

I think we got seven boat, well, six, but the PD is very aware that we're moving forward with with that.

That's on like Donkey Kong.

They so and I won't dwell here a lot longer, but again, I do think this is the elephant in the living room issue.

And we can have many more conversations in other four.

Yes, sir.

But I and I uh I do I do recognize the reality of the dynamic that once you let go of something, it's hard to get it back.

Okay, I I I'll grant you that.

But I'll also tell you these these seven people have not voted no on a single thing that deals with getting the police department, but they've been able to convince us.

But they've been able to convince us.

Yes, sir.

I agree, and we appreciate the support.

So when the mayor says if we decide to ramp up and hire, I thought we were ramping up.

We are rent.

I think we I can't speak for the mayor, but I think what he's speaking of is once we go to RSA and we can compete in the market.

That's I think that's his terminology of ramping up.

We are doing everything.

I have two time full recruiters.

We go all over the country.

Um we hit militaries when when they're coming out the bases, we hit colleges, universities.

Um we hit any recruiting events anywhere anywhere in the southeast we're going and when we're hitting those.

But our primary thing is you know, the the new people coming in, it's the retirement.

They're looking at retirement these days.

When I started 20 years ago, I didn't even care about retirement.

I was getting a paycheck, and there's a waiting list to get on with any police department in the country.

Now you can pick and choose where you want to go.

The the country dynamics have changed, and it's really hurt in police recruiting, and you can go from department to department.

It doesn't matter anymore.

It used to take over a year and a half to get you hired.

Now I get you hired in two and a half months.

Um team does an amazing job.

Uh Melissa, that she was talking about she's available to us 24-7 to get people pushed through.

So I believe what he was speaking of was once we go to RSA, we have a a full campaign where I can steal officers from other agencies.

Let's just call it what it is.

At that point, we hope to fill those numbers very quickly.

Rough order of magnitude.

Once we cross into the RSA zone, and and we are there is no say everybody knows it's not a secret.

It's perfectly expected that a lot of the older officers, more senior officers, have of course stayed around because that's in sight.

Yes, sir.

Right?

And so there it's not going to come as a surprise that we experience some sort of step down as that as that occurs, whether that's probably not month one, but maybe sometime in year one, maybe year two.

What rough order of magnitude you think we're gonna be dealing with on the downside?

Now you you talked about the upside.

The upside is we've we've got the competitive um edge to compete now on the downside.

What do you think our step down will be over, say the first year and a half?

I think we have we may lose 15.

Um we may have you know everybody knows Steve Rice is going to be in Thailand.

Um so we'll lose him for sure.

We don't want to.

Um we're gonna we're gonna lose some other top-level command staff that's been here 30 years.

Um, some of those captain positions we've looked at, we did an entire study at the PDA as you you know very detailed.

Um, we're gonna eliminate some of our uh captain positions.

Um that'll also help keep up keep people in the officer ranks because I believe we're a little top heavy and uh hard look needs to be taken at that, and we've done that.

So some of those top positions won't be um refueled as far as some of our captains, we can move people around and realign um so we don't have to promote as many.

And we're around 13 or 14 captains.

I think we got 14, sir.

And so 15, okay.

That's um I'm hearing numbers bigger than that.

So I'm I'm yeah, we we've called it.

We put out a survey um last year, and we're hearing everything from 25 to 15 to 13.

But when I've talked to some of the people, like, well, I don't know, I'm just gonna see.

And I think a lot of people that you know are like, oh, I'm gonna retire, but then you look at retirement and you're kind of like, well, I made stick around for another year because with RSA, I think your your retirement goes up, I believe two percent a year.

Um so we we don't know 100%, but I more than 15 in those first three or four months would surprise me.

That's good to hear.

The um last question on this, and then I'm gonna kind of let you move on.

The rest of yours gonna be easy.

Uh I I can sit down right now if you want me to, sir.

Um I think we're coming up on the expiration.

I believe it's a 3.2 million dollar uh retention bonus that we put in for two years, right?

And that's yes, sir.

I believe it's all last month that maybe it was actually up last month.

So what are we gonna see as a result of the expiration?

We had a couple officers.

I know we had one that left.

Um he was waiting for it to be up to leave.

Um, you know, I think RSA and and that people, you know, they're going to stay.

Um, I think anybody, we had a couple people not take that knew that they were gonna leave, but I don't think you're gonna see a huge effect of that's up, everybody's trying to leave at this point because they do know RSA is coming, and I feel like the the retention bonus was also that stop gap to get us to RSA.

Okay.

So you don't you're not expecting anything significant.

Because of that, no, sir.

It's already up.

He went down to Florida to fly, and his big concern was was that bonus up, so we'd have to repay it.

Okay.

Why don't we just um why don't we just now kind of move down through the the cover page of your section?

You're looking for a total in 2026.

Mayor's recommendation is just under 47 million, 46.9.

Yes, sir.

And that's uh 6.7 percent increase.

Where is most of that increase found?

Uh you're gonna see the increase we as um the council is aware.

Um before there was a police dispatch and a fire dispatch, that is all absorbed under the new public safety dispatch, but that is under police.

So we did have a large move over of I believe 14 or 13 fire dispatchers that now fall under our police budget with that overtime.

So that's a shift of uh them coming over to underneath my budget at this point.

Um walk me through that slower.

Okay, so basically we had police and fire both have their own dispatch.

We used to be combined, yes, sir.

Uh month and a half ago.

Obviously, uh one of the discussions going on big time inside the city right now is the placement of fire and police under public safety department.

Um is that reflected in this budget?

No, sir, it's not.

The but the when you talk about the dispatchers we felt like it was going to be the best thing to do to have when the 911 withdrawal came where we take back our 911 calls.

Um from taking those back.

Yeah, we answer our own 9-1 calls now from yes, from E911.

So we answer those now, but the only way to do that was to combine police and fire back to have adequate coverage to do that.

Um police and fire were split probably four years ago, I believe, five years ago.

But the only way to answer our 91 calls adequately was for us to come back together.

So with that, we were going to have a standalone unit.

That near police was not over or fire.

We wanted somebody who was an expert in dispatch to run dispatch.

Um Miss Burns was hired in that position as the director of public safety communications.

However, with that, our ORI number that all of our warrants and databases are tied to have to fall under police.

So that had to fall under the police department under our umbrella of operations.

So Miss Burns falls under Chief Clark, so all of dispatches under the direct command of the police department.

Um so their salaries and overtime for that unit had to fall under us as well.

So that is a percentage of this increase.

Mr.

Bus.

Will that be in the same facility it's at now?

Or are they gonna be able to do that?

Yes, they are still at the 911 center, yes, sir.

So okay.

But we just we answer our own phone calls now.

Why is that the giant jump in lease payments?

Uh no, sir.

Lease payments.

No, sir.

That that's the salaries and all that.

But I mean, for 14 people with benefits and overtime that that is our lease.

Came over under us, yes, sir.

Um the lease payment jump was our body camera contract went up.

Um what contract?

Body cameras or axon body cameras.

Um that went up, and then also Peregrine was 127,000.

Um that went up as well.

So those two contracts were in well.

But that we put it in the 75 budget, right?

But that's the jump as far as part of the what was inserted of why it went up over last year.

And then our capital outlay for drones was 135,000.

So that's another reason why that went up as well.

Well, we leasing those drones.

No, sir, it's capital outlay.

We we own those.

We do a five-year install or six-year installment on them, but we do own them, and then year three, we get all new drones as well.

Um, technology, the one thing with it.

If you buy it outright and you don't have contracts that um basically fix them and replace them, then in two years you're outdated, and the city would lose money.

So we do have a six-year contract with that.

And uh those are our two big jump areas are the lease payments and then the capital outlay.

The the the huge, I mean, those are the big percentage ones, the the big one in uh absolute dollars, of course, with salaries and benefits.

Yes, sir.

The salary benefits is gonna be the step raises, the colas, and then the added personnel.

Okay.

And then of course, overtime is always one of our uh our big numbers that we're working very hard to try and get down as much as possible.

Um, but I would like to remind everybody that uh the more successful the city is, the more events we put on, the more overtime we have to work.

So um, you know, a lot of times, you know, I we do have a large overtime budget.

Um we wish we didn't have to work all that overtime.

That's felt throughout the department, but the more events we have, the more security you do have to have for that reason.

But um, this year we're at 77% of our use right now with two home games left.

So we're doing very 77% right now of our overtime has been used.

Um we have two home games left, so we're doing very good on overtime budget this year.

Chief, you know I'm gonna say this.

Uh yes, sir.

You know, we know where it's coming.

Um over time.

I I understand there's gonna be overtime, it's just the nature of it, but I really appreciate the fact that Major Bayance has come up with a plan to cut back on it.

This is and I know you can't cut it all out.

I'm not silly.

I've been there, but I I would appreciate if he and other people continue to work on cutting that back.

I think that would be to your benefit.

Yes, sir.

And uh I know you're not gonna get rid of all of it.

I understand, but we all know that from time to time we can find a spot to cut some back.

Yes, sir.

And the test pilot program for that is working.

Um we're getting good feedback from that.

We're getting foot good feedback from the bar owners.

Um, so it it so right now that is successful.

Of course, when you're talking about ball game weekends or something extra, we always have to bring additional people in.

Sure.

But we do feel like that's going to be effective, and um, I'm very thankful for him for coming up with that model and thinking outside the box.

Yeah, you may not have as big a crowd to deal with well, we could have angry crowds, I'm not really sure.

So I had a cancellation already feeling the pinch.

What else you want to tell us about what's going on in the department?

I'm good if you're good.

I'm gonna cut the touch all the high points, you know, the overtime, the drones, uh, and our areas of uh of where we went over this year and our goals and plans.

So uh I I do have one actual last question for me.

Yes, sir.

When you look at moving into RSA, yes, sir.

What are the uncertainties that you and that you're dealing with right now on not knowing what to expect?

I I think it's the you know, we've got 15 to 30 people that said they might leave.

I think we're closer to that 15 mark.

It's for us our RSA is personnel.

Um filling the roles and the jobs.

Man, we've got an amazing department.

We've got guys ready to step up.

That's one thing I love about the police department is if the captain's off work, that lieutenant does her job for the day, and councilman Fail, you know, you you understand this.

Um the learning curves, I don't feel like are as deep because we do train down all the time.

So we're not worried about the retirements.

I wish the the ones that are are leaving, you know, happy retirement, they deserve it.

But ours is just staffing, changing our staffing model um as far as some of the people leaving and and realigning some divisions, but it's just you don't know the exact personnel number until it happens.

Um, and then we'll pivot and do what we need to do to get people in because I believe people are coming in, but there's gonna be that stop gap um between when we do have some people that are retired and getting people hired because the process takes two months, and they got through our th our training just because they're uh a deputy in Jefferson County, they can't hit the streets for us day one.

They gotta go through our you know, uh 14 weeks uh training at the department and make sure that they're up to our standards.

So it's just the unknown personnel issue.

Uh other members of the committee or non-committee, any questions?

I just I'm always amazed having spent 25 years there.

I'm just amazed at where you all are at today.

Thank you.

And I appreciate that.

It's not all you and you know that.

No, sir, not but it goes back to some men that really drug it out of the old-fashioned days.

Yeah, we got some amazing people that work there with amazing ideas, and it's an honor to lead them every single day.

Thank you.

Chief, can I I want to ask a quick question?

Hey, thanks again for what y'all do.

I mean y'all do a great job for our city.

I've got a question.

I mean, I look at the travel and education budget.

I know educate and continuing aid is important.

I guess that it jumped about 250,000 in the mayor's recommendation based on travel education previously.

What's what's driving that you know?

No, sir.

That should be fire.

We I think are at 60,000 total.

Oh 60,000.

I'm looking at the wrong line, I'm sorry.

Yes, sir.

Our state pretty, I think our state's level funded for that.

You're right.

I'm sorry, I'm looking at the five.

Yes, sir.

I'd love 250,000 if y'all can find it though.

I'm sure Carly can find it.

I'm looking at it.

No, sir.

We're level funded on that.

We um one thing we do do is we send a lot of our our training staff to to schools where they can be the trainer.

Um it saves money that way because then they can come back and train all of us rather than sending individuals to a bunch of different schools.

It's cheaper in the long run, and we you know can control the level of training at that point.

So I can write I was looking down at the wrong.

I was fixing to get really excited.

So thank y'all so much.

Thanks, Chief.

Well, I should have went back to we're gonna keep the protocols, right?

No.

Good morning, council.

Good morning, Chief.

Welcome, Chief.

Laid up, easy to do.

All right.

Thank you, Chief.

First page here, our organizational chart of our administrative staff.

The second page of that shows you what a battalion one.

So we we work three shifts, A, B, and C.

So you see there on page two, it's battalion one A shift.

We also have a battalion two, which is also the A shift.

So this just gives you at least an idea of what our shifts look like day to day and the requirements that are set for us.

So we have a 69 personnel requirement per shift.

And so that includes the battalion chief all the way to our 12 uh stations that are there and include everything.

So just to start out, Tusk Lucifier and Rescue.

I think we're most recognized by by what we do, whether it's extinguishing fires, uh cutting people out of vehicles, the medical calls that we do, but there's a lot of other things that I think don't get a spotlight in our department.

We do everything from emergency medical prevention.

We have social workers that actually are kind of putting those needs.

Uh when the guys make those calls, they see a need, they reach out to our social workers, those social workers then reach out and basically facilitate what those people's needs are with the needs that are out there and the abilities of our partners in the community that work with us.

The other things that we do, we do education, whether it's fire drills at schools, adult fire drills, adult fire extinguisher training that our fire marshal offices do, both industrial and school related.

We do training with compliance on medication.

So whether we run across a patient on a medical call that's having some of those issues, that's what some of our prevention personnel do is help facilitate and help get those people a better quality of life so they're not calling 911 every time something happens.

Um we're always there to respond, but if we can prevent that before the response, that's what we try to do.

We also teach community CPR classes, um, first aid classes, bleeding control, all of those things we do in a calendar year.

Some of the other things that that we that have been highlighted recently, especially with with some of the help of of the council and the mayor would be our specialty teams.

So the specialty teams that we have within the department, we have a hazmat, hazmat decon units, urban search and rescue, um, which was highlighted on the deployment to Texas, and we definitely appreciate that, and the ability for us to do that.

I think we talk a lot about recruiting and things like that.

That's that's the kind of things that recruit for a fire department, is allowing those guys to have that training and the and the efforts are allowed to go out there and actually do the job that they signed up for.

Chief, if if you would back up one step.

Yes, sir.

I mean, we're we're all pretty familiar with uh police department manning because that's been in the in the limelight for the last two or three, four years.

What what's your department personnel wise?

Personnel wise, that's what I was going through.

We've got 266 personnel.

Um that's what that org chart kind of the layout is to see where those personnel fit in.

That's why that's why I presented that to you today.

Just to just so you have an idea of how that fits in.

So out of 266, 232 are line personnel, which means they're actually on the trucks making the emergency calls.

30 uh excuse me, 23 of those would be staff.

So that would be our training division, fire marshal's office, um, logistics, all of those are counted in our staff positions.

And so to continue on, the Swiftwater team, wilderness, dive, structural collapse, and airport responses are all encompassed in my department.

Um all of these things make up Tuscaloose Fire and Rescue, and I think that's one of the things that that doesn't get highlighted enough is the diversity that we that we provide to the community.

Um if we want to get started in the budget, this was a level funding year.

Um, so so you can look across the budget.

There's not a lot of uh I think it's already been discussed that the fire dispatch was removed from our budget this year.

Numbers on that, please.

Okay, call them wide.

You're showing a drop of 395,000 971 overall.

What is salary reimbursement?

Salary reimbursement.

So there's an agreement with through the through the state through Mercedes Benz that we get reimbursed for those personnel.

So that's what we get from the state based on that station we put up.

Yes, sir.

And that's based off four uh four lieutenants, four drivers, and four firefighters is what that is.

So that feels fills one of the trucks at that station.

So that's what that reimbursements for.

Um if we look at the top line of of your salary and benefits, it goes down 423,000.

Is that the movement of this dispatch shift that Chief Lankley was talking about?

Yes, that that would be the majority of that movement.

Um we've also had some senior personnel that are no longer with the department that that's that's kind of absorbed into that as well.

What is your recruiting dynamic like right now?

Oversimplified, you know, it used to be the police were beating the bushes, and y'all had people standing in line.

Where is it now?

We do uh they're not standing in line like they used to, uh like Chief Blankley just discussed when I came on, it was there was a list of 200 plus, and you were lucky to get an interview and to get a get a spot.

Um now I've got a list of about 49 that I looked at just yesterday.

Um it's still there.

This the still you know Tuscaloosa is still a department that people it's a big department that does a lot of things that that still allows a firefighter to do the job, and so that appeals to people that are uh that that are in it for the right reasons.

Um so we still have the appeal for guys to come to this department, and to me, that's you talk about recruiting.

That's that's one of the best things that we've got is being able to take care of the personnel that we have.

I think that's the best recruiting tool that the fire department can do is take care of the employees that we have because sending those guys to classes, sending those guys to the fire college, they sell our department for us, and I want to continue doing that.

And the the same question that I put to Chief Blankley, as as we approach a session into RSA, what are the things you're either apprehensive about, uncertain about, or looking forward to?

Well, I think the the big question in the area is how many people are actually gonna sign that paperwork on the day we convert.

I think that's the biggest thing for me because there's there's a potential of 60 guys in my department that could leave day one.

That's that's a huge gap.

You look at the 60 guys that could sign the paperwork day one, the 49 people on the list, we would be at a deficit at that point.

Um we have to prepare for the worst, and that's what we're trying to do.

Uh, we're trying to train up, and that reflected in the budget.

You'll see uh the training.

I think counselor crow asked the question about the budget uh for train travel and education.

That's that's where the majority of mine my focus was uh to try and get that from from my personnel to make sure that our drivers are upcoming officers have that training and are developed to where if they're put in that seat, they're ready to go.

So Chief are most of these I shouldn't say most of them, there are many of them in administrative positions, or we're gonna lose a lot of firefighters.

We're gonna lose a lot of firefighters, yes, sir.

Um, I mean, you just look at the at the ratio, um about 10 percent staff positions, uh maybe not that high, but if if we lose 60 60 personnel, there's a lot of older lieutenants, drivers, captains, six of that six of the eight six of the eight battalion chiefs are eligible to retire at that date.

Is that on day one?

Yes, sir.

What are you doing to prepare for that?

Uh we are training, we're doing the best.

We've we've dialed up uh the training division has begun monthly training sessions to actually whether it's radio communication, on-scene reporting, uh strategy and tactics, we're getting that across the department to make sure that those firefighters I mean in terms of the pool of you said you had 49 standing in line out there to interview and they've already been interviewed, they're on the list for eligible candidates.

Okay, and so if 60 left follow shortly following RSL, you got yep 49 already interviewed and deemed um hirable.

They still have to go through a background check and a uh polygraph.

And that's HR, yes.

HR and PD is who they do the polygraph with.

Uh we are also given another uh test in October, and we're gonna we're working with the fire college right now to actually give so so before they can become a candidate with us, they have to take the candidate physical agility test.

So that's something that everybody in the state doesn't do, but we do here to keep our standards to what they are.

Um and that discourages that discourages a lot of people from from coming here.

So that's that's I would say that that may contribute some to our numbers going down.

Right.

And uh and it's that's not gonna change, you know.

People are getting heavier and fires are burning faster, and that's that's not gonna change in the next coming years just because we're going to RSA.

Um so that's what we're preparing for.

But working with the fire college, we've got some recruiting opportunities there to host some of those CPAT tests and actually get uh some more people on our list.

Uh I I've I sidetracked you keep going where you were going if you were going somewhere.

So the preparation that we're doing is basically just getting our guys ready.

The training divisions that we have, we're getting those guys ready and making sure that if we do have that huge drop in our in our seasoned experienced personnel, that we've got those guys.

You know, this could be the last year that we've got some of those guys that can contribute to the knowledge of those young guys coming up, and so that's what this year we're taking advantage of that and trying to get the most out of it before we lose those guys.

If you want to go through the budget, uh the two things that are that are to take note of is also the the travel and education line that was increased 200 and 250,000, 253,000.

Um that was requested basically to we're getting behind on some of those specialty teams.

Not only is that a local response, but that's a regional response, and in order for us to get the reimbursement from the state on those teams and our responses, we have to have those certified personnel.

We're getting behind that, and especially with the conversion to RSA.

If we don't start building some of those teams up, we're not gonna have those teams in the future.

So that's a that's that's a a large chunk of the 250 will go to that.

It's also gonna go to more in-house classes on not certificate classes, but actually real world.

Hey, I'm looking at this house.

How am I gonna size it up?

How am I gonna do what I have to do to get it out and get the people out?

I know Mr.

Busby, when we went through the interview process, everybody we talked to almost said we need to improve on that in-house training.

Right.

I think that's very important.

Right members or non-members, any other questions or comments.

All right.

All right, thanks, Chief.

Appreciate the job you do, Chief.

Okay, take care of your ice down Kitlin, Georgia.

So I think we also have Tuscles Symphony here for a short presentation.

I'm gonna have to excuse myself, Rob.

You would take over.

Sure.

Better out yeah, try not to ignite any uh controversy budget too.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Natasha Perine.

I'm the executive director of the Tuscalist Symphony, and thank you so much for making time for me to come talk with you all today.

First of all, we are sincerely grateful for the support that you have given us for decades.

And your 21,700 helps us pay for three essential things for us to do our work.

One is Moody Concert Hall, which is the only indoor venue where we are able to fit the entire orchestra.

Two is for our office space, and three is for our music.

So we are using uh those dollars very very wisely, and they are allowing us to give an excellent product to our community.

Now, as you can see, uh we have had significant growth over the last three years, and even though our funding from the city dropped in 2021, we have grown 80 percent our audience in just three years.

Last season alone, we reached 18,416 people, 10,000 of which were students, and that is a big part uh core of what we do.

We've also expanded our programming and it deepened our community engagement.

This wasn't on accident, this has been incredibly strategic, and it's happened because we're making the most out of the dollars that we are getting for from the city.

We are currently uh putting back just about a million dollars back into the community, and the city's current support of 21,700 yields a uh 44 to one ROI.

So every dollar you're spending, 44 is coming back to the community.

What we are asking for this season is to be returned to our 2021 um grant award, which was 25,025, and at that level, you still are gonna have an exceptionally strong ROI of $38, and it is gonna help us meet an urgent and expanding need.

Our community is growing with us.

More and more people are wanting to come to the orchestra, and with that uh uh reinstate reinstated award of 25,025.

We are going to put that straight into students because we have more students in schools signing up, because we have more people coming to concerts, we are offering an additional free young persons concert.

We've done this every year since our inception, and it has the potential to reach 3,000 students, and your uh reinstated award of 25,025 is only gonna be a $3.33 additional investment per child, and that's gonna allow us to reach a thousand more kids.

Why are we doing what we do?

Because the arts help bring people together, they help us see from new perspectives.

And if there was ever another time in the world where we needed to come together, it is now, and we are reaching our students right at the very beginning in pre-K, and that goes all the way through college.

Everything we do for schools is free.

Our education quintet that goes into the schools, our Meet the Maestro programs that bring kids to the concert hall to meet with uh the maestro and our musicians, and then of course our young persons concert.

All of this happens at no cost to schools or families, and in addition to our young persons concert, we also give away up to 3,000 tickets to students each year.

And we don't just say y'all come, myself and our board members and even some musicians go into schools to build relationships with teachers and faculty, and of course, most importantly, the students.

But imagine if we got that $3,325 back, and imagine all of the kids whose lives can be changed and therefore making our community a better place.

Thank you so much for your support and for adding me to the schedule today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming.

Committee members have any questions.

I do, because that would be see, that would be $3,300 basically.

I just I just want to say I think one of the things that makes this symphony so important is that I know through my trips to Germany, especially with the Mercedes number one, I guess most exciting response we got of Germans coming to Tuscaloosa were the fact that we actually have a symphony and soccer.

Those were the two most important things.

And so I just think when we look at funding the arts or getting back to the level we need to remember how international our city has become.

That's right.

And I just think it's a very small amount for the benefits that the Symphony pays, and just uh again, think about how great our July 4th concert is.

That's that we offer to people free.

And your um numbers, members of your symphony come from several states, right?

That's correct.

So we are paying people from out of town.

That's right.

very small amount for the benefits that the symphony pays and and just uh again think about how great our july fourth concert is uh that's that we offer to people free and your um numbers members of your symphony come from several states right that's correct so we are getting people from out of town that's right most of our core members are either from Tuscaloosa or Birmingham but we have folks coming from uh Panama City from uh from Tennessee from Atlanta from Savannah um really all over Mississippi all over the southeast and then we fly in international uh guests thank you thank you very much for any other comments thank you for being here today thank you is there any um other comments from my colleagues about the budget or any other questions that we would like to discuss today if not I guess I wouldn't I don't have to have a motion to adjourn to